Puppet MastersS


Eye 1

Selective 'obscenity': U.S. checkered record on chemical weapons


The US charge against Syria is being driven by Damascus' alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians. While Washington is quick to intervene on moral grounds, its own checkered past regarding WMDs may put the world's policeman under the spotlight.

"Nobody disputes - or hardly anybody disputes - that chemical weapons were used on a large scale in Syria against civilian populations," US President Barack Obama told a briefing Wednesday. "We have looked at all the evidence, and we do not believe the opposition possessed ... chemical weapons of that sort."

It is this charge, so far unsubstantiated by UN inspectors, that underpins Western attempts to intervene militarily in Syria.

"If we are saying in a clear and decisive but very limited way, we send a shot across the bow saying, 'Stop doing this,' this can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term," Obama said.

Comment: Redundant question - psychopaths literally have no shame and no conscience !!!


USA

No leave for U.S. Army this September and October

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I don't believe a lot of what I read on Before It's News, et. al., until I see the facts for myself. I always do my own research. There are a lot of folks out there making things up just to get their names out on the net.

The rumor that has been going around about no one in the Army getting to take leave during the month of September and October is one of the things I had to see for myself. If that were true, that is a very big deal. It doesn't happen very often.

My daughter and her husband have just been stationed at Ft. Riley, KS. He is in a unit that has just returned recently from deployment and is on "recovery phase" They are not slated to deploy anywhere anytime in the near future. My daughter called last night and said that they have all been told that they will get no leave in September through October. They were even told that they are on QRF, (Quick Reaction Force)

I was in the Army for a long time. When you go on QRF, you are told months in advance and train and prep for it. You have to go through a week of paperwork, vaccinations for the area of possible deployment, etc. It is a big deal. It also only involves one unit as opposed to an entire base. It never happens on the fly like this. This tells me that they are planning for the possibility of a rapid deployment of at least one division. I do not know if this is happening at other bases.

Handcuffs

Former JP Morgan banker arrested in Spain over 'London Whale' charges that cost $6bn

Javier Martin-Artajo is accused of trying to cover up Bruno Iksil's spiralling multibillion pound losses

JP Morgan
© Michael Nagle/Getty ImagesThe 'London whale' cost JP Morgan $6bn.
A former JP Morgan banker has been arrested in Spain 10 days after US authorities filed charges against him over the "London Whale" affair that cost the bank $6bn (£3.9bn).

Javier Martin-Artajo, who was the direct supervisor of Bruno Iksil, the trader dubbed the "London Whale", handed himself in on Tuesday in Madrid following a conversation with the specialist fugitive unit of the Spanish police.

Martin-Artajo, a 49-year-old Spanish national, is wanted by US authorities on four charges of conspiracy, keeping false books and records, wire fraud, and making false filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission watchdog.

His passport has been confiscated pending extradition proceedings, a spokeswoman for the Spanish national court said. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charges, although extraditions from Spain to the US are rare.

He is accused of trying to inflate the value of trading positions held on JP Morgan's books. The mismarking allegedly took place as the traders tried to hide mounting losses in an illiquid derivatives market, where they had made outsized bets.

Martin-Artajo, who was paid $11m a year for his work as head of Europe for JP Morgan's chief investment office (CIO), was charged by the New York attorney general, Preet Bharara, earlier this month. Bharara alleges that as the London losses mounted Martin-Artajo and former junior JP Morgan trader Julien Grout began to "creatively cook the books".

Cloud Lightning

Departing DHS secretary warns of 'serious' cyber-threat, devastating natural disaster

Janet Napolitano
© AFP Photo / Saul LoebFormer US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
The departing US Homeland Security Secretary used her farewell speech to warn the nation's leaders of an impending "serious" cyber-attack as well as a natural disaster, the impact of which will dwarf Hurricane Sandy and other disasters in recent memory.

Janet Napolitano, after four years at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security, delivered her final speech Tuesday morning before she formally exits her position next week.

"Many things still need tending, and my successor will most certainly have a full plate on his or her hands," she said, adding that she faced "many challenges" over the past four years, including Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill two years before that.

Napolitano, whose Department of Homeland Security was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and is primarily responsible for immigration and airport security, said the agency launched a "historic" effort after the attempted "underwear bombing" in 2009. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) helped coordinate screening efforts against "nonmetallic devices" in 190 countries, she said.

Gear

U.S. soldier sentenced to death for Fort Hood shooting rampage

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© AFP 2013/ Bell County Sheriff's OfficeNidal Hasan
A United States military jury sentenced an Army psychiatrist to death Wednesday for the 2009 shooting rampage at the Fort Hood military base in Texas that left 13 people dead and more than 30 wounded, US media reported.

The same military jury that convicted Maj. Nidal Hasan last week had only two options, a death sentence or life in prison with no chance of parole.

Hasan, 42, admitted that he was the gunman who opened fire on Nov. 5, 2009 in a crowded waiting room at a medical processing center filled with troops there to get final medical checkups before deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Witnesses in the case said that Hasan yelled "Allahu akbar," or "God is great" in Arabic, before he started shooting.

Comment: Look at this article's picture of Nidal Hasan, and now look at this one:

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© REUTERS/Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences/Handout
We wonder if they 'work on' people like Hasan, McVeigh, Holmes and Manning during their years of solitary incarceration prior to (and during) their trials?

