Puppet Masters

The US-Saudi assault on Yemen has sunk it into oblivion - most people on the brink of starvation

RT
Sun, 18 Oct 2015 15:54 UTC

The humanitarian situation in Yemen is reaching disturbing proportions, with half a million children now facing life-threatening malnutrition and imminent famine, according to a senior UNICEF official.

An announcement made on Friday by the organization represents a three-fold increase in numbers of those not receiving enough food since fighting began in March. Afshan Khan, director of the UN Children's Fund's emergency programs worldwide, told Reuters Friday that "We are facing the potential of a huge humanitarian catastrophe... The levels of malnutrition that are being reported for children are extremely critical.

"A nutritional survey will be done at the end of October. How close are we to a famine declaration? We see some zones that are worse than others," she confirmed.

Comment: Also see:

Clinging to hegemony: Japan displays naval power as US extends home fleet's operation to entire Pacific

RT
Sun, 18 Oct 2015 15:43 UTC

© Toru Hanai / Reuters
Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) destroyer Kurama (L), which is carrying Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, leads the JMSDF fleet during its fleet review at Sagami Bay, off Yokosuka, south of Tokyo October 18, 2015.

Japan has showcased its naval strength, including Tokyo's latest helicopter carrier Izumo. The commander of the US Third Fleet, which was recently given a greater role in the western Pacific, visited the event.

The Fleet Review of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) is held every three years. The display held on Sunday in Sagami Bay, southwest of Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, featured an armada of carriers, cruisers, destroyers and submarines.

The highlight of the show was Japan's new 250 meter long helicopter carrier, the Izumo, the biggest warship Japan has built since World War II. Japan designates it a 'helicopter destroyer' rather than carrier to comply with the country's pacifist constitution that renounces war and the threat of force as means to settle international disputes. Technically the country has no military and for numerous years, has not been building aircraft carriers, which are needed to wage war far from home soil.

Comment: Also see: China 'may use force' if US continues with plans to sail warship into South China Sea

After Syria: Russia's awesome responsibility on the world stage

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Sun, 18 Oct 2015 16:22 UTC

The Russian decision to proceed with military support to the Damascus government has shifted the global geopolitical map significantly. For the moment Washington is choosing to react with words, no doubt planning carefully its next move. The Russian intervention has exposed the fraud of the US position in the Middle East and shown the world that Washington lies, that she supports the very terrorists who allegedly were behind the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and at the Pentagon. The decisive question now is what strategic plan does Moscow have to foster world peace after the defeat of ISIS?

From the standpoint of tactics, Russia has made a brilliant, unexpected move against the war agenda of certain very bad circles in the USA by her invitation to Washington to form a common coalition to combat terrorists in Syria, to wage a real "war on terror," an offer immediately rejected by President Barack Obama. By accepting the invitation of the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad to help combat the grave danger of ISIS, Al Qaeda (al-Nusra Front), and numerous other outlaw terrorist gangs, most made up of foreign mercenary psychopaths from at least 80 foreign countries, Russia is scrupulously abiding by the UN Charter. The US, which has been bombing a sovereign nation for more than one year without permission, is not abiding by international law.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared repeatedly over a period of years, Washington and those who control Washington policy are pursuing some form of what they like to call America's Manifest Destiny, ever since the Soviet Union dissolved and with it the Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1990-1991. It is neither manifest nor destiny, rather the mad plan of some power-addicted circles.

Silence is complicity: Study shows media's refusal to acknowledge civilian victims in U.S. wars

Sarah Lazare
Common Dreams
Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:28 UTC

New research finds, through their silence, mainstream news outlets are 'legitimating' U.S. military's burn pits on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan

© Sgt. Anthony L. Ortiz
A U.S. military burn pit at forward operating base Zeebrudge in Helmand province, Afghanistan pictured in March 2013.

Mainstream media outlets are systematically disregarding the hazardous health impacts of widespread U.S. military burn pits on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby playing a direct role in "legitimating the environmental injustices of war," a harrowing new scholarly report concludes.

"During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US Department of Defense burned the majority of its solid waste in open-air pits or trenches, producing large amounts of potentially hazardous emissions," noted Eric Bonds, assistant professor of sociology at University of Mary Washington, in his investigation, published in the journal Environmental Politics.

"It is well known that the uncontrolled burning of plastics, Styrofoam, electronics, unexploded weapons, and other manufactured and highly processed materials releases harmful toxins and particulate matter into the air," Bonds continued.

However, when he surveyed major U.S. newspaper stories from 2007 to 2014, Bonds found that discussions of the negative health impacts of these burn pits overwhelmingly focused on the plight faced by U.S. military service members and veterans—but the actual civilians nearby were almost entirely missing from the picture.

Comment: How about the corporate media ignoring the suffering, bombing and killing of innocent children and civilians? Drone attacks? Funding and arming ISIS and other 'regimes'? The millions, upon millions killed from U.S. wars? What about that?!

