Puppet MastersS


Light Saber

Kiev caving in? Sets truce talks after Russian troop build-up and downing of military plane

Donetsk militant
© AFP Photo/Dominique FagetA Donetsk militant stands guard at a checkpoint in Marinka, 25 kilometers west of Donetsk, on July 15, 2014.
Ukraine's Western-backed leaders on Tuesday invited pro-Kremlin insurgents to a videoconference aimed at halting spiralling violence and what Kiev warned was an imminent invasion by thousands of Russian troops.

Kiev sharply raised the stakes in Europe's most explosive crisis in decades by declaring on Monday that a Ukrainian transport plane downed in the eastern conflict zone had been hit by a rocket fired from the Russian side of the frontier between the two ex-Soviet states.

Russia has broken with its traditional denials of all links to the uprising by not publicly responding to the charge.

A top Ukrainian general went a step further by telling a live television audience in Kiev that he feared a Russian invasion was imminent.

"Ukraine, like never before, stands on the cusp of a wide-scale aggression from our current northern border," said National Security and Defence Council Deputy Secretary Mykhaylo Koval.

The former defence minister said the Kremlin had parked 22,000 troops in the annexed Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and had other units stretching from the north-central region of Chernigiv to the southeastern edge of the Russian-Ukranian border on the Sea of Azov.

Comment: It looks like all it took was a minor flex of Russia's arms to scare Kiev into backing off. That, and the increasingly effective resistance offered by the self-defense militias in the east. Kiev knows what it would be up against if it followed the U.S.'s diktats in provoking Russia. But what kind of pressure will the U.S. now put on their puppet Poroshenko?


Laptop

COINTELPRO: Hacking online polls and other ways British spies seek to control the Internet

poll
The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, "amplif[y]" sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be "extremist." The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call.

The tools were created by GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG's use of "fake victim blog posts," "false flag operations," "honey traps" and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.

But as the U.K. Parliament today debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one which Prime Minister David Cameron has justified as an "emergency" to "help keep us safe," a newly released top-secret GCHQ document called "JTRIG Tools and Techniques" provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit's operations are. The document - available in full here - is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG's "weaponised capability" when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker's buffet for wreaking online havoc.

Comment: SOTT has been talking about manipulated online polls and 'artificially' inflated views/likes for years, not to mention COINTELPRO trolls paid to post pro-government nonsense all over the Internet. It's old news and has been going on for a long time, but it's nice to see it confirmed. This has to stop, and idiots like David "we spy on you for your own good" Cameron need to be booted out of office, preferably into the closest prison cells available.


Bomb

Warmonger, hypocrite, psychopath Dick Cheney: Obama is 'the worst president of my lifetime'

Cheney
© CNNWhy is this criminal still on TV? Don't feed the troll!
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born in 1941, thinks President Barack Obama is the country's worst commander-in-chief of his lifetime.

"I think he is the worst president of my lifetime. I fundamentally disagree with him. I think he's doing a lot of things wrong," Cheney said Tuesday on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper."

Cheney made the critical remarks when he was asked about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's call for Obama's impeachment. Cheney said such efforts would be a "distraction" but praised Speaker John Boehner's lawsuit against the president.

"I'm not prepared at this point to call for the impeachment of the president," he said. "I'm glad to see that the House Republicans are challenging him, at least legally at this point, but I think that gets to be a bit of a distraction. It's like the impeachment of Bill Clinton did - everybody could get geared up to have a big fight over it but it wasn't going anyplace."

Later in the interview, Cheney also indicated he is not a fan of former President Jimmy Carter.

"Jimmy Carter might have been a better president than Barack Obama, and I didn't think I'd ever say that," said Cheney.

View the show's first segment below.


Comment: We're certainly no fan of Obama, but this is too much! Seriously, this 'man' should be doing solitary confinement in a straightjacket, not spouting off his nonsense on national television. And talk about the pot calling the kettle black: Cheney is one of the most repugnant individuals on the planet!


Star of David

SOTT Focus: It's not the first time the Israeli military has massacred children on a Gaza beach

Image
A Palestinian boy whose father was killed weeps at his funeral in Gaza City, 13 July
Israel's latest game of "kill the Palestinians" began as a result of the kidnapping of 3 Israeli teenagers. No one knows who did it. Hamas denied they had anything to do with it, Israel has no evidence that Hamas had anything to do with it, and yet Israel blamed Hamas and, on the basis of that spurious claim, began bombing Gaza's civilians.

The latest example of unfettered Israeli criminality and brutality came today when Israeli missiles targeted part of the beach in Gaza, specifically, a part of the beach where four young Palestinian boys were playing football. This comes on the heels of last week's massacre of 9 young Palestinians in a beach cafe as they watched the World Cup.

Chess

Russia to reopen Cuban spy base

Image
© Reuters
Moscow and Havana have reportedly reached an agreement on reopening the SIGINT facility in Lourdes, Cuba - once Russia's largest foreign base of this kind - which was shut down in 2001 due to financial problems and under US pressure.

When operational, the facility was manned by thousands of military and intelligence personnel, whose task was to intercept signals coming from and to the US territory and to provide communication for the Russian vessels in the western hemisphere.

Russia considered reopening the Lourdes base since 2004 and has sealed a deal with Cuba last week during the visit of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to the island nation, reports Kommersant business daily citing multiple sources.

"I can say one thing: at last!" one of the sources commented on the news to the paper, adding that the significance of the move is hard to overestimate.

Chess

Germany considers using typewriters to deter US snooping

Image
© Reuters
Amid the worsening Berlin-Washington spy row, German politicians are considering going back to old-fashioned manual typewriters for confidential documents to protect national secrets from American NSA spooks.

