Puppet MastersS


2 + 2 = 4

Mark Zuckerberg: There was no Russian meddling in US election on Facebook

Alex Christoforou
The Duran
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 11:31 UTC
Trump Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg: "Campaigns spent hundreds of millions advertising online to get their messages out even further."

Under increasing pressure to explain the ridiculous notion that it only took $100,000 in Facebook ads from "Russian-linked" buyers (whatever that means), with many ads being pro-Hillary Clinton, to sway the election results against Hillary Clinton, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally spoke some sense in liberal left crazy-land, pointing out that "campaigns spent hundreds of millions advertising online" which was "1000x more than any problematic ads we've found."

In other words...the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign spent 1000x more in Facebook ads than the measly $100,000 from accounts that are somehow linked to Russia (now under the scrutiny of the US Congress), and she still lost. Pathetic.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that he has found himself in the uncomfortable position of coming under fire from both the left and the right, each side accusing the platform of "helping" the other side during the US elections.

Comment: No matter what Zuckerberg says or does about what is arguably one of the most powerful social media platforms in the world, he will be caught in the web and machinations of the Big Lie - that will force him to turn Facebook into a tool of Deep State propaganda; there's just no getting around it: Facebook censorship now being spearheaded by the New York Times and the Democrats

Read More...
Dollar Gold

War is a racket: Amnesty states that loopholes make United Kingdom a 'hotspot' for illegal international arms trade


RT
Tue, 26 Sep 2017 21:32 UTC
arms trade UK
© Phil Noble / Reuters
Legal gaps and government negligence make the UK a safe haven for companies involved in illicit arms deals, Amnesty International says, adding that one of the "largest" alleged illegal arms supplies to South Sudan was brokered by a UK-based firm.

"Glaring gaps in UK company regulation mean a dealer of illicit arms can go online and set up a UK company to front its activities with fewer checks than joining a gym or hiring a car," James Lynch, Amnesty International's Head of Arms Control and Human Rights, said, calling on British authorities to "urgently review" their company registration procedures.

On September 25, the UK-based human rights NGO issued a report in which it particularly focused on the role of a UK-registered "shell" company in what it called one of the "largest arms deals to South Sudan."

In the case outlined in the report, commercial documents obtained by Amnesty designated a company named S-Profit Ltd - registered in the UK as an official supplier in a 2014 deal which involved providing thousands of small arms worth $64 million to South Sudan.

Comment:
war is a racket


Read More...
Cow Skull

California says Dept. of Homeland Security wrongly accused Russia of hacking its voting systems, 'a year late with bad info'


RT
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 10:13 UTC
Russia hacking
© Thomas Samson / AFP
It appears that in its eagerness to accuse Russian hackers of meddling in the US presidential election, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrongly claimed California's election systems had been breached.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla released a statement in which he confirmed that DHS officials had told him that the state's election system had been "scanned" by Russian hackers.

"Last Friday, my office was notified by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that Russian cyber actors 'scanned' California's Internet-facing systems in 2016, including Secretary of State websites. Following our request for further information, it became clear that DHS' conclusions were wrong," he wrote in a statement published on Wednesday.

He went on to stress that last Friday's notification from the DHS wasn't just "a year late," but was also "bad information."

Comment: Day by day, hour by hour, the "Russiagate" witch-hunt gets debunked and revealed for what it really is. People are waking up to the wholesale lies they're being told, and when the truth and scope of US political incompetence and corruption finally meets its way to a tipping point in awareness, all hell's going to break loose.

Read More...
Arrow Up

War weary? Two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump's rhetoric towards North Korea, prefer a diplomatic solution


RT
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 19:50 UTC
kim jong-un
© KCNA / Reuters
Over two-thirds of US voters find President Donald Trump's remarks on North Korea unhelpful in getting Pyongyang to stop its nuclear weapons program, according to a Fox News opinion poll.

Only 23 percent of Americans said otherwise, the survey found.

61 percent of the respondents said they see diplomacy as the best way to halt North Korea's weapons programs, while 27 percent said that threatening military action is Trump's best bet.

Overall, voter disapproval of the US president's handling of North Korea is on the rise, from 45 percent in July to 50 percent in August and 55 percent in September, according to the poll.
Read More...
Rocket

Russia's new electromagnetic missile aims to turn enemy weapons into scrap metal


Sputnik
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:01 UTC
radio electronic weapon
© RT.comRussian radio electronic weaponry
Russia is developing radio-electronic weapons, which use a powerful UHF impulse capable of destroying all electronic equipment miles away, a senior advisor to the deputy head of Radio-Electronic Technologies Concern (KRET) told Sputnik.

Earlier, media reports said that Russia's defense industry had come up with the Alabuga, a new electro-magnetic missile, which uses a powerful UHF emitter to disable all enemy electronics within a radius of 3.5 kilometers (2.3 miles), turning it into "a heap of scrap metal."
radioelectronic weapon
© RT.com
In an interview with Sputnik, Vladimir Mikheev, a senior adviser to KRET's chief, said that the Alabuga stands for a whole series of scientific research in the development of the radio-electronic weapons of the future. "The effect of such weapons may vary from ordinary interference that temporarily knocks out the enemy's weapons systems, all the way to a complete radio-electronic destruction of electronic elements, motherboards, microchips and systems," Mikheev explained.

He added that all the research results were classified and the subject of UHF weapons was assigned a top secret classification. "All I can say is that the obtained know-how is now being used in the development of electromagnetic artillery shells, bombs and missiles, which carry a magnetic explosion generator," Vladimir Mikheev said. "All leading world powers, including the US and China, are also working on this," he added.

The pulsed radiation generated by the UHF emitter developed as part of the Alabuga project is similar to that of a nuclear explosion, but without the radioactive component.

Comment: The war capabilities of the future are being developed today. It's never over, sorry to say.

Read More...
Cut

While Trump's plan promises huge tax cuts, big questions remain

Marcy Gordon, Andrew Taylor
AP
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
Trump tax
© mobileconservative.com
Promising big tax cuts and a booming economy, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans unveiled the first major revamp of the nation's tax code in a generation Wednesday - a sweeping, nearly $6 trillion tax cut that would deeply reduce levies for corporations, simplify everyone's brackets and nearly double the standard deduction used by most Americans.

Trump declared repeatedly the plan would provide badly needed tax relief for the middle class. But there are too many gaps in the proposal to know how it actually would affect individual taxpayers and families, how it would be paid for and how much it might add to the soaring $20 trillion national debt.

There clearly would be seismic changes for businesses large and small, with implications for companies beyond U.S. borders. The American middle-class family of four could take advantage of a heftier child tax credit and other deductions but face uncertainty about the rate its household income would be taxed.

"Under our framework, we will dramatically cut the business tax rate so that American companies and American workers can beat our foreign competitors and start winning again," Trump boasted at a speech in Indiana.

Democrats predictably felt differently.

Comment: As expected, an onslaught of criticism from Democrats who didn't solve tax problems either. Try something!

Read More...
X

CEO: US government knows Kaspersky Lab is not involved in cyber-espionage


Sputnik
Thu, 28 Sep 2017 13:38 UTC
kaspersky
© pic2fly.com/itweb.co.za/KJN
Russia's Kaspersky Lab accused of threat to security to US government assured it does not have technical capabilities for cyber-espionage. Eugene Kaspersky, the CEO of Russia's Kaspersky Lab, is sure that US authorities are aware of the company's non-involvement in cyber espionage in favor of Russia.

"I'm more than sure that they know that we cannot do this. The company employs a thousand people, but this does not mean that some programmers are sitting in dirty sweaters in the dungeon and each writes a piece of code. These are collectives that make whole pieces of the project, so we can not do something invisibly," he told journalists on the sidelines of a cybersecurity forum.

Kaspersky said that, in his opinion, the company simply fell victim to the political struggle. "Now they are just hitting the whole of Russia, and since we are there, we also hit," he said.

Last week, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke ordered all US federal departments and agencies to stop using Kaspersky Lab products within the next 90 days, saying that Kaspersky products represented a threat to security. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said discriminatory steps against the Kaspersky Lab cast a shadow on the image of the United States as a reliable partner and represent "a manifestation of unfair competition."

Comment: Accusations are more effective and believed if there is a sticker face on which to attach them.

See also:

Read More...
Magnify

Understanding the riddle of the Kurds' Iraqi pipedream

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 06:03 UTC
Massoud Barzani
© Reuters / Azad LashkariIraq Kurdish president Massoud Barzani
Masoud Barzani has overplayed his hand - no regional powers are going to assent to partition of Iraq

Wily clannish capo Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), has announced that "Yes" won Monday's non-binding independence referendum. Now that index fingers in indelible indigo ink are out of the way, the real battle between the KRG and Baghdad begins. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the Iraqi Supreme Court have denounced the referendum as "unconstitutional."

