Puppet MastersS


Magnify

Best of the Web: Unpacking the Ukraine 'Game Change': Is a major conflict inevitable?

Russia referendum
© REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko/Strategic CultureAny political solution – however theoretical, at this point – would involve Moscow sitting with the collective West. Kiev had become a bystander.
Russia is preparing for an escalation in this war. She is augmenting her forces to the minimum level that could deal with a major NATO offensive. This decision was not precipitated by a significant attrition in the existing force. The facts are clear: The militias of Donetsk and Luhansk represent the majority of the Russian allied forces fighting in the Donbas. The militias have been reinforced by contract soldiers from the Wagner Group and Chechen fighters however, rather than by regular Russian forces.

But this is about to change. The number of Russian regulars fighting in Ukraine will rise dramatically. However, the referenda in the Ukrainian oblasts come first; and those will be followed by the Government of Russia and the Duma accepting the results and approving the annexation of these territories. After that is concluded and the territories assimilated into Russia, any attack on the new Russian territories would be treated as an act of war against Russia. As former Indian diplomat, MK Bhadrakumar, notes, "The accession of Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye creates a new political reality and Russia's partial mobilisation on parallel track is intended to provide the military underpinning for it".

Black Magic

Germany to spend €200 billion in attempt to stabilize soaring energy costs

Habeck Scholz
© AP Photo/Markus SchreiberGerman Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck (L), Chancellor Olaf Scholz (C) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (R) brief the media.
Germany's government says it will spend up to €200 billion to help consumers and businesses cope with rising energy prices.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced on Thursday that the government is reactivating an economic stabilising fund and "will do everything it can" to bring prices down.


Comment: Without Russia's critical supplies, there's not much it can do. Well, unless they plan on going all Weimar and literally burning money to stay warm.


Prices for natural gas -- used to heat homes, generate electricity, and power factories -- have surged across Europe amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.


Comment: Russia's special operation in Ukraine didn't stop energy supplies, the West sanctioned itself out of the market.


Germany previously used the so-called "defensive shield" to support the country during the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The fund will cap the price German customers pay for gas and relieve them from inflation.

Comment: The taxpayer is being saddled with debt it will never be able to be repay all because its officials have chosen to submit to the US in its proxy-war on Russia; the same US which rightly stands accused of literally blowing up Germany's best chance for making it through the burgeoning crisis:

Although, it seems that Britain will be indebting its citizens the most:






Quenelle

Hungary's Orbán announces referendum on Russia sanctions, 'were not decided democratically but by bureaucrats & elites'

Orban
© DPAFILE PHOTO: Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks at a press conference in Budapest.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced a referendum on the sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU due to the war in Ukraine.

"The sanctions were not decided democratically, but were decided by Brussels bureaucrats and European elites," he said on Monday. "Although Europe's citizens are paying the price, they were not asked," he added.

Orbán has been raging for months against the sanctions imposed on Russia, even though Hungary has always voted in favour of the sanctions packages at the Council of the European Union, which has to take these decisions unanimously.

The country, however, was able to negotiate an exemption from the Russian oil embargo.

Comment: If the parties policies are 'confirmed' then it's probably because they, in large part, reflect the will of the people. It's notable that Hungary is one of the few countries to have these kinds of consultations and referenda over significant issues, because elsewhere in Europe politicians daren't, and, if they do, as has been the case with independence or EU membership, they either ignore the results or force citizens to re-vote until they 'get it right'.

Making this an issue of a democratic vote is a smart move by Hungary, because the West is apparently so besotted with its facade of democracy that proof such as this makes it a little harder for the establishment to smear. All the same, its propaganda arms will simply go into overdrive, as they already have done in Brussels calling Hungary an 'autocracy', or 'not a full democracy'.


MIB

German spies secretly helping Ukraine - media

The headquarters of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) in Berlin, November 06, 2019.
© Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesFILE PHOTO: The headquarters of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) in Berlin, November 06, 2019.
The BND also reportedly backed the illegal 2003 US invasion of Iraq, despite Berlin's official line.

German foreign intelligence service BND has been forwarding satellite imagery, radio and phone intercept data to Kiev for months, helping the Ukrainian war effort while Berlin has officially maintained it wasn't party to the conflict, Zeit magazine revealed on Wednesday.

The information "can be incorporated into war planning and help the Ukrainian army to assess the combat effectiveness and morale of Russian units or to check their positions," Zeit wrote, describing it as the German contribution to the "turning point" on the battlefield.

Zeit also revealed that German spies fed the US some intelligence from Baghdad during the 2003 Iraq invasion. Berlin had officially declined to share information with Washington during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, reportedly to BND's frustration. This time around, however, the spies unanimously decided that the "exceptional historical situation" warranted helping the Ukrainians.

Comment: See also:


Snakes in Suits

The Justice Department Was Dangerous Before Trump. It's Out of Control Now

Justice Department Was Dangerous Before
Clockwise from top left: The “Blind Sheikh,” attorney Lynne Stewart, singing Attorney General John Ashcroft, Enron defendant Ken Lay
The current Trump investigation is just the latest chapter of a long-brewing civil liberties nightmare.

On Monday, August 8, Justice Department officials spent nine hours raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of Donald Trump, carrying out 12 boxes of material. When criticism ensued, FBI spokespeople in wounded tones insisted the press eschew the harsh term "raid," and use "execution of a search warrant" instead.

"Agents don't like the word 'raid,' they don't like it," complained former assistant FBI counterintelligence director turned MSNBC analyst Frank Figliuzzi. He added with unintentional irony: "It sounds like it's some sort of extrajudicial, non-legal thing."

But it was a raid, as the surprisingly enormous number of people who've been on the business end of such actions since 9/11 will report. The state more and more now avails itself of a procedural trick that would have horrified everyone from Jefferson to to Potter Stewart to Thurgood Marshall. Investigating, say, one lawyer, prosecutors raid a whole firm, taking everything — emails, client files, cell phones and personal computers — then have a supposedly separate group of lawyers, called a "taint" or "filter" team, examine it all. In this way they learn the private details of hundreds or even thousands of clients in a shot, all people unrelated to the supposed case at hand.

Attention

Who profits from Pipeline Terror?

Secret talks between Russia and Germany to resolve their Nord Stream 1 and 2 issues had to be averted at any cost.
Putin and Demented
The War of Economic Corridors has entered incandescent, uncharted territory: Pipeline Terror.

A sophisticated military operation - that required exhaustive planning, possibly involving several actors - blew up four separate sections of the Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) gas pipelines this week in the shallow waters of the Danish straits, in the Baltic Sea, near the island of Bornholm.

Swedish seismologists estimated that the power of the explosions may have reached the equivalent of up to 700 kg of TNT. Both NS and NS2, near the strong currents around Borholm, are placed at the bottom of the sea at a depth of 60 meters.
Gas Pipelines
© The Cradle
The pipes are built with steel reinforced concrete, able to withstand impact from aircraft carrier anchors, and are basically indestructible without serious explosive charges. The operation - causing two leaks near Sweden and two near Denmark - would have to be carried out by modified underwater drones.

Every crime implies motive. The Russian government wanted - at least up to the sabotage - to sell oil and natural gas to the EU. The notion that Russian intel would destroy Gazprom pipelines is beyond ludicrous. All they had to do was to turn off the valves. NS2 was not even operational, based on a political decision from Berlin. The gas flow in NS was hampered by western sanctions. Moreover, such an act would imply Moscow losing key strategic leverage over the EU.

Diplomatic sources confirm that Berlin and Moscow were involved in a secret negotiation to solve both the NS and NS2 issues. So they had to be stopped - no holds barred. Geopolitically, the entity that had the motive to halt a deal holds anathema a possible alliance in the horizon between Germany, Russia, and China.

Binoculars

Court orders production of Seth Rich laptop

seth rich
Today, a federal judge ordered the FBI to "produce the information it possesses related to Seth Rich's laptop."
seth rich
This case involves a multi-year fight by attorney Ty Clevenger to obtain records relating to the FBI/DOJ investigation of Seth Rich, particularly whether Rich was involved in the hack of the DNC or had communicated with Wikileaks.

This fight dates back to 2017 and includes two FOIA lawsuit. In the first lawsuit, the FBI produced no responsive documents. The parties knew the FBI had something, and so this sparked a second lawsuit - where the FBI somehow found 20,000 pages of potentially responsive documents. The court explains:
seth rich
Of those 20,000 pages, the government found 1,596 pages of responsive documents, of which the government withheld 1,469 pages under various FOIA exemptions (privacy, law enforcement exemption, etc.).

The FBI also withheld the contents of Seth Rich's personal laptop, which it possesses, in its entirety, alleging the privacy of Rich's family in "preventing the public release of this information" outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

The court rejected that argument, stating "the FBI has not satisfied its burden of showing more than a de minimis privacy interest that would justify withholding information from Seth Rich's laptop."

Stock Down

UK pension funds bond crash prompts historic Bank of England emergency intervention

Bank of England
© Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThe Bank of England on Wednesday launched a historic intervention in the U.K. bond market in order to shore up financial stability, with markets in disarray following the new government’s fiscal policy announcements.
The Bank of England launched a historic intervention to stabilize the U.K. economy, announcing a two-week purchase program for long-dated bonds and delaying its planned gilt sales until the end of October.

The move came after a massive sell-off in U.K. government bonds — known as "gilts" — following the new government's fiscal policy announcements Friday.


Comment: Lest we forget that there's much more happening to Western economies than just this announcement; including but not limited to: the proxy-war on Russia; 2 years of lockdowns; the energy crisis; as well as over a decade of worsening corruption and greed since the last crash.


The policies included large swathes of unfunded tax cuts that have drawn global criticism, and also saw the pound fall to an all-time low against the dollar on Monday.

Comment: It's notable that the US press, in this case CNBC, eagerly provide a detailed overview of the disastrous state of the UK's finances, meanwhile they're much more 'optimistic' when reporting on their own.

Some footage from UK TV during the initial announcements of events:


Other tweets that provide an overview of the current state of Western economies:





Bad Guys

U.S. announces $1.1 billion in aid for building Ukraine's military

HIMARS, High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System
The package includes funding for 18 units of the High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS. (file photo)
The United States will provide an additional $1.1 billion in military aid to Ukraine, including funding for about 18 more advanced rocket systems and other weapons to counter drones, the White House announced on September 28.

The package is aimed at helping Ukraine secure its longer-term defense needs under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which funds the purchase of weapons and equipment. This means it could take a year or more for Ukraine to get the systems.

Most of the other military aid packages announced by the United States have thus far used Pentagon drawdown authority to provide weapons more immediately.

Eye 2

New Zealand's PM calls internet freedom & free speech a 'weapon of war' in UN speech

New Zealand   Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
New Zealand communist Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern labeled internet freedom a "weapon of war" in her most recent UN speech before the General Assembly this week.

Leftist Ardern, who ruled her country like a 20th Century despot during the COVID pandemic, called out for a new type of internet with "rules and transparency."

In the next breath, she says she "values free speech so highly." She is the typical leftist elitist leader in the world today. And she insists on giving Communist Justin Trudeau a run for his money.


Comment: She's allied with neither left nor right, she's merely a willing pawn using political parties to implement the establishment's nefarious agenda.


Comment: This is the same Ardern who, during the 'pandemic', actually said: "unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth"; that the vaccinated and unvaccinated were 'different classes'; that the vaccinated wouldn't 'die' of covid; who smiled whilst talking about the deaths of despair caused by the lockdowns; and this is the same New Zealand that enforced some of the harshest and longest lockdowns - then said that orgies were fine - and yet which, despite a shockingly compliant population, failed miserably to ever achieve its declared zero covid objective: