Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

US 'threatening' Africa over ties with Russia - South Africa's defense minister


RT
Tue, 10 Jan 2023 19:12 UTC
Thandi Modise
© Twitter / South African GovernmentSouth Africa's Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Thandi Modise
Relations between Washington and Pretoria have become strained after a Russian cargo ship visited South Africa's largest naval base last month, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The country's defense minister said the US had been pressuring African nations over any links with Moscow, according to the outlet.

Washington is "concerned by the support the South African Armed Forces provided to the 'Lady R'," a senior US official told the WSJ, referring to a Russian vessel that was sanctioned in May over its alleged involvement in arms shipments for Moscow.

In early December, the ship was allowed to enter Simon's Town navy base with its transponders turned off and freely move cargo there, the report claimed. "There is no publicly available information on the source of the containers that were loaded onto the 'Lady R'," the official said.
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Russian Flag

Moscow says there's 'no place' in the Western mindset for an independent Russia


RT
Tue, 10 Jan 2023 16:24 UTC
Nikolay Patrushev Russia National Security Council
© Sputnik / Aram NersesyanNikolay Patrushev, Secretary of Russia National Security Council
NATO's proxy war in Ukraine is being waged for profit and ambition, the secretary of the national security council has claimed

The secretary of Russia's national security council has lashed out at the West, pointing to their habit of creating global threats, including numerous terrorist groups, in pursuit of their interests.

Nikolay Patrushev also claimed, in an interview published by news outlet Argumenti i Fakti, that Washington's decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was a prelude to NATO's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

"The events in Ukraine are not a confrontation between Moscow and Kiev. It's a military confrontation of NATO - the US and England first and foremost - with Russia," the top security official said in a newspaper interview. "They fear a direct standoff, so NATO instructors push Ukrainian guys toward their certain deaths."

Comment: Patrushev's remarks are on point, borne out by observation.

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Briefcase

Dems done with Biden? Classified documents found at Biden's namesake think tank

Victor Nava
NY Post
Mon, 09 Jan 2023 16:10 UTC
Penn Biden Center, Washington, D.C. thnk tank classified documents
© TwitterPenn Biden Center, Washington, D.C.
The Justice Department is looking into how a handful of classified documents from President Biden's time as vice president ended up at the DC think tank that bears his name, the White House confirmed Monday night.

"A small number" of sensitive documents from the 80-year-old Biden's time as Barack Obama's No. 2 were located less than a week before last year's midterm elections at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

The material was discovered by Biden's personal lawyers on Nov. 2, 2022 while they "were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space," according to a statement from Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president.

Sauber said that Biden used the office space from "mid-2017 until the start of the 2020 campaign" in April 2019.

Comment: Looks like the PTB are throwing Biden under the bus. These docs were discovered back in November, just 6 days before the midterm elections. Now that the pedophile-in-chief has gotten them where they need to go, the Dems are releasing the goodies they've had on him.

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Eagle

What's inside the budget for the secretive DARPA agency?

Jeremy Loffredo
Rebel News
Tue, 03 Jan 2023 00:00 UTC
Darpa
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is known as the most notorious and secretive branch of the Pentagon.

The Economist has called DARPA the agency "that shaped the modern world," and listed weather satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, the personal computer and the internet on the list of innovations for which "DARPA can claim at least partial credit." These technologies were originally invented for the military aims of the Pentagon.

DARPA was providing funding and technical support to Moderna's mRNA vaccine technology since at least 2013. DARPA also had long-time associates and partners at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A look at their new budget provides a glimpse at what the U.S. Military sees as part of the future of warfare.

Using machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate information or human behavior seems to be a priority for DARPA judging by the budget.
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Binoculars

Ok, Doomer - Legendary Russian fatalism may be alive and well, but it will be ashamed of its doubts in the end

William Schryver
imetatronink
Sat, 07 Jan 2023 00:00 UTC
Moscow
"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."

- Seneca
I have struggled in vain for almost a year now to comprehend the frequently expressed fears of potential defeat from a great many Russian observers of this war - as though they are constantly haunted by a sense that inevitable humiliation is lurking in the shadows just ahead, and they'd best prepare themselves accordingly.

The abundantly manifest facts of the ongoing NATO proxy war against Russia, as I have been able to ascertain them, are that Ukraine has now suffered approximately five hundred thousand irretrievable casualties and virtually the entirety of their original inventories of military hardware - the equivalent of ALL the personnel and equipment (both active and reserves) with which they commenced this conflict.

Their military strength was partially reconstituted over the summer of 2022, infused with the best equipment NATO could spare, but which, in both quantity and quality, is simply no longer capable of being replenished.

In addition to this substantial infusion of NATO armaments, several thousand "sheep-dipped" NATO soldiers appeared on the battlefield, mostly in the form of shock troops and technical specialists to operate and maintain the more complex systems such as M-777 howitzers and HIMARS rocket artillery.
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Pirates

Japan's PM Kishida vows deeper alliance with US on defense


Associated Press
Wed, 04 Jan 2023 23:10 UTC
Fumio Kishida
© Kyodo News via APJapanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during his New Year's press conference in Ise, central Japan Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday pledged to deepen his country's alliance with the United States under Japan's new defense policy that breaks from its exclusively self-defense-only stance in the face of growing regional tensions.

Kishida, speaking in a news conference after visiting Ise Shrine in central Japan, said he will visit Washington for talks with President Joe Biden to underscore the strength of the Japan-U.S. alliance and highlight closer cooperation between the countries under Japan's new security and defense strategies adopted last month.

The U.S. visit is part of Kishida's upcoming trip to most of the Group of Seven countries beginning Monday. Japan will host this year's G-7 summit in Hiroshima. Kishida said his meeting with Biden will be "very important" and "more significant than showing my face as G-7 president."
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Eye 1

Israel seizes $36 million in Palestinian tax revenue over ICJ probe into occupation of West Bank


The Cradle
Mon, 09 Jan 2023 22:56 UTC
Bezalel Smotrich
© Yonatan Sindel/Flash90Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich signed a decree on 8 January blocking around $36 million in tax revenue from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in order to divert the funds over to the families of Israelis killed in resistance operations.

When asked during a press conference if he was concerned that the decision could trigger the downfall of the PA, Smotrich replied: "As long as the Palestinian Authority encourages terror and is an enemy, I have no interest for it to continue to exist."

This comes as part of an already active Israeli campaign to derail payments made by the PA to the families of imprisoned Palestinians and dead resistance fighters, which the Israeli finance minister called a "just struggle ... not only in providing retroactive justice, but also as a deterrent."

Comment: See also: Germany willing to steal billions of frozen Russian assets to 'help rebuild Ukraine' - reports

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Network

Why China made a $540mn energy deal with the Taliban

Timur Fomenko
RT
Mon, 09 Jan 2023 21:20 UTC
Taliban
© BULENT KILIC / AFPA member of Taliban stands guard along a road in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has signed a deal with a Chinese company that will invest $540 million to develop oil and gas fields in the country. The deal is the first large-scale investment to be conducted in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over the war-torn country in August 2021, following the withdrawal of US forces after 20 years of occupation.

Although Beijing does not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, it does recognize that the group is in control of a neighbouring country with vast natural resources, which makes it critical to China's economic security and strategy. Thus, while Western diplomats fled Kabul following the Taliban's advance, Chinese negotiators stayed put.

The decision to make a deal with the Taliban is an extension of a strategic dilemma which China faces when it comes to energy security. As the world's most populous nation and an industrial giant, China is also the world's largest energy consumer. It does not have enough resources at home to meet its own demands, which are continually growing as the country rapidly develops. This has left China as a major net importer of oil and natural gas, which has been a driving factor in many of its recent partnerships, including with Russia, Ecuador and the Gulf States of the Middle East.
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Footprints

Covid-related tech was exploited for mass surveillance, just as we were warned

Rachel Marsden
RT
Mon, 09 Jan 2023 20:57 UTC
airport
© Getty Images / izusekMonitoring view of temperature measurement at an airport
New revelations show that the Covid pandemic has allowed for governments and Big Tech to expand the surveillance-industrial complex that tightens the state's grip on thought and movement.

A recent batch of Twitter internal documents released by Elon Musk via journalist David Zweig on the platform itself reveals that one of the first meetings that the Biden Administration requested with Twitter executives was on the topic of Covid vaccines and specific high-profile accounts that deviated from the official narrative.

"Twitter did suppress views - many from doctors and scientific experts - that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing," Zweig wrote.
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X

Kremlin rubbishes 'hoax' about Korea-style Ukraine split plan


RT
Mon, 09 Jan 2023 20:41 UTC
Kremlin
© Hans Neleman/Getty ImagesMoscow says it reserves the right to respond to Ottawa's stated goal of toppling the country's government
The allegation that Russia has been secretly negotiating an end to the Ukraine conflict along the lines of how the Korean War ended is false, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Monday.

The Russian official described as a "hoax" last week's reports in Ukraine that Dmitry Kozak, the deputy head of Russia's presidential administration, was involved in a clandestine diplomatic mission to resolve the Ukrainian conflict.

Aleksey Danilov, the head of Ukraine's national security council, claimed during a TV interview last week that Kozak "got into action" and was holding meetings with European officials "to force us to sign" a peace deal. He stated that Russia wanted to partition his country the way the Korean Peninsula was split in 1953, after its three-year-long devastating armed conflict. Kiev will not accept any such deal, Danilov declared.
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