Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Still useful: Tony Blair reportedly mediates secret Israel-Hamas talks negotiating end to Gaza siege


RT
Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:35 UTC
Tony Blair
© Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair is acting as a mediator in hush-hush talks between Hamas and Israel in an attempt to halt the Israeli siege of Gaza, reports suggest.

According to accounts from Al-Hayat, an Arabic daily newspaper, since resigning as the Quartet's Middle East envoy Blair has held two meetings with the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

Hamas has been in control of the Gaza strip since 2007.

One Israeli newspaper also reported that Blair had previously discussed his plans with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Meetings have reportedly taken place in Qatar, and have centered around the possibility of a temporary ceasefire, which would lift the siege on Gaza.

Comment: If Blair is involved, it won't be for the benefit of the Palestinians. A ceasefire will only last as long as Israel wants it to.

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Boat

Surprised? Stratfor thinks Saudi Arabia needs Mistrals for power projection in Middle East


Sputnik
Mon, 17 Aug 2015 20:19 UTC
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© AP Photo/ Laetitia Notarianni
Saudi Arabia has been on a course to boost its military capabilities focusing lately on its naval forces and the possible purchase of the two Mistrals originally built for Russia by France could be central to these efforts.

The primary reason Riyadh needs the warships is simple: the amphibious assault ships are ideal for unilateral power projection in littoral waters or as part of the joint Arab force project which Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi and Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced earlier this month.

Comment: It's hardly surprising that Saudi Arabia is touted as willing to "foot the bill" for the Mistrals that France pusillanimously refused to sell to Russia at the behest of its masters in Washington. It's likely that France made a deal with Washington where if France was to renege on the deal with Russia in the interest of US 'foreign policy', Washington would have to shoulder the financial burden it forced on the French. The US solution appears to take the form of getting its corrupt Saudi head-chopping client state to come to the rescue. What a pathetic bunch of losers!

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Yoda

Putin: Foreign forces trying to destabilize Crimea


RT
Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:02 UTC
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© Aleksey Nikolskyi / RIA NovostiRussian President Vladimir Putin
President Vladimir Putin has voiced issues with the current situation around Crimea, pointing out at a continuing threat from "foreign forces" that try to play on the "justified concerns" of local residents in order to destabilize the peninsula.

"It is obvious that a persistent threat still comes from foreign forces who are trying in one way or another to destabilize the situation on the [Crimean] peninsula," Putin said as cited by RIA Novosti.

"[They] may want to play the nationalist card or - capitalizing on any mistake, miscount or ineffective actions of the authorities - channel the justified concerns of residents into a destructive course."

The president attended a meeting on Crimean security in the port city of Sevastopol on Wednesday.

Comment: See also the documentary Crimea: The Way Home



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Vader

Shocker: Jeb Bush thinks NSA needs broader powers to conduct surveillance on Americans to combat fictional 'evildoers'

Bill Barrow
Associated Press
Tue, 18 Aug 2015 19:32 UTC
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Comment: There's no doubt about it: If Jeb Bush is elected president, the U.S. will quickly devolve into outright fascism. It will probably go that way anyway, but with Bush at the helm, it will be a particularly vehement descent.


Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush said Tuesday that the government should have broad surveillance powers of Americans and private technology firms should cooperate better with intelligence agencies to help combat "evildoers."

At a national security forum in the early voting state of South Carolina, Bush put himself at odds with Republican congressional leaders who earlier this year voted to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records.

The former Florida governor said Congress should revisit its changes to the Patriot Act, and he dismissed concerns from civil libertarians who say the program violated citizens' constitutionally protected privacy rights.

"There's a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and NSA doing its job," Bush said. "I think the balance has actually gone the wrong way."
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Quenelle - Golden

The battle for Syria: Russian diplomacy versus NATO duplicity

Andrew Korybko
Sputnik News
Wed, 19 Aug 2015 18:47 UTC
Syria
© AP Photo
The past couple of weeks have seen Russia intensify its efforts to resolve the War on Syria and coordinate an inclusive anti-ISIL coalition.

The War on Syria experienced a noticeable escalation ever since the Iran nuclear agreement was signed, with Turkey committing to "fight ISIL" in the country and the US gaining access rights to use the nearby Incirlik air base for its bombing missions in Syria.

What's really going on is that the American-Turkish Tandem is racing against the clock to accomplish The Brookings Institute's plan for splitting Syria as soon as possible, knowing that Iran will likely send some of the billions of dollars of frozen funds that it's set to receive around January to its embattled ally, and in turn irreversibly augment Damascus' defensive capabilities against external aggression from then on out.

Comment: Russia certainly knows how to play whatever hand she's been dealt. Hopefully a real anti-terrorist coalition can emerge from these diplomatic efforts.

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Eye 2

Yemen conflict has killed & injured over 1,000 children while 10 million more require 'urgent humanitarian aid'


RT
Wed, 19 Aug 2015 14:25 UTC
Image
© Khaled Abdullah / Reuters
More than 400 children have been killed and at least 600 wounded since the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen begun in late March, UNICEF said, warning that younger casualties might rise as youths are now being recruited as fighters in the civil war.

"This conflict is a particular tragedy for Yemeni children ... (they) are being killed by bombs or bullets and those that survive face the growing threat of disease and malnutrition," UNICEF Yemen representative Julien Harneis said, commenting on a new report by the agency.

With an average of eight child casualties every day over the past four months, the conflict has resulted in 4,300 deaths, mostly civilian, according to the organization's Childhood Under Threat report.

