Puppet MastersS


Attention

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda: US military and CIA leaders may be investigated for war crimes committed in the armed conflict in Afghanistan

Marjorie Cohn
Truthout
Sun, 19 Nov 2017 20:39 UTC
US Marine
© Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kevin S. O'Brien / US NavyA US Marine Corps V-22 Osprey aircraft prepares to land at forward operating base Nawa in Helmand province, Afghanistan, Dec. 17, 2010
On November 3, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) informed the court's Pre-Trial Chamber, "[T]here is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in connection with the armed conflict in Afghanistan."

In what Amnesty International's Solomon Sacco called a "seminal moment for the ICC," Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda asked the court for authorization to commence an investigation that would focus on US military and CIA leaders, as well as Taliban and Afghan officials.

Bensouda wrote in a November 14, 2016, report that her preliminary examination revealed "a reasonable basis to believe" the "war crimes of torture and ill-treatment" had been committed "by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, principally in the 2003-2004 period, although allegedly continuing in some cases until 2014."

The chief prosecutor noted the alleged crimes by the CIA and US armed forces "were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals," but rather were "part of approved interrogation techniques in an attempt to extract 'actionable intelligence' from detainees." She added there was "reason to believe" that crimes were "committed in the furtherance of a policy or policies ... which would support US objectives in the conflict of Afghanistan."

Comment: See also:

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Dollar Gold

Treasonous: Senior British politician, who campaigned for Brexit, is now encouraging capital flight from UK


RT
Mon, 13 Nov 2017 19:33 UTC
john redwood
John Redwood, MP
A senior Tory politician has urged the wealthy to pull their money out of the UK and invest elsewhere, with the Labour Party quick to brand him a hypocrite.

Conservative MP John Redwood, who has a second £180,000 per year job as Chief Global Strategist for investment management firm Charles Stanley, encouraged investors to move their money out of the UK in his opinion piece, 'Time to look further afield as the UK economy hits the brakes'.

"I sold out of the general share ETFs in the UK after their great performance for the year from early July 2016, when I saw the last Budget and heard the BoE's credit warnings," Redwood said in the op-ed.

"The money could be better put to work in places where the authorities are allowing credit to expand a bit, to permit faster growth."

Translation: "I can get more profits elsewhere so stuff the lot of you."

Comment: Nevermind 'Brexit' - he is moonlighting as an international financial speculator while being a senior economic advisor to the Tory government. You will not find a more clear-cut example of why Western politics is so backwards. Such people should not be allowed anywhere NEAR the levers of political power. They need to be kept on a tight leash precisely because they are wholly unreliable when the going gets tough. Just look at them all, rats fleeing the ship...

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No Entry

Trump puts hold on trophy elephant ban reversal after bipartisan complaints


RT
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 19:30 UTC
elephant tusks
© Thomas Mukoya / Reuters
President Donald Trump has tweeted that he will not make a decision whether to end a ban on the import of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia "until such time as I review all conservation facts."

The Friday evening tweet follows a backlash after the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFS) announced on Thursday it would begin issuing permits for the import of elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia hunted from January 21, 2016 to December 31, 2018.


Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke followed up with a statement later in the night.

Zinke tweeted that he and Trump "both believe that conservation & healthy herds are critical," and that the permitting process was being put on hold.

Comment: It wasn't just Royce from the Republican camp who slammed the initial reversal:
Rep. Vern Buchanan (Fla.), another Republican, is also criticizing Trump's moves. "We should not encourage the hunting and slaughter of these magnificent creatures," he said in a statement. "We don't get a second chance once a species becomes extinct." Buchanan co-chairs the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus along with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who also forcefully criticized Trump.

The lawmakers join numerous Democrats, conservationists and celebrities in denouncing the Trump administration's decision to overturn the Obama administration's ban on bringing parts of elephants killed in Zimbabwe into the United States.


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Dollars

Trump footing his own and staffers' legal bills for Russia investigation


Sputnik
Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:06 UTC
Trump
© AP Photo/ John Locher
President Trump is paying his own legal bills related to the Russia investigation, and has authorized an effort to help current and former staff members drawn into the probe pay their expenses, a White House attorney said Friday.

US President Donald Trump is now paying his own legal fees in connection with the investigation into alleged collusion between his presidential campaign and Russia, White House Special Counsel Ty Cobb said in a statement on Friday.

"[The] President is paying his own legal fees, as was always his preference," Cobb said as quoted by CNN. "He does not want to deplete any funds that may be available to assist current and former staffers."
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Chess

Judge considers whether Trump's tweets should open up government's dossier probe in FOIA case

Josh Gerstein
Politico
Fri, 17 Nov 2017 16:33 UTC
President Donald Trump has taken to his favorite social media forum to denounce the so-called dossier as “fake.
© Evan Vucci/AP PhotoPresident Donald Trump has taken to his favorite social media forum to denounce the so-called dossier as “fake."
A federal judge is considering whether President Donald Trump's own tweets could force the federal government to reveal more information about its efforts to verify the claims in the controversial privately compiled dossier about Trump's alleged ties to Russia.

