Puppet MastersS


Eye 1

Analyzing NATO's perpetual war with Russia


Russia Insider
Mon, 22 Jun 2015 17:06 UTC
Kaliningrad NATO
© UnknownNATO landing exercise just 100 miles from Kaliningrad
The latest scoop from Reuters begs for a few words:
The United States and its NATO allies are preparing militarily for the prospect that their rift with Russia could outlast President Vladimir Putin, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Sunday.

Carter, speaking at the start of a week-long trip to Europe, said the United States hoped Russia would return to a forward- looking course and noted areas of diplomatic cooperation with Moscow, including talks over Iran's nuclear program.

But ongoing changes to NATO's military posture, which are meant in part to deter a Russian intervention, illustrate preparations for longer lasting tensions, he said.

"The adaptations I was talking are specifically in anticipation that Russia might not change under Vladimir Putin, or even thereafter," Carter said before landing in Berlin.
A common line of argument in respectable western policy circles is "if only Putin were gone," followed by a deep sigh of regret. Apparently they have no appreciation for just how moderate Putin is when it comes to foreign policy — and how drastically different the geopolitical scene could be with someone else in Kremlin.


Comment: Putin tackled the challenges of post-Soviet Russia, took her back from rapacious oligarchs, and has defended her autonomy ever since. In a system where striving for autonomy leads to death (remember civil rights and MLK Jr., or African autonomy and Gaddafi) Putin is Western 'leadership's' natural enemy. He represents a freedom they cannot control, and therefore he, and the country he governs, are, through no fault of their own, in their cross-hairs.


Comment: Also see:

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Quenelle

Knesset member, former ambassador to the US Michael Oren: Obama abandoned Israel


Times of Israel
Tue, 16 Jun 2015 04:23 UTC
Net and OB
© www.smh.com.auBreaking up is hard to do.
Knesset member and former ambassador to the US Michael Oren on Monday penned a scathing attack on US President Barack Obama's policies toward Israel, claiming that while both he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made mistakes, "only one leader made them deliberately."

In an article in The Wall Street Journal headlined "How Obama Abandoned Israel," Oren, who served as Israel's ambassador in Washington during Obama's first term in office, recounted various gaffes committed by the Israeli government. Currently a lawmaker with the Kulanu party, Oren cited the announcement of settlement expansion on the eve of visits by top US officials, the now infamous "lecture" Netanyahu gave Obama during a photo op in the Oval Office in 2011, and the prime minister's speech to Congress earlier this year.

Oren absolved Netanyahu of some of the incidents, claiming that some missteps were taken by mid-level staffers without the prime minister's knowledge (e.g., two instances where settlement expansion was announced just as Vice President Joe Biden was scheduled to arrive in Israel). Netanyahu even apologized to Biden personally for the timing, Oren noted.

Obama, on the other hand, deliberately deviated from several long-held traditions in the US-Israel relationship, aired disagreements in the media, and pointedly skipped over Israel on his first Middle East tour after being elected, he said.With these very public displays of dissatisfaction with Israel, Obama violated the "no sunlight," as Oren referred to it, principle of not airing discord between the two governments.

Comment: Where there is "no sunlight" there may be a ray of hope.

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Chess

Russian politicians react: Extension of sanctions freezes Russia-EU political conflict


ITAR-TASS
Mon, 22 Jun 2015 15:01 UTC
Image
© ITAR-TASS/Maxim Nikitin
Extension of the European Union's anti-Russian sanctions only freezes the current political conflict between Moscow and Brussels, Alexei Pushkov, the chairman of the international committee of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, said on Monday.

Earlier in the day, the European Union's Foreign Affairs Council extended economic sanctions against Russia for another six months - till January 31, 2016.

"Actually, it means freezing of the current confrontation, the current political conflict," Pushkov told TASS. In conditions of no serious pressure from the European Union, Kiev seems to think it can "freely interpret the Minsk agreements and, as a matter of fact, simply ignore them," he said. "Hence, we have a dead end in the settlement of the situation [in southeastern Ukraine], a dead end in armed confrontation, because Kiev continues to shell living quarters, killing civilian population."

