Puppet MastersS


Chess

Trump pays compliment to Democratic senator during tax reform speech


RT
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 23:31 UTC
trump
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
The divide between President Donald Trump and his own party may deepen, as he has just paid a compliment to an embattled Democratic senator. This as he traveled to North Dakota to pitch his tax reform plan and after making a deal with Democratic leaders to extend the debt ceiling by three months.

Trump began his speech at an oil refinery in Mandan, North Dakota on Wednesday by inviting several officials to the stage, including Democratic US Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, whom he called a "good woman."

"Everyone's saying 'what's she doing up here?'" Trump said. "But, I'll tell you what, good woman. And I think we'll have your support. I hope we'll have your support."
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Propaganda

Fake News: NYT claims Russian company 'likely' bought Facebook Ads to beat Hillary

Alex Christoforou
The Duran
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 21:49 UTC
Mark Zuckerberg Facebook American Flag
Who would have known that all it takes to beat Hillary Clinton, subvert "exceptional" US democracy, and send the entire western mainstream media into "red scare" panic mode was $100,000 in Facebook ads.

The New York Times has uncovered the smoking gun that lead to the rise of Trump, and the fall of "Crooked" Hillary Clinton.

Comment: Let's get this straight. There's 'new evidence' that a 'shadowy' Russian company with 'possible' ties to the Kremlin 'likely' spent a measly $100 grand on 'divisive' Facebook ads that 'might have' influenced the 2016 US election in 'one way or another'?

This is the kind of evidence one expects to find when investigating something that never actually happened. By now, anyone who doubts that this is anything more than a witch hunt against Trump and his associates have succumbed to mass hysteria.

Further reading:

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Wall Street

N. Korea confirms that it supports economic ties with Russia & South Korea

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 21:49 UTC
President Moon Jae-in South Korea Vladimir Putin
© New York TimesPresident Moon Jae-in, left, of South Korea and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday, at an economic summit meeting in Vladivostok, Russia.
North Korea's representative at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok has given his first public statement to journalists since President Vladimir Putin announced his plans for trilateral economic cooperation between Russia and the two Korean states.

Subsequently, North Korea's Minister for External Economic Affairs, Kim Yong Jae told reporters that in principle, his country supports the plan but that North Korea does not plan to immediately enact such proposals. Such a statement is not surprising giving North Korea's generally cautious approach to international engagement.
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Star of David

Israel's Geopolitical Reality Check

Sharmine Narwani
The American Conservative
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 21:49 UTC
Benjamin Netanyahu
A once favorable balance of power has shifted, clipping Tel Aviv's wings.

Tel Aviv has had a bad few weeks. A once favorable regional balance of power has suddenly shifted in a direction that clips Israel's wings-all while adversaries on its borders are making swift strategic gains.

At the core of the issue is Israel's obsession with Iranian ascendancy in the region. The 2015 nuclear deal that ended the Islamic Republic's isolation was a real setback for the Israeli establishment, but what really hit home this summer was a steady succession of political and military victories for the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.

So Israel's power players headed to the United States and Russia to try to claw back some lost leverage on the ground.

They returned from Washington empty-handed, unable to wrest guarantees on keeping Iranian and allied troops out of southern Syria, where the U.S. and Russia in July established a de-escalation zone near Israel's border.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's consultations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi went nowhere too. Russian accounts of those talks describe a highly "agitated" and "emotional" Netanyahu who was told in no uncertain terms by a calm Putin: "Iran is Russia's strategic ally in the Middle East." To Netanyahu, Putin offered what must have comparatively felt like crumbs: "Israel is also an important partner of Russia in the region."
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Stock Up

Congress approves $15.25bn natural disaster aid package and raises US debt ceiling until Dec.


RT
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 21:11 UTC
Man in flooded Houston
© Adrees Latif / Reuters
The US Senate has approved a $15.25 billion relief package for areas affected by hurricanes and has tied it to measures that would raise the US government's borrowing limit through December, following President Donald Trump's deal with Democrats.

The package, passed 80-17, would provide initial aid to those affected by Hurricane Harvey, which flooded southern Texas last week, and also provide relief to areas in the US that are expected to be hit by Category 5 Hurricane Irma this weekend, primarily Florida.

To get it passed, President Trump struck a deal with Democratic Congressional leaders that would see the package tied to suspending the country's debt ceiling and funding government operations through the end of the year.

Republican Congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, wanted to push the debt ceiling deadline further into the future, but Trump agreed to the Democrats' offer of a three-month extension.
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Footprints

US sends 3,500 troops to Afghanistan


RT
Wed, 06 Sep 2017 22:14 UTC
troops choppers
© Omar Sobhani / Reuters
President Donald Trump's insistence that he will not disclose troop numbers in Afghanistan has apparently not stopped unidentified US officials from telling Reuters that 3,500 additional US soldiers will soon head to the country.

The Pentagon has yet to officially announce how many more troops the US will be sending to fight America's longest war. Last week, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis signed orders to send additional forces to Afghanistan but did not specify numbers, saying he first needed to brief Congress. If confirmed, the new deployment would bring the total number of US troops in the country to about 14,500.

