Puppet MastersS


Dollar

Trade War! Trump extends EU exemptions on steel tariffs for another month - Bloc threatens to retaliate


RT
Wed, 02 May 2018 15:16 UTC
JunckerTrump
© InfowarsEU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker • US President Donald Trump
The European Union will not accept threats from the United States in the talks to secure a permanent exemption from US tariffs on steel and aluminum, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said.

"I would like to reiterate the call that this exemption be made unconditional and permanent," Juncker said as he presented the EU's budget at the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday.

Donald Trump's decision in March to impose a worldwide 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum "cannot be justified on the basis of national security," he said as cited by AP. The situation in which Washington and Brussels find themselves on the brink of a trade war "should not happen between allies," the Commission's head stressed.

"We will continue our negotiations with the US, but we will refuse to negotiate under threat," Juncker said. The statement came a day after Trump prolonged the temporary exemption for the EU for another month, until June 1.
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Snow Globe

Whether it's Russiagate, Skripal or Syria, it's clear the mainstream media have lost their grip on reality

Paul Mansfield
21st Century Wire
Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Trump and Putin
Despite a series of collapsing mainstream narratives, the establishment can't help but doubling (and tripling) down on their government-issued official conspiracy theories.

The "Blame Russia" for absolutely everything world we currently occupy has reached a point almost beyond return and is scaling heights that would turn Joseph McCarthy green with envy. Whether it is internally produced political turmoil and scandal, or because of generally reckless and failed foreign policy endeavours, the US and UK governments are more wiling than ever to pin the blame on Russia without fail.

The instant blame on Russia for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, or "highly likely" it was Russia, as Theresa May put it, proved grossly premature, graduating onto maybe not so likely at all - thanks to dedicated alt media and social media researchers and activists uncovering the development of Novichoks in multiple countries, making it entirely plausible that some country other than Russia may be responsible for the improbably Salisbury event.

Comment: The question would now seem to be how much more anti-Russia hysteria does the deep state believe needs to be whipped up before they feel they have the backing of the US public to take their insane campaign further. And make no mistake, short of nuclear war, the body of pathological deep staters (including their mouthpieces) will take this war as far as it can go before they are effectively neutralized.

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Propaganda

PC Gatekeeper: Facebook's new ranking system decides which news organizations are 'trustworthy'

Ben Smith and Mat Honan
Buzz Feed News
Wed, 02 May 2018 00:13 UTC
zuckerberg
© Josh Edelson / AFP / Getty Images
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the company has already begun to implement a system that ranks news organizations based on trustworthiness, and promotes or suppresses its content based on that metric.

Zuckerberg said the company has gathered data on how consumers perceive news brands by asking them to identify whether they have heard of various publications and if they trust them.

"We put [that data] into the system, and it is acting as a boost or a suppression, and we're going to dial up the intensity of that over time," he said. "We feel like we have a responsibility to further [break] down polarization and find common ground."

Zuckerberg met with a group of news media executives at the Rosewood Sand Hill hotel in Menlo Park after delivering his keynote speech at Facebook's annual F8 developer conference Tuesday.

The meeting included representatives from BuzzFeed News, the Information, Quartz, the New York Times, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, NBC, Recode, Univision, Barron's, the Daily Beast, the Economist, HuffPost, Insider, the Atlantic, the New York Post, and others.

Comment: Zuckerberg is finally admitting what Facebook has been doing for some time now - suppressing any information that runs counter to the establishment's political ideology:

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Blue Planet

Best of the Web: Russia-DPRK-ROK 'peace pipeline' gaining traction thanks to Korean thaw

M. K. Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
Mon, 30 Apr 2018 15:56 UTC
Moon Jae-in and Vladimir Putin
© Sputnik / Grigoriy Sisoev
The two "peace pipelines" - one carrying Iranian natural gas via Pakistan to India and a second transporting Russian gas via North Korea to South Korea - surfaced as tantalizing ideas roughly a decade ago. They were promptly lampooned as "pipedreams". But the Russia-DPRK-ROK pipeline (RDR) is having the last laugh on its detractors, thanks to the "thaw" on the Korean Peninsula.

The South Korean President Moon Jae-in telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday to personally brief him on the outcome of the inter-Korean summit in Panmunjom last Friday. The Russian readout says that during the conversation, Putin "reaffirmed Russia's readiness to continue facilitating practical cooperation between the Republic of Korea and the DPRK, including through major trilateral projects in infrastructure and energy."

The South Korean media reported that Putin "stressed the need to take advantage of the success of the inter-Korean summit to launch economic cooperation projects between the two Koreas and Russia" and flagged, in particular, that "connecting railways, gas pipelines, and electric power transmission between Russia and the Korean Peninsula via Siberia will contribute to the stability and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula."

Earlier, in a statement in Moscow on Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry had welcomed the Panmunjom summit as "a significant step by Seoul and Pyongyang to national reconciliation and the establishment of strong relationships of independent value." The statement said, "We are ready to facilitate the establishment of practical cooperation between the DPRK and the Republic of Korea, including through the development of tripartite cooperation in the railway, electricity, gas and other industries."
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Oscar

Republicans nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize - "single-handedly" resolved Korean crisis


RT
Thu, 03 May 2018 15:48 UTC
nobel
© nobelprize_org / Instagram
Donald Trump has been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize by House Republicans, who believe his threats of sanctions and war is the "only reason" why Pyongyang is reconciling with Seoul and moving towards denuclearization.

Trump should "receive the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work to end the Korean War, denuclearize the Korean peninsula and bring peace to the region," the nomination letter, addressed to the Norwegian Nobel committee by Indiana Republican Luke Messer, recommended.

The endorsement letter was signed by another seventeen House Republicans who could think of "no one more deserving" than President Trump to receive the prestigious award for his "tireless work to bring peace to our world."

"President Trump's peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula," the letter states.

"The President's strong leadership is the only reason North Korea is now coming to the table and he deserves recognition for this unprecedented progress toward peace," Messer said.

Comment: See also: See also our recent discussion on Trump's role (or lack thereof) in bringing about peace in Korea:

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Laptop

FBI delays release of communications with Crowdstrike until October

Joe Schoffstall
Washington Free Beacon
Sat, 28 Apr 2018 15:33 UTC
crowdstrike comey FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has pushed back the estimated completion date of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents pertaining to its communications with the security firm that examined the Democratic National Committee's hacked servers to October.

The Washington Free Beacon submitted the FOIA request in July 2017 with the FBI seeking all communication between the bureau and CrowdStrike, Inc., the California-based cyber security firm that examined the DNC's servers following the infiltration that led to the release of John Podesta's emails. The FBI said in December the documents should be available by March.

The FBI, which was never granted access to the DNC's servers for inspection, instead relied on the third-party firm that was brought in by the DNC for information regarding the compromised network who concluded that Russia was behind the hack.

The FBI previously awarded an unrelated $150,000 contract to CrowdStrike in July 2015. Details and communications between the firm and the bureau regarding that past contract were requested as part of the FOIA.

The request additionally sought all communications spanning from April 1, 2016 - one month before the firm was brought in by the DNC to analyze the servers - and July 7, 2017, the day the FOIA request was submitted to the FBI.
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Info

Former Trump lawyer says Mueller may subpoena Trump if he declines to speak to investigators

Karen Freifeld
Reuters
Thu, 03 May 2018 15:28 UTC
mueller
© Getty Images
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump's lawyers in March, raised the possibility of issuing a subpoena for Trump if he declines to talk to investigators in the Russia probe, a former lawyer for the president said on Tuesday.

John Dowd told Reuters that Mueller mentioned the possibility of a subpoena in the early March meeting. Mueller's subpoena warning was first reported by the Washington Post, which cited four people familiar with the encounter.

