Puppet MastersS


Passport

US decries that countries in Visa Waiver Program not sharing data


RT
Tue, 07 Jun 2016 15:22 UTC
security
© Mariana Bazo / Reuters
Countries in the Visa Waiver Program haven't been pulling their weight - and this could be a huge security problem, according to the US Government Accountability Office. A report found criminal history and terrorist-ties were missing from many countries.

The visa waiver program (VWP) allows travel to and from 38 countries for either business or tourism for up to 90 days without a visa. In order to participate in the VWP, countries are required to share the identities of known or suspected terrorists as well as criminal history information.

However, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that more than one-third of the countries involved in the program did not submit the information and an additional third did not share terrorist identities.

Some are concerned that the lack of accountability from participating countries could give foreign fighters an easy entrance into the US, The Washington Times reported. Lawmakers are worried about the program after receiving reports of people leaving the European Union - many countries in the EU are in the VWP - to go train with the Islamic State in Iraq or Syria and then return back to the EU for visa-free access to the US.

Comment: The US isn't in a position to point fingers. They are after-all the primary movers and shakers of terrorist activity the world over.

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Bomb

Amnesty International: Britain's denials of its cluster bombs in Yemen, MoD smokescreen


RT
Mon, 06 Jun 2016 10:02 UTC
cluster bomb
© www.youtube.comSaudis' weapon of choice.
Ministry of Defence (MoD) denials regarding banned, British-supplied cluster munitions found in Yemen are little more than a "smokescreen of wildly implausible claims," according to Amnesty International. The human rights charity wrote to the MoD after defence minister Philip Dunne told parliament a UK-made BL-755 bomb found in a village in Yemen had not been dropped by the Saudi coalition.

Responding to an urgent parliamentary question, both Dunne and Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond suggested the banned munition, which may have been bought as long ago as the 1970s, was dropped in an earlier conflict.

Dunne argued: "It is unclear from the evidence provided thus far that the munitions came from the current conflict. We assess that no UK-supplied cluster weapons have been used."

Amnesty, which carried out inspections in the area and first exposed the presence of the cluster bombs, rejected the claims. It said there had been no wars involving airstrikes in the region and that metadata showed that the weapons had been dropped on around January 18 or 19, 2016.

Amnesty UK's head of policy and government affairs Allan Hogarth said: "It's shocking that the Saudi coalition has dropped a British cluster bomb on villagers in Yemen, and no less shocking that ministers are doing so little about it. Instead of immediately halting all sales of arms to a Saudi coalition that obviously cares little for civilian life in Yemen, ministers have hidden behind a smokescreen of wildly implausible claims." Hogarth branded the minister's behavior "disgraceful" and a "scandal."

"It all goes back to the fact that UK government just won't stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia and other rich countries in the Gulf," Hogarth said.


Comment: Does the Minister of Defence think the rest of the world is just really stupid?

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Pistol

Kazakhstan on yellow alert after Islamist attack on military base


RT
Mon, 06 Jun 2016 14:37 UTC
Crime scene
© unknownPolice arrest, kill members of radical Islamist gang after attack on military base.
Kazakhstan declared a moderate 'yellow' terrorist alert [after] a group of gunmen attack a military base. Twelve of the suspected jihadists were reportedly killed in clashes with government troops while six or seven remain at large. The city of Aktobe, where the militants robbed two gun shops and used the stolen weapons to assault a nearby base of the National Guard on Sunday, remains on the lockdown as security forces continue a counter-terrorism operation.

The nationwide alert is to remain in place for at least 40 days, the Kazakh national counter-terrorism staff said on Monday. The body asked the people to be especially cautious, and to take note of suspicious items like unattended bags or people acting in a strange manner and report them to the police. The police ramped up patrols throughout the country.

Overnight the police killed five gunmen in a continued manhunt, they reported on Monday. Nine of the attackers are in police custody, but several are yet to be caught. "We have now 12 [perpetrators] killed and six injured. We believe that six or seven remain at large. They have five firearms at their disposal," Interior Minister Kalmukanbet Kasymov said.

The minister added that the assailants used weapons stolen from the shops as a stepping stone to acquiring even more heavy arms at the military base. "The criminals wanted to get into the arsenal and get arms there. The guards resisted them, then our police forces arrived and the criminals retreated,"he described the attack.

Six people, including civilians, where killed in the wave of violence in Aktobe and 38 others were injured. The majority of them were soldiers at the base, many of whom were unarmed at the moment it was attacked. Kazakh authorities said that the attackers were radical Islamists and that they treat the events as an act of terrorism.


