Puppet MastersS


Light Saber

Moscow will not allow the Euro-Atlantic community to isolate Russia says head of state for international relations

Alexei Pushkov
© RIA Novosti / Vladimir FedorenkoAlexei Pushkov
Moscow will not allow Washington to realize its plan of international isolation for Russia and many nations will not support the US, the head of the State Duma committee for international relations has said.

Currently the economic and political isolation of Russia is impossible, MP Aleksey Pushkov told the Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

"Statements are being made in Washington that the United States are starting to implement a global isolation policy for our country. Now the US administration attempts to attract the European Union to the isolation policy. The ultimate objective is to create a new tectonic rift between Russia and Europe in the spirit of the new Cold War," the senior MP said in the interview.

However, such a scheme would not work, primarily due to the strong economic and financial ties between Russia and Europe that are important for both parties. "We are an important and large country; they have to do business with us. We also need this and we have to prevent the USA from creating the rift," Pushkov emphasized.

Comment: Russia is taking steps to counter US hegemony and it appears that Putin's government is doing well in its attempts to forge new alliances. This may explain the US-led Ukrainian government's increased attempts to create chaos, thus drawing Russia directly into war.

US failing to push economic sanctions against Russia through EU allies
Unintended consequences? Western sanctions will cause Russia to change its economic partners...for the better
Russia, China banking deal to exclude dollar in transactions - Symbolic blow to dollar
Bear baiting: Russia vows response after Ukraine shell kills 1, injures 2 in Russian city


Mail

Two federal judges order IRS to provide declaration on how 2 years of emails were lost

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Two federal judges aren't buying "the dog ate my emails" bs story the IRS is trying to sell.

Finally, we might be getting somewhere with this ridiculous scandal. Congress has been working on this for a year without much success, but on Thursday and Friday, the two U.S. District court judges ordered the IRS to start providing some answers.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the IRS to provide - within a month - a declaration explaining exactly how the agency managed to "lose" two years' worth of emails belonging to Lois Lerner.

Sullivan issued the order as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Judicial Watch, a non-partisan watchdog group. He said the IRS declaration must be signed, under oath, by the appropriate IRS official.

"I'm going to hold tight to that Aug. 10 declaration," Sullivan said.

Judge Sullivan also assigned John Facciola, a federal magistrate, to conduct his own query into whether there may be another way to obtain Lerner's emails.

Comment: The answers should be very entertaining. Stay tuned!

IRS emails show Lois Lerner contacted DOJ about prosecuting tax exempt groups


Megaphone

What the media isn't telling you about Israel's attack on Gaza

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Israel is responding to rocket attacks out of Gaza! That's the headline you see everywhere. But we show you what the mainstream media isn't telling you about this story.


Comment: This is a good overview, but it's important to stress that the catalyst for every bombing operation on Gaza is a false-flag event or some other convoluted pretext in which Israeli agents precipitate a crisis, in this case by abducting three teenagers, executing them, and pretending they were missing.

Also missing is the reason why the Israeli regime does all this: to prevent peace and integration into a normal one-state solution, at all costs. Yes, at ALL costs, including killing some of their own from time to time. They're psychopaths; what else could we expect?


Gift

Pentagon gives pink slips to thousands of soldiers

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© Reuters
The Pentagon is laying off thousands of military officers, including those serving or who have recently served in Afghanistan.

Defense Department officials said the reductions are the result of mandatory spending cuts imposed by sequestration and are part of their larger plan to reduce the number of U.S. soldiers from 520,000 to 450,000.

Roughly 2,600 captains and other officers have or will be laid off, with more expected, Fox News learned Friday.

The decision to send pink slips to soldiers overseas on active duty is dangerous and bad for morale, says retired Major Gen. Robert Scales.

"It puts the soldier, the soldier's family and the men under his command at risk," said Scales, a Fox News contributor. "Young officers look at each other and wonder who is next."

Comment: Engendering support for the military and war? These soldiers are and were death dealers who have caused much suffering in Afghanistan and Iraq. The number deaths suggests that the people of Afghanistan and Iraq have made ALL of the sacrifices. Where is the sympathy for all of the human beings whose homes and lives have been destroyed? What about the innocent people murdered by these solders?

Afghan civilian death toll reaches record high
Iraq deaths: 1,455,590
Iraq War deaths exceed Vietnam War numbers
Americans increasingly comparing Afghan war to Vietnam


Top Secret

UK police have details of CIA torture flights to Diego Garcia despite past denials - report

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© ReutersAn undated file photo shows Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago
Crucial logs that confirm the British overseas territory Diego Garcia was involved in the CIA's black site rendition program as a secret prison have been passed to the UK police for further investigation, despite earlier claims that there were no logs.

