Puppet Masters
Nevertheless, I feel sorry for him. I started feeling sorry for him when he announced he would run for President of the United States. You see, I had inside information. I had held a presidential appointment from a President of the United States. I ended up fighting battles for him against entrenched interests who opposed his policies to end stagflation and the cold war. I helped to win the battles for him, as his accolades to me testify, but my success ended any career for me in government.
I knew that, unlike Reagan who had prepared his run over the years and had a movement behind him, Trump had not. Moreover, also unlike Reagan, Trump had no idea of what he was walking into and no idea of who to appoint to important offices who might be inclined to help him. Generally speaking, the value of a presidential appointment, such as the one I had, lies NOT in helping the president, but in helping the ruling private establishment. Any Assistant Secretary can be very helpful to private interests and end up a multi-millionaire. Indeed, most of them do.
But I put the country's interest ahead of mine and helped Reagan to cure stagflation and to end the cold war. Curing stagflation was perceived as a threat by the economics profession which had no cure and didn't want to be shown up by dissident supply-side economists, and much of Wall Street misunderstood what the media called "Reaganomics" as more inflationary deficit spending that threatened their stock and bond portfolios. Ending the Cold War threatened the budget of the military/security complex, a dangerous undertaking.
Mattis, who left the Trump administration in January, also slammed Pakistan's obsession with India, saying it "views all geopolitics through the prism of its hostility toward India" and that has also shaped their policy on Afghanistan as "the Pakistan military wanted a friendly government in Kabul that was resistant to Indian influence".
He has long years of experience dealing with Pakistan and South Asia, first as a top US Marine Corps commandeer in Afghanistan, head of US central command and then as secretary of defense.
"Of all the countries I've dealt with, I consider Pakistan to be the most dangerous, because of the radicalization of its society and the availability of nuclear weapons," Mattis has written in "Call Sign Chaos", an autobiography that hit the stands Tuesday. "The result would be disastrous." Pakistan has the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenal, with a substantial quantities of tactical weapons that its leaders have publicly boasted about, including a member or Prime Minister Imran Khan's cabinet recently. And Mattis writes, echoing a longstanding US concern, "We can't have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world falling into the hands of the terrorists breeding in their midst."
Comment: No, we can't have that. Mattis isn't exactly wrong about Pakistan as a hub for radicalization. But what he neglects to mention is the cozy relationship the CIA has had with the ISI - and the fact that the U.S. has supported, and continues to support, those very terrorists Mattis is so worried about. The U.S., Israel, UK, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan - all have had a hand in creating the world of terrorism we live in today. And the crazy thing is, in their minds, they're the ones who should be given the task of fighting those very terrorists. Why should we trust them, especially given the following revelations? See: 'It's a tip of an iceberg': Bulgarian journo reveals how US-purchased arms end up with ISIS in Yemen
Soybeans and their processed derivatives were the second-biggest agricultural export from Russia's Far East, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Sergey Levitin said at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok.
"Over the past year, these exports doubled and amounted to 6.5 percent of the total export volumes from the Far East. This became possible due to a significant increase in demand from the Chinese market due to its trade conflict with the US," he said.
'It's a tip of an iceberg': Bulgarian journo reveals how US-purchased arms end up with ISIS in Yemen
This story began back in June, when Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists in Yemen demonstrated several Serbian-made 82mm mortar shells in their propaganda video. Independent investigative journalist, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, believes that the deadly munitions ended up with the jihadists after going through US hands.
Tracing origins
Clearly visible on one of the shells is a mark that reads '82 mm M74HE mortar shells KV lot 04/18.' The letters KV stand for the Serbian state arms manufacturer Krusik, located in the town of Valjevo, while the digits 04/18 refer to lot 04 produced in 2018. One should not jump to any conclusions, however, as it is not the Serbs who were responsible for the shells suddenly appearing in the hands of terrorists, according to Gaytandzhieva.
A trove of "explosive" leaked documents she said she received from an "anonymous source" shows that the lot in question was part of a deal between the Serbian arms factory and a Pentagon contractor, Alliant Techsystems LLC. It was part of a purchase of more than 100,000 such shells "for the needs of the US government."
Ankara is currently in tense negotiations with the United States over Erdogan's plan to militarily carve out a large swathe of territory along the Turkish-Syrian border which would serve as a buffer zone of sorts where US-backed Kurdish militias could not operate.
Erdogan said one million refugees could settle in the new buffer territory, thus alleviating the crisis on Turkish soil, and ultimately for Europe as well.
Comment: Erdogan has been pushing for this
- Cavusoglu: Create US-Turkish safe zone to eliminate Kurds. Syria calls it 'flagrant aggression' and interference
- Turkish Defence Ministry says Turkey and US have agreed on joint centre to coordinate Syrian 'safe zone'
- Erdogan warns of launching own offensive in northern Syria if US delays safe zone
- Turkey begins operation in Syria to establish buffer zone: Report
- Lavrov: Turkey buffer zone plan for Syria violates international law
The Yemeni government has been claiming that Abu Dhabi is supporting the separatists and has been calling on the United Arab Emirates to abandon policies aimed at dividing the country. The United Arab Emirates, which is part of the Saudi-led coalition backing the Yemeni government in its fight against the Houthi rebels, has denied claims it supports the STC.
The source said that around 70 UAE combat vehicles had been brought on a vessel to Aden and deployed to a camp of the Security Belt Forces, loyal to the STC.
Meanwhile, a Yemeni military source reported that the military had deployed tanks, multiple rocket launchers and artillery to the city of Ataq, the administrative centre of the Shawbah province, neighbouring Aden.
Comment: For more background on the situation in Yemen in general and the situation with the UAE in particular, see:
- Islamic State Weapons in Yemen Traced Back to US Government: Serbia Files (part 1)
- Yemen coalition falling apart - Hadi urges end of UAE strikes, fears secession

