Puppet MastersS


Cross

Pope nationalizes Vatican assets following years of mismanagement and criminal wrongdoing


Associated Press
Sat, 25 Feb 2023 00:37 UTC
Pope Francis
© AP Photo/Andrew MedichiniPope Francis arrives for his weekly general audience in the Pope Paul VI hall at the Vatican, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023.
Pope Francis has essentially nationalized all assets and property owned by Vatican departments and affiliated institutions, declaring them to be sovereign patrimony owned by the Holy See and not any individual or office.

The action outlined in a new law published Thursday marks Francis' latest initiative to centralize Vatican assets so they can be managed properly, following years of mismanagement that led to huge losses and, prosecutors allege, criminal wrongdoing.

Francis previously stripped the Vatican's secretariat of state of its 600 billion-euro ($635 billion) portfolio and ordered the assets transferred to the Vatican's patrimony office following a scandal involving a 350 million-euro investment in a London property.

Comment: See also: Pope warns he has seen 'omens of even greater destruction and desolation' for mankind

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Bullseye

Analysis: One year on, here's how the Ukraine conflict is changing the world order

Dmitry Trenin
RT
Fri, 24 Feb 2023 23:05 UTC
putin annual speech 2023
© Sputnik / Maksim BlinovRussian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual address to the Federal Assembly, including lawmakers of the State Duma, members of the Federation Council, regional governors and other officials, in Moscow, Russia on February 21, 2023.
The West's failed Ukraine strategy has empowered the Global Majority to reject US domination

In his recent landmark address to Russia's parliament, President Vladimir Putin cited the war in Ukraine and US/NATO involvement in the conflict as the main reason for his decision to "suspend" Moscow's participation in the 2010 New START Treaty on strategic nuclear weapons. Putin also suggested that Russia should be ready to resume nuclear testing.

Effectively, this announcement, promptly turned into law by the Russian parliament, means a formal end to the long-ailing institutions of strategic arms control that began over 50 years ago. If New START is followed by the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) and then the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), strategic deregulation will be complete. Putin's logic is that the United States cannot be allowed to inspect Russian missile bases while at the same time pursuing a policy of "strategically defeating" Moscow in Ukraine.

Comment: Russia has led the way in showing the rest of the world it's possible to stand up to the U.S.'s hegemonic bullying. That genie cannot be put back into the bottle.

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Bad Guys

Republicans fire warning shot: We will audit Biden's $100 BILLION in aid sent to Ukraine

Geoff Earle
The Daily Mail
Wed, 22 Feb 2023 23:24 UTC
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.)
© ReutersHouse Oversight and Accountability Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.).
Top GOP Congressman promises comprehensive review of taxpayer funds sent to Kyiv after President's trip to meet Zelensky

House Republicans are backing up their vow to probe U.S. support for Ukraine in search of potential waste and fraud - with a letter released on the last day of President Biden's to Europe on the eve of the anniversary of Russia's invasion.

A letter by House Oversight and Accountability Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) puts the Pentagon and State Department on notice that investigators want to see documentation of U.S. military and humanitarian assistance to the Eastern European war-torn nation.

'Since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago, Congress has provided more than $113 billion for security, humanitarian, economic, and governance assistance. It is critical that government agencies administering these funds ensure they are used for their intended purposes to prevent and reduce the risk of waste, fraud, and abuse,' Comer wrote.

Comment:

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Smoking

Dr Fauci comes clean on vaccines and respiratory viruses

David Bell
Brownstone Institute
Tue, 21 Feb 2023 00:00 UTC
Fauci
© www.wsj.comDr. Anthony Fauci, Dir. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
"Attempting to control mucosal respiratory viruses with systemically administered non-replicating vaccines has thus far been largely unsuccessful."
~ Dr A Fauci (former director of NIAID), 2023, commenting on vaccines for Covid-19.
The journal Cell Host & Microbe recently published one of the more important papers of the Covid era; 'Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenza viruses, and other respiratory viruses.' This elicited surprisingly little fanfare considering its authorship and contents.

Firstly, the final author was Dr. Anthony Fauci, the recently retired director of the United States National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), normally a magnet for the media. Secondly, because Dr. Fauci and his co-authors provide evidence that much of what those in authority have told the public regarding Covid vaccines was contrary to what they knew to be true.

Comment: Coming clean? Mia Culpa? This is a CoverMyAss move. Fauci knew exactly what he was doing: making millions touting outright lies and ripping apart the reputations of those professionals who sounded alarms and told the truth. He and his cohorts do not deserve praise nor mercy. Lawsuits and jail time should be the reward.

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Laptop

US says Google routinely destroyed evidence and lied about use of auto-delete

Jon Brodkin
Ars Technica
Fri, 24 Feb 2023 12:28 UTC
delete
© Getty Images
The US government asked a federal court to sanction Google for allegedly using an auto-delete function on chats to destroy evidence needed in an antitrust lawsuit while falsely telling the government that it suspended its auto-deletion practices.

The US motion to sanction Google seeks a ruling that Google violated the rule against spoliation of evidence and "an evidentiary hearing to assess the appropriate sanctions to remedy Google's spoliation." The US also sought an order forcing "Google to provide further information about custodians' history-off chat practices, through written declarations and oral testimony, in advance of the requested hearing." The motion was filed under seal on February 10 and unsealed yesterday.
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Footprints

Ukraine poised to invade neighbor - Russian MOD


RT
Fri, 24 Feb 2023 05:56 UTC
soldier and gunthing
© Libkos/APUkrainian soldier • February 19, 2023
Ukraine is gearing up to invade Moldova's breakaway Transnistria region, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Thursday evening, reporting:
"A significant buildup of Ukrainian military personnel and equipment near the Ukrainian-Transnistrian border, as well as the setting up of artillery positions and an 'unprecedented' increase of drone flights over the region.

"The Russian Armed Forces will respond appropriately to the impending provocation by the Ukrainian side."
In a statement on Thursday, the Russian MOD said the potential attack from Ukraine "would be conducted in response to a supposed Russian offensive from the territory Transnistria."

Valeriu Mija, Moldova's secretary of state for defense, dismissed Russia's claim as "an element of a psychological operation." He added that the authorities are monitoring the situation on the ground.

Comment: Moscow says it will respond to any "provocation" by Kiev against Russian peacekeepers in the Moldovan breakaway region:
Any action by Ukraine or the West that poses a threat to Russian peacekeepers or nationals in the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria will be seen as an attack on Russia, the country's Foreign Ministry has stated. It warned Kiev and its Western backers against carrying out "provocations" there.

While Russia favors "political-diplomatic" ways of resolving issues, "no one should have any doubt that the Russian armed forces will react appropriately to any provocation by the Kiev regime," the statement reads.

Moscow stressed that it is determined to protect its citizens, peacekeepers, and military personnel stationed in Moldova's breakaway region.


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Bullseye

Biden team has 'deeply rooted hatred for Russia' - US congressman


RT
Fri, 24 Feb 2023 13:45 UTC
Nuland
© Rodrigo BuendiaVictoria Nuland
Senior officials at the US State Department are attempting to get the country "involved in another world war" with Russia, Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar tweeted on Friday. Gosar, Twitter CEO Elon Musk, and former president Donald Trump, have all named Victoria Nuland as the most dangerous among this group in recent days.

Responding to an RT article on Musk accusing Nuland of "pushing this war" in Ukraine, Gosar declared that the billionaire "is correct."

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Arrow Up

Best of the Web: This time it's different: Wisdom of crowds vs. Western propaganda

Alex Krainer
Alex Krainer's TrendCompass
Thu, 23 Feb 2023 20:00 UTC
The powers-that-be failed spectacularly on two mission-critical fronts.
Train Crash
© Substack
The Wisdom of Crowds, a hypothesis popularized by James Surowiecki in his 2005 book of the same title, is among the most fascinating discoveries about the collective human psychology. It's an antithesis to Charles Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds." In a nutshell, Surowiecky suggests that under certain conditions, the crowds can converge on the truth about some matter or zero in on most effective solutions to a problem more accurately and more reliably than even the best qualified experts in that problem matter. I will skip the discussion of concrete cases of this mysterious phenomenon, but for all who are interested, I summarized two of Surowiecki's most fascinating examples in my book Mastering Uncertainty in Commodities Trading (free download at link, you'll find the relevant discussion on pages 58 and 59).

Social media are making us remarkably smart

But in order for the crowds to manifest such wisdom, a number of conditions must be satisfied: (1) the flow of information must be decentralized; (2) truthful information must be present within the information universe; (3) there has to be a wide diversity of participants in the discussion, and (4) the participants must not be dependent upon each other in making their judgments.

Modern social media may have created an environment where these conditions have satisfied in a robust way, which radically changed the way we respond to information as a collective. Until not so long ago, information flowed from centralized sources which filtered the information that reached the public. For as long as the society depended on the printed word, radio or TV for information, controlling the flow of information and shaping the narratives was relatively straightforward.
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Bullseye

Former state senator Richard Black affirms US started both Iraq and Ukraine conflicts


RT
Fri, 24 Feb 2023 18:57 UTC
US troops in Iraq
© Getty Images/Rockfinder/FileUS troops in Iraq.
Richard Black claims Washington overthrew the legitimate governments in these countries to turn them into puppets

America's involvement in the affairs of foreign countries is to blame for at least two major conflicts in the past 20 years - the Iraq War and Russia's military operation in Ukraine - ex-Virginia state Senator Richard Black has claimed in an interview with RT.

He also argued that while most Americans do not want to be involved in faraway conflicts, the US "foreign policy establishment" has its own agenda.

Speaking to RT on Thursday, Black said the US is the "source of both" the Iraq and Ukraine conflicts, explaining that Washington "overthrew Iraq with military force, coming in from across the globe," and has "gone in and overthrown Ukraine with military force from the other side of the globe."
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Boat

Russia was the first to escape the US dollar sinking ship, the rest will be less lucky


Stalkerzone
Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:00 UTC
Titanic sinking
Today I would like to discuss what more global tasks Russia is solving for itself than the fight against the new germs of Nazism. And why, by starting to solve these tasks earlier than others, it will be easier for us later, and many other countries will have a much harder time than we do now.

You've probably heard about what a pyramid scheme is. The first participants of the pyramid usually get a good profit, but the last ones who did not manage to pull out the money, as a rule, lose everything. For many people, this becomes literally a disaster, especially for those who foolishly invested an apartment and all their savings there. Some remain literally on the street, and someone else with a lot of loans and debts.

Most people don't even realise that they participated in a pyramid scheme until they lose money. But there are also those who know that they are taking risks, but carefully monitoring the situation, they expect to jump out in time.
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