Puppet MastersS


Megaphone

You think the U.S. is any more democratic than Syria? CNN interview with Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, advisor to Bashar Assad

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban
© ReutersDr. Bouthaina Shaaban, media and political advisor to the Syrian presidency.
In the current international negotiations over the Syrian conflict, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not have a role in any new transitional government. President Assad's media advisor Bouthaina Shaaban appeared on CNN and asked where John Kerry gets the right to tell the Syrian people who can and cannot be their leader.

She suggested the shoe would never be on the other foot, called the U.S.' stance "colonial," and asked, "Do you think there's real democracy in the United States when they deal with countries like this?"

Wolf Blitzer brought up some graphic pictures that appear to depict victims of the Syrain Government, pictures obtained by CNN's Christiane Amanpour. Shaaban fired back that "you really have to be in Syria to know who's doing what," not judging from a distance like, she said, Amanpour was doing. She called the accusations a huge lie meant to create conflict and undermine the Syrian government.

Shaaban called out "one man in the United States who's misleading" about Syria, but when pressed by Blitzer, she said, "I'm not going to name him, everybody knows him."

She encouraged the media to come to Syria so "you will find out for yourself who is the criminal; who is kidnapping people, who is raping people." She said that "most of what's circulated in the media has nothing to do with what's in Syria."


Bad Guys

Hillary Clinton aides joked about Ted Kennedy's death

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© Daily Caller
Years after Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 presidential primary campaign against then-Senator Barack Obama, unnamed former Clinton aides joked to one another about what happened to various Democrats who they "felt had betrayed them" in the primary, according to The Hill:

"'Bill Richardson: investigated; John Edwards: disgraced by scandal; Chris Dodd: stepped down,' one said to another. 'Ted Kennedy,' the aide continued, lowering his voice to a whisper for the punch line, 'dead.'"

Bill Clinton desperately pleaded with Sen. Kennedy over the phone in 2008 to not endorse Obama, even reminding the senior senator that Clinton as president in 1999 kept the Coast Guard looking for John F. Kennedy Jr.'s missing plane days longer than usual, according to the 2008 campaign tell-all book "Game Change."

Stormtrooper

French police raid comedian's home and offices, arrest owner of alternative media website

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RAID officers stormed the comedian's offices at his Paris theater today
Police in France have raided properties linked to controversial comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala as part of a fraud inquiry, French media report.

They swooped on several properties owned by Dieudonne as well as the Main d'Or theatre in Paris, where he has staged some of his shows.

He is suspected of a fraudulent declaration of bankruptcy, money-laundering and abuse of company assets.

The government has vowed to make him pay fines for hate speech.

According to French media, he has transferred 400,000 euros (£331,000; $547,000) to Cameroon since 2009 while failing to pay fines totalling 65,000 euros.

Dieudonne has been convicted six times of hate speech against Jews and popularised a gesture called the "quenelle", widely regarded as an inverted Nazi salute.

Stormtrooper

Death toll in northeast Nigeria attack rises to 85

Nigeria attack
A security offensive to combat Boko Haram's insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria has been unable to put a stop to the violence
An attack by suspected Islamist Boko Haram insurgents on a northeast Nigerian village on Monday killed 85 people, up from 40 previously reported, officials said on Tuesday.

Boko Haram wants to impose sharia (Islamic law) on a country split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims. It has killed thousands over the past four and a half years and is considered the biggest security risk in Africa's top oil exporting state and second largest economy after South Africa.

Comment: Would you be shocked to know that the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram is linked to Mossad and the CIA?


War Whore

Behind the Headlines: Manufacturing Civil War in Syria

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The London-based NGO, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, claimed recently that the number of dead from the civil war in Syria will soon hit the 200,000 mark. At the time we did the following radio show about what's really going on in Syria, the mainstream media was reporting that the Obama administration was "considering sending" military aid to the 'rebels'.

What SOTT.net has been reporting since they launched this dirty war in 2011 - that foreign terrorists have been fully supported by Western governments since the very beginning - has since been confirmed in the mainstream media. In the meantime, they've also tried to pin false-flag chemical weapons attacks on Bashar al-Assad and, most recently, just as peace talks get underway in Geneva, claim that "thousands" have been tortured to death by the Syrian 'regime'.

Have a listen as SOTT.net editors took a look behind-the-scenes at the real actors in the Syrian conflict and how the massive bloodshed there fits into the ever-changing narrative of the West's bogus 'war on terror'. As part of examining the Western government's real objectives in Syria, we also considered the history of "al-Qaeda" and the role of religion as it is used by psychopathic politicians to justify imperial expansion and domination of other nations.

Running Time: 02:20:00

Download: MP3


Dollar

Behind the Headlines: Interview with 'Web of Debt' author Ellen Brown - How the banking system controls the world

Sott Talk Radio logo
On September 15th, 2013, we interviewed lawyer and author Ellen Brown, who has published a dozen books on finances and health. Ellen developed her research skills as an attorney practising civil litigation in Los Angeles. In her bestselling book, Web of Debt, as well as a follow-up book, The Public Bank Solution, Ellen turned her investigative skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and the money trust', exposing how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from what was once a publicly controlled function.

