Puppet MastersS


Dollar

Former French president Sarkozy faces trial over illegal campaign financing

Alex McGuiness
Sky News
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 10:33 UTC
Nicolas Sarkozy
© Sky NewsSarkozy lost the 2012 election to Francois Hollande.
Nicolas Sarkozy is to stand trial over allegations of illegally financing his failed 2012 re-election bid, according to reports.

The prosecution claims the former French president went over the €22.5m (£19.4m) spending limit by using false billing from a public relations firm called Bygmalion.

A judicial source told Reuters that 13 others would also face trial over the affair, which has involved charges of spending overruns and funding irregularities. Another told AFP that one of the two judges in charge of the case, Serge Tournaire, decided last week that it should go to trial after the failure of Sarkozy's legal efforts to prevent it in December.

Bygmalion allegedly charged €18.5m (£15.9m) to Mr Sarkozy's UMP party, which has since been renamed the Republicans, instead of billing his campaign. Company executives have acknowledged the existence of fraud and false accounting, and the trial will focus on whether Mr Sarkozy himself was aware of what was going on.
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Eye 1

Facebook to challenge search warrants for personal data of 9/11 responders accused of Social Security fraud


RT
Mon, 06 Feb 2017 20:54 UTC
Facebook
© Dado Ruvic/Reuters
In an important court case over digital privacy, Facebook will attempt to protect user data of 9/11 responders who, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, have defrauded the US Social Security Administration.

Facebook has appealed the case all the way to the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. There, on Tuesday, the social media giant will defend its efforts to scuttle hundreds of search warrants levied against the company by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in 2013. The DA's office has said the responders' Facebook accounts show proof of fraud.

The Manhattan DA's office has sought information from the social networking site on New York City police officers and firefighters who retired following the terror attack of September 11, 2001. These 9/11 responders have claimed mental trauma and filed for disability claims with the Social Security Administration. The government says information — including photos and messages — on Facebook pages of many responders indicate fraudulent disability claims.

The case will likely have ramifications for digital privacy and how law enforcement can access information amid rapidly advancing technology. Facebook has claimed it has a right to legally challenge search warrants that are issued for its users' data, while New York courts have, thus far, said that the company does not have such a right.
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Wall Street

Goldman Sachs warns Washington and Beijing on brink of trade war


RT
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 14:59 UTC
Chinese police officer
© Joe Chan / Reuters
The risk of an escalating trade war between the world's two biggest economies - the US and China - is growing fast, warn analysts from Goldman Sachs as cited by Business Insider.

Goldman's Andrew Tilton and Alec Phillips said in a note to clients they saw "little reason to believe" US President Donald Trump would back down on imposing restrictions on Chinese imports such as steel and machinery.

Trump has repeatedly criticized China's trade practices and threatened to impose punitive tariffs on the country's imports. He argued many Chinese policies were unfair, pointing to Beijing's currency manipulation, theft of trade secrets, hacking, lax labor and environmental regulations.
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Eye 1

How the Liberalization of the Left is Empowering the Far Right

Neil Clark
Sputnik
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 13:36 UTC
global elite propaganda pathocracy power
The 2008 financial crash, brought about largely by the greed and recklessness of very wealthy bankers, ought have been a great opportunity for the political left. But instead, as popular opposition to elite-friendly globalization grew, it was the right, and the far-right in particular, which gained ground in countries across the Western hemisphere.

In their brilliant new book, The Rise of the Right, three leading criminologists, Simon Winlow, Steve Hall and James Treadwell, set out to explain the rise of right-wing nationalism in England.

Although the book mainly concerns itself with English society and politics, there's lessons to be learnt for readers in the US and in the rest of Europe too. In fact, I'd go as far to say that if the Western left don't pay heed to what Winlow et al have to say, then it could be curtains forever.

Comment: Further reading:

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Star of David

Netanyahu & May chat while Israeli spies are exposed in London

Craig Murray
Craig Murray
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 13:36 UTC
Israel spies London UK
The Israeli Embassy has seventeen Israeli "technical and administrative staff" granted visas by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The normal number for an Embassy that size would be about two. I spoke to two similar size non-EU Embassies this morning, one has two and one zero. I recall I dealt with an angry Foreign Minister during my own FCO career incensed his much larger High Commission had been refused by the FCO an increase from three to four technical and administrative staff.

Shai Masot, the Israeli "diplomat" who had been subverting Britain's internal democracy with large sums of cash and plans to concoct scandal against a pro-Palestinian British minister, did not appear in the official diplomatic list.

I queried this with the FCO, and was asked to put my request in writing. A full three weeks later and after dozens of phone calls, they reluctantly revealed that Masot was on the "technical and administrative staff" of the Israeli Embassy.
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Book

NYT book review reveals 'Israel receives more U.S. military aid than every other country in the world combined'

Phil Weiss and Donald Johnson
MondoWeiss
Sun, 05 Feb 2017 14:16 UTC
Israel bombs Gaza
© AlalamIsraeli air strikes target civilian population of Gaza Strip.
This is actually a very good review in the New York Times of a book that apparently gushes about Israel's arms industry, The Weapons Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower, by Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot.

Reviewer Rosa Brooks describes the contents of the book, so for about two thirds of the review there is a lot of gushing (How did "the tiny Jewish state manage... to become such a military innovator[?]... brains, pluck and the bracing prospect of imminent annihilation"). But then Brooks, a former Pentagon official and now law professor at Georgetown who has published her own book on permanent war, points out the facts that shine a different light on the issue.
Left largely unmentioned, for instance, is the role of the United States. American security guarantees over the last few decades have kept Israel's neighbors relatively docile, if not precisely friendly, and nearly a quarter of Israel's annual defense budget is effectively paid for by the United States. Israel receives more American military aid than every other country in the world combined. A more complete answer to "How did Israel do it?" might be: pluck, brains and billions of dollars of American aid each year.

