Puppet MastersS


Propaganda

Western media's propaganda war against Syrian army success


Moon of Alabama
Sun, 14 Jan 2018 09:30 UTC
Syrian tank advancing

The success of the current Syrian government operations against al-Qaeda in Idleb governorate can be measured by the volume of U.S. propaganda against it. A similar situation occurred when Aleppo was liberated from al-Qaeda's control. Certain U.S. media, (non-)government-organizations and politicians obviously prefer Takfiri al-Qaeda rule in Syria over control by the legitimated secular government.

According to the various streams of such propaganda Idleb is crowded with hospitals, bakeries and little children who all get "barrel bombed" by the nefarious Iranians and Russians while no Takfiri militant can ever be seen.

Amnesty International, which famously begged "NATO: KEEP THE PROGRESS GOING" in Afghanistan, is again on the forefront:
Amnesty International‏ @amnesty - 3:41 PM - 12 Jan 2018
We're outraged by the attacks on civilians in #Idlib governorate which hosts thousands of internally displaced people from across #Syria. They now have nowhere else to flee to anymore.
The tweet is decorated with a picture of al-Qaeda's first aid mercenaries, the White Helmets, who are paid by the British and other governments and receive propaganda cover from British media.

Comment: See also: 'Humanitarian' propaganda war against Syria - Led by Avaaz and The White Helmets

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Eye 1

Dem support for reauthorizing White House surveillance powers proves "resistance" is bull***t

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Sun, 14 Jan 2018 03:05 UTC
The resistance snowflakes SJW
The so-called "Resistance", the think tank-generated campaign to continue the authentic grassroots energy from the Bernie Sanders campaign and artificially harness it to oppose Donald Trump, is bullshit. It always has been bullshit. It always will be bullshit.

The leaders of the "Resistance" do not oppose Donald Trump. They are Donald Trump dressed in drag.

As we discussed previously, the US intelligence community has been aggressively demanding that congress reauthorize its Orwellian Section 702 surveillance powers, and the president has been echoing those demands. House Democrats could have forced an amendment called the USA RIGHTS Act to abridge this administration's ability to spy on US citizens, but they did not. This same president who Democratic representatives like Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell have been loudly claiming is a treasonous Russian agent has been granted uninhibited surveillance powers by both Schiff and Swalwell, as well as House opposition leader Nancy Pelosi. They do not believe that Trump is a Kremlin asset, and they do not oppose him.
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Question

Can UK refuse Julian Assange as an Ecuadorian diplomat?

Craig Murray
Criag Murray
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
It is for the government of Ecuador, not the UK, to determine who is an Ecuadorian citizen. It is for the government of Ecuador, not the UK, to determine who is an Ecuadorian diplomat.
Julian Assange
© ReutersAfter living five years behind the safety of Ecuador’s London embassy, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may be in for a change of scene.
It is not in the least unusual for Julian Assange to become an Ecuadorian citizen. Having been granted political asylum, and having lived for over five years under Ecuadorian jurisdiction, naturalisation is a perfectly normal step. There are a great many refugees in this country who are now naturalised UK citizens. Julian appears suitably proud of his new citizenship, and rightly so.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office appears to be putting out a story that it has refused to accredit Assange as an Ecuadorian diplomat. As the Guardian reports:
"Earlier this week the UK's Foreign Office revealed that Ecuador had asked for Assange, who was born in Australia, to be accredited as a diplomat. The request was dismissed."

Comment: 1st step to obtaining diplomatic immunity: Ecuador has granted citizenship to Julian Assange, says foreign ministry

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Pistol

FBI admits MGM keeping Paddock weapons footage secret

Jay Syrmopoulos
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Mandalay Bay massacre
© TheFreeThoughtProject.com
Any chance of a successful cover-up in the case of the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay massacre just got exponentially more difficult to successfully pull off, as new information provided by an FBI source with direct knowledge of the investigation has revealed that the FBI has yet to see ANY surveillance video of alleged gunman Stephen Paddock bringing weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition to his 32nd-floor hotel suite in Mandalay Bay into the hotel.

