Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Under the title of 'peace plan', Syrian opposition demands regime change

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Fri, 09 Sep 2016 15:32 UTC
Syrian opposition unveils a 'peace plan' which requires the Russians to pressure President Assad to go and hand over power to the opposition after a short interval.
Riyad Hijab
© Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/GettySyrian opposition negotiator Riyad Hijab.
As fighting in Syria continues, with the Syrian army continuing to gain ground around Aleppo and in the countryside near Damascus whilst the Turkish army in the north east of Syria steadily expands the area of its control, the Syrian opposition in Geneva has announced what it calls its peace plan.

It is clear that this peace plan has been drawn up in close consultation with the Syrian opposition's external sponsors - primarily the US, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

According to the BBC the peace plan contains three stages:
"(1) Six months of negotiations between opposition and government representatives, using a 2012 document known as the Geneva Communique as a basis for discussions. Both sides would also commit to a temporary truce, lift sieges, allow full humanitarian access and release detainees;

(2) A transitional period lasting a year and a half would start with the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive powers, as well as the departure of Mr Assad and other senior officials accused of committing "heinous crimes". A new constitution would be drafted during this phase, and a democratic and pluralistic political system established;

(3) Changes to the constitution would be agreed, the outcomes of a national dialogue implemented, and elections held under UN supervision."
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Dollars

Russia: Police raid on anti-corruption official uncovers over $120mn in cash


RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 15:29 UTC
money
© Laszlo Balogh / Reuters
A raid on the acting head of Russia's anti-corruption agency turned out to be quite productive - police found a bag big enough to accommodate over $122 million in cash, sources told Russian media.

Police arrested Dmitry Zakharchenko, the deputy head of the Energy Industry Department of the General Administration of Economic Security and Combating the Corruption (GAESCC), after the operation.

According to investigators, police seized a sum of some $120 million and € 2 million ($2.2 million).

"The final amount is unknown. [Police] confiscated a cache only in [Zakharchenko's] house; it is not yet known how many more assets [he has], but we are working in this direction," a source told RIA Novosti.
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Star of David

Netanyahu goes full Orwell: Compares opposition to settlement policy with "ethnic cleansing" - U.S. feebly comments


RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 15:01 UTC
israel house demolition
© Abdelrahman Younis / Reuters
Washington has berated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for using the term "ethnic cleansing" to describe the Palestinian Authority's aspirations to create its own state, saying Netanyahu's choice of words is "inappropriate and unhelpful."

In a video message posted on Netanyahu's FB account, the PM that he has "always been perplexed by the notion" that the "Jewish community in Judea and Samaria [the Israeli name for the West Bank] is an obstacle for peace."

He went on to imply that requesting the dismantlement of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestine territory constitutes an "outrageous demand" equivalent to a call for "ethnic cleansing."

"The Palestinian leadership actually demands a Palestinian state with one pre-condition: No Jews. There's a phrase for that: It's called ethnic cleansing," the Israeli prime minister said, pointing out that Israel with its Arab community of two million people, on the contrary, provides an example of "openness and readiness for peace."


Comment: Watch what Israel does, not what it says.
"In May of 1948, Zionist forces proclaimed the formation of a Jewish state in the Palestinians' country, a date Palestinians mark as the Nakba, or catastrophe. The Jewish state controlled 78 percent of Palestine. Many of the Palestinians whom Jewish terrorists had forced from their homes lived in refugee camps in the remaining 22 percent of their country. This was made up of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. In 1967, Zionist forces completed their military conquest of Palestine in toto, imposing military rule on parts of the Palestinians' country they had failed to conquer in 1948. Since then, Israel has engaged in a process of creeping Judaization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, building Jewish-only settlements, connecting them by Jewish-only roads, and denying building permits to Palestinians."

Appealing to the intentional community, he urged all countries sharing Palestine's view to cease "promoting this outrage."

That call, however, did not find any support in Washington, which accused the Israeli PM of resorting to doublespeak.

