Puppet MastersS


Eye 2

Another Operation Carwash witness confesses he 'built a story' to incriminate Brazil's Lula

Former Odebrecht  operation carwash Brazil Lula
© Brasil de FatoFormer Odebrecht executive Carlos Armando Paschoal during testimony to the Public Prosecutor's Office in November 2018.
Former Odebrecht Superintendent, Carlos Armando Paschoal, and one of the plaintiffs in the trial against former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva admitted that he was "almost coerced" by Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) prosecutors to "build a story" that would incriminate Lula, according to a report published Tuesday by Brasil de Fato.

"In the case of the Atibaia site (the property attributed to former President Lula that was remodeled by Odebrecht allegedly in payment of a bribe), which I had absolutely nothing to do, for example, I was almost coerced to create an account of what happened," Paschoal testified in another trial on July 6.

According to his account, he was forced to say something like "look, this happened, this, this and that...I had to build a story," in exchange of reduced sentence of two years in open prison regime.

Comment:


Newspaper

Three people killed, incl Turkish Deputy Consul-General, in Iraqi-Kurdistan shooting

Erbil
© REUTERS/Azad LashkariFILE PHOTO A general view of a market in Erbil, Iraq
Three people, including the Turkish deputy consul, have been killed in a shooting at a restaurant in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, according to local media. Police confirmed the death of the Turkish diplomat.

The shooting was reported shortly after 2pm local time, and took place at a restaurant in an upmarket area of Iraqi Kurdistan's capital city. While local media reported that all three victims were officials with the Consulate General, Turkey's Foreign Ministry only confirmed the death of one diplomat.

Kurdish authorities sealed off roads around the scene and searched nearby cars and businesses. The gunmen have not yet been found.

Eye 1

Hack of Department of Homeland Security contractor exposes government surveillance of drivers on US roads and border crossings

PERCEPTICS PRESENTATION on survellience
© MOTHERBOARDA SCREENSHOT OF A PERCEPTICS PRESENTATION MADE FOR CBP. FACES BLURRED BY MOTHERBOARD.
On July 2 the Washington Post reported that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) suspended the license of a long-standing contractor of surveillance technology on the grounds that the firm exhibited "evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity."

CBP made the suspension more than a month after an anonymous hack of internal corporate data of Perceptics, a 35-year-old company based in Farragut, Tennessee. Perceptics is a supplier of license plate readers, facial recognition and artificial intelligence technologies to CBP and other government agencies at US border crossings, military facilities, electronic toll collection terminals and highway and city security systems.

The hack and subsequent publication of the data trove — including Department of Homeland Security handbooks, company PowerPoint presentations, equipment schematics, confidential agreements, technology lists, budget spreadsheets, internal photos and hardware blueprints of security systems — by a group of transparency advocates has exposed to the public the extensive infrastructure of government surveillance of drivers on roadways and at border crossings.

Comment: See also:


Newspaper

Facebook Board member Peter Thiel says FBI, CIA should probe Google

Peter Thiel
© Alex Wong/Getty ImagesPeter Thiel speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Peter Thiel, billionaire investor and Facebook board member, on Sunday night said that Google should be federally investigated for allegedly aiding the Chinese military.

Why it matters: Thiel is the tech industry's highest-profile Trump supporter, and one of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley.

Thiel spoke at the National Conservatism Conference, a new event that bills itself as being focused on Trump-era nationalism, with part of his speech focusing on "three questions that should be asked" of Google:

Comment:




Eye 2

On MH17 prosecution firing their biggest salvo, subjunctive and conditional tenses and Ukraine's secret services tapes

Wilbert Paulissen
© Associated PressWilbert Paulissen of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) speaks on the preliminary results of the investigation into the shooting-down of Malaysia Airlines jetliner flight MH17 during a press conference in Nieuwegein, Netherlands, Sept. 28, 2016.
Dutch prosecutors have announced international arrest warrants and criminal charges against three Russians and a Ukrainian whom they accuse of being part of a chain of Russian military and political command leading to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

The four are accused of acting in the Ukrainian civil war "to gain ground at the expense of the Ukrainian State and its armed forces"; of cooperating together in actions "which ultimately led to the shooting down of the MH17... Although they did not press the button themselves, it is alleged they worked closely together to get the BUK TELAR [anti-aircraft missile] to the firing location with the aim of shooting down an aircraft. They are therefore suspected to be held jointly responsible for shooting down flight MH17."

