Puppet MastersS


Stock Down

Why the EU's economic engine is breaking down


RT
Tue, 30 May 2023 16:40 UTC
german economy
The German economy, once Europe's roaring engine of growth, slipped into recession in early 2023 amid runaway inflation, the national statistics office revealed this week. GDP data is reportedly showing surprisingly negative signals, with the economy losing the potential for growth. RT looks at the challenges facing the EU's economic powerhouse.

Why is Germany's recession important?

The EU's largest and richest member, Germany has built its economic power on its manufacturing capacity, its integration into international trade, and a strong transport and logistics ecosystem. It is the world's fifth-largest economy in terms of PPP, behind China, the US, India, and Japan.

What is crippling the EU's economic titan?

Post-pandemic supply-chain problems and trade disputes, along with the energy crisis and aggressive monetary policy tightening, have all placed a strain on the export-oriented German economy. Industrial production has stalled amid geopolitical tensions, supply bottlenecks, and a shift to green energy. That was followed by a drop in purchasing power and diminished industrial orders.
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Red Flag

Tel Aviv color revolution

Israel Shamir
The Unz Review
Sat, 27 May 2023 00:00 UTC
color revolution israel
For a few months, a colour revolution had been brewing in Israel. Tens of thousands of citizens demonstrated, every Saturday night, predominantly in Tel Aviv, but elsewhere too. The demos caused traffic jams and interfered badly with daily life in the country. At its height, over 250 000 persons participated in one demonstration in Tel Aviv. Then PM Bibi Netanyahu postponed his legal reforms until after the holidays. It helped a bit: the demos slimmed in size and intensity. Frictions with Palestinians have also helped the PM. Still, it was a strong movement, similar to such movements in other countries, such as the Kiev Maidan, the NY Occupy, the Beirut Gucci Revolution, Arab Spring, Velvet Rising, Orange Revolution, Dignity Revolution etc. et al.

Now we have learned something about the central causes of the movement, from the NYT. The NYT discovered, through US intelligence leaks, that the driver behind it and its coordination were supplied by Mossad and Shin Beth, the external and internal intelligence services of the Jewish State. It was not a complete surprise; Israeli media duly informed its consumers that Mossad staff were permitted to participate in the demos; and Mossad's retired bosses were paraded by the rebels as their leaders. Their deeper participation was discovered by their American brethren. The rebels' love for America was made quite obvious by their demos at the US embassy. The national blue-and-white banners flew over the crowds stressing their patriotism, together with plentiful stars-and-stripes.
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Cloud Lightning

Catastrophic borrowing kills global financial system

Greg Hunter
USA Watchdog
Sat, 20 May 2023 00:00 UTC
treasury
Analyst and financial writer John Rubino says this time, the so-called debt ceiling fight could end in a systemic failure. Rubino points out,
"In a well-run society, the debt limit would be zero. Governments should not borrow money in the first place. The amount of money we are borrowing is catastrophic. Historians are going to look back at this era, and they are just going to wonder why we allowed it to happen and what were we thinking. We are destroying the global financial system by allowing governments to borrow this much money. The debt limit thing is being called a crisis, and if they let it go too far, it will be a crisis. . . . I think this game of chicken will end in the not-too-distant future, and if it doesn't, they have an ulterior motive. They want to crash the economy because that achieves something for them. We can speculate about this. The party in power wants to crash the economy, and that is a very dark scenario. . . . They are willing to burn down the world around them to get what they want. Look at Russia-gate and the contents of the Durham Report. The Democrats are willing to do stuff like that. . . . I would not put it past the Democrats to plan and implement it if they think it benefits them."
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Megaphone

Graduates boo and turn their chairs away from former US Rep. Liz Cheney as she delivers commencement address at liberal Colorado College

Andrea Cavallier
Daily Mail
Mon, 29 May 2023 10:59 UTC
liz cheney commencement address
Graduates booed and turned their chairs away from former U.S Rep. Liz Cheney as she delivered the commencement address at Colorado College on Sunday.
Graduates booed and turned their chairs away from former U.S Rep. Liz Cheney as she delivered the commencement address at Colorado College on Sunday.

Cheney repeated her fierce criticisms of former President Trump but steered clear of talking about his 2024 reelection campaign or her own political future.

The Wyoming Republican blasted her House Republican colleagues for not doing enough to combat Trump's lies that the 2020 election was stolen.

Comment: See also:

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Fire

AOC's town hall erupts in chaos, constituent calls her 'piece of sh*t'

Elaine Mallon
Breitbart
Sat, 27 May 2023 00:01 UTC
AOC ocasio-cortez
A constituent called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) a "piece of shit" on Friday during her town hall meeting in the Corona neighborhood of New York City.

The video posted by FreedomNews.Tv FNTV, shows the man wearing a shirt with the Cuban flag on it as he waves the American flag.

"American citizens before migrants," the man said. "Where are you on the migrant issue? You're a piece of s-t."

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Believing Impossible Things

Alastair Crooke
Strategic Culture
Mon, 29 May 2023 02:17 UTC
The endless bitter antagonism to Putin and to Russia has allowed a self-imagined reality to detach, ultimately becoming a delusion.
G7++ Psychopaths
The recent G7 summit should be understood as firstly, the shaping of a battlespace in the 'War of Narratives' whose principal 'front' today is the Team Biden insistence that only one 'reality' — the US-led 'Rules' ideology (and it alone) - can predominate. And, secondly to underline pointedly that the West is 'not losing' in this war against the other 'reality'. This other reality is the multivalent 'otherness' that self-evidently is attracting more and more support around the world.

Many in the West are simply unaware of how fast the geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting: The original plate bifurcation (the failed financial war declared on Russia), already has led to a building wave. Anger is growing. People now no longer feel alone in rejecting western hegemony - they "no longer care".

In just the week that preceded the G7 summit, the Arab League literally 'went multi-polar'; It quit its former pro-US automaticity. The embrace of President Assad and the Syrian government was both the logical consequence to the secondary tectonic-plate shift set in motion by China with its Saudi-Iranian diplomacy — a revolution which Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) then logically extended to the entire Arab sphere.

MbS sealed this 'break-free' of US control through having President al-Assad invited to the Summit to symbolise the League's act of generalised iconoclasm.

For the West, it is ontologically impossible to tolerate their reality being disassembled: to see their society and the world split in two. The narrative reality is so embedded via the well-honed effectiveness of MSM messaging however, that politicians have become lazy. They do not have to argue their case, and have no incentive to hold back on untruths either.
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Russian Flag

Ex-French colony may host Russian military base - ambassador


RT
Thu, 25 May 2023 00:56 UTC
Leon Dodonu-Punagaza
© Sputnik / Alexey NikolskyLeon Dodonu-Punagaza
The Ambassador of the Central African Republic (CAR) to Russia, Leon Dodonu-Punagaza, has said his country is interested in having a Russian military base on its territory that could accommodate between 5,000 and 10,000 soldiers.

"Our country is the first country in Africa that resisted the French," he said in an interview published by Izvestia on Monday, adding that a Russian military base would help reinforce CAR, where long-stading security threats have worsened due to the inflow of refugees from war-torn Sudan.

The ambassador praised the role of Russian military instructors in strengthening his nation's armed forces and emphasized the importance of continuing military-technical cooperation, despite the opposition of some countries.

"In recent weeks, when Russia delivered six military aircraft to us, it was the French who began to resent it, yelling and yelling. But this is not our business; we are interested in cooperation with Russia," Dodonu-Punagaza noted.

Comment: A series of strategic missteps have set the collective West up for repeated failure, pushing more nations into the arms of Russia and China, a trend that will probably continue for the foreseeable future.

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Arrow Up

Election body confirms Erdogan victory


RT
Sun, 28 May 2023 20:41 UTC
erdogan
© AP/Francisco SecoRecep Tayyip Erdogan waves to supporters outside his residence
Istanbul, Türkiye • May 28, 2023
The announcement came after the Turkish president had already declared himself the winner...

The head of Türkiye's Supreme Election Council has announced that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won a third term in office after defeating Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a runoff election on Sunday.

Erdogan claimed 52.14% of the vote to Kilicdaroglu's 47.86%, Supreme Election Council chairman Ahmet Yener told reporters on Sunday night. Erdogan defeated his rival by a margin of around 2.2 million votes, according to figures released by the council.

Erdogan, in his second victory speech outside the presidential palace in Ankara, said:
"No one has lost today. Every single one of our 85 million citizens has won. It is time to leave aside all the disputes and quarrels about the election period, and unite and band together around our national goals and dreams."
Erdogan's victory was all but assured for several hours by the time Yener spoke to the press, with a count by Türkiye's Anadolu Agency showing an unclosable gap between Erdogan and Kilcdaroglu within hours of polls closing earlier on Sunday evening.

Comment: Turkish traditions win over Western ideology:
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who portrays himself as a defender of traditional Islamic values, has once again labeled the opposition as 'LGBT', and insisted that liberal Western ideology will never infiltrate his ruling party or its nationalist allies.

In the run-up to the election, Erdogan repeatedly accused Kilicdaroglu and his allies of being pro-LGBT, and voiced similar charges in his victory speech in front of a jubilant crowd in Istanbul.

Listing off the factions in his rival's six-party National Alliance bloc, and a pro-Kurdish political party, he asked supporters if they agreed that CHP, HDP, IYI, and "some little guys next to them" are all "LGBT," to the rousing cheers of the crowd.

Erdogan asked rhetorically - Proclaiming that his ruling coalition and its allies will always stand in defense of traditional Turkish values, Erdogan asked rhetorically:
"But can LGBT infiltrate the AK Party? Can it infiltrate the MHP? Can it infiltrate other members of the People's Alliance?

"Every election is a rebirth for us. Family is sacred to us. No one can speak out against the family. Violence against women is forbidden, it is haram."
Kilicdaroglu is not an outspoken supporter of gay rights, but has promised to reinstate the Istanbul Convention if elected. Signed by 45 countries plus the EU in 2011, the convention aimed to strengthen legal penalties for violence against women.

Türkiye withdrew from it in 2021, stating that it had been "hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality." This was likely a reference to the treaty's listing of transgender women, who are biologically male, as women.

Many officials in Erdogan's conservative government view LGBTQ ideology as an American and European "religion" that is alien to Turkish morals.
"They are trying to... ungender the whole of our society under the name of LGBT,"
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in February. At a rally in April, Erdogan said young people should "not look at these LGBTs" and "not oppose marriage."
Giving it gas!
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to complete a gas distribution hub to pipe Russian natural gas into Europe via Türkiye. Erdogan said that the project, first suggested by Russian President Vladimir Putin, will be built with Russian assistance.
"We will strengthen Türkiye's position as an international hub even further. Actually, Mr. Putin mentioned again the creation of the hub in the region of Thrace in Türkiye in his congratulatory message. We will do that together with them. There will be a hub in Thrace."
In a congratulatory message to Erdogan, Putin praised the Turkish president's "personal contribution to the strengthening of friendly Russian-Turkish relations," and hailed the construction of Türkiye's first nuclear power plant and the creation of the gas hub as two significant joint projects.

Putin first proposed the gas hub in October, stating that Moscow could redirect gas transit from the two sabotaged Nord Stream pipelines to Türkiye, from where it could be used domestically and sold on to European consumers. The hub would be built in the Turkish region of Eastern Thrace, which already receives gas from Russia via the 930-kilometer TurkStream pipeline. The hub could begin operating as soon as this year.

The plan has faced criticism in the West, with US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel urging European countries not to purchase Russian gas via Türkiye, and to "take steps to diversify their energy sources, to reduce energy reliance on Russia" instead. French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that the proposal "makes no sense," given that the EU aims to wean itself off Russian energy.

Under Erdogan's leadership, Türkiye is the only member of NATO that has not sanctioned Russia, and Ankara and Moscow have strengthened their trade and diplomatic links since the conflict in Ukraine began. Erdogan describes his foreign policy as "balanced," and has sought to build Türkiye into a regional energy trading power and a middleman between producers in the east - such as Russia and Azerbaijan - and buyers in the West.


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Vader

Washington's obsession with crushing Russia has dismantled its Middle East agenda


RT
Mon, 29 May 2023 21:38 UTC
biden saudi arabia 2022
© Mandal Ngan/AFPUS President Joe Biden departing Saudi Arabia on July 16, 2022, at the end of his first tour in the Middle East as presideny
Prioritizing efforts to weaken Moscow, Washington has let slip its grasp elsewhere and failed to wake up to the multipolar world it now finds itself in

Once the undisputed hegemonic power in the Middle East, thought to be indispensable for the security and success of a range of regional leaderships, the US has been fading into the background to the benefit of its adversaries.

As armed conflict erupted between NATO-backed Ukraine and Russia in February of 2022, the Joe Biden administration in Washington decided to throw its weight behind Kiev and focus on a project to bog down Moscow, while unleashing wave after wave of sanctions. Despite spending at least $75 billion dollars on assistance to Ukraine and making Russia the most sanctioned nation on earth, the US has failed to bring Moscow to its knees. In fact, one could say that it is the US that has been cut down to size in the global arena, especially in the Middle East, an area it once considered its own backyard.
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Bullseye

Best of the Web: Russia issues arrest warrant for war criminal Lindsey Graham after Ukraine comments

Alexander Bolton -
The Hill
Mon, 29 May 2023 20:39 UTC
mccain neo nazi ukraine maiden graham
© Petro Poroshenko/TwitterPoroshenko tweeted in 2016, "Arrived at the command post in the Shirokino area with John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Amy Klobuchar to wish our Warriors a Happy New Year"
Russia's Interior Ministry has issued an arrest warrant for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) after he praised U.S. military aid to Ukraine as "the best money we've ever spent."

Russian officials reacted to a video of Graham's meeting Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Graham acknowledged "Russians are dying" and later said, "it's the best money we ever spent."

Graham appeared to make the comments in different parts of the conversation, which was edited and posted on Zelensky's social media account.

The South Carolina senator Monday said it "brings me immense joy" to know that his support for Ukraine "has drawn the ire of [Russia President Vladimir] Putin's regime."

Comment: Graham has been beating the war drums in Ukraine for years:



Warhag Nuland ups the ante:


In a sane world, Congress would censure Graham, Nuland, and the rest of the neocons and then toss them out as an embarrassment to the U.S. government, not to mention a menace to society.

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