Puppet MastersS


Oil Well

US assures Germany it won't stand in the way of Nordstream pipeline linking Germany and Russia


RT
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 19:30 UTC
nordstream
© Tobias Schwarz / ReutersEuropean leaders at the opening of the North Sea gas pipeline on Germany's Baltic coast in Lubmin, 2011
Germany's Economy Ministry said Berlin was assured by the United States that any punitive measures introduced against Moscow wouldn't affect the building of gas pipelines from Russia.

The ministry's spokesperson said Germany opposed sanctions with extraterritorial effect but, in the specific case of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany, guidelines that had been provided by Washington suggested that the construction would be unaffected, Reuters reports.

Earlier, Washington repeatedly voiced disapproval of the Nord Stream 2 project, pledging to introduce sanctions against European firms participating in the building of the gas pipeline. The project, led by Russia's energy giant Gazprom, is being implemented in cooperation with German energy firms Wintershall and Uniper, French multinational Engie, British-Dutch oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell and Austrian energy company OMV.
Read More...
Briefcase

Supreme Court upholds Trump travel ban - Andrew Cuomo now says court can't be 'trusted'


NTK Network
Tue, 26 Jun 2018 18:48 UTC
Andrew Cuomo
© Erik ThomasGov. Cuomo
The New York governor called the court's decision on President Trump's travel ban "a stain on this country's history."

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), in an appearance on CNN on Tuesday, said that Americans can no longer "trust" the institution of the Supreme Court because of the justices' decision on President Trump's travel ban.

The Court ruled in a 5-4 decision on Tuesday to uphold the president's executive order banning citizens from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

Comment: Andrew Coumo is virtue signalling to his liberal base. Trump is exercising a power enshrined directly in the Constitution: This is what the law says:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
Seven countries have travel restrictions: North Korea, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Venezuela. Since when was Venezuela a Muslim country?

Muslim countries not in travel ban: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Nigeria, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Indonesia, Malaysia, Azerbaijan, Mauritania, Senegal, and Kosovo

Supreme Court upholds Trump travel ban on countries posing 'terrorist threat'

Read More...
Bullseye

President Trump is pretty sure he's nailing this whole 'President' thingy

Chris Cillizza
CNN
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 01:56 UTC
Donald Trump
© salonUS President Donald Trump
On Wednesday night, speaking to a packed house in North Dakota, President Donald Trump seemed to suggest that this whole being President thing wasn't so tough.

"The Heritage Foundation came out with a report, and this was as of two months ago, we've already implemented 64% of our top agenda items," Trump told the cheering crowd. "And that's at a much faster pace than even Ronald Reagan. That's pretty good, right?"

That bravado was apparent, too, in Trump's barrage of early morning tweets on Thursday. Breaking with his past refusal to impugn special counsel Robert Mueller personally, Trump tweeted,
"When is Bob Mueller going to list his Conflicts of Interest? Why has it taken so long? Will they be listed at the top of his $22,000,000 Report...And what about the 13 Angry Democrats, will they list their conflicts with Crooked H? How many people will be sent to jail and persecuted on old and/or totally unrelated charges (there was no collusion and there was no obstruction of the no collusion)...And what is going on in the FBI & DOJ with Crooked Hillary, the DNC and all of the lies? A disgraceful situation!"
The reason for all that confidence? Donald Trump is, to borrow a favorite Trump word, winning -- at least as he sees it.

Comment: A reasonable article coming from CNN. Confidence, aim, acumen, circumstance...necessary attributes to great leaders. Does Trump have them to effect an impressive legacy? Likely. Will he be able to stay the course?

Read More...
Arrow Down

US push for nations to cut Iran oil imports to '0' by Nov. 4 with no waivers for allies


The Japan Times
Wed, 27 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Panamanian tanker
© AFP-JIJIPanamanian tanker oil docked at Iranian oil facility on Khark Island.
The United States is pushing foreign countries to cut their oil imports from Iran to zero by November, a senior State Department official said Tuesday, as the Trump administration escalates its bid to pressure Iran after pulling out of the nuclear deal.

The price of U.S. crude jumped to more than $70 per barrel for the first time since May on the news that countries were expected to completely eliminate their imports, rather than making a "significant" reduction. The Trump administration does not intend to give out waivers allowing countries such as close allies to keep importing, the official said.

The official wasn't authorized to be identified by name and briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

Last month, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. was leaving the 2015 deal, in which sanctions on Iran - including its energy sector - were eased in exchange for Tehran agreeing to roll back its nuclear program. His administration said the oil sanctions would be going back into effect after a six-month grace period that expires Nov. 4.

