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Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: Watch Stephen Colbert extract stunning answer from Donald Rumsfeld on case for Iraq War (VIDEO)


RT
Wed, 27 Jan 2016 10:58 UTC
rumsfeld
© Luke Frazza / Reuters Death merchant: U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld signs a Baghdad road sign at the request of a US soldier, April 30, 2003 during his visit to US troops at Baghdad's international airport.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came to promote his solitaire app, but when Stephen Colbert craftily brought up the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld's remarks left 'The Late Show' host and many others saying "Wow."

Launching his 'Churchill Solitaire' game, the 83-year-old Rumsfeld has been on a media tour where tough questions are not a prerequisite. Talking about the Iraq War, even as it looms like a cloud, can be a challenge when 2016 is saturated with politics and a fun application built to benefit charity is closer at hand. But Colbert made transitioning to the taboo topic look easy.

Colbert asked if Islamic State, or terrorist groups like it, holding western Iraq and eastern Syria was considered "a worst-case scenario, or a beyond-worse-case scenario" in 2002 and 2003 during the run-up to declaring war.

The "disorder in the entire region ... generally, people had not anticipated," Rumsfeld answered.


Comment: This isn't about getting an 'admission' or a 'confession' from Rumsfeld, or from any of the others involved in unleashing hell on Earth.

As Rumsfeld makes plain in this masterful interview by Colbert, psychopaths literally don't understand the meaning of the term 'fact'. For them, facts are fluid things. Even when you think you've got him to commit to one particular definition of the term 'fact', that can change for him the next day.

That's why self-styled 'reality-creators' like Rumsfeld treat 'intelligence' as they do: as a government service for spinning narratives that can have little to no bearing on objective reality. Why work to eke out and abide by scarce Truth when you can have so much more fun with abundant Lies?

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Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Iran is back, but on China's side

Pepe Escobar
RT
Mon, 25 Jan 2016 19:24 UTC
Iran China
© Unknown
Iran is back with a bang. And what a bang. The simplistic Western narrative rules that after the end of UN, US and EU sanctions - in fact a few still remain in place - Iran is rejoining global markets.

That may be the case - from Tehran clinching a deal to buy 114 planes from Airbus to Iranian oil soon hitting Western markets. But the key question is actually how, at what pace, and with what partners Tehran plans to rejoin global markets.

All the commotion, at the moment, predictably revolves around oil. Iran's Deputy Oil Minister for Commerce and International Affairs, Amir Hossein Zamaninia, said the new oil export target is an extra 500,000 barrels a day within a few months. Tehran may indeed boost production by 600,000 barrels a day in six months, and add up to 800,000 barrels a day in output before the end of 2016.
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Quenelle - Golden

Flashback Best of the Web: Litvinenko's father: 'The British duped me - Putin did NOT kill my son'


RT
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:51 UTC
litvinenko
Valter Litvinenko (right) now realizes he was completely duped by the British government and the Russian mafia
The father of late Russian security officer Aleksandr Litvinenko says he pursued a smear campaign against the Russian government out of grief, but changed his mind after Aleksandr's widow revealed his son had been working for British intelligence.

After his son died in London from radioactive polonium poisoning in November 2006, Walter Litvinenko was among those who accused Russia of assassinating Aleksandr.

But he changed his attitude after his son's widow Marina revealed that he had been working for British intelligence.

"If I knew back then that my son worked for the MI6, I would not speculate about his death. It would be none of my business. Although I am not 100 per cent sure he did work for them," he said in an interview with RT.


Comment: Litvinenko did work for the Brits, and the reason they let that information come out was because they wanted to bolster their case for Putin being behind his murder.

But to understand the real British spy mentality, and not the James Bond one, you have to understand that that actually makes it more likely that Litvinenko was killed by the Brits in order to make it look like Putin did it.

Remember folks, this case goes back to 2006. Even then, at least some among the Western oligarchs knew that Putin was a serious threat to their plans, and that the only way they could get to him was via asymmetric warfare...

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Quenelle

Flashback Best of the Web: Maxim Litvinenko: 'Western intelligence killed my brother to turn public opinion against Putin'

Robert Verkaik and Hannah Roberts
Daily Mail UK
Sat, 26 Jul 2014 21:32 UTC
Litvinenko
© EPAMaxim Litvinenko, left, with his brother Alexander
The widow of murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has described as 'lies' extraordinary new claims by his brother that the assassination was the work not of Russian agents but British intelligence.

Alexander Litvinenko died of radiation poisoning in 2006 three weeks after ingesting polonium in a London hotel. His death triggered an international murder investigation implicating Russian president Vladimir Putin and naming two former KGB officers.

The murder is to be the subject of a public inquiry, announced by Theresa May earlier this week.

But in an intervention which has outraged the Litvinenko family, the spy's younger brother, Maxim, claims British agents were responsible.

His allegations are a dramatic U-turn from his original reaction, when he blamed Putin's Russia.

Comment: British intelligence, and/or the 'masters of the universe' who work through British intelligence, created this lie about Putin ordering a hit on Litvinenko in order to demonize him. And boy, have they gotten some serious mileage out of it.

See also: Litvinenko's father: 'The British duped me - Putin did NOT kill my son'

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Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: US investigation into 'Russian meddling' in the EU is a farce

Danielle Ryan
RT
Wed, 20 Jan 2016 19:16 UTC
putin propaganda
News broke last Saturday evening that the United States is to conduct a "major investigation" into how the Kremlin is "infiltrating political parties in Europe" amid "mounting concerns" of a new Cold War.

The exclusive, which was published by the UK's Telegraph newspaper, revealed that James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence has been instructed by Congress to begin the major review into Russia's "clandestine" funding of EU parties over the last decade.

Hypocritical? Oh, let us count the ways...

"Moscow-backed destabilization" of Europe

First, to get a sense of the motives behind this investigation, look no further than the wording used to justify it. The Russians have been "fostering agitation against NATO missile defense" and attempting to "exploit European disunity" on the subject.
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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: The Western propaganda of a Russian Red Menace no longer works

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik
Tue, 19 Jan 2016 17:10 UTC
Putin
The American and British governments are launching yet another media campaign to demonize Russia, with tall claims that the Kremlin is infiltrating European political parties and news media. The dastardly Russian aim, we are told, is to destroy the European Union.

We've already seen versions of this scare tactic with regard to Ukraine and "Putin the new Hitler". But what this yawn-inducing exercise illustrates is that the old former spell over the Western public held by their rulers no longer works. The opiate of Western propaganda has expired.

Never mind Russia. The EU has no-one else to blame for its present stresses and strains but itself, owing to its craven subservience to Washington's reckless policies.

Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Washington and its trusty sidekick in London are desperately seeking to turn back the clock to the "good old days" when they could control their public through scare stories.

Recall those hoary old bogeyman themes of "Reds under the bed", the "Red menace", "Evil Empire", and so on, when the Western authorities mobilized their populations out of fear and trepidation that "the Russians are coming".
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Control Panel

Best of the Web: Who is hunting Angela Merkel with 'rapefugee' hysteria? US network war against the German government


Oriental Review
Mon, 18 Jan 2016 13:13 UTC
merkel soros
Can Angela Merkel withstand the network attacks coming from globalists like George Soros?
Last September we published an outline of the analysis produced by Russian investigator Vladimir Shalak on the hidden aspects of a Twitter-based campaign to lure Middle Eastern refugees to Germany. Having examined 19,000 refugee-related original tweets, Shalak claimed that the great exodus to continental Europe was artificially arranged by non-European actors. The latest wave of migrant-related violence in a number of European cities on New Year's Eve sparked another intense anti-Merkel campaign in German and European social media, and yielded additional data for Shalak's in-depth research.

Below we will share its preliminary results. But before we do, let's have a glance at two pictures demonstrating the drastic change in just 4 months of German public opinion about the refugees:

Comment: Like we've said throughout this 'rapefugee' hysteria; if you're against the refugees, you're for your own enslavement under the American boot.

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Magnify

Best of the Web: Now it's Israel's turn to open its nuclear program to IAEA inspection, or face sanctions

Anthony Bellchambers
Global Research
Mon, 18 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
The Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona, Israel
The Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona, Israel

Iran has currently met its obligations to the IAEA under the 2015 US-­led agreement with the UN and now IT is the time for Israel to submit its nuclear program to UNSC inspection or face international sanctions. The imperative is for:

1. The Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona to be fully opened to inspection by the IAEA and its estimated undeclared stockpile of up to 400 nuclear warheads be put under UN supervision for eventual destruction other than those required for legitimate defence purposes, estimated not to exceed five warheads (5) in total.

Comment: Will "the only democracy in the Middle East" permit itself to be under the scrutiny of any organization that it doesn't control? Don't hold your breath. Countries with governments as arrogant and pathological as Israel's exemplify hypocrisy and only adhere to international laws and norms when it is politically expedient. And the case will be no different if the UN tries to inspect Israel's nuclear production facilities.

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Document

Best of the Web: Doing it right: German paper Bild's interview with Putin

Alexander Mercouris
Russia Insider
Wed, 13 Jan 2016 03:07 UTC
putin bild
Putin used Russia's Christmas break to give an interview for the German tabloid Bild-Zeitung (see here and here).

Unusually for the Western media, the German interviewers proved to be both well-informed and intelligent and avoided cliches, giving Putin a good opportunity to explain himself concisely on a wide range of topics.

The fact the interviewers from Bild-Zeitung conducted the interview so intelligently incidentally shows that the true causes of the present tensions in international relations are well understood in Germany - including by the media there - even if they are not openly articulated.
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Bug

Best of the Web: Agents provocateur: Is the Oregon occupation being stage-managed?

Eric Draitser
Stop Imperialism
Thu, 07 Jan 2016 12:00 UTC
ammon bundy
US and international media have been abuzz in recent days with the ongoing armed occupation at the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. The social media space has been - quite predictably - polarized, with many on the far-right lionizing the armed occupiers as "patriots" and "heroes" defending a just cause in the name of "liberty." Naturally, many liberals and assorted leftists have condemned the occupation, pointing out both the relevant legal and historical issues at play here, including the vicious tradition of white militias in the US, the blatant disregard of environmental regulations, and much more that is well beyond the scope of this article.

But what has been missed by seemingly every pundit, left and right, who has chimed in on the Oregon occupation is the unmistakable stench of provocation. Simply put, something is off about this whole story, and it struck me from the first moment I read about what was happening, who was involved, and who wasn't involved. Specifically, there are indications that this entire fiasco has been manufactured by either government agencies themselves or some other private forces for any number of reasons.

Comment: Also worth mentioning is the media slant. If these armed 'protesters' were Muslims they would most certainly be called "terrorists", and if they were black, labeled "thugs" or "militants". No kid gloves would be used in either case: it would be shoot first, ask questions later.

If you happen to be a reader of the right-wing persuasion, and are inclined to sympathize with the ranchers' cause, you might want to jog your memory about the US military-intelligence fingerprints all over the Oklahoma City bombing:

A Noble Lie: The Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995

Oklahoma City bombing 20 yrs later: The facts that still go unreported

For more general information on government agents busy infiltrating and leading any and all political or social movements, read this:

How to Spot COINTELPRO Agents

COINTELPRO: Information Warfare

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