Puppet MastersS


Stormtrooper

Fascist forces: Kiev's Neo-Nazis being incorporated into U.S.-style 'Ukraine National Guard'

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The new army of the coup-imposed government in Ukraine has begun training exercises outside Kiev. Although the National Guard's roles are law enforcement and border protection, many in the country's east fear the military unit will work against them.

Concerns over the loyalty of the Ukrainian army and security agencies have pushed Kiev to start forming an additional armed branch, which it will fully control.

The National Guard is designed to be 60,000-strong and completely independent from the country's military and police.

Recruitment across Ukraine began on March 13, with around 20,000 people already joining the new uniformed service.

"Most volunteers have battle experience. Most of them protected the rights and freedom of citizens of Ukraine at Maidan," Stepan Poltorak, a commander with the Ukrainian Interior Troops, told RT.

Dollar

New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission bans Tesla Motors from selling its electric cars directly to the public

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© Reuters
Elon Musk wants to keep selling electric cars directly to the public in New Jersey, but on Tuesday the state said no, insisting instead that Tesla Motors Inc offer its cars through an auto franchise rather than its own stores.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's administration approved a rule requiring sales of all new cars to go through franchises.

The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission approved the rule, proposed in October, a representative at the commission confirmed, making explicit the need to have a franchise license to sell new cars in the state.

Tesla, which is led by CEO Musk, said on Tuesday the administration was undermining its model of selling cars, while the administration countered that Tesla had long known the company needed a law change to accommodate its sales model.

Most traditional auto companies sell cars through franchised dealerships.

Shares of Palo Alto, California-based Tesla closed down 1.9 percent at $234.41 on the Nasdaq on Tuesday.

War Whore

NATO going ahead with 12th annual military exercise in Western Ukraine this July

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Personnel will be part of a group of about 1,300 troops who are taking part in Rapid Trident, a previously planned exercise

British forces are preparing to travel to Ukraine in July to join allies in a peacekeeping training exercise.

The troops will be part of a group of about 1,300 troops, mostly American, who are taking part in Rapid Trident, a previously planned exercise.

US officers cancelled a military exercise in Russia in the light of current events but confirmed the exercise in Ukraine would go ahead.

British officials said they had yet to decide the UK's level of participation in Ukraine but confirmed planning for Rapid Trident 2014 in Lviv, near the Polish border, was ongoing.

The US has already sent 12 warplanes and 300 personnel to Poland in the wake of Russia's takeover of Crimea.

Comment: On the last link to the US Army website we learn that
This year [2013] marked the 11th iteration of the Rapid Trident exercises.
So Rapid Trident 2014 will be the 12th year NATO forces have been 'conducting military exercises' in Western Ukraine, the very region where far-right extremists, well-armed and well-trained, took over Ukraine's capital city in a bloody coup earlier this year.

Coincidence?


Bandaid

U.S. in denial: rejects criticism of silly 'toothless' sanctions

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© Carolyn Kaster/AP
The US and the European Union retaliated over the Crimea referendum by targeting sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials on Monday, a move widely greeted with scepticism as "toothless".

The White House imposed sanctions against 11 named individuals: seven senior Russian politicians and officials and four Crimea-based separatist leaders accused of undermining the "democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine".

But the US pointedly avoided targeting the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, or key figures in his inner circle.

The EU imposed sanctions on 21 individuals, including three senior Russian commanders, the prime minister of Crimea, a deputy speaker of the Duma and other senior officials.

There are divisions within Europe over how to respond to Russia, and this is reflected in the fact that action is being taken against less than two dozen from an original proposed list of 120.

The sanctions came on the eve of an address to the Russian parliament by President Vladimir Putin on the next moves for Crimea.On Monday night, Putin posted a decree on the Kremlin website, recognising Crimea as a sovereign state - in what appeared to be a first step toward integrating Crimea as a part of the Russian Federation. The decree, which took effect immediately, says Moscow's recognition of Crimea as independent is based on "the will of the people of Crimea".

