Puppet MastersS


Bomb

Britain's record of continuous conflict has no parallel. Now the elite is panicking that they can't get away with it any more

Seumas Milne
The Guardian
Wed, 12 Feb 2014 21:00 UTC
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© Matt KenyonBritain's record of warmaking is 'extraordinary and chilling, unmatched by any other country
The generals are beside themselves, Whitehall's in a panic. After generations of continuous warfare, the British public has had enough. They're war-weary, the mandarins fret, and believe the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have been bloody failures.

Worse, multicultural Britain is increasingly hostile to troops marching into countries from which British citizens or their families came, defence ministry officials complain, especially as one war after another has been waged in the Muslim world.

Add to that the unprecedented vote in parliament last year to stop an attack on Syria and the governing elite is convinced its right to decide issues of war and peace without democratic interference is under threat. As the former Tory Middle East minister Alistair Burt insisted: "Politicians need space and time to take unpopular action."
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Arrow Down

Someday the world will be in love with bankers again, bankers hope

Heather Timmons
Quartz
Thu, 13 Feb 2014 01:15 UTC
Bankers
© AP Photo/Charles DharapakWill facial hair help?
Goldman Sach's chief executive Lloyd Blankfein expressed a wistful closing thought in a recent interview with Nikkei News: "It's going to be a long time before most people in the world are in love with bankers, but that is not going to stop us from working hard to be a better institution."

Blankfein and bankers around the world are working on rehabilitating their image, years after the bank-sparked financial crisis of 2008 that destroyed an estimated $34 trillion in wealth and cost governments $20 trillion in bailouts and stimulus (as well as giving Goldman Sachs its hard-to-shake "vampire squid" nickname.) Since then, "we've worked hard to engage, and I think it's a better dynamic now," Blankfein told Nikkei News. "It will take some time," he added. "The trauma of the crisis was real and economic growth is still not what it should be."

Blankfein is joined in his quest for love by 90,000 bankers in the Netherlands, who are now required to take an oath to do their "utmost to maintain and promote confidence in the financial-services industry. So help me God," Reuters reports. The full oath includes a pledge to weigh the interests of society as well. The City of London is also doing its part - it recently formed an official task force to "repair the reputation of banking," while the new head of RBS, Ross McEwan, publicly promised to "change our behaviour at every level...and clean up every aspect of how we treat customers."
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Snakes in Suits

What's that sucking sound? It's all the public money being swallowed up by London's wealthy elite

Aditya Chakrabortty
The Guardian
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 19:53 UTC
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© adidas via Getty ImagesTeam GB: Chris Hoy
This is no longer north v south: it's the rest of the country versus a small elite in London

Last Friday, Westminster showed its love for Scotland by putting up an Old Etonian MP for a safe Tory Oxfordshire seat to speak at the Olympics velodrome, paid for by the British public but gifted to east London. Truly, the Scottish Nationalists could ask for no better recruiting sergeant than David Cameron.

Forget, if you haven't already, the prime minister's burblings about "brand Britain" and our apparent monopoly on creativity and ingenuity. Such speeches simply remind us of how the imaginations of Blair and Cameron have turned British history into a Richard Curtis movie from which we are struggling to escape.

Far more revealing was the tableau. Cameron and his aides chose their location as a reminder of the achievements of Chris Hoy and Team GB. But the setting for their defence of the union was also a place that demonstrates how superbly it serves just one corner of it. Look, the prime minister might as well have said, this is what the UK is all about - taking billions of the nation's taxes and paying them to huge civil engineering firms who build structures that push up London house prices and fatten profits for property developers and local estate agents.

You will see many other such moments between now and Scotland's vote on 18 September, even if not all of them are unwitting own-goals. Any halfway serious investigation of the relationships between our nations and regions will end up showing how much of Britain's business model is built on taking wealth and power from across the country - and handing it to a small cabal of financiers and businesspeople in central London.
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Bad Guys

Terror attack in Pakistan leaves four women dead, 'Baluchistan Republican Army' claims responsibility


The Guardian
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 19:37 UTC
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© Ahmad Sidique/Xinhua Press/CorbisA man mourns after a suicide attack killed four women in Peshawar, Pakistan.
Police say attacker ran into home of Jan Mohammad Afridi in Peshawar and exchanged fire with police before explosion

A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the house of a pro-government tribal elder in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing four women, police say.

The attacker ran into the home of Jan Mohammad Afridi in the city's Chamkani area, chased by police.

Police surrounded the house and exchanged gunfire with the bomber. It was unclear whether the bomber detonated his explosives or if they were set off by police gunfire.

