Puppet MastersS


Telephone

Doubling back? John Kerry consults with FM Lavrov on Syria less than 48 hours after suspending ties

Kerry Lavrov Phone
© english.irib.ir
Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the situation in Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday, less than 48 hours after the State Department announced a suspension in "bilateral channels with Russia" related to reducing the violence in Syria. The Wednesday phone call between the two diplomats, first disclosed by the Russian Foreign Ministry, raised immediate questions about whether the United States was already backtracking on its threat to cut off ties with Moscow.

In acknowledging the phone call, State Department spokesman Mark Toner defended the high-level contact. "They did talk about the situation on the ground in Syria," he said, "my argument back to you would be it would be irresponsible for Secretary Kerry not to raise what's happening in Syria and make our concerns clear about what's happening there."

Toner faced stiff push back from reporters seeking to understand the practical extent of the suspension of ties. "You tell the Russians one thing, and then you turn around and don't follow through on it," Associated Press reporter Matt Lee said.

Toner said the suspension only applied to a diplomatic channel setup to sustain a cessation of hostilities in the country. Such a suspension apparently did not preclude talks between Kerry and Lavrov on Syria who have remained in near constant contact throughout the deadly civil war. "While that particular bilateral channel has been suspended we're not going to just walk away from what's happening in Syria," Toner said.

Comment: As usual, the US is as clear as mud in actions and policy.


Stock Up

The great debt unwind: Business bankruptcies soar 38%, commercial loans decline

Bankrupt graphic
Six years of Fed & Wall Street hype come home to roost.

Something funny happened on the way to the bank: In August, commercial and industrial loans outstanding at all banks in the US fell for the first time month-to-month since October 2010, which had marked the end of the collapse of credit during the Financial Crisis.

In October 2008, the absolute peak of the prior credit bubble, there were $1.59 trillion commercial and industrial loans outstanding. As the Great Recession chewed into the economy, C&I loans plunged. Many of them were cleansed from bank balance sheets via charge-offs. But then the Fed decided what the US needed was more debt to fix the problem of too much debt, thus kicking off what would become the greatest credit bubble in US history. By July 2016, C&I loans had surged to $2.064 trillion, 30% above their prior bubble peak.

Take 2

Killary caught using a child actor at town hall event to create some good publicity, and the MSM spread the lie - no questions asked

Hillary Clinton town hall Brannan Leach
© CNN
The Clinton presidential campaign has been caught scripting reality, this time at a town hall in Haverford, Pennsylvania. During the town hall meeting, a 15-year-old girl was supposedly "chosen at random" out of the audience to ask Hillary Clinton a question.

The young lady gave a such a well-scripted performance that a suspicious individual on YouTube going by @Spanglevision chose to further investigate.

After some online investigative work, it was revealed that the "randomly selected" audience member - who was also the only person with a question written on a prepared script - was child actor Brannan Leach, who just so happens to be the daughter of democratic Pennsylvania state senator Daylin Leach; a Hillary supporter.

Here is the obviously staged "random" question from Brennan to Hillary Clinton:
Brennan:

"Hi Madam Secretary. I'm Brennan and I'm 15 years old. At my school, body image is a really big issue for girls my age. I see with my own eyes the damage Donald Trump does when he talks about women and how they look. As the first female president how would you undo some of that damage and help girls understand that they're so much more than just what they look like?"
And, this folks, is what life is like in the Matrix; where politicians script questions for little girls and feign that they are random, while knowing full well what question will asked be and having an answer already in the can.
Hillary Clinton:

"I'm so proud of you for asking that question. You are right — my opponent has just taken this concern to a new level of difficulty and meanness. And, it's shocking when women are called names and judged solely on the basis of physical attributes.

"My opponent insulted Miss Universe. I mean, how do you get more acclaimed than that? But, it wasn't good enough. So we can't take any of this seriously any more. We need to laugh at it. We need to refute it. We need to ignore it. And we need to stand up to it."
Here is the full analysis from Spanglevision.

