Puppet MastersS


Piggy Bank

Trump's message to NATO: 'We will no longer be your piggy bank'

Seraphim Hanisch
The Duran
Fri, 06 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
NATOshakeup
© Pinterest/KJN
President Trump's pledge to put America first has caused many ripples of disruption in the "established" order of geopolitics and with the global economy. On July 3rd, a further disturbance was promised, this time regarding NATO, according to this report from Reuters:
President Donald Trump will tell fellow NATO countries at next week's summit that the United States cannot be "the world's piggy bank," White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Tuesday.

"What the president is going to do is go into these meetings with the mindset to protect the American people, stand with our partners and allies - but as he has said many times before America is thought so often to be the world's piggy bank. And that's gotta stop," Gidley told reporters as Trump flew to West Virginia. Trump has pressured some NATO allies to significantly increase military expenditure.
While Reuters went no further in their reporting than what is above, other agencies offered some thoughts about this situations.

Sputnik spoke to geopolitical analyst and author Nikola Mirkovic, to find out how Europe might respond to such straight talk.

Sputnik: So, we know now that President Trump plans on telling NATO countries next week that the US "cannot be the world's piggy bank" - how do you expect NATO leaders to respond to that sentiment?

Comment: Trump is proving to be a 'mover and shaker'. It will be up to the members of NATO to self-determine participation and the future of the alliance, effective or not. A small number of countries have already begun to form an elite force. See also:

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Snakes in Suits

A shift in strategy: Trump's lawyers revise conditions for Mueller interview

Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman
The New York Times
Fri, 06 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
GiulianiMueller
© Doug Mills/The New York Times, J. Scott Applewhite/APRudy Giuliani • Robert Mueller
President Trump's lawyers set new conditions on Friday on an interview with the special counsel and said that the chances that the president would be voluntarily questioned were growing increasingly unlikely.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, needs to prove - before Mr. Trump would agree to an interview - that he has evidence that Mr. Trump committed a crime and that his testimony is essential to completing the investigation, said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president's lead lawyer in the case.

His declaration was the latest sign that the president's lawyers, who long cooperated quietly with the inquiry even as their client attacked it, have shifted to an openly combative stance.
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Chess

Lavrov: JCPOA countries to create mechanism to maintain trade with Iran without the US


Sputnik
Fri, 06 Jul 2018 20:04 UTC
Lavrov
© African Ripples MagazineRussian FM Sergei Lavrov
Countries that remain committed to the nuclear deal on Iran - Russia, China, Germany, France and the UK - agreed to establish a permanent expert mechanism that will be tasked with finding ways to maintain trade with Iran regardless of US sanctions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters after the meeting in Vienna.
"We agreed, though it was not easy given that the European troika, Russia, and Iran often have very different interests, that the permanent mechanism of the joint commission at the level of experts will work on a regular basis to review options that will allow keeping all the obligations under the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] despite the US decision, and maintaining trade and economic ties with Iran... independently from the US," Lavrov said.
The minister also expressed doubts that US sanctions policy against Iran would be changed.
"Yes, the threat of extra-territorial sanctions, which Washington is imposing in the coming month as the first wave, followed by the ban on buying Iranian oil as the second wave of sanctions in November, has already been voiced by Washington. Everyone agrees that this practice is absolutely illegitimate. But this is the policy that is unlikely to be changed. There will be an intensive fight in trade and economic and political spheres. The permanent expert mechanism will be working out trade solutions that will not create problems for economic actors of those countries who remain committed to the JCPOA," he added.
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Question

What's Devin Nunes up to? The House Trump-Russia probe turns its focus to informants

Byron York
Washington Examiner
Fri, 06 Jul 2018 07:41 UTC
Devin Nunes
© Crooks and LiarsDevin Nunes, House Intelligence Committee Chair
Devin Nunes is up to something. The House Intelligence Committee chairman has been writing letters lately, asking that two other House chairman - Bob Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee and Trey Gowdy of the Oversight Committee - pick up parts of the Trump-Russia investigation that Nunes started. It's as if Nunes, who shook loose some of the key publicly-known facts in the probe, is having a grand going-out-of-business sale. But that's clearly not the case. So what, in fact, is going on?