Comment: The EU is shooting itself in the foot. One can only imagine what pressure the US has on the EU.

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Shoe

Former adviser to Ukraine's Defense Minister defects to Donbass


Sputnik
Mon, 22 Jun 2015 14:11 UTC
Image
© Sputnik/ Igor Maslov
A onetime aide to the Ukrainian defense minister has defected to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, taking along his entire family and a wealth of classified information, Russian media reported Monday.

"I am Alexander Kolomiyets, a Major-General of the Ukrainian armed forces... My latest position was that of an adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Minister and a senior defense analyst," the General said during a news conference at the Donetsk News Agency headquarters on Monday.

Alexander Kolomiyets said that he had spent 19 years serving as the military commandant of Donetsk Region.

Comment: If the General is correct that many more want to defect, that would really put pressure on Poroshenko to perform for the West.

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Red Flag

Do as we say, not as we do: Boeing to sell fleet of cargo planes to Russia despite sanctions

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik
Mon, 22 Jun 2015 14:07 UTC
green light
It's a rich irony - in fact a richness worth about $7.4 billion, and counting. In the same week that European Union envoys voted to extend trade sanctions on Russia, news emerges from the Paris Air Show that American aviation giant, Boeing, is moving ahead to sell a fleet of its 747 cargo planes - to Russia.

That deal - reportedly worth about $7.4 billion - will see Boeing supply Russian transport firm Volga-Dnepr with 20 long-haul aircraft. That inventory is in addition to the fleet of 14 Boeing 747s that the Russian company has already purchased, according to media reports.

Moreover, it also emerged this past week that the Pentagon is lobbying hard for the US Congress to ease trade restrictions imposed on Russian-manufactured space rockets. According to a report in the Washington Times, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter and other Pentagon officials are calling on Senators to repeal a ban on Russian space technology. The Pentagon says that a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin needs to purchase 14 RD-180 Russian engines in order to power Lockheed's Atlas V space rocket program.

Comment: The US continues to show its true face by profiting at the expense of the EU which continues to suffer the consequences of its own idiocracy.

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Binoculars

Paul Craig Roberts: Understanding Washington and its agenda of evil


Paul Craig Roberts
Fri, 19 Jun 2015 00:00 UTC
Image
© UnknownSecretary of State and consummate liar and shill for US hegemony John Kerry.

Paul Craig Roberts' address to the Conference on the European/Russian Crisis, Delphi, Greece, June 20-21, 2015

The United States has pursued empire since early in its history, but it was the Soviet collapse in 1991 that enabled Washington to see the entire world as its oyster.

The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the rise of the neoconservatives to power and influence in the US government. The neoconservatives have interpreted the Soviet collapse as History's choice of "American democratic capitalism" as the New World Order.

Chosen by History as the exceptional and indispensable country, Washington claims the right and the responsibility to impose its hegemony on the world. Neoconservatives regard their agenda to be too important to be constrained by domestic and international law or by the interests of other countries. Indeed, as the Unipower, Washington is required by the neoconservative doctrine to prevent the rise of other countries that could constrain American power.

Paul Wolfowitz, a leading neoconservative, penned the Wolfowitz Doctrine shortly after the Soviet collapse. This doctrine is the basis of US foreign and military policy.
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2 + 2 = 4

The West struggles to understand Russia's 'information war'


Sputnik News
Sun, 21 Jun 2015 18:47 UTC
Image
© Sputnik / Yury Artamonov

The West is up in arms about Moscow's success in its use of so-called "information warfare," racking its brain over the question on how to outstrip the Russian media both in international and regional competition.

A new propaganda war on Russia, declared by Washington and Brussels this year, has not yet brought any tangible results and the prospect that it will prove effective in the future is as well rather bleak.

