Puppet MastersS


Bomb

U.S. resumes aid to militants in Syria


PressTV
Tue, 28 Jan 2014 02:00 UTC
Syria rebels
© n/a
As negotiations between Syrian officials and the country's foreign-backed opposition hit a deadlock over the issue of transfer of power, the United States has resumed deliveries of aid to the opposition.

The "non-lethal" aid comes more than a month after al-Qaeda-linked insurgents seized warehouses and prompted a sudden cutoff of Western supplies to other militant groups which are publically backed by Western countries.

US officials said Monday that "the communications equipment and other items are being funneled for now only to non-armed opposition groups," according to The Associated Press.
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Attention

Schindler's List producer states: "I never feared my government until now"

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 21:47 UTC
Schindler’s List
© Universal Pictures
Earlier today, I wrote an article about the arrest of BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem on charges of money laundering, and how it demonstrated that the rule of law is completely dead in America. All we have now is selective enforcement of the law, a situation in which a handful of oligarchs can steal with impunity, but politically unpopular or troublesome folks are pursued with tyrannical vigor.

However, Charlie's case is not the only recent example of selective enforcement. Dinesh D'Souza is yet another. Despite what you may think of Mr. D'Souza (I watched his film and personally found it to be a very weak and superficial criticism of Obama), he is clearly being targeted in a political vendetta.

This is obvious in the sense that banker thieves never, ever face prosecution for far greater crimes. Our descent further and further into Banana Republic status is accelerating.
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Eye 1

Court doc shows FBI can access all messages sent over 'anonymous' email service


RT
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 21:03 UTC
picture shows a computer screen
© tormail.orgThis picture shows a computer screen displaying the home page of tormail.org

The United States government seized the contents of every message stored on the servers of a supposedly secure email provider, new documents reveal, and is using that information in other criminal cases.

Kevin Poulsen, a former hacker-turned-tech reporter, wrote for Wired.com on Monday that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation cloned the data being held by a service called Tormail as the result of a separate probe started last year.

The FBI made waves throughout the internet security community back in August when it was discovered that US prosecutors asked police in Ireland to arrest Eric Eoin Marques, a 28-year-old man who administered a hosting provider that offered customers web space on the so-called dark web - a section of the internet that is only accessible through the Tor anonymizer browser and contains an unknown number of hidden portals, including many with content that's illegal under US law.

When Marques was arrested last year, US authorities gained control of his company, Freedom Hosting, and the data belonging to customers who had created websites on the dark web. One of those clients was Tormail, a hidden service that boasted of allowing "anyone to send and receive email anonymously" and claimed to never "co-operate with anyone attempting to identify or censor" its users. Only now, though, has it been revealed that the FBI cloned the entirety of that company's info after shutting down its service provider, Freedom Hosting, and customers who relied on it for web space.
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Attention

Ukraine police forced to abandon Kiev conference centre to opposition as Western-funded riots spread across the country

Enjoli Liston
The Independent
Sun, 26 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Getty ImagesAnti-government protesters carry the body of Mikhail Zhiznevsky, 25, a protester killed during clashes with police on Wednesday
Ukraine's two-month old anti-government protests have spread further across the country despite offers of concessions from President Viktor Yanukovych.

Thousands of demonstrators attempted to take over the regional government office in Dnipropetrovsk on Sunday, a major industrial hub in eastern Ukraine home to more than one million people and birthplace of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.

Thousands more tried to seize the local government headquarters in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhia, local media reported. Further protests took place in Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Lutsk and Sumy over the weekend, raising fears that the previously peaceful movement is morphing into a national uprising.

In Kiev on Sunday, hundreds of protesters chanted "heroes don't die" as the coffin of one demonstrator shot dead in clashes with police was paraded through the city centre.

The opposition cancelled a mass rally to hold a memorial for 25 year-old Mikhail Zhiznevsky - one of at least three people to have died when protests in the capital turned violent last week.
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Black Cat

Florida congressman Trey Radel resigns after pleading guilty to cocaine possession

Sean Sullivan
The Washington Post
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 10:20 UTC
Image
Embattled Rep. Trey Radel (R-Fla.) resigned from Congress Monday, months after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor drug charge.

A first-term congressman, Radel was arrested for cocaine possession in the fall . After reaching a plea agreement, he underwent substance abuse rehabilitation treatment and returned to Congress earlier this month. Despite calls from state party leaders for him to step down, Radel had said he was committed to returning to work.

But on Monday, he swiftly changed course and said he would step down later in the day. In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Radel said his personal struggles impeded his ability to serve in Congress. He said last year that struggles with alcoholism led him to make an "extremely irresponsible choice" involving cocaine.
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Eye 1

Top-secret document reveals NSA spied on porn habits as part of plan to discredit 'radicalizers'

Ryan Grim
Huff Post Politics
Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:58 UTC
Image
The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as "exemplars" of how "personal vulnerabilities" can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority.

The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger. "A previous SIGINT" -- or signals intelligence, the interception of communications -- "assessment report on radicalization indicated that radicalizers appear to be particularly vulnerable in the area of authority when their private and public behaviors are not consistent," the document argues.

Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are "viewing sexually explicit material online" and "using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls."
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Arrow Down

Dow suffers worst weekly loss since Sept. 2011

Matt Jarzemsky
The Wall Street Journal
Fri, 24 Jan 2014 16:35 UTC
Image
© Westhavenmanagement.comNew York Stock Exchange
The Dow industrials took their biggest daily tumble in more than seven months Friday, caught up in a two-day selloff in emerging-market stocks and currencies.

Traders said that despite the scope of the decline, fund managers weren't overly urgent in selling. Rather, they pointed to short-term players selling baskets of stocks, such as index futures or exchange-traded funds, as a way to protect against losses elsewhere in their portfolios. Buyers, meanwhile, pulled to the sidelines, content to wait before putting money to work.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 318.24 points, or 2%, to 15879.11, a five-week low. For the week, the benchmark fell 3.5%.

The S&P 500 index dropped 38.17 points, or 2.1%, to 1790.29. The Nasdaq Composite Index shed 90.70 points, or 2.2%, to 4128.17.

"There's a lack of buyers supporting the market and incremental sellers who are de-risking on the back of the macro developments," said Doug Crofton, head of U.S. cash equity trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "I don't think the market was positioned for the recent events."

"We're not seeing people throw in the towel," or selling indiscriminately in a rush to get out of the market, he added.

Even with Friday's declines, the S&P 500 is up 20% from a year ago and 3% off its Jan. 15 all-time closing high.
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Dollar Gold

China's elite storing riches in Caribbean offshore haven

James Ball and Guardian U.S. Interactive Team
The Guardian
Tue, 21 Jan 2014 16:00 UTC
Image
© USA Today
Relatives of political leaders including China's current president and former premier named in trove of leaked documents from the British Virgin Islands

More than a dozen family members of China's top political and military leaders are making use of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, leaked financial documents reveal.

The brother-in-law of China's current president, Xi Jinping, as well as the son and son-in-law of former premier Wen Jiabao are among the political relations making use of the offshore havens, financial records show.

The documents also disclose the central role of major Western banks and accountancy firms, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Credit Suisse and UBS in the offshore world, acting as middlemen in the establishing of companies.

The Hong Kong office of Credit Suisse, for example, established the BVI company Trend Gold Consultants for Wen Yunsong, the son of Wen Jiabao, during his father's premiership - while PwC and UBS performed similar services for hundreds of other wealthy Chinese individuals.

The disclosure of China's use of secretive financial structures is the latest revelation from "Offshore Secrets", a two-year reporting effort led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which obtained more than 200 gigabytes of leaked financial data from two companies in the British Virgin Islands, and shared the information with the Guardian and other international news outlets.
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Bad Guys

Raping the planet: U.K. Fracking companies could be allowed under your home without consent


RT
Mon, 27 Jan 2014 14:29 UTC
Fracking protest manchester
© Reuters / Phil NobleA sign stands outside a protest camp at the entrance to the IGas Energy exploratory gas drilling site at Barton Moss near Manchester in northern England January 13, 2014.

Government sources have admitted that they are considering overhauling UK trespass laws to make it easier to extract shale gas. Under the plans being considered by the government, fracking could take place under homes without owners' permission.

The government sources say they are mulling over these amendments to the law to make it easier for companies to explore and extract shale gas, amid worries that landowners and other parties could hold up energy companies in costly and lengthy court proceedings, the Telegraph reports.

The plans are expected to be published in the coming months, and are likely to be the most controversial yet in Prime Minister David Cameron's plans to push through fracking regardless of the environmental cost.

Comment: See also:

Investigation confirms the evils of fracking
Opposed to fracking? Then the corporatocracy considers you to be a terrorist
Massachusetts seeks 10 year ban on gas fracking after series of Texas earthquakes
Dangerous levels of radioactivity found at fracking waste site in Pennsylvania
Is there a media blackout on the fracking flood disaster in Colorado?

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Document

Flashback New document details arguments about torture at a JSOC prison

Jeff Kaye
My Firedog Lake.com
Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:06 UTC
Image
© Shrieking TreeAmnesty International projection "Torture is Wrong" outside of the Newseum during the screening of Zero Dark Thirty in Washington DC.
Journalist Michael Otterman, author of the excellent book, American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond, was kind enough to forward to me some months ago a document he obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. The document consists of the after-action reports made by Colonel Steven Kleinman and Terrence Russell, two of the three team members sent by the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) to a top-secret special operations facility in Iraq in September 2003.

The reports, written shortly after both JPRA officials finished their assignment, present two starkly different accounts of what took place that late summer in the depths of a JSOC torture chamber. Even more remarkable, Col. Kleinman, who famously intervened to stop torture interrogations at the facility, had his own report submitted to Russell for comment. Indeed, Kleinman's report as released contains interpolations by Russell, such that the documents become a kind of ersatz debate over torture by the JPRA team members, and at a distance, some of the Task Force members.

This extraordinary document is being posted here in full for the first time. Click here to download.
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