Puppet MastersS


Yoda

US author and activist: It's clear Putin has come out on top against US in Syria


Sputnik
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 20:40 UTC
Image
© Sputnik/ Alexei Druzhinin
It is becoming evident that Russian President Putin has come out on top in the most recent phases of a geopolitical chess match, US author Michael Payne points out, adding that Russia and the US should join together in coordinated military actions to eradicate terrorism in the Middle East.

Russian President Putin has long been promoting negotiations between the major powers involved in the Syrian conflict; however, only after Russia sent its military forces to Syria in response to the official request of the legitimate Syrian government, did Washington take a step toward negotiations.

"While the US will play a major role in these negotiations it appears that Putin now holds the strongest position and will likely play the key role in reaching that resolution," American independent progressive activist and author Michael Payne remarked in his recent article for OpEdNews.com.

According to the author, Putin has repeatedly outperformed Washington's strategists, whether they like it or not.

Comment: The fact that Putin has outmaneuvered the US in Syria could be why the U.S. is scrambling to save face in Syria.

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Handcuffs

Kyrgyzstan detains al-Qaeda recruiter for terrorism in Syria


Sputnik
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 20:09 UTC
terrorist
© Unknown
Kyrgyz intelligence agencies detained on Monday a member of an international terrorist organization accused of recruiting 10 men for military activities in Syria and Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Kyrgyzstan National Security Committee said. According to the National Security Committee, the detainee represented the al-Qaeda terrorist group and kept contact with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan militant group.
"Officers of the State National Security Committee for the Osh region have detained a 47-year-old member of an international terrorist organization in the Kara-Suu town, who sent about 10 people to Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan to participate in military activities in the past two years," the spokesman told RIA Novosti.
Over 420 Kyrgyz citizens have joined the ranks of the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq, according to the Kyrgyz law enforcement.
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Briefcase

Confessions of a former Russian adviser to US Presidents


Russia Insider
Fri, 30 Oct 2015 18:55 UTC
Reagan and SDI
Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative speech.
A former Soviet political refuge and ex-senior researcher at the Hudson Institute on why he was disappointed with the West, and why he severed ties with his anti-Soviet past.

Our interlocutor is a graduate of the Physics Department at Moscow State University. In 1970 he was sentenced to 6 years in a gulag prison for trying to cross the border using a false identity. He emigrated to the United States In 1979, where he soon became an influential proponent of the hawkish policies of the US Republican Presidents.

Не returned to Russia in 1998.

In an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda editor-at-large and RI special correspondent Alexei Pankin he explains why he abandoned his extremely successful career in the United States and returned to an uncertainty back home.

He has been RI's guest columnist.

This article orginally appeared at Komsomolskaya Pravda. Translated by Elina Whaley
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Stormtrooper

IDF executes wounded 23-year-old Palestinian youth in Occupied Hebron


International Solidarity Movement
Fri, 30 Oct 2015 18:53 UTC
Image
© Screenshot via YouTube/ISM Palestine
On October 29th Mahdi Mohtaseb was executed by Israeli forces at the Salaymeh (160) checkpoint, near the Ibrahimi Mosque in the old city of al-Khalil (Hebron). The 23-year-old from Jabal Johar, who was employed in a local sweets shop, was supposed to meet his fiancée later in the day.

At 0:22 seconds it shows an Israeli soldier shoot Mahdi in the back from close range as he lies wounded on the ground.

In a statement released the 27th of October by Amnesty International, they concluded that: "Israeli forces have carried out a series of unlawful killings of Palestinians using intentional lethal force without justification". Amnesty also stated that "wilful killings of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, over which all states can exercise universal jurisdiction."

In the last week in al-Khalil, seven Palestinians have been murdered. Ezzedin Nabi Sha'ban Abu Shakhdam, 17 (Gush Etzion), Shadi Nabil Dweik, 22 (Gush Etzion), Houmam Adnan Sa'id, 23, Islam Rafiq Hammad Ibeido, 23, Mahdi Mohammad Ramadan al-Muhtasib, 23, and Farouk Abdel Qader Omar Sidr, 19.

Mahdi Mohtaseb, who is survived by four brothers, four sisters, and many grieving family and loved ones, joins the daily rising death toll of mostly Palestinian youths gunned down by Israeli forces and Israeli settlers since October 1st.


Comment: The Nazis massacred millions of people, very similar to the way that the Palestinians are being massacred today. The same ideology is being spread like an infection; is condoned and mostly ignored by the Western media and governments. How much more evidence do we need that Israel is a paranoid, delusional and murderous force and needs to be stopped?

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Arrow Down

Report from conservative think tank finds US military has degraded


RT
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 18:51 UTC
Image
© Kim Hong-Ji / ReutersA U.S. Navy crew member maintains a F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter
America is losing its hard power due to years of poor funding. Two of its four service branches tasked with foreign missions have degraded on a five-point scale over the past year, a report by an influential think tank says.

The US is unable to meet its long-time goal of being able to fight two major regional wars simultaneously and the situation is getting worse, said the "2016 Index of US Military Strength," released last week by the Heritage Foundation.

The annual assessment details the state of the military itself, their operational environment and the level of global threats to US interests. Since 2014, the military has lost some of its strength while the threats have become more significant, the report said.

"The US does not have the right force to meet a two - major regional contingency requirement and is not ready to carry out its duties effectively," said the Heritage Foundation, which is often critical of the Obama administration. "Consequently, the US risks seeing its interests increasingly challenged and the world order it has led since World War II undone."