Senate report points to UK 'complicity' in US extraordinary rendition

A Whitehall official was photographed earlier this week carrying documents marked as "sensitive," which have been handed to detectives, the Observer reports.

The documents consist of a number of printed emails and handwritten notes and memos. They were written by an administrator for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's British Indian Ocean Territory section.

In notes scrawled onto the documents, the official suggests the press office of the Foreign Office should become "more active" on the issue. He also asks what information should be released. "What else in public domain?" he asks.
Well fancy that: this document shows HMG responds to #rendition questions by hiding details of flights 2 Diego Garcia pic.twitter.com/MlQ3kni1Xq
- Ian Cobain (@IanCobain) July 13, 2014

Comment: David Vine, author of Island of Shame: the Secret History of the U.S. Military on Diego Garcia writes that Diego Garcia island is a strategic location for the U.S. to maintain its global domination. It is reportedly more secretive and a "black site" for high profile-detainees.
"Through Diego Garcia," Vine pointed out, "the U.S. can project its power throughout the Middle East, and from East Africa to India, Australia and Indonesia. With Guam, the island is the most important American base outside the U.S." He said U.S. bases now number around 1,000, including 287 in Germany, 130 in Japan and Okinawa, and 57 in Italy.

"Bases have been essential tools of U.S. military and economic power since not long after independence," Vine pointed out. "We had bases all the way to the Pacific. After the Civil War, the U.S. began to acquire coaling bases in the Pacific."

Although the Chagossians were forcibly removed in 1971, they still hope to return, Vine says, and refer to their period of exile as one of "profound sorrow." Vine says they would be happy to live on the unused eastern portion of the island and work at the base but the U.S. instead "imports contract labor from other areas so they can send them home when the job is done." The island's exiled survivors and their descendants today number about 5,000.

Long off limits to reporters, the Red Cross, and all other international observers and far more secretive than Guantánamo Bay, many long suspected the island was a clandestine CIA "black site" for high-profile detainees, Vine wrote in a related article. Journalist Stephen Grey's 2006 book "Ghost Plane" documented the presence on the island of a CIA-chartered plane used for rendition flights. On two occasions former U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey publicly named Diego Garcia as a detention facility. And a Council of Europe report named the atoll, along with those in Poland and Romania, as a secret prison.
Diego Garcia - A brief history lesson: U.S. military forcibly transported inhabitants and gassed their dogs


X

Japan plans to reopen nuclear reprocessing plant capable of 2,000 bombs a year

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© Reuters/Kimimasa Mayama
Reactivating a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant could provide Japan with enough plutonium to produce up to 2,000 atomic bombs a year, a US expert has warned. The "reckless" move could destabilize the region, as Japan's neighbors rush to compete.

Henry Sokolski, executive director at the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, urged the House Foreign Affairs committee to hinder the reopening of the nuclear reprocessing facility in Rokkasho, North Japan.

The plant itself was supposed to begin operations in October 2013, but its reactivation was delayed by new safety regulations. The operators of the facility, which, according to the IAEA, has an annual capacity of 800 tons of uranium, or 8 tons of plutonium, say it should be up and running by this October.

Allowing the reactivation of the plant would be "insulting" and "reckless," especially when South Korea is not allowed to reprocess or enrich nuclear fuel, the US expert said, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.

War Whore

More Bear baiting: Kiev forces bomb Russian border town killing Russian citizen

kiev shelling russia
© RIA Novosti / Sergey Pivovarov
The daughter of a man killed by an artillery shell fired by Kiev's forces in a quiet Russian town just across the border from Ukraine is still in shock. In a night of horror, she also had to save her 11-year-old brother from the bombing.

Andrey Shulyatyev, a 46-year-old father of four, was killed on Sunday when an artillery shell from Ukraine hit his private house on the border, in the Rostov Region of Russia.

Irina, 20, was woken up in the middle of the night on Sunday by a sound of an explosion and could not believe it was not all just a bad dream. The girl was crying throughout her whole interview to LifeNews, in which she had to relive the ordeal of her terrible night once again.

"I heard a scream, it was my younger brother, I grabbed him and ran towards the exit. Then I heard my father's scream," the girl said. "When my brother and I ran up to the door, glass from the windows shattered again. We stopped. When we went out to the porch, we saw my father lying there. He was without an arm. I was in shock, I thought it was a dream, I came back into the house, then went out again to see him lying there without an arm. He was screaming. My brother was screaming. We were bombed."