Kurds comprise roughly 22% of an Iraqi population of 32 million. They are mostly Sunni and speak an Indo-European language close to Farsi. Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed significant autonomy since Daddy Bush installed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, post-Desert Storm, in 1991. They were instrumental in helping Shock and Awe in 2003, and the Peshmerga (Iraqi Kurdistan's standing force) are de facto US allies, fighting Islamic State - with US air cover - after the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the phony Caliphate's conquest of Mosul in 2014. Their dreams of secession from Iraq have been paramount for almost three decades.

Yet the KRG is far from a bed of mountain flowers. Inside it, the crucial vector is the rivalry between Erbil and Sulaimaniya. Erbil, largely tribal, is run by the Barzani clan. Sulaimaniya, way more cultured, is run by the Talibani clan, and its Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party has close ties with Iran. Masoud Barzani is viewed in Sulaimaniya as no more than a crude opportunist.

Comment: True to form, the US/Israel alliance seeks to secure its geopolitical interests by any means, be it military, social, economic or 'divide and conquer' from within. If it can't manage to win a significant military victory to bend foreign countries to its will, there is always the option for stirring up factional autonomy issues to achieve the desired result.

Read More...
X

Pakistani FM: Helping US in Afghanistan wrong choice


RT
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 20:24 UTC
AfghanTaliban
© TOLONewsAfghan Taliban
Lending assistance to the US as it sought to influence the internal affairs in Afghanistan both in the 1980s and following 9/11 was a "mistake," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif has said, telling RT that US actions has made the region less secure.

Back in the 1980s, "we made a wrong choice... and then after 9/11 we again became a conduit of American effort in Afghanistan," Asif said. "Today, [when] we look back in hindsight, [we] can say in full confidence it was a mistake."

He said US interferences in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, both in '80s, when it decided to back Islamists fighting the left-wing government supported by the Soviet Union, and in 2000s, when the US invaded Afghanistan following 9/11, led to nothing good and only contributed to a deteriorating security situation in the region.

More than a decade after the US and NATO invasion, Taliban militants still control some 40 percent of Afghan territory, "where they can have sanctuaries, bases and... can operate from there against anybody," the minister said. Asif added that the US, meanwhile, accuses Pakistan of "harboring terrorists," even though the Taliban does not need Pakistani territory to operate from.

"Scapegoating Pakistan is not acceptable," he told RT, adding that Pakistan has been a US defense partner for some 60-70 years. Asif warned that such accusations "compel" Islamabad to "rethink the whole alliance"issue.


Comment: The US is stuck on a 'rinse and repeat' military strategy and the economic benefits of the MIC.

Read More...
Attention

Malfunction of US missile blamed for casualties during Mattis' Afghanistan visit


RT
Wed, 27 Sep 2017 19:00 UTC
Mattis Kabul
© teleSURUS Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Kabul Airport, Afghanistan
As NATO forces tried to fend off a Taliban attack during the visit of US Secretary of Defense James Mattis to Kabul, a "tragic malfunction" during a US air strike resulted in a number of civilian casualties.

"During a failed attack today, insurgents fired several rounds of high-explosive ammunition, including mortars, into the vicinity of Hamid Karzai International Airport and detonated suicide vests endangering a great number of civilians," said a statement from NATO's Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan.

"The Afghan Crisis Response Unit 222 responded quickly to confront the attackers and end the assault. US forces acting in support conducted an airstrike. Tragically, one of the missiles malfunctioned, causing several casualties."

Officials said an investigation into the "malfunction" is underway and promised to release more details about the attack. NATO also blamed the Islamist group for operating in areas with a high density of civilians.

"We take every precaution to avoid civilian casualties, even as the enemies of Afghanistan continue to operate in locations that deliberately put civilians at very high risk,"insisted the statement published Wednesday evening.


Comment: If the Taliban and IS had 'leaked intel' from the Kabul Airport, was the scenario a setup to validate recent US troop increases? High profile targets Mattis and Stoltenberg were conveniently offsite at the time of the attack. The malfunctioning missile spoiled the heroics.

Read More...