Puppet MastersS


Megaphone

UK government urged to kick Saudi Arabia off UN human rights council for Yemen brutality


RT
Fri, 19 Aug 2016 12:28 UTC
Britain's Prime Minister, Theresa May
© Peter Nicholls / Reuters
Politicians and NGOs are urging the UK government to vote against Saudi retention of the chairmanship of the UN human rights council in light of the Gulf theocracy's ongoing brutal war in Yemen.

The calls have come ahead of a key vote on the position and shortly after details of the vast amounts of arms, ammunition and military equipment Britain sells to the Saudi regime came to light.

Saudi Arabia's appointment to the role in 2015 appears to have come about thanks to British connivance. A WikiLeaks document from 2015 apparently shows a voting deal was struck between the long-standing allies.
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House

Leak in-house? NSA data dump could be work of inside hacker


RT
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 13:36 UTC
NSA data dump
© Gary Cameron / Reuters
The leak of tools used by the NSA's elite hacking team has resulted in speculation and finger-pointing in a desperate attempt to identify who could have exposed the government agency's secrets. But one source says it was an inside job.

The chances of a hacker remotely breaking into the National Security Agency's systems are very unlikely, according to an anonymous insider who spoke to Motherboard.

Despite accusations that the leak is Russia's meddling, the data dropped online under the name "the Shadow Brokers" would have required someone with the ability to access the NSA's server, the former NSA employee told the news outlet.
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Document

'Distorted mentality': Turkey furious over 'Islamist extremism' claims in leaked German govt report


RT
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 08:25 UTC
Hamas movement
© Mohammed Salem / ReutersA Palestinian fighter from the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement.
Turkey has demanded an explanation from Germany given the "distorted mentality" of an interior ministry report which accused Ankara of breeding Islamist extremism in the Middle East. German officials meanwhile distanced themselves from the allegations.

On Tuesday, Germany's ARD public television accused Turkey's ruling party and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of running a deliberate state policy that sponsors groups like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Hamas as well as terrorist factions in Syria. The leaked document, produced by the German Interior Ministry called Turkey"a center platform in the Middle East" for Islamist groups since 2011.

Turkey's foreign ministry said the claims were "a new indication of the distorted mentality, which attempted to weaken Turkey by targeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish government."

Ankara attributed the German assessment of Turkish state policy referenced in the leak to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK ), and the organization's network in Germany, as the foreign ministry demanded an explanation from Berlin.
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Sherlock

UN finally admits role in Haiti cholera outbreak that killed 10,000 people


RT
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 23:16 UTC
Haitian with symptoms of cholera
© Eduardo Munoz / ReutersA Haitian with symptoms of cholera is transported in a wheelbarrow in the slums of Cite-Soleil in Port-au-Prince November 19, 2010.
United Nations officials acknowledged, for the first time, the role peacekeepers played in the 2010 deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti that killed 10,000 people and sickened hundreds of thousands of others.

The Office of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in an email this week said "the UN has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera," reported the New York Times.

For six years, UN officials refused to accept blame for bringing cholera to Haiti, but suspicions settled on a group of UN troops from Nepal who arrived after the January 2010 earthquake. Nepal had a cholera epidemic underway at the time and raw sewage from the latrines at the UN troops' camp was allowed to seep into an adjacent river.
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Propaganda

America's journalistic hypocrites

Robert Parry
Consortium News
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:46 UTC
New York Times building in New York City
© Wikipedia
Over the past few decades, the U.S. mainstream media has failed the American people in a historic fashion by spinning false or misleading narratives on virtually every important global issue, continuing to this day to guide the nation into destructive and unnecessary conflicts.

To me, a major turning point came with the failure of the major news organizations to get anywhere near the bottom of the Iran-Contra scandal, including its origins in illicit contacts between Republicans and Iranians during the 1980 campaign and the Reagan administration's collaboration with drug traffickers to support the Contra war in Nicaragua. (Instead, the major U.S. media disparaged reporting on these very real scandals.)

If these unsavory stories had been fully explained to the American people, their impression of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush would be far less favorable and the rise of Reagan's neocon underlings might well have been halted. Instead the neocons consolidated their dominance over Official Washington's foreign policy establishment and Bush's inept son was allowed to take the White House in 2001.

Comment: HuffPo goes haywire against Russia, for Hillary

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Airplane

Western media forces British travel blogger to apologize for saying positive things about North Korean experience


RT
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:38 UTC
Louis Cole
Louis Cole visiting a military museum in North Korea
A popular British vlogger who filmed feel-good travel videos in North Korea has been forced to deny being paid by the totalitarian state to show off its 'beautiful beaches' and 'plentiful food'.

Louis Cole, 33, travels the world for fun making videos of his adventures called 'Fun for Louis', boasting more than 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube.

His most recent trip was a 10-day stint in North Korea, traveling from Beijing to Pyongyang, with an organization which runs surfing and skateboarding lessons for local tour guides and children.

Cole showcases the country's skateboard parks, surfing and water slides. On arrival, he is filmed enjoying a banquet of traditional fare, then heading to a 43-story hotel with a pool, bowling alley and massage parlor.

"I'm booking a massage, 100 percent!" he says.

Comment: HRW et al can say all they want. Who is going to verify their 'facts'?

The fact is, a guy went out there with some friends, had only positive things to say about the place, then came home safe and sound.



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Propaganda

HuffPo goes haywire against Russia, for Hillary

Eric Zuesse
Sott.net
Wed, 17 Aug 2016 22:17 UTC
Photoshoped image of Putin and Trump riding horses
© RIA Novosti / Reuters
As part of their campaign for Hillary Clinton to become President, Huffington Post bannered their home-page on the night of Tuesday August 16th, "TRUMP BRINGS KREMLIN APOLOGIST TO INTEL BRIEFING!", and linked to their news story that's headlined against Trump, "Donald Trump To Bring Adviser With Russia Ties To Classified Briefing: Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn will join Trump at Wednesday's top-secret session." Those "Russia Ties" consist of Flynn's having appeared as a commenter at Russia's international television network, RT, which is Russia's equivalent of Britain's BBC. This was the day's big news? Really? Is there an editorial agenda here — or only a low-news day, when the Olympics are on, records are being broken, and the Presidential contest is getting under way?

This is not only a HuffPo problem; and, so, on July 28th, I reported (with contemporary examples) that, generally, "America's press cover the Trump campaign with barely concealed hostility toward it, and with an obsessive emphasis upon the candidate's positions regarding Russia; they're attacking Trump as being (wittingly or unwittingly) an agent of Russia — and portraying Russia as being America's enemy."
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Sheeple

Best of the Web: Westerners suddenly realize children get killed in airstrikes, cry crocodile tears over 'boy in Aleppo ambulance'


RT
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 21:00 UTC
boy bomb aleppo
© AMC / AFPThis image is shocking the Western world, which has no clue that it caused the subject's pain.
Harrowing images of an ash-covered boy who survived an air strike in Syria has quickly spread across the internet, shocking and disturbing social media users.


While there are many horrifying images from Syria, this, like the image of drowned Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, managed to capture the world's attention.



Comment: It later turned out that Kurdi's father - who was on the same boat as his son - was one of the people smugglers the Western media blamed for the refugee crisis (before it later switched to blaming Russia).


Comment: For more on this latest bout of global emotional manipulation, see here:

The boy in the ambulance: US State Dept-funded groups behind latest 'iconic image' designed to demonize Russia and encourage further bloodshed in Syria

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Jet3

US Air Force flies B-52 bombers in Afghanistan for first time in a decade


Sputnik
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 22:02 UTC
US B-52 bomber
© AP Photo/ Mindaugas Kulbis
US Air Force Chief of Staff General David L. Goldfein announced in a media release Tuesday that Boeing B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers have completed airstrikes against targets in Afghanistan for the first time in ten years.

He stated, "We got the B-52 back in the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq," adding, "We have the B-52 contributing to a significant ground effort and employing weapons in close proximity of friendly troops who are under attack [and] who are preparing the battlefield in new ways."

Godfein's news release indicated that the Air Force's B-52H detachment at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar has flown nearly 270 sorties since April, dropping over 1,300 bombs in more than 325 strikes, in Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria.
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Handcuffs

Justice Department plans to end use of private prisons

Matt Zapotosky
The Washington Post
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 21:16 UTC
Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates
© Carolyn Kaster/AP
The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or "substantially reduce" the contracts' scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is "reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons."

"They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department's Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security," Yates wrote.

Comment: More articles:

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