Running Time: 02:06:00

Download: MP3


Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: Karzai suspects U.S. is behind Taliban attacks, Afghan officials say

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An Afghan driver looks out from a broken windshield after a recent suicide bombing outside a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul that left 21 dead.
Kabul - President Hamid Karzai has frequently accused the U.S. military of causing civilian casualties in its raids. But behind the scenes, he has been building a far broader case against the Americans, suggesting that they may have aided or conducted shadowy insurgent-style attacks to undermine his government, according to senior Afghan officials.

Karzai has formalized his suspicions with a list of dozens of attacks that he believes the U.S. government may have been involved in, according to one palace official. The list even includes the recent bomb and gun assault on a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul, one of the bloodiest acts targeting the international community in Afghanistan, the official said. The attack, which left 21 people dead, including three Americans, was almost universally attributed to the Taliban.


Comment: "almost universally" meaning the Western mainstream media.


But Karzai believes it was one of many incidents that may have been planned by Americans to weaken him and foment instability in Afghanistan, according to the senior palace official, who is sympathetic to the president's view and spoke on the condition of anonymity. He acknowledged that his government had no concrete evidence of U.S. involvement and that the American role had not been formally confirmed.

Snakes in Suits

Bailed-out and nationalized Royal Bank of Scotland to ignore EU caps on bonuses and pay executives 200% salary bonuses, despite 2013 company profit loss of £8 billion

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© Murdo MacLeodRoyal Bank of Scotland is on track report up to £8bn losses for 2013 due to £2.9bn in conduct and mis-selling issues and £4.5bn from the creation of a mini-bad bank inside RBS.
Unscheduled trading statement to reveal bank, 81% owned by taxpayer, hit by extra £2.9bn over conduct and mis-selling issues

Royal Bank of Scotland is facing a row over its pay policies after a fresh hit for legal bills and mis-selling scandals put the bailed-out bank on track to report up to £8bn in losses for 2013.

Even though its nine-strong top management team said they would waive any bonuses, given the scale of the losses, the bank gave the strongest indication yet it would sidestep the EU bonus cap by asking shareholders' permission to pay bonuses worth 200% of salaries - double the size of the restriction imposed by Brussels.

Chairman Sir Philip Hampton insisted RBS had to keep paying competitively. He spoke at a hastily convened conference call caused by an unscheduled trading statement in which the 81% taxpayer-owned bank revealed it would incur an extra £3bn of losses for conduct-related matters over the US sub-prime mortgage crisis and mis-selling of payment protection insurance and interest rate swaps.

The additional costs come on top of £4.5bn losses from the creation of a mini-bad bank inside RBS and, according to estimates, could drive the bank to losses of around £8bn by the time it reports full-year results at the end of next month.

If the loss is on that scale it would mean RBS has incurred more than £40bn of losses since its 2008 bailout - almost as much as the £45bn taxpayers pumped in to rescue it.

Info

Ukraine Prime Minister Azarov resigns

Mykola Azarov
© Reuters / Denis BalibouseMykola Azarov resigns
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich has accepted the resignation of PM Nikolay Azarov and his cabinet, according to a decree on the presidential website. The cabinet will continue to work until a new government is formed.

The prime minister submitted his resignation earlier Tuesday, explaining that his move was motivated by efforts to peacefully resolve the current crisis in the country.

"For the purpose of creating additional possibilities of social and political compromise, for the peaceful solution of the conflict, I've made a personal decision to ask the Ukrainian president to accept my resignation from the post of prime minister," Azarov's statement reads.

Azarov described the current crisis in Ukraine as a threat to the economic and social development of the country, as well as a threat to each and every Ukrainian citizen.

"During the standoff, the government has done everything for a peaceful solution of the conflict," Azarov said. "We've been doing everything not to let bloodshed occur, to prevent the violence escalating, not to have human rights infringed upon. The government has made sure the economy and social security have functioned in extreme conditions."

Pirates

An empire of drones and robots

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Is there any doubt that America's foreign policy, based upon maintaining a global empire, actually makes us less safe? The misgiving is that such intercession has any actual benefits to the citizens of the country. What once was a respected leadership role of non-interventionism in international affairs, has become a dominating imperium for worldwide control and subjugation. Exporting the "land of the free" is a myth, especially when domestic freedom is a dying memory. Internationalists tell us that military and surveillance drone technology promises enhanced security, with little concern for collateral damage or loss of innocent life. However, the facts do not bear out such claims.

Factor in the expansion of robot deployment and replacement of human assets, produces the net effort of an even more depersonalize and dehumanizing use of coercive force. Nonetheless, such a trend gets little public concern and even less outrage. Military branches, filled with voluntary recruits, are losing faith in the spin. CIA and unnamed black bag missions rely upon eager operatives that believes in the importance of the assignment or demented mercenaries that enjoy their macabre trade.