Puppet MastersS

Bulb

Excellent idea! Candidates in elections must prove their sanity - MPs

voter
© RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy
A nationalist lawmaker suggests making politicians disclose their psychiatric problems to the public and punish those who try to hide them by removing them from polls.

Aleksey Zhuravlev, who heads the nationalist party Rodina (Motherland), and sits in the Lower House on the ticket of the center-left party Fair Russia, claims that the initiative was caused by personal experience.

"In the course of election campaigns, I sometimes encounter candidates who cause only bewilderment. I have to explain the simplest things to them - like what security is, what social solidarity and responsibility are, what healthy conservatism is. Sometimes our citizens say that certain deputies must be insane. It might be a figure of speech, but we cannot rule out that it could be an actual fact," Zhuravlev said in an interview with Izvestia daily.

"I think voters should know about psychiatric problems of the people who seek their support. The candidates must submit official papers about their mental condition to the elections commissions, and, if they conceal anything, this can be a reason for removal from polls," he added. The MP said that the regulations could be similar to the requirements concerning criminal records - candidates must report it in their papers and can be disqualified from the race if they fail to do so.

The motion received some support from other Fair Russia MPs and lawmakers representing the Communist Party.

In the same interview, Zhuravlev gave an example of a politician who should undergo a test. He claimed that the leader of the old and established Russian pro-democracy party Yabloko, Sergey Mitrokhin, had been recognized as unfit for military service for health reasons, with the suggestion that it was because of his mental condition.

However, Mitrokhin refuted Zhuravlev's allegations in press comments saying that his military ID had a "fit for service" marking and expressed readiness to undergo an independent psychiatric test at any time.

"I hope other deputies agree to pass the test together with me as their mental condition can really cause worries - almost every week they submit schizophrenic motions to the parliament and then vote for them," the Yabloko leader said.

Bad Guys

Larijani: US, UK chief sponsors of terrorism

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© UnknownIranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani
Iran's Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani says the United States and the United Kingdom have engineered and sponsored terrorism around the world.

"History shows that the first terrorists in the world and in the region are the superpowers themselves," Larijani said, adding that the US and UK are chief among them.

The United States and European states have expressed concerns that the Western militants fighting in Iraq and Syria would pose a security threat once they decide to return to their countries. This is while the United States and its Western allies have been actively funding and training the militants.

The top Iranian parliamentarian pointed out that the superpowers express misgivings over terrorism while they themselves have created the ISIL terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.
Referring to the Western countries, he said, "You will never be upset about terrorism and you are lying because you yourselves were the founders of terrorism in the region."

Comment: Larijani is telling it like it is! For more information on the creation of ISIL/ISIS/IS, see:


Camcorder

Editor of Veterans Today: Video of Sotloff beheading might be staged by Rita Katz

Rita katz
Rita Katz: our source of all Muslim terror-groups/personas since the launching of the war against "terror" fiasco
Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, a senior editor with Veteran's Today, from Atlanta, about the West's direct support for the ISIL terrorist group slaughtering Syrians and their response to the recent killings of Western journalists. The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Are you on the verge of another invasion by American troops to Iraq?

Dean: No, I'm afraid this has been really exaggerated. We have a lot of folks out there that don't like what America has done in the region and they have very good reasons for that; but they are kind of grasping... they are so angry that they try to grasp at anything that comes along that's going to bash America, but America's not, they have no need to because Iraq has a huge army.

All we're looking at and all really Iraq wants is of course American tax payers to pay for things; and they want airstrikes because they don't really have much of an air force.

Comment: Indeed, Sotloff was a dual American-Israeli citizen. As the Guardian reported yesterday:
The revelation of Sotloff's Israeli citizenship was disclosed by the country's foreign ministry on Wednesday morning. In a brief tweet, Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the ministry, said: "Cleared for publication: Steven Sotloff was Israel citizen RIP."
Gilad Atzmon had a small comment on his blog today:
Ynet reports this morning on "the operation to hide Steven Sotloff's Jewish and Israeli background online."

