Puppet MastersS


War Whore

Against all the evidence, lying psychopath John Kerry sez Russian agents behind east Ukraine unrest


Yahoo! News
Tue, 08 Apr 2014 09:28 UTC
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© AP/J. Scott Applewhite
The United States accused Russia of sending its agents to stoke a flaring secession crisis in eastern Ukraine that Moscow itself conceded could spill over into civil war.

The blunt US charge came as Ukraine's embattled leaders waged an uphill battle to keep their culturally splintered nation of 46 million together after the February ouster of a pro-Kremlin president and subsequent loss of Crimea to Russia.

An eery echo of the Black Sea peninsula's separation sounded on Sunday when militants -- many of them masked -- stormed a series of strategic buildings across a swathe of heavily Russified eastern regions and demanded that Moscow send its troops for support.
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War Whore

NATO chief telling lies, spewing propaganda, seeking to please Washington, trying to incite war in Europe with Russia


PressTV
Sat, 12 Apr 2014 16:00 UTC
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NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen
It's been a busy week for NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The week began with him telling lies, spewing propaganda, seeking to please Washington, trying to incite war in Europe with Russia, and ended with a warning to Russia to back down from military aggression.

Such is the busy life of a puppet on a string, bouncing in step with the tune called by his master. From here on, Rasmussen should be re-branded as the "Fogh of War."

Earlier in the week, Fogh Rasmussen addressed a meeting in Paris on the "transformation of NATO." He licked the boots of French leaders by saying:
From Central Africa to Eastern Europe, French forces are helping make our world safer - whether under the banner of NATO, the European Union, or of France

Comment: This hypocrisy of the warmongers is pure farce, blaming their adversary exactly for what they themselves are doing, without a shred of shame, or awareness of how ludicrous they sound.

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Bomb

Kiev: pro-US regime threatens massacre of east Ukraine protesters

Alex Lantier
WSWS
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 00:00 UTC
Andriy Senchenko
Andriy Senchenko
Ukraine stands on the brink of civil war, as the unelected pro-Western regime that seized power this February in Kiev threatens a bloody crackdown on protesters occupying local government offices in cities across traditionally pro-Russian sections of eastern Ukraine.

Protesters are demanding a referendum to federalize Ukraine and limit the authority of the new, far-right regime in Kiev. Some protesters have also called on their areas to vote to join Russia, as the former Ukrainian region of Crimea did last month, or declared independent "people's republics" in Donetsk and Kharkiv.

Andrei Senchenko, the deputy head of the presidential administration in Kiev, said his regime's security forces would "shoot to kill" if protesters did not abandon buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv by today.

Senchenko's threats echoed those of Irina Farion, a legislator from the Fatherland Party of US-backed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk. She demanded death for the protesters saying, "Today's reaction is unacceptable. The measures should be much tougher. Our people laid down their lives. That's why those creatures that arrive here deserve only death."
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Chess

U.S. fracking companies are licking their lips over Ukraine

Naomi Klein
Guardian
Thu, 10 Apr 2014 19:12 UTC
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© Ted Wood/Aurora Photos/CorbisA large field of fracking sites in a Colorado valley. 'The industry’s singular solution to the climate crisis is to dramatically expand an extraction process that releases massive amounts of climate-destabilising methane
The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress - one in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S. 2083) - that attempt to fast-track liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, all in the name of helping Europe to wean itself from Putin's fossil fuels, and enhancing US national security.

According to Cory Gardner, the Republican congressman who introduced the House bill, "opposing this legislation is like hanging up on a 911 call from our friends and allies". And that might be true - as long as your friends and allies work at Chevron and Shell, and the emergency is the need to keep profits up amid dwindling supplies of conventional oil and gas.

For this ploy to work, it's important not to look too closely at details. Like the fact that much of the gas probably won't make it to Europe - because what the bills allow is for gas to be sold on the world market to any country belonging to the World Trade Organisation.
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Star of David

Former Australian FM Bob Carr denounces Jewish lobby's 'extraordinary influence' in new book


Haaretz
Thu, 10 Apr 2014 10:55 UTC
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Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr
In new book, Bob Carr claims office of former Australian PM Julia Gillard was effectively held hostage by Jewish lobby.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has suggested Prime Minister Julia Gillard's dogged support of Israel was due to the "subcontracting" of Australian foreign policy to Jewish donors, The Guardian reported on Wednesday.

In his upcoming book "Diary of a Foreign Minister," Carr claims the "extreme right-wing" pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne wielded "extraordinary influence" on Gillard. The book includes private text messages between the two - published without Gillard's consent - which detail the pair's disagreement on Australia's support (or lack thereof) for the November 2012 United Nations vote concerning Palestinian observer status.

In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to promote his new book, Carr claimed the pro-Israel lobby in Melbourne wielded "extraordinary influence" on Gillard and her office, negatively interfering with Australian foreign policy.
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Snakes in Suits

'Business as usual' for British Petroleum in Russia


RT
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 10:51 UTC
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© AFP Photo / Ben StansallBob Dudley
Speaking at BP's annual shareholder meeting, CEO Bob Dudley said BP can "act as a bridge" between Russia and Europe, adding that it was "business as usual" between the oil giant and Russia.

BP remains positive on doing business with Russia, even though tension over Ukraine has caused significant losses for the company, which holds a 19.25 percent interest in Rosneft, Russia's state-owned oil major.

"We have a unique position," Dudley told shareholders in London on Thursday.

This unique position stems from Rosneft and TNK-BP's mega $55 billion merger in March 2013 that made the Russian oil company the world's largest publicly traded oil producer. BP acquired a 19.75 percent of Rosneft last year as part of the exchange.
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Ambulance

Bank of Greece building in Athens hit by car bomb


The Guardian
Thu, 10 Apr 2014 10:48 UTC
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© George Panagakis/Pacific/BIA protest outside the Greek parliament over austerity measures brought in by the goverment to secure bailout funding.
Explosion in Athens followed telephone warning and comes as government re-enters bond markets after debt crisis

A car bomb went off outside a Bank of Greece building in central Athens early on Thursday, smashing windows in nearby shops but causing no injuries, police and witnesses said.

The blast happened hours before Greece planned its first foray into the international bond markets since it plunged into a debt crisis four years ago, and a day before a visit by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

An anonymous caller warned a newspaper of the attack about 45 minutes ahead of the explosion, which took place just before 6am. The caller said the car contained about 70kg (155lb) of explosives, said a police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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War Whore

Pentagon ponders 'logistical nightmare' of how to move millions of pieces of military equipment out of Afghanistan


RT
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 10:41 UTC
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© AFP Photo / Javed Tanveer
Ranked as America's most challenging military action since WWII, the US is faced with the task of transporting millions of pieces of military assets out of Afghanistan as possible exit routes - including through Russia - are blocked.

The US military is learning the hard way from its lengthy experience in Afghanistan that it is far easier to get bogged down in a foreign adventure than it is to extricate oneself from it. Landlocked, isolated and surrounded on all sides by potential enemies, Washington's withdrawal of its troops and equipment from the Central Asian country by the end of 2014 is beset with numerous obstacles.

One US military planner compared the moving operation to the minute logistics of transporting a mail shipment.

"The FedEx model, if you will," Tony Shaffer, a senior fellow at the London Centre for Policy Research, told RT. "You gotta know where it's at, what it's doing, where it's moving, and what's going to happen when it gets somewhere."
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Light Sabers

Putin warns EU gas transit from Russia to Europe could be affected by Ukraine's debt crisis


RT
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 10:33 UTC
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© AFP Photo/Ronny HartmannGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel
The EU is taking seriously President Vladimir Putin's letter to 18 European countries, in which he warned that Ukraine's debt crisis could affect gas transit from Russia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

"There are many reasons to seriously take into account this message [...] and for Europe to deliver a joint European response," Itar-Tass reported Merkel as saying.

She said the issue would be discussed in a meeting between European Union foreign ministers Monday.

Speaking in Athens on Friday, Merkel stressed that the price on natural gas should be negotiated. She also said that EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger and representatives of European states should talk to Russia's biggest gas producer, Gazprom.

"When we take all these steps, we can be sure that we have reached a joined response for the countries that face this problem because they are getting gas from Gazprom," Merkel said, adding European states "would like to be good clients but we would also like to be sure Russian gas supplies are not interrupted."
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Stock Down

Weak Kiev government backs down, offers more power to eastern regions


The Guardian
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 10:28 UTC
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© Efrem Lukatsky/APArseniy Yatsenyuk tells regional leaders in Donetsk he is committed to devolving more powers to Ukraine's regions.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk meets officials in Donetsk, where pro-Russian groups demand a referendum on independence from Kiev

In an attempt to quell the deepening crisis in eastern Ukraine, the interim prime minister has offered to devolve more power to the regions.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk met officials in Donetsk on Friday, where pro-Russian separatists are occupying government buildings and demanding a referendum on independence from Kiev.

Yatsenyuk did not meet with representatives of the protesters, nor did he offer any detail on how his vision of devolution differed from that of the separatists.

It came as the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia did not want to take over more Ukrainian territory but repeated a call for Kiev to grant more powers to regional authorities. "We want Ukraine to be whole within its current borders, but whole with full respect for the regions," state-run RIA quoted Lavrov as saying.

The officials whom Yatsenyuk met asked him to allow referendums on autonomy for their regions, not on secession.

Meanwhile, on Friday, European energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger said the EU was working on a plan to help Ukraine pay some of its gas bills to Russia, telling Austria's ORF radio there was "no reason to panic" about Russian gas supplies to Europe.
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