Puppet Masters
If approved by Congress, the deal would involve the sale of 210 missiles and 37 command units, Defense News reported, citing Pentagon sources. The Pentagon claims it will not affect the military balance in the region, where the Kiev government is locked in conflict with two regions in the east of the country. Kiev has been accusing Moscow of backing the rebels, to the point of officially designating Russia an "aggressor" state.
"The Javelin system will help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity in order to meet its national defense requirements," the Pentagon said in a statement.
This Friday morning began for the Israeli prime minister and his wife with the arrival of police forces, as the Jerusalem Post newspaper reports: Benjamin Netanyahu was questioned in his official residence in Jerusalem, his wife, Sara, was simultaneously testifying over her engagement in the "Bezeq affair," otherwise known as Case 4000 at the Israeli national police headquarters.
Case 4000 is connected with suspicions that while working as communications minister in 2014-2017, in addition to his prime ministerial post, that Netanyahu was helping the Bezeq group, controlled by Shaul Elovitch, in exchange for a beneficial image of Netanyahu and his policies in the media.
Sara Netanyahu, for her part, is suspected of communicating with Elovitch's wife, Iris, aiming to secure favorable coverage in another media outlet, Walla.
Indeed, America itself could be described as one gigantic ongoing psyop infecting 323 million otherwise healthy homo sapiens. Propaganda is one of the most under-appreciated and overlooked aspects of human experience; the way those in power use media to manipulate how people think and vote affects every significant issue in a truly massive way, yet it rarely even comes up in conversation. Americans are some of the most aggressively propagandized people on our planet, and their mass media machine keeps acting stranger and stranger.
Comment: Information gathering. Trump, again, sussed out the Dems' threshold of support by suggesting an outcome they might agree with (to which he is not obligated to follow through) and in turn, the level of Republican push back.
See also: 'Take the guns first', Trump parts with Republicans over gun-control plan
The Guardian's coverage ("Putin threatens US arms race with new missiles declaration") shows us their masters see this as just another chance to cast Russia as a dangerous rogue state. The Times [the British daily] takes a similar line ("Putin unveils his super weapons to defy the West"). Elsewhere Putin's speech is not only misinterpreted it's also relegated to sidebars in favour of photos of snow (Telegraph), or dropped into the tiny print at the bottom of the page (New York Times).
The western press has basically opted out of analysing this, so let's do it for them. Why is Putin talking about the new generation of weapons? What does he hope to achieve?
First and foremost what Putin's speech - just as all his previous warnings - is ultimately intended to do is avert a pending worldwide catastrophe. The US political class is too fluoridated, too driven by ideologues, too crazy to understand MAD any more. And its current policy, in concert with the EU and NATO, is one of continued unremitting provocation toward Russia, presented through the subservient and frankly stupid corporate media as "responding" to Russian "aggression".
In his speech Putin revealed the existence of new Russian nuclear weapons that make it indisputably clear that Russia has vast nuclear superiority over the United States and its pathetic NATO vassal states.
In view of the Russian capabilities, it is not clear that the US any longer qualifies as a superpower.
There is little doubt in my mind that if the crazed neoconservatives and military/security complex in Washington had these weapons and Russia did not, Washington would launch an attack on Russia.
Putin, however, declared that Russia has no territorial ambitions, no hegemonic ambitions, and no intention to attack any other country. Putin described the weapons as the necessary response to the West's firm refusal year after year to accept peace and cooperation with Russia, instead surrounding Russia with military bases and ABM systems.
Nauert went on an ill-mannered tirade against the Russian media when she responded to a question from Rossya 1 TV journalist Aleksandr Khristenko during a policy briefing on Thursday. Khristenko asked about the prospects of the US and Russia cooperating on nuclear non-proliferation in light of Russian President Vladimir Putin's remarks during the state-of-the-nation address on Thursday.
