Puppet MastersS


Eye 1

Amnesty International reports Spanish government using force to crush peaceful protests


RT
Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:25 UTC
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© Reuters/Andrea Comas
The Spanish government and police are using legislation and force to snuff out peaceful public protest across the crisis-stricken Iberian nation, claims human rights group Amnesty International in a new report.

"The Spanish government is using the full force of the law to suffocate legitimate peaceful protest," said Jezerca Tigani, Europe and Central Asia Deputy Program Director for the non-profit organization.

"The police have repeatedly used batons and rubber bullets against demonstrators, injuring and maiming protestors and bystanders alike. The police act with complete impunity, while peaceful demonstrators and leaders of social movements are continually harassed, stigmatized, beaten, sometimes arrested to face criminal charges, imprisonment and fines."

According to government figures, there were more than 4,300 protests in Madrid alone last year, with thousands more across the country. Police statistics show that less than 1 percent of those turned violent.

Yet, Amnesty says, police use "excessive force in many cases, including inappropriate use and misuse of anti-riot gear, and when carrying out arrests."
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Chess

Russia and Iran strike $10bn energy deal - Iranian oil for Russian goods


RT
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 11:57 UTC
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© RIA Novosti/Dmitry Astakhov
Iran and Russia are negotiating a power deal worth up to $10 billion. The construction of new thermal and hydroelectric plants and a transmission network are in the works.

Iran's Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian met his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak in Tehran to discuss the power deals, according to the Mehr news agency. They include the possibility of Russia exporting 500 megawatts of electricity to Iran.

Moscow is discussing with Tehran the trade of 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil for Russian goods. The deal could be worth as much as $20 billion, and has rattled Washington because it could bring Iran's crude exports above a one million barrels a day which is the threshold agreed upon in the nuclear deal.
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Rocket

U.S. unleashes three days of drone strikes on Yemen, 55 killed


RT
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 12:07 UTC
Image
© Reuters
Dozens are reportedly dead in Yemen, including at least three civilians, as the result of a series of drone strikes that started in the southern part of the country on Saturday and is alleged to still be occurring two days later.

By noontime in Washington, DC on Monday, the Associated Press reported that 55 Al-Qaeda militants were among those that had been killed in an hours-long series of strikes that targeted a training camp operated by the group, according to Yemen's interior ministry. The United States is alleged to have carried out the strikes using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, but does not legally have to acknowledge any operations conducted by its Central Intelligence Agency and has not commented.
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Target

Book: Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine

Candice E. Jackson
WND
Tue, 31 May 2005 11:33 UTC
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© WND
Bill Clinton told us all about his life. In a memoir that spanned over 950 pages, the former president discussed his five and a half decades in exhaustive detail. But while he made a point to mention the names of his minister's three children and to recount conversations his mother had with coffee shop patrons, curiously little is said about the many women whose lives he upended and changed forever.

Now it's time for their stories to be told. In a ground-breaking examination of the accounts of seven women, libertarian commentator Candice E. Jackson examines how the former president and his inner circle wielded their vast power to discredit and destroy the former objects of his desire. Instead of passing moral judgment on Clinton's philandering, Jackson relies on extensive research and firsthand interviews to document the intimidation and harassment that Clinton unleashed on these individuals. The shocking new revelations contained in "Their Lives" include:
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Document

Glenn Greenwald's new book to contain more scoops 'from the Snowden archive'

Martin Pengelly
The Guardian
Sun, 20 Apr 2014 13:55 UTC
Image
© Eduardo Munoz/ReutersGlenn Greenwald attends the George Polk Awards at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York.
Journalist who broke Guardian story about NSA surveillance says new documents 'will help inform the debate even further'

Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who broke the National Security Agency revelations from Edward Snowden in the Guardian, said on Sunday a book he is writing about the case will contain "a lot of new stories from the Snowden archive".

Speaking to Brian Stelter, the host of CNN's Reliable Sources, at the end of a week in which Guardian US and the Washington Post shared a Pulitzer prize for public service reporting, Greenwald said: "There are stories that I felt from the beginning really needed the length of a book to be able to report and to do justice to, so there's new documents, [and] there's new revelations in the book that I think will help inform the debate even further."

Greenwald left the Guardian in October 2013. In February 2014 he launched a website, The Intercept, which was the first venture from First Look, a media company backed by the eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. His book on Snowden is due out in May.
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House

New York Attorney General goes after Airbnb for disrupting hotel business

Jason Abbruzzese and Jessica Plaut
Mashable
Sat, 26 Apr 2014 10:21 UTC
Airbnb/New york state
© Image: Mashable composite. iStock, sirup
As far as the state of New York is concerned, most of Airbnb's business is illegal.

What had been a relatively civil legal proceeding spilled into the press this week when the rental startup and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman met in court on Tuesday. Airbnb has said the attorney general "is determined to fight innovation and attack regular people." The attorney general's office claims it has worked with numerous other tech companies to stamp out illegal activity, but that Airbnb is being evasive.

At the center of the dispute are records of Airbnb's hosts who rented their homes in New York. The attorney general wants the information. Airbnb, worried about the impact this could have on its customers and its business, has resisted.

That may seem like a local issue, but the ramifications are big. The case could become a guide for other municipalities that want to limit rentals through Airbnb.

Beyond Airbnb, the case is among the most high profile of any company in the sharing economy, the peer-to-peer marketplaces that some believe could change how we do business everywhere.

Let's start simple.
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Dollar

America's quest for 'Putin's billions'

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Sun, 27 Apr 2014 18:49 UTC
Vladimir Putin
© unknown
Just over a month ago, in the latest round of sanctions against Russia, and specifically Putin's inner circle of advisors and lieutenants, one person was singled out - Gennady Timchenko, part-owner of the Gunvor Group commodities trading company, the fourth largest oil trader in the world with over $90 billion in 2013 revenues.

This name was particularly notable because as part of the justification for adding Timchenko to the list of sanctioned oligarchs, the US Treasury said that "Putin has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds." This is curious because in 2008 The Economist also linked Putin to Timchenko. Timchenko promptly sued but later dropped the case, and The Economist issued a statement. "We accept Gunvor's assurances that neither Vladimir Putin nor any other senior Russian political figures have any ownership in Gunvor."

Yet somehow, despite the repeated denials that Putin has a direct or indirect interest in the massive oil trading company, the Treasury department apparently knows better. As the NYT reports, "Seth Thomas Pietras, Gunvor's corporate affairs director, said Mr. Putin "does not and never has had any ownership, direct, indirect or otherwise, in Gunvor," nor is he "a beneficiary of Gunvor," and "he has no access to Gunvor's funds." After the sanctions statement, Gunvor executives flew to Washington to meet with State Department officials and congressional aides. "We're providing evidence but have not seen any sort of evidence from them yet and don't know if we ever will," Mr. Pietras said. He said the company's banking partners had been satisfied by its explanations.
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Sheriff

Illinois mayor sends cops to raid man who created parody Twitter account

Eric Pfeiffer
Yahoo! News
Sat, 19 Apr 2014 20:06 UTC
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© Peoria City websiteMayor Jim Ardis
A police warrant shows that Peoria (Ill.) Mayor Jim Ardis asked authorities to investigate the home of a man who created a parody Twitter account in the mayor's name.

However, the Journal Star says that Twitter had already suspended the @Peoriamayor parody account before the raid took place and that the only thing police found on site was some marijuana.

The alleged creator of the Twitter account, Jacob Elliott, 36, was charged with one count of marijuana possession but was not charged with any crimes related to the parody account.

The official request for a search warrant filed with the Peoria police reads in part:

"In addition to the creation of the @peoriamayor twitter account, Mayor Ardis discovered that the individual had created 'tweets' impersonating Mayor Ardis. These 'tweets' implied Mayor Ardis utilizes illegal drugs, associates with prostitutes, and utilized offensive inappropriate language."
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Eye 2

Crowd cheers Sarah Palin: If I were president, 'Waterboarding is how we'd baptize terrorists'

Dylan Stableford
Yahoo News
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 09:50 UTC
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Sarah Palin would like all terrorists to know that if she were in charge, waterboarding is how the United States would baptize them.

At least that's what the former Alaskan governor and ex-vice presidential nominee told thousands of attendees this weekend at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Indianapolis.

"If I were in charge," Palin said Saturday during a Stand And Fight rally at Lucas Oil Stadium, "[our enemies] would know that waterboarding is how we'd baptize terrorists."

Palin mocked what she called the Obama administration's coddling of suspected terrorists.

"Enemies, who would utterly annihilate America, they who'd obviously have information on plots, to carry out jihad," Palin said. "Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen." The White House, she said, has failed to put "the fear of God in our enemies."

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Book 2

Book: Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton

Kathleen Wiley
WND
Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:32 UTC
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© WND
Labor Day Weekend 2007 - In the dead of night during a hot Virginia summer, an unknown intruder silently hoisted himself through a downstairs window into a rural home. As the unsuspecting homeowner slept upstairs, the burglar carried out his mission. The next morning, Kathleen Willey awoke to find her jewelry untouched, her credit cards intact and her electronics disturbed but not stolen. A copy of the manuscript of her upcoming book - a book containing damaging revelations about Bill and Hillary Clinton - had mysteriously disappeared.

For Willey, the manuscript theft was déjà vu. Ten years earlier, the former White House aide's life had been turned upside down by threats aimed at silencing her about the sexual assault she experienced at the hands of President Bill Clinton. The Clintons' fears about Willey speaking publicly were heightened by what she knew of their shady political operations. In 2007, with Hillary Clinton in the midst of a campaign to return to the Oval Office - this time as president of the United States - Willey decided to break the silence she had maintained for 10 years. And, as a result, Willey found herself once again a target.
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