Puppet MastersS


Che Guevara

Vladimir Putin reminds world - Soviets saved Europe from fascism during WWII

Harriet Salem and Ian Traynor
The Guardian
Fri, 09 May 2014 18:27 UTC
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© Mikhail Klimentyev/APVladimir Putin and the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, at the Victory Day parade in Red Square.
Russian president gives speech to soldiers and war veterans at Victory Day military parade in Red Square

Vladimir Putin has praised the Soviet role in defeating fascism, as Russia marked the anniversary of the second world war victory over Nazi Germany.

In a speech to soldiers and war veterans gathered on Moscow's Red Square for the annual Victory Day military parade, Putin said those who defeated fascism must never be betrayed.

The message had a poignant ring because Moscow has warned of the dangers posed by leaders it portrays as neo-fascists in Ukraine, and urged Europe to prevent the rise of the far-right.

"The iron will of the Soviet people, their fearlessness and stamina saved Europe from slavery. It was our country which chased the Nazis to their lair, achieved their full and final destruction, won at the cost of millions of victims and terrible hardships," the Russian president said.

"We will always guard this shining and unfading truth and will not allow the betrayal and obliteration of heroes, of all who, not caring about themselves, preserved peace on the planet."
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Eye 2

Watch the U.S. drop 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos

H.F. Bhojani
Mother Jones
Wed, 26 Mar 2014 18:15 UTC
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Cluster bomb leftovers
Picturing the deadly legacy of America's secret war in the world's most bombed-out country.

Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos. While the American public was focused on the war in neighboring Vietnam, the US military was waging a devastating covert campaign to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines through the small Southeast Asian country.

The nearly 600,000 bombing runs delivered a staggering amount of explosives: The equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years, or a ton of bombs for every person in the country - more than what American planes unloaded on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth.

The map above, created by photographer Jerry Redfern, provides another view of the massive scale of the bombing. Each point on the map corresponds to one US bombing mission starting in October 1965; multiple planes often flew on missions.

The unfinished aftermath of the air campaign is the subject of Redfern and Karen Coates' new book, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos. This stunning book, seven years in the making, documents how the secret air war is still claiming lives more than four decades after it ended.

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Shopping Bag

Global trade: What the world imports and exports

Joe Weisenthal
Business Insider
Tue, 29 Apr 2014 08:13 UTC
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© Lawcustoms.wordpress.com
Here are two awesome maps from a recent Standard Chartered report on the state of global trade.

The top map shows the big exports from every country. The bottom is the country's imports.

Each region is depicted by a few categories, and the number next to each category represents how big that category is for each country.
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Dollar

Despite U.S. sanctions BP says committed to Rosneft


The Economic Times
Tue, 29 Apr 2014 02:12 UTC
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© Ibtimes.com
British energy group BP said today it remained committed to its investment in Rosneft, despite new sanctions imposed by the United States against the Russian oil giant's chief executive Igor Sechin.

The powerful head of Russia's largest oil company was one of seven senior officials named on a new list of US punitive measures aimed at punishing President Vladimir Putin's stance on Ukraine.

Rosneft itself did not face any new restrictions. Washington's measure freezes any holdings Sechin might have in the United States and bars him from entering the country.
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USA

Fed Chair Janet Yellen won't answer question on whether U.S. is democracy or oligarchy

Travis Gettys
Raw Story
Thu, 08 May 2014 17:26 UTC
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The Federal Reserve chair told Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that she shared his concerns about wealth inequality and its distorting effects on democracy, but she declined to offer any solutions.

Sanders pointed Wednesday during a Joint Economic Committee hearing to a recent study that found corporate interests dominated politics at the expense of ordinary citizens, and Fed Chair Janet Yellen said she agreed.

"All of the statistics on inequality you're cited are ones that greatly concern me, and I think for the same reasons that you're concerned about them," Yellen said.

She said money was often the deciding factor in which voices were heard during the political process, but she stopped short when Sanders asked if the United States had ceased to be a capitalist democracy but had instead become an oligarchy.

"I prefer not to give labels, but there's no question we've had the trend toward growing inequality, and I personally find it very worrisome trend that deserves the attention of policy makers," Yellen said.
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Cowboy Hat

Putin announces pullback from Ukraine border

Neil MacFarhuqar
NY Times
Wed, 07 May 2014 17:16 UTC
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© Sergei KarpukhinPresident Vladimir V. Putin pictured at the Kremlin on Wednesday. “Open, honest and equal dialogue is the only possible option,” he said of the situation in Ukraine.
President Vladimir V. Putin, faced with rising violence in southeastern Ukraine that threatened to draw in the Russian Army at great cost and prompt severe new Western economic sanctions, pressed pause on Wednesday in what had started to look like an inevitable march toward war.

But it remained unclear to analysts and political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic whether he was truly reversing course on Ukraine or if this was just another of his judo-inspired feints.

Using a far less ominous tone than in previous remarks about Ukraine, Mr. Putin told a news conference at the Kremlin that Russia had withdrawn its troops from along the border and that he had asked separatists to drop plans for a referendum on sovereignty this Sunday. Russia would even accept Ukraine's presidential election on May 25, he said, if demands for autonomy from the country's east were recognized.

Mr. Putin said Russia wanted to spur mediation efforts led by the Europeans. He said he did not know whether talks between the warring sides in Ukraine were "realistic," but was determined to give them a chance, in particular a suggestion from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany that the factions engage in a round-table discussion.
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Better Earth

Remembering the important lessons of the Cold War

The Saker
The Vineyard of the Saker
Thu, 08 May 2014 15:46 UTC
Dr-Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove: just a movie? U.S. leaders just might be that crazy.
If anything the past 24 hours have proved, once again, that the US and NATO are opposed to any form of negotiations, confidence-building measures or any other type of negotiations with the Donbass and with Russia. Even though Putin tried really hard to sound accommodating and available for a negotiated solution, the US/NATO policy is clearly to provoke and confront Russia and its allies in every imaginable way. The same goes, of course, for the junta freaks whose forces have acted with special brutality during repressive operations in the city of Mariupol. As for the AngloZionist Empire, it is organizing all sorts of military maneuvers in Poland, the Baltic states and elsewhere. Logically, many of you are coming to the conclusion that a war is becoming a very real possibility and I therefore want to repeat a few things yet again.

First, there is no military option for the AngloZionists in the Ukraine, at least not against Russia. This is primarily due to three fact things: geography, US overreach and politics. Geography, it is much easier for Russia to move a ground forces to the Ukraine than it is for the US/NATO, especially for heavy (mechanized, motor-rifle, armored, tank) units. Second, simply too many US forces are committed elsewhere for the US to have a major war in against Russia in eastern Europe. Third, for the time being the western public is being deceived by the corporate media's reports about the "Russian paper tiger", but as soon as the real fighting starts both Europeans and Americans will suddenly wonder if it is worth dying for the Ukraine. Because if a shooting war between the USA and Russia really begins, we will all be at risk (see below).

Remember how the very same media promised that the poorly equipped, poorly trained, poorly commanded and poorly motivated Russian military could not crack the "tough nut" represented by the NATO-trained Georgian military?
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X

U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine: No evidence of direct Russian involvement in violence in Odessa

David Sherfinski
Washington Times
Sun, 04 May 2014 15:35 UTC
Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey R. Pyatt on the Maidan square.
© UnknownVictoria Nuland and Geoffrey R. Pyatt on the Maidan square, Kiev, Ukraine.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt said Sunday that while Russia is exercising influence across eastern Ukraine, there's no evidence the country was directly involved in the most recent spate of violence over the weekend.

Dozens were killed in Odessa in southern Ukraine over the weekend after a violent clash between demonstrators on both sides culminated in dozens of pro-Russia supporters ending up inside a building set ablaze.

The context of the deadly incident "suggests that somebody wanted this violence to explode the way it did," Mr. Pyatt said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"At this point, the whole country is trying to figure out what happened, how to pull together, and how to make sure that those who would try to divide the country will not be successful," he said.

Mr. Pyatt said that while Russia is "exercising influence" across eastern Ukraine, there's no evidence of the country's direct involvement in what happened in Odessa.

Comment: Hmm, we wonder who could've wanted Ukraine to erupt in violence the way it did...

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Laptop

Emails reveal close Google relationship with NSA

Jason Leopold
Al Jazeera America
Tue, 06 May 2014 15:19 UTC
alexander page brin
© (l. to r.): Loeb / AFP / Getty; Ramson / PolarisFrom left: NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander; Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Email exchanges between National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt suggest a far cozier working relationship between some tech firms and the U.S. government than was implied by Silicon Valley brass after last year's revelations about NSA spying.

Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency's vast capability for spying on Americans' electronic communications prompted a number of tech executives whose firms cooperated with the government to insist they had done so only when compelled by a court of law.

But Al Jazeera has obtained two sets of email communications dating from a year before Snowden became a household name that suggest not all cooperation was under pressure.

On the morning of June 28, 2012, an email from Alexander invited Schmidt to attend a four-hour-long "classified threat briefing" on Aug. 8 at a "secure facility in proximity to the San Jose, CA airport."

"The meeting discussion will be topic-specific, and decision-oriented, with a focus on Mobility Threats and Security," Alexander wrote in the email, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the first of dozens of communications between the NSA chief and Silicon Valley executives that the agency plans to turn over.
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Attention

Putin warns of growing militant nationalism, Nazi ideology in Europe - passes anti-fascism laws


RIA Novosti
Thu, 08 May 2014 15:09 UTC
putin
© RIA Novosti/Alexey Nikolsky
Militant nationalism, which has led to the appearance of Nazi ideology, is raising its head in Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

"Here and there militant nationalism is again raising its head, the same kind that brought on the appearance of Nazi ideology," Putin said during a meeting with the leaders of Armenia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus.

On Monday, Putin signed a bill making attempts to "whitewash Nazism" punishable with hefty fines and prison sentences. The law is based on the results of the Nuremberg Trials held by the Allies in 1945-1949, which convicted most surviving Nazi leaders of war crimes, denounced fascism and proclaimed most Nazi organizations as criminal.

The law provides for a monetary penalty of up to 500,000 rubles ($14,000) or a jail term of up to 5 years as punishment for rehabilitating fascism and spreading false information about the Soviet Union's actions during World War II.

Publicly desecrating symbols of Russian military glory or spreading information disrespecting public holidays related to the country's defense will be punishable by a fine of up to 300,000 rubles ($8,400) or community service for up to a year.

The Soviet Union's role in the Allied victory in World War II is an important component of many Russians' sense of pride and patriotism, with spectacular anniversary parades and ceremonies held each year on May 9.

Pro-federalization supporters have called Ukrainian nationalists, who have protested and fought against federalists in the country's east since the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych and deadly riots in Kiev, followers of Nazi ideology. Europe has been supporting Ukraine's so-called Euromaidan activists, who wish to see Ukraine become part of the EU.
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