At the time, the Treasury Department had issued public guidance suggesting that countries needed to make a "significant reduction" in their imports, or else they would be subject to separate U.S. sanctions prohibiting all transactions between their central banks and Iran's central bank.

Comment: Is an economic war on Iran: 1) more practical, 2) much cheaper than military confrontation, 3) able to be sustained with collective resolve, 4) an elimination of the stigma of deaths, casualties and negative historical opinion, 5) a grand maneuver around Israel's resolve to engage the US in all out war, 6) an opportunity to fill US/ally coffers, and 7) a change agent 'pressure point' within the Iranian society? Is there 'method' to Trump's 'madness'? Will he avoid war?

Read More...
X

Ignored: Trump's zero-tariff challenge

Ed Feulner
Townhall
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 12:01 UTC
Trump
© Unknown
How many free-traders does it take to have a trade war? It's a nonsensical question, but you have to wonder given the actions of our trading partners, especially those in the G-7, who ignored President Trump's suggestion to eliminate all tariffs, and instead implemented tariffs of their own.

Free-traders understand that tariffs harm both the exporting country and the importing country. Real free-traders also understand that retaliatory tariffs do the same thing - harm both importing and exporting countries. Yet too many of our trading partners, after rightly warning of the harmful economic consequences of tariffs on steel and aluminum, imposed tariffs of their own.

As bad as the retaliatory tariffs may be, much worse was the total silence regarding President Trump's suggestion to eliminate tariffs altogether.

Comment: By offering the option, Trump now knows the trading acumen of his cohorts and what will constitute his control of the deal. Mindsets are prime candidates for shake-ups, accepted willing or forced.

Read More...
Pistol

MIC's assault on liberty

Michael Shindler
The American Conservative
Fri, 22 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Lindsey Graham
© Mark Reinstein/ShutterstockSenator Lindsey Graham
Last week, the House Appropriations Committee advanced a lavish $674.6 billion Pentagon spending bill for fiscal year 2019. That means Congress is preparing to spend even more on defense, which isn't at all shocking. To even marginally decrease defense spending, according to its champions, would be disastrous. After Senator Rand Paul proposed a "penny plan" to balance the budget with minor cuts, Senator Lindsey Graham warned his peers that the initiative "creates the one thing we can't afford, which is unpredictability." This attitude shapes Congress's treatment of the defense budget, even though "unpredictability" is intrinsically inescapable and feverishly spending in an effort to evade it costs us the very liberty that our military ostensibly protects.

Over two millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "Everything changes and nothing stands still." He was right, and not only in the cosmic sense, but regarding the tumult of modern geopolitics. Unexpected alliances, the development of new weaponry, and erratic fluctuations in financial markets can all alter a military's defensive capabilities in an instant. So, like most prudent nations, we invest heavily in an array of measures that allow our military to be effective in inauspicious circumstances - except, unlike all other nations, that amounts to an inexplicably colossal sum.

Comment: In theory, in fantasy, we expect our government reps to place all decisions in a proper and honest context and advocate for the good and wellbeing of the people. In reality, nothing is farther from the truth.

Read More...
Attention

Moscow: UK and allies used bribery and blackmail to force members to back OPCW guilt proposal


RT
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 23:55 UTC
Boris and OPCW
© Yves Hermen/ReutersBoris Johnson awaits OPCW decision
The UK and its western allies have resorted to downright intimidation and bribery to make other OPCW member states support the idea of giving the chemical watchdog the right to assign guilt, the Russian Foreign Ministry charged.
"London together with other countries ... managed to push their scandalous project ... by political manipulations as well as by downright bribery and open blackmail, as we have learned," the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, told journalists during a briefing on Thursday.
She spoke a day after the UK's proposal, to give the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) the authority to pin the blame in chemical attack probes, was adopted at the organization's special session.

The decision was supported by 82 OPCW member states while 24, including Russia, voted against it. Zakharova denounced the move as illegitimate, adding that the member states' conference actually "moved beyond its own mandate."

She then drew attention to the fact that the Chemical Weapons Convention, which serves as a legal basis for the existence of the OPCW, does not envisage the creation of any special mechanisms tasked with assigning guilt in case of chemical weapons use. "Granting such authority to the OPCW Technical Secretariat without amending the convention is impossible by default," Zakharova said.

She then warned that the actions of the UK and its allies de facto only "deepen the rift" within the OPCW and puts the international chemical weapons non-proliferation and disarmament regime at risk.