Comment: The Dutch prosecution has made much of the Ukraine wiretaps, which were released within hours of the crash. Max vander Werff and Yana Verlashova of Bonanza Media had the files analyzed. Experts said the sound files showed evidence of extensive editing.




Star of David

'The Roots of Evil': Right-wing Israeli settler group Regavim accuses Palestinians of land theft in the heart of Israel

Palestinian and flag
© Majdi Mohammed/APPalestinians attempting to stop the planned demolition of the West Bank hamlet of Khan al-Ahmar scuffle with Israeli police, July 4, 2018.
Israeli settler groups are turning the Israel-Palestine narrative on its head, accusing Palestinians of trying to illegally steal land in the West Bank's Area C.

In a move designed to shock Israeli settlers in the West Bank into action, activists from the right-wing settler organization "Regavim" hung Palestinian flags along the main West Bank settler roads last week.

Regavim claims that there is a Palestinian take over of Area C and that the Israeli government is not doing enough to fight it. The organization's PR stunt, shown in the video below, was in their own words "an in-your-face challenge to the הכנסת (Knesset) to enforce the law and halt the de facto creation of a terrorist state in the heart of Israel."


Regavim also published, "a comprehensive, in-depth report" titled, "The Roots of Evil, Land Theft in Area C is Creating a De Facto Palestinian State." In the report, the group claims that it has exposed a "secretive program undertaken by the Palestinian Authority, with massive financial support provided by the European Union, European governments, and other foreign interests." The secret program, which Regavim has dubbed "The Roots Project," is allegedly a systematic program of land theft by Palestinians which targets areas placed under full Israeli jurisdiction by the Oslo Accords and international law. The report alleges that the PA is taking advantage of a legal loophole in order to effectively annex territory throughout Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) through seemingly-innocuous agricultural projects.

Moon

Beyond the pale! Attacks on Moon landing's 'whites and males' proves no achievement too big for libs to destroy

mission control
© NASASea of white: The mission control for Apollo 11
Attempts to diminish the triumph of Apollo 11 and to reassign credit don't just taint the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, but presage the technological decline of the US if it persists with identity politics.

With the Founding Fathers now rarely mentioned in the media without side notes about their slave ownership, and the Betsy Ross flag is offensive to Colin Kaepernick and Nike, there is nothing new about liberal attempts to strike at the very heart of American identity.

But - leaving aside the conspiracy theorists - the moment Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969 was objectively such a universal milestone that to qualify it seems a fight against human endeavor itself.

Heroes retconned

It would seem like the more logical route, for those who resent that this was a feat of white un-woke America, would be to try and diminish their role in favour of supposedly unsung heroes.

Hidden Figures, the Oscar-winning film from 2016 was the perfect archetype of this revisionist history, exaggerating and fictionalizing the role of a cadre of politically suitable black women, who did an entirely replaceable job and were no more important than thousands of others involved.

This way everyone would get to celebrate their own role models, even though in time such worthy changes of focus can end up with grotesque urban myths, like Crick and Watson stealing the Nobel Prize from (the actually dead) Rosalind Franklin.

Jet2

It's official: Turkey kicked out of F-35 program, cost to US is half a billion dollars

F-35
© CNN.comF-35
The U.S. has removed Turkey from the F-35 joint strike fighter program, and Turkey will lose its production work on the jet by March 2020, following its acceptance of the S-400 Russian-made air defense system last Friday. However, a top Pentagon official would not close the door on Turkey rejoining the program in some form, should it reverse the decision to buy the S-400.

The White House issued a statement Wednesday confirming the move, which Washington had threatened for months.

"Turkey's decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible," the White House statement read. "The F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities."

"Turkey has been a longstanding and trusted partner and NATO Ally for over 65 years, but accepting the S-400 undermines the commitments all NATO Allies made to each other to move away from Russian systems," the statement continued.

Comment: Turkey had something to say about this development. From RT:
Turkey has blasted the US decision to kick it out of the F-35 fighter jet program, in response to Ankara buying Russian S-400 air defense systems, as a mistake that will cause permanent damage to the US-Turkish relations.

