Puppet MastersS


Airplane

Post-Putin interview, Fox's Chris Wallace sets out to vacation in St. Petersburg


RT
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 02:14 UTC
WallacePutin
© Fox News/YouTubeRussian President Vladimir Putin • Fox News anchor Chris Wallace
While Fox News anchor Chris Wallace and Vladimir Putin were at loggerheads during their sit-down in Helsinki, Wallace seems to have decided to see for himself where they make them like that, and he set off for a Russian holiday.

Wallace, a veteran Fox News host who interviewed Putin in the wake of the Monday summit with US President Donald Trump, then left for a vacation to Russia, he revealed to the New York Times. His first destination, none other than Putin's native St. Petersburg.

The anchor, whose grilling of Putin was nowhere near amicable, told NYT that he "had a few doubts" about his choice of a holiday destination, but eventually decided to go for it. "But I figured, Why not?" Wallace said.

Given the escalating anti-Russian sentiment in the US, that reached a pinnacle following the Helsinki summit with cries of "treason" and "disaster" by mainstream media, St. Petersburg might not seem like an obvious holiday destination.

At the end of their roughly half-hour interview, Wallace was apparently still not intimidated enough by one of the most demonized men around, so he revealed to Putin an itinerary of his trip. Putin, Wallace said, was glad that he chose to spend more time in St. Petersburg than in Moscow, including a visit to the famed Mariinsky Theater.

Comment: Maybe for Wallace's next Putin interview, he should do the vaca first.
In case you missed the interview:



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Stormtrooper

Mad Maxine Waters continues her descent into delusion, calls Trump 'Putin's apprentice'


RT
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 19:32 UTC
Maxine Waters
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) has lashed out at US President Donald Trump again, this time referring to him as "[Vladimir] Putin's apprentice" and claiming she knows about a secret deal between Trump and the Russian president.

Speaking on MSNBC's AM Joy show on Sunday, the California congresswoman said that she has been trying to warn the American public for months that Trump is "dangerous" and "in bed with Putin."

Waters said that Trump was looking to use Russia as his new "financial playground" because many American banks will no longer do business with him. Waters also claimed that Trump and his "Kremlin clan" of associates had a special arrangement with Putin to lift US sanctions on Russia in gratitude for alleged Russian efforts to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election.

Trump "has promised [Putin] that once he was elected, he would get those sanctions lifted," she said. "I think he is Putin's apprentice. He's been under his tutelage for a long time now."
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Bullseye

White Helmets must be tracked down & brought to justice for 'war crimes' - Syria's Grand Mufti


RT
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 17:06 UTC
White Helmets
© Arindam Shivaani / Global Look PressMessages seen on while helmets at a Q&A with The White Helmets group in Toronto, Canada on 3 April 2018.
Russia and Syria must hunt down and prosecute members of the White Helmets for "war crimes," Syria's Grand Mufti has said shortly after Israel "evacuated" a large number of the group's members at the request of the US and Canada.

"These people are not refugees. They are war criminals. I'd like to ask the governments of our two countries [Syria and Russia] to pursue the members of the White Helmets group. To find them anywhere they might be," Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun said on Monday. Hassoun was meeting families of five Russian servicemen, who were killed while fighting terrorists in Syria. The relatives of the fallen soldiers were invited to visit Syria by President Bashar Assad.

Hassoun branded the White Helmets group "terrorists" and squarely blamed them for the use of chemical weapons against civilians. While the White Helmets advertise themselves as a humanitarian group and Syria's "civil defense" they operate exclusively in militant controlled areas. The group, praised in the West as "rescuers" has been repeatedly accused of closely cooperating with terrorists and staging chemical attacks to frame Syria's government.

Comment: See also: Israel helps militant commanders flee with White Helmets during Syrian 'evacuation'

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Chess

Bibi announces meeting with Lavrov - Possible Iran withdrawal from Syria to be discussed


RT
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 17:40 UTC
israel and russia flag
© israel.mid.ru
Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed he's meeting Russia's FM Sergey Lavrov and military chief Valery Gerasimov at President Putin's request on Monday. An analyst believes Israel expects Russia to mediate Iran's withdrawal from Syria.

