Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

UK commander: ISIS intelligence seized in Syria's Manbij reveals terror plots throughout Europe


RT
Mon, 28 Nov 2016 11:23 UTC
Abandoned buildings in the Syrian town of Manbij
© Ayham al-Mohammad / AFP
A "huge amount" of Islamic State intelligence found after the capture of the Syrian town of Manbij was related to terror threats in Europe, according to Britain's most senior commander in Iraq and Syria, as cited by British media.

Major General Rupert Jones said the capture of Manbij in August was "hugely important for external operations," adding that "a huge amount of intelligence gathered in Manbij related to threats in Europe and elsewhere..." the Telegraph reported.


Comment: Syrian commander: Syria's Manbij fully liberated from Daesh jihadists


"I am not going to go into the details but we know that external operations have been getting orchestrated to a very significant degree from within the caliphate critically from within Raqqa and from within Manbij..." Jones said, as quoted by the Guardian.

"...They were key external operations hubs. There is a huge amount of intelligence, documentation, electronic material that has been exploited there that points very directly against all sorts of nations around the world," he added.

Comment: See also:

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Quenelle

Russian Reconciliation Center: 40% of east Aleppo liberated from al-Qaeda


RT
Mon, 28 Nov 2016 10:59 UTC
The area of the humanitarian corridor in Aleppo, Syria
© Mikhail Alaeddin / SputnikThe area of the humanitarian corridor in Aleppo, Syria
More than 3,000 civilians have left the eastern part of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo in the last 24 hours, the Russian Center for Reconciliation said. It later reported that about 40 percent of the militant-held part of the city has been liberated.

Some 3,179 people, including 1,519 children - among them 138 newborn babies - have left Eastern Aleppo through the 'humanitarian corridors' set up by Syrian government forces, Russian Reconciliation Center said on Monday.

The center reported that 12 neighborhoods, comprising roughly 40 percent of the territory previously controlled by the militants, have been cleared.


Comment: See also:

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Snakes in Suits

Brazil's corrupt political institutions: Major new corruption scandals engulf the faction that impeached Dilma

Glen Greenwood
The Intercept
Fri, 25 Nov 2016 00:49 UTC
Michel Temer
© Dida Sampio/Estadao Conteudo (Agencia Estado via AP Images)
A primary argument made by opponents of impeaching Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was that removing her would immediately empower the truly corrupt politicians in Brasília - the ones who were the driving force behind her impeachment - and they would then use that power to kill ongoing corruption investigations and shield themselves from consequences for their own law-breaking. In that regard, Dilma's impeachment was not designed to punish corruption but to protect it. The last two weeks have produced new corruption scandals that have vindicated that view beyond what even its proponents imagined was possible.

In his short time in office, Temer has already lost five ministers to scandal, but these new controversies are the most serious yet. One major scandal involves an effort in Congress - led by the very parties that impeached Dilma, with the support of some in Dilma's party - to pass a law that vests themselves full legal amnesty for their crimes involving election financing. In late September, a bill appeared in Congress, seemingly out of nowhere, that would have retroactively protected any member of Congress from being punished for the use of so-called "caixa dois" (second box) monies in campaigns, whereby politicians receive under-the-table contributions from oligarchs and corporations that they do not declare.
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Magnify

Steve Bannon on the media's echo chamber, why Trump won and politics as war

Kimberly A. Strassel
Wall Street Journal
Fri, 18 Nov 2016 23:02 UTC
Trump Bannon
© Getty
It's hard to think of Steve Bannon as a low-profile guy. He has garnered about as many headlines over the past week as Donald Trump—no small feat. He is the executive chairman of the hard-right Breitbart News, among the most aggressive voices online, its website an attack machine against Democrats and "establishment" conservatives. President-elect Trump chose Mr. Bannon this week as his chief strategist and senior counselor, a slot usually filed by someone eager to play a presidential surrogate on TV.

Yet Mr. Bannon—who joined the Trump campaign in mid-August to propel its thunderbolt victory—professes no interest in being the story. "It's not important to be known," he says in a telephone interview Thursday night, among his first public comments since the election. "It was Lao Tzu who said that with the best leaders, when the work is accomplished, the people will say 'We have done this ourselves.' That's how I've led."

Nor does he profess to care that Democrats and the media are portraying him as a "cloven-hoofed devil," as he puts it. "I pride myself in doing things that matter. What mattered in the campaign was winning. We did. What matters now is pulling together the single best team we can to implement President-elect Trump's vision.

He continues: "How can you take anything seriously from a media apparatus—paid the amount of money you people are paid—that systematically missed something that was so obvious, that missed Brexit, that missed the Trump revolution? You'd have thought they'd have learned their lesson on November 8."

Slight pause. "They clearly haven't."
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Info

'An example should be set': Tony Blair faces new charges in Parliament for 'misleading' UK over Iraq War


RT
Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:24 UTC
Tony Blair
© Bria Webb / Reuters
A cross-party group has tabled a new motion against Tony Blair, on the basis of facts revealed in the Chilcot report, that could see him stripped of his place on the Privy Council - a potential humiliation for the former leader, who is attempting to play a bigger role in UK politics.

The motion, which will be debated on Wednesday, claims that the seven-year Chilcot inquiry "provided substantial evidence of misleading information presented by the then prime minister and others on the development of the then government's policy towards the invasion of Iraq as shown most clearly in the contrast between private correspondence to the United States government and public statements to parliament and people."

It asks for "a further specific examination of this contrast in public and private policy and to report on what further action is necessary to help prevent repetition of this disastrous series of events."
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Propaganda

Gerald Celente: US Media to 'get even' after Clinton's loss amid crackdown on 'fake news sites'


Sputnik
Wed, 23 Nov 2016 00:14 UTC
Hhillary Clinton
© REUTERS/ Brian Snyder
The IT billionaires in Silicon Valley and elsewhere and the corporate mainstream media are reacting to Hillary Clinton's defeat in the US election by seeking to shut down genuine free speech, Wall Street analyst and Trends Research Institute head Gerald Celente told Sputnik.

According to Celente, media are "taking cheap shots at getting even by claiming it was fake news and not that people were disgusted with the Clintons."

Merrimack College Assistant Professor Melissa Zimdars, a self-proclaimed feminist activist, recently created a list of the allegedly fake news sites. The corporate media extensively covered the list, which reportedly serves as the starting point in creating a narrative suitable to censor alternative and independent media in the United States, including the Daily Wire, Zero Hedge, Breitbart, WND, Red State and Infowars.

Comment: The corporate mainstream media is still at it with the latest from the Washington Post:

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Propaganda

Washington Post peddles tarring of Ron Paul Institute as Russian propaganda

Adam Dick
Ron Paul Institute
Fri, 25 Nov 2016 22:46 UTC
Various newspaper headlines
The Washington Post has a history of misrepresenting Ron Paul's views. Last year the supposed newspaper of record ran a feature article by David A. Fahrenthold in which Fahrenthold grossly mischaracterized Paul as an advocate for calamity, oppression, and poverty — the opposite of the goals Paul routinely expresses and, indeed, expressed clearly in a speech at the event upon which Fahrenthold's article purported to report. Such fraudulent attacks on the prominent advocate for liberty and a noninterventionist foreign policy fall in line with the newspaper's agenda. As Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob G. Hornberger put it in a February editorial, the Post's agenda is guided by "the interventionist mindset that undergirds the mainstream media."

On Thursday, the Post published a new article by Craig Timberg complaining of a "flood" of so-called fake news supported by "a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy," To advance this conclusion, Timberg points to PropOrNot, an organization of anonymous individuals formed this year, as having identified "more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season." Look on the PropOrNot list. There is the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity's (RPI) website RonPaulInstitute.org listed among websites termed "Russian propaganda outlets."

Comment: For more comments from other sites that were on "the list":

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Info

Merkel is concerned about next election - with good reason - her track record is disastrous

Christoph Germann
Newsbud
Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:45 UTC
Merkel
© Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters
Donald Trump's surprise victory in the U.S. presidential election came as a shock to many, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel has made no secret of her admiration for Hillary Clinton. "I admire her strategic thinking and her strong commitment to the trans-Atlantic partnership," Merkel told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper in an interview earlier this year. "Whenever I was able to work with Hillary Clinton, it was a great pleasure."[1]

But instead of congratulating her old friend Hillary, the German Chancellor was forced to congratulate Republican candidate Donald Trump on winning the U.S. presidential election.
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Info

Germany launches inquiry into Nazi influence on post-WWII government


RT
Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:39 UTC
German Nazi chancellor Adolf Hitler
© The National Archives / AFP
The German government wants to find out how widely Nazi networks proliferated among the post-WWII chancellery, as well as ministries and agencies, launching an in-depth inquiry to unmask one of the most complex parts of the nation's history.

The inquiry, at a cost of $4.2mn (4mn euros), will run until 2020, the German Ministry of Culture said in a statement on Saturday. A quarter of that amount will specifically be allocated to uncover Nazi influence on the core of Germany's political power - the Federal Chancellery.

Investigators want to gain insight into the personal connections among Nazi officials before 1945 and look at how they evolved in the form of post-war networking in the chancellery, the federal ministries, and regional authorities, according to Deutsche Welle.
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Dominoes

Trump's election has former critics looking to China to defend global trade

Jonathan Kaiman and Jessica Meyers
LA Times
Sun, 27 Nov 2016 22:22 UTC
xi jinping
© Ernesto Arias / European Pressphoto AgencyChinese President Xi Jinping arrives at the government palace in Lima, Peru, on Nov. 21, 2016.
Just months ago, world leaders were fretting over the threat posed by an increasingly assertive China.

The country's government oversaw the worst crackdown on dissent in nearly three decades. The Chinese built, then militarized, islands in disputed waters of the South China Sea. They tightened controls over the Internet, freezing out foreign firms while allowing their domestic competitors to prosper.

Then the United States elected Donald Trump as president.

Now some of those same countries are looking to Beijing to defend international cooperation on matters as diverse as trade and climate change, propelling China to new heights on the world stage.

And yet China doesn't sound particularly enthused about its elevation.

The Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, this week called it "beyond imagination to think that China could replace the U.S. to lead the world."
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