The short version is that the investigation is expanding to the two additional committees, even as Nunes devotes his own committee's resources to learning whether the FBI used informants against the 2016 Trump campaign and, if so, how many, when, and how much money was spent on the project. Both Judiciary and Oversight have more staff than Intelligence, and thus more capacity to handle multiple witnesses. They also have more direct oversight responsibility for parts of the Justice Department and other arms of the federal government under examination by House investigators.

Comment: See also:
Nunes refers 17 DOJ, FBI officials to Gowdy and Goodlatte to grill on surveillance abuse

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Stop

US troops unlikely to leave Germany says US NATO envoy


RT
Fri, 06 Jul 2018 17:50 UTC
USTroopsGermany
© Chron.com-Houston ChronicleUS Troops based in Wiesbaden, Germany
Not much is likely to change for the 35,000 American soldiers stationed in Germany, as the US ambassador to NATO says there are no plans for their withdrawal, despite speculations that Trump may be considering a troop pullout.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Trump administration's envoy to NATO, told reporters on Thursday that there is "nothing being said at all about the troop alignment in Germany or anything that would change," the Washington Post reported. Commenting on speculations relating to potential troop withdrawal, Hutchison said: "I've heard nothing on that score."

Earlier media reports suggested that President Donald Trump floated the idea of scaling down or withdrawing the 35,000-strong US contingent from Germany. Speculations arose that it was because the president was frustrated by the fact that Germany and other NATO allies do not pay their 'fair share' into the alliance's budget, the Washington Post reported.

Comment: Boggles the mind how many countries are complacent with, or numb to, US troop occupation for so many decades by maintaining a level of panic over the idea of a war that might never occur. Those who feed this paranoia are those who profit from enticing fear and supplying 'the remedy'.

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Russian Flag

French President Macron will attend World Cup semifinal, further isolating UK leadership

Seraphim Hanisch
The Duran
Fri, 06 Jul 2018 15:59 UTC
Putin Macron
French Presiden Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin
President's Macron's decision is as promised, but visibility of forthcoming trip to Russia continues to isolate and embarrass Great Britain

TASS News Agency reported on Friday July 6 that French President Emmanuel Macron plans to travel to Russia to attend the semifinal match of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. France advanced to this stage in the tournament, so the nation's leader wants to be there.

A June 8th piece on Deutsche Welle, a German-state funded news site, discussed the matter of the European nations and their response to the games being held this month in Russia. A number of leaders took politically calculated stances, such as Great Britain, Ukraine and Germany, and even the French leader said that he would only go if his nation's team made it to the semifinals.
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Document

Poland steps back on Holocaust memorial law after US pressure

Olivier Bault
visegradpost.com
Tue, 03 Jul 2018 15:40 UTC
Mateusz Morawiecki and Benyamin Netanyahu
The Polish and Israeli Prime Ministers signed a common declaration to end the dispute.

The amendments to the Polish memorial law concerning the Shoah and the Nazi crimes committed in Poland at the origin of tensions between Poland on one side, and Israel, Jewish organisations and the USA on the other side, had been adopted in last January. On 27 June, the Polish and Israeli Prime Ministers have wanted to put an end to the polemic and have signed a common declaration while the Polish parliament did suppress within one single day the provision of the new version of the memorial law punishing the assignation "to the Polish nation or to the Polish State the responsibility or the co-responsibility of the Nazi crimes committed by the German IIIrd Reich". To explain this step back, the leaders of the PiS have asserted that this provision was anyway impossible to implement. They also promised to the Polish people that Warsaw would continue to put civil charges on persons and media using the "Polish death camps" expression when referring to the German extermination camps in occupied Poland.

