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Health

NATO bets on 'strong defense, deterrence & dialogue' with Russia - Stoltenberg

NATO meeting
© NATO
NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg sees no contradiction between the biggest increase in the alliance's military presence near Russia's borders since the end of the Cold War and its alleged intention to continue political dialogue with Moscow.

"We have to combine the idea of strength, deterrence, defense and dialogue. For me, there is no contradiction between strong defense and a political dialogue," Stoltenberg said during a roundtable in Passau, Bavaria, where he was joined by European Council President Donald Tusk and European Parliament President Martin Schulz. "It is very important at the same time to avoid a new Cold War. We do not want a new arms race."

Stoltenberg said he was not unduly alarmed by Russia's recent re-deployment of potentially nuclear-tipped Iskander missiles to its westernmost exclave, Kaliningrad.

Cult

Unbelievable! British UN Envoy accuses Russia of 'killing moderate, peaceful' rebels in Syria

Sputnik/Mikhail Alayeddin
© Sputnik/Mikhail Alayeddin
The statement made by the British Envoy to the United Nations on Saturday came less than 48 hours after the "moderate" and "peaceful" rebels signed an agreement to start fighting alongside a Daesh (ISIS) offshoot Jund al-Aqsa in addition to al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front.

The British Ambassador to the United Nations delivered a blistering speech during Saturday's Security Council meeting condemning Russian airstrikes in Aleppo saying that Moscow's claims to wanting a lasting peace in Syria were a sham before walking out of the meeting.

Matthew Rycroft's grandstanding act, modeled after US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power's orchestrated walk-out one week earlier, shows the growing divide between Russia and Western powers on the appropriate manner and method to deal with the crisis in Syria that has left over 400,000 dead since the war began.

Comment: Another British lawmaker, Conservative Andrew Mitchell, one-upped Rycroft's delusions:
"When it comes to incendiary weapons and munitions such as bunker-buster bombs and cluster bombs, the U.N. makes it clear that the systematic use of such indiscriminate weapons in densely populated areas amounts to a war crime," Mitchell told parliament late on Monday.

"We are witnessing events that match the behavior of the Nazi regime in Guernica in Spain," he said referring to the destruction of the Spanish town in 1937 by German aircraft from Adolf Hitler's Luftwaffe. The bombing of the historic city became the subject of a famous painting by artist Pablo Picasso.
What's the point even responding to this nonsense? Not much. Thus Peskov's response:
"Who's this politician?" Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov asked reporters when told about Mitchell's comment. "Unfortunately I don't know him, who is he? I would not comment in any way. To my shame, I don't know him."
A much better fit to Guernica: SOTT Exclusive: Funeral massacre in Yemen: Houthis blame U.S., mobilize to original Islamic State Saudi Arabia's border - UPDATE

And ex-general Richard Shirreff is calling for British boots on the ground to train and fight with the rebels al-Qaeda. You may recall Shirreff from this story: SOTT Exclusive: Ex-NATO general writes fiction about Russian nuclear threat, tries to pretend he's serious. Needless to say, he's got a few screws loose.


Alarm Clock

Scandal management: Pentagon spends most of US gov't PR budget

David B. Gleason/Wikipedia
© David B. Gleason/Wikipedia
By far the greatest share of the US government's public relations budget - more than all the other agencies combined - is spent by the military, an audit has revealed. While that has helped the Pentagon pitch fancy weapons, it hasn't managed to make them work.

The Department of Defense employs 40 percent of the government's public relations workforce and accounts for almost 63 percent of all public relations spending between 2006 and 2015, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO report on government PR spending, released last week, showed a $1 billion annual outlay on various forms of public relations, with 5,000 government employees working in PR for a combined annual salary of $475 million in 2015. By comparison, the entire Department of Education has 4,500 employees.


Comment: At least they have jobs...


Bell

Terrorism & cyberattacks on nuclear plants 'not an imaginary risk' - IAEA chief

Pylons stand in front of the cooling towers of the Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power station in northern Bavaria
© Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
The risk of a terrorist attack against a nuclear power plant or militants eventually making a "dirty bomb" must be taken very seriously, the head of the UN's atomic watchdog has warned, noting a growing threat of cyberattacks which have caused "disruptions" in the past.

Snakes in Suits

Arch neocon and president of the 'National Endowment for Democracy' Carl Gershman comes out and calls for US to oust Putin

Carl Gershman
Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy and arch-neocon
A prominent neocon paymaster, whose outfit dispenses $100 million in U.S. taxpayers' money each year, has called on America to "summon the will" to remove Russian President Putin from office, reports Robert Parry.