Comment: We know how this is going to turn out. What are Russia's options, if any? If the UK et al can successfully manipulate the mandate of the OPCW, what is next on the agenda for Western puppetry via structure collapse?

Read More...
Snakes in Suits

FBI's misconduct spells 'danger to what little is left of American democracy'


Sputnik
Thu, 28 Jun 2018 03:24 UTC
Trumpurple
© Unknown/KJN
FBI agent Peter Strzok testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees Wednesday after catching flak for raising the specter of exploiting his power as a law enforcement agent to meddle in a presidential election. Since the agent testified in a closed-door session, the public doesn't know what he said nor what he was asked.

Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page were portrayed in a damning June 11 report from the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) about their role in the Clinton email probe.

Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear was joined by journalist and author Daniel Lazare to discuss the grilling. While it remains unclear what Strzok testified about, Lazare stressed that it's really about "what he should testify about, because these congressmen are hardly unbiased observers."

Overall, the OIG report "painted a picture of an FBI which leaks like sieve, is insubordinate, and is rife with this kind of, you know, arrogant, mutinous spirit. I think this is a real danger to what little is left of American democracy," Lazare said.

Comment: Catching flak? One catches flak for coming late to a meeting, forgetting to turn in a report, being discourteous to a customer...and apparently 'for raising the specter of exploiting one's power as a law enforcement agent to meddle in a presidential election'. One might be prone to think this was just a little more than 'FBI's misconduct'.

Read More...
Attention

Exposed: How John Brennan led the CIA to hack the Senate

Roger Stone
Stone Cold Truth
Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
John Brennan
© UnknownFormer CIA director, John Brennan
Former CIA Director John Brennan said yesterday that President Donald Trump should be removed from office due to his mental stability. It's Brennan who's mental stability and loyalty to the United States and it's Constitution are in question.

As CIA Director, Brennan penetrated and spied on a US Senate Committee investigating torture by the CIA.

"Patently absurd," said Senator Harry Reid. "It violates the US constitution," is how Senator Mark Udall described it. Senator Angus King of Maine went even further and said that "it violated both the spirit and the letter of the constitutional separation of powers."

It is hard to believe that these Democrats are talking about the Obama appointed CIA chief John Brennan under whose leadership the CIA hacked the computers of their Congressional overseers.

It happened in 2014 after the CIA suspected that the team from the Senate Intelligence Committee, investigating the CIA's claim that their enhanced interrogation techniques or torture led to valuable information, had gained access to a classified report called the Panetta Review. Hackers from the CIA penetrated the Senate side of computers by using a fake ID to perform keyword searches and read the emails of their Senate investigators. They were doing so under Brennan's order who tasked to "use whatever means necessary" to find out how the Senate got hold of that document.

Comment: Double-edged sword: The chain of secrets and their manipulation lock in an agency's power base and ultimately control it.

Read More...
Briefcase

'Build it and they won't come' - EU leaders come up with genius plan to keep migrants out

Lorne Cook and Raf Casert
Associated Press
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Merkel
European Union leaders claimed a breakthrough deal Friday on how to deal with the pressures of migration after all-night talks helped accommodate Italian demands for more help.

The EU leaders said the agreement would bolster the bloc's external borders and improve the solidarity among member nations to ease pressure on point-of-entry nations like Greece and Italy.

The plan proposes screening migrants in North Africa for asylum eligibility and setting up control centers within the bloc by nations which would volunteer to have them.

Beyond demands from Italy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also faced intense domestic pressure to find a breakthrough to stave off a government crisis at home.

"We got a European solution and a work of cooperation," said French President Emmanuel Macron.

For several years now, EU nations have been trying to stem the flow of those making the perilous journey to the continent by sea, part of a desperate attempt to shore up EU unity on an issue that has helped fuel a political crisis in several member nations.

"We are not an island," Macron said. "Europe will have to live a long time with such migratory pressures which come from countries in crisis, poor countries."

No North African countries have agreed so far to sign on to the plan, though possible EU funding that could bring billions in aid may prove persuasive.


Comment: Uhm, so they agreed a deal to screen migrants in North Africa... with no agreement from North African countries?

Way to go, EUSSR!

The option of not assassinating Gaddafi is getting more attractive by the day eh?


Comment: The level of delusion in European leaders, western European leaders in particular - is astonishing. These people once prided themselves on being 'the most rational race'. Now they're clearly the most irrational.

See also: 'Migratory pressure': EU leaders compromise to share refugees & establish migrant centers on 'voluntary' basis - EU leaders extend economic sanctions against Russia

Read More...