Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Palestinian Lost Opportunities

Image
U.S. Israel-first Martin Indyk looks out for Netanyahu's interests in keeping Abbas' Palestine unviable as a state.
Just over a week ago Palestine had a chance to cast its first vote at the UN General Assembly appointing a Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first submitted the UN membership application on September 23, 2011. The vote was delayed for a year providing time for the Obama administration to persuade Israel to cease construction of the illegal Jewish-only colonies on occupied Palestinian land.

On November 29, 2012 and after a year lost, the international community overwhelmingly granted seat number 194 to Palestine as a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly. But what did that mean? For the last year it meant naught.

Palestinian leadership was forced to backpedal agreeing last summer to negotiate over the "pie" while Israel continues gulping it.

The US even acceded to Israeli conditions limiting American participation to less than an observer and appointing Israeli firster Martin Indyk as the US Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Heart - Black

Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science: The Goodman Affair

Image
by Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, PhD
Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. On another occasion, Smith was challenged to publish an issue of the BMJ exclusively comprising papers that had failed peer review and see if anybody noticed. He replied, "How do you know I haven't already done it?"

As Smith's stories show, journal editors have a lot of power in science - power that provides opportunities for abuse. The life science industry knows this, and has increasingly moved to influence and control science publishing.

The strategy, often with the willing cooperation of publishers, is effective and sometimes blatant. In 2009, the scientific publishing giant Elsevier was found to have invented an entire medical journal, complete with editorial board, in order to publish papers promoting the products of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck. Merck provided the papers, Elsevier published them, and doctors read them, unaware that the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was simply a stuffed dummy.

Fast forward to September 2012, when the scientific journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) published a study that caused an international storm (Séralini, et al. 2012). The study, led by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen, France, suggested a Monsanto genetically modified (GM) maize, and the Roundup herbicide it is grown with, pose serious health risks. The two-year feeding study found that rats fed both suffered severe organ damage and increased rates of tumors and premature death. Both the herbicide (Roundup) and the GM maize are Monsanto products. Corinne Lepage, France's former environment minister, called the study "a bomb".

Comment: See also:
In the face of Monsanto's minions: Researcher refuses to retract GM maize tumor study


Robot

One World Under Drones: Global Drone coverage infographic

The American love affair with drones (officially called unmanned aerial vehicles) extends to both military and law enforcement uses. The U.S. isn't the only country that uses drones, but it is the most regular user in the world.

Which Countries Have Drones?

The biggest owners of military drones in the world:
U.S. 670
France 23
Germany 9
Italy 5
Turkey 32
U.K. 7
Russia 3
China 11
India 39
Iran 1
Israel 29

Note: Numbers are minimums, as many countries' levels are unknown.

Business is Booming

Global spending on unmanned aerial vehicles will surge in the next 10 years, rising by a predicted 128 percent.

Projected global spending on drones
2014 $5,200,000,000
2023 $11,900,000,000

Ranked drone spending over the next decade by region
1st U.S.
2nd Asia-Pacific
3rd Europe

Terror From Above?

The U.S. has been widely criticized for its use of drones to fight terrorism. In Pakistan alone, the U.S. has launched thousands of drone strikes since 2004.

Fatalities in Pakistan from U.S. drone attacks (since 2004)
Children 175
Civilians 535
Other 2,390*
High-profile targets 49

* The U.S. classifies all adult men in Pakistan as potential terrorist targets in casualty calculations

Targeting Americans?

Many Americans assume these devices are used only to launch offensives in foreign countries. That's a false assumption. Over the years, dozens of agencies across the U.S. have used drones for a variety of purposes, many of them classified.

Wall Street

Detroit ruled eligible for bankruptcy: City to be assest-stripped by banksters?

Image
© Bill Pugliano/Getty ImagesProtesters outside the federal courthouse in Detroit before Tuesday’s ruling.
The struggling metropolis of Detroit, overwhelmed by debt and groping for a path forward, on Tuesday became the largest American city ever to qualify for bankruptcy protection.

Judge Steven W. Rhodes of the United States Bankruptcy Court, found that Detroit was insolvent and that the pension checks of retirees could be cut during a bankruptcy proceeding, a crucial part of his decision.

Under the ruling, the vastly diminished city, once the nation's fourth largest and the cradle of the American auto industry, will now be allowed to search for a way to pay off some portion of its debts and restore essential services to tolerable levels under court supervision. The goal, according to an emergency manager appointed by the state of Michigan, is to emerge next year from court protection with a formal plan for starting over.

"This once proud and prosperous city cannot pay its debts. It is insolvent. It's eligible for bankruptcy," Judge Rhodes said Tuesday. "But it also has an opportunity for a fresh start."

Comment: This is absurd. How does a city go bankrupt?

It was never a private entity to begin with!

Right?


Star of David

Disgusting Israel uses sewage as a weapon of war against Gaza

Image
© Rosa Schiano / International Solidarity Movement.A Gaza residential street is inundated by sewage.
After military attacks on Gaza failed to bring down the territory's Hamas government, reports Ramzy Baroud, Israel is now waging an environmental war whose weapons are chronic power shortages, collapsing sanitation - and floods of sewage.

The latest punishment of Gaza may seem like another familiar plot to humiliate the strip to the satisfaction of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, and the military-controlled Egyptian government. But something far more sinister is brewing.

This time, the collective punishment of Gaza arrives in the form of raw sewage that is flooding many neighborhoods across the impoverished and energy-starved region of 360 km2 (139 sq mi) and 1.8 million inhabitants.

Even before the latest crisis resulting from a severe shortage of electricity and diesel fuel that is usually smuggled through Egypt, Gaza was rendered gradually uninhabitable. A comprehensive UN report last year said that if no urgent action were taken, Gaza would be "unlivable" by 2020. Since the report was issued in August 2012, the situation has grown much worse.

Comment: This Zionist tactic has little to do with 'ousting Hamas', rather it is as mentioned environmental warfare on the Palestinian people. The genocidal psychopaths have stooped to an all new low in stripping a people of their dignity, livelihood and hygiene, instigating extremely dangerous circumstances for disease propagation.
Situation update:

"According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, all 291 water and wastewater facilities in the Gaza Strip are now relying on standby generators, which are also affected by the fuel shortages. On 13 November a large sewage pumping station failed in al-Zaytoun, south of Gaza City, allowing more than 35,000 cubic metres of raw sewage to spew into the streets.

Local authorities have struggled to clean up the spill, leaving some 3,000 residents wading through sewage. The clean-up finally began on 29 November, according to local residents, following efforts by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and other agencies, and an emergency donation from Turkey to pay for fuel for critical sewage stations."

Israel/OPT: Gaza power crisis has compounded blockade's assault on human dignity



Stormtrooper

Palestinian official: Murderers of Yasser Arafat to be named

Image
© Unknown.
A Palestinian investigator said on Tuesday he would soon name the people he believed were responsible for the death of former leader Yasser Arafat, almost a decade after he started searching for suspects.

Arafat, a guerrilla leader who became the first Palestinian president, died in 2004 from a sudden illness contracted while under an Israeli siege at his Ramallah headquarters in the occupied West Bank.

Many Palestinians have long believed Israel killed him - a charge Israel flatly denies - but an official Palestinian Authority investigation headed by Tawfiq Tirawi has yet to produce any evidence.

Arafat's widow has also said that a member of Arafat's own inner circle was responsible, stoking tensions among senior officials.

"I promise that the next press conference will be the last, and will cast into the light of day everyone who perpetrated, took part in or conspired in the matter," Tirawi told Palestine Today television.

"We are in the last 15 minutes of the investigation," he added.

Comment: Only problem here is that Israel's number one lackey these days, France, appears to have treacherously sabotaged the investigation into the presence of polonium on Arafat's body and possessions:

French tests show Arafat did not die of poisoning: source


Bad Guys

Best of the Web: White House reporter: Obama administration 'most hostile' to journalists in US history

Barack Obama
© Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images / AFP
A longtime Washington reporter and White House correspondent has accused the current administration of being "the most hostile" to journalists in the history of the United States.

Former CNN correspondent Bob Franken was sitting down over the weekend with reporters at MSNBC when he was asked to weigh in on the current standoff between the White House and some of the biggest names in news when he made headline-grabbing remarks about this administration's treatment of the press.

Allegations have been made lately by the likes of the Associated Press, Reuters and others that the White House has been excluding independent photographers from official functions with increasing regularity as of late, instead relying on a lone administration staffer to shoot images of US President Barack Obama for selected distribution among the press. In a recent letter sent by editors at the AP, Reuters, CNN, ABC, NBC and others, the organizations wrote "officials in this administration are blocking the public from having an independent view of important functions of the Executive Branch of government," and McClatchy newspapers and USA Today both went as far as to vow to boycott official images provided by the White House in protest.

On Saturday, however, perhaps the harshest critique yet of this administration's policy with regards to the press surfaced, courtesy of Franken, a longtime White House reporter who has covered the Washington beat since the 1980s.

"Well, let's use the 'P' word here," Franken told MNBC Live host TJ Holmes. "This is propaganda when it comes from the White House: government covering the government. "

Take 2

U.S. released Iranian scientist as part of nuke negotiations (sez Israel)

Image
© AP
The U.S. released a top Iranian scientist Mojtaba Atarodi in April as part of the dealings with Iran in Geneva recently, the Times of Israel reported.
The secret back channel of negotiations between Iran and the United States, which led to this month's interim deal in Geneva on Iran's rogue nuclear program, has also seen a series of prisoner releases by both sides, which have played a central role in bridging the distance between the two nations, the Times of Israel has been told.

In the most dramatic of those releases, the US in April released a top Iranian scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, who had been arrested in 2011 for attempting to acquire equipment that could be used for Iran's military-nuclear programs.
Reportedly, American hikers Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal were individuals the Iranians released in 2010 and 2011 as part of the dealings. In 2012, the United States began to reciprocate with its own release of Iranian prisoners Shahrzad Mir Gholikhan, Nosratollah Tajik, and Amir Hossein Seirafi.

Stormtrooper

Russia arrests al-Qaeda CIA patsies ahead of 2014 Winter Olympic Games


Security forces crack down on 15 alleged Muslim fighters, confiscating improvised bombs and other weapons in a raid.

Russian security forces have arrested 15 suspected members of a banned Islamic organisation in Moscow after confiscating improvised bombs and other weapons in a raid on an apartment, the country's interior ministry said.

A statement issued on Wednesday by the ministry said that the detainees were members of a group called Takfir Wal-Hijra, which was formed in Egypt in the late 1960s and was banned in Russia as a religious extremist organisation in 2010.

The ministry claimed the group that is linked to al-Qaeda was led by a man who had come to Moscow after studying in Arab states.

Comment: Terrorist attacks on Moscow. Perhaps Prince Bandar isn't happy:

Saudi snake, Prince Bandar, tried first to bribe Russia to drop its support of Syria, then threatened to unleash Chechen terrorists at 2014 Winter Olympics


Eye 2

Americans have no right to challenge NSA phone surveillance, government claims

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander
© Mark Wilson via Getty Images NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander
After years of secrecy, the National Security Agency's phone records surveillance program had its day in open court on Friday, as civil liberties lawyers asked a federal judge in New York to shut it down, and government lawyers claimed ordinary Americans cannot legally challenge it.

U.S. District Court Judge William H. Pauley III did not immediately rule on issuing an injunction against the NSA program. But he did push the government on whether it respected Americans' rights to privacy and freedom of association, and whether Congress was adequately informed about the program.

"Never before has the government attempted a program of dragnet surveillance on this scale," warned Alexander Abdo, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. The group brought its lawsuit against the program in June, just days after NSA leaker Edward Snowden revealed its existence. The ACLU is arguing that the government's surveillance exceeds both its powers under the Patriot Act, and under the First and Fourth amendments.

Comment: Indeed, Americans lost that right a long time ago.

Remember how the terrorists hate us for our freedoms? Well, the terrorists in government have taken those freedoms away and won't ever give them back.