Puppet MastersS


Chess

US forces lead militant attack on Syrian city of Raqqa


RT
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 09:01 UTC
Syrian Democratic Forces
© REUTERS/ Rodi Said
Backed by US advisers and coalition airstrikes, Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters have begun advancing on the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. Meanwhile, the top US general met with his Turkish counterpart to plan for future operations in Syria.


US jets bombed Islamic State positions (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) on Sunday, as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) advanced approximately 10 kilometers southward from Ein Issa, a town some 55 km (30 miles) north of Raqqa, the self-proclaimed caliphate's capital. The alliance of predominantly Kurdish fighters and Arab tribal militia announced on Saturday their intent to encircle Raqqa while the Iraqi security forces battled IS in Mosul.


The SDF has been supplied by US weapons, including anti-tank missiles, and about 50 US Special Forces operators are accompanying the advancing troops as advisers and forward air controllers, according to local media.

Comment: Further reading:

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Birthday Cake

Number 34: Wikileaks releases 2nd batch of Podesta emails on eve of election


RT
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 00:52 UTC
John Podesta
© Bryan Snyder/Reuters
On the day before the election, WikiLeaks released the 34th email batch of its Podesta Emails series. This latest leak included 888 emails written to or from Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chairman John Podesta.

Much of the latest emails' content repeats from previous WikiLeaks releases, because entire email threads are not always released at once.

In one leaked email, dated August 21, 2015 and with the subject line "Needy Latinos and 1 easy call," John Podesta writes to Hillary Clinton, "A few calls you might consider making." Podesta then names Fedrico Pena, Bill Richardson and South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges. The first two are presumably the "needy Latinos."

Pena, former secretary of the US Department of Transportation under President Bill Clinton, was covered extensively in the email. Podesta goes on to say that Pena's "Cabinet stints ripped up his family," and that Pena "gave everything to the cause and no time to his family, he went through a messy divorce in the late 90's and was left really down and felt like no one reached out to him then so he felt pretty cut off from Clinton World."

Podesta, passing along all of this information after speaking with former Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, gives Clinton four steps in completing a call with Pena, writing, "1) you really enjoyed seeing Cindy at the Chambers event and appreciate her support. 2) ask him how he's been doing 3) ask about his views on the race and what she should be doing in Colorado 4) ask that he consider publicly supporting you."
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Mail

33 and counting: Wikileaks release latest batch of emails from Podesta


RT
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 20:17 UTC
A puzzled Hillary
© Reuters/Carlos Barria
WikiLeaks has published its 33rd tranche of emails from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.

The whistleblowing organization has now published more than 55,600 emails in a series of daily online releases which it said were building towards the November 8 presidential election. Emails released Sunday included messages accusing Chelsea Clinton of using Clinton Foundation funds for her wedding as well as leaked transcripts of Bill Clinton's fundraising speeches.

WikiLeaks has claimed its email publishing servers suffered a sustained DoS attack after it released #DNCLeak2 over the weekend.


Goldman Sachs speeches

In an email from January 23, 2016 Clinton Research Director Tony Carrk quoted the Democratic presidential nominee apparently expressing little appetite for prosecuting rogue Wall Street bankers.

In the mail to Clinton campaign Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri, Press Secretary Brian Fallon and Podesta, Carrk said he was sending excerpts from Clinton's Goldman Sachs speeches.
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Snakes in Suits

Looking for a job with Clinton? Ukraine's Odessa region governor Saakashvili decides to resign


Sputnik
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 12:56 UTC
Mikheil Saakashvili
© AFP 2016/ VASILY MAXIMOV
Mikheil Saakashvili, former Georgian President and the governor of the Ukrainian region of Odessa, has decided to resign.

Mikheil Saakashvili, the governor of the Ukrainian region of Odessa, said Monday he had made a decision to resign.

"In the current situation, I made a decision to resign and begin a new phase of struggle," he told a press conference.

Comment: Senior Russian lawmaker says Saakashvili may try to stage comeback in Georgia
A senior Russian legislator believes Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to quit the post of governor of Ukraine's Odessa Region stems from the poor performance of his party (United National Movement) in the elections in his home country, Georgia.

"Saakashvili's strategic aim is to regain power in Georgia," said Leonid Kalashnikov, the chairman of the State Duma's CIS Affairs Committee.

"He has always been regarded as an outsider in Ukraine and he was perfectly aware of that. His real aim was to stay as close as possible to his home country he had to leave, and to run the political process in Georgia from Ukraine," Kalashnikov told TASS about Saakashvili's resignation.

Saakashvili, he explained, has had the sincere intention to rise to power with his party's support.

"He failed, though, and now he wants to put on a bold face. He has never been welcome in Ukraine. He has now suffered a defeat in his home country Georgia and is desperately trying to find a job for himself," Kalashnikov said, adding that Saakashvili's position of the Odessa governor was a cover-up.

He did not rule out that if she emerged the winner in the US presidential election race, Hillary Clinton might invite Saakashvili in the capacity of some kind of East European aide or adviser.
More on Saakashvili's resignation: Mikheil Saakashvili resigns as Odessa's Governor, positions himself as leader of opposition to Kiev's government
In the event not only has Saakashvili resigned, but so apparently has Odessa's police chief whom he appointed, whilst all the other people he brought with him to Odessa as his team - including the Russian liberal politician Maria Gaidar (daughter of Boris Yeltsin's liberal prime minister Yegor Gaidar) - have either already left Ukraine or are under investigation by Ukraine's government.

Saakashvili now apparently plans to lead a political movement in Ukraine in opposition to the Maidan government. Apparently its pitch will be "the revolution betrayed".

As Ukrainians struggle to make ends meet in difficult economic conditions and with winter closing in, and as the gross corruption of their leaders becomes increasingly obvious, there is no doubt that such a pitch could gain traction. However it is most unlikely that a foreigner and outsider like Saakashvili is the person to make it successfully.


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Laptop

Key #DNCLeak2 emails: Cozy with CNN, silencing journalists and pinning it on Putin


RT
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 22:36 UTC
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin
© Reuters
WikiLeaks released 8,263 emails from key figures in the Democratic National Convention on Sunday, exposing CNN's embarrassingly close relationship with the DNC, the party's plan to pin it on Putin and to bait Trump.

The whistleblowing website released thousands of DNC emails in July which revealed the committee strategizing with the Clinton campaign to hinder Bernie Sanders' nomination bid.
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Life Preserver

SOTT Focus: Finding meaning in the chaos: The Trump v Clinton saga

Carl Daley
Sott.net
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 22:46 UTC
Trump Clinton masks
You know that candidates will say anything to get elected, right?
As a reasonably 'awake' person, you would be forgiven for burying your head in the sand and wishing for the unfortunate freak show that is the current US election to end by way of an accommodating giant meteor. 13% of Americans feel exactly that way. Is that, perhaps, a good indicator of the percentage of Americans who are not lost in the bogus left-right political paradigm?

You would also be forgiven for getting too swept up in the fight against either camp, as many 'awake' people have, because there is no shortage of ammo in this battle for those on either side to use.

But if you manage to take a step back, breathe deeply and try to look at this situation objectively, a couple of unavoidable questions surface: "Why are these two freaks America's only choices? Could a population of 320 million really not produce better candidates than this?"

If you know a little about how the world actually works, then you'll know that few things happen by accident, especially in politics. A lot of things are planned by an entrenched elite that 'wins' either way. We're talking Old Money, long-time Washington power-brokers, the revolving-door system from government to top corporations and banks, think-tanks, the military-industrial complex and back into government again. In short, the Deep State, aka the 'Powers That Be' (PTB).
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USA

Your vote is useless - The US (s)election is rigged anyway


The Corbett Report
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 20:22 UTC
Dangerous Superstition
© Larken Rose
Your vote is statistically meaningless and will not sway the (s)election. Your vote is strategically meaningless and decides nothing about the future of the country. Your vote is useless, as the (s)election is rigged anyway. But as Larken Rose of LarkenRose.com reminds us, what really matters is that voting is immoral, legitimizing a system of authoritarian control and empowering the oligarchs who created the system and control its results.

Happy selection day!

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Dominoes

Whoever gets control of the Senate will have a long-lasting effect on US politics


RT
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 20:32 UTC
Members of the US Senate
© Paul Marotta / AFP
This November, Democrats have their first chance to take back the Senate since becoming the minority party in the 2010 midterms. However, Republicans stand strong as well. Whoever gets control of the Senate will have a long-lasting effect on US politics.

If Democrat Hillary Clinton wins, she'll hope that her party took back the upper chamber. If Republican Donald Trump wins, it likely won't matter because of his antagonistic relationship with lawmakers from both parties.
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USA

Iran expects no change - All US presidents are alike


Press TV
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 19:56 UTC
Ali Akbar Velayati
© Press TVAli Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
A senior Iranian official says the Islamic Republic expects to see no change in the behavior of the United States toward Iran with the coming and going of different American presidents.

"We have witnessed Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama presidencies," said Ali Akbar Velayati, making passing references to presidents who took office in the US after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. "They all treated Iran the same way, and not one of them is different from the others."

Velayati, who advises Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on international affairs, was speaking in a televised interview on Sunday night.

Remarking on the characteristics of the competing US presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Velayati said they were "the two sides of the same coin."

"One shows the US's true face, and the other is the face of America with make-up. This gentleman (Trump) is the un-retouched face of America, and that lady (Clinton) is the US's retouched face."
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Bad Guys

One family's traumatic journey across Aleppo: "Militiamen prevented at rifle-point thousands of civilians from fleeing"

Robert Fisk
The Independent
Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00 UTC
Syrian family aleppo
© Nelofer PaziraKahled Kadoura, his wife Samira and 8-year old son Almuatazbilah in Aleppo shortly after they fled the east of the city
Khaled Kaddoura and his wife Samira are both 50 - they married when they were only 15 - and they are a tough, forthright couple who decided just over a week ago to abandon their besieged home in eastern Aleppo. They and their son Almuatazbilah, a boy of eight with long, uncombed hair, were among only 48 men, women and children in weeks to make it to the Syrian army lines surrounding the east of Syria's largest city with its tens of thousands of civilians and its collection of militias, most of them Islamists, who refuse to surrender.

Both husband and wife have dark, almost haunted eyes, and they tell a frightful story which is often at odds with the East Aleppo narrative of heroic 'rebel' defenders and civilians fearful of a regime massacre. Samira al-Jarrah - in Syria, wives keep their maiden names — says she prays for her country every night, but neither she nor her husband mention Bachar al-Assad.

They agree that the bombing and shelling of eastern Aleppo was terrifying but they also say that the Jabhat al-Nusra - the thousands of al-Qaeda followers who have twice changed their name in a vain attempt to shake off the West's claim that they are 'terrorists' — are the least offensive, perhaps even the kinder, of the armed groups which still hold their sector of the city. This family are no Syrian government patsies.
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