Puppet MastersS


Briefcase

Obama Administration and the DNC's recent lawsuit more threatening to freedom of the press than Trump rhetoric

Bob Shanahan
IWB
Sat, 21 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Trump&Tweet
© unknown
America's mainstream media continues to blow President Trump's words and threats out of proportion while giving the Obama administration a pass for its actions against press freedom and forgetting Bush's jailing of a New York Times reporter. Trump's tweets putting an untrustworthy media in its place are far from "unprecedented."

I'm not pretending Trump is a saint at all. He is far from perfect. Though he has certainly said some alarming things, he has not taken any significant action against the media or attacked the First Amendment in any way.

Sure, Trump suggested journalists be sent to jail, as we learned from Thursday's release of the Comey memos from February 2017. But he has not mired a reporter in a seven year-long lawsuit or jailed a reporter for failing to disclose a source, as both the Obama and Bush administrations have done.



Comment: See also:

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Star of David

Dankof: Israeli-Saudi alliance behind war crimes in Syria


Tasnim News Agency
Fri, 20 Apr 2018 17:51 UTC
NetiArabguy
© i24news.tv
A former US Senate candidate said the Israeli-Saudi alliance has its "fingerprints all over illegal and criminal activities" in Syria.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Tasnim: Multiple places in Syria came under attack by US, British and French military forces after President Donald Trump ordered a military strike against the war-torn country early on Saturday. What is your take on the attack?

Dankof: My take on the attack is that we may all fairly conclude that Mr. Trump's foreign policy has been irretrievably hijacked by the worst elements in the Neo-Conservative, Israel First fifth column in the American government and media, and that the President has every intention of continuing to facilitate the ongoing violations of international law and American Constitutional standards that has characterized his predecessors in terms of illegitimate military actions and interventions in the Middle East that are chiefly at the behest of Israel, the central banks, and the Saudi Arabian regime that knows its own survivability depends on the continuation of the American Petrodollar as the reserve currency of the world, even as this regime continues to pursue the support of Wahhabic terrorists and extremists to destroy Iran and Shiite Muslim interests in the region.
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Star of David

The destruction of Syria is 'vital to Saudi-Israeli hegemonic interests'


Tasnim News Agency
Sun, 22 Apr 2018 16:09 UTC
SaudiIsraeli
© Antiwar.com
A political commentator based in Paris said the Zionist regimes of Israel and Saudi Arabia are seeking to destroy Syria in an attempt to serve their "hegemonic interests in the region".

Tasnim: Multiple places in Syria came under attack by US, British and French military forces after President Donald Trump ordered a military strike against the war-torn country last week over the alleged use of chemical weapons by Damascus in Douma. What is your take on the attack?

Gearoid Ó Colmáin: The attack (in Douma) was clearly a false flag operation. It was undertaken by the White Helmets in coordination with British and American and Israeli intelligence agencies. The goal was simply to create the pretext for the bombing. President Trump had stated that he wished to disengage from Syria. Israel was not happy with that decision as they want America to fight their Middle Eastern wars and the war in Syria is, and always has been, a proxy war started by Israel to destroy Iran's most important regional ally, the Syrian Arab Republic.
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Megaphone

S. Korea turns off border propaganda speakers as summit with N. Korea approaches


RT
Mon, 23 Apr 2018 11:37 UTC
S Korea speakers
© Kim Jae-Hwan / AFP
South Korea has turned off its speakers broadcasting propaganda across the border to North Korea for the first time in two years in the lead up to a historic summit between the two countries.

The speakers blast radio shows, pop music and criticism of Pyongyang towards North Korea in a bid to influence their northern neighbors. The broadcasts also include details of defectors who escape the north. North Korea also has its own propaganda broadcasts, which include praise for leader Kim Jong-un and North Korean songs.

South Korea's defence ministry spokesperson Choi Hyun-soo said the speakers stopped broadcasting from midnight Sunday. "We hope that our move today will result in South and North Korea ending mutual slandering and propaganda against each other and creating a peaceful new beginning." she said.


Comment: See also:

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Biohazard

Best of the Web: Russian prank call captures OPCW director on tape admitting chemical used against Skripals could have been made anywhere


Sputnik
Mon, 23 Apr 2018 18:54 UTC
skripal
© AFP 2018 / Ben STANSALL
If the audio is authenticated, the phone call will put another dent in London's claim that the A234 chemical agent known in Western countries as Novichok, was Russian-made.

Vladimir 'Vovan' Kuznetsov and Alexei 'Lexus' Stolyarov, the pair of Russian telephone pranksters well-known for their constant trolling of Western officials, have put out an audio recording of what they say is their conversation with Ahmet Uzumcu, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Posing as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the pranksters got the man in the tape to admit that the nerve agent used to poison Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia could have been made anywhere, and to point out that the British government never gave the OPCW the mandate to trace the source of the chemical.
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Bad Guys

Merkel warns Germany of 'new kind of anti-Semitism' coming from refugees and 'people of Arab origin'


RT
Mon, 23 Apr 2018 18:02 UTC
anti-israel flag
© Majed Jaber / Reuters
In an interview with Israeli TV, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, much-maligned for her open-door immigration policy, has said Germany is facing a new form of anti-Semitism from refugees and people of Arab origin.

"We now have another phenomenon, as we have refugees or people of Arab origin who bring another form of anti-Semitism into the country," Merkel told the Channel 10 network in a broadcast on Sunday, as cited by Die Welt.

No Jewish nursery, no school, and no synagogue can be left without police protection, the German chancellor said. "This dismays us," she noted, adding that the German government has appointed a commissioner to fight against anti-Semitism.
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Bullseye

Kadyrov dismisses Washington allegations of human rights violations, says situation in Chechnya better than US


RT
Mon, 23 Apr 2018 17:55 UTC
Ramzan Kadyrov
© Said Tzarnaev / SputnikHead of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov speaks at an event devoted to Peace Day, at the State Theater and Concert Hall in Grozny
Ramzan Kadyrov has dismissed the allegations of human rights violations in Chechnya made by the acting US secretary of state, saying that the situation in the republic is "significantly better" than in America.

"[Acting US Secretary of State] John Sullivan has called upon everyone to pay attention to the impunity of human rights abuses in Chechnya," the head of the Chechen Republic wrote on Telegram. "With all responsibility, I am telling Mr. Sullivan that his statement of human rights violations in Chechnya contains not a small part of truth. This applies also to the part about the alleged impunity. As far as fundamental human rights are concerned, the situation in Chechnya is significantly better than the one in the United States of America."
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Vader

Lavrov: Macron shows 'colonial position' by calling on US to stay in Syria


RT
Mon, 23 Apr 2018 19:20 UTC
Chain
© George Panagakis / Global Look Press
French President Emmanuel Macron's plea for the US to maintain a military presence in Syria, even after the terrorist threat has been eliminated, is similar to colonialism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov believes.

"I heard that French President Emmanuel Macron had recently called on the United States not to withdraw from Syria even when the last terrorist would be killed or expelled from the country.... This is some kind of colonial position," Russia's top diplomat said in China on Monday.

Earlier this month, right after Paris joined US and UK airstrikes against Syria, Macron claimed he convinced his US counterpart Donald Trump that it was "necessary" to extend American troop deployments to Syria. This contradicted Trump's earlier call to pull out from the country as soon as possible.

Comment: See also: 'Let us eat Freedom Fries!' Trump wines and dines Macron at first White House state dinner

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Question

Trump's visit to Merkel, Macron will tell the future of Europe

Tom Luongo
Halsey News
Sun, 22 Apr 2018 17:11 UTC
merkel macron
Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron
The nominal U.S. President, Donald Trump, will meet with the two main European leaders next week with the goal of pushing the President off his position to end the Iran Nuclear Deal, or JCPOA. But it is the bigger issues of energy security that will be the real focus.

From soy-boy Emmanuel Macron of France to the Gelded One of Germany, Angela Merkel, putting the European Union back in its place is one of the few things that Trump may still be able to affect the trajectory of when it comes to foreign policy.

He has no control over Syria, having ceded his authority to the neoconservative crazies who have been wrong about everything since the fall of the Soviet Union. I also don't think he has much control over negotiations with North Korea.
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Bad Guys

Flashback How the United States betrayed Russia and shamed the West

Eric Zuesse
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 09 Oct 2016 16:50 UTC
Gorbachev
The conditionality of the Soviet Union's agreement to allow East Germany to be taken by West Germany and for the Cold War to end, was that NATO would not expand «one inch to the east». This was the agreement that was approved by the Russian President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, a great man and a subsequent hero to democrats around the world.

He agreed then to end the Soviet Union and abandon communism and thus to end the entire Cold War; he agreed to this because he had been promised that NATO would expand not «one inch to the east,» or «one inch eastward,» depending upon how the promise was translated and understood - but it has the same meaning, no matter how it was translated. He trusted American President George Herbert Walker Bush, whose friend and Secretary of State James Baker made this promise to Gorbachev. With this promise, Gorbachev agreed to end the Soviet Union; end the communist mutual-defense pact which was their own equivalent of NATO, the Warsaw Pact; and he believed that the remaining nation that he would then be leading, which was Russia, would be accepted as a Western democracy.
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