Puppet MastersS


Tornado1

Trump sets up a 'war room' to battle Russiagate

trump
© Columbia Review
US President Trump finally acts to sort out his White House operation so as to take the battle to his opponents.

Earlier this month I said, in an article for The Duran, that President Trump's erratic behaviour has played a significant role in creating many of the problems he has suffered as a result of the Russiagate scandal.

I said in that article that though the situation was not yet irretrievable, Trump needed without delay to improve the quality of his White House operation by bringing in experienced professionals to run it and to help him respond to the swirl of unsubstantiated allegations that have centred on his campaign.
However if disaster is to be avoided then the President has to change his ways, and has to realise that he cannot go on trying to run the government in the same seat-of-the-pants way that he ran his business.

Above all that means the President needs to get himself some proper professional advice and help, since it is clear that his existing advisers - Bannon, Kushner and Preibus - are simply not up to the job of doing it.Trump took a first step in that direction just before he went on his trip to the Middle East and Europe by appointing Marc Kasowitz, a tough New York litigator, to act as his private lawyer.

Comment: Good advice, but probably easier 'said' than done.


Magnify

Deep State in action: Obama loyalist Brennan drove FBI to begin investigating Trump associates last summer

Brennan
© Bloomberg
What caused the Barack Obama administration to begin investigating the Donald Trump campaign last summer has come into clearer focus following a string of congressional hearings on Russian interference in the presidential election.

It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama's, who provided the information — what he termed the "basis" — for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer. Mr. Brennan served on the former president's 2008 presidential campaign and in his White House.

Mr. Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians. Mr. Brennan did not name either the Russians or the Trump people. He indicated he did not know what was said.

But he said he believed the contacts were numerous enough to alert the FBI, which began its probe into Trump associates that same July, according to previous congressional testimony from then-FBI director James B. Comey.

The FBI probe of contacts came the same month the intelligence community fingered Russian agents as orchestrating hacks into Democratic Party computers and providing stolen emails to WikiLeaks.

Cowboy Hat

Putin to Le Figaro: Stop inventing fictional threats from Russia

Vladimir Putin
© Sergey Guneev / Sputnik
With bombings in Paris and elsewhere across Europe and war in the Middle East, it's strange to hear speculation about a fictional Russian threat, Vladimir Putin said in an exclusive interview with Le Figaro.

The Russian president, who visited Paris to meet with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, on Monday, expressed the belief that Moscow and Western capitals "all want security, peace, safety and cooperation."

"Therefore, we should not build up tensions or invent fictional threats from Russia, some hybrid warfare etc.," the Russian leader said.

Info

Iran's response to Trump's Saudi Arabia visit: Saudis will share the fate of Iran's shah

Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani
Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani
While Donald Trump was in Riyadh, raving incessantly about the over-hyped Iran threat, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif was trolling America's foreign policy establishment. He advised Trump to discuss with Saudi Arabia how to avoid another 9/11 atrocity rather than making baseless claims against Iran.

Zarif said:
"[Trump] must enter into dialogue with them [the Saudis] about ways to prevent terrorists from continuing to fuel the fire in the region and repeating the likes of the September 11 incident by their sponsors in Western countries."
He added:
"You will find out who really knocked down the World Trade Centre because they have papers out there that are very secret. You will find it's the Saudis, you will find that is the case."

Blackbox

Legit? Alleged DC surgeon claims on 4chan that Seth Rich was alive and recovering before officers entered ICU

seth rich
Seth Rich
A 4-year resident surgeon at Washington Hospital Center claims that Seth Rich was alive and recovering well in facility's Intensive Care Unit (ICU) after being treated for a total of 3 routine gunshot wounds — that is until a number of law enforcement officers arrived eight hours later kicking most everyone out of the ICU and physically barring doctors and others from attending to Rich.

The surgeon who witnessed this bizarre behavior decided to come forth with the information despite the fact that he or she may be easy to identify.

Comment: Intellihub followed this piece up with the following report:
So who was attending to Rich as all of this was taking place?

MedStar Health's website states: "Jack Sava, MD, is director of the Gold Surgery team at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Dr. Sava's team manages a broad spectrum of urgent general surgical conditions (including problems of the intestine, gallbladder, stomach, liver, and other abdominal organs) and staffs the MedStar trauma unit, a Level-1 trauma center."

As director of the Gold Surgery team, Dr. Sava should have been in charge of the operation and would have been privy to access Rich's room at all times.

Dr. Jack Alfred Sava, a.k.a. Jack A Kountoupes, a.k.a. Jack A Ateljevich, is related to Lisa M Kountoupes, according to Radaris records.

Additionally, the name "Sava Ateljevich" appears on the 2008 Bohemian Grove guest list.

