Puppet Masters
As reports have been vague at best and Berlin will "neither confirm nor deny" their provenance, what exactly they hope to discover is unknown. Has German intelligence invented a litmus test for how dissenting a viewpoint has to be to be classified as "propaganda," or will they make it up as they go along?
Deutsche Welle, Berlin's (publicly-funded, just-like-RT, to-carry-German-POV-but-would-never-be-called-propaganda-by-western-media) foreign news broadcaster maintains that German government experts worry that Moscow has prepared "a systematic propaganda push reminiscent of Cold War KGB methods." The irony here is that RT was set up as a news service, for the precise reason that Russia learned full well, from its Soviet past, that propaganda was not the way to make its voice heard.
Who wants to sit down and watch, thrilling though they may be, reports on the grain harvest in Stavropol? Or a polemic on friendship between Moscow and Cuba? Unless, perhaps, it featured The Buena Vista Social Club.
Zaman, killed on Friday, wakes up on Sunday as a pro-government zombie pic.twitter.com/E7dqotT3CS
— Piotr Zalewski (@p_zalewski) March 6, 2016
Comment: It seems that Erdogan's paranoia is escalating daily.
- Easy target: Almost 2,000 court cases are open in Turkey for insulting Erdogan
- Like a cornered rat: Turkey seizes Cihan News Agency, bars staff from entering offices, uses rubber bullets on protestors
- Austrian MP slams Erdoğan for 'brutal and undemocratic' policies
- Dictator Erdogan: 'I don't respect court ruling to free Cumhuriyet journalists'
- Erdogan refuses to accept court decision to release journalists, pushes country into abyss - Turkish legal scholar
In the course of last 24 hours, preliminary agreements with elders of six towns located in the Damascus province have been achieved.
Total number of towns, which had joined the ceasefire agreements, remained 42 ones.
Negotiations with leaders of 6 armed formations active in the provinces of Damascus, Daraa and Homs are being held.
In total, 30 ceasefire application forms have been signed with leaders of armed groupings.
The Russian Centre for reconciliation receives appeals from representatives of opposition forces for participating in the process of discussion of the new Syrian Constitution.
Comment: Meanwhile, locals in Raqqa are rising up against their Daesh occupiers in advance of the upcoming Syrian offensive to retake the city: Ba'ath party militias, Syrian agents open offensive on Daesh in Raqqa
Comment: As the Syrian offensive aimed towards the Daesh stronghold of Raqqa continues, locals of the city are rebelling against the terrorists ruling there:
Syria's flags had been flown in five neighborhoods of Raqqa, according to the witnesses. The residents took to the streets in two neighborhoods, killing a Daesh terrorist. The witnesses added that on Saturday there were armed clashes between the the terrorists, after a group of some 100 jihadists tried to desert the city.Ziad Fadel from Syrian Perspective rounds out the picture below.
There are operatives working for the Syrian government inside Al-Raqqa City. Their work is sensitive and they have to exercise great caution since the mere suspicion they are working to undermine the rule of ISIS will land them in front of a video camera which will memorialize their dreary execution. There are hundreds of men and women inside the city who regularly report events to both the media and the government in Damascus. The most important group is the Ba'ath Party Vanguards. Dressed often as ordinary peasants or denizens of the poor quarters, they mix with the people and gather information about ISIS, its family structure, command structure and troop movements. Their military role has not been activated until very recently as the Syrian Army begins the ineluctable flow eastward to liberate the city from the plague of Islamist heresies.
Trump's campaign issued a statement quoting him as saying he would not order the military to take actions contrary to international or U.S. law.
But fewer than 24 hours earlier, in Thursday's GOP debate, Trump stuck to his position on targeting family members of militants and on an expansive use of torture against captured militants. When a debate moderator asked him what he would do if the military refused to carry out such orders, Trump replied: "They're not going to refuse me. Believe me."
Over the past day the Ukrainian military shelled the territory of the Republic 230 times in thirty-sixviolations of the ceasefire. In the shellings the enemy used 122mm mortars one time, 122mm mortars 104 times, 82mm mortars 105 times, 100mm anti-tank towed cannons MT-12 'Rapira'six times. The enemy also used infantry fighting vehicles, as well as different types of grenade launchers, anti-aircraft systems and small arms.
Over the week the Ukrainian side violated the ceasefire 259 times. In total the chasteners shelled the territory of the Republic 1433 times, including a thousand shellings from heavy weapons.
The most intensive shellings, including from the heavy weapons prohibited by the Minsk Agreements, were applied to the localities of Zaitsevo, Spartak, Staromikhailovka, Zhabunky, Dokuchayevsk, Vesyoloye, the area of the Airport and theVolvo Centre, as well as the Petrovsky and Kuibyshevsky districts of the city of Donetsk.
Comment: Further reading:
- Kiev has 1115 DPR residents in detention for 'political opinions,' continues weekly Minsk violations
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on Saturday that the United States have virtually proclaimed a war against Venezuela.
"[The United States] are accusing Venezuela of being a threat to their security, that is called a declaration of war...this is as serious as the blockade against Cuba," Ortega said at the ceremony commemorating the anniversary of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's death as quoted by the Noticias24 news website.
