Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Flashback Best of the Web: Al Jazeera undercover investigation: 4-part series on how the Israel Lobby in Britain influences politics and universities


Al Jazeera
Wed, 11 Jan 2017 17:45 UTC
israel lobby uk
  • Israeli diplomat boasts of role in establishing pro-Israel groups
  • Investigation reveals Israel offers financial, strategic support to UK lobby
  • Students targeted to boost support for Israel amid BDS movement
  • Groups attempting to oust NUS leader Malia Bouattia
  • 'Pluralist' Fabian Society think-tank analysts sent on paid trips to Israel
Israel is influencing student, activist and parliamentary groups in the UK, offering financial and strategic assistance in order to gather support among young organisers and shape British politics, Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit reveals.

For six months, undercover reporter Robin (an alias) infiltrated pro-Israeli groups working to counter the powerful and growing movement against the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

He uncovered a close link between Shai Masot, whose business card described him as a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy in London, and a network of politicians, activists and analysts in Britain who are sympathetic to Israel.
Read More...
Eagle

Permanent state of coup: Brazilian court orders favored presidential candidate Lula to prison


RT
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 21:25 UTC
Lula protest
© Paulo Whitaker / ReutersOne of Brazil's most popular political figures, da Silva, simply known as Lula, was convicted of money laundering and of passive corruption last July, and was sentenced to nine years behind bars. An appeals court in January upheld Lula's conviction and the court increased his sentence to 12 years. The latest developments would apparently block Lula’s re-election bid, despite strong public support.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been ordered to turn himself in by Friday afternoon to begin serving his 12 year sentence, after an appeals court authorized his immediate arrest on a conviction for graft.

The arrest warrant was issued by Brazilian federal Judge Sergio Moro on Thursday, a day after Supreme Federal Court (STF) dismissed Lula's plea to remain free while he appeals the corruption conviction, which he dismisses as machinations by his political opponents.

According to the arrest order, Lula has until 5 pm local time Friday to turn himself to Federal Police in Curitiba. Apparently in order to avoid an escalation of tensions with Lula's supporters, the federal judge barred authorities from using handcuffs on the former Brazilian president.

Comment: Pepe Escobar could see the outlines of Lula's persecution over a year and a half ago:
A powerful array of institutional/oligarchic interests is behind the rabid demonization of all things Workers' Party.

The interminable, ghastly telenovela aiming at turning Brazil, the seventh-largest economy in the world, into a Banana Republic of Scoundrels while destroying its economy, is-like the infamous GWOT (Global War on Terror) - a gift that keeps on giving.

No, this would never qualify as a Shakespearean tragedy or even a Monty Python sketch. Neither tragic nor funny; just nasty, brutish and overwhelmingly pathetic.

Center stage once again is Sergio Moro, the puny provincial prosecutor with an Elliott Ness complex, in charge of the blatantly one-sided Car Wash corruption investigation. Moro is a pure product of Hollywood screenwriting. He is investigator, judge, executioner; in sum, he incarnates The Law. A Magnum-deprived Dirty Harry, but armed with plenty of cheap suits.

After the golpeachment of Dilma Rousseff, it didn't take long for Moro to play his joker: Lula in jail by all means necessary.

It started with a-pathetically amateurish-Powerpoint presentation by the provincial crusaders in the southern Brazilian state which doubles as Car Wash's seat, insisting they are "convinced" Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva is guilty of being the Don Corleone in a vast corruption ring. But they have no proof.

Ooops. They did it again (for the third time, actually). So sub-Elliott Ness had to run back to his handlers - in the belly of the Empire of Chaos - for new "instructions." Moro, after all, was the lucky recipient of all that savory NSA spying on Petrobras, the Brazilian Energy Ministry and (regime-changed) President Rousseff.

Lula, ever the old fox, nailed it - observing how Moro has built, alongside the ultra-right-wing Globo media empire, a framework according to which Brazilian mainstream media is able to condemn anyone at will: "There are leaks and no one knows who leaked. Before proof is presented on whether the leak is true or false, five headlines are out. Then, you are guilty."

Lula was referring to Moro's by-the-book application of the 1990s Italian Mani Pulite proceedings - when all guilty verdicts were media-induced. In the remixed Brazilian version, the Public Ministry, the Federal Police and the Judiciary as a whole have been totally monopolized by political interests - all of them opposed to the Workers' Party - with full corporate media support. The whole Brazilian political system is astonishingly corrupt to the core; but Car Wash only targets the Workers' Party.


