Puppet MastersS


Umbrella

Syria: Three-month ceasefire is holding despite violations


Sputnik
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:20 UTC
Assad and company tour
© SANA via AP PhotoSyrian President Bash al-Assad walking through a suburb of Damascus on September 12, 2016. Shortly after the ceasefire took effect he said his government is determined to ‘reclaim every area from the terrorists, and to rebuild’ the country.
Steps are being taken to consolidate a three-month ceasefire in Syria throughout the country despite increasing violations, Turkey's Ambassador to Russia Huseyin Dirioz said Monday.

The nationwide Syrian ceasefire that came into force on December 30 is backed by Russia and Turkey; it has been holding up in general, despite continued reports of violations. The UN Security Council passed a resolution in December supporting the effort. "Unfortunately, we are witnessing violations of the ceasefire, especially recently, but concrete steps are being taken to prevent violations throughout Syria," Dirioz said at a Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency roundtable on Russian-Turkish ties. "We see that the fruits of our cooperation and our interaction contribute to settlement of the existing regional problems, in particular, to the Syria crisis settlement."

Dirioz pointed out that the trilateral format of cooperation, comprising Russia, Turkey and Iran, was very important as each of these states had impact on the sides of the Syrian conflict. "At the very beginning we managed to ensure a ceasefire in Aleppo due to this format, which means organization of evacuation of the people and prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe," Dirioz added.

Comment: Downhill - the path to war. Uphill - the path to peace. Why is that?

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Arrow Up

Partial merger possible between Russian and South Ossetian military forces


RT
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 13:46 UTC
S Ossetia
© Denis Sinyakov / ReutersThe South Ossetia border
The Russian government has approved an agreement with the Republic of South Ossetia that would allow certain military units of the latter nation to become part of the Russian military forces. The draft of the agreement has been prepared by the Russian Defense Ministry and coordinated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other state agencies.

After the government's approval, which took place on March 7 but was officially disclosed only on March 13, the document was forwarded for signing by President Vladimir Putin. Presidential aide Vladislav Surkov earlier told reporters that Putin and South Ossetian leader Leonid Tibilov intended to discuss the document in detail sometime in mid-March.

The document specifies that the soldiers and officers of the South Ossetian units that will be included in the Russian military forces will have to resign from South Ossetian service, and after this will be accepted as contract soldiers for work at the Russian military base in the republic. The agreement specifies that such contracts must be signed on a strictly voluntary basis. Service at the Russian military base will continue in accordance with Russian laws. The agreement also reads that the manning of the Russian base with South Ossetian contract soldiers in required quantities should be completed within six months after the corresponding order in issued by the commander-in-chief of the South Ossetian military.

In March 2015, Russia and South Ossetia signed a key treaty under which the two nations agreed to partially join their military forces. Under the same treaty Russia pledged to provide full military protection to its ally, including constant protection of its state border. In return, South Ossetia agreed to allow part of its military to join Russian military forces.
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Magic Hat

Clever tactics: Russia plays 'Where's the S-300?' with NATO

Richard Brandt
Russia Insider
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 16:43 UTC
balloon russian mig
Russia continues to troll NATO with inflatable army

Good news: Apparently the game of S-300 hide-and-seek between Russia and NATO is still going strong.

It was revealed late last year that Russia had mobilized a vast army of inflatable military hardware in order to make its already highly-mobile army even more difficult to detect.

According to reports
Rusbal, a Russian toy company started in 1993 by a hot air balloon enthusiast, originally made hot air balloons, inflatable children's play sets, and inflatable costumes. Eventually the company began making inflatable jets, tanks, and surface-to-air missile batteries as part of a Russian tactic known as maskirovka—warfare by deception.
We almost forgot about this inflatable armada until we saw this tweet pop up in our "feed" this morning:
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Stormtrooper

The overlooked liberal roots of Islamophobia

Hamid Dabashi
Al Jazeera
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:18 UTC
Bill Maher Milo Yiannopoulos
© Screengrab from HBO: Real Time with Bill MaherMaher interviewed the former Breitbart technology editor, and far-right figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos for his HBO show Real time with Bill Maher
The disease of Islamophobia, the irrational and categorical hatred of Muslims and their religion - just as its corresponding malaise of anti-Semitism against Jews, racism against African Americans, misogyny against women, or homophobia against the LGBQT - will need a sustained course of critical thinking and persistent examination before we understand its pathological origins and globally expose and discredit its chief ideologues.

