Puppet MastersS


Handcuffs

Russia to charge right-wing ultra-nationalist Ukrainian director and 3 others for plotting attacks in Crimea

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© Alliance/DPAOleg Sentsov, accused of terrorism charges.
Russia's FSB security force is charging a Ukrainian film director and three others with plotting "terrorist" attacks in Crimea after the peninsula's annexation by Moscow.

The FSB, the successor to the KGB, said in a statement that the four detained this month were "to be charged shortly" with "terrorism", organising a "terrorist" group and arms trafficking.

If convicted of terrorism, they face jail terms of up to 20 years.

The suspects are "providing confessions," the FSB said, accusing them of being members of the Right Sector ultra-nationalist paramilitary movement.

The FSB also accused them of plotting to down powerlines and destroy railway bridges as well as blow up a World War II memorial and a statue of Lenin.

The detainees include Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, an opposition activist and member of protest group AutoMaidan, which held drive-by protests against president Viktor Yanukovych.

Comment: It seems that Russia is keeping an eye out for attacks from the supporters of the new Ukrainian puppet-regime.


Attention

Pentagon directives outline conditions for using military force, drones against U.S. civilians

Urban Warfare
© Police State USAUrban warfare.
Recent Pentagon directives contain some alarming text regarding the extents of military involvement in domestic emergencies and the advancement of the War on Terror on domestic soil. Specifically at issue is the use of drone surveillance and military force against American civilians within the United States of America.

The authority to deploy the U.S. military inside the USA was established first in Article IV of the Constitution in cases of domestic violence that threaten the government of a state, or the application of federal law. This authority was further clarified both by the Insurrection Act of 1807 and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

The Insurrection Act specifies the circumstances under which the president may convene the armed forces to suppress an insurrection against any state or the federal government. Furthermore, where an individual state is concerned, consent of the governor must be obtained prior to the deployment of troops. The Posse Comitatus Act gives some teeth to the Insurrection Act by provides penalties for unlawful troop deployments.

Bomb

First known U.S. suicide bomber among Syrian rebels

Social media posts by an Al-Qaeda affiliate claim a man named Abu Hurayra Al-Amriki (Abu Hurayra the American) blew himself up in an attack in Syria. US officials say he is the first-known American suicide bomber in the civil-war besieged country.

On Sunday, four men from the Al-Nusra Front, a jihadist organization aligned with Al-Qaeda, carried out suicide bombings on army positions in Idlib province, AFP reported. Dozens were killed or wounded, though exact numbers of casualties are still unknown.

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© Twitter
Abu Sulayman al Muhajir, one of the top sharia officials in the Al-Nusra Front, according to The Long War Journal, tweeted about the involvement of an American man in the coordinated suicide attacks on Tuesday.

Rocket

Kiev fires mortar rounds at Slavyansk hospital

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© RIA Novosti / Maks VetrovSlavyansk, Ukraine
Kiev's troops renewed the shelling of Slavyansk on Friday morning, residents told RT. A local children's hospital and a clinic came under fire. There are no reports of injuries.

Read RT's live updates on the violence in Ukraine

"This morning they hit the children's policlinic in the center of the city and the reception ward of the children's hospital. It was at 5 am," Vladimir, a Slavyansk resident, told RT.

"The hospital and the policlinic stand close to each other. The hospital was damaged worse than the policlinic," another resident said. "There were no victims."

Laptop

Snowden email released after NSA denies its existence

Snowden
© AFP Photo / Axel HeimkenA giant screen shows fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden delivering a speech, on May 16, 2014 in the northern German city of Hamburg
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden did raise questions with top NSA lawyers, the agency admitted on Thursday. Snowden responded by saying the released emails are incomplete, and that NSA misdirection "raises serious concerns."

The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence announced through its website on Thursday that it has located a lone email inquiry sent by Mr. Snowden in April 2013 to the Office of General Counsel, confirming in part allegations the former contractor made during an interview with NBC's Brian Williams that aired Wednesday evening.

