Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Israeli high court bans far-right candidate from election, but politics are still apartheid to the core

Jonathan Ofir
Mondoweiss
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 17:18 UTC
Michael Ben-Ari
© Ronen Zvulun/ReutersMichael Ben-Ari (center) and members of the Jewish Power Party.
The Israeli High Court has ruled yesterday on several petitions regarding the upcoming elections. Taking the recommended position of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, the court reversed the Knesset Elections Committee decision to ban the Palestinian-Israeli party union of Balad-United Arab List; to reverse the ban on Jewish Ofer Cassif who is part of Hadash (Hadash-Ta'al is another dual Palestinian-Israeli union); and finally, to ban the leader of Jewish Power Michael Ben Ari from running - Ben Ari was otherwise approved by the committee.

The merger of the rabbi Kahane disciples of Jewish Power with the Jewish Home party was a move orchestrated by Netanyahu, which drew widespread critique, as the Jewish Power is an extension of the Kahanist Kach party, which was banned from the Knesset in 1988 on grounds of racism. Netanyahu thus offered it political legitimacy, also in order to secure a future coalition and not lose votes under the 3.25% threshold.

The permitting of the Balad-UAL to run actually follows a familiar pattern - where these parties are banned by the Knesset Elections Committee on the basis of their advocacy for a state of all its citizens, and the ban is rescinded by the High Court. The Elections Committee bars them for violating the "Jewish and Democratic" clause of the Knesset party law, and then the High Court reverses it, citing a more liberal interpretation of the law (I will elaborate on this further down).

Nonetheless, the decision to bar an individual, rather than a whole party, sets a new precedent in Israeli election history.

Comment: For the background on why Israeli politics is so entho-centric, check out the following episodes of the Truth Perspective:

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Bullseye

Rouhani says Iran will file legal case against US over sanctions, says they are a crime against humanity


RT
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 12:12 UTC
Rouhani
President Hassan Rouhani announced that Tehran will pursue legal action against US officials who imposed sanctions on Iran, adding that the dispute could be brought before an international court.

The Iranian president said that he had ordered the ministries of foreign affairs and justice to "file a legal case in Iranian courts against those in America who designed and imposed sanctions on Iran."

Describing the unilaterally imposed sanctions as a "crime against humanity," Rouhani said that if Iranian courts believe there is a strong case against Washington, Tehran would then pursue the legal challenge in international courts of justice. He said that the United States is seeking to "come back to Iran and rule the nation again."
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Bad Guys

The EU's 'Reichstaat' in Germany is in major disarray: A long cultural and political war is underway

Alastair Crooke
Strateic Culture Foundation
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
EU germany flags
© flickr
"If the euro fails - Europe fails," Angela Merkel has said. "And indeed, the failure of the European project is now a genuine possibility: Monetary Union is no longer seen as irreversible, and neither is the EU", writes Professor Guido Montani of Padua University.

Yes - but the profound structural nature to the crisis, and the concomitant perceived threat to German and to ruling euro-élite interests suggests that any solution will be as bitterly fought-over, as has been Brexit in the UK. It is a foretaste - and warning of the breakdown of national cohesion that is to come.

After years of austerity and stagnation amongst some EU states, it is clear that both the structure - and the culture of the Union - insisted on by a post-war Germany, is facing a growing insurrection, a demand for change - both from member-states, and now, significantly, even from within Germany itself.
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Brick Wall

Best of the Web: In just one year, Italian government has drastically reduced numbers of migrants coming from Africa

Guillaume Durocher
The Unz Review
Thu, 14 Mar 2019 11:55 UTC
orban salvini
Really and truly, I did not expect the most promising developments in West-European politics to come from Italy. Who could predict that the strange government appointed in June 2018 - an uneasy alliance of nationalists under Matteo Salvini's Lega and the populist-but-vague Five-Star Movement - would last as long or achieve as much as it has? Italy's parliamentary regime is notoriously unstable, governments falling with unnerving regularity, and yet this strange hybrid has gone from strength to strength.

