Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

EU teams with social media in Orwellian plan to monitor & censor 'hate speech'

Alex Christoforou
The Duran
Sun, 05 Jun 2016 12:39 UTC
cia terrorism
The European Union, in partnership with YouTube, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, has published a "code of conduct" to fight the spread of "illegal hate speech" online.

Following the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks, the EU has taken it upon itself to begin cracking down on "hate speech". The technocrats in Brussels have already taken over the economic and political sovereignty of member states, the hijacking of free speech online was bound to happen. The terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe have provided the unelected in Brussels perfect cover.

In partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, the newly released EU "code of conduct" will fight "illegal hate speech" online in Europe. The arguments from those supporting the initiative is textbook smoke and mirrors...in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, a crackdown on "hate speech" is necessary to counter jihadist propaganda online.

Of course we will see definitions of what is "hate speech" take on various forms, all of which will be defined as any voice that strays from the EU narrative, as content that must be removed from the above popular online destinations.

Opponents to the "code of conduct" rightly argue that this is nothing more than an assault on free speech in Europe.
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Chess

Syrian Army joins the race to liberate Raqqa from ISIS


Sputnik
Sun, 05 Jun 2016 12:58 UTC
Syrian Arab Army
© Sputnik/ Mikhail Voskresenskiy
The Syrian Army launched on June 3 a large-scale offensive to liberate the city of Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the Daesh caliphate.

Retired Syrian Major General Sabet Muhammad told the Russian newspaper Izvestia that the operation started from the town of Isriya, in Hama province, nearly 140 km to the west from Raqqa.

"The operation was prepared for many days. Several thousands of troops were deployed to Isriya. The forces have several interim objectives, including the town of Al-Thawrah, a military airfield as well as the town of Resapha. These positions will be used for an assault on Raqqa," he said.

According to the general, after the army regains control over Raqqa the Daesh-controlled area will be split. Terrorists in Deir ez-Zor will be cut off from supply lines.

Comment: Further reading:
Assuming an — unlikely — scenario of Syrian Kurds managing somehow to conquer Raqqa, it's not hard to forecast the follow-up, whoever wins in November. Washington will make Raqqa its own satrapy and invest — once again — in Divide and Rule; creating a joint Kurd/Sunni Arab vassal state within Syria, along the Euphrates.

So those "advise-and-assist" boots on the ground are in fact the vanguard for a complex game plan — through which Washington, if successful, would be able to cut off that fiction much entertained by the petrodollar gang — the Shi'ite crescent — as well as weaken a fragmented Syria for the foreseeable future.

Pepe Escobar: The road to Raqqa is a ruse


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War Whore

Pepe Escobar: Obama's drone attack on Taliban leader Mullah Mansour about New Opium War, not crushing Taliban

Pepe Escobar
Strategic Culture Foundation
Tue, 31 May 2016 12:10 UTC
hellfire strike
So Taliban supremo Mullah Mansour's white Toyota Corolla was rattling across the Baluchestan desert just after it had crossed the Iranian border when a Hellfire missile fired from a US drone incinerated it into a charred / twisted wreck.

That's the official narrative. The Pentagon said Mansour was on Obama's kill list because he had become «an obstacle to peace and reconciliation».

There's way more to it, of course. Mansour was a savvy businessman who was extensively traveling to Dubai - the Taliban's historic clearing house where all sorts of dodgy deals are made. He was also in close connection with Jundullah - a.k.a. the hardcore Sunni anti-Tehran militia very much active in Sistan-Baluchestan province in Iran.

This time Mansour was in Sistan-Baluchestan on a medical visit - allegedly to eschew hospitals in Pakistan heavily monitored by the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]. Yet arguably Pakistan intel knew about it - so US intel also may have known about it and thus were able to track him.

But then there's the real ace in the hole: the New Opium War.
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Monkey Wrench

As Merkel weakens, EU sanctions unity against Russia cracks

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Fri, 03 Jun 2016 10:10 UTC
Merkel
As EU sanctions against Russia come up for renewal opposition against them builds both in Europe and Germany.

The details are extremely murky but with Merkel's position coming under increasing pressure and with growing dissatisfaction with the sanctions in France and southern Europe it is clear a battle of some kind over their pending renewal is underway.

The country at the centre - as always - is Germany. Here there are visible signs of a split.

Merkel herself stated publicly on Tuesday through her spokesman that she wants to see the sanctions renewed unaltered.

The fact Merkel felt obliged to make her stance public is itself a sign of conflict. On every previous occasion when the question of renewing the sanctions has come up she has maintained her preferred Sphinx-like stance of silence. She was able to do that previously because there was no pressure on her to change it. The fact that on this occasion she has been forced to go public shows that disagreement with her sanctions policy is growing and that she has therefore felt the need to go public to hold the line.

As to where the disagreement with the sanctions policy in Germany is coming from, the signs of that are everywhere.

Comment: Europe is in revolt against anti-Russia sanctions

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Light Sabers

Russia's advanced and deadly submarines are threatening NATO maritime dominance


RT
Sat, 04 Jun 2016 09:50 UTC
Severodvinsk (K-329)
© SputnikThe Russian nuclear-powered submarine Severodvinsk (K-329)
New, silent, and deadly Russian submarines are challenging NATO's maritime dominance, says a senior US admiral who calls the current situation a "Battle of the Atlantic," comparing it to the Cold War and the two World Wars.

"Once again, an effective, skilled, and technologically advanced Russian submarine force is challenging us," Vice Admiral James Foggo III, commander of the US 6th Fleet, wrote in the June issue of the US Naval Institute's magazine, Proceedings."Russian submarines are prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses, confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battlespace to give them an edge in any future conflict."

In the article, which was co-authored with naval analyst Alarik Fritz, Foggo argued that a "Fourth Battle of the Atlantic" is underway, comparing the present-day situation to Cold War tensions between NATO and the Soviet Union, as well as the Anglo-American battles with German submarines during the two World Wars.

Russia is "rapidly closing the technological gap" and the "clear advantage that we enjoyed in antisubmarine warfare during the Cold War is waning," wrote Foggo and Fritz, pointing to the Severodvinsk, a Russian Yasen-class attack submarine commissioned in December 2013, which so impressed the US admiral in charge of submarine construction that he commissioned a model for his office in 2014.
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Bad Guys

Brazilians revolt as Temer enacts pro-Empire agenda, eliminates 13 years of social programs


Sputnik
Fri, 03 Jun 2016 09:07 UTC
temer
© AP Photo/ Eraldo Peres
Michel Temer's interim government has moved rapidly to reverse 13 years of social programs advanced by the democratically elected Workers Party, despite increased turmoil in his beleaguered administration.

In two weeks, the highly-orchestrated rightwing impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, viewed by many Brazilians as a coup, has been beleaguered by a combination of incompetence by the Temer government and a series of leaked audio files implicating key cabinet ministers in their plotting of the "impeachment" as a means to derail a far-reaching corruption probe.

The façade of Michel Temer's legitimacy unraveled just days into his administration, when Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo released an audio recording and transcript of a conversation between the country's Planning Minister, Romero Juca, and oil executive Sergio Machado, discussing how to put Temer into office to "stop the bleeding" from the so-called Car Wash Investigation into petroleum giant Petrobras.

At the time, Juca also served as the president of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, the same political party of the chief participants in the impeachment, Temer, Senate leader Renan Calheiros, and disgraced former lower-house leader Eduardo Cunha. Juca stepped down from office immediately following the release of the news story.
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Chess

Best of the Web: Western lies malign Russia, but NATO's aggression is just fine

Robert Bridge
RT
Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:36 UTC
Russian Su-24
© Dmitriy Vinogradov / SputnikA Russian Su-24
With Washington undertaking the greatest military expansion in world history, oblivious to the global ramifications of its sheer arrogance and audacity, the time is ripe for Russia to make a symbolic gesture in America's backyard.

At the time of this writing, three US B-52 Stratofortress Bombers have just departed from a US airbase in North Dakota, en route to the Baltic States where they will participate in a NATO war game that goes by the cuddly codename 'Saber Strike'. This two-week gang bang will involve 10,000 troops from 13 NATO countries, as well as several coveted candidates for future membership, like Sweden and Finland.

If you think Russia is comfortable with these annual war dances, you're probably watching too much Western television.

But this reckless provocation on Russia's doorstep is just a little sampling of the US-led military adventures now happening across Eastern Europe, which are directly responsible for dragging bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington to their worst levels since maybe forever.

Last month, for example, President Putin commented on the US missile defense system that has just gone live in nearby Romania.

"At the moment the interceptor missiles... have a range of 500 kilometers, soon this will go up to 1,000 kilometers, and worse than that, they can be rearmed with 2,400 km-range offensive missiles... and it can be done by simply switching the software, so that even the Romanians themselves won't know," Putin told reporters during a two-day visit to Greece.
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Bomb

Update: Over 270 Syrian civilians killed, hundreds wounded in militants' shelling


Sputnik
Sat, 04 Jun 2016 22:11 UTC
Bombing in Homs
© REUTERS/ SANA/Handout via Reuters
More than 270 civilians were killed and hundreds more were injured by militants' bombings in Syrian cities, the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria reported.

More than 270 civilians were killed and hundreds more were injured by militant groups' shelling of Syrian cities, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

"As a result of the Syrian cities being shelled by terrorist groups, more than 270 civilians were killed, hundreds were injured," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on its website.
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Eye 2

Death squads: Pentagon investigation finds 2010 Afghan raid that killed pregnant women and ripped bullets out of their bodies was "appropriate use of force"

Jeremy Scahill
The Intercept
Wed, 01 Jun 2016 20:16 UTC
us troops
© Lucas Jackson / Reuters
An internal Defense Department investigation into one of the most notorious night raids conducted by special operations forces in Afghanistan — in which seven civilians were killed, including two pregnant women — determined that all the U.S. soldiers involved had followed the rules of engagement. As a result, the soldiers faced no disciplinary measures, according to hundreds of pages of Defense Department documents obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act. In the aftermath of the raid, Adm. William McRaven, at the time the commander of the elite Joint Special Operations Command, took responsibility for the operation. The documents made no unredacted mention of JSOC.

Although two children were shot during the raid and multiple witnesses and Afghan investigators alleged that U.S. soldiers dug bullets out of the body of at least one of the dead pregnant women, Defense Department investigators concluded that "the amount of force utilized was necessary, proportional and applied at appropriate time." The investigation did acknowledge that "tactical mistakes" were made.

The Defense Department's conclusions bear a resemblance to U.S. Central Command's findings in the aftermath of the horrifying attack on a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, last October in which 42 patients and medical workers were killed in a sustained barrage of strikes by an AC-130. The Pentagon has announced that no criminal charges will be brought against any members of the military for the Kunduz strike. CENTCOM's Kunduz investigation concluded that "the incident resulted from a combination of unintentional human errors, process errors, and equipment failures." CENTCOM denied the attack constituted a war crime, a claim challenged by international law experts and MSF.
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Black Cat

Is Poland responsible for the resurgence of neo-Nazism in Ukraine?

Vladislav Gulevich
International Affairs
Sat, 04 Jun 2016 19:55 UTC
poland ukraine
The events in Ukraine have shown very distinctly the extent of fascism in Ukrainian society. The revival of neo-Nazi tendencies in the form of ultra-Ukrainian nationalism began on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

Anticipating a quick path to independence, the patriotic Ukrainian intelligentsia and the bureaucracy pulled from the dust of the past long forgotten legends and half truths of an arduous nationalist past. New political parties were established along with public organizations with nationalist views. All that was considered unacceptable until the 1980's, is now declared to be the only true manifestation of patriotism.

The social and political changes in Ukraine have been noticed in Eastern European capitals, especially in Warsaw. Since the late 1980s, Poland recognized that Ukraine had gained its sovereignty, which it considered to be a main condition for the consolidation of its own security. Since then it has supported the nationalist tendencies in this country, knowing that only a Russophobe Ukraine would be able to play the role of a buffer between Europe and Russia.

It was in the interests of Poland to inflate the level of Russophobia in Ukraine to the maximum level, and to achieve this, the only way was to bet on the Ukrainian nationalists. The Polish authorities were loyal to the alarming processes initiated by Ukrainian politicians: the glorification of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the revival of the of the Bandera and Shukhevych cults, and a playful attitude to the phenomenon of the Ukrainian Collaboration during World War II in the face of the SS "Galicia" Division or the "Nachtigall" special forces.
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