Puppet MastersS


Bomb

Turkey's terror state: 150 civilians dead in one week as Erdogan promises to 'annihilate' more


Sputnik
Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:50 UTC
Kurds Turkey
© AP Photo/ Cagdas Erdogan
The death toll among civilians has surged as Turkish security forces continue a large-scale operation against Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey, shattering the last hopes to conclude a truce between the opposing sides.

Government forces have killed over 150 civilians and at least 200 Kurdish insurgents within the last week, according to human rights groups and local officials, cited by the New York Times. Amid escalating fighting across southeastern Turkey, hundreds of thousands of residents have abandoned their homes for safer regions.

"What people here in the west [of Turkey] do not realize is that we are one step away from a civil war," Engin Gur, a resident of the Turkish South East who moved to Istanbul, told the New York Times.

Comment: While Erdogan acts like a brutal, bloodthirsty dictator, the West remains almost completely silent. The Western media is quick to demonize officials who fight for their people, and they're quick to lionize officials who kill their people.

Also see:

Read More...
Bomb

Iraqi forces recapture Ramadi & find a city the U.S. bombed into oblivion


Sputnik
Thu, 31 Dec 2015 03:34 UTC
Iraq Ramadi
© AFP 2015/ AHMAD AL-RUBAYE
The recapture of Ramadi by the Iraqi Army dealt a major a blow to Daesh, also known as ISIL/Islamic State, and the Obama administration is desperate to take credit for the victory as a means for justifying Washington's failed anti-terror strategy.

In May, Daesh conquered the city of Ramadi, in the Anbar Province, using a wave of suicide bombs to defeat Iraq's security forces. Earlier this week, the Iraqi Army retook the city.

In an email to the New York Times, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that the turn of events meant that "enemy forces have suffered a major defeat." US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter called the victory, "a significant step forward in the campaign to defeat this barbaric group." Landon Shroder, a US intelligence analyst, told the Times that the liberation of Ramadi is a "much-needed tactical victory."

Comment: The US has been bombing Ramadi to ruins since July, and has been repeatedly frustrating Iraq's attempts to retake the city. Then, once Iraqi forces proved that they were moving in for good, the US allegedly evacuated their top terrorists. Now the US is trying to take credit for their 'success' in the fight against Daesh. Well, with half of Ramadi's infrastructure now destroyed, it would be nice if the US officials attempting to take credit for this 'success' finally received the credit they so richly deserve - in a war crimes tribunal.

Read More...
Arrow Down

Russian special envoy: 'US and NATO's mission in Afghanistan has been a complete failure'


RT
Wed, 30 Dec 2015 14:34 UTC
US soldiers
The US and NATO mission in Afghanistan has been a complete failure, the Russian President's special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, told TASS, in evaluating the effectiveness of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) there.
"Assessing the results of the actions of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, it can be said that they have completely failed their mission," Kabulov said in an interview to TASS, adding that the ultimate goal of the ISAF anti-terrorist campaign, which consisted in creating "a democratic centralized state" in Afghanistan, has not been achieved.
The special envoy stressed that, not only has the US-led coalition in Afghanistan failed to achieve its main goal, but "has not accomplished any of the tasks it had set before the operation," as Afghanistan still lacks "strong and stable central authority." He also emphasized that, failing to defeat the Taliban by military means, the ISAF's current policy of national reconciliation de-facto envisions their participation in the new political power structure of Afghanistan.

Kabulov drew attention to the fact that the ongoing "Decisive Support" training mission, which the US and their allies in Afghanistan are currently conducting, has also shown very little result. The program aims to improve the combat readiness of the Afghan army and police, enabling them to independently secure stability and order. According to Kabulov, Afghan governmental forces "show inability to affect the situation due to a lack of arms and equipment, as well as an insufficient level of training and low morale."

Comment: United States operations in Afghanistan have only been a miserable failure when you take their stated goals at face value. The world knows what the US says and what it does are two different things. There is in fact a stable, and respected leadership structure with Afghan tribes which could pave the way for peace, but then that is not at all what the US wants. The plan all along has been regional destabilization as a means of control over an emerging Eurasia.

Read More...
Arrow Down

The European 'Union' - political and economic fault lines could run fatally deep

Peter Schwarz
WSWS
Mon, 28 Dec 2015 01:41 UTC
EU flag 800 px
It is 70 years since large parts of Europe lay in ruins. Great power aspirations, nationalism and fascism made the continent the focus of two world wars, which together claimed nearly 100 million victims. Now, these same tendencies are spreading once again.

