Puppet MastersS


Yoda

Lavrov: Russia will be ready for large-scale provocations by the West

Lavrov
© Sputnik / Aleksej Filipov
Western provocation, the prospect of WWIII, and China's closer stance with Russia are just some of the topics that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has spoken about with RT France.

"We will be ready for larger-scale provocations too. But our answer is very simple - if they talk to us through the media, we will respond through the media too, but specifically and in a correct manner," Lavrov said, answering questions from RT France, Paris Match and Le Figaro.

Going further, he said a third world war is an unimaginable scenario, noting that "everybody would be sane enough not to let it happen." However, an aggravating factor is the absence of any dialogue between the Russian military and NATO.

Snakes in Suits

From Hillary to Elizabeth, Democratic distractions hurting the party in midterms

warren and hillary
With three weeks to go in what should be a strong midterm election for them, here's what the Democrats don't need:

Hillary Clinton justifying her husband's sexual affair with a White House intern because she was over 21. Elizabeth Warren doing a DNA test that shows she has a minuscule fraction of Native American ancestry and getting denounced by the Cherokee Nation. Heidi Heitkamp having to apologize for putting out a letter naming sexual assault victims without their permission.

These are, to put it mildly, all self-inflicted wounds.

Eye 2

Psychopath Netanyahu vows "large-scale military activity" against Gaza following alleged attacks by Hamas

Gaza Strip
© Reuters / Finbarr O'ReillyAn Israeli soldier next to mobile artillery unit near the Gaza Strip
Israel's Prime Minister has explicitly warned Hamas that the IDF is edging closer to yet another full-blown military operation against the Gaza strip to put an end to cross-border violence.

Tel Aviv's patience appears to be running extremely thin from the seven months of violence along the Israeli-Gaza border. The Jewish nation is also uncompromising in its commitment to prevent Palestinian boats sailing up to the maritime boundary between Israel and the coastal enclave and promised to act unless Hamas stops launching rockets and incendiary balloons that threaten Israeli civilians.

"Israel views, with great severity, the attacks on it along the fence, on the Gaza perimeter, on Beersheba, everywhere," Netanyahu said Wednesday after the IDF struck Hamas targets in retaliation to rocket fire which damaged a house in the Southern Israeli city of Beersheba. "I said at the beginning of this week's cabinet meeting that if these attacks do not stop, we will stop them. I want to tell you today [that] Israel will act with great force."

Comment: Israel is likely keen to move things along since the international outcry and backlash, brought about by Israeli crimes against Palestinians, is building:



TV

Israel's ambassador to France slammed for trying to censor news story about Gazan children crippled by Israeli snipers

Aliza bin Noun
Aliza bin Noun
Israeli Ambassador to France Aliza bin Noun is under fire for attempts to censor a news report on the situation in the Gaza Strip. The report aired on France 2, despite her demands that it never be aired.

The report, titled "Gaza's disabled teens," was an investigative story on Palestinian teens who had been crippled by Israeli sniper fire into the Gaza Strip. This included a number of teens who lost legs, and their difficulty in getting by on a single leg in the strip.

Bin Noun argued that the report on Israeli snipers shooting and crippling teenage civilians "vilifies Israel" and subsequently posed a threat to the French Jewish community. French newspaper Le Monde noted that no one at the Israeli Embassy had even seen the report before protesting that it would be aired, and that bin Noun complained Israel wasn't allowed to respond even though the Israeli military spokesman was interviewed in the report.

Comment: Israel's nefarious influence on governments all over the world has been widely documented:



Bad Guys

Operation Choke Point: Obama's secret war on political enemies finally unmasked

Barak obama paranoid
James Madison once wrote that "the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which government was instituted." While in recent years our political leaders have not always lived up to Madison's vision of government, rarely have they engaged in such blatant disregard for our constitutional rights as they did during Operation Choke Point - a secret program launched under the Obama administration to punish political adversaries.

Operation Choke Point was a plot by President Obama's Department of Justice, the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other government agencies to cut off banking and financial services for small businesses and industries that they deemed to be political enemies or otherwise undesirable.

Some of these businesses included gun stores, ammunition shops, fireworks stores, small dollar lenders, and home-based charities.

Bad Guys

Dehumanising! Twitter & Atlantic Council release millions of Tweets from 'Russian trolls'

Twitter Russia flag
© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
Ahead of midterm elections, Twitter has reminded Americans that democracy is still under threat by releasing millions of tweets by pesky Russians (and Iranians) from the past decade. How do they know? Well, that's the question.

Twitter says the database released on Wednesday contains an archive of tweets and media "we believe resulted from potentially state-backed information operations." Translation: dastardly Russian (and some Iranian!) trolls looking to corrupt the sanctity of American elections.

Some ten million posts - dating back to 2009 - come from 3,841 accounts Twitter thinks are highly likely connected to the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA), and from 770 supposedly "backed by" Iran. Most of the content dealt with American politics, weighing in on both sides of the widening left-right divide in the US. Posts about Black Lives Matter activism: Russian bots. Gun rights? Russian bots. NFL players kneeling for the national anthem? Yep, Russian bots.