"This isn't some game. You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States," Dowd said he told the investigators, who are probing possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Dowd left the president's legal team about two weeks after the meeting.

The Post said Mueller had raised the possibility of a subpoena after Trump's lawyers said the president had no obligation to talk with federal investigators involved in the probe.

After the March meeting, Mueller's team agreed to provide the president's lawyers with more specific information about the subjects they wished to ask Trump, the Post reported.

Comment: The leaked questions just demonstrate what everyone knows: that the Mueller investigation is a witch-hunt: Leaked Mueller questions prove investigation is a witch-hunt - Mueller wants to take Trump down, but doesn't have the evidence to do so
Recently there have been media reports that Robert Mueller's investigators have informed Donald Trump that he is not a target of the Mueller investigation.

The highly aggressive questions Mueller wants to ask Trump however tell a very different story. The consistent theme behind them is of a Donald Trump who is very much at the centre of all sorts of nefarious activities.

Frankly they do not look like the sort of questions an investigator asks if he searching for the truth. Rather they look like cross examination by prosecuting Counsel.

In light of this Trump's hesitation in submitting himself to an interview by Mueller in which these sort of questions are asked is fully understandable.

I suspect his lawyers are advising him against it.


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TV

Media attacks Jill Stein over her non-existent collusion with Russia


RT
Thu, 03 May 2018 13:57 UTC
Jill Stein
© Jim Young / ReutersFormer Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
It's a rare occasion that mainstream media turns its attention to a third party presidential candidate and gets them on-air. Attacking them over 'collusion' with Russia? In this case, an exception may be made.

The former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein gave an interview to CNN, explaining her campaign's decision not to hand over all documents requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee, relating to contacts and discussions with Russians in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Stein said her campaign handed over most documents to the Senate committee's probe into alleged Russian interference in the election, but partly objected to the request for communications with "Russian persons, or representatives of Russian government, media, or business interests." Stein argued that the request was too broad and targeted people simply "because they happen to be Russian immigrants or of Russian descent."

"We thought that where requests were made that violated basic constitutional protections, that wasn't a good idea, not for anybody, and we did not want to be part of setting a precedent that intrudes further on our civil liberties," she explained to CNN's Chris Cuomo.
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Dollars

Kiev shielded Manafort from corruption probe to ensure delivery of US cash & weapons


RT
Thu, 03 May 2018 12:28 UTC
Paul Manafort
© Carlos Barria / ReutersFormer Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort
Ukraine froze four corruption investigations into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in order to avoid angering the American president, as the White House finalized a $47 million deal to sell anti-tank missiles to Kiev.

According to Ukrainian officials who spoke to the New York Times, Kiev is too reliant on US financial and military aid to risk irritating Trump, who is hugely critical of the investigation into alleged Russian interference and collusion in the 2016 presidential election.

Volodymyr Ariev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and ally of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, admitted that the Manafort investigations were put "in the long-term box" to avoid spoiling relations with the Trump administration.

Comment: Further reading:

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Info

Russian MoD confirms both pilots dead as Su-30SM jet crashes off Syrian coast


RT
Thu, 03 May 2018 10:47 UTC
A Sukhoi Su-30SM Flanker-C fighter
© Vitaliy Timkiv / SputnikA Sukhoi Su-30SM Flanker-C fighter
A Russian military jet has crashed off the coast of Syria's Latakia, killing two pilots on board, the Russian Defense Ministry has confirmed.

On Thursday morning, a Russian Su-30SM went down in the Mediterranean Sea after taking off from Khmeimim Airbase. Pilots "fought to take the aircraft under control till the last minute," the Russian Defense ministry said. Both of them died as the result of the incident.

The crash may have been caused by a bird hitting the engine, the ministry said, citing preliminary data. The aircraft did not come under fire.
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