Puppet MastersS


Target

Flashback Top US general says Iranian military involvement against ISIS in Iraq 'a positive thing'

Robert Burns
The Times of Israel
Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:15 UTC
Joint Chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey argues that Tehran's involvement is only a problem 'if it results in sectarianism'
general dempsey
© AFP/Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesGeneral Martin Dempsey testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, on September 16, 2014.
Iran's direct support for an Iraqi push to dislodge the Islamic State group from the northern city of Tikrit could turn out to be "a positive thing" if it does not inflame sectarian tensions, the top US general said Tuesday.

The statement by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reflected the delicate balance Washington is trying to strike between limiting Iranian influence and allowing Iraqi leaders to determine their own path to defeating the Islamic State.

US officials have said Iraq did not ask the US to provide air support for the Tikrit offensive, even though the US-led military coalition has been conducting airstrikes in much of Iraq since August and has deployed hundreds of US soldiers to try to regenerate an Iraqi army that collapsed last June.

Dempsey said Iran and its proxies have been operating inside Iraq since 2004, but the Tikrit campaign signals a new level of involvement.

Comment: Which they did do (perform in a credible way). And to which the US responded last week by assassinating Soleimani.

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Eye 2

Flashback Best of the Web: Heshmat Alavi wrote DOZENS of anti-Iran articles for MSM. Turns out he's an M.E.K. sockpuppet

Murtaza Hussain
The Intercept
Sun, 09 Jun 2019 18:48 UTC

Comment: The vast majority of what you hear about Iran is Fake News, literally...


fake person mask
© Soohee Cho/The Intercept
In 2018, President Donald Trump was seeking to jettison the landmark nuclear deal that his predecessor had signed with Iran in 2015, and he was looking for ways to win over a skeptical press. The White House claimed that the nuclear deal had allowed Iran to increase its military budget, and Washington Post reporters Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly asked for a source. In response, the White House passed along an article published in Forbes by a writer named Heshmat Alavi.

"Iran's current budget is funded largely through 'oil, taxes, increasing bonds, [and] eliminating cash handouts or subsidies' for Iranians, according to an article by a Forbes contributor, Heshmat Alavi, sent to us by a White House official," Rizzo and Kelly reported. The White House had used Alavi's article — itself partly drawn from Iranian sources — to justify its decision to terminate the agreement.

Comment: MEK has a long and terrifying history. The fact that neocon hawks like John Bolton are supporters only makes it worse. Naturally Israel is mixed up in it, as they view Iran as their principal threat to regional hegemony.

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Bad Guys

The complicit Western media distorts Gen. Soleimani's role in Iran to justify killing him

James North
Mondoweiss
Fri, 17 Jan 2020 15:06 UTC
Soleimani
© Tasnim News Agency/WikimediaQasem Soleimani, Commander of Quds Forces during National AGIR commanders conference, September 2013
The U.S. mainstream media's shoddy, dishonest reporting about the Iran Crisis continues. The media refuses to closely examine the Trump administration's latest justification for killing Qasem Soleimani — that the Iranian general was responsible for the deaths of "thousands of U.S. troops."

Trump's original rationale — that Soleimani was planning "imminent" attacks on U.S. embassies and soldiers — has crumbled away. Trump himself in a Tweet dismissed the false "imminent" charge, saying "it really doesn't matter because of his [Soleimani's] horrible past!"

Some days ago, the Washington Post looked into the charge. It consulted a number of experts — all Americans — and ended by citing Brian Hook, the U.S. State Department's Special Representative for Iran, who contended, (with suspicious precision), that Iran was "responsible for the death of at least 608 American service members."

Comment: One reason for eliminating Soleimani could be his outspokenness over the true origins of ISIS. And remember, the true reason for any American actions in the Middle East is, in the end, at the service of Israel.

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Health

Best of the Web: Pentagon admits there WERE U.S. casualties from Iranian airstrikes, but 'only 11 injuries'

Frank Miles
Fox News
Fri, 17 Jan 2020 11:01 UTC

Comment: The Pentagon's P.R. operation regarding the damage Iran inflicted on its largest airbase in Iraq, and regarding U.S. casualties, continues...


us troops assad airbase
© Emiliene Malfatto/WaPoU.S. troops walk by a crater caused by Iranian airstrikes inside al-Assad Air Base near Anbar, Iraq, on Jan. 13, 2020.
Eleven U.S. service members were flown out of Al- Assad Air Base in Iraq and treated for concussion symptoms after Iran's rocket attack targeting two Iraqi military bases earlier this month, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command revealed Thursday night.

President Trump and U.S. officials had said earlier that no Americans were killed or injured in the Jan. 8 attack.

Several U.S. troops "were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed. As a standard procedure, all personnel in the vicinity of a blast are screened for traumatic brain injury, and if deemed appropriate are transported to a higher level of care," Capt. Bill Urban, the Central Command spokesman, said Thursday.

