Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Explosions, gunfire heard in Afghan capital after Obama leaves

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© UnknownPsychopaths reflecting on what happened?
A suicide bomber rammed a car full of explosives into a blast wall in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, an interior ministry spokesman said.

Sediq Sediqqi said that there was only one attacker, dismissing reports that more than one insurgent was involved in the assault against a housing compound for westerners.

Police chief Ayub Salangi told Reuters the car bomb exploded on Jalalabad road, the main road out of the capital heading east, where several U.S. military bases and compounds housing Westerners are located. A guard and five civilians were killed.

Salangi said one of those compounds, known as "Green Village", was the target.

Hours earlier, President Barack Obama left Kabul following an unannounced visit during which he signed a strategic partnership agreement.

Vader

Warmonger: Obama says Afghanistan Deal is one Where 'War Ends and a New Chapter Begins'

Obama, Hamid Karzai
© The Associated Press/Charles DharapakPresident Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai sign a strategic partnership agreement at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, May 2, 2012.
President Barack Obama, on a surprise nighttime trip to Afghanistan, told war-weary Americans that he would keep his promise to wind down the unpopular conflict by the end of 2014 but also vowed he would not abandon the strife-torn country prematurely.

In a televised address from an aircraft hangar at Bagram Air Base, Obama said the daring raid that killed Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago meant that the goal of crushing the al-Qaida network was "now within our reach."

"I recognize that many Americans are tired of war," Obama said. "I will not keep Americans in harm's way a single day longer than is absolutely required for our national security. But we must finish the job we started in Afghanistan and end this war responsibly."

Obama, speaking at 4 a.m. local time, highlighted a new security agreement both he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai had signed hours earlier to usher in "a future in which the war ends, and a new chapter begins."

Obama had a message for those, mostly Republicans, who question his timetable for withdrawal and argue that it risks emboldening the Taliban and their al-Qaida and other extremist allies while demoralizing America's Afghan friends.

Stormtrooper

Police State: NYPD Raids Activists' Homes Before May Day Protests

NYPD
© Getty
A day before Occupy Wall Street hopes to shut down New York and cities across the country in massive May Day protests, the NYPD visited at least three activist homes in New York and interrogated residents about plans for tomorrow's protest.

Today "there was definitely an upswing in law enforcement activity that seemed to fit the pattern of targeting what police might view as political residences," said Gideon Oliver, the president of the New York Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, which offers legal to support to Occupy Wall Street. "They were asking what are your May Day plans, do you know who the leaders are - these are classic political surveillance questions."

Magnify

"Global Spying". Washington's "Weaponized Data" System

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© N/A
From driftnet surveillance to data mining and link analysis, the secret state has weaponized our data, "criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial," as Cryptohippie famously warned.

No longer the exclusive domain of intelligence agencies, a highly-profitable Surveillance-Industrial Complex emerged in the 1980s with the deployment of the NSA-GCHQ ECHELON intercept system. As investigate journalist Nicky Hager revealed in CovertAction Quarterly back in 1996:
The ECHELON system is not designed to eavesdrop on a particular individual's e-mail or fax link. Rather, the system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones. A chain of secret interception facilities has been established around the world to tap into all the major components of the international telecommunications networks. Some monitor communications satellites, others land-based communications networks, and others radio communications. ECHELON links together all these facilities, providing the US and its allies with the ability to intercept a large proportion of the communications on the planet.
With the exponential growth of fiber optic and wireless networks, the mass of data which can be "mined" for "actionable intelligence," covering everything from eavesdropping on official enemies to blanket surveillance of dissidents is now part of the landscape: no more visible to the average citizen than ornamental shrubbery surrounding a strip mall.

Bad Guys

Why? - 21 Unanswered Questions That They Don't Want You To Look Into

Hear No Evil
© Alt-Market.com
Do you ever get the feeling that the mainstream media is feeding you a very watered-down and twisted version of the news? Do you ever get the feeling that the federal government does not believe that the American people can actually be trusted with the truth? It is exasperating to realize that the news that the public is being fed every single day is very heavily filtered and very heavily censored.

In a world where "spin" is everything, simply telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Fortunately, the Internet has helped fuel the rise of the alternative media, and millions of Americans that are starting to wake up are turning to the alternative media for answers to their unanswered questions.