"No one has seen that on the video we were provided by MGM," an FBI official told True Pundit. "Vegas (PD) has looked at the same video. Paddock is on surveillance video but the guns are not. He's not carrying bags or cases with rifles."

These latest revelations in the investigation into the massacre of 58 people in Las Vegas raise serious and startling questions as to the veracity of the official story of what took place on Oct. 1.

Comment: See also:

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Clipboard

Putin's election team decides to print additional signup lists


TASS
Sat, 13 Jan 2018 22:59 UTC
Additional signature lists will be printed at the expense of the candidate's election fund

Russian voting
© EPA-EFE/SERGEI CHIRIKOV
The number of signatures in support of Vladimir Putin who stands for Russia's president as a self-nominee has exceeded half a million, but his election team has made a decision to print additional papers for 200,000 more signatures, the team's spokesman Andrei Kondrashov told TASS on Saturday.

"As of Saturday morning, 538,113 signatures in support of Putin has been collected. The procedure is still underway in 267 populated localities in all 85 Russian regions," he said.
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Snakes in Suits

Democratic Senators publish disturbing and profoundly racist report on Russia

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Fri, 12 Jan 2018 20:46 UTC

Comment: Though somewhat lengthy, this article is a must read for those who wish to get a deeper sense of just how paranoid, hysterical and deceitful Washington has become in its goal of trying to demonize Russia, and its President, Vladimir Putin. Russophobia is now clearly being institutionalized beyond anything we have seen previously...


putin with child
In the aftermath of Russiagate a group of Democratic Party Senators have published one of the most bizarre and disturbing reports ever to issue from the US Senate.

The best way to summarize it is to say that it takes every single charge which has ever been made against Vladimir Putin and Russia and repeats them whilst ignoring any evidence which contradicts them.

The whole dreary catalogue is there: the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings, the Khodorkovsky prosecutions, the Politkovskaya and Litvinenko murders, the Magnitsky affair, Putin's billions, Chechnya, the 2008 South Ossetia war, Crimea, the Ukrainian conflict, the state sponsorship of organized crime, the use of gas exports as a political weapon, the malign influence of RT and Sputnik, the sponsorship of extreme-right groups in Europe, the Russian role in the Brexit vote, and even the Russian Olympic doping scandal.
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Mr. Potato

Oprah for president . . . . seriously?

Mike Whitney
Counterpunch
Sat, 13 Jan 2018 18:16 UTC
oprah
© Screenshot/Stanford
Being president isn't like hosting a talk show or running a media brand. Oprah's success in her field is no more indicative of her potential to be a good president than Trump's success in real estate was. You can't criticize Trump for having no relevant experience or evident understanding of public policy, then say that the solution for Democrats is just to throw up their hands and find their own celebrity to promote.

- Paul Waldman, "Get a Grip, People. Oprah should not run for President", Washington Post
Will she or won't she?

No one knows for sure. Best friend, Gayle King, says Oprah Winfrey has no plans to run for president, but longtime Oprah partner, Stedman Graham, disagrees. Graham says bluntly, "She would absolutely do it. It's up to the people."

So who's right and who's wrong? And what's up with the Golden Globes? Was the reaction to Winfrey's emotionally-charged speech really as spontaneous as we've been led to believe or was the deluge of adulatory coverage in the media already in the works? I don't know about you, but the ridiculous outpouring of praise -including more than 700 gushing articles in the MSM accompanied by a saturation campaign on social media- smells fishy to me. Was this supposed to be an inspirational speech to fans and well-wishers or a 'product launch' by Democratic party leaders who needed a glitzy venue to showcase their future presidential candidate, Ms. Talk TV herself, Oprah Winfrey?
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Star of David

Jared Kushner's connection to an Israeli business goes without scrutiny, different if he was Palestinian

