Puppet MastersS


Airplane

Final U.S. tanker aircraft departs Manas Base in Kyrgyzstan

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© RIA Novosti/Vladislav UshakovFinal US Tanker Aircraft Departs Manas Base in Kyrgyzstan.
The final US tanker aircraft supporting military operations in Afghanistan departed a Kyrgyzstan airbase Monday ahead of the closure of the facility later this year, a US army media agency reported.

An agreement with Kyrgyzstan that provides for the United States' transit center at the Manas airport, the country's largest, is slated to expire in July.

A picture of a line of troops saluting the final KC-135 aerial refueling tanker as it taxied to depart the base was posted online by the US Army's Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS) website.

The air base opened at Manas, outside the capital Bishkek, three months after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 to support US-led coalition forces in the invasion of Afghanistan.
Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev said in 2011 that the Central Asian republic would not renew an agreement to extend the lease of the facility.

Eye 2

Russia hit by 31 terror attacks in 2013 - Investigative Committee

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© RIA NovostiAgents of law enforcement and operative services work at the site of an explosion on a trolleybus near Kachinsky Market in Volgograd.
The head of Russia's top law enforcement agency - the Investigative Committee says the North Caucasus region remains a hotbed of terrorism and blamed external enemies for destabilizing the area.

The Investigative Committee recorded 661 terrorist offences in 2013, Aleksandr Bastrykin reported at the session of the agency's executive council on Thursday. Of these, 31 qualified as fully fledged terrorist attacks, the head of the Investigative Committee added. Terrorist attacks in 2013 claimed about 40 lives and dozens more injured, Bastrykin said.

"The acts of terrorism are very well planned and thought through. A lot of people are involved in their preparation. We are witnessing a destructive anti-Russian activity, the core of which is based abroad," the chief investigator said. "Forces hostile to our nation consider the North Caucasus as a detonator for the stable socio-economic situation in the Russian Federation," he stated.

War Whore

Western Imperialism's creative destruction in Syria

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© FreedomHouse/FlickrDar Al Shifa hospital, bombed from the air.
US-led Western regime change in Syria might be described as a process of creative destruction. Like Schumpeter's economic concept of cyclical creative destruction, so too Washington's political machinations in Syria seem to be playing out likewise.

We begin with the premise that the humanitarian crisis in Syria over the past nearly three years is largely as a result of a Western covert proxy war inflicted on that country. The objective is to destabilize, terrorize and eventuate regime change in the Arab country...

The crisis afflicting Syria with over 130,000 dead and nearly nine million people displaced from their homes - nearly 40 per cent of the total population - would not be occurring if it were not for the infiltration of that country with massive flows of weapons, fighting funds and foreign mercenary brigades. US and NATO Special Forces, along with Western military intelligence, have worked with Saudi, Qatari, Jordanian, Israeli and Turk allies to foment this externally driven insurgency. All under the cover of an Arab Spring revolt.

Muffin

Hypocritical NATO Secretary-General calls Crimea developments "dangerous and irresponsible"

Rasmussen
© EFE
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday that an armed group's seizure of regional government headquarters and parliament in Ukraine's Crimea was "dangerous and irresponsible."

"I am extremely concerned about the most recent developments in Crimea. This morning's action by an armed group is dangerous and irresponsible," Rasmussen told a NATO meeting also attended Ukraine's acting defense minister. "I urge Russia not to take any action that could escalate tension or create misunderstanding."

Comment: How hypocritical can one be? When violent groups attacked and took over public institutions in Ukraine and killed dozens of police men and injured hundreds of people, throwing molotov cocktails and firing live ammunition, neither the EU, the US or NATO condemned it but just placed the responsibility for all violence at the hands of the Ukrainian government.

Likewise both NATO and the US urge Russia to not take any action that could escalate tension or create misunderstanding, but over the last few months, we have seen European delegations and senior US officials meeting with the protest leaders and encouraging them to continue the protest despite their violent nature. It all stinks to high heaven.


Red Flag

Russia puts military on high alert as Crimea protests turn deadly

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© Unknown
The Kremlin ordered major military exercises on Wednesday as concerns about unrest in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula continued to grow and scuffles in the region left one person dead.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ordered an urgent drill of his country's armed forces in western Russia, in what appeared to be a display of sabre-rattling aimed at the new government in Kiev.

The US reacted in a strongly worded message, with the secretary of state, John Kerry, saying that any military intervention in Ukraine would be a "grave mistake".

"For a country that has spoken out so frequently ... against foreign intervention in Libya, in Syria, and elsewhere, it would be important for them to heed those warnings as they think about options in the sovereign nation of Ukraine," Kerry said last night.