In their common declaration, Mateusz Morawiecki and Benyamin Netanyahu have condemned the usage of this expression aiming to reduce the German responsibility. While condemning the crimes committed by some Polish people towards Jews during the Second World Ward, they also reminded the heroism of those who risked their lives for saving Jews as well as the efforts of the Polish government in exile for thwarting the German criminal operation by informing the Allies on the ongoing genocide. They also reminded the role of the underground structures in occupied Poland that were supervised by the Polish government-in-exile in London and that provided assistance to the Jews and punished with the sentence of death the Polish people who betrayed Jews.
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USA

Trump and Melania salute military at Independence Day parade


Conservative Fighters
Thu, 05 Jul 2018 15:22 UTC
trump melania
President Donald Trump thanked America's 'finest' for serving and protecting the nation on Wednesday in Fourth of July remarks from the Truman Balcony of the White House.

Addressing military families on the South Lawn and around the country, the president said, 'These are truly unbelievable people.'

'Thank you for keeping America safe, strong, proud, mighty and free,' he told assembled service members and those that he said are watching from around the world. 'God bless you. God bless our military. And God bless America, and Happy Fourth of July.'

The president and the first lady then greeted guests, hand-in-hand, who had made their way to the front of a rope line.

VP Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence were in attendance, as were several members of the President's cabinet.

Comment: Trump may not have all the top military brass on his side, but he has the support of the troops and the officers in the intel agencies. As Thierry Meyssan put it recently:
During his election, President Trump could count on the the votes from his troops, but not those of the superior officers and generals.

Donald Trump entered into politics on 11 September 2001. He immediately contested the official version of the events. Thereafter, he expressed his astonishment about the contradictions of the mainstream story - while Presidents Bush Jr. and Obama declared that they wanted to eliminate the jihadist movements, we observed on the contrary a drastic multiplication and globalisation of jihadism during their mandates which went as far as the creation of an independent state in Iraq and Syria.

This is why, as soon as he took office, President Trump surrounded himself with officers who enjoyed a recognised authority in the army. It was, for him, the only option, both to guard against a military coup d'etat and to ensure that he would be obeyed in the reforms that he wanted to implement. Then he gave carte blanche to all the military for everything concerning tactics on the ground. Finally, he never lost an opportunity to confirm his support for the armed forces and the Intelligence services.


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Russian Flag

SOTT Focus: Western media pundits resort to hurling racist abuse: 'Russian team too white to win World Cup'

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Sat, 07 Jul 2018 14:58 UTC
russia world cup
© Carl Recine / ReutersRussian joy: kryptonite to russophobes
While most of us focus on the football, many Western media outlets have used the past few weeks to promote their "issues" agenda. Amid the virtue signaling, readers are being misled about the make-up of Team Russia.

Before a ball was kicked, you could have filled a book with nasty, obnoxious, mean-spirited and loathsome takes on this year's FIFA World Cup. They ranged from predictions of Russia using chemicals to slow down England players (BBC) to British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson equating the event to the "Hitler" Olympics of 1936.

While people here laugh at this sort of plainly outrageous nonsense, other forms of deceit invoke feelings of anger. And one which seems to especially irk Russians is the false representation of alleged ethnic conformity within their side.

Comment: Yes, it's a no-brainer, but that's not self-evident for people with no brains.

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Newspaper

Kiev parliament proudly displays 1941 independence act pledging allegiance to Hitler


RT
Sat, 07 Jul 2018 14:33 UTC
A newspaper clipping displayed in the Ukrainian parliament.
A newspaper clipping displayed in the Ukrainian parliament.
The Ukrainian parliament has hosted an exhibition dedicated to a failed attempt to declare an independent state during World War II. The text of the act declared Kiev's allegiance to the Nazi Germany.

In its struggle for national identity and unanimity to Russia, modern Ukraine is in an endless quest for traces of historic statehood. One such episode happened in June 1941 with the arrival of Nazi troops in Ukraine. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), having just captured Lvov under the leadership of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, declared an independent nation.

Comment: Any questions on Kiev's modus operandi?

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