Puppet MastersS


Question

Who's behind PropOrNot alt news blacklist?

Pam Martens & Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade
Wed, 07 Dec 2016 21:04 UTC
propornot
A shadowy group called PropOrNot (shorthand for Propaganda Or Not) that has gone to a great deal of trouble to keep its funders and principals secret, is promulgating a blacklist of 200 alternative media websites that it has labeled "Russian propaganda outlets." On Thanksgiving Day, Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg amplified this smear campaign in an article giving credence to the anonymous group's research.

While a handful of state-funded sites are included on the list, both the Washington Post and PropOrNot have come under withering criticism for engaging in McCarthyism by including dozens of respected sites like Naked Capitalism, Truthout, Truthdig, Consortium News and, initially, CounterPunch, on the list. (CounterPunch has since been removed and Naked Capitalism's lawyer has sent a scorching letter to the Washington Post demanding a retraction and an apology.) The widely read Paul Craig Roberts also landed on the blacklist. Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for Economic Policy under President Ronald Reagan, a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former columnist at BusinessWeek. He held Top Secret clearance when he worked for the U.S. government.

Wall Street On Parade closely examined the report issued by PropOrNot, its related Twitter page, and its registration as a business in New Mexico, looking for "tells" as to the individual(s) behind it. We learned quite a number of interesting facts.

Comment: Is PropOrNot starting to look like Prop? You decide.

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2 + 2 = 4

Half of Detroit votes may be ineligible for recount

Chad Livengood and Joel Kurth
The Detroit News
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 02:22 UTC
Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum explains how entire voting precincts may be non-recountable in the presidential election recount that began Monday in Ingham and Oakland counties.
© Chad Livengood, The Detroit NewsIngham County Clerk Barb Byrum explains how entire voting precincts may be non-recountable in the presidential election recount that began Monday in Ingham and Oakland counties.
One-third of precincts in Wayne County could be disqualified from an unprecedented statewide recount of presidential election results because of problems with ballots.

Michigan's largest county voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but officials couldn't reconcile vote totals for 610 of 1,680 precincts during a countywide canvass of vote results late last month.

Most of those are in heavily Democratic Detroit, where the number of ballots in precinct poll books did not match those of voting machine printout reports in 59 percent of precincts, 392 of 662.


Comment: Note that being historically "heavily Democratic" in no way indicates how a given area really voted in 2016.
It is clear that large numbers of Democrats across the country could not bring themselves to vote for Hillary, so maybe they voted for Trump instead? In which case, it's a perfect place to swing votes in Clinton's favor, because it would just appear as "in line" with the historical trend. If that's the case, it looks like the Democrats will get away with their voter fraud, because the spoiled ballot boxes now cannot be accurately recounted. How convenient.


According to state law, precincts whose poll books don't match with ballots can't be recounted. If that happens, original election results stand.

"It's not good," conceded Daniel Baxter, elections director for the city of Detroit.

Comment: Update: There are signs of vote tampering in these Clinton-supporting precincts. From Russia Insider:
Ken Crider, a 2014 Republican candidate for District 19 of the Michigan House of Representatives, said he watched the recount effort in Cobo Hall in Detroit with his wife, Penny. In a Facebook post Tuesday, he claimed to have witnessed some serious ballot discrepancies. Crider wrote:
MUST READ! Penny Crider and I just got back from helping watch the recount at Cobo Hall in Detroit. On Nov. 8th (Election Day) the election officials at 8:00 p.m. shut down the polls. They then reconciled the differences from the machine count and the voter count on the computer. At this point, a Metal tag/seal with a serial number is put on the box and the box was taken away.

Penny's precinct, Detroit Precinct #152 had an unbroken seal and everything looked proper. The tag on the box said 306 and the book said 306 and the ticket said 306, so there should be 306 paper ballots on the box, right. Well when they pulled out the ballots the stack seemed short and when they finished separating the two page ballot to count the Presidential page only guess how many ballots were in the box? 304 no, 299 nope, 200 nada, how about 100 wrong again. There were only exactly 50 paper ballots in a locked sealed box that again was supposed to have 306. HMMMM.