Comment: The month of Ramadan is off to a bad start, bringing out deadly aggression by 'the followers of untraditional religious movements,' in describing islamist militants. Islamist attacks are on the rise in the countries on the southern border of Russia, a trajectory likely unopposed by the West.

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Pirates

Jordan: Terrorist attack on intel office leave 5 dead at refugee camp


RT
Mon, 06 Jun 2016 08:48 UTC
2 jordan police
© Muhammad HamedAmman, Jordan on alert.
Five people working for Jordanian intelligence were killed in an attack on a security office in a Palestinian refugee camp near Amman, the country's capital. "The intelligence agency office in the Baqa'a camp was the target of a cowardly attack shortly before 7:00 a.m. (0400 GMT) today that left five agents dead," Jordanian government spokesman Mohammed Momani told journalists.

Momani said three noncommissioned officers from the guard office, a receptionist and a handyman were killed by the assailants. He said that the crime happened on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, which indicated that the perpetrators, who are suspected to be Islamists, acted "outside of our religion."

The Baqa'a camp is the largest facility hosting Palestinian refugees in Jordan.

The killings on Monday morning were described as a 'terrorist attack' by the Jordanian media, but no details were immediately provided.

Jordan has been relatively safe from terrorist attacks despite bordering Iraq and Syria, two major sources of instability in the Middle East. The last large successful attacks in the country happened in 2005, when Al-Qaeda bombed three hotel lobbies in Amman, killing 60 people.

Jordan currently hosts an estimated 3 million Palestinian refugees, most of whom live in 10 refugee camps throughout the country.

Comment: See also: US, EU: Islamic State urging terror attacks during Ramadan

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Info

Armenian Genocide vote fallout: Merkel slams Erdogan amid death threats to German MPs


Sputnik
Tue, 07 Jun 2016 14:14 UTC
Chancellor Angela Merkel
© AFP 2016/ Odd Andersen
The row over Germany's decision to formally recognize the Armenian genocide has deepened, with Chancellor Angela Merkel hitting back at criticism from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The dispute comes as some German MPs reported receiving death threats.

Merkel's spokesperson Steffen Seibert said the German parliament's decision must be "respected" by Ankara.

"The resolution was a political initiative that emerged from the midst of the Bundestag, which is a democratically elected, independent organ under our constitution," he said.

"The Bundestag reached a sovereign decision. That must be respected," he added.
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Info

Netanyahu arrives in Moscow for talks with Putin, second time this year


RT
Tue, 07 Jun 2016 11:42 UTC
Netanyahu, accompanied by his wife Sara
© Ruptly
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Russia for talks with President Vladimir Putin. The leaders reportedly plan to discuss the conflict in Syria and the prospects for settling the Israeli - Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu, accompanied by his wife Sara, arrived at Vnukovo II airport on Monday to the warm welcome of the honor guard waiting by the runway. The Israeli PM is also being accompanied by Immigrant Absorption Minister Zeev Elkin and Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel.
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Star of David

Propaganda alert! Iranian commander: We can destroy Israel 'in under 8 minutes'


The Times of Israel
Sun, 22 May 2016 16:14 UTC

Comment: This latest piece of propaganda is another in a long list of lies created by Israel. The West and Israel want Iran destroyed, just like Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and now Syria in order to keep those countries weak, divided, controllable, and to interfere with Russia's influence and allies in the region.


If supreme leader gives order, Revolutionary Guards 'will raze the Zionist regime' quickly, says senior adviser of elite al-Quds unit

Thumbs up for Israel!
© grizzom.blogspot.com
A senior Iranian military commander boasted that the Islamic Republic could "raze the Zionist regime in less than eight minutes."

Ahmad Karimpour, a senior adviser to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' elite unit al-Quds Force, said if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave the order to destroy Israel, the Iranian military had the capacity to do so quickly.

"If the Supreme Leader's orders [are] to be executed, with the abilities and the equipment at our disposal, we will raze the Zionist regime in less than eight minutes," Karimpour said Thursday, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.


Comment: There appears to be no available source for the above quote, aside from the Times of Israel, which is a propaganda rag. Nothing from RT, Sputnik, SANA, Press TV. Searching FARS News Agency, it is not possible to find the above quote.

This leads us to conclude that the quote was fabricated by the Times of Israel as part of the Israel government and media's ongoing attempt to try to convince the world that the Iranian government is the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East, when the truth is that the psychopaths that have dominated Israeli politics for the last 50 years are the cause of the bulk of the problems in the Middle East.


