Puppet MastersS


Laptop

Two fingers to the NSA! New Russian law requires Internet companies to store data inside country

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© RIA Novosti/Alexey Kudenko

All internet companies collecting personal information from Russian citizens are obliged to store that data inside the country, according to a new law. Its supporters cite security reasons, while opponents see it as an infringement of freedoms.

The law, passed Friday by the State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, would come into force Sept. 1, 2016. The authors of the legislation believe that it gives both foreign and domestic internet companies enough time to create data-storage facilities in Russia.

The bill was proposed after some Russian MPs deemed it unwise that the bulk of Russians' online personal data is held on foreign servers, mostly in the US.

"In this way foreign states possess full information, correspondence, photographs of not only our individuals, but companies as well," one of the authors of the bill, Vadim Dengin of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) told Itar-Tass. "All of the [internet] companies, including the foreign ones, you are welcome to store that information, but please create data centers in Russia so that it can be controlled by Roscomnadzor (the Federal Communications Supervisory Service) and there would be a guarantee from the state that [the data] isn't going anywhere."

Cowboy Hat

Green activist likes the dictatorship: Says Obama should use edict to ban sales of coal and oil

imperial president
© Dianny
From an interview with Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a man of whom Bill Clinton said "We should all heed his advice":
You've talked before about the civilizational challenge that climate change poses, how confident are you that the human race is up to meeting that challenge?

We don't know and there is no guarantee that we will. But we do know that change can come very quickly. Look how quickly the US restructured its whole economy in 1942. At beginning of 1942, the automobile companies were producing automobiles. By the middle of 1942 they were all producing tanks and planes. It didn't take decades or years, just a few months and they totally converted. If they could do that then, certainly we can restructure the world energy economy today. What Roosevelt did was ban the sale of cars. He didn't say they couldn't produce cars. He just banned the sale of cars.

Would you like to see President Obama do that?

I'd like to see him ban the sale of coal and oil.
Dear heavens, the Imperial President should "ban the sale of coal and oil"? Oh, yeah, that's the ticket. Some 40% of US electricity, lots of our industrial energy, and ~ 100% of our transportation fuel comes from coal and oil, so I'm sure that other than the small matter of impoverishment, suffering, death, and economic ruin, banning them wouldn't cause any disruption at all ... while I want to ask "is this Imperious Idiot for real?", the sad truth is that Lester Brown is totally serious.

Comment: It appears that Lester Brown is an authoritarian follower who is quite happy with the imperious edicts of this administration. Authoritarians are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority, and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. Unfortunately, Obama needs little incentive to continue the course of his imperial presidency:

Obama's "Become The Very Danger The Constitution Was Designed To Avoid"
Coup d'etat: Americans oppressed by an unconstitutional, illegitimate, psychopathic regime
Bush 2.0: 100 Ways Barack Obama Is Just Like George W. Bush


Star of David

It needs to be said over and over again: Israel does not want peace

Israel does not want peace.

Rejectionism is embedded in Israel's most primal beliefs. There, at the deepest level, lies the concept that this land is destined for the Jews alone.
Israeli settlement
© BloombergHousing sits on the development at Ma'aleh Adumim, an Israeli settlement on the West Bank, Dec.16, 2009
Israel does not want peace. There is nothing I have ever written that I would be happier to be proved wrong about. But the evidence is piling up. In fact, it can be said that Israel has never wanted peace - a just peace, that is, one based on a just compromise for both sides. It's true that the routine greeting in Hebrew is Shalom (peace) - shalom when one leaves and shalom when one arrives. And, at the drop of a hat, almost every Israeli will say he wants peace, of course he does. But he's not referring to the kind of peace that will bring about the justice without which there is no peace and there will be no peace. Israelis want peace, not justice, certainly not anything based on universal values. Thus, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace." Not only is there no peace: In recent years, Israel has moved away from even the aspiration to make peace. It has despaired utterly of it. Peace has disappeared from the Israeli agenda, its place taken by the collective anxieties that are systematically implanted, and by personal, private matters that now take precedence over all else.

