Puppet MastersS


Eye 1

Washington vultures circle House Intel Chair for seeing 'no evidence' of Russia-Trump collusion

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes
© Aaron P. Bernstein / ReutersHouse Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes
House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes is in the cross-hairs for stating there's "no evidence of collusion" between Trump's team and Moscow ahead of what's expected to be heated public hearings former intelligence officers, and political analysts told RT.

Nunes stated that "no evidence of collusion" between President Donald Trump's team and Russia has been found. The statement to Fox News came just ahead of the first public hearing on the matter on Monday. Nunes added, that, "the one crime we know that's been committed" were the leaks to the media that fueled these speculations.

Nunes' statements may make him a new target for the anti-Trump section of the US establishment as the latest round to unravel the "Russian election meddling" saga unfolds, a former MI5 intelligence officer Anny Machon told RT

Light Saber

The horror! Putin's 'axis of secular leaders' a threat to western-backed terrorist life on Earth

President Bashar  al-Assad and President Vladimir Putin
Secular leaders that oppose American hegemony? We can't have that.
Our trusted media now warns us about Putin's malicious "axis of secular authoritarians" who fight terrorists. The horror?

Remember Bush's "Axis of Evil"?

Of course you do, because this scary bogeyman was repeated 24/7 ad nauseam by every trusted television network in North America.

And the endless repetition of this phrase had fantastic results: Within a few months, every responsible, taxpaying American understood that in the "post-9/11 world" it was more important than ever before to chant meaningless slogans and cheer on illegal wars in the Middle East and North Africa.

Chess

Pepe Escobar: Russia, Iran and China are 'birthing a new Middle East'

syria war
© Valery Melnikov/SputnikVillages in north-eastern Syria liberated from ISIL
You all remember former US Secretary of State Condi Rice's notorious 2006 prediction about "birth pangs of a New Middle East." True to the George "Dubya" Bush/Cheney regime, Condi got it all spectacularly wrong, not only about Lebanon and Israel but also Iraq, Syria and the House of Saud. The Obama administration duly maintained a tradition that we could, light-heartedly, call The Sex Pistols School of Foreign Policy ("no future for you"). That's perfectly exemplified by unflappable Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in just a few sentences.

Zakharova points out how Team Obama "didn't have a consistent Syrian strategy in entire eight years: one day we bomb it, the next day we don't, one day we pull out of Syria, the next day we go in." That's because "one branch of government did not understand what the other branch was doing." And in the end "they just went ahead and dropped all Syrian politics without seeing it to its logical end. Then they focused on Aleppo, but not on resolving this situation, but solely on building up hysteria and an information campaign geared exclusively to the elections."

And that leads us to the adults in the room in the Trump era, the ones that are actually monitoring the birth pangs of the real new Middle East: Russia.

Comment: Russia has already put Israel in its place over Syria. It remains to be seen how Turkey and Saudi Arabia can be brought into line. Russia has much economic leverage over Turkey. Saudi Arabia may be trickier. Here is where China may help.


Phoenix

PedoGate Update: The Global Elite's Pedophile Empire is Crumbling - But Will it Ever Crash?

Pedogate
Since the internet bombshell launched by WikiLeaks' release of John Podesta emails and the uncovered Comet Pizza's bizarre and suspicious activities leading to last fall's Pizzagate scandal, and the simultaneous reporting of unprecedented number of arrests made in child sex trafficking rings worldwide, clearly demonstrate that law enforcement is finally treating the global epidemic seriously. Yet the systematic kidnapping, torturing and raping of children by highly organized trafficking rings have barely if at all even scratched the surface of mainstream media coverage, which has chosen to act as a complicit accomplice and partner-in-crime in the unholiest of alliances with the child rapists themselves, consistently ignoring child sex trafficking rings being operated by powerful members of the world's elite ruling class.

A prime example is the state owned BBC that knew for a number of decades that entertainer Jimmy Savile was raping hundreds if not thousands of defenseless, innocent children throughout the United Kingdom, and said and did absolutely nothing to stop it other than punish and silence those few who came forth trying to expose the evil. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols was banned by the BBC after he spoke up and once the 37-year old TV presenter Jill Dando called attention to the known pedophilia abuse at the BBC, she was abruptly murdered outside her West London home in April 1999.

Oscar

Assad: Oscar-feted White Helmets are part of Al-Qaeda

Assad
© SANA / Reuters
Syria's President Bashar Assad.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has hit out at the controversial nonprofit White Helmets, calling it a front for Islamic terrorism, and saying they are an example of Western narratives grotesquely distorting the truth about the conflict in the country.

"White Helmets are Al Qaeda members and that's proven on the net," Assad told RT during an interview with Russian journalists in Damascus. "The same members are killing or executing or celebrating over dead bodies, at the same time they are humanitarian heroes, and now they have an Oscar."

