Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Netanyahu's demands that Iran exit Syria not 'realistic,' says Russian ambassador


RFE/RL
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 15:37 UTC
UN peacekeepers Syria
© Ronen Zvulun (Reuters)UN peacekeeping troops look over the border line between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's repeated demands that Iranian forces and their allies leave Syria are not "realistic," Russia's ambassador to Israel has said.

"The Iranians are playing a very, very important role in our common efforts to eliminate the terrorists in Syria," Anatoly Viktorov said in English on Israel's Channel 10 broadcaster on July 30.

"That's why, for this period of time, we see as nonrealistic demands to expel any foreign troops from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic," he said.

Viktorov said the presence of Iran's military advisers and allied fighters in Syria is "fully legitimate, according to UN principles," and Russia "cannot force them" to leave the country.

Syria, with help from Russia, Iran, and Tehran's ally, the Lebanese militia Hizballah, has swiftly regained control over large swathes of territory this year after seven years of a civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people.
Read More...
Star of David

Syrian envoy to UN: Israel evacuating terrorists from occupied Golan Heights was a 'criminal enterprise'


Sputnik
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 15:30 UTC
soldier near Golan Heights
© Associated Press / Ariel SchalitA mock road sign for Damascus, the capital of Syria, and a cutout of a soldier, are displayed in an old outpost in the Israeli controlled Golan Heights near the border with Syria, Thursday, May 10, 2018
Israel previously evacuated several hundred White Helmets and their family members from southern Syria to Jordan at the request of several Western countries. The Syrian government, which believes that the NGO's members have been cooperating with terrorists and plotted several false flag attacks, stated that the transfer was a "criminal operation."

Syrian envoy to the UN Bashar Jaafari has said during Astana-format reconciliation talks that Israel helped to transfer militants, who had previously been evacuated from the Golan Heights to other countries, including the US.

Comment: Let it be noted that Turkey is a NATO member, jockeying to increase its influence in that organization.

Read More...
Stop

Rep Nunes tells Fox he's looking into remedies against Twitter censoring conservatives

Pam Key
Breitbart
Sun, 29 Jul 2018 15:38 UTC
Twitter
© AFP Photo/JOSH EDELSON
On this weekend's broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures," House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said he was looking into "legal remedies" to use against Twitter for "shadow banning," which resulted in the accounts of some conservatives being harder to find.

Nunes said, "I had no idea what shadow banning even was. For several months, people have been contacting me saying that, 'Hey I tried to find you on Twitter, I couldn't find your account. Why is that?'"

He added, "They don't call it shadow banning but, effectively, we were getting caught up in some type of trap to where people couldn't see our Twitter feed. I don't know what Twitter is up to. It sure looks to me like they are censoring people and they ought to stop it. And we're looking at any legal remedies that we can go through."


Comment:



Read More...
Bullseye

Trump: There was no collusion, but even if there was it's not a crime


RT
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 15:13 UTC
trump
© Ron Sachs / Global Look Press
US President Donald Trump took to Twitter to say that collusion isn't a crime, and that he never colluded with anyone. His tweet came as the first trial from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 'Russiagate' probe begins.

"Collusion is not a crime," he tweeted Tuesday. "But that doesn't matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!"

Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is set to appear before a Virginia court on Tuesday. While Special Counsel Robert Mueller is tasked with uncovering alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the runup to the 2016 election, Manafort is being tried on unrelated tax and bank fraud charges dating back over a decade.

Mueller will likely draw attention to Manafort's lavish lifestyle, funded by his political consulting work for Ukraine's pro-Russian former leader Viktor Yanukovych.
Read More...
Oil Well

Advisor to Iranian president Rouhani tweets back: Returning to nuclear deal can pave way for talks with US

Parisa Hafezi and James Dalgleish
Reuters
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 11:42 UTC
Hamid Aboutalebi Iran twitter
© Twitter
To pave the way for talks with Iran, the United States should return to a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers, an aide to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday.

"Respecting the Iranian nation's rights, reducing hostilities and returning to the nuclear deal are steps that can be taken to pave the bumpy road of talks between Iran and America," tweeted Hamid Aboutalebi, an advisor to Rouhani.

Trump said on Monday he would be willing to meet Iran's leader without preconditions to discuss how to improve ties after he pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, saying, "If they want to meet, we'll meet."


Comment: Trump a week ago:

But fear not - a war with Iran remains unlikely at this point. Such a move would be too costly and risky for the US and the global economy, and surely even the warhawks in the Deep State understand this.

Notice that Trump sweetened his tone after that tweet, so it appears he was both distracting the attention from the unfairly bad press he received for meeting Putin, and was once again applying his 'shock-and-awe' negotiating style.

Read More...
USA

SOTT Focus: American Post-exceptionalism: Trump Betrays Elites' Belief That US is Always Pure And Democracy-loving

Michael Tracey
The Spectator
Sun, 29 Jul 2018 14:26 UTC
Welcome to American post-exceptionalism
Trump
Now that the all-consuming, head-exploding media meltdown over Donald Trump's performance in Helsinki has subsided somewhat, it is worth attempting to examine what, exactly, inspired the frenzy. Virtually the entire elite press corps and large swaths of the political class united in denouncing the sitting president not just as incompetent, but as an active, knowing traitor. Given the interminable quality of the Trump/Russia saga, such furor is likely to bubble up again in the near future. So what's at the root of it?

