Puppet MastersS


Bulb

Crimea vs. Quebec: The legal right to a referendum on self-determination

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There has been a great hue and cry by the USA, Ukraine and other countries about the supposed illegality of the proposed referendum by Crimea on its future political status. They indignantly proclaim that this is a violation of international law.

Amazingly, have Obama and the leaders of these other countries never heard of the situation in Canada with regard to Quebec? Quebec, as a province of Canada, has held two referenda (1980 and 1995) on the matter of independence from Canada . . . and a third referendum may be in the works in the near future.

Quebec never had to get permission from Canada's federal government to hold a referendum, and no one ever questioned the legality of Quebec's referendum.

Crimea is an autonomous region within Ukraine and seems to have the same rights as a Canadian province. So if it is perfectly legal for a province such as Quebec to hold a referendum on independence, why would it not be legal for Crimea to do the same? At no time did the USA object to Quebec holding a referendum on independence, so why the big brouhaha over Crimea? Moreover, what business would it be for the USA to have such objections - for Quebec or Crimea?

The UN charter gives people the right to self-determination and by virtue of that right they are free to determine their political status. Quebec in Canada has exercised that right, and there should be no reason why Crimea could not do the same.

Star of David

Missiles to Gaza? Netanyahu's latest anti-Iran comedy routine

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© PressTVFile photo shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to reporters about rockets allegedly found aboard a ship bound for Gaza.
Comedians say that the art of telling jokes relies on "timing." Israeli's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the world's top comic politician, seemed to be proving the point with his "timely" claims about seizing Iranian rockets aboard a cargo ship in the Red Sea.

Standing in front of 40 pointed missiles, each carefully displayed on props (you sense the stilted exhibitionism here), the Israeli leader said the seized cache "showed the true face of Iran" in its support for terrorism. Netanyahu lashed out at Western leaders who are "shaking hands with Iran" and preparing to finalize a political settlement to the long-running nuclear dispute.

Iran swiftly denounced the Israeli allegations as orchestrated, indicating that the capture of munitions on a Panamanian-registered vessel was a set-up.
Even some of the Israeli media have grown weary of such "propaganda stunts," as the newspaper Haaretz described Netanyahu's melodramatic display of Iran's alleged clandestine cargo in the port of Eilat at the weekend. Netanyahu's corny sensationalist manner, standing in front of the green-colored rockets, was reminiscent of his previous presentation to the United Nations using a cartoon bomb in which he claimed then that Iran was "only months away from building a nuclear weapon."

Eye 1

NSA plans to infect 'millions' of computers with malware

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One presentation outlines how the NSA performs “industrial-scale exploitation” of computer networks across the world.
Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process.

The classified files - provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden - contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware "implants." The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks.

The covert infrastructure that supports the hacking efforts operates from the agency's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and from eavesdropping bases in the United Kingdom and Japan. GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, appears to have played an integral role in helping to develop the implants tactic.

In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target's computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer's microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites.

Light Sabers

Washington cesspit: Why the CIA and U.S. senators are feuding over 9/11 secrets

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John Brennan and Diane Feinstein, 'feuding', 'jockeying for power', but most definitely on the same side and against the American people.
The festering dispute between the CIA and Senate investigators that exploded in public this week shows just how hard it can be to learn from the past and move on.

More than 12 years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the government still is struggling with what kind of public reckoning is due for harsh interrogation techniques introduced by President George W. Bush and banned by his successor, President Barack Obama.

Some questions and answers about how the Senate and the CIA got here and what happens next:

Q: What are the CIA and the senators quarreling about?

A: The CIA likes to hold its secrets close. It's the job of the Senate Intelligence Committee, along with its House counterpart, to keep tabs on the spy agency. Those interests have collided during the Senate committee's exhaustive review of the CIA's detention and interrogation program. Since 2009, the committee has worked on a classified report about waterboarding and other harsh methods used to interrogate suspected terrorists in overseas prisons. This week, the head of the Senate committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., went public with complaints that the CIA was interfering with the investigation.

Propaganda

Putin rebuffs Obama on Ukraine, says Russia 'cannot ignore calls for help'

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© AP/Alexander ShalginPresident of the Russian parliament Sergei Naryshkin (right) welcomes Prime Minister Sergei Aksyono Crimea / center) before the conversation between Moscow, Russia, on Friday, March 7, 2014.
A day after President Obama ordered sanctions over Russia's military takeover in Crimea, Russian President Vladi­mir Putin emphatically rejected the U.S. position, saying his country could not "ignore calls for help" from ethnic Russians in Ukraine after what he has termed an illegitimate power grab there by pro-Western agitators.

Obama authorized the Treasury Department on Thursday to impose sanctions on "individuals and entities" responsible for the Russian intervention in Crimea or for "stealing the assets of the Ukrainian people."

The financial measures, and a separate ban on U.S. visas, are part of the administration's effort to squeeze Russia into pulling back its troops in Crimea, an autonomous, pro-Russia region of Ukraine that does not recognize the country's new Western-backed leaders.


Comment: Does anyone buy this? Financial Measures my sweet patooty.


After announcing his sanctions order and condemning a planned Crimean referendum on joining Russia as a violation of both Ukrainian and international law, Obama spoke to Putin on the phone for an hour in his latest outreach to the Russian leader.

But Putin, in a statement Friday, said he and Obama remain far apart on the situation Ukraine, whose new anti-Russian government he accused of making "absolutely illegitimate decisions on the eastern, southeastern and Crimea regions."

Comment: Lie and B.S. all you like, but the truth is: You're incompetent. Plain and simple. Nothing breeds support like success. You thought you could just waltz right into the Ukraine and overthrow its government. But the fact that you didn't succeed, besides making the U.S. look like a bunch of half-wit yahoos, proves that you are completely incompetent.


Mr. Potato

Obama should be impeached over hypocritical Crimean stance says US analyst Mike Billington

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© EPA
An American political analyst, Mike Billington, says the United States' plot to oust a sovereign elected government in Ukraine is a gross crime, adding that US President Barack Obama must be impeached over the Crimean crisis.The expert supposes it is a disgusting hypocrisy. Everyone knows is that it is not the Russians who are intervening in the internal affairs of Ukraine - it is the US indeed.

Everybody heard Victoria Nuland's open discussion with ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt about who they want to put in office and who they want to keep out on the street, continue the violent demonstrations that were going on.

The call for a referendum for separation in Ukraine is, in fact, contrary to the national constitution. But the vote to throw [ousted Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych out of office was also against the constitution, the expert assumes. It did not have the required number, according to the constitution, to impeach the president and therefore in fact Yanukovych is still the legitimate president, even though he is obviously not in office.

Bad Guys

Hypocrats: U.N. plans to legalize coup post facto

The U.N. Security Council is discussing a possible resolution that would reaffirm Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity and address Sunday's referendum on whether its Crimean Peninsula should become part of Russia, a council diplomat said Wednesday.

The diplomat said the resolution would aim to show the strong opposition in the U.N.'s most powerful body to a Russian takeover of the pro-Russia Crimea - even though permanent council member Russia is virtually certain to veto any resolution.

Another U.N. diplomat said supporters of the resolution also hope that China - a close ally of Russia which has spoken out in favor of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity - would abstain rather than join Russia in vetoing a resolution.

Comment: Legally. You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means. U.N. resolutions are not legally anything. There is NO SUCH THING AS INTERNATIONAL LAW. It's convention. Kind of a loose grouping of informal guidelines. Every country violates it with impunity when they are popular and in power. Or uses it to harangue other countries when they are not.


Stormtrooper

Kiev snipers were shooting from building controlled by Maidan forces - Ukraine's ex-security chief

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© Reuters / Konstantin Chernichkin
Former chief of Ukraine's Security Service has confirmed allegations that snipers who killed dozens of people during the violent unrest in Kiev operated from a building controlled by the opposition on Maidan square.

Shots that killed both civilians and police officers were fired from the Philharmonic Hall building in Ukraine's capital, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine Aleksandr Yakimenko told Russia 1 channel. The building was under full control of the opposition and particularly the so-called Commandant of Maidan self-defense Andrey Parubiy who after the coup was appointed as the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Yakimenko added.

Furthermore the former security chief believes that Parubiy has been in contact with US Special Forces that could have coordinated the assault.

"Shots came from the Philharmonic Hall. Maidan Commandant Parubiy was responsible for this building. Snipers and people with automatic weapons were 'working' from this building on February 20. They supported the assault on the Interior Ministry forces on the ground who were already demoralized and have, in fact, fled," Yakimenko said in an interview with Russian television.

The police officers were chased by a group of rioters armed with various weapons and at that point, Yakimenko says snipers fired at pursuers themselves.

"When the first wave of shootings ended, many have witnessed 20 people leaving the building," former chief says, noting that they were well-equipped and were carrying military style bag for carrying sniper and assault rifles with optical sights. Not only the law enforcers, but people from the opposition's Freedom, Right Sector, Fatherland, and Klitschko's UDAR party have also seen this, Yakimenko claims.

Binoculars

Big Brother Surveillance - It is not just for governments anymore

Surveillance
© End of The American Dream
Traditionally, when we have thought of "Big Brother technology" we have thought of government oppression. But these days, it isn't just governments that are using creepy new technologies to spy on all of us.

As you will see below, "Big Brother surveillance" has become very big business. In the information age, knowledge is power, and big corporations seem to have an endless thirst for even more of it.

So it isn't just governments that are completely obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that we do.

Corporations have discovered that they can use Orwellian technologies to make lots of money, and this is likely only going to get worse in the years ahead.

Below, I have shared a few examples of this phenomenon...

Eye 1

Sensitive personal information for Sale: "Data Brokers" know more about you than you know


The following script is from "The Data Brokers" which aired on March 9, 2014. Steve Kroft is the correspondent. Graham Messick and Maria Gavrilovic, producers.

Over the past six months or so, a huge amount of attention has been paid to government snooping, and the bulk collection and storage of vast amounts of raw data in the name of national security. What most of you don't know, or are just beginning to realize, is that a much greater and more immediate threat to your privacy is coming from thousands of companies you've probably never heard of, in the name of commerce.

60 Minutes Overtime How to defend your privacy online They're called data brokers, and they are collecting, analyzing and packaging some of our most sensitive personal information and selling it as a commodity...to each other, to advertisers, even the government, often without our direct knowledge. Much of this is the kind of harmless consumer marketing that's been going on for decades. What's changed is the volume and nature of the data being mined from the Internet and our mobile devices, and the growth of a multi billion dollar industry that operates in the shadows with virtually no oversight.