Puppet MastersS


Mail

The UK taxpayer is the loser in Royal Mail privatisation by firms accused of unethical practices and corporate greed

Simon Jenkins
The Guardian
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 14:16 UTC
Image
© Phillip Toscano/PA‘Millions of pounds swilled round Whitehall, drenching consultants with fees and fooling ministers into gullible decisions.
The Treasury was badly advised on the sale, relying on firms accused of unethical practices and corporate greed

Thatcher would have screamed, "What! Flogging off her majesty's mail, cheap and to a bunch of spivs?" She always refused to sell Royal Mail. Her latterday apostle on Earth, Margaret Hodge, said as much on Tuesday. As the public accounts committee chairman, she savaged the business secretary, Vince Cable, for last winter's sale of Royal Mail. He had promised: "There is no way we will sell Royal Mail on the cheap." He sold it on the cheap. Hodge called him "clueless".

There was always something odd about last October's Royal Mail privatisation. Both Michael Heseltine and Peter Mandelson had tried it and failed. Driven by the Treasury's need for cash, Cable seemed rushed and nervy. The ground was rolled with a massive relief of pension liabilities, a 30% rise in stamp prices, and post offices detached from the business.

A chief executive was hired, and by May last year the business engineered a 60% surge in profit. It was clearly being gold-plated. So why was it sold as tin? Cable chose Lazards, Goldman Sachs and five other banks to advise on the sale. As anyone who has witnessed these events will attest, they are carnivals of cash.
Read More...
Eye 1

NSA performed warrantless searches on Americans' calls and emails

Spencer Ackerman and James Ball
The Guardian
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 12:26 UTC
Image
© Shawn Thew/EPAClapper said: 'These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures and consistent with the statute and the fourth amendment.'
  • NSA used 'back door' to search Americans' communications
  • Director of national intelligence confirms use of new legal rule
  • Data collected under 'Prism' and 'Upstream' programs
US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a "back door" in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans' communications.

The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases.

Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to "US persons".

"There have been queries, using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States," Clapper wrote in the letter, which has been obtained by the Guardian.

"These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures approved by the Fisa court and consistent with the statute and the fourth amendment."
Read More...
USA

Double Standards: Freeing Pollard while pursuing Snowden

James Gordon Meek
ABC News
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:20 UTC
Image
© Karl DeBlaker/AP PhotoIn this file photo, Jonathan Pollard is pictured during an interview at the Federal Correctional Institute in Butner, N.C. on May 15, 1998.
Former investigators who thought they'd put convicted U.S. spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard in the slammer for life lashed out today at news that the Obama administration is using his release as a bargaining chip in Mideast peace talks.

"How do you do this after Snowden?" fumed the former top prosecutor who won Pollard's conviction, Joseph diGenova.

DiGenova was referring to former National Security Agency contractor and admitted classified documents thief Edward Snowden, on the lam in Russia since last June.

The FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service never fully assessed the exact amount of classified military and intelligence files Pollard sold to Israeli agents for more than $600,000 beginning in the mid-1980s until his 1985 arrest, ABC News sources involved in the investigation said. But Pollard himself once estimated that he forked over 360 cubic feet of documents, which the sources said pertained to much more than Israel and included secrets about U.S. intelligence capabilities that made it into the hands of spies in Russia, South Africa and other countries.

"Nobody who has seen the classified damage assessment thinks Pollard ought to be freed," diGenova told ABC News.
Read More...
Bad Guys

Abbas defies U.S. and Israel - Kerry cancels visit - Pollard to be released

Jodi Rudoren, Michael R. Gordon and Mark Landler
NY Times
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:06 UTC
Image
© Atef Safadi/European Pressphoto AgencyPresident Mahmoud Abbas met with Palestinian leaders on Tuesday, signing documents to join 15 international bodies.
The Middle East peace talks verged on a breakdown Tuesday night, after President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority defied the United States and Israel by taking concrete steps to join 15 international agencies - a move to gain the benefits of statehood outside the negotiations process.

Mr. Abbas's actions, which appeared to catch American and Israeli officials by surprise, prompted Secretary of State John Kerry to cancel a planned return to the region on Wednesday, in which he had expected to complete an agreement extending negotiations through 2015.

In that emerging deal, the United States would release an American convicted of spying for Israel more than 25 years ago, while Israel would free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and slow down construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Mr. Abbas, who had vowed not to seek membership in international bodies until the April 29 expiration of the talks that Mr. Kerry started last summer, said he was taking this course because Israel had failed to release a fourth batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners by the end of March, as promised.
Read More...
Smoking

Following the Nazi model, U.S. Secretary of Defense favors tobacco sales ban at military installations

Jon Harper
Stars and Stripes
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 09:20 UTC
smoking in US army bases
© Heather Johnson/U.S. Marines CorpsStudies show military members use tobacco at higher rates than same-age civilians
As the Navy considers banning tobacco sales on all bases and ships, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel gave a strong endorsement of the review Monday, and suggested that he would be in favor of a ban.

"I don't know if there's anybody in America who still thinks that tobacco is good for you," Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon in response to a question about the Navy review. "We don't allow smoking in any of our government buildings. Restaurants, states, [and] municipalities have pretty clear regulations on this. I think in reviewing any options that we have as to whether we in the military through commissaries [or] PXs sell or continue to sell tobacco is something we need to look at. And we are looking at it. And I think we owe it to our people."

Comment: Adolph Hitler: Vegetarian, teetotaler, anti-smoking campaigner

The devious plan of anti-smoking campaigns to control people and stop them from using their brain

Read More...
Chess

SOTT Focus: Geopolitics of Empire: Mackinder's Heartland Theory and the Containment of Russia

Niall Bradley
Sott.net
Wed, 02 Apr 2014 15:17 UTC
Image
"What has happened in Crimea is a response to the format that made Ukrainian democracy collapse. And there is only one reason for this: the anti-Russian policy of the US and some European countries. They seek to encircle Russia in order to weaken and eventually destroy it... There is a certain transnational elite that has been cherishing this dream for 300 years."

~ Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, 19 March 2014

"History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

~ Attributed to Mark Twain
What's been happening in the Ukraine recently makes little sense without seeing it in broader geopolitical and historical contexts, so in my search for a firmer understanding of what's going on, I've been consulting the history books. First off, it needs to be said that the Ukraine is historically a part of Russia. It has been "an independent nation-state" in name since 1991, but has been completely dependent on external support ever since. And most of this "support" has not been in its best interest, to say the least.

The short answer to why the U.S. hatched its hare-brained scheme to overthrow Yanukoych last November is that its real target was Russia, which stands in the way of the plans for world domination by a banking elite whose empire is centered on the U.S. The longer answer is more complex, but in the process of working towards it we discover startling historical precedent for everything that is going on today, right down to the very rationales politicians give for why they do what they do.
Read More...
Bad Guys

N.Korea 'to Execute 200 Jang Song-taek Loyalists' - Some 1,000 members of their families could be sent to concentration camps under the North's barbaric system of guilt by association


The Chosunilbo
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 18:54 UTC
Image
Jang Song-taek
North Korea is poised to execute 200 high-ranking officials loyal to ousted eminence grise Jang Song-taek, a source said Tuesday. Some 1,000 members of their families could be sent to concentration camps under the North's barbaric system of guilt by association.

The source said the State Security Department has conducted a sweep to ferret out Jang's supporters after his execution in December last year and identified 200 core supporters and another 1,000 followers.

The department has authorization from the North's highest court to hold closed-door trials to deliver death sentences, the source added. This apparently aims to make it look as if proper procedure, to the extent that it exists at all, has been followed.
Read More...
Dollar

Arizona Republicans try to pump $1 mil into private prison for non-existent inmates


RT
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:15 UTC
jail
© AFP Photo / John Moore
Private prison company GEO Group coaxed around $1 million out of Arizona Republicans, despite assertions by the state Department of Corrections that the money is not needed based on the state's contract with GEO Group.

The last-minute funding attempt came late Friday, when Arizona House Appropriations Chairman John Kavanagh (R) added $900,000 into a budget proposal after GEO Group lobbyists convinced him that the company was not seeing enough profit from emergency inmate beds it supplies Arizona's prisons in Phoenix and Florence.

The funding addition, which must now win the state Senate's approval, comes despite GEO Group's established contract with the state for $45 million to hold minimum- and medium-security inmates in its 2,530 beds.

Doug Nick, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Corrections, told the Arizona Republic that the agency did not seek increased funding for GEO.

"We did not request it," Nick said. "We had nothing to do with it."
Read More...
Stock Down

Senior EU official: EU should avoid economic sanctions against Russia


RIA Novosti
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 17:11 UTC
Image
© Slovenia Times
The European Union should refrain from introducing broad economic sanctions against Russia if the situation around Ukraine does not deteriorate, European Commission Vice President Olli Rehn said Tuesday.

"No sensible European would want to see economic sanctions or any other escalation to the crisis. And in case Russia will not escalate the crisis, then we shall be able to avoid these sanctions," Rehn said.

After Crimea held a referendum on March 16 in which over 96 percent of voters supported seceding from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, the US and EU imposed targeted sanctions against a number of senior Russian officials.

The West has repeatedly warned Russia of economic pressure and international isolation if tensions over Ukraine continue to escalate.
Read More...
Attention

U.S. drone strike kills two in eastern Afghanistan; 10 severely injured


Press TV
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 18:23 UTC
Image
© AP
At least two people have been killed and several others severely injured in a fresh strike by a US killer drone in the troubled eastern Afghanistan, security sources say.

Local Afghan security officials said on Tuesday that the attack took place in volatile Kunar Province.

At least 10 others, including women, were also wounded in the deadly strike. The injured have been shifted to a local hospital to receive medical treatment.

Local security sources also said all the victims were members of the Taliban militant group. However, the militant group has not commented on the deaths yet.

US officials claim that the airstrikes target militants, but local sources say civilians have been the main victims of the attacks.
Read More...