Puppet MastersS


Attention

18 Israeli fighter jets deployed in Saudi Arabia to prevent Nayef coup


FARS News Agency
Thu, 22 Jun 2017 18:22 UTC
Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz
18 Israeli fighter jets along with two Gulfstream aircraft landed in Saudi Arabia on Thursday to prevent any hostile or military moves by former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz who was replaced with Saudi King Salman's son.

Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz announced on Wednesday his decision to replace Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz with his own son, Mohammed bin Salman.

After the decision was announced, the Israeli air force sent 18 of its fighter jets, including F16I, F15CD and F16CD, along with two Gulfstream aircraft, two tanker airplanes and two C130 planes, special for electronic warfare, to Saudi Arabia at the demand of the new crown prince bin Salman to block his cousin (bin Nayef)'s possible measures.

According to a royal decree, Mohammed bin Salman, 31, was also named deputy prime minister, and shall maintain his post as defense minister, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Wednesday.
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Star of David

Psychopath Lieberman: Establishing safe zones in Syria will not limit Israeli freedom of action


Sputnik
Thu, 22 Jun 2017 19:21 UTC
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel had no intention to start a military campaign in Syria, however, Tel Aviv would continue responding to shelling from Syrian territory.

The creation of de-escalation zones in Syria will not limit Israel's capabilities to act in the war-torn country in case of threats to the security of the Jewish state, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday.


Comment: If you define "security" as the right to commit wanton unprovoked aggression that is.

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Sherlock

FBI to leakers: We will find and prosecute you


RT
Thu, 22 Jun 2017 17:34 UTC
top secret files
© DNY59 / Getty Images
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe has issued a warning to leakers of classified information - that the government will find and prosecute them.
"Leaking of classified information is a federal crime and it is one that we have the jurisdiction to investigate, and I assure you that we will do so in every single case," McCabe told Representative John Culberson (R-Texas), while testifying at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing about the FBI's budget on Wednesday.
Culberson had asked the acting FBI director about Reality Winner, the 25-year-old federal contractor who was charged this month with leaking a top-secret National Security Agency memo accusing Russia of carrying out a cyberattack on a US voting software supplier. The document does not provide the underlying "raw" intelligence for the assessment.

During a hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, cybersecurity officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI said that although they believed that Russia had targeted election-related systems in 21 US states, there was no evidence that any vote tallies were affected.

Comment: The problem is that there seems to be at least two types of 'leakers'. First, there are the whistleblowers. Good people who see abuses being committed by their country and wish to do something to stop it. Second, there are the Deep State agents who are doing everything in their power to keep Trump in line by 'leaking' lies to the media. The latter are the leakers the FBI needs to go after, not the whistleblowers.

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Info

Stating the obvious: Family of downed pilot says US-led coalition protects ISIS by targeting Syrian forces


RT
Thu, 22 Jun 2017 14:11 UTC
U.S.-led air strike Raqqa
© Nour Fourat / ReutersU.S.-led air strike in Raqqa
The US-led coalition's downing of a Syrian Army plane near Raqqa province shows that the group is not fighting Islamic State terrorists but is instead protecting them, the family of the pilot told Ruptly.

A Syrian Su-22 jet was shot down by a US aircraft in the vicinity of Raqqa, northern Syria, on June 18. Damascus said that at the time of the attack that the pilot, later identified as Ali Fahd, was carrying out a mission "to destroy IS [Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL] terrorists." The pilot reportedly ejected from the plane above IS-controlled territory and is still missing.

"Before he was targeted by the coalition, he was executing a mission of destroying operations headquarters of the IS terrorist organization in Raqqa," Mohyyddin Fahd, the pilot's cousin, told Ruptly in the city of Salamiyah, Hama province, on Wednesday.

"The coalition targeting of the pilot proves that the [coalition] and IS are the same. We thought otherwise about the coalition, that it aimed to liberate the land and purify it from the dirt of terrorism altogether, but it turned out the opposite," Mohyyddin concluded bitterly.


Comment: See also:

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Arrow Down

The Contrast Problem: Why the new healthcare bill will be a loser

Scott Adams
Scott Adams Blog
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:12 UTC
Mitch McConnell
People accuse me of imagining that everything President Trump does is brilliant (persuasion-wise) no matter what he does. But I expect the next version of the Republican healthcare bill to be a complete failure. That's because Republicans seem deeply committed to a losing path, thanks to what might be called the Contrast Problem.

Contrast is the driving principle behind all decisions. You have to know how your options differ, and by how much, or else you have no basis for a decision. President Obama solved for the contrast problem by designing Obamacare to cover more people than before. The rest of the details - especially the costs - were hard to predict, so our brains flushed that noise and focused on the greater number of people covered.

Everyone knew Obamacare would need future tuning to get it right. That gave us mental permission to focus on the good parts we understood - the greater coverage - and hope the other details would get worked out later. President Obama nailed the Contrast Problem like the Master Persuader he is.

That was then.

Now, President Trump and the Republicans have the "going second" problem. The public will compare their proposed bill with Obamacare and conclude that the one metric they understand - the number of people covered - does not compare favorably with Obamacare. The contrast is fatal.
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Chess

While UK citizens distracted by grief, May was quietly helping Murdoch empire take over UK media

Kerry-anne Mendoza
The Canary
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 00:00 UTC
theresa may Grenfell Tower
In recent weeks, a series of man-made tragedies have struck Britain. From terror attacks to the Grenfell Tower inferno. UK citizens have been grieving for the victims, and fighting to prevent future tragedies. Meanwhile, Theresa May was busy elsewhere - trying to seal a deal for the wholesale takeover of UK media by Rupert Murdoch.

The Sky deal

Rupert Murdoch tried to take full control of Sky in 2011. But the phone hacking scandal and revelations from the Leveson inquiry forced the government to withdraw support. And the deal fell through.

Just a few years later, Murdoch is at it again. This time, 21st Century Fox is putting up £11.7bn to buy out the 61% of Sky that the Murdochs don't already own. The deal would give Murdoch an unprecedented ownership of UK media. Labour MP David Winnick expressed serious concern about the near-monopoly this would create for Murdoch, saying "it would be simply unacceptable that the amount of media ownership he already controls should be increased".

The Murdochs have expressed confidence that, this time, the deal will go though. So have industry insiders. They're pleased this time that other events are keeping the deal well away from the front pages.
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Info

'Our brand's worse than Trump': Democrats demand 'toxic' Pelosi step aside, Trump urges her to stay

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:34 UTC
Pelosi add
Democrats' embarrassing special-election loss in Georgia, after the liberal media built up unrealistic expectations, has provoked a wave of bitter blowback that targets House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

As Axios notes, it's part of a generational argument that's also driving the party's 2020 conversation.
"It was a very rough night for Nancy Pelosi," said Sean Clegg, a Democratic strategist in San Francisco, adding that he was personally a big fan of hers.

"Republican messaging attacking Pelosi appeared to be more effective than Democratic messaging against Trump. That's a problem going forward, and it's going to be a challenge in House races particularly."

"I think the problem is we have not come up with an agenda and then we need a strategy to communicate it," Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said.

"We can't just be against something."
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Star of David

Nikki Haley's Israel Doctrine pits Israel against the UN

Ramzy Baroud
Arab News
Sun, 18 Jun 2017 16:49 UTC
UN ambassador Nikki Haley
Colin Powell with a wig
Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, seems to be championing a single cause: Israel.

When Haley speaks about Israel, her language is not merely emotive nor tailored to fit the need of a specific occasion. Rather, her words are resolute, consistent and are matched by a clear plan of action.

Along with Haley, the right wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is moving fast to cultivate the unique opportunity of dismissing the UN, and thus, any attempt at criticizing the Israeli occupation.

Unlike previous UN ambassadors who strongly backed Israel, Haley refrains from any coded language or any attempt, however poor, to appear balanced. Last March, she told a crowd of 18,000 supporters at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) annual policy conference that this is a new era for US-Israel relations.

"I wear heels. It's not for a fashion statement," she told a crowd thrilled by her speech. "It's because if I see something wrong, we're going to kick 'em every single time."
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Rocket

Whoops! US anti-ballistic missile test intended to intimidate N. Korea backfires spectacularly


RT
Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:29 UTC
cruise missile test
An interceptor missile fired from a US Navy destroyer off the coast of Hawaii failed to hit the target, the US Missile Defense Agency said. The failure follows last month's successful test of a ground-based interceptor against an ICBM-like target.

On Wednesday evening local time, a medium-range ballistic missile was fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii, the MDA said in an official statement about the test.

The destroyer USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53) tracked the missile with its onboard AN/SPY-1 radar, part of the Aegis Baseline 9.C2 weapon system. The ship fired a SM-3 Block IIA guided missile, but did not hit the target.

"A planned intercept was not achieved," the MDA statement said. "Program officials will conduct an extensive analysis of the test data. Until that review is complete, no additional details will be available."
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Jet4

An eagle in the sky: Russia's new Tu-160M2 bomber leagues ahead of any other strategic bomber including US jets


Sputnik
Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:20 UTC
Tu 160 bomber
© Fotobank.ru/Getty Images/
Russian Aerospace Forces Commander Viktor Bondarev has confirmed that the new Tu-160M2 strategic bomber would take to the skies in March 2018. Military analyst Viktor Tuchkov says that with an estimated combat effectiveness two and a half times greater than its predecessor, the Tu-160M2 is more advanced than anything the US has in its arsenal.

In an interview with Krasnaya Zvezda ('Red Star'), the official newspaper of the Russian Ministry of Defense earlier this week, Col. Gen. Bondarev said that the first Tu-160M2 would take off for state trials in the spring, adding that the air force expects to receive about three-four planes per year in the years thereafter.

In addition to the deep modernization of the 16 Tu-160 Beliy Lebed ('White Swan') bombers already in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces, the Russian defense industry will also incorporate the improvements of the Tu-160M2 in the production of new Tu-160s. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to restart production of the Tu-160 at the Tupolev Aircraft Factory in Kazan earlier this year. The company has also been instructed to begin work on the PAK-DA, the next generation Russian strategic bomber.

Commenting on Bondarev's remarks, independent military analyst and Svobodnaya Pressa contributor Vladimir Tuchkov wrote that the discussion of flight testing beginning next spring, a year earlier than originally planned, seems to indicate that the time frame for the Tu-160M2's delivery to the military has been dramatically shortened.
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