Puppet MastersS


Chess

Former US diplomat: Trump needs to learn the rules of the game, Russia should teach him how to act in Syria


RT
Fri, 14 Apr 2017 20:41 UTC
Trump
© Carlos Barria / Reuters
Donald Trump lacks international experience and it's up to Moscow and others to teach him the rules of the game, John Brady Kiesling, ex-US diplomat and a signee of an open letter, warning US president against escalating relations with Russia, told RT.

"The difficulty is that President Trump is inexperienced... His instinct is to do the opposite to whatever President Obama did," Kiesling, who represented the US Foreign Service in Israel, Morocco, Greece and Armenia between 1983 and 2006, said.

"The goal here should be to teach President Trump. And here Russia needs to do more than it has done to explain how the international community can do what's needed in Syria," he added.

The former diplomat said President Vladimir Putin "obviously, has much more experience" than his US counterpart and that "Trump will have to learn the rules of the game."

Comment: Trump administration on Syria: Two weeks, six positions, clear as mud

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Dollar

Another Trump flip-flop: US Treasury does not label China currency manipulator, keeps on monitor list


RT
Fri, 14 Apr 2017 15:49 UTC
Chinese currency
© Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
The Trump administration has declined to label China a currency manipulator, but is keeping the country on its list of those to monitor, according to a new report from the US Treasury Department.

The monitoring list includes China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany and Switzerland, according to a Treasury report to Congress entitled, "Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States," published Friday.

President Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal this week he would not consider China as manipulating its currency, which he attributed to a strong US dollar, China's recent currency activity as well as the development of a new strategy with the US to rein in North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
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Info

Marine Le Pen blasts Donald Trump and his new found love for NATO

Alex Christoforou
The Duran
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:42 UTC
Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen criticized President Donald Trump on Friday for his sudden embrace of NATO.

Last week The Duran reported on the many "deplorables" turned off by Trump's new found fancy for a US interventionist foreign policy.

Last week Trump also backtracked on much of his NATO pre-presidential stance.

He signed off on Montenegro's membership to the alliance...which now means Serbia is completely surrounded by an aggressive military alliance, that has bombed it mercilessly in the past under false flag pretenses.

Trump also met with NATO head warmonger Stoltenberg, and reversed his NATO position from "obsolete" to, "it is no longer obsolete".

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is not amused with Trump's swiveling foreign policy.
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Bomb

Afghan officials: Massive US bomb death toll rises to 94


RFE/RL
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:36 UTC
US GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB)
© United States Department of Defence / Wikipedia
Afghan officials say the number of Islamic State (IS) group fighters killed in an attack by the most powerful nonnuclear weapon ever used in combat by the U.S. military has risen to 94.

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb -- dubbed the Mother Of All Bombs -- was deployed in combat for the first time on April 13, hitting IS positions in eastern Nangarhar Province.

Provincial Governor Muhammad Ismail Shinwari said on April 15 that four key commanders were among the militants killed. Shinwari said no civilian casualties were inflicted as civilians living in the area of the bombing had been evacuated by the Afghan military.
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Folder

What are they looking for? Microsoft bombarded with record number of US foreign intelligence requests in 2016


RT
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:18 UTC
microsoft
© Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Microsoft received over 1,000 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests from the US government in the first half of 2016 alone - the highest number in the company's recorded history.

This was more than double the number of requests in the preceding six-month period the company stated in a Transparency report published online Thursday.

Microsoft also published a redacted National Security Letter the company received from the FBI. The correspondence sought specific user information and also functioned as a temporary gag order, preventing the corporation from disclosing the request to the public.

In 2015, Congress included additional transparency measures in the USA Freedom Act, allowing tech companies (such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Twitter) to publish similar letters from the FBI in recent months, reports The Hill.

Following a number of widely publicized leaks involving the scope of US intelligence gathering both at home and abroad, such practices by US authorities have come under increased scrutiny in recent months.
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Attention

Turkey launches probe into role of former US officials in coup attempt


PressTV
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:18 UTC
Former CIA Director John Brennan
© AFPFormer CIA Director John Brennan
The Turkish judiciary has begun an investigation into the suspected involvement of some former US officials and politicians in the coup attempt of July 2016.

The Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in Istanbul began the proceedings on Saturday, after some Turkish attorneys filed a criminal complaint against 17 individuals including US politicians, bureaucrats and academics.

The people are suspected of having links to what Turkey entitles FETO, an alleged terrorist network run by Fethullah Gulen, a cleric based in the United States whom Ankara blames for the coup attempt of July 15.
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Info

Russia will build 'Storm' supercarriers to challenge US naval supremacy

Ricky Twisdale
The Duran
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 14:57 UTC
Russian Storm supercarrier
Called Project 23000E, Russia's new class of supercarrier will be able to give US carriers a run for their money

The unchallenged reign of the US Navy on the high seas may be drawing to a close.

Russia has plans to build a new class of supercarrier which will be able to challenge the US navy's Nimitz and Gerald Ford class carriers.

The "Storm" (or Shtorm) class supercarrier, also called Project 23000E, is being planned by Russia to be comparable to the Gerald Ford class, will be nuclear powered, and carry around 90 combat aircraft.
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Eye 1

Tillerson's Chief of Staff Peterlin is an old hand at US cyberwarfare against Russia

John Helmer
Dances with Bears
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 14:32 UTC
Margaret Peterlin Tillerson us cyber warfare
Margaret Peterlin
When US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was telling the Russians and the US state press yesterday to stop hacking into American politics, sitting beside him was a former US Navy signals officer and lawyer named Margaret Peterlin (lead image, red circle). Peterlin's job for the last two years was managing a Boston company specializing in cyber warfare weapons, including the latest in US computer programmes to mimic foreign hackers and convince US targets they have been hacked by Russians. Peterlin was also an advisor to Donald Trump during the presidential transition. Her targets then included Hillary Clinton and her campaign organization.

Peterlin was born in Alabama, and for most her career she has worked for southerners. Her appointment at the State Department as Tillerson's chief of staff is currently blank on the Department's website.
margaret peterlin Tillerson
© U.S. Dept of State
Peterlin's appointment to run Tillerson's office was announced more authoritatively by the Washington Post on February 12. There her Texas Republican Party credentials were reported in detail, but not her expertise in signals, codes, and cyber warfare.
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Radar

Russia announces tests of hypersonic Zircon anti-ship missile in warning to US

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 14:50 UTC
Russian hypersonic Zircon anti-ship missile
Russia announces test of hypersonic Zircon anti-ship missile as warning to US following US navy deployments against Syria and North Korea.

It is probably no coincidence that as international tensions have ratcheted up following on the US missile strike on Syria and the US military deployments around North Korea, that Russia has announced that its new hypersonic Zircon anti-ship missile has achieved speeds of Mach 8 in tests.

This claim appears in an article carried by the official Russian news agency TASS.
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Bulb

Lavrov urges international investigations into Syrian gas attack allegations


RT
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 14:49 UTC
Syrian missile attack
© Mikhail Voskresenskiy / ReutersAftermath of the US missile attack on a Syrian military airbase.
Inspectors should be urgently sent to both Syria's Idlib province and the Shayrat Airbase to conduct an unbiased investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Russia will call on both the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the UN to investigate, Lavrov said after meeting with his Qatari counterpart in Moscow.

"We think that it is absolutely necessary to conduct a thorough, objective, professional, and unbiased investigation. We will insist that the OPCW and the UN in New York urgently send inspectors both to the site of incident and the airfield itself, where, according to Western experts, the munitions were loaded with chemicals."
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