Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Japan toes U.S. line with anti-Russian sanctions: 23 visa bans - betting on the wrong horse

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© Reuters / Yuriko Nakao
Japan has imposed visa bans on 23 Russian citizens including government officials following US sanctions over Russia's stance on Ukraine.

Japan has not released the names of those affected, but says the list is based on those compiled by the United States and the European Union, according to the Kyodo news agency.

"We need to call on Russia to restrain itself and act responsibly," Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said.

Tokyo announced the measures following the decision on Monday by the United States and the European Union to impose additional sanctions against Russia.

US President Barack Obama visited Japan last week to wrap up his four day Asia tour, meant to boost trade and business relations between Asia and Washington. Obama pledged support to Japan over a territorial dispute it has with China about islands in the East China Sea.

Bulb

Russia passes new 'blogger bill' - gives rights and responsibilities to citizen media

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© RIA Novosti / Alexey FilippovFederation Council meeting.
Russia's Federation Council has passed the bill introducing obligations for maintainers of popular blogs, roughly similar to the existing rules for mass media.

The new bill introduces a definition of 'blogger' to Russian legislation. Popular blogs, defined as those that have 3,000 or more visitors per day, will have to register on a special list maintained by the consumer rights agency Rospotrebnadzor, and follow certain rules.

The authors will have to sign the posts with their real name and verify the information they publish. They will also be banned from posting extremist and terrorist information, propagating pornography or violence, and disclosing state or commercial secrets and personal data of citizens. Popular bloggers will not be able to use obscene language and will face some other restrictions, such as a 'day of silence' ahead of elections.

At the same time bloggers receive the right to make official inquiries and for commercial activities - they can have advertising in their posts and receive money for it.

Eye 2

'They went through some form of hell': Psychiatrist for Gitmo detainee testifies

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© AFP Photo / Mladen Antonov
An Army psychiatrist said the accused USS Cole bomber was given adequate access to treatment for his mental health problems, although he admitted he had no access the secret CIA files documenting the suspect's extensive torture, the Miami Herald reports.

The doctor, an Army major who was board-certified in psychiatry in 2012, said 49-year-old Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri refused any kind of therapy, Carol Rosenberg, who has covered the story exclusively for the daily, reports.

Nashiri, who faces the death penalty for his alleged role in the October 2000 USS Cole bombing, was held for four years by the CIA. According to recently unclassified abuse reports, he was interrogated with a waterboard and power drill and subjected to a mock execution. His psychiatrist, identified in court as Doctor 97, testified at the pre-trial hearing on Sunday that the medical records he consulted made no mention of the CIA detention history on any of his patients.

"I have just assumed that they probably went through some form of hell at some point in their life," Rosenberg cites the doctor, an Army major who testified anonymously from Fort Bliss, Teas via video-link, as saying.

Eye 1

Government starts testing driver's license for the internet program

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© T.J. Kirkpatrick / Getty Images / AFP
State officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania have been awarded roughly $2.4 million in federal funds to test an online ID system that's been called a "driver's license for the internet," and it could soon exist from coast to coast.

The "National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace" program has been in development for years, but it's about to finally be rolled-out to a degree in two locales in order to see if using government-certified IDs on the web is something worth considering on a much larger scale.

"The goal is to put to bed once and for all our current ineffective and tedious system of using passwords for online authentication, which itself was a cure for the even more ineffective and tedious process of walking into a brick-and-mortar building and presenting a human being with two forms of paper identification," reporter Meghan Neal wrote for VICE's Motherboard website on Tuesday this week.

In theory, the program would also help curb a major problem rampant within both the worldwide web and the federal government: abuse. The United States government loses billions of dollars a year due to fraud, Neal reported, and the White House thinks that number could be drastically cut if a new system was implemented to authenticate the people that use government programs and websites alike.

Chart Bar

China to overtake US economy; India trumps Japan in GDP

China is set to overtake the U.S. as the world's number one economy, while India has jumped into third place ahead of Japan, according to a new study from the world's leading statistical agencies.

The 2011 International Comparison Program (ICP), which involves the World Bank, assesses economies based on purchasing power parity (PPP), an estimate of the real living costs. The results revealed on Wednesday paint a new and different picture of the global economy compared with the last update in 2005.

The research puts China's GDP (gross domestic product) at 87 percent of the U.S. in 2011 and says the Chinese and Indian economies have more than doubled relative to that of the U.S. In the 2005 study, the ICP believed China's economy was less than half the size of the U.S., at 43 percent.