Today in the United States, the rising attacks by white supremacists against Jewish, Muslim, and African American people, institutions and icons have all come together under one propaganda outlet code named "alt-right", whose chief ideologue Stephen Bannon (the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the "alt-right") is now sitting right next to the president of the US in the Oval Office as his top consigliere.

What is the nature of this disease, and where does it come from? We already have a number of excellent studies on the matter, among them I might mention Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg's Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy; Deepa Kumar's Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire; Nathan Lean's The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims; and Carl Ernst (Ed), Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance; and to which we must add Terry Eagleton's exquisite dismantling of the New Atheists, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate.

Comment: Liberalism is responsible for much of the Islamophobia. However, it goes much further than the ignorant statements made by a few darling liberal talking-heads on television. They are just representative of a truer face of what liberalism has become. Both the left and right, for the most part, follow each-other's lead. War-criminal neo-conservatives like George Bush have become leftist mascots, which should certainly give pause to those championing the liberal cause.

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Chess

Nicola Sturgeon: Brexit will lead to 2nd Scottish independence referendum


RT
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 17:51 UTC
Nicola Sturgeon Scottish Independence
© RT
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced plans for a second Scottish independence referendum to take place in autumn 2017 or spring 2018. It comes as Prime Minister Theresa May prepares to formally launch Brexit negotiations.

Sturgeon told a press conference in Bute House, Edinburgh, on Monday she will stand up for Scotland's interest and make sure the Scottish people have a choice at the end of Brexit negotiations.

Claiming the government's plan for a 'hard Brexit' will "damage the economy and change the very nature of our society and country," Sturgeon announced her intention to go to the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood next week to ask it to approve a second Scottish independence referendum.
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X

Chinese Communist Party warns of 'creeping destabilization' from radical Islamists


AP
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 17:51 UTC
china
© Flickr/ Max Braun
China's ruling Communist Party is hardening its rhetoric about Islam, with top officials making repeated warnings this past week about the specter of global religious extremism seeping into the country.

Shaerheti Ahan, a top political and legal affairs party official in Xinjiang, became the latest official from a predominantly Muslim region to warn political leaders gathered in Beijing about China becoming destabilized by the "international anti-terror situation."

Over the past year, President Xi Jinping has directed the party to "Sinicize" the country's ethnic and religious minorities, while regional leaders in Xinjiang, home to the Uighur (WEE-gur) ethnic minority, have ramped up policing amid an uptick in violence.

Comment: While the AP can claim that China risks 'exacerbating a cycle of repression,' what they don't mention is the fact that China's 'radical Islam' problem is made in the USA. Of course this is part of the strategy - foment revolutionary conditions and then blame the government for 'cracking down' on the problem.

In an interesting development Al Jazeera reports that top Communist officials are now drawing comparisons with Trump to justify their approach:
Speaking at a regional meeting open to the media, Ningxia Communist Party secretary Li Jianguo drew comparisons to the policies of US President Donald Trump's administration to make his point.

"What the Islamic State and extremists push is jihad, terror, violence," Li said. "This is why we see Trump targeting Muslims in a travel ban.

"It doesn't matter whether anti-Muslim policy is in the interests of the US or it promotes stability, it's about preventing religious extremism from seeping into all of American culture."


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Network

'Holy grail' for spies: Sensitive US Air Force documents left exposed online


RT
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 17:22 UTC
US Air Force documents
© mackeeper.com
A lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force left "gigabytes of files" accessible online that contained personal or sensitive information on more than 4,000 officers and even actor Channing Tatum, according to a new report.

For an indeterminable amount of time, a backup drive chocked full of personal and government information was left exposed to the public online, according to a report by ZDNet. The drive, not protected by a password, contained intimate details of thousands of Air Force officers, some of whom have top secret security access, and login information to a Department of Defense internal system containing names of staff with security clearances.

