Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Best of the Web: US slaps Palestine in the face by celebrating embassy move to Jerusalem on anniversary of Nakba - while Israel mass murders protesters

Finian Cunningham
RT
Mon, 14 May 2018 16:40 UTC
gaza great march protest
© Mohammed Salem / Reuters
How obscenely ironic. Embassies traditionally symbolize diplomacy and peace. The opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem was occasioned by a grotesque baptism of murder of Palestinians, heralding wider war in the Middle East.

Not only that, but on the very anniversary of one of the most shameful episodes of ethnic cleansing and dispossession over the past century - the 1948 Nakba or Catastrophe for Palestinians - the US government is brazenly siding with the heirs of that historic violence, the Israeli state.

Trump's wholesale abandonment of any shame in endorsing Israeli violations against Arab historic rights is an incitement to regional conflagration.

It's hard to express the horror. Israeli snipers shooting unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, while some 100 kilometers away in Jerusalem, US dignitaries and evangelical pastors were blessing the opening of Washington's new embassy as 'God's work'.

US President Donald Trump's policy in the Middle East, if you could call it "policy", has descended into absolute lunacy. No wonder, most European states stayed away from the US reception for unveiling its new diplomatic center.
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Pirates

Kiev forced to recall their German consul after he's outed as Nazi sympathizer


RT
Tue, 15 May 2018 16:50 UTC
Vasil Marushchinets
© Screenshot from a video published by Anatoly Shariy on YouTube.Vasil Marushchinets’ birthday.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has recalled its consul to Hamburg, Germany for disciplinary action after a popular vlogger accused him of being a Holocaust-denying Nazi sympathizer.

Vasil Marushchinets was recalled to Kiev for an investigation into his friends-only posts on Facebook. He allegedly hailed Nazi policies and denied that the regime slaughtered millions of people in death camps.

It is also alleged he called for violence against Jews, Romas and other ethnicities, argued for Ukraine to take land by force from other countries like Poland, Romania or Hungary and made other statements that hardly befit a diplomat working in Germany.

"If all the facts are confirmed - because what we saw may not be all of it - then certainly such people have no place in the foreign ministry," Ukrainian diplomat Pavlo Klimkin on Monday.
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Attention

Mike Huckabee: Avenatti slip-up implicates FBI in illegal anti-Trump activity

Cillian Zeal
Conservative Tri9bune
Fri, 11 May 2018 16:40 UTC
michael avenatti stormy daniels
Michael Avenatti
Every time I see Michael Avenatti on TV, I keep on wondering whether he's Jacoby or Meyers.

Given the big leagues that he's playing in, Avenatti is a veritable ambulance chaser - and it shows. Aside from personal attacks on the president, he seems woefully unprepared as a litigator. While Stormy Daniels ought to be grateful that the media loves him, she still needs to face the fact that this isn't the kind of lawyer you want to go to court with. That's doubly true when the collected legal forces of the president are sitting at the other side of the courtroom.

Mike Huckabee isn't impressed, either. In an opinion piece posted to his website, the former governor of Arkansas and father of White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders asked an important question about Avenatti's latest information regarding payments made to President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen: Namely, where did he get the information?

Comment:

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Star of David

Israeli envoy says UNSC must condemn Hamas for double war crime


Sputnik
Tue, 15 May 2018 18:35 UTC
Hamas militants
© REUTERS / Ibraheem Abu MustafaHamas militants
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said in a press briefing on Tuesday that the UN Security Council must condemn Hamas for committing war crimes.

"The Security Council today must condemn Hamas for its double war crime; only then will justice be served," Danon told reporters.

He accused Hamas of war crimes, claiming the movement used a mob of rioters to enter Israel for the purpose of conducting attacks and kidnapping Israeli citizens.

Comment: Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned on Tuesday the actions of the Israeli authorities against the protesting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and called for an investigation in this regard in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ministry's spokesman Bahram Qassemi described the events in Gaza as the "killing of dozens of Palestinians" and an "unprecedented brutal massacre," stating that the demonstrations in Gaza were peaceful, the ministry said.

"He [Qassemi] called on regional and international organizations and bodies to take prompt action without any hesitation, condemn the crimes committed by the Israeli regime and introduce the Tel Aviv regime to the International Criminal Court as a war criminal," the ministry said in a statement.


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Bad Guys

US imposes new sanctions on Iran following withdrawal of nuclear deal


RT
Tue, 15 May 2018 16:35 UTC
Teehran
© Morteza Nikoubazl / ReutersA general view of the Central Bank of Iran building in Tehran
The US has imposed fresh sanctions on an Iranian bank and individuals, the department of the treasury has announced.

In a release on its website, the department listed four people added to the Office of Foreign Assets Control's Specially Designated Nationals List. Those individuals are Aras Habib Kareem, the chairman of Al Bilad Islamic Bank for Investment and Finance which was also sanctioned; Valiollah Seif, an economist and the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, and Ali Tarzali, its assistant director; and Muhammad Qasir, a Hezbollah official.

The additional sanctions come after US President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal last week, promising the highest level of sanctions. The move has been slammed by Tehran and other signatories of the landmark agreement, which was signed under the Barack Obama administration.
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Bad Guys

US sanctions seek to undermine progress of rapidly developing countries - Russian Duma chief


RT
Tue, 15 May 2018 16:28 UTC
Vyacheslav Volodin
© Vladimir Fedorenko / SputnikRussian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin at a plenary meeting of the Duma
The main purpose of United States sanctions is to slow the progress of rapidly developing nations, Russian State Duma speaker has said before the parliament gave its first nod to bills on Russia's response to the restrictions.

"The USA is conducting its sanctions policy against the countries that are actively developing. This includes not only Russia, but also China, Iran and other countries," Vyacheslav Volodin was quoted as saying by TASS on Tuesday. He added that every nation that faces US sanctions is taking its own measures to counter Washington's unfriendly policies and expressed hope that the Russian bills, on counter- sanctions and responsibility for compliance with foreign restrictive regulations on Russian territory, would be effective.

Volodin also said that Russian authorities had not expected the current level of political and economic pressure as Russia had always expressed its opinions with maximum correctness based on mutual respect and non-interference with internal affairs of other countries.
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Eye 2

Israeli senior lawmaker: IDF have 'enough bullets for everyone'


RT
Tue, 15 May 2018 18:22 UTC
Israeli soldiers
© Amir Cohen / Reuters
Israel Defense Forces have enough bullets for everyone, a senior lawmaker party said, according to local media. At least 60 Palestinians, including children, were killed by Israeli gunfire on Monday during protests.

Avi Dichter, a senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud Party, made the controversial comment when speaking to Hadashot TV news on Monday afternoon.

"The IDF has enough bullets for everyone," said former director of Shin Bet internal security service and Minister of Internal Security Dichter, as cited by the Times of Israel.

Comment: See also: Israeli minister compares killing unarmed Palestinian protesters to killing Nazis

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Gold Coins

Multipolar world: Iranian envoy says currency swap agreement with Pakistan could begin soon

Shahram Haq
The Express Tribune
Thu, 03 May 2018 00:00 UTC
Pakistani currency
© EXPRESS/ File
Ambassador of Iran to Pakistan Mehdi Honardoost said the establishment of banking channels and currency swap agreements with Pakistan is in process, and the business community should be able to hear the "good news" soon enough.

Currently, bilateral trade between the two countries is hindered by the absence of banking channels in the wake of US sanctions on Iran.

However, some of those sanctions were lifted in early 2016 after Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear weapons programme, paving way for trade with the country.

Comment: Sanctions and demonization will not stop Iran and and other countries from doing business; the world no longer revolves around the US and all of it's egregious policies.

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Red Flag

SBU raid Russian news agency as part of 'investigation into hybrid war against Ukraine'


RT
Tue, 15 May 2018 14:50 UTC
RIA Novosti office Kiev
© SputnikBuilding in Kiev which houses the RIA Novosti office targeted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)
The Kremlin said a raid conducted by Ukraine on the Kiev office of Russian news agency RIA Novosti is "outrageous and blatant", adding that Moscow awaits "harsh and uncompromising" response from international groups.

On Tuesday morning RIA Novosti reported that its office was targeted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Hours earlier, Kirill Vyshynsky, who heads the Ukrainian bureau of the agency, was detained near his home in Kiev.

"If these actions of the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are somehow related to the work of these media, they are absolutely outrageous and blatant [and] violate all norms and rules," Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
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Attention

The Nakba: A disaster that is never-ending for Palestinians

Marcello Di Cintio
The Globe and Mail
Fri, 11 May 2018 00:00 UTC
Nabka anniversary 2018
An Israeli border policeman stands guard as Palestinian demonstrators take part in a protest ahead of the Nakba anniversary in Bethlehem on May 10, 2018.
Marcello Di Cintio's books include Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, winner of the 2013 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. His latest book is Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense.

Abu Ahmed Sa'ad was 12 years old when a group of weary Palestinians arrived on foot seeking a night's respite in the village of al-Birwa. It was spring of 1948, just after the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14 and the beginning of the first Arab-Israeli War. More refugees passed through in the days that followed, all escaping the fighting along the coast. When farmers spotted Jewish soldiers advancing on the village, the Sa'ads and other al-Birwa families decided to flee. They took almost nothing with them. Everyone believed their exile from al-Birwa would be short-lived. The Sa'ad's were wrong. Al-Birwa was destroyed.

The Sa'ads were among the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 14-month war, and al-Birwa one of more than 400 Palestinian villages effectively erased by Jewish forces. Seventy years later, three generations of Palestinian refugees and their descendants remain scattered throughout the world. More than five million refugees are registered with the United Nations Work and Relief Agency, and 1.5 million live in UNRWA-administered camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Palestinians refer to this mass-displacement as the Nakba, or "catastrophe."

Comment: '70th anniversary of Nakba': Trump creates, then exacerbates, crisis for Palestinian refugees

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