Puppet Masters

Putin: US quitting INF unleashes 'fundamental risks' for all in potential 'unrestrained' arms race

RT
Mon, 05 Aug 2019 13:32 UTC

Russia won't be the first to deploy INF-banned munitions and will act only in response to potential US actions, President Vladimir Putin has said, warning that the US decision to withdraw risks an "unrestricted" arms race. He cautioned on Monday:

"The unilateral withdrawal from the INF treaty by the US, destruction of one of the basic documents on arms control, based on an imaginary pretext, has seriously complicated the situation in the world, [and] created fundamental risks for everyone."

The decision to ditch the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty will hark back to other accords on strategic nuclear weaponry and non-proliferation, he added. If the system crumbles, it will give way to an arms race and world-wide "chaos without any rules, restrictions, and laws."

Comment: See also:

OAN sent 'Cease and Desist' notices to MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Daily Beast, Kevin Poulson - lawsuits may follow

Cassandra Fairbanks
Gateway Pundit
Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC

One America News has sent Cease and Desist notices and demands for retraction to Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, The Daily Beast and its reporter Kevin Poulson over their claims that the network is a "paid Russian propaganda operation."

The notices to retract warned that if they do not comply with the conditions sent to them by August 15, 2019, they "will recommend that our client pursue all legal avenues to protect its interests, including damages and attorneys' fees and costs incurred as a result of your actions."

Miller Barondess, LLP, the law firm representing OAN, a pro-Trump right-wing network, wrote that Maddow and the others "maliciously slandered OAN" and asserted that they have never taken money from any foreign government, including Russia. The letter to Maddow states:

"The assertion that OAN is paid to disseminate propaganda on behalf of a foreign government is more than a mere falsehood — it amounts to an accusation of treason. Your comments were beyond the pale and unbecoming of a reporter at any respectable news organization.

"It also appears that the unwarranted attack on OAN was retaliation for OAN's suggestion that Comcast is refusing to carry it for non-business reasons. On July 15, 2019, Charles Herring emailed Gregory Rigdon, the President of Content Acquisition for Comcast. Herring made the compelling business case for adding OAN and also stated his concern that Comcast is refusing to carry OAN because OAN's coverage 'generally counters the voice of MSNBC.' Exactly one week after that email, MSNBC's number one show opens with a hit piece on OAN. This does not appear to be a mere coincidence. Tellingly, nobody at MSNBC or Comcast made any effort to reach out to OAN for comment prior to airing the defamatory statements."

Comment: More from The Ohio Star 30/7/2019:

Poulsen wrote July 22, in which he referred to OANN as being endorsed by President Donald Trump:
"Kremlin propaganda sometimes sneaks into Rouz's segments on unrelated matters, dropped in as offhand background information."... "If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin's official propaganda outlet, Sputnik."
The article also reads that OANN is:
"increasingly dedicated to conspiracy theories and fake news, and became overtly supportive of Russia's global agenda."
Maddow described OANN as a
"boutique, little news outlet that is designed specifically for Trump mega-fans. It's called One America ... News Network."
She referred to The Daily Beast article during her show.
"We literally learned today that that outlet that the president is promoting shares staff with the Kremlin," Maddow said July 22. "I mean, what? It's an easy thing to throw out ... 'Hey, that looks like Russian propaganda.' In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really, literally is paid Russian propaganda."
OANN's lawyers have given Maddow and The Daily Beast until Aug. 15 to retract its statements, according to the cease-and-desist requests.

Bellingcat founder unloads 4,000-word assault on Tulsi Gabbard for questioning Syria chem attacks

RT
Sun, 04 Aug 2019 20:56 UTC

Running as an anti-war candidate in the US comes with a target painted on your back that draws fire from those rooting for foreign interventions. In [the] case of Tulsi Gabbard, it includes a lengthy piece on chemical attacks in Syria.

Gabbard, a Democratic presidential hopeful, became the most-googled candidate during the second primary debate - but the surge of public interest came with renewed attacks against her anti-interventionist agenda. In case you've missed it all, Gabbard has been branded a 'Russian' spoiler for whichever candidate is eventually picked, and, once again, an apologist for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Joining the chorus of bashers on Sunday was Elliot Higgins, the founder of the UK-based 'citizen investigation' outlet Bellingcat, who wrote a whopping 4,000-word piece attacking Gabbard's negative attitude toward regime change wars. In particular, Higgins didn't like her skepticism over chemical weapons attacks in Syria reflected on her campaign website. The attacks were used by Washington to justify missile attacks against the country's government - and by extension continued illegal US military presence in the country.

Comment: See also:

DOJ to release Bruce Ohr 302 reports, other docs this week

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Sun, 04 Aug 2019 12:35 UTC

The DOJ will release a cache of FBI documents early next week related to Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, who - along with his CIA-linked wife Nellie, had extensive interactions with Christopher Steele during the period in which the FBI was using the former British spy's fabricated dossier against the Trump campaign.

