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Tue, 02 Nov 2021
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Cow Skull

Charging into Venezuela will be a disastrous overstretch for the US

Mike Pompeo
Are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton and (farcically titled) Special Envoy for Restoring Democracy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams agents of influence for Russia and China? The idea has a lot more going for it than most of the ridiculous paranoia sweeping Washington over the past years.

If Russia and China really wanted to subvert the national security of the United States, they would seek to plunge Washington into a completely new, open-ended war with no practical resolution in sight on another continent far away from either of them where the United States itself had absolutely no major strategic interests at all, apart from fantasies of domination and greed.

Such a war would also serve the purpose of burning up an increasing share of the defense budget that otherwise could be spent on modernizing the US armed forces.

Repeated congressional testimony over the past two years by Service chiefs confirms that these forces remain woefully aging and out of date despite record size defense budgets. This is testimony to the incompetence, corruption and sheer wastefulness of the military-industrial-congressional-complex (MICC).

Comment: Though there remains the likelihood that the US will invade Venezuela, it seems more 'up their alley' to intervene clandestinely, or indirectly by arming and/or funding an insurgency, similar to what they did in Syria.


Cross

Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell found guilty of child sex charges

Australian Cardinal George Pell

Pell arrives at court in Melbourne on Tuesday.
One of the most powerful men in the Roman Catholic Church was found guilty of multiple historical child sex offenses at a secret trial in Melbourne in December, the existence of which can only now be revealed.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, 77, is almost certain to face prison after a jury found him guilty of one charge of sexual penetration of a child and four charges of an indecent act with or in the presence of a child in the late 1990s.

The conviction of Pell, the Vatican treasurer and a close adviser to Pope Francis, will send shockwaves through the church, which is already reeling from accusations of sexual abuse committed by priests worldwide.

Comment: See also:


Arrow Up

Facebook unblocks RT-linked pages but makes them comply with rules 'no one else' has to follow

in the now

A screenshot taken from the In The Now Facebook page.
Social media giant Facebook has restored several RT-linked pages more than a week after it blocked them without prior notice. The pages were only freed-up after their administrators posted data about their management and funding.

The Facebook pages of InTheNow, Soapbox, Back Then and Waste-Ed - all operated by the Germany-based company Maffick Media, which is 51 percent owned by RT's video agency Ruptly - were made accessible again as of Monday evening.


All the accounts were previously suspended by Facebook, which issued no warning before taking action against the pages, even though their administration had not violated any of the social media giant's existing regulations.

Comment: See also:


Chess

Putin's self-defense warning to the US becomes twisted by the media as an 'unacceptable threat'

Putin state address
With stupendous double-think, Western news media claimed this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "threatening" the United States and its NATO allies with nuclear missiles.

The New York Times accused the Russian leader of "nuclear saber-rattling" while Radio Free Europe headlined: 'Putin threatens to target the US with missiles'. Many other news outlets conveyed the same depiction of Russia somehow escalating bellicose tensions, based on Putin's annual state-of-the-nation address this week.

Buried beneath the sensational headlines was a little more context that hints at the gross distortion being propagated by the Western media.

The New York Times disdained Putin was speaking with an "aggressive tone" and "doubling down on threats against the United States".

Comment: See also:


Arrow Down

US puppet Guaido says opposition trying to freeze Venezuelan Govt's assets in Switzerland

Credit Suisse
© REUTERS / Arnd Wiegmann
The Venezuelan opposition is discussing the possibility of freezing accounts of the Venezuelan government in banks in Switzerland with the country's leadership, Juan Guaido, the leader of the opposition-run National Assembly, said on Wednesday, adding that he had discussed the issue with Swiss President Ueli Maurer.

"[Maurer] informed us that there had been improper handling of the republic's accounts, with attempts to make illegal payments, and we are trying to freeze all those accounts belonging to the republic," Guaido said as broadcast by Mexico's Televisa TV channel.

Guaido has not provided any details regarding the assets' freeze.