Trump has taken to his favorite social media forum to denounce the so-called dossier as "fake" and "discredited," while also calling repeatedly for investigators to make public details about who funded creation of the document containing accurate, inaccurate and unverified assertions about the president.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta heard arguments Friday in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit testing whether Trump's public statements foreclose the government's ability to refuse to even confirm that officials attempted to verify the claims in the so-called dossier. The lawsuit was filed by this reporter along with a pro-transparency group, the James Madison Project.
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Nuke

How Israel tricked the US into giving it green-light to bomb Syrian 'nuclear reactor' in 2007

Gareth Porter
Consortium News
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 18:05 UTC
Satellite photos of the supposed Syrian nuclear site before and after the Israeli airstrike
Satellite photos of the supposed Syrian nuclear site before and after the Israeli airstrike.
In September 2007, Israeli warplanes bombed a building in eastern Syria that the Israelis claimed held a covert nuclear reactor that had been built with North Korean assistance. Seven months later, the CIA released an extraordinary 11-minute video and mounted press and Congressional briefings that supported that claim.

But nothing about that alleged reactor in the Syrian desert turns out to be what it appeared at the time. The evidence now available shows that there was no such nuclear reactor, and that the Israelis had misled George W. Bush's administration into believing that it was in order to draw the United States into bombing missile storage sites in Syria. Other evidence now suggests, moreover, that the Syrian government had led the Israelis to believe wrongly that it was a key storage site for Hezbollah missiles and rockets.

The International Atomic Agency's top specialist on North Korean reactors, Egyptian national Yousry Abushady, warned top IAEA officials in 2008 that the published CIA claims about the alleged reactor in the Syrian desert could not possibly have been true. In a series of interviews in Vienna, and by phone and e-mail exchanges over several months, Abushady detailed the technical evidence that led him to issue that warning and to be even more confident about that judgment later on. And a retired nuclear engineer and research scientist with many years of experience at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has confirmed a crucial element of that technical evidence.

Comment: If you practice deception long enough, you'll eventually teach others to deceive you in return!

And today, Hezbollah and the Syrian regime are stronger than ever, while the writing is on the wall for the Israeli and US regimes.

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Radar

Turkish threat to remove US 'intelligence gathering' radar systems indicative of changing relationships in Middle East

ADAM GARRIE
The Duran
Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:06 UTC
erdogan
Turkey's increasingly fraught relationship with NATO has just entered a new crisis as Ankara threatens to remove a substantial US radar system from its soil, should Washington fail to complete the transfer of F-35 fighter jets ordered by Turkey.

The row has its origins in Turkey's recent purchase of Russia's powerful S-400 missile defence systems.

The Pentagon has announced that Turkey's purchase of the S-400s "would jeopardise the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey".
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Rocket

North Korea and its missile program: All you need to know

VPK-NEWS
South Front
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 16:50 UTC
North Korean missile
© express-k.kz
One may say that the political and military situation in the Asian Pacific is a calm before the storm. The race to prepare everyone to an armed conflict between the "free world" and the "communist totalitarian regime" in Pyongyang that was propagated by the western media has reached its peak.

The US are concentrating their forces in Southeast Asia in order to strike at the military and industrial objects in North Korea. Three carrier strike groups (CSG) are awaiting orders in the Sea of Japan: USS CVN-68 Nimitz, USS CVN-71 Theodore Roosevelt and USS CVN-76 Ronald Reagan. They are accompanied by three air wings. That comes up to 72-108 F/A-18E jets with 36 older F/A-18C Hornet jets for Navy support. The CSGs include up to 18 Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers, with 540 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles. The Sea of Japan is also being patrolled by USS Michigan (SSGN-727) and USS Florida (SSGN-728) cruise missile submarines, with 300 more Tomahawks. There are six B-1B and B-52 bombers with three nuclear-capable B-2 bombers at the Andersen Air Force Base (AFB) in Guam. All of this striking power is mobilized not only for show.

A real threat of a US nuclear strike reemerged during the Korean war of 1950-1953. The US developed several plans to bomb key objects in North Korea in order to gain a strategic advantage. The top brass did not bring themselves to open the Pandora's box, but the threat of nuclear obliteration was still present even after the war, although to a lesser extent. Quite possibly this was what spurned Kim Il-sung to start a nuclear program of his own.
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Network

Trilateral talks on Syria between Russia, Iran and Turkey "very useful", parties agree on "all key issues" - Lavrov

Paul Antonopoulos
Fort Russ
Sun, 19 Nov 2017 17:26 UTC
Lavrov Zarif Cavusoglu
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov positively assessed the meeting with his Iranian and Turkish counterparts, stating that it was "very useful" adding that parties "have agreed on all key issues", speaking in Antalya on Sunday.

Sergei Lavrov, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held trilateral talks to discuss the settlement of the Syrian crisis, taking into consideration the activities in line with the Astana Process - series of international meetings on Syria.

The meeting is in the lead up to the Russia-Iran-Turkey summit due in Sochi on November 22 and the intra-Syrian consultations in Geneva on November 28, as reported by FRN earlier today.

No media were allowed to be present during this meeting.

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Megaphone

Attacks on free press taking American media another step towards 'Sovietisation'

James George Jatras
Stretegic Culture
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 12:00 UTC
RT censored
This week the US Department of Justice Criminal Division forced the Russian-funded television network RT (formerly Russia Today) to register as a "foreign agent" under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Failure to comply would have risked arrest of RT's management and seizure of its assets. The move comes on the heels of Senators' recent demands that terrified tech giants Twitter, Facebook, and Google act as ideological filters.


Comment: See:


With no discernable defenders among America's media establishment, RT rightly denounced the selective FARA mandate as an attack on media freedom - which it is. But more ominous is what the move against RT says about America's rulers' further intention to limit the sources of information available to its subjects.

Comment: Also See:

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