Puppet MastersS


Cow Skull

Too little, too late: Obama's 2015 budget will seek $60 billion tax credit by closing 'Gingrich loophole'

Obama
© Agence France-Presse
President Barack Obama will strike a firmly populist tone in his 2015 budget plan on Tuesday, proposing to pay for an expansion of a popular tax credit for the working poor by eliminating tax breaks claimed by wealthy Americans.

The proposal to expand one of the most popular U.S. government poverty reduction programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit, would cost $60 billion, a modest amount in a budget in which the president has $1.014 trillion in spending to parcel out, the White House said.

Obama would pay for the tax credit expansion by closing tax loopholes used typically by wealthy investors or employees of professional service companies such as law, consulting or lobbying firms.

Che Guevara

Hugo Chavez: what the mainstream is hiding

Hugo Chavez's death radically shifted the balance of power in Latin America and the Caribbean but not for the reasons that you are being told on the mainstream media.

Quenelle - Golden

US, UK foreign secretaries visit Kiev in PR stunt - Deputy national security adviser accidentally reveals UK government too weak to confront Russia

  • Cameron's adviser Hugh Powell left file on display to photographers
  • Document revealed Britain will not impose sanctions against Russia
  • Will not support military action against the country either, it showed
  • Also disclosed Russian investors will not be frozen out of City of London
  • Hague and Cameron claimed today they would 'get tough' with Russia
  • Britain will not impose sanctions or support military action against Russia, according to a briefing paper that was revealed in error yesterday.
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The document was snapped by a sharp photographer who zoomed in on the deputy national security adviser Hugh Powell as he walked past No10 to attend a meeting about the coup in Ukraine.

The document became public when one of David Cameron's advisers left it on display to press photographers before a Downing Street meeting.

The blunder by Hugh Powell, who is deputy national security adviser, also shows that the Government has no plans to freeze Russian investors out of the City of London.

Instead, the briefing paper recommends that the UN should take the lead and possibly send monitors to Ukraine.

The document says: 'UK should not support for now, trade sanctions ... or close London's financial centre to Russians.'

Comment: As the British establishment is joined at the hip with the American, we can deduce that the US won't do anything either.

It's all hot air and PR stunts, with both foreign secretaries visiting Kiev in two days, while their lackeys in the press push all the right propaganda buttons.

They can't slap sanctions on Russia because the financial elite in London would overrule them. They can't confront Russia's army because it's too risky to wage war with a real army.

They're pathetic creatures, which is why they instead use their armies to target defenseless peoples and hope that repeating lies often and loudly enough will convince the others to submit to their will.

See also:

Sophomoric peer pressure: Lawmakers call for G8 suspension of Russia

Russia mocks Britain: 'That small island no one listens to'!


Chess

Flashback Russia mocks Britain: 'That small island no one listens to'!

Russia mocked Britain today as "a small island no one listens to", sparking a diplomatic spat with David Cameron.

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© APIThe Russian official is also said to have joked about Russian “oligarchs” buying up large parts of Chelsea and other upmarket London districts.
The Prime Minister insisted that Britain remained a major world power.

Tensions surrounding the Syrian crisis boiled over at a G20 summit in St Petersburg. Mr Cameron has backed calls for military intervention in Syria after the Assad regime allegedly used chemical weapons.

Mr Putin has opposed intervention and questioned Western claims about the attack. Britain has faced questions about its role and influence in the world since Mr Cameron was embarrassed by last week's Commons vote to rule out a military strike against Syria.

Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin's official spokesman, is said to have highlighted that embarrassment, telling Russian journalists that Britain was now diplomatically irrelevant.

Britain is "just a small island ... no one pays any attention to them", Mr Peskov is reported to have said. The blunt remarks appeared to realise British fears that the Russians would use the St Petersburg summit to upstage Mr Cameron over his criticism of Syria, Russia's closest Middle Eastern ally.

Boat

Propaganda: Ukraine mobilizes reserves troops, threatening war

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© Photomig/EPADemonstrators put up a Russian flag near an administration building in Donetsk, Ukraine
Russia's move to seize control of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula on Saturday led Ukraine to call up its military reserves on Sunday and warn Moscow against further incursions as Western powers scrambled to find a response to the crisis.

A day after the Russian Parliament granted President Vladimir V. Putin broad authority to use military force in response to the political upheaval in Ukraine that dislodged a Kremlin ally and installed a new, staunchly pro-Western government, the Ukrainian government in Kiev threatened war if Russia sent troops further into Ukraine.

Russian troops stripped of identifying insignia but using military vehicles bearing the license plates of Russia's Black Sea force swarmed the major thoroughfares of Crimea on Saturday, encircled government buildings, closed the main airport and seized communication hubs, solidifying what began on Friday as a covert effort to control the largely pro-Russian region.