Both Jack Sava and Lisa Kountoupes appeared on the MV DSCC 2015 guest list.

Moreover, Lisa Kountoupes was a co-host for the Kate McGinty "Democrat for United States Senate fundraiser," along with the Podesta brothers which took place on Feb. 22, 2016, which can be found in the Wikileaks "Podesta emails."

Lisa Kountoupes was one of the Hill's top lobbyists in 2016 and also reportedly lobbied for the Clinton's.

Kountoupes also worked for the U.S. Department of Energy and has known ties to Uranium One, a Russian proxy company that Hillary Clinton offloaded 20% of the U.S. uranium supply to during her tenure in the State Department, as reported by Intellihub's Shepard Ambellas in a January 2016, report titled: "Clinton Foundation took massive payoffs, promised Hammond Ranch and other publicly owned lands to Russians along with one-fifth of our uranium ore."

The Hill reported in December 2011: "Kountoupes Consulting has been hired by Uranium One Inc. to lobby on "issues related to uranium mining and the uranium market." Uranium One is more than half-owned by Atomredmetzoloto of Moscow. Lisa Kountoupes, former policy adviser to the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Shawn Whitman, a former chief of staff to Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), are working on the account."

Kountoupes also appears on a participants list for a January 2017 Nuclear Fuel Supply Forum.

Lisa Kountoupes also visited the White House 23 times since 2009 and her last visit was on May 31, 2016, as posted on archive.is.
Lisa M. Kountoupes's visit occurred on Tuesday, May 31, 2016. Kountoupes made appointment number U16748 at 12:00 pm on May 26, 2016 through caller Jaime Kreager. The appointment was scheduled to begin at 3:00 pm with Jaime Kreager in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building 276 and included a group of one person. Originally scheduled to end at 11:59 pm, this visit should have lasted approximately 9 hours and was one of Kountoupes's 23 total visits since 2009. The appointment is described in the records as "Request (Sf) Merge with Appointment # 656188".
John Podesta visited the White House just 3-days later on May 26, 2016, according to archive.is.
John D. Podesta's visit occurred on Thursday, May 26, 2016. Podesta made appointment number U15174 at 12:00 pm on May 24, 2016 through caller Zealan Hoover. The appointment was scheduled to begin at 3:00 pm with Zealan Hoover in the White House West Wing and included a group of one person. Originally scheduled to end at 11:59 pm, this visit should have lasted approximately 9 hours and was one of Podesta's 140 total visits since 2009.
Keep in mind that the last leaked email occurred on May 25, 2016.

All of this signifies that Seth Rich quite possibly was murdered over information he obtained regarding Clinton's dealings with the Russians.



Info

Trump's communications director leaves position - Trump planning comms war room shakeup

michael dubke
© Michael Dubke / Facebook
Mike Dubke, President Trump's communications director, is leaving the White House — the start of a wave of changes as the West Wing struggles to cope with burgeoning scandals and a stalled agenda.
  • Dubke served for just three months before tendering his resignation May 18. He offered to stay through the overseas trip, and Trump accepted. He has been trying to help restructure the press and communications operation, and is parting on good terms, a senior administration official said.
  • Insiders say Dubke came in with few patrons, and never gelled with the originals. His departure is a reminder of how hard it is for newcomers to thrive in Trumpland.
  • Dubke is still coming in to work, and his last day hasn't been set. His job is likely to remain open for a bit.
Bring in the killers ... Trump is considering much broader changes, including the possibility of bringing in David Urban, a prominent GOP lobbyist who was a senior adviser on the campaign, as chief of staff.

Comment: New York Daily News adds the following:
With the Russian influence scandal ensnaring the President's own son-in-law, the White House has begun recruiting new lawyers and old campaign hands to contain the fallout and get back on message, according to reports.

Frustrated by his current team's inability to put the crisis fire out, President Trump is considering a staff shakeup that would bring in people better skilled at damage control.

... White House aides have recruited a number of prominent Washington lawyers with experience in political investigations for Trump to interview, according to The New York Times.

Trump is also considering bringing former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski back into the fold, along with Trump's former deputy campaign manager David Bossie.

Under a scenario being discussed, the two would help manage a war room responsible for getting Trump's message out amid distractions and scandals.



Attention

Daily Mail source: FBI warned MI5 about Manchester terror attack

free thought manchester abedi
The massive Western police state, that is seemingly expanding at an exponential rate, is there to protect us — or so we are told. However, all the spying, phone call intercepts, spied on emails, facial scanners, CCTV cameras, and loss of freedoms did not stop Salman Abedi from murdering innocent people by detonating a bomb inside the Manchester Arena. What's more, as we are now finding out, British intelligence was warned ahead of time that Abedi was plotting a terror attack in the UK — and they did absolutely nothing to stop it.

Several months before this terrorist blew himself up at the Ariana Grande concert, FBI agents are said to have to have informed British officials that the 22-year-old was part of a North African Islamic State cell based in the north west of England that was plotting an attack in the UK, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

The United States placed Abedi on a terror watchlist in 2016 after he came to the attention of intelligence agencies investigating terrorist groups operating out of Libya.

"In early 2017 the FBI told MI5 that Abedi belonged to a North African terror gang based in Manchester, which was looking for a political target in this country," a security source told The Mail.

Comment: If true, several questions need to be answered: Who in MI5 received this information, on the UK side? Did these individuals let anyone else know, or sit on the information? Where did the chain of information-sharing break down? Whoever is responsible should be investigated and brought to justice, but that will never happen.

This may also account for how U.S. sources knew so quickly the identity of the attacker. Either they too were as complicit as MI5, or some agents sincerely thought they were doing a solid for their UK counterparts. That may also explain why they leaked the information: out of disdain for MI5's lack of action.

Meanwhile, Manchester police - who most likely were caught off guard by the attack, thanks to MI5, and are attempting to investigate the case to the best of their ability - are appealing to the public for more information:
Police investigating the Manchester terrorist attack are looking for information on a suitcase the man was seen carrying in the days prior to the bombing.

CCTV footage released by Manchester police shows attacker Salman Abedi wheeling a blue suitcase through Manchester city center. Police say they are looking for information on Abedi's movements up to four days before the deadly attack.

Investigators say they now know Abedi was in the city as well as Wilmslow, an area south of the city center. They are asking the public to come forward with information.


"We continue to track the final movements of Salman Abedi and are particularly interested in his whereabouts between May 18-22," Detective Chief Superintendent Russ Jackson said in a statement. "We believe Abedi was in possession of this case in the days before the attack at Manchester Arena on Monday May 22. I want to stress that this is a different item than the one he used in the attack."

"We have no reason to believe the case and its contents contain anything dangerous but we would ask people to be cautious."
Maybe they should be appealing to MI5 for their complicity in this attack.

Further reading:


Георгиевская ленточка

Liberal rag interviews one of Putin's few defenders in the American intelligentsia - Stephen F. Cohen

Putin Trum[
© Eliot Blondet/AFP/Getty Images and Sergei Karpukhin/AFP/Getty Images. President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
An American Russia scholar on why he doesn't believe the New York Times, doesn't think the DNC was hacked, and just wants the U.S. and Russia to get along.

Stephen F. Cohen has long been one of the leading scholars of Russia and the Soviet Union. He wrote a biography of the Bolshevik revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin and is a contributing editor at the Nation, which his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, edits and publishes. In recent years, Cohen has emerged as a more ideologically dexterous figure, ripping those he thinks are pursuing a "new Cold War" with Russia and calling for President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to form "an alliance against international terrorism." Cohen has gone so far as to describe the investigations into the Trump campaign and Russia "the No. 1 threat to the United States today."

Cohen has been criticized by many people, myself included, for his defenses of Putin. (He once said the Ukraine crisis had been "imposed on [Putin] and he had no choice but to react.") He scolded President Barack Obama for sending retired gay athletes to Sochi and recently went on Fox News to speak up for Trump's war against leakers.

Comment: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is about as close as US media people can get to entertaining a reality-based perspective.

Poor Stephen. Speaking to American intellectuals about Russia must be like trying to teach to baboons algebra.


Yoda

Russia and India: 70 years of friendship and progress

Russia India Putin Modi
© Times of India
This year, we are celebrating the anniversary of a truly historic event. Seventy years ago - on April 13, 1947 - the governments of the USSR and India announced their decision to establish official missions in Delhi and Moscow. This step on our part logically followed up on our course for assisting India on its way to national liberation and contributed to strengthening its independence.

In the decades that have followed, our bilateral partnership has further intensified and strengthened, and has never been subject to expediency. Equal and mutually beneficial relations of the two States have steadily developed. This is quite natural. Our peoples have always had mutual sympathy and respect for each other's spiritual values and culture.

Comment: This is how a true statesman treats another sovereign nation.


Bad Guys

Lavrov during Cairo visit: West responsible for chaos caused by terrorism in Middle East

Russia Egypt
The western states that supported regime changes and financed militants in the Greater Middle East, particularly in Libya, bear responsibility for the chaos ravaging the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during his visit to Cairo.

Lavrov arrived in Cairo on Monday with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu for a joint meeting of the Russian and Egyptian foreign and defense ministers. The fight against terrorism was top of the meeting's agenda.

Both sides reiterated that for counter-terrorist efforts to have any effect, the fight against this global threat must be carried out jointly.

Comment: See also: