Puppet MastersS


Quenelle - Golden

Russia Today hits back at Prince Charles' Putin-Hitler comparison: 'If anyone knows real Nazis, it's the Royal Family'

RT Newsreader
© The Independent, UKThe news channel suggested that the Royal Family should 'should take a look at their ties' before Prince Charles meets with Putin next month
A Russian news programme has launched a scathing attack on the British Royal Family after Prince Charles compared Vladimir Putin's actions in Ukraine to those of Adolf Hitler during the Second World War.

The Kremlin-backed Russia Today (RT) suggested that the Royal Family should look at their own Nazi connections before disparaging the Russian leader.

Senior political correspondent Anissa Naouai said: "Russia has asked for an explanation although I'm not sure why because if anyone knows real Nazis it's the Royal Family."

The news anchor then proceeded to lead viewers through a somewhat bizarre family tree, highlighting links between the Windsors and Nazi figures.

Ms Naouai began with the wife of Edward VIII - the Queen's uncle - saying that Wallis Simpson "hung out with Hitler", before noting that the Duke of Edinburgh's sister, Sophie, was married to an SS officer.

She then offered up photographs of Prince Harry dressed up as a Nazi while attending a fancy dress party in 2005 - a move that landed him in hot water back in the UK.

Ms Naouai conceded: "The Royal Family should take a look at their ties before Putin and Charles meet in a couple of weeks to commemorate defeating Nazis in World War Two. That could be awkward."

Light Sabers

Pepe Escobar on the complexity behind Thailand's umpteenth coup d'etat

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Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar explains the military coup in Thailand: Bangkok elites, militaries and former PM in a power struggle. Pepe calls it a 'soft coup' but warns of what might happen next.


Arrow Down

The war on America's military veterans, waged with SWAT teams, surveillance and neglect

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." - John F. Kennedy
Veterans Day Flag
© thompsonblogs.org
Just in time for Memorial Day, we're once again being treated to a generous serving of praise and grandstanding by politicians and corporations eager to go on record as being supportive of our veterans. Patriotic platitudes aside, however, America has done a deplorable job of caring for her veterans. We erect monuments for those who die while serving in the military, yet for those who return home, there's little honor to be found.

Despite the fact that the U.S. boasts more than 23 million veterans who have served in World War II through Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan, the plight of veterans today is deplorable, with large numbers of them impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, thoughts of suicide, and marital stress, homeless (a third of all homeless Americans are veterans), subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, and left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration (VA) offices.

According to the National Veterans Foundation, the VA has had a backlog of as many as 1.2 million unprocessed claims in recent years, in addition to the fraud and mismanagement within the VA and its network of offices across the country, and secret lists containing thousands of names of veterans who were forced to wait months just to see a doctor.

While President Obama has now declared that he "will not stand" for the mistreatment of veterans under his watch, the time for words is long past. As Slate political correspondent John Dickerson observed, these inexcusable delays represent "a failure of one of the most basic transactions government is supposed to perform: keeping a promise to those who were asked to protect our very form of government."

Rocket

US launches spy satellite after being warned against using Russian rocket engine

The US has launched a military satellite into orbit using an Atlas 5 rocket with a Russian-made engine. Following warnings that non-civilian launches may force Russia to ban delivery, the US Senate approved $100mn in funding to create a US equivalent.

Five minutes into the successful flight, the command center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station stopped its video feed to disguise the classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

Powering the 10th Atlas 5 with a cargo from the NRO, for the first four minutes of journey, was a Russian RD-180 liquid-fueled engine.

The two-thrust chamber liquid oxygen/kerosene design was created by NPO Energomash located in Khimky, Russia. US aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney financed the venture to develop RD-180 for the Atlas program.


The​ engine is capable of producing almost one million pounds of thrust and is "throttled up and down to ease the stresses the rocket experiences throughout the launch," Space.com says.

