Puppet Masters

The war-loving Deep State is Trump's biggest obstacle to peace on the Korean peninsula

Finian Cunningham
RT
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 19:05 UTC

© Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters
US Army's AH-64 Apache helicopters fire during a US-South Korea joint live-fire military exercise, South Korea, April 21, 2017

President Donald Trump appeared to blindside everyone this week when he announced he was cancelling "war games" on the Korean Peninsula as a gesture of peaceful intent towards North Korea.

If Trump stands by that commitment then it will be key to a successful resolution of the decades-old conflict, with the specific result of North Korea fulfilling its vow to scrap nuclear weapons.

Significantly, following his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump referred to the annual joint military exercises between US and South Korean forces as "provocative" and "inappropriate" in the new context of peaceful exchange.

Until recently, the Trump administration - like previous US administrations - had refused to consider a reciprocal move over suspending its war maneuvers on the Korean Peninsula in return for North Korea's nuclear disarmament.

Congress wants to bind Trump's hands on troop removal from Korean peninsula

Frank Sellers
The Duran
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 18:43 UTC

When the President wants to wage a war somewhere, he just does it, and no one bats an eye. But for the first time in a very long time, as opposed to escalating tensions, invading, and bombing somewhere, a US president is proposing to deescalate a situation and establish peace somewhere.

That's a major thing in and of itself. But that's not alright in the minds of US congressmen, who are concerned that a peace arrangement might be brokered with North Korea if Trump withdraws American troops from the Korean peninsula.

Due to this worry, predicated on the reality that they simply don't trust Trump at his word, quite openly, they are drafting up some legislation, in both houses, that would bind the president's hands in order to prevent any meaningful reduction or removal of US military presence in Korea.

Trade War: Trump puts 25% tariff on $50bln worth of Chinese imports, Beijing responds in kind

RT
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 19:00 UTC

The White House has announced a 25-percent tariff on $50 billion worth of Chinese goods in what it calls a clampdown on unfair trade practices by Beijing.

The US trade representative's office said it issued a revised China tariff list covering 1,102 separate product categories. The first package of revised tariffs will apply to $34 billion of Chinese imports, on 818 product lines, and will enter into effect from July 6. The second package will target the remaining $16 billion of Chinese goods, on 284 product lines.

Since his presidential election campaign, US President Donald Trump has pledged to cut the trade deficit between the US and China and to curb Beijing's allegedly unfair trade practices. Trump has also accused China of stealing US technology and intellectual property.

Comment: China's immediate response was to impose tariffs on "US agricultural products, fish and automobiles worth some $34 billion worth of US goods, with another $16 billion worth of products subject to the 25 percent duty at a later date", Xinhua reported.

Armenian PM to RT: We are open to relations with US and EU, but not at expense of Russian ties

RT
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 17:08 UTC

Those who claim that anti-Russian political forces have come to power in Armenia are wrong, newly-elected Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan told RT, adding that relations with the West won't come at the expense of Moscow-Yerevan ties.

There are "forces who want to paint" street protests in the Armenian capital and Pashinyan coming to power "in a different light," the man who was sworn-in as prime minister in May told RT's Ilya Petrenko in an exclusive interview. "They want to make it look like anti-Russian political forces have come to power in Armenia," he said.

The prime minister dismissed all such claims, saying "the people who made the revolution happen, had no problem with Armenia's foreign policy" and that it was "a purely internal process." He stressed: "Those who said the political changes in Armenia will lead to problems in Armenian-Russian relations were wrong."

Propaganda alert! Netanyahu tries to polish image by making 'offer' of irrigation technology to drought-stricken Iran

Matfey Shaheen
The Duran
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 17:15 UTC

Israeli PM Netanyahu offered Iranian people irrigation technology in PR Video

Israeli PM Netanyahu made a bizarre offer to the Iranian people - if it can even be called an offer.

His "offer", came in the form of a youtube video, which was also re-uploaded with Arabic and Farsi (Persian/Iranian) subtitles. In the video, he says Iran is suffering from major lack of water, and Israel wants to help by providing the Iranian people irrigation technology with seemingly no catch. In the video, he says that "The Iranian regime shouts "death to Israel". In response, Israel shouts, "Life to the Iranian people".

The video seems to be a PR scheme, in which he is trying to frame himself as the Savior of the Iranian people, saying that Israel stands with them, and cares about them more than their own government.

If you watch the video, and understand the situation, you realize however that his "offer" is a thinly veiled PR scheme at best.

Memo reveals Killary emails were accessed by 'foreign actors'

Catherine Herridge and Adam Shaw
Fox News
Thu, 14 Jun 2018 16:56 UTC

"Foreign actors" obtained access to some of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails -- including at least one email classified as "secret" -- according to a new memo from two GOP-led House committees and an internal FBI email.

Fox News obtained the memo prepared by the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, which lays out key interim findings ahead of next week's hearing with Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The IG, separately, is expected to release his highly anticipated report on the Clinton email case later Thursday.

The House committees, which conducted a joint probe into decisions made by the DOJ in 2016 and 2017, addressed a range of issues in their memo including Clinton's email security.

"Documents provided to the Committees show foreign actors obtained access to some of Mrs. Clinton's emails -- including at least one email classified 'Secret,'" the memo says, ad ding that foreign actors also accessed the private accounts of some Clinton staffers.