In a court filing submitted last Thursday, Justice Department lawyers said the agency will provide FBI notes of interviews conducted with Ohr to Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that sued for the records last year.

Justice Department lawyers said the agency had initially determined that the Ohr transcripts, known as 302s, should be withheld in full. But "after further review in conjunction with DOJ's preparation of its motion for summary judgment, DOJ has decided to release the requested records in part to Plaintiff," the lawyers said.

"DOJ will make this release to Plaintiff by August 5, 2019." -Daily Caller

Comment: More from Washington Examiner 2/8/2019:

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared optimistic about what might be learned next week, tweeting out that the news was "huge" and that "key Bruce Ohr 302 FBI reports on his coup cabal contacts with Christopher Steele are to be released to Judicial Watch imminently."

In September 2018, Trump directed the DOJ to declassify a series of investigative documents including "all FBI reports of interviews with Bruce G. Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation." But a few days later he seemed to walk back that order in a follow-up tweet. It now looks like Judicial Watch's lawsuit might result in that info coming out, even if Trump backed down.

Paul Craig Roberts: America's collapse, Part 1: 'Asset Forfeiture'

Paul Craig Roberts
paulcraigroberts.org
Thu, 25 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC

Readers aware that I, and Dmitry Orlov, have been chronicling America's rapid decline ask me, "where did it all begin?" To answer that question would require a massive history such as Jacques Bazun's From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. All I can do for you is to show you recent evidence from our time.

Let's begin an occasional series on the subject with asset forfeiture. Asset forfeiture was one of those tactics that Sir Thomas More warned against in the play, A Man for All Seasons. Cutting down a protective feature of law in order to better chase after devils exposes the innocent to injustice along with the guilty. The devil was the Mafia. Asset forfeiture originated as a way to prevent gangsters from using their ill-gotten gains to hire better lawyers to defend them than the US Justice Department could hire to prosecute them. In effect, gangsters were denied the use of their money in their defense. This was the beginning of an unconstitutional assault on private property and due process, but the judiciary, desiring that the Mafia be imprisoned, ignored their constitutional responsibility. The judges joined in the chase after devils.

A next step was to go further in the "war on drugs" and confiscate the property of those suspected of drug crimes. The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1984 declared forfeitable all real property, including any right, title or interest in anything associated in any way with the commission of a drug crime.

Comment: See also:

The declining Empire of Chaos is losing its mind over Iran

Federico Pieraccini
The Strategic Culture Foundation
Mon, 05 Aug 2019 18:57 UTC

The transition in recent years from a unipolar to a multipolar world order has created international tensions that seem to threaten to escalate into clashes between regional and global powers.

In 2014 we were almost at the point of no return in Ukraine following the coup d'etat supported and funded by NATO and involving extremist right-wing Ukrainian nationalists. The conflict in the Donbass risked escalating into a conflict between NATO and the Russian Federation, every day in the summer and autumn of 2014 threatening to be doomsday. Rather than respond to the understandable impulse to send Russian troops into Ukraine to defend the population of Donbass, Putin had the presence of mind to pursue the less direct and more sensible strategy of supporting the material capacity of the residents of Donbass to resist the depredations of the Ukrainian army and their neo-Nazi Banderite thugs. Meanwhile, Europe's inept leaders initially egged on Ukraine's destabilization, only to get cold feet after reflecting on the possibility of having a conflict between Moscow and Washington fought on European soil.

With the resistance in Donbass managing to successfully hold back Ukrainian assaults, the conflict began to freeze, almost to the point of a complete ceasefire, even as Ukrainian provocations continue to this day.

Russia undercuts US dollar dominance by shifting trade to local currencies

RT
Mon, 05 Aug 2019 17:53 UTC

Russia has nearly halved the share of the US dollar in trade with India and China and continued to reduce the use of the greenback in deals with the EU, sticking to its pledge to de-dollarize the economy.

It's the first time that the dollar has lost the leading position in Russia's export trade with its main trading partners. As of the end of the first quarter of 2019, more than 75 percent of Russian exports to India were paid for in rubles. Local currency trade has nearly quadrupled compared to the same period last year and more than doubled since the end of 2018.

Comment:

American 'wild, wild West' needs taming, but politicizing cold-blooded murder the wrong way to do it

Robert Bridge
RT
Mon, 05 Aug 2019 17:24 UTC

This weekend witnessed another politically-fueled hate-fest in the US as liberals raged against Donald Trump, blaming him for two mass shootings in as many days. Welcome to US election season.

Second only to the news of innocent people having their lives cut tragically short is the realization that there are individuals who would use those deaths to advance an agenda, invariably a political one. And so it happened with a mass shooting in El Paso on Saturday, followed up just hours later with another in Dayton, Ohio - another 29 Americans added to the growing list of victims in the most heavily armed nation in the world.

