Puppet Masters

Germany says it needs Nord Stream 2, denies being captive to Russian energy supplies

RT
Mon, 08 Jul 2019 16:45 UTC

The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is one of the ways for Germany to meet its growing energy demand, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has said, rebuffing criticism that the project increases Russia's energy leverage on Berlin.

Germany will have an increased demand for natural gas, as the country is phasing out coal and nuclear power, the minister said in an interview to Bild shortly before his trip to the US - one of the most vocal critics of the Nord Stream 2 project.

Comment: That's the problem right there. Why phase out nuclear in the first place? It's cheaper and more efficient. But regardless of the motivation there, Altmaier is right: Germany needs more natural gas. Russia has it. So they're engaging in a mutually beneficial transaction. All the hysteria over the fact that it's Russia is just that: hysteria.

"We do not depend on Russia. It is about shortening delivery routes and creating new supply structures," Altmaier said. He added that the completion of the pipeline, designed to deliver Russian gas to Europe, serves the same purpose as building new terminals for American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the country.

The statement came as the Nord Stream 2 received another barrage of criticism, this time from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). On Sunday, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's committee adopted a resolution against the Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream projects, labeling them a tool that Moscow could allegedly use for its political purposes.

Comment: Cue the pearl clutching.

Witnesses in FISA abuse probe agree to talk to DOJ inspector general

Catherine Herridge & Cyd Upson
Fox News
Mon, 08 Jul 2019 09:45 UTC

© Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP/Getty Images
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz looks on as he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on "Examining the Inspector General's First Report on Justice Department and FBI Actions in Advance of the 2016 Presidential Election" in the Hart Senate Office Building on June 18, 2018, on Capitol Hill.

Key witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the 11th hour, Fox News has learned.

Sources familiar with the matter said at least one witness outside the Justice Department and FBI started cooperating -- a breakthrough that came after Attorney General William Barr ordered U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead a separate investigation into the origins of the bureau's 2016 Russia case that laid the foundation for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.

While the investigative phase of the inspector general's long-running probe is said to be complete, the sources said recent developments required some witnesses to be reinterviewed. And while Barr testified that he expected the report into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse to be ready in May or last month, multiple sources said the timeline has slipped.

The Kafkaesque nightmare of Julian Assange and Chris Williamson

Neil Clark
Sputnik
Mon, 08 Jul 2019 09:45 UTC

'Someone must have been slandering Josef K, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested'.

A few days ago, on 3rd July, Julian Assange celebrated his 48th birthday, if 'celebrated' is a word that can be used for a man in his predicament.

By a strange coincidence, the imprisoned journalist shares his birthday with Franz Kafka, a man who knew all about persecution.

In his classic novel The Trial, Kafka tells the story of one Josef K, a man who awakes one morning to find himself under arrest for a crime which is not revealed to him. The parallels with Julian Assange's plight are unsettling.

Fake history with real consequences: Israel's Third Temple movement rebrands theocracy as "civil rights"

Whitney Webb
MintPress News
Wed, 03 Jul 2019 20:15 UTC

© Sebastian Scheiner/Associated Press
Israeli Knesset member Yehuda Glick, center, speaks to journalists after visiting at the compound in Jerusalem, Aug. 29, 2017.

In a troubling trend that continues to be overlooked by international media, the Temple Activist movement that seeks to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and replace it with a Third Temple continues to advance its agenda. The movement's forward progress is largely thanks to its successful efforts in recent years to rebrand as a "civil rights" movement — securing support from secular and religious Zionists alike — as well as to growing levels of support in Israel's executive and legislative branches of government.

As was detailed in Part I of this series, the Temple Activist movement is now more mainstream than ever before and its effort to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam, has advanced with great rapidity since the year began and has picked up precipitously in recent weeks. Yet this new face of the Temple Activist movement — one that claims that its quest is to wrest control of the holy site from Jordanian and Palestinian custody in the name of "equal rights" for Israeli Jews — obfuscates the troubling origins of this once-fringe yet now normalized campaign.

Comment: Judaism is built on a pile of myths and frauds that fanatics are willing to start a war over.

