Puppet MastersS


Pirates

No surprise: BP wins delay of Gulf spill trial until 2013

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A trial to assign blame and damages that could total tens of billions of dollars for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been put off until January, in a setback for the U.S. government, which wanted to try its case this summer.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans on Thursday scheduled a trial for Jan. 14, 2013, more than 10 months after it had originally been scheduled.

The decision means the federal government and Gulf Coast states, which also wanted a summer trial, may have to wait longer to recover money from BP Plc and its drilling partners.

It is unclear how the new timetable will affect strategy, or whether it might spur the federal government to press harder for settlements and help local residents seeking money for cleanup or restoration.

"This may spur the government to settle," said Edward Sherman, a professor at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. "The Obama administration may want to show its stuff before the November elections."

Stormtrooper

Lords of the Rings: Olympic paranoia targets protests

As London prepares for the Olympics, bureaucrats and law-makers have been busy too - enacting a range of rules and regulations. Draconian measures are already excluding some people from the country, while a number of residents have been banned from the games -simply because they've objected to the construction of Olympic facilities near their homes. RT's Laura Smith has more.


USA

The Jones Plantation

One cannot change reality by changing the words you use to describe reality. Look beneath the rhetoric, and glimpse the truth.


Light Sabers

Putin to skip G8 summit, talks with Obama in US

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Russia's newly-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin speaks during a reception marking Victory Day at the Kremlin in Moscow, on May 9, 2012.
Russia's newly-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin has pulled out of the Group of Eight summit in Maryland, US, and ice-breaker talks with US President Barack Obama next week, the Kremlin says.

Raising new questions about Moscow-Washington ties, Putin, who took the oath as the new Russian leader on Monday, informed Obama of his decision during a telephone call on Wednesday.

He noted the need to stay in Moscow to finalize cabinet appointments in the new Russian government, citing he will send Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his place.

Putin had been expected at the G8 summit at Camp David to hold talks with the US president in a first test of whether the "reset" policy between the Kremlin and the White House will survive his return to the presidency.

Vader

UK Prime Minister Calls For Single Eurozone Government

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David Cameron has given his strongest warning yet that the euro is doomed to fail as fears grow that Greece is close to crashing out of the single currency.

The Prime Minister dismissed new French president Francois Hollande's claim that Britain was 'indifferent' to the fate of the eurozone, insisting it was essential for our economy that the Continent recovers.

'We want the euro area to succeed,' Mr Cameron said in an interview with the Daily Mail. 'It's 40 per cent of our exports. It's vitally important these economies get back to growth.

'The difficulty for us is we take a different view about the euro. We didn't join. We think that single currencies really require single governments if they are going to work properly.

'We have to recognise that the euro is a project in enormous transition. It could go in any number of different ways.

No Entry

Blocking internet porn at the expense of civil liberties? UK government's plan deemed 'unrealistic'

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© Kai-Otto Melau/AlamyOpt-in blocks to combat pornography can be easily avoided, say experts.
Civil liberties campaigners and technology experts join condemnation of 'opt-in' scheme favoured by children's charities

Proposals for a default block on internet pornography have been criticised as impractical and potentially counterproductive by technology experts and civil liberties campaigners, setting them at loggerheads with groups such as the NSPCC ahead of a potentially stormy government consultation.

David Cameron announced last week that the government would consult on methods to improve online child protection, including a system whereby filters on adult material were set as default. Anyone wanting to access such content would have to "opt in" with their internet service provider.

The idea, advocated by a number of MPs as the best way to safeguard minors, was the chief recommendation of an independent parliamentary inquiry into online child protection, chaired by Tory backbencher Claire Perry and published last month. It has also been vociferously championed by the Daily Mail.

But according to many in the technology community the proposal is unrealistic. They say that a combination of web-aware children and ever-resourceful pornography sites would leave a network-level block struggling to be effective.

Comment: The global push towards internet control has no greater ally than internet pornography. All healthy people would agree, with one third of boys now addicted to soul-crushing porn, that blocking children's access to it could be a good plan or at least a move in the right direction.

But do we really think governments give a damn what our children are watching online?

Beyond the Dutroux Affair: The reality of protected child abuse and snuff networks in a world ruled by psychopaths


Vader

British Intel MI5 And MI6 Behind Underwear Bomb Plot

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Purported bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri
British intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6 were ultimately behind this week's contrived underwear bomb plot, it has been alleged by sources spoken to by London's The Telegraph.

MI5 reportedly recruited a British passport holder of Saudi origin with the mission to infiltrate Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and gather intelligence which could be used to kill purported master bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri in a drone strike.

Once the double agent had been recruited, MI6 collaborated with Saudi intelligence and the asset was sent to Yemen, where he successfully infiltrated militants and walked away with the explosive device currently being analysed by the FBI in Virginia.

Upon completing his mission the man reportedly travelled from Yemen to Saudi Arabia, via the United Arab Emirates, where the underwear bomb was passed to the agent's British handlers. He also provided intelligence which was used to kill purported "director of external operations" for Al Qaeda, Fahd al-Quso, in a CIA drone strike in Yemen on Sunday.

MIB

Manufactured False Flag Bomb Plot Exposed, Officials Irate Over Leak Proving CIA Ran Entire Operation

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The supposed al Qaeda bomb plot to blow up a U.S. bound plane has completely fallen apparent with recent revelations that the terrorist was actually working for the CIA and Saudi Intelligence the entire time.

That's right, this huge corporate media manufactured story was literally a NON EVENT with the terrorist actually being an operative who then turned the bomb over to the Central Intelligence Agency.

In an all too predictable next move, the corporate media is now running direct homeland security advertisements for body scanners throughout the entire world.

Immediately after the release of this full scale propaganda story, the corporate CIA run media went to work promoting the dangerous naked body scanners and literally worshipping homeland securities draconian "security" measures.


Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Farage: We face the prospect of mass civil unrest, even revolution

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European Parliament, Brussels, 9 May 2012

Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Co-President of the 'Europe of Freedom and Democracy' (EFD) Group in the European Parliament

Debate: Statement by the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz MEP, on the occasion of Europe Day


Comment: On February 15th UK MEP Nigel Farage gave an interview to Russia Today, in which he used the example of what is happening in Greece to explain how those who are making peaceful revolution impossible are making violent revolution inevitable:




Dollar

$2 billion JPMorgan's blunder calls for tighter regulation

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© Keith Bedford/ReutersJamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JP Morgan Chase and Co, whose bank announced a massive trading loss of $2 billion, and counting, on Thursday.
Wall Street probably is wishing it never heard of the "Dimon Principle."

Major banks hoping to thwart calls for tighter banking restrictions were dealt a blow by news that JPMorgan Chase lost $2 billion in a trading blunder that proponents of new rules say more stringent regulation would curtail.

The spectacular trading meltdown came despite assurances from bankers that existing layers of regulations, internal safeguards and proper oversight are adequate to prevent such disasters. Those critical mechanisms failed to surface a sprawling series of bad bets that reverberated through the global financial markets.

JPMorgan's shares were slammed Friday after Jamie Dimon, CEO of the largest bank in the U.S., said in a conference call late Thursday that his bank's trading losses resulted from a 'flawed' hedging strategy that was "poorly constructed, poorly reviewed, poorly executed, and poorly monitored."

Dimon has been a vocal opponent of a regulation that would restrict certain types of risk-taking by banks, aka the Volcker rule, proposed in the aftermath of the financial crisis by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker.

Comment: Banks and bets, it's a lot like a casino.
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