President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Bill Dudley speaks during the Bank of England Markets Forum 2018, at Bloomberg, in central London, Britain, May 24, 2018.
Unfortunately for former Goldman managing director and NY Fed president, Bill "let them eat iPads" Dudley, that is a saying he is not familiar with, and one week after his stunning Bloomberg op-ed in which he advocated the Fed to prevent Trump's 2020 re-election by sending the economy in a recession, resulting in a brutal response from virtually everyone who slammed Dudley's musings as the final proof that the Fed was in fact a political animal, one which is more powerful than the executive branch in its ability to pick and choose presidents, Dudley is out with an "explainer", seeking to "answer" some of the main questions posed by his "provocative" piece.
After reading "What I Meant When I Said 'Don't Enable Trump", let's just say that Dudley fails in explaining why he said is not what he said, and if anything he has successfully doubled down, giving Trump even more ammunition to throw the book at the political Fed for not cutting rates fast enough as the president has been demanding for months, and for eventually taking the blame for the coming economic and market crash.
"The Russians had good reason to arrest Sergei Magnitsky for Hermitage tax evasion" said the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday, Aug 27, 2019. That is a major admission by a western institution.
The Court decision also describes terrible medical care that everyone acknowledges contributed to the death of the Russian accountant jailed for his collaboration in a major tax evasion crime.
But then it makes a judgment based on no evidence that is hard to explain outside a political Russophobic attack.
"Bruises on wrists and ankles could come from beatings"
Magnitsky who died of pancreatitis and related diseases had bruises on his wrists and ankles. "The Court considers that the injuries could have arguably been received as a result of beatings by prison officers."
"Could have" is not a usual basis for a court decision. Such bruises of course, based on accepted autopsy reports, could not have caused his death. And there is no evidence they were inflicted by prison officers.
But they became the reason for a Court finding that "Taking into account the intentional character of the ill-treatment (not proved), the nature of the injuries (bruises) and the level of suffering (obviously from illness) to which [Magnitsky] was subjected, the Court finds that the act of violence in question amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment."
Except there was no act of violence cited and proved.

Founder and CEO of Overstock.com Patrick Byrne attends Consensus 2019 at the Hilton Midtown on May 15, 2019 in New York City.
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne came to me months ago with a wild, difficult tale. I told him any story would have to come with a caveat.
"There's not going to be any way to tell this," I told him, "without explaining to readers you're a different sort of dude."
Unable to confirm enough of his story, I ended up hesitating. The tale is now out, and Byrne, whom I've known and liked for almost a decade, is taking a beating in the press. It's unfortunate, and the import of his story is going unnoticed because reporters are focusing instead on Byrne's eccentricities.
Comment: We don't find anything strange about the I.C. seeking out a suitable victim to portray as a Russian agent just to hurt Trump's chances of having a successful meeting with Putin. They're THAT unpatriotic and demented.
See also:
- Russian 'Agent' Maria Butina Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison on 'Conspiracy' Charge
- NATO 'Deep State' and Israeli interests both served by the collapse of the Austrian government
- Joe Quinn on Sputnik: 'Deep State Wants Trump to Acknowledge Russian Collusion, Thus Undermine His Own Presidency'
The tech platforms met with government officials at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters on Wednesday, the company has confirmed, boasting that Big Tech and Big Brother have developed a "comprehensive strategy" to get control of previous election-related "vulnerabilities" while "analyzing and getting ahead of new threats."
Facebook has scrambled to get in front of the 2020 election after being blamed for Trump's 2016 electoral victory over merely allowing the "Russian trolls" to buy a bunch of ads, most of which appeared after the vote and had nothing to do with the election. But the company insisted last week it had tightened its rules for verifying purchasers of "political" ads, for real this time, after the 2018 contest showed they could still be duped into running obviously-fake ads "paid for by" the Islamic State terror group and Cambridge Analytica.














Comment: This story is bigger than Iran-Contra, but the mainstream media aren't touching it with a ten-foot pole. Gaytandzhieva has uncovered that the U.S. is diverting weapons to al-Qaeda and ISIS - the very terrorists who are supposed to have been the target of the war on terror for the past 18 years. And they're doing so "for the needs of the U.S. government." Just let that sink in. SOTT has been saying this for as long as they've been doing it - but Gaytandzhieva has uncovered the proof. So naturally, the MSM must not cover it at all. That would necessitate some heads to roll - probably an uncomfortably large number, including some at the very top of the U.S. power structure. And that can never happen.
See the full reports:
- US Task Force Smoking Gun smuggles weapons to Syria: Serbia files (part 2)
- Islamic State Weapons in Yemen Traced Back to US Government: Serbia Files (part 1)
And Gaytandzhieva's previous investigative work: