Puppet MastersS


Attention

Lavrov: Turkey's statements on Karabakh are calls for war


ITAR-TASS
Fri, 22 Apr 2016 16:33 UTC
Nagorno-Karabakh soldier
© Vahan Stepanyan, PAN Photo via AP
The Turkish authorities' statements on Nagorno-Karabakh are unacceptable as these are calls for war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after talks with his Armenian counterpart Eduard Nalbandyan on Friday.

"The statements of the Turkish leadership are absolutely unacceptable. These were the calls not for peace but for war," Lavrov stressed. "These were calls to resolve the conflict by military means," he said, adding that this absolutely contradicts the position of the co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group.

"Unfortunately, we have got accustomed to such 'twists' of the current Turkish leadership," he said.

Earlier Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized the work of the Minsk Group (Russia, France and the US) on Nagorno-Karabakh, accusing it of "inaction."
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Bomb

Russian sappers find large ISIS munitions depots in Palmyra holding 12,000 explosive objects


ITAR-TASS
Fri, 22 Apr 2016 16:22 UTC
Palmyra
© Konstantin Leifer/TASS
Russia's mine pickers involved in demining of Syria's Palmyra found and destroyed one of Islamic State's biggest weapons depots holding more than 12,000 explosive devices, including mines and shells, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Friday.

"The depot was well disguised. It was spotted thanks to the use of special equipment brought by Russian field engineers to Syria. Russian sappers retrieved from the depot more than 12,000 explosive objects, including large-caliber mines for mortars, artillery shells, as well as anti-tank and anti-infantry mines," he said.

"It was one of the biggest munitions depots used by Islamic State militants to organize terror attacks not only in the province of Homs but also in other Syrian provinces," Konashenkov noted.
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Gold Bar

Pimco's economist has a stunning proposal to save the economy: The Fed should buy gold

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Fri, 22 Apr 2016 15:57 UTC
Cartoon of Ben Bernanke
Back in December 2014, just before the ECB officially launched its initial phase of QE in which it would monetize government bonds, Mario Draghi was asked a very direct question: what types of assets could the ECB buy as part of its quantitative easing program. He responded, "we discussed all assets but gold."

The reason for his tongue in cheek response was because over the prior few weeks speculation had arisen that gold could be part of the central bank's asset purchases after Yves Mersch, a member of the ECB executive board and former Governor of the Central Bank of Luxembourg, said on November 17 that "theoretically the ECB could purchase other assets such as gold, shares, ETFs to fulfill its promise of adopting further unconventional measures to counter a longer period of low inflation."

Mario Draghi promptly shot down that idea.

But according to a provocative paper released by none other than Pimco's strategist Harley Bassman, Yves Mersch's inadvertent peek into what central bankers are thinking, may have been on to something.
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Magnify

Truth, the first casualty of war: Untangling Western media lies about Azerbaijan's attack against Nagorno-Karabakh

Jirair Tutunjian
Countercurrents
Tue, 19 Apr 2016 00:00 UTC
"A foreign correspondent is someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it." —Tom Stoppard, Night and Day
Ilham Aliyev
© EPAMafia State: US-UK-Israel puppet President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev runs a 'mafia state' in which journalists who go against the regime are jailed or blackmailed, just like in 'Big Brother' Turkey.
The Crimean War, in mid-19th century, introduced the world to the cardigan, the raglan jersey, and the balaclava headdress. It also introduced a new profession: the foreign correspondent. And almost immediately after the war the axiom "truth is the first casualty of war" was born because of the falsehoods spread by foreign correspondents on both sides, not to mention Tennyson's overheated and wrong-headed poem.

Since then, as in any other profession, there have been capable and honest foreign correspondents and reporters who have been incompetent, ignorant or propaganda tools of their nation or their employers. Ernest Hemingway, a giant of American literature, didn't hesitate to color his coverage of the Spanish Civil War with propaganda for the side he favoured. A British daily reported that the Americans had been victorious at Pearl Harbor. Countless American foreign correspondents beat the Pentagon drum during the Vietnam War. More recently, "embedded" American journalists reported how the US forces had "liberated" Iraq.

Foreign correspondents can be notoriously uninformed and cavalier about the countries they report on: for example, Middle East foreign correspondents of Western media who speak Arabic are as rare as atheists in Mecca. Most Western correspondents thus depend on local "minders" and a dubious local media to report what's happening. The situation has worsened in recent years as Western media have closed news bureaus around the globe and lone correspondents cover whole continents. This has given rise to the "airport reporter"... the journalist who flies in to a hot spot for a few days and covers complicated conflicts with a few hundred words then flies away to chase another conflict.

Comment: Partisan journalism, intentionally or unintentionally, obscures truth and bends the opinions and understanding of vast populations dependent upon 'the news'. We should all do our homework and identify the biases. In reality, the truth has been sacrificed long before the war begins.

As regards the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, Sott.net fully supports the Armenians against the Western-backed regime of 'Turkey Junior', or 'the Republic of BP', as investigative reporter re-named the pathocracy-friendly Turkic statelet on the Caspian.

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Calendar

Gorbachev: Putin & Obama should meet, cooperate over Ukraine


RT
Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:05 UTC
Gorbachev
© Ramil Sitdikov / SputnikFormer Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
Ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has described the Ukrainian crisis as "an abscess that sends fever through Europe and the whole world" and has called for an urgent meeting between the Russian and American presidents to secure a peaceful settlement to the issue.

In an interview with the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily, Gorbachev noted that despite the fact that politicians belonging to his generation had managed to end the Cold War and the global confrontation between capitalist and socialist systems, the world remained unjust, militarized and violent. He reiterated the point that the blame for this lies with Western nations that hurried to celebrate their victory and paid little attention to cooperation with Russia on global security issues. Gorbachev added that the new global world required completely new rules of behavior and morals, and that these should be developed by all nations together.

The first and only Soviet president also pointed out that the sides that gained the most from globalization so far were shady financial structures that lived off artificial crises they organized all over the world, as well as organized criminal groups of global proportions.
"Financial structures reporting to no one were the fastest to adjust to globalization and make profits from it. They are inflating one market bubble after another and make billions literally from thin air. And these billions fall into the pockets of the circle of people that becomes narrower and narrower and these people dodge taxes. In recent days we saw new examples proving this and these examples were just the tip of the iceberg," Gorbachev told the paper, apparently hinting at the leaks that revealed the offshore operations of the Panama company Mossack Fonseca.

"And we have not yet mentioned the organized crime structures that are feeling quite comfortable in the globalized environment. These are illegal traders in weapons and drugs, human traffickers, cyber-criminals and of course terrorists," he noted.

Comment: It will be difficult to reconcile the differences in agendas between Russia and the US when it comes to the crisis in Ukraine. The US has a huge investment in its persuadable facade of a liberating revolution, masking its intent to create Western proximity and military advantage regarding Russia. Both countries see cross threats and are unlikely to become hugging buddies at the end of the day, but "communication with an intent to solve" would certainly be a step forward and one worth taking.

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Airplane

Saudis bankroll Brit MP visits, while bombing Yemen with British artillery


RT
Thu, 21 Apr 2016 11:39 UTC
Saudi Brits plane
© Dylan Martinez / ReutersThe Saudi "fact but don't find" junkets, first-class persuasion.
Saudi Arabia has paid for 11 Conservative MPs to visit the oil-rich kingdom on 'parliamentary fact-finding' missions in the last several months, while continuing to wage its deadly airstrike campaign against Yemen, it has emerged. According to the latest version of parliament's register of interests, 11 MPs have declared "parliamentary fact-finding" visits paid for by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Independent reports.

The MPs visited in two groups, the first in mid-February and the second in early April. Each trip, which included hotels and flights, cost between £1,500 and £3,700 (about US$2,150-5,320), according to the MPs' register of interests, where parliamentarians are required to report any gifts or donations. Among the MPs who reported the April trip were Edward Argar, Sir Alan Duncan, Sir Edward Garnier, David Jones, Kwasi Kwarteng and Helen Whately. Rehman Chisti, David Mackintosh, Mark Pawsey, Royston Smith and Martin Vickers visited the kingdom in February.

The visits come amid rising international pressure on the UK to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, whose bombing campaign in Yemen has killed 6,400 and displaced hundreds of thousands more. In March a leaked report by a UN panel condemned "widespread and systematic" violence against civilians by Riyadh. The UN secretary-general, Save the Children, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the British Labour Party have all called on the UK government to halt its arms sales to the Gulf kingdom.

Yet figures compiled by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) earlier this week show that since Riyadh began its bombing campaign last March, the British government approved 122 military licenses for weapons and military hardware worth nearly £3 billion. Even the Home Office and the Foreign Office appear to be at odds about Riyadh's conduct in Yemen.

Comment: You can't have it both ways. Either Saudi Arabia is in violation of human rights and international law or it isn't. Calling them out on this infraction while, wink wink, selling them arms to kill people is only a half-step away from being equally complicit. The UK, and other suppliers, are making big bucks on weapons sales to a country that is slaughtering civilians in a war against factions over a couple of deposed presidents. Go figure.

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Quenelle

Tsipras: Greece will not tolerate Erdogan's violation of the country's sovereignty


Sputnik
Fri, 22 Apr 2016 12:12 UTC
Alexis Tsipras
© Reuters / Yves Herman
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said that Athens would continue its joint efforts with other NATO states to improve the alliance's capabilities over the whole operational area in the Aegean Sea.

Athens will not tolerate the actions of Ankara violating the country's sovereignty in the Aegean Sea, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Friday.

NATO ships have been deployed to the Aegean Sea for months to monitor migrant flows between Turkey and Greece. Athens claims that Ankara refuses to allow NATO ships to enter the maritime zone near some of the Greek islands, as Turkey considers them as its own territory.

Comment: While Tsipras has the right attitude, it's Merkel and other EU technocrats who opened the door to the 'Erdogangster' in the first place.

Also see: The EU-Turkey Refugee Deal & Other Strange Tales

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Smiley

Ukraine's attempt to join the 'New Silk Road' ends in abject failure


Sputnik
Fri, 22 Apr 2016 11:56 UTC
Ukraine train new silk road railroad
© AP Photo/ Sergei Poliakov
Ukraine's experimental new transit route, which had been designed to bypass Russia via the so-called New Silk Road project, has proven a failure. Ukrainian Railways has announced that the train has returned home empty.

In mid-January, Ukraine launched a cargo train from its southwestern Black Sea port of Illichivsk to China via the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, making its way from the Black Sea to Georgia, and then on to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, thus joining the Chinese-led Silk Road initiative.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the pilot project was stuck at the Kazakh-Chinese border due to a lack of prospective clients ready to fill it with cargo. The train had originally been scheduled to return to Ukraine at the end of March at the latest.

Comment: This is what Ukrainian leaders and their Western technocratic mentors offer to their people - a long series of ridiculous, 'anti-Russian' pipe dreams. And it only gets worse.

Further reading:

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Megaphone

Chief Syrian diplomat: Terrorists coming to Syria with the consent and support of European intelligence agencies


RT
Wed, 20 Apr 2016 01:36 UTC
syrian streets
© Ahmed Jadallah / Reuters
Jihadists are coming to Syria with the consent and support of the intelligence services of European states, Syria's ambassador to the UN and chief negotiator at the Geneva peace talks, Dr. Bashar Ja'afari, told Euronews.

Europe facilitates the passage of terrorists with EU citizenship to Syria and Iraq, the Syrian diplomat insists, stressing that"governments are responsible for every terrorist who comes from Europe."

"Today we have a new phenomenon called European terrorism. They claimed before that there was Arab and Islamic terrorism. Today we are victims of European terrorism, emanating from Brussels, Paris, London, Spain, Germany, Italy..."Ja'afari told Euronews.

"It's hard to believe that a terrorist who leaves Paris, London, Brussels, or Boston, or Australia and arrives in Syria without a visa, without a passport, through dozens of states and the Turkish-Syrian or Jordanian-Syrian border, has done so without intelligence services overseeing these operations," Ja'afari said.
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Dollars

Hypocrisy: Hillary denounces Panama's 'outrageous tax havens', yet many named in documents are Clinton donors


RT
Thu, 21 Apr 2016 22:04 UTC
Hillary Clinton
© Yuri Gripas / Reuters Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
Names in the Panama Papers link Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, fresh off a big win in New York, and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, to those who use offshore tax shelters.

Though the former secretary of state was quick to denounce the Panama Papers revelations, describing them as "outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting,"some of those found in the 11.5 million documents have connections with the Clintons dating back four decades.

A new report by McClatchy, one of more than 100 journalism outlets with access to the leaked documents, reveals a number of Clinton donors and associates used Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, "global provider for legal and trust services," for their offshore accounting.
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