Comment: Netenyahu's latest orwellian speech (have a sick bag handy):



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Propaganda

The tale of two Ukrainian oligarchs and two campaign aides: The good ones with Hillary ties and the evil ones with Trump ties

Ken Silverstein
Washington Babylon
Tue, 06 Sep 2016 15:05 UTC
Doug Schoen
© YouTube videoDoug Schoen, Hillary's pal and Ukrainian oligarch's client. Why have you heard less about him than Paul Manfort?
One the most heavily promoted stories of this year's campaign is that Donald Trump is a tool of Moscow and no one is pushing it harder than Hillary Clinton's campaign. Just in the past few days we've had stories by numerous outlets regurgitating the idea, including Politico — "Clinton suggests Russia working to elect Trump" — and CNN — "Hillary Clinton: Timing of Russian hack aimed at helping Trump."

The idea that Trump is Putin's Manchurian Candidate is too ludicrous to take seriously, as Paul Starobin, Business Week's former Moscow bureau chief, recently wrote here. But it has gained such currency that when an audience member recently asked Stephen Colbert what question he'd like to ask Trump, he replied, "Well, we're not broadcasting right now so I would say, 'What does Vladimir Putin's dick taste like?'.' This got picked up widely on the Internet and was treated as politically-informed comedy gold.

Let me state for the 1,000th time that I find Trump, like Clinton, to be a repellent candidate, but there's no question that he's getting screwed by the media during this campaign. And one key example is that Hillary Clinton has extensive ties of her own to Russia (more in upcoming stories) and various Eastern European oligarchs, but she's largely gotten a free pass on these topics.

Comment: Fair and balanced? The unrelenting pundit-led effort to delegitimize all negative reporting about Hillary Clinton

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Arrow Down

'Former MI6 chief Mark Allen who rendered me claims to be a Christian' - Gaddafi torture victim


RT
Fri, 09 Sep 2016 15:11 UTC
Abdul Hakim Belhadj
© Youssef Boudlal / ReutersAbdul Hakim Belhadj
Former MI6 chief Mark Allen is mistaken if he thinks that a recent article he wrote for a Christian magazine means his "account is settled with God," according to a man the spy boss rendered to Libya's torture chambers along with his pregnant wife.

In 2004, Abdul Hakim Belhaj was kidnapped in Hong Kong with British complicity, along with his pregnant wife, and rendered back to his native Libya. He was then held and tortured by the Gaddafi regime for six years.

A note faxed from Allen to the Libyan authorities told the regime's spy chief Moussa Koussa: "I congratulate you on the safe arrival of... the air cargo."

Comment: See also:
  • Hiding the truth: UK government says Libya rendition, torture evidence should be heard in secret

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Stock Up

Balance of power: China is setting up the menu for global financial order

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez
Voltaire Network
Fri, 09 Sep 2016 14:50 UTC
china banking
During the first Annual Summit organized by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in Beijing, China has shown her intention to take over the global leadership in infrastructure investment. By the end of this year, AIIB would have more than 100 members, making it the first lending institution in multilateral loans in history, under the control of the most important emerging countries. Yet, it is expected that she makes the decision of dropping off the Dollar, as it is the only way to break away from US hegemony in international finance.

China is already ahead of the US in the race of financing infrastructure at the global level. International Finance is going through transformation, in spite of the strong resistance by the powerful American controlling power. Last year, high officials from Washington had tried to sabotage the launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank - AIIB, but failed to do so.

In fact, countries that had formerly declared their allegiance to the US government, namely Germany, France, Italy, UK, had, at the end of the day, taken the decision to join the new multilateral lending institution promoted by Beijing. President Barack Obama could not imagine that the AIIB would have got the support of more than fifty countries within a few months.
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Propaganda

Fair and balanced? The unrelenting pundit-led effort to delegitimize all negative reporting about Hillary Clinton

Glen Greenwald
The Intercept
Tue, 06 Sep 2016 14:22 UTC
Hillary Clinton
© Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
In his New York Times column yesterday, Paul Krugman did something that he made clear he regarded as quite brave: He defended the Democratic Party presidential nominee and likely next U.S. president from journalistic investigations. Complaining about media bias, Krugman claimed that journalists are driven by "the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation." While generously acknowledging that it was legitimate to take a look at the billions of dollars raised by the Clintons as Hillary pursued increasing levels of political power — vast sums often received from the very parties most vested in her decisions as a public official — it is now "very clear," he proclaimed, that there was absolutely nothing improper about any of what she or her husband did.

Krugman's column, chiding the media for its unfairly negative coverage of his beloved candidate, was, predictably, a big hit among Democrats — not just because of their agreement with its content but because of what they regarded as the remarkable courage required to publicly defend someone as marginalized and besieged as the former first lady, two-term New York senator, secretary of state, and current establishment-backed multimillionaire presidential front-runner. Krugman — in a tweet proclamation that has now been re-tweeted more than 10,000 times — heralded himself this way: "I was reluctant to write today's column because I knew journos would hate it. But it felt like a moral duty."
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Snakes in Suits

CNN host Wolf Blitzer pooh-poohs US senator's opposition to Saudi Arabia arms sales: 'Lot of jobs at stake'


RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 14:23 UTC
Wolf Blitzer
© Lucy Nicholson / ReutersCNN anchor Wolf Blitzer
CNN host Wolf Blitzer appeared to play up the economic benefit of Washington's $1.1 billion arms sales to Saudi Arabia, despite Yemeni civilian casualties cited by a US senator seeking to block the deal. Blitzer worried that halting the trade would cost jobs.

In a Thursday interview with Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Blitzer confronted the lawmaker, expressing skepticism over his opposition to the international arms deal.

Paul is one of four US senators seeking to stop Washington's $1.15 billion arms deal with Riyadh, arguing that this would result in "disaster and an escalation of an ongoing arms race in the region."

However, the CNN host seemed to prioritize profits for America's defense sector over the lives of thousands of Yemenis. Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia's intervention has claimed at least 10,000 lives.

"So for you, this is a moral issue," Blitzer told Paul, adding: "You know, there's a lot of jobs at stake."

"Certainly if a lot of these defense contractors stop selling warplanes, other sophisticated equipment to Saudi Arabia," the CNN host continued, "there's going to be a significant loss of jobs, of revenue here in the United States. That's secondary from your standpoint?"

According to a United Nations tally, 3,799 of the victims have been civilians, the majority of whom were killed in airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led Arab coalition.
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Star of David

Israel begins home demolitions in Golan Heights, plotting illegal annexation of Syrian territory

Christof Lehmann
NSNBC International
Fri, 09 Sep 2016 15:38 UTC
Israel demolition Palestine homes
Israeli bulldozer destroying Palestinian homes
Israel has for the first time used the illegal home demolition policy it uses in Palestine in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Tel Aviv declared that Israel and the Golan are "part and parcel" and that the international community should get used to the fact that Israel will annex the Syrian territory that holds major energy reserves. Israel also aids "Syrian rebels" via a corridor from which UN blue helmets were displaced.

Israeli occupation authorities in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, on Wednesday, for the first time demolished a home, claiming it was built without permission. The demolition and claims the house was built without permission violates Israel's obligations under international law, according to which an occupying power must assure that administration in occupied territories adhere, to the greatest possible degree, to the law of the occupied country's territory.

Israel has, however, enforced new Hebrew as official administrative language, denies building permits and engages in other violations of international law that aim at oppressing the Arab population and culture and Syrian administration in the occupied Golan.

Comment: Thievery, plain and simple. Israel has been systematically stealing the land, water and mineral resources that lawfully belong to the Palestinian people. Syria is now being victimized the same way.

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Snakes in Suits

No politics please! Unless it's anti-Russian politics

Neil Clark
RT
Sat, 10 Sep 2016 13:16 UTC
Andrei Fomochkin, Director of the Republican Center for Olympic Training
© Iliya Pitalev / Sputnik Andrei Fomochkin, Director of the Republican Center for Olympic Training in Track and Field (Belarus), with a Russian flag during the parade of athletes and national delegations at the opening ceremony of the 15th Summer Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
If there were prizes going for hypocrisy, then the International Paralympic Committee would surely be strong contenders for the gold medal.

The IPC has slammed Belarus after its team committed the crime of - wait for it - holding up a Russian flag at the Paralympics opening ceremony in Rio.

The official who carried the flag, a Mr. Andrey Fomochkin, has had his accreditation rescinded.

The IPC said that it would remind Belarus that "political protests are forbidden at the Paralympic Games." What a load of humbug. For it was political games by the IPC that got Russia banned from the event in the first place.
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