Comment: Venezuela is currently in an economic crisis due largely to the crash in oil prices. This situation, which some analysts believe was a strategy aimed at pressuring Russia, has also been used by opposition figures in Venezuela to push back hard against everything that Chavez and his supporters worked for. The situation is dark for Venezuela.
Further reading: Death of Chavismo in Venezuela: Election of right-wingers heralds privatization, pillage, and pro-Americanism
Public pressure against glyphosate in countries across Europe has been intense, with nearly 1.5 million people petitioning the EU's health commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, for a ban on the substance, the Guardian reported.
After a Dutch parliament vote opposing the renewal of glyphosate's permit, the Netherlands called for a postponement of the EU-wide decision. "If there is no possibility to postpone the vote, then we will vote against the proposal," said Marcel van Beusekom, a spokesman for the Netherlands agriculture ministry.
Comment: Monsanto's Roundup: New deadly scam exposed
A study to be published this month indicts Roundup and, in fact, the general class of insecticides and herbicides. On what grounds? When they're tested for safety, only the so-called "active ingredients" are examined.
The untested ingredients are called "adjuvants," and they are said to be inert and irrelevant. But the new study concludes this is far from true. The adjuvants are actually there to INCREASE the killing power of the active ingredient in the herbicide or insecticide.
Safety tests don't take this into account. "Active ingredients" are already toxic, but the adjuvants ramp up their poisonous nature even higher.
Obviously, we are looking at a major crime and major scam here. It boils down to this: the manufacturers who put these adjuvants in their pesticides and herbicides know very well why they are there - to increase the killing power of the "active ingredient." But this fact is overlooked and ignored. The pretense is, the adjuvants are inert and harmless.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) of Washington and the European Union as well as the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) were founded by Washington to apply its standards and derive benefits.Their purpose is to be alternatives to the existing trade and economic international organizations like WTO, the ASEAN, and APEC. Their target is to put American corporations in full control of the trade and economic relations in Europe and the countries of the Pacific Rim.
The US acts in the same manner when engaging in military interventions unauthorized by the UN: Yugoslavia in 1995 and 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and today's shelling of peaceful cities in Syria and Iraq. By engaging its NATO allies in these criminal activities, Washington, ultimately, encourages them to implement similar military actions in other corners of the planet by supporting their UN-unauthorized military operations. The French newspaper Le Monde's in-depth report about preparations for and commencement of a French military campaign in Libya is a good example supporting this notion.
In the recent months, France and Great Britain, faced with the problem of illegal migration, have come to realize that the infiltration of radical jihadists, ISIS militants and other terrorist organizations, coming to Europe with the flow of refugees, poses a serious threat to their security. Special services agents of these countries see this threat as incoming from two directions: from the countries of the Middle East via Turkey and the Balkan states, and from the North African states, mainly from Libya.
What are Paris and London doing to address the threat? They are trying to shift the responsibility of dealing with the flow of migrants from the Middle East to Germany and the countries of the Central Europe. Meanwhile, in view of the fact that both France and Great Britain already have a considerable number of migrants from Africa residing in their territory, they have set it as a priority to counteract the threat posed by the refugees from North Africa.
Comment: Libya, like the others, is expendable. There will always be another self-minding country to trick or bomb into vassalage and, in the wake, a dwindling group of supporters and a growing list of enemies. The road to unipolarity is the road to self-destruction, and the US - forsaking its traditions, its liberties, its honor, its people - is blinded by that prize.
Comment: The Turkish government is acting as if it has been backed into a corner and is striking out in mad desperation. Cihan news agency is most likely being attacked simply because they have been reporting the truth about Erdogan's genocidal war on Turkish Kurds and about Turkey's support for Daesh and the 'moderate rebels' in Syria (the papers' ties with CIA-linked Gulen notwithstanding). Perhaps Erdogan has come to the realization that his time has come; he has outlived his usefulness and will no longer enjoy the support of the Americans. So he is striking out at the media in order to cement his control of information and cut off the media's potential role in a color revolution. But by doing so, he is only digging himself deeper. As readers can see below, the foreign chastisement has begun. Erdogan is officially becoming an enemy of democracy. And we all know what happens to those.
Turkey's Cihan news agency was placed under state control and access to the agency was blocked, according to Turkish opposition media.
Turkey's Cihan news agency, part of the Feza Publications media conglomerate whose Zaman opposition newspaper offices have been raided in Istanbul, was placed under state control, Today's Zaman reported Saturday.
The latest move follows Friday's court order to place Zaman and Feza's other outlets under the management of government trustees.
"Cihan, the only news agency that was monitoring elections besides state-run Anadolu, now under trustee control," Today's Zaman tweeted.















Comment: It looks as though Germany has chosen the wrong side of history. Again. With the absolutely egregious and absurd accusation of Russia "weaponizing migration" (originally spouted by NATO General Breedhate) and the recent calling for the Empire-supporting no-fly-zone in northern Syria, among other things, we can see that Germany has been infected by the US-imposed poisons of aggression, destruction, and subjugation. Was the destruction of Germany during WWII not a strong enough lesson? If it looks, walks, and acts like totalitarianism and fascism, chances are it is because it is - and should be fought and resisted. Too bad Germany seems unable to act on this knowledge and has chosen, instead, to align itself with the pathological drives of the US.