Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Vietnam bans people from leaving their homes; New Zealand extends lockdown


South China Morning Post
Fri, 20 Aug 2021 18:30 UTC
Vietnam covid test
© EPA-EFEA health worker collects swab samples from a woman for Covid-19 testing in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Vietnam will deploy troops in Ho Chi Minh City and prohibit residents from leaving their homes, authorities said on Friday, as the country's biggest city turns to drastic measures to slow a spiralling rate of coronavirus deaths.

Vietnam's toughest order yet comes amid a spike in fatalities and infections, despite weeks of lockdown measures in the business hub of 9 million people, the epicentre of the country's deadliest outbreak.

"We are asking people to stay where you are, not to go outside. Each home, company, factory should be an antivirus fort," Pham Duc Hai, deputy head of the city's coronavirus authority, said on Friday.

The government said it was preparing to mobilise police and military to enforce the lockdown and deliver food supplies to citizens.

Police with loudspeakers were seen driving around residential areas on Friday instructing people to follow protocols and assuring them food supplies would be provided.

The defence ministry plans to send 1,000 military medics and medical equipment over the weekend, according to a military document reviewed by Reuters.

The government also extended restrictions on Friday in the capital Hanoi by a further 15 days, state media reported.
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Mr. Potato

Kabul embassy warned Biden about Afghanistan collapse in JULY cable

Nick Monroe
The Post Millennial
Fri, 20 Aug 2021 15:43 UTC
taliban troops us afghanistan
Officials at the Kabul embassy directly warned the Biden administration about the imminent danger of the Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Days after President Biden publicly doubted the strength of the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, the Kabul embassy in July 2021 warned Secretary Antony Blinken and the State Department of exactly that.

The Wall Street Journal reports that embassy officials in Kabul sent a memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and "another top State Department official" in July warning of the potential collapse of Kabul after the full withdrawal of troops from the region.

Comment: Seeing the disarray displayed by the Biden administration with regard to Afghanistan, one might wonder if President Houseplant was not being kept completely informed about the realities on the ground. Is he being set up by the Harris camp to be removed from office under section 25?

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Dollars

Bribe money? EU gives countries bordering Belarus 'handout' to deal with 'flood' of refugees fleeing through Eastern European nation

Layla Guest
RT
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 15:56 UTC
Belarus Lithuania border
© Reuters / Janis LaizansFILE PHOTO. Lithuanian army soldiers install razor wire on border with Belarus in Druskininkai, Lithuania.
Faced with a sharp rise in the number of desperate people from Africa and the Middle East seeking refuge coming through the forested frontier from Belarus, the EU is now stumping up cash and equipment to try and stem the flow.

In a statement issued after the bloc held talks on the crisis on Wednesday, member states' interior ministers "agreed to deploy additional experts and agency teams as well as the necessary technical equipment" to Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

According to the release, "the ministers expressed solidarity with the three affected states". Slovenia's Interior Minister Aleš Hojs, whose country currently holds the presidency of the EU Council, further reiterated that the bloc stands against Belarus' purported "attempts to instrumentalize human beings for political purposes". In recent weeks, Minsk has been accused of flying in vulnerable refugees from countries like Iraq, Syria and the Congo, before bussing them to the border with the EU and encouraging them to cross over in an effort to stoke a political crisis in response to sanctions from Brussels.

Comment: It's likely that this migrant issue, that has already plagued Europe for over half a decade now, is being used by all parties to their own benefit: The EU wants to ensure border countries stay on side in excluding and smearing Belarus so it offers them large sums of money to sweeten the deal; border countries see both opportunity to extract more cash, and they need some incentive to do Brussel's bidding; and Belarus, due to the sanctions, but also due to politics, may have decided to no longer take responsibility for the wave of economic migrants and refugees that, lest we forget, are, primarily, due to the imperialist actions of the West in the Middle East and Africa.

Either way, it's notable that this was preceeded by a variety of other apparent attacks on Belarus following its pivot to Russia, away from the West: Also check out SOTT radio's: The Truth Perspective: Weapons of Mass Migration: Interview with Michael Springmann on Europe's Migrant Crisis

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Info

EU foreign chief calls fall of Kabul "catastrophe"

Raf Casert
AP
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 12:19 UTC
Borrell Ghani
© APRepresentative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, left, Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani, walks to attend the Central and South Asia 2021 conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Friday, July 16, 2021.
The European Union's foreign policy chief on Thursday called the fall of Afghanistan's capital and the resurgence of the Taliban "a catastrophe" and "nightmare" that laid bare a failure of intelligence and trans-Atlantic cooperation.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell further criticized U.S. President Joe Biden for underplaying the commitment to nation-building in Afghanistan. Borrell insisted that instilling the rule of law and achieving basic rights for women and minorities were goals of the Western military intervention in the country, along with the initial goal of stamping out terrorism emanating from the region.

"President Biden said the other day that it has never been the purpose, state building was not the purpose. Well, this is arguable," Borrell told a European Parliament committee.

Comment: See also:

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Better Earth

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: How Russia-China are stage-managing the Taliban

Pepe Escobar
The Saker Blog
Wed, 18 Aug 2021 12:00 UTC
taliban china
The Taliban delegation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tianjin on July 28th
The first Taliban press conference after this weekend's Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer.

The contrast could not be starker with those rambling pressers at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad after 9/11 and before the start of the American bombing - proving this is an entirely new political animal.

Yet some things never change. English translations remain atrocious.

Here is a good summary of the key Taliban statements, and here (in Russian) is a very detailed roundup.

Comment: For more, check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: The Great (End)Game - Closing the Afghan War, Opening the 'Covid War'?



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Penis Pump

Afghanistan invasion 'brought stability' & 'reduced terrorist threat', says UK's Labour Labour Party leader Keir Starmer


RT
Wed, 18 Aug 2021 12:13 UTC
Starmer
© Starmer(L) Keir Starmer. Reuters / BERESFORD HODGE; (R) Kabul, Afghanistan. AFP / Wakil Kohsar
UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer argued in Parliament on Wednesday that the invasion of Afghanistan "brought stability" to the region and reduced the threat of terrorism in the West - days after the Taliban took over Kabul.

During a House of Commons debate over the withdrawal of US and UK troops from Afghanistan this week, which led to the Taliban quickly taking over the country, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that the UK would "judge" the new "regime on the choices it makes and by its actions rather than its words."

Starmer, meanwhile, condemned the "disastrous week" and "staggering complacency from our government about the Taliban threat," before attempting to argue that the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks was meaningful and worthwhile.

Comment: It's helpful when character disturbed people in positions of power expose themselves in this manner, because, whilst some people may believe the nefarious nonsense he's spouting, a significant number of his voters know the truth. They resent former Labour Leader, and then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, for taking their country into illegal wars and sacrificing their soldiers in heinous war crimes. And by associating himself with, and supporting the evil deeds of, his predecessor, there will be little doubt to a great many as to whose side he's on; and his spiraling approval rating already shows as much: UK PM's approval rating lowest ever, Labour leader's also falling

See also: For more on Afghanistan, check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: The Great (End)Game - Closing the Afghan War, Opening the 'Covid War'?



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Bug

Biden and Kamala camps falling out over Afghanistan disaster

Jack Posobiec
Human Events
Wed, 18 Aug 2021 20:04 UTC
biden and kamala
Kamala Harris has been eerily quiet over the last week, as her and Joe Biden seem to be in the middle of a White House shade war. Indeed, Harris hasn't been seen publicly in six days after she refused to join Biden for his Afghanistan press conference on Monday.

As reported by the Daily Mail, rather than standing in her usual spot behind Biden's right shoulder, she watched the speech from the "green room."
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Vader

SOTT Focus: From Afghan War Diary to Afghanistan Papers, US 'Reconstruction' Long Known to be Farce

Morgan Artyukhina
Sputnik
Mon, 16 Aug 2021 19:46 UTC
afghan hospital destroyed
© AP Photo / Najim Rahim
The US spent $143 billion on "nation-building" in Afghanistan, a cause US President Joe Biden said Monday was never Washington's goal, despite regular boasting about the progress made toward westernizing the country's political system and values. In the end, little has changed in 20 years, except the deaths of nearly half a million people.

The quick folding of the US-backed Afghan government before a Taliban advance has caught many off-guard after Pentagon leaders claimed little chance of its overthrow. However, almost since the 2001 US invasion, a steady stream of reports showed the "reconstruction" was a rolling disaster.
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Bullseye

Alleged 'poisoning' of opposition figure Navalny was 'provocation' aimed at discrediting Russia in eyes of world, Moscow claims


RT
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 19:41 UTC
Navalny
The hospitalization of prominent opposition figure Alexey Navalny was a planned provocation aimed at discrediting Russia. That's according to the Foreign Ministry, in a text published a day before the incident's first anniversary.

Navalny, a well-known anti-corruption campaigner and protest leader, fell ill last August on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. Following an emergency landing, he was immediately hospitalized in the Siberian city of Omsk. Two days later, after a request from his family and associates, the activist was flown to Germany for treatment at Berlin's Charité clinic.

Shortly after, German authorities announced that the opposition figure was poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok group, a finding later reportedly confirmed by laboratories in both Sweden and France. The medical team in Omsk denies that any poison was found in Navalny's body.
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USA

Flashback How America will collapse (by 2025)

Alfred McCoy
Salon
Mon, 06 Dec 2010 08:01 UTC
continental USA
© Unknown
Four scenarios that could spell the end of the United States as we know it in the very near future.

A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don't bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.

Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.

Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration's rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.

Comment: How close to these predicted scenarios we have come! Numerous junctures, prior to-and-post 2010, offered the potential for different choices and branching realities. It would seem we are heading that way again.

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