He said that although no U.S. service members were killed in the attack on Al Assad Air Base, "in the days following the attack, out of an abundance of caution, some service members were transported... to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, others were sent to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, for follow-on screening. When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq following screening. The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual's medical status. At this time, eight individuals have been transported to Landstuhl, and three have been transported to Camp Arifjan."

Comment: When US media was first allowed on the base about 4 days after the strikes, reporters heard Lt Col Staci Coleman, the U.S. air force officer who runs the airfield there, say:
"It's miraculous no one was hurt. Who thinks they're going to have ballistic missiles launched at them and suffer no casualties?"
Clearly, the brass, rank-and-file, their families and the media CAN and DO effectively engage in 'conspiracies of silence' about such things.

Maybe "11 concussions" is all there is to it, but maybe the Pentagon is in the process of walking back its initial claim because it was much worse than that.

See also: Iraqi TV network: Iranian airstrikes on al-Assad airbase resulted in hundreds of US casualties and extensive damage - UPDATE: 'Letter is fake'

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Mr. Potato

Voice of America confuses Communist leader with new Russian PM... showing once again MSM can't do Russia


RT
Thu, 16 Jan 2020 18:08 UTC
Voice of America
© voanews.comScreenshot from Voice of America's website.
US-government sponsored Voice of America is well aware that Russia's new PM Mikhail Mishustin is "a career bureaucrat who never had political ambitions" but, strangely enough, it doesn't seem to know what the man looks like.

Kudos to the US outlet for having noticed a major shake-up in the Russian government, but someone at the desk needs to read up on the country's internal affairs, it would seem - if only for better face recognition. A photo of the long-time leader of Russia's Communist party, Gennady Zyuganov, has appeared on VOA's article about Mishustin - who was ratified by the parliament as Prime Minister on Thursday.

The caption under the picture reads "Russia's new Prime Minister Mishustin" - and neither photo nor caption seems to be going anywhere over an hour later. Who'd ever care to check, right?

Comment: Yet another glaring (albeit, sadly, unsurprising) example of the sorry state of US journalism.

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Heart - Black

If Soleimani was a 'terrorist' why was he fighting ISIS?

Ramin Mazaheri
PressTV
Thu, 09 Jan 2020 07:36 UTC
Soleimani
© AFPPakistani Shia Muslims protest against the assassination of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, outside the US consulate in Lahore on January 7, 2020.
I remember when ISIL first burst into the global consciousness - with the fall of Mosul on June 4, 2014. I happened to be visiting my parents.

My mother rushed in and told me that terrorists in Toyotas had overrun Iraq's second-largest city in a modern-day Mongol Horde.

I rolled my eyes.

I explained to her that, as usual, she was exaggerating. What she was describing was undoubtedly impossible, and I patiently explained why:

Comment: See also:

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Snakes in Suits

Former Trump aide's veiled threat that UK should align with US not Brussels on foreign policy and trade

Patrick Wintour
The Guardian
Fri, 17 Jan 2020 13:25 UTC
bojo
© Will Oliver/EPA
Boris Johnson risks jeopardising a free-trade deal with the US unless he pulls the UK out of the Iran nuclear deal, a leading Republican voice on Iran has said.

The warning by Richard Goldberg, until last week a member of the White House national security council (NSC), highlights the dilemmas UK foreign and defence policymakers will face as Britain tries to steer its own course between Washington and Brussels after Brexit.

Goldberg told the BBC: "The question for prime minister Johnson is: 'As you are moving towards Brexit, as your supporters of Brexit really do not like the nuclear deal, want you to get out of the nuclear deal ... what are you going to do post-31 January as you come to Washington to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the United States?'"

Comment: RT reports:
In an interview with BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday, Iran hawk Richard Goldberg - who recently stepped down from his role on the National Security Council following his part in ramping up US tensions with Tehran - ostensibly issued Johnson a veiled threat.

Goldberg suggested that Johnson think long and hard about the UK's position on the Iran nuclear deal and foreign policy more generally. He insisted that in post-Brexit Britain, it's "less important what Brussels thinks and far more important what Washington thinks."

"It's absolutely in his interest and the people of Britain's interest to join with President Trump and the United States, to realign your foreign policy away from Brussels, and to join the maximum pressure campaign to keep us all safe."

Goldberg's comments have been widely panned on social media, with many interpreting his words as an ultimatum, rather than a "choice" being presented to PM Johnson. Green MP Caroline Lucas claimed that it was "clear" that if the UK is to secure a trade deal with the US then "we'd have to follow Trump's dangerous foreign policies."


Others online insisted Trump's former aide was in reality proposing that the UK becomes "a US vassal state & to fall in line on Iran, Israel" and the Middle East. While another angrily tweeted: "So much for Take Back Control."


