Puppet MastersS


Light Saber

Vindication: City of Albuquerque ordered to pay $6m over man's wrongful killing by police

albuquerque killer cops christopher torres
Christopher Torres
The city of Albuquerque must pay more than $6m in connection with the wrongful death of a man with schizophrenia killed by Albuquerque police, a New Mexico judge ruled Tuesday.

In her detailed findings of fact, district court judge Shannon Bacon said officers were not acting in self-defense when they punched and shot Christopher Torres, 27, in his backyard in 2011.

Bacon also wrote the use of deadly force violated Torres' constitutional rights.

According to authorities, detectives CJ Brown and Richard Hilger shot Torres in the back at close range while serving an arrest warrant on a felony charge of aggravated auto burglary for trying to carjack a woman at a traffic light. During the confrontation with police, Torres tried to punch Hilger and grabbed Hilger's gun as they scuffled in the suspect's backyard, police said.

But Bacon said the officers did not present the arrest warrant when they confronted him in his yard. The judge said Hilger and Brown also did not contact Torres' assigned Crisis Intervention Team officer or family before confronting him - something the family had asked in order to ease tensions.

Instead, the officers jumped the fence and walked toward him, the ruling said.

"The unnecessary escalation of events by Detectives Brown and Hilger and their own aggressive acts at the Torres home created the unnecessarily dangerous situation in which Christopher Torres was shot to death," Bacon wrote.

Steve Torres, Christopher's father, said he hadn't seen the ruling but he thinks it vindicates the family's story that their son was unnecessarily killed by police.

"For us, it was never about the money," Torres said. "It was about setting the record straight."

An attorney for the city of Albuquerque did not immediately respond to an email from the Associated Press.

The ruling comes as the city of Albuquerque is in talks with the US Justice Department over pending police reforms following a scathing report faulting Albuquerque police over its use of force and the way officers handle suspects battling mental illness.

The Justice Department is expected to release a draft of its decree later this week.

Via Associated Press

USA

U.S. wars, a record of unparalleled failure

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© amidnightsuns.blogspot.com
The United States has been at war -- major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts, and covert actions -- nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began. That's more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions.

Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in the face. They are, however, the words that can't be said in a country committed to a military-first approach to the world, a continual build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and occupations to counterinsurgency, proxy wars, and back again.

So here are five straightforward lessons -- none acceptable in what passes for discussion and debate in this country -- that could be drawn from that last half century of every kind of American warfare:

Gold Seal

Pakistan court orders ex-CIA station chief to be charged over drone murder

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© Reuters/US Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Effrain Lopez/Handout
A Pakistani High Court has ordered police to charge ex-CIA station chief Jonathan Banks for the murder of civilians in a 2009 drone strike. Prosecutors say he issued ordered the deadly strike and was directly responsible for the deaths.

Judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui issued the ruling after hearing a petition from drone activist Kareem Khan, whose son and brother were killed in the 2009 strike in the North Waziristan tribal district.

"Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of Islamabad High Court ordered today registration of a criminal case for offenses of murder, conspiracy, waging war against Pakistan and offenses under the provisions of Terrorism Act 1997," against Banks, a statement by Khan's lawyers said.

Banks' cover as CIA Pakistan station chief was blown in 2010 after he was named in court papers. As a result he was forced to flee the country.

Comment: It's about time someone held these greedy, warmongering scumbags accountable:

Making the world safe for corporate greed: American drone attacks kill 12 in Pakistan
US drone strike kills four in Pakistan
Waging Peace: Ten killed by US drone strike in Pakistan
US Drone Strike Kills 8 In Pakistan
U.S. Drone Strike Kills 4 Militants in North-Western Pakistan
US Drone Strike Kills Three in Pakistan
Another Day in the Empire: US drone kills 8 in Pakistan
US drone strike kills 25 in Pakistan
US Assassination Drone Attack Kills 6 in North West Pakistan
US Fires 1st Drone in Pakistan in 6 Weeks; 4 Dead
US Drone Strike Kills 5 "Militants" in Pakistan
First drone strike in Pakistan since protest march kills 5
Drone strike kills five more in Pakistan
Drone Strike Kills 19 Ahead of US-Pakistan Meeting in Tokyo
U.S. Drone Attacks Kill 10 "Militants" in Pakistan


Recycle

Covert re-invasion of Iraq on the cards? U.S. feigns surprise at ISIS attacks

ISIS map of offensive in Iraq
© UnknownISIS clearly did not materialize spontaneously within Iraq, it has clearly redeployed from its NATO-sponsored destruction of Syria to northern Iraq, perhaps in an attempt to justify a NATO incursion and the creation of a buffer zone straddling Syrian, Iraqi, and even possibly Iranian territory with the goal of targeting Iran directly with ISIS.
Heavily armed, well funded, and organized as a professional, standing army, the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swept southward into Iraq from Turkey and northeastern Syria, taking the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, and now threaten the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad itself. The United States was sure to prop up two unfounded narratives - the first being that US intelligence agencies, despite assets in Iraq and above it in the form of surveillance drones, failed to give warning of the invasion, and that ISIS is some sort of self-sustaining terror organization carving out a "state" by "robbing banks" and collecting "donations" on Twitter.

The Wall Street Journal in its report, "Iraqi Drama Catches U.S. Off Guard," stated:
The quickly unfolding drama prompted a White House meeting Wednesday of top policy makers and military leaders who were caught off guard by the swift collapse of Iraqi security forces, officials acknowledged.
In another WSJ post, "U.S. Secretly Flying Drones Over Iraq," it claimed:
A senior U.S. official said the intelligence collected under the small [secret US drone] program was shared with Iraqi forces, but added: "It's not like it did any good." The rapid territorial gains by the Islamist forces loyal to Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, an al Qaeda offshoot, caught the U.S. by surprise, the officials said.

Arrow Down

Top Palestinian negotiator rips into 'discredited, useless' Abbas

Saeb Erekat
© Miriam AlsterSaeb Erekat
A leaked audio recording of chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat harshly criticizing PA President Mahmoud Abbas over his reluctance to pursue Israel in the international arena exposed severe fissures within the Palestinian leadership regarding how best to engage Israel following the collapse of US-brokered negotiations in April, and showed profound disdain by Erekat for his president.

In the video, Erekat says Abbas has lost his credibility, slams his "useless" approach, and compares him to Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad. The top Palestinian negotiator also says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal who isn't "worth the bullet" to shoot him.

The source and time of Erekat's speech were not reported, but in the edited three-minute recording, uploaded to YouTube late Wednesday night by the Awraq News Agency, the Palestinian official accused his president of acting autocratically against the will of a majority of the Palestinian leadership, which voted for a harsher stance against Israel.

USA

Flashback How US fuelled myth of Zarqawi the mastermind

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Zarqawi, a "terrorist leader" myth created by US intelligence to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader believed to be responsible for the abduction of Kenneth Bigley, is 'more myth than man', according to American military intelligence agents in Iraq.

Several sources said the importance of Zarqawi, blamed for many of the most spectacular acts of violence in Iraq, has been exaggerated by flawed intelligence and the Bush administration's desire to find "a villain" for the post-invasion mayhem.

US military intelligence agents in Iraq have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one source, "told us what we wanted to hear".

"We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," the agent said.

"Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."

Airplane

Electronic war games blamed for jets disappearing off radars in Europe

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Electronic military exercises were to blame for the mysterious disappearance of dozens of planes from air-traffic control screens in the heart of Europe, Slovak authorities have said.

About 50 planes temporarily disappeared from radars in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia between June 5 and June 10, Austria's flight safety monitor said.

German and Czech air traffic control also reported brief disappearances.

Slovakia blamed the outages on planned military exercises.

"The disappearance of objects on radar screens was connected with a planned military exercise which took place in various parts of Europe...whose goal was the interruption of radio communication frequencies," the Slovak air traffic services said in a statement.

"This activity also caused the temporary disappearance of several targets on the radar display, while in the meantime the planes were in radio contact with air traffic controllers and continued in their flight normally."

Comment: Or...the planes disappearing from radar could be a direct result of two X-Class solar flares that took place during the time frame in question. Data from the Space Weather Prediction Center illustrates just such an occurrence, as can be seen here with the GOES X-ray flux data.

X-Class solar flares have been observed to cause radio blackout due to the ionosphere's D-Region Absorption of said flares. Where was the affected region during one of these events? Europe, which can be seen here.

