Puppet MastersS


Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: Telling it as it is: Washington is the biggest threat to life on Earth

Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 15:56 UTC
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Washington's plan to seize Ukraine and to evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base has come amiss. But as Lenin said, "two steps forward, one step back."

Do you remember all the tough talk coming from John Kerry, the White House Fool, Hilary Clinton, and the lickspittle Merkel about the harsh sanctions that would "badly damage" the Russian economy unless Russia prevented the referendum vote in Crimea? Well, it was all bullshit, more hot air from the White House sock puppet and the lickspittle German chancellor who is a disgrace to the German nation. As the Russians kept telling John Kerry, sanctions on Russia would destroy Europe and do little damage to Russia.

I wish the Russians had kept this to themselves. I was looking forward to the Washington morons destroying NATO by closing down the European economy.
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War Whore

Brzezinski Mapped Out the Battle for Ukraine in 1997

Chris Ernesto
AntiWar
Sat, 15 Mar 2014 00:00 UTC
Zbigniew Brzezinski
© InconnuZbigniew Brzezinski
Why would the United States run the risk of siding with anti-Semitic, neo-Nazis in Ukraine?

One of the keys may be found by looking back at Zbigniew Brzezinski's 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard in which he wrote, "Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire."

Comment: See also : Imperial Hubris: Ukraine as a 'regime change' too far for the American Empire
'Pussy Riot', the U.S. State Department and Economic Shock Therapy

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Quenelle

Hypocritical 'Stephen Harper Regime' joins U.S. with silly sanctions on Russia, warns of more‏

Kathryn Blaze Carlson
The Globe and Mail
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:56 UTC
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© UnknownThe Right Honourable Stephen Harper, in a show of solidarity with his buddies in Kiev?
Canada is joining the European Union and the U.S. in slapping additional sanctions on those it blames for threatening Ukraine's sovereignty, retaliating against what Prime Minister Stephen Harper has branded the "Putin regime."

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday recognizing Crimea as a sovereign state after the Ukrainian region declared itself independent and applied to join Russia following a weekend referendum. The decree, which took effect immediately, says Moscow's recognition of Crimea as independent is based on "the will of the people of Crimea".

Ahead of a Monday afternoon meeting with Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, Mr. Harper once again condemned Sunday's referendum in the breakaway region, calling the move a "dangerous escalation" of the already tense situation in the southern, mostly Russian-speaking region.

Without going into detail, the Prime Minister said the government is going ahead with additional sanctions - economic and travel - on "various senior people in Russia and Ukraine, in Crimea specifically."
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USA

Best of the Web: The world psychiatrist on the "madness" of President Putin

Dmitri Orlov
Club Orlov
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 06:07 UTC
Skull
© Juliette Bates

Of all the various interpretations Western leaders and commentators have offered for why the president of the Russian Federation has responded the way he has to the events in Ukraine over the course of February and March of 2014 - in refusing to acquiesce to the installation of a neo-fascist regime in Kiev, and in upholding the right of Crimea to self-determination - the most striking and illuminating interpretation is that he has gone mad. Striking and illuminating, that is, something in the West itself.

In times past, the international landscape reflected a multipolar order, a multiplicity of competing ideologies, alternative schemes of social and economic organization. Back then the actions of another country could be understood in terms of its alternative ideology. Even extreme figures - Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot - calling them crazy was an example of hyperbole, an intensified way of describing the brazenness with which they pursued their rationally set political goals. But when Chancellor Angela Merkel asks whether Putin is living "in another world," echoing a theme in the narrative presented by Western media, the question seems to imply something quite literal.
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TV

Western media's reporting on Ukraine is as terrible as it was on Iraq

Robert Parry
Consortium News
Sun, 16 Mar 2014 15:36 UTC
Image
© Unknown
As the Ukraine crisis continues to deepen, the mainstream U.S. news media is sinking to new lows of propaganda and incompetence. Somehow, a violent neo-Nazi-spearheaded putsch overthrowing a democratically elected president was refashioned into a "legitimate" regime, then the "interim" government and now simply "Ukraine."

The Washington Post's screaming headline on Sunday is "Ukraine decries Russian 'invasion,'" treating the coup regime in Kiev as if it speaks for the entire country when it clearly speaks for only a subset of the population, mostly from western Ukraine. The regime's "legitimacy" comes not from a democratic election but from a coup that was quickly embraced by the U.S. government and the European Union.
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Bomb

Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela and beyond: Beware the wars of March

Richard Rozoff
Stop NATO
Sat, 15 Mar 2014 00:00 UTC
In the 1930s it was a notorious fact the German government of Adolf Hitler chose the month of March to perpetrate its most daring moves in reasserting the nation as a continental power, culminating in the most deadly war in history.

