Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Flashback Awkward - Mossad in Ukraine

Dirar Abu Sisi
© Ariel Schalit/APPalestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi, who is believed to have been kidnapped from Ukraine by Mossad.
Well here is an awkward issue dear readers.

For some weeks there has been rumour of a Palestinian gentleman being "spirited away" from the sovereign state of Ukraine in an American-esque style black op/rendition.

I have deliberately left this matter alone whilst waiting for something more solid than rumour.

Comment: It seems they haven't left! See the following video, 'Mossad agents provocateurs in Ukraine', which states that ex-IDF troops (funded by an "Israeli tycoon"), as well as Mossad, participated (and directed) the original anti-government protests that culminated in the current coup-installed junta:


We wonder if dual Israeli-Ukrainian citizen/oligarch/Dnepropetrovsk governor/Odessa butcher Ihor Kolomoyskyi played any part in this?


Star of David

Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the key man behind Odessa Massacre: His many connections to the White House

Ihor Kolomoyskyi
© WikipediaDual Israeli-Ukrainian citizen and oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi.
The key person behind the May 2nd massacre inside Odessa's Trade Unions Building appears to have been Ihor Kolomoyskyi who was appointed to be the regional governor in that area by Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian Presidential candidate that the Obama Administration has apparently been hoping will win the May 25th election to take over the Ukrainian Government, from the junta that the Obama Administration imposed in Ukraine on February 22nd. Just weeks before this coup, on February 4th, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Asia, Victoria Nuland, chose Tymoshenko's ally Arseni Yatsenyuk to head the post-coup interim government, which appointed Kolomoyskyi.

Only a few months before this coup, Nuland had asserted that U.S. taxpayers had already invested more than $5 billion, in order to bring "democracy" to Ukraine, by which she was referring to the U.S. effort to oust the Russian-oriented, democratically elected, leader of Ukraine, President Viktor Yanukovych, who had prosecuted and imprisoned Tymoshenko for embezzlement and abuse of governmental office. Tymoshenko was then on 11 October 2011 sentenced to seven years in prison, and was ordered to pay the government restitution of $188 million. She was released from prison less than three years later, two days after the coup, on 24 February 2014. The Ukrainian criminal code was immediately changed, in order to legalize the actions for which Tymoshenko had been imprisoned. This allowed Tymoshenko to run for the Ukrainian Presidency. She had been Prime Minister 2007-2010. Both she and her husband, Oleksandr Tymoshenko, and his father, all three of whom were on the board of United Energy Systems of Ukraine (and thus Ms. Tymoshenko was called "the gas princess"), have been legally prosecuted as embezzling state funds; but so have most of Ukraine's oligarchs and political leaders (and there's a lot of crossover between those two categories).

Binoculars

Government surveillance now targets entire populations sez Snowden

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© Reuters/Vincent KesslerEdward Snowden
Government surveillance no longer targets individuals, but entire populations, former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has said. The whistleblower appeared via video link in a Toronto debate over the NSA intelligence gathering programs.

Commenting on the antics of the National Security Agency, which have been described in the past as "Orwellian in nature," Snowden said every citizen is affected by intelligence gathering programs

"It's no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing," Snowden said in the brief video. "It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love."

Snowden's video link was screened during a Munk debate in Toronto, where former US National Security Administration director General Michael Hayden and Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz went head to head with Glen Greenwald and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian over government surveillance.

Map

Best of the Web: The birth of a Eurasian century: Russia and China do Pipelineistan

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China is building its own pipeline networks to help deliver Russia's resources to its people and for export.
A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass -- at the expense of the United States.

And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa); at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to NATO; inside the G20; and via the 120-member-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain. Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia's Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile, Russia is about to sell dozens of state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters to the Chinese as Beijing and Moscow move to seal an aviation-industrial partnership.

This week should provide the first real fireworks in the celebration of a new Eurasian century-in-the-making when Russian President Vladimir Putin drops in on Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. You remember "Pipelineistan," all those crucial oil and gas pipelines crisscrossing Eurasia that make up the true circulatory system for the life of the region. Now, it looks like the ultimate Pipelineistan deal, worth $1 trillion and 10 years in the making, will be inked as well. In it, the giant, state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom will agree to supply the giant state-controlled China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) with 3.75 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day for no less than 30 years, starting in 2018. That's the equivalent of a quarter of Russia's massive gas exports to all of Europe. China's current daily gas demand is around 16 billion cubic feet a day, and imports account for 31.6% of total consumption.

Gold Coins

The corporate gods of America

The Corporation
Corporations: psychopaths in everything but name.
Can anyone doubt that the United States is governed for the corporate good? The lofty concept of 'for the people' evaporated into mythical fairy dust generations ago.

In the new millennium, any pretense to serve the people, rather than the corporation, has been swept away; apparently, the elected, so-called representatives, and the corporations who own them, are convinced that the 99% are sufficiently lulled into a somnolent belief that the U.S. is the greatest country in the world, and what's good for business is good for them. Those with that bizarre belief overlook some very basic and rudimentary facts:

Comment: Be sure to check out Robert Fantina's latest book, Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy, published by Red Pill Press.


Stormtrooper

Judge, jury, and executioner: Have the police become a law unto themselves?

