Puppet MastersS


Megaphone

Poland: President overturns ban on nationalists' independence day march


BBC
Thu, 08 Nov 2018 12:00 UTC
poland march nationalist
© ReutersIn 2015, some participants carried a banner that read Poland for Poles - Poles for Poland
A Polish court has overturned a ban on a nationalist march in Warsaw to mark 100 years of Poland's independence.

"We're victorious," said the organisers of the annual event, which has become a magnet for the far right and has been marked by violence in recent years.

The ruling comes a day after Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz barred Sunday's rally, saying the city had suffered enough from "aggressive nationalism".

After the ban, President Andrzej Duda vowed to organise an official march.

"Everyone is invited, come only with red-and-white flags," he said, referring to the march that was expected to follow the same route as the nationalist rally - only starting one hour later.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: What's The Problem With Nationalism?

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Bad Guys

Lavrov blasts Vienna for 'megaphone diplomacy' after they accuse ex-colonel of spying for Russia


Sputnik
Fri, 09 Nov 2018 11:24 UTC
Vienna Austria
© Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich
Earlier in the day, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced that a former Austrian colonel is suspected of having spied for Russia for around two decades. His statement came as another development in the Western narrative of Russia's alleged espionage activities, which Moscow denies.

An 'Unpleasant Surprise'

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on Friday on the situation with an ex-colonel accused by Austria of spying in favor of Russia.

"You know, I just learned this before the start of our meeting, and frankly speaking, this information unpleasantly surprised me," Lavrov said at a press conference after talks with his Comorian countepart Mohamed El-Amine Souef.

Comment: More details from Sputnik:
Austrian Defence Minister Mario Kunasek said that Vienna had learned about an Austrian retired colonel suspected of conducting intelligence activity for Russia from "a friendly service a few weeks ago".

"After that, the ministry began to negotiate with a view to identifying and then talking with him. The former officer also handed over the equipment; these devices are now being evaluated - a laptop, and so on," Kunasek told reporters.

The statement came after Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said that "Austria suspects that a retired colonel of the Austrian Armed Forces has worked with the Russian intelligence service for many years."

"According to our information, it began in the 1990s and lasted until 2018," Kurz told reporters.

He demanded "transparent information from the Russian side", saying that "the [Russian] ambassador - or rather, an authorised representative, because the ambassador is not in Austria now - was summoned to the Foreign Ministry."


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Better Earth

"A brighter future of development": Xi Jinping's historic speech on China's role in the world


Near Eastern Outlook
Fri, 09 Nov 2018 10:36 UTC
xi jin ping
Belief in historical progress was once abundant in the western world. In fact, some of the uglier crimes of western colonialism were justified in the name of progress. Colonizers and imperialists often claimed to be more advanced than those they repressed and brutalized, and justified their mistreatment of others in the name of somehow "civilizing" and "advancing" their victims. However, in recent years, this very western concept has been largely eroded.

Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker tried to put forward a western, capitalist conception of historical progress in his article "The Enlightenment is Working" published by the Wall Street Journal on February 13th, 2018. Observing the condition of American discourse, he began his article saying: "For all their disagreements, the left and the right concur on one thing: The world is getting worse. Whether the decline is visible in inequality, racism and pollution, or in terrorism, crime and moral decay, both sides see profound failings in modernity and a deepening crisis in the West. They look back to various golden ages when America was great, blue-collar workers thrived in unionized jobs, and people found meaning in religion, family, community and nature." Pinker's article went on to give a defensive attempt to assert the concept of progress in an atmosphere where it is notably absent, and say that such progress is indeed coming from western countries.

Comment: Progress is only really progress if what it's replacing is better than that which went before, and in the case of the West, the majority have lost sight of this very important point. As R.G Collingwood writes in The Idea of History:
But progress is not the replacement of the bad by the good, but of the good by the better. In order to conceive a change as a progress, then, the person who has made it must think of what he has abolished as good, and good in certain definite ways. This, he can only do on condition of his knowing what the old way of life was like, that is, having historical knowledge of his society's past while he is actually living in the present he is creating: for historical knowledge is simply the re-enactment of past experiences in the mind of the present thinker. [...]

He must take into account the conditions and consequences of that change. He must ask what was done with the additional fish or the additional leisure. He must ask what value attached to the social and religious institutions that were sacrificed for them. In short, he must judge the relative value of two different ways of life, taken as two wholes. Now, in order to do this, he must be able to enter with equal sympathy into the essential features and values of each way of life
See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Attention

Democrats call election victory a win - but is it really?