A senior Iranian general on May 9 announced that the country's armed forces successfully tested a precision-guided, medium-range ballistic missile two weeks earlier that could reach Israel, the state-run Tasnim agency reported.

"We test-fired a missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers and a margin of error of eight meters," Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi was quoted as saying at a Tehran science conference. The eight-meter margin means the "missile enjoys zero error," he told conference participants.

Comment: By way of deception: Bogus Iranian nuclear weapon documents linked to Israel

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Eye 1

Fallen star: NATO's blood-soaked legacy and the seven betrayals

Angus Gallagher
Sputnik
Mon, 06 Jun 2016 00:11 UTC
NATO naval exercises
© AP Photo/ RONI LEHTI / Lehtikuva via AP, FILE
Is NATO fervently stoking a gift wrapped mega crisis to celebrate its 70th anniversary in vicious style?

Oblivious to its contradictions, NATO knows that the Soviet Union was all but 70 when it unilaterally dissolved. With NATO's own 70th anniversary rapidly approaching in 2019, the Alliance's rationale for keeping Europeans trapped in the past remains its sinister coupling to the US military and the European Union.

But as the EU enters a race to the bottom and many Americans question whether the Alliance works at all, NATO must continually reinvent its enemies. This regression to cold war era status follows a grim procession of serial betrayals. Yet how is it possible that NATO can wrench Europe from the stability it has always craved?
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Bomb

The faithfulness of Russia: Large scale bombing to resume around Aleppo as U.S. fails to keep their end of the bargain

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Tue, 07 Jun 2016 00:25 UTC
As the rebels launch an offensive, truce around Aleppo approaches collapse.

Evidence is mounting that the Russians are cranking up to resume large scale bombing in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Aleppo Syrian Army
© Sputnik/ Iliya Pitalev
The background is an agreement which was concluded by the US and the Russians in February. This called for a "cessation of hostilities" between the various Syrian factions in return for which Russia's bombing campaign in Syria was to be scaled down.

The "cessation of hostilities" was not a ceasefire and was not intended to be. This was because the two biggest groups fighting the Syrian government - Daesh ("the Islamic State", also sometimes called ISIS) and Al-Qaeda's local Syrian franchise - Jabhat Al-Nusra - were expressly excluded from it. The UN Security Council previously declared both organisations terrorist organisations and neither were parties to the "cessation of hostilities" agreement. In fact both denounced it.

A fundamental part of the "cessation of hostilities" agreement was that the US would persuade the various groups it supports in Syria - the so-called "moderates" who form the so-called "Free Syrian Army" - to separate their fighters from these two terrorist groups.

The reason the Russians are now cranking up to resume their bombing in and around Aleppo is because the separation of so-called "moderate fighters" from those of Daesh and Jabhat Al-Nusra in and around Aleppo has never happened. On the contrary the fighters of the various Syrian groups remain intermingled with each other and continue to fight alongside each other.

Comment: The Russians gave the U.S. a chance, and now it looks like they'll be true to their word. The cessation of hostilities was a military setback, but if it at least had the chance of resulting in some groups choosing peace over terrorism, it was worth it. But the moderates have shown their true colors, and now it's fully the U.S.'s responsibility that they're going to be utterly destroyed.

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Георгиевская ленточка

Best of the Web: Vladimir Putin: A decent man leading a reformed, renewed country

Rodney Atkinson
Free Nation
Fri, 27 May 2016 20:27 UTC
Putin
For such a time as this
Vladimir Putin is a few years younger than I am. Like me he spent several years in Germany. Like me he lost an elder brother to diphtheria (his during the Nazi siege of Leningrad, mine just after the second world war). His mother, despite her extreme suffering under the Nazi oppression of Russia did not hate German soldiers. My father, a prisoner of war for 5 years and often put in German "revenge camps" in chains and fed on bread and water, did his best to understand the suffering of Germans under a vile dictatorship and liked visiting Germany after the war. He encouraged me to learn and study German, as I am sure, from what we know, Putin's mother would have done.

Five of Putin's father's brothers died in the second world war. I lost a grandfather and a great uncle. Neither Putin nor I would speak German fluently today had our families instilled a hatred of the former foe. But that does not mean that Putin, like myself, does not grasp the very serious threat posed today by that same combination of European and American corporatism and German Eastward expansion which caused that war.

Nor are we blind to the remarkable similarities between the extent of "German EU's" territory today and that occupied by Nazi Germany in the 1940s.
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