Puppet MastersS


Briefcase

Macron visits China to discuss trade imbalance, African security, and climate change


RT
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 15:12 UTC
Emmanuel Macron Xi Jinping
© Ludovic Marin / Reuters
French President Emmanuel Macron is on a three-day visit to China, where he is seeking Beijing's support on a number of issues. These include a bilateral trade deficit, African security, and global climate change.

Macron has found himself in Europe's foreign-policy driver's seat with two other leading powers, the UK and Germany, currently distracted by domestic issues. While London has been preoccupied by Brexit, and Berlin is mired in protracted coalition talks, the young French leader has brought Paris to the forefront of global policy making.

He has played a key role in crises like the interrupted resignation of Lebanon Prime Minister Saad Hariri in November, and the latest hostile exchanges between the US, Israel and Iran.

This week's visit to China is part of Macron's greater engagement in world affairs, compared that of his predecessors, Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. Wearing his hat as an envoy from Europe, he has called for a unified European policy towards the Asian powerhouse. "We need a coordinated European approach... that gives China more visibility about our agenda," he said.
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Rocket

Israeli forces carried out missile strikes on targets near Damascus, Syrian military intercepted at least 3


South Front
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
An Israeli Air Force F-35 fighter
© REUTERS/AMIR COHENAn Israeli Air Force F-35 fighter jet flies during an aerial demonstration at a graduation ceremony for Israeli airforce pilots at the Hatzerim air base in southern Israel December 29, 2016..
Syria's air defense forces thwarted three Israeli missile attacks on targets near Damascus, the country's General Command of the Army and the Armed Forces said in a statement on January 9.

The military said that at 2:40 local time Israeli warplanes launched few missiles at targets near Damascus from the Lebanese airspace. The missiles were intercepted and one Israeli warplane was targeted by air defense forces.

At 4:00 local time, two surface-to-surface missiles were launched from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They were also intercepted.

At 4:15 local time, Israeli forces launched 4 other missiles from the Golan Heights. One missile was intercepted and the others hit a target causing damage to positions of Syrian forces.
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Star of David

Israeli blitz on Damascus with jets and missiles successfully defended by Syrian forces

Samuel Osborne
The Independent
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 13:35 UTC
missile syria
Syrian air defense systems took out most of the Israeli missiles, and possibly another Israeli jet.
Israel has attacked several military outposts near the Syrian capital with jets and ground-to-ground missiles in an early-morning strike, Syria's army said.

In a statement reported by state media, the Assad regime's forces said Israeli jets fired missiles at the al-Qutayfah area near Damascus from inside Lebanese airspace, and its air defences hit one of the planes.

Israel then fired ground-to-ground rockets from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but the Syrian defences brought the missiles down, the Syrian army said.

It said Israeli jets fired a final barrage of four rockets from inside Israel, and the Syrian air defences brought down one, but the others caused material damage.

Comment: Incredible, isn't it, how Israel has done this over a hundred times and yet the penny hasn't dropped for many that this is has been a 7-year-long war by Western states against Syria.

Israel's incessant attacks on Syria have many wondering why Syria doesn't retaliate. It has (though purely defensively), and has probably been far more successful at it than anyone is letting on:

David and Goliath: Did Soviet-era Syrian S-200 missile system take out brand new Israeli F-35?

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Bad Guys

Pentagon: US 'concerned' that ISIS in Syria now using drones against Russians


Sputnik
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 13:30 UTC
The Pentagon
The US military is concerned that combat drone technology used by terrorists in attempted attacks on two Russian facilities in Syria is available on the open market, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Adrian Rankin-Galloway told Sputnik on Monday.

"We have seen this type of commercial UAV technology used to carry out missions by ISIS," Galloway said. "Those devices and technologies can easily be obtained in the open market and that is cause for concern."

Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that 13 drones were used in attempted attacks on two Russian military facilities in Syria on January 6. Ten of them targeted the Hmeinin air base and three were sent toward Tartus naval base.

Comment: The Russian Defense Ministry said that the drones were supplied by foreign countries, and hinted that they've got a pretty good idea of who it was:
More than a dozen drones attacked Russia's military bases along the western coast of Syria over the weekend, an assault that Moscow said it discovered to have foreign fingerprints.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Monday that unknown militants used 10 sophisticated, armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to target the Hmeymim air base located near the Syrian city of Latakia and three more against the naval facility in Tartus. The aircraft was reportedly defeated before inflicting any casualties or damage, but when Russian military experts examined the remote-controlled devices they were said to have used technology that could only have been supplied from one of a limited number of countries. [...]

While the Russian Defense Ministry did not specify which country may have supplied the technology or devices used in last weekend's drone attack, Russia has routinely accused the U.S. of offering support to jihadis such as the Islamic State militant group and other organizations still fighting to overthrow Assad despite him having recaptured most of the country with support from Russia and Iran.
Further reading:

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Brick Wall

Trump's Wall Street regulators keep public in the dark

Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:01 UTC
Joseph Otting
© Patrick T. Fallon/BloombergJoseph Otting, Trump’s Head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Under the Obama presidency, a key executive of the scandalized Wall Street bank, Citigroup, was secretly in charge of selecting the people who would fill top administration posts in Obama's White House and cabinet, while the bank was in the midst of the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. The staffing recommendations included top posts at the Justice Department, which would fail to prosecute any major Wall Street executives for the crimes leading up to the financial crash of 2008. (See our prior reporting on this here and here).

Under Trump, who ran on a populist platform, the top cop of Wall Street at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, is a lawyer who had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks prior to his nomination by Trump and confirmation by the U.S. Senate to become SEC Chairman. The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who also sits at the helm of the Financial Stability Oversight Council to make sure Wall Street doesn't blow up the economy again, was actually a foreclosure king at OneWest Bank Group. The top national bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees Wall Street's biggest and serially charged banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, is now headed by Mnuchin's former pal at OneWest Bank Group, Joseph Otting.

Comment: See also:

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Mr. Potato

Moronic WSJ is seeking a Moscow bureau chief: Oath to Russiagate required, Russian language skills are not

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sun, 07 Jan 2018 13:59 UTC
Vladimir Putin shh quiet
© Image via Russia InsiderWho needs evidence or even expertise? The answer should always be "the Russians did it!"
Imagine if a major foreign newspaper - let's say based in Germany or Russia or somewhere in Europe - hired journalists to cover United States politics, culture, and the economy, and sent them to its bureau in Washington D.C., but they couldn't speak English and perhaps had never visited America even once in their lives.

Thankfully we've never heard of such a case, however, the reverse scenario has become all too common: one can walk into the foreign bureaus of the Washington Post or New York Times or Wall Street Journal in places ranging from Beirut to Jerusalem to Moscow and encounter American journalists who claim to cover the intricacies of local politics and events but who can't speak the language or have little to no experience of the country they're supposed to cover.

But it's no secret that mainstream media has long valued ideology over expertise - so foreign language proficiency or any level of local expertise for that matter need not apply. And this is literally the case, proudly advertised for the world to see, as the Wall Street Journal is seeking to fill its vacant Moscow Bureau Chief position.

Want to head up the WSJ's Moscow bureau?

Comment: The Wall Street Journal has implicitly admitted that it intends to run a propaganda campaign rather than engage in journalism. Notice all the assumptions it makes about Russia and Putin before it even has a researcher on the job: Russia's "hacking complex", Moscow´s "campaign of hacking and disinformation", Putin the "champion of illiberal democracy" and his "conservatism of blood and religion". And of course, Russian language skills are not required because the point is not to get to the truth of the matter.

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Fire

Russiagate turns on its creators

Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Mon, 08 Jan 2018 14:05 UTC
Russiagate
Russiagate originated in a conspiracy between the military/security complex, the Clinton-controlled Democratic National Committee, and the liberal/progressive/left. The goal of the military/security complex is to protect its out-sized budget and power by preventing President Trump from normalizing relations with Russia. Hillary and the DNC want to explain away their election loss by blaming a Trump/Putin conspiracy to steal the election. The liberal/progressive/left want Trump driven from office.

