Puppet Masters
Abby Interviews outspoken journalist, and US Congressional Candidate, David Seaman, about the slow erosion of civil liberties in America.
Public opinion polls show that public trust in government and the media is at an all time low. Their record of lying to the Western public is difficult to conceal, even with the biggest propaganda machine in history at their disposal. The growth and influence of the global alternative media has broken the magic spell over the public. The "mainstream media" is no longer mainstream. The old fringe is the new mainstream.
Conspiracy theorists have been proven right about so many issues and historical events, with 9/11 being the most important among them. The views of conspiracy theorists are more popular than ever because they are telling the truth.
© Getty
Game: A Luftwaffe boss reveals shooting children was a sport.
Game: A Luftwaffe boss reveals shooting children was a sport.
But now a disturbing - and at times horrifyingly graphic - new book has laid to rest the myth that only the likes of the SS and Gestapo were responsible for war crimes and acts of rape, murder and genocide.
And the German people have been forced into reassessing their past.
Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs, which is published in English for the first time next week, contains shocking transcripts of ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen condemning themselves from their own mouths.
We are printing some of them here to highlight how widespread the bloodlust was among German troops.
British intelligence hid microphones among POWs at Trent Park detention centre in North London, captured every boast, offhand remark and sick joke about the killing of children and new mothers, women being raped and the mass extermination of Jews.
The transcripts from tape recordings of 13,000 inmates over four years, form the most unique and bleak look inside the mind of war-time German forces ever published. Before the book by historians Soenke Neitzel and Harald Welzer came out in Germany, people there assumed that their fathers and grandfathers did not have blood on their hands.
A few years ago, nobody in Asia gave much thought to the Senkaku islands. They form a cluster of eight pimples in the East China Sea, mid-way between Taiwan and Japanese Okinawa, devoid of people, culture and - by all accounts - beauty. Yet suddenly, they have become the focus of a dispute between China and Japan which is growing so bitter that doomsters fear Beijing might even go to war over them.
The dispute is one of a dozen involving islands off the Asian mainland - some claimed by Vietnam, others by South Korea, others again by the Philippines - in which China is wielding a big stick. In some cases, it covets fish stocks around the rocks, in others there is oil under the sea; elsewhere, Beijing merely wants to extend its territorial waters. What alarms the United States, as well as the regional powers, is the ferocity with which China is pursuing its claims.
The row about the Senkakus escalated when the Tokyo government recently purchased them from their owner, a Japanese businessman. In the past week, the ownership of the islands has provoked demonstrations in a dozen Chinese cities, outbreaks of violence and vandalism against Japanese targets which have prompted some of its industrial giants - Nissan, Honda, Canon, Panasonic - to shut down their plants in that country.
The row about the Senkakus escalated when the Tokyo government recently purchased them from their owner, a Japanese businessman. In the past week, the ownership of the islands has provoked demonstrations in a dozen Chinese cities, outbreaks of violence and vandalism against Japanese targets which have prompted some of its industrial giants - Nissan, Honda, Canon, Panasonic - to shut down their plants in that country.
National security officials told NBC News that the continuing cyber attacks this week that slowed the websites of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are being carried out by the government of Iran. One of those sources said the claim by hackers that the attacks were prompted by the online video mocking the Prophet Muhammad is just a cover story.
A group of purported hackers in the Middle East has claimed credit for problems at the websites of both banks, citing the online video mocking the founder of Islam. One security source called that statement "a cover" for the Iranian government's operations.
The attack is described by one source, a former U.S. official familiar with the attacks, as being "significant and ongoing" and looking to cause "functional and significant damage." Also, one source suggested the attacks were in response to U.S. sanctions on Iranian banks.
A group of purported hackers in the Middle East has claimed credit for problems at the websites of both banks, citing the online video mocking the founder of Islam. One security source called that statement "a cover" for the Iranian government's operations.
The attack is described by one source, a former U.S. official familiar with the attacks, as being "significant and ongoing" and looking to cause "functional and significant damage." Also, one source suggested the attacks were in response to U.S. sanctions on Iranian banks.
An analyst says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the Palestinians disappear from the international stage with the "will he, won't he" drama of threatening to bomb Iran.
In an article on The Guardian website, Chris McGreal said Netanyahu's bid to draw "Washington's energies into trying to prevent him from attacking Iran before the US election" has all but eliminated any talk of the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and Palestine's move for statehood or recognition at the UN.
"When the Israeli prime minister was last in Washington, there was barely a mention of the Palestinians after his meeting with [US President Barack] Obama. And barely a word was breathed about the Palestinians at this year's meeting of the most influential of the pro-Israel lobby groups in Washington, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The focus was firmly on Iran."
McGreal said Netanyahu's recent appearance on Meet the Press this weekend was "telling" in that "there wasn't a single mention of the Palestinians during the 15-minute interview."
"[Interviewer David] Gregory didn't ask about them, and Netanyahu didn't talk about them. Thus the fate of several million people living under varying degrees of an occupation that continues to plunder land, maintain discriminatory laws and administrative procedures - such as rationing water to Arab villages while their neighbors in the Jewish settlements have unlimited supplies - remains in limbo."
"When the Israeli prime minister was last in Washington, there was barely a mention of the Palestinians after his meeting with [US President Barack] Obama. And barely a word was breathed about the Palestinians at this year's meeting of the most influential of the pro-Israel lobby groups in Washington, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The focus was firmly on Iran."
McGreal said Netanyahu's recent appearance on Meet the Press this weekend was "telling" in that "there wasn't a single mention of the Palestinians during the 15-minute interview."
"[Interviewer David] Gregory didn't ask about them, and Netanyahu didn't talk about them. Thus the fate of several million people living under varying degrees of an occupation that continues to plunder land, maintain discriminatory laws and administrative procedures - such as rationing water to Arab villages while their neighbors in the Jewish settlements have unlimited supplies - remains in limbo."
Georgia's Interior Minister Bacho Akhalaia
"I feel moral and political responsibility that we failed to eradicate the horrible practice (of torture)," Bacho Akhalaia said in a statement on Thursday.
"This is why I have submitted my resignation to the president," he added.
Before taking office as interior minister, Akhalaia was the official overseeing the country's prisons.
Several video recordings emerged on September 18, showing graphic images of prison guards at a jail in the capital Tbilisi brutally beating prisoners. In one video, a prison guard is seen sexually assaulting an inmate.
On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to court over Pentagon's controversial drone policy after the US government refused to release documents related to the drone attacks, also known as the "targeted killing" program.
Judge Merrick Garland told government lawyer Stuart Delery, "If the CIA is the emperor, aren't you asking us to say that the emperor has clothes even when the emperor's bosses say it doesn't?"
The ACLU has tried to file Freedom of Information Act requests to get information on the CIA's drone program.
However, the US spy agency has refused to respond to the requests, saying that it cannot confirm the existence of the program.
The assassination drone program is cloaked in secrecy, even as officials up to President Obama admit it exists.
Comment: For more information about the use of drones please read:
Celebrating our "Warrior President"
Obama's Death Panels: Jeremy Scahill at the Drone Summit
Spy in the Sky: Is It Only a Matter of Time Before Drone Technology is Used in Civil Society?
Police State: "Robots R'US": Military-Style Drones on 63 Military Bases In The USA
This ad set to appear in New York subway stations next week
As early as next Monday, ten NYC subway stations will showcase adverts declaring, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." The campaign was created by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an organization considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center watch group.
Pamela Geller, the executive director of the AFDI, stands by her signage despite rampant complaints circulating before the campaign has even begun.
"I will not abridge my freedoms so as not to offend savages," Geller tells Sky News.
Comment: Comment: 70 years later, roles have been swapped, but nothing has changed...
Anti-Jew poster from Nazi Germany
Anti-Jew poster from Nazi Germany
© Agence France-Presse/Getty Images/Khaled Desouki
Egyptian protesters burn a US flag during a demonstration against a film deemed offensive to Islam outside the US embassy in Cairo
Egyptian protesters burn a US flag during a demonstration against a film deemed offensive to Islam outside the US embassy in Cairo
Pakistan
A crowd of more than 2,000 people, including students affiliated with the Islamist hardline Jamaat-e-Islami party, tried to make their way to the U.S. Embassy inside a guarded enclave that houses embassies and government offices in the capital Islamabad. Riot police used tear gas and batons to keep stone-throwing demonstrators away from the enclave, and hundreds of shipping containers were lined up to cordon off the area.
Demonstrators also rallied in the Pakistani cities of Lahore, Chaman, Karachi and Peshawar, although those demonstrations were peaceful.
The protests have been fairly small by Pakistani standards, but are expected to grow Friday, the traditional Muslim day of prayer.
The Pakistani government has called a national holiday for Friday so that people could come out and demonstrate peacefully against the film.
Comment: While we applaud the hard work done by the alternative media in trying to sift through the lies of the government and main stream press, some people are more likely disinfo agents. They may by unwitting puppets of the PTB, discrediting the work of the real alternative press, and very often it is difficult work determining who is trustworthy.
The Royal Family are bloodsucking alien lizards
Alex Jones: The Pied Piper of Extremism Who Brands "Truth-Seeking" as Mental Illness
How to Spot COINTELPRO Agents
Case Study on COINTELPRO and Ponerization: Report from an 'Alternative Convention'