Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Unexplained Gaza communications "blackout" highlights Israeli control of networks

Benjamin Doherty
The Electronic Intifada
Sun, 14 Aug 2011 10:12 UTC
On Tuesday, Gaza disappeared from the world's telecommunication networks for between 12 and 18 hours. This was an anxious time for both Gaza's residents and those trying to contact friends, colleagues and loved ones from the outside.

The Gaza Strip, home to 1.6 million Palestinians, the vast majority of them refugees, depends on telecommunications to maintain a tenuous link to the outside world, from which it has been physically isolated due to five years of Israeli siege and blockade. The sudden cutoff also sparked fears of an imminent Israeli attack.

Though there was relief when communications were re-established, there has been no satisfactory explanation of the blackout, who was responsible for it, and whether or not it could happen again.

What happened to Gaza's networks last week?

Ma'an News Agency was the first to report the problem, and a few Twitter users in Gaza remained online because they had BlackBerry service or were able to connect to the Orange network via its towers on the Israeli side of the boundary with Gaza.
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Bad Guys

Iraq Withdrawal? Don't Take it to the Bank

Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis
City Watch
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© unknown
Since coming to Washington, Barack Obama has won a Nobel Prize for Peace, but he hasn't been much of a peacemaker. Instead, he has doubled down on his predecessor's wars while launching blatantly illegal ones of his own. But, as his supporters would be quick to point out, at least he's standing by his pledge to bring the troops home from Iraq.

Right?

That's certainly what America's latest war president has been saying. Speaking to supporters this month, he was unequivocal. "If somebody asks about the war [in Iraq] . . . you have a pretty simple answer, which is all our folks are going to be out of there by the end of the year." Obama's statement was a welcome reaffirmation of what he promised on the campaign trail. "If we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do," he thundered in the fall of 2007. "I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."

But don't count on cashing that check. The Washington Post brings the unsurprising news that Iraqi leaders have agreed to begin talks with the U.S. on allowing the foreign military occupation of their country to continue beyond this year - re-branded, naturally, as a mission of "training" and "support." The move comes after an increasingly public campaign by top White House and military officials to pressure Iraqi leaders into tearing up the Status of Forces Agreement they signed with the Bush administration, which mandates the removal of all foreign troops by the end of 2011.

Comment: For more reading on Obama's broken promises, check out:

Bush 2.0: 100 Ways Barack Obama Is Just Like George W. Bush

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Newspaper

'US imposes news blackout on lawmakers' junkets to Israel'


Press TV
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:48 UTC
Alison Weir, Executive Director of "If Americans Knew" criticizes news blackout in the United States about confirmed reports that 81 members of the U.S. Congress went on AIPAC-funded junkets to Israel.

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Wall Street

Bank of America's Dead Drop To Rick Perry: "We Will Help You Out"

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:39 UTC
Should we be surprised, frightened, disgusted or simply say "we knew it", that in the informal mixer just after Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry spoke at a Politics and Eggs breakfast in Bedford, New Hampshire, an unknown gentlemen approaches a casual Perry like an Ian Flemming character, and proceeds to dead drop the following: "Bank of America... We will help you out"... and silently moves on. At least we know now who is funding what, and whose interests potential future president Perry will be paid to defend.

Fast forward to precisely 40 minutes into the blow clip (full event can be found here).
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UFO

Insane! Report For NASA Claims Aliens May Attack Earth If We Do Not Stop Global Warming


Intel Hub
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:03 UTC
Image
© Getty
Scientists at Nasa and Pennsylvania State University have penned a research report that warns of the possibility of aliens attacking earth over so called rising greenhouse gases.

"Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilization growing out of control - and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain," reported The Guardian.
The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect other civilisations.

"A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilisation may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states.
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USA

The Clinton Chronicles

mearbhrach
YouTube
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:37 UTC
Image
© snip

This revealing video is an investigation into the Alleged Criminal Activities of Bill Clinton and his Circle of Power. An in-depth documentary shows you all of the pieces of the Clinton puzzle, and fits them all together to reveal the whole story.

You'll hear from and see the faces of the key players who Clinton used to build his Circle of Power...as well as those who got in his way and lost their jobs, reputations, freedoms, virtue, and even their lives!

You'll learn everything about Clinton's alleged involvement in Whitewater, The Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), drug money in the millions smuggled from the airport in Mena, Arkansas, and money laundering with the BCCI. You'll find out the truth behind Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, the gangland slaying of private investigator Jerry Parks, and details of the Vince Foster "suicide".