Robert Fisk
Independent
Thu, 11 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Jarkush
© APJared Kushner, WH Senior Advisor to President Trump
Shortly before Kushner accompanied Trump on his first diplomatic trip to Israel in May, his family real estate company received about $30m in investments from Menora Mivtachim, one of Israel's largest insurers and financial institutions

There was a time when we all went along with the myth that American peacemaking in the Middle East was even-handed, neutral, uninfluenced by the religion or political background or business activities of the peacemakers. Even when, during the Clinton administration, the four principle US "peacemakers" were all Jewish Americans - their lead negotiator, Dennis Ross, a former prominent staff member of the most powerful Israeli lobby group, AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) - the Western press scarcely mentioned this. Only in Israel was it news, where the Maariv newspaper called them "the mission of four Jews".

The Israeli writer and activist, Meron Benvenisti, wrote in Ha'aretz newspaper that while the ethnic origin of the four US diplomats may be irrelevant, "it is hard to ignore the fact that manipulation of the peace process was entrusted by the US in the first place to American Jews, and that at least one member of the State Department team was selected for the task because he represented the view of the American Jewish establishment. The tremendous influence of the Jewish establishment on the Clinton administration found its clearest manifestation in redefining the 'occupied territories' as 'territories in dispute'.


Comment: Manipulation of terms - subtle changes that few notice - have a way of impacting future understanding and points of view by the tweak in meaning. Israel is a masterful and successful manipulator of awareness and context to suit its needs. Look at how it has gained command of the USA and how many Americans are under this stupor. Should objections be raised, Israel plays the 'anti-semitism card and the sheeple dutifully fall back in line, demonstratively more enthusiastic and blindly supportive of whatever is next on Israel's agenda.


Comment: US citizens and politicians are conditioned to accept a close relationship with Israel. Israel has special privilege to call the shots. Even if Kushner's vulnerabilities are exploitable, it may be difficult to get a consensus that targets his activities. As this article points out, a Palestinian would never be viewed in the same bias, nor treated as well.
See also:

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Binoculars

Working below the radar, Congress is unleashing surveillance

Andrew P. Napolitano
The Washington Times
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
usflagphone
© newsday.com"Here's looking at you, kid..."
Hidden beneath the controversy stirred up last week by the publication of a book called Fire and Fury, a highly critical insider's view of the Trump White House that the president has not only denounced on national television but also tried to prevent from being published and distributed, are the efforts of the Trump administration and congressional leadership to bypass the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

Here is the back story.

After the excesses of the Watergate era, during which the Nixon administration used the FBI and the CIA unlawfully to spy without warrants on the president's real and imagined domestic political opponents, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA prohibited all domestic surveillance except that which is pursuant to warrants signed by federal judges.

The Fourth Amendment - which guarantees privacy in our persons, houses, papers and effects - permits the government to invade that privacy only when a judge has signed a warrant that authorizes surveillance, a search or a seizure. And judges may only issue warrants when they have found probable cause to believe that the government surveillance or invasion of the target's privacy will produce evidence of criminal behavior. The Fourth Amendment further requires that the judicial warrant describe specifically the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Trump/NATO continue Obama-era saber rattling by arming Ukraine

Darius Shahtahmasebi
MintPress News
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Ukraine tank
© AP Photo/Evgeniy MaloletkaUkrainian servicemen ride atop an APC with a Ukrainian flag, near Artemivsk, eastern Ukraine.
Despite the mainstream media's insistence that U.S. President Donald Trump is some sort of compromised Russian lackey, the fact is that at the end of last year, his administration approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. This is a move that clearly infuriates and angers Russia, souring relations between the two countries even more so than they already had been under the Obama administration (and in various stages throughout Trump's first year in office).

According to The Washington Post, administration officials confirmed that in December the State Department had approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and other associated parts and accessories to Ukraine - a package valued at $41.5 million.
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