Last month, Trump announced his administration's strategy in Afghanistan would be driven by objectives, not timetables. "Conditions on the ground - not arbitrary timetables - will guide our strategy from now on. America's enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out," Trump said.

As a presidential candidate, Trump had lamented the war's high cost, and in previous years had indicated support for a withdrawal from the conflict-ridden country. The president recently said the American troops in Afghanistan "will fight to win."

Critics have suggested that America's involvement in Afghanistan may stretch on indefinitely. Some US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have questioned the benefit of sending more troops to Afghanistan "because any politically palatable number would not be enough to turn the tide, much less create stability and security," Reuters reported.

Comment: There is no "win" here, just delusion -- and you can't blame the Taliban for that.

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Snakes in Suits

Cambodian opposition leader openly bragged about US-backed sedition

Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 20:53 UTC
Kem Sokha
Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha was recently arrested on charges of treason. While the Western media has attempted to portray the charges as politically motivated, Sokha's treason is not only quite real, he openly, eagerly bragged about it on the Australian-based "Cambodia Broadcasting Network" (CBN).

The Phnom Penh Post in its article, "Kem Sokha video producer closes Phnom Penh office in fear," would quote Sokha who claimed (emphasis added):
And, the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can changed the dictator Slobodan Milosevic," he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes.

"You know Milosevic had a huge numbers of tanks. But they changed things by using this strategy, and they take this experience for me to implement in Cambodia. But no one knew about this."
Sokha is referring to the openly admitted US-engineered regime change mechanism known as "color revolutions" and in particular the successful overthrow of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

Comment: More on Cambodia:

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No Entry

Trump: US would be 'extremely upset' if Assad used chemical weapons


RT
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 20:47 UTC
Donald Trump with Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah
© Jonathan Ernst / ReutersUS President Donald Trump with Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah in the East Room of the White House in Washington, US, September 7, 2017.
At a meeting with the emir of Kuwait, US President Donald Trump claimed to have "very little to do with Syria", but would be very upset if it turned out the government was using chemical weapons.

"We would be extremely upset if Assad used chemical weapons," said Trump at a joint conference with Sheikh Sabah IV Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah in Washington DC. However, "we have very little to do with Syria, apart from killing ISIS," he added.

The President made his remarks a day after a report released by the UN Syria Commission which suggests that Syrian government forces were responsible for a chemical attack that took place in April.

"All evidence available leads the Commission to conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe Syrian forces dropped an aerial bomb dispersing sarin in Khan Shaykhun at around 6:45am on 4 April," the report stated, adding that such attacks constitute war crimes.

However, the Russian and Syrian governments have contested this version of events, arguing that the chemical leak was the result of an airstrike on a militant warehouse where chemical weapons were being produced and stockpiled before being shipped to Iraq.
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Biohazard

US Army training forces in South Korea for WMD attack


RT
Thu, 07 Sep 2017 20:39 UTC
U.S. army soldiers take part in a U.S.-South Korea joint river-crossing exercise
© Kim Hong-Ji / ReutersU.S. army soldiers take part in a U.S.-South Korea joint river-crossing exercise near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Yeoncheon, South Korea.
The US Army wants its forces deployed in South Korea to train for a potential attack with the use of hazardous materials, which could be radioactive or chemical.

The Army's 718th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company (EOD) in South Korea should be taught to be able to identify hazardous materials, "know how to perform basic control, containment and/or confinement operations," as well as to be able to implement decontamination procedures, according to the contract proposal which the Army posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website.

It is expected to be a two-week training course, taught on-site at the US Camp Humphreys base in South Korea.

The US has around 25,000 troops deployed in the country, at some 80 sites across the country.

In late August, the Pentagon posted another proposal for contractors to build walls around four US bases in South Korea to protect them from a potential attack.

This comes at a time of heightened tensions between the US and North Korea, following the latter's recent missile tests, which Pyongyang called "gift packages" to the United States.
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Radar

'The Art of War': The new NATO intelligence headquarters

Manlio Dinucci
Voltaire Net
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 20:26 UTC
New NATO headquarters
"The Hub for NATO's strategic leadership for the South"! This is the delightful name of the gigantic intelligence center that NATO has just erected. What exactly is the point of this center? Nothing less than to co-ordinate each of the Pentagon's covert actions. In this article, Mario Dinucci analyses its structure. He shows that to start with, this center will cover all of Africa (apart from South Africa) and the entire territory (apart from Israel) that the enlarged Middle East now covers. While the Center receives some of its funding from European states, its mind is controlled entirely by the United States.

On 4 September 2017, a ribbon-cutting ceremony took place at Lake Patria (Naples), where the Joint NATO Forces Command (Jfc Naples) is based. It was at these headquarters (which cover an area of 85,000 m2 and accommodates a bulked up staff of 2,500 soldiers and civilians), that the "Hub for NATO's Strategic Leadership for the South" (Nsd-S Hub) was inaugurated. Strongly supported by Minister Pinotti, this Hub is mandated to "gather information and analyze a wide range of issues relating to destabilization, terrorism, radicalization and migration". In other words, it is an intelligence-gathering center, whose activity "focus on Southern regions, such as the Middle East, North Africa and Sahel, Sub Saharan African and adjacent areas".
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