The Clinton Chronicles uncovers the shocking truth the controlled media and Clintons don't want you to know!

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Bad Guys

Israel-Gaza violence intensifies after attacks by 'gunmen dressed as Egyptian security guards'


MSNBC
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:39 UTC
Image
© Oded Balilty / APIsraeli soldiers secure the area near a roadblock formed by security forces on roads leading to the sites of several attacks in the Arava desert, southern Israel, on Aug. 18.
Israeli military warns it 'will respond in strength and exact a price'; Hamas denies involvement

Israeli aircraft struck militant outposts in Gaza and Palestinians fired more than a dozen rockets into southern Israel on Friday as violence escalated following deadly gun attacks along Israel's desert border with Egypt.

Tensions between Israel and Egypt also grew, with Cairo issuing a formal protest over the death of three of its security guards, who, it said, where killed when Israeli forces hunted for the gunmen behind Thursday's roadside ambushes.

Eight Israelis perished in the border assault and at least seven of the attackers also died as Israeli forces tracked them down along the largely open frontier with Egypt.

Israel swiftly pinned the blame on a Palestinian group that is independent of the Hamas Islamist movement which governs Gaza. An airstrike killed the faction's leadership on Thursday and there were numerous other strikes throughout Friday.

"We have a policy of exacting a very heavy price of anyone who attacks us and this policy is being implemented," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday while visiting wounded compatriots in hospital.
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Bizarro Earth

Israelis, Palestinians brace for massive statehood protests

Edmund Sanders
STL Today
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00 UTC
Israel, Palestine
© unknown
Palestinians say it will trigger the biggest West Bank demonstrations in years. Israelis are bracing for another intifada.

A month before a potentially historic United Nations showdown over Palestinian statehood, the two sides are mobilizing for the possibility of mass street protests that some fear could spiral into a violent uprising.

As Palestinian leaders rally West Bank residents on Facebook and activists prepare campaigns against Jewish settlements and military checkpoints, Israel's Defense Ministry has spent about $22 million on new riot gear and police have canceled September vacations.

"There will be activities everywhere - against the wall (Israel's separation barrier), against the settlements and against the occupation," said Wasel Abu Yousef, who heads the Palestine Liberation Front, a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Palestinian officials say they are committed to keeping demonstrations nonviolent. But Israelis are preparing for the worst, calling up military reservists and making plans for emergency evacuations of settlements and an increased military presence in Palestinian regions of the West Bank.

Source: The Los Angeles Times
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Display

UK: Operation Weeting plods cuff 13th hack in phone-hack probe

Kelly Fiveash
The Register
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:59 UTC
Reportedly former NotW showbiz bin-rifler

The Metropolitan police have arrested another man as part of its ongoing investigation into alleged phone-hacking at axed Sunday tabloid News of the World.

"On Thursday, 18 August, officers from Operation Weeting arrested a man [H], aged 38, on suspicion of conspiring to unlawfully intercept voicemails contrary to section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977," said Scotland Yard in a brief statement this morning.

The unnamed man was cuffed by appointment at a London police station, where he remains in custody.

This arrest brings the total number of people allegedly associated with the NotW phone-hacking scandal to 13.

A Guardian report suggest that James Desborough, who joined the tabloid as a showbiz reporter in 2005 before being promoted to Hollywood editor in 2009, is the man currently being quizzed by police.
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Robot

DARPA shells out $21m for IBM cat brain chip

Timothy Prickett Morgan
The Register
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 01:02 UTC
Here, Skynet Skynet

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is moving ahead with IBM in the third leg of its Synapse cat brain chip. That leaves one more leg, a tail, and nine lives to go.

Because this is the military, the third leg of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (Synapse) project at DARPA is called phase 2, and IBM's techies have already completed phases 0 and 1. The initial phase of the project simulated the cortex of a cat brain on an IBM BlueGene massively parallel supercomputer with 147,456 cores and 144TB of memory and developing the basic synaptic circuits for the brain chip.

ibmresearcher
© The RegisterIBM Research's Dharmendra Modha
Phase one, which brought in $16.1m in funding spread across IBM and researchers at Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, Columbia University Medical Center, and the University of California-Merced, focused on simulating and building prototype brain chips that have electronic synapses and memory circuits instead of simulating them using sequentially processing von Neumann-style processors like the ones on our desktops and in the data centers of the world.
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