Putin had earlier instructed his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, to place Russia's military in a state of high alert for drills in the western military district, bordering Ukraine. The defence ministry denied the drills had anything to do with the political situation in Kiev, where the government of President Viktor Yanukovych was in effect toppled at the weekend.


Comment:
Baiting the Bear: US warns Russia it would be a 'grave mistake' to send its military into Ukraine‏
Russian ships arrive on Ukraine's Crimean coast


Penis Pump

Latest Snowden revelations: Perverted UK and U.S. intel agencies spy on millions of innocent people through their webcams

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Trust us, we're from the government...
  • Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
  • 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
  • Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'
  • Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images
Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery - including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications - from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy".

Comment: When we consider this in light of the GCHQ's disgusting sexual practices and the fact that most Pentagon employees regularly watch child pornography...

Code breaker at GCHQ found in padlocked gym bag 'probably died by accident' (yeah right!)

Leading British opposition party politicians under investigation for channeling public funds to elite pedophile network

Sick elites: 5,200 Pentagon employees PURCHASED child pornography


Dollar

Ukraine delays vote on new Government as Russia warns of default on bailout it granted in December

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© UnknownActing President and Baptist Pastor Oleksandr Turchynov
Ukraine delayed selecting a national unity government as Russia warned of a possible default days after President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted.

Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov pushed back a parliamentary vote to Feb. 27 from today as he attempts to win agreement with protest leaders who orchestrated the revolt. He indicated yesterday that a new administration should be formed quickly to secure as much as $35 billion in financial aid.

"Ukraine's economy needs rescue and that adds pressure on the revolutionary political forces to create a truly national unity government," said Lilit Gevorgyan, senior economist at IHS Global Insight in London, said by e-mail. "The large bailout plan that Ukraine currently seeks won't be handed out by international donors to a weak and non-inclusive government."

With Yanukovych on the run after weeks of anti-government protests turned deadly, Ukraine's new leaders are grasping for a financial lifeline as Russia weighs the fate of a $15 billion bailout it granted in December. Russia's deputy finance minister said there's a high chance Ukraine will default. The U.S. and the European Union have pledged aid to the new administration.

No Entry

Ban of Russian as an official language in Ukraine sparks concern among Russian and EU diplomats

Rally in Crimea
© RIA Novosti / Taras LitvinenkoParticipants in a rally in front of Crimea's Supreme Council building in Simferopol.
Ukraine's swift abolition of the law allowing the country's regions to make Russian a second official language has worried European MPs and officials, and has been condemned outright as a "violation of ethnic minority rights" by Russian diplomats.

The European Parliament has approved a resolution on Ukraine, which among other things calls on the country's MPs and the new government to respect the rights of minorities, particularly when it comes to the use of languages.

Ukraine's new leaders should distance themselves from extremists and avoid any provocation that might fuel "separatist moves," MEPs said, the parliament's press service reported. MEPs said that the new government should respect the rights of minorities in Ukraine, including the right to use Russian and other minority languages.

The resolution, proposed by six political groups in the European Parliament, urges Ukraine to ensure that its new legislation complies with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) abolished the 2012 law "On State Language Policy" the day after it voted to dismiss President Viktor Yanukovich. The law allowed the country's regions to use more official languages in addition to Ukrainian if they were spoken by over 10 percent of the local population. Thirteen out of Ukraine's 27 regions, primarily in Eastern Ukraine, then adopted Russian as a second official language. Two Western regions introduced Romanian and Hungarian as official languages.

Magnify

Businesses dealing in bitcoins subpoenaed by U.S. prosecutors

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© Andy Clark/ReutersSigns on a window advertise a bitcoin ATM machine that has been installed in a cofee shop.
New York attorney subpoenas companies, including shuttered MtGox, as Japanese regulators question bitcoin's legality

Manhattan US attorney Preet Bharara's office is seeking information from businesses dealing in bitcoin on how some of them handled cyber-attacks that hamstrung several exchanges in recent weeks, a source familiar with the probe told Reuters on Wednesday.

Subpoenas have been sent to numerous businesses, including MtGox, once the largest bitcoin exchange, as well as other firms that did business with the Tokyo-based company, the source said.

Prosecutors want to know more about the nature of the cyber-attacks on MtGox and other exchanges and how those exchanges dealt with them. MtGox halted customer withdrawals on 7 February in response to what it termed unusual activity, and on Tuesday the exchange went dark, leaving customers unable to recover their funds.

Display

How the Government manipulates your thoughts online

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Abby Martin talks about journalist Glenn Greenwald's report regarding the intelligence community's use of subversive and manipulative online tactics to destroy the reputations of businesses and individuals.


Comment: See also: How covert agents infiltrate the internet to manipulate, deceive, and destroy reputations