Puppet MastersS


Cult

Rule from the Shadows - The Psychology of Power

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© StormCloudsGathering
Time to look behind the curtain...

The following documentary looks at the way in which early 20th Century psychological concepts were applied by governments and the totalitarian outcomes that resulted. It also charts the history and development of non-governmental organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, naming many of its members, and analyses how their discrete meetings influence US government policy.


Comment: The weapon in our arsenal is Political Ponerology. Awareness of psychopathy strips them of the power we project onto them. They're not 'enlightened leaders' in any way, shape or form; they're utterly insane.

Realizing that, we realize that they're not consciously directing global affairs.

So, what then is driving the machine?

That's the $64k question, but in the meantime perhaps we could say that the energy used to power the machine is drawn from the masses of ordinary people.

Stop believing their lies, then they no longer have the energy they need to control you.


Yoda

Pressure mounts on Dieudonne - Power Elite Must be REALLY Scared!

Dieudonne
© Joel Saget/Agence France-PresseControversial French comedian Dieudonne arrives at court in Paris on December 13, 2013 to face charges of defamation, insult and incentive to hate and discrimination.
The mayor of Paris has joined France's interior minister in calling for comedian Dieudonne, whose vitriolic brand of humour targeting Jews has caused outrage, to be banned from the stage.

Anti-racist groups also threatened legal action against a provocative arm gesture Dieudonne makes which has been described as an upside-down Nazi salute.

Dieudonne has been part of France's comedy scene for years, but while he started out with a Jewish comedian in sketches that mocked racism, he gradually veered to the far-right and alienated some fans with anti-Jewish comments -- one of his latest being a joke about gas chambers.

Speaking on Europe 1 radio, Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe likened Dieudonne to a criminal who "defends crimes against humanity".

"We must ban the performances (of the comedian)," he said, echoing recent comments made by Interior Minister Manuel Valls.

Dieudonne has been fined several times for defamation, using insulting language, hate speech and racial discrimination, and over his use of the provocative straight arm gesture known as the "quenelle".

But the 47-year-old comedian argues that the horrors of the Holocaust are given too much focus to the exclusion of other crimes, like slavery and racism, and says the gesture merely represents his anti-establishment views.

The "quenelle" has landed several personalities in hot water, including footballer Nicolas Anelka, who recently used it to celebrate a goal.

Bad Guys

US imperial intervention in world conflicts - shape-shifting policies

US flag/ bars
© CTJ71081 (CC-BY)
Following the Vietnam War, US imperial intervention passed through several phases: In the immediate aftermath, the US government faced a humiliating military defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese liberation forces and was under pressure from an American public sick and tired of war. Imperial military interventions, domestic espionage against opponents and usual practice of fomenting coups d'état (regime change) declined.

Slowly, under President Gerald Ford and, especially President 'Jimmy' Carter, an imperial revival emerged in the form of clandestine support for armed surrogates in Southern Africa - Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau - and neo-liberal military dictatorships in Latin America. The first large-scale imperial intervention was launched during the second half of the Carter Presidency .It involved massive support for the Islamist uprising against the secular government of Afghanistan and a mercenary jihadist invasion sponsored by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US (1979). This was followed by direct US invasions in Grenada (1983) under President Reagan; Panama (1989) and Iraq (1991) under President Bush Sr. and Yugoslavia (1995 and 1999) under President Clinton.

In the beginning, the imperial revival involved low cost wars of brief duration with few casualties. As a result there were very few voices of dissent, far diminished from the massive anti-war, anti-imperial movements of the early 1970's. The restoration of direct US imperial interventions, unhindered by Congressional and popular opposition, was gradual in the period 1973-1990. It started to accelerate in the 1990's and then really took off after September 11, 2001.

Wall Street

As Citigroup Spun Toward Insolvency in '07- '08, Its Regulator Was Dining and Schmoozing With Citi Execs

Timothy Geithner
© UnknownTimothy Geithner Is Sworn in as 75th U.S. Treasury Secretary As His Wife, Carole, Looks On
Before Timothy Geithner became the 75th Secretary of the U.S. Treasury in 2009, he served as the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for five years. The New York Fed is one of Wall Street's primary regulators. But after leaving his post at the New York Fed, Geithner testified before the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Financial Services on March 26, 2009 that he was not regulating Wall Street as he earned his $400,000 a year with car, driver and private dining room.

At the 2009 hearing, in response to a question from Congressman Ron Paul, Geithner said:

"That was a very thoughtful set of questions. I just want to correct one thing. I have never been a regulator, for better or worse. And I think you are right to say that we have to be very skeptical that regulation can solve all these problems. We have parts of the system which are overwhelmed by regulation...It wasn't the absence of regulation that was a problem. It was, despite the presence of regulation, you got huge risks built up."

When Geithner says, "for better or worse," I think most Americans would agree that Geithner's failure to know that he was a regulator at an institution he headed for half a decade that employed hundreds of bank examiners was probably worse for the country, not better, given that he oversaw the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression and the most expensive taxpayer bailout in the history of finance.

Vader

Hypocrisy and propaganda: The Guardian laments Sharon

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© Gilad.co.uk
In a uniquely dishonest piece, The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland paid a tribute today to Israel's veteran PM Ariel Sharon.

According to Freedland, Sharon, "as one of Israel's founders... had the credibility to give up occupied territory - and even to face the demons of 1948". Freedland speculates also that "Sharon's final mission might well have been peace." This is indeed a big statement, but how does Freedland support his creative historical account?

"Sharon's final act" says Freedland, "was to dismantle some of the very settlements he had sponsored. In 2005 he ordered Israel's disengagement from Gaza, seized in the 1967 war in which Sharon had been a crucial, if maverick, commander."

Let alone the fact that Freedland comes short of reminding his readers about Sharon's colossal war crimes, he actually completely distorts the political narrative that led Sharon to the 2005 unilateral disengagement.

Did Sharon have a plan to reconcile with the Palestinians and to address their plight or their right to return to their land? Not at all, we do not have any evidence of Sharon's remorse. The logic behind Sharon's disengagement is simple on the verge of banal. Sharon knew very well that if Israel insisted to maintain itself as the 'Jewish State', it would have to rid itself immediately of Arabs. Late Sharon was becoming aware of the possible implications of the 'Palestinian demographic bomb'. The Palestinians were becoming a majority in areas controlled by Israel.

Newspaper

UK Navy scrambles destroyer to challenge Russian warship off British coast

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© Daily MailA Russian cruiser came within 30 miles of the British coast, but the Navy had only one ship to respond.
  • Russian vessel detected 30 miles away from Scotland last night
  • Only ship available to respond was on south coast of England
  • Tensions heightened when aerial photos showed ship full of missiles
A fully armed Royal Navy warship was scrambled to challenge a missile-carrying Russian vessel in the waters off Britain just days before Christmas, defence sources revealed last night.

In a calculated test of Britain's reduced naval capacity in the North Sea, the Russian warship came within 30 miles of the coast.

It was detected nearing Scotland, but the only ship the Royal Navy had available to respond after Ministry of Defence cuts was in Portsmouth, resulting in a delay of 24 hours until it was in position.

The threatening approach towards Britain's territorial waters triggered a top-secret Navy and Air Force operation co-ordinated by the military top brass at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) bunker at Northwood, just outside London.

RAF reconnaissance aircraft tracked the progress of the Russian warship as it neared north-east Scotland, and the tension heightened when aerial photographs revealed the ship was carrying a full payload of guided missiles.

Arrow Down

Rand Paul thinks he's helping people by kicking them off unemployment; he couldn't be more wrong

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© Redknucklepolitics.com
The Kentucky senator thinks he's helping people by kicking them off unemployment. He couldn't be more wrong

Right-wing libertarian that he is, Rand Paul isn't much for using the federal government to make the world a slightly less terrible place. It was hardly a surprise, then, to find out the Kentucky senator opposed extending emergency unemployment compensation, preferring instead to let it expire for some 1.3 million in late December, with millions more to come after that. EUC is a federal government program, after all; and worse still, it's one whose primary beneficiaries are the unemployed, a population with little political influence or social standing. You'd expect, in other words, Rand Paul to leave these people shuddering in the winter cold. It's what his rigid vision of libertarianism requires.

What was less predictable, however, was Paul's stated justification for opposing EUC. Rather than talk about "makers" and "takers" and the economy's winners and losers, Paul attempted to repackage his laissez faire absolutism as a kind of tough love empathy. He pointed to a study that, he claimed, showed those on EUC had a harder time reentering the workforce (an interpretation one of the study's authors subsequently differed with). He talked about how those advocating for an EUC extension were doing a "disservice" to America's long-term unemployed workers. He made kicking millions to the curb sound like nothing less than an act of benevolence, bordering on charity. Whether it was a feat of self-delusion or chutzpah, only Paul can really say. (My guess is somewhere in-between.)

But as is so often the case with right-wing libertarianism, Paul's flimsy moral reasoning simply disintegrates once it comes into contact with the facts on the ground. Implicit in Paul's formulation is the idea that there are jobs to be had, if only the long-term unemployed would stop relying on government checks and go and have them. Considering that the total number of long-term unemployed set to be sent adrift by the expiration of EUC is somewhere in the vicinity of 5 million, it's quite likely that, in some instances, this is true. But for the vast, vast majority of those on EUC, the reality is that there simply are not enough jobs to go around. A Bureau of Labor Statistics study found the ratio of job seekers to job openings to be nearly 3-to-1, and that's the national figure - in many regions, the chances of finding employment are considerably worse.

Stop

The brutal ivory trade, fueled largely by U.S. demand, is wiping out elephants and funding terrorists

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The brutal but lucrative ivory trade, fueled largely by U.S. demand, is wiping out elephants and funding terrorists


I was choking back tears by the end of my interview with Andrea Turkalo.

Turkalo, who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, is one of the founding members of the Elephant Listening Project, which is documenting elephants' ability to communicate, often using low-frequency sounds below the threshold of human hearing. She is conducting her fieldwork at Dzanga Bai, an idyllic clearing in the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in the Central African Republic (CAR) where elephants come to drink the mineral-rich waters and wallow in the mud.

Unlike their cousins on the open savannah, forest elephants are typically hidden by thick jungle and difficult to track. Scientists often locate the reclusive animals by monitoring their vocalizations, some of which can be detected from miles away.

Despite being one of the best protected sites in the region, heavily armed poachers entered Dzanga Bai last May, butchering 26 elephants, mostly mothers and their calves. They fired their automatic weapons from the observation platforms used by researchers themselves, leaving behind a horrific crime scene. The grassy glade, usually teeming with elephant family groups emotionally reuniting after weeks of wandering in small bands through the forest, was littered with piles of elephant parts, bones and blood-soaked scraps of skin.

Tragically, such scenes are becoming commonplace throughout Central Africa. An astonishing 60 percent of the region's forest elephants have been lost in the first decade of the 21st century, and they have disappeared entirely from over half of their range in just the past 30 years. The forest elephant is regarded by biologists as a separate species from the more numerous and larger bush elephants of the African plains, but it is under the same unrelenting pressure from poachers, who are slaughtering them in order to hack off their tusks.

Eye 1

Cardinals, bishops and priests 'sexually prey on Swiss Guards'

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A former member of the Vatican's Swiss Guard has claimed that cardinals prey on young men recruited to the Pope's personal bodyguard.

He said that he had received up to 20 "unambiguous advances" from cardinals, bishops and priests and claimed that he was even asked for sex by a dignitary close to Pope John Paul II. "The Vatican is a paradise for gays," the unnamed former guard said in an interview with a Swiss newspaper.

His story appears to confirm rumours that senior Catholic churchmen, who have vowed to remain celibate, look to the Swiss Guards for sex.

The guardsman, who served under Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, attacked the hypocrisy of the Church. He said that he once received a late-night telephone call inviting him to a bedroom in the apostolic palace, close to the lodgings of the Pope. "Once, when I was coming home at midnight, I got a phone call from a withheld number," he said. " 'What are you doing? Where are you?' he asked me in Italian, and it turned out that this concerned an important cleric who was lodging at the papal palace."

Vader

Best of the Web: How propaganda can slowly repair the image of an utterly disgraced public figure like George W. Bush

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© Leavethecult.com
Peter Baker's book, "Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House" is one of the latest efforts in an audacious rebranding effort.

It is a testament to the degree to which presentation overshadows practice in modern political life that 49 percent of Americans approve of George W. Bush. Here is a President not only on the wrong side of history in almost every particular, but one whose misjudgments continue to constrain the country in measurable ways into the present. He is the author of two wars, one entered into based on faulty information, that have cost thousands of American, Iraqi and Afghani lives and further destabilized the Middle East, delivering it to the machinations of Islamic militants and increasing threats to our national security. To fund these wars, he employed deficit spending that could have been used to grow human and material capital through investments in infrastructure, education, clean energy and scientific research, among other areas. In the process of ballooning the deficit, he put further pressure on entitlement programs that were already moving toward unsustainability, helping precipitate a political crisis 20 years earlier than necessary. His concrete domestic innovation is a sprawling and convoluted defense bureaucracy lacking adequate oversight. His signature domestic initiative, a stillborn plan to privatize social security and create an "ownership society," appears, five years into an economic downturn precipitated by unwise investments, astonishingly ill-conceived. His two most successful decisions, the 2007 "surge" and the 2008 bailout, were reversals of errors that he either caused or compounded. This would not, in sum, seem to be a politician who merits much affection from the electorate based on his policies. Yet here he is enjoying a 49 percent approval rating, the result of a successful rebranding in which his professed purity of motives have come to count for more than the quality of his actual performance.

This rebranding had several sources. The first was historical logic: the dissatisfaction that Bush helped precipitate among Republicans ended up empowering figures so radical that he appeared prudent by comparison. The second was Bush's own canny performance once he was out of office: unlike, say, Dick Cheney, he stayed on the political sidelines and devoted himself to benign initiatives helping African AIDs victims and U.S. veterans. The third, and most instrumental, was a Washington press corps habitually focused on stark narrative contrasts, which helped publicize the benign storyline that the former president was quietly crafting (Bush vs. the Tea Partiers, Bush vs. Cheney). The opening of the Bush Presidential Library in April functioned as the opportunity for this process to go public, and, specifically, for longtime Bush supporters to press their case for redemption in a newly receptive environment. Against the backdrop of partisan logjam in Washington, the event was portrayed in the rosy hues of reunion: in Peggy Noonan's unabashed rendering, "What was nice was that all of them - the Bush family, the Carters and Clintons - seemed like the old days. 'The way we were.'" The exhibition itself included prominent places for Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley and Andrew Card, those figures marginally less tarnished by the Administration's blunders, and none at all for the reviled troika of Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove. Political commentary tended to revolve around the President's charitable initiatives or, more insistently, his "character."