Everywhere in Europe, the ruling elites are moving sharply to the right. They are boosting military spending, taking part in the imperialist wars in the Middle East and Africa, sealing up borders and inciting xenophobic sentiments against refugees. They are developing authoritarian forms of rule and building up a police state in order to suppress growing social tensions.

After the attacks in Paris, the Socialist Party government imposed a state of emergency for three months, stationed thousands of soldiers on the streets and deployed the military's only aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf to bomb Syria. The beneficiary of this policy has been the right-wing National Front, which became the strongest party in the first round of the recent regional elections.

In Hungary and Poland, governments openly profess their admiration for the authoritarian regimes of the 1920s and 1930s.

In Germany, leading politicians and academics demand that the country again take on the role of a "hegemon" and "disciplinarian" in Europe and aspire to be a major power in the world, as if the crimes of the Nazi regime never happened. The austerity policies that Berlin has imposed on the economically weaker EU members for years have aggravated social and political tensions throughout Europe.

Comment: The EU has not "united the interests of its peoples', but only serves the interests of global capitalists. They may soon reap the consequences of this policy.

Read More...
Dollar

Flashback Let's Do Business! The Soviet Union is open for deals as never before

Paul Hofheinz
Fortune Magazine
Mon, 23 Sep 1991 21:57 UTC

Comment: The following article was published in an American business magazine before the USSR was even formally disbanded. As you'll see, Wall Street elites were openly salivating at the prospect of taking over as much of the Soviet economy as fast as possible. They called it 'democratization', of course, but the free-for-all had precious little to do with people's rights...


mcdonald's russia
They thought they were free... Russians queue up to buy 'food' at the first McDonalds 'restaurant' to open in Moscow, Russia in 1990. 500 more would follow...
A top executive warns, ''If U.S. companies wait until all the problems are solved, somebody else will get the business''

Boris Yeltsin never actually said the words across the top of this page, at least not within earshot of this writer. But he might as well have. Everything the Russian President and his new partner, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared and did in the past few tumultuous weeks, and will do in the next few, adds up to that simple message. The Soviet Union, or whatever we ultimately call the collection of diverse, bumptious entities on Europe's eastern flank, is wide open to Westerners with checkbooks. Says a senior Western diplomat in Moscow: ''Opportunities like this come up maybe once a century.''


Comment: Wall Street capital got lucky in the 20th century: they got two bites at Russia - in 1917 and again in 1991.


Sure, all the horrendous problems remain. The country is still lurching through a hair-curling depression. Gross national product has fallen by 10% in the first half of this year. The budget deficit has ballooned to $33.5 billion. To pay bills, the government is rolling the presses, which has led to an inflation rate of 250% and rising.

Moscow by some estimates is more than $60 billion behind in hard currency payments to foreign creditors. Finally, rising cries for independence from all the familiar ethnic groups, and a few nobody ever heard of, are enough to rattle even the most seasoned geopolitician -- or the most intrepid investor.

Yet you need only focus on what was happening under cover of the coup to see why Western businessmen should be at least a little euphoric. On the second of the junta's three days in power, while the world was watching Yeltsin's heroic stand, the KGB began 157 criminal investigations into what it called economic crimes. These included ''concealment of superprofits'' and ''links with criminal groups.''

Comment: God, that last paragraph is revolting, especially in light of what happened across the USSR in subsequent years: mass unemployment, homelessness, a rise in crime, wholesale theft of state assets and natural resources, regional wars, bread lines, hyperinflation, population reduction, and just sheer humiliation for hundreds of millions of people.

We apologize for exposing readers to such an article, but now and then it's useful to peek at American business 'journalism' for a clear sight of the gaping maw that is mindless Western consumerism.

Read More...
Wall Street

A crisis worse than ISIS? Bank bail-ins begin

Ellen Brown
Web of Debt Blog
Tue, 29 Dec 2015 23:02 UTC
Bank bail-in graphic
While the mainstream media focus on ISIS extremists, a threat that has gone virtually unreported is that your life savings could be wiped out in a massive derivatives collapse. Bank bail-ins have begun in Europe, and the infrastructure is in place in the US. Poverty also kills.

At the end of November, an Italian pensioner hanged himself after his entire €100,000 savings were confiscated in a bank "rescue" scheme. He left a suicide note blaming the bank, where he had been a customer for 50 years and had invested in bank-issued bonds. But he might better have blamed the EU and the G20's Financial Stability Board, which have imposed an "Orderly Resolution" regime that keeps insolvent banks afloat by confiscating the savings of investors and depositors. Some 130,000 shareholders and junior bond holders suffered losses in the "rescue."

Comment: See also: The derivatives market is a matrix of fraud - here's how it works

Read More...
Oscar

It's a Wonderful Life: Bridge 'suicide' saved by Erdogan was a Turkish security service agent


Fort Russ
Tue, 29 Dec 2015 23:06 UTC
erdogan
Recently the world media had spread the news of the miraculous salvation of a suicide due to the President of Turkey. The Daily Sabah edition published a video in which Erdogan stopped his motorcade (which was on its way to Friday prayers in the mosque) to save a man who was about to jump.

The president's aides told the man that he wanted to talk to him and then brought him to the Mercedes Erdogan was riding in. In the footage we see the suicidist soon talking with the Turkish leader, who makes a few phone calls on a golden late-model iPhone. After that, the man kisses Erdogan's hand.

It was reported in the news that the man was about to commit suicide because of family problems, and that Erdogan promised to solve these problems. The story was published on 25 December on Christmas -- drawn on the Christmas story in the spirit of Charles Dickens. However, later it turned out that the failed suicidist is a senior Turkish intelligence agent. Some Turkish media and some bloggers published pictures of him. This means that the Turkish version of "A Christmas Carol" smacks of a theater production.

Comment: Erdogan should hire some new PR people. They really are making him appear as if he is a total idiot. But then again, maybe he really is that kind of crazy...

See also: Shameless! Miraculous intervention by Sultan Erdogan 'saves man' from committing suicide on Istanbul bridge

Read More...
Alarm Clock

Syrian Foreign Ministry to UN Security Council: Turkey and Saudi Arabia are funding the terrorists - do something already!


Syrian Arab News Agency
Mon, 28 Dec 2015 00:00 UTC
Syrian Foreign Ministry
Syrian Foreign Ministry
Foreign and Expatriates Ministry on Monday sent two letters to the UN Secretary-General and President of UN Security Council regarding the persistence of ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, and other terrorist organizations in committing crimes against civilians in Syrian cities.

The Ministry said that terrorist organizations are targeting Syrian cities with suicide bombing and arbitrary shelling in a bid to disturb the state of tranquility and stability which had prevailed in several Syrian cities that witnessed successful national reconciliation efforts in recent days.

The letters asserted that this terrorism is the result of the open and generous support in funds, arms, and munitions provided to terrorists by states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, who are complicit in the terrorist attacks carried out against the Syrian people.

Comment: That the Syrian Foreign Ministry even has to write such letters to the UN Security Council is indicative of just how hamstrung, dysfunctional, cowed and corrupted the body of the UN is. Because, by now, everyone knows who the terrorist players are and who's generally responsible for what. But no one in the UN has the moral courage (aside from Russia) to address the real problems head-on.

Read More...
Wall Street

The Fed just gave the US Treasury a record $19 billion holiday bonus

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Wed, 30 Dec 2015 21:41 UTC
Something surprising emerged in the latest Daily Treasury Statement report showing the sources and uses of operating cash of the US Treasury: the line item for Federal Reserve Earnings exploded to $19.3 billion on December 28, doubling the amount of cash the Fed had remitted to the Treasury for all of 2015.
Daily Treasury Statement
Read More...
Attention

Ukraine confusion: West adopts Russia's stance on Donbass


Fort Russ
Wed, 30 Dec 2015 20:40 UTC
Mykola Malomuzh
The verdict in Kiev is disappointing for the Ukrainian authorities. In particular, the former head of foreign intelligence service of Ukraine, Mykola Malomuzh, said that the West does not want to support Kiev and has almost entirely adopted the Russian strategy of resolving the crisis in Donbass. The corresponding statement of Malomuzh was made on the air of Ukrainian TV.

According to the former head of foreign intelligence service of Ukraine, this information is continually voiced in various European forums, but not at the official level.
I, visiting international forums in London, Monaco and other countries of the world over the past year and three months, have seen the trend of a reduced interest in Ukraine," said Malomuzh.
Read More...