Comment:


Gold Bar

Citing security concerns, Dutch Central Bank to move its gold from Amsterdam to a former military air base

Gold stored in the central bank vaults
© DNB
Nearly two years after the Netherlands made waves in the gold market when it announced that it had secretly repatriated 122 tons of physical gold from the New York Fed, this morning there was another surprising announcement out of the Dutch central bank which said is was planning to move the country's gold reserves from the center of Amsterdam to land owned by the defense ministry near Zeist. According to a statement by the bank, the security measures necessary to guard the gold are a problem for both staff and visitors, and as a result it would transfer the assets to a safer location.

The aim is to move the gold to the new location, Camp New Amsterdam, at the beginning of 2022. The new complex, dubbed the Cash Centre, will also be used to sort and distribute bank notes and to hunt for fake cash.

According to official data, some 189 tons of gold are stored in Amsterdam but the bank has total reserves of 612 tons. In order to spread the risk, Dutch gold is also held in central banks in New York, Ottawa and London.

Yoda

Assad in Danish interview: Moderate opposition in Syria a myth, US intentionally attacked Syrian Army at Deir Ez-zor

assad
President Bashar al-Assad affirmed that the United States doesn't have the will to reach any agreement about Syria, and that Syria knew in advance that the US agreement with Russia will not succeed because the main part of that agreement is to attack al-Nusra which is an American card in Syria.

In an interview given to Denmark's TV 2 channel, President al-Assad said that "moderate opposition" is a myth, and that reaching a political solution requires fighting terrorism, asserting that it's not acceptable that terrorists will take control of any part of Syria.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Question 1: So, Mr. President, let us begin with the current situation in Aleppo. The last few weeks, terrifying pictures have come out from Aleppo. I mean, we see the residents of the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo in a very dire situation. They seem exhausted, they seem terrified, the situation is very violent. What is the strategy behind launching such fierce attack from the Syrian and Russian armies at the moment?

President Assad: Actually, we didn't launch an attack, because the Syrian Army has continued its drive toward liberating every part of Syria including Aleppo or eastern Aleppo from the terrorists, but there was a ceasefire for one week in order to give the treaty, or the agreement, let's say, between the Russians and the Americans a way to be implemented, and it didn't work. When that week ended, we continued our drive as army to liberate eastern Aleppo from the terrorists. But actually, when you want to talk about the dire situation in eastern Aleppo, it's not because of the government; it's because of the terrorists. They've been in that area for years now, but we only heard about that "dire situation" in the media recently, in the Western media, because the situation of the terrorists is very bad. This is the only reason. While if you want to talk about the situation there, we never prevented any medical supply or food supply or any other thing from entering east Aleppo. There's no embargo, if that's what you mean, there's no embargo, and our role as a government is to encircle the terrorists in order to liberate every part of the city.


Alarm Clock

Is the Russian power structure divided over India/Pakistan?

india russia pakistan
Russian diplomacy in the 21st century is characterized by its trademarked balancing and mutually beneficial pragmatism. This pair of traits is difficult enough for any power to practice individually and is extra challenging to do so concurrently with the other, though Russia masterfully manages to pull this off because of its "deep state's" consensus on the country's grand strategic purpose in Eurasia. To avoid any misunderstandings, the "deep state" that's being referred to is the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies that ensure long-term political stability for the state, and in Russia's case, they're in complete agreement about the need for Moscow to balance the various, and often times competing, forces in the supercontinent in order to maintain peaceful harmony between them.

Whether it's through military diplomacy or traditional statecraft, Russia is working hard to defuse the state-on-state tension that the US has stoked all throughout Eurasia. The world has borne witness to just how quickly Russia's direct involvement in the Mideast totally rewrote the rules of the game in that region, just as it stands to do in East Asia as Moscow and Tokyo edge closer to signing a conclusive peace treaty with one another and resolving the "Kuril Islands dispute". The strategic situation in Europe has reached a stalemate between Russia and the US/NATO, while events in the Arctic haven't yet dynamically begun to develop and won't do so until after more of the ice melts sometime in the coming future, so the only Rimland portion of Eurasia still unaccounted for by Russia's pan-continental balancing act is South Asia, which has only recently come to the fore of Moscow's attention in this regard.

Comment: Further reading on the conflict between India and Pakistan:


Star of David

Change in tactics: Israel using rocket attacks from fringe groups in Gaza to target Hamas tunnel infrastructure

Palestinian man is lowered into a smuggling tunnel
© Ali Jadallah/APA ImagesA Palestinian man is lowered into a smuggling tunnel which connects the Gaza Strip and Egypt in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 11 September 2013.
Ali Tannany, 27, was celebrating his bachelor party with friends, relatives and neighbors in Jabalia Camp in Northern Gaza in August when Israeli missiles were launched into the Strip, shelling several arbitrary areas in the region. The attack was considered an immediate response to the launching of a missile by Palestinian resistance groups on August 21st against Sderot, located less than a mile east of Gaza. Ali and his guests were not shaken when the shelling started and continued their celebration. However, as the sound of bombs got louder and closer, people started leaving the party and Ali had to ask the rest of his guests to seek safety in their homes.

Israel has seemingly altered its reaction policy to resistance rockets; it now responds with immediate, massive seismic missiles. It did so again today, striking targets in Gaza in retaliation for a rocket fired at an Israeli community.

Eye 2

US official: Covert strikes against Syrian Army back on the table to prevent fall of Aleppo

aleppo
A US official said the Obama administration is set to discuss striking positions of the Syrian military without a UN Security Council resolution, while bombing air force runways with missiles fired from coalition planes and ships is being considered, according to a report.

A US administration official who is to take part in the discussions told the Washington Post that one proposed way "to get around the White House's objection to striking the Assad regime without a UN Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment", RT reported.

A meeting of the Obama administration's Principals Committee is scheduled for Wednesday, the newspaper reported, adding that a meeting of the National Security Council could follow this weekend.

The CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed support for "limited military strikes against the Syrian government," last Wednesday, when the US discussed such "kinetic" options, the official told the Washington Post.

"There's an increased mood in support of kinetic actions against the regime," one senior administration official was quoted as saying. "The CIA and the Joint Staff have said that the fall of Aleppo would undermine America's counterterrorism goals in Syria," he added.

Attention

Getting serious: Third Russian Black Sea fleet ship leaves for Mediterranean to join anti-ISIS operations

Guided-missile corvette Mirazh
© Vasiliy Batanov / Sputnik
A third Russian warship - the corvette 'Mirage' - has left the port of Sevastopol and set sail for the Mediterranean Sea to assist in Russia's anti-Islamic State operations, the Russian Black Sea Fleet has confirmed.

"The fast-attack guided missile craft (FAC) of the Black Sea, 'Mirage', has left Sevastopol and set out on a long Mediterranean journey, after having completed a round of preparations," the interim head of the information department for the Black Sea fleet, Captain 2nd-rank Nikolay Voskresensky said.

"It is planned that the vessel will go via Black Sea straits and enter the Mediterranean, where it will join the standing naval force of the Russian Fleet in the region," he added.

Light Sabers

Russian MoD: Media leaks of US strikes on the Syrian army usually a preface to real action

deir ezzor
© AFP 2016/ AHMAD ABOUD
Russian Defense Ministry believes that the leaks to the media about possible US strikes on the Syrian army could be a preface to real action, spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said.

"A number of Western media outlets have published "leaks" about the talks held in the White House administration about the possibility to hold missile and airstrikes on the positions of the Syrian army," Konashenkov said. "As history has shown, such "leaks" often prove to be a preface to real action."

I point out to all the 'hotheads' that following the September 17 coalition airstrike on the Syrian Army in Deir ez-Zor we took all necessary measures to exclude any similar 'accidents' happening to Russian forces in Syria," Konashenkov said.