Puppet MastersS

Boat

The blackmail 'reparations' continue: Germany to finance Israeli military

Image
© KockumsYour ancestors killed some of our ancestors: therefore give us weapons so we can kill other people.
Germany plans to finance part of the cost of four new corvette warships for the Israeli navy made by German firm Thyssen Krupp under a deal struck with the Jewish state in November, the government said on Monday.

Following approval by German parliament's budget committee the contract could be finalised before the end of this year, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

As part of its atonement for the Nazi Holocaust, Germany is committed to Israel's security and has often helped pay for the cost of military equipment such as submarines.

The mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday that Berlin had earmarked up to 115 million euros for the warships -- which would cost around 1 billion euros in total.

Seibert declined comment on the size of the German contribution.

Comment: The Holocaust was 70 years ago. Just as the U.S. keeps EU countries in line via blackmail, so does the Mossad. That's the only rational explanation for this ludicrous policy. It's only a matter of time before the world turns on the psychopathic nation of Israel for its gangster tactics and genocidal mentality.


Light Sabers

Erdogan tells EU to 'mind own business' over Turkey arrests

Erdogan
© Adem Altan
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday told the European Union to "mind its own business", in a blistering attack against the bloc over criticism by EU officials of police raids against opposition media.

Turkey has come under fire over the arrests Sunday of over two dozen journalists, television producers, police and even TV drama scriptwriters linked to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen who has emerged as Erdogan's arch-foe.

Comment: One more leader who has the courage to stand up to the Anglo-American empire.


Light Sabers

NSA and Electronic Frontier Foundation to square off in court over internet surveillance

Electronic frontier Foundation
© Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach
A digital rights group in the United States plans to argue in federal court this week that the National Security Agency's internet surveillance operations violate the US Constitution's ban against unlawful searches and seizures.

Six years after the Electronic Frontier Foundation brought suit against the NSA on behalf of a former AT&T customer, Carolyn Jewel, US District Court Judge Jeffrey White for the Northern District of California will hear an EFF attorney argue on Friday for summary judgment and attest that the intelligence agency's data collection methods breach the Constitution's Fourth Amendment clauses intended to protect private information.

Filed back in 2008, the EFF's fight against the NSA long predates the public's awareness of Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents about the agency's surveillance operations in 2013 and has since been charged with espionage and theft by the US Department of Justice. The disclosures attributed to Snowden and subsequent admissions from the intelligence community have in the past year provided the EFF and others with ample fodder to plead their cases against the government, however, and on Friday, Judge White is expected to be told by the group that the operations of the NSA as they're known today are unconstitutional.

Comment: It may be a long battle, but we can't forget how Aaron Swartz spearheaded a successful campaign that stopped the internet censorship bills (SOPA/PIPA).


Binoculars

Best of the Web: Jon Stewart: Dick Cheney is a psychopath

Image
On Sunday's Meet The Press, former Vice President Dick Cheney stubbornly - and, many would argue, illogically - defended the controversial CIA interrogation techniques that were the subject of a recent horrifying report. In part, he seemed to insist that they should not be labeled torture, despite the Senate Intelligence Committee's conclusions, because only the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States deserve that label.


Comment: Finally, finally, after 13 years of SOTT.net sounding like a broken record player, someone with a mainstream audience spells it out: Dick Cheney is a psychopath.


SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Year in Review: 2014

Sott Talk Radio logo
Welcome to the radio network of SOTT.net, your media source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events. Each Sunday on the SOTT Radio Network, SOTT.net editors Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley host the Behind the Headlines talkshow, analyzing global impact events that shape our world and future. Connecting the dots to reveal the bigger picture obscured by mainstream programming, Behind the Headlines is current affairs for people who think.

From the crisis in Ukraine to the ISIS in Iraq, from increasingly extreme weather to surviving in a world ruled by psychopaths, your hosts, their colleagues (and occasional guests) explore the deeper truths driving world events by exposing the manipulations behind what passes for 'news'. In this final show of the year, your hosts and their colleagues will be taking a look back at events in 2014 and considering what 2015 holds in store.

Running Time: 02:22:00

Download: MP3


Gear

Lukashenko says Belarus is ready to help Ukraine

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko
© Michail Metsel/TASS
Belarus is ready to offer support to Ukraine, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Sunday at a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko.

"I want everything in Ukraine to be well. Many interpret it as some kind of games. I know you are not among them," the Belarusian news agency BELTA quoted Lukashenko as saying. "That is why, and I have told you this before: if you want anything from Belarus, just say it, we will give you anything you might ask in just a day."

"I am telling it openly, we have always done everything the Ukrainian president asked us. And we will continue that way," Lukashenko said.

"This is not a game for us. Not just because of trade but because we are neighbours, we live side by side, we are kinsfolk," he added.

The Ukrainian president, in turn, said he hoped the Minsk talks on the settlement in eastern Ukraine would proceed as energetically as they had started. He said that thanks to "efficient cooperation" with the Belarusian side "such terms as the 'Minsk format,' the 'Minsk memorandum,' the 'Minsk protocol,' and the 'Minsk agreements' are part of the history of diplomacy now."

Comment: Lukashenko's statement of helping Ukraine with anything is pretty wide open to interpretation. However it doesn't appear this includes any military assistance.


Eye 2

CIA 'enhanced interrogation' vs. ISIS torture: See if you can tell the difference

Abu Ghraib prison
© APA file photo of renovated Abu Ghraib prison, now renamed Baghdad Central Prison, Iraq.
It's been a big week for abhorrent torture manifestos.

On Tuesday, the Senate released its much-anticipated report outlining the CIA's brutal post-9/11 torture program. A few days before, the Islamic State (IS) group released what appears to be an "abhorrent" pamphlet to its followers with guidelines on how to capture, keep and sexually abuse female slaves, a reminder of the militant group's vicious tactics. Both document are testaments to the brutality of the war on terror, from the CIA interrogators fighting to "save American lives" to IS waging a bloody war against the West.

What's even more disturbing is how accounts of CIA and Islamic State torture - from the Senate report for the former and months of news reports from the latter - are, at times, virtually indistinguishable from one another. Speaking on the Senate floor after the release of the CIA torture report, Sen. John McCain passionately asserted that "our enemies act without conscience. We must not." As it turns out, that moment is long past.

Read the 13 torture accounts below see for yourself:

1. Prisoners were "routinely beaten and subjected to waterboarding."

2. The waterboarding of one prized prisoner devolved into a "series of near drownings," where the process induced convulsions and vomiting.

3. Prisoners were subjected to "rectal rehydration" or "rectal feeding."

4. Interrogators "chained [a prisoner's] feet to a bar and then hung the bar so that he was upside down from the ceiling. Then they left him there."

5. Prisoners were forcefully kept awake, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.

6. Detainees "were starved and threatened with execution by one group ... only to be handed off to another group that brought them sweets and contemplated freeing them."

7. Prisoners were subjected to extended isolation and experienced "hallucinations, paranoia and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation."

Comment: ISIS was, in part, trained and funded by the CIA. So it's really no wonder that both groups employ the same tactics.


Eye 1

The government is spying on you - What's the big deal?

Image
Recent polls show that, despite the Senate's torture report, most Americans still support the Central Intelligence Agency's use of torture on suspects. Obviously the mainstream media misinform the public, neglecting to tell them that such torture techniques do not even produce reliable information and are mainly used to extract false confessions from innocent detainees.

And on the National Security Agency's spying on innocent Americans, people love it, and then they hate it, and now they're back to loving it again. Alas, Most people are ignorant of the actual criminality being committed by the federal goons.

Comment: It's the old argument: "If you have nothing to hide ...", but only the most gullible and naive (or corrupt) people really believe that. Imagine your neighbour having full access to your home, laptop, email, etc. Would you tolerate that?

Certainly not!


Airplane

Mystery drone spotted flying over Belgium's nuclear plant

predator drone
© Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press
A mystery drone was spotted flying over a Belgium nuclear facility on Saturday, local authorities said, a day after one of the plant's reactors came back on line after a four-month closure caused by sabotage.

The mystery appearance by an unmanned aircraft, on which Belgian authorities refused to provide much detail, resembles a spate of similar drone sightings over nuclear plants in neighbouring France this autumn.

Around 20 unidentified drones have been spotted over nuclear plants since October throughout France.

"We can confirm that the East Flanders prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into a drone flight over the Doel nuclear plant," a spokesman for the investigation told Belga news agency.

"We will not provide further information for the time being," the spokesman added, hours after the plant's operator, GDF-Suez unit Electrabel, first disclosed the incident, which took place early Saturday.

The imposing Doel nuclear site sits on a riverbank near the North Sea about 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Antwerp. It holds four of Belgium's seven reactors.

One of those reactors, Doel 4, was shut urgently in August after a leak, caused by tampering, gushed out 65,000 litres of oil lubricant.

A steam turbine weighing 1,700 tonnes was severely damaged by the loss of lubricant, requiring a 30-million-euro ($37-million) repair job that was carried out in Germany.

Comment: Is someone trying to keep pressure on the Belgian government?


X

IDF is itching for another round of slaughter and strikes Gaza in retaliation to rocket fire

Image
© Reuters/Amir CohenAn Israeli air force F-15 fighter jet
The Israeli Defense Forces have launched an attack on Gaza allegedly striking a weapons cache near Khan Yunis in retaliation to a rocket fired from Gaza earlier in the day.

There were at least two strikes by the Israeli Air Force, Jerusalem Post reports. Residents reported hearing two explosions in an "area that contains training sites for Palestinian militants," according to AP. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The attack allegedly comes in retaliation to a rocket fired from Gaza earlier in the day into an open territory near the Eshkol Regional Council.

"The IDF will not permit any attempt to undermine the security and jeopardize the well being of the civilians of Israel. The Hamas terrorist organization is responsible and accountable for today's attack against Israel," said the IDF Spokesman, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, cited by Haaretz.

Comment: Notice that as usual no one claimed responsibility (except when a new and "unknown before" terror group suddenly does that). Read the following articles to understand why.