Comment: Proof:




USA

Robin Hood in reverse - How government goons use civil asset forfeiture to rob us blind

"Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property. Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head. With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent."—" Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture," Institute for Justice
Forfeiture
© Less Government
In jolly old England, Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor.

In modern-day America, greedy government goons steal from the innocent to give to the corrupt under court- and legislature-sanctioned schemes called civil asset forfeiture. In fact, according to The Washington Post, "law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did."

This is how the American police state continues to get rich: by stealing from the citizenry.

Here's how the whole ugly business works in a nutshell.

First, government agents (usually the police) use a broad array of tactics to profile, identify, target and arrange to encounter (in a traffic stop, on a train, in an airport, in public, or on private property) those individuals who might be traveling with a significant amount of cash or possess property of value. Second, these government agents—empowered by the courts and the legislatures—seize private property (cash, jewelry, cars, homes and other valuables) they "suspect" may be connected to criminal activity.

Then—and here's the kicker—whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, without any charges being levied against the property owner, or any real due process afforded the unlucky victim, the property is forfeited to the government, which often divvies it up with the local police who helped with the initial seizure.

It's a new, twisted form of guilt by association.

Only it's not the citizenry being accused of wrongdoing, just their money.

What this adds up to is a paradigm in which Americans no longer have to be guilty to be stripped of their property, rights and liberties. All you have to be is in possession of something the government wants.

Motorists have been particularly vulnerable to this modern-day form of highway robbery.

For instance, police stole $201,000 in cash from Lisa Leonard because the money—which Leonard planned to use to buy a house for her son—was being transported on a public highway also used by drug traffickers. Despite the fact that Leonard was innocent of wrongdoing, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the theft on a technicality.

Airplane

New Zealand expels US Diplomat over violent incident

NZ airlplane
© Pixabay
An American employed at the US embassy in Wellington, New Zealand, has been expelled from the country after what is thought to be an incident of domestic violence.

US diplomat Colin White, a technical attache said to be coordinating with Government Communications Security Bureau, New Zealand's spy agency, has been expelled from the island nation after Washington declined to waive his diplomatic immunity, according to New Zealand news website stuff.co.nz.

Chess

Russia to resolve 'growing conflict' between Damascus & UN Special Envoy for Syria

Damascus Syria
© AFP 2017/ JOSEPH EID
Russia favors the current dispute between the Syrian government and UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura resolution, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian upper house of parliament said Monday.

Russia is trying to resolve the current dispute between the Syrian government and UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, whose visit to Damascus was canceled ahead of the next round of the intra-Syria talks in Geneva, Konstantin Kosachev, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian upper house of parliament, said Monday.

"We are trying to calm this conflict down. [The Syrian authorities] should continue interaction with the UN secretary-general's representative in any case," Kosachev told reporters.

Comment: It seems that de Mistura is failing at mediating this conflict, and has now become 'persona non grata' to Syrian authorities:
According to the interlocutor of the Agency, de Mistura appealed to Republic's leadership asking about the possibility of a visit to Syria on the eve of the Geneva meetings, which have been scheduled for the upcoming week. At the request of the official Damascus refused without explanation, stated the source.

He said that de Mistura "has become persona non grata in Damascus — both today and for the future".
One wonders if there is a connection between this turn of events and the devastating string of terror attacks in Damascus. As de Mistura himself said, the attacks were 'plainly designed to spoil attempts to sustain political talks'.

Further reading:


Chess

After retaking Palmyra, Syrian army's 5th Legion forges ahead in offensive against ISIS

Syrian army
© Sputnik/ Mikhail Voskresenskiy
Russia pushing for Syrian army 5th Legion to end ISIS siege of Deir Ezzor.

In contrast to what happened after the capture of Palmyra in March 2016, the Syrian army has been pressing on with its offensive against ISIS positions near Palmyra since its recent recapture of the city.

Most of the focus has been on gaining control of mountain areas north of Palmyra, which were used by ISIS in December as its launch point for its second capture of the city.

Comment: Further reading: An analysis of Israel's ill-judged raid on Syria
Israel's raid appears to have been intended to disrupt the ongoing offensive against ISIS but has provoked a powerful response.

The Russians have now formally confirmed earlier media reports that following the Israeli air raid on Syria on Friday the Israeli ambassador in Moscow was called in to the Russian Foreign Ministry to be handed a stern lecture and a stiff protest.

Moscow's confirmation of the Russian protest to Israel, and the fact that the Israeli ambassador was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry within hours of the raid taking place, shows how seriously the Russians are treating this incident.



Eye 2

Ukrainian nationalists release latest 'manifesto'

neo nazi ukraine
A Ukrainian nationalist movement which is politically increasingly in the ascendant has unveiled a manifesto which underscores its growing flight from reality.

On March 16, representatives of the political party Svoboda, Right Sector, and the National Corpus (i.e. the Azov batallion's political wing) gathered to sign a National Manifesto.

The document affirms the ideological unity of the three main forces of Ukrainian nationalism, and conveniently summarizes its core vision.