Oh I forgot to add, since there was a discrepancy in the two numbers, the original count stands.

One more thing my precinct (sorry I forgot the number), had 525 votes on the book, tag and ticket and we counted 525 ballots the election official was praising the Lord "Hallelujah we have a countable precinct" Jill Stein had three (3) votes.
In other words: In Democratic Detroit, each vote was counted 6 times!


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Snakes in Suits

Journalist threatened by Ukraine's Poroshenko to 'sue UK media' over corruption reports


RT
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 20:28 UTC
Petro Poroshenko
© Alexey Vovk / Sputnik
A journalist from The Times newspaper in the UK says he and other western colleagues received legal threats from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's lawyers for publishing materials on alleged corruption uncovered by a fugitive Kiev lawmaker.

"Just got letter from Poroshenko lawyers threatening to sue UK media repeating Onischenko claim he bribed MPs. That Poroshenko bribed MPs," said a tweet from Times journalist Maxim Tucker.

According to the reporter, he is refraining from publishing the whole letter, since it is "marked private" and could subsequently result in a legal case which he might lose, Tucker wrote.

Comment: Kiev must be feeling the pressure:

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Bad Guys

Have the US and its allies used covert airdrops and drones to supply the Islamic State?

Ulson Gunnar
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 20:10 UTC
CDS Air Drop Pallets
Is there a way the United States or one of the Islamic State's admitted state sponsors could be airdropping supplies without triggering suspicion? How has modern airdrop technology and techniques evolved that might make this possible?

When asking these questions, they must first be understood in the context that:
(A.) According to Wikileaks, within the e-mails of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton it was acknowledged that the governments of two of America's closest allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were providing material support to the Islamic State (IS);

(B.) That according to the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) (PDF), the US and its allies sought to use a "Salafist principality" in eastern Syria as a strategic asset against the Syrian government, precisely where the Islamic (Salafist) State (principality) eventually manifested itself and;

(C.) That the fighting capacity of the Islamic State is on such a large and sustained level, it can only be the result of immense and continuous state sponsorship, including a constant torrent of supplies by either ground or air (or both).

Comment: And now the 'flood gates' have opened: Obama grants waiver for military support of foreign fighters in Syria

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Bullseye

Russia continues its battle against government corruption


RT
Fri, 09 Dec 2016 20:12 UTC
russian investigative committee car
© Mikhail Voskresenskiy / SputnikA car of the Russian Investigative Committee enters the Russian Investigative Committee's courtyard.
Russia's Investigative Committee is continuing to probe alleged bribery committed by former Economy Minister Andrey Ulyukayev and numerous other former senior officials, the agency's spokesperson has said.

"At present we are conducting an active investigation into criminal cases targeting corruption instigated against former Minister of Economic Development Aleksey Ulyukayev, former Deputy Governor of St. Petersburg Marat Oganesyan, Pereyaslavl-Zalessky Mayor Denis Koshurnikov, former senior police officer Dmitry Zakharchenko, ex-Governor of the Kirov Region Nikita Belykh, and others," the head of the Investigative Committee's department for interaction with mass media, Svetlana Petrenko, said in a statement released on December 9 - which is International Anti-Corruption Day.

She also noted that over the past six years the agency has started anti-corruption cases against 3,600 people of special status, such as lawmakers, judges, law attorneys and civil servants of various rank. In the first nine months of this year, 427 such cases were forwarded to courts.

On Thursday, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika told reporters that in 2015 Russian courts convicted 9,900 people of corruption crimes, adding that 10 percent of these convicts were working in law enforcement.

Comment: Putin creates new security dept to tackle corruption and will use the proceeds to boost the Russian economy

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Jet5

China slams Japan over close military jet encounter during exercises


RT
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 19:41 UTC
J-11B fighter jets of the Chinese Air Force
© Jason Lee / ReutersJ-11B fighter jets of the Chinese Air Force
The Chinese Defense Ministry expressed "grave concern" over what it called "two Japanese F-15 fighter jets' interference" in Chinese Air Forces' training in the Western Pacific. The incident resulted in a close encounter between Chinese and Japanese military jets.

According to a statement released by the Chinese ministry, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) scrambled two F-15 fighter jets to shadow Chinese warplanes that were flying over the Miyako Strait as part of a "routine training exercise in the Western Pacific."

The ministry's spokesman, Senior Colonel Yang Yujun, said in the statement that the Japanese jets "endangered the safety of the Chinese aircraft and the crew" by approaching at a close range and "launching jamming shells."
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Snakes in Suits

Mayday! Post-Brexit Britain courts Gulf despots

Finian Cunningham
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 19:16 UTC
EU and UK flags with broken glass
With Britain's post-Brexit economic outlook uncertain, Prime Minister Theresa May was doing her best this week to drum up trade prospects in the Persian Gulf. But her assiduous courting of the monarchs and emirs in what is perhaps the most despotic region in the world spells, ironically, a Mayday distress signal for an intensification of conflict and human rights violations.

May, who took over from the ill-fated David Cameron following Britain's shock referendum vote to quit the European Union in June, was attending the 37th annual summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). She was reportedly the first woman to ever address the GCC whose member states Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman are all ruled by unelected, self-styled monarchs with appalling human rights records. This year's summit was held in Bahrain, which like the other GCC member states is a former British colonial territory.
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Bad Guys

ISIS shoots down Syrian jet near Palmyra, Syria

Leith Fadel
Al Masdar News
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 20:16 UTC
A MiG-23 aircraft of the Syrian Air Force lands at the Hama airbase near the city of Hama, Syria's Hama Province
© Sputnik/ Dmitriy Vinogradov
The so-called "Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham" (ISIS) reportedly shot down a Syrian Air Force jet north of Palmyra today after it carried out an airstrike over the Jazal Mountains.

According to the Islamic State's official media wing, their forces shot down the warplane as it was flying over the village of Jazal, which was captured by the terrorist group earlier this week.

Comment: See also: ISIS shoots down Russian helicopter near Palmyra, Syria

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Arrow Down

Western leaders call for resumption of Syria talks amid army's gains against militants


Press TV
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 18:52 UTC
US Secretary of State John Kerry (L), German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (R) and France's Foreign Minister Jean Marc Ayrault (C) give a press conference following a meeting with representatives from foreign-sponsored Syrian opposition in Pari
© AFPUS Secretary of State John Kerry (L), German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (R) and France's Foreign Minister Jean Marc Ayrault (C) give a press conference following a meeting with representatives from foreign-sponsored Syrian opposition in Paris, France, on December 10, 2016.
Western leaders have called for a new round of talks between representatives from the Damascus government and foreign-sponsored opposition groups to find a solution to the nearly six-year-old conflict in Syria amid recent gains made by the Syrian army against militants and terrorist groups.

"We need to tie down the conditions for a genuine political transition, and negotiations must resume on a clear basis within the framework of the UN resolution 2254," French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in Paris on Saturday following talks between top Western diplomats and opposition delegates.

Comment: The US has floundered in nearly every way possible with its talks with Russia. Keep talking Kerry, meanwhile Russia is cleaning house in Syria: Aleppo Update: 4 Al-Qaeda chiefs arrested; one thousand Jihadis surrender

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Vader

US cannot guarantee arms supplies to Syria won't fall into Daesh hands


Press TV
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 18:51 UTC
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner
The United States cannot guarantee that the weapons it sends to militants in Syria will not end up in the hands of the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, says the State Department.

When asked if the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama is able to guarantee the weapons being sent to Syria will not fall into the hands of the terrorists, the department's spokesman Mark Toner said it would be "difficult" for anyone to say that "with complete confidence."
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