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Post-Mueller Putin Derangement Sydrome

Patrick Armstrong
Strategic Culture Foundation
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:14 UTC
putin time magazine cover
© Time Magazine
The West - its governments and its governments' scribes - are obsessed with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Obsessed" is probably too weak a word to describe the years of impassioned coverage, airy speculation and downright nonsense. He is the world's leading cover boy: military hats, Lenin poses, imperial crowns, scary red eyes, strait-jackets, clown hats; anything and everything. He's the avatar of Stalin, he's the avatar of the Tsars, he's the Joker, he's Cthulhu, he's Voldemort, he's Satan. He's the palimpsest for the New World Order's nightmares. Putin is always messing with our minds. He weaponises information, misinformation and sexual assault accusations. Childrens' cartoons, fishsticks, Pokemon and Yellow Vests, "Putin's warships" are lurking when they aren't stalking; "Putin's warplanes" penetrate European airspace; "Putin's tanks", massing in 2016, massing in 2018, still massing. His empire of rogue states grows. All Putin, all the time.

In an especially imbecile display in 2015, Western reporters (unable to find his website) thinking he hadn't been seen for several days started a contest of speculation about coups, death, wars, plastic surgery, secret births and other nonsense; when he "re-appeared", the story went down the Memory Hole.

For some reason, Americans personalise everything. In meetings with US intelligence agencies I was always fascinated how they would reduce every complicated reality to a single individual. But it isn't Saddam, or Assad, or Qaddafi, or Osama, or Aidid, or Milosevic, or Maduro, or Castro or any of the other villains-of-the-day, it's a whole country: these people got to the top for good reasons. Removing the boss makes some difference but never all the difference. They go but they never leave a Washington-friendly country behind and Washington does it all over again somewhere else. This peculiar blindness drives Putin Derangement Syndrome and has infected everybody else.
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Propaganda

Why media won't drop the obviously corrupt SPLC

Warren Henry
The Federalist
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:02 UTC
SPLC
© Family Research Council
Southern Poverty Law Center: A hate group that targets 'hate groups'
The Southern Poverty Law Center - America's wealthiest so-called civil rights group - is engulfed in scandal. Do not expect the establishment media to stop relying on them anytime soon.

In March, the SPLC ousted its co-founder and public face, Morris Dees, amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment and mistreatment of nonwhite staffers. Two weeks later, SPLC president Richard Cohen stepped down to assist the group in implementing findings of an internal investigation.

That the SPLC has been a problematic organization for many years has been clear to anyone who cared to take a close look. Bob Moser, a former SPLC writer, recently summed up the prior findings of non-right-wing publications: "In 1995, the Montgomery Advertiser had been a Pulitzer finalist for a series that documented, among other things, staffers' allegations of racial discrimination within the organization. In Harper's, Ken Silverstein had revealed that the center had accumulated an endowment topping a hundred and twenty million dollars while paying lavish salaries to its highest-ranking staffers and spending far less than most nonprofit groups on the work that it claimed to do. The great Southern journalist John Egerton, writing for The Progressive, had painted a damning portrait of Dees, the center's longtime mastermind, as a 'super-salesman and master fundraiser' who viewed civil-rights work mainly as a marketing tool for bilking gullible Northern liberals."

Nevertheless, Moser was shocked by what he found when he began working for the SPLC in 2001. A co-worker laughingly retorted: "And you call yourself a journalist! Clearly you didn't do your research." Moser was far from the only journalist who has not done his research. And why would they? After all, the SPLC were the Good Guys fighting right-wingers who were obviously the Bad Guys.
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Network

Turkey seeks early delivery for Russian S-400 air-defense systems


RFE/RL
Wed, 10 Apr 2019 16:24 UTC
s-400
© Sputnik / Aleksey Malgavko
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Russian air-defense missile systems could be delivered earlier than initially planned, standing by a purchase that has put the NATO member at odds with Washington.

"The delivery of the S-400 missile-defense system was to be in July, maybe it can be brought forward," Erdogan told journalists on his plane following a trip to Russia, Turkish media reported on April 10.

Meanwhile, four U.S. senators said that "it is time" for Erdogan to choose between the Russian S-400 systems and two U.S. products: Patriot missiles and F-35 fighter jets.

The United States has demanded that Ankara call off its deal with Russia, saying that the S-400 system is incompatible with NATO systems and seen as a threat to the U.S.-made F-35.
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Russian Flag

'Not partners, friends': Putin calls out his 'bandit' translator for making him sound less warm to Sweden


RT
Wed, 10 Apr 2019 16:35 UTC
Russia sweden Putin Lofven
© Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven speak through a translator at the International Arctic Forum
Russian President Vladimir Putin branded his translator a "bandit" during a conversation with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, after noticing a not very accurate translation of his words.

The conversation Tuesday followed the international Arctic forum in St. Petersburg, where Russia is attempting to strengthen ties with other states in the region. Putin highlighted the $5 billion Swedish businessmen invested in Russia, referring to them as "druz'ya" (friends), not once, but twice, emphasizing the word.
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Eye 1

Leaked Google 'news blacklist' documents show manual manipulation of special search results is policy

J. Arthur Bloom
The Daily Caller
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 16:09 UTC
Google CEO Sundar PIchai
© Reuters / Jim Young
Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies to the House Judiciary Committee
Google does manipulate its search results manually, contrary to the company's official denials, documents obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller indicate.

Two official policies dubbed the "misrepresentation policy" and the "good neighbor policy" inform the company's "XPA news blacklist," which is maintained by Google's Trust & Safety team. "T&S will be in charge of updating the blacklist as when there is a demand," reads one of the documents shared with The Daily Caller.

"The deceptive_news domain blacklist is going to be used by many search features to filter problematic sites that violate the good neighbor and misrepresentation policies," the policy document says.

Comment:

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Bizarro Earth

Democrats mull reparations for slavery as a political tool for attention in 2020 election


RT
Wed, 10 Apr 2019 21:36 UTC
black reparations
With Democratic frontrunner Cory Booker mulling plans to compensate descendants of slaves, the controversial campaign issue has some hoping it could tackle racial inequality, and others saying we need to let sleeping dogs lie.

Conservative commentator Anthony Brian Logan says that while reparations for slavery may have made sense immediately after the fact, "150 years" have passed since then, making it a lot more tricky to know who should being paying whom. Moreover, today's politicians are not looking at the issue in earnest: "It's no more than a campaign promise from Democratic hopefuls trying to get some kind of attention."

Attorney and author Reese Everson calls that argument "ridiculous," saying that if she stole a large sum of money from someone, her death would not stop her victim from trying to get the money back.

Is it too late to repay the victims of this dark chapter in American history, or are we making things worse by passing the buck? Watch the full debate on RT.

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Oil Well

'Buy US gas or else': Washington's attempt to impose its will on the EU stirs anti-American moods

Grete Mautner
New Eastern Outlook
Wed, 10 Apr 2019 15:43 UTC
natural gas russia arctic
© Sputnik / Mikhail Voskresenskiy
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant construction in Yamal peninsula, Siberia
The untamed desire of the Trump administration to impose all sorts of conditions and restrictions on the way that Europe operates is clearly leading to an abrupt increase in anti-American moods across various social layers of the European society. Practically speaking, there's an avid hatred visible all across the EU towards Trump's use of the 'Al Capone approach', which is typical for American businessmen who would try to brute force their way into foreign markets and influence them in any way possible.

Even before the European Union created a vehicle to bypass American sanctions against Iran last January, it was clear that Washington wasn't simply trying to inflict maximum damage to Tehran, as many EU companies found themselves staring down the barrel of American gun. However, there's no denying that the special purpose vehicle known as INSTEX (Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges) did come in handy, as German, French and even British companies can now do business with Iran while bypassing dollar completely or even without any direct transactions with Tehran. Before INSTEX was introduced, one had to remain mindful of the fact that the US State department was capable of tracing international transactions and blocking them, which meant that Europe had the challenge of dodging a curve ball every time it wanted to sell something to Tehran. But it seems that the EU has had enough of both the US-imposed dollar system along with Washington's attempts to champion European foreign policy agenda.

Comment: Self-interest will always win out in the end. The EU cannot afford to subsidize Washington's campaign against Russia, no matter how much the US bellows. Hence the institution of INSTEX. As the US share of world trade begins to fall, it will have no one to blame but itself.