On Tuesday, Johnson signaled that he was falling in line behind the US president and would seek to tear up the current Iran deal and replace it with a 'Trump deal'.

"Let's work together to replace the JCPOA and get the 'Trump deal' instead," Johnson told BBC Breakfast.
Since it still seems unlikely Brexit will go ahead, in the end, will the UK be left in the EU but also beholden to detrimental trade and policy agreements with the US?

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Snakes in Suits

Turkey starting troop deployment to Libya, will start granting drilling licenses in region - Erdogan

Tuvan Gumrukcu
Reuters
Thu, 16 Jan 2020 11:56 UTC
erdogan
Turkey is beginning to send troops into Libya in support of the internationally recognised government in Tripoli, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday, days before a summit in Berlin which will address the Libyan conflict.

Speaking in Ankara, Erdogan added that Turkey will continue to use all diplomatic and military means to ensure stability to its south, including in Libya. Erdogan is due to meet leaders of Germany, Russia, Britain and Italy on Sunday to discuss the conflict.

He also said Turkey would start granting licenses for exploration and drilling in the eastern Mediterranean in 2020, in accord with a maritime agreement with Libya. He said Turkey's Oruc Reis ship would begin seismic activities in the region.

Comment: See also:

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X

What if Russia assassinated Ukrainian Nazi Yarosh like the US did to Soleimani?

Denis Churilov
Fort Russ
Wed, 15 Jan 2020 07:48 UTC
Dmytro Yarosh
A hypothetical scenario - a Ukrainian far-right paramilitary leader, Dmytro Yarosh, travels to Estonia to take a part in a political forum organised by NATO. On his way to Tallinn airport, his convoy is hit by a Russian drone strike, killing him and a dozen of people who happened to be in that convoy. Later that day, Putin's press-secretary, Dmitry Peskov, openly boasts about conducting such a brilliant military operation on a foreign soil, eliminating a former leader of the Right Sector (the organisation holds an "extremist/terrorist" status and is banned in Russian Federation).

Imagine the international reaction. Imagine the US State Department press briefings, imagine the CNN and BBC headlines, imagine The Economist cover. Russia would be unequivocally condemned as a rouge, terrorist state that ruthlessly murders citizens of other countries, the countries it's not formally at war with, on a foreign soil. There would be calls for immediate action, a deadly round of economic sanctions would be applied in an instant, all regional NATO military bases would be put on high alert.

Well, there's no need to imagine things, really. Remember the Skripal case, when someone poisoned a former Russian spy and his daughter in the UK in 2018, and the British government went hysterical, pointing fingers at Russia, before the official investigation even commenced, with countries like Australia taking Theresa May's words at face value, making collective ultimatums to the Russian government? There was no concrete proof that Russia was behind the assassination attempt, of whatever the hell that was - the UK authorities initially claimed that the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent that is many times more potent that sarin, yet both Skripal and his daughter somehow managed to survive it; by the way, how's the investigation going? And when was the last time "free press" investigative journalists attempted to contact Skripals, or find out anything about their whereabouts, in order to get an update on the situation? It's a matter of national security, remember? What? Everyone lost their interest as there has been no command to continue the hysteria?
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Syringe

The United States of Amnesia, and its incredible asbestos pants: 'Drugs for me but not for thee' in international sport

Mark Chapman
The New Kremlin Stooge
Sat, 04 Jan 2020 23:59 UTC
Putin wink
Uncle Volodya says, You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it”.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire... Children's rhyme
In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.

Alan Moore, from "Watchmen"
Unless you were catatonic this past couple of weeks, dead drunk from Sunday to Saturday, suffered a debilitating brain injury or were living in Bognor Regis where the internet cannot reach, you heard about the West slapping a four-year Olympic ban on Russia. Because it could, it did. And not really for any other reason, despite the indignation and manufactured outrage. It's a pity - now that I come to think on it - that you can't use outrage to power a vehicle, fill a sandwich or knit into socks: because the west has a bottomless supply, and it's just about as renewable a resource as you could envision.

As I have reiterated elsewhere and often, the United States of America is the cheatingest nation on the planet where professional sports is concerned, because winning matters to Americans like nowhere else. Successful Olympic medal-winners and iconic sports figures in the USA are feted like victorious battlefield generals, because the sports arena is just another battlefield to the United States, and there's no it's-not-whether-you-win-or-lose-it's-how-you-play-the-game in wartime. Successful American sports figures foster an appreciation of American culture and lifestyle, and promote an image of America as a purposeful and powerful nation. Successful sports figures anywhere, really; not so very long ago Olympic gold medalists were merely given an appreciative parade by a grateful nation, and featured in lucrative advertising contracts if they were photogenic. More recently, some nations have simply paid athletes by the medal for winning. This includes most nations, with the notable exceptions of the UK, Norway and Sweden. So the pressure is on to win, win, win, by whatever means are necessary.

Comment:

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