Jack Rasmus
jackrasmus.com
Thu, 08 Nov 2018 10:16 UTC
voter polling station election
© Fred Prouser / Reuters
For months, the leadership of the Democratic Party hyped the message that a 'blue wave' was on its way that would politically engulf Trump and reverse his policies. Well, the wave washed up on shore on November 6, 2018, but Trump barely got his feet wet.

The failure of Democratic Party leaders' 2018 strategy to deliver as promised last night should also raise some serious questions about its strategy going forward for 2020. That strategy focused on running women and a few veterans in suburban districts and targeting the independent voter-a Suburbia Strategy-i.e. an approach apparently abandoning the 2008 successful Democratic strategy of targeting millennials, blacks and latinos, and union workers who since 2012 have been steadily reducing their support for Democrats. But the Dems believe their new Suburbia Strategy works. As former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, declared to the media on November 6 after polls closed, the Dems had just won "a great victory". But was it 'great'? Or even a 'victory'?

And is the Suburbia Strategy targeting women and independents in the 'burbs a formula for winning anything but a couple dozen or so toss up, suburban House districts in off year elections? If not, what is - given the Democrat Party's abandonment of strategies that once were successful?

Comment: See also: Midterm Madness Shows US Media More Divisive Than The American People

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Eye 2

Let them eat sand: Iran leaders will have to fall in line if 'they want their people to eat,' Pompeo says


RT
Fri, 09 Nov 2018 11:00 UTC
iran protest usa
© Reuters / Tasnim News Agency
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a BBC journalist that Iranian "leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat," dropping all pretense of caring about Iranians as he touted the latest harsh sanctions.

The BBC Persian reporter, Hadi Nili, attempts to ask Pompeo what will happen if the sanctions do not have their desired effect, but Pompeo repeatedly dodges the question, repeating that it is in Iran's "best interest" to curb its "destabilizing influence" and clinging to the soundbite that the country is the primary sponsor of world terrorism. Pompeo attempts to pin all regional ills on Iran and paints the Iranian government's aims as wholly at odds with those of the people.

But what if the sanctions end up hurting the people, Nili starts to ask. "No, they're not," says Pompeo, interrupting him.

Comment: For some reason the US thinks it's going to get respect this way.

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TV

Fox News 'dresses down' Hannity for Trump campaign appearance, while MSNBC's Rachel Maddow openly roots for #Resistance on Twitter


RT
Fri, 09 Nov 2018 01:05 UTC
rachel maddow
© YouTube / MSNBCRachel Maddow
With protests planned over the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow dropped her pretense of journalistic objectivity and took to Twitter to encourage the Resistance.

The AG's departure on Wednesday at the request of President Donald Trump caused alarm on the left, especially since his replacement, Matthew Whittaker, once criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 'Russiagate' investigation and suggested that a new Attorney General could reduce Mueller's budget to "so low that his investigation just grinds to a halt."

Immediately, liberal groups started organized protests, due to hit the streets of 900 American cities on Thursday evening. The demonstrations are for the most part organized by MoveOn and Indivisible.org, a liberal activist group made up of former Congressional staffers.

Comment: Who thought the day would come when Fox News held its journalists to a higher standard of conduct than the Big Three media companies?

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Cult

Now that the Democrats are in control of the House, they plan to slam Trump with a wave of subpoenas

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 00:00 UTC
Nancy Pelosi
This is a very dark moment in American history. On November 6th, the American people gave the keys to the U.S. House of Representatives to the Democrats, and that means that the crazies will soon be unleashed on Capitol Hill. They won't be able to get much legislation pushed through because Republicans still control the Senate and Donald Trump is still in the White House, but they will be able to cause all sorts of chaos with their investigative powers. If you thought that things were bad the last two years, just wait, because you haven't seen anything yet. Top Democrats are already talking about hitting Trump with a huge wave of subpoenas, and the White House is bracing for the worst. It is going to be a time of bitter partisan wrangling in Washington, and meanwhile the nation as a whole is going to continue to fall apart.

In just a couple of months, Nancy Pelosi will be speaker of the House once again. That also means that if something suddenly happened to Donald Trump and Mike Pence, she would become the president of the United States.

Just the thought of that should chill you to the bone.

And of course Pelosi is just the tip of the iceberg. All of the powerful House committees will now be chaired by Pelosi's crazy allies, and they plan to use those positions to hurt President Trump as much as possible.
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No Entry

Moscow responds to Russian billionaires being barred from Davos meeting: 'Your loss'


RT
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 12:11 UTC
Russian billionaires
(L) Viktor Vekselberg Sputnik / Ramil Sitdikov; (C) Andery Kostin Sputnik / Alessandro Rota; (R) Oleg Deripaska Sputnik / Alexander Vilf
Three Russian businessmen have been reportedly barred from visiting next year's World Economic Forum in Davos due to US sanctions against them. The Kremlin said the event organizers are shooting themselves in the foot.

Viktor Vekselberg, the owner of Renova group, aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska and the head of VTB Bank Andery Kostin have been denied the right to visit the upcoming business gathering in Switzerland, according to the British business daily the Financial Times. The newspaper cites sources as saying that the three Russian individuals were deemed unwelcome at the January WEF because the US considers them key supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin and imposed individual sanctions on them as part of its wider anti-Russian pressure campaign.

One source said the sanctions themselves in no way bar the three businessmen from attending the high-profile event and that the organizers bowed to pressure from Washington. "This is not about the law," one person said on condition of anonymity. "They're under huge pressure from the US not to invite them."

Comment: And correct Russia is in perceiving it this way. But at the end of the day, all the smart business and world leaders do realize that it is in fact their loss - and will be flying to Russia to make deals. See:

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Mr. Potato

Trudeau apologizes for Canada turning down 900+ Jews fleeing Nazi Germany


RT
Thu, 08 Nov 2018 23:09 UTC
Justin Trudeau
© Reuters / Chris Wattie
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has delivered a passionate 30-minute apology to 907 German Jews, who sought refuge in Canada from Nazi persecution in 1937 but were denied entry. Some 250 later perished in death camps.

"We are sorry for the callousness of Canada's response. We are sorry for not apologizing sooner," Trudeau said in his emotional speech before the Parliament on Wednesday.

Comment: Trudeau's apology is virtue signalling lip service.

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Smiley

Best of the Web: Epic troll: #Pr0udBear billboards pop up in UK celebrating Putin's Brexit victory


Reuters
Thu, 08 Nov 2018 21:59 UTC
putin brexit
Spoof billboards celebrating Russian President Vladimir Putin's "contribution" to Brexit have been put up in London by a satirical group which says it wants to secure recognition for the role Russian military intelligence played in the referendum.

Britain has said it found no evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 Brexit vote and Moscow has repeatedly denied even trying, though opponents of Brexit have repeatedly questioned whether the Kremlin played a role.

In the referendum, 17.4 million voters, or 51.9 percent, backed leaving the EU while 16.1 million, or 48.1 percent, backed staying. Britain is due to leave on March 29.

The posters in London showed a picture of Kremlin chief Putin winking and holding the Russian flag beside the slogan: "Lets celebrate a Red, White and Blue Brexit." The "r" of Brexit was reversed to give it the look of a Cyrillic letter.

In a statement, the people claiming to be behind the campaign said they were a group of Russian military intelligence (GRU) officers who wanted their true role in the Brexit vote to be recognized.

"The group hopes to counter recent unwarranted negative publicity about the GRU by putting up advertisements highlighting their part in Britain's imminent liberation from the EU," said the group, which calls itself Proud Bear.

Comment: ProudBear's Twitter account is hilarious. What's even funnier is how many people seem to have been unsure whether or not it was a hoax...







The IRA "troll farm" is back in the news too. The Daily Beast, among others, are taking claims seemingly from IRA itself 'declaring victory in the U.S. election and warning the "citizens of the United States of America" that "your intelligence agencies are powerless."'
"Despite all their efforts, we have thousands of accounts registered on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit spreading political propaganda," read a statement attributed to the St. Petersburg-based organization. "These accounts work 24 hours a day, seven days a week to discredit anti-Russian candidates and support politicians more useful for us than for you."

The statement appeared on a website titled the "Internet Research Agency American Division" that popped up over the weekend. Featuring a clip art logo of a green goblin typing on a laptop, and packed with absurd boasts about the IRA's prowess, the site at first appeared to be a lampoon. But on Tuesday night it posted a previously unseen list of 100 IRA Instagram accounts that Facebook confirmed as authentic.

It's still not entirely clear if the website is intended as self-parody, a parody of U.S. perceptions of Russian information operations, or an earnest effort to terrify the American citizenry and cast doubt on the midterm results.
That's worthy of only one response: LOL. It gets funnier:
"Hundreds of your fellow citizens are our unintentional agents unaware of the fact that they actually act for the good of the Russian 'troll farm,'" the statement declared. "We have allies and spoilers intervening the political campaigns of the candidates for both parties. The victory of the Democratic party is our top priority in these midterm elections."

"Soon after November 6, you will realize that your vote means nothing," the statement reads. "We decide who you vote for and what candidates will win or lose. Whether you vote or not, there is no difference as we control the voting and counting systems. Remember, your vote has zero value. We are choosing for you."
Followed by more and more people in all seriousness taking this very, very seriously...

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