Russia's media sources have turned the spotlight on the Ukrainian crisis shaping not only Russian views of the conflict, but even affecting "the conversation in Western Europe and the United States," US journalist Brittney Lenard pointed out.

Comment: Seeing reality as it is has never been more difficult for the Western audience.

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Heart - Black

Collusion: British government murder of civilians in Northern Ireland - Documentary


RTE
Sat, 20 Jun 2015 19:45 UTC
Image
Collusion is a special feature length television documentary commissioned and funded by RTÉ.

In a first television interview, a member of the gang linked to the Dublin Monaghan bombs and many other atrocities reveals that their intent was to foment a civil war - and in that event, they were confident they could "crush the other side".

Taoisigh Jack Lynch and Liam Cosgrave were met with flat denials when they raised collusion with their British counterparts. The film will reveal that the British were well aware of it.

Supported by archive evidence and interviews with senior Irish and British officials of the period, the film reveals that the British Army decided early on it could not fight a war on two fronts and concentrated its efforts on "destroying" the Provisional IRA, while at the same time saying publicly it was dealing with the conflict in an even handed way.

Such was the extent of collusion in the eighties, the film will also reveal that an RUC Special Branch officer tipped off a UDA brigadier about an informer. It could easily have led to the man's murder. Northern Ireland's Police chief George Hamilton confirms a police officer could face serious charges.
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Eye 1

The oligarch's chessboard: Kolomoisky and the Kiev Cauldron

Gleb Bazov
slavyangrad.wordpress.com
Sun, 21 Jun 2015 18:33 UTC
kolomoisky


"What is this comic opera being played in Albania?" (Kemal Atatürk on President Zogu's elevation to monarchic status)

When I began writing this, Kolomoiskiy was still governor of Dnepropetrovsk and had yet to back down in his confrontation with the Junta. It was my contention at the time that things were not as simple as waiting to see who the US would back in order to judge the outcome; that they were not necessarily minutely controlling the situation; that—to quote Iraq's one time Information Minister, Muhammad Sa‛eed al-Sahhaf—"they don't even control themselves!" Subsequent events certainly give the impression that a pronunciamiento from the US Ambassador is all it took to settle the issue. Nonetheless, I would still contend that the US is not needed in order to explain Kolomoiskiy's apparent surrender (a rally is planned for this Saturday in Dnepropetrovsk which may indicate what, if any, moves he has left to make).

My reasoning for this is not that Frankenstein's monster has eluded the control of his creator, as Ukraine slips deeper into chaos (chaos, precisely, is one of the forms that US control takes); nor is it that the US has other concerns, including domestic political ones, that distract her attention. It is simply that even openly avowed US support is no guarantee that they will not abandon you in favour of somebody that they may have explicitly rejected or reprimanded. The US is working through Ukrainian actors, many of whom have the wherewithal to pursue their own personal goals, which may at some point coincide with those of the US—whoever appears to them most capable of achieving those goals is who they will ultimately back, even if they do not publicly proclaim that support.

Comment: Also see:

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Bad Guys

NATO increases tensions in the Baltics with provocative war games in Poland

Jared Sharp
Russia Insider
Sun, 21 Jun 2015 19:03 UTC
NATO & EU
© Unknown
NATO is on the move again, conducting a military BALTOPS (Baltic Operations) exercise in Ustka, Poland just west of the border from Kaliningrad in Russia.

This could be viewed as a direct provocation towards Russia. The increase in tension caused by such close-border exercises is justified by NATO blaming what they call Russian aggression in "annexing" Crimea. This, despite observers confirming the free and fair referendum in which the Crimean people overwhelmingly voted for reunification with Russia.

What's more, NATO's aggressive posturing is merely one of many such operations planned to be conducted across Eastern Europe.

The NATO exercise entitled Noble Jump includes attack helicopters, fighter jets, military hovercraft, amphibious landing vehicles, warships, and nearly 6,000 personnel, all taking part in drills to capture make-believe "enemy held" (Russian) territory.

Comment: Also see:

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