Puppet MastersS


Oscar

As criminal scandals implicating McCain unfold, 'declining' health has become an off-broadway production


True Pundit
Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:00 UTC
John McCain in wheelchair
© Unknown
It's uncanny how Sen. John McCain's health declines every time the walls are closing in on the scandals he is implicated in.

It's almost like a script of a play or a canceled TV pilot.

Today, as McCain's name has surfaced in more anti-Trump scandals, he showed up to the Senate in a wheelchair.

Perhaps he actually needs the chair. But ask any true conservative about it and they will surely snicker.

Is McCain a faker?

Who would allege he is faking brain cancer? No one is saying that.
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Bad Guys

War on Nationalism: Top French bank tells Le Pen's party to shut accounts


RT
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 14:47 UTC
French France bank Societe Generale
© Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters
Societe Generale, one of France's biggest banks, has reportedly asked the National Front (FN), the far-right anti-immigration eurosceptic party led by Marine Le Pen, to close its accounts after 30 years of cooperation. FN has vowed to fight the decision.

"It seems the bank wants nothing more to do with us," FN spokesman David Rachline told Sud Radio early Tuesday. "It's a real scandal. We will resist and fight to overcome this persecution."

According to an internal party document received by the investigative magazine Mediapart, the bank wants to close all current and savings accounts held by the party.

Comment: It wasn't just SocGen that closed their accounts - HSBC closed them as well. While poor party finances have been used by some to justify the actions, National Front officials claim this is not the case:
On Tuesday FN officials denied that the decision had been made because the party accounts were in the red. "If that was the case why hasn't Société Générale closed the UMP - Les Républicains' accounts when they owe the considerable sum of €50m?" said Wallerand de Saint Just, the FN treasurer. "The Front National's situation is perfectly healthy and there's no reason for any banker to use that as an excuse to so brutally throw out a long-standing customer that has always behaved according to the banking rules."
Le Pen has announced she will be taking the banks to court for discrimination:
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen today said she would take banking giants HSBC and Societe Generale to court for discrimination after they moved to close her personal and party accounts.

Le Pen, who lost the presidential election in May to Emmanuel Macron, said her National Front (FN) party was being deliberately cut off from financing as part of a "banking fatwa" against the far-right.
It seems the war against populism & nationalist sentiment is moving ahead, one step at a time.

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Wall Street

Economic warfare: Washington imposes 'massive' anti-dumping duties on Russian steel


RT
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 14:47 UTC
carbon steel wire rod
© Global Look Press
The US Commerce Department has concluded that carbon and alloy steel wire rod from Russia, Belarus, and the United Arab Emirates has been dumped on the US market at unfair prices. Russian steel faces the highest tariff of 756.93 percent.

"The United States is dedicated to free, fair, and reciprocal trade with these countries, and this case was decided strictly on a full and fair assessment of the facts. The DoC is committed to protecting US companies being hurt by foreign manufacturers that refuse to play fair," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said, commenting on the final results of an anti-dumping probe this year.

According to the department, exporting companies from Russia, Belarus, and the UAE have been selling at dumping margins of up to 756.93 percent.
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No Entry

Russia's Duma mulls legislative ban on businesses using Google ads


RT
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 14:47 UTC
Google
© Jaap Arriens / Global Look Press
A senior lawmaker has said that Russia could ban its businesses from advertising through Google's marketing systems in response to plans by the internet giant to de-rank Russian mass media in its search results.

"We would like to meet and discuss all possible steps to protect Russian citizens from dangerous web content. If that's impossible, then let us simply block all internet ads with a legislative motion. Maybe this won't apply to foreign-based companies, but it would surely apply to the Russian ones," Pyotr Tolstoy, deputy lower-house speaker, said at the All-Russian Forum of Youth Media.

"We are very concerned over the situation with the advertising information on social networks that can be undesired and dangerous. If global corporations such as Google and Facebook tell the US Congress that they cannot separate good ads from bad, and safe ones from dangerous, we are also concerned about this," Tolstoy was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.
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War Whore

Pentagon: 'US has dropped over 3,500 freedom-bombs on Afghanistan since October'

Jack Moore
Newsweek
Tue, 21 Nov 2017 11:15 UTC
US Army helicopter
© Andrew Renneisen/GettyA U.S. Army helicopter flies outside of Camp Shorab on a flight to Camp Post on September 11 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
The U.S. military is set to triple the amount of bombs it has dropped in Afghanistan this year under the Trump administration compared with last year, according to new figures.

So far this year the U.S. air force has dropped 3,554 bombs in Afghanistan against the Taliban as of October 31. This is almost three times the 1,337 it dropped in 2016 and almost four times the 2015 figure: 947.

The increase is consistent with the new strategy that Trump announced in August that would see the presence of U.S. soldiers expanded.

Strikes have also reached higher levels than previous years in other arenas that the military is operating. Since the beginning of 2017, the U.S. military has conducted 28 drone strikes against radical Islamists in Somalia.

Comment: The bombing and war crimes will continue. The Americans won't be withdrawing anytime soon, certainly not as long as there's money to be made.

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Airplane Paper

US military to spend a billion USD on US-made helicopters for Afghanistan to replace Russian model due to sanctions on Russia

Marko Marjanović
Checkpoint Asia
Thu, 16 Nov 2017 12:22 UTC
Afgan Mi-17
Mi-17, the most produced military helicopter of its class
Here is American efficiency for you. In 2011 the Pentagon decided it would buy Russian Mi-17 helicopters for Afghanistan. The decision to go Russian made every sense - it was the aircraft Afghans themselves wanted, for understandable reasons.

Afghanistan already had pilots and mechanics who were familiar with the machine, the Mi-17 is more rugged, easier to fly, and requires less maintenance. It costs less than American machines, and has proven itself over Afghanistan's dust and many high peaks and plains. With a medium-sized fuselage it is also more versatile than either the small-ish UH-60 Black Hawk, or the huge CH-47 Chinook.

It was simply the best helicopter for the job. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey himself told Congress in 2013: "There's no way we can put them in anything other than that helicopter."

So for the next five years the US military was buying Russian helicopters and handing them over to the US-created 'National Afghan Army'. It continued to do so even after the US Congress - which is naturally in the pocket of domestic arms makers - started throwing a fit over it in 2013.

Russian Mi-24 helicopter
The US even paid India to hand over four of its Russian-built Mi-24 helicopter gunships to Afghanistan last year
Turns out going the common sense route for even just once is not the American way, however. In late 2016 the Pentagon proclaimed it would stop buying Russian-made helicopters and start buying American-made helicopters to replace them with.

Hilarious. The wisdom of building an enormous helicopter force that Afghanistan can't possibly maintain on its own aside, the decision to get the Russian Mi-17s was a good one. The decision in 2011 to get (the more expensive and sensitive) American-made helicopters would have been less good, but still okay.

Comment: Interesting choice for a replacement helicopter, seeing that the US army can barely fly it themselves. For more on how they like to waste money:

Missing military-industrial-complex money
Drop in the bucket: Failed weapons systems cost Pentagon $58 billion over two decades
New US Air Force planes go directly to 'boneyard'
Obama gives support to Osprey: The military boondoggle that just won't die

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Snakes in Suits

FBI & DoJ admit they 'cannot verify' Trump Dossier


The Duran
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 13:41 UTC
Robert Mueller
FBI and DoJ admit to Congress their inability to verify Trump Dossier collusion allegations

Perhaps the clearest sign that the Russiagate investigation has run into the sand are reports which circulated over the weekend that the FBI and Department of Justice have informed Congressional investigators that their attempts to verify the collusion allegations in the Trump Dossier have so far failed.

The clearest account of these reports has come from Byron York writing for the Washington Examiner on 19th November 2017
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Wall Street

Russian official: Russia & Brexit Britain 'on threshold of new era in economic relations'


RT
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 13:41 UTC
Boris Abramov
© Russian-British Business Forum 2017Boris Abramov, Trade Representative of Russia in the UK
Ahead of this year's Russian-British Business Forum on November 29, Boris Abramov, Russia's Trade Representative to the UK, says the two nations are on the threshold of a new era of trade and economic relations.

Today, the Russian Federation is successfully expanding its trade with many different countries. Trade relations with the countries of European Union and the Asia-Pacific region are being rebuilt and developed. But especially telling, is the growth of trade with the UK. This is due both to the specifics of Russian-British trade and economic relations, and the fact that the British market and its partners traditionally react very sensitively to external signals and context, and in a good way, as we know, operate in a balanced and conservative manner, with an accurate assessment of the situation for the economic interests of their country.

Therefore, the growth trend of Russian-British trade, which reached 23 percent in the first eight months of 2017, is of great importance today and signals the prospect of a new era of trade between the two countries. Since 1920, when the Trade Delegation in London was established and the first contracts were concluded, the United Kingdom has been, and continues to be, a key trade and investment partner of modern Russia.
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Megaphone

Barron Trump on ISIS assassination list

Adam Kredo
The Washington Free Beacon
Tue, 21 Nov 2017 15:55 UTC
Barron and Donald Trump
© Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Pro-ISIS internet channels are calling for the assassination of President Donald Trump's son, Barron, and have shared personal details of the child's life on its social media networks, including the address of his school, according to a media monitoring organization.

ISIS supporters, on a well-known Telegram channel, shared the name and address of Barron Trump's school and are calling for backers of the terrorist organization to assassinate him, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI.

The initial message, sent on Nov. 21 by an ISIS supporter on Telegram, "called for the assassination of Barron Trump, and shared the name of the school that Barron attends along with a Google map pinpointing its location," according to MEMRI, which shares images of this messages with reporters.

"Using the hashtag 'handle the son of the mule of America,' the supporter, who uses the name "Dak Al-Munafiqeen,' Arabic for 'striking the hypocrites,' wrote: 'Barron Trump goes to this school in Washington,'" according to MEMRI.

Comment: Best to take any reports from MEMRI with a grain of salt. Or better yet, a bucket. Note that the source, MEMRI, is a DC-based, Israeli intel-founded 'NGO':
The organization's translations are regularly quoted by major international newspapers, and its work has generated strong criticism and praise. Critics have accused MEMRI of producing inaccurate, unreliable translations with undue emphasis and selectivity in translating and disseminating the most extreme views from Arabic and Persian media, which portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light, while ignoring moderate views that are often found in the same media outlets. Other critics charge that while MEMRI does sometimes translate pro-US or pro-democracy voices in the regional media, it systematically leaves out intelligent criticism of Western-style democracy, US and Israeli policy and secularism.[8][60][61][62]

MEMRI's work has been criticized on three grounds: that their work is biased; that they choose articles to translate selectively so as to give an unrepresentative view of the media they are reporting on; and that some of their translations are inaccurate.[10] MEMRI has responded to the criticism, stating that their work is not biased; that they in fact choose representative articles from the Arab media that accurately reflect the opinions expressed, and that their translations are highly accurate.[10]


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Nuke

Journalist shreds DOJ attempt to discredit FBI informant

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Tue, 21 Nov 2017 16:42 UTC
yellow cake uranium
Several weeks ago a bombshell report by John Solomon and Alison Spann of The Hill revealed that an undercover FBI informant embedded deep within the Russian nuclear industry had uncovered evidence as early as the fall of 2009 of a massive plot by Russia to corner the American Uranium market. Evidence of the scheme was in the hands of the FBI an entire year before the Obama administration approved the sale of Uranium One to Russia's state-owned Energy giant, Rosatom - which has since been exporting 'yellowcake' uranium to Canada, Europe and elsewhere via a Kentuky trucking firm.

Based on what the FBI knew - including evidence which purportedly includes a video of Russians preparing briefcases of bribe money - the deal never should have gone through. Moreover, both Robert Mueller and current deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were directly involved - and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other Justice Department officials appear to be covering for them.

Mueller's FBI knew...

Key among the troubling revelations from The Hill is the undercover informant's claim that Obama's FBI, headed at the time by director Robert Mueller, knew that "Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow" - a deal which would eventually grant the Kremlin control over 20 percent of America's uranium supply, as detailed by author Peter Schweitzer's book Clinton Cash and the New York Times in 2015.

The FBI mole also gathered extensive evidence that Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm, Transport Logistics International (TLI) in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act - engaging in a scheme of bribes and kickbacks involving the company which would have transported the U.S. uranium sold to Russia in the '20 percent' deal.
"The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns. And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions," a person who worked on the case told The Hill, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by U.S. or Russian officials." -The Hill

Comment: Over 5000 documents detailing Uranium One deal obtained by reporter

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