Puppet MastersS


Binoculars

Ukraine's government has lost control of east, says illegal 'acting president'

Luke Harding
Guardian
Wed, 30 Apr 2014 17:43 UTC
Image
© Alexander Zemlianichenko/APPro-Russia gunmen in an administration building in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine's acting president has admitted his government has practically lost control of the east of the country, with his security forces "helpless" to stop a rolling takeover by pro-Russia gunmen.

Oleksandr Turchynov said numerous Ukrainian military and security personnel had defected to the rebels, taking their arms with them. Using the language of defeat, he told a meeting of regional governors: "I will be frank. Today, security forces are unable to take the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions quickly under control."

His comments came after anti-Kiev militants seized a string of official buildings in the eastern city of Luhansk on Tuesday. Only the city's police station remained under nominal central command.

Standing outside Luhansk's police headquarters on Wednesday, Tatiana Pogukay was close to tears. "We are still here. We didn't surrender. But Kiev betrayed us," she said. Her emotion was understandable. The previous night she and her colleagues had fended off an armed attack by 50 pro-Russia separatists. The gunmen in fatigues attempted to storm the building. One fired warning shots in the air; some scaled the roof; others rammed the rear entrance with a Kamaz truck.
Read More...
Star

Lavrov advises U.S to "discipline those whom they brought to power in Ukraine" instead of sanctioning Moscow


RT
Wed, 30 Apr 2014 20:38 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Suzanne PlunkettRussia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
Washington's approach to the events in Ukraine is not fueled by concerns about the fate of the crisis-torn state, but rather by the desire to prove it is still running the show worldwide, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

The way the situation in Ukraine is reported in mainstream media indicates that "unfortunately, the information machine of our Western colleagues is working at full capacity," Lavrov said following talks with his Chilean counterpart, Heraldo Munoz, in Santiago.

The US is trying to shape public opinion in a specific manner "because they are not concerned by the fate of Ukraine in the first place, but have strong desire to prove that it's them who decides how things should be - always and everywhere," Lavrov stated.

The foreign minister stressed that sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies are the result of such a stance, and will have a costly outcome for Washington in the long run.
Read More...
Arrow Down

So you thought food aid was about feeding the starving then, did you?

Tim Worstall
Pando Daily
Tue, 29 Apr 2014 01:33 UTC
Apparently food aid isn't about aiding those without food. Rather, it's all about subsidizing the Pentagon's budget:
"The secondary reason for food aid is food," Rep. Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who introduced the bill, said in an interview Thursday. "The No. 1 reason is military readiness."
Food Aid
© FMSC/Flickr

There we have it, that's the reason for a bill that's just been passed by the House. Who gives a shit about the people dying of starvation in other countries when we could screw up the system to make sure that we've got plenty of things that go bang?

The background to this is an absurdity called the Jones Act. This, among other provisions (for example, insisting that cargo between two US ports must be carried on US-owned, crewed, built and flagged ships) insists that food aid being sent off to the starving elsewhere must be carried on those US-built, owned, crewed and flagged ships. You'll not be surprised to find out that said US ships are rather more expensive than those using cheaper labor, or those using rather newer, more fuel efficient, engines.

But there we have it from the horse's arse, one of our elected Solons, that this is actually the point. We want to make food aid more expensive so that, for however much we decide to spend on food aid, we can alleviate less starvation.

The specific thing that this bill does is raise the percentage of such aid that must be carried on those Jones Act ships, thus making the food aid system even more inefficient. Quite rightly the Obama Administration opposes this change. Don't, however, think that this is a respectable Democrat arguing with idiot Republicans: the AFL/CIO is over on the Jones Act side here. It's not a party partisan dispute, it's one about the ability to use food aid to favor certain pockets instead of the purpose of food aid, to feed the hungry.
Read More...
Bizarro Earth

BP well sprays crude oil mist over 27 acres of Alaskan tundra

Emily Atkin
Think Progress
Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:49 UTC
BP_Alaska tundra
© Sartz-ADEC
Snow-covered Alaskan tundra sprayed by a mixture of oil, gas, and water released from a BP well pad on Monday.


