Puppet MastersS


Yoda

Venezuela president extends his hand to the people of America and calls for peace

Nicolas Marudo
The New York Times
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 10:17 UTC
maduro
© Agence France-Presse/Luis AcostaVenezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro
According to the United Nations, Venezuela has consistently reduced inequality: It now has the lowest income inequality in the region. We have reduced poverty enormously - to 25.4 percent in 2012, on the World Bank's data, from 49 percent in 1998; in the same period, according to government statistics, extreme poverty diminished to 6 percent from 21 percent.

We have created flagship universal health care and education programs, free to our citizens nationwide. We have achieved these feats in large part by using revenue from Venezuelan oil.

Read more at the NY Times

Comment:
Breaking through the propaganda front: CNN's Christiane Amanpour interviews Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blames the United States for deadly anti-government riots

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Bullseye

Own goal again: US senators fail to kick Russia out of 2014 World Cup


RT
Thu, 03 Apr 2014 10:13 UTC
© AFP Photo / Yasuyoshi ChibaGeneral view of Mario Filho "Maracana" stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Football's world governing body FIFA, has refused to kick Russia out of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, after two American senators said the country should be barred due to its actions in Ukraine.

Dan Coats and Mark Kirk wrote a letter to the organization based in Zurich in March asking for Russia's membership to be suspended, and for the country to be barred from competing in this year's World Cup in Brazil, as well as losing the right to host the event in four years' time.

In a letter to the two senators, FIFA said participation in the World Cup is based on sporting merit and only a violation of FIFA statutes and regulations could lead to a suspension from a competition.

Coats, a Republican senator from Indiana, was deeply disappointed by the ruling, saying, "FIFA suggests that outrageous misbehavior by member states does not matter because such decisions are irrelevant to soccer."

The 70-year-old, who was US ambassador to Germany for four years, cited Yugoslavia's expulsion from the 1992 European Championships in Denmark due to its behavior in the Balkan wars as a precedent, as this was not connected to the playing field.

It seems the American still plans to continue his protest.

"I continue to call upon FIFA leadership to impose the same punishment on Russia," Coats added.

Comment: The US senators seem oblivious to the fact that if outrageous behaviour is the criterion for not participating in international sporting events, then the US would find themselves terminally banned from all sporting events.

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Stormtrooper

Tyranny: Ukrainian leadership to hire US mercenaries to suppress people in eastern regions


Voice of Russia
Tue, 25 Mar 2014 09:56 UTC
Sniper
© RIA
Private military company will be in charge of suppressing protest movements in Eastern Ukraine, said a source in the country's Security Service. According to him, the name of the company is Greystone Limited.

According to a source cited by ITAR-TASS, Ukrainian authorities believe that the Security Service is not able to suppress the protest mood and neutralize the leaders and activists of the pro-Russian movement in the eastern regions. In particular, the source said, the acting president Alexander Turchinov shares this opinion. "Therefore it was decided to attract foreign mercenaries, who will serve as political police and state security protection, " said the representative of the Security Service.

He informed that the initiative to attract mercenaries belongs to oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Sergei Taruta, appointed governors of Dnepropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.

Not so long ago, during a meeting with Turchinov, a plan to stop the protest movements in the eastern regions was discussed. Kolomoysky noted: "why reinvent the wheel if there are real people who understand how and how much to pay," said the source.

According to publicly available information Greystone Limited is a structural part of Blackwater, that was later renamed into Academi. According to military experts, the company is associated with the CIA and the US Defense Department. Its employees participated in the war in Afghanistan after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, the company has appeared in Iraq and became involved in training the new Iraqi armed forces and police, as well as support of the occupation forces.

Voice of Russia, TASS

Comment: Imagine if the elected president of Ukraine Yanukovych had hired Russian mercenaries to take care of the Maidan protests. Then you would have heard the word dictator used across the Western media.

Here we have a Western puppet government wanting to use US hired thugs to quell kill the pro Russian protest because this thing called free speech and self-determination is getting pretty annoying and yet to the Western governments all is fine and dandy.

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Nuke

Argentinian President: UK turned Malvinas into NATO nuclear base


Press TV
Thu, 03 Apr 2014 01:20 UTC
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has accused Britain of turning the disputed Malvinas Islands, known as the Falklands to the British, into a nuclear base for NATO.

Fernandez made the remarks while addressing an event marking the 32nd anniversary of the beginning of the war with Britain over the islands on Wednesday.

"The truth about Malvinas is that it constitutes the biggest NATO nuclear military base in the South Atlantic. This is the truth they cannot keep hiding," the Argentine president told war veterans and supporters during the event.

Comment: Argentine president condemns Western policy on situation in Crimea and reminds the West of the Falkland referendum

What the British did to Malvinas, sounds like what the U.S. and U.K. did to Diego Garcia:
In order to convert the sleepy, Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia into a dominating military base, the U.S. forcibly transported its 2,000 Chagossian inhabitants into exile and gassed their dogs.


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Bad Guys

Hawaii may cut health benefits to Pacific islanders affected by nuclear testing


RT
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 02:41 UTC
american first H bomb
© AFP PhotoPicture taken on November 01, 1952 of the explosion of the american first H bomb, in the Eniwetok Atoll, in the Marshall Islands.
A US federal court has granted Hawaiian lawmakers permission to slash benefits for residents whose families formerly lived on a string of Pacific islands that the US military used as a nuclear test site in the decades after World War II.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit removed an injunction Tuesday that prevented the state from reducing the health benefits paid out to residents of Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands, where a number of people claim they are still suffering from health problems caused by the military tests.

In the years between 1946 and 1958, at least 67 nuclear weapons tests were conducted on the small group of atolls located north of Australia and just east of the Philippines. Over 7,200 Hiroshima-sized bombs were dropped on the Marshall Islands alone. The "Bravo Test" of 1954 dropped a bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the atom bomb used to decimate the Japanese city.

Not long after, families in Micronesia and other Pacific islands began birthing stillborn babies and children with birth defects. Others suffered the early onset of cancer, sterility, and illnesses they likely could have avoided had radiation not permeated the mostly isolated region.
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Calendar

NATO shakes their fist at Putin

Skydrifter
Sott.net
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 16:36 UTC
Image
© Barcroft Media
OMG! NATO is warning Russia - and taking steps. (But, Ukraine isn't a member of NATO.)

Granted, NATO has been doing anything politically convenient, anywhere, whenever asked. But now, is the world to wake up and take a closer look at NATO? Why did NATO survive the collapse of the Soviet Union? There is a good question.

How many know that Obama and the Gang started this Ukraine Crisis; Putin didn't. Putin caught Obama and the Gang in the process of enticing the overthrow of the Ukraine government. Obviously, Putin is taking full advantage of the situation, but that is nothing unexpected.

From history, here's the deal:

In 1994, Ukraine was added to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in the Budapest Memorandum. Under the terms of that memorandum Ukraine gave up possession of any left-over Soviet nuclear weapons (the third largest stockpile in the world) in exchange protection from nuclear attack.
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Info

Despite crisis, Ukraine delivers upgraded An-32 transports to India

Richard Tompkins
UPI
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 10:04 UTC
Image
© CC/Peter KadlecUpgraded An-32 transport planes of the Indian military, such as this one of the Croatian Air Force, are being upgraded in Ukraine.
Ukraine's Ukroboronprom and its Spectechoexport subsidiary have shipped upgraded An-32 transports to India despite Ukraine's military and political problems.

Ukroboronprom, a government-owned organization, said the aircraft were allowed by "European partners" to transit their airspace late last month in their journey from Kiev to Kanpur, India. It did not, however, provide details on the route taken after the aircraft departed the Ukrainian capital.

The An-32, manufactured by Ukraine's Antonov, was first produced in the mid-1970s. It is a twin-engine turboprop with a maximum speed of 329 miles per hour and a range of 1,553 miles. The planes were upgraded for India under a 2009 contract with an overall value of about $400 million.
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Bad Guys

Sanctions on Russia "stupid, petty and obvious sabotage of the West"

Martin Walker
UPI
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 13:35 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
We are about to see whether the successful use of sanctions against Iran can be repeated, and whether they will have sufficient impact to make the Russia of Vladimir Putin draw back from the Ukraine crisis.

Europe and the United States are expected to announce Monday the form of sanctions they intend to apply if Russia goes ahead with the annexation of Crimea after the Sunday referendum in the Black Sea peninsula, which has been part of Ukraine since 1954.

As reports came through of Russian troops massing on Ukraine's border, German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week told the Bundestag, Germany's Parliament, any decision by the Kremlin to change borders by force would meet a very robust response.

"We would not only see it, also as neighbors of Russia, as a threat. And it would not only change the European Union's relationship with Russia," she told Parliament. "No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically."
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Bulb

Bad news for U.S. companies in China: Minimum wage raised in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin


CNBC
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 15:41 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
The monthly minimum wage in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin will go up by between 11.4 percent and 12.3 percent from Tuesday, the semi-official China News Service reported, as the government continues efforts to boost domestic demand.

The central government has repeatedly pledged to increase workers' share of national income, pushing up wages steadily for more than a decade. It accelerated hikes in 2010 as an economic boom spread to the hinterland and fueled competition for labor.

In the latest hikes, wages will increase the most in Shanghai by 12.3 percent to 1,820 yuan ($290) a month from 1,620 yuan, and 21.4 percent on an hourly basis to 17 yuan from 14 yuan, according to the report on the website www.chinanews.com.
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Crusader

Russia will retaliate over "illegal and absurd" payment block by "hostile" (and infantile) JPMorgan

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 15:28 UTC
Image
While everyone was gushing over the spectacle on TV of a pro-HFT guy and anti-HFT guy go at it, yesterday afternoon we reported what was by far the most important news of the day, one which was lost on virtually everyone if only until this morning, when we reported that "Monetary Blockade Of Russia Begins: JPMorgan Blocks Russian Money Transfer "Under Pretext" Of Sanctions." This morning the story has finally blown up to front page status, which it deserves, where it currently graces the FT with "Russian threat to retaliate over JPMorgan block." And unlike previous responses to Russian sanctions by the West, which were largely taken as a joke by the Russian establishment, this time Russia is furious: according to Bloomberg, the Russian foreign ministry described the JPM decision as "illegal and absurd." And as Ukraine found out last month, you don't want Russia angry.

More:
The biggest U.S. bank thwarted a remittance from the Russian embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan, to Sogaz Insurance Group "under the pretext of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the United States," the ministry said yesterday in a statement on its website. Sogaz lists OAO Bank Rossiya, a St. Petersburg-based lender facing U.S. sanctions over the Ukrainian crisis, as a strategic partner on its website.

Interfering with the transaction was an "absolutely unacceptable, illegal and absurd decision," Alexander Lukashevich, a ministry spokesman, said in the statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama announced the action against Bank Rossiya last month as part of a broadening of sanctions that targeted government officials and allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose associates own Rossiya. The embassy's transaction was for less than $5,000 dollars, a person with knowledge of the dispute said, asking not to be identified because such transfers aren't public.
Did JPMorgan just move the second Cold War into semi-hot status? Very possibly:
"Any hostile actions against the Russian diplomatic mission are not only a grossest violation of international law, but are also fraught with countermeasures that unavoidably will affect activities of the embassy and consulates of the U.S. in Russia," Lukashevich said.
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