Study: U.S. regime has killed 20-30 million people since World War Two

Having a complicit media that lies and hides atrocities committed by the U.S. government is 'war made easy' for the defense department and the military industrial complex. If the people really knew the truth, they might rise up in mass against them.

Censorship: American media has shaped everything you think

Disintegration of Iraq and Syria: The main beneficiary of ISIS has been Israel

Jeffrey Blankfort
Algérie Résistance
Sat, 30 May 2015 00:00 UTC

Israeli web of powerful political organizations that set the parameters for US Middle East policy

Grassroots Jewish organizations that exist in cities to influence community relations, message and policy

Compromise of nearly all Western politicians, VIPs, police agencies dependent on Jewish contributions and support

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: What is the real weight of the Zionist organizations, such as the AIPAC and the ADL in the American political life?

Jeffrey Blankfort: It is both considerable and immeasurable and their influence can be felt, if not seen, in every critical sector of American society. AIPAC and the ADL are only the most well known among a web of powerful political organizations that function on Israel's behalf and effectively set the parameters for US Middle East policy although for most of its sixty plus years AIPAC has preferred to limit its public profile to the political class and those who fund it. There is no lobbying group or combination of groups in the United States or elsewhere that begin to compare with the Zionist network in terms of sheer political power at every level of government, including the courts.

What I am referring to is, essentially, the Jewish political establishment, religious as well as secular, plus a number of "think tanks" and foundations that while not officially identified as Jewish or pro-Israel, function as if they are.

They include the American Jewish Committee, the establishment's foreign policy arm; the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA); the national arm of Jewish Community Relations Councils across the country; TheWashington Institute for Near East Policy (TWI), which was founded by AIPAC in 1985 to take a more direct role in influencing Congress and setting policy; the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a neocon stronghold which former Secretary of State Colin Powell later blamed for the Iraq war; Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the successor organizations to PNAC (Project for a New American Century; the Saban Forum of the Brookings Institution, initiated and paid for by Israeli-American Haim Saban, the biggest contributor to both of the Clintons; and The Israel Project (TIP) which propagandizes the media and has on its advisory board 25 members of the US Congress (12 Senate; 13 House), to name the most important.

Comment: When will we wake up and liberate ourselves from the scourge of this self-serving and diabolical ideology that counts on and demands our defeat to serve its ends. It is an agenda that has spanned ages and has insidiously honed/owned public thought. Can we see the deep, deep hole that has been dug and the blatant manipulation--at the expense of each and every country, therefore every one of us--to do Israel's bidding? Are our countries and politicians suffering from Stockholm Syndrome (feelings of trust or affection felt in certain cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim toward a captor) from the source we detrimentally choose not to realistically see? Or is it just about the money... Apparently, the US sold its soul long ago.

Dictator, tsar, thug, strongman, KGB: Western journalism's demonization of President Putin

James Petras
petras.lahaine.org
Sat, 17 Oct 2015 13:58 UTC

Comment: Petras cuts through the transparent character assassination campaign in the media, aimed squarely at the president of Russia. Unfortunately for the West, there isn't much meat on the bones of their propaganda. People aren't buying it. The lies are just too obvious.

The major influential western print media are engaged in a prolonged, large-scale effort to demonize Russian President Putin, his politics and persona. There is an article (or several articles) every day in which he is personally stigmatized as a dictator, authoritarian, czar, 'former KGB operative' and Soviet-style ruler; anything but the repeatedly elected President of Russia.

He is accused of hijacking Russia from the 'road to democracy', as pursued by his grotesquely corrupt predecessor Boris Yeltsin; of directing the bloody repression of the 'freedom loving Chechens'; of jailing innocent, independent and critical oligarchs and robber barons; of fomenting an uprising in the 'democratic, newly pro-Western' Ukraine and seizing control of Crimea; of backing a 'bloody tyrant' in Syria (elected President Bashar Assad) in a civil war against ISIS terrorists; of running the Russian economy into the ground; and of militarily threatening the Baltic and Eastern European NATO member countries.

In a word, the media have propagated an image of an 'out-of-control autocrat', who makes a mockery of 'democratic' norms and 'Western values', and who seeks to revive the 'Soviet (aka Evil) Empire'.

Russian PM Medvedev on US administration: 'Weak, indecisive, incompetent'

RT
Wed, 14 Oct 2015 13:35 UTC

Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has blamed the Obama administration for its failure to make progress in talks between the US and Russia on coordinating airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria.

Speaking to the Rossiya 1 TV station, Medvedev said he was perplexed at the reasons behind the US not wanting to agree to President Vladimir Putin's proposal to work with Washington to drive Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) out of Syria.

"The issue is that our American colleagues always tell us that it is necessary to solve the problem in a single package," Medvedev said.

Comment: Medvedev also said:

"What is the American administration usually accused of? That it allows itself something which cannot be allowed - weakness, indecision, incompetence, and fails to take adequate measures to defend its certain priorities. I don't know if it is so, it's their business. But, anyway, judging by the statements sounded this week, including from some of the White House clerks, it seems to be true".

Iraqi forces add Russian guns to US tanks and Iranian ammo for ISIL fight

Barbara Opall-Rome, Joe Gould and Awad Mustafa
Defense News
Fri, 16 Oct 2015 12:20 UTC

Earlier this month, Shia militiamen in Iraq dropped off an American-supplied Abrams tank at a US-supported repair facility where workers were surprised to find an attached Russian machine gun plus Iranian ammo, Defense News has learned.

The MIA1 main battle tank — one of 146 frontline tanks the US sold to Baghdad — was transported through the Green Zone to a US-supported Iraqi service facility at al-Muthanna that was established as part of the Pentagon's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.

The tank was equipped with a Russian .50-caliber machine gun and Iranian-stamped 12.75-mm ammunition, according to a source at the facility.

"They brought it in through Iraqi checkpoints, back-rolled it off the trailer and then drove away," recounted the source.

"Once all the ammo was removed, as per procedure, by Iraqi personnel, we noticed Iranian markings on the back of the shell casings. Seems they put a Russian machine gun with Iranian ammunition on an Abrams tank."

Comment: The Iraqi forces are trying to do the best they can against ISIL, even if that means 'upgrading' US supplied weapons to be more effective with Russian hardware.

Russian jets destroy Syrian jihadist supply lines: rebel groups feud & bomb each other over funds

RT
Sun, 18 Oct 2015 12:24 UTC

© Dmitriy Vinogradov / RIA Novosti
Fueling a Russian Su-34 strike fighter before a mission at the Khmeimim airbase in Syria.

Russian attack jets have hit 51 Islamic State targets in Syria in the past 24 hours, including four command posts, six arms depots, a mortar battery, two underground bunkers, 32 field camps and six outposts.

The strikes took place in the Latakia, Aleppo, Hama and Damascus provinces.

The damage the Russian SU-34 jets caused to the underground bunkers was especially significant, Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said.

They hit the terrorists' underground infrastructure in Homs, which had allowed the militants to move undetected and increase their effectiveness in combat.

The well-funded Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has been hiding whole weapons caches underground, which included explosive devices for carrying out terrorist attacks.

Comment: A worrying development. The mobilization of children shows how desperate the 'moderate' rebels are becoming.

ISIL fighters cut beards and flee Russian airstrikes for Turkey

Sputnik
Fri, 16 Oct 2015 12:08 UTC

ISIL fighters appear to be shaving off their beards before fleeing to Turkey to escape Russian airstrikes.

Hundreds of ISIL fighters are fleeing Syria for Turkey, as Russia's Defense Ministry previously said, and reports are popping up that they are leaving their beards behind.

.2/ More Jihadi beards, shaved off in Reef #Aleppo, as they flee clean shaven 2 #Turkey, these Via @leithfadel pic.twitter.com/xOmMkhH8oY— Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) October 12, 2015

Comment: Zero Hedge put it nicely:

Now obviously, these are just pictures of hair on the ground with razors, so that shouldn't be interpreted as anything that even approximates definitive evidence of a full-on ISIS retreat but put yourself in the following situation for a moment. You're a Sunni extremist and your regional and Western backers have just abandoned you. You are now under siege by the Russian Air Force. If you survive the air strikes you will soon have to come face to face with the fiercest, most experienced Shiite militia on the planet and if you somehow manage to survive that, well then you have to fight the Quds Force ("how do you shoot the devil in the back"?).

What would you do?

Their HELL bent in injecting this SHIT in to everyone and will stop at nothing until their demented goal is achieved. If you lose your job for not...

Winternights3

Someone deport this monstrous POS back to hell, or wherever. Anywhere with a good stockade 😤and his kids too

slbeaudry

To prevent Corona spreading they're gonna make everyone be asymptomatic super spreaders. if you agree with this action as legitimate you're a dumb...

sbc

If you read the linked white house statement try not to puke.

sbc

Let's go, Brandon! Fucking asswipe, worthless, POS. Fraud! Argh! 😤

slbeaudry

Puppet Masters

The US-Saudi assault on Yemen has sunk it into oblivion - most people on the brink of starvation

Clinging to hegemony: Japan displays naval power as US extends home fleet's operation to entire Pacific

After Syria: Russia's awesome responsibility on the world stage

Silence is complicity: Study shows media's refusal to acknowledge civilian victims in U.S. wars

Disintegration of Iraq and Syria: The main beneficiary of ISIS has been Israel

Dictator, tsar, thug, strongman, KGB: Western journalism's demonization of President Putin

Russian PM Medvedev on US administration: 'Weak, indecisive, incompetent'

Iraqi forces add Russian guns to US tanks and Iranian ammo for ISIL fight

Russian jets destroy Syrian jihadist supply lines: rebel groups feud & bomb each other over funds

ISIL fighters cut beards and flee Russian airstrikes for Turkey

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