Puppet MastersS


Red Flag

Did China just join the War on Terror? Tiananmen car crash may have been suicide attack, officials claim

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© ReutersSmoke rises from the scene of Monday's crash at the Forbidden City, in which a sport utility vehicle mounted the pavement and burst into flames.
Police investigating incident at Forbidden City in which five people died say they are seeking two Muslim Uighur suspects


Police investigating Monday's car crash at Beijing's Forbidden City are searching for information on two suspects from the Muslim Uighur minority. A day after a car ploughed through a crowd, crashed and burst into flames, killing five people and injuring 38, government sources have said the "major incident" may have been a suicide attack.

"It looks like a premeditated suicide attack," a government source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Two bystanders, including a Filipino woman, were killed when a sport utility vehicle veered inside a barrier separating a crowded pavement from a busy avenue and then drove toward Tiananmen Gate, which stands opposite Tiananmen Square. Three passengers inside the car were also killed.

The 38 injured were among the crowds in front of the gate, where a large portrait of Mao Zedong hangs near the southern entrance to the former imperial palace. Three other Filipinos and a Japanese man were among the injured, police said, but there were no immediate details on their conditions.

Pirates

British army criticised for recruiting 16-year-olds


Britain is one of just 19 countries that still recruit 16-year-olds to the armed forces. A new report claims that younger recruits are more likely to suffer from PTSD, alcohol problems and suicide than those who join as adults. This video tells the story of David Buck who joined the army at 17 but now feels he was conned by misleading recruitment marketing

Nuke

Going nuclear: Russia to construct first $10bn facility in energy-hungry Jordan

Nuclear plant
© RIA Novosti / Alexandr Kryazhev
Russia's State Nuclear Energy Corporation Rosatom has won a contract to build and operate Jordan's first nuclear power plant. The $10 billion contract is one of the world's first reactor projects since the disastrous Fukushima leak of 2011.

The chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) Khaled Toukan said Atomstroyexport (ASE), Rosatom's international arm, will construct, and possibly operate, the plant which will provide 12 percent (2000 megawatts) of the kingdom's energy needs, and is due for completion in 2020.

ASE will finance 49 percent of the project and Jordan will pay for 51 percent and take a controlling share.

A or build-own-operate (BOO) scheme will be used to construct the two separate 1000-megawatt reactors 25 miles from the capital Amman, the International Business Times reported.

ASE used the same business model to finance a plant in Turkey, where it is building a 4.8 gigawatt facility worth $20 billion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to make an official state visit to Jordan in November, and will meet with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Comment: In the calculations of cost the long term storage of used nuclear fuel rods and the massive clean-up after meltdowns such as in Fukushima are not incorporated. They are costs that are all passed on to the taxpayers and to the many generations that come after us.


Nuke

TEPCO must address 'institutionalized lying' before it restarts world's biggest nuclear power plant - governor

Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant
© AFPTokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant at Okuma town in Fukushima prefecture
Tokyo Electric Power Co must give a more thorough account of the Fukushima disaster and address "institutionalized lying" in the company, before it will be permitted to restart the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant, according to a local governor.

"If they don't do what needs to be done, if they keep skimping on costs and manipulating information, they can never be trusted," Niigata Prefecture Governor Hirohiko Izumida told Reuters on Monday, adding that these limitations need to be overcome before the plant is restarted.
It is up to Izumida to approve plans to restart the reactor at the TEPCO-run Kashiwazaki Kariwa - the world's biggest nuclear complex, located on the Japan sea coast, north-west of Tokyo. His personal commission would examine both the causes and handling of the disaster at Fukushima and lay them alongside existing regulatory safeguards to ensure a similar crisis could not reoccur.

Comment: Just a few articles showing TEPCO lying:

Water leaks at Fukushima could contaminate entire Pacific Ocean

American sailors sue Tepco for lying about Fukushima - on the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan for rescue work

Radiation Blowback: 10 Times Lethal Level Registered at Fukushima

Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout?


Cell Phone

NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders

Warrentless Wiretap
© Terrance Emerson/Shutterstock.comWarrentless Wiretap
Angela Merkel was right. Leaders calling it "unprecedented breach of trust."

