Puppet MastersS

Bad Guys

Western media ignores Kiev's war crimes in Kursk Region - Moscow

Kursk Region, Russia
© Getty Images / Anadolu / Contributor
Foreign outlets do not provide balanced coverage of alleged atrocities by Ukraine in the occupied Russian territory, the Kremlin spokesman has said.

Western media outlets have been deliberately ignoring reported atrocities by Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk Region, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said.

Accusing the Western media of biased reporting, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday condemned what he called a lack of balanced coverage of alleged atrocities by Ukrainian forces. Responding to a TASS inquiry about the purported massacre in the recently liberated village of Nikolayevo-Daryino, he criticized the media for ignoring these incidents.

Almost all of the male residents of the village near the Russian-Ukrainian border have been killed since Ukrainian forces took control during a cross-border offensive in August 2024, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. People were held hostage for more than six months until Russia recaptured the settlement on January 27, the ministry reported.

Broom

DOGE team reviewing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren's personal shakedown racket

trump warren alcohol
If you thought the USAID revelations were alarming sunlight, just wait until you see the apoplectic fits of rage about to come out from the Democrats, the DNC affiliated community activist groups, and the professional leftists who all rely upon the financial mechanism of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

According to a Politico article (also funded by USAID money), written with stunning amount of anger and apoplexy itself, Elon Musk's DOGE team has just entered the CFPB to do a review and audit. This one is going to be beyond bananas.

Jumpin' ju-ju bones, tell Ma, to fire up the coffee pot, we are in for a delicious treat. There's no way for the DC outrage machine to handle this dose of Trumpian nitrous oxide directly into the intake manifold. The machine will explode.

Comment: Indeed she was:
elizabeth warren protest usaid shutdown satire
© CopyrightDemocrat Elizabeth Warren melts down at protest over Republicans actually trying to govern America
CPFB has been a useful little construct: A clip of from the Marc Andreassen interview with Joe Rogan:




Bad Guys

The Empire strikes back: Judge rules CDC, FDA, and other agencies must restore woke webpages

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered U.S. health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore data and webpages that were taken down in recent days to comply with a Trump administration order on gender ideology and diversity rules.

Numerous webpages operated by the CDC were removed after President Donald Trump took office, a spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times last week. Other webpages belonging to the FDA and other agencies operated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were taken down as well, a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration said.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, with the federal court in Washington, on Tuesday issued a temporary order in favor of Doctors for America (DFA), an advocacy group that filed a lawsuit. He agreed with the group's arguments that the removal of the pages appeared to violate a provision that mandates federal agencies to provide notice before they end information portals and products.

Comment: The Twitterati swung into action regarding the good judge:








Green Light

Putin-Trump summit on the way - Kremlin

Trumpputin
© Steffen Kugler/Getty ImagesUS President Donald Trump โ€ข Russian President Vladimir Putin
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has welcomed the US administration's desire to reach peace in Ukraine.

It is hard to overestimate the significance of the recent phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He also noted that the presidents have instructed their teams to lay the groundwork for the summit.

The call on Wednesday marked the first known conversation between the US and Russian leaders since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Trump has since signaled that he is "okay" with keeping Ukraine out of NATO and suggested that it is "unlikely" that Kiev could regain all of the territory it has lost to Russia over the past decade. Trump also noted that the presidents had exchanged invitations to visit each other's countries.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Peskov described the phone call as "a very important conversation":
"Against the backdrop of what has been happening for several years, there have been no contacts at the highest level between Moscow and Washington. This landscape did not contribute to solving the Ukraine crisis.

"Unlike the administration of ex-US President Joe Biden, which believed that everything must be done to ensure that the war continues, the Trump team apparently holds the view that everything must be done to stop the war and for peace to prevail. We are much more impressed by the position of the current administration, and we are open to dialogue."
Peskov added that the leaders would remain in touch regarding a summit.
"They will focus on a separate meeting; they also agreed that instructions would be immediately given to the relevant assistants so that they would begin the relevant work."

Extinguisher

Donald Trump and the conflict in Ukraine

Notre-Dame
© UnknownOn the occasion of the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, on December 7, 2024, re-elected President Donald Trump meets his unelected counterpart from Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Three weeks after his installation in the White House, President Trump is trying to resolve the Ukrainian conflict. It is clear that his advisors are blinded by their prejudices and do not understand any of Moscow's concerns. They give him a false image of Russia's involvement in this conflict. Realizing that it is impossible for him to move forward, Donald Trump therefore turns to economic transactions, as he did for Gaza. This time, he proposes to exploit Ukrainian rare earths.

President Donald Trump had announced that he would resolve the Ukraine conflict in a matter of days, then acknowledged that it would probably take several weeks. He appointed General Keith Kellogg as special envoy to Ukraine. The latter succeeded General Michael Flynn as national security adviser then served as the chief of staff of the National Security Council, during Trump's first term.

During the election campaign, Kellogg had asked one of his former collaborators, Frederic H. Fleitz, to prepare a plan for Ukraine. It was published on April 11, 2024, by the America First Policy Institute [1]

Star of David

The next Israel-Hezbollah war is now unavoidable - and it will be worse

Israelitank
© Amir Levy/Getty ImagesAn Israeli tank moves along the border โ€ข Southern Lebanon โ€ข October 13, 2024 โ€ข Naqoura, Lebanon
Another round of violence between Lebanon and Israel is not a matter of if, but when. Israel managed to extract a series of tactical victories from the war so far, but did not possess the capacity to defeat Hezbollah decisively. Now that Israel seeks to maintain freedom of action inside Lebanon, it threatens a much more violent outbreak than what was stopped by the November 27 ceasefire.

Much of the analyses offered on the conflict between Lebanon and Israel, which erupted into a paroxysmal battle in September 2024, trace its origins back to October 8, 2023. However, this take is limited in its scope and also often misses key lessons from the history of the conflict.

Understanding what shaped the Lebanon-Israel war

A day after the Hamas-led October 7 attack against Israel, it became clear, through the public statements and actions of the Israelis, that the war they sought to launch was intended to inflict maximum collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza. Although it often goes unrecognized due to the shocking effects of the Hamas raid, at least 413 Palestinians were killed inside Gaza that day, most of them civilians. The next day, the Lebanese group Hezbollah began opening fire on Israeli monitoring equipment set up in the illegally occupied Shebaa Farms area.

Stop

Trump suspends funding to the National Endowment for Democracy

CIANED image
© CIA/NED/Washington Post
The Trump administration has frozen funding to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US-funded organization that meddles in elections and pushes regime change around the world in the name of "promoting democracy."

According to The Free Press, an order from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the US Treasury Department that blocked the disbursement of funds to the NED has crippled the organization's activities.

"It's been a bloodbath," an NED staffer told the FP. "We have not been able to meet payroll and pay basic overhead expenses."

The NED, which was founded during the Cold War in 1983, received $315 million from the US government for the 2025 fiscal year, according to the report.

In 1991, Allen Weinstein, a co-founder of NED, acknowledged to The Washington Post that a lot of what the organization did was done "covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius listed some examples of the NED's "overt" action that was previously done by the CIA, including "providing money and moral support for pro-democracy groups, training resistance fighters, working to subvert communist rule."

Boat

US aircraft carrier mysteriously collides with merchant vessel off Egypt

USS Harry S. Truman
© Southfront PressUSS Harry S. Truman
In a mysterious incident, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman has collided with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M near Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea.

Besiktas-M is a bulk carrier registered under the flag of Panama and managed by Synergy Ship Management Turkey.

The following is an official statement by U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa / U.S. Sixth Fleet
"The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) was involved in a collision with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M at approximately 11:46 p.m. local time, Feb. 12, while operating in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea.

The collision did not endanger the Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) as there are no reports of flooding or injuries. The propulsion plants are unaffected and in a safe and stable condition. The incident is under investigation. More information will be released as it becomes available."

Wall Street

Best of the Web: Mikhail Khazin on the Economic Crisis, Liberalism as an Ideology of Financiers, and the Rise of Industrial America

khazin
Should we call any economic downturn a recession? Mikhail Khazin, a prominent mathematician, economist, and the author of Recollections of the Future: Modern Economic Ideas, argues that we should not. Together with a group of like-minded experts, Khazin conducted extensive research on capitalism as a system and identified a distinct type of economic contraction โ€” a crisis of capital effectiveness (CCE). The term arises from its typical manifestations: negative returns on investments when the natural regeneration of capital (through the market) ceases.

Crises of this type are characterized by a profound (double-digit) drop in GDP followed by extended periods of economic depression. Most importantly, unlike a recession, a CCE does not automatically end when a new cycle of growth starts. Instead, a crisis of capital effectiveness can be addressed only through market expansion โ€” the sole mechanism that significantly lowers manufacturing risks. At its core, Khazin's concept of crisis is based on the writings of Adam Smith, who recognized that in closed economic systems, labor division eventually stalls.

According to the author, humanity has gone through three CCEs: the 1900s crisis of banking liquidity, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the stagflation of the 1970s. Each time, the crisis ended only when access to new markets was achieved. On the first two occasions, it was accomplished through major wars. The 1970s crisis was eased by Reaganomics, yet its ultimate resolution came from the 1991 defeat of the USSR in the Cold War; this enabled the West to dismantle and integrate the Soviet economic zone, expanding the markets one final time โ€” this time to encompass the entire world.

Chess

Trump's call with Putin marks a shift in global power

Trump and Putin
© Sputnik/Alexey Nikolskiy
US-Russian relations will now return to their 'factory settings', but the key here is the end of Western overreach.

The long-anticipated phone call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump has finally taken place, sending shock waves through the geopolitical landscape. But before anyone gets carried away with triumph or despair, it's worth recognizing what has actually happened: Russian-US relations have simply returned to their natural state - one of strategic rivalry, conflicting interests, and fundamental differences in worldview.

For decades, the US pursued a fantasy - one where it could reshape Russia in its own image, first through incentives and later through coercion. Washington believed it could mold Moscow into a compliant partner within the 'liberal international order', an illusion that only collapsed when reality hit: Russia was never going to be remade. Meanwhile, Moscow spent years trying to find common ground, adjusting its own policies in hopes of reaching a workable coexistence. That experiment, too, ended a decade ago.

Comment: Russia will see it as a plus if some more common sense and adult approach will be coming from the US even if it has learned the hard way not to expect too much from the US.