Puppet MastersS


Nuke

Kremlin blasts Western 'hysteria' over nuclear plans


RT
Sun, 09 Apr 2023 11:14 UTC
launcher
© RIA NovostiA Russian Iskander missile launcher. Moscow would only consider repatriating them if US removes its own nuclear weapons from Europe, the Foreign Ministry official said.
Moscow wants to send atomic weapons to Belarus, but the US has already deployed such assets in Europe, Dmitry Peskov has said...

Western countries are hyping up hysteria around Russia's plan to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov suggested in an interview released on Sunday.

Speaking to Russia 1 TV, Peskov blasted what he called the West's "extremely unrestrained" reaction to President Vladimir Putin's decision to deploy nukes in Belarus this summer, which followed repeated requests from his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.

"The collective West is not inclined to recall... [that] American nuclear weapons are stationed here, in Europe, around our country," the spokesman said. He also claimed that the West "is prone to hysterical reaction" in relation to Moscow's plans to build a nuclear storage facility in Belarus, which is widely regarded as a key Russian ally.

Comment: 'Do as I say, not as I do.'

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Briefcase

Kirby warns reporters not to report on leaked Pentagon documents: 'No business in the public domain'

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 18:25 UTC
john kirby pentagon document leak ukraine
© NewsweekNational Security Council spokesman John Kirby subtly pleads with reporters to leave the Pentagon leak alone
Biden administration and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby addressed the media on Monday, asking in so many words that pretty please would journalists not report on the trove of highly classified documents which were leaked online.

"This is information that has no business in the public domain... It has no business... on the front pages of newspapers or on television." But Kirby is a bit late, given already days ago major outlets from the NY Times to Washington Post to foreign outlets like The Guardian and RT have widely reported on them. They classified reports have circulated widely on English-language and foreign social media as well.

Comment:

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Bad Guys

Ukraine grooming Russian youth for terror attacks - FSB


RT
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 18:30 UTC
Aleksandr Bortnikov
© Sputnik / Gavriil GrigorovRussian Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Aleksandr Bortnikov
Western and Ukrainian intelligence services are trying to recruit Russian youth to carry out terrorist attacks against their own country, Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a session of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAK), over which he presides, Bortnikov claimed, according to the NAK statement, that amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, "Ukraine and their Western sponsors' special services have launched an aggressive brainwashing and recruitment [campaign] on our citizens."

One of the main tasks of Kiev and their Western backers is to target "especially the younger generation to involve them in sabotage, terrorist and extremist activities," he added.

Since February 2022, when Moscow launched its operation against Ukraine, Russia has prevented 118 terrorist crimes being prepared by young people and minors, Bortnikov said.
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Arrow Up

Why the media don't want to know the truth about Nord Stream blast

Jonathan Cook
Mint Press News
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 17:37 UTC
Hersh and Nord Stream 2
© Illustration by MintPress News
No one but the terminally naïve should be surprised that security services lie - and that they are all but certain to cover their tracks when they carry out operations that either violate domestic or international law or that would be near-universally rejected by their own populations.

Which is reason enough why anyone following the fallout from explosions last September that ripped holes in three of the four Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea supplying Russian gas to Europe should be wary of accepting anything Western agencies have to say on the matter.

In fact, the only thing that Western publics should trust is the consensus among "investigators" that the three simultaneous blasts deep underwater on the pipelines - a fourth charge apparently failed to detonate - were sabotage, not some freak coincidental accident.

Someone blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, creating an untold environmental catastrophe as the pipes leaked huge quantities of methane, a supremely active global-warming gas. It was an act of unrivaled industrial and environmental terrorism.

If Washington had been able to pin the explosions on Russia, as it initially hoped, it would have done so with full vigor. There is nothing Western states would like more than to intensify world fury against Moscow, especially in the context of NATO's express efforts to "weaken" Russia through a proxy war waged in Ukraine.