"BP Well Sprays Crude Oil Mist Over 27 Acres Of Alaskan Tundra"

A large pipe attached to a BP-owned well pad on Alaska's North Slope has sprayed an oily mist of natural gas, crude oil, and water over an area of tundra larger than 20 football fields, state officials confirmed Wednesday.

The discovery at BP'sPrudhoe Bay oil field operation comes one week after federal scientists released a report warning that the United States is woefully unprepared to handle oil spills in the Arctic.

A statement provided by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) said BP discovered the release on Monday during routine inspections, and that the spray was active for about two hours before it was contained. The pipe spewing the gas mixture was facing upwards while strong 30 mph winds blew, which ultimately caused the spray to spread over 27 acres.

It is unclear at this point how much of the mixture was released, the DEC statement said.

A spokesperson for BP did not immediately return ThinkProgress' request for comment Wednesday about its cleanup effort, but spokesperson Dawn Patience told the Associated Press that it is "still assessing repairs." Patience reportedly said it was too soon to determine long-term impacts from the release, but that no wildlife were impacted.

Federal scientists from the National Research Council recently confirmed the difficulty of cleaning up spills in the Arctic. According to their 198-page report, the Arctic's environment is uniquely challenging due to pockets of oil that get trapped under freezing ice, sealing it beyond the reach of traditional cleanup equipment. The Arctic also lacks a variety of infrastructure, including paved roads, which could make response time exponentially longer than typical spills.
Read More...
Cow

Bureau of Land Management has a long history of aggressive cattle rustling

Kerry Picket
Breitbart
Wed, 30 Apr 2014 08:47 UTC
Raymond Yowell
Every month, Raymond Yowell, the 84-year-old former chief of the Shoshone Indian Tribe in northeastern Nevada, has almost $200 garnished from his $1,150 Social Security check, and it all dates back to a 5:00am phone call on a Friday morning in 2002.

That morning, a government official from the Bureau of Land Management told him to come down to a seizure site where the 132 cattle he owned were about to be impounded.

When he arrived, men brandishing handguns told him he couldn't get any closer than 250 yards from his cattle. He watched from a distance as the government loaded the livestock onto stock trailers.

Within a week, the cattle had been sold at a private auction - for what Yowell estimated to be a quarter of their market price. The proceeds belonged to BLM, officials told him, paying a portion of the grazing fees he suddenly owed. It wasn't enough to cover the full debt, and BLM sent Yowell a bill for $180,000.

Yowell has been fighting the BLM in court ever since, but while the case moves its way through the system, his Social Security check takes a hit every month.

The story, ranchers in Nevada say, is far from unique. Beginning in the late 1980s, BLM adopted aggressive tactics in the West, leading to large-scale cattle seizures and a disruption of life for ranchers that had utilized public lands for decades prior.
Read More...
Clock

Another debacle in the making: U.S. troops arrive in Poland for 'exercises'


Fox News
Wed, 23 Apr 2014 21:19 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Kacper Pampel
U.S. Army paratroopers are arriving in Poland on Wednesday as part of a wave of U.S. troops heading to shore up America's Eastern European allies in the face of Russian meddling in Ukraine.

Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said an initial contingent of about 600 troops will head to four countries across Eastern Europe for military exercises over the next month.

First, about 150 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team based in Vicenza, Italy, are arriving in Poland.

Additional Army companies will head to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and are expected to arrive by Monday for similar land-based exercises in those countries.
Read More...
Black Magic

The Marquis de Sade in Washington

Tom Engelhardt
Commondreams.org
Tue, 29 Apr 2014 00:00 UTC
flag of torture
© Unknown
In mid-April, Abu Ghraib was closed down. It was a grim end for the Iraqi prison where the Bush administration gave autocrat Saddam Hussein a run for his money. The Iraqi government feared it might be overrun by an al-Qaeda offshoot that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. By then, the city of Fallujah for which American troops had fought two bitter, pitched battles back in 2004 had been in the hands of those black-flag-flying insurgents for months. Needless to say, the American project in Iraq, begun so gloriously -- remember Iraqi exiles assuring Vice President Cheney that the invaders would be greeted with "sweets and flowers" -- was truly in ruins. By then, hundreds of thousands had died in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, the insurgencies that followed, and the grimmest of sectarian civil wars. And the temperature was rising anew in that divided land, where only the Kurdish north was relatively peaceful. Iraq was once again threatening to fracture, with suicide bombers and car bombs daily occurrences, especially in Shiite areas of the country, and the body count rising rapidly.

