Puppet MastersS


Nuke

Nuclear security worries prompt Belgium health plan to provide iodine pills for entire population


RT
Thu, 28 Apr 2016 12:19 UTC
Belgian nuclear power plant
© Vincent Kessler / Reuters
Belgian officials have grown so worried about the country's nuclear power plants that the government has been advised to let everyone living within a 100-kilometer radius of the plants be issued with iodine pills. This is basically the entire population.

The recommendation was made by Health Minister Maggie De Block, who said the current legislation, which gives iodine pills to Belgians within a 20-kilometer radius, is inadequate and should be extended to 100 kilometers, according to La Libre daily.

De Block mentioned that the whole of Belgium is located within 100 kilometers of a nuclear power plant and therefore the tablets should be made available to everyone.
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Bad Guys

Media blackout: U.S. still committing genocide in Iraq under guise of 'fighting ISIS'

Felicity Arbuthnot
Global Research
Thu, 28 Apr 2016 03:53 UTC
"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants."
propaganda
(Albert Camus 1913-1960.)

On 1st May 2003, George W. Bush stood in a dinky little flying suit on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and in a super stage managed appearance told the lie of the century: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country." (1)

The illegal occupation and decimation of Iraq continued until December 2011. In June 2014 they returned to bomb again in the guise of combating ISIS. As the thirteenth anniversary of Bush's ridiculous appearance with a vast "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him, Iraq is largely in ruins, Iraqis have fled the murderous "liberation" and it's aftermath in millions and there are over three million internally displaced.

The nation is pinned between a tyrannical, corrupt US puppet government, a homicidal, head chopping, raping, organ eating, history erasing, US-spawned ISIS - and a renewed, relentless US bombardment. So much for the 2008 US-Iraq State of Forces agreement, which stated that by 31st December 2011: "all United States forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory."
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Snakes in Suits

'Serial child molester' and former US House Speaker Hastert sent to prison


Sputnik
Wed, 27 Apr 2016 21:20 UTC
Dennis Hastert
© AP Photo/ Charles Rex Arbogast
Former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Wednesday after a judge referred to him as a "serial child molester," making him one of the highest-ranking politicians in US history to go to prison.

Hastert, 74, pleaded guilty last year to paying $3.5 million in hush-money to a man to keep the molestation secret. Law enforcement found that Hastert had sexually abused at least four boys while coaching sports at Yorkville High School in Illinois.

"Nothing is worse than using serial child molester and Speaker of the House in the same sentence," said the judge, who sentenced the Republican politician to nine months longer than the six-month sentence recommended by the prosecution.

"I hope I never see a case like this again," said the judge.

Comment: The sentence is very light for this snake of a person. He should get life in prison.

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Dollar

Sign of things to come? Goldman Sachs moves into the retail banking business

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com
Tue, 26 Apr 2016 21:17 UTC
Lloyd Blankfein
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has claimed his company is “Doing God’s Work.”
If there were ever a signal that large investment banks may be preparing for financial crisis and that they'll be using your money to bail themselves out when it hits, this could be it.

According to a new report from the Financial Times via The Daily Star, mega-banking giant Goldman Sachs is now getting into the retail banking business and looking for more depositors to help fund their operations. The bank has reportedly "been under pressure to develop new streams of funding" after posting lower than usual equity returns in the first quarter of 2016. In response, Goldman recently acquired a portfolio of 145,000 retail depositors from GE Capital totaling some $16 billion in deposits.

Goldman now intends to aggressively pursue retail depositors whose accounts they will then tap to help fund their investing and trading operations:

Comment: See also:

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Horse

An offer they couldn't refuse? France rejected Israeli data mining tech prior to Paris attacks


RT
Tue, 26 Apr 2016 20:45 UTC
bataclan
© Dominique Faget / AFPRescuers workers evacuate a man on a stretcher near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, on November 13, 2015.
French intelligence reportedly rejected an offer to purchase terrorist-scanning and tracking software from an Israeli company that could have helped to prevent the November 2015 attacks in Paris, a security expert has said.

Certain "data-mining technology" which would have helped the Paris authorities to "connect all the dots" in the terrorist community was offered to the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), according to an Israeli counter-terror specialist familiar with the technology and the company, in comments to Fox News.

The DGSI is a French intelligence agency that specializes in counter-espionage, counter-terrorism and countering cybercrime. It also tracks potentially threatening groups.

