Puppet MastersS


Footprints

Turkey evacuates one of their largest military bases in northwest Syria


Al Arabiya
Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
turkconvoy
© AFPMilitary convoy in Ariha, Northwestern Idlib Province
October 20, 2020
Turkish troops in northwestern Syria have been evacuating one of their largest military bases in the area, which was surrounded by Syrian government troops for months, activists said Tuesday.

There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials. Activists and opposition media platforms reported the military evacuation, posting footage and photos of Turkish trucks and equipment driving north of Morek.

Turkish TV station Haberturk quoted unnamed officials saying that Turkey is moving the base to an area farther north in the northwestern province of Idlib still controlled by Syrian opposition forces backed by Ankara. There was no immediate government confirmation of that report.

Youssef Hamoud, a spokesman for the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition group, confirmed that the troops are redeploying in the north, adding that he was not aware of evacuations of other bases.

It was not immediately clear whether the withdrawal is part of a deal to reposition Turkish observation points inside the opposition-held enclave or is aimed at reducing Turkey's military presence in the area.
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Pirates

ISIS calls for attacks on Saudi oil industry

Irina Slav
Oil Price
Sun, 25 Oct 2020 10:00 UTC
ISIS flag
The Islamic State has called on its members to start targeting Saudi Arabia oil infrastructure as punishment for the Kingdom warming up to Israel.


Comment: Saudi Arabia has had a covert, cosy relationship with Israel for decades and it's likely ISIS leaders were aware of this, so the reasoning doesn't make sense.


"Targets are plenty...Start by hitting and destroying oil pipelines, factories, and facilities which are the source (of income) of the tyrant government," a spokesman for the terrorist group said in a recorded message cited by Reuters.

Saudi Arabia opened its air space for flights between Israel and several neighbors in a historic move for the Middle East. According to the statement of Islamic State, that was enough to turn the Kingdom into a target of the group's attention.

Comment: It's also glaringly obvious that ISIS has never made any efforts to attack Israel, and there's good reason why: Hacked cables reveal Israel-ISIS link

See also: Saudi Arabia triples VAT rate in austerity push to counter oil price crash

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MIB

US criminalizes Russian Army defense against US, UK, Nato attacks, charges 6 GRU officers of spying on chem warfare labs in Skripal case

John Helmer
johnhelmer.net
Mon, 19 Oct 2020 17:58 UTC
batman helmer
A grand jury of steelworkers and coalminers in western Pennsylvania has voted to charge six Russian Army officers with several criminal offences, including defence against two enemy states at war on Russia's borders, Ukraine and Georgia; the UK's chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down; and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Netherlands.

According to the 50-page indictment by a local US attorney, the Russian soldiers were engaged in a "conspiracy to deploy destructive malware and take other disruptive actions for the strategic benefit of Russia".

Between April 5 and 6, 2018, the soldiers sent emails pretending to be a journalist from a German national weekly newspaper and a British journalist. The emails were sent to official addresses of the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down in England, and to the OPCW in The Netherlands. Regarding the poisoning incidents in Salisbury of March 4, 2018, involving Sergei and Yulia Skripal, the "Conspirators purported to have information to share regarding the poisoning".

No evidence has been presented of what information they, or the Russian military intelligence agency GRU at which the six officers worked, had about the Skripal case because their emails were ignored. Malware alleged to be attached to the emails appears to have caused no damage to the targeted computers, nor allowed effective espionage inside the DSTL and OPCW files.

The attempts to communicate with Porton Down and the OPCW have been charged to be the US criminal offences of wire fraud, damage to computers, identity theft, and abetting a scheme of spearphishing - breaking into the computers of Porton Down and OPCW when those organisations were accusing the Russian Army of an attempted assassination by the chemical agent they called Novichok.
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Bad Guys

Global report: Spain declares Covid state of emergency as Italians urged to stay home

Sam Jones, Angela Giuffrida
The Guardian
Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:06 UTC
people, mask
The Spanish government has declared a six-month state of emergency and ordered a nationwide curfew, while Italians have been strongly advised to stay at home as both countries impose tough limits on people's movements in a effort to contain the second wave of the coronavirus.


Comment: There is no second wave. To state that there is without question is dishonest and irresponsible.


Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said his cabinet had approved a state of emergency on Sunday morning that is set to remain in force until 9 May 2021.

The decree will allow Spain's regional governments to order an overnight curfew to run from 11pm to 6am, or to begin and finish and hour earlier or later. The only area of Spain exempt from the curfew is the Canary islands because of what Sánchez termed "the very positive epidemiological situation there".


Comment: Because viruses sleep during the day, apparently.


Spain became the first western European country to record more than 1m Covid infections last week, and Sánchez said on Friday that studies suggested the real number was three times higher.

The state of emergency also permits Spain's regional governments to bring in full or partial lockdowns, and limits public and private gatherings to six people.

Comment: The Guardian article includes fear-mongering graphs showing 'surges' in 'cases.' They willfully neglect to include the death curves going along with those 'cases.' Because those death curves show there is nothing to worry about. These positive "cases" largely consist of asymptomatic individuals, mild cases, and false positives. See the death curves here for Spain, Italy, and Netherlands (and those are using official, i.e. over-inflated, data!) - no 'spikes', just a slight rise, which is normal for this time of year. There is NO overall excess mortality currently in Europe (though Spain is currently seeing a moderate rise).

Italians are rightfully protesting.



Victoria's premier reneged on his promise to reopen Melbourne.



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Attention

Drawing your line in the sand

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:06 UTC
Line in the Sand
© Corbett Report
Choices.

We are living in world historical times and, like it or not, the choices that we make over the next few years will have profound implications for the future of the human species.

Whether or not to wear the mask. Whether or not to take the vaccine. Whether or not to get the health app. Whether or not to fill out the digital visitor card. Whether or not to take the chip.

Choices.

Perhaps the most insidious thing that the would-be rulers of society have ever done is to convince the public that there's no choice to be made. That in each and every instance, you HAVE to do x, y or z.

But this is a lie. These are choices that we are making each and every day. They have always been choices.

Now, don't get me wrong: choices have consequences. There's nothing to say that you won't suffer for making the "wrong" choices in the coming years. In fact, the severity of the consequences that we face for making day-to-day choices are about to escalate greatly. "No jab, no job" quickly becomes "no vax, no travel" and, inevitably, "no injectable 5G luciferase microchip, no access to the market." Only those who are deliberately deluding themselves fail to see this by this point.

But, nonetheless, we make a choice each and every day to comply with what we know is wrong, or to refuse to go along with the charade. But we have a weapon at our disposal. A secret weapon that has been used throughout the centuries to bring down the dictators.
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Passport

France recalls its ambassador from Turkey after 'unacceptable' Erdogan comments


France 24
Sun, 25 Oct 2020 17:05 UTC
Macron i Erdogan
French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R) in happier days
France on Saturday said it was recalling its envoy to Turkey for consultations after comments by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggesting French counterpart Emmanuel Macron needed a mental health check-up that Paris condemned as unacceptable.

France and its NATO ally are at loggerheads over a range of issues including maritime rights in the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria and the escalating conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

But Ankara has now been particularly incensed by a campaign championed by Macron to protect France's secular values against radical Islam, a debate given new impetus by the murder this month of a teacher who showed his class a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

Comment:

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Yoda

On Pepe Escobar's excellent Russia-EU article

Andrei Martyanov
Reminiscence of the Future...
Thu, 22 Oct 2020 16:36 UTC
Russia European Union EU flags
© Sputnik / Vladimir Sergeev
You can read it in full at Saker's Blog, Zerohedge or some few other media outlets, including Asia Times. Pepe refers to me, for which I am very thankful to him, when describing the the general state of the affairs today, and I quote him:

Generally, Pepe and I we arrive to the same conclusion, as Pepe puts it:
As much as Washington is not "agreement-capable", in the words of President Putin, so is the EU, says Lavrov: "We should stop to orient ourselves toward European partners and care about their assessments." Not only Russia knows it: the overwhelming majority of the Global South also knows it.

Comment: Lavrov at Valdai: Iron Curtain still separates Russia and the EU

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Black Cat

Biden promises to pressure states into issuing mask mandates nationwide

Haris Ali
Breitbart
Fri, 23 Oct 2020 15:39 UTC
Joe biden mask
© Angela Weiss/AFP
Former Vice President Joe Biden is promising that, if elected, he would urge state and local governments to issue mask mandates nationwide.

The Democrat nominee, who has shifted on his support for a federal mask mandate, told supporters in Delaware on Friday that it was vital for the government to implement a "national strategy to position our country to finally get ahead of this virus." As part of the strategy, the former vice president promised not only to get a spending bill, that deals with both the economic and public safety aspects of the novel coronavirus, through Congress by January, but also to push for comprehensive mask mandates.

"I'll go to every governor and urge them to mandate mask-wearing in their states," he said. "If they refuse I'll go to the mayors and county executives and get local masking requirements in place nationwide."

Comment: The Hill reports that Covid propagandist-in-chief Fauci backs up dictator-wannabe Creepy Joe:
Fauci told CNN's Erin Burnett that it would be a "great idea" to have everybody wearing masks uniformly. He also responded to criticism that mandates on masks would be difficult to enforce.

"If everyone agrees that this is something that's important and they mandate and everybody pulls together, and says 'we're gonna mandate it, but let's just do it,' I think that would be a great idea to have everybody do it uniformly," Fauci said.

Fauci further said that one of the arguments he hears against masks mandates is that enforcing it would create more of an issue.

"One of the issues though, I get the argument that 'Well, if you mandate a mask, you're going to have to enforce it and that's going to create more of a problem,'" Fauci said. "Well, if people are not wearing masks, then maybe we should be mandating it."
For someone who bleats on about 'following the science', Joe seems to be ignoring a remarkable amount of it:

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Newspaper

UK has mounted covert attacks against Russian leadership - former cabinet secretary reveals


The Guardian
Sat, 24 Oct 2020 10:36 UTC
Mark Sedwilll
© Omar Sobhani/ReutersMark Sedwill said the aim of such actions had been to ‘impose a price greater than one they might have expected’ in response to aggressive Russian behaviour.
Britain has carried a series of covert attacks on Russia's leaders and their allies, the former cabinet secretary has disclosed.

Mark Sedwill said the UK had sought to exploit Moscow's "vulnerabilities", including through the deployment of its recently declared offensive cyber-capability.

He said the aim of such actions had been to "impose a price greater than one they might have expected" in response to aggressive Russian behaviour.

Comment: It's highly likely that the criminality the UK is admitting to involves a lot more nefarious dealings than just illicit money: Skripal Likely Poisoned by British Intelligence in Effort to Smear and Silence Russian World View

For more, check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Perfidious Albion: If Russia is a Rogue State, What is the UK?

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Star of David

Donald Trump announces Sudan-Israel relations agreed


BBC News
Sat, 24 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
Trump on phone
© ReutersPresident Trump announced the deal on a three-way call with the leaders of Sudan and Israel.
Sudan is to normalise relations with Israel - the latest in a series of Arab League countries to do so.

At the same time, US President Donald Trump has removed Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, unblocking economic aid and investment.

Announcing the normalisation, Mr Trump said "at least five more" Arab states wanted a peace deal with Israel. The Sudan deal comes weeks after similar moves by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. The two Gulf states became the first in the Middle East to recognise Israel in 26 years. The UAE's foreign ministry said it welcomed Sudan's decision, calling it "an important step to boost security and prosperity in the region."

Sudan and Israel said in a three-way statement with the US that delegations would meet "in the coming weeks. The leaders agreed to the normalisation of relations between Sudan and Israel and to end the state of belligerence between their nations."

Comment: Stick and carrot? Not everyone sees this 'breakthrough' as unleveraged persuasion. Iran has its take on the new developments as the tide rises towards a final kumbaya moment:
Iran's Foreign Ministry has portrayed a US-brokered Sudan-Israel deal to normalise ties as "phoney", accusing Khartoum of paying "a ransom" in exchange for Washington taking the North African country off a list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it was added in 1993, soon after the rise to power of now ousted President Omar al-Bashir.

"Pay enough ransom, close your eyes to the crimes against Palestinians, then you'll be taken off the so-called 'terrorism' blacklist", the ministry tweeted in English, going on to fume:
"Obviously, the list is as phoney as the US fight against terrorism. Shameful".
The deal was negotiated on the US side by senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz, National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and national security official Miguel Correa, with Kushner, for his part, calling the agreement "a great breakthrough".

Meanwhile, both Israel and America, which has been acting as a mediator, have stated the deal is just a continuation of an apparent trend for peace agreements with the Jewish state, with Netanyahu for his part praising the "expansion of the peace circle". Donald Trump has expressed certainty that Iran will also join a "deal like this" in the foreseeable future.


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