In the popular telling, Trump's subservience to Vladimir Putin - coupled with his rejection of his own Intelligence Community's conclusions on purported Russian "meddling" in the 2016 election - caused the apoplexy. This is true, as far as it goes. But there is a more fundamental level on which Trump stokes such angst: he departs from the traditional American exceptionalism script. The one which holds that America's motives are always democracy-loving and pure, its spy agencies are infallible, and its moral superiority goes without saying. Trump evidently believes none of these things, and, as such, is not so much a duly-elected head of state, but a saboteur whom the political and media class can never countenance.

Comment:

Read More...
USA

SOTT Focus: American society would collapse if it weren't for these 8 myths

Lee Camp
Truthdig
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 11:45 UTC
USA flag diggers
Our society should've collapsed by now. You know that, right?

No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a "Star Wars" movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans can't afford a $500 emergency. Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now worth a record $141 billion. He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than he could ever spend on himself.
Read More...
Chess

Italian PM tells Trump to relax Russian sanctions, Trump says they'll 'remain as is'


RT
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 10:39 UTC
Giuseppe Conte Donald Trump
© Carlos Barria / ReutersItalian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte with US President Donald Trump, July 30, 2018.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is interested in relaxing US and EU sanctions against Russia, but has apparently failed to sway US President Donald Trump despite the friendship they struck up over the immigration issue.

Conte, who met with Trump in Washington on Monday, said that Italy doesn't expect sanctions against Russia to be lifted overnight, but that Rome maintains a need for dialog with Russia and doesn't want the sanctions to harm Russian civil society or its small and medium businesses.

"Sanctions against Russia are not, and cannot be, an end unto itself," Conte said.

Comment: Further reading:

Read More...
Heart - Black

Flashback Useful atrocities serving the imperialist agenda: Media ignores murders committed by Western-backed militants

Eva Bartlett
Zero Antropology
Sun, 26 Oct 2014 00:00 UTC
thanks corporate news
© Unknown
Who outside of Syria knows the names Yara Abbas, Maya Naser, Mohamed al-Saeed...? The corporate media has inundated us with news of the two American journalists allegedly beheaded, the first of whose execution video has been deemed faked. But what of the non-Western journalists and civilians beheaded and murdered by ISIS, al-Nusra, and associated terrorists in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine?

Why didn't the August 2012 execution (which some reported as a beheading) of TV presenter Mohamed al - Saeed, claimed by the Nusra gang, create the same outrage? Or the December 2013 kidnapping and point blank execution in Idlib by ISIS of Iraqi journalist Yasser al-Jumaili?

Why wasn't the murder of Yara Abbas—a journalist with al-Ikhbariaya, whose crew's car was attacked by an insurgent sniper—broadcast on Western television stations? Or that of Lebanese cameraman for al-Mayadeen, Omar Abdel Qader, shot dead by an insurgent sniper on March 8, 2014 in eastern Syria.

Maya Naser, Ali Abbas, Hamza Hajj Hassan (Lebanese), Mohamad Muntish (Lebanese), Halim Alou (Lebanese)...all were media workers killed by the Western-backed insurgents in Syria. Their deaths were reported by local media, some even got a passing notice in corporate media, but none resulted in a media frenzy of horror and condemnations as came with the alleged killings of Westerners. Another at least 20 Arab journalists have been killed by NATO's death squads in Syria in the past few years.

Comment: Eva Bartlett is a Canadian freelance journalist and human rights activist who was recently interviewed on Sott Radio Network's Behind the Headlines.

Read More...
Quenelle

'You've lost Islam': Ethiopian PM snubs help from Abu Dhabi's crown prince because they're corrupting religion and creating chaos in Middle East


MEE
Tue, 31 Jul 2018 07:39 UTC
'You've lost Islam': Ethiopian PM recounts snub to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince
'You've lost Islam': Ethiopian PM recounts snub to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince
'We need to learn Arabic quickly, so we could better understand the religion and teach it to you, and return you to it'

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has said that he shunned an offer by Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed to build an Islamic centre in the East African country by telling him that he had "lost" his religion.

Ahmed recalled the conversation with bin Zayed, who is considered the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, in a speech to members of the American-Ethiopian Muslim community in the US state of Virginia on Friday.

"We will help you with many things. We will teach you," Bin Zayed allegedly said in a private conversation with Ahmed, who replied: "We don't need to learn the religion from you. You've lost the religion. What we need is to learn Arabic quickly, so we could better understand the religion and teach it to you, and return you to it."

Comment: The Ethiopian PM is merely stating the facts, who would want to be taught anything moral from a group with such an appalling record as the UAE? Saudi Arabia in particular is responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses at home and then abroad its crimes against humanity are legion; from its support for terrorists groups like ISIS, its funding of militant forms of Islam across the globe, and in its barbaric war on Yemen:

Read More...