Read Reviving the War of Terror: Patsy framed in Secret Team psy-op to generate public support for wars to learn more.


Dollar

The leveraged buyout of America

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© flickr/badjonni
Giant bank holding companies now own airports, toll roads, and ports; control power plants; and store and hoard vast quantities of commodities of all sorts. They are systematically buying up or gaining control of the essential lifelines of the economy. How have they pulled this off, and where have they gotten the money?

In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dated June 27, 2013, US Representative Alan Grayson and three co-signers expressed concern about the expansion of large banks into what have traditionally been non-financial commercial spheres. Specifically:
[W]e are concerned about how large banks have recently expanded their businesses into such fields as electric power production, oil refining and distribution, owning and operating of public assets such as ports and airports, and even uranium mining.
After listing some disturbing examples, they observed:
According to legal scholar Saule Omarova, over the past five years, there has been a "quiet transformation of U.S. financial holding companies." These financial services companies have become global merchants that seek to extract rent from any commercial or financial business activity within their reach. They have used legal authority in Graham-Leach-Bliley to subvert the "foundational principle of separation of banking from commerce". . . .

It seems like there is a significant macro-economic risk in having a massive entity like, say JP Morgan, both issuing credit cards and mortgages, managing municipal bond offerings, selling gasoline and electric power, running large oil tankers, trading derivatives, and owning and operating airports, in multiple countries.
A "macro" risk indeed - not just to our economy but to our democracy and our individual and national sovereignty. Giant banks are buying up our country's infrastructure - the power and supply chains that are vital to the economy. Aren't there rules against that? And where are the banks getting the money?

Cult

Pope criminalizes the reporting of sex crimes

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© Wikimedia Commons
Few eyebrows were raised last week when Pope Francis brought the Vatican's legal system up to date by criminalizing leaks of official information and formalizing laws against sex crimes. But now that the laws have been made public, a closer look revealed that the pope has made it illegal to report sex crimes against children.

According to the new laws, revealing or receiving confidential Vatican information is now punishable by up to two years in prison, while newly defined sex crimes against children carry a sentence of up to twelve years. Because all sex crimes are kept confidential, there is no longer a legal way for Vatican officials to report sex crimes.

"We didn't mean for this to happen, obviously," lamented Vatican foreign minister Monsignor Dominique Mamberti. "It's quite the papal pickle that His Holiness has placed upon our heads. Sex crimes are more illegal than ever, but technically it's illegal to report them." Mamberti said that the simultaneous passing of each law is merely a coincidence and insisted that the Church is not trying to protect itself against further embarrassment, but critics outside the Vatican are skeptical.

Play

Comedian Russell Brand highlights government propaganda and lies about Syria on BBC TV

Russell Brand
© Jason LouvRussell Brand
Comedian Russell Brand talks about the push for military strikes on Syria and why he doesn't trust the government


Above, Russell Brand delivers yet another straight talk on government propaganda and lies, in this case around Syria, and why we should not trust governments claiming foreign countries have "morally unacceptable" weapons after Bush and Blair lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction to get us into Iraq.

As YouTube commenter "roman14032″ says, "we got REALLY, REALLY BIG PROBLEMS in our society when the most thoughtful and rational person in mass media or government is an ex-junkie comic."

War Whore

Best of the Web: 'Intervention' in Syria is another western war crime in the making

Blair
© Lewisasutton, Flickr
The UK Independent newspaper reports that over this past week-end Obama, Cameron, and Hollande agreed to launch cruise missile attacks against the Syrian government within two weeks despite the lack of any authorization from the UN and despite the absence of any evidence in behalf of Washington's claim that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the Washington-backed "rebels", largely US supported external forces, seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

Why the rush to war?

Indeed, one reason for the rush to war is to prevent the UN inspection that Washington knows would disprove its claim and possibly implicate Washington in the false flag attack by the "rebels," who assembled a large number of children into one area to be chemically murdered with the blame pinned by Washington on the Syrian government.

Another reason for the rush to war is that Cameron, the UK prime minister, wants to get the war going before the British parliament can block him for providing cover for Obama's war crimes the way that Tony Blair provided cover for George W. Bush, for which Blair was duly rewarded.

What does Cameron care about Syrian lives when he can leave office into the waiting arms of a $50 million fortune.

Vader

In Syria, Weapons of Mass Destruction redux

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© n/a
If you ever doubted the erosion of popular democracy in the U.S., the next few weeks should set you straight. The simple fact is that the voting population is the main "constituency" of politicians only at election time.
Right now it is reported that approximately 60% of that constituency does not want the U.S. to attack Syria. However, it is not election time. In the post-election period, the politician's real constituency becomes special interests, some of which are rich enough and influential enough to substitute their own parochial interests for the interests of the nation. There are a bunch of them which are now anxious for an attack on Syria.
The media is presently rife with reports that the U.S. government, along with other countries like the UK and France, operating with the blessing of the so-called Arab League (which has become little more than a front operation for the Gulf Arabs), are going to militarily strike Syria in just a matter of days. This will be done to supposedly punish Damascus for the alleged use of chemical weapons in its ongoing civil war. The U.S. government keeps saying they are sure the Assad government carried out this attack, but where are they getting their information? Well, that is rather shady. Washington won't really say, but one can guess at the most likely sources.

These might well be: