Puppet Masters
The Polish Foreign Ministry has proposed introducing classes about NATO that will promote the alliance and explain its role in Poland.
Poland is among the nations at the forefront of the US-backed campaign to put more troops in Eastern Europe. They are justifying the buildup by a perceived threat from Russia, which Moscow denies exists.
Free books about NATO's importance for Poland have also been distributed to every school and library in the country.
"It is a very good idea that experts from the [foreign] ministry or from NATO come to schools," Aleksandra Kusmierz, a civic studies professor at a high school in Stalowa Wola, told the Financial Times. "Every student in my school would have something to say about it," she added.
On Monday, Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo revealed a recording of a conversation between the country's planning minister Romero Juca and Sergio Machado, former CEO of state-owned oil company Petrobras subsidiary Transperto, calling for a carefully orchestrated and arguably-legal coup against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
The conversation centered on "changing" the government to "stop the bleeding" revealed by the so-called Car Wash investigation into Petrobras' corrupt practices. Both men are being actively investigated for corruption under the probe, and Juca resigned from his position on Monday.
Buzzfeed, May 23 2016Well ...
No, U.S. Ground Troops Aren't Headed To Libya Anytime Soon
"... there won't be boots on the ground anytime soon."
"Zero hour for the liberation of Fallujah has arrived. The moment of great victory has drawn near and Daesh [derogatory term for IS] has no choice but to flee," Abadi posted on his Twitter account.
The Iraqi offensive will see the army, police counterterrorism units, local tribal fighters, and a coalition of Shiite Muslim militias join forces. Meanwhile, air support will most likely be provided by the US-led coalition.
Comment: Yep, the same Fallujah that was destroyed by U.S. forces in 2004. This comes as U.S.-backed SDF rebels are preparing their assault on Daesh in Raqqa, Syria, from three axes. But as usual, the Americans probably have ulterior motives:
Pentagon plan: Convert Daesh caliphate into US-backed Syrian rebel redoubt. When have they ever done anything for purely humanitarian purposes, let alone for the Syrian people? Meanwhile, the Russians-Syrians-Iranians launched an offensive on Shaer, Homs, outside Palmyra. Russian jets and marines are reportedly participating in the offensive. Daesh is on the retreat.
Members of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, are set to discuss the implications of the latest assessment of the threat from Daesh by Europol that predicts:
"[Daesh] inspired terrorists or another religiously inspired terrorist group will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in Europe again, but particularly in France, intended to cause mass casualties amongst the civilian population."
Comment: The report was written earlier this year, but it's timely as can be. Consider: Merkel Admits 'Grave Concerns' Over Turkey as Migrant Deal Enters Brexit Row. Daesh would not be a threat without Turkish support (not to mention U.S. support).
The report by al-Shammari, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), claims that long-standing American policy is "built upon the principle of advance planning and future probabilities," which the U.S. has now turned toward the Saudi regime after being successfully employed against first the Taliban and al-Qaeda, then Saddam Hussein and his secular Baathist controlled Iraq.
Al-Shammari claims the recent U.S. threats to "expose" documents implicating the Saudi government are simply the continuation of a U.S. policy, which he refers to as "victory by means of archive." He highlights that during the initial invasion of Iraq, under George H.W. Bush, Saddam Hussein was left alive and in power to be used as "a bargaining chip," but upon deciding that he was "no longer an ace up their sleeve" Washington moved to topple his government and install a U.S.-backed ruling party.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are now the "ace up the sleeve" of the U.S. government, according to al-Shammari.
The impetus behind the attacks, writes al-Shammari, was to create "an obscure enemy - terrorism - which became what American presidents blamed for all their mistakes" and that would provide justification for any "dirty operation" in any nation."September 11 is one of winning cards in the American archives, because all the wise people in the world who are experts on American policy and who analyze the images and the videos [of 9/11] agree unanimously that what happened in the [Twin] Towers was a purely American action, planned and carried out within the U.S. Proof of this is the sequence of continuous explosions that dramatically ripped through both buildings... Expert structural engineers demolished them with explosives, while the planes crashing [into them] only gave the green light for the detonation - they were not the reason for the collapse. But the U.S. still spreads blame in all directions. [This policy] can be dubbed 'victory by means of archives."
This is a misrepresentation. Whilst Trump did not provide a detailed programme — to have done so in the middle of an election would have been unwise — his underlying message is clear enough.
Instead of a foreign policy based on an ideology centred on US world hegemony, "exceptionalism" and "democracy promotion" Trump promises a foreign policy straightforwardly based on the pursuit of US national interests.
To understand what that would mean in practice consider the contrast between what the US public wants and what the US has actually done under successive US administrations.
Whereas the US public since 9/11 has been overwhelmingly focused on jihadi terrorism as the greatest threat to the US, the US foreign policy establishment is only minimally interested in that question. Its priority is to secure US world hegemony by reshaping the world geopolitical map.
Earlier it was reported that the Syrian Democratic Forces will start a large-scale operation to liberate the 'capital' city of Daesh terrorists, Raqqa.
"In general, I believe that Raqqa is symbolic due to the presence of Daesh and it is declared as their capital by them. Taking back Raqqa can be compared with the capture of Berlin in World War II. I say this in a political and geopolitical sense," al-Ahmad said.
He further said that in his opinion whoever takes back Raqqa will majorly stand out in the world in symbolic terms.
"It will be considered a major victory over Daesh as I think it is very important to unite joint efforts of Russians, Iranians and other allies, so that the Syrian Army can enter Raqqa," al-Ahmad stressed.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said the new Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF) will accelerate global and national responses to disease outbreaks that threaten large populations and fragile economies.
He said the PEF, a combination of catastrophe insurance and bonds, is a direct reaction to the sluggish donor response to the outbreak of Ebola, which eventually killed close to 11,000 in West Africa and shut down economic activity for months.
"Pandemics pose a serious threat to global health and economic security," said Kim. "The recent Ebola crisis in West Africa was a tragedy that we were simply not prepared for. It was a wake-up call to the entire world." "There is no effective international system ready to respond quickly to a pandemic."
Kim, a medical doctor and expert on health and disease in developing countries, put the World Bank in the lead of the response to Ebola at the time. But he acknowledged that it took months to bring together the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to pay for deploying health personnel, supplies, and other relief to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. In the meantime, he said, the death toll rose ten-fold.
The fighting is between the Jaish al-Islam, a major faction within the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee (HNC) and the Faylaq al-Rahman, a union of two other rebel factions, which Jaish al-Islam attempted to absorb back in February.
Faylaq al-Rahman controls towns closer to Damascus in the region, and Jaish al-Islam accused them of rejecting an HNC initiative to end fighting in the area. The terms of the initiative were not made public, but almost certainly favored Jaish, a major ally of the Saudis. The Observatory reported that Jaish al-Islam had refused to withdraw from a town seized previously, and which they'd agreed to leave two weeks ago, and that they were the ones who launched the new offensive.
Comment: This infighting at the lower levels of corrupted reality is reflective of what is happening at the global scale between nations like Saudi Arabia and the United States. There is no honor among thieves and the untenable bond between the pathologicals in charge appears to be breaking. The rats are finally turning on one another.















Comment: Further reading: