Puppet MastersS


Vader

Best of the Web: The Case of the Missing Terrorists

Paul Craig Roberts
paulcraigroberts.org
Mon, 14 May 2012 16:50 UTC
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Jose Rodriguez, free to broadcast his psychopathology
Who is Jose Rodriguez? He is the criminal who ran the CIA torture program. Most of his victims were not terrorists or even insurgents. Most were hapless individuals kidnapped by warlords and sold to the Americans as "terrorists" for the bounty paid.

If Rodriguez's identity was previously a secret, it is no more. He has been on CBS 60 Minutes taking credit for torturing Muslims and using the information allegedly gained to kill leaders of al Qaeda. If terrorists were really the problem that Homeland Security, the FBI and CIA claim, Rodriguez's name would be a struck through item on the terrorists' hit list. He would be in his grave.

So, also, would be John Yoo, who wrote the Justice (sic) Department memos giving the green light to torture, despite US and International laws prohibiting torture. Apparently, Yoo, a professor at the Boalt School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, was ignorant of US and international law. And so was the US Department of Justice (sic).

Notice that Rodriguez, "The Torturer of the Muslims," doesn't have to hide. He can go on national television, reveal his identity, and revel in his success in torturing and murdering Muslims. Rodriguez has no Secret Service protection and would be an easy mark for assassination by terrorists so capable as to have, allegedly, pulled off 9/11.
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Wolf

Best of the Web: Psychopaths in Power: Colonized by Corporations

Chris Hedges
TruthDig
Mon, 14 May 2012 14:58 UTC
corporations
© Mr Fish
In Robert E. Gamer's book The Developing Nations is a chapter called "Why Men Do Not Revolt". In it Gamer notes that although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or ethnic group or an apostate within their own political class. The useless battles serve as an effective mask for what Gamer calls the "patron-client" networks that are responsible for the continuity of colonial oppression. The squabbles among the oppressed, the political campaigns between candidates who each are servants of colonial power, Gamer writes, absolve the actual centers of power from addressing the conditions that cause the frustrations of the people. Inequities, political disenfranchisement and injustices are never seriously addressed. "The government merely does the minimum necessary to prevent those few who are prone toward political action from organizing into politically effective groups," he writes.

Gamer and many others who study the nature of colonial rule offer the best insights into the functioning of our corporate state. We have been, like nations on the periphery of empire, colonized. We are controlled by tiny corporate entities that have no loyalty to the nation and indeed in the language of traditional patriotism are traitors. They strip us of our resources, keep us politically passive and enrich themselves at our expense. The mechanisms of control are familiar to those whom the Martinique-born French psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon called "the wretched of the earth," including African-Americans. The colonized are denied job security. Incomes are reduced to subsistence level. The poor are plunged into desperation. Mass movements, such as labor unions, are dismantled. The school system is degraded so only the elites have access to a superior education. Laws are written to legalize corporate plunder and abuse, as well as criminalize dissent. And the ensuing fear and instability - keenly felt this past weekend by the more than 200,000 Americans who lost their unemployment benefits - ensure political passivity by diverting all personal energy toward survival. It is an old, old game.
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Beaker

Gulf troops were used as 'guinea pigs' say war veterans


The Sentinel
Mon, 14 May 2012 09:33 UTC
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© unkCHANGED MAN: Dave Sephton with the cocktail of drugs he has to take every day since the Gulf War in 1991.
Gulf War veterans claim they were used as human guinea pigs on the battlefield - and now they believe they have the classified documents to prove it.

Dave Sephton, of Bradeley, was one of thousands of soldiers who claim they returned from the 1991 conflict a changed man.

The 50-year-old, who served as a lance corporal with the Queen's Royal Lancers for a decade, now suffers from a range of different medical complaints including post traumatic stress, extreme fatigue, gut pain and hormone deficiencies.

The conditions all fall under the umbrella term 'Gulf War Syndrome'.

For years the father-of-two, who takes 20 to 40 different drugs every day, has believed his illnesses were partly caused by vaccinations he and other troops were given in combat.
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Handcuffs

Police State: Plainclothes NYPD detain woman in Union Square for demonstrating


Vimeo
Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00 UTC
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Dollar

Is the JP Morgan bombshell the financial world's worst nightmare?

Dave in Denver
The Golden Truth
Fri, 11 May 2012 16:58 UTC
"We're getting to the heart of why you own gold" - long time friend and colleague, Wistar Holt (Holt & Shapard Capital Mgmt)
Jamie Dimon
Jamie Dimon
I think every useful blog under the sun has re-hashed the JP Morgan/Jamie Dimon bombshell dropped on the market last night, so I'm going to try to be brief, to the point and hopefully add some "color" and information that is new.

First, Jamie Dimon did a superb job of throwing very expensive, opaque lipstick on the world's ugliest pig and catering the to the Wall Street analysts and media who take what he says and spin it to the public in the best possible light. In fact, I just saw one headline on Marketwatch that said "JPM stock is lower due to a a bad trade." A "bad trade?"

What we just saw last night was the result of Wall Street's equivalent of unsupervised special ed. children playing with financial nuclear triggers. How do I know this? I used to be one of those unsupervised kids back in the 1990's, when the magnitude of the capital being played with was a small fraction of what it is now.

This is not a "bad trade." This is a massive proprietary (i.e. bank trading/speculation portfolio) position that has blown up. Dimon fraudulently refers to it as "an economic hedge" that didn't work as well as they expected.

Jamie Dimon is either completely ignorant of what is going on in JPM's speculation-ridden proprietary trading operation or he's lying. Or a lot of both. If he's clueless, then he should be terminated by the board immediately. If he's lying, he should be investigated by the Obama Justice Department. But we know the latter has no chance of happening, as Eric Holder's Justice Dept has taken financial fraud prosecutions to a 20 year low. Not surprising since JP Morgan and other Wall Street banks are the heart of the client list of Eric Holder's pre-Justice Dept law firm.

Comment: Tip of the iceberg?

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Bizarro Earth

Deliberate government and EU policy to keep the UK short of water and increase prices

Christopher Booker
The Telegraph
Sat, 12 May 2012 16:39 UTC
cracked
© PACracked: the country’s water problems are derived from the failure to fix leaks and increase reservoir capacity
Failure to fix leaks and increase reservoir capacity are behind our water problems.

When I returned last week to a grey, cold, rainswept Heathrow, after a brief visit to Australia on rather sad family business, I naturally wanted to know what had been going on while I was away. It hardly said much for our democracy that Boris Johnson should have owed his "triumphant" re-election as Mayor to the support of just 16.8 per cent of those Londoners eligible to vote - while Labour owed its "victory" in council elections to just 12 per cent of the potential voters. The Greek and French election results heralded another sharp downward lurch in the slow-motion collapse of the euro. The prospect of Britain's lights going out moved nearer with the pulling out of France's state-owned EDF as the last company that might have provided us with new nuclear power stations, while the Environment Agency's Chris Smith announced that Britain may be hoping for a glut of cheap gas from "fracking" shale, but that this could be allowed to generate electricity only on condition that all the resulting CO₂ is buried in holes in the ground, by a wishful-thinking technology that would double its price and is unlikely ever to work anyway.

As big a story as any, however, was the ongoing drama of our "wettest-ever drought" as, despite record recent rainfall, we are told that hosepipe bans are still unlikely to be lifted because we don't have enough water to go round. And here, it turns out, there is a startling twist to the tale.

Comment: When essential utilities are under the control of private interests then methods of increasing prices become inevitable.

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Stormtrooper

Anti-Islam Teachings 'Widespread' in U.S. Law Enforcement

Ryan Devereaux
Guardian UK
Sun, 13 May 2012 12:28 UTC
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© ShutterstockMuslims are waiting for the call to prayer at the Umayyad Mosque on October 12, 2007 in Aleppo,Syria. homeros
A course at a military academy that taught US officers to prepare for "total war" with Islam does not represent an isolated incident, campaigners have warned.

The Pentagon moved swiftly to distance itself from revelations that officers in a defense department class were taught that "Hiroshima"-style tactics would be needed to combat the threat from Islam.

"It was totally objectionable, against our values and it wasn't academically sound," said General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

The class in question was canceled in April and Dempsey noted the instructor responsible for the course, army lieutenant colonel Matthew A Dooley, is "no longer in a teaching status". Dooley, however, is still employed at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

Linda Sarsour, executive director at the Arab American Association of New York, said the course is merely the latest example in a proliferation of anti-Muslim teaching materials in law-enforcement agencies. "It's part of a much larger problem," Sarsour said, pointing to similar controversies involving the FBI and the New York police department.
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Heart - Black

Capitalists and Other Psychopaths

William Deresiewicz
New York Times
Sat, 12 May 2012 11:03 UTC
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© Ted Parker
There is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad. Well, consider the following. A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are "clinical psychopaths," exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an "unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation." (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

The only thing that puzzles me about these claims is that anyone would find them surprising. Wall Street is capitalism in its purest form, and capitalism is predicated on bad behavior. This should hardly be news. The English writer Bernard Mandeville asserted nearly as much three centuries ago in a satirical-poem-cum-philosophical-treatise called The Fable of the Bees.

Private Vices, Publick Benefits read the book's subtitle. A Machiavelli of the economic realm - a man who showed us as we are, not as we like to think we are - Mandeville argued that commercial society creates prosperity by harnessing our natural impulses: fraud, luxury and pride. By "pride" Mandeville meant vanity; by "luxury" he meant the desire for sensuous indulgence. These create demand, as every ad man knows. On the supply side, as we'd say, was fraud: "All Trades and Places knew some Cheat, / No Calling was without Deceit."
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Yoda

911 Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds: US government needs to keep the fear factor alive


Russia Today
Wed, 09 May 2012 10:05 UTC
The Obama administration has the worst track record when it comes to prosecuting whistleblowers. Obama once claimed he'd work hard to have a transparent government, but many have faced retaliation for revealing controversial government information. Sibel Edmonds, who is a whistleblower, waited 340 days for FBI clearance of her memoir but finally released it on her own. Edmonds, founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, joins us for more.

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Star of David

Iran sentences 13 for spying for Israeli spy agency


Press TV
Sun, 13 May 2012 09:57 UTC
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An Iranian court has sentenced 13 people after finding them guilty of involvement in espionage activities for the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.

Branch 15 of Tehran's Revolution Court made the decision on Sunday, stating that they had been lured into spying for the Mossad by overseas-based satellite television networks and clever advertisement campaigns.

The defendants reportedly accepted large sums of money from Mossad and CIA agents.

The Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced on April 17 that it had arrested over a dozen Israeli-linked spies and terrorists.

The ministry said the detainees were of Iranian and non-Iranian nationalities.
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