The articles tells a story of a "worldwide network of friends included over 150 members, speaking 20 different languages, who scanned every post Steven has made on Facebook or Twitter and removed any mentions of his Israeli or Jewish connections." I can only think of one Jewish organization that could facilitate such an grand scale operation and it isn't JVP.

We also learned yesterday that Sotloff spent 3 years at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. An institute that is linked to the Mossad according to some media sources.

Israeli press comes short of linking Sotloff to the Mossad but it produces the necessary evidence that would make such a suggestion into a valid option.
Not surprised if true! Sotloff video found by group connected to Homeland Security and responsible for releasing fake bin Laden video

And who is this Rita Katz?

Private Jihad: How Rita Katz got into the business of inventing Muslim terrorists and hystericizing America

Is Israel Controlling Phony Terror News?


Oscar

Not surprised if true! Sotloff video found by group connected to Homeland Security and responsible for releasing fake bin Laden video

sotloff beheading
The group purportedly responsible for discovering the Steven Sotloff beheading video is an intelligence asset specializing in war on terror propaganda.

"The video was first obtained by SITE Intelligence Group (Search for International Terrorist Entities), also known as SITE Intel Group, a relatively under-the-radar yet apparently very powerful nonprofit research body that monitors jihadist movements," reports USA Today. "The Bethesda, Maryland, organization has published a shortened version of the beheading video and published a transcript on its news site, which has been largely inaccessible since news of the beheading broke, likely due to an uptick in Web traffic."

One of SITE's founders, Rita Katz, is a government insider with close connections to former terrorism czar Richard Clarke and his staff in the White House, as well as investigators in the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security, according to SourceWatch. Her father was executed in Iraq as an Israel spy, a fact that suggests a connection to Israeli intelligence.

Info

Lavrov: Russia is for peaceful settlement

Image
© EPA/SERGEI ILNITSKY
There will be no military interference to Ukraine, and Russia is for peaceful settlement. Sergei Lavrov, Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, has made this statement on Monday at an annual meeting with students and teachers of Moscow State University of Foreign Affairs.
"There will be no military interference. We are committed exclusively to the peaceful settlement of this deep crisis, this tragedy," Lavrov stated.
He noted that the demand to the militia to lay down arms was unrealistic.

The minister said that Washington and Brussels should demand that Kiev quit using heavy weaponry against civilians.

"The most important is that Washington and Brussels demand from Kiev the same that they demand in all other conflicts: to stop using heavy weaponry and aviation against civil facilities and civilians," the minister stressed.

Comment: Russia continues to offer peaceful solutions to the Ukrainian crises but it seems to fall on deaf ears.


Megaphone

Russian Council Speaker to EU: Sanctions are counterproductive and more damaging to EU than Russia

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© ITAR-TASS/Pavel SmertinFederation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko
Russia is ready to respond if the West whips up the spiral of sanctions, Valentina Matviyenko, Federation Council Speaker, upper house of Russian parliament, said on Monday.

She said any sanctions were counterproductive and mutually disadvantageous and their ultimate goal was "not only to tear Ukraine away from Russia and Russia from the European Union" but also "to weaken the European Union".

"The United States is securing its geopolitical interests with the Europeans' hands for there is a fierce competition for markets, economic and financial resources," Matviyenko said.

She said sanctions were sensitive to any country. "They are sensitive to us too, but they are not dramatic", she said.

"Russia has an enormous potential and possibilities. This is the time for us to collect ourselves and see where our weak points are and where we are particularly dependent on other countries and take real steps to preserve our economy and avoid negative developments in the country," Matviyenko said.

Arrow Up

Can you smell what The Caliph is cooking?

Soldier
© AFP Photo /Ahmad AL-Rubaye
Next week is the 13th anniversary of 9/11. And Washington is back to bombing... It's Iraq, all over again - an eerie echo of the most tragic of all post-9/11 developments: Shock and Awe.

