Puppet MastersS


MIB

Obama Secret Service Agents Sent Home from Colombia Over Alleged Misconduct

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© Enrique Marcarian/ReutersColombia's President Juan Manuel Santos and his wife Maria Clemencia Rodriguez receive U.S. President Barack Obama as they arrive at the San Felipe Castle for a state dinner before the start of the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena April 13, 2012.
A dozen Secret Service agents sent to Colombia to provide security for President Barack Obama at an international summit have been relieved of duty over alleged misconduct.

A caller who said he had knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press the misconduct involved prostitutes in Cartagena, site of the Summit of the Americas. A Secret Service spokesman did not dispute that.

A U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity, put the number of agents sent home at 12. Secret Service was not releasing the number of personnel involved.

The incident threatened to overshadow Mr. Obama's economic and trade agenda at the summit and embarrass the U.S. The White House had no comment, but also did not dispute the allegations.

Rocket

North Korea's Rocket Failure a Setback for New Leader

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© Chung Sung-Jun/Getty ImagesSouth Korean conservative protesters burn a mockup of a North Korean missile during an anti-North Korea rally Friday in Seoul.
Pyongyang, North Korea - A satellite launch North Korea had hailed as a moment of national pride ended in failure Friday when the rocket disintegrated over the Yellow Sea, earning Pyongyang embarrassment as well as condemnation from a host of nations that deemed it a covert test of missile technology.

The United States and South Korea declared the early morning launch a failure minutes after the rocket shot out from the North's west coast. North Korea acknowledged that some four hours later in an announcement broadcast on state TV, saying the satellite that the rocket was carrying did not enter orbit.

North Korea had held up the launch as a scientific achievement and even a gift for its late founder, Kim Il Sung, two days before the 100th anniversary of his birth. It pressed ahead even as world leaders vowed to take action in the UN Security Council against what they called a flagrant violation of international resolutions prohibiting North Korea from developing its nuclear and missile programs.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the launch "is in direct violation" of Security Council sanctions "and threatens regional stability," spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

Vader

Washington's Psychopathic Kosovo strategy could destroy NATO

clinton kosovo nato
© EFE / ENDState Secretary Clinton at a press conference in Washington D.C. with Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, 9 April 2012.
Not satisfied with having sponsored the artificial creation of Kosovo, the United States has now decided to ram the mafia state through NATO and the European Union. A new member with those characteristics is the last thing that Europe needs right now. However, it should work wonders for the consolidation of U.S. political and military agenda in the region, not to speak of the flourishing heroin trade from Afghanistan...both of which, as Engdahl points out in this sharp analysis, pose a threat to Russia and may backfire in the end.

In one of the more bizarre foreign policy announcements of a bizarre Obama Administration, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that Washington will "help" Kosovo to join NATO as well as the European Union. She made the pledge after a recent Washington meeting with Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in Washington where she praised the Thaci government's progress in "European integration and economic development"[1].

Her announcement no doubt caused serious gas pains among government and military officials in the various capitals of European NATO. Few people appreciate just how mad Clinton's plan to push Kosovo into NATO and the EU is.

X

Best of the Web: What Israel Does

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Israeli soldiers and Palestinian medics treat Nesreen Hash'hash, an 8-year-old Palestinian girl who was injured in the face by a rubber bullet in the Fawar refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Hebron, Tuesday, March 28, 2006. Nesreen was hit in the face by the rubber bullet fired by Israeli troops during a military operation in the camp, Palestinian officials said. The girl was on the roof of her home when she was hit.

Nuke

Fluoride Propaganda: Is Our Health Being Sacrificed for the Sake of Nuclear Weapons?

atomic explosion
© n/a
Misinformation By Nuclear Weapons Producers

Above-ground nuclear tests - which caused numerous cancers to the "downwinders" - were covered up by the American, French and other governments for decades. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

Moreover, the entire idea of safe nuclear energy has arguably been a cover for nuclear weapons production ... at the expense of our health and the environment.

Believe it or not, the push to fluoridate water might have been the same thing.

Government Scientists Now Question Safety

Even government scientists now say that fluoride can cause serious health problems.

As the president of Environmental Working Group - a highly-respected environmental group which has been quoted some 1,400 times by the New York Times - notes:
For decades, people who raised concerns about fluoride being added to tap water or food were dismissed as crazy. All of a sudden we have two federal regulatory actions, announced just days apart, that tell us what was really crazy all those years: a government bureaucracy that ignored strong scientific evidence and clear warning signs of the threats fluoride has posed to public health all along.

Dollar

Oligarchy in the U.S.A.

Cover of Harper's Weekly December 13, 1913
© James Montgomery FlaggCover of Harper's Weekly December 13, 1913
In 2005, Citigroup offered its high net-worth clients in the United States a concise statement of the threats they and their money faced.

The report told them they were the leaders of a "plutonomy," an economy driven by the spending of its ultra-rich citizens. "At the heart of plutonomy is income inequality," which is made possible by "capitalist-friendly governments and tax regimes."

The danger, according to Citigroup's analysts, is that "personal taxation rates could rise - dividends, capital gains, and inheritance taxes would hurt the plutonomy."

But the ultra-rich already knew that. In fact, even as America's income distribution has skewed to favor the upper classes, the very richest have successfully managed to reduce their overall tax burden. Look no further than Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, who in 2010 paid 13.9 percent of his $21.6 million income in taxes that year, the same tax rate as an individual who earned a mere $8,500 to $34,500.

How is that possible? How can a country make so much progress toward equality on other fronts - race, gender, sexual orientation and disability - but run the opposite way in its policy on taxing the rich?

Mr. Potato

Sarkozy Admits Lying About Visiting Fukushima

Sarkozy
© APMr Sarkozy admitted he had not visited Fukushima, adding there had been an exclusion zone around it
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy has conceded he did not visit Fukushima on a visit to Japan after last year's tsunami, despite saying he had.

Election rival Francois Hollande had queried Mr Sarkozy's claim that he had been to the stricken nuclear plant.

Mr Sarkozy admitted on Friday that he had not. "I'm not an engineer, I don't need to stick my nose in the situation at Fukushima," he said on I-tele.

Nuke

Enriched Uranium secrets and Fukushima Radiation

Professor Chris Busby talks about the enriched uranium weapons used in Iraq, and the radiation dangers in Fukushima.


Whistle

Best of the Web: Millions Against Monsanto: The Food Fight of Our Lives

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© Shutterstock/Zvonimir Atletic
Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry's contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We're fighting back.
"If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."
- Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994
"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job."
- Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1998

X

Egypt MPs Bar Mubarak-Era Officials from Standing for Office

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© Agence France-Presse/Amro MaraghiA supporter of former Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman
Cairo - Egypt's parliament on Thursday approved a law that would ban members of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's regime from standing for public office, in the latest twist to Egypt's political roller coaster.

The law, which still has to be approved by the ruling military council, could see former officials including ex-intelligence chief Omar Suleiman disqualified from standing in a presidential election scheduled for next month.

The amendment to the political activity law "bars any president, vice president, prime minister or leader or (senior member) of the now-dissolved National Democratic Party from exercising political rights for 10 years," the MPs said in a parliamentary session aired live on television.

The law still needs to be ratified by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) which took power after Mubarak was ousted on February 11 last year.

The text applies to Mubarak-era officials who served in the decade prior to the date of his ouster, which would also disqualify Ahmed Shafiq -- the last premier to serve under the longtime strongman.

The contest has pitted the country's powerful and organised Islamist forces against Mubarak-era officials, with only a handful of the 23 candidates representing the secular political forces that were at the frontline of last year's revolt.

Immediately after the uprising, anyone associated with Mubarak kept a low profile for fear of reprisals, but after a year of political upheaval and insecurity some no longer shy away from voicing support for ex-regime members.