Puppet MastersS


Magnify

China signs order allowing 'armed forces operations' abroad, including disaster relief, security, and safeguarding national sovereignty

Liu Xuanzun
Global Times
Tue, 14 Jun 2022 13:43 UTC
china military
© ReutersFILE PHOTO: China's military
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, recently signed an order to promulgate a set of trial outlines on military operations other than war, which will take effect on Wednesday.

The outlines will standardize, and provide the legal basis for Chinese troops to carry out, missions like disaster relief, humanitarian aid, escort, and peacekeeping, and safeguard China's national sovereignty, security and development interests, experts said.

The outlines aim to prevent and neutralize risks and challenges, handle emergencies, protect people and property, and safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, and world peace and regional stability, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday.

Comment: Considering the threats China is facing from the West - their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine as a prime example - it should come as no surprise that they're readying themselves for any and all eventualities, so that they may protect their nation, their partners, and their investments:

Read More...
Vader

UK has decided to extradite Assange: Clearly the US/UK's lectures on free speech are a farce

Glenn Greenwald
greenwald.substack.com
Sat, 18 Jun 2022 12:10 UTC
assange extradition protest
© imona Granati - Corbis/Corbis via Getty ImagesPeople protest with t-shirts and easter eggs at Largo di Torre Argentina to demand Julian Assange's freedom against extradition, on April 11, 2022 in Rome, Italy.
The Assange persecution is the greatest threat to Western press freedoms in years. It is also a shining monument to the fraud of American and British self-depictions

The eleven-year persecution of Julian Assangewas extended and escalated on Friday morning. The British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, approved the U.S.'s extradition request to send Julian Assange to Virginia to stand trial on eighteen felony charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and other statutes in connection with the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks of thousands of documents showing widespread corruption, deceit, and war crimes by American and British authorities along with their close dictatorial allies in the Middle East.

This decision is unsurprising — it has been obvious for years that the U.S. and UK are determined to destroy Assange as punishment for his journalism exposing their crimes — yet it nonetheless further highlights the utter sham of American and British sermons about freedom, democracy and a free press. Those performative self-glorifying spectacles are constantly deployed to justify these two countries' interference in and attacks on other nations, and to allow their citizens to feel a sense of superiority about the nature of their governments. After all, if the U.S. and UK stand for freedom and against tyranny, who could possibly oppose their wars and interventions in the name of advancing such lofty goals and noble values?

Comment:

Read More...
Eye 2

Leaked emails expose Paul Mason's collusion with senior British intelligence agent

Kit Klarenberg
The Grayzone
Mon, 13 Jun 2022 13:01 UTC
paul mason disinformation russia ukraine britain grayzone integrity initiative
© The Grayzone
On June 7th, The Grayzone revealed how British journalist Paul Mason planned to wage all-out war on anti-imperialist and left-wing academics, activists, campaign groups, independent journalists and media sites - and particularly this outlet.

Since the conflict in Ukraine erupted, Mason has aggressively assailed any prominent figure calling for a diplomatic resolution or opposing NATO escalation, authoring columns advocating for government censorship of facts and viewpoints he perceives to be insufficiently anti-Kremlin, and demanding "state action" against media personalities that oppose NATO expansion.

Since The Grayzone revealed that Mason has also been operating through covert channels to sabotage his leftist targets, a question lingers: is the British celebrity journalist purely a freelancer, building a clandestine informal coalition of fellow travelers to undermine and ostracize his perceived enemies on his own initiative, or are his activities influenced by shadowy state actors?
Read More...
Attention

Lithuania to block rail cargo to Russian enclave Kaliningrad


Reuters
Sat, 18 Jun 2022 10:38 UTC
Kaliningrad
© KaliningradFILE IMAGE showing Kaliningrad on map
Lithuania has told the Russian region of Kaliningrad that it will block the import and export of a large number of goods by rail because of Western sanctions, the regional governor said on Friday.

The region - home to the Russian Baltic Fleet and a deployment location for nuclear-capable Iskander missiles - is sandwiched on the Baltic coast between Lithuania and Poland, both Nato members, and has no land border with Russia.

Governor Anton Alikhanov said the clampdown would affect between 40 percent to 50 percent of the products that are imported to and exported from Russia through Lithuania.
Read More...
NPC

Denmark claims Russian naval ship violated its territorial waters


TASS
Fri, 17 Jun 2022 16:11 UTC
Jeppe Kofod
© Olivier Hoslet/EPADanish foreign minister, Jeppe Kofod
The Danish armed forces claimed on Friday that a Russian corvette violated the country's territorial waters north of the Baltic Sea Island of Bornholm, the TV 2 television channel reported, citing the military.

"We must view this as a manifestation of what we see as a higher level of tension in the Baltic Sea," the TV Channel quoted Danish Defense Minister Morten Bodskov as saying. He added, however, that there was no direct threat to Denmark.


Comment: That's a rather hysterical way to look at it.


As Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod claimed, the Russian warship had violated twice the kingdom's territorial waters during the past night. "This is a gross and inadmissible provocation," he wrote in a Twitter post.
Read More...
Bullseye

Flashback War in Europe and the rise of raw propaganda

John Pilger
Johnpilger.com
Thu, 17 Feb 2022 00:00 UTC
John Pilger: Rat je najveći američki biznis
John Pilger
Marshall McLuhan's prophecy that "the successor to politics will be propaganda" has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain

On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, "The medium is the message." The lie is the message now.

But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented "public relations" as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream.

The great editor David Bowman, author of The Captive Press, called this "a defenestration of all who refuse to follow a line and to swallow the unpalatable and are brave". He was referring to independent journalists and whistle blowers, the honest mavericks to whom media organisations once gave space, often with pride. The space has been abolished.
Read More...
Eye 2

Assange's extradition to US approved by UK home secretary Patel

Jamie Grierson
The Guardian
Fri, 17 Jun 2022 19:32 UTC
assange patel
Appeal likely after Priti Patel gives green light to extradition of WikiLeaks co-founder
Priti Patel has approved the extradition of the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange to the US, a decision the organisation immediately said it would appeal against in the high court.

The case passed to the British home secretary last month after the UK supreme court ruled that there were no legal questions over assurances given by US authorities on Assange's likely treatment.

While Patel has given the green light, WikiLeaks immediately released a statement to say it would appeal against the decision. "Today is not the end of the fight," it said. "It is only the beginning of a new legal battle. We will appeal through the legal system; the next appeal will be before the high court."
Read More...
Wolf

Minsk peace deal was distraction used to buy time so Kiev could militarise - Ukraine's former president Poroshenko


RT
Fri, 17 Jun 2022 20:15 UTC
PPoroshenko
© eurosolidarity.orgFormer Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko said the Minsk agreements "meant nothing" and claimed credit for giving Kiev enough time to militarize.
Petro Poroshenko has admitted that the 2015 ceasefire in Donbass, which he negotiated with Russia, France and Germany as president of Ukraine, was merely a distraction intended to buy time for Kiev to rebuild its military.


Comment: One might think that France and Germany would be outraged for being deceived over such a critical matter, for their peace deal to have been brazenly abused by Ukraine, however, as recent weeks have shown, much of the West is more than for endless war in the region.


He made the comments in interviews with several news outlets this week, including Germany's Deutsche Welle television and the Ukrainian branch of the US state-run Radio Free Europe. Poroshenko also defended his record as president between 2014 and 2019.

"We had achieved everything we wanted," he said of the peace deal. "Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war - to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces."
Read More...
Bad Guys

EU recommends fast tracking candidate status for Ukraine, Moldova


RFE/RL
Fri, 17 Jun 2022 19:39 UTC
zelensky von der leyen
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (left) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speak at a press conference in Kyiv on June 11.
The European Commission has taken a historic step, recommending Ukraine and Moldova be granted European Union candidate status, a move that marks the start of what will likely be a long journey toward full EU integration.

The recommendation, announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on June 17, will be discussed by leaders of the 27-nation bloc during a summit next week in Brussels. Launching accession talks requires unanimous approval from all member countries.

The unprecedented move by the European body comes as Kyiv fights a devastating war against Russia, which launched an unprovoked invasion of its neighbor on February 24 that has killed tens of thousands of people and caused huge material destruction.
Read More...
2 + 2 = 4

When the secretaries of Defense and State said publicly the U.S. wants Ukraine to win and weaken Russia, Biden said tone it down

Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube, Ken Dilanian and Abigail Williams
NBC News
Thu, 16 Jun 2022 19:02 UTC
Lloyd Austin, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky Antony Blinken
© Office of President Volodymyr ZelenskyySecretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken had taken off on separate flights from southeastern Poland after their risky, high-stakes visit to Kyiv when they were conferenced into a phone call from President Joe Biden.

During their whirlwind April trip, Austin appeared to expand the U.S. goals in Ukraine, saying publicly that the administration wanted the Ukrainians to win the war against Russia, not just defend themselves, and that the U.S. hoped to weaken Russia to the extent that it could not launch another unprovoked invasion. Blinken had publicly aligned himself with the remarks. Now Biden wanted to discuss the mounting headlines that resulted.

Biden thought the secretaries had gone too far, according to multiple administration officials familiar with the call. On the previously unreported conference call, as Austin flew to Germany and Blinken to Washington, the president expressed concern that the comments could set unrealistic expectations and increase the risk of the U.S. getting into a direct conflict with Russia. He told them to tone it down, said the officials.

"Biden was not happy when Blinken and Austin talked about winning in Ukraine," one of them said. "He was not happy with the rhetoric."

The secretaries explained that Austin's comments had been misconstrued, another senior administration official said. But the displeasure Biden initially conveyed during that phone call, the officials said, reflected his administration's belief that despite Ukrainian forces' unexpected successes early on, the war would ultimately head in the direction it is now in two months later: a protracted conflict in which Russia continues to make small and steady advances.
Read More...