Puppet MastersS


Bizarro Earth

Taliban never sought peace with US: It fights both Americans & ISIS, commander to RT


RT
Mon, 01 Oct 2018 17:28 UTC
Talibani
© ReutersThe Taliban have become a bulwark against ISIS terrorists
The Taliban has never tried to mend ties with the US as they continue to fight against both Americans and Islamic State, a commander of the group told RT. He denied that any member was ever permitted to discuss peace with the US.

Taliban leaders rarely appear on TV. However, Mullah Tofan, a warlord of Pati Kot district in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, gave an interview to RT in which he denied speculation that the insurgent group had an appetite for reaching out to the United States - and so does the United States.

"The Americans never wanted to cooperate with Taliban and Taliban also never asked Americans to cooperate," Tofan said, noting that US forces are bombing the militants while they are fighting against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

Comment: Russia needs peace on its borders. Putin understands that talk and negotiation is always better than bombs.

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Satellite

Upping the ante again? Rumors that Russia is developing air-launched satellite killer


RT
Mon, 01 Oct 2018 16:26 UTC
MIG 31 space
© RTA screenshot from RTD documentary on MiG-31 shows the jet flying in the Earth's statosphere
A photo of a MiG-31 interceptor jet carrying a huge missile has sparked speculation that Russia has revived an old project involving an air-launched anti-satellite weapon system.

MiG-31 is a superfast Mach-3 fighter jet which recently acquired fame as the platform for the hypersonic Kinzhal missile. A new photo has emerged of a MiG-31 carrying an even bigger rocket during a flight in Zhukovsky, an air range near Moscow. Some believe the black projectile is a full-scale mock-up of a new missile, which may be used to deliver small payloads into orbit or rake down enemy satellites on short notice.
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Roses

CCTV footage of explosion that killed Donbass leader released by Russian media


RT
Mon, 01 Oct 2018 15:36 UTC
Café Separ
© Valery Melnikov / SputnikDamaged entrance of the Café Separ, where the DPR leader was killed, in Donetsk, on September 2, 2018.
Footage of the blast that killed the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, on August 31 has been aired by Russian media.

The CCTV images, obtained by Russia's Rossiya 1 TV channel, show Zakharchenko entering a cafe in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, surrounded by his bodyguards, moments before the deadly explosion.

Comment:

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Briefcase

New name, new rules: Canada & US reach agreement on NAFTA revision USMCA after months of stand-off


RT
Mon, 01 Oct 2018 07:46 UTC
Canada USA NAFTA USMCA
© Graham Hughes/Canadian PressForeign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, shown in January, released a joint statement late Sunday.
Canada and the US have agreed a basis for the revised North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), reaching a compromise in late-night talks on Sunday after months of stand-off.

In a joint statement, issued by Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the parties revealed the name of the upgraded trade deal - the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA.

While highlighting the mutual benefits of the "new modernized trade agreement for the 21st century," the statement did not offer any details on its contents, nor hint at the concessions that Washington and Ottawa reportedly had to make.

"We look forward to further deepening our close economic ties when this new agreement enters into force," the statement reads.
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Arrow Up

Serbian opposition: Russia must be involved in negotiations to solve Kosovo crisis

Joaquin Flores
FRN
Mon, 01 Oct 2018 00:00 UTC
Serbia Russia Kosovo
On September 29th, Kosovo militia stormed a Serbian settlement, seizing the hydro-electric facility, critical for the community's survival. In response, Serbian president Vucic ordered the military on high alert, to become ready for any possible armed conflict. That day, Putin and Vucic spoke via the CSTO hotline, and have agreed to meet in person in Moscow, to come to final resolution on what Russia's response and strategy will be moving forward.

The nationalist opposition Serbian Radical Party (SRP/SNS is the second largest in parliament) is also demanding that Russia be involved more deeply in the negotiation process to resolve the Kosovo crisis, since the European Union has a biased position on this issue. This was explained by one of the young leaders of the SNS, Alexander Šešelj. He is the son of Serbian Radical Party founder, Vojislav Šešelj. He also added that the official initiative of the party will be announced at a meeting of the National Assembly (the country's parliament) next month.

