Puppet MastersS


Pistol

US sending heavier weapons to Syrian Kurds, protection to Turkey


RT
Tue, 09 May 2017 17:34 UTC
YPG convoy
© ReutersKurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG) head a convoy of U.S military vehicles in the town of Darbasiya next to the Turkish border, Syria.
The Department of Defense has confirmed delivery of heavier weapons to US-allied Kurdish fighters, for the upcoming 'long and difficult' battle to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from ISIS. The Pentagon has also offered protection to its NATO ally, Turkey.

"That's not to say we all walk into the room with exactly the same appreciation of the problem or the path forward," Mattis told reporters in Denmark after meeting with officials from more than a dozen nations also fighting IS. "We're going to sort it out," Mattis said. "We'll figure out how we're going to do it."

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis is meeting with Turkish officials in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Tuesday to work out differences over the US's continued support for Syrian Kurds against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) fighters and efforts to retake Raqqa. Turkey considers them an extension of a banned terrorist group on its territory.

Back in February, General Joseph Votel, commander of the US forces in the Middle East, after visiting the Raqqa frontline told reporters Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces need more than AK-47s weapons in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). "Anti-tank weapons systems to address the vehicle-born IEDS. Certainly mortars would be something of help," Votel said, according to CBS News. "Things that they would need of a force that's going to conduct an assault."

Syrian Kurds have complained that while asking for heavier weapons all the US has supplied are small arms and ammunition.
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Health

WHO: Cholera outbreak in Yemen kills 25 per week

Noah Browning, Tarek Fahmy
Reuters
Mon, 08 May 2017 10:04 UTC
Yemen garbage
© Geo TVMountains of garbage contribute to 27K cases of Cholera in Yemen.
A cholera outbreak in Yemen killed 25 people this week, the World Health Organization said, as two years of war continues to wreak havoc on the impoverished country's health and sanitation system. The deaths from the diarrheal disease which is carried in food and water tainted by human faeces are among 1,360 cases that the United Nations agency reported since April 27.

Some severe cases can kill within hours unless treated with intravenous fluids and antibiotics. "(This) is extremely alarming. We are facing a reactivation of the cholera epidemic," Nevio Zagaria, the WHO's representative in Yemen, told Reuters.

"The cause is that there [have been] two years of war in Yemen. There is a huge impact on the infrastructure, the electricity power is on and off, the water pumping stations are not functioning regularly and this has an impact on the quality of water."

A previous outbreak subsided last winter, Zagaria said, and the country has experienced a total of around 27,000 cases including 130 deaths during the conflict.
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Whistle

NPR tries to undermine Wikileaks' credibility, with deliberate and brazen lie

Caitlin Johnstone
A Medium Corporation
Sun, 07 May 2017 00:00 UTC
NPRadio
© Katherine Du"National Propaganda Radio" has a media virus.
As if we needed another reason to want the legacy media to die screaming all alone in an ill-reputed nursing home, National Public Radio has just added one more to the planet-sized pile. NPR, which just Wednesday released an anti-WikiLeaks attack editorial disguised as a movie review, has made a deliberate attempt to tarnish WikiLeaks' 100% perfect record of authentic and accurately-vetted releases by going out of its way to report that the publishing organization had posted nine gigabytes of partially inauthentic documents.

In reality, WikiLeaks did not post 9 gigabytes of anything, but only tweeted a link to a pre-existing cache of documents allegedly from French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron on a site that very plainly does not have the WikiLeaks URL, with a very clear disclaimer that it didn't know who was responsible for posting them.


Comment: Well, this is giddy commentary but the point about WikiLeaks is made.

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Handcuffs

Jakarta governor sentenced to two years for 'blasphemy' against Islam


RT
Tue, 09 May 2017 19:48 UTC
Basuki Tjahaja Purnama
© Antara Foto / Sigid Kurniawan / ReutersJakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama is seen inside a court during his trial for blasphemy in Jakarta, Indonesia May 9, 2017.
An Indonesian court has found the first Christian governor of Jakarta guilty of blasphemy against Islam, sentencing him to two years in prison. His supporters have blasted the verdict, fearing it signals the 'Islamization' of Indonesia.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, nicknamed 'Ahok,' was sentenced to two years in jail on Tuesday by the five-judge panel of the south Jakarta court.

He was "found to have legitimately and convincingly conducted a criminal act of blasphemy, and because of that we have imposed two years of imprisonment," head judge Dwiarso Budi Santiarto stated.
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Headphones

Rand Paul accuses Obama of spying on him using NSA intercepts

John Solomon
Circa
Tue, 09 May 2017 19:16 UTC
rand paul
Sen. Rand Paul, the former Republican presidential candidate and vocal champion of civil liberties, has received allegations that the Obama administration sought intercepted intelligence from the National Security Agency on him and other members of Congress and has asked President Donald Trump to conduct a formal investigation, Circa has learned.

Paul quietly asked for the probe nearly a month ago in a letter to Trump that was obtained by Circa.
"An anonymous source recently alleged to me that my name, as well as the names of other Members of Congress, were unmasked, queried or both, in intelligence reports of intercepts during the prior administration," Paul wrote Trump in a letter dated April 10.

"In light of the revelations that the names of persons associated with the Trump campaign were unmasked, I believe the allegations that myself and other elected members of the legislative branch may have also been unmasked or caught in intelligence gathering warrants investigation."
The emergence of the letter, which also was copied to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon, comes after Circa recently reported that members of Congress and their staffs have been unmasked in NSA intelligence reports as frequently as once a month since President Obama loosened privacy protections back in 2011.
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Info

Syria's FM says Russian military, not UN troops, to police safe zones


RFE/RL
Tue, 09 May 2017 19:32 UTC
Syria checkpoint maintained by Al-Qaeda
© ReutersA checkpoint maintained by Al-Qaeda's onetime affiliate, Nusra Front, in Syria's Idlib province.
Syria's foreign minister said on May 8 that Russian troops, not UN-supervised international forces, will enforce the cease-fire in safe zones established under a Russian-led agreement.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told reporters that Damascus would not agree to admit any foreign troops to monitor whether the cease-fire, the delivery of aid, and other activities slated to occur in the zones are being carried out.

The zones, to be set up by next month, are expected to include checkpoints to ensure easy movement of unarmed civilians and safe delivery of humanitarian assistance.

"There will be no presence by any international forces supervised by the United Nations," Moallem said. "The Russian guarantor has clarified that there will be military police and observation centers."
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Bad Guys

Who is destroying Syria? Pretty much everyone

Philip Giraldi
The American Conservative
Tue, 09 May 2017 17:59 UTC
pawns in Middle East
© Bruce Rolff / Shutterstock
The United Nations Charter, to which all member states are signatories and which prevails over all other treaties and agreements, states that the organization is obligated to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and to take military and nonmilitary action to "restore international peace and security."

The justices at the Nuremberg trials in 1946 concluded that "to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

The U.S. Constitution's Article I states that only Congress has the authority to declare war, with the understanding that, per Article II, the president is empowered to respond to a "sudden" or imminent threat only if there is no time to pass such a declaration. An Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) amended in 2016 grants the president blanket authority to respond militarily to threats against the United States, but only if they originated with al-Qaeda and "associated forces."

So how is it that on April 6 the United States attacked a fellow member state in the United Nations that has an internationally recognized sovereign government? That member state posed no imminent threat, had not attacked the United States, and was not at war with Washington. Nor did that member state consist of or support al-Qaeda or an associated group, and it was not under sanction from the United Nations Security Council to authorize any other member state to act against it. On the contrary, that member state was actively fighting several terrorist groups as defined by the U.S. government that had occupied its sovereign territory.
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MIB

Pentagon Military Intelligence Operations and US Office of National Intelligence requests more billions


Sputnik
Tue, 09 May 2017 18:56 UTC
Pentegon building
The US Department of Defense said in a statement released on Tuesday it has made public its request for $1.7 billion in additional funding for its military intelligence operations.

Earlier a Pentagon spokesman stated that the US Department of Defense believes the Asia-Pacific to be a top priority and "in principle" supports the $7.5 billion military funding aiming to increase US military presence and build up infrastructure in the area.

"The Department of Defense released today the revised Military Intelligence Program (MIP) top line budget request for fiscal year 2017 that was disclosed to the public on Feb. 9, 2016," the statement said. "The $16.8 billion is now updated to [$18.5 billion to] include additional funding above the initial president's budget request for the MIP."
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MIB

The US intelligence agency has a long history of helping to kill leaders around the world

Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian
Tue, 09 May 2017 20:11 UTC
Kim Jong-un
© Wong Maye-E/APNorth Korea’s ministry of state security accused the CIA of an alleged recent assassination attempt on Kim Jong-un
US intelligence agency has since 1945 succeeded in deposing or killing a string of leaders, but was forced to cut back after a Senate investigation in the 1970s

Some of the most notorious of the CIA's operations to kill world leaders were those targeting the late Cuban president, Fidel Castro. Attempts ranged from snipers to imaginative plots worthy of spy movie fantasies, such as the famous exploding cigars and a poison-lined scuba-diving suit.

But although the CIA attempts proved fruitless in the case of Castro, the US intelligence agency has since 1945 succeeded in deposing or killing a string of leaders elsewhere around the world - either directly or, more often, using sympathetic local military, locally hired criminals or pliant dissidents.

According to North Korea's ministry of state security, the CIA has not abandoned its old ways. In a statement on Friday, it accused that the CIA and South Korea's intelligence service of being behind an alleged recent an assassination attempt on its leader Kim Jong-un.

Comment: See also: 'Vicious plot': Pyongyang claims CIA planning biochemical attack against Kim Jong-un

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Info

Second soldier arrested in not-so-strange plot to kill politicians and blame refugees


RFE/RL
Tue, 09 May 2017 18:20 UTC
german troops
© EPAThe case, which authorities have called "more than strange," has raised concerns about far-right extremism in Germany's military.
German authorities say a second soldier has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in a far-right plot to assassinate politicians and blame the killings on asylum-seekers.

Federal prosecutors said on May 9 that the 27-year-old suspect, identified as Maximilian T., was arrested in the city of Kehl in southwestern Germany on charges of preparing an act of violence.

He was stationed at the same base near Strasbourg as another soldier suspected in the alleged plot, Franco Albrecht, who was taken into custody on April 26.

Prosecutors say they planned to carry out an attack against politicians who support accepting refugees, including former German President Joachim Gauck and Justice Minister Heiko Maas.

Along with another suspect, a 24-year-old student identified as Mathias F., they had hoped the killing would "be seen by the population as a radical Islamist terrorist act committed by a recognized refugee," prosecutors said in a statement.

To that end, Albrecht had created a fraudulent identity as a Syrian refugee and registered himself as an asylum recipient, prosecutors said.

Comment: Guys, guys... You can't just go around staging terror attacks and blaming them on Muslims and refugees. That's NATO's job.

This case certainly is a strange one, though. See:

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