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Light Sabers

Blackout strikes Venezuela again as earlier cases blamed on 'sabotage'


RT
Wed, 10 Apr 2019 15:53 UTC
blackout
© AFP / Cristian Hernandez
Venezuela suffered another blackout, with Caracas and other areas around the country reporting a loss of power shortly before midnight on Tuesday.

The mayor of the Bolivarian Libertador Municipality, Érika Farías Peña, tweeted: "at this time a new impact on the electric service is reported, not only in Caracas, but also in various regions of the country. The first call to keep calm, STEEL NERVES."

However, within minutes reports came in that the power was starting to gradually return. A member of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) said workers in the service areas were working on fixing the issue and that hospitals had alternative systems set up to provide power, Telesur reports.
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Chess

Turkish FM: Turkey could buy even more Russian S-400s if US doesn't sell it air defense systems


RT
Wed, 10 Apr 2019 15:48 UTC
s-400 and patriot system
© AFP / Russian Defense Ministry (L) ; AFP / DPA / BERND WUSTNECK (R)
Russian S-400 air defense system (L) and rival US Patriot system (R)
Turkey will not bow to mounting US pressure to drop its planned purchase of Russia's S-400, and will even buy more of them if Washington doesn't sell its Patriot systems. Ankara will also look into alternatives for US F-35 jets.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Wednesday that if Washington refused to sell Turkey its Raytheon-made Patriot air defense system, or canceled planned orders of Lockheed Martin's F-35 stealth fighter, it would look elsewhere for alternatives. He added that a proposition Ankara made to NATO ministers last week over the possible formation of a technical group to address the bloc's concerns over the S-400 purchase, did not get a positive response.

Cavusoglu's defense of the S-400 deal comes after President Erdogan suggested that the delivery for the systems could be brought forward from their scheduled arrival in July. Speaking to the media on his return from bilateral talks in Moscow, Erdogan noted that the issue of the S-400 sale had gained much international interest and Turkish ministers were constantly being asked about any changes in position Ankara may have over the sale.
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Star of David

Israeli democracy? Arabs blast 'racist' Likud scheme which installed 1200 hidden cameras at Arab polling stations

Adam Rasgon
Times of Israel
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 15:11 UTC
lukid hidden cameras polling stations
© Courtesy Hadash-Ta'al
A hidden camera allegedly snuck into a polling station in an Arab town by a Likud observer during Israel's parliamentary elections on April 9, 2019.
Many residents of Tamra and Shfaram say cameras did not frighten them; party attorney claims they were intended 'to preserve the integrity of the vote'

Arab residents of Tamra and Shfaram overwhelmingly lashed out at the Likud party on Tuesday for equipping election observers at polling stations in Arab towns with cameras.

Residents of the two towns in the Galilee sharply criticized the ruling party's scheme in conversations with The Times of Israel, with some calling it "racist."

Comment: RT adds:
Police in Israel have confiscated over 1,200 illegal hidden cameras from Likud activists in Arab polling stations, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended his party's use of recording devices.

The cameras were worn by Likud election volunteers in Arab-majority towns, including Sakhnin, Majd al-Krum, Nazareth, Tamra and Jisr a-Zarka. Likud confirmed it had hired 1,200 election observers and fitted them with cameras.

Channel 13 reports some cameras were also found at polling stations in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.

Central Elections Committee head Hanan Meltzer has filed a complaint to the Israel Police, saying the cameras were illegal and could only ever be taken to polling stations in "exceptional circumstances in order to report an incident."

After news of the devices emerged, Netanyahu said he believed "there should be cameras everywhere, not hidden ones," adding that the devices should "ensure a fair vote."

However, Likud has been accused of using the cameras to intimidate Arab voters. "Netanyahu wants to lower the percentage of Arabs arriving at the polls," claimed Ahmed Tibi of the Hadash-Taal alliance of two Arab parties.


Arab voter turnout is at a low "never seen before," prominent pollster Camil Fuchs said, with a 20 percent turnout at 3.30pm. At the last election, 63 percent of the Arab electorate voted. Meanwhile, voter turnout for Israel is at 42.8 percent as of 4pm.


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