Earlier today, September 30th, Kremlin spokesperson Peskov said that Russian involvement had not been ruled out, but that it was "premature to determine either way."

"The unresolved status of Kosovo remains one of the main problems of the Balkan region. The parties did not bring the settlement of disputes closer either to the refusal of Serbian President Alexander Vucic from the dialogue with the head of the self-proclaimed republic Hashim Thaci. Negotiations mediated by the European Union were to be held last Friday in Brussels. To get out of the crisis, it is necessary to look for new discussion formats," Šešelj told Russian press.

Comment: Previously:

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Info

California reinstates net neutrality laws, Trump administration seeks to block it


RT
Mon, 01 Oct 2018 14:06 UTC
net neutrality protest
© Yuri Gripas / ReutersNet neutrality advocates rally in front of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, U.S., December 13, 2017.
California Governor Jerry Brown has approved a bill to effectively reinstate net neutrality in the state, prompting a lawsuit by the Trump administration. The Obama-era legislation was repealed in December last year.

The bill, signed into law by the governor on Sunday, would have come into force on January 1. However, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit an hour after it was greenlighted by Brown, seeking to block one of the toughest net-neutrality laws ever to have been passed in the US.

The department will insist that regulating net neutrality is solely the responsibility of the federal government and not the state authorities, senior DOJ officials told the Washington Post.

The lawsuit argues that the Californian legislation is "unlawful and anti-consumer," as it imposes restrictions on telecommunications companies.

Comment: A few things you'll want to know about so-called 'net neutrality':
Three years ago, Google used its influence over the Obama administration to pass sweeping federal government regulations over our modern internet networks. So-called "net neutrality" was subsequently sold to the public through a massive disinformation campaign, asserting that the rules as devised by Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) were necessary to ensure a "free and open internet." Unfortunately, that description couldn't be further from the truth.

So-called net neutrality rules instead gave a false illusion of neutrality online and a false sense of protection. If anything, those rules singlehandedly weakened the free flow of information by empowering the world's most powerful online companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to censor speech, filter and manipulate information and abuse the collection of your personal data with absolutely no transparency or accountability.


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Pirates

Flashback Who is protecting them? Ethnic Albanians control heroin supply in Switzerland

Simon Bradley
swissinfo.ch
Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:32 UTC
KLA albania
'Ethnic Albanians', aka 'Kosovars', aka al-Qaeda-in-the-Balkans
Ethnic Albanian criminal gangs continue to pose a serious security threat, dominating the transit and supply of heroin to Switzerland, warns a federal police expert.

Three members of the same Kosovo family are currently on trial in Switzerland accused of operating one of Europe's largest heroin wholesale operations.

Prosecutors say the 69-year-old father and his two sons, aged 42 and 28, used their base in the southeast European country to import 1.5 tons of heroin from Turkey for sale elsewhere.

"[The clan] has been one of the principle suppliers of heroin in western Europe since the middle of the 90s," the prosecution claimed. The defendants deny all charges.

They went on trial in Switzerland because the brothers lived and worked there. A verdict by the Federal Penal Court in Bellinzona is expected at the end of October.

Comment: Two of the above criminals were convicted that year, but the Swiss found these Albanians continued to act with impunity. In 2010, Swiss politician Dick Marty published a Council of Europe report detailing how Kosovo leader Hashim Thaçi - a darling of the US State Department - is in fact the 'ethnic Albanian' mafia don for heroin, prostitute and organ smuggling in Europe.

And he's still the 'legitimate leader of Kosovo'.

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Syringe

Flashback 'Colombia' of Europe: Albanian mafia in Kosovo poised to become main supplier of heroin to Europe and North America

Maggie O'Kane
The Guardian
Mon, 13 Mar 2000 21:23 UTC
clinton thaçi kosovo
International agencies fighting the drug trade are warning that Kosovo has become a "smugglers' paradise" supplying up to 40% of the heroin sold in Europe and North America.

Nato-led forces, struggling to keep peace in the province a year after the war, have no mandate to fight drug traffickers; and - with the expulsion from Kosovo of the Serb police, including the "4th unit" narcotics squad - the smugglers are running the "Balkan route" with complete freedom.

The peacekeepers of K-For "may as well be coming from another planet when it comes to tackling these guys," said Marko Nicovic, a lawyer and vice-president of the international narcotics enforcement officers association, based in New York.

"It's the hardest narcotics ring to crack because it is all run by families and they even have their own language. Kosovo is set to become the cancer centre of Europe, as western Europe will soon discover," he said.

Comment: And how did Colombia become synonymous with being the main source of hard drugs in the Western hemisphere? 'Plan Colombia'...
Of course, the US has a large responsibility to bear for this awful situation in Colombia, as it has been the intellectual author behind Colombia's brutal, decades-long war against its own people and has provided billions of dollars of material aid to this war effort. Indeed, since 2000, the US has given Colombia $10 billion in mostly military assistance as part of its counter-insurgency program known as 'Plan Colombia.' During the Plan Colombia years, the Colombian military attempted to boost US military assistance by murdering civilians in cold blood and passing them off as left-wing guerillas. It is now believed that the military killed 10,000 civilians in this grisly "false positive" operation.

But the US is also behind an even darker force than the Colombian military - that is, the Colombian paramilitary death squads. While those who live in the more remote parts of Colombia are painfully aware of the paramilitaries' presence and brutality, the paramilitaries are now a well-kept secret in the more well-to-do parts of Colombia's big cities and even more so outside of Colombia. Indeed, the Colombian and US governments deny the very existence of these paramilitary groups, and the compliant press is happy to oblige in keeping this dirty secret.
In Colombia, it's right-wing death squads. In 'Greater Albania', it's jihadi death squads. To the Empire, it's six of one, half dozen of the other. And hard drugs grease the wheels of both.

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Camera

Touchy-feely Macron lands in embarrassing middle-finger picture controversy


RT
Sun, 30 Sep 2018 08:48 UTC
macron middle finger
French public is angry with Emmanuel Macron after the cheerful President posed for photos with young men at Saint Martin, one of whom showed the middle finger to the cameras.

The controversial pictures were made during Macron's visit to the Caribbean island, devastated after hurricane Irma last year.

The French leader was followed by a host of photographers as he walked for five hours, despite sporadic rain, entered homes and talked to the locals about their life and rebuilding after the tragedy.
macron
© Eliot Blondet / AFP
The reconstruction seems far from over at Saint Martin, with many houses remaining half-built or in need of repairs.


Comment: That's not even the worst photo from his whirlwind tour of the outer colonies...

macron Saint Martin


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2 + 2 = 4

Too little, too late? EU interested in financing 'disarming' of Syrian terrorists they helped create - to help ease immigration crisis


Sputnik
Mon, 01 Oct 2018 08:37 UTC
syrian terrorist weapons
© Sputnik / Grigoriy Sisoev
Many EU countries are interested in Syrian refugees' return to their homeland, and they will be ready to invest in a disarmament program of militants, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Rule of Law and Security Institutions in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations Alexander Zuev told Sputnik.

The preparation of such a program may take several months, but there is still no a corresponding mandate of the UN Security Council nor a request from Damascus, Zuev said.

"[Disarming of militants] is profitable to donor nations [EU member states] from all points of view, including for gaining political capital or due to social-economic reasons. Other states, such as France or the United Kingdom, have historic responsibility, as they have been traditionally actively involved in Middle East affairs," Zuev said.

According to Zuev, it is easier for EU states to "make a one-time investment in our program rather than to look for these militants in their own countries, some of whom pose security threats."

Comment: The terrorist revolution in Syria only existed because of EU complicity (among other guilty parties). Now EU countries are finally realizing they made a big mistake? Where were they years ago? What were they thinking? Regardless of all that, however, steps like this are probably necessary. By facilitating peace in Syria, fewer refugees will head for Europe (fewer terrorists, too), and a large number of Syrian refugees already in Europe will go back home. Everyone wins. But this whole tragedy could've been avoided. It was completely unnecessary to begin with.

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