"French authorities liked it, but the official came back and said there was a higher-level instruction not to buy Israeli technology... The discussion just stopped," said the security specialist, who gave the interview on condition of anonymity.

Comment: So an Israeli company makes a pitch to sell some spy tech to France. France rejects the idea of buying Israeli tech. France gets attacked. Convenient. Maybe the French remembered Comverse...

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Pirates

Trump's foreign policy? Seek common ground based on unquestioned dominance


Sputnik
Wed, 27 Apr 2016 20:41 UTC
Trump hate
Following decisive victories in Tuesday's primary races, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump delivered a speech on Wednesday outlining his "America first" foreign policy.

"We must make America respected again, we must make America truly wealthy again, and we have - and we will - make America great again," the billionaire candidate said during a speech in Washington DC. "My foreign policy will always put the interest of the American people and American security above all else."

"Under a Trump administration, no American will ever feel that their needs come second to a foreign country," he stated. "I will be America's greatest defender." Much of his address focused on criticizing the policy of outgoing two-term President Barack Obama. He blamed Obama for cutting defense and spending, and stressed that his policies would replace "randomness with purpose," as well as "ideology with strategy and chaos with peace."

But in what sounds like a contradiction, Trump stated that, "We have to be unpredictable starting now," referring to the Pentagon's efforts in combating Daesh, also known as IS/Islamic State. His proposed strategy would eliminate Daesh "very, very quickly" if elected, he said.
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No Entry

Best of the Web: Mission Accomplished? Snowden 'NSA Leak' had 'chilling effect' that scared people away from learning truth about terrorism


RT
Wed, 27 Apr 2016 20:24 UTC
snowden CIA
"Hi I'm Ed. Everyone knows I was a subcontractor for the NSA, but no one knows I was first recruited by the CIA."
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations on government mass surveillance have apparently scared a significant number of people away from searching for terrorism-related information on Wikipedia, as a new study shows readers are afraid of being investigated.

The conclusions come as the online encyclopedia giant showed a 30-percent drop in searches on terrorism-related topics - the most direct evidence yet of something called the "chilling effect,"described by University of Oxford and Toronto's Jonathon Penney as the measure of the negative impact on legal conduct that arises out of the leaks by the former NSA contractor who exposed the PRISM program.

Many in academic circles have been denying that such an effect exists, as well as its potential negative fallout. This prompted Penney to delve deeper into the issue, which has steadily been rising in popularity across academic disciplines.

His findings are published in an upcoming paper in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. There he analyzes the fall in traffic after taking a look at 48 Wikipedia topics monitored closely by the US government on national security concerns. "Al-Qaeda," "jihad" and related searches top the list compiled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Comment: This is what we said on Sott.net at the time, that the purpose of these 'leaks' was to let people know, or make them think, that they are being watched. This would have the same effect of dampening dissent as the actual terrorism itself: making people fear the authorities.

PRISM for your Mind: NSA, WikiLeaks and Israel

Behind the Headlines: NSA's PRISM offers neither privacy nor security

And we were right.

The very fact that the Chilling Effect is 'controversial' in mainstream academic circles tells us that it's very well understood (and applied) in elite circles: they don't want people to understand why they do what they do.

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Evil Rays

Pentagon losing the plot: Mixing CYA and Stratcomm on Russia's Syrian intervention

Gordon M. Hahn
Russian and Eurasian Politics
Mon, 25 Apr 2016 20:27 UTC
Colonel Warren
© www.primanews.orgArmy Colonel Steve Warren
CYA means 'cover your ass.' Given the scale and audacity of the Defense Department's and overall U.S. government's strategic communications (stratcomm) distortions of every Russian action, including in Syria, Washington's CYA moment was bound to come. As I have written about numerous times, with their shills in the media, academia, and DC think tanks, the Barack Obama administration had built such a facade of impossible distortions of reality—with albeit, some subtlety—that it was bound to come to the need for major CYA operations to cover their stratcomm ops at some point. That time appears to have come. Slowly but surely the Pentagon's statements hint at the truth behind the Russian air campaign and overall Syria intervention, while insinuating caveats and other qualifications and uncertainties to muddy the waters of what it reports, thinks, and says it knows.

Thus, in Wednesday's (20 April 2016) Defense Department press briefing, Col. Steven Warren continued the stratcomm operation which intentionally conflates the small non-jihadist, non-Islamist opposition forces and the non-Islamic State jihadists who predominate within the overall opposition fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad's army by as much as 75 percent or even more of the overall non-IS forces. With the Islamic State (IS) forces included, the overall rebel forces fighting Assad comprise 85-90 percent jihadist (Jabhat al-Nusra, etc.) and Islamist (Muslim Brotherhood, etc.).

Comment: One more observation about Warren's statement. He says the U.S.'s focus is ISIL, implying they are not focusing on Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria). The reason? The 'rebels' the U.S. supports are either embedded within, closely tied with, or identical to al-Nusra. The U.S. has been counting on that 85-90% jihadi/Islamist majority to topple Assad, exactly like they did to Qaddafi in Libya.

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No Entry

Best of the Web: Brazil's 'constitutional coup, color revolution' two-step

Andrew Korybko
Oriental Review
Mon, 25 Apr 2016 17:21 UTC
brazil rally
An anti-coup rally in Brasilia, March 2016
Brazil is in the midst of a prolonged regime change operation, as documented step-by-step by Pepe Escobar in his articles for Sputnik, RT, and the Strategic Culture Foundation. The author's intent isn't to get into the situational specifics of each and every detail behind the US' techniques, but to provide a general overview of the strategies that are at play and their contribution to Hybrid War theory. Brazil is an important New Cold War battleground not just because of its institutional multipolarity, but particularly because of its role in China's One Belt One Road global vision. The Chinese announced last year that they plan to build the Twin Ocean Railroad between Brazil's Atlantic Coast and Peru's Pacific one in order to facilitate transoceanic trade between the two BRICS members by enhancing Brasilia's transcontinental trade capability. Because this mega project is located in the US' own hemisphere, the "Monroe Doctrine"-obsessed Exceptionalists accelerated their existing regime change plans for Brazil with the intent of overthrowing its government and replacing it with a pro-unipolar quisling.


Comment: For more on Obama's revamped Monroe Doctrine, see Wayne Madsen's recent piece: Monroe Doctrine becomes Obama Doctrine: "The Western Hemisphere is ours"

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Radar

The Golan Heights: Israel's decades long occupation for water, land and oil and the war it will wage to keep it

Timothy Alexander Guzman
Silent Crow News
Thu, 21 Apr 2016 00:00 UTC
Golan Heights
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a "clear message" to the international community about the Golan Heights (an area that was originally part of Syria and now occupied by Israel since 1967) being part of Israel. Netanyahu called for a cabinet meeting on April 17th to declare that the Golan Heights will be under Israeli sovereignty indefinitely. What was insulting to the Syrian people was not only Netanyahu's declaration that the Golan Heights belonged to Israel; it was the same day Syria celebrated the 70th anniversary of 'Evacuation Day' or Syria's 'Independence Day', which was the end of the French occupation when its forces left the country in 1946. Now the Syrians have to suffer another occupation by led by Israel. According to an RT news report, Netanyahu told his cabinet members "I convened this celebratory meeting in the Golan Heights to send a clear message: The Golan will always remain in Israel's hands. Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights." Netanyahu continued:
It is time that the international community recognized reality," Netanyahu was quoted as saying by The Times of Israel. "Whatever happens on the other side of the [Syrian] border, the border itself will not move." "And secondly," Netanyahu added, "the time has come after 40 years for the international community to finally recognize that the Golan Heights will remain under Israeli sovereignty forever

Comment: In other words, "we took the land, its ours now, get used to it".


The Israeli government claims that the Golan Heights is a strategic territory for Israel's security, but it is also a fact that a third of Israel's water supplies comes from the occupied territory. It is also important to note that 25% of Israeli wines are produced in the Golan Heights and between 30-50% of certain fruits and vegetable are also grown in the occupied territory. Water in the Middle East is similar to the value of gold since water is becoming a scarce commodity. According to the World Resources Institute (www.wri.org):

Comment: If time is short for the U.S. Empire, it is also true that Israel is foreshortening its time as a truly rogue nationstate with its criminal behavior. The time will come soon when Israel's belligerent rhetoric will be further matched by aggression that will no longer be tolerated, and the choice will be made to stop it by the parties it has acted against. Most Israelis - but especially those in its government and military - seem completely unable to see that they are quite literally digging their own grave.

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