"This unilateral step is incompatible with the spirit of alliance and does not rely on any legitimate justification," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a strong-worded statement Wednesday, shortly after the White House officially banished Turkey from the fifth-generation stealth jet program.

"We call on the United States to come back from this mistake that will cause irreparable wounds in our strategic relations," it said. The ministry dismissed as "invalid" American claims that the delivery of the Russia-made air and missile defense complexes, which began last week, would compromise F-35 and NATO security.

All attempts by Ankara to reach out to Washington in hopes to resolve the issue amicably have fallen on deaf ears, with the US not showing any interest in setting up a working group within NATO, Turkey said. This lack of willingness to negotiate is "the most obvious indicator of the prejudice on the US side and the lack of will to resolve the issue in good faith."

While cutting Turkey off, the US said it could still be reinstated in the F-35 program - if it ditches the Russian missiles, something that the Turkish government has ruled out. Moreover, Ankara hinted it would want to go "much further" in its "joint weapons production" with Moscow.



Star of David

Was Iran to blame for a bombing raid at a Buenos Aires Jewish center 25 years ago killing 85?

car bomb attack
© Reuters/Enrique MarcarianWorkers search the rubble after a car bomb destroyed Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) centre in Buenos Aires.
The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo is visiting Argentina this week to mark the 25th anniversary of the bombing at the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) centre in Buenos Aires on 18 July 1994. The attack killed 85 members of Argentina's Jewish community, the sixth largest in the world.

Argentina's President Mauricio Macri has passed a decree designating Hezbollah as a terrorist group, 25 years after the Lebanese Shia organisation and its ally, Iran, were accused of the bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.

The decision to outlaw Hezbollah in Argentina - based on a request from the US and Israel - comes amid rising tensions between the US, the UK and Iran after a series of accusations and counter-accusations, which started with the US alleging Iran had bombed of oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in May, which Tehran vehemently denied.

The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo is heading to Argentina for meetings with President Macri and after the commemoration ceremony he will attend the Western Hemisphere ministerial anti-terrorism summit on 19 July.

Comment: See also:


Bullseye

Canadian liberals use 'human rights' to justify undemocratic coup in Venezuela

Chrystia Freeland
© APForeign Minister Chrystia Freeland announcing closure of Canadian embassy in Caracas.
The modern way to overthrow a government the capitalist world doesn't like is by claiming to do it in the name of supporting 'human rights'. This requires that the target be portrayed as a rights violator.

As part of their effort to overthrow Nicolas Maduro's government, Ottawa has funded and promoted a slew of groups and individuals critical of human rights in Venezuela. And a recent report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) gave a boost to Canada's faltering coup bid in that South American country. Overseen by former social democratic Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, the report paints Venezuelan security forces as extremely violent and the government as politically repressive.

While the Hugo Chavez/Maduro government's failure to address insecurity/police violence in the country is condemnable, some context is required. Neighbours Colombia and Brazil also have significant problems with police and other forms of violence. As do countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, Jamaica, Honduras, etc.

Instead of offering a roadmap for remedying the scourge of violence and divisions in the country, the one-sided OHCHR report offers a public relations triumph to those pursuing regime change, which would likely plunge the country into greater violence. As former OHCHR Independent Expert Alfred de Zayas pointed out, Bachelet "should have clearly condemned the violence by extreme right opposition leaders and the calls for foreign intervention in Venezuela." The human rights law expert, who produced a report on Venezuela last year, added that the "report should also have focussed on the criminality of the repeated attempts at a coup d'etat [because] there is nothing more undemocratic than a coup."

Comment: From Ricochet, 25/2/2019
Yves Engler, political commentator and author of Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada writes: Ottawa has sent millions of dollars to opposition NGOs such as Súmate, inviting its leader, Maria Corina Machado, to Canada, shortly after a failed August 2004 referendum to oust the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor.

From Alfred de Zayas, former independent UN expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order: "This is a matter of the International Criminal Court, because this sort of behaviour is not only a violation of fundamental principles of international law, it entails violations of the UN Charter, OAS Charter (chapter 4, article 19), as well of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, article 7 of which defines 'crimes against humanity. Canada has lost all of its credibility as a country that defends democracy and human rights to the extent that there has been an increase in maternal mortality, infant mortality as a result of the financial blockade and sanctions, Canada is complicit and has both civil and criminal responsibility."
See also: