Puppet MastersS


Heart

Another reporter breaks down on air while reporting on the 87 Palestinians who lost their lives Sunday

Shijaiyah
© Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse via Getty ImagesShijaiyah: Civil defense workers remove the body of a little girl.
Covering the violent scene in Gaza has proven difficult for even the most seasoned reporters.

Al Jazeera's Gaza correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh walked off camera on Sunday while reporting on the dozens of people killed and thousands of Shijaiyah residents forced to flee their homes as Israeli aircraft continued to target the area. Al-Dahdouh is an award-winning journalist and has covered the conflicts in his hometown for years.

Despite his experience, he could not hide his emotions while reporting on the 87 Palestinians who lost their lives Sunday.

Watch the video to see an emotional Al-Dahdouh unable to finish his coverage.

Comment: Press TV's Gaza correspondent breaks down while covering Israeli killing of Palestinian children


Briefcase

The implosion is near: Signs of the bubble's last days

Janet Yellen
The Fed's Janet Yellen, world's leading money printer.
The central banks of the world are massively and insouciantly pursuing financial instability. That's the inherent result of the 68 straight months of zero money market rates that have been forced into the global financial system by the Fed and its confederates at the BOJ, ECB and BOE. ZIRP fuels endless carry trades and the harvesting of every manner of profit spread between negligible "funding" costs and positive yields and returns on a wide spectrum of risk assets.

Moreover, this central bank sponsored regime of ZIRP and money market pegging contains a built-in accelerator. As carry trade speculators drive asset prices steadily higher and fixed income spreads steadily thinner - - fear and short interest is driven out of the casino, making buying on the dips ever more profitable and less risky. Indeed, the explicit promise by central banks that the money market rate will remain frozen for the duration and that ample warning of any change in rate policy will be "transparently" announced is the single worst policy imaginable from the point of view of financial stability. It means that the speculator's worst nightmare - - suddenly going "upside down" due to a sharp spike in funding costs - -is eliminated by central bank writ.

Comment: At the end of the day, this is just a continuation of the move to strip wealth from the 99% and transfer it to the 1%


Attention

A new study predicts 2 billion dead, 25-year winter after a 'limited' nuclear war

Nuclear War_1
© news.com.au Blast effect ... Forget the shock wave. The change in weather induced by billions of tons of ash and dust in the atmosphere from even a “small” nuclear war between India and Pakistan will kill 2 billion people, a new study says.
IT'S a horrifying scene burned into our collective conscious: A flash of light, a blast of hot air and a ballooning mushroom cloud. But there's much more to a nuclear war, as a new study reveals.

Nuclear War_3
© news.com.auGrim reality ... The morbid, confronting scenes of the movie “Threads” sets an accurate scene for the effects of a “small” nuclear war.
Filmmakers and novelists have been tackling the subject for decades. Some have been somewhat sanitised in their approach (Jericho, 2006).

Others have been brutally confronting (Threads, 1984, and The Road, 2009).

All have simply speculated about the fate of life on Earth after an apocalyptic nuclear exchange.

Now, a team of US atmospheric and environmental scientists have taken a detailed look at exactly what all that dust, ash and debris in the air means.

Specifically, they ran computer models on a fight between Pakistan and India through advanced climate predicting software developed to study pollution-based climate change.

The outcome?

It's bad.

Even for this "limited, regional nuclear war", it means a one-to-two degree plunge in global temperatures and a nine-per cent cut in worldwide rainfall.

Attention

New World Disorder: Emerging division between East and West threatens to plunge the globe into chaos

New World Disorder
© The Economic Collapse Blog
In general, over the last several decades the world has experienced an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. The opening up of relations with China and the "end of the Cold War" resulted in an extended period of cooperation between east and west that was truly unique in the annals of history. But now things are shifting.

The civil war in Ukraine and the crash of MH17 have created an enormous amount of tension between the United States and Russia, and many analysts believe that relations between the two superpowers are now even worse than they were during the end of the Cold War era. In addition, the indictment of five PLA officers for cyber espionage and sharp disagreements over China's territorial claims in the South China Sea (among other issues) have caused U.S. relations with China to dip to their lowest point since at least 1989.

So could the emerging division between the east and the west ultimately plunge us into a period of global chaos? And what would that mean for the world economy?

For as long as most Americans can remember, the U.S. dollar and the U.S. financial system have been overwhelmingly dominant. But now the powers of the east appear to be determined to break this monopoly.

Four of the BRICS nations (China, Russia, India and Brazil) are on the list of the top ten biggest economies on the planet, and they are starting to make moves to become much less dependent on the U.S.-centered financial system of the western world.

Airplane

Kiev confiscated MH17 air traffic control recordings - what are they hiding?

mh17 flight path
Is this proof that MH17 change course into a war zone? A route map compiled by Twitter user Vagelis Karmiros using data from flight-tracking website Flightaware claims to show how the doomed Malaysia Airlines plane took a different flightpath to the ones taken by the previous ten MH17 flights
Earlier, when we commented in the abnormality in the flight path of flight MH-17 we said that "perhaps before coming to "certain" conclusion about the involvement of this rebel or that, the key questions one should ask before casting blame, is why did the pilot divert from his usual flight plan, why did he fly above restricted airspace, and just what, if any instructions, did Kiev air control give the pilot in the minutes before the tragic explosion?"

The simple answer would have come if Ukraine had merely released the Air Traffic Control recording from the tower and flight MH 17, something Malaysia did in the aftermath of the disappearance of flight MH 370, which at last check has still not been uncovered.

It now appears that answer will not be forthcoming because as the BBC reports "Ukraine's SBU security service has confiscated recordings of conversations between Ukrainian air traffic control officers and the crew of the doomed airliner, a source in Kiev has told Interfax news agency."

What happens to the recordings next is completely unknown. What is known is that any hope of getting an undoctored explanation why the plane flew as it did, or what the pilots may have seen or said in the moments before the explosion, is forever gone.

Comment: Where is the international outrage? Or maybe the MSM will blame Putin for this too! "Putin blocking investigation into MH17 by Judo chopping Kiev ATC into hiding flight recordings!"


Attention

How American propaganda works: "Guilt by Insinuation"

Propaganda
© kapitalcon.wordpress.com
Why hasn't Washington joined Russian President Putin in calling for an objective, non-politicized international investigation by experts of the case of the Malaysian jetliner?

The Russian government continues to release facts, including satellite photos showing the presence of Ukrainian Buk anti-aircraft missiles in locations from which the airliner could have been brought down by the missile system and documentation that a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet rapidly approached the Malaysian airliner prior to its downing. The head of the Operations Directorate of Russian military headquarters said at a Moscow press conference today (July 21) that the presence of the Ukrainian military jet is confirmed by the Rostov monitoring center.

The Russian Defense Ministry pointed out that at the moment of destruction of MH-17 an American satellite was flying over the area. The Russian government urges Washington to make available the photos and data captured by the satellite.

President Putin has repeatedly stressed that the investigation of MH-17 requires "a fully representative group of experts to be working at the site under the guidance of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)." Putin's call for an independent expert examination by ICAO does not sound like a person with anything to hide.

Turning to Washington Putin stated: "In the meantime, no one [not even the "exceptional nation"] has the right to use this tragedy to achieve their narrowly selfish political goals."

Putin reminded Washington: "We repeatedly called upon all conflicting sides to stop the bloodshed immediately and to sit down at the negotiating table. I can say with confidence that if military operations were not resumed [by Kiev] on June 28 in eastern Ukraine, this tragedy wouldn't have happened."

What is the American response?

Lies and insinuations.

Clipboard

Russia counters anti-rebel, anti-Russian propaganda during press conference

Image
Russia's Defence Ministry on Monday challenged accusations pro-Russian rebels were to blame for shooting down a Malaysian airliner and asked the United States to produce satellite images to support its assertions.

At a briefing in which generals used flashing radar images on big screens in a state-of-the-art conference room, the ministry said a Ukrainian fighter jet had tracked the airliner despite Kiev's assertions that no aircraft were nearby.

The ministry also denied supplying the separatists in east Ukraine with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems, known as "Gadfly" in NATO, or "any other weapons".

The hi-tech presentation appeared a direct response to video and audio recordings used by Ukrainian security officials to back up their accusations of Russian and rebel involvement - recordings the ministry's comments suggested were fabricated.

"Russian air space control systems detected a Ukrainian Air Force plane, presumably an SU-25 (fighter jet), scrambling in the direction of the Malaysian Boeing ... The distance of the SU-25 plane from the Boeing was from 3 to 5 kilometres (2 to 3 miles)," Air Force Lieutenant-General Igor Makushev said.

"Earlier, Ukrainian officials said that on the day of the Boeing 777 crash there were no military aircraft in the region - as you can see this does not appear to be true."

Another officer, Lieutenant-General Andrei Kartopolov, said that, "whether it is a coincidence or not", a U.S. satellite had been monitoring the area at the time.

"We also have some questions for our U.S. partners," he said. "According to the U.S. declarations, they have satellite images that confirm the missile was launched by the rebels. But nobody has seen these images." "If the American side has pictures from this satellite, then they should show the international community."



Comment: It's as simple as that: put up, or shut up.


Quenelle

Wow, a rational politician! Ron Paul defends Putin, points out U.S. propaganda

Ron Paul
© Reuters/Shannon Stapleton
It used to be that blaming America for crisis abroad was largely the province of liberals. That folk wisdom appears to be changing - just ask Ron Paul. In the days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the former House member has been quick to attack the West and President Obama for pointing any fingers in the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Just days after the tragic crash of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine, Western politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster. It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said," Ron Paul wrote in an editorial Sunday. "President Obama held a press conference to claim - even before an investigation - that it was pro-Russian rebels in the region who were responsible. His ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, did the same at the U.N. Security Council - just one day after the crash!"

Paul's argument, which he first made in a Friday television appearance, was quickly picked up by the Kremlin-funded English language outlet Russia Today. And on Monday, the Permanent Mission of Russia to NATO, a group tasked with facilitating cooperation between Russia and NATO, tweeted out his column.

It's easy to see why they liked the piece. Politically, it's a much sounder line of argument for protecting Russia from blame than what's being reported on Russian TV (much of which is funded by the Kremlin), where conspiracies theories abound. One report promotes the idea that the airliner was already full of corpses when it took off from Amsterdam. Another claims the tragedy was somehow mysteriously the result of the Ukrainian military confusing MH17 for Putin's presidential plane.

Comment: One voice of reason in the wilderness of sycophantic presstitutes and psychopathic politicians!


People 2

Iran reaches out to Putin at a critical time

Rouhani and Putin phone call
© IRNA
The early bird gets the worm and someone like US president Barack Obama who grew up in the tropics in Hawaii and Indonesia would know it far better than his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin from Leningrad. The alacrity with which Obama scrambled to take early lead in the propaganda war over Moscow on Ukraine almost makes it appear he was expecting such a horrendous tragedy to happen. So far he has had no phone conversation with Putin - not even to ascertain some facts first.

That is, unlike Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and the two most affected statesmen here in the tragedy of the ill-fated Malaysian plane - Dutch prime minister Mark Rutt and Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak. Rutt, in fact, already twice discussed the tragedy with Putin and they have agreed on the latter's suggestion for an "independent, open and fair investigation" into the tragic event in Donetsk by the International Civil Aviation Organization with the participation of "all the parties concerned", and pending that, to demand "an immediate and unconditional ceasefire" in eastern Ukraine.

Comment: In 1988 the U.S. warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian aircraft. This is what U.S. president Reagan said at the time according to an article from the BBC:
President Reagan said the Vincennes had taken "a proper defensive action" and called the incident an "understandable accident", although he said he regretted the loss of life.
The warship Vincennes defended itself by saying that it was at the time in battle with 3 Iranian patrol boats, who had fired on a helicopter onboard the Vincennes. It took the U.S. 4 years to admit that the warship at the time was in Iranian territorial waters.


USA

Best of the Web: Government agents 'directly involved' in almost all high-profile U.S. terror plots

Image
Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says.

Some of the controversial "sting" operations "were proposed or led by informants", bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.

The lengthy report, released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US criminal justice system's ability to respect civil rights and due process in post-9/11 terrorism cases. It portrays a system that features not just the sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots.

"In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act," the report alleges.

Comment: There is a clear motivate here, between the lines. The authorities wish to project the 'reality' of a 'terror threat' to keep the people afraid and justify military invasions overseas to accrue more wealth to themselves. It does not require a large leap of logic to see how the same authorities would, on occasion, not only manufacture 'terror plots' but also carry out real terror attacks themselves in the name of the patsies.


See also Sott.net's The SOTT Report on this topic for more details.