Puppet MastersS


Bomb

Security forces nab ISIS-linked militants, tons of explosives seized in southern Russia


RT
Thu, 17 Mar 2016 13:45 UTC
arrest
© www.rt.comSecurity forces arrest ISIS-linked militants, confiscate explosives.
Three Islamic State-affiliated extremists who were plotting attacks in Russia have been arrested in southern republic of Dagestan, officials said, adding that police seized over 1 ton of explosives and 5 kg of TNT in homemade bombs.The fighters were detained in the village of Mutsalaul, 72 km from the republic's capital, Makhachkala.

All of them "agreed to testify and disclosed the location of a cache in an abandoned home on the outskirts of the village" in Dagestan, said the National Anti-terrorist Committee (NAC) in a statement.

In the cache police found four homemade bombs with their explosion yield amounting to 5kg in TNT equivalent and about 1 ton of explosives. The bombs were made of steel pipes stuffed with shrapnel. The specialists are currently disposing the explosives, the committee said. "According to evidence available to the NAC, the extremist group, linked to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), was planning to use homemade bombs in terrorist attacks," the committee said.

Earlier in March a Russian terrorist group which pledged allegiance to IS has issued a video call to arms to millions of Muslims in Russia, urging them to carry out attacks against the population and government. The militants called themselves 'warriors' of the group's global leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: The Syrian war in review: A look back at the US-NATO-Israeli sponsored "protest movement" and war of terror

Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
Wed, 16 Mar 2016 19:40 UTC
Syria protests
© Washington PostProtests and preparations as Western powers stand on the brink of attacking Syria
The war on Syria started five years ago in Daraa on the 17th of March 2011. The following article first published in May 2011 examines the inception of the jihadist terrorist insurgency. It recounts the events of March 17-18, 2011 in Daraa, a small border town with Jordan.

Media reports have finally acknowledged that the so-called "protest movement" in Syria was instigated by Washington. This was known and documented from the very inception of the Syrian crisis in March 2011. It was not a protest movement, it was an armed insurgency integrated by US-Israeli and allied supported "jihadist" death squads.

From Day One, the Islamist "freedom fighters" were supported, trained and equipped by NATO and Turkey's High Command. According to Israeli intelligence sources (Debka, August14, 2011):
NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime's crackdown on dissent. ... NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)
This initiative, which was also supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, involved a process of organized recruitment of thousands of jihadist "freedom fighters", reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA's jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:
Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)
These mercenaries were subsequently integrated into US and allied sponsored terrorist organizations including Al Nusrah and ISIS.

Comment: The covert war of terror waged by the United States et. al in Syria was being exposed right from the start five years ago. It had all the signs and footprints of being setup to become a collapsed state shattered through the Western use of terrorist mercenaries. The same tactics were being used during the same time in Libya, and we can see the deplorable outcome.

Enchanted by their propagandist media outlets, the American public didn't take notice of what was really happening in Syria. Russia stepped in to intervene and the so called press barely covered the incredible feats being accomplished. Russia made significant in-roads in destroying terror cells and infrastructure, and now it is ready to pull out the majority of their forces. And while this is still hardly a blip on the radar for the American people, Syria now has a chance at survival.

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Alarm Clock

Hillary's 'no card, no care' act may become reality

Gary
TruthKings
Wed, 16 Mar 2016 21:39 UTC
hillary
© Unknown
As of last night, Hillary Clinton is all but a lock to become the Democratic Presidential Nominee. Her nomination is hugely important because most odds favor Hillary as beating potential GOP Nominee, Donald Trump, in a head to head battle. Hillary Clinton sits poised to make a lot of critical decisions on behalf of the people of the United States. And that's not likely a good thing at all.

Hillary has in the past pushed for a "no card, no care" National Patient ID system. The idea fell flat, not gaining support and seemingly vanishing. Ron Paul was critical in dismantling the idea. That is until now. States could deploy a similar legislation known as REAL ID. This is dangerous territory because it puts at risk the medical information of all Americans. As it stands, you have a right to have your medical information as private. That could all change. REAL ID had been around since 2005 as a reaction to 9-11 when the Government quickly moved in with all types of ideas which infringed on our privacy. From the Department of Homeland Security website. "The Act established minimum security standards for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards and prohibits Federal agencies from accepting for official purposes licenses and identification cards from states that do not meet these standards. States have made considerable progress in meeting this vital recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and every state has a more secure driver's license today than before the passage of the Act."
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Snakes in Suits

What about Benghazi? Clinton says US 'didn't lose a single person' in Libya


RT
Tue, 15 Mar 2016 20:48 UTC
Hillary Clinton
© Reuters / David Becker
US Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton appeared to overlook the killing of four US citizens during an attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi when insisting Monday that "we did not lose a single person in Libya".

Clinton was US Secretary of State at the time of the Libyan intervention and the attack on the Benghazi site.

