Puppet MastersS


Sherlock

Fake News? Trump's pursuit of leaks within administration creates unease among civil servants

Arshad Mohammed, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel
Reuters
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 18:19 UTC
spicer schiller
© REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstWhite House Director of Oval Office Operations Keith Schiller carries a red USA hat and a copy of Fortune magazine with President Trump on the cover as he and Communications Director Sean Spicer deplane from Air Force One yesterday.
President Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin used his first senior staff meeting last month to tell his new aides he would not tolerate leaks to the news media, sources familiar with the matter said.

Current and former officials said that in a departure from past practice, access to a classified computer system at the White House has been tightened by political appointees to prevent professional staffers from seeing memos being prepared for the new president.


Comment: Considering the barrage of anti-Trump stories in the media and coming from within the Establishment, one can't really blame Trump for compartmentalizing access to sensitive documents. He is smart enough to know that there are people close to the White House who do no have his best interests at heart, so it's only smart to limit access to memos and sensitive data.


And at the Department of Homeland Security, some officials told Reuters they fear a witch hunt is under way for the leaker of a draft intelligence report which found little evidence that citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries covered by Trump's now-suspended travel ban pose a threat to the United States.

Washington career civil servants say the clampdown appears designed to try to limit the flow of information inside and outside government and deter officials from talking to the media about topics that could result in negative stories.
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Snakes in Suits

How the Aristocracy deceives the public about the Deep State

Eric Zuesse
Strategic Culture
Thu, 23 Feb 2017 18:06 UTC
Washington DC
The "deep state" is the aristocracy and its agents. Wikispooks defines it as follows:

The deep state (loosely synonymous with the shadow government or permanent government) is in contrast to the public structures which appear to be directing individual nation states. The deep state is an intensely secretive, informal, fluid network of deep politicians who conspire to amplify their influence over national governments through a variety of deep state milieux. The term "deep state" derives from the Turkish "derin devlet", which emerged after the 1996 Susurluk incident so dramatically unmasked the Turkish deep state.

Their article is so honest that it continues from there, directly to:
Official Narrative

The official narrative of deep states used to be that they simply do not exist. This position was modified in the last few years to the claim that they don't exist here. In 2013 the New York Times defined the deep state as «a hard-to-perceive level of government or super-control that exists regardless of elections and that may thwart popular movements or radical change. Some have said that Egypt is being manipulated by its deep state». [1] Since the Times (like the rest of the commercially-controlled media) is more or less a under the control of the deep state, such a mention is very interesting.

Comment: More on the Deep State:

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Yoda

Doping scandal: Putin's response to WADA's retreat proves he's a cut above the rest

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 16:55 UTC
putin sochi olympics
Russian President Putin, in comments made in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk where he oversaw preparation for the 2019 World Winter Universiade (a student sports meet), set out the Russian response to the admission - reported in a leaked IOC letter - that the claims in the McLaren report are insufficient as evidence against any individual athlete and that Professor McLaren seems to be retreating from his claim that there was a massive state sponsored conspiracy to carry out doping in Russian sport.

Putin's words were firm but conciliatory, and were in line with what the Russians have been saying all along.

Firstly, it is important to stress that Putin admitted that there has been widespread doping in Russia. This is a point that some people have been resisting, or which they have been seeking to relativise by saying that doping is also widespread in other countries.

The second point is undoubtedly true, and there is no doubt the Russians have been treated differently from others. I question whether the picture would appear much better if the athletes of any other country were subjected to the same sort of relentless investigation to which Russian athletes have been.

Comment: As Russia Insider notes, Putin could have stooped to the level of the West and responded with self-righteousness, but responded in a much more constructive way:
Here's the thing, though: Any objective observer can see that WADA and the IOC have been caught in a giant, xenophobic lie.

How should Putin respond? Should he drag these two organizations through the mud, or take the high road and let WADA's outrageous lies and deceit speak for itself?

You already know what he did.

Putin is a judo master. He doesn't waste time kicking his opponents when they're already in a fetal position.

Instead of taking a victory lap, Putin called a meeting and demanded better mechanisms for detecting doping among Russian athletes going forward:

This is classic Putin.

Putin doesn't need to sink to WADA's level. He doesn't need to start vendettas.

The reason is pretty simple: The west doesn't need help destroying its own reputation and standing in the international community.

Like we said: Putin knows judo. And he's damn good at it.


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Chess

Trump expresses total confidence in Jeff Sessions amid establishment calls for his resignation


RT
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 17:58 UTC
U.S. President Donald Trump
© Jonathan Ernst / ReutersU.S. President Donald Trump
President Donald Trump reportedly has "total" confidence in US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who faces bipartisan pressure to resign over talks with a Russian ambassador. He has since recused himself from probes of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

During a visit to Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia on Thursday, Trump told reporters he "wasn't aware" that Sessions had contact with Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during last year's campaign. Sessions was a US senator and member of the Armed Services Committee at the time.

Trump was in Virginia to give a speech aboard the USS Gerald Ford. Asked whether Sessions should have testified truthfully before Congress, Trump said, "I think he probably did."

Sessions spoke twice with Kislyak during the campaign. Those conversations appear to contradict Sessions' sworn testimony during his Senate confirmation hearings, although the questions revolved around campaign affiliations.

Comment: Trump is apparently taking a different approach to Session's situation than he did when Flynn was under-fire. Trump barely said a word when all the hub-bub was taking place with Flynn's conversation with the Russian Ambassador. There may have some other things going on behind the scenes, but it doesn't look like Trump is just going to roll over when it comes to Sessions.

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Attention

Lavrov slams US 'witch-hunt' against Russian ambassador's contacts, saying it resembles days of McCarthyism


RT
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 17:17 UTC
sessions protest russia mccarthyism
© Nicholas Kamm / AFPWashington, DC, on March 2, 2017.
With Russian Ambassador to the USA Sergey Kislyak's contacts with members of the Trump administration under scrutiny, Moscow won't apply a tit-for-tat approach to US Ambassador to Russia John Tefft, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov promised. Lavrov said the whole situation resembled the days of McCarthyism.

Kislyak recently found himself under the US media spotlight with reports of his communications, first with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and then with Attorney-General Jeff Sessions. After Wednesday reports saying Sessions had met Kislyak twice in 2016, but did not disclose the contacts during his Senate confirmation testimony, a CNN article said that "current and former US intelligence officials have described Kislyak as a top spy and recruiter of spies."

According to Lavrov, the situation developing around Kislyak and his contacts is reminiscent of "witch hunt."
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Stop

VP office: 'Absurd' to compare Pence's use of private email account to Clinton's


RT
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 16:39 UTC
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence
© Joshua Roberts / Reuters
During his term as Indiana governor, Vice President Mike Pence used a personal AOL account to communicate security-related issues. Though his account was once hacked, his office denies that the situation can be compared to that of Hillary Clinton.

Some of the content of US Vice President Mike Pence's AOL account emails has been revealed by IndyStar, which received the emails through a public record request addressed to the office of his successor, Governor Eric Holcomb.

The topics of the emails ranged from security gates at the governor's residence to the state's response to terrorist attacks across the globe, the report says. In one email dated January 8, 2016, he communicated with then-Chief of Staff Jim Atterholt, and his top public safety and homeland security adviser, John Hill, on an FBI arrest of suspected terrorists.

Comment: Pence has been fighting to keep a tight wrap on these emails for a while now. While it may or may not be absurd to compare Pence's private use of email to Clinton's, the fact that Clinton has successfully evaded prosecution for this and even more heinous crimes certainly is.

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Attention

So it begins: EU founders to form Federal Union of European States

Alex Gorka
Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 16:58 UTC
Torn EU flag
Anti-establishment and anti-EU winds are blowing across Europe hard and fast, as the bloc is edging ever closer to collapse. The Brexit-started domino effect is continuing the chain reaction across the Union. Crises abound, and all of them boil down to people ultimately prizing their national and regional identities over the supranational project. The upcoming changes may make the West as we know it fade away, with groups of states united by shared interests emerging instead.

Leaders of the lower chambers of parliaments of Germany, Italy, France, and Luxembourg published a letter demanding a "Federal Union" be implemented immediately. It was published by Italian La Stampa on February 27. "Now is the moment to move towards closer political integration — the Federal Union of States with broad powers. We know that the prospect stirs up strong resistance, but the inaction of some cannot be the paralysis of all. Those who believe in European ideals, should be able to give them a new life instead of helplessly observing its slow sunset", the paper reads.

The lawmakers also warn that the European integration project is currently more at risk than ever before, with high unemployment and immigration problems driving populist and nationalist movements.
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Pirates

Western chaos in Mid-East is uniting Daesh and al-Qaeda in Libya


Sputnik
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 16:19 UTC
terrorit
© Flickr/ Zoriah
The unholy alliance between the world's two most prominent Islamist terror groups in Libya will naturally be a cause for significant concern across both North Africa and Europe, but it is also puzzling — after all, already frayed public tensions between the group further worsened in 2016, with Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri virulently condemning Daesh's brutal methods, branding the group "liars."

Based on intelligence, Barghathi said, Belmokhtar — thought to have been slain in a French airstrike in 2016 — was believed to be the guiding force behind the pair's conciliation. In all, Libyan government investigations suggest around 700 Daesh terrorists have reorganized in the desert areas south of the city of Bani Walid, taking the number of terrorist fighters in Libya to over 3,000.

Why Libya?

For political analyst Loretta Napoleoni, Daesh's attraction to Libya is unsurprising. 'Operation Unified Protector', the 2011 NATO intervention led by the US, UK and France that ensured the overthrow of leader Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi, threw the country into a state of "fragmented, fractured" chaos, from which it has never recovered.
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Propaganda

Media bias: Research center finds press coverage of Trump in first month of office to be 88% 'hostile'

Jennifer Harper
Washington Times
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 16:27 UTC
trump press
© Associated Press
President Trump has a long history of negative press coverage, and it continues after he won the 2016 election a new study finds.
There was no press honeymoon for President Trump during his first month in office. A meticulous new study by the Media Research Center finds that 88 percent of the broadcast news coverage of Mr. Trump and his team was "hostile" during the first 30 days of office.

The coverage was intense and plentiful. The study, which analyzed both tone and content for evening newscasts on ABC, NBC and CBS, found that the "Big Three" networks produced 16 hours of coverage on the new president and his staff. That is over half — 54 percent — of their total coverage for the month.

"Our measure of media tone excludes soundbites from identified partisans, focusing instead on tallying the evaluative statements made by reporters and the nonpartisan talking heads (experts and average citizens) included in their stories," write Rich Noyes, research director for the conservative press watchdog, and fellow analyst Mike Ciandella.

Comment: The presstitute media is fulfilling its function as the propaganda arm of the Deep State.

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Info

Iran to expand ties with Turkey and Pakistan

Kamila Aliyeva
Azernews
Thu, 02 Mar 2017 16:40 UTC
Hassan Rouhani
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated that he has held proper talks for strengthening of ties with Pakistan and Turkey during his recent visit to Islamabad.

Saying that the member states of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) are determined to expand relations, President Rouhani added that he discussed broadening ties with Pakistani and Turkish leaders during his recent visit to Islamabad to attend the ECO summit, Mehr news agency reported.

The ECO held its 13th plenary session in Pakistan's capital Islamabad on March 1.
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