Puppet MastersS


Vader

US, allies used "diplomatic flights" as cover to smuggle weapons to terrorist groups

Jason Ditz
AntiWar.com
Sun, 27 Aug 2017 17:53 UTC
U.S. arms shipments terrorists
Azerbaijan's Silk Way Airlines transports weapons with diplomatic clearance for Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Congo

A Bulgarian reporter has uncovered evidence that the United States and its allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have been using Azerbaijan's Silk Way Airlines to ferry entire planeloads of weapons to Syrian militants, some of which ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda's Nusra Front.

Some 350 different flights, all labeled "diplomatic" flights to avoid being searched for weapons, were sent into the area, generally carrying arms purchased in Eastern Europe, so as to disguise the country that was actually sending them.

This was the mechanism through which the since ended CIA program to arm Syrian rebels was conducted, and they apparently encouraged both Saudis and the Emirates to use the same trick. Exact figures on weapons sent aren't total clear, but the US sent around $1 billion worth of arms by themselves.

Comment: Tweet from the reporter who broke this story.



Read More...
Attention

North Korea fires missile through Japan's airspace setting off warning system


RT
Mon, 28 Aug 2017 22:28 UTC
N. Korea missile launch
© Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters
Pyongyang has launched a missile which, according to the Japanese and South Korean governments, passed through northern Japan's airspace.

The Japanese government activated its J-Alert warning system after North Korea fired an unidentified missile early Tuesday morning.

The North Korean missile passed over Japanese territory around 6:06am local time, Reuters reports. The Japanese military did not attempt to shoot down the missile but warned people to take precautions.

Meanwhile, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said Pyongyang fired a "projectile... in the direction of the East Sea (Sea of Japan) at 5:57am," according to Yonhap.
Read More...
Radar

Russian MOD reports ISIS moving heavy weapons to Deir ez-Zor to protect its 'last stronghold' in Syria


RT
Mon, 28 Aug 2017 20:14 UTC
Islamic State video showing militants with a tank
© ZUMA Press / Global Look PressIslamic State video showing militants with a tank in an area described as Wilayah al-Khayr near Deir ez-Zor, Syria, January 13, 2016.
Islamic State (IS, former ISIS/ISIL) terrorists have started moving tanks and other heavy weaponry to the Deir ez-Zor area in a desperate attempt to hold their positions in the region following the successful offensive of the Syrian Army, the Russian defense ministry has said.

"Following the successful offensive action of the Syrian Armed Forces group supported by the Russian Air Forces in the Ghanem Ali area, Islamic State terrorists try to regroup and establish fortified defensive positions in the Deir ez-Zor area," the ministry said in statement.

It added the extremists are deploying heavy weapons, "including tanks, all-terrain vehicles with high-caliber weapons and mortars mounted on them."
Read More...
Star of David

Is anyone listening? Netanyahu complains to UN chief Israel is being treated unfairly


RT
Mon, 28 Aug 2017 20:05 UTC
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in Jerusalem
© Heidi Levine / ReutersIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in Jerusalem August 28, 2017.
The UN is treating Israel unfairly by diminishing its ties to Jerusalem and not doing enough to curb arms deliveries to Hezbollah, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, complained to visiting UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Monday.

Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the UN in the presence of Guterres, who is in the Middle East to try and facilitate the resumption of peace talks between Israel and Palestine.

Netanyahu said the United Nations treats Israel unfairly and "absurdly denies" Jewish connections to Jerusalem which Israel claims as its capital, while the UN views East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory which Israel occupied illegally under international law.
Read More...
X

Best of the Web: How does the deep state tie down Trump?

Alastair Crooke
Consortium News
Sat, 26 Aug 2017 00:00 UTC
Trump capitol
© InfoWars
America's Deep State players have tied down President Trump on Russian sanctions and other foreign and economic policies but that doesn't mean the struggle is over, writes ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke.

President Trump has had his foreign policy hands and feet tied by the Russia (and Iran) Sanctions Act. He now has been rendered "helpless": in respect to détente with Russia - gulliverized, spitefully, by his own party, working with the Democrats, to empty Trump's constitutional prerogatives in foreign policy - and to seize them for Congress.