Bomb

Destruction of America from within: The Cloward-Piven Strategy

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In the mid-sixties at the height of the "social revolution" the line between democratic benevolence and outright communism became rather blurry. The Democratic Party, which controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, was used as the springboard by social engineers to introduce a new era of welfare initiatives enacted in the name of "defending the poor", also known as the "Great Society Programs". These initiatives, however, were driven by far more subversive and extreme motivations, and have been expanded on by every presidency since, Republican and Democrat alike.

At Columbia University, sociologist professors Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven introduced a political strategy in 1966 in an article entitled 'The Weight Of The Poor: A Strategy To End Poverty'. This article outlined a plan that they believed would eventually lead to the total transmutation of America into a full-fledged centralized welfare state (in other words, a collectivist enclave). The spearpoint of the Cloward-Piven strategy involved nothing less than economic sabotage against the U.S.

Comment: Regardless of the motivations of Cloward-Piven, the internal and external behavior of the US is clearly a determined and intentional path of destruction directed by a psychopathic Elite. Prepare accordingly.


Bomb

Buildings in ruins in Palestine after Israel's airstrikes


Israel is reinforcing its border with the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants and the Israel Air Force traded strikes overnight, leaving at least 15 people injured and two residential buildings in ruins.

Rockets that struck the two buildings in the southern Israeli town of Sderot caused no casualties, but caused extensive damage.

"We heard an explosion, and then a really strong explosion," a woman, who hid in a reinforced room with her three children, was cited as saying by Haaretz daily.

Another building was used as a nursery for infants, The Jerusalem Post reported police as saying.

The airstrikes knocked out electricity supplies in part of the town.

Bomb

Propaganda alert: Meet the Saudi chemist sparking fears of 'invisible' bombs on transatlantic flights

Ibrahim

Experts believe al-Qaida bomb-maker could be working with ISIS - and that jihadists with western passports might target planes


Concern about the prowess of al-Qaida's bomb-maker in chief - and his willingness to work with Isis insurgents in Syria and Iraq - underlies the decision to increase security at British and other European airports.

Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, a Saudi chemist who became a bomb-maker, has for years been high on America's most-wanted list, because he is believed to be behind many audacious attempts to bring down transatlantic flights, using his skills as a chemist to devise increasingly imaginative ways to conceal explosives, with the best known being the "underwear" bomber.

The new element that led to the present scare is intelligence linking Asiri for the first time to two groups in Syria and Iraq, the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis).

The worry is that Asiri's skilfully disguised bombs might be carried on to transatlantic airlines by passport-holders from the US or Europe.

Asiri has survived several assassination attempts in Yemen, the latest a drone attack in April. He has been reported killed, only to resurface.

Comment: This is yet another scare tactic emanating from the psychopathic elite, the purpose of this being to beat and intimidate the populace into submission, to accept more and more heavy handed invasion of privacy, and to clamp down on international travel. The sheeple need to remain in the paddock ...

It's interesting to note the comparison to the "underwear bomber", with it's clear links to intelligence circles. For more information read:

The Underwear Bomber - Crushing Freedom With Phony Arab Terrorism


Gold Coins

Russia flexing its financial muscle with generous loans to poorer EU countries

sberbank russian bank
Sberbank, Russia's largest state-controlled lender
By using Sberbank as a source of loans in eastern Europe, the Kremlin is quietly exerting its influence again.

A quarter century ago, when communist regimes in central and eastern Europe tumbled one after another, the economically devastated Soviet Union could do nothing but watch. The USSR fell apart, and the eastern Europeans rushed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Russia never gave up on its former sphere of influence. Now, instead of sending troops, it is building a web of economic ties with its old satellites.

Whether it's bankrolling a Hungarian nuclear power plant or the construction of the South Stream pipeline in Bulgaria, Russian money is buying leverage in eastern Europe. Much of the region finds it increasingly counterproductive to act against Russia's interests, even as the nation tangles with Ukraine. Hungarian, Slovak, and Czech politicians have openly opposed stricter EU sanctions against Russia, arguing their economies would bear a higher burden than their neighbors to the west.

"The Russians are playing a classic game of divide and conquer with the EU," says Otilia Dhand, an analyst with political risk adviser Teneo Intelligence. "They're making sure that the national interests of individual members have bigger weight in their decision-making than the common EU interest."