The neoconservative president of the U.S.-taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy [NED] has called for the U.S. government to "summon the will" to engineer the overthrow of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the 10-year-old murder case of a Russian journalist should be the inspiration.

Carl Gershman, who has headed NED since its founding in 1983, doesn't cite any evidence that Putin was responsible for the death of Anna Politkovskaya but uses a full column in The Washington Post on Friday to create that impression, calling her death "a window to Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin autocrat whom Americans are looking at for the first time."

Gershman wraps up his article by writing: "Politkovskaya saw the danger [of Putin], but she and other liberals in Russia were not strong enough to stop it. The United States has the power to contain and defeat this danger. The issue is whether we can summon the will to do so. Remembering Politkovskaya can help us rise to this challenge."

Attention

SOTT Exclusive: Funeral massacre in Yemen: Houthis blame U.S., mobilize to original Islamic State Saudi Arabia's border - UPDATE

al-houthi
© PressTVAbdul Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, addresses the nation during a televised speech on October 9, 2016.
When Russia and Syria bomb al-Qaeda, the U.S. regime accuses them of war crimes and threatens to launch investigations. When Saudi Arabia deliberately targets hospitals and schools in Yemen - and when the Saudis recently targeted a funeral, killing, over 150 civilians and injuring over 500 more - U.S. officials see "little choice" but to continue supporting the Saudi regime. It's only a war crime when "we" allege that Russia does it. When "we" or our allies actually do it, it's okay. No wonder tens of thousands of Yemenis recently protested at the UN office in Sanaa.

The leader of the Houthis in Yemen, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, has publicly blamed the U.S. for the funeral massacre, calling the American regime "the first and foremost party responsible for the carnage," and noting that Washington and Riyadh's are accustomed to committing mass murder.
Those killing Yemenis are morally bankrupt, which has driven them to perpetrate any sort of crime. The Saudis are killing Yemenis by means of US weapons and military aircraft. They strike where Americans pinpoint and allow ... Saudis have a black criminal record of killing innocent people. They have a cruel and evil nature, and do not respect the independence of other countries. The Saudi king (Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud) would not have dared to attack Yemen if it had been without US consent.
He called on Yemenis to continue their resistance against the Saudi regime's attacks, and to carry out attacks in return.

Bad Guys

CNN forgets to turn off mic, records reporter telling debate focus group what to say

Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton appear together during their presidential town hall debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., October 9, 2016.
© Mike Segar/ReutersRepublican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton appear together during their presidential town hall debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., October 9, 2016.
Make no mistake about it, Hillary Clinton and her elite backers control the mainstream media narrative. However, the illusion of an unbiased press is quickly falling apart as multiple leaked emails, and now, a video from last night's debate on CNN shows.

During a brief clip, which has now been posted to YouTube, CNN forgot to kill reporter Pamela Brown's mic when they cut away. As the camera cuts back to the allegedly 'unbiased' debate focus group, Brown can be heard speaking to the group under her breath.

"America is great, because we're good," Brown whispers to the group in an obvious attempt to coach their answers.

Once Brown realizes she is back on air, she quickly asks a participant in the focus group what anti-Trump argument from Clinton impressed her most. Having just been told what to say by Brown, the participant quickly regurgitated her canned response, adding her own adaptation for good measure.

"She stated that America is already great, and I tend to agree with that," the panel member says. "Though we are slow in progressing in a number of ways, we are progressing and we need to continue the momentum."

As the Daily Caller notes, "this brief exchange is being interpreted by many as proof CNN was coaching focus group members about what to say on the air. Within just a few hours of being uploaded, the video collected nearly 150,000 views. There are other possible explanations, though; Brown may have been informing focus group members about what clip CNN had just aired (since they couldn't see the replay themselves), or Brown could have been setting up a semi-staged response after previously finding out what the focus group member wanted to say."


Bad Guys

No 'moderate rebels': Daesh affiliate merges with Al-Nusra Front, US-backed rebels - UPDATE

Al-Nusra Front  militants
© AFP 2016/ RAMI AL-SAYEDAl Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria 'crippled' by Trump's election victory
Daesh (ISIS) offshoot Jund al-Aqsa paid allegiance to Syria's al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front in an effort to halt attacks from US-backed rebel groups aligned with the terrorist organization.