Read More...
Snakes in Suits

Mafia tactics: Bill Browder 'warns' Dutch FM that opposing sanctions against Russia is 'career-ruining'


RT
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 12:53 UTC
William Browder
© Drew Angerer / AFPWilliam Browder
Bill Browder, the financier convicted of tax fraud in Russia and the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, has taken aim at the Dutch foreign minister, warning him that opposing sanctions against Russia is dangerous.

Foreign Minister Stef Blok should take note of what happened to his Canadian colleague, Stephane Dion, after he opposed the hard line on Russia, Browder tweeted on Tuesday. Blok had voiced opposition to an EU version of the Magnitsky Act, the 2012 US law blacklisting dealings with the Russian government and certain individuals, enacted over "human rights violations."

Browder's tweet was pointed out by the Russian embassy in Canada as an instance of foreign meddling.


Comment: More on the malevolent Mr. Browder:

Read More...
Propaganda

The Spin War: Cambridge Analytica and Privatized Military Propaganda

Adam Ramsay
NPN News
Fri, 30 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC
Western wars in iraq
© Unknown
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. This audacious claim was made by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in March 1991, only two months after NATO forces had rained explosives on Iraq, shedding the blood of more than a hundred thousand people.

To understand Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm, Strategic Communication Laboratories, we need to get our heads round what Baudrillard meant, and what has happened since: how military propaganda has changed with technology, how war has been privatised, and how imperialism is coming home.

Baudrillard's argument centred on the fact that NATO's action in the Gulf was the first time audiences in Western countries had been able to watch a war live, on rolling TV news - CNN had become the first 24-hour news channel in 1980. Because camera crews were embedded with American troops, by whom they were effectively censored, the coverage had little resemblance to the reality of the bombardment of Iraq and Kuwait. The events known to Western audiences as "The Gulf War" - symbolised by camera footage from 'precision' missiles and footage of military hardware - are more accurately understood as a movie directed from the Pentagon. They were so removed from the gore-splattered reality that it's an abuse of language to call them the same thing. Hence, the "Gulf War" did not take place.

Comment: Trump's campaign used Cambridge Analytica which used private user data from Facebook. Obama team also used this type of data illegally. Why is the MSM making it big news? Is it because the desperate Deep State is trying to blame everything and anything that would have contributed to Trump's election on Russia (even if it meant a few thousand dollars spent by some Russian trolls) in a multi-Billion dollar US presidential campaign?

Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Orgies, blackmail and anti-semitism: Inside the Islamic cult whose leader is embraced by elite Israeli figures

Asaf Ronel
Haaretz
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 12:00 UTC
Turkish cult leader Adnan Oktar
Turkish cult leader Adnan Oktar
He has a harem of scantily clad 'kittens,' claims the U.K. 'deep state' brought Hitler to power and is accused of sex slavery. What draws Israeli politicians and rabbis to Turkish cult leader Adnan Oktar?

Fulya is a Turkish woman of 36. Tall, thin, with peroxide blonde hair, hazel eyes, penciled eyebrows and full lips. When she enters a fancy restaurant on the European banks of the Bosporus in Istanbul's fashionable Bebek neighborhood, almost all eyes turn to look at her. Even though Fulya (not her real name), who's the daughter of the CEO of a large Turkish company, seems to leave a trail of stardust behind her, her work is not especially glitzy - she works for an NGO in Istanbul.

Before that, Fulya was a journalistic commentator on Turkey and the Middle East, appearing both in print and on-air. She held those jobs while she was, for more than a decade, a member of a religious sex cult led by a person named Adnan Oktar. According to Fulya, for the last four years she pursued her career as a journalist even though she was a captive of the idiosyncratic cult, following a failed first attempt to escape. She'd made an appointment with a doctor in a hospital in an effort to flee, but Oktar's people seized her as she was entering the hospital and forced her into a car. After that, she relates, she was imprisoned in a room in one of the Istanbul compounds owned by the cult, managing her career mostly via computer and under close scrutiny, and leaving the room only to take part in the cult's activities.

Comment: See Also:

Read More...
USA

Pentagon says it's looking at ways to 'expand support to border security mission'

Tara Cop
Military Times
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 10:35 UTC
US border patrol
© Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty ImagesMounted Border Patrol agents are seen as President Donald Trump inspects border wall prototypes in San Diego, Calif., on March 13, 2018.
The Pentagon is looking at ways it can fulfill President Donald Trump's request to have the military guard the U.S.-Mexico border, spokesman Dana White said.

"There are a number of ways the Department of Defense is already supporting the [Department of Homeland Security] border security mission," White said. "We are still in consultation with the White House about ways we can expand that support."

As it has become apparent that Congress was not going to give Trump the full funding he has requested to build a border wall, the president has looked to the military to fill the gap.

Comment: 'That's a big step!': Trump sends National Guard to border as migrants vow to continue advance

Read More...
Monkey Wrench

US State Department forced to reveal spending $9M on Soros-backed political 'reform' in Albania


RT
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 13:05 UTC
Soros Albanie
© Bernadett Szabo / ReutersThe Obama administration quietly spent at least $9 million in US taxpayers’ dollars in direct collusion with left-wing billionaire George Soros’s backing of a socialist government in Albania.
Documents the State Department was forced to publish show that it spent almost $9 million on political reform in Albania coordinated with billionaire George Soros. The US government denies the expenditure was inappropriate.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) channeled funds into a 'Justice for All' campaign to reform the judicial system in Albania in 2016. The campaign was run by Soros's East West Management Institute, according to the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. The group obtained 32 pages of State Department documents in a legal battle, which concluded with the US government submitting to a Judicial Watch Information Act (FOIA) request in exchange for a dropped lawsuit.

"The Obama administration quietly spent at least $9 million in US taxpayers' dollars in direct collusion with left-wing billionaire George Soros's backing of a socialist government in Albania," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.

Soros is a billionaire and "shouldn't be receiving taxpayer support to advance his radical left agenda to undermine freedom here at home and abroad," Fitton added.

Comment: The CIA, Soros And Obama vs. Democracy - Why the US Empire Has No Moral High Ground

Read More...
Propaganda

SOTT Focus: British Government's Chemical Attack Narrative Falls Apart - Boris Johnson Lied About Russia

Niall Bradley
Sott.net
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 17:57 UTC
boris johnson pinocchio
Boris has really done it this time hasn't he.

In a blockbuster twist to the Skripal saga, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and his British Foreign & Commonwealth Office has been caught lying to the whole world.

After almost a month of baseless claims and slurs - broadcast in media globally - about Russian involvement in the attempted murder of retired spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the British government is now backpedaling faster than a Tour de France video on rewind.

In its previous iteration, the British government's argument hinged on the Porton Down chemical weapons facility having positively identified the alleged murder weapon, 'Novichok', as being Russian in origin. But now the most that the chief of Porton Down will say is that they have identified a "military-grade nerve agent" of unknown origin.



This time it's Russia's turn to call an emergency UN Security Council meeting, and Britain's turn to field awkward questions.
Read More...
Dollars

Meddling: US State Department records show Obama admin helped fund Soros' left-wing activities in Albania


Judicial Watch
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 18:07 UTC
soros


Obama USAID Used U.S. Taxpayers' Funds to Back Soros Group's Effort to Give Albania's Socialist Government 'Full Control Over Judiciary'

Judicial Watch obtained 32 pages of records showing the Obama administration sent U.S. taxpayers' funds to a group backed by billionaire George Soros, which used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania, including working with the country's socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial "reform." The records also detail how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding.

The records were obtained in a May 26, 2017, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) after both the State Department and USAID failed to respond to March 31, 2017, FOIA requests (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:17-cv-01012)). Judicial Watch agreed to dismiss the lawsuit after it received the documents and payment of attorneys' fees.

The new documents show USAID funds were funneled through that agency's Civil Society Project to back Soros's left-wing Open Society Foundations in Albania, particularly the Soros operation efforts to give the socialist government greater control of the judiciary. USAID reportedly gave $9 million in 2016 to the "Justice for All" campaign, which is overseen by Soros's "East West Management Institute."

Comment: What business do Soros and the US State Department have interfering in the democratic processes of other countries?

Read More...
2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Britain's Not So Distant History of State Sponsored Assassinations

Gavin OReilly
Mint Press News
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 20:19 UTC
British state sponsored assassination NOrthern Ireland
Britain's self-righteous tone when denouncing Russia for the alleged assassination of Sergei Skripal ignores its own not so distant history of engaging in state-sponsored assassinations.
Read More...