"I actually did go through channels, and that is documented," Snowden told Williams when the two sat down in Moscow for an interview recently. "The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks, from me raising concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities."

"I would say one of my final official acts in government was continuing one of these communications with a legal office. And in fact, I'm so sure that these communications exist that I've called on Congress to write a letter to the NSA to verify that they do," Snowden said.

Yet the NSA has, until now, denied the existence of any such correspondence. In fact, previously the agency said any such emails simply couldn't be found.

"After extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden's contention that he brought these matters to anyone's attention," the NSA said last year.

Comment: Agencies like the NSA and CIA frequently lie about the existence of key documents when said documents reveal something that will harm their image, or they simply deny their release or black out their contents, all in the name of 'national security'. It's the height of criminality when institutions ostensibly designed to serve the public are allowed to control the flow of information that would prove their criminality.


Dollar

Let them eat birthday cake! Bilderberg at 60: Inside the Western elites' most secretive conference

Bilderberg60
© John Thys/ AFP/ Getty Images

It's been a week of celebrations for Henry Kissinger. On Tuesday he turned 91, on Wednesday he broke his personal best in the 400m hurdles, and on Thursday in Copenhagen, he'll be clinking champagne flutes with the secretary general of Nato and the queen of Spain, as they celebrate 60 glorious years of Bilderberg. I just hope George Osborne remembered to pack a party hat.

Thursday is the opening day of the influential three-day summit and it's also the 60th anniversary of the Bilderberg Group's first meeting, which took place in Holland on 29 May 1954. So this year's event is a red-letter occasion, and the official participant list shows that the 2014 conference is a peculiarly high-powered affair.

The chancellor, at his seventh Bilderberg, is spending the next three days deep in conference with the heads of MI6, Nato, the International Monetary Fund, HSBC, Shell, BP and Goldman Sachs International, along with dozens of other chief executives, billionaires and high-ranking politicians from around Europe. This year also includes a visit from the supreme allied commander Europe, and a return of royalty - Queen Sofia of Spain and Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, the daughter of the Bilderberg founder Prince Bernhard.

Comment: "Happy" birthday, dear Bliderbergers, our beloved psychopathic leaders, cooking up the next wars, famines, bail-outs and bail-ins to feather their own nests and leave everyone else in the gutter.

Notice that no Russians were invited this year...

Bilderberg 2014: List of Participants: Mingling of Military-Intel, Politicians, Finance, Oil, Media, Academia and Neocon Think Tanks


Bad Guys

Insurance co. sues after storm, claims inadequate 'climate change' preparation by city officials

City of Chicago. (AP)
© APCity of Chicago.
The Farmers Insurance Company is suing 98 Illinois towns, Cook County, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, asserting they were insufficiently prepared to deal with the effects of global warming that allegedly caused heavy rains and flooding in those areas last spring, damaging property, which led to expensive claims against the company.

"During the past 40 years, climate change in Cook County has caused rains to be of greater volume, greater intensity and greater duration than pre-1970 rainfall history evidenced," reads the lawsuit, adding that the infrastructure systems used by the towns to manage the heavy rainfall apparently are "inaccurate and obsolete."

"This defendant knew or should have known that climate change in Cook County has resulted in greater rainfall volume, greater rainfall intensity and greater rainfall duration than pre-1970 rainfall history evidenced, resulting in greater stormwater runoff from a rainfall with Cook County and its Watersheds," state the plaintiffs.

As a result, the "defendant knew that, because of climate change-causing increased rainfall," it "had to increase stormwater storage capacity of its stormwater sewer system(s) to prevent sewer water invasions," claim the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit also states that in 2008, Cook County, the City of Chicago, and other municipalities had "adopted the scientific principle that climate change has caused increases in rainfall amount" and to help address the problem had adopted the Chicago Climate Action Plan.