One of Russia's main weapons is Sberbank, its largest state-controlled lender. In the past few years, with almost €12 billion ($16 billion) in assets, Sberbank Europe has built a strong presence in central Europe and the Balkans. Besides expanding its branch network, it's providing hefty loans to companies in former communist Europe. In April the bank agreed to lend $820 million to Agrokor, a Croatian company, for the acquisition of Slovenia's Mercator, a deal that will create the top food retailer in the Balkans.

Russia's main focus is energy. Early this year it agreed with Hungary to build two nuclear reactors. To fund the project, the Kremlin offered the Hungarians as much as €10 billion in a 30-year loan at below-market rates - conditions no western European commercial bank could match.

Comment: One might wonder who is the 'hard-headed capitalist' here: western imperialists who would spend their own countries into oblivion to hold onto an illusionary hegemony, or the nation that recognizes that prosperity for one country depends on the prosperity of all.


Dollars

Oil and gas industry buys Colorado fracking election

anti-fracking fight continues in Colorado
© Circle of BlueThe anti-fracking fight continues in Colorado where 53,000 active wells are splattered across the landscape and about 3,000 new wells are drilled every year, many of those in suburban neighborhoods like Loveland.
In what may have been the most expensive and farce of an election in the history of Colorado, the oil and gas industry has likely spent $1 million to buy a fracking election in the city of Loveland, CO. When the votes were tallied last night for a two-year fracking moratorium in Loveland, "no" votes squeaked out a victory by a 10,844 to 9,942 margin, getting just 52 percent of the vote.

The industry has so-far reported spending more than $375,000 on those 10,844 votes, but massive unreported spending that exploited a loophole in the Colorado campaign finance law ruled the election. As long as the industry's ads didn't say "vote for" or "vote against," they didn't have to report their spending. That resulted in a deluge of an aerial attack of TV ads, radio ads, newspaper ads and inserts, and mailers that inundated voters in Loveland. Residents reported getting one and sometimes two mailers a day over the last three weeks, many including bucolic photos of pristine Colorado landscapes while hailing positive aspects of fracking.

Anti-fracking activists from a local group Protect Our Loveland spent about $7,500 trying to pass the moratorium. In the end, Protect Our Loveland was likely outspent by a 100 - 1 margin by the most profitable industry on the planet.

At the same time that the industry bought the election, it also fought fiercely to manipulate the election date and process. Anti-fracking activists in Loveland gathered the signatures and tried to place the vote on the ballot in November of 2013 at the same time that anti-fracking elections swept neighboring cities of Fort Collins, Boulder, Lafayette and Broomfield in Colorado's "Frack Zone." But, the oil and gas industry sued in court to get the election postponed and bullied the Loveland City Council into delaying the vote. A couple months later, a judge ruled against the industry and the city and forced the election to occur. An industry-friendly city council then cherry-picked a date - June 24 - for the election that coincided with the hotly contested Republican Governor's race in Colorado, thus ensuring a large turnout of very conservative voters.

Chart Pie

Why is the world wooing India? It's defense deals, stupid!

PSLV-C23
© Reuters/BabuIndia's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C23), carrying five satellites, lifts off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, north of the southern Indian city of Chennai June 30, 2014.
On the day India launched a French earth observation satellite and four smaller satellites from Germany, Canada and Singapore, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was in New Delhi for talks.

The wheel has come full circle in just about four decades since India and France started their space exploration cooperation. Then, Indian satellites were being launched using French launch vehicles. Now it is the other way round and India is charging $20,000 per kilo for each satellite launched.

Unsurprisingly, the foreign minister of Singapore, another country whose satellite was launched by India, landed up in New Delhi a day after Fabius' June 30 visit. Shanmugam, who also doubles up as Singapore's law minister, met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on July 1 and discussed a wide array of bilateral, regional and international issues like Fabius had done with Swaraj the day before.

The next day after the Singaporean foreign minister's talks with Sushma Swaraj, it was the turn of American Senator John McCain, a former Presidential candidate, to sit with the Indian foreign minister. Later this month, US Secretary of State John Kerry too is visiting New Delhi.

Quenelle

What to do if an FBI agent knocks your door?

An Austin Texas woman, who is a peaceful antiwar activist was visited by the FBI.

They wanted to know if she "had any plans to destroy property."

She handled the situation like a professional, flexing her rights.


Comment: Note how many times Agents flip flopped their words. Can you believe them?