Watching the Dealer,
Trump may have a semi-independent foreign policy that does not include nuclear war in Asia.
Trump said "there is no reason ... to be spending large amounts of money on joint U.S.-South Korea war games," amid stalled denuclearization talks with North Korea.
Trump canceled the joint military exercise in June due to "tremendously expensive" costs and what he called their "provocative" nature.
Trump's move falls out of step with the Pentagon, which has maintained that the joint exercises are routine, purely defensive and vital to maintaining readiness on the Korean Peninsula.
Trump said "there is no reason ... to be spending large amounts of money on joint U.S.-South Korea war games," amid stalled denuclearization talks with North Korea.
Trump canceled the joint military exercise in June due to "tremendously expensive" costs and what he called their "provocative" nature.
Trump's move falls out of step with the Pentagon, which has maintained that the joint exercises are routine, purely defensive and vital to maintaining readiness on the Korean Peninsula.
The US still has not staged the chemical weapons false-flag attack in Syria, to justify bombing the Syrian military again. Maybe it is being saved for the actual attack on American-funded jihadis, when they call for protective airstrikes.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Lavrov has warned the West not to interfere in Syrian and Russian forces engaged in antiterror actions in the northwest province of Idlib: "I hope our Western partners will not give in to [rebel] provocations and will not obstruct an antiterror operation," he said.This as Reuters reports that a planned "phased offensive" is imminent and as massive Syrian Army reinforcements and military convoys have been filmed this week heading toward the last major anti-Assad holdout.
Eleni sends this article about the "successful" life of John McCain, which touts his own-goals for/against the Empire, but also has this very informative tidbit about Russian sale of US Treasuries a few months ago:
The effect of the sanctions in simultaneously driving down both the ruble and the Russian stock market has allowed the Russian government to sell dollars high and to buy up Russian industrial stocks low, effectively re-nationalizing Russian industry at bargain-basement prices, shifting the share of its government ownership from around 16% to at least 65% while squeezing out Western financial interests. The profits that would have otherwise been pocketed by Western investors are now flooding into the Russian treasury, to be spent on health, education, housing, roads and bridges and so on. McCain, you socialist you!
Now-jobless whistle-blower gives the longish story of the propaganda operations set in motion well before the 2016 election, to prevent or disable a Trump presidency. They involve deep state agencies and the media, so are unaccountable to anybody. Here is how they pick off individuals.
Flynn’s career with Trump ended as quickly as it came. He was forced to resign as Trump’s National Security Advisor 27 days after taking the job. The highly classified conversation between Flynn and former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was leaked to the Washington Post in January 2017 and he was later questioned by the FBI on that conversation. According to former FBI Director James Comey, the agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe he was lying, but in the end, Flynn pled guilty to one count of lying to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He had already spent more than $1 million in lawyers fees and sold his home to help with the debt. According to sources, Flynn’s family was being threatened by the Mueller team.
Glenn Greenwald points out that the whole "mainstream" corporate media lies all the time, consistently, in one direction, and when exposed, will not talk about it. When there are retractions, they are late, small and go unnoticed. The original falsehoods continue to live long lives, referred to as supportive "facts". (Consider the Syrian chemical weapons attacks against Syrian government supporters and their children, whenever government forces are advancing on our good terrorists).
Colleen sends this article by Diana Johnstone about the "real Russian Interference in US Politics" It's those pesky oligarchs we installed in business over there. They like the hand that feeds them.
Ilargi, at The Automatic Earth, got cut out of facebook without explanation, or any answer to his questions, despite sending his non-bot credentials and proof of personhood. That cut out the majority of his views, and revenue, and so on. No comment. none... Non-acknowledgement.
Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador who did some whistle-blowing on the empire has also been erased from Facebook. Who runs that operation?
Facebook has deleted all of my posts from July 2017 to last week because I am, apparently, a Russian Bot. For a while I could not add any new posts either, but we recently found a way around that, at least for now. To those of you tempted to say “So what?”, I would point out that over two thirds of visitors to my website arrive via my posting of the articles to Facebook and Twitter. Social media outlets like this blog, which offer an alternative to MSM propaganda, are hugely at the mercy of these corporate gatekeepers.Facebook’s plunge into censorship is completely open and admitted, as is the fact it is operated for Facebook by the Atlantic Council – the extreme neo-con group part funded by NATO and whose board includes serial war criminal Henry Kissinger, Former CIA Heads Michael Hayden and Michael Morrell, and George Bush’s chief of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, among a whole list of horrors.
The Ron Paul Instirute has more on that psy-ops arm of NATO, The Atlantic Council.
The Atlantic Council, until recently kept comparatively in the shadows for obvious reasons, is a think tank that has more than any other organization effected the transition of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from a seeming Cold War relic with the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the world's only and history's first international military network with 70 members and partners on six continents currently. All thirteen new full member states are in Eastern and Central Europe; four of them border Russia.
Three months ago it began collaborating with Facebook to police and censor that and (presumably) soon after other social media companies which in recent decades have become the major sources of information and communication for the seven billion citizens of the planet. No modest undertaking.
Three months ago it began collaborating with Facebook to police and censor that and (presumably) soon after other social media companies which in recent decades have become the major sources of information and communication for the seven billion citizens of the planet. No modest undertaking.
Bees seem to get addicted to those neonicotinid pesticides, in a chemically similar way to how humans get addicted to nicotine. that's bad for bee colonies, but it doesn't kill them outright. Bayer/Monsanto is not killing bees, any more than RJ Reynolds is killing smokers. They all have free will...
Buzzed Bee