Arrow Up

Best of the Web: World Economic Forum in St Petersburg, Russia sees Russian-Chinese alliance strengthen

The unipolar model of the world order has failed.
- Vladimir Putin, St Petersburg, May 22
St. Petersburg
© Wikimedia CommonsTop left to bottom right: Saint Isaac's Cathedral rises over the city, Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachy Island, Palace Square with the Alexander Column, the Winter Palace, Petergof, and Nevsky Prospekt.

In more ways than one, last week heralded the birth of a Eurasian century. Of course, the US$400 billion Russia-China gas deal was clinched only at the last minute in Shanghai, on Wednesday (a complement to the June 2013, 25-year, $270 billion oil deal between Rosneft and China's CNPC.)

Then, on Thursday, most of the main players were at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum - the Russian answer to Davos. And on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his Shanghai triumph, addressed the participants and brought the house down.

It will take time to appraise last week's whirlwind in all its complex implications. Here are some of the St Petersburg highlights, in some detail. Were there fewer Western CEOs in town because the Obama administration pressured them - as part of the "isolate Russia" policy? Not many less; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may have snubbed it, but Europeans who matter came, saw, talked and pledged to keep doing business.

And most of all, Asians were ubiquitous. Consider this as yet another chapter of China's counterpunch to US President Barack Obama's Asian tour in April, which was widely described as the "China containment tour". [1]

On the first day at the St Petersburg forum I attended this crucial session on Russia-China strategic economic partnership. Pay close attention: the roadmap is all there. As Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao describes it: "We plan to combine the program for the development of Russia's Far East and the strategy for the development of Northeast China into an integrated concept."

That was just one instance of the fast-emerging Eurasia coalition bound to challenge the "indispensable" exceptionalists to the core. Comparisons to the Sino-Soviet pact are infantile. The putsch in Ukraine - part of Washington's pivot to "contain" Russia - just served to accelerate Russia's pivot to Asia, which sooner or late would become inevitable.

Eye 1

China claims US has 'fabricated' evidence of cyber spying against Chinese military officials

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© AFP Photo/China Out
The US has fabricated evidence to back cyber espionage accusations against Chinese military officials, China's Defense and Foreign Ministries said.

"In the field of internet technology and infrastructure, the US is blessed with an advantage, so fabricating some so-called 'evidence' is certainly no hardship," Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said, as quoted by Reuters.

Last week, the US Justice Department (DOJ) accused five Chinese officers of hacking into American companies to steal trade secrets and pass them on to Chinese state-owned enterprises.

The summary of the alleged conduct released by the DOJ contained detailed information about the alleged perpetrators and their activities, which included domain names and email addresses used in the attacks.

But Geng compared Washington's evidence of Chinese cyber spying to its justification for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Back then, the Americans stated that Baghdad was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, but the accusations later appeared to be baseless.

"The international community has not seen the US' so-called proof. They've only seen the massive conflict and hardship endured by the people of Iraq," Geng stressed.

The harsh comments from the Defense Ministry were echoed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which also held a briefing on Thursday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gan used the same wording, saying that Washington's proof of Chinese cyber espionage is "fabricated."

Comment: Unsurprising that the Chinese are up in arms over the US accusations of cyper espionage considering Snowden's disclosures that the US hacked into China's backbone networks, universities and government departments.
  • Ouch! China to ditch U.S. consulting firms over espionage suspicion



Vader

Former Bush counterterrorism czar admits that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld all committed 'war crimes', but hedges by questioning if it would be 'productive'

Richard Clarke
Richard Clarke
President George W. Bush's former top counterterrorism official said this week that he is convinced that Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld all committed war crimes during the Iraq war.

In an interview that will air in full next week, Democracy Now's Amy Goodman asked former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke if "President Bush should be brought up on war crimes [charges], and Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, for the attack on Iraq."

"I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war crimes," Clarke agreed. "Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we could all have."