Puppet MastersS


Light Sabers

Zelensky aide explains why Ukraine fights in urban areas

UK soldier
© AP/Oleksandr RatushniakUkraine soldier in Severodonetsk, Luhansk region, Ukraine
Taking up positions in cities is the Ukrainian military's calculated tactic to minimize their own losses and maximize those of Russian forces, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed.

In an interview with the New York Times published on Tuesday, Uktrainian official Mikhail Podolyak argued that the
"Russians fight poorly in the cities. In the cities, it is possible to maneuver, and find cover, and you minimize losses; you can resist a longer time and inflict significant casualties on the Russians."
Podolyak added that combat in an urban environment is where the infantry stands a chance. And since Russian forces have far more artillery, Ukrainian troops have to resort to this strategy, according to the presidential adviser. As an example, he referenced the city of Severodonetsk in the Lugansk region, where heavy street fighting has been taking place for several days now.

Comment: Delusions never amount to their promise - especially in a war against a superior 'enemy'.


Dominoes

Ukraine to decide how much territory it trades for peace - NATO

Stoltenberg
© AP/Olivier MatthysNATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday that the US-led bloc aims to strengthen Ukraine's position at the negotiating table, but added that any peace deal would involve compromises, including on territory.

Stoltenberg was speaking at the Kultaranta Talks in Finland, following a meeting with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. While the NATO chief insisted that the West was willing to "pay a price" to strengthen the Ukrainian military, Kiev will have to make some territorial concessions to Moscow in order to end the current conflict.

He said:
"Peace is possible. The only question is what price are you willing to pay for peace? How much territory, how much independence, how much sovereignty...are you willing to sacrifice for peace?"
Stoltenberg did not suggest what terms Ukraine should accept, saying that "it's for those who are paying the highest price to make that judgment," while NATO and the West continue supplying arms to the Ukrainians to "strengthen their hand" when a settlement is eventually negotiated.

Arrow Down

Gas prices spike in Europe as flow through Nord Stream pipeline reduced further due to repair problems caused by sanctions

Gas pipeline
© Getty Images / wolvRussia's Gazprom has slowed deliveries from the Nord Stream pipeline, citing technical issues caused by Western sanctions
Overall flows via the Nord Stream pipeline will decrease by roughly 60%, Gazprom says

Russian energy major Gazprom said on Wednesday it would further reduce the capacity of gas supplies via the Nord Stream pipeline to 67 million cubic meters per day. The company explained it has to halt the operation of one more Siemens gas pumping unit on the pipeline.

"Due to the expiration of the time before overhaul (in accordance with the instructions of Rostekhnadzor and taking into account the technical condition of the unit), Gazprom is halting the operation of another Siemens gas pumping unit at the Portovaya compressor station," the energy firm's statement said. It detailed that the flow curbs will start from 01:30 Moscow time (22:30 GMT) on June 16.

Comment: So Canada rejects returning Siemens pumping units needed in the compressor stations in the Nord Stream gas pipeline and Europe suffers big increases in gas prices. Meanwhile the German minister of the economy blames Russia and claims it is political and not technical. As usual, if unintended consequences of their policies happen, blame Russia.


Vader

Dutch PM admits treating Ukraine like a proxy as NATO pledges more heavy weapons

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
© AP Photo/Patrick PostNATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (center) is welcomed by Dutch PM Mark Rutte and Danish PM Mette Frederiksen in The Hague, Netherlands, June 14, 2022.
The bloc is unwilling to fight Russia directly and treats Kiev as a proxy, Dutch PM admits

Ukraine must get more NATO heavy weapons, the military bloc's head said on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting of the US-led 'contact group' to discuss the logistics of that undertaking. NATO is trying to adapt to the "constantly changing" demands from Kiev, according to the US envoy to the alliance.

"Ukraine should have more heavy weapons and NATO allies and partners have provided heavy weapons ... and they are also stepping up," Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday in The Hague, where he met with leaders of seven member countries ahead of the NATO summit scheduled for the end of June.

"In terms of weaponry, we stand united here that it is crucial for Russia to lose the war," said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who hosted the meeting. "And as we cannot have a direct confrontation between NATO troops and Russia, what we need to do is make sure that Ukraine can fight that war, that it has access to all the necessary weaponry."


Comment: NATO appears to be suffering from schizophrenia, though it is more likely that there are splits within the alliance of what to do. One group wants Ukraine to cut their losses and settle for a ceasefire and a peace agreement while another faction will not allow any peace to settle in Ukraine and actively sends more weapons.


Comment: While NATO is still sending weapons to Ukraine, there seems to be little incentive for Russia to actively negotiate with Ukraine, not least since Russia is liberating more and more of Ukraine for every passing day. Add to that the point which Russia has realized, namely that any agreement made with the West is not worth the paper it is written on.

See also:


Better Earth

China willing to support Russia on matters of sovereignty, security, and intensify coordination - Xi Jinping

putin xi jinping
© Alexei Druzhinin /Sputnik/AFP/FileFILE PHOTO: Xi Jinping (R), Vladimir Putin at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics in early February
Beijing (AFP) - Chinese President Xi Jinping told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a call Wednesday that Beijing would keep backing Moscow on "sovereignty and security", according to state media.

China is "willing to continue to offer mutual support (to Russia) on issues concerning core interests and major concerns such as sovereignty and security," Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported Xi as saying.

It was the second reported call between the two leaders since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

China has refused to condemn Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and has been accused of providing diplomatic cover for Russia by blasting Western sanctions and arms sales to Kyiv.

Comment: TASS reported that Xi also commented these ties were to establish "a fairer and rational world order,".


Cross

Pope Francis says Ukraine war was 'perhaps somehow provoked', he was warned NATO was 'barking at the gates of Russia'

Pope Francis
© Claudio Peri/EPAAngela GiuffridaPope Francis: 'We do not see the whole drama unfolding behind this war, which was, perhaps, somehow either provoked or not prevented.'
Pope Francis has said Moscow's invasion of Ukraine was "perhaps somehow provoked" as he recalled a conversation in the run-up to the war in which he was warned Nato was "barking at the gates of Russia".

In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, conducted last month and published on Tuesday, the pontiff condemned the "ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops" while warning against what he said was a fairytale perception of the conflict as good versus evil.


Comment: Accusing Russian troops of cruelty seems to be either an attempt to placate the brainwashed or the pope is misinformed, because there's no substantial evidence of cruelty by Russian troops, however there's a lot of evidence that Ukrainian troops have been involved in the near systematic torture and murder civilians and POW's.


"We need to move away from the usual Little Red Riding Hood pattern, in that Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad one," he said. "Something global is emerging and the elements are very much entwined."

Attention

Stories designed to (literally) put you off your food

Suddenly perfectly ordinary foods are set to give you cancer, why? And who stands to gain?

Scary Foods
© Off-Guardian
We've been covering the emerging food crisis for months now. Detailing how the economy was deliberately sabotaged to drive up the cost of living, especially food, via lockdowns and sanctions.

But propaganda wars are like regular wars: They have theatres, fronts and overt for covert campaigns.

Yes, the big noise on food is that we need to change to "save the planet", but there's more going on in smaller spheres. A constant drip-feed of stories, articles and studies designed to undermine public faith in the food we eat.

Here are four examples, all from just the last ten days.

1. BEEF CAUSES CANCER

On June 3rd MedicalXpress reported on a new study which - allegedly - (we'll be using that word a lot) found red meat increased cancer risk in certain people.

The "study", carried out at the Boston University School of Medicine and originally published in the Journal of Nutrition, claims to have found that "unprocessed" red meat increased the risk of colorectal cancer {CRC} - in black women:
Unprocessed red meat intake was associated with an increased CRC risk in the present study, the first positive evidence that red meat plays a role in the etiology of CRC in Black women.

2. SO DOES FISH


Then, on June 9th, Sky News reported another study which found eating fish on a regular basis also increases your risk - this time of skin cancer.

This "study", done out of Brown University and published in the journal Cancers Causes and Control, alleges those who eat over 40g of fish per day had a 22% increased risk of skin cancer:
We found that higher total fish intake, tuna intake, and non-fried fish intake were positively associated with risk of both malignant melanoma and melanoma in situ. Future studies are needed to investigate the potential biological mechanisms underlying these associations.

Magnify

Navalny moved to as of yet undisclosed location, judge previously ordered transfer to high security prison camp

Navalny
© REUTERS/Evgenia NovozheninaRussian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is seen on screens via a video link from the IK-2 corrective penal colony in Pokrov during a court hearing to consider an appeal against his prison sentence in Moscow, Russia May 24, 2022.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been abruptly transferred from the prison where he is serving an 11-1/2 year sentence to an undisclosed location, nearly two years since he was poisoned with what the West said was a nerve agent.

Navalny, by far Russia's most prominent opposition leader, casts President Vladimir Putin's Russia as a dystopian state run by thieves and criminals where wrong is cast as right and judges are in fact representatives of a doomed elite.


Comment: 'Prominent', perhaps, thanks to Western propaganda, but in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election he received just 27% of the votes, against Sobyanin's 51%, so he's hardly very popular, and there are a number of opposition parties in Russia that receive more support than he ever has.


Navalny's top aide informed about the transfer on the Telegram app on Tuesday.

Putin

'World's best-performing currency': Rouble hits fresh highs against dollar, euro

rouble
© REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko/File PhotoA vendor counts Russian rouble banknotes at a market in Omsk, Russia February 18, 2022.
The Russian rouble hit three-week highs against the euro and U.S. dollar in volatile trading on Tuesday, continuing to climb despite recent interest rate cuts and a looming economic crisis.

At 1415 GMT, the rouble was up 1.8% against the euro at 59.03, fading slighting from an early gain of 3.6%, its strongest level since May 25. .

Against the dollar, the rouble added 0.4% to trade at 56.54 , having dipped from multi-year peaks with a session low of 55.6 on the Moscow Exchange earlier on Tuesday.

Bad Guys

Joe Biden's submissive and highly revealing embrace of Saudi despots

Biden SA
© AFP/Getty ImagesThen-Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal (2nd R) welcomes then-US Vice President Joe Biden at the Riyadh airbase on October 27, 2011.
Biden's immediate abandonment of his 2020 vow to turn the Saudis into "pariahs," and his increasing support for the regime, shows the core deceit of U.S. propaganda.

In 2018, President Trump issued a statement reaffirming the U.S.'s long-standing relationship with the Saudi royal family on the ground that this partnership serves America's "national interests." Trump specifically cited the fact that "Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing nation in the world" and has purchased hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons from U.S. arms manufacturers. Trump's statement was issued in the wake of widespread demands in Washington that Trump reduce or even sever ties with the Saudi regime due to the likely role played by its Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

What made these Trump-era demands somewhat odd was that the Khashoggi murder was not exactly the first time the Saudi regime violated human rights and committed atrocities of virtually every type. For decades, the arbitrary imprisonment and murder of Saudi dissidents, journalists, and activists have been commonplace, to say nothing of the U.S./UK-supported devastation of Yemen which began during the Obama years. All of that took place as American presidents in the post-World War II order made the deep and close partnership between Washington and the tyrants of Riyadh a staple of U.S. policy in the Middle East.