EU's 'Russian meddling' alert system "at risk of becoming defunct" - because there isn't any

RT
Sun, 07 Jul 2019 01:30 UTC

The EU's Rapid Alert System, created to tackle 'Russian meddling', hasn't sounded a single alarm in the six months of its existence, a report has found.

In a piece on the struggles of the ambitious project, the New York Times cited an inside joke popular in Brussels before the European Parliament election in May about the Rapid Alert System: "It's not rapid. There are no alerts. And there's no system."

Comment: It's just a shameless smear tactic.

The system has never issued any warnings, the NYT reports, but not before setting the mood by talking about how "Russian efforts metastasized" during the 2016 election in the US, how analysts spotted "unmistakable signs" of the Kremlin's hand in an Austrian political scandal, and quoting EU officials who speak of "continued and sustained disinformation activity from Russian sources."

Comment: See also:

British oil tanker slows to 'adjust its arrival time', authorities wrongly blame Iran

Basit Mahmood
Metro
Sun, 07 Jul 2019 21:25 UTC

© Getty
The British registered tanker appeared to veer off course, as it slowed to a stop and began drifting south in the Persian Gulf

A British registered tanker which began drifting off the coast of Iran caused a major scare this morning, with fears that Iranian forces had boarded the vessel.

The Pacific Voyager tanker was en-route from Singapore to Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia, when it slowed down and stopped around 6am today.

Iranian officials denied that they had boarded the boat.

Earlier in the week, Royal Marines Commandos boarded the Panamanian-flagged Grace 1, as it passed by Gibraltar. The supertanker, which is owned by Iran, is suspected of carrying crude oil to Syria in breach of EU sanctions.

Comment: It's obvious who the aggressor is here; Iranian forces did not even board the UK's Pacific Voyager whereas British forces have detained Iran's Grace 1.

Mohsen Rezaee, secretary of Iran's Expediency Discernment Council and a commander in the Revolutionary Guards, said it was Iran's 'duty' to retaliate following the interception of the Grace 1 tanker by Royal Marines and Gibraltar police on Thursday.

Comment: It makes for hysterical headlines but it's all a rather feeble attempt by the US and EU to antagonize Iran. They can't detain all the oil shipments, and, in the end, Russia and China, allies of Iran and Syria, won't stand for it forever, and they'll be forced to join in the retaliation if the West carries on like this:

Fingers crossed - New York activists file formal complaint with police demanding Hillary Clinton's arrest

Sputnik News
Sun, 07 Jul 2019 20:33 UTC

© AP Photo / Paul Sancya
Former President Bill Clinton and wife Hillary Clinton, left, talking during the funeral service for Aretha Franklin at Greater Grace Temple, Friday, Aug. 31, 2018, in Detroit.

The former first lady has been a target among opponents for her numerous suspected crimes including alleged pay-to-play machinations during her tenure as secretary of state, and controversy over her use of a private email server during her time in office.

Activists from Equal Justice Tour, a religious political action group petitioning to have Hillary Clinton "be held accountable" for her alleged "wrongdoing at the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi, Haiti, Email Destruction and Uranium One," have filed a formal complaint with the New Castle Police Department in Chappaqua, New York State, where Clinton has a residence.

On Saturday, the activists live-streamed a video on Facebook showing members of the group walking into the police station and handing over notarized copies of the complaint to an officer. The officer said he would forward the document to his superiors.

Soros and the 'business' of illegal immigration, a 'criminal phenomenon' - An interview with Francesca Totolo

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Sun, 12 May 2019 09:20 UTC

"Never before has a criminal phenomenon enjoyed widespread international support by governments, political parties, religious and civilian organizations, popular opinion, and never before has a sovereign state renounced to exercise control over its borders."

These opening words by Gianandrea Gaiani are a fitting introduction to Francesca Totolo's latest book Inferno Spa. Gaiani is no stranger to the business of illegal immigration, being an author of several books on the subject. He was interviewed by Gefira in 2017 when the Italian government was then still a center-left pro-migrants coalition. Totolo has agreed to an exclusive interview for Gefira and we recently met her in Florence, where she was presenting her new book.

