Puppet MastersS


Radar

US sends missile destroyer to challenge Chinese maritime claims


RT
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 14:31 UTC
The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain
© US Navy / MC3 Declan Barne / AFPThe Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG 56).
The US Navy has sailed the USS John S. McCain past an island in the disputed Spratly chain in the South China Sea, US officials told media. It's the third mission to challenge China's claim on the territory under the Trump administration.

The so-called "freedom of navigation" mission involved the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer sailing within the 12-mile range of an artificial island reclaimed by China, Reuters reported, citing US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A Navy official confirmed the operation to Fox News, saying that a US Navy P-8 reconnaissance plane flew nearby to monitor the operation, but stayed outside of the airspace claimed by China.

It was the third mission of this kind since May, when the USS Dewey sailed by Mischief Reef, marking a continuation of such operations under the Trump administration. In July, the USS Stethem passed near another island in the South China Sea claimed by Beijing as its territory and contested by Taiwan and Vietnam.
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Rocket

'Missiles to fly over Japan and land near Guam': N. Korea's strike plan to be ready in 'days'


RT
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 14:23 UTC
Kim Jung-un
© KCNA / Reuters
North Korean state media has outlined details of the country's Guam strike plan expected to be ready by mid-August. The attack will reportedly include four missiles fired over Japan and landing within a few dozen kilometers of US territory.

Continuing the heated exchange with US President Donald Trump, Pyongyang's state media outlet KCNA said that the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, will be presented with an elaborate plan of the attack by mid-August, Reuters reported.

The plan envisions launching four Hwasong-12 rockets that would "cross the sky above Shimane, Hiroshima and Koichi Prefectures of Japan," the report says, citing General Kim Rak Gyom.

The missiles are set to "fly 3,356.7km (2,085.8 miles) for 1,065 seconds" before practically reaching the shores of Guam, landing in the waters just "30-40km away."


Comment: How kind of N. Korea to explain the exact plan.


Comment: For another perspective: North Korea's strategy: Rational player pretending to be irrational

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Snakes in Suits

Trump relishes annihilation like a dish of hors d'oeuvre

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 13:01 UTC
korea tv screen with Kim Jung-un and Donald Trump
© AFP 2017/ JUNG Yeon-Je
It really is saying something when US President Trump's latest threat against North Korea draws a rebuke from John McCain - America's most hawkish lawmaker.

McCain said Trump's comments about striking North Korea with "fire and fury" were not helpful in the current spiral of tensions.

Other members of the US Congress deplored Trump's reckless rhetoric, even comparing the president to the North Korean leader Kim Jung-un, who is commonly regarded as "a nut-job" by American politicians and media.

That comparison is saying something about Donald Trump's own state of mind.

Comment: For another perspective: North Korea's strategy: Rational player pretending to be irrational

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Stock Up

Coincidence? Military industrial complex hit highest stock prices ever as US hypes N. Korea war

Claire Bernish
Free Thought Project
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 12:47 UTC
North Korea Trump
Feckless boasts of military might and icy vows to annihilate one another might not necessarily prove war between the U.S., North Korea, and their allies is nigh, but the monumental increase in stocks of weapons and defense manufacturers - the economic fingerprints a preparation for a colossal military endeavor - just might.

"North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States," President Trump railed yesterday. "They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen."

If, as legendary author John Steinbeck posited, "all war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal," than the altogether avoidable rush for violent, physical confrontation with North Korea - currently unfolding by the hour - could easily be deemed foolishness of the highest order.
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Play

WikiLeaks 'Vault 7' release: CIA CouchPotato tool 'captures video stream images remotely'


RT
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 12:50 UTC
WikiLeaks on computer screen
© Gary Hershorn / Reuters
The CIA has developed a top-secret program allowing users to remotely hack and capture still images of video streams, according to the latest release from WikiLeaks.

Dubbed 'CouchPotato,' a user guide to the tool uploaded by WikiLeaks says that it utilizes ffmpeg software, which produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data to decode streaming connections.

The user guide is dated February 2014 and the document front page is marked: "Classified By: 2273504" and "Declassify On: 25X1, 20620712."

"Today, August 10th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes the the User Guide for the CoachPotato project of the CIA. CouchPotato is a remote tool for collection against RTSP/H.264 video streams," a statement on the WikiLeaks site reads.
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Airplane

'€75,000 on one trip:' Top EU officials under fire after information request reveals travel costs


RT
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 12:42 UTC
Federica Mogherini
© Leon Neal / Getty Images
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini are in the center of a controversy for spending many thousands of euros on private charters as part of official missions, an information inquiry reveals.

The documents obtained via an information request filed by Access Info Europe, a human rights group based in Spain, shed light on the tremendous travel expenses claimed by the EU officials in the first two months of 2016.

Although Access Info filed the request three years ago, the EU commission was reluctant to disclose its financial details, at first releasing heavily redacted documents covering several months, Helen Darbishire, the group's director, said, as cited by the Guardian.

The documents published Tuesday by Belgian magazine Knack, which supports the NGO in its years-long battle with EU bureaucrats, show that in the course of two months the EU commissioners spent almost half a million euro (€492,249) on travel-related costs. While the sum includes travel expenses by all 28 Euro commissioners, the costs incurred by two top EU officials stood out.
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USA

US State Department expels 2 Cuban diplomats over mysterious 'physical symptoms' reported by US personnel


RT
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 11:26 UTC
Cuban and American flags
© Chip Somodevilla / Reuters
The US State Department has expelled two diplomats from the Cuban Embassy in Washington after US government personnel in Cuba reported "some incidents" which resulted in "a variety of physical symptoms."

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert has not elaborated on the nature of the reported incidents or the symptoms, except to say that they were not life threatening and that the matter is under investigation.

The incidents resulted in a "variety of physical symptoms," prompting some US government personnel to leave the island, Nauert said at the State Department's press briefing on Wednesday.
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Wolf

Surprise! George Soros and his Open Society network are all over Kenya's elections

John Kamau
Daily Nation, Kenya
Mon, 07 Aug 2017 10:47 UTC
kenya riot election
© Thomas Mukoya / Reuters'Demonstrators' - probably Soros bots - sparks riots in Mathare, Kenya August 9, 2017, after the Soros candidate lost the election.
On the day that Kenya's electoral commission (IEBC) did the dry run for the technology that will be used during Tuesday's general election, the NGO Coordination Board Executive Chairman Fazul Mohammed was busy accusing an NGO associated with Rosemary Odinga of receiving Sh500 million from Hungarian billionaire George Soros.

Of course Mr Mohammed was playing some politics there since, as Raila Odinga's family explained, Rosemary has been incapacitated and does not appear on the list of members of the board.

Again, they explained that Key Empowerment Foundation Kenya was "not yet registered" and dismissed Mr Mohammed's letter to Central Bank Governor Patrick Njoroge as "disgusting, callous and fraudulent."

Comment: Soros and his networks of bots are the textbook definition of 'election-meddling'. Everything the US accused Russia of doing, this creature and his minions personify.

The election in Kenya has since happened. The Soros candidate, Raila Odinga, lost to the incumbent leader. He then cried foul, saying the election had been 'hacked' (what a convenient label that has now become). The country's electoral commission says the elections were free and fair.

So now riots have broken out with gangs of youths breaking up stuff. Remember, democracy is only free and fair if Soros and his network says it is.

Here's the evidence that the losing opponent's daughter, Rosemary, is on the board of a key Soros NGO in the country (in fact, she runs it), presented to the media by the Kenyan government last week:

odinga Soros kenya
© kenyan-post.com
odinga kenya soros
© kenyan-post.com


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Propaganda

Total impunity: US government & its willing presstitutes lie constantly

Eric Zuesse
Strategic Culture Foundation
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 03:30 UTC
U.S. Senate
The U.S. Senate
The lies are usually about the most important policies and actions of the United States government regarding international relations - foreign policy matters, such as wars, treaties, and economic sanctions. In the past, they were lies about matters such as that North Vietnam had attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and that Chile's President Salvador Allende opposed democracy, and that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein was "six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon", and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's "conquest of land" regarding Crimea had happened, and is the basic reason for the economic sanctions the US has placed against Russia.

On August 2nd, US President Donald Trump signed into law increased sanctions against Russia, which had been passed 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House. This new law stated in Section 211, "Congress makes the following findings" as the basis for greatly hiking the economic sanctions against Russia:
(6) On January 6, 2017, an assessment of the United States intelligence community entitled, «Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections» stated, «Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the United States presidential election». The assessment warns that «Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US Presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes».
In other words: because of this alleged hacking of the 2016 US Presidential election, the sanctions that were originally (and entirely falsely) based upon "conquest of land" regarding Crimea, are now being greatly increased.
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Gear

The South Ossetia war 9 years later: EU investigation ignored and 'nobody paid the price' for 2000 killed


RT
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 00:48 UTC
Sister of charity grieves
© Eduard Korniyenko / ReutersSister of charity grieves as she visits a memorial of 'Burned Souls', made from vehicles destroyed in the conflict, in Tskhinval, August 8, 2009.
On August 8, 2008, Georgia launched an attack on civilians and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Despite an EU probe concluding that Tbilisi initiated the conflict, no one in Georgia has been held accountable, a Georgian politician told RT.

South Ossetia these days is remembering and mourning the victims of the conflict known as the Five-Day War, in which up to 2,000 civilians and over 70 Russian peacekeepers were killed. In the early morning hours of August 8, the Georgian military launched an assault on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinval, shelling the city with Grad multiple rocket launchers.

The conflict also cost Georgian lives, with over 150 military personnel and nearly 200 civilians killed.


Comment: "...sometimes I have a feeling that despite the official position of the high officials in the US, there are some very strong forces who were trying to force Saakashvili or to provoke Saakashvili to begin this war in 2008"

Indeed.

See: Remembering the 08.08.08 Georgia war: Forerunner to today's proxy war against Russia via Ukraine

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