The legacy of America's Iraq is essentially an oil-producing wreck of a state with another autocrat in power, a Shiite government allied to Iran in Baghdad, and a Sunni population in revolt. That, in short, is the upshot of Washington's multi-trillion-dollar war. It might be worth a painting by George W. Bush. Or maybe the former president should reserve his next round of oils not for the world leaders he met (and Googled), but for those iconic photos from the prison that might have closed in Iraq, but will never close in the American mind. From the torture troves of Abu Ghraib, there are so many scenes that the former president could focus on in his days of tranquil retirement.
Read More...
Star of David

Oz: Holocaust survivor begs Prime Minister not to repeal hate speech laws

Anne Lu
International Business Times
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 14:20 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Australian Broadcasting Corporation via Reuters TVAustralian Prime Minister Tony Abbott tells parliament in Canberra that satellite imagery has found two objects possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, in this still image taken from video March 20, 2014. Australian search aircraft are investigating two objects spotted by satellite floating in the southern Indian Ocean that could be debris from a Malaysian jetliner missing with 239 people on board, Abbott said on Thursday.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott's plans to change the Racial Discrimination Act have been met with criticisms from various groups. Holocaust Survivor Moshe Fiszman pleads the country's leader to abandon his proposed changes, saying that he would be taking away their freedom in doing so.

The Government has made known of its plans to remove key sections of the RDA, including Section 18C, which makes it unlawful to do an act that is "reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate another person or a group of people" based on their racial or ethnic backgrounds.

The Opposition and Greens have opposed the proposal, saying that the changes will just make it legal for bigotry to rule the country.
Read More...
Black Magic

Psychopathic officials and establishment idiots control the masses

SATRE
BATR.org
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 00:00 UTC
Psychopaths
© SOTT.net
Few will dispute that careerist politicians often demonstrate psychopathic behavior. In the article, Who Controls our Government? The Psychopathic Corporate Elites of America, Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null attempt to answer several fundamental questions:
"Is the problem, therefore, we the people? Are we at fault for having been seduced by those in power to sell us blank bill of goods, drugs, products and policies that are more harmful than beneficial? Are we at fault for having deceived our selves by being convinced that their illusion is the truth? Or is the elite, the best and brightest in Wall Street, Washington and throughout the top stories of the multinational corporate networks, the real obstacle to a promising future for all? Are the oligarchic elite, including corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans in all branches of government, not in fact a special breed of psychopath with no moral compass, striving solely to maintain their power, control and wealth? In this article we explore this phenomena with two leading experts on the psychopathic nature of our CEOs, business leaders and politicians who rule America from their residences on Psycho Street."
What may be revealing to the average person is that many of the same sociopathic characteristics exhibited in the policy manipulators exist in the general population. Martha Stout, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and former Harvard Medical school instructor and author of The Sociopath Next Door. The article, Psychopaths and sociopaths share many characteristics: seem to coincide, cites she "estimates that one in 25 people, 4 percent of the population, are sociopathic. Dr. Stout describes sociopaths as those who, through grand schemes of contrivance, manipulation and deceit, seek to undermine and manipulate simply because they can."

The tendencies for government officials, who prefer the designation authorities, project their dictatorial attitude upon a compliant public. "Most disturbing of all, Stout says at least six out of 10 people "will blindly obey an official-looking authority to the bitter end."
Read More...
Gear

BLM eyeing land grab along Texas-Oklahoma border sez Republicans


Fox News
Wed, 23 Apr 2014 20:42 UTC
Image
© Foxnews
Texas officials are raising alarm that the Bureau of Land Management, on the heels of its dust-up with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, might be eyeing a massive land grab in northern Texas.

The under-the-radar issue has caught the attention of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who fired off a letter on Tuesday to BLM Director Neil Kornze saying the agency "appears to be threatening" the private property rights of "hard-working Texans."

"Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box," wrote Abbott, also a Republican gubernatorial candidate.

At issue are thousands of acres of land on the Texas side of the Red River, along the border between Texas and Oklahoma. Officials recently have raised concern that the BLM might be looking at claiming 90,000 acres of land as part of the public domain.
Read More...