On the night of September 11, 2012, Islamic militants attacked the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other US citizens. It emerged that the compound had inadequate security in place, and staff had raised concerns about the issue prior to the attack.

It was the first time since the murder of the then-US Ambassador to Afghanistan in 1979 that a US ambassador was killed in the line of duty. The Benghazi killings sparked an FBI investigation and a Congressional inquiry at which Clinton claimed responsibility for the tragedy.

Comment: Did the Benghazi incident somehow slip her mind, or did she purposely overlook that minor detail to make herself and America look better? Did she also forget about the current state of Libya when she said it resembled a 'functioning state', or did she intentionally overlook that fact, as well as many others regarding Libya in order to look good?

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Red Flag

Venezuela may run out of electricity, will shut down for a week, El Nino blamed

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Thu, 17 Mar 2016 21:09 UTC
President Nicolas Maduro
When last we checked in on our favorite socialist paradise, Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro's opponents "had gone crazy."

Or at least that's how Maduro described the situation in a "thundering" speech to supporters at what he called an "anti-imperialist" rally in Caracas last Sunday.

Meanwhile, thousands of demonstrators held counter-rallies calling for the President's ouster. Maduro angered the opposition - which dealt Hugo Chavez's leftist movement its worst defeat at the ballot box in history in December - last month when he used a stacked Supreme Court to give himself emergency powers he says will help him deal with the country's worsening economic crisis.

"Now that the economic emergency decree has validity, in the next few days I will activate a series of measures I had been working on," he said, following Congress's declaration of a "food emergency."
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Chess

West failed to take into account Assad's Iranian backers as the Western-backed war developed

Robert Fisk
The Independent
Sun, 13 Mar 2016 16:03 UTC
damascus residents
© Getty / Valery SharifulinResidents of Damascus taking advantage of the ceasefire between the Syrian army and rebels

Comment: What Fisk attempts to say in this article, between the lines of course, is that there is not now, and never was, any significant indigenous Syrian rebel army. The actual Syrian state army was fully representative of the majority of Syrians and supported by the majority of Syrians. So who, then, has been attacking the Syrian army and civilians and attempting to overthrow the Syrian government since 2011? "ISIS" the "FSA", "al-Qaeda" "al-Nusra". All of these are monikers for foreign mercenaries trained, armed, paid and shipped into Syria by Western government agents for the express purpose of a completely undemocratic 'regime change' against the will of the majority of the Syrian population. This is a tactic that has been used for almost 100 years by the anglo-American empire builders, in many different countries around the world.


Just before I left Syria last month, a tall and eloquent Franco-Lebanese man walked up to me in a Damascus coffee shop and introduced himself as President Bashar al-Assad's architect. It was his task, he led me to understand, to design the reconstructed cities of Syria.

Who would have believed it? Five years after the start of Syria's tragedy - and within six months of this, remember, the regime itself trembled and the Western powers, flush with dangerous pride after destroying Gaddafi, predicted the imminent fall of the Assad dynasty - the Syrian government is preparing to rebuild its towns and cities.

It's worth taking that embarrassing trip down memory lane to the early spring and summer of 2011. The US and French ambassadors visited Homs to sit amid tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators calling for the overthrow of the Assad government. EU diplomats were telling the political opposition not to negotiate with Assad - a fatal mistake, since the advice was based on the false assumption that he was about to be overthrown - and journalists were gathering with rebels in eastern Aleppo for the inevitable march of liberation on Damascus.

The Assad regime, came the message from the Washington think-tanks and mountebank "experts", had reached - a cliché we should all beware of - the "tipping point". La Clinton announced that Assad "had to go". French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared that Assad "did not deserve to live on this planet" - although he failed to name the galaxy to which the Syrian President might retire. And I complied with an Independent request to write Assad's obituary - for future use, you understand - and still it moulders in the paper's archives.
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Eagle

Trump campaign volunteers must sign contract stipulating they will not say anything bad about him - ever

Claire Bernish
Antimedia
Wed, 16 Mar 2016 20:08 UTC
trump pledge
© Bloomberg PoliticsSupporters of Donald Trump pledge to vote for him during a rally in Orlando, Florida on March 5, 2016
If, for unknown reasons, you feel the urge to volunteer for Donald Trump's campaign, be certain you're prepared to make a lifetime commitment never to insult or disparage him, his family, his businesses, products — and, of course, his campaign.

Yes, seriously.

After reports circulated last week of a non-disclosure agreement required of volunteers for the candidate's phone bank located in Trump Tower in Manhattan, the Daily Dot finally managed to procure a copy on Monday. Its contents — though not shocking, considering Trump's litany of complaints against the media — reveal telling control issues, if not outright paranoia.