The drive was first discovered by MacKeeper security researchers. The information has since been taken offline. Many of the materials were marked as "confidential" or "sensitive," but none were labeled classified, ZDNet reported.
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Snakes in Suits

McCain hornswoggle: Trump should 'retract wiretap claim or provide proof'


RT
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 10:18 UTC
Dingbat McCain
© Mark Makela/Reuters
Republican stalwart John McCain has called on US President Donald Trump to provide evidence to back up his claim that his predecessor, Barack Obama, wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower during the election campaign or else drop the allegations entirely.

"The president has one of two choices, either retract or provide the information that the American people deserve," McCain said in an interview on CNN's State of the Union. "I have no reason to believe that the charge is true, but I also believe that the president of the United States could clear this up in a minute."

"If the allegation is left out there, it undermines the confidence the American people have in the entire way that the government does business," the veteran senator added.


Comment: Depending on how the American people deal with the reality of how their government 'does business', a loss of confidence isn't necessarily a bad thing.


McCain was one of several top Republicans to question the president's claims. On CBS's Face The Nation House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said he has seen no evidence to back up the wiretap claims. "I think he's frustrated with selective leaks coming from parts of government that malign his campaign," Ryan said.


Comment: There is plenty of evidence to suggest the wiretapping did occur and many powerful people are implicated in the scandal:

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Bullseye

NATO: An out-dated, useless paper tiger Trump should dump

Phil Butler
New Eastern Outlook
Mon, 13 Mar 2017 16:26 UTC
Putin: NATO pokušava uvuči Rusiju u sukob i miješa u unutrašnje poslove
© Kay Nietfeld / www.globallookpress.com
American President Donald Trump has called NATO "obsolete" in an interview with The Times back in January. The US president's view mirrors that of generations of Americans and Europeans who've wondered at the purpose of the military alliance since the fall of the Soviet Union. In Brussels and Berlin though, the bureaucrats and vested interests scurry like frenzied jungle monkeys posturing to save a paper tiger protector.

NATO is a paper tiger, you know? But first let me clarify, for those of you reading who are too young to have heard this terms before. The term "paper tiger" comes from the Chinese phrase zhilaohu (紙老虎), which means - "something that seems threatening but is ineffectual and unable to withstand challenge". This is the fact of the matter of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO). Since its formation in 1949 this military alliance has only proven one thing, its ineffectiveness as either a peacekeeping force - its utter uselessness for the purpose it was instituted for. NATO nations spend 70% of the money spent on military and defense, and the organization has never won a war or deterred chaos. NATO is mostly a home for useless armchair warriors and a country club of unneeded bureaucrats.

NATO's first Secretary General, Winston Churchill's chief military assistant Lord Ismay, stated back in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Not a lot has changed in nearly seven decades, except the Germans are up and most Europeans are down. Oh, and the fact America may be "out" soon. As for Russia wanting "in", there is no convincing evidence to show Europe has anything Russia needs except gas money. Moving on, the history of NATO's military effectiveness is dubious at best, catastrophic in the worst case. Let me illustrate for you.
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Dollars

Ukraine whining pays off - Sen. Graham to moronic foreign minister: Just shut up and we'll cut you a check

Ricky Twisdale
The Duran
Sun, 12 Mar 2017 13:43 UTC
fm Ukraine Klimkin
Foreign minister of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin
Senator Lindsey Graham lost patience with Ukrainian lackey Pavlo Klimkin who droned on about Russian aggression far too long

Russophobia watchers got a real treat on Tuesday. That is, if you manage to maintain a sense of humor about these things.

The ambassadors of Poland, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were joined by the foreign minister of Ukraine, the diminutive dweeb Pavlo Klimkin, for a deluxe crying and whining session. The goal: extract as much money as possible from US taxpayers by licking Washington's boots.

Klimkin, who was born in Russia, was apparently considered too ridiculous to be allowed to represent that country, but he was more than welcome in Ukraine. After all, they do appear to prefer being run by foreigners. (Most of whom have by now resigned in despair of trying to reform the country.)

The all-star panel of professional Russophobes spun out the usual groundless fear-mongering about Russia's "threat" to Europe and Putin's maniacal ambitions. I will not waste time recounting their bland tall tales, but those interested may watch or read their published testimony (in mostly illiterate English) here.
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