Puppet MastersS


Caesar

Putin announces he's 'ready to meet Trump' at upcoming Arctic summit in Finland

Putin International Arctic Forum
© Sergei Karpukhin / ReutersRussian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at a session of the International Arctic Forum in Arkhangelsk, Russia March 30, 2017
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he would be ready to meet with US President Donald Trump at the upcoming summit of Arctic countries in Finland, if the talks are properly prepared.

"I believe Finland suits this purpose well, and Helsinki is a very convenient platform to organize an event like this," Putin said, when asked if he thought a meeting between him and Trump was possible in Finland.

However, he added that the event should be well prepared "by both sides."

Dig

El Salvador says no to gold to become first country to ban metal mining

El Salvador miners
© David Mercado / Reuters
The smallest country in Central America - El Salvador - has approved a law prohibiting all metal mining in an attempt to protect the environment and natural resources. It is the first country in the world to do so.

The new law, supported by 70 lawmakers, bans all exploration, extraction, and processing of metals both in open pits and mines.

"It's a historic day in El Salvador. It's a historic day for the whole world,", Environment Minister Lina Pohl told reporters after a vote in Congress, as quoted by the Financial Times.

"This is a brave step, an extraordinary step, and an enormous step toward reversing the environmental degradation in this country," she added.

Георгиевская ленточка

Flashback What if Putin is telling the truth? Then what?

Russian President Vladimir Putin
© RIA Novosti/Sergey Guneev
On April 26 Russia's main national TV station, Rossiya 1, featured President Vladimir Putin in a documentary to the Russian people on the events of the recent period including the annexation of Crimea, the US coup d'etat in Ukraine, and the general state of relations with the United States and the EU. His words were frank. And in the middle of his remarks the Russian former KGB chief dropped a political bombshell that was known by Russian intelligence two decades ago.

Putin stated bluntly that in his view the West would only be content in having a Russia weak, suffering and begging from the West, something clearly the Russian character is not disposed to. Then a short way into his remarks, the Russian President stated for the first time publicly something that Russian intelligence has known for almost two decades but kept silent until now, most probably in hopes of an era of better normalized Russia-US relations.

Putin stated that the terror in Chechnya and in the Russian Caucasus in the early 1990's was actively backed by the CIA and western Intelligence services to deliberately weaken Russia. He noted that the Russian FSB foreign intelligence had documentation of the US covert role without giving details.

What Putin, an intelligence professional of the highest order, only hinted at in his remarks, I have documented in detail from non-Russian sources. The report has enormous implications to reveal to the world the long-standing hidden agenda of influential circles in Washington to destroy Russia as a functioning sovereign state, an agenda which includes the neo-nazi coup d'etat in Ukraine and severe financial sanction warfare against Moscow. The following is drawn on my book, Amerikas' Heilige Krieg.

Comment: And so it goes in The Great Game.


Colosseum

Foundation to assist Palmyra restoration to be set up in Russia

Palmyra, Syria
© Sputnik/ Mikhail Alayeddin
As Syrian Palmyra lies in ruins after liberation from Daesh extremists, a foundation to bring together construction, restoration and financing organizations to accelerate the reconstruction of the ancient city is planned to be established in Russia.

A foundation to bring together various interested organizations and to help collect the funds required to restore the Syrian city of Palmyra will be established in Russia, Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the Russian State Hermitage Museum, said on Wednesday.

"UNESCO will coordinate the project, but it will not fund the restoration of Palmyra... We will have to look for funding. Which is why we are establishing a foundation that will bring together Russian construction, restoration and financing organizations and, hopefully, will collect the money," Piotrovsky told Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

Mr. Potato

This Democrat lawmaker has "damning evidence" Russia meddled in US elections. His smoking gun is John McCain

tucker carlson
© Fox News
Tucker Carlson asks this Democrat nutcase to show evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

How many lies can a politician say in one 5 minute TV segment.

Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan says he's read classified reports and there's "damning evidence" of Trump-Russia collusion and that reporters will be breaking stories.

We are eight months into this complete liberal left scam, and we have exactly zero evidence from anyone.

Chess

Destroy Daesh? No consensus yet

Anti-Daesh coalition
Anti-Daesh coalition
While Washington multiplies the signals confirming its intention to destroy Daesh, the British and the French, followed by the rest of the Europeans, are contemplating going their own way. London and Paris may have coordinated the attacks on Damascus and Hama in order to force the Syrian Arab Army to move out to defend them, and consequently, to weaken their presence around Raqqa. The Europeans are hoping to organise the flight of the jihadists towards the Turkish frontier.

The meeting of the anti-Daesh Coalition in Washington, on 22-23 March, went very badly. Although in appearance, the 68 members reasserted their will to fight this organisation, in reality, they only displayed their differences.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reminded the Congress of President Trump's commitment to destroy Daesh, and no longer simply to reduce it, as the Obama administration had stated. By doing so, he placed before the members of the Coalition a fait accompli - without discussion.

First problem - how can the Europeans in general, and the British in particular, save their own jihadists, if it's no longer a question of displacing them, but eliminating them.

Document

Bill to audit the FED passes House Committee, and could become law

 federal reserve
For decades, the Federal Reserve of the United States Government has been ignoring Freedom of Information requests (FOIA), even finding and using loopholes to get around such requests from citizens, in regards as to how the world's most powerful financial institution conducts its business. Nearly everything about the Federal Reserve remains a carefully and closely guarded secret. Yet, despite repeated requests from officials aware of its unscrupulous nature, the FED refuses to open its doors, let alone its financial books, to those stakeholders who dutifully claim the rights to know more: the U.S. citizenry.

For years, proponents of transparency have made repeated attempts to force the FED to operate with at least the same level of transparency with which the Congress operates to no avail. However, that could soon change.

The latest bill to hold the FED accountable was approved by the Republican-controlled Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday. This bill began under former Congressman Ron Paul's term and is being pushed through by his son.

As Market Watch reports, analysts said the measure has a better chance to become law now that Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House. Paul's son, Rand, the Republican senator from Kentucky, has introduced a similar measure in the Senate.

Proponents of auditing the FED say the central bank wields too much power, operates in near total secrecy, and is accountable to no one. Only an "outside auditor" employed by the FED is allowed to audit the FED's books, not the government itself.

Magnify

Senate probe into alleged 'Russian meddling' in 2016 US election set to focus on 'fake news'

US Capitol building night
© Joshua Roberts / Reuters
Gearing up to start hearings in the probe of alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election, the Senate Intelligence Committee leaders said they would look at "propaganda" and "fake news" stories that supposedly hurt Hillary Clinton.

Though it has been provided with thousands of pages of documents already, the committee has requested raw intelligence from the CIA, NSA, FBI and the Director of National Intelligence, to see what was left on the "cutting room floor" when the agencies compiled the joint intelligence report presented in January.

Attention

Best of the Web: Former Obama insider, Evelyn Farkas, reveals she was involved in "helping to spy on Trump for Obama"

Evelyn Farkas, trump spying
Farkas admitted to having first hand knowledge that the Obama administration spied on a US presidential candidate’s transition team in order to gather “intelligence” for political use, information which was then leaked to the media through Obama January executive order 12333.
Evelyn Farkas says Barack Obama was indeed spying on candidate Trump.

#Obamagate picks up more speed, as the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Obama White House, Evelyn Farkas, has admitted that Donald Trump was spied on, and that Obama tried to hide both the source, and how the information was being disseminated to "the hill."

Farkas was on MSNBC's Morning Joe, when she made the stunning revelation that she was involved in "helping to spy on Trump for Obama."

Farkas unknowingly ratted out her former boss Barack Obama on the liberal left propaganda outlet, MSNBC...
"I was urging my former colleagues, and, and frankly speaking the people on the Hill [Democrat politicians], it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can - get as much intelligence as you can - before President Obama leaves the administration.

Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left; so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy, um, that the Trump folks - if they found out HOW we knew what we knew about their, the Trump staff, dealing with Russians - that they would try to compromise those sources and methods; meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.

So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew that there was more. We have very good intelligence on Russia; so then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew that they were also trying to help get information to [Democrat] politicians.

Comment: Potential 'smoking gun' showing Obama administration spied on Trump team, source says


Info

'Smurfing' around China's capital controls

chinese bubble
Riddle me this: As we all know by now, China is bleeding capital, with a record $725 billion in outflows last year alone. Accordingly, the ChiComs have been flipping their lid, imposing new capital controls left and right to try and stop the bleeding. One of the most straightforward of these capital controls limits each Chinese citizen to $50,000 worth of foreign exchange transactions a year. In other words, if they want to buy anything overseas or even park their money in an overseas (dollar-denominated) account, they're stuck at $50,000 a year.

So why do Chinese nationals account for the vast majority of the US government's EB-5 immigrant investor program, a program that issues visas for immigrants that invest at least $500,000 in a new American business? Wouldn't it require 10 years of diligent savings before a Chinese investor could possibly amass the needed capital to qualify for the visa in the first place?

capitol controls graph