The announcement of the reserve mobilization was an attempt by the rattled new government in Kiev to draw a line against Mr. Putin, an effort expected to continue later on Sunday when NATO holds an emergency meeting on Ukraine and the British foreign secretary, William Hague, visits Kiev in a sign of Western support.

Comment: The New York Times is blowing smoke!


Hotdog

Lies and Spin: Vladimir Putin tightens grip on Crimea

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Yulia Tymoshenko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk
The fledgling government in Kiev put the country on a war footing on Sunday as the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, tightened his grip on the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and western powers were left scrambling to find a response to the escalating crisis.

"We are on the brink of disaster," said Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's acting prime minister, as Kiev called for help from Washington and London, co-signatories of a 1994 pact with Russia guaranteeing Ukraine's security and its borders.

"This is actually a declaration of war on my country," he said. "We urge Putin to pull back his troops from this country and honour bilateral agreements. If he wants to be the president who started a war between two neighbouring and friendly countries, he has reached his target within a few inches."

As John Kerry, the US secretary of state, described Russia's gambit as "an incredible act of aggression", western powers pondered their limited options. Nato ambassadors met in Brussels, with Lithuania and Poland arguing that Russia's actions threatened them as Nato members bordering Russia and Ukraine, and pushing for appropriate action.

Comment: The Nuland Eavesdrop redux: Anybody that tells you that the U.S. is not running the "revolution" from behind the scenes is blowing smoke


Wall Street

The crisis in Ukraine hits stock markets

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© Alexander Zemlianichenko/APA currency exchange office in downtown Moscow, as the ruble hits new record lows against the US dollar.
Escalating tensions over Crimea push shares down; drive oil, gold and wheat prices up

Closing summary

Russian MICEX tumbles 10.7%, wiping off more than cost of Sochi

Markets close: Big falls across Europe; DAX slides 3.3%; FTSE 100 down 101 points

Earlier: Russian central bank hikes rates as ruble hits record low

Snakes in Suits

Business as usual: UK seeking to ensure Russia sanctions do not harm City of London

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The secret document carried by an official in Downing Street.
Government document photographed outside No 10 states that 'London's financial centre' should not be closed to Russians

Britain is drawing up plans to ensure that any EU action against Russia over Ukraine will exempt the City of London, according to a secret government document photographed in Downing Street.

As David Cameron said Britain and its EU partners would put pressure on Moscow after it assumed control of Crimea, a government document drawn up for a meeting of senior ministers said that "London's financial centre" should not be closed to Russians. It did say that visa restrictions and travel bans could be imposed on Russian officials.

The picture of the document was taken by the freelance photographer Steve Back, who specialises in spotting secret documents carried openly by officials entering Downing Street. The document was in the hands of an unnamed official attending a meeting of the national security council (NSC) called by the prime minister to discuss the Ukrainian crisis.

Cards

Former German chancellor Schroeder: EU facilitates Ukrainian conflict, attempts to isolate Russia wrong

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The European Union "only facilitated the conflict in Ukraine" when it announced that "the Association Agreement is incompatible with the Customs Union agreement between Kiev and Moscow", said former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroeder in an interview with the radio station Europe-1.

Schroeder also criticized NATO, as "this alliance does not have a political purpose, and its actions do not help to build trust, but on the contrary, create more and more concerns". Measures to solve the Ukrainian crisis "should be solely diplomatic", he stressed.

Schroeder spoke against attempts to isolate Russia, particularly by rejecting to attend the G8 summit in Sochi. "In such critical conditions, any measures that block further discussions are wrong," Schroeder noted.

When asked about whether Germany could take a tougher position on the issue, he emphasized that "boycotts should be used in a way that does not harm your own interests."

Dollar

US prepares $1B aid package for new non democratic Ukraine government

In a somber show of U.S. support for Ukraine's new leadership, Secretary of State John Kerry walked the streets Tuesday where nearly 100 anti-government protesters were gunned down by police last month, and promised beseeching crowds that American aid is on the way.

The Obama administration announced a $1 billion energy subsidy package in Washington as Kerry was arriving in Kiev. The fast-moving developments came as the United States readied economic sanctions amid worries that Moscow was ready to stretch its military reach further into the mainland of the former Soviet republic.

Kerry headed straight to Institutska Street at the start of an hours-long visit intended to bolster the new government that took over just a week ago when Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych fled. He lay a bouquet of red roses, and twice the Roman Catholic secretary of state made the sign of the cross at a shrine set up to memorialize protesters who were killed during mid-February riots.

Comment: Reader may want to read this article to understand the motivation behind the $1 billion dollar energy subsidy aid.
IMF sponsored "Democracy" in the Ukraine