Puppet MastersS


Red Flag

Law enforcement agency may have had info about Boston bombing in advance


wsbtv.com
Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:51 UTC
Image
Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss told Channel 2 Action News late Tuesday afternoon that a law enforcement agency may have had information in advance of the Boston bombings that wasn't properly shared.

"There now appears that may have been some evidence that was obtained by one of the law enforcement agencies that did not get shared in a way that it could have been. If that turns out to be the case, then we have to determine whether or not that would have made a difference," Chambliss said.

Though Chambliss would not get into specifics on the information or whether or not the bombing could have been prevented, he told Channel 2 Action News that they will find out if someone dropped the ball.

"Information sharing between agencies is critical. And we created the Department of Homeland Security to supervise that. We created the National Counter Terrorism Center to be the collection point for all of this information, and we're going to get to the bottom of whether or not somebody along the way dropped the ball on some information and did not share it in a way that it should have been shared."

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Pistol

For your safety: U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand admits gun background checks do nothing - But still wants them anyway

Dabney Bailey
Opposing Views
Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:26 UTC
Gillibrand
© Unknown
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) recently told The New York Times that background checks wouldn't really do much to stop criminals. That doesn't change the fact that she still wants to push through stricter gun control legislation.

She said, "I think trafficking can be the base of the bill, the rock on which everything else. I also think it's complementary to background checks because, let's be honest, criminals aren't going to buy a gun and go through a background check. So if you really want to go after criminals, you have to have to do both."

This is essentially the argument that gun rights advocates have been making all along - that background checks won't make an impact because criminals won't sit through background checks in order to get firearms. Stricter gun control laws would only make it harder for law-abiding citizens to get their firearms, they argue.

Then why go through all the trouble of making gun control legislation? According to Jacob Sullum of Reason, it's to maintain the "appearance of doing something."
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Pistol

No joke: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signs bill requiring all buy-back guns be resold

Sarah Rae Fruchtnicht
Opposing Views
Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:01 UTC
jan Brewer
© Unknown
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill on Monday requiring all firearms acquired through gun buyback events to be resold, rather than destroyed.

The bill requires seized or forfeited guns be sold to any business "authorized to receive and dispose of the firearm ... that shall sell the firearm to the public according to federal and state law."

Republicans in Arizona's GOP-controlled legislature argued that destroying weapons seized by authorities was a waste of taxpayer resources. Now the money earned from selling the guns will be put into the local treasury.

Democrats argued that selling the firearms goes against the premise of gun-buyback event, defeating the purpose of people turning over their guns to keep them out of the hands of children or criminals.


Comment: Where it can be funneled back into the burgeoning police state in their noble efforts to get even more and bigger guns than all the other folk with guns. Militarization is an expensive business, so you can see the flawless logic in Gov. Brewer's case for the bill.

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Dollar

"The rich don't always win" - But they usually do

Salvatore Babones
Truth Out
Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:49 UTC
businessman
© Victor1558
Once upon a time there was a land of milk and honey called the United States of America. America was a great country, but it faced a powerful enemy, the evil Soviet Union. In 1959, there was a trade exhibition of American products in Moscow, the capital of that evil empire. The vice president of America, one Richard Milhous Nixon, attended the exhibition on America's behalf.

A 29-year-old future journalist named William Safire was there at the exhibition representing the American building industry. Doing his job very well, he steered Nixon and his Soviet nemesis, Nikita Khrushchev, toward a walk-through display of the typical American home.

As they toured the model American home, Nixon and Khrushchev debated the relative merits of the American and Soviet systems. The debate came to a climax in the kitchen, and so it went down in history as the "kitchen debate."

Khrushchev argued that the Soviet Union had surpassed America in rockets and high technology. Nixon responded by showing Khrushchev around the model American kitchen with its modern 1950s appliances. Nixon told Khrushchev how any ordinary American, a military veteran or a steelworker earning $3 an hour (worth $24 today), could afford a brand-new home with modern appliances. And he was right.

In The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 journalist and policy analyst Sam Pizzigati tells the story of how that American workers' paradise came to be. (Seven Stories Press, 2012)
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Gold Coins

Best of the Web: 'A monumental social experiment': The 'Monarchs of Money' and 'Quantitative Easing' - Updated: The illusion of growth

Neil Macdonald
CBC News
Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:25 UTC
Power Shift: First in a series on the rise of the central bankers and the global imposition of cheap credit


Quietly, without much public fuss or discussion, a new ruling class has risen in the richer nations.

These men and women are unelected and tend to shun the publicity hogged by the politicians with whom they co-exist.

They are the world's central bankers. Every six weeks or so, they gather in Basel, Switzerland, for secret discussions and, to an extent at least, they act in concert.

The decisions that emerge from those meetings affect the entire world. And yet the broad public has a dim understanding, if any, of the job they do.

In fact, these individuals now wield at least as much influence over the lives of ordinary citizens as prime ministers and presidents.

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© International Monetary FundSee the surge in central bank holdings, the printing of new money, beginning in the spring of 2008 with the bank bailouts and the acquisition of long-term securities to keep interest rates down.

Comment: Comment: 'Quantitative easing' has been around as long as civilization(s) have relied on money. Economic historians refer to it as 'currency debasement':

Gold, currency debasement and the fall of the Roman Empire
The Telegraph, UK
April 15, 2013
What's happening to fiat currency, they note, is much the same as what successive Roman emperors did to the denarius - debasing it to the point of near worthlessness. They quote The Collapse of Complex Societies by US anthropologist Joseph Tainter, which argues that monetary collapse was one of the main reasons for the Fall of the Roman Empire.
"By debasing currency, increasing taxes and imposing stringent regulations on the lives of individuals, the Empire was, for a time able to survive. It did so however by vastly increasing its own costliness and in doing so decreased the marginal return it could offer its population. These costs drained the peasantry so thoroughly that population could not recover from outbreaks of plague, producing lands were abandoned and the ability of the state to support itself deteriorated."
Roman emperors had to do all the same things our 'monarchs of money' are doing today because everything was going to pot! Yes, certain types are well-positioned to take advantage of the chaos to enrich themselves (and thus speeding up the crash and spreading mass misery through society) - the senatorial class in Rome, the goldsmiths in medieval times and the banksters on Wall Street today - but given what we now know of the climatological and environmental factors that repeatedly bring down civilizations, it is probably more accurate to say that monetary collapse is a symptom of economic downturn, and not a cause...

Comets and the Horns of Moses

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Snakes in Suits

Top economist Jeffrey Sachs says Wall Street is full of 'crooks' and hasn't changed since the financial crash

James Legge
The Independent UK
Mon, 29 Apr 2013 03:50 UTC
The IMF adviser also blamed 'a docile president, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system'
Image
© Getty
In a cutting attack on America's financial hub, one of the world's most respected economists has said Wall St is full of "crooks" and hasn't reformed its "pathological" culture since the financial crash.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs told a high-powered audience at the Philadelphia Federal Reserve earlier this month that the lack of reform was down to "a docile president, a docile White House and a docile regulatory system that absolutely can't find its voice."

Sachs, from Colombia University, has twice been named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World, and is an adviser to the World Bank and IMF.

"What has been revealed, in my view, is prima facie criminal behavior," he said.

"It's financial fraud on a very large extent. There's also a tremendous amount of insider trading - you can even watch when you are living in New York how that works."
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War Whore

Questionable report of 'missiles fired at Russian plane' with 159 passengers onboard flying over Syria


RT
Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:20 UTC
Two missiles were reportedly fired at a Russian plane with at least 159 passengers on board that was flying over Syrian territory. Russian officials admit the jet faced danger, but are not talking of a targeted attack.


The news broke in on Monday as Interfax, citing "an informed source in Moscow," reported that a Russian passenger plane was attacked.

"Syrian [officials] informed us that on Monday morning, unidentified forces launched two ground-to-air missiles which exploded in the air very close to a civilian aircraft belonging to a Russian airline," the source told the Russian agency.

The pilots reportedly managed to maneuver the plane in time however, "saving the lives of passengers."

It is believed the aircraft was intentionally targeted, "but it remains unclear whether the attackers knew it was Russian or not," the source added.
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Bomb

Syrian PM survives assassination attempt in huge blast near Damascus school, at least 10 killed


RT
Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:11 UTC
Syrian Prime Minister Wael Halqi survived an attempted bombing assassination in central Damascus on Monday. Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, has condemned the attempted assassination, calling it a "terrorist attack".


The explosion struck near a school in a southwestern district of Damascus, and at least ten were killed in the attack.

The attack was reported by Syrian state television. "The terrorist explosion in al-Mezze was an attempt to target the convoy of the prime minister. Doctor Wael al-Halqi is well and not hurt at all," the report said.
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Bomb

Propaganda Alert! Israeli air force flew into Syria and bombed a chemical weapons plant

Robert Johnson
Business Insider
Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:50 UTC
Syria
© NTI
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) reports that Israeli fighter jets slipped into Damascus over the weekend and bombed a chemical weapons depot outside the city.

Neither Damascus nor Jerusalem have yet confirmed the attack, according to UPI.

According to The Jewish Press (JP) "many" reports came in over the weekend confirming the mission. Sources told the JP Israeli jets arrived over Damascus early Saturday morning and circled Assad's presidential compound before moving on to target the weapons site.

The Israeli jets reportedly received fire but returned to base unscathed.

The Lebanese Daily Star confirms heavy FSA fighting occurred near the plant, the Scientific Studies and Research Center, but troops lacked the resources to breach the heavily fortified site.

Comment: Difficult to verify the validity of the report but WMD lies are being used to justify military intervention in Syria

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Propaganda

Building a pretext to wage war on Syria, replicating the Iraq WMD 2003 scenario

Stephen Lendman
Global Research
Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:41 UTC
syria iraq wmds
© unknownIraq has WMDs, Assad has WMDS, Trump has Russian connections!
What's ongoing now bears eerie resemblance to events preceding Bush's Iraq war. Obama's replicating a familiar scenario.

Waging war requires a pretext to do so. When none exists, it's invented. It's easy. Lies substitute for truth. Claims about Syria using chemical weapons don't wash. Repetition gets people to believe them. We've seen it all before.

Colin Power's infamous February 5, 2003 Security Council speech led to war. It was shameless deception. Later he admitted WMD claims were false. It was too late to matter.

Plans were set. The die was cast. Weeks later, America bombed, invaded and occupied Iraq. The cradle of civilization was destroyed. No WMDs existed. It was well-known but ignored. More on that below.
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