Puppet MastersS


Nuke

Could Trump's grandstanding on national security end in nukes?

M.K. Bhadrakumar
Russia Insider
Thu, 21 Dec 2017 14:00 UTC
Trump grin
None of the capitals singled out in the Trump administration's National Security Strategy as being the United States' prime adversaries - Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Pyongyang - appear to feel particularly threatened by the fire and brimstone in that document, which was unveiled on Monday.

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov shrugged the matter off, saying he could see traces of an "imperial nature" in the NSS "as well as an unwillingness to abandon the unipolar world idea and accept a multipolar world." Peskov saw "some positive moments" in the document where it signals a need to cooperate with Russia in the US' self-interests, but thought that overall it was too bulky.

Peskov prudently left it to relevant Russian agencies to "thoroughly" study the NSS "in order to think it through" - although, prima facie, its "wordings are rather impressive." The Russian Foreign Ministry had said nothing so far, at the time of this writing.

Comment: See also:

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Brick Wall

Palestine: It's about injustice, not religion

Amal Awad
The New Arab
Thu, 14 Dec 2017 11:45 UTC
Doaa Rajabi (8) finds Israeli forces have demolished her house in East Jerusalem
© AnadoluDoaa Rajabi (8) finds Israeli forces have demolished her house in East Jerusalem, November 2017
For many, Israel's occupation of Palestine, and the tentacles of conflict emerging from it, invoke religious sentiment. But it's justice we should be seeking, not religious sovereignty.

There is no point searching for a fair outcome with Palestine. It's impossible, given the very roots of the conflict. But perhaps what has been a more feasible belief, even as it seems increasingly out of reach with each new illegal settlement, is a just one for Palestinians.

For many, that hope was well and truly torpedoed last week when the US President Donald Trump, without genuine authority to do so, recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, decreeing that the US Embassy would find a new home in the embattled and controversial area of the conflict zone in the near future.

It was an unpopular move, prompting even Arab nations who keep the peace with Israel to object.
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Info

Congress calls Trump's bluff on threat to cut aid over UN Jerusalem vote

Bryant Harris
Al-Monitor
Wed, 20 Dec 2017 00:01 UTC
Nikki Haley
© REUTERS/Brendan McDermidUS Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vetoes an Egyptian-drafted resolution regarding recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem, during the UN Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including Palestine, at UN Headquarters in New York City, Dec. 18, 2017.
US President Donald Trump's threat to cut foreign aid to countries that criticize his position on Jerusalem at the United Nations is drawing fierce condemnation from key Democratic lawmakers, raising doubts that Congress would allow him to carry it out.

Trump suggested today that any country voting in favor of Thursday's nonbinding resolution opposing the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel could lose US foreign assistance, potentially putting vulnerable US allies in the Middle East at risk. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, after sending letters to UN members warning them of consequences if they vote the wrong way, followed suit today with a tweet endorsing the president's statement of "Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot."

"The effort by President Trump and Ambassador Haley to threaten nations who might dare to express disagreement in the United Nations is not a wise or sustainable tactic, and it will make cooperation more difficult in the future," said Rep. David Price, D-N.C., a member of the House panel overseeing foreign aid spending.

Comment: See also:

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Health

Russia sends 72nd convoy containing 450 tonnes of aid and seasonal gifts to suffering people of Donbass


TASS
Thu, 21 Dec 2017 10:29 UTC
Russia sends 450 tonnes of New Year’s gifts and aid to suffering people of Donbass
The 72nd truck convoy of the Russian Emergencies Ministry has arrived in Donbass, a source in the ministry's press service told TASS.

"The trucks have arrived in Donetsk and Lugansk. The humanitarian aid is now being unloaded at local warehouses," the source said. Later the aid will be distributed among the Donbass social facilities and the people in need.

According to the Russian Emergencies Ministry, no incidents occurred on the way, all the trucks passed customs and border control.
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Russian Flag

Who's meddling now? Vladimir Putin orders Russia's security services to "erect a safe barrier" to prevent foreign interference (Video)

Alex Christoforou
The Duran
Thu, 21 Dec 2017 12:54 UTC
Vladimir Putin
RT is reporting that in a speech to security and intelligence personnel on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged everybody in attendance to work tirelessly to try and prevent foreign influence from creeping into Russian society and politics.

Putin's request is both a warning to Russian officials to be alert and on the look out for US meddling in internal affairs (something America does with great frequency) and also an indirect jab at the ridiculous Trump-Russia collusion hysteria conjured up by a pathetic Clinton campaign.

Vladimir Putin said...
"There is a great responsibility on the intelligence services to erect a safe barrier against external meddling in our social and political life, and to counteract the work of foreign security agencies, which are doing all they can to ramp up their level of activity in Russia."

Comment: While he didn't mention the US specifically, it's pretty easy to read between the lines to see who he was referring to. The US have hypocritically been 'meddling' in the affairs of other nations for decades. See also:

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Recycle

Report: Russia 'dossier' was based on 10-Year-Old Wall Street Journal articles - not Russian sources

Joel B. Pollack
Breitbart
Fri, 22 Dec 2017 11:05 UTC
Glenn Simpson Fusion GPS
© AP Photo/Pablo Martinez MonsivaisGlenn Simpson, Fusion GPS co-founder. Some suspect he did work for Mueller.
Lee Smith of Tablet magazine has traced the origins of the Russia "dossier" - the Democrat-funded opposition research project that may have laid the foundations for the ongoing Russia investigation - to several Wall Street Journal articles that appeared in print a decade ago.

Smith's article, "Did President Obama Read the 'Steele Dossier' in the White House Last August?", suggests that the information compiled by opposition research firm Fusion GPS, with funding from Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, could have been repackaged as genuine U.S. government intelligence and presented to President Barack Obama on that basis as his administration began investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Smith recounts how the "dossier" likely prompted the surveillance and investigation of aides to Donald Trump by the Obama administration, and efforts to delegitimize the incoming administration.

Comment: So not only did Glenn Simpson get paid to get some non-existent 'Russian dirt' on Trump, but while building his case he decided to cut some corners and simply recycle stuff he had written a decade earlier. Can we drop this Russiagate charade already?

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Star of David

The case for US government sanctions on the apartheid state of Israel

Jeff Warner and Dick Platkin
Mondoweiss
Fri, 22 Dec 2017 10:38 UTC
Palestinian demonstration Jerusalem Palestine
© Mohammed Dahman/APA ImagesPalestinian demonstrators take part during a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City December 20, 2017.
United States government diplomatic, economic, and military support has been critical for Israel to maintain its post-1967 occupations of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and West Bank, and to transform these occupations into a permanent apartheid state.

The role of the U.S. government in facilitating Israeli apartheid, however, will eventually fade for multiple geopolitical reasons, and that development will create opportunities to turn an apartheid state into as an equitable democratic state or two separate states. The sooner United States government for Israeli apartheid ends, the sooner this transformation could occur.

The waning of U.S. government support for Israel may take the form of conditions on military aid or comprehensive government sanctions, even though either development strikes many people as unimaginable. Nevertheless, a December 2016 Brookings public opinion poll reveals that nearly half of the U.S. public supports sanctions on Israel - including a majority of self-identifying Democrats. This increased support for U.S. government sanctions indicates that now is the time for political groups committed to a just resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict to lead public opinion, not follow or ignore it. They need to become advocates for official U.S. government sanctions on Israel, such as an update to the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. Instead of sanctioning South African apartheid, this updated legislation's new goal should be to end Israeli apartheid.

Comment: The problem is that the Israel lobby is too powerful and influential in the US, so any sanctions against Israel will be shot down before they fly. Furthermore, the Trump administration does not seem inclined at all to upset Zionists - quite the contrary!

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2 + 2 = 4

The more they get us believing in Russiagate the more stupid we become

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Wed, 20 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
Russiagate stupidity

The Guardian recently published an amazingly deceitful hit piece on skeptics of the establishment Syria narrative who point to the piles of evidence that the so-called White Helmets are nothing other than a western-backed propaganda firm for the destabilization efforts in Syria.

The piece is simultaneously shocking in the brazen amount of dishonesty a mainstream publication can pack into one little article, and entirely unsurprising in the tactics it uses. It follows a pattern which will be exhaustingly familiar to anyone who engages in online debate against establishment narratives with any regularity: it paints anti-establishment speakers as "Russian propaganda" simply because they advance opinions that run counter to western establishment interests, and cites "experts" to counter those opinions who are considered experts solely because their opinions are endorsed by the mainstream establishment. The message is never attacked, only the messenger, and the attacks are imbued with legitimacy solely because they are pro-establishment.
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Quenelle - Golden

UN General Assembly votes overwhelmingly against recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Thu, 21 Dec 2017 00:00 UTC
Vote by UN General Assembly is rebuke to US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital
UN session
© Unknown
As widely predicted, the great majority of UN Member States brushed off threats from Donald Trump and Nikki Haley and voted in an extraordinary session of the UN General Assembly against recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The vote was 128 in favour of the resolution (jointly sponsored by Turkey and war-racked Yemen) with 9 against (the US, Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo). Thirty five states abstained including Mexico and Canada, and 21 countries in effect abstained by declining to turn up for the vote. All the UN's permanent members apart from the US - Russia, China, Britain and France - supported the resolution.

Extraordinary sessions of the UN General Assembly are very rare.

Comment: Most of the Western countries either abstained (Canada, Australia) or voted against (Britain, France, Germany) the United States position despite all the threats from Trump administration. Is the Israeli control over Western democracies waning fast?

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Bad Guys

US National Security Strategy spells out information warfare

Andrew Korybko
Sputnik
Thu, 21 Dec 2017 18:44 UTC
America USA flag statue of liberty
© CC0 / Pixabay
The Trump Administration's National Security Strategy contains many references to defending against and waging information warfare, even if the latter point isn't directly referred as such, though this important element of the policy document has thus far been overlooked by most analysts.

President Trump unveiled his administration's National Security Strategy earlier this week, and it's chock-full of promises to "Make America Great Again" through the utilization of what's described as "Principled Realism".

This guiding philosophy understands the world as being in a constant state of competition (p. 2) somewhere between war and peace (28) and marked by the return of Great Power rivalry (27), though one in which US behavior is guided by outcomes instead of ideology (2) and thus reliant on a combination of military, economic, and soft power to achieve its goals.

Comment: Also see the following for additional perspective: Trump's National Security Plan and the End of One World Empire

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