Bulb

Has there been a military cover-up over missing Malaysia jet?

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Spotted: Thai military say they picked up an unidentified aircraft on radar bearing off the flight path, heading left over Malaysia and towards the Strait of Malacca.
  • MH370 spotted at 1.28am, eight minutes after it stopped communicating
  • Turned towards Butterworth, a Malaysian city along the Strait of Malacca
  • Malaysia detected MH370 on their military radar at 2:14am heading to strait
  • Thai air force did not report contact because 'it did not look like a threat'
  • It meant precious time was being wasted searching in the wrong area
  • Malaysian cedes control to other countries in ongoing search operation
  • Search area consists of 14 sections covering an area the size of Australia
  • Witnesses in Maldives report seeing a 'low-flying jumbo jet' around 6.15am
  • They said plane was white with red stripes like a Malaysia Airlines jet
  • It emerged the captain is related to Malaysia's jailed opposition leader
  • Families of the Chinese passengers are threatening to go on hunger strike
Asian military officials may be staging a mass cover-up over missing flight MH370, because they do not want to expose gaping holes within their countries' air defences, a leading aviation expert has suggested.

The Malaysian Airlines jet went missing 1.30am on Sunday, March 9. But it wasn't until the following Tuesday that the Malaysian Air Force reported they had spotted the aircraft on radar over the Strait of Malacca at 2.15am.

Now Thailand's military say they detected a plane at 1.28am, eight minutes after MH370's communications went down, heading towards the Strait but didn't share the information because they were not asked for it.

The revelation comes on a day when it emerged the captain of flight MH370 is a relative of Malaysia's jailed opposition leader.

Frog

French ex-minister says the West's sanctions against Russia a grave mistake, Crimean aspirations 'can't be neglected'

Luc Ferry
© AFP
Sanctions against Russia would be "the West's big mistake", acclaimed French socialist, writer and former education minister Luc Ferry writes.

"For a number of reasons Russia's actions in Ukraine cannot be assessed as faulty," he says adding Crimea had been part of Russia since the 18th century. Ferry finds granting Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 unjustified and deems election of Yanukovich legitimate in contrast to the formation of the Ukrainian interim government, which is "by no reason legitimate".

Ferry described stripping the Russian language in Ukraine of its national status as a stupidity, an absurd and ridiculous provocation.

"It would be grotesque to assume that the Russian army seized Crimea, since the massive presence of Russian troops there is absolutely legal and complies with the earlier concluded agreement," Ferry believes.

"It is an indisputable fact that majority of the Crimean population wants to join Russia," Ferry adds describing opponents' arguments as rather weak in legal sense. "For the sake of which people can be denied their right to self-determination?" Ferry wonders. "Although the referendum was a bit hasty, examination of the situation on the spot shows it corresponded to people's true aspirations, and this cannot be neglected."

Heart - Black

Psychopathic Israel troops 'kill Palestinian teen' in West Bank

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© EPA
Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the southern West Bank on Wednesday, a Palestinian security source said. The dead teenager was named as Youssef Shawamra. His family said he was 15.

"Yussef Sami Shawamreh, 15, was killed by the Israeli army near the separation barrier, close to al-Ramadin village," the source said, indicating that the body was still with the army.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said that three Palestinian suspects were seen tampering with a security fence near the West Bank city of Hebron, and did not heed the soldiers' call on them to stop and move back.

Treasure Chest

Koch brothers' tangled political network uses obscure LLCs to hide their conservative propaganda spending from the public

koch brothers
© Huffington Post
Obscure limited liability companies have ultimate say over the Koch network's nonprofits, which spend hundreds of millions of dollars to advance conservative causes.

Libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch were among the first to grasp the political potential of social welfare groups and trade associations - nonprofits that can spend money to influence elections but don't have to name their donors.