"All across the government we thought it was an excellent idea for a variety of reasons to bring in Russian engines, not least because we wanted to understand the technology of a clearly superior engine, and learn how to build it ourselves, and one of the absolute constraints on approval of the deal that the policy-levels of government is that we would learn how to coproduce the engine," Mike Griffin, the former NASA administrator who participated in US Defense Department study on replacing the RD-180 told Space.com

Gold Coins

Russia, China banking deal to exclude dollar in transactions - Symbolic blow to dollar

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© Unknown
During Putin's two day visit in Shanghai, Russia and China took another small step to undermine U.S. monetary hegemony when Russia's second biggest financial institution, VTB, signed a deal with the Bank of China to bypass the dollar and pay each other in domestic currencies.

Many experts are referring to the move as symbolic. The banking deal is very small in the scheme of things, however it is a signal of intent. Both China and Russia are looking to a future where the U.S. dollar is no longer the world reserve currency, and they aren't content to wait for that future to arrive. They are working to help it along.

Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Putin vs. Comrade Wolf: Showdown in Ukraine stems from Brzezinski's desire to chop Russia into pieces

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Puppets on the Grand Chessboard
"Comrade Wolf knows who to eat, and he eats without listening to anyone."

- Russian President Vladimir Putin referring to the United States
The Ukraine crisis has its roots in a policy that dates back nearly 20 years. The origins of the policy can be traced to a 1997 article in Foreign Policy magazine by Zbigniew Brzezinski, titled "A Geostrategy for Eurasia." The article makes the case that the United States needs to forcefully establish itself in Central Asia in order to maintain its position as the world's only superpower. While many readers may be familiar with Brzezinski's thinking on these matters, they might not know what he has to say about Russia, which is particularly illuminating given that the recent uptick in violence has less to do with Ukraine than it does with Washington's proxy-war on Russia. Here's what Brzezinski says:

Comment: It's not so much Washington's plan to conquer the world as it is that Washington already believes itself to have already conquered the world, and someone is standing up to say, 'No, the facts on the ground state otherwise.'

This, from the horse's mouth, neatly sums up America's official position on the EU:
Europe is America's essential geopolitical bridgehead in Eurasia
In other words, it's our colony on the 'World-Island' landmass!

As for this being a 20-year-long conflict, arguably it's part of a pattern that is HUNDREDS of years old! Before Brzezinski there was Halford Mackinder and before the U.S. obsession with making Russia out to be evil there was Britain's obsession with making Russia out to be evil.


Question

Hillary Clinton brain damaged?

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Hillary Clinton leaves New York Presbyterian Hospital with husband, Bill (TOP), and daughter, Chelsea (RIGHT) on January 2, 2013. The secretary of state was under treatment for a blood clot that stemmed from a concussion she suffered in mid-December.
  • Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suffered a concussion and blood clot in December 2012, for which she was hospitalized for three days
  • Karl Rove suggested last week that Hillary Clinton is hiding something about her health
  • On Tuesday Bill Clinton spoke out about his wife's health and said 'there's nothing to' the Republican's claims
  • Hillary's concussion 'required six months of very serious work to get over,' Bill said. 'It's something she never low-balled with the American people, never tried to pretend it didn't happen.'
  • But the State Department said less
Former President Bill Clinton divulged on Wednesday that it took former secretary of state Hillary Clinton 'six months of very serious work' last year to recover from a fainting spell in December 2012 that resulted in a concussion and blood clot.

Her long recovery is 'something she never low-balled,' Bill said.

But Bill's timeline contradicts the State Department's claims just after the conclusion of Hillary's treatment in January 2013 that 'she seems to be fully recovered.'

Stormtrooper

The Saker's Ukraine Situation Report - May 22nd: Death squad murders conscripts who refuse to attack civilians

Privat Bank Ukraine death squads
© Unknown
Something really weird has just happened in the Ukraine. Everybody agrees that an attack took place on a checkpoint of the Ukrainian national guard near the city of Volnovakha (see map). 35 soldiers were wounded, 15 died (other figures quote 8 confirmed dead and an unknown number of evacuated bodies of attackers who got killed; one source says "13-20 fatalities"). The surviving soldiers say that out of 53 men, only 7 survived.

So far all the sources point to the same sequence of events. Here is what I pieced together:

A Ukrainian national guard unit (according to one source, the 51st motorized brigade which had been hastily made up with middle-aged reservists) brought in from the city of Vinnitsa. For three days they were were told to man a checkpoint, but today they were given the order to attack civilians in a nearby village. The unit refused and the commander announced that he would withdraw because "there were no terrorists here, only civilians". At around 5AM a black sedan, two jeeps and several vehicles (vans and armored) of the company Privat Bank (belonging to the Jewish oligarch Kolomoiski) carrying members of the "Donbass" and "Azov" death-squads drove to the checkpoint and opened fire with everything they had. The soldiers fired back as best they could. The attack lasted 15mins, after which the attackers put on some Saint George ribbons and beat up the surviving and wounded soldiers while telling them that they were from the Donbass Resistance forces. Not a single solider believed them.

Vader

Jordan to host joint 'military training drill' with US and 24 other nations on Syrian border during Syrian presidential election

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© Mohammad Hannon/APPro-fascist military forces to participate in Eager Lion military exercise in Amman, Jordan, Sunday, May 27.
Ukraine's referendums in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk provinces earlier this month were met with condemnation from the West, especially the US.

Accusations of the electorate voting "at the barrel of a gun" were thrown at regions where almost 90 per cent in Donetsk and 96.2 per cent in Luhansk voted in favour of self-rule, on a near 90 per cent turnout.

Many did indeed vote at the barrels of guns. The guns of the junta in Kiev which, following a successful coup overthrowing an elected government, is now backed by the US, Britain, the EU and Nato.

The army was sent east to stop people voting. Its actions resulted in several deaths.

As the barrels of guns go, they don't get much bigger than those focused on the voters of Ukraine when the new regime holds its national elections on May 25.

The US warship Vella Gulf is expected to arrive in the Black Sea "on the eve of presidential elections," with US diplomats stressing that "the United States wanted to support the actions of the new Ukrainian authorities through the presence of US warships in the Black Sea."

In "support" of the elections the Vella Gulf is "armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles and anti-submarine and anti-aircraft Standard-2 and Standard-3 missiles. The ship carries a total of 122 missiles on board. The vessel also has two multi-purpose helicopters."

Comment: What can we expect during this 'military drill'? The psychopaths in Washington have become completely unhinged and it wouldn't be surprising to see yet another attempt to overthrow the Syrian government.


Pistol

Kiev snipers: Mystery solved?

sniper
Georgian sniper during South Ossetia war.
Despite all the reporting on Ukraine, there is one aspect of the war which, perhaps not surprisingly, has not made it to most media outlets. The democratic West has largely ignored the revelation made by the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, in an intercepted phone discussion with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, that "that there is growing evidence that the snipers were under the control of the new Kiev authorities, and that the same snipers were shooting BOTH police and protesters!

It has also ignored Ashton's response: "Well, yeah, that's really terrible". So what is the EU going to do about it? How come the EU wants to interfere in everything else in Ukraine, but give nothing more than a throwaway remark to this institutional murder committed simply to inflame the conflict further?

Sources agree

I have Jewish-Ukrainian friend who has family in Ukraine, whose father and grandmother survived a concentration camp after being turned in to the Germans by their Ukrainian neighbours for being Jewish. Somehow they escaped from a ghetto work camp in East Ukraine before it was closed and its inmates sent to death camps in Poland.

This woman has family members working in the Security Services. Two days after the first deaths in Maidan Square she told me that, according to these family members, the snipers were killing members of both sides equally. The intercepted phone call has since confirmed this information.