And in a further humiliation, Trump has been "rolled" by his military minders (Generals James Mattis, H.R. McMaster and John Kelly) on his Afghan policy: he has relinquished civilian oversight of this military expedition in Afghanistan to McMaster and Mattis - the former being the presumed author of the "new" Afghan policy. The President was "rolled" on his foreign military prerogatives too - as Commander in Chief - by his triumvirate of military minders in the White House. The "civilian" leadership has given place to the "military."

The question is whether these humiliating concessions will appease his opponents sufficiently to allow the President to "live on," albeit as an incapacitated President, or is this just the hors d'oeuvre? It seems that the entrée may be being planned as the complete discrediting of Trump's base - ordinary Republicans being lashed to the Trump "Titanic" - to be sunk along with its captain - as "white-supremacists, white bigots and Nazis."

Comment: In some respects, Trump has had to give away whole chunks of his power in order to keep the wolves at bay. His team has dissipated and those left to advise him seem to be those in place with varying and different agendas. Will his personality, quick-to-judgement tendencies, and brashness give way to his forte of keeping them guessing while working behind the scenes, or is he deluding himself that what he can do matters?

His best and only choice may be the support of the people, if he manages to wake them up. Even then, he will not be able to control the deep state, the heavy-handed influence of Israel, nor likely prevent a civil war. We can speculate the last thing the deep state wants is a rejuvenated American public that pays attention to its circumstances and will go all out to keep that from happening.

Pay attention to the upcoming 'debt ceiling deal'; this may very well be the moment the phony leveraging of 'the markets' is suspended and economic hell breaks loose.

Read More...
Whistle

Trump is not one of Hillary's big creeps

Daniel John Sobieski
American Thinker
Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:00 UTC
HillBilly
© CTN Politics
The latest evidence of Hillary Clinton's total detachment from reality is found in the excerpt from the audio version of her book What Happened in which she complains of candidate Donald Trump invading her space in the second presidential debate. Not since Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny have we seen such paranoia and one sincerely hopes she finds her missing strawberries. Maybe the Russians ate them. As NBC News reported:
In the first excerpts from Hillary Clinton's highly anticipated upcoming memoir, the former Democratic presidential candidate said her "skin crawled" during a debate with Donald Trump.

In audio clips of Clinton reading from the book, What Happened, which were first obtained by MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday, Clinton recounted her thoughts as she toyed with the idea of telling her Republican rival to "back up, you creep" as he stood behind her during the second presidential debate.

"My skin crawled," Clinton said. "It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching 'well, what would you do?'"

Just two days prior, Clinton said, "the world heard [Trump] brag about groping women."

Clinton said during the debate she decided against telling Trump, "back up, you creep, get away from me," and in order to keep her composure, she gripped the microphone "extra hard."
Her grasp on the truth is less firm. Consider this comes from the serial liar who dodged sniper fire in Bosnia, was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who climbed Mt. Everest years after she was born, and who claimed the Benghazi terrorist attack was caused by a video.

Comment: Despicability and creepiness? Killary doesn't have to go any farther than the mirror. When is this pathological woman-thing going to be held accountable and brought to justice?

Read More...
Info

Getting acquainted: Russia's new ambassador to US meets counterpart in Moscow


RT
Mon, 28 Aug 2017 17:09 UTC
Russian ambassador Anatoly Antonov (L), US ambassador John Tefft (R)
© SputnikRussian ambassador Anatoly Antonov (L), US ambassador John Tefft (R).
Russia's new Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov has met his American counterpart in Moscow, John Tefft, to discuss "the current state of bilateral relations and certain international issues," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Antonov, who has a reputation as a hardliner, was appointed as Russia's top diplomat in Washington a week ago, replacing Sergey Kislyak after his decade-long tenure.