As the presstitutes are aligned with the military/security complex, Hillary and the DNC, and the liberal/progressive/left, the Russiagate orchestration is a powerful conspiracy against the president of the United States and the "deplorables" who elected him. Nevertheless, the Russiagate Conspiracy has fallen apart and has now been turned against its originators.

Despite the determination of the CIA and FBI to get Trump, these powerful and unaccountable police state agencies have been unable to present any evidence of the Trump/Putin conspiracy against Hillary. As William Binney, the former high level National Security Agency official who devised the spy program has stated, if there was any evidence of a Trump/Putin conspiracy to steal the US presidential election, the NSA would most certainly have it.
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Cult

With friends like these: Saudis demand US court reject lawsuit showing they funded 9/11

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Mon, 08 Jan 2018 13:21 UTC
Saudi Arabia 9/11 terrorism
© The Free Thought Project
New York, NY - Last year, for the first time since that fateful September morning 16 years ago, families of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks used a new law to go after Saudi Arabia in lawsuits for their role in the attacks. After evidence was revealed during the lawsuit showing the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington may have funded a "dry run" for the hijackings carried out by two Saudi employees, Saudi Arabia went into panic mode. They are now attempting to use their pull inside the United States to have the lawsuits thrown out.

"The 9/11 victims' families and survivors have submitted dozens of declassified FBI reports and affidavits regarding Saudi involvement in the attacks so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its high-priced lawyers are still trying to hide behind baseless procedural arguments," said Terry Strada, national chair for the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism.

Naturally, lawyers for Saudi Arabia are denying all allegations and are demanding that the lawsuit be dismissed immediately. According to the Saudi newspaper Okaz, as cited by the Middle East Monitor, the government of Saudi Arabia has called on a US federal judge to immediately reject the lawsuit.

Comment: Yes, Saudi Arabia had a hand in the matter, but it was not the only state involved - not even the main one. For a detailed analysis of the 9/11 attacks, read the book:

9/11 The ultimate Truth, by Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Joe Quinn

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Red Flag

'Declarations not enough': Moscow is 'concerned' with OSCE after Latvia expels journalist


RT
Sat, 06 Jan 2018 00:09 UTC
Latvia Russia border
© Ints Kalnins / Reuters'Declarations not enough,' Moscow tells ‘concerned’ OSCE after Latvia expels journalist
Latvia-Russia border.
Russia has demanded that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) take concrete steps to ensure press freedom in Latvia, after the Baltic state deported a Russian documentary maker without explanation.

"We hope you will immediately take measures within your mandate to change this approach of Latvia authorities towards Russian journalists. Declarations are not enough, actions are highly needed," tweeted the Russian foreign ministry Friday night, in response to an OSCE statement published earlier.

Comment: Sounds like the journalist's chosen topic of her documentary didn't sit well with the Latvian authorities.

See also:

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Book

Author Michael Wolff might have opened himself to lawsuits for inaccuracies in book about Trump

Matt Vespa
Townhall
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 13:03 UTC
donald trump tweet white house background
Michael Wolff's book, Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House, has a note in the prologue that an attorney says could open him up to a deluge of lawsuits. The book has already come under siege by the Trump White House for being wildly inaccurate. No shocker on that response, but multiple media figures have voiced their concern over the accuracy of the book as well, with New York Times reporters and CNN hosts saying that Wolff gets basic facts wrong in his book, and that this work really isn't journalism. Former Obama adviser Steve Rattner called Wolff a "total sleaze bag" and an "unprincipled writer of fiction." Regardless, Wolff stands by his book, despite all the errors that have been pointed out, like reporters who have admitted to never being at certain meetings to getting the jobs of some of members of the president's cabinet dead wrong. Case in point, Wolff has Wilbur Ross as the labor secretary, he's actually the commerce secretary.

Comment: That's what happens when you write a book based on gossip, and then pretend it is journalism. Of course, much of that gossip is probably true, but a whole lot more is likely to be either exaggerations or lies. See also:

"Fire and Fury" author Wolff says he doesn't know if his claims are true, said "whatever was necessary" to get the story

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