North Korean human rights abuses: Convenient tales, but without any actual evidence

Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
Thu, 14 Jun 2018 16:42 UTC

Claims of North Korean human rights abuses spearheaded attempts to undermine US-North Korean negotiations in Singapore. While the talks are unlikely to change the long-laid agendas of special interests across the West who have cultivated and profit from the ongoing conflict, it is important to confront these claims and diminish the intended effect they are meant to have in buttressing the notion of American exceptionalism and justifying American interventionism.

Tales of North Korean human rights abuses are so pervasive and persistent that even those opposed to US exceptionalism and interventionism have shied away from confronting and refuting them.

Rumors Built Upon Rumors

One would expect such significant accusations to be backed up by an equally significant amount of evidence. Yet - like most of what the Western media produces and spreads among the public consciousness - there is little evidence at all.

In most cases, tales of North Korean abuses are derived from hearsay by alleged witnesses and supposed defectors who no longer reside in North Korea.

Comment: Here's the thing: if there are such abuses going on in North Korea, only the defectors would be able to say anything about them. It was the same with the Soviet Union. Sure, some defectors would exaggerate or make up stories, but that didn't change the fact that there were actual abuses. But that's not even the issue. Abuses or not, the focus on them is just the rationalization for a different agenda. Cartalucci is right about that. And even if some of the defectors' stories are true, that doesn't justify the decades of demonization, sanctions, and aggressive policy from the West.

'Prove that you are independent': Russian MP Poklonskaya invites Trump to visit Crimea

RT
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 18:44 UTC

© Mikhael Klimentyev / Sputnik
Natalya Poklonskaya, deputy chair of the State Duma Committee for Security listens to Vladimir Putin's annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly

Ex-chief Crimean prosecutor and now-Russian MP Natalia Poklonskaya invited President Trump to visit Crimea to see how true his alleged statement - that Crimea is Russian - is.

Poklonskaya made the invitation soon after Buzzfeed quoted two unnamed diplomatic sources as saying that at a recent summit, US President Donald Trump told G7 leaders that Crimea is Russian because everyone who lives there speaks Russian.

On Friday, Interfax reported that the press secretary of the US Embassy in Moscow commented on the news by saying that the official position of the US is that Crimea is part of Ukraine and that the US sanctions imposed on Russia over its reunification with the Crimean Republic would remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine.

As the Atlanticist vision crumbles Europe faces a crossroad

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 16:35 UTC

The world events of the past days are significant far beyond the apparent divide within the G7 industrial nations. If we imagine the planet as a giant electric force field, the lines of flux are in dramatic reordering as the post-1945 global dollar-based system comes to its disordered end phase. Europe's political elites are currently split between rationality and irrationality. The developments to the East however are drawing more and more force and we are seeing the early phases of what might be called a geopolitical polarity reversal within the EU from West to East. The latest developments across Eurasia including the Middle East, Iran and above all between Russia and China are gaining in importance as Washington offers only war, whether trade war, sanctions war, terror war or kinetic war.

The spectacle of a US President tweeting about its long-standing NATO ally and bordering country, Canada, openly calling the Canadian Prime Minister "dishonest and weak," and threatening new import tariffs for cars imported from Canada, is from all appearances not some whim of an erratic US President but rather a calculated strategy of putting all US allies off balance. It comes after Washington unilaterally tore up the Iran nuclear agreement to the dismay of Europe, Russia and China as well as Iran. On top of that the US announced new trade war tariffs on EU aluminum and steel in open violation of WTO agreements.

Mueller scrambles to limit evidence after indicted Russian firm actually shows up to defend itself in court

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:34 UTC

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is scrambling to limit pretrial evidence handed over to a Russian company he indicted in February over alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, according to Bloomberg.

Mueller asked a Washington federal Judge for a protective order that would prevent the delivery of copious evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, one of three Russian firms and 13 Russian nationals. The indictment accuses the firm of producing propaganda, pretending to be U.S. activists online and posting political content on social media in order to sow discord among American voters.

The special counsel's office argues that the risk of the evidence leaking or falling into the hands of foreign intelligence services, especially Russia, would assist the Kremlin's active "interference operations" against the United States.

I said this would happen...now they are looking to mandate companies with less that 100 employees...shits getting real, people[Link]

Bezel Bub

it's all a lie ! :O

cracker

"Falling out of windows" as an occupational hazard for people with access to sensitive information - compliments of the Soviet playbook and even...

Tsakoug

covid will seem like a walk in the park when the proper cold sets in later this month and beyond...

steven23

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Rowan Cocoan

Puppet Masters

The war-loving Deep State is Trump's biggest obstacle to peace on the Korean peninsula

Congress wants to bind Trump's hands on troop removal from Korean peninsula

Trade War: Trump puts 25% tariff on $50bln worth of Chinese imports, Beijing responds in kind

Armenian PM to RT: We are open to relations with US and EU, but not at expense of Russian ties

Propaganda alert! Netanyahu tries to polish image by making 'offer' of irrigation technology to drought-stricken Iran

Memo reveals Killary emails were accessed by 'foreign actors'

North Korean human rights abuses: Convenient tales, but without any actual evidence

'Prove that you are independent': Russian MP Poklonskaya invites Trump to visit Crimea

As the Atlanticist vision crumbles Europe faces a crossroad

Mueller scrambles to limit evidence after indicted Russian firm actually shows up to defend itself in court

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