In an official statement released earlier today by the extremist Jund al-Aqsa terror group, a prominent affiliate of the Daesh (ISIS) terrorist network, the radical organization has merged with Al Nusra Front - formerly al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate that fights with US-backed rebel groups including Ahrar al-Sham under the umbrella group The Army of Conquest.

The merging of the terror groups follows intense fighting between extremists with US-backed Ahrar al-Sham, joined by Al-Nusra Front in the fight, waging a series of bloody offensives against the Daesh affiliate leading the group to give in and pursue the path of least resistance by joining arms with the al-Qaeda-linked terrorists against the Syrian government.

Comment: So here's what's happening. There are two main terrorist groups in Syria: Daesh (Islamic State), and al-Nusra (i.e. al-Qaeda/Jabhat Fateh al-Sham). Jund al-Aqsa was a Daesh affiliate (the U.S. only got around to adding it to their list of designated terrorist groups on September 20 of this year). But because this mini-Daesh group was fighting against a U.S.-backed group, which is also an al-Qaeda affiliate (i.e., Ahrar al-Sham), and losing, they capitulated and joined al-Nusra. Now, the U.S.-backed group Ahrar al-Sham has reworked their agreement with al-Nusra, calling for all-around cooperation with Jund al-Aqsa.

You can't put it any more plainly: a U.S.-backed group (Ahrar al-Sham) is openly allied to the terrorist group al-Nusra (al-Qaeda). They both have agreed to cooperate with an ex-Daesh group (Jund al-Aqsa). In other words, one of the largest U.S./moderate rebel groups is fighting alongside both Nusra and Daesh.

No wonder the propaganda machine has gone into overdrive against Assad and Putin. It's getting mighty difficult to cover up the fact that the U.S. supports the very worst terrorist groups on the planet.


Cult

The 2016 U.S. presidential election and the politics of fear

none of the above
"This politics of fear has actually delivered everything we were afraid of."
Well, OK, let's think about these words of Jill Stein for a moment, as the 2016 presidential race enters, oh Lord, its final month — and the possibility still looms that this country could elect a hybrid of Benito Mussolini and Jim Crow its next, uh, commander in chief.

Politics of fear, indeed! Most of the people I know are going to vote for Hillary Clinton, and I get it. The other guy is the most unapologetic "greater evil" the Democrats have ever been blessed with.

Everybody's scared. Bernie Sanders, my guy, the force behind the Bernie Revolution that almost transformed, or reclaimed, the Democratic Party this year, said: "I know more about third-party politics than anyone. (But) this is not the time for a protest vote."

And Michelle Obama, speaking at a Clinton rally a few days ago, equated not voting at all with voting for a third-party candidate. She told the crowd, according to Bloomberg.com, that they could "help swing an entire precinct for Hillary's opponent with a protest vote or by staying home out of frustration." (And the headline on the Bloomberg story neatly summed up the media consensus on how democracy works: "Which States Can Gary Johnson and Jill Stein Spoil?")

A month to go and I find myself skewered with something bigger than frustration. It begins with the false, dead enthusiasm I hear in Hillary's attempts to rally her base, the tepid "USA! USA!" she invokes as she praises America's generals and its wars and its moral righteousness. She and Trump are running for president of the same illusion, and there's something seriously wrong with this.

Comment: The author is absolutely correct: The 'politics of fear,' as we now see, has been honed in to something like a perverse science. And because this mechanism is intended to play on our emotions, it has essentially stripped many of their ability to think rationally, reasonably and logically about their elected leaders. Real choice in the matter has been eviscerated.


Info

Putin: Russia and Turkey call for urgent end to bloodshed in Syria, strengthen military ties

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Tayyip Erdogan
© Osman Orsal / ReutersRussian President Vladimir Putin (L) talks during a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan following their meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, October 10, 2016.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan have urged a swift end to the bloodshed in war-torn Syria, following talks between the two leaders in Istanbul on Monday.

"Both Russia and Turkey stand for the earliest cessation of bloodshed in Syria. In Russia we think that the switch to a political settlement must happen as soon as possible. We suppose that everybody, who wants peace, should support this proposal," Putin said.

According to Putin, both Moscow and Ankara backed the proposal of UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, regarding the removal of militants from Aleppo.

"Together with the Turkish president we agreed to do everything to support de Mistura's initiative on the withdrawal of military units, which refuse to lay down their arms, from Aleppo in order to end violence," he said.


Comment: Damascus has also warned rebels in Aleppo to leave: Last chance: Damascus offers East Aleppo militants to leave besieged area safely