The Kochs and their allies have built up a complex network of such organizations, which spent more than $383 million in the run-up to the 2012 election alone. [Click link for interactive graphic]

Documents released in recent months show the Kochs have added wrinkles to their network that even experts well versed in tax law and campaign finance say they've never seen before - wrinkles that could make it harder to discern who controls each nonprofit in the web and how it disperses its money.

A review of 2012 tax returns filed by Koch network groups shows that most have been set up as nonprofit trusts rather than not-for-profit corporations, an unusual step that reduces their public reporting requirements.

It sounds complicated and arcane because it is. Some of the nation's top nonprofit experts said they could only speculate on the reasons for the network's increasingly elaborate setup.

"My guess is that we're looking at various forms of disguise - to disguise control, to disguise the flow of funds from one entity to another," said Gregory Colvin, a tax lawyer and campaign-finance specialist in San Francisco who reviewed all the documents for ProPublica.

Four other leading nonprofit experts and three conservative operatives with knowledge of the Koch network said the most likely reason that the Kochs and their inner circle are using this arrangement was to exert control over the groups without saying publicly who was in charge. In particular, they said, the Kochs likely wanted to prevent any of the groups that they help fund from going against their wishes - as happened with the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank the Kochs had long supported before they got into a dispute with its president, Ed Crane.

After a top Cato official ridiculed Charles Koch in a 2010 New Yorker article, the brothers pushed to put allies on the think tank's board. The following year, they pressed Cato to provide "intellectual ammunition" for their oldest politically active nonprofit, Americans for Prosperity, Cato officials later alleged. The dispute was settled in 2012, with the departure of Crane and the installation of a traditional board. (Cato previously was controlled by four private shareholders, including the Kochs, an unusual setup for a nonprofit.)

Robert Levy, Cato's board chairman, told ProPublica that while he didn't disagree with the Kochs' aims, Cato's leaders were uncomfortable with serving as advocates for their political agenda.

Airplane

Why experts are baffled by the disappearance of the Malaysian Airways flight MH370: 5 unanswered questions

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
© Sovannara/RexAround 100 people including Buddhist monks light incense sticks and candles during a prayer service in Cambodia for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
More than a week after the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, an ever-increasing number of questions remain unanswered or partly explained.

1. Why did no passengers or cabin crew make mobile calls if they realised the plane was off course?

Experts say calls can be made even at high altitude. "It is theoretically possible," said Dan Warren, senior director of technology at the GSM Association. "It would depend on the spectrum range you're in with your phone. It also depends on the power output of the cell itself.

It would also depend on the landmass and network they were flying over, and the roaming agreement of the various network operators. There's not really a clear cut answer.""

If a plane were to fly over the sea, he added, mobile contact would soon stop: "It wouldn't take very long to lose any kind of phone signal. It would depend on altitude and the direction you were flying in."

Some planes have systems to enable passengers to make calls using a satellite link, but it is not thought to have been fitted in the Boeing 777.

2. What role could have been played by reinforced cockpit doors?

Since 9/11 airliners have been fitted with strengthened flight deck doors, intended to prevent intruders from taking control. If whoever took control of the plane barricaded themselves in there would be little others on the plane could do, said Professor David Allerton of the University of Sheffield. "They're designed to be impregnable, so six terrorists can't kick it down. They're steel reinforced, with a solid locking mechanism. The assumption is you'd always have two or three people on the flight deck and they wouldn't all go mad."

The doors are often opened, for example, to pass food to the pilots. Last week photographs emerged of the co-pilot of flight MH370 entertaining teenage tourists in an aircraft cockpit during a previous flight.

Vader

Ex-U.S. intelligence officer Scott Rickard says U.S. foreign aid agencies paid for Kiev street violence

The EU is a hurry to sign the long-awaited association treaty with Ukraine, while the new leaders in Kiev are turning to Washington for support. Whose interests were at stake during the Ukrainian revolution? Should the promises of the West be trusted by the new authorities? Sophie talks to former US intelligence officer Scott Rickard to find out the answers to these questions.