"The Weapon Wizards" is also largely silent on how Israel uses its military might. Absent is any reflection on the role of the Israeli armed forces in paving the way for the contentious expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian territory, for instance, or the Israeli practice of destroying homes occupied by the families of suspected militants, though both have been condemned by the international community.

Katz and Bohbot are similarly uninterested in the brave new world Israel is helping to create.... [T]argeted killings are interesting only because they showcase the combination of "cutting-edge technology, high quality intelligence, and Israel's best and brightest minds."
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Jet3

Russian jets destroy 892 terrorist targets near Syria's al-Bab


Sputnik
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 13:36 UTC
Russian jets air force Syria
The Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed 892 terrorist targets near the Syrian town of al-Bab, according to the Russian General Staff.

"The jets of the Russian Aerospace Forces destroyed 892 terrorist targets near al-Bab," Chief of the General Staff's Main Operational Directorate Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi said on Tuesday.

Comment: As Alexander Mercouris reports, ISIS is facing one of its largest military defeats yet:
Reports are circulating - some of which are traceable to Jihadi sources - that fast advancing Syrian army forces have completed the encirclement of 5,000 ISIS fighters who are trapped in the strategic north Syrian town of Al-Bab.

If true then this begs the major question of whether the Syrian troops who have been advancing on Al-Bab from the south are coordinating with the Turkish troops who together with Turkey's Jihadi allies have been trying to take Al-Bab from the north.

One of the key reasons why ISIS has survived and grown in strength over the last few years is that conflicts between its 'enemies' have always prevented them from working together against it. Indeed some of ISIS's 'enemies' (Turkey for instance) have in the past tried to use the organisation for their own purposes.

If the Syrians and the Turks - backed in this case by the Russians - can be brought to fight ISIS together in Al-Bab, then with 5,000 of its fighters apparently trapped in the town the organisation could be facing its biggest ever military defeat in the Syrian war.


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Laptop

US prosecutors seek to indict '2nd Snowden' this week for 'massive data theft'


RT
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 12:52 UTC
hal martin NSA
The likely home of Hal Martin, as tracked down by a Baltimore Sun reporter last October. Google blurred it out, much like the NSA has blurred Martin out of existence.
Prosecutors in Baltimore, Maryland say they are seeking to indict one of the biggest thieves of classified information in US history. It could happen as early as this week.

Harold T. Martin III, a former NSA contractor, has been held in detention since his arrest in August 2016 after authorities found thousands of pages of classified information in his car and home.

Martin was also accused of stealing 50 terabytes of highly sensitive data, including files from the Tailored Access Operations (TAO), an elite hacking unit that develops and deploys software to hack the networks of foreign governments.


Comment: ...foreign civilians too.


US officials claim that Martin stole 75 percent of TAO's hacking tools, according to the Washington Post.


Comment: That's from the WaPo, chief purveyor of Fake News, so it is probably a grossly over-inflated stat provided to them by 'the intel community' to ensure Martin gets an unfair trial and no one asks to many questions about what exactly the spooks are up to.


Federal prosecutors called Martin's alleged theft "breathtaking in its scale and longevity," and say that he has "top secret" information from the last 20 years he was working with various federal agencies.


Comment: It's not Martn's theft that is "breathtaking in its scale and longevity" - it's the US government's duplicitous deeds that are "breathtaking in their scale and longevity."


Comment: Martin was 'secretly' arrested, and appeared before a 'secret judge' in late August 2016, soon after the NSA was hacked earlier in the month in such a way that its own hacking was revealed. It's unclear to what extent, if any, the two events are connected, but the timing is interesting.

Ed Snowden speculated at the time that this 'reverse hack' of the NSA by hacker group 'Shadow Brokers' was Russian intel publicly exposing the NSA's techniques in such a way as to send them this message: if they push their 'Russia is hacking our elections' claim too far, Russia could publicly expose whatever 'evidence' they cooked up as 'proof that Russia hacked the DNC' as having originated from the NSA...



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Newspaper

Muslim Brotherhood expands presence in East Germany, seeks to establish Sharia law - security official


RT
Mon, 06 Feb 2017 00:00 UTC
Mosque in Germany
© Johannes Eisele / AFP
Islamic radicals from the Muslim Brotherhood are actively trying to gain a "monopoly" over mosques in the eastern German state of Saxony to attract more followers and increase their influence, the local security service chief has warned.

The members of the radical Salafist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was established in Egypt in 1928, "have long been active in Saxony, although they were stealthy," Gordian Meyer-Plath, the president of the regional department of the German domestic security and anti-terrorist service, the BfV, told Germany's MDR broadcaster.

Meyer-Plath warned, however, that "only now, when a [large] number of Muslims have come to Germany, do they see a chance to expand their network beyond some central structures and become interesting for the new Muslims in Saxony."
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Rocket

US House Armed Services chair says US needs missiles that can reach Iran, N Korea


RT
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 00:00 UTC
Iran ballistic missile
© Mahmood Hosseini / ReutersA ballistic missile is launched and tested in an undisclosed location, Iran, March 9, 2016.
The chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee has called for long-range ballistics, citing concerns about Iran and North Korea. Both countries have released statements claiming to only be preparing to act in self-defense.

Rep. Mark Thornberry (R-Texas) told reporters that the US should expand its ballistics arsenal to include long-range missiles that could reach Iran or North Korea. "If you look at what's happening around the world, I would mention Iran and North Korea, the importance of missile defense is increasing," Thornberry said Monday.

"Actors around the world are building missiles that are harder to stop," he added.
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