Israel's PM announced the upcoming arrival of the Russian delegation on his official pages on Twitter and Facebook.

Netanyahu said that the meeting was requested by the Russian president "in a conversation a few days ago." Netanyahu held a telephone talk with Putin on July 20 about the Middle East and Syria in particular.

During the announcement of the meeting with Russian top officials, Netanyahu lashed out at 'good old' Israeli arch-nemesis Iran, saying that Israel will continue "to act against any attempt by Iran and its proxies to establish a military presence in Syria."
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Chess

Propaganda against Iran kicks into gear as Sec. of State Pompeo announces launching of pro-Western propaganda channel


RT
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 02:17 UTC
pompeo
© Andrew Harnik/Pool / Reuters
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has pledged US support for "the long-ignored voice of the Iranian people," announcing the launch of the Farsi-language propaganda channel at a diaspora meeting in California.

Pompeo delivered a scathing speech on the Iranian leadership, addressing the country's diaspora at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, on Sunday.

While the US top diplomat fell just short of outright calling for an uprising against the Iranian government, which he likened to the "mafia," he instead resorted to Washington's favorite weasel words, promising that the US "will support the long-ignored voices of the Iranian people."

Supporting the will of the people is what the US claimed to have done in Libya and Syria. The former is still lying in ruins years after the 2011 NATO-led military intervention, which saw the country plunge into political and economic chaos. The latter has been ravaged by infighting between Western-backed rebels, hardline extremists the likes of Al-Nusra and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), and government troops for the past six years.

Comment: Preceding this, Trump tweeted directly at Iranian President Rouhani to "never threaten" the US after Rouhani warned Washington against provoking Iran.

Former US diplomat Jim Jatras has opined on what this development could be revealing regarding Trump's future foreign policy towards Iran and what the true meaning of this move could be:
Let's remember some of the harsh rhetoric that was used regarding North Korea and, as it turns out, we all play sweetness and light now with the Trump-Kim meeting. Maybe we will go back to the saber-rattling, but it looks like that was partly a warming-up or softening-up the target for something more conciliatory. That could be the case here.
The Israeli UNESCO envoy took the opportunity of this move by the US by not-so-subtly referring to the Iranians as "animals". Leave it to the Israelis to stir the hornet's nest even more than is necessary.

Tehran's response to this has been to rightfully call it "psychologicial warfare" and an interference in their internal affairs.

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Broom

Last gasp of the global hegemon: Bloomberg declares America's NWO officially dead

Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
Sun, 22 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
US soldier, US military
Hal Brands - the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments - pines of waning American hegemony in his op-ed in Bloomberg titled, "America's New World Order Is Officially Dead."

The sub-headline would further elaborate, "China and Russia have fully derailed the post-Cold War movement toward U.S.-led global integration."

And while Brands blames Russia and China for America's decline - it should be noted that the "US-led global integration" Brands and others within the halls of corporate-financier funded policy think tanks promote, was little more than modern day empire.

Post-Cold War, the United States abused and squandered its monopoly over military and economic power. It led serial wars of aggression across the globe, destroying entire regions of the planet. It proved that whatever the rhetoric was used to sell its unipolar world order to rest of the world, it was in practice an order that ultimately served Wall Street and Washington at the expense of everyone else on the planet.

Russia and China's vision of a multipolar world order is not predicated on institutions the world must surrender its sovereignty, trust, and future to. It is an order built on a much more realist balance of power - where national sovereignty holds primacy and a balance of economic and military power defines and protects the boundaries of international norms. This is in stark contrast to America's vision in which an easily co-opted and manipulated UN made it easy for the largest, most powerful nations to sidestep national sovereignty and even international law, and expand wealth and power through sanctions, invasions, perpetual military occupations, and the creation of subordinate client states.

Comment: Further reading:

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Dollars

Tony Blair's institute gets $10m from Saudi Arabia for helping with its modernization plan


RT
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 15:41 UTC
Tony Blair Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
© Javier Rojas/Global Look Press (L)/Rainer Jensen/Global Look Press (R)
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's 'Institute for Global Change' has reportedly received multi-million dollar payments from the Saudi Arabian government for its role in advising the kingdom on its ambitious modernization plan.

Founded in 2016, the not-for-profit Tony Blair Institute for Global Change received $10 million (£7.6 million) from Riyadh in January for an advisory role in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's 'Vision 2030' program, the UK's Sunday Telegraph has revealed.

Geared at restructuring and invigorating the Saudi economy, the program looks to reduce Saudi reliance on oil revenues after a worldwide drop in oil prices in 2016 caused shock in the Kingdom amid never-before-seen austerity measures.

Comment:

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Network

Flashback WikiLeaks: CIA hides origins of hacking attacks and 'disguises them as Russian or Chinese activity'


Daily Mail
Fri, 31 Mar 2017 18:17 UTC
julian assange wikileaks
© APWikiLeaks, founded by Julian Assange (pictured), claims its Vault 7 files come from the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence
  • WikiLeaks published 676 source code files today which it claimed are from CIA
  • It says the CIA disguised its own hacking attacks to make it appear those responsible were Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean
WikiLeaks has published hundreds more files today which it claims show the CIA went to great lengths to disguise its own hacking attacks and point the finger at Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

The 676 files released today are part of WikiLeaks' Vault 7 tranche of files and they claim to give an insight into the CIA's Marble software, which can forensically disguise viruses, trojans and hacking attacks.

WikiLeaks says the source code suggests Marble has test examples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi (the Iranian language).

Comment: See also: John McAfee on Russian hacking allegations: "If it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians"

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Black Cat

The Establishment strikes back - Mueller Russian 'indictment' was blatant attempt to poison Helsinki

Philip M. Giraldi
The Strategic Culture Foundation
Thu, 19 Jul 2018 14:35 UTC
Trump flag melania
© Agence France-Presse/GettyUS President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania greet officer at US Yokota Air Base
There are a number of elements in the recent release of an indictment of twelve named alleged Russian military intelligence GRU officers by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein looking into possible ties between Moscow and the Trump Administration that I find either implausible or even incoherent. But before considering that, it is necessary to consider the context of the announcement.

The Department of Justice, which had, based on evidence already revealed, actually interfered in the 2016 election more that Moscow could possibly have done, continued in that proud tradition by releasing the indictment three days before President Donald Trump was due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Helsinki Summit between the two leaders was critically important to anyone interested in preserving the planet Earth as we know it and there was no reason at all to release a non-time sensitive document that was clearly intended to cast a shadow over the proceedings. In fact, the surfacing of the indictment might easily be explained as a deliberate attempt by a politicized Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Mueller to torpedo President Trump over concerns that he might actually come to some understanding with Putin.

Comment: Two birds with one stone. Mueller is under huge pressure to produce some kind of results to justify the length and expense of his Russiagate "investigation". Pretty pathetic so far. But the optics of the indictments just as there may be a breakthough in US-Russian relations have done damage anyway.

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House

'Taxpayer squatting': Boris Johnson slammed for failing to move out of £20mn gov house


RT
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 10:47 UTC
Boris Johnson
© Rob Pinney/ Global Look Press
Boris Johnson has been accused of "taxpayer squatting" as he resigned from his senior cabinet role almost two weeks ago and yet is still living rent-free in the £20 million government mansion in Carlton Gardens.

The Tory - once branded by the PM as an 'FFS - a fine foreign secretary' - resigned earlier this month in protest at Theresa May's Brexit white paper.

Almost a fortnight on, he is still taking advantage of the taxpayer-funded residence, which has been reserved for the use of British foreign secretaries since 1945. Besides not having to pay a single penny on rent, he is also raking in some £10,000 per year from the rental of his own property in Islington, north London.

Labour MP Catherine West told the Mirror Online: "While many people in Westminster are stuck on housing waiting lists, this amounts to taxpayer-funded squatting from Boris. He should pack his bags and move on."
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