The globalists - notably the EU institutions and the various migrant NGOs, many supported by George Soros' Open Societies Foundation - had adopted a criminal policy whereby the goal of their operations was not to reduce illegal immigration but to "solve" the problem by "rescuing" migrants at sea, even if they barely left the coast of North Africa, and breaking down Europe's external and national borders.
libya migrants EU rescues
© Council of EuropeEU data-map of its 'rescue operations'. Notice how they edged closer and closer to Libya with each passing year of the 'migrant crisis', until, in a couple of instances, migrants were literally being picked up at a Libyan port
The Italians, suffering from the crushing burden of supporting an endless wave of economically useless and often violent African migrants, rebelled against this. In fact, the decline in migration had already begun under the previous center-left government, which had grown increasingly frustrated with the NGOs. In July 2017, Interior Minister and "Lord of Spies" Marco Minniti began the crackdown on NGOs which, in conjunction with other efforts, led to a sharp decline in illegal immigration by the end of the year. In this sense, the successful crackdown on illegal immigration has been possible as part of a national consensus that the country could not cope and had to actually address the root of the problem.
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Megaphone

FDA medical adviser: 'Congress is owned by pharma'

Erin Elizabeth
Health Nut News
Wed, 13 Mar 2019 13:39 UTC
congress
Given the state of things now, it's easy to lose hope. But then you get someone willing to speak out and the glimmer of hope comes back. There is obviously no guarantee that anything will happen, but the small spark of someone willing to speak truth is often just enough to start a fire.
"Dr. Raeford Brown, a pediatric anesthesia specialist at the UK Kentucky Children's Hospital and chair of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Committee on Analgesics and Anesthetics, has been openly critical of big pharma and the lack of proper oversight from the FDA.

Despite many politicians, particularly declared presidential candidates, beginning to speak out against big pharma, Brown does not think that anything will come out of it 'because Congress is owned by pharma.'

'The pharmaceutical industry pours millions of dollars into the legislative branch every single year,' he told Yahoo Finance. 'In 2016, they put $100 million into the elections. That's a ton of money.'"1

Comment: Who spends the most dollars lobbying Washington, DC?
Oil? Financials? Aerospace? When someone asks who the biggest sources of lobby dollars for DC's politicians-for-purchase are, these are the three usual suspects that come to mind. Some may, therefore, be surprised to learn according to the database kept by OpenSecrets between Pharmaceutical and health product industry, hospital and nursing homes, health professionals and health services, HMOs, or more broadly Pharma/Healthcare/HMO, the total lobby dollars spent between 1998 and 2012 was a staggering $5.3 billion, or nearly three times greater than the second most generous industry: insurance, and well above Oil and Gas at $1.4 billion, and Securities and Investment at $1.0 billion. Is it becoming clearer why the US government has few qualms about unsustainable taxpayer funded healthcare spending, especially when there are so many current benefits accruing to the politicians who see so many billions in benefits from passing lobby-friendly laws now (by which we mean generous taxpayer funding, the bulk of which benefits the healthcare industry's bottom line)?


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Popcorn

How Russian sanctions expose cracks in Britain's political class


21st Century Wire
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 11:12 UTC
may putin browder
Bill Browder was invited to the Foreign Affairs public session in February so that he could promote his well-polished narrative of malign influence, human rights abuses and aggression by the Kremlin. This will be used to help frame British sanctions policy towards Russia. But two weeks later, the grilling of Gregory Barker on his role in overcoming the sanctions against Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska - reveals an emerging rift in the British establishment over Russian sanctions.

The Western establishment loves Russian money. Russian treasures, including state assets, were bought at basement-bucket prices through Yeltsin's loans-for-shares programme. It is claimed that opportunists such as Mikhail Kordokhovsky made money by rigging auctions of state assets, paying a fraction of the value, then passing the proceeds to offshore shell companies. Money made through individuals such as Kordokhovsky and other championed 'capitalists' of Russia, eventually made its way back into Europe and London. When Vladimir Putin first came to power in 1999, UK leaders Tony Blair and David Cameron rode the wave of opportunity that Russia was open to business, and yachting with oligarchs or taking large party donations were just perks of the time. All types of Russian money seemed welcome.

Comment: The Western establishment is lashing out with sanctions and smear campaigns in an attempt to stomp out the emerging multi-polar world, of which Russia is a major player, but its hypocrisy and desperation is only hastening its demise: And for more, check out SOTT radio's:

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Snakes in Suits

Aussie right-wing politician Fraser Anning blames Muslims for New Zealand shootings


RT
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 09:39 UTC
Fraser Anning
Fraser Anning
An Australian senator is being heavily criticized for lashing out at Muslim immigrants in the wake of the horrific shootings at two New Zealand mosques.

Queensland Senator Fraser Anning released a media statement on Friday afternoon, hours after the terrorist attacks at two Christchurch mosques. In it, Anning claimed while he was "utterly opposed to any form of violence" and condemned the actions of the gunman, he said the atrocity highlighted the "growing fear over an increasing Muslim presence" in Australia and New Zealand.

"While this kind of violent vigilantism can never be justified, what it highlights is the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand, of the increasing Muslim presence."

Comment: And his well-deserved response:



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Russian Flag

'US must abandon its arrogance': Moscow skeptical over Bolton's newfound desire for 'arms control talks'


RT
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 09:39 UTC
John Bolton
© Reuters / Leah MillisUS National Security Advisor, John Bolton
Any talks with the US are bound to fail until Washington gives up on its arrogance and trying to do things on own terms only, a top Russian senator said after fresh arms control remarks by US national security adviser John Bolton.

Bolton expressed concerns over the growing nuclear potential of Beijing, telling AM 970 radio on Sunday that "if we're going to have another arms control negotiation, for example, with the Russians, it may make sense to include China that discussion as well."

"Washington is still planning to talk to China, Russia and North Korea arrogantly and on its own terms," Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Russian Federal Council, responded.
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Bad Guys

New reports connect George Soros' Open Society to 'Trump Dossier'

Joe Hoft
The Gateway Pundit
Mon, 18 Mar 2019 09:39 UTC
SOROS
George Soros
The secrets to the deep state coup to prevent Donald Trump from winning the 2016 election and then to overthrow his government are slowly being revealed. To no one's surprise the plot leads back to DNC billionaire donor and anti-American activist George Soros.

George Soros was interviewed years ago on CBS's 60 Minutes where he admitted helping Nazi's during World War II steal from Jews during the war. Soros is Jewish. He was not apologetic.

Soros was also reportedly behind the airport protests in the US shortly after President Trump's inauguration. A week before that Soros was reportedly behind 50 Groups involved in the 'Women's March the day after the inauguration. Before that, Soros was connected to the groups demanding election recounts after the November 8th election and Soros money was funding more protests during these efforts.
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Blackbox

Trump's mysterious inconsistent inconsistencies

Patrick Armstrong
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 17 Mar 2019 08:27 UTC
trump waves
Unlike the American Democratic Party, the Western news media and most of my neighbours, I do not fully understand Trump. Although, unlike all of them, I thought from the start he had a good chance of winning and, as time went on, became more confident and finally bet he would win.

One of the consistent themes of Trump's campaign was that foreign entanglements were not to the country's advantage and the wars were a waste of resources; bad for business, as it were. Now, I'm not so simple-minded as to believe campaigning politicians. Bush promised a quieter foreign policy and Obama was going to close Guantánamo; but what made me pay attention to Trump's statements was that they weren't just the disconnected laundry list of focus-groups handed out by most politicians, they had an internal consistency. (And consistent over quite some time: watch this interview from 1987.)

That consistency could be found in his slogan Make America Great Again. It was the "again" that was the clue. Shattered tells us that Bill Clinton tried to get his wife to perceive the dissatisfaction in the USA, Sanders tapped into some of it but Trump saw and understood it early and based his campaign on it; Clinton never understood. Again, that's the clue. I concluded that Trump saw a connection between the loss of "greatness" and the foreign entanglements: the "six trillion dollars" spent in the Middle East would have been better spent on infrastructure". Of course he was right: there is a direct connection. But to stop that drain, Trump, now President, has to break the entanglements and that will not be easy. Last year I formed the theory that he would try to get the allies to break these entanglements and updated the idea recently. (It was written just before we heard that Trump is considering to charging allies 150% for the cost of US bases - something that is sure to cause a lot of re-thinking and disentangling.)

Comment: It is a curious thing and remains to be seen if Trump is really simply 'enabling' them to be their own demise. Although, in order for that to be case, Trump would have to be willing to go down with the ship as well. See also: Trump's brilliant strategy: Dismember US dollar hegemony

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