Light Sabers

Flashback Things that make you go 'hmmm...': Hamas supports CIA color revolutions in Middle East, relocates from Syria to Qatar and Egypt

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Hamas leaders, what are they up to?
The political leadership of the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, has moved from Syria to Egypt and Qatar.

Deputy political leader Moussa Abu Marzouk, now based in Cairo, said Hamas could not operate effectively due to the unrest in its long-time ally.

The political leader, Khaled Meshaal, and his aides have moved to Doha.

On Friday, the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, declared his support for Syrian people against President Bashar al-Assad.

"I salute all people of the Arab Spring, or Islamic winter, and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform," Ismail Haniya told worshippers at a mosque in Cairo.

Comment: Maybe this isn't such a conspiracy theory after all?

Hamas is a Creation of Mossad

CIA, Mossad Infiltrated Muslim Organizations


Map

Infrastructural and militarized cartography of Israel's Gaza prison complex

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© Léopold Lambert
Map created by Léopold Lambert for The Funambulist (July 10, 2014)

Download a high-quality version of the map here (5MB)

(license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 4.0)
As the military siege on Gaza (the fourth since the 2005 evacuation of the Israeli settlers) continue to kill every day (81 Palestinian killed in bombings so far), I go back, once again to the idea that we should as much focus on the exceptional violence that affects many of us emotionally, as on the normal violence that unfolds itself on a daily basis upon what has been legitimately named "the largest prison on earth (1.65 millions inhabitants). Let it be clear, making maps won't save any life, and the production of knowledge during urgent situation is always problematic. Moreover, maps tend to be disincarnated and therefore carry the risk of a desensitization on the contrary of photographs and/or videos that allow us to identify with situated bodies. There is therefore a need for articulating the emotional approach to violence - it manifests most of the time through the notion of spectacular - with a more structural and analytical approach of it, as I have been recently writing again.

This map can be put in relation with the three articles I have written during the last siege, "Operation Pillar of Cloud" in November 2012. The first one was introducing a map that I did in a similar concern of sensitivization. This map was one of "the Manhattan Strip" (only 4-times smaller than the Gaza strip) under siege like Gaza was at that time. The second one was describing Gaza as a scale-1 experiment for the Israeli government and army to test how little can the strip be fed in power, water, supplies, etc. without triggering an actual "humanitarian disaster." Finally, the third article was trying to think how a Gaza kid could picture Israelis since the only ones (s)he have seen in her/his life were soldiers or machines.

Star of David

Gilad Atzmon: On Israeli defeat and the future of Jewish politics

Interview with Gilad Atzmon

anti-semitism
Alimuddin Usmani: After Cast Lead in 2009 and Pillar of Defense in 2012, the Israeli army has launched operation Protective Edge in July 2014 against Gaza. What is the purpose of these repeated large scale military operations?

Gilad Atzmon: It is important to note that Israel hasn't won a single military battle since 1973. True, it has killed many Arabs, but it hasn't managed to achieve any of its military objectives.

Israel's military domination has been sustained by the power of deterrence. The strategy was to force Arabs to avoid conflict by threatening that they could lose everything. This week has shown that this trick won't work anymore. Palestinian resistance has sprung back to life. Israel can not solve its problems by military means. The situation is desperate for the Israelis. They have started to realize that they are stuck within a political, ideological and cultural stalemate. Israel is unable to conjure an image of a resolution. There is no prospect of future for the Jewish State.

Furthermore, the Jewish Left's blatant lie that the 'occupation is the problem' has been exposed this week as we witness Israeli Arab citizens chased by Jewish mobs. As we know, the right-wing call for mass expulsion of all Arabs from Israeli territory is becoming increasingly popular within Israel. This brutal 'solution' is totally consistent with Jewish supremacist culture and ideology. After all, Jews, and I mean both Zionists and anti, like to operate within a Jews only environment. But can Israel rid itself of the Palestinians. This is exactly what the Right wing parties within the coalition promise to do.

Back to your question; since the military cannot provide the answers and the politicians cannot produce an image of a solution, the military is used as a firemen's brigade. It supplies short-lived victories. The IDF is buying time, it cannot deliver a victory because military objectives cannot even be articulated. The IDF pounds Gaza with missiles, it kills whatever it suspects might be dangerous (a lot of kids, elders and women). But as time goes by, the military options are shrinking and to a certain extent, are not viable any more.

The German military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz suggested in the 19th century that "war is the continuation of politics by other means." In the case of Israel what we see instead is the reverse of Clausewitz' idea: Israeli politics is the continuation of the Jewish need for a conflict.