Comment:




Star of David

Has the UK elite's slavish pro-Israel agenda finally gone too far?

hezbollah party lebanon
© Aziz Taher/Reuters
Supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah party parade to mark the last day of Ashura ceremony in Beirut, Lebanon October 1, 2017.
Hezbollah's defeat of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the July war of 2006 was heroic and an essential redress to the Middle East power balance. I supported Hezbollah's entirely defensive action then and I continue to applaud it now. That, beyond any shadow of a doubt, makes me guilty of the criminal offence of "glorifying terrorism", now that Sajid Javid has proscribed Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. I am unrepentant and look forward to the prosecution.

A large majority of the public, and certainly almost everyone who remembers that 2006 invasion, would revolt from my being prosecuted on those grounds. The very absurdity of it is a sure measure that Sajid Javid has simply gone too far in naming Hezbollah - the legitimate political party representing in parliament the majority rural population in Southern Lebanon - as a terrorist organisation.

Comment:


Caesar

Victory: Syria's Assad visits ally Iran for first time since Western war to kill him began

assad khamenei
© Reuters / SANA
Allahu akbar
Syrian President Bashar Assad has made his first public visit to Iran - his country's closest regional ally - since the beginning of the Syrian conflict eight years ago.

Syrian state television reported the visit on Monday, showing footage of Assad meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that the two had agreed to "continue cooperation at all levels for the interests of the two friendly nations."


Comment: Humanitarianists and Israel-firsters are having aneurysms right about now.

8 years of proxy war, 15 years of black-ops and psy-ops, all probably costing well over a trillion dollars. And half a million dead Syrians. And a culture shock in Europe from millions of refugees.

And yet Assad's still there defending his country from the combined forces of the greatest (though also the most effeminate) war machine ever amassed on Earth.

We salute you.


Wall Street

How Ebay Founder Pierre Omidyar is Funding a Globalist Disinformation Factory

Pierre Omidyar
© YouTube Screenshot
Pierre Omidyar is pictured during an interview on technical innovation published by The Henry Ford, a Dearborn-based museum.
A select group of national news "stakeholders" gathered at an undisclosed location for what was described as a "semi-secret" workshop somewhere in Canada on January 26. The meeting had been convened to determine how and to whom a "news industry bailout" of $645 million in Canadian government subsidies to private and supposedly independent media outlets would be disbursed. It was a striking event that signaled both the crisis of legitimacy faced by mainstream media and the desperate measures that are being proposed to answer it.

Jesse Brown, a Canadian journalist who participated in the meeting, complained that the first thing he noticed about it "was that one major public 'stakeholder' wasn't represented: the public." Inside what amounted to a smoke-filled room that was off limits to most Canadian citizens, Ben Scott - a former Obama administration official who also served in Hillary Clinton's State Department - presided over the discussions. Today, as the director of policy and advocacy for the Omidyar Network, Scott works for one of the most quietly influential billionaires in helping to shape the media landscape and define the craft of journalism itself.

Bad Guys

Ex-Iraqi PM lets cat out of bag: 'US president Obama created ISIS to take over our country'

Daesh
© REUTERS / Muhammad Hamed
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki previously accused the administration of the 44th US president of being responsible for the rise of Daesh, which "caused bloodshed" in the Arab world.

Iraq's former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, told a local TV station on Sunday that the administration of ex-US President Barack Obama had played a crucial role in the creation of Daesh* by allowing the terrorist group to occupy Iraqi territories, PressTV reported.

Maliki, who served as prime minister between 2006 and 2014, reportedly said that the United States had provided Iraq with intelligence and aerial images, locating with great precision positions of Daesh terrorists, who had lined up behind Iraqi borders in Syria.


Comment: And he's not the only official stating the obvious: See also:


Oscar

Trump slams Spike Lee for 'racist hit' on his presidency during Oscar acceptance speech

Spike Lee
Spike Lee may not have angered the team behind Oscar best-picture winner "Green Book" with his comments Sunday, but someone else made it clear he was unhappy by what Lee had to say at the Academy Awards: President Donald Trump.

In an early-morning tweet Monday, Trump went after the "BlacKkKlansman" writer-director for remarks he made about the current administration while accepting his first Oscar for the movie's screenplay, calling Lee's speech a "racist hit" on him.

"Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President, who has done more for African Americans (Criminal Justice Reform, Lowest Unemployment numbers in History, Tax Cuts,etc.) than almost any other Pres!" he tweeted.