Increasingly, people are becoming willing to question the orthodoxy that is being shoved down their throats by the major news networks, and that is a very good thing. The world is becoming an incredibly unstable place, and it is more imperative than ever that we all learn to think for ourselves. We live during a time of great deception, and the lies are going to get even bigger and even more bold in the years to come. If we don't know why we believe what we believe, then we are in danger of falling for just about anything.

It is those that seek the truth that end up finding it. If you just accept the version of reality that the system wants to feed you, then you are probably going to become what the system wants you to become.

But if you are not afraid to question everything, then you will have a chance to become everything that you were always meant to be.

So what are some things that we should be questioning right now?

The following are 21 unanswered questions that they don't want you to look into....

Vader

France leads new EU secret paramilitary force for suppressing protests

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The emergence of para-military police units for use abroad (and potentially at home) is exemplified by the EGF which is being organised by six EU member states outside of the Justice and Home Affairs structures1

The increasing deployment of para-military gendarmerie forces abroad is due to a changing threat analysis resulting in new requirements for operational forces. The control of the population through permanent gendarmerie deployment is a central component of this threat analysis, leading to a para-militarisation of forces, as is illustrated by the multinational European Gendarmerie Force (EGF / EUROGENDFOR). Due to this unit's dual nature (the EGF can operate under military as well as civil command, inland as well as abroad) and through common training, the paramilitarisation of police forces in Germany, the EU and worldwide is inevitable. The logo of the EGF is LEX PACIFERAT ("The law will bring peace") - it is a law enforced to ensures uninterrupted economic activity.

Population control

What is deemed to be a threat depends on which group is able to enforce its views; the group which possesses a discursive hegemony. Since the 1990s, hegemonic threat analysis and its resulting security strategies have undergone fundamental changes. With the disappearance of the clear frontlines drawn up during the Cold War, there is no definitive enemy such as the Soviet Union. According to the German government's coalition agreement, the new global threats are "international terrorism, organised crime and piracy, climate change, (lack of) food and resource security as well as epidemics and diseases": diffuse, ambiguous and asymmetrical threats.2 These new enemies seemingly can attack everywhere and at any time; they are also difficult to differentiate from the civil population or are in fact identical to it. The population therefore poses a continuous threat and its "political and social control" has become central to the planning of military and police operations.3

Comment: So, with France leading the way, the EU has quietly created a secret police force that will be accountable to no one but SITCEN, its new intelligence agency.

The name Brice Hortefeux rings a bell. Apparently he is good at creating secret police forces:

Big Agri-Business, Big Pharma, Arms Trafficking, Suicide Cults and MIVILUDES - The Truth Behind France's Cult-Hunting Policies Exposed
The author of the following contribution to the 2009 MIVILUDES report is Brice Hortefeux, who was Minister of the Interior at the time and is one of many charming characters we find in high places in France today. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Hortefeux is a friend and longstanding ally of President Nicolas Sarkozy. In June 2010, Hortefeux was fined 2,750 euros for racial insults against a party activist of Algerian descent. The incident went like this:
BBC 4 June 2010

Mr Hortefeux was joking with a small group of activists from the ruling UMP party in south-west France.

Immediately before Mr Hortefeux's controversial remark, one activist is heard saying: "Amin is a Catholic. He eats pork and drinks alcohol."

Mr Hortefeux then says: "Ah, well that won't do at all. He doesn't match the prototype."

A woman is then heard to say: "He is one of us... he is our little Arab."

The interior minister then says: "We always need one. It's when there are lots of them that there are problems."
That's just a little background into one of the people leading France's modern-day militarized 'Department of morality and normality'. Here is Hortefeux, in an appendix to the 2009 MIVILUDES report, describing the organisation and role of CAIMADES, the 'anti-cult' special police unit created to give MIVILUDES some teeth:
The services of the DGPN [General Directorate of the National Police] (DSCP/SDIG [the Sub-directorate for General Intelligence]) produced a general study on new therapies (already sent to MIVILUDES). This same service has continued its work of collecting information and intelligence for operational purposes, notably of the investigative services, thanks to a network of support staff within each departmental service which reports on cultic activities. This work is ultimately destined to feed CAIMADES, a group specializing in this area and newly created within the 'Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons' (OCRCVP) at the DCPJ ['Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire'].

Operating within the DCPJ, the OCRCVP, created by the decree of 6 May 2006, was empowered to fight against cultic abuses constituting criminal offenses. Until 1 September 2009, one of the criminal investigative groups of this service was specifically charged with centralising information and processing court records related to this matter. The Minister of the Interior, in two memos circulated on 25 February 2008 and 23 January 2009, reminded officials of the new legal arsenal at their disposal for fighting against cultic abuses. He committed to a coordinated action on the matter, established specific guidelines in the fight and expressed a wish to bring new impetus to the activities of the various state services in this matter. [...]
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MIVILUDES can rely on scores of Gendarmerie to protect France's children from eeeevil 'cults'

The main objective of this unit is to ensure compliance with the provisions of the About-Picard law of 12 June 2001 relating to subjection to mental manipulation, facilitate meetings for characterizing these notions [of what constitutes "subjection" and "mental manipulation"] and the relevant elements of criminal offenses. To this end, CAIMADES is at the disposal of the territorial services of the police and gendarmerie to provide them with methodological (training, experience sharing, situational analysis) or operational assistance. These interventions can take the form of tips and expert advice in order to evaluate whether registered complaints or information received meet legal qualifications.

The unit is intended to facilitate the implementation of specific techniques in conducting investigations relating to acts that may constitute cultic abuses. It is capable of acting alone or in co-referral with those services initially involved during a criminal investigation. Experts assigned to the unit act in these proceedings under the guide of requisitions made by the prosecution or 'rogatory commissions' initiated by the investigating judge. It is certainly desirable that the cell intervenes alongside investigators from the beginning of inquiry, but its assistance can be obtained at any stage during the inquiry and especially during arrests and while in police custody. Such cooperation of experts, on the fringes of the investigation, is readily available and naturally enables better management of cult followers or minors as the situation requires. The implementation of CAIMADES as an entity of the OCRVP enables it to equally benefit from the operational capacities of the overall central and territorial services of judicial police.
Monsieur Hortefeux is also very good at getting things done in secret:
A few months ago, the above mentioned Brice Hortefeux, now a senior adviser to Sarkozy, was pulled in for questioning by police after he phoned another comrade of Sarkozy's, Thierry Gaubert, to warn him that the police were onto his role in collecting suitcases of cash from banks in Switzerland to finance Edouard Balladur's unsuccessful 1995 presidential election campaign. Balladur's campaign spokesman? Nicolas Sarkozy. Dubbed 'Karachigate' by the French press, the Swiss cash was kickbacks from illegal arms sales to Pakistan in the 1990s. For Hortefeux to have been able to warn Gaubert - and therefore Sarkozy, we presume - he must have had inside knowledge of the advanced stage of the judicial investigation... being former Minister of the Interior probably helped. Just about everyone in Sarkozy's entourage has been implicated or officially charged in this latest major corruption scandal to hit France, including the president's best man, Nicolas Bazire, who was Balladur's campaign manager in 1995.
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'hmmm... now where did I leave that suitcase of cash...' Brice Hortefeux

We say "latest major corruption scandal to hit France" because the current fallout from 'Karachigate' is practically a rerun of another kickbacks-for-arms scandal involving the country's top brass in the 1990s. 'Angolagate', aka the 'Mitterrand - Pasqua affair', saw just about everybody and his dog in the docks over the illicit sale of $790 million of Russian weapons and equipment to Angola from 1993 all the way up to the year 2000, fuelling a civil war that killed over half a million people, left the country in ruins and ensured that French companies, in league with dictator Dos Santos against the Unita rebels, could continue to plunder Angola's vast oil and diamond wealth. Despite a UN embargo blocking the sale of weapons to Angola, Pierre Falcone, a French businessman, arranged deals through his company Brenco with none other than the Israeli 'Lord of War' Arcady Gaydamak to ship enormous quantities of military hardware to the dictator - it remains the single largest racket of illegal arms trafficking ever (well, that we know of).

Of course, this couldn't be done without opening doors, so Falcone showered millions of dollars (in more suitcases of cash) upon power brokers in France. Guess who was named by Falcone as one of the more than 40 French politicians to win a lucky potluck suitcase? That's right... Georges Fenech, who was a magistrate in Lyons in 1997 at the time, soon to be made a judge, and was busy prosecuting his war on minorities. He denied everything of course and, like most of the French Mafia implicated in Angolagate, got away with it.
Having cut their teeth among the ranks of special forces in Afghanistan and the Balkans, it's unlikely that this 'new riot' squad is being drafted in to do grunt work on the streets. No, Europe's elites might have much craftier work in mind for them...

The Return of Gladio And The Rebirth of Terror Under French Tyrant Nicolas Sarkrazy

Operation Gladio: State-Sponsored Terror


Vader

"Eurogendfor" - the private army of the EU, ready to march to Greece

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Translation : Current Concerns

cc. There are articles which the reader can only comment like this: "This cannot be true, I regularly inform myself and usually think I am up to date, but why do I not know about that?" - The following is one of those: If you think of gender - the synthetic newfangled definition of sex - in connection with Euro-Gender-For, you are on the wrong track. The name is a showpiece of the intellectual power of innovation of the French: Instead of EU rambo troops or Goldman Sachs bodyguards along the lines of Blackwater a "police"-private army has emerged. This way the Germans from Angela Merkel's faction may deflect the "indignation" that they trigger in the countries of the oh-so-liberal euro-Europe to the French. But at the latest upon arrival in Greece, this spin doesn't work any longer.

MIB

Secret Service Closes Ranks in Sordid Scandal

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© The Associated Press/Susan WalshIn this Monday, Oct. 24, 2011 file photo, Secret Service agents stand guard as President Barack Obama meets with the neighbors of homeowners Jose and Lissette Bonilla in Las Vegas. The Secret Service has been tarnished by a prostitution scandal that erupted April 13, 2012 in Colombia involving 12 Secret Service agents, officers and supervisors and 12 more enlisted military personnel ahead of President Barack Obama's visit there for the Summit of the Americas.
Washington - After two weeks of disturbing revelations about a tawdry prostitution scandal, the Secret Service and its supporters are circling the wagons to restore the "secret" part of its mission.

Retired agents have been instructed to stop talking to reporters. Secret Service agents are dismantling Facebook accounts, hanging up on reporters and notifying headquarters - even calling police - when journalists knock on their doors at home for interviews about the investigation.

"What purpose do these revelations, true or exaggerated, serve? What ever happened to one's pride in being discreet and keeping a confidence?" asked the president of the Association of Former Agents of the U.S. Secret Service, Pete Cavicchia, in an email to members. Cavicchia, head of a New York-based security and investigations firm, praised retired agents who declined interviews, urged others to "exercise the proper caution" and added, "We as an organization and individually do not have to add to the damage and speculation at this time."

Cavicchia said Monday that the email speaks for itself.

The scandal and what it's revealed about the culture inside the Secret Service have been a shock to an agency that is famously discreet. More than a dozen Secret Service agents contacted by The Associated Press have abruptly hung up or declined to return multiple messages to discuss their agency and former coworkers. One reported it to headquarters when an AP reporter visited his home in the evening; some retired officials who were interviewed quickly notified headquarters about what questions reporters were asking.

Vader

Psychopaths and American Exceptionalism: In Defense of Torture: CIA Torturer Has No Regrets

"We are the dark side."

Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service, defends the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on high-level al Qaeda detainees and says he has no regrets. Lesley Stahl reports.


Airplane

Pakistani Officials: Suspected U.S. Drone Strike Kills "Militants" Hiding in High School

Drone
© Reuters
Islamabad - A suspected U.S. drone strike killed three people Sunday at a high school in northern Pakistan where militants were hiding, intelligence officials said.

The drone fired two missiles at the school in the city of Miranshah, killing three suspected militants, the Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The city is located in North Waziristan, one of seven districts in Pakistan's tribal region widely believed to be a haven for militant groups.

It comes several weeks after Pakistani lawmakers approved a list of recommendations that includes a call for an immediate end to U.S. drone attacks.

There has been a sharp drop in the number of drone attacks in Pakistan since a November NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the country's border with Afghanistan, driving U.S.- Pakistan relations to a low point.