Francesca Totolo is a freelance investigative journalist and collaborates with a variety of Italian and international press agencies and websites. Her investigations have been published both in Italy and abroad. We could easily call Totolo a diligent - and outspoken - journalist as her new book, which she wrote with Dante's Inferno in mind, involves just that: solid, painstaking, diligent research and fact-checking. The result is the equivalent of an encyclopedia of who's who in the business (Spa is the Italian acronym for joint-stock company, equivalent of the German AG) of the immigrants' industry, an industry which moves an unending flow of human beings and money.

She has divided her book into different sections, entitling them with some of Dante's appellatives in his Divine Comedy: first the ferrymen or Charons who deliver thousands of human beings to the other bank, then the hypocritical NGOs followed by the traitors to the country at all levels, sided by the omnipresent politically correct mainstream media and well-funded organizations of all sorts.

All these infernal characters have in the end one Master Mind, who acts like a modern and nefarious Virgil: George Soros and his mind-boggling network. Totolo is ready to point out, at the conclusion of her book, that Soros is himself an actor, albeit of the highest level, lending his face to higher "movers and shakers behind the curtains", who have already decided that the original European population must be replaced.

Korybko: Is Vladimir Putin a social conservative leader?

Andrew Korybko
Global Research
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC

The Russian leader reminded the world of his original appeal as one of its socio-conservative leaders during an interview that he gave to the Financial Times late last week in which he spoke out strongly against liberalism and staunchly defended traditional values.

Part of President Putin's original appeal worldwide was that he was one of the first socio-conservative leaders of a Great Power in the 21st century, though Trump's meteoric rise to power and characteristic showmanship eventually overshadowed the soft power attractiveness of the Russian leader. As if on cue, Putin took the opportunity to proudly display his socio-conservative credentials during an interview that he gave to the Financial Times last week ahead of the G20. While a myriad of topics were covered during this extensive discussion, the most intriguing insight that he shared was about the present state of affairs in the West, which will undoubtedly attract the attention of the audience in that part of the world where his international reputation has been under the most ferocious attack.

Julian Assange, censorship power and the real war on the free press

Ted Galen Carpenter
The American Conservative
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC

Don't be fooled: those attacking him want censorship powers not seen since the Nixon administration.

Trump administration officials were enthusiastic when Ecuador decided to expel Julian Assange from its embassy in London, where he had received sanctuary for nearly seven years. British authorities promptly jailed him for jumping bail on sexual assault charges in Sweden, and U.S. officials began plans to have Assange extradited to face espionage charges in this country. He just turned 48 in prison on July 3.

Last month, the Department of Justice added 17 counts to the one-count indictment that it had filed years earlier. His current imprisonment in Britain and the probability of a lengthy extradition battle have delayed the prospect of a high-profile trial in the United States, but that outcome remains Washington's goal. The United States reportedly submitted a formal extradition request on June 6.

The issues at stake go far beyond whether Assange is an admirable (or even a reasonably likeable) person. He symbolizes a crucial fight over freedom of the press and the ability of journalists to expose government misconduct without fear of criminal prosecution. Unfortunately, a disturbing number of "establishment" journalists in the United States seem willing — indeed, eager — to throw him to the government wolves.

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

I've got an idea to help folks like this. Anyone know of any in Central Florida? R.C.

Rowan Cocoan

Puppet Masters

Germany says it needs Nord Stream 2, denies being captive to Russian energy supplies

Witnesses in FISA abuse probe agree to talk to DOJ inspector general

The Kafkaesque nightmare of Julian Assange and Chris Williamson

Fake history with real consequences: Israel's Third Temple movement rebrands theocracy as "civil rights"

EU's 'Russian meddling' alert system "at risk of becoming defunct" - because there isn't any

British oil tanker slows to 'adjust its arrival time', authorities wrongly blame Iran

Fingers crossed - New York activists file formal complaint with police demanding Hillary Clinton's arrest

Soros and the 'business' of illegal immigration, a 'criminal phenomenon' - An interview with Francesca Totolo

Korybko: Is Vladimir Putin a social conservative leader?

Julian Assange, censorship power and the real war on the free press

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