Puppet MastersS


Eye 1

US imposes hypocritical 'human rights' sanctions against North Korea


RT
Fri, 27 Oct 2017 01:17 UTC
North Korea
© Iliya Pitalev / Sputnik
The US Treasury has issued new sanctions targeting seven North Korean military and government officials and three entities with ties to the government and the Workers' Party of Korea, citing reported human rights violations.

In announcing the move on Thursday, the Treasury Department called North Korea "a brutal regime" and said the new sanctions were in response to Pyongyang's alleged ongoing human rights abuses and censorship activities.

"We are especially concerned with the North Korean military, which operates as secret police, punishing all forms of dissent," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. "Further, the military operates outside of North Korea to hunt down asylum seekers, and brutally detains and forcibly returns North Korean citizens."
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Bad Guys

US coalition confirms more civilian deaths in Iraq & Syria


RT
Fri, 27 Oct 2017 01:17 UTC
US empire American imperialism
© The Hawaii Independent
The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State has confirmed another 51 "unintentional civilian deaths" caused by its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, raising the number of civilians it has acknowledged killing since 2014 to at least 786.

Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), as the coalition is officially known, said that in September, it assessed 127 reports suggesting that their strikes resulted in civilian casualties and deemed that 16 of them were "credible," meaning that it was "more likely than not a Coalition strike [that] resulted in a civilian casualty," according to a statement published Thursday.

The deadliest occurrence was a June 25 strike near Al Mayadin, Syria, in which the coalition destroyed a building held by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), killing 12 civilians.
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Arrow Down

A Dynamic Analysis of Ukraine Politics: The Crooks, the Clowns and the Nazis

The Saker
The Unz Review
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 00:00 UTC
2014 Pro-Russian Unrest in Ukraine
© Unknown
The latest big news out of the Ukraine

Have you heard what the latest big news out of the Ukraine is? No? There is a mini-Maidan under way and Ukrainian nationalists seem to hope that Poroshenko will be kicked out before the end of the week. You did not know? Well, that is the real big news, the fact that you did not hear about this.

Truthfully, what is going on is kind of interesting. Let me sum it up: the former President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili (who was stripped of his Georgian citizenship and of this Ukrainian citizenship) recently crossed the border (through Poland, of course) and proceeded to travel to Kiev to demand Poroshenko's resignation. You think that I am kidding? Check the Wikipedia article about him, it has all the details. It gets better. There is a consensus amongst analysts that Saakashvili is being used as a battering ram by somebody far more influential - Iulia Timoshenko, of course. But what is really new is that many well informed analysts and commentators seem to think that the USA and EU are not the main driving force behind these latest developments (though they are involved, of course).
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Dollars

'Foreign funding provided big power to small factions in Syria, flipped everything on its head'


RT
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 17:17 UTC
money pillars
© www.cio.com
In Syria, there are different interests sometimes running parallel or are completely inconsistent, says former CIA officer Jack Rice. He adds that the proxy wars, with funding rolling out of the US and other powers, have led to the morass seen today.

According to a leaked document from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Saudi Arabia ordered Syrian opposition forces to 'Light-up Damascus' in 2013 while providing them with tons of weapons for the assault.

RT spoke to former CIA officer Jack Rice who explains the international players changed the balance of power in the region.

RT: What was Saudi Arabia trying to achieve by ordering this attack?

Jack Rice: It is very clear here that the Saudis are trying to have enormous influence in Syria. That is one of the problems that we have in the region, the region that is so difficult right now. Inside of Syria, there are all these different interests running sometimes parallel, sometimes completely inconsistent. You can have a revolution, you can have a civil war, which you absolutely had. Right alongside it you had a proxy war where you found that there was funding rolling out of the US, out of Western Europe, out of the Saudis, out of the Iranians and out of others because they all had a certain agenda in place, but the problem was they were absolutely inconsistent which led to the morass that we see today.

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Arrow Down

In the land of the free, don't call the cops if you are a disabled person!

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Tue, 24 Oct 2017 22:22 UTC
"Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement."-Steve Silberman, The New York Times
Thug Cop
© The Daily Sheeple
Life in the American police state is an endless series of don'ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: don't talk back to police officers, don't even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), don't run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, don't carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, don't expect privacy in public, don't let your kids walk to the playground alone, don't engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, don't try to grow vegetables in your front yard, don't play music for tips in a metro station, don't feed whales, and on and on.

Here's another don't to the add the growing list of things that could get you or a loved one tasered, shot or killed, especially if you are autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffer from dementia, disabled or have any other condition that might hinder your ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order: don't call the cops.

Sometimes it's dangerous enough calling the cops when you're not contending with a disability.

For instance, Justine Damond called 911 to report a disturbance and ended up dead after police dispatched to investigate instead shot the 40-year-old yoga instructor. Likewise, Carl Williams called 911 to report a robbery and ended up being shot by police, who mistook him for a robber in his own home.

Unfortunately, the risks just skyrocket when a disability is involved.

Nancy Schrock called 911 for help after her husband, Tom, who suffered with mental health issues, started stalking around the backyard, upending chairs and screaming about demons. Several times before, police had transported Tom to the hospital, where he was medicated and sent home after 72 hours. This time, Tom was tasered twice. He collapsed, lost consciousness and died.

The Schrocks are not alone in this experience.

Indeed, disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers.
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Briefcase

Trump campaign argues WikiLeaks posting hacked DNC emails was legal

Josh Gerstein
Politico
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 06:13 UTC
AssangeWiki
© unknown
Publication of messages didn't violate the law even if WikiLeaks stole them, Trump's lawyers say

WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of emails apparently hacked from the Democratic National Committee was legal and specifically protected by federal law, the Trump campaign argued in a court filing Wednesday.

Lawyers for the Trump presidential campaign came to the controversial transparency website's defense in a bid to defeat a lawsuit three Democratic activists filed in July accusing Trump's presidential campaign of conspiring to publish sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers and information suggesting that a Democratic National Committee employee was gay.

The Trump campaign's motion to dismiss the case argues that WikiLeaks qualifies as the kind of online service that Congress rendered immune from legal liability through legislation passed more than two decades ago.

Comment: Sometimes the law actually serves and protects when knowledge prevails. This time seems to be mutually beneficial for the Trump campaign and Assange/Wikileaks.

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USA

Best of the Web: Why the 'Steele Dossier' on Trump-Russia collusion is a total 'nothingburger'

Bryan MacDonald
RT.com
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 20:46 UTC
Trump smiling
The infamous "Steele Dossier," which alleges collusion between Donald Trump and Russian operatives during the 2016 election campaign is back in the headlines, with revelations that Hillary Clinton's campaign team paid the British spy for his research.
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Folder

Concealed JFK assassination records to be released by NSA

Miriam Pensack
The Intercept
Wed, 25 Oct 2017 01:07 UTC
JFKennedy
© IrishCentral.comFormer President John F. Kennedy
There is something perverse about the fact that President Donald Trump, the exuberant and all-too-successful spinner of conspiracy theories, and deeply ignorant of American history besides, will oversee the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination of his presidential predecessor, John F. Kennedy.

In 1992, Congress approved, and former President George H.W. Bush signed, the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. They were prodded by an Oliver Stone film on the killing released the year prior and the resulting flurry of public interest. The act mandated the disclosure of all assassination-related records no later than 25 years after its signing, by October 26, 2017 - this Thursday.

While federal agencies can contest the release of the documents on the grounds of "identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations" that "outweighs the public interest in disclosure," according to the act, the chief executive gets the final say in all such cases. In other words, much of what we can still hope to learn about the JFK assassination hinges on Trump.

FidelNikita
© PBSFidel Castro and Nikita Khruschev
The estimated 113,000 pages of material, presently with the National Archives, are known from metadata searches to contain extensive mentions of Cuba and the former Soviet Union. Two documents provided by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and published for the first time today further underline how closely the intelligence community has held information related to Cuba's potential role in the killing, indicating that the NSA for decades has kept secret its efforts to monitor Cuban agents' communications in the aftermath of the event.

Details from and about U.S. intelligence-gathering against Cuba, even if historic in nature, have particular resonance amid a new chill in diplomatic relations between the two countries, and in the wake of documents released earlier this summer showing that CIA officials believed that the investigation into the president's death paid insufficient attention to assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's contacts with Cuba.

The sensational potential of the release is not lost on the president, who over the weekend tweeted that: "Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened." But an official from the National Security Council told the Washington Post last week that a number of government agencies have already appealed to Trump to block portions of the release.

Comment: Many assume Trump is ignorant of American history, and to an extent that may be true. But we must qualify that opinion to encompass 99.9% of Americans, including those in government. What has been passed on as true history is a shell of instances filled with 'historical remakes.' Following this logic, perhaps Trump has more awareness than it seems. Who is to say but the puppet masters who altered the narratives in the past...and continue to alter or obscure them to hide or manipulate facts and manage conclusions.

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Sherlock

Who is in charge of the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shooting investigation?

Doug Poppa
Baltimore Post Examiner
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 20:08 UTC
Paddock room dead body
The body of Stephen Paddock in the hotel suite. Who shot him?
The mass shooting and the death of the gunman, Stephen Paddock, who reportedly committed suicide, would normally be investigated by detectives from the LVMPD's homicide division, however the Baltimore Post-Examiner was told by a retired police official that the investigation was pulled from homicide detectives and given to the department's Force Investigation Team.

Comment: For the most complete analysis of the Las Vegas shooting see these SOTT Focus articles by Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley:

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Laptop

Jittery UK govt wanted to set up internal alerts to monitor Trump


RT
Thu, 26 Oct 2017 15:43 UTC
MayTrump
© Sputnik InternationalSpecial relationship, but...
Not even the 'special relationship' was enough to calm a nervy Britain about what Donald Trump could do next just after becoming president. Official emails show the UK government planned to set up an internal warning system to monitor orders issued by Trump.

Most of the emails - released to the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act - were between the British Embassy in Washington and the Foreign Office around the time of Trump's executive order halting all refugee admissions and temporarily banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

On January 30, Kara Owen, director of the Americas desk at the Foreign Office, sent an email around the Foreign Office and to Deputy British Ambassador to the US Patrick Davies asking for a new warning system to be set up to look at the impact of Trump's executive orders on British interests.

"Many of these orders will no doubt be issued just as London is going to sleep," she said. "I would like to establish a system for assessing impact of the orders on U.K. interests (if any) and offering quick advice on what to do about it to the right readership (including senior readers in FCO and Whitehall, press and private offices)." She added: "I would welcome any other predictions about EOs [executive orders] foreshadowed during the campaign and likely to touch on our interests - he is doing a lot of what he said he would."
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