According to the Daily Dot:
"In addition to forbidding volunteers from disparaging Trump, the contract also includes a sentence that demands volunteers prevent their employees from criticizing Trump, thus making volunteers responsible for the free speech of others for an indeterminate amount of time."
Again. Yes, seriously. These far-beyond-Orwellian strictures found their way into contracts for unpaid volunteers. Now, imagine what fun a Trump presidency might entail.

"I guess he doesn't know about the First Amendment," New York City employment lawyer, Davida Perry, told the Daily Dot. "This is really shocking."
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Bullseye

Modern warfare just changed forever — laser weapons are ready for use

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Thu, 17 Mar 2016 20:20 UTC
laser weapons
© Lockheed Martin
Washington D.C. — As if autonomous drones launching Hellfire missiles at targets acquired through the collection of metadata weren't horrifying enough, the US military now has its own death rays — no kidding.

Since the days of Nikola Tesla, and his plans of a death ray, the up and coming military industrial complex has salivated over the idea of direct energy weapons. For pennies, the US could lay waste to their enemies instead of using highly expensive missile systems. However, this technology and the resources to build it remained elusive — until now.

Directed energy weapons (DEWs) are systems that emit energy without the means of a projectile, and can use visible light, infra-red or microwave radiation, with lethal effects.

The weapons are said to be particularly useful for targeting large numbers of targets with high precision, and some estimates put the cost of each shot of directed energy at just $1.

"The technologies now exist," said Paul Shattuck, company director for Directed Energy Systems. "They can be packaged into a size, weight, power and thermal which can be fit onto relevant tactical platforms, whether it's a ship, whether it's a ground vehicle or whether it's an airborne platform.

"So everything exists today," he said, "it's just a question of the desire and when is that going to occur."

Comment: Perhaps it is time to bring on the comets.....

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Question

Turkey and Ukraine: Shared grievances and problems are creating a 'misfits alliance'

Martin Berger
New Eastern Outlook
Thu, 17 Mar 2016 19:57 UTC
Erdogan Poroschenko
The residents of Turkey and Ukraine, while facing a dramatically growing number of both domestic and foreign policy challenges have decided to create an "alliance of misfits." The rapidly deteriorating economic situation and an ever increasing danger of civil war in both of these states has brought their officials to the conclusion that they should exploit the fact that these two states lie on a route between the East and West, at the crossroads of geopolitical interests of several great powers.

In March 2015, Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan visited Kiev on an official visit, this step was later followed by the official visit of the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Ukraine in February 2016. Just a month later, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko made a trip to Turkey. The exchange of visits of high level officials, according to the official rhetoric of Kiev and Ankara, is aimed at bringing their bilateral relations "to a new strategical level."

On the eve of Poroshenko's visit, Turkish and Ukrainian maritime forces held a joint exercise in the Sea of Marmara. It is therefore not surprising that particular stress in this new bilateral partnership has been placed on military cooperation, along with the development of bilateral trade and economic relations, which should lead to the revival of a free trade zone between Ukraine and Turkey, that was brought to a screeching halt back in 2013.
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Chess

Interpreting the withdrawal from Syria, Putin's dual realism

Alexandr Bovdunov
Fort Russ
Thu, 17 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
Russ withdrawal
© www.india.comCrossing their 'Ts': Task, Troops, Trounce, Talk, Truce, Terminate
On the evening of March 14th, at a special meeting in the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Syria. The president said that the Russian troops had completed all their tasks, and the withdrawal should "encourage the peace process." Why is Russia now trying to get out of Syria, and that will it do next?

American Victory?

Recall that last month the United States and Russia reached agreement on a cease-fire in Syria, which entered into force two weeks ago. The truce is a result of several months of negotiations that the United States and Russia were engaged in. The US blackmailed Russia with the possibility of a military confrontation with one of their allies (Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia). In the event of a conflict the Americans were ready to side with the Turks and the Saudis. These countries repeatedly made unambiguous hints about the possibility of an invasion of Syria. The objective of the Americans was to apply direct pressure, using threats, to stop the successful offensive of Syrian troops in the north of the country, with the support of the Russian Air Force. Over time they would block the weapons supply lines to the militants from Turkey.

As a result, the offensive was stopped even as operations in Aleppo were in progress. With the city not having been liberated, the Americans succeeded. Fighting has ceased, despite some exchanges of fire. Formally, the withdrawal of Russian troops could be considered an even bigger prize for the Americans. However the restrained reaction of the American leadership shows that this is not so evident.

Comment: The withdrawal of Russia from Syria announcement took most everyone by surprise. The Russian balance of ideologies is something the West hasn't a fog of an idea how to employ or utilize to its advantage, compounded by its greedy need to destroy, divide and conquer. This is one-dimensional thinking compared to Russian blending, mastery and application of its global and peripheral realism strategies. While they are both self-serving methodologies, there is quite a difference in how the world is perceived and how events are thereby directed and unfolded and, ultimately, what is accomplished to the good or detriment of humanity.

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