Currently the Sun's output is low relative to historical solar maximums and double X-Class flares could reasonably be seen as anomalous. Unless the flares were caused by Sun diving comets, which apparently was the case.

Watch this video for a quick rundown of how everything transpired in "real-time".


Info

Situations report from the frontlines in Ukraine June 13th by Juan

White Phosphorous bombs used in Ukraine
© Youtube/NEF AcuraUkraine military reportedly dropped incendiary bombs on villages near Slavyansk
1. Fighting central Mariupol near Novorossiya command post. Increasing intensity 06:15 13 June.

2. Minimum 3 main battle tanks Nats Army outside Lugansk captured by Army Novorossiya and are in use by new owners.

3. White Phosphor artillery shells used to bombard several villages around Slavyansk and Slavyansk City late evening and night. Fires in one village and Slavyansk City.

4. Unconfirmed but deemed reliable sources indicate chemical weapons and/or biological weapons to be used in Peoples Republic of Donetsk against civilian and Army Novorossiya targets coupled with simultaneous high casualty attacks against civilian targets in central and west Ukraine. Unconfirmed but reliable reports state Ambassador J. Pyatt of USA knows of this plan. Operations are scheduled for 3 to 5 days from 12 June 2014. Army Novorossiya is to be implicated in chemical and terror attacks.

5. Strong Nats armor column advancing on Lugansk City has been stopped on the outskirts by local self defense units. Several Nats tanks and BTR's destroyed in fighting.

6. Civilian dead from bombardments Slavyansk area night of 12 June including at least 2 children.

Windsock

Kiev junta shoots itself in the foot yet again: Refuses to pay debts and prepares for cuts in Russian gas supplies

gas metering station Uzhgorod
© AFPA picture taken on May 21, 2014 shows a gas metering station "Uzhgorod" near the Chaslivci village, not far from western Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod.
Ukrainian Prime Minster Arseny Yatsenyuk has ordered Energy and Coal ministries, regional governments, and Naftogaz to get ready for Russian gas supplies to be cut starting Monday, the cabinet's website said.

The measure is dubbed "the energy sector's functioning plan which involves the cessation of gas deliveries from the Russian Federation" and comes into effect on June 16, the document states.

With that, Kiev will launch its case against the Russian energy giant Gazprom at the Stockholm Court of Arbitration, the statement said. Yatsenyuk called for "preparations to be completed" for the process.

Moscow set Monday as a deadline for Ukraine to pay off part of its gas debt of $1.95 billion.

Yatseniuk also ordered the national regulator to revise transportation tariffs for Russian gas via Ukraine as Russia ships around a half of its gas exports to Europe through Ukraine.

Despite ordering the measures effectively undermining current gas talks with Russia, Yatsenyuk still blamed Moscow for the failure of the talks.

Comment: Well there you have it, "Yats" is completely insane and will destroy his country, all the while blaming Russia for everything like a spoiled child. Just the kind of puppet that the US loves!


Eye 1

The war on compassion: In 33 U.S. cities, it's illegal to do the one thing that helps the homeless most

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© AP
The news: In case the United States' problem with homelessness wasn't bad enough, a forthcoming National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) report says that 33 U.S. cities now ban or are considering banning the practice of sharing food with homeless people. Four municipalities (Raleigh, N.C.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Daytona Beach, Fla.) have recently gone as far as to fine, remove or threaten to throw in jail private groups that work to serve food to the needy instead of letting government-run services do the job.

Why it's happening: The bans are officially instituted to prevent government-run anti-homelessness programs from being diluted. But in practice, many of the same places that are banning food-sharing are the same ones that have criminalized homelessness with harsh and punitive measures. Essentially, they're designed to make being homeless within city limits so unpleasant that the downtrodden have no choice but to leave. Tampa, for example, criminalizes sleeping or storing property in public. Columbia, South Carolina, passed a measure that essentially would have empowered police to ship all homeless people out of town. Detroit PD officers have been accused of illegally taking the homeless and driving them out of the city.

Comment: Basic human values like compassion, decency, morality are all foreign and threatening to psychopaths, those who are ruling societies. That is why they are doing everything they could to destroy those values and turn normal people into pseudo-psychopaths.