Puppet Masters
This could be viewed as a direct provocation towards Russia. The increase in tension caused by such close-border exercises is justified by NATO blaming what they call Russian aggression in "annexing" Crimea. This, despite observers confirming the free and fair referendum in which the Crimean people overwhelmingly voted for reunification with Russia.
What's more, NATO's aggressive posturing is merely one of many such operations planned to be conducted across Eastern Europe.
The NATO exercise entitled Noble Jump includes attack helicopters, fighter jets, military hovercraft, amphibious landing vehicles, warships, and nearly 6,000 personnel, all taking part in drills to capture make-believe "enemy held" (Russian) territory.

Financial crisis in pictures: traders at stock markets around the world when markets crashed before.
Ian Spreadbury, who invests more than £4bn of investors' money across a handful of bond funds for Fidelity, including the flagship Moneybuilder Income fund, is concerned that a "systemic event" could rock markets, possibly similar in magnitude to the financial crisis of 2008, which began in Britain with a run on Northern Rock.
"Systemic risk is in the system and as an investor you have to be aware of that," he told Telegraph Money.
Comment: Once again the voices are getting louder warning of a pending financial collapse.
- End of the line! China and Germany stock markets look ready to pop
- Signs of financial turmoil in Europe, China and the United States
- More economic indicators show we are heading into recession
- Shades of 2008: Stocks plunging just as they did before the last financial crisis
"The way to reach an agreement [to solve Palestinian-Israeli conflict] is only through negotiations and we will fiercely reject attempts to impose international diktats," Netanyahu said at his Cabinet meeting, AP reported.
Comment: In other words, it is Netanyahu's way or no way.
I would like to note that the Libyan people were not in any way extremist Muslims. The part of the Koran that was added by the Ayatollah Khomeini talking about killing infidels was thrown out of Libya by Ghadafi because he said it was not part of the Koran. For this there was a fatwa or death order put on Ghadafi for over 20 years by the radical extremist Muslims. All religions with a book were allowed in Libya. Women were emancipated in the 1970s by Ghadafi. No special clothing were required and all women were highly educated if they choose to be. They were doctors, lawyers, ministers, business owners, or just house wives whatever they decided.
Libya shared ½ of all the its oil revenue with its 5.5 million population. All medical care was free, if you could not get the care you needed in Libya then you could travel wherever you needed with a family member and all costs and expenses were fully paid. Education was free and if you wanted to go outside to another University that was paid in full with a stipend. When a Libyan couple got married they received a $46,000 gift from the government to start their lives. Their first home, a 2,500 sq foot condominium cost 10% of their salary for 20 years and then it was theirs. Gasoline was 44 cents a gallon, all utilities were free. If you were hungry and had no money they had huge stores of food where you could get rice, milk, cheese, flour and money to buy meat. The average salary in Libya was the highest in Africa, higher than China or India at $15,800 a year. If you had a college education and could not find a job you received that money until you found a job.
Comment: For the full story about what happened to the Moriartys - and Gaddafi's Libya - check out their fascinating (and disturbing) interview on SOTT Radio.
Despite an overwhelming sand storm of disinformation emanating from the mainstream media that laughably portrayed the militant group and its creepy offshoots as wholly organic, critical thinkers have insisted that ISIS is a controlled outfit of covert mercenaries that were manufactured by Western powers and first wielded like a samurai sword against the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Once the North African country was swallowed whole by the Wahhabi onslaught, which was directed by CIA and MI6 "advisors" on the ground and reinforced by NATO airstrikes from above, the same stock and breed of criminal miscreants were promptly set upon Syria to ravage that unsuspecting nation.
With banal hubris, Western regimes denied whole cloth any suggestion that they have been sponsoring ISIS. But a recently unearthed US intelligence document shatters the façade of secrecy and denial, confirming in bare language that the West and its Persian Gulf marionettes are directly responsible for the rise of ISIS. US intelligence analysts, writing in a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report [1] disclosed by Judicial Watch, pondered gleefully about the prospect of utilizing radical Wahhabi-Islamist fundamentalists as a bludgeon against the secular government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
The document categorically demolishes Washington's deceptive 'we were only arming moderates' gambit, noting that the rebels in Syria (which Washington and other Western powers have been supporting[2] since 2011) were dominated by "Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda" elements from the outset. Such extremists were the "major forces driving the insurgency in Syria," the report states with unambiguity. It adds that Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor group to ISIS, was the ideological backbone of the insurgents who were flooding into Syria that same year - the very same militants that the West was backing with enthusiastic vigor, dumping hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and supplies at their feet.
The Pentagon is quietly working to set up an elaborate network of defenses to protect American cities from a barrage of Russian cruise missiles.
The plan calls for buying radars that would enable National Guard F-16 fighter jets to spot and shoot down fast and low-flying missiles. Top generals want to network those radars with sensor-laden aerostat balloons hovering over U.S. cities and with coastal warships equipped with sensors and interceptor missiles of their own.
One of those generals is Adm. William Gortney, who leads U.S.Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, and North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD. Earlier this year, Gortney submitted an "urgent need" request to put AESA radars on the F-16s that patrol the airspace around Washington. Such a request allows a project to circumvent the normal procurement process.
Comment: One day we can all give a heaving sigh of relief when ALL the bases are covered as to everlasting security and defense capability. We might find out we live inside Cheyenne Mountain or its prison equivalent. Pity the sunset watchers, star-gazers, flower-sniffing fools that buy into the idiocy that our world doesn't need layer-upon-layer of action-reaction-action-reaction nausea. It was perfect the way it WAS.
Of course a lot riding on the Iran nuclear deal has to do with Pipelineistan. Iran, assuming sanctions quickly collapse, will finally be able to sell natural gas to the EU - theoretically in competition with Gazprom; but that will take a long time, until Iranian (decaying) infrastructure is upgraded.
"The prime minister has presented the three leaders the Greek proposals on a mutually beneficial deal, which will provide a definitive solution, rather than postponing the solution to the problem," the cabinet spokesman told media on Sunday.
Tsipras offered a new solution during a telephone conversation between Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, France's President Francois Hollande and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Meanwhile, Chinese stocks are absolutely crashing. The Shanghai Composite Index was down more than 13 percent this week alone. That was the largest one week decline since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
In the U.S., stocks aren't crashing yet, but we just witnessed one of the largest one week outflows of capital from the bond markets that we have ever witnessed. Slowly but surely, we are starting to see the smart money head for the exits. As one Swedish fund manager put it recently, everyone wants "to avoid being caught on the wrong side of markets once the herd realizes stocks are over-valued".
Comment: If you have not done so already, better get prepared and fasten your seat belts.
More than 10,000 cases of desertion have been registered in the Ukrainian Army since the outbreak of the Donbass war in April 2014, Ukrainian Vesti reported.
In 2014 the army suffered heavy desertion and nearly 30 percent of the servicemen called up in the first wave of mobilization (March 17) abandoned their positions, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said.
Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada has announced six waves of mobilization so far. By the end of 2014 the strength of Ukrainian Armed Forces grew from 130,000 t















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