Osama bin Laden, now arguably at the bottom of the Arabian Sea (according to the official spin), used to personify the intolerant Wahhabi worldview run amok. Then his Wahhabism married Sayid Qutb's Egyptian Islamism, personified by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Qutb, killed by the Egyptian regime in the late 1960s, was the wayward prophet of a global jihad between Islam and the West. Yet his zealous sons - from Osama/al-Zawahiri to current Caliph Ibrahim of ISIS/IS [The Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS/ISIL] - went much further, their jihad targeting civilians and even Muslims.

Now Caliph Ibrahim has maneuvered Washington into renewed bombing in Iraq - and potentially bombing Syria. Obama does "Syraq". And yet, more crucially, what if Obama is doing Al-Qaeda's bidding?

This could all fit Osama's carefully laid-out trap - over the years - of finally managing to expel the US from the Middle East via a constant war of attrition, slowly bleeding the Empire of Chaos. Eric Margolis has alluded to this possibility here.

Eye 1

NSA defends collection of Americans' phone records in Federal appeals court

big brother
© Reuters/Larry Downing
A federal appeals panel heard arguments in New York City on Tuesday from attorneys representing the American Civil Liberties Union and the United States government as the court considers the future of a controversial phone surveillance program.

The three democratically-appointed judges serving the Second Circuit Court of Appeals spent two hours asking questions of the ACLU and Justice Department lawyers during the hearing, but reserved making a decision just yet concerning the matter at hand: the US intelligence community's reliance on Section 215 of the Patriot Act to receive in bulk the metadata, or raw call records, pertaining to the daily phone habits of millions of Americans.

Last June's disclosure of classified documents detailing how the US National Security Agency compels telecommunication companies for these records spawned a slew of lawsuits, including one brought by the ACLU only days after journalists began to report on the leaks attributed to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. And although a federal court judge serving the District of Washington, DC agreed with the plaintiffs in one case that the government's use of Sec. 215 was likely unconstitutional and "almost Orwellian," Judge William Pauley ruled for the Southern District of New York last December in the government's favor and insisted "There is no evidence that the government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks," and that the NSA's efforts are necessary to combat the "bold jujitsu" of international terrorism.

Attorneys for the ACLU soon after appealed Judge Pauley's decision, which in turn took lawyers to the Second Circuit this week to answer questions before the appellate panel now tasked with deciding if the lower court's ruling is worthy of standing.

Roses

Russia to lift controls on Mongolian meat exports - Vladimir Putin

meat
© Reuters/Alexander Demianchuk
Russia will lift restrictions on the import of meat products from Mongolia, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday following talks with Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.

"We will certainly make steps towards our Mongolian friends and the decisions will be taken by the Russian Government in the near future", RIA Novosti quoted Putin as saying after the meeting in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar.

Putin said that Mongolia has a big opportunity to significantly increase the supply of meat products to the Russian market given compliance with Russian food safety regulations.

In the last decade Russia imposed restrictions on the import of livestock from Mongolia due to several outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).

Newspaper

Russian French round-table discussion: What Does Russia Want?

russia round table
© RussEurope & A. Chalguine
An important round-table discussion was held yesterday evening (Monday, September 1st), in Paris, under the auspices of the Franco-Russian Dialogue Association, to attempt to assess the political solutions to the Ukrainian crisis, and to exit from the spiral of escalation. This round-table discussion brought together leading Russian politicians and representatives of diverse French political forces, of the business community (Total, GDF-Suez), and of the cultural and scientific communities. The Participants

Without it being possible to list them all (and we apologise in advance to those who have been forgotten), those present included:
  • Sergei Naryshkin, Chairman of the State Duma,
  • Aleksey Pushkov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Foreign-Affairs,
  • Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on the CIS, Eurasion integration and Relations with Compatriots,
  • Aleksandr Orlov, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to France.