Patrick Sensburg, the chair of the German parliament's enquiry into NSA alleged spying, said committee members are considering new security measures and are seriously thinking about abandoning email and returning to old school typewriters.

"As a matter of fact, we already have [a typewriter], and it's even a non-electronic typewriter," he told the ARD Morning Show Monday.

The interviewer, apparently surprised by the idea, asked if that was really the case, The Guardian writes. "Yes, no joke", responded Sensburg of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party.

The committee was set up to investigate the scope of surveillance uncovered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden who revealed that the US has been eavesdropping Germans and even bugged Merkel's cell phone. The scandal led to a chill in relations between old allies, Berlin and Washington, with Merkel saying at the time that "monitoring of friends was unacceptable."

Target

Reporting from Gaza: When my son screams...

We don't even seem to have a right to exist or defend ourselves. That right, according to the United States, belongs to Israel alone.

children at child funeral
© blog.milliyet.com.trChildren of Palestine paying last respects.
At just 3 months old, my son Omar cries, swaddled in his crib. It's dark. The electricity and water are out. My wife frantically tries to comfort him, shield him and assure him as tears stream down her face. This night Omar's lullaby is Israel's rendition of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, with F-16s forming the ground-pounding percussion, Hellfire missiles leading the winds and drones representing the string section. All around us crashing bombs from Israeli gunships and ground-based mortars complete the symphony, their sound as distinct as the infamous Wagner tubas.

But unlike a performance, this opera of death lasts days. Audience applause is replaced with the terrified cries of babies and children shrouded in smoke. Shrapnel zings off buildings and cars as another missile finds its mark, landing on another home. Six more are now dead. A doctor's house next door was hit by three Israeli F-16 missiles. It's hard to know what was the target. The doctor was killed, joining his mom and dad, killed in the previous war in 2008 - 09. The airstrikes are buzzing in my ears and Lina's. Omar's crying is continuing. Now the death toll is at 186, with 1,390 injured, the majority of them are civilians, as reported by the UN.

3 children
© www.presstv.irPalestinian children witness atrocity in Gaza as warplanes bomb their neighborhood.
There is no end in sight. Beyond the border we see tanks amassing, preparing for a ground assault. Above, the ever-present thwup-thwup of hovering Apache helicopters rock Omar's cradle through vibration. Warning sirens pierce the night - another incoming missile from an Israeli warship. The border is not far. But we cannot leave. The Gaza Strip has been under siege since 2007. Unlike Israel, we do not have bomb shelters to hide in. The 1.8 million citizens of Gaza, over half of them children under the age of 18, are packed into an area the size of Manhattan, unable to leave. We must stay and pray, pray that we don't get hit.

Comment: There are reports that the Israeli regime has resorted (once again) to the use of internationally-banned weapons within the imprisoned Gaza enclave. Bodies of most victims have been incinerated, while others had been completely torn apart. This type of Israeli weaponry has a history of use in two previous wars on Gaza (Anadolu Agency source). Is there no recourse for the Palestinians but to suffer this slow and horrific annihilation? Is there no country or power willing and able to step up and stop blatant Israeli genocide or are we still supposed to believe without question that Israel is the victim... May Mr. Omer and his family remain safe and the atrocities cease in Gaza.


People

CrossTalk: Gaza under siege, with Miko Peled, Gideon Levy and Fred Lazin

crosstalk
What does Israel hope to achieve with its most recent assault on Gaza? Does Tel Aviv merely want to reinforce the status quo. And what of the Palestinians' right to resist illegal occupation? Will Gaza's suffering ever end? CrossTalking with Miko Peled, Gideon Levy and Fred Lazin.


Comment: Lazin is lazy when it comes to facts, and morals. Killing civilians is not a war crime, while sending practically harmless rockets into civilian areas is? What is this guy smoking? Warning that a house will be bombed by bombing it magically makes it not a war crime?? Jon Stewart recently pointed out the absurdity of this Israeli practice:




Heart - Black

Israeli naval ship purposefully targets and bombs Palestinian children playing on Gaza beach, killing four

Israeli targets children at the beach
© ReutersA man on a beach in Gaza City carries a child in the aftermath of Israeli shelling
It is not unusual for militants to launch rockets from sites near my hotel. Israeli missiles have also landed pretty close to Al Deira, an old red stucco inn with a large terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Just a few hundred yards down the beach is the fishing harbor.

I had just returned to the hotel to type up some notes and file inserts on the day's news when there was a large explosion on the quay at the port, a little after 4'o clock in the afternoon.

We could smell the charge. I wondered: Did Hamas just fire a rocket? But it was the sound of an incoming missile. We saw a small fisherman's shack on the quay, churning with gray smoke.

Then we saw a gang of kids running from the shack, down the breakwater and onto the sand, hurtling toward Al Deira. A couple of waiters, the cook and a few journalists starting waving at them. Run here! Then a second missile exploded on the beach right behind them.

The staff were yelling, "They're hurt!"

Comment: The Guardian reports about the same event:
Journalists heard two loud explosions outside the Gaza City hotel, before children were pulled into the restaurant area for treatment.

A journalist who saw the incident said some of the children who survived were running away when another shell seemed to be aimed at them.



Gold Seal

Best of the Web: The return of George Orwell and Big Brother's war on Palestine, Ukraine and the truth

Image
The other night, I saw George Orwells's Nineteen Eighty-Four performed on the London stage.

Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell's warning about the future was presented as a period piece - remote, unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said:
'... to be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.'
Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other distractions beckoned.

"What a mindfuck," said a young woman, lighting up her phone.

As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular.

In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in 1984. 'Democracy' is now a rhetorical device. Peace is 'perpetual war'. 'Global' is imperial. The once hopeful concept of 'reform' now means regression, even destruction. 'Austerity' is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich - an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few.