Puppet MastersS


Stormtrooper

Cosmetic make-over: U.S. and EU call on Ukrainian neo-Nazis to ditch swastika

Neo-Nazis in Ukraine
© Unknown
The European Union and the United States, which have supported and funded for years all neo-Nazi groups and other radical extremist factions in Eastern Europe, have given the order to these new fascists never use to brandish the swastika, associated with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, in their marches or other demonstrations.

Indeed, it would be a more discreet way to be seen in public, but an even better way to avoid compromising the U.S. and the European Union because of the secret alliance that binds them to these groups (intelligence operatives and subversive infiltration within the New Gladio).

Thus, the Western mainstream press can present them today as fighters for democracy in the face of the "Russian invasion". However their methods, ideology and actions are a continuation of the same Nazi practices that took place in 1933-1939.

In Kiev, the police arrived at the City Hall after receiving word that unidentified persons had broken into the municipal offices. But they were caught in an ambush by dozens of masked men protected by helmets, who started beating them up.


2 + 2 = 4

A Chinese perspective: Four lessons to be learned from the Ukraine crisis

Xi and Putin
© AP Photo/Alexander Nemenov
Ukraine has become the final battlefield in the "cold war", and it is becoming a possibility that the crisis will trigger a second "cold war". The Crimean parliament's declaration of independence from Ukraine ahead of the March 16 referendum indicates that Crimea may go ahead and join Russia. The tug of war between Russia and western countries teaches us four things.

A geostrategic conflict leads to the tragedy of big-power politics

Most people in west Ukraine are Catholics while in east Ukraine most are Russian Orthodox believers. The financial crisis caused conflict between civilizations, pushing Ukraine to the brink of bankruptcy and fragmentation. This created a vacuum that provided the big powers wth an incentive to meddle in Ukraine's affairs.

Ukraine's economic over-reliance on Russia is the soft underbelly of its national security

In recent years, the western countries have succeeded in promoting several regime changes. Ukraine is on the brink of debt default and bankruptcy. Ukraine's economic over-reliance on Russia is the soft underbelly of its national security. Western countries have taken advantage of this weak spot in their efforts to promote regime change in Ukraine.

Comment: The People's Daily is a newspaper closely tied to the Chinese leadership.


Card - VISA

Reversal of decision: MasterCard, Visa resume services for Russia's SPN Bank clients despite US sanctions

Mastercard and Visa card
© SXC.hu
The MasterCard and Visa electronic payment networks have reversed their decision to cut off online services for payment transactions for the clients of the SMP bank controlled by brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, who have both been listed among the Russian officials subject to US sanctions over Crimea.

SMP Bank's co-owner Yuri Kovalchuk is also on the US sanctions list of 20 Russians, which was announced on Thursday.

The same day Visa and MasterCard stopped serving the clients of SPM Bank and another Russian bank, Rossiya. The payment system MasterCard made this decision in the late hours of Saturday and the Visa system made the decision on Sunday morning.

"By now, card serviceability for the bank's MasterCard holders has been fully restored. Transactions for Visa card holders will resume within hours," SPN Bank said in statement on Sunday.

"We are glad that the world's largest international payment networks have heeded our arguments and reversed their decision to suspend transactions...," the statement quotes the bank's CEO Dmitry Kalantyrsky as saying.

Magnify

Exposure effort: 'British Friends of Israel should be named & shamed'

Cameron in the Knesset
© UnknownA Zionist first and foremost: British Prime Minister David Cameron addresses Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

Last week David Cameron, addressing Israel's Knesset, pledged to defeat any boycotting of Israel. "Britain opposes boycotts," he said without having consulted the British people on the matter.


This should be enough to put the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) on a war footing. But when a friend suggested to one of the PSC's senior people that next year's general election candidates who had joined Friends of Israel should be named and shamed, he got a sniffy response. Being a Friend of Israel, he was told, "is not a totally reliable indicator of where people stand".

The enemy within

There's no doubt where the ringleaders stand, though. Their words and actions make it perfectly clear. And with electioneering already in full swing, now would be a good time to target them. Cameron and his lieutenant, William Hague [Foreign Secretary], have provided abundant ammunition, here for example, to mount a devastating campaign exposing their unnatural devotion to a foreign military power that practises apartheid and treats international law with contempt.

The pair are currently drumming up sanctions against Russia after the citizens of Crimea, exercising their right of self-determination, upset the West's apple-cart by voting to rejoin "the Bear". On the Foreign Office website Hague whined: "We are witnessing a clear attempt to pave the way for the annexation of part of the sovereign territory of an independent European state, through military force and an illegal and illegitimate referendum." Yet he and Cameron continue rewarding Israel for annexing Jerusalem (al-Quds), large parts of the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Gaza's airspace and territorial waters, at gunpoint and all without a referendum of any kind.

Gold Coins

The Ukraine Crisis and Vladimir Putin: A New Financial System Free from Wall Street and the City of London?

Flag
Approximate Transcript of Interview

The Ukrainian crisis? It is basically the opposite of what the media and politicians keep repeating both in the US and Europe. They say that the so-called International community have isolated Russia and Vladimir Putin.

In fact it is the real sponsors of the coup d'état and the violence in Ukraine who are isolated not only morally but also strategically.

And it is Putin, the first leader who resisted and defeated the strategy of world domination, who is enjoying the enthusiastic support of his people and the growing admiration of the world. The well financed media and politicians do not want to hear this, but this is the reality. Without exaggeration, one can compare this resistance to that against Napoleon and Hitler...

Green Light

Afghanistan respects Crimea's right to self-determination - Karzai

Karzai
© Reuters / Mohammad Ismail
Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a US congressional delegation that he respects the decision of the people of Crimea to reunite with Russia. His comment follows the March 16 referendum in which 96 percent of voters opted to join the Russian Federation.

The events in Crimea and Ukraine were among several issues discussed in a Kabul meeting between Karzai and the group of Democratic and Republican congressmen. The bipartisan delegation was led by Senator Kelly Ayotte.

Karzai made it clear that Afghanistan respects the free will of the people of Crimea and Sevastopol to decide their own future, the Afghan president's office said on its website.

Comment: It is interesting to see the courage that the leaders of different countries appear to be finding now that Russia has taken a stand against the American Imperial juggernaut. Karzai, however, already has a track record of serious and outspoken dissent against the US. Earlier this year he suggested that many so-called "Taleban" bombings in Afghanistan have been the work of agents of the US government/military.


Cardboard Box

Flashback Vladimir Putin's fortune: a pension and a plot of land

He has been controversially described as Europe's richest man, with an alleged personal fortune put at more than $40bn.

But yesterday Russia's prime minister Vladimir Putin made a rather more modest declaration of his wealth - owning up to an income last year of a paltry £100,000, including his KGB pension.

His assets included a 1,500 square metre plot of land and "a stake in a garage cooperative equivalent to one car seat".

Putin's declaration follows an initiative by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to combat the country's ubiquitous corruption. Under a new law passed last December, all senior government officials now have to give annual declarations of their income, together with that of their spouses and under-age children.

Bad Guys

'Torture gear' brochures at world's largest weaponry fair backfire

Anti-arms trade campaigners have launched an unprecedented private prosecution against two defence companies for allegedly marketing torture equipment at the world's largest weaponry fair in London.

Lawyers said that the rare private proceedings were being mounted because state bodies had failed to act on allegations that laws banning the export of illegal weaponry were broken at the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition in London's Docklands last year.

Chess

The most powerful individual on Earth: Russian president Vladimir Putin

Vladmir Putin
© Associated Press
A few years ago, it began to look like Vladimir Putin, the man who had been at the center of Russian power since 1999, was finally losing his grip. Protesters in Moscow and other major Russian cities took to the streets in the bitter cold of winter to protest the very convincing allegations of corruption in the 2011 Russian Duma elections. Putin, who was looking to return to the Russian presidency in 2012, was the focus of their bile, and for the first time in years a real, credible opposition movement appeared, in part led by the charismatic anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny.

At the time, it really looked like Russia was poised to undergo its own Arab Spring, and finally move away from strongman politics to a real democracy. Flash forward to 2013, and that all seems rather laughable.

Putin did return to the presidency in 2012, easily beating his rivals. The opposition movement ultimately struggled and split; Navalny in particular was hobbled not only by criminal prosecutions, against him but also his uncomfortable associations with nationalism. The Kremlin has been able to casually repress dissent, from the art rock troupe Pussy Riot to the LGBT movement, despite Western condemnation. Just last week Putin announced that the well-respected and frequently critical Russian news agency RIA Novosti, founded in 1941, would be dissolved - with a new network led by a notorious reactionary taking its place.

Perhaps nowhere has Putin's new self confidence been better revealed than on the world stage. As Max Fisher of The Washington Post's WorldViews blog wrote when declaring Putin his "Man of the Year," "Putin has made himself and his country unusually consequential this year, exerting Russian influence - usually meager - over some of the most important moments in international relations."

Umbrella

God, a 'psychotic mass murderer' who 'drowns babies' - Bill Maher

Image
© Unknown
Comedian Bill Maher told his HBO Real Time audience recently that God was a "psychotic mass murderer."

He made the comments during a conversation on the biblical story of Noah and the upcoming Hollywood version of it that's about to hit the big screen.

"But the thing that's really disturbing about Noah isn't the silly, it's that it's immoral. It's about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it, and his name is God," Mr. Maher said, adding, "What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie."

Mr. Maher continued: "Hey God, you know you're kind of a [expletive] when you're in a movie with Russell Crowe and you're the one with anger issues. [...] Conservatives are always going on about how Americans are losing their values and their morality, well maybe it's because you worship a guy who drowns babies."