Comment: On the one hand, based on the success of Russia in Syria and the overall inability of the US to do anything about it, it very much looks like the US military is weak and falling into disrepair. But, the think tank's complaint about funding is interesting, as the US military is the most-heavily funded military in the world by a great margin. Funding doesn't seem to be the problem, so the bellowing about money comes across as rather hollow. How likely is it that the think tank is run by officials with ties to arms manufacturers?

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Megaphone

Your tax dollars at work: Watchdog fumes over $43m Afghan gas station, Pentagon keeps mum


RT
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 18:36 UTC
government waste afghanistan
© Central Asia Development GroupThe pumps at the CNG filling station constructed by TFBSO.
The Department of Defense is dodging questions about an $800 million program aimed at boosting the economy of Afghanistan, including $43 million spent on a natural gas station that few if any Afghans can utilize, says a US government inspector.

John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), said that the US military is illegally withholding documents pertaining to the Task Force for Business Stability Operations (TFSBO), a five-year program intended to kick-start the Afghan economy. In a letter to US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Sopko also claimed the Department of Defense (DOD) has refused to offer personnel that could answer questions about the task force.

"Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago," Sopko wrote to Carter in an October 22 letter that was released publicly on Monday.

Comment: Wasteful government spending is hardly new, but the scale nowadays rivals the Roman Empire as it declined. The U.S. is following the same trajectory. And the granddaddy of them all:

9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon

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Airplane

South China Sea tensions: China sends armed jets on training exercise in area


RT
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 18:33 UTC
Image
© China Daily / ReutersChinese jet fighters release flares as they fly over a Chinese vessel.
Days after a US warship sailed by contested islands in the South China Sea, Beijing conducted training for its naval jets in the same area. The armed aircraft flew from China's recently constructed island airstrip.

Last Tuesday, the USS Lassen passed through a 12-mile limit around Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands archipelago. The reef is one of seven that China has artificially reinforced to support its claim on the archipelago and the sea around it.

The area is believed to be rich in mineral resources, has fishing grounds and commands a position over several busy trade routes. The US rejects the claim and insists that the warship sailed through international waters.

In an apparent response to the American move, Beijing sent armed fighter jets for a training exercise in the area. On Saturday, the Chinese Navy released photos of the aircraft being launched from an airstrip in the South China Sea.

Comment: The US likes to bully other nations into falling in line with the empire. It's highly doubtful they will be able to do that with China, who is far stronger than the other countries the US has been bullying over the last few decades.

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Bad Guys

Child porn, illicit drugs, weapons, and death threats: Report details various crimes by UN officials in last year

Samuel Oakford
Vice
Sun, 01 Nov 2015 12:55 UTC
Image
Staff at the United Nations downloaded and shared child porn, transported roughly 380 pounds of weed in an official vehicle, and repeatedly threatened each other with murder, according to an annual report on disciplinary matters and cases of criminal behavior issued by the international organization.

The report, carried out by the UN Secretariat, covers the period between July 2014 and June of this year. It does not name the staff involved, their nationalities, or where the offenses took place.

Perhaps most alarmingly, four UN employees were dismissed for receiving, storing, and disseminating pornographic images of minors on their official computers and over UN networks. It was unclear if their home countries had filed any charges against the four unnamed individuals. A fifth staff member who stored adult pornographic material on a UN computer was demoted and blocked from being promoted for a period of two years.

Elsewhere in the report, a staffer was referenced as being fired for using "an official vehicle of the Organization to transport approximately 173 kilograms of marijuana." Another employee inexplicably tried to bring a chainsaw on a UN passenger flight. Yet another UN security official was caught pilfering $2,200 from a passenger while screening their luggage.

Comment: Here we see another corrupt Western organization that is supposed to represent the morality and the rule of law. When reports like this are released, it becomes clear that Western society is rotten to the core.

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War Whore

The US and Israel: Stunning examples of international immorality

Robert Fantina
Mint Press News
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 17:27 UTC
flag burning
© AP/Natacha PisarenkoDemonstrators burn a U.S. flag in front of the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
For reasons that only show the effectiveness of public relations campaigns, many U.S. citizens view their government as the height of global morality, a beacon of freedom and liberty in an otherwise broken world. They believe, inexplicably, that the United States is a force for good throughout the world, protecting its own borders as it helps the downtrodden in far-flung locations.

Too bad none of this is true. This particular fairy tale is not believed much outside of U.S. borders, where a more realistic view of the U.S. prevails. And the stark evidence of this reality is on no greater display than in the country's twisted relationship with Israel, one of the world's most repressive regimes.

Israel's impunity

Let us look at just a few facts: Israel has been illegally occupying Palestine for decades, continually building new, illegal settlements, and encroaching on Palestinian land. Israeli soldiers and settlers steal from, harass, and kill Palestinians with complete impunity, yet if a Palestinian is even suspected of committing a crime against Israel, his or her home can be immediately bulldozed.
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Eye 2

Dancing with the devil: Kerry invites Russia and China to join TPP deal


Sputnik
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 16:37 UTC
Anti-TPP rally
© Flickr/ Stop FastTrack
Countries all over the world, including Russia and China, are welcome to join various US-proposed initiatives, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, Kerry stated in an interview with Mir TV channel.

The only precondition for them to join the trade pact is consent to raise standards and live in accordance with them, protecting people and working openly, transparently and responsibly, the US diplomat stressed.


Comment: According to Western standards, which are in favor of big business.


On October 5, the 12 countries of the Pacific Rim region reached an agreement on the wording and subject matter of the TPP accord, intended to deregulate trade among the signatories and cover 40 percent of the world economy.

The parties to the agreement are the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam, which together account for 40 percent of international trade.

Comment: Don't do it, Russia and China! Just keep at it with the Eurasian Economic Union and other activities.

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