In the address, Putin unveiled the newest additions to Russia's nuclear deterrents, including the next-generation Sarmat ICBM that is capable of attacking across the South and North Pole as well as the yet-unnamed nuclear cruise missiles. The speech incorporated videos, which showed missile test launches and a simulation of their trajectory to demonstrate the nearly unlimited range of the ICBMs. The videos did not show the moment of impact or presumable targets of a nuclear-powered strike.
Comment: See how its working now? Everyone - including the press - who dares question anything the US government does now has to think twice about it lest they be accused of "working for RT" or being "an agent of the Kremlin".
In a letter required under the National Emergencies Act, Trump notified Congress that the White House will continue treating the situation in Ukraine as "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States," as defined by Obama's Executive Order 13660, dated March 6, 2014.
The US has been gradually expanding the list of people and entities under its Russia sanctions over the years. The latest addition of 21 individuals and nine companies was announced in January 2016.

Hope Hicks on stage with then President-elect Donald Trump during a rally in December, 2016
The big picture: Hope Hicks leaving is obviously a huge blow to him. Every time he reads about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his head explodes. The staff is just trying to ride out the storm.
Western public consensus on Syria appears to have shifted dramatically since Aleppo's liberation in December 2016, which drove a stake through the heart of corporate media misdirection and deception on the Syrian 'crisis.' As Syrian civilians haltingly told their tales of misery, imprisonment, execution, rape and murder under terrorist occupation, the corporate media headed for the hills, unwilling to confront the suffering they had effectively prolonged for over four long years.
Now we have a repeat spin cycle in Eastern Ghouta and other eastern suburbs of Damascus that have been occupied by Al-Nusra Front and its affiliates since 2013. Parallels to the distorted propaganda produced in relation to East Aleppo are unmistakable. The usual UN inflation of civilian numbers, the cries of "chemical weapon attacks," the "starvation" of civilians by the Syrian "regime" and of course the "incessant bombing" of hospitals by Syria and Russia, "targeting exclusively civilians," are as rampant in Western media as they were during the Syrian-led military campaign against many of the same terrorist factions in East Aleppo.
READ MORE: 'Truth is the 1st casualty of war': Syria's East Ghouta battleground distorted by MSM propaganda
Western media "hysteria" has reached unprecedented levels, all manner of analogy is being utilized to convey the message of civilians "driven to their knees" under a "brutal onslaught by Syrian armed forces and allies who are hell-bent on slaughtering the Syrian people" - of course nothing could be further from the truth. As in East Aleppo, there is a high probability that many of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers giving their lives to liberate Eastern Ghouta from the clutches of Al-Nusra Front affiliates have family in those areas. The SAA is the Syrian people, it is an army of conscripts from all walks of Syrian life. It is not some disembodied Assad-loyalist entity, despite what that Western media would have you believe. It is from the people and it is for the people, it is most certainly not deliberately targeting the people who are being used as human shields by the extremist factions.
Comment: The Syrian government has repeatedly denied any accusations of using chemical weapons, insisting that the country "simply" had none in its possession.
Terrorist groups in Syria's Eastern Ghouta are preparing to stage an attack with the use of chemical weapons and then blame it on the Syrian Arab Army, SANA reported, citing an unnamed military source.
According to the source, speaking on condition of anonymity, the leaders of such groups as Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Nusra Front), Faylaq al-Rahman and Ahrar al-Sham have received instructions from the United States, the United Kingdom and its allies to use chemical agents near the front lines with the Syrian army, as well as to target civilians and accuse Damascus of those actions.
READ MORE: US Mulls Holding Russia Accountable for Situation in Eastern Ghouta
On February 26, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that the leaders of the militant groups were preparing provocation with the use of poisonous substances in Eastern Ghouta in order to accuse Damascus of using chemical weapons.
Earlier the same day, the infamous White Helmets, which have repeatedly falsified facts and information, claimed that the Syrian Government had deployed chlorine gas against the town of Al-Shifoniya town in Eastern Ghouta, killing one child and causing "widespread suffocation" among the local populace, the Anadolu Agency reported.














Comment: See also: