Puppet MastersS


Gold Bar

French citizens group demands Russia repay €53bn imperial debt


RT
Mon, 15 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
19th century Russian Empire bonds
© Sputnik
A group of French citizens holding eurobonds issued by the Russian Empire in the 19th century is demanding the Kremlin repay the debt, says a report by Radio France Internationale (RFI).

In 1867, Russian Railways launched government bonds guaranteed by gold. They were worth a total of 15 billion francs, the equivalent of €53 billion (US$65 billion) today. Now, 400,000 descendants of the investors are demanding repayment, according to the RFI.

After the socialist revolution in Russia, Vladimir Lenin issued a decree to write off the debts of the Russian Empire.
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Passport

Trump willing to make DACA deal, but 'Democrats aren't going to make a deal"


RT
Mon, 15 Jan 2018 15:00 UTC
trump congress daca
Trump meets with several US Senators to work out DACA agreement.
US President Donald Trump has denied being "racist" in the wake of a scandal and wide condemnation triggered by his alleged reference to Haiti and African nations as "s***holes" amid attempts to reach a deal on immigrant children.

"I'm not a racist. I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you," Trump told reporters on Sunday in Florida, where he was having dinner with Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The US leader said he is "willing and able" to reach a deal to protect immigrants brought to the United States as children. The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program shields those individuals, often called the Dreamers, from deportation.
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Arrow Down

Outgoing Virginia governor fantasizes about punching out Trump during MSNBC interview

Cortney O'Brien
Townhall
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 13:43 UTC
Terry McAuliffe
Terry McAuliffe is leaving his post as Virginia governor, and he's going out swinging.

The outgoing governor, to be succeeded by Democrat Ralph Northam this weekend, is so frustrated by reports that President Trump called Haiti a "s***hole" that he is challenging the commander-in-chief to a fight.

"You would have to pick him up off the floor," McAuliffe said about his potential duel with Trump.

Comment: Wait a second... McAuliffe, on national television, invents a hostile scenario out of pure imagination where Trump 'gets in his space' and then he 'knocks him on the floor'. These aren't exactly the thoughts of a well adjusted individual, yet he slams Trump as being intimidating and a disgrace? The state of Virginia is lucky to see him out of office.

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Bad Guys

Palestine: Abbas slams Trump's 'deal of the century' as a 'slap in the face', Israel's 'killing' of Oslo Accords


RT
Mon, 15 Jan 2018 00:55 UTC
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during the meeting of the Palestinian Central Council in the West Bank city of Ramallah January 14, 2018
© Mohamad Torokman / ReutersPalestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during the meeting of the Palestinian Central Council in the West Bank city of Ramallah January 14, 2018
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stated he will never agree to the US-championed peace plan in which Jerusalem is "taken off the table." He accused Israel of "killing" the historic Oslo Accords on mutual recognition.

Speaking at the Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) Central Council meeting on Sunday, Abbas lashed out at US President Donald Trump, denouncing his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and a reported proposal by Washington to make a tiny West Bank village a future Palestinian capital.

"We told Trump we will never accept his [peace] plan. His 'deal of the century' is the slap in the face of the century, and we will not accept it," Abbas said, vowing to "slap back," as cited by Arutz Sheva.

Comment: Also See:

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Eye 1

Turkey vows to 'eliminate any threat' after US announces Syrian 'border force' of 30,000 that includes terrorists and Kurdish militia


RT
Mon, 15 Jan 2018 03:29 UTC
US forces accompanied by Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters patrol the Syria-Turkey border on Friday.
US forces accompanied by Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighters patrol the Syria-Turkey border on Friday.
Ankara has slammed the plan to create a 30,000-strong force from the Kurdish-dominated SDF militias on its border with Syria, accusing its NATO ally of presenting its "unilateral" move as a joint decision of the US-led coalition.

The Turkish government perceives the so-called Syrian Border Force, that may be stationed along the Kurdish-controlled parts of the Syrian border with Iraq and Turkey, as well as in the Euphrates River Valley, as a threat to its national security, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in the statement on Sunday.

"Turkey is determined to eliminate any threats against it, and has all possibilities to do this," it said, denouncing what it called "the persistence of the United State in this erroneous approach" of cooperating with the Kurdish militias.
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Snakes in Suits

Dear Hillary and arch neocon Bill Kristol: Get a room!

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Sat, 13 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Kristol Hillary
Oh god, get a room already. It was only a matter of time before Hillary Clinton began quoting directly from the Gospel of Bill Kristol.

Surely one of the most evil human beings still sullying the face of this planet, Kristol has been an aggressive proponent of every senseless act of military violence the US war machine has inflicted upon our world during his toxic career, and uses his extensive influence in the media and in DC think tanks to help facilitate those agendas.

In a hugely significant strategic maneuver that hardly anyone seems to pay much attention to, Bush-era neoconservatives have been working overtime to ingratiate themselves to the Democratic party's progressive base and pivot into full alignment with that party, publicly placing far less emphasis on the GOP. Central to this pivot has been the shrill Russia alarmism which has been infecting the Democratic party more and more pervasively since the 2016 elections, manufacturing support for new cold war escalations in perfect alignment with the anti-detente agenda that has been central to neoconservatism since its inception.

