Puppet MastersS

Nebula

Ukraine Crisis: Russian roulette in space? Who'll man the Space Station?

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© NASA
Rocky Russian relations could leave U.S. astronauts without rides to the International Space Station.

Since NASA retired its fleet of space shuttles in 2011, Russia has had a monopoly on flying crews to the orbital outpost. The only other country currently flying people in space is China, which is not a member of the 15-nation space station partnership.

That leaves the United States in a vulnerable position as it ponders options to diffuse a tense standoff between Russia and Ukraine.

For now, the U.S.-Russian space partnership is insulated from the political whirlwind generated by Russia's decision to move troops into the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea last week, fueling fears of a full-fledged invasion.


"We are continuing to monitor the situation," NASA administrator Charles Bolden told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday.

"Everything for us continues to be nominal," he said.

Comment: NASA space missions to be halved in 2014, and halved again in 2015


Vader

Hillary and other assorted barbarians at Russia's gate

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The United States is more than just an ally to fascists in Ukraine and everywhere else; the American South provided an historical model for fascism. "The fascist order of the pre-Sixties Solid South was simply a domestic expression of U.S. Manifest Destiny - the national religion." The fascists - both local and imperial - have laid siege to Russia.

Hillary Clinton is a walking profanity - and, thereby, a prime candidate to be the next president of the United States. The fiend who played Julius Caesar when U.S.-employed jihadists butchered Libya's Muammar Gaddafi ("We came, we saw, he died") now likens Russia's response to the U.S.-backed fascist putsch in the Ukraine to Hitler's quest for a Greater Germany. It is like spitting on the graves of the 25 million Russians and other Soviet nationalities slaughtered in Hitler's racist jihad - the people who actually defeated the Nazis while the U.S. and Britain loitered off Europe's shores. At war's end, the United States imported thousands of Nazis to construct the nuclear/chemical/biological military juggernaut that would usher in an "American Century" - while confiscating Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois' passports.

Thanks to the Americans, West German denazification never happened but, by the mid-Seventies, Washington had implanted fascist military regimes throughout Latin America - one of which exterminated 200,000 Guatemalan Mayas.

When John Kerry praises the "brave Ukrainians" that "took to the streets to stand against tyranny and demand democracy," he makes common cause with the direct political heirs of the Ukrainian Waffen SS units and concentration camp guards that eagerly joined Hitler's genocidal rampage in the mid-20th century. The Ukrainian fascists, who command 40 percent of the electorate in some western regions of the country, return the compliment, hoisting the Confederate flag in Kiev's city hall. They see, correctly, that the epicenter of their ideology is not Berlin, but Washington.

"Ethnic purity was the organizing principle of one-party Democratic rule in Dixie from the mid-1870s to the mid-1960s."

Heart - Black

High hopes for the GOP's poverty strategy? Not when created by phonies, frauds and liars

John Boehner Paul Ryan Marco Rubio GOP crooks
© Reuters/Jim BourgAP/Manuel Balce Ceneta/J. Scott Applewhite/Photo collage by SalonJohn Boehner, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio
Paul Ryan and friends won't expand the earned income tax cut or hike the minimum wage, even if it helps the economy

It's heartwarming to see how quickly Rep. Paul Ryan's new poverty report has been debunked and discredited. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has the most exhaustive takedown, but the Fiscal Times report featuring scholars who said Ryan misrepresented their work in order to discredit anti-poverty programs was devastating, too. What's become clear in the last two days is that, just like Paul, his fellow Republicans have absolutely no plans to fight poverty except, perhaps, repealing the 20th century.

As I noted Tuesday, Ryan did single out one anti-poverty program he likes: the earned income tax credit, which helps low-wage parents by eliminating their tax burden or giving them a refundable tax credit. President Obama, always on the lookout for areas of compromise, quickly responded, with a budget proposal that expands the credit to benefit 13.5 million workers and increases what it provides them. Obama would pay for the EITC expansion by eliminating the ugly "carried interest" loophole, which lets certain investment bankers evade taxes, along with another tax break for wealthy self-employed individuals.

What was Ryan's response? He dismissed Obama's budget as a "campaign brochure." House Speaker John Boehner, meanwhile, called it the president's "most irresponsible budget yet." Sen. Marco Rubio, who briefly pretended to care about poverty, specifically denounced Obama's EITC expansion. "I am concerned by the President's call to expand the status quo on the Earned Income Tax Credit. We should be reforming this flawed approach to helping low-income workers, not expanding it."

Vader

U.S. policy of isolating Russia and expanding NATO is a dismal failure

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[NATO's goal is] to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.
- Hastings Ismay, first NATO Secretary-General
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
- James Madison (1751-1836), fourth American President
The hazards associated with American foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 should appear obvious to all, because it is precisely this policy that has caused the crisis in Ukraine with all its negative consequences for the coming months and years.

President Barack Obama was candid in admitting it on March 3, 2014: "we are indicating to the Russians [that] if in fact they continue on the current trajectory they're on, then we are examining a whole series of steps - economic, diplomatic - that will isolate Russia."

Well, it is precisely this desire to expand NATO and to isolate Russia by incorporating all the countries bordering Russia into NATO; i.e., a strategy of geopolitical and military encirclement of Russia, which has provoked that country when it felt threatened in its national security.

This is easy to understand.

War Whore

The looting of Ukraine has begun

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This supporter of the Ukraine joining the EU has received her reward: a 50% cut in her pension.
According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington's stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine's poor. It is Greece all over again.

Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated coup against the legitimate, elected Ukraine government, the Western looters are already at work. Naive protesters who believed the propaganda that EU membership offered a better life are due to lose half of their pension by April. But this is only the beginning.

The corrupt Western media describes loans as "aid." However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev's acceptance of an IMF austerity plan.

Remember now, gullible Ukrainians participated in the protests that were used to overthrow their elected government, because they believed the lies told to them by Washington-financed NGOs that once they joined the EU they would have streets paved with gold. Instead they are getting cuts in their pensions and an IMF austerity plan.

Chess

21st Century U.S. imperialism: Crimea, this time

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George Washington warned against "foreign entanglements." Was it because he had a premonition of the cluelessness and ineptitude of his successors in the Bush years and in the Age of Obama?

If so, the Bush-Cheney - now Obama - War on Terror shows how right he was. It might as well have been concocted deliberately to encourage Islamists to attack Western targets. The ill will it has created will be a factor in world politics for generations to come.

It has also diminished the liberal protections Washington and his contemporaries prized. Privacy rights have suffered the most.

Was that the idea all along? It could be.

Bush and Cheney certainly saw to it that their successor would have a hard time changing course. Did Obama even want to? There is no sign of it. He and his advisors have carried on with unbridled gusto.

Briefcase

Issa walks out of IRS scandal hearing - Cummings calls proceedings 'Un-American'

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© Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesA House hearing on the IRS targeting of conservative groups erupted into an argument between Rep. Elijah Cummings and House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa just moments after former IRS official Lois Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify in regards to her role in the tax scrutiny scandal.
A House hearing on the IRS targeting of conservative groups erupted into an argument between Rep. Elijah Cummings and House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa just moments after former IRS official Lois Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify in regards to her role in the tax scrutiny scandal.

The spat began as Rep. Issa, R-Calif., stood up to adjourn the hearing, but Rep. Cummings requested to ask a "procedural question." While making a statement, Issa asked Cummings to yield when the Maryland Democrat became incensed at the California Republican.

"Mr. Chairman, you cannot run a committee like this," Cummings appealed.

"If you will sit down and allow me to ask a question," Cummings insisted. "I am a member of a Congress of the United States of America."

"I am tired of this," Cummings continued, as Issa signaled to have his microphone cut off. "You cannot just have a one-sided investigation. There is absolutely something wrong with that, and it is absolutely un-American."

Bad Guys

Long-nosed Hypocrite Barack Obama accuses Putin of breaking international law

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© Unknown
Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama traded accusations over the crisis in Ukraine on Tuesday, with the Russian leader seeking to blame the Americans for the growing international standoff as the US president all but accused Putin of breaking international law.

The barbed exchanges, a sign of the escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow, came as Putin delivered his first public remarks on the crisis - ruling out a war days after his forces took control of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, but reserving the right to use force to protect Russian speakers in the east of the country "as a last resort".


Comment: You can hear and read what Putin had to say on the matter here: A true statesman: Vladimir Putin press conference, March 4, 2014 - video and transcript


Speaking from his country residence outside Moscow, Putin gave a robust performance during which he portrayed Kiev as being in the grip of "terror, extremists and nationalists" rampaging on the streets. Putin described what is broadly seen as a Russian land grab in Crimea as "a humanitarian mission".

Obama and John Kerry, the US secretary of state, responded in apparent disbelief after Putin maintained there were no Russian forces occupying Crimea. "He really denied there were troops in Crimea?" said Kerry after arriving in Kiev, where he offered $1bn in loan guarantees to the new Ukraine government.

Eye 1

MP Robert Halfon compares Ukip support for Muslim policy as "literally akin to the Nazis"

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© Andrew Parsons/Press AssociationConservative MP Robert Halfon (right) pictured with party leader, David Cameron, in Harlow.
Ukip has done the Conservative party a favour by "cleansing" it of people with extreme views, a Tory MP says.

Robert Halfon accused Ukip MEP Gerard Batten of supporting a policy "literally akin to the Nazis" by suggesting Muslims should sign a charter rejecting violence.

In an interview with The House magazine, the Harlow MP claimed there was a "sinister element" to Nigel Farage's party.

Halfon also ridiculed former Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom, who sits as an independent after calling women at a meeting "sluts" and hitting the Channel 4 News journalist Michael Crick on the head with a party conference programme.

Halfon said: "To me there are two kinds of Ukip - the Godfrey Bloom guy who's like a cross between Sid James and Bernard Manning, and then there's a much more sinister element, like the MEP who said every Muslim has got to sign a declaration of non-violence, which to me is literally akin to the Nazis saying Jews should wear a yellow star."

Eye 1

Manufacturing Contempt for Venezuela

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© ReutersViolent opposition protests last month.
The Venezuelan opposition has been skillfully using Twitter and Facebook to disseminate horrifying photos and testimonies of alleged government violence and abuse against protesters over the last few weeks. The problem with these allegations and images which have gone viral globally, and even used by media outlets, is that they are fabrications; many of the most viral photos allegedly from Venezuela have actually depicted images from places such as Syria, Chile, Brazil - and even a US-based porn site.

"Initial, inaccurate information will be retweeted more than any subsequent correction," wrote Craig Silverman, journalist and founder of the blog Regret the Error, for the Poynter Institute in a post in 2010. Silverman's insight reveals the dangers, often ignored, about the use of Twitter and social media as a news source, as well as a tool for liberation and uprisings.