Puppet MastersS


Smoking

Nanny State: US to regulate e-cigarettes (and other tobacco products)

E cigarettes
© Thinkstock
US regulators have proposed new restrictions on the soaring $US2 billion ($NZ2.33billion) market in e-cigarettes, which until now have been free from federal oversight.

The changes would also apply to other, previously unregulated tobacco products, including cigars, hookahs, nicotine gels, and pipe tobacco.

"This proposed rule is the latest step in our efforts to make the next generation tobacco-free," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a press release announcing the reform.

The proposal by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would require sellers to enforce a minimum age restriction on those who wish to buy the products, including requiring identification.

Companies would be barred from handing out free samples, and would be required to include health warning labels.

Oscar

G7 agrees Russian sanctions over Ukraine

Asshole
© GettyBarack Obama
The Group of Seven rich countries have agreed to start slapping fresh sanctions on Moscow as early as Monday over the worsening Ukraine crisis amid Western fears of an imminent Russian invasion.

International tensions were mounting Saturday over the situation in the ex-Soviet republic, where sporadic fighting between pro-Kremlin rebels and Ukrainian security forces flared this week.

Russian warplanes violated Ukraine's airspace several times on Thursday and Friday, the Pentagon said.

Russia has also begun new drills on the border, where it has tens of thousands of troops massed.

Vader

China's president warns against growing threats to national security

Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Saturday that China faces increasing threats to national security and warned of the dangers of terrorism in a speech indicating that Beijing could impose tougher controls on its ethnic minorities.

Xi told a study session of the party's decision-making Politburo "to resolutely stamp out the brazenness of the terrorists," the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

Pistol

Lavrov accuses US of seeking to 'smear Russia'

SMoker
© AFP Photo/Kirill KudryavtsevAn armed men in military fatigues smokes outside a regional administration building seized by pro-Russia separati
Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday accused the United States of seeking to smear Moscow and called US Secretary of State John Kerry's tone over the Ukraine crisis unacceptable.

Lavrov warned "the might of US propaganda" was aimed "at smearing Russia, smearing those who protest against the illegal actions of the (Kiev) authorities who are trying to ban Russian and trying to call all Russians and Russian speakers enemies who should be killed."

Bomb

Russia responds to threat of more sanctions by violating Ukraine's airspace

Pope and Ukraine
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk with Pope Francis yesterday.
What did Russia do after being threatened with more sanctions by the United States, the European Union, and the leaders of the G7 on Friday? It repeatedlyviolated Ukraine's airspace with fighter jets, of course.

According to the Pentagon, Russian military aircraft entered Ukrainian airspace several times overnight. And for the umpteenth time, Russia was called upon to "de-escalate the situation."

The sanctions, expected to be unrolled next week, are a part of a bid to goad Moscow to stop interfering with Ukraine's efforts to stabilize the eastern part of its country, where battles with pro-Russian separatists are taking places in a number of cities and towns. Just yesterday, Ukrainian Prime MinisterArseniy Yatsenyuk accused Russia of wanting to start World War III. And, as the crisis intensifies, the United States and Russia are reportedly no longer on speaking terms.

Bomb

Russia's Gazprom issues May 7 ultimatum over gas supplies

Gazprom
© ReutersAbout 30 per cent of European gas comes from Russia and roughly half of it passes through the Ukraine under transit agreements.
Russian state-controlled energy giant Gazprom has ratcheted up the pressure on Ukraine, issuing a May 7 ultimatum to settle $3.5bn unpaid debts or start paying in advance for its gas.

Alexander Medvedev, deputy chief executive, warned that Europe must help Ukraine pay the bill - and a further $5bn needed to refill storage facilities this summer - or face "severe problems" with gas supplies this winter.

Attention

Oligarchs, billionaires, uber wealthy are killing capitalism-- They are dangerous

Capitalism
© Pedro Fanega
Capitalism has many faces. That's the message of Thomas Piketty, whose book, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, is making right wingers crazy, and clearing the inventory shelves of Amazon. The big message people are taking from his book is that capitalism as it now exists will produce income inequality.

Piketty has put a scientific face on what we've pretty much known already.

The detour capitalism has take that has led to the development of ultra-wealthy individuals could be a dead end-- a dangerous detour that could disrupt capitalism as the world has known it.

This may be a message we, the ninety-nine percent can use against the billionaires, ultra-wealthy and the transnational corporations mutating capitalism to something that threatens the planet.

Reading Naomi Klein's book Disaster Capitalism opened my eyes to the idea that there are different kinds of capitalism, and that some of them can be malignantly evil and toxic.

Star of David

In Israeli politics, the word "peace" has become poison

Image
© Tamar Fleishman/PC'Judea and Samaria' means that the territory belongs to Israel.
Imagine a war breaking out between Israel and Jordan. Within two or three days the Israeli army occupies the entire territory of the Hashemite Kingdom. What will be the first act of the occupation authority?

Establish a settlement in Petra? Expropriate land near Aqaba?

No. The very first thing will be to decree that the territory will henceforth be known as "Gilead and Moab".

All the media will be ordered to use the biblical name. All government and court documents will adopt it. Except for the radical Left, nobody will mention Jordan anymore. All applications by the inhabitants will be addressed to the Military Government of Gilead and Moab.

Why? Because annexation starts with words.

Words convey ideas. Words implant concepts in the minds of their hearers and speakers. Once they are firmly established, everything else follows.

War Whore

Flashback Distortions, exaggerations and outright lies about the invasion and occupation of Iraq

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10 myths about the invasion and occupation of Iraq

In perhaps the biggest propaganda campaign since the Second World War, the British political and military elite has attempted to serve up a series of distortions, exaggerations and outright lies to the British public in an attempt to gain support for the unpopular invasion of Iraq and the ongoing occupation. There are two types of myth concerning Iraq. Those, such as Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (sic), that have been completely discredited, and other, more insidious myths, often believed and repeated even by those who are against the war. These, through constant repetition, have acquired the status of common sense 'truth'.

Ignoring Eduardo Galeano's truism that "the words uttered by power are not meant to express its actions, but to disguise them"; large sections of the media have echoed and channeled government propaganda. The writer George Monbiot notes, "The falsehoods reproduced by the media before the invasion of Iraq were massive and consequential: it is hard to see how Britain could have gone to war if the press had done its job."

It is high time we put the record straight.

Chess

Lavrov: Kerry's 'prosecutorial' RT assault unacceptable

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© Reuters/Maxim ShemetovForeign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov
Russia's Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has lashed out at US Secretary of State John Kerry over his 'prosecutorial' remarks about RT.

"The US is trying to pervert everything that is going on in Ukraine. They accuse us of turning on - what was called by John Kerry in a prosecutorial tone - accuse us of switching on what they called the 'Putin propaganda machine' called RT," said Lavrov during the press conference.

"Well, It's not civilized to call the media like that," he said, adding that he can "understand John Kerry because RT now presents serious competition for CNN and BBC and other media outlets, which some time ago were confident that they had an absolute monopoly and no competition could threaten them."

However, RT news channel has gathered a large audience among US and European viewers, let alone in Latin America and the Arab World, Lavrov said.