Puppet MastersS


Handcuffs

79-year-old Irish writer, actress, playwright and film director Margaretta D'Arcy jailed for protesting U.S. military's use of Shannon Airport as refuelling station

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© Andrew DownesMargaretta D'arcy
Margaretta D'Arcy, the acclaimed Irish writer and peace activist, is serving a three-month prison sentence in Ireland for her protests at the US military use of Shannon airport.

She could have avoided the jail term if she had agreed to sign a bond to uphold the law and stay away from unauthorised zones at Shannon. She refused to do so and was taken into custody last Wednesday (15 January).

But the Irish authorities have been confronted with a torrent of protest, and a measure of embarrassment, since D'Arcy, who is 79 and suffering from cancer, was incarcerated in Limerick prison.

She has been visited by Sabina Higgins, wife of Ireland's president, Michael D Higgins. And protests on behalf of D'Arcy have been growing day by day. Some 240 artists have called for D'Arcy's release, including journalist Nell McCafferty, film-maker Lelia Doolan and former UN assistant secretary-general Denis Halliday.

Quenelle

Ray Nagin found 'guilty of corruption' thanks to 'secret evidence' - Maverick ex-New Orleans' Mayor facing up to 20 years' imprisonment for 'taking bribes'

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Has Nagin been bush-whacked by the Southern Mob?
A jury convicted former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Wednesday on 20 of 21 federal corruption counts, including bribery, marking a stunning fall for the feisty official who gained a national profile following Hurricane Katrina.

The 57-year-old Democrat, who led his city through the aftermath of the 2005 storm, was found guilty of charges that he accepted bribes, free trips and other gratuities from contractors in exchange for helping them secure millions of dollars in city work while he was in office.

He will remain free on bond while he awaits sentencing. Each of the charges carries a sentence from three to 20 years, but how long he would serve was unclear and will depend on a pre-sentence investigation and various sentencing guidelines. No sentencing date was set.


Comment: Charging and convicting a politician in the USA with taking bribes is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. A man in his position would be expected to accept bribes; failure to do so would have raised suspicion and flagged him for extra scrutiny. If anyone wants to do well for his community in the US, he must play the game. In fact, in today's America, for someone to be charged with taking bribes, it probably means they were diverting money in order to be able to do good with it.

So the question is; why Nagin? Could it be because he interfered with certain developers' plans for post-Katrina N.O.? Could it be because he was actually a rare case of a good politician that he has been sent down for more than most murderers get in the U.S.? Somebody clearly wanted to eliminate this man from the game.

Curiously, the evidence used against Nagin is 'secret' and won't be made public.... 'just temporarily', they say, but everyone will have forgotten about it once he begins rotting in prison.

From his Wiki page we learn that:
Shortly after Katrina devastated New Orleans, some started making bold public demands for socially reengineering New Orleans during its recovery. There were repeated calls for moratoriums on rebuilding certain neighborhoods with developers eager for cheap land. Two weeks after Katrina struck, Nagin took a weekend trip to Dallas to reunite with his family. While there, he was asked to meet with leading New Orleans businessmen to discuss the city's future. Nagin made it clear at the meeting that everyone had a right to return home, a claim contradicted by some businesspersons in attendance. He also asserts his plans were to rebuild a bigger and better New Orleans where diversity, equity, and fairness ruled. Nagin traveled the country presiding over 170 town hall-style meetings to inform displaced New Orleanians of the status of the city's recovery.
...and those "some businesspersons" are no doubt among those implicated in the deliberate sabotaging of the city's flood defenses during Hurricane Katrina, along with the deliberately delayed federal response and the barbaric handling of refugees in the city and across the country.

Despite all that, Nagin still managed to turn the city around for one of the fastest ever urban recoveries from a major disaster.

It seems to us that they put a decent man away because he wasn't a psychopath like them.

See also:

It was the levees, not the hurricane, that flooded New Orleans


Bad Guys

Saudi Arabia to supply Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles - report

Rebel fighters in Syria
© brown-moses.blogspot.ru
Frustrated by the deadlock of the second round of Geneva 2 talks, Saudi Arabia has reportedly offered to supply the rebels with anti-aircraft missiles. Meanwhile Russia has accused the US of once again hijacking peace talks and pushing for regime change.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Russian-made antitank guided missiles and Chinese man-portable air-defense systems are up for grabs, already waiting in warehouses in Jordan and Turkey.

An Arab diplomat and several opposition figures with knowledge of the Saudi efforts have told WSJ that these supplies are likely to tip the battlefield scales, as the rebels will become capable of taking on the government's air power and destroying heavy armored vehicles.

"New stuff is arriving imminently," a Western diplomat with knowledge of the planned weapons deliveries told the American publication.

Leaders of the Syrian opposition said they don't yet know the total amount of military aid that will be shipped. The new weapons are expected to reach southern Syria from Jordan while the opposition in the north will get arms from Turkey, the Western diplomat said.

Attention

Fascists unleash violence in Venezuela as gunfire, clashes leave 3 dead

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© Angel VillarroelLara @avillarroellaraCaracas photo of burned police units in the city center
4:38 PM - 12 Feb 2014
At least three people have died in violent protests in the Venezuelan capital, officials have confirmed. President Nicolas Maduro has condemned the unrest as an attempt at a coup d'état orchestrated by extremist members of the political opposition.

Thousands of protesters flooded the streets of the Venezuelan capital on Wednesday in the worst unrest since Nicolas Maduro assumed the presidency last year. Demonstrators from several different political factions clashed in Caracas, leaving at least three people dead and over 20 injured.

Venezuela's top prosecutor confirmed the death of 24-year-old student Bassil Dacosta Frías, who was shot in the head and died later in hospital. Officials said that a government supporter was also assassinated in what they decried as an act of "fascism." A third person was killed in the Chacao neighborhood in the East of the Venezuelan capital.

Stock Down

Twitter tanks 20 percent, loses $7.7 billion market cap - threatens to sue Obama administration

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© Twitter
Twitter focus on engagement and growth: Analyst Thursday, 6 Feb 2014 | 10:03 AM ET "One of our primary concerns has been related to user and engagement growth," says Scott Kessler, senior equity analyst at S&P Capital IQ, and Colin Sebastian, senior research analyst at RW Baird, discuss Twitter's downside and concerns.

Shares of Twitter dropped about 24 percent Thursday - a paper loss of $8.7 billion - after it reported sluggish user growth. The selloff was a sign that the social network will have a tough time regaining its stature with advertisers, at least until it releases better numbers, a senior tech analyst told CNBC.

"To us, when you're talking about opportunities relative to communicating with advertisers, you want to lead with a large and growing and increasingly engaged user base," Scott Kessler of S&P Capital IQ told "Squawk on the Street." "And Twitter doesn't seem to have the data to support that proposition."

Twitter closed Wednesday's trading session at $65.97 a share before posting earnings after the bell, the first quarterly report since it went public in November. Shares reached a low of $50 during trading Thursday, on pace for Twitter's worst day on record. The formerly red-hot stock had zero room for error, said Colin Sebastian, a senior research analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.

Despite a rocky trading session Thursday, Twitter's stock remained up 99 percent from its IPO price of $26 a share.

Alarm Clock

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Terror Masters, Kenya mall terror attack, Navy Yard shooting, Mind Control, Electrophonic Meteors

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Al-Shabab terrorists, aka CIA/Mossad/MI6/DGSE dupes, terrorise people in Nairobi Kenya on behalf of their corporate sponsors
In the following SOTT Talk Radio show from September 2013, the SOTT Editors discussed the bloody terror attack at a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, the mass shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC (the 16th mass shooting of Obama's reign), secret government Mind Control, the 'strange sky sounds' and 'electrophonic meteors'.

Running Time: 01:59:00

Download: MP3


Control Panel

EPA vastly misjudges methane leaks, new study confirms

EPA_Methane_Measurement
© UnknownMethods for detecting natural gas emissions. Top-down methods take air samples from aircraft or tall towers to measure gas concentrations remote from sources. Bottom-up methods take measurements directly at facilities.
The federal government has underestimated methane emissions from the United States by 50 percent for the past 20 years, according to a comprehensive new study.

Methane, also called natural gas, is a powerful but short-lived greenhouse gas. It lasts just nine years in Earth's atmosphere but is about 34 times more potent at trapping infrared radiation (the greenhouse effect) than carbon dioxide, which is more abundant and lasts longer. While methane spews into the sky from both natural sources, such as wetlands, and human activities, including oil and gas production, the government estimates only track manmade sources.

The review of scientific studies of methane emissions suggests that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) methane counts are about 50 percent too low, though the underestimate could range from 25 percent to as much as 75 percent. That means the United States is pumping about 14 million tons more methane than thought into the atmosphere each year, according to the findings, published today (Feb. 13) in the journal Science.

"Evidence from numerous studies consistently suggest that methane emissions are larger than those estimated by the EPA inventory," said Adam Brandt, lead study author and an energy resources engineer at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

The review analyzed the results of more than 200 studies that traced methane emissions across the United States and were published in the past 20 years. The results were compared to the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which records methane emissions and other climate-changing gases.

Star of David

Israel spies sent after boycott backers

A report says Israeli spies have been ordered to try to link supporters of an economic boycott against Tel Aviv to terrorists and enemy states.

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Israeli Minister for Intelligence and Strategy, Yuval Steinitz
Israel has convened a ministerial meeting to discuss how to respond to the growing number of foreign companies refusing to do business with Israeli entities operating in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, The Times reported on Tuesday.

The United Nations regards the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured in the war and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid any constructions on the occupied lands.

The meeting saw Israeli Minister for Intelligence and Strategy, Yuval Steinitz tabling a plan for media propaganda against organizations advocating boycotts.

Earlier in the month, US Secretary of State John Kerry pointed to "an increasing de-legitimization" campaign building up against Israel internationally and "talk of boycotts" if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not end.

Eye 1

In America the gestapo has replaced the rule of law

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© Alex Wong / Getty Images / AFP(L-R) National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn testify during a hearing before Senate (Select) Intelligence Committee January 29, 2014
RT is the best English language news source available to Americans. On January 29, RT published a photo of 5 presidential appointees lying through their teeth to Congress.

All five of these Gestapo wannabes are in violation of their oath of office to protect the Constitution of the United States. They have relentlessly violated the Constitution, which makes these five, who are in charge of US intelligence and black operations, traitors to the United States. Yet, they have not been arrested and put on trial. Congress is content to sit there and listen to their ongoing lies time after time after time, despite the fact that these 5 have committed more and worse crimes against our country than the "terrorists" that serve as an excuse for the crimes committed by the intelligence agencies.

Remember, dear readers, it is a crime for you to lie to any federal agent even if you are not under oath or before Congress. How much more evidence do you need that you are not a citizen of the United States but a mere serf of the federal government? Will you ever wake up?

Arrow Down

German cabinet minister warned lawmaker of global child porn investigation

Hans-Peter Friedrich
© Agence France-PresseGerman minister Hans-Peter Friedrich.
A German cabinet minister was under intense pressure Friday over suspicions he may have breached official secrecy in a widening scandal sparked by an international child porn investigation.

Agriculture Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, in his former post as interior minister, tipped off the party leader of a prominent lawmaker whose name had cropped up in an international probe, Friedrich's spokesman said.

The move dates back to October, a month after German general elections when Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives were in the process of building a coalition government with the centre-left Social Democrats.

Friedrich, a conservative ally of Merkel in her left-right "grand coalition", insisted Friday he did not believe he had done anything wrong politically or legally but said he would resign if a legal inquiry was launched.

Merkel had held an "intensive discussion" with Friedrich on Friday, said her spokesman Steffen Seibert, adding that the minister "is aware of the dimension of the case".

The case has blown up after news broke early in the week that searches as part of a child pornography investigation had been carried out at the home and offices of Social Democrat (SPD) lawmaker Sebastian Edathy.