Folder

UK vetoed plan for Assange to get diplomatic immunity in Russia, newly released files show

Assange
© AP Photo/Matt Dunham, FILEIn this file photo dated Friday May 19, 2017, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange looks out from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Newly released Ecuadorean government documents made public late Tuesday Oct. 16, 2018, by Ecuadorean opposition lawmaker Paola Vintimilla, have laid bare an unorthodox attempt to extricate Assange from his embassy hideaway in London by naming him as a political counselor to the country's embassy in Moscow.
Newly published files confirm plan to move Assange to Russia

Julian Assange: Hacker. Journalist. Diplomat?

Newly released Ecuadorean government documents have laid bare an unorthodox attempt to extricate the WikiLeaks founder from his embassy hideaway in London by naming him as a political counselor to the country's embassy in Moscow.

But the 47-year-old Australian's new career in international affairs was nipped in the bud when British authorities vetoed his diplomatic status, effectively blocking him from taking up the post in Russia.

The files were made public late Tuesday by Ecuadorean opposition lawmaker Paola Vintimilla, who opposes her government's decision to grant Assange nationality. They largely corroborate a recent Guardian newspaper report that Ecuador attempted the elaborate maneuver to get Assange to Moscow just before Christmas last year.

Comment: So the Brits thwarted any chance Assange had of escaping persecution, and, like Edward Snowden, the only other country that dared defy the pathological Western establishment to offer him a safe haven was Russia. Let it be stand for the record - yet again - that whistleblowers on crimes by governments in the West, will find no justice in the West:


Eye 2

Justin Trudeau is far more dangerous than Donald Trump

Justin Trudeau
Readers of the above statement will likely fall into one of two categories: those who knew this all along, or those who will find the statement absurd. I am putting this argument out there for the latter category and hopefully it will be read with an open mind. If you are the type of person who does not have the ability to question their own beliefs, and prefer the comfort of an echo-chamber, then this piece is probably not for you. I will offer only one caveat on my position: Donald Trump will only turn out to be more dangerous in the short-term if he blunders his way into a nuclear war.

Before I begin, I just want to make a couple of things clear. My political leanings would make me either a classical liberal, or perhaps a left-leaning libertarian, depending on the criteria used. I am not a conservative or a Trump supporter, but I have been forced to abandon my support for the Left because of its increasingly alarming and bizarre politics. I care deeply about my country and our precious and rare civilization. I dislike suffering, and wish to act in a way that minimizes it for all people. The reason that I am writing this piece is that I believe that we are being duped, and that this is going to lead to a lot of suffering in the future.

I believe that the tool that is being used to dupe us is political-correctness. It is a very powerful tool because it stifles all argument and creates the perfect conditions for mass manipulation of the population. Those in charge set all of the rules and conditions for conversation and a large percentage of the population becomes afraid to make statements that they know to be true; or worse, are forced to make statements that they know to be untrue. Christopher Hitchens issued a warning about this more than twenty years ago when he said, "There's a police-state coming, get used to it. And it will all be done in the name of niceness". Well, it's arrived.

Comment: Trudeau is definitely taking Canada down a dangerous path through his all out embrace of leftist identity politics. Soon there won't be anything left to call "Canada" anymore.


Attention

Skripal and Khashoggi: A tale of two disappearances and US hypocrisy

khashoggi
Two disappearances, and two very different responses from Western governments, which illustrates their rank hypocrisy.

When former Russian spy Sergei Skripal went missing in England earlier this year, there was almost immediate punitive action by the British government and its NATO allies against Moscow. By contrast, Western governments are straining with restraint towards Saudi Arabia over the more shocking and provable case of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The outcry by Western governments and media over the Skripal affair was deafening and resulted in Britain, the US and some 28 other countries expelling dozens of Russian diplomats on the back of unsubstantiated British allegations that the Kremlin tried to assassinate an exiled spy with a deadly nerve agent. The Trump administration has further tightened sanctions citing the Skripal incident.

London's case against Moscow has been marked by wild speculation and ropey innuendo. No verifiable evidence of what actually happened to Sergei Skripal (67) and his daughter Yulia has been presented by the British authorities. Their claim that President Vladimir Putin sanctioned a hit squad armed with nerve poison relies on sheer conjecture.

Comment: See also:


Light Saber

Supreme Court hearing case that could end Internet censorship, expand scope of the First Amendment

Internet companies
After the recent purge of over 800 independent media outlets on Facebook, the Supreme Court is now hearing a case that could have ramifications for any future attempts at similar purges.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to take a case that could change free speech on the Internet forever.

Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, the case that it has agreed to take, will decide if the private operator of a public access network is considered a state actor, CNBC reported.

The case could affect how companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and YouTube are governed. If the Court were to issue a far-reaching ruling it could subject such companies to First Amendment lawsuits and force them to allow a much broader scope of free speech from its users.

The Court decided to take the case on Friday and it is the first case that was taken after Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court.

DeeDee Halleck and Jesus Melendez claimed that they were fired from Manhattan Neighborhood Network for speaking critically of the network. And, though the case does not involve the Internet giants, it could create a ruling that expands the First Amendment beyond the government.

Comment: We're not holding our breath, but it would be good to see a class action lawsuit by all those who've been purged from social media giants. Perhaps this case will be the first of many.