Puppet MastersS


Dig

Pedophilia investigation against former UK PM could be buried

Edward Heath
© Luke Frazza / AFPFormer British prime minister Sir Edward Heath.
The police force investigating claims of pedophilia against former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath has again been accused by his supporters of trying to bury the findings.

Wiltshire Police has been repeatedly criticized for spending two years and almost £2 million (US$2.5 million) probing allegations against Heath, who died in 2005 aged 89. Heath's family and friends believe police want to bury their findings after the investigation could not support the claims made against him.

Last week, the force announced its investigation - Operation Conifer - was drawing to a close, with a report expected to be published in the autumn. Since then, however, the force has said the findings will be passed to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), chaired by Professor Alex Jay.

Comment: See also:


Blackbox

Turkey on verge of military cooperation with Iran against Kurds?

erdogan rouhani
Turkish media have begun reporting on the high probability of Iran and Turkey establishing a long term task-force for joint cross-border military operations against Kurdish militants including the Turkey based PKK and the Iran based Kurdish group PJAK.

Both groups are regarded as terrorists by Ankara and Tehran and the recent meeting between General Mohammad Baqeri, the most senior general in Iran and Turkey's President Erdogan indicates that the armed forces of both countries as well as political leaders are in far closer communication than in previous years or decades for that matter.

The pro-government Turkish outlet Daily Sabah has printed the following quote from The Turkish President. He said of possible cooperation with Iran,
"We have discussed the details on what kind of work we can carry out amongst us. There are damages that the PKK and its branch in Iran causes. We will carry out these discussions with the understanding that the threats can be defeated with the cooperation of both countries in a short time".
This move cements Turkey's further move away from NATO and closer to Eurasian powers, in this case Iran.

Comment: For their part, Iran denies planning any joint operations with Turkey at this time:
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) does not intend to conduct any joint military operations with Turkey against members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the IRGC press service said on Tuesday.
...
"We do not conduct operations abroad, but we will confront any person or group that will seek to have influence on Iran's territory... We will oppose any attempt to commit a terrorist attack inside the country," the statement said.

The IRGC stressed that there were no plans for any large-scale military operations abroad.



Dollars

Secret Service low on funds to pay agents, blames Trump's travel and large family

trumpsecretservice
© Getty/PoliticoProtecting "Mogul"
The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission - in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump's family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.

Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex" Alles, in an interview with USA Today, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.

The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump - who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia - and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas.

"The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,'' Alles said. "I can't change that. I have no flexibility.''

Alles said the service is grappling with an unprecedented number of White House protectees. Under Trump, 42 people have protection, a number that includes 18 members of his family. That's up from 31 during the Obama administration.

Comment: Trump just decreased the deficit by $100B. Congress should fall all over themselves to come up with the funding.

See also: Trump breaks the record: Cuts more US debt for a longer period of time than any president in US history


Star of David

Bibi to bend Putin's ear on Iranian aggression

PutinBibi
© 124 News/Zee News"looking forward to it"
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will discuss with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday what he calls Iran's "aggression" and attempts to expand its military presence in neighbouring Syria. Iran is Israel's arch-enemy, and Netanyahu along with Israeli security officials have repeatedly expressed concern over what they see as the country moving to expand its presence in the Middle East.

Netanyahu will meet Putin at the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on Wednesday. Both Russia and Iran back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in the war.

"I will raise the problem of Iran trying to establish a military presence in Syria," Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday. "This proves that Iran's aggression has not diminished since the nuclear agreement, which has become a problem not only for Israel, but for all the countries of the Middle East and the entire world."

The head of Israeli spy agency Mossad, Yossi Cohen, and Netanyahu's newly named head of his national security council, Meir Ben-Shabbat, will join him on the trip.

Comment: "Israel has sought to avoid being dragged into the six-year Syrian conflict" because it is far more self-servingly effective pulling the strings from the sidelines while participating in covert activity, and have the expense of war it helped to create on someone else. Iran is the sticker face that gives Israel a narrative by which to manipulate and direct global focus, thus the visit to Russia.


Health

As US coalition pursues ISIS, Raqqa civilians caught in 'horrific crossfire'

Civilian wounded crossfire
© alwasatnews.comCivilians wounded in crossfire.
International NGOs are becoming increasingly alarmed by the situation in Raqqa, a stronghold of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria, as more civilians suffer from both the terrorists and the US-led operation to free the city.

New eyewitness accounts from Raqqa refugees have emerged amid the US bombing campaign and the Kurdish-led forces' ground siege. Those who managed to flee the city have told RT that "civilian people would die either from clashes or from the aircraft." A woman claimed a checkpoint for refugees had also been "targeted by the aircraft" as she was leaving it.

While civilians have been dying in Syria because IS terrorists are "shooting people in the back as they try to flee or using them as human shields," there are also "many" casualties "due to the coalition bombardment," the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, told RT in an exclusive interview on Monday.

People are being killed in what Egeland described as "a horrific crossfire" in Raqqa. Such operations, especially with the use of air strikes, always put civilians' lives at risk, he said, adding that in such densely populated area as Raqqa the bombardment from the coalition has been ongoing for a long period of time.

US-led coalition forces have assured human rights activists "that they are taking all possible measures to avoid civilian casualties," but "when the fighters and the civilians are mixed you cannot avoid it," Egeland said.


Comment: Political agenda outweighs the horrific toll in casualties. Western history will spin this as a necessary sacrifice for victory.


Nuke

Envoy to UN: N. Korea will 'never step back one inch' from nuclear arms development

Soldier salute missile
© Damir Sagolj / Reuters
A North Korean envoy to a UN disarmament forum has refused to negotiate its nuclear program, accusing the US and South Korea of using joint military drills to carry out "an aggressive war scenario" and "a secret operation" against the North's leadership.

"The DPRK will never place its self-defense nuclear deterrence on the negotiating table or step back from the path it took to bolster the national nuclear force," a North Korean diplomat stated at the UN disarmament forum in Geneva, as cited by Reuters.

The envoy accused the US and its ally in the region, South Korea, of worsening the situation on the Korean Peninsula, saying that the ongoing joint military drills "would certainly add fuel to the fire."

Pyongyang considers the Ulchi Freedom Guardian maneuvers as "an aggressive war scenario," targeting North Korea and its leadership, according to the envoy. "As long as the US hostile policy and nuclear threat remains unchallenged, the DPRK will never place its self-defensive nuclear deterrence on the negotiating table," Ju Yong-сhol, a North Korean envoy, stated at the UN disarmament forum on Tuesday.

Ju also said that the bolstering of North Korea's nuclear program "is justifiable and a legitimate option for self-defense in the face of such apparent and real threats."

The North has repeatedly called on the US to refrain from military exercises which could "ignite a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula at any cost," according to the North's state news agency KCNA. "The situation on the Korean Peninsula has plunged into a critical phase due to the reckless north-targeted war racket of the war maniacs," KCNA reported on Monday.

Comment: There is no winning side to this conflict. The logical answer is to de-escalate the threats until there is none -- that is the winner. More important? The arms 'business'.


Chess

Breitbart and the Far Right turn on Trump over Afghanistan strategy change

trump
© REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Vocal supporters of President Donald Trump on the far right slammed his decision to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan and ramp up engagement in the US's longest war.

Many of the president's longtime boosters criticized his about-face on Afghanistan, a war he repeatedly pilloried in the years leading up to the 2016 election.

Breitbart News, the site led by recently ousted White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, had a front-page Monday evening full of stories lambasting Trump's decision, referring to it as "unlimited war," and comparing his strategy to that of former President Barack Obama. Its top story described the speech as a "disappointment to many who had supported his calls during the campaign to end expensive foreign intervention and nation-building."

Breitbart politics reporter Adam Shaw wrote a separate story titled "Trump's 'America First' Base Unhappy with Flip-Flop Afghanistan Speech," while other top articles on the site compared the speech to an address Obama delivered in 2009, in which he said American commitment to Afghanistan would not be a "blank check."

War Whore

Flashback "The war is worth waging": Afghanistan's vast reserves of minerals and natural gas

minerals
The War on Afghanistan is a Profit driven "Resource War".

US and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan more than eleven years ago. Afghanistan is defined as a state sponsor of terrorism. The war on Afghanistan continues to be heralded as a war of retribution in response to the 9/11 attacks.

This article, first published in June 2010, points to the "real economic reasons" why US-NATO forces invaded Afghanistan eleven years ago.

The legal argument used by Washington and NATO to invade and occupy Afghanistan under "the doctrine of collective security" was that the September 11 2001 attacks constituted an undeclared "armed attack" "from abroad" by an unnamed foreign power.

* * *

Comment: But of course, where sheeple are concerned, the US invaded - and continues to occupy -- Afghanistan because that hapless country harbored the world's No.1 evildoer and architect of 9/11, Usama bin Laden. Right.


Attention

Breitbart on Trump's Afghanistan surge: Deep state has neutered Trump

trump bannon
Trump's Afghanistan troop surge has been met with resounding disapproval from Steve Bannon's news outlet

It didn't take long for Breitbart to clarify what senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak meant meant when he declared 'war' shortly after Steve Bannon's apparently acrimonious departure from the White House. The last few days worth of Breitbart material has been firmly critical of Donald Trump.

One notable piece was an interview with the popular American talk show host Dr. Michael Savage in which Savage said,
"Trump comes from a liberal background, and he saw which way wind was blowing and see what Eddie and Edith [Savage's term for the common man and woman] wanted, and he ran with it. Now what? Now he's hit a stone wall with his progressive friends, and so he's got to do a 180? How far is he going to turn away from what got him elected? Is he going to become [Mitt] Romney? You know he's going to move in another direction, but it's anyone's guess".
This was published prior to Donald Trump's announcement that he plans a 'troop surge' in Afghanistan.

After the speech in which Trump called for more troops to be deployed to the front of the longest war America has fought in its history, Breitbart published a scathing opinion piece by Brian Darling in which he declared himself a former Trump supporter.

Comment: On some issues, Bannon is sane. On others, he's just as loony. Politics is like that: a never-ending balancing act of varying degrees of crazy. Sometimes the public gets lucky. Most often, they don't. The latter looks to be the case regarding Trump's "new" policy for Afghanistan.

Zero Hedge adds:
Last Friday Bannon boldly declared: "I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents... on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America."

But, according to a new note from Vanity Fair, that "war" could end up ensnaring the President himself should he decide to succumb to what Bannon views as intense internal White House pressure, from the likes of Jared Kushner, Ivanka and Gary Cohn, among others, to move to the Left on key policy issues.

Quoting editor Matt Boyle, Vanity Fair reports...
"We're in a loud bar celebrating the return of our captain!" Breitbart's Washington editor Matt Boyle told me on Friday night. Breitbart's defense of Trump has so far helped keep the Russia scandal from gaining traction on the right. But that could swiftly change if Trump, under the influence of Kushner and Cohn, deviates too far from the positions he ran on. If that happens, said one high-level Breitbart staffer, "We're prepared to help Paul Ryan rally votes for impeachment."
...
Bannon's main targets are the West Wing's coterie of New York Democrat "globalists" - Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn-as well as the "hawks," comprised of National Security Adviser H.R McMaster and his deputy, Dina Powell. "He wants to beat their ideas into submission," Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow told me. "Steve has a lot of things up his sleeve."

The chaotic, war-torn West Wing of the past six months will be prologue, but the coming struggles will be as personal as they are ideological, waged not with leaks but with slashing Breitbart banners. On Sunday, Breitbart took renewed aim at McMaster, with a headline claiming he advocated "Quran Kissing."
But the biggest target of all is squarely on the back of Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law who Bannon affectionately describes as a "dope" with "highly questionable political instincts."
But most of all, there's a deep animosity between Bannon and Kushner, amplified by a lack of respect. Bannon finds Kushner's political instincts highly questionable. "He said Jared is a dope," one Bannon ally recalled.

The two clashed fiercely on personnel decisions and policy debates, both domestic and international, many of which Bannon lost.

But Bannon, who was the only West Wing advisor to publicly support the president's response to the violence in Charlottesville, is especially galled at being scapegoated as an anti-Semite in its wake. "It's one of the attacks he takes most personally because it's not true," a Breitbart staffer told me. Bannon's allies lay out a more complicated backstory. Bannon, they say, lobbied Trump aggressively to move America's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but was blocked by Kushner. And, according to three Bannon allies, Bannon pushed a tougher line against the Palestinians than Kushner did. In May, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited the White House, Bannon stayed home. "I'm not going to breathe the same air as that terrorist," Bannon texted a friend.



Robot

Britain argues for right to field 'killer robots' in direct defiance of UN

killer robot
© Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP
The UK will oppose a preemptive ban on 'killer robots', despite widespread calls in the UN to prohibit the use of 'murder machines'.

A spokesperson for Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the UK will abstain from a ban on the development of fully-autonomous weapons systems, even though leading tech experts urged the UN to act against implementation of autonomous military machines.

The MoD claimed that the existing international law is sufficient to regulate the use of autonomous weapons that once unleashed on the battlefield could kill without any human control.