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Footprints

Trump admin paves the way for release of Julian Assange by closing eight year long grand jury proceedings

Gary Maher
USA Politics Today
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Julian Assange
© Peter Nicholls / Reuters
The man behind Wikileaks, who gave us lots of important information about Hillary, the DNC and so much more, may be a free man soon, if Donald Trump has anything to say about it.

Julian Assange has been confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012. It might be nice to get a change of scenery.

The New American has the details.
In a tweet last week, WikiLeaks pointed out that the U.S. government has "decided to close its eight year long grand jury proceedings against @WikiLeaks (expanded in 2017 to cover our series on the CIA)." The WikiLeaks tweet was a reference to a statement made by State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert during a press conference on January 2. Speaking about Iran, Nauert said, "We support a freedom of the press. When a nation clamps down on social media, we ask the question, 'What are you afraid of?' What are you afraid of? We support the people of Iran, and we support their voices being heard."

Even more promising to Assange's plight is the fact that President Trump's lawyers have filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia arguing that Assange's publication of the DNC and John Podesta e-mails was protected by the First Amendment even if the e-mails were stolen.

Comment: See also:

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Eagle

The Washington Post's mission statement should read: 'Confessions of a free press killer'

Tim Nuell
Ghion Journal
Sat, 13 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Jeff Bezos
While "Democracy Dies in Darkness" serves as a catchy tagline for the Washington Post, these days the masthead reads more like a threatening mission statement as the paper slogs down a path of propaganda, censorship, and renewed McCarthyism.

The Post is perfectly positioned to capture the nation's "paper of record" heavyweight title from the New York Times. Post owner Jeff Bezos has Amazon-sized pockets, and a $500 million computing contract with the CIA that brings unique access to government sources and information. Mix in a Meryl Streep/Tom Hanks Hollywood blockbuster that harkens back to its glory days of journalism, and the Post is sitting pretty.

Unfortunately, the paper appears more intent on being a tool of government elites than an independent journalistic enterprise. The Post has been burned repeatedly by parroting claims of anonymous "intelligence" officials, particularly in regard to Russia. In an interesting plot twist, the Post is now leading the way in debunking much of the same Russia nonsense it's been front and center selling us for more than a year.

Just after the 2016 election, the Post broke an "exclusive" about a Vermont power company "hacked" by the Russians and the infamous Grizzly Steppe computer virus. And this was right after the Russians were deemed to have used those same evil Bears to hack the DNC, and it all just looked so bad, so everybody reported it, and repeated it, because hey, the Washington Post said so.
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Arrow Down

Evaluating 2017: The Ukrainian economy's most dismal year yet

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Sun, 14 Jan 2018 23:38 UTC
Ukraine worker economy
The Ukrainian economy continued to weaken as inflation rose and living standards fell

In an article which I wrote about Ukraine on 13th December 2017 and in which I spoke of Ukraine's continuing downward spiral I speculated that the situation might be even worse than it appeared since conditions in Ukraine meant that Ukraine's already dismal statistics could no longer be relied upon.
This is of course always assuming that the statistics are being collected and collated properly, which in countries such as Russia was in the 1990s and such as Ukraine is now they never are.

That Ukraine's statistics are not reliable has in fact been confirmed by studies of its population statistics, which show massive distortions intended to conceal how bad the country's demographic situation has become. There is no reason to suppose that the same distortions do not affect the economic data.
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Dollar

Pentagon audit already found $830 mln in "missing" helicopters, $trillions spent on "mysterious" items

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Thu, 11 Jan 2018 22:38 UTC
Blackhawk helicopter
© U.S. Air Force 145U.S. Army soldiers from the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, dismount a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter during an air assault in the Al Jazeera Desert, Iraq
After several decades of nation-building and trillions of dollars missing or improperly recorded, the long-awaited audit of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has finally begun. On Wednesday, the Defense Department Comptroller David Norquist told lawmakers in Washington that the DoD's first-ever department wide audit will cost about $367 million in 2018 and an additional $551 million to fix the problems.

Norquist, who testified before the House Armed Services Committee, said Defense Secretary James N. Mattis and Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan are in full support of the audit. Back in May 2017, President Trump appointed Norquist to finally put the military's financial house back in order after many years of delays.

What is surprising, if only in retrospect, is that according to the World Economic Forum, U.S. Department of Defense has been named the largest employer in the world with some 3.2 million members on its payroll and $2.4 trillion in assets but has never administered a full audit.

"This is the first time the department will undergo a full financial statement audit,"he said. "A financial statement audit is comprehensive and occurs annually and it covers more than financial management," Norquist explained to Lawmakers.

The purpose of the audit will document military equipment and real property along with condition and location. "It tests the vulnerability of our security systems and it validates the accuracy of personnel records and actions," Norquist said.
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