"Police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent." - Kristian Williams, activist and author
Militarized Police
© Reuters/Philip Andrews
Living in a free society means not having to look over your shoulder to see whether the government is watching or fearing that a government agent might perpetuate violence upon you.

Unfortunately, as I detail in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, subjected as we are to government surveillance, body scanners, militarized police, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids, drones, and other trappings of a police state, "we the people" do not live in a free society any longer.

Not only are we no longer a free people but we have become a fearful people, as well, helped along in large part by politicians eager to capitalize on our fears. As Julie Hanus writes for Utne: "Since the 1980s, society at large has bolted frantically from one panic to the next. Fear of crime reduced us to wrecks, but before long we were also howling about deadly diseases, drug abusers, online pedophiles, avian flu, teens gone wild, mad cows, anthrax, immigrants, environmental collapse, and - let us not forget - terrorists."

Now thanks to an increasingly militarized police force and police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, we've got one more fear to add to that growing list, and with good reason: fear of the police - local, state and federal agents.

Who wouldn't be afraid of police officers who go around shooting unarmed citizens, tasering women - young and old alike, and forcing law-abiding Americans to the ground at gunpoint?

Such was the case when a Missouri police officer shot and wounded an unarmed panhandler. Texas police, during a raid on a home where music was reportedly being played too loudly, repeatedly tasered a 54-year-old grandmother, kicking and punching other members of the household. A 20-year-old Florida woman who was tasered by a police officer while she was handcuffed ended up in a permanent vegetative state and eventually died. And then there was the homeless man who was shot and killed by Albuquerque police for squatting on public land.

Stock Down

Climate change research to be axed in Australia, affects jobs

next 100 years road signs
© copycarbon.comSigns of the future...a climate of change.
The fallout from the new government's budget is still being seen in Australia, but it is already obvious that climate change is a loser when it comes to funding. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has long been skeptical of global warming and the science behind it, but with his new-found legislative power it seems as though he is looking at making that viewpoint into law. According to critics, there is no longer even the pretence of working towards limiting the effects of climate change as the government works to protect the interests of fossil fuel producers and businesses. Whether or not there is a real connection between big business interest and the new budget, Abbott and his cabinet have taken the axe to climate change research and are poised to fundamentally damage all scientific research in Australia in the process.

The budgetary facts are inescapably grim for researchers and scientists based in renewable energies and research. The funding for all government programs related to climate change is set to shrink at an alarming rate, going from $5.75 billion this year to a scant $500 million in the next four years. Additionally, the Emissions Reduction Fund which is meant to help lower greenhouse gas emissions in Australia is going to be reduced to only $1.14 billion. This was devastating news after Environment Minister Greg Hunt had gone on record promising to provide $2.55 billion to fund the program. Nevertheless, it is not only climate change programs that are feeling the pinch of the Abbott budget. The Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, will have $111 million worth of funding slashed over the next four years, which will affect an uncertain number of programs and a loss of tenth of the CSIRO workforce.

Comment: No matter what the beliefs are concerning the causes of climate change, and no matter the methods conceived to "deal" with it, there are extenuating circumstances of great consequence when cocky politicians set industries in motion and then pull out the rug. Opinions trump research. Big business survives. Talent goes elsewhere. People inevitably suffer.


Life Preserver

French non-profit Maison des Journalistes offers a home to exiled journalists

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© maisondesjournalistes.org
In honour of World Press Freedom Day, the Maison des Journalistes (MDJ), a French non-profit organization that offers shelter and support to journalists forced to flee their home countries, opened its doors to FRANCE 24.

Based in Paris's 15th arrondissement, the MDJ was founded in 2002, and has since housed more than 250 journalists from 54 different countries.

Johnny (who declined to give his last name), a journalist from the Central African Republic (CAR), left his home in the capital Bangui after his brother was killed. For the past four months, he has been living in a tiny room at the non-profit overlooking a nearby cemetery.

"The first few nights were rough, but I got used to it," he said of his new lodgings.

Bad Guys

US takes on the Russians, only this time it's over the International Space Station

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© NASAAstronaut Rick Mastracchio works outside the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Dec. 24, 2013.
Even during the paranoia and antagonism of the Cold War, the United States and Russia managed to find common cause in space. In July 1975, both countries celebrated the first joint space flight, as Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked in orbit, astronauts and cosmonauts smiling for the cameras as they shook hands through the air lock.

But now the spirit of co-operation appears to have died, with the International Space Station - the $150bn (£89bn) international research laboratory that is still physically divided along Cold War lines - becoming the rope in a tug-of-war between American and Russian politicians.

The dispute began in April, when a leaked Nasa memo revealed that the agency would be suspending all contact with the Russian government because of the country's "ongoing violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity".

Bizarro Earth

Nice mask, psycho: Obama 'madder than hell' over VA allegations

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© Associated Press/Cliff Owen
The White House chief of staff says President Barack Obama is "madder than hell" about reports of treatment delays at veterans' hospitals across the country.

Top aide Denis McDonough tells CBS' Face the Nation that Obama is demanding that Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki (shin-SEHK'-ee) and others in the administration "continue to fix these things until they're functioning the way that our veterans believe they should."