Rocket

U.S. keeps shooting itself in the foot with ridiculous sanctions! U.S. should send astronauts to space station by trampoline: Russian official

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© NASA TVScreen capture from NASA TV of the Soyuz approaching the International Space Station with the Expedition 35/36 crew.
Facing sanctions from the United States government, a high-ranking Russian official took to Twitter today (April 29) to express his frustration, warning that NASA has few options should Soyuz flights to the International Space Station cease.

"After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline," wrote Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's deputy prime minister, in a Russian-language tweet highlighted by NBC News.

Snakes in Suits

Insurance policies pertaining to bankers' suicides classified - contain 'trade secrets'

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© AFP Photo / John Moore
After a recent rash of mysterious apparent suicides shook the financial world, researchers are scrambling to find answers about what really is the reason behind these multiple deaths. Some observers have now come to a rather shocking conclusion.

Wall Street on Parade bloggers Pam and Russ Martens wrote this week that something seems awry regarding the bank-owned life insurance (BOLI) policies held by JPMorgan Chase. Traditional life insurance policies ensure that the loved ones of the deceased are compensated fairly in the event of a death, but banks are investing billions in policies that let them receive untaxed payment with the passing of each employee. While it's not unusual for major banks to take out policies that compensate companies in the event of an employee death, the Martens wrote, attempts to find out more about that practice have been peculiarly hard and have raised a red flag among bloggers like those at Wall Street on Parade.

MIB

Best of the Web: Afghanistan's 'torturer in chief', Haji Gulalai, settles down in California with a dozen of his relatives thanks to CIA connections

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© AFP Photo / John MacdougallKandahar Governor Gul Agha's chief of intelligence, Gulalai
Recruited to help run Afghanistan's security and intelligence operations in the aftermath of the US war against the Taliban, the country's most feared security official dubbed 'torturer in chief' now has settled in a pink two-story house in California.

Before his move to the US, Gulalai helped American troops retake Kandahar in 2001 and was tapped to run the intelligence program in the city. Later, he was put in charge of the long-term custody of prisoners at the National Directorate of Security's headquarters in Kabul.

According to a new report by the Washington Post, Haji Gulalai has "a substantial record of human rights abuses." On two separate occasions, United Nations officials convinced the NDS to set in motion orders to fire him from the agency, yet those efforts were stymied both times by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"He was the torturer in chief," a senior Western diplomat, who was unnamed, told the Post.

Chess

Losing Russia: The West's hypocrisy in Ukraine

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When it comes to Ukraine the US and the EU are adopting a holier than thou attitude which, unfortunately, leads them not to worship at the alter of truth.

Take the issue of the fuss made over alleged soldiers wearing Russian uniforms. They are not dressed in the smart fatigues of the unmarked Russian soldiers in Crimea, about which President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged he misled us.

What these soldiers, leading the Russian-speaking revolt, are wearing can be bought in any army surplus store. As for the photos Western intelligence has persuaded much of the media to use as evidence, they are hazy and would not be admissible in a court of law.

The Ukranian Security Agency announced that it captured 20 of its Russian counterparts. But then it reduced the number to 10 and then to 3. But the last figure received much less highlighting from Western governments and media than the first.

Comment: The United States is clearly pursuing a self-defeating course in the Ukraine. The question is why? Is the foreign policy of the United States controlled by forces that do not have the best interests of the United States at heart? If so, whose interests? And what are those interests?


Megaphone

Best of the Web: Putin: Washington behind Ukraine events all along

Putin
© AFP Photo/Alexey DruzhininRussia's President Vladimir Putin attends a session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Minsk, on April 29, 2014.
The US has been behind the Ukrainian crisis from the beginning, but was initially flying low, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. He added that if sanctions continue, Russia will have to reconsider who has access to key sectors of its economy.

"I think what is happening now shows us who really was mastering the process from the beginning. But in the beginning, the United States preferred to remain in the shadow," Putin said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

Putin stated that since the US has taken a lead role in resolving the political crisis in Ukraine, it is "telling that they originally were behind this process, but now they just have emerged as leaders" of it.

The "Maidan cookies" policy paves the way to a broader crisis, Putin warned, referring to US officials showing up in central Kiev and encouraging protesters during demonstrations.

"It is necessary to understand that the situation is serious and try to find serious approaches to the solution," he said.

Putin said that he has called on Kiev to start an all-Ukrainian dialogue, adding that other countries should not be blamed for the crisis.

"[They should] treat equally the rights of those living in other areas of Ukraine, first of all, I mean, the east and southeast, establish a dialogue, find a compromise," he told journalists while speaking about the measures necessary to put an end to the crisis. "Here's what you need to do; searching for the guilty outside Ukraine is wrong."