Puppet MastersS


Footprints

A walk on the wild side: Trump meets Putin at Finland station

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Tue, 17 Jul 2018 02:29 UTC
TrumpballPutin
© Chris McGrath/Getty ImagesThe pass receiver and the goal keeper.
US President stirs up a hornet's nest with his press conference alongside his Russian counterpart, but it seems that no 'grand bargain' was struck on Syria, and on Iran they appear to strongly disagree

"The Cold War is a thing of the past." By the time President Putin said as much during preliminary remarks at his joint press conference with President Trump in Helsinki, it was clear this would not stand. Not after so much investment by American conservatives in Cold War 2.0.

Russophobia is a 24/7 industry, and all concerned, including its media vassals, remain absolutely livid with the "disgraceful" Trump-Putin presser. Trump has "colluded with Russia." How could the President of the United States promote "moral equivalence" with a "world-class thug"?

Multiple opportunities for apoplectic outrage were in order.
Trump: "Our relationship has never been worse than it is now. However, that changed. As of about four hours ago."

Putin: "The United States could be more decisive in nudging Ukrainian leadership."

Trump: "There was no collusion... I beat Hillary Clinton easily."

Putin: "We should be guided by facts. Can you name a single fact that would definitively prove collusion? This is nonsense."
Then, the clincher: the Russian president calls [Special Counsel] Robert Mueller's 'bluff', offering to interrogate the Russians indicted for alleged election meddling in the US if Mueller makes an official request to Moscow. But in exchange, Russia would expect the US to question Americans on whether Moscow should face charges for illegal actions.

Comment: A 'Pepe Escobar glimpse' into the interactions between Putin and Trump.

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Document

Time to declassify documents relating to Russian collusion, Mr. President!

Emmett Tyrrell
Townhall
Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:01 UTC
Trumpmueller
© media.salon.comPresident Trump • SC Mueller
Now that FBI agent Peter Strzok has appeared before Congress and told us nothing that we did not know, it is time for President Donald Trump to act. Strzok looked like a cocky crook testifying to Congress about a failed con job. His appearance was utterly astounding. He actually smirked at the assembled elected officials of government. He smirked from morning until late in the afternoon when Congress finally adjourned, though admittedly, by late in the afternoon, the wind was pretty much out of his sails and his smiling face most assuredly ached. He looked deflated, and if he was eager for anything, it was for the exit and the arms of his paramour, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

His demeanor was not that of a stalwart FBI agent appearing before the Congress of the United States to inform the citizenry but like that of John Gotti or one of the other hoods whom a better generation of FBI agents than Strzok's once put behind bars.

At some point in the near future, a reflective Congress might -- in a bipartisan moment -- investigate how the FBI became a tool of elitist interests in our nation's capital. Then, too, Congress could offer suggestions as to what could be done to repair the damage. Federal law enforcement becoming so flagrantly political is genuinely alarming.

I think President Trump has subtly brought the left and the right in this country together, at least on one point. The time has come for the citizenry to see all the documents held by the government in the so-called Russian collusion scandal. Was there collusion? Who was involved? The president has it in his power to declassify the documents. Use your faithful weapon, Mr. President, your trusty black felt pen. Sign the declassifying order now.

Comment: Trump has method to his madness which seems to also include an element of 'timing' and a successful 'poker face' on his level of awareness. The tide is rising from the Left. There may be more 'catch' in the net yet to come.

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SOTT Logo S

SOTT Focus: Grand Deception: The American Deep State's Role in 1990s Raid on Russia

Alex Krainer
Sott.net
Sun, 22 Jul 2018 17:03 UTC
The following article is part 4 in a six-part series on Russia's transition from communism to capitalism during the 1990s. Links to previous posts: introduction, part 1, part 2, part 3. It is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of my book, Grand Deception: the Truth About Bill Browder, the Magnitsky Act, and Anti-Russia Sanctions. The book's previous incarnation was banned last summer by some of the same actors we'll be discussing today. This post should prove relevant today, in light of hysterical rebukes of President Trump's recent summit with his Russian counter part in Finland, particularly regarding the role and trustworthiness of the so-called "intelligence community."
yeltsin gorbachev
Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev
Now, why does the west applaud Gorbachev and Yeltsin? Do you think that the West wants Soviet people to live in luxury, be well fed? Not remotely! The West wants the Soviet Union to break up. Gorbachev and Yeltsin get a pat on the back because the West thinks they are destroying the country. - Alexander Zinoviev, March 1990 on French TV channel Antenne 2 during a debate with Boris Yeltsin
Western commentators usually focus on the period from 1991 to 2000 and blame the administration of Bill Clinton for mismanaging their aid to Russia. However, blaming the Clinton administration is a bit like reading a book from the middle rather than from the beginning. To understand the U.S. government's role in the Russian tragedy, we have to go at least ten years back, to the beginnings of the administration of President Ronald Reagan. We must also distinguish between the legitimate U.S. government, and an illegal, parallel structure of power operating within it. For a long time, this "secret government" could not be discussed in polite society because its existence was deemed a wild conspiracy theory.

But that all changed in the fall of 1986 when an American supply plane got shot down over Nicaragua and Reagan's illegal arm sales to Iran became exposed. These events brought to light the "Iran-Contra" affair. A full congressional investigation was launched and its proceedings revealed the existence of a parallel power structure operating unlawfully within legitimate government structure. For the first time, the actions of this network, also referred to as shadow government, deep state or the Enterprise, came out on record and could no longer be dismissed as mere conspiracy theory.
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Question

Questioning the Intelligence

Cal Thomas
Townhall
Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:01 UTC
Trumputin
© UnknownPresident Trump • President Putin
Did President Trump bungle the moment in Helsinki by casting doubt on American intelligence findings that Russian agents "meddled" in the 2016 election? His critics, including some Republicans, say so -- and on Tuesday, Trump said he had misspoken when he expressed doubt about Russian culpability -- but several things need to be kept in mind.

The first is that Russia and the United States have been meddling with, or spying on, each other for decades. That is hardly a secret. Second, according to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, no votes were altered, and the election outcome was not affected by the alleged meddling. Third, the fealty most Democrats and some Republicans are showing for the credibility of U.S. intelligence today was lacking after it was discovered that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

Every intelligence agency in the U.S. and Britain swore (some under oath) that Saddam Hussein had WMD. It was the rationale President George W. Bush used to invade Iraq, topple Saddam and install a government more to his liking.

Some older history might serve to prove that U.S. intelligence findings are not always accurate, or worth taking at immediate face value.

Comment: Seems the US has a history of wanting/needing accurate 'intelligence' information and, having created those agencies to do precisely that, find they are instead political tools with their own agendas, conglomerations of partisan-political-ideological biases, upon which presidents and the American people cannot trust nor depend. They are corrupt and out of hand which, for their original intent, makes them useless.

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Attention

FISA files: 'Little doubt' FBI, DOJ misled courts in Carter Page probe says Trump


RT
Sun, 22 Jul 2018 12:46 UTC
Carter Page
© Wall Street JournalCarter Page
President Donald Trump has claimed files about his former campaign adviser Carter Page confirm that the Department of Justice and FBI had misled the courts. Separately, he suggested his campaign was "spied upon illegally."

Donald Trump on Sunday lashed out at the FBI and the Department of Justice, which released over 400 pages of its initial and renewed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests pertaining to Carter Page, Trump's ex-foreign policy adviser.

Praising Judicial Watch, a conservative foundation that studied the files, the president tweeted: "As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of "Justice" and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!"


Comment: The FBI is running a deflection, redirection and redaction campaign in hopes of saving itself and those with whom it colluded.

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Newspaper

US/Soros-funded Colombian group blasts Judicial Watch's exposé on ties to violent Marxist guerrillas


Judicial Watch
Tue, 17 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Soros-activities
© youtube.comGeorge Soros activities of the OSF
A Colombian human rights group funded by the U.S. government and leftwing billionaire George Soros is attacking Judicial Watch for exposing its ties to the country's famously violent Marxist guerrilla. Judicial Watch's involvement is on behalf of American taxpayers who unknowingly finance the political activities of the Soros Open Society Foundations (OSF) abroad, including in Colombia. The cash flows through the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and is used to support extremist groups that want to rewrite Colombia's history by granting terrorists from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the guerrilla formed by communist farmers in the country's central region, the same rights as legitimate police and military forces. The movement, supported by the Obama administration, also seeks to rebrand decades of massacres, kidnappings, child soldiering, and drug trafficking by a criminal syndicate as simply "50 years of armed conflict."
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Handcuffs

Lavrov: Charges against alleged spy Maria Butina were fabricated, release her


Reuters
Sat, 21 Jul 2018 11:51 UTC
Maria Butina
© FacebookMarina Butina
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov addresses Butina's detention in call with US secretary of state Mike Pompeo

Russia's foreign minister told his American counterpart on Saturday a woman arrested in the US on accusations she was a Russian agent was detained on "fabricated charges" and should be released.

Sergei Lavrov made the comments about Maria Butina in a phone call to the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, that was aimed at improving bilateral relations, the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement in the wake of the recent summit in Helsinki.

On Wednesday, a US judge ordered Butina jailed until her trial after prosecutors argued she had ties to Russian intelligence and could flee the country. Butina has been accused of working with a high-powered Russian official and two unidentified US citizens, trying to infiltrate the National Rifle Association and influence US policy toward Russia.

Comment: More from RT:
The 29-year-old Russian student and a gun activist was arrested in the US about a week ago and charged with acting as a foreign agent without registering her activities with the authorities. Butina has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

On July 16, a DC Federal Court rejected Butina's bail plea and ordered her to be placed in custody pending trial over fears that she could flee or contact Russian intelligence officials. Her lawyer says the trial is being politicized and Russian embassy staff were only allowed to visit her in jail on Thursday.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called Butina's arrest politically motivated, adding that it could have been aimed at disrupting the Helsinki summit between Putin and Trump. On Thursday, the ministry also launched a campaign hashtagged #FreeMariaButina on Twitter to raise awareness of her case.

The Foreign minister raised the issue during phone conversations that were made at the request of the US and aimed at "further normalization of the US-Russian relations" following the summit between the US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
See also:

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Target

Unidentified drones attack Russian airbase in Syria two days in a row


Sputnik
Sun, 22 Jul 2018 11:34 UTC
Russian jet
© Russian Defense MinistryRussian jets at Hmeymim Airbase, Syria
On Saturday the Russian Defense Ministry's Reconciliation Center already reported that a drone launched from a militant-controlled area had been detected and destroyed near the Hmeymim airbase in Syria.

According to the Hmeymim airbase representative, one drone approaching the military facility was terminated on Saturday and the second one - on Sunday morning.
"On Saturday, July 21, 2018, at nightfall, the Russian air defense at the Hmeymim airbase detected an unidentified small-sized air target (UAV) at a considerable distance approaching the Russian military facility. The aerial target was destroyed by the Russian airbase's standard anti-aircraft guns. On Sunday morning, July 22, 2018, the air defense destroyed at long range another unknown UAV that was approaching the Hmeymim airbase from the northwest," the report said.
There were no casualties or material damage in both cases and the Russian air base is operating as normal, the representative added.
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Bad Guys

Trump should pick a fight with Putin over the failures of Obama, Clapper, Strzok and Brennan? Nonsense

George Rasley
Conservative HQ
Wed, 18 Jul 2018 18:36 UTC
Helsinki Trump Putin
© Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP
President Trump's statement about the poor state of US - Russian relations,
"I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we've all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago -- a long time, frankly, before I got to office. And I think we're all to blame,"
seems to have sent the establishment media and #NeverTrump crowd into chicken little-level fits of hysteria never before seen in American politics or media.

Pearl Harbor, Kristallnacht and treason were just a few of the insane comparisons Democrats and #NeverTrump Republicans have made to denigrate the President's performance in Helsinki.

Keep in mind, what all the hysteria is obfuscating is that President Trump did discuss Russian interference in our election with President Putin, "During today's meeting, I addressed directly with President Putin the issue of Russian interference in our elections. I felt this was a message best delivered in person. We spent a great deal of time talking about it..."
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Vader

Washington excuses US imperialism with two keywords: 'Justification' and 'plausibility'

Federico Pieraccini
The Strategic Culture Foundation
Tue, 17 Jul 2018 17:42 UTC
mike pence army speech
© Staff Sgt. Joshua KleinholzU.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks to a crowd of deployed service members assigned to the 332d Air Expeditionary Wing January 21, 2018 at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia.
Observing the behavior of the United States over recent decades, it becomes clear that the American establishment has always relied on two fundamental factors to justify choices in foreign policy.

We have been accustomed in recent years to humanitarian interventions being justified on the assumption that the United States and the West were in some way intervening militarily in the interests of defending innocent civilians from brutal dictators. This justification for armed intervention has either been the key factor or the direct cause for the expansion of US imperialism. The use of the media as an instrument of war - with lies, artfully constructed stories, intentional omissions, and targeted disinformation - has helped US imperialism to justify armed interventions abroad.

There is always some sort of justification, rationale or pretext offered when Washington intervenes to bring about conflict. These excuses were showcased in Yugoslavia in 1999, in Afghanistan in 2002, in Iraq in 2003, and in Libya in 2011. With Yugoslavia and Libya, the lie of protecting human rights was the justification offered to the public. The September 11, 2001 attacks were used to justify attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003, pointing the finger of blame at these countries. The war on terror in general offered a perfect justification for bringing about chaos in every corner of the world.

Comment: While the development of social media has helped as a way around the gate-keeping, it is just as vulnerable to manipulation. Read widely, and with discernment.

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