The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The confidential memo reveals that the NSA encourages senior officials in its "customer" departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems.

The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately "tasked" for monitoring by the NSA.

Eye 1

Justice Department, for the first time, notifies defendant that evidence came from warrantless wiretaps

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© Haraz N. Ghanbari/Associated PressSolicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said defendants had a right to know if prosecutors had relied on wiretaps.

The Justice Department for the first time has notified a criminal defendant that evidence being used against him came from a warrantless wiretap, a move that is expected to set up a Supreme Court test of whether such eavesdropping is constitutional.

Prosecutors filed such a notice late Friday in the case of Jamshid Muhtorov, who was charged in Colorado in January 2012 with providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a designated terrorist organization based in Uzbekistan.

Mr. Muhtorov is accused of planning to travel abroad to join the militants and has pleaded not guilty. A criminal complaint against him showed that much of the government's case was based on intercepted e-mails and phone calls.

The government's notice allows Mr. Muhtorov's lawyer to ask a court to suppress the evidence by arguing that it derived from unconstitutional surveillance, setting in motion judicial review of the eavesdropping.

The New York Times reported on Oct. 17 that the decision by prosecutors to notify a defendant about the wiretapping followed a legal policy debate inside the Justice Department.

The debate began in June when Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. discovered that the department's National Security Division did not notify criminal defendants when eavesdropping without a warrant was an early link in an investigative chain that led to evidence used in court. As a result, none of the defendants knew that they had the right to challenge the warrantless wiretapping law.

Sherlock

Rats nest of concealment and lies behind Obama administration scandals and Obamacare website disaster

Bob Woodward
© CBS News via YouTubeBob Woodward
Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward said a "rat's nest of concealment and lies" is at the heart of many Obama administration scandals and miscues, including the disastrous Obamacare website rollout.

"They need to review the this secret world and its power in their government because you run into this rats nest of concealment and lies time and time again then and now," Woodward said of the White House during his appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday. "You get to a point where it's what do you worry about? Secret governments."

As for Obamacare, Woodward said "it clearly isn't working" and it connects to the idea that America possesses an "incredibly powerful government that gets on automatic pilot and you have people with inexperience who don't know about nuts and bolts questions. People who don't go in and say, 'Well, now is this going to work? Let's test it.'

Bacon

Preschool bans lunches from home, will only allow with doctor's note

An unidentified preschool in Richmond, Virginia is refusing to allow parents to pack their child's lunch from home, unless they have a doctor's note.

A letter from the school was recently posted by a mom on her blog My2CrazyCurls.com. She packed a lunch anyway for her son, and then got the letter again with a handwritten part at the top: "Ms Brooks, Please do not send a lunch to school unless a doctor's note is sent in connection with this letter."

The letter, also featured on the website Momdot.com, states:

Comment: The diet dictocrats have been invading our schools and encroaching on the rights of parents to decide what is healthy for them to eat. A good diet for children is high in saturated fat, moderate in protein, and low in carbohydrates.

See also:
The paleo diet explained
A Real Paleo Diet - Grassfed Meat, Fat, and Organ Meats


Display

'60 Minutes' Benghazi Report blames White House - was 'planned, sophisticated' attack on 'barely protected American compound'

60 minutes
© CBS News via YouTube 60 Minutes segment, “Benghazi”
TheBlaze reported on the chilling objective stated by Al Qaeda terrorists in the 2012 Benghazi attack - "We're here to kill Americans" - as a preview of a "60 Minutes" segment, "Benghazi."

The report aired Sunday and examines the horrific attack on the U.S. mission in Libya that took the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11, 2012, noting that there were many unheeded warnings about the attack as well as misinformation regarding what sparked it - i.e., it wasn't caused by an anti-Muslim YouTube video, rather it was an Al Qaeda operation from the beginning.

Bad Guys

Obama admin. knew millions could not keep their health insurance

Barack Obama
© Larry Downing / ReutersU.S. President Barack Obama walks out to deliver remarks alongside Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, October 1, 2013.
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a "cancellation" letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don't meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience "sticker shock."

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be "grandfathered," meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don't meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, "40 to 67 percent" of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, "the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range."