Yet the public response to those cold-blooded murders fell far short of the decorum the occasion required. Twitter, for example, our electronic town square for exchanging ideas and so much more, lit up like some kind of Stephen King amusement park where the evil clowns had locked the front gates and seized control. Thus, we were treated to a host of puerile, expletive-filled rants against Donald Trump, as if the 45th president of the United States himself had pulled the trigger in those savage attacks. Unfortunately, those sort of deranged opinions are par for the course. That's the beauty of democracy; before you are able to hear from a single Nobel laureate you must deal with the opinions of 10,000 maniacs first.

America's elites are fractured - And primed to either destroy or self-destruct

Alastair Crooke
Strategic Culture
Sat, 03 Aug 2019 12:00 UTC

Something is 'up'. When two Financial Times columnists - pillars of the western Establishment - raise a warning flag, we must take note: Martin Wolf was first off, with a piece dramatically headlined: The looming 100-year, US-China Conflict. No 'mere' trade war, he implied, but a full-spectrum struggle. Then his FT colleague Edward Luce, pointed out that Wolf's "argument is more nuanced than the headline. Having spent part of this week among leading policymakers and thinkers at the annual Aspen Security Forum in Colorado," Luce writes, "I am inclined to think Martin was not exaggerating. The speed with which US political leaders of all stripes have united behind the idea of a 'new cold war' is something that takes my breath away. Eighteen months ago the phrase was dismissed as fringe scaremongering. Today it is consensus."

A significant shift is underway in US policy circles, it seems. Luce's final 'take' is that "it is very hard to see what, or who, is going to prevent this great power rivalry from dominating the 21st century". It is clear that there is indeed now a clear bi-partisan consensus in the US on China. Luce is surely right. But that is far from being the end of it. A collective psychology of belligerence seems to be taking shape, and, as one commentator noted, it has become not just a great-power rivalry, but a rivalry amongst 'Beltway' policy wonks to show "who has the bigger dick".

Comment: If the US does something stupid, the others will smack it. And that'll be the end of it. More likely though, US braggadocio is inversely proportional to its aggressive capabilities, which are diminishing in a Russian-Chinese-led world.

100 years? They wish! This thing is almost running on empty. It certainly hasn't got more than a decade left in the engine.

See also:

Pakistani PM Kahn ACCEPTS Trump's offer of mediation, spurring India to revoke Kashmir's autonomy

RT
Sun, 04 Aug 2019 14:32 UTC

Comment: The legacy media never saw this coming!

After mocking Trump for offering to mediate between India and Pakistan over the status of Kashmir and the two nuclear-armed powers' recent dangerous border clashes, suggesting he was ignorant for world affairs and wholly incapable of doing so, the Pakistani PM has accepted his offer...

Donald Trump should help Islamabad and New Delhi resolve their differences over disputed Kashmir, the Pakistani PM said. The US president earlier claimed his mediation was requested by India, but Indian officials denied this.

"President Trump offered to mediate on Kashmir. This is the time to do so as the situation deteriorates there," Khan tweeted on Sunday.

He was referring to what Trump said during their present meeting, suggesting that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to be a mediator between India and Pakistan. Indian officials denied such a request was ever made and said India will only speak to Pakistan about the Kashmir dispute.

Comment: In response, India has today (Monday 5th) announced the revocation of its 70-year-old constitutional provision recognising special autonomous status for Kashmir (a substantial part of it anyway).

In other words, India is staking its claim to the disputed region between itself and Pakistan.

What can Pakistan, realistically, do to stop India, short of nuclear war against its far larger neighbor?

Run to Uncle Sam for help!?

Winternights3 There's probs a good connection! Just think about it.

sbc

Moving the goalposts. and people are too shit stupid to notice or care

sbc

Hang em... All the jab pushers. At this point they are trying very hard to continue blatant bullshit lies in a bid for total societal control

sbc

It was interesting when the brothers (their family owns the dealerships/service center that were vandalized - something of like 130+ cars burned...

Scoot Over

I ain't going to watch any more than I didn't watch the OJ trial, which ended exactly as I predicted. The thing is that the state should have...

Rowan Cocoan

Puppet Masters

Putin: US quitting INF unleashes 'fundamental risks' for all in potential 'unrestrained' arms race

OAN sent 'Cease and Desist' notices to MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Daily Beast, Kevin Poulson - lawsuits may follow

Bellingcat founder unloads 4,000-word assault on Tulsi Gabbard for questioning Syria chem attacks

DOJ to release Bruce Ohr 302 reports, other docs this week

Paul Craig Roberts: America's collapse, Part 1: 'Asset Forfeiture'

The declining Empire of Chaos is losing its mind over Iran

Russia undercuts US dollar dominance by shifting trade to local currencies

American 'wild, wild West' needs taming, but politicizing cold-blooded murder the wrong way to do it

America's elites are fractured - And primed to either destroy or self-destruct

Pakistani PM Kahn ACCEPTS Trump's offer of mediation, spurring India to revoke Kashmir's autonomy

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