But, after the claim made the rounds of front pages for a week or two, the story of Russia destroying its own pipelines was quietly shelved. That was partly because it seemed too difficult to maintain a narrative in which Moscow chose to destroy a critical part of its own energy infrastructure.
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Vader

Seymour Hersh: Biden sought to 'threaten' Putin through Nord Stream bombing


RT
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 16:55 UTC
Nord Stream 2 Blow Up
© Public Domain
The US wanted to leverage a potential attack on Nord Stream to deter Moscow from an offensive against Ukraine, the journalist has claimed

The US intended to use the threat of blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines to dissuade Russia from attacking Ukraine, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has argued.

In an exposé published online in February, Hersh claimed that the US orchestrated the September 2022 bombing of the Baltic Sea pipelines built to deliver gas from Russia to Germany.

Speaking to German online magazine Tichys Einblick on Monday, the journalist said President Joe Biden originally viewed the threat of sabotage as a deterrent.

Comment: Sweden has refuted the "six guys in a boat" theory.



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No Entry

Jacinda Ardern to become New Zealand's de facto censorship Tsar


21st Century Wire
Sat, 08 Apr 2023 00:00 UTC
Jacinda Ardern
These days, it's hard to find any globalist who will let go of power gracefully, let alone retire from the stage of politics.

This seems to be the case with New Zealand's increasingly unpopular radical Marxist former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who also just happens to also be a World Economic Forum young leader, and mentored by none other than Tony Blair. Undoubtedly, a brilliant resumé for any aspiring technocrat.

Not content with destroying her country's economy and society over the last three years with her fanatical "zero Covid" lockdown and brutal vaccine mandates, Ardern is now being positioned by the Establishment to become the country's de facto censorship Tsar...

Bloomberg News reports:
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will lead the nation's push for greater safeguards against terrorist and violent content online.

Ardern has been appointed Special Envoy for the 'Christchurch Call', a global initiative she set up in the wake of a terrorist attack in the South Island city in 2019, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said Tuesday in Wellington. She will report directly to Hipkins and has declined to receive any remuneration for the role, which will commence on April 17, he said.

Comment: This new assigned role to top technocrat Adern didn't take long to occur, and should certainly not come as any surprise to those who have been following her illustruous career.

See also:

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Info

Biden ends 'national emergency'


RT
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 16:48 UTC
Joe Biden
© AP / Evan VucciFILE PHOTO
President Joe Biden on Monday signed a measure ending the Covid-19 national emergency in the US. Though he originally planned to extend the legislation until May 11, Biden ended up signing the Republican-proposed law that Congress had approved over the objections of many of his own Democrats.

The White House released a one-sentence statement about Biden's signature around 6pm local time, indicating that the president had agreed with House Joint Resolution 7.

Drafted by Congressman Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, the bill was approved by the House of Representatives in February (229-197), and by the Senate at the end of March (68-23).

Biden's Democrats had argued that ending the emergency would "create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the healthcare system," but a handful ended up voting in favor of the GOP-proposed bill in the House, and about half in the Senate.

Comment: The national emergency is over. Until the next national emergency comes along, that is.

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Better Earth

The Taliban did in one year what Washington couldn't in 20, sparking new panic

Rachel Marsden
RT
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 16:24 UTC
poppy field, Afghan worker, Taliban
© Sayed Khodaiberdi Sadat/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesFILE PHOTO. Afghan worker work at a poppy field in Kandahar, Afghanistan on April 06, 2022. Farmers demand an alternative for plantations after Taliban's ban on poppy cultivation.
It's been nearly a year since the Taliban banned Afghan poppy farming used for the production of opioids. The impact of the move is set to hit global markets sometime soon, given the delay from farm to customer.

You'd think that would bring a welcome sigh of relief. Apparently not. Reports are now suggesting that a lack of Afghan heroin on the global market and a reduction of available natural opioids like heroin could lead to increased use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. If that's the case, then it's only because Washington and the West are about as competent at curtailing skyrocketing drug overdose deaths as they were at tackling the cultivation of Afghan opioids back when they had control of the country. Synthetic opioids from China and Mexico are increasingly being used, as are those procured through prescriptions within America's own healthcare system.

Over the course of the US-led Global War on Terror that kicked off in Afghanistan in 2001, heroin overdoses in the US and elsewhere spiked. Despite having control over the country and its government for two decades, Washington not only failed to curtail farming and exports of Afghan opium, but oversaw an increase.

Comment: See also:

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Map

Best of the Web: Russo-Ukrainian War: Pentagon Leak Biopsy

Big Serge
bigserge.substack.com
Mon, 10 Apr 2023 07:45 UTC

Comment: Long story short, they're probably legit. Russia-Ukraine War analyst 'Big Serge' explains why he thinks so...


The Pentagon
© Public domain
Another winter has ended, and spring has again arisen on the war in Ukraine. Amid the thaw and attendant mud, Russian forces - including the indominable Wagner Group - have pushed the Ukrainian grouping in Bakhmut to the brink, with the AFU now clinging its last defensive toehold in the city. Bakhmut has become the largest battle of the 21st century, and is now entering its climactic phase.

Nevertheless, battlefield developments have been upstaged to some extent by the apparent leak of classified US military intelligence documents which provide a sweeping view into the inner workings of the Pentagon's war.

I am not entirely clear on Substack's content policies as it relates to such documents. It is certainly too late for the US Government to contain the leak, as the images have by this point been shared, screenshotted, and downloaded countless times, but that does not preclude an attempt to limit its circulation via a whack-a-mole campaign of content deletion. In any case, desiring neither to violate US law nor run afoul of Substack's content rules, prudence dictates that I ought not embed the images directly in this post, but they are not hard to find - the "Rus Fleet" Telegram channel has them up at the moment, for example. Use your own discretion.

Comment: Some of the documents (which are actually photographs of physical documents):
pentagon documents leaks ukraine
So that's the content from these leaked documents which concerns US military support/analysis of the Ukrainian regime.

With the caveat that just because these docs may be 'legit', this doesn't mean their contents are reliably factual, there are also photographed documents of intelligence reports about the role of Western, active-duty, 'special forces' soldiers participating in the Russia-Ukraine War; details about internal South Korean government deliberations over whether to send weapons to Ukraine (which the US no doubt discovered via spying on its 'ally'); another report claiming that Israeli foreign intel outfit - 'the Mossad' - is supporting the protest movement in Israel against Netanyahu; and other documents implying that the US has inside sources in both the Wagner PMC and the Russian Ministry of Defence.

Spicy stuff!

No surprises there for Sott.net readers, but the 'optics' are bad for US narrative-makers and the US govt's ever-deteriorating relations with the whole world.

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Eye 1

China is 'ghosting' the US because normal diplomacy has proven useless

Timur Fomenko
RT
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 03:07 UTC
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping
© AP Photo/Alex BrandonU.S. President Joe Biden, left, arrives with Chinese President Xi Jinping for a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022, in Bali, Indonesia.
A recent Politico article, citing unnamed US officials, claims that China is "ghosting" the US, ignoring American attempts to re-establish diplomatic communications after they broke down in February.

If you aren't familiar with the term, 'to ghost' someone is social media-era slang that means to leave a conversation hanging by suddenly ceasing to reply. This, according to officials cited by Politico, is what's going on between the US and China, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken attempting to reschedule his Beijing visit, which he canceled after the recent 'spy balloon' incident, and the Chinese giving him the diplomatic cold shoulder.

The way the article frames it, Washington is making attempts to "stabilize an increasingly volatile relationship," but "thin-skinned" Beijing is avoiding engagement because it, among other things, resents US arms sales to Taiwan and US officials' contacts with Taiwan's pro-independence politicians.
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