Comment: Also see: 'The world is failing Yemen': Saudi Arabia desperate to escalate war as Yemeni rebels refuse to buckle

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Bizarro Earth

SOTT Focus: Canadian government's jihad against 'disbelieving Canadians'

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:17 UTC
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At this stage of the great game, or farce, I'm resigned to the fact that the world is going to hell in a hand basket (as the saying goes) and nothing anyone says or does will change that. Admittedly, I don't know if hell exists, so the precise planetary conditions that await humanity are unknown to me, but there have been many suggestive signs and portents over the last few years.

The word 'hell' has an interesting etymology; it comes from an Indo-European root meaning 'to cover' or 'hide'. The word 'apocalypse', on the other hand, means 'to uncover' or 'reveal', which is weird, but strangely appropriate, because just about everything of real importance - all meaningful truth - in this world is hidden from most people, leading to a collective retardation of true human evolution and progress.

But if 'normal life' on this planet is hell, most people are having a ball, and will continue to do so, at least until the 'apocalypse'/uncovering, when the bare, naked truth gets dropped on humanity's collective doorstep and everyone freaks out and runs screaming to the nearest Walmart or FEMA camp for some familiar police-state succor.

Over the last 15 years, Western political types have repeatedly treated the human race's tendency towards open-minded positivity disorder (OMPD) with high doses of fear-mongering in an attempt to induce in them the, more desirable, disinhibited reactive attachment to authority disorder (DRAAD). One example of this, (among an overwhelming number of other examples), comes from the relatively new rabid authoritarian on the block, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
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Bad Guys

The Empire Strikes Back: Kiev moves 65,000-strong army to frontline near Donetsk


Sputnik News
Wed, 19 Aug 2015 14:20 UTC
Ukrainian army Donetsk
© AFP 2015/ Sergey Volskii
With the Minsk ceasefire agreements formally still in force, the situation in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region remains extremely tense amid reports about Kiev's mass troop deployments in the area.

In violation of the Minsk ceasefire agreements, the Armed Forces of Ukraine has deployed heavy weapons and a large number of troops to the frontline in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region, Russian media outlets said.

The reports came amid intensified artillery shelling exchanges between the warring sides in the area, including near the city of Mariupol.

Comment: Probably thanks to the economy being in free fall, Kiev has managed to find 65,000 soldiers to commit to this brutally racist campaign of slaughter. But one wonders how many are Ukrainian soldiers versus how many are the US' mercenaries and terrorists.

Also see Warlord gone mad: How Obama's aggression in Ukraine risks nuclear war:
But what about the rebellion in eastern Ukraine? Well, when neo-Nazis overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine in a violent coup, one of their first acts was to try to outlaw the Russian language in "their" country. And Yulia Tymoshenko, former prime minister of Ukraine, apparently suggested Ukraine's eight million ethnic Russians should be "nuked."[4] And "[t]hen, there was the massacre of ethnic Russians burned alive in Odessa's trade union building on May 2, with neo-Nazi militias again on the front lines. Like other topics that put the U.S.-backed coup regime in a bad light, the Odessa massacre quickly moved off the front pages and there has been little follow-up from international agencies that supposedly care about human rights. [See Consortiumnews.com's 'Ukraine's 'Dr. Strangelove' Reality[5]

So maybe this made the millions of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine just a bit nervous. And they started pushing, not for secession, but a degree of local autonomy, in a Ukrainian Federation. But instead of negotiating with them, the Ukrainian government called them "terrorists," launched a full-scale military assault, and pounded the major cities of eastern Ukraine with heavy artillery. Frankly, if the Russians at that point began providing them with the means to defend themselves, I would not regard it as the business of the USA to object, let alone intervene.


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Star of David

Force-feeding the favored method of torture for Israel

Neve Gordon
Al-Jazeera
Sat, 15 Aug 2015 17:11 UTC
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© ReutersMany Palestinian political prisoners have embarked on hunger strikes as a form of non-violent protest against the authorities
Netanyahu's justification for pushing forward a bill to legalise force-feeding reveals a contradiction in his logic

Miri Regev, Israel's Minister of Culture and Sports, supports torture.

She is not alone. Joining her is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and nearly all ministers and members of Knesset in his coalition have followed suit.

Although almost half of the Knesset members opposed to the bill, the Israeli government supports torture, and thus, is by no accounts different than the governments of Egypt, Syria and many of its neighbours in the Middle East.

Israel, apparently, is not a "villa in the jungle", as so many of its pundits would have us think.
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Eagle

Best of the Web: US the main suspect with the means, motive, and opportunity in Bangkok bombing

Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
Tue, 18 Aug 2015 16:48 UTC
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The bombing on Monday evening, August 17, 2015, has killed up to 20 people, injured over 100 more, and stands as one of the worst single terrorist attacks in Thailand's capital of Bangkok in recent memory. The attack targeted a religious shrine popular with Asian tourists - particularly from China - who now comprise the largest demographic group of visitors to Thailand.

It is clear the attack was a precision strike on Thailand's economy, and specifically against a very precise segment of Thailand's tourist market. Commentators have admitted that many other targets with higher concentrations of tourists exist throughout Bangkok. Terrorists specifically struck the Erawan Shrine in downtown Bangkok to target Thailand's Asian tourists.

The Western media has already begun spinning theories as to who carried out the attack - focusing on separatists in Thailand's southern most provinces who have been waging a low-level insurgency for years. Many note, however, that violence rarely unfolds outside of these provinces, and has never been carried out on this scale - especially in Bangkok.
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