The rotation comes as the tension between the two countries remains at a level highest since the Cold War, with Russian and American diplomatic services involved in the stand-off.
Read More...
Handcuffs

Chaffetz: Awan not lone operator, feds were watching him for months prior to arrest

Jim Hoft
Gateway Pundit
Sun, 27 Aug 2017 17:01 UTC
wasserman shultz awan
© Facebook / ReutersImran Awan (L), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (R)
"IT specialist" Imran Awan worked for Debbie Wasserman Schultz for thirteen years since she was first elected to national office in 2004 as a Florida representative. She only fired him after he was arrested and would have kept paying her "IT expert" even after he fled to Pakistan. The Awan brothers IT ring had access to emails and computer data from an estimated 800 lawmakers and staffers.

Three Pakistani brothers who managed the IT affairs for several Democratic government officials were relieved of their duties in February on suspicion that they accessed specific computer networks without permission, also known as hacking. Imran Awan, who started working for Wasserman Schultz in 2005, received $164,600 in 2016, with close to $20,000 of that coming from Wasserman Schultz. His brother Jamal, who started working as a staffer in 2014, was paid $157,350.12 in 2016. Abid, who started working in 2005, was paid $160,943 in 2016. Imran's wife, Hina Alvi, who was employed as a staffer since February 2007, was paid 168,300 in 2016. Rao Abbas was paid $85,049 in 2016. Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives in February.

Most of the House Members fired the Awans subsequently. Only Debbie Wasserman Schultz kept Imran Awan on the pay roll up to the day he got arrest for Bank Fraud after trying to flee the country. The rest of the family fled since months to Pakistan along with hundreds of thousands of tax-payer money they mysteriously were able to wire.
Read More...
Binoculars

From the rumor mill: Trump fed up with Tillerson

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Mon, 28 Aug 2017 16:52 UTC
Donald Trump (R) and Rex Tillerson
© Carlos Barria / Reuters
After North Korea launched three more short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea early on Saturday morning, local time, political observers were eagerly looking forward to Trump's response, especially since the president had managed to get boxed in by Kim Jong Un: on one hand, do nothing and be mocked and ridiculed not only by the North Korean press, but by the rest of the developed world, whose view of Trump's diplomatic skills could hardly be any worse; or on the other hand, launch a military campaign, either surgical or broad, and risk a retaliation against South Korea and millions of US allies dying.

In the end the US appears to have chosen the former and on Sunday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the firing of three ballistic missiles by North Korea this week was a provocative act but that the United States will continue to seek a peaceful resolution. The de-escalating tone took place just days after Tillerson credited the North with showing some restraint by not launching a missile since the ICBM test in July, and he had expressed hope that the easing of tension could lead to dialogue. That was not meant to be, although in it appears that what happened next is North Korea called the US bluff, and the US folded.

"We do view it as a provocative act against the United States and our allies," Tillerson said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. "We're going to continue our peaceful pressure campaign as I have described it, working with allies, working with China as well to see if we can bring the regime in Pyongyang to the negotiating table."
Read More...
Attention

Threats of political violence rise as MSM polarizes Trump era

Melanie Zanona
The Hill
Sun, 27 Aug 2017 14:54 UTC
antifa
© Getty
Escalating tensions this summer have stepped up fears about political violence.

Law enforcement officials, college campuses and cities around the country are bracing for a new wave of alt-right rallies in the weeks and months to come, with parties on both sides of the debate over Confederate statues and monuments prepared for standoffs.

At the center of it all is President Trump, whose heated rhetoric has angered opponents while firing up his supporters, magnifying the sense that the political divide in the country is growing wider.


Comment: Heated rhetoric? How is this statement 'heated rhetoric' when anyone who watched the events in Charlottesville would know it was an accurate assessment of the situation
"You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I'll say it right now."
[...]
There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly, the taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee. I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call 'em. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know, I don't know if you know, but they had a permit. The other group [Antifa] didn't have a permit. So I only tell you this: there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country.
Full transcript of press conference here


"When there seems to be no room for compromise and no appetite for listening to the other side, the potential for violence is higher," said Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. "And the Confederate monuments are the obvious flashpoint."

Even before the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., this month, which left one woman dead and 19 others injured after a car mowed down a group of counterprotesters, there was already heightened concern over the threat of violence amid a hyper-charged political environment in the country.
Read More...