For example:

March 1933:
German federal election brings Hitler to power as chancellor

March 1936:
Germany remilitarizes the Rhineland in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles

March 1937:
The Third Reich's Condor Legion bombs and attacks Durango, Spain and the next month bombs Guernica

March 1938:
Germany absorbs Austria

Over the past fifteen years a not dissimilar pattern has emerged.
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Top Secret

CIA-Senate dispute 101: Who's spying on whom?

Peter Grier
The Christian Science Monitor
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:42 UTC
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© Gary Cameron/Reuters
Did the Central Intelligence Agency spy illegally on Senate Intelligence Committee computers?

That's what Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California charged Tuesday in an extraordinary Senate floor speech. The CIA has denied wrongdoing and has its own questions about how Intelligence Committee staffers turned up a sensitive internal report on the agency's past use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Here are nine questions and answers about a complex story that starts with waterboarding and ends in a secret CIA facility in northern Virginia.

1. What's the background?

The CIA began using so-called enhanced interrogation techniques on terror suspects at black sites around the world in 2002. These included use of waterboarding to simulate drowning, stress positions, and sleep deprivation.

Following a series of news reports detailing this activity, the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2009 authorized a comprehensive review of the program. While panel lawmakers had been informed of the program by agency briefers, a preliminary staff inquiry showed that the interrogations were harsher than they had been described, according to Senator Feinstein, the committee chairman. The panel was also concerned about the CIA's destruction of some videotapes of interrogations, seeing it as possible destruction of evidence.
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Cards

Snowden accuses Dianne Feinstein of double standards, pointing out her lack of concern about widespread surveillance of ordinary citizens

Paul Lewis
The Guardian
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:50 UTC
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© Vanity Fair
NSA whistleblower accuses Dianne Feinstein of double standards, pointing out her lack of concern about widespread surveillance of ordinary citizens

The whistleblower Edward Snowden accused the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee of double standards on Tuesday, pointing out that her outrage at evidence her staff were spied on by the CIA was not matched by concern about widespread surveillance of ordinary citizens.

Snowden, the former contractor whose disclosures to journalists revealed widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency, was responding to an explosive statement by Senator Dianne Feinstein about the CIA's attempts to undermine a congressional investigation into interrogation and detention.

In a surprisingly combative statement on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Feinstein, who has been widely criticised by privacy experts for failing to hold the NSA to account, accused the CIA of conducting potentially unconstitutional and criminal searches on computers used by her staff.

The remarks put the Democratic senator on a collision course with the CIA's director, John Brennan, who strongly denied "hacking" the committee's computers. Feinstein described the controversy as "a defining moment for the oversight of our intelligence community".
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Dollar

More hypocrisy from Warren Buffett as he structures deal to avoid $400 million in taxes

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 20:48 UTC
Obama n Buffett
© Wikimedia Commons
Warren Buffett epitomizes everything that is wrong with the global economy, and the U.S. economy specifically. He is the consummate crony capitalist, a brilliant yet conniving oligarch who intentionally plays on the gullibility of the masses to portray himself as one thing, when in reality he is something else entirely.

He publicly talks about how rich people need to pay more in taxes, then turns around and pioneers new ways for his company Berkshire Hathaway to avoid hundreds of millions in taxes. He thinks that by going on television stuffing ice cream cones and hamburgers in his mouth and acting all grandfatherly that no one will notice who he is really is and the incredible hypocrisy of his actions.

I've pointed out "Uncle" Warren's hypocrisy previously on these pages, most recently in my post from last March titled: Crony Capitalist "Uncle" Warren Buffett Drives Company Profits Using Derivatives.

While that was pretty blatant hypocrisy, Buffett's latest elaborate scheme to avoid $400 million in capital gains taxes from the disposition of a large chunk of Berkshire Hataway's Washington Post stake (which was acquired in the 1970s for $11 million) absolutely takes the cake.
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Vader

Obama administration censoring records more than ever before


RT
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 19:56 UTC
obama administration censoring
© Reuters / Stoyan Nenov
Despite promising he'd preside over the most transparent administration in United States history, President Barack Obama's White House is setting new records with regards to not releasing government documents.

Never mind Obama's assurances on the campaign trail and the vow he made in 2009 about being "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government." Journalists at the Associated Press say that their research indicates that the US government has withheld more information from ever under the authority of Pres. Obama.

Journalists Jack Gillum and Ted Bridis have been investigating just how hard it is to successfully request documents from the White House through the US Freedom of Information Act, and in an article published by the AP on Sunday they wrote that the current administration "more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them."

"The administration cited more legal exceptions it said justified withholding materials and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy," they wrote. "Most agencies also took longer to answer records requests, the analysis found."

According to the AP's research, the Obama administration has exhibited anything but what the president promised with regards to maintaining an open and transparent White House.
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