Half of Afridi's house was destroyed in the blast, and the bodies of four women were recovered from the rubble. Five others in the house, including a woman and two children, were wounded.

Afridi is a prominent member of the local peace committee, which opposes militants in the area.

Comment: Readers may wish to check the Baluch Republican Army's website. It's also worth noting that the website appears to be registered in Australia and is working from a server in Houston, Texas. So, as usual, all is not what it seems in this terrorist attack and the "army" that has taken responsibility for it.

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Smoking

Brits ban subjects from smoking in their own cars

Rowena Mason
The Guardian
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 19:28 UTC
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© Clive Gee/PAUnder the proposal, the government will now have powers to introduce a new offence of exposing children to smoke in vehicles.
Shadow public health minister hails great victory for child health after vote which divided Conservative backbenchers

Smoking in cars carrying children is set to be banned after MPs overwhelmingly backed the plan in a free vote.

The House of Commons supported the plan, first put forward by Labour, despite the misgivings of some cabinet members, including Nick Clegg, over whether it will be too difficult to police.

Under the proposal the government will now have powers to introduce a new offence of exposing children to smoke in vehicles, with breaches of the law likely to incur a small fine.

David Cameron, who missed the vote, gave his personal backing to the idea, despite the government saying last week there was no need for the legislation.

"While he understands the concerns that some have expressed, his view is that the time for this kind of approach has come," the prime minister's spokesman said.

The shadow public health minister, Luciana Berger, who campaigned on the issue, said it was a "great victory for child health which will benefit hundreds of thousands of young people".

She added: "It is a matter of child protection, not adult choice. The will of parliament has been clearly expressed today and this must be respected. Ministers now have a duty to bring forward regulations so that we can make this measure a reality and put protections for children in place as soon as possible.
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Vader

The Hillary Papers: 'closest friend' paints portrait of ruthless First Lady

Alana Goodman
Washington Free Beacon
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 19:05 UTC
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© AP
On May 12, 1992, Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake, top pollsters for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, issued a confidential memo. The memo's subject was "Research on Hillary Clinton."

Voters admired the strength of the Arkansas first couple, the pollsters wrote. However, "they also fear that only someone too politically ambitious, too strong, and too ruthless could survive such controversy so well."

Their conclusion: "What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary."

The full memo is one of many previously unpublished documents contained in the archive of one of Hillary Clinton's best friends and advisers, documents that portray the former first lady, secretary of State, and potential 2016 presidential candidate as a strong, ambitious and ruthless Democratic operative.

The papers of Diane Blair, a political science professor Hillary Clinton described as her "closest friend" before Blair's death in 2000, record years of candid conversations with the Clintons on issues ranging from single-payer health care to Monica Lewinsky.
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Snakes in Suits

NY Times editor who held Bush wiretapping story for a year now joining criminal justice nonprofit focusing on news coverage

John Byrne
Raw Story
Mon, 10 Feb 2014 18:42 UTC
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An editor who held back on reporting one of the most sweeping violations of American law in recent history is set to join a new nonprofit - focused on drawing attention to criminal justice and news media coverage in America.

The New York Times editor whose decision to hold a story revealing that President George W. Bush was eavesdropping on Americans' calls for more than a year will join a new nonprofit news site focused on the American criminal justice system.

Bill Keller, who served as the executive editor of the paper from 2003-2011 and received a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in Moscow earlier in his career, will join several other journalists who have announced they will start their own news services this year. Glenn Greenwald, known for revealing NSA secrets in The Guardian, Der Spiegel and other papers, opened his own shop, The Intercept, today.

Keller, 65, had the final word in the Times' decision to hold its groundbreaking electronic eavesdropping story, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy On Callers Without Courts," which the paper finally published in December of 2005. Notably, the paper held the story through the course of an entire presidential election, where then-President George W. Bush was re-elected by a narrow margin.
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Eagle

The Franco-American Alliance: U.S. and France's new terror tango

Finian Cunningham
PressTV
Tue, 11 Feb 2014 18:34 UTC
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France is emerging as the new partner-in-crime in support of America's imperialist machinations across the globe.

Up until recently, that thuggish role was filled by British in what was euphemistically referred to as the "special Anglo-American relation". Now the French are taking over from the British as the "oldest ally."

French leader Francois Hollande is currently on a three-day visit to the US, greeted by President Barack Obama with full military honors and a 21-gun salute. "France and US enjoy renewed alliance," reports the Washington Post.

The American president has gone out of his way to emphasize historical links between the two countries, with the opening visit for the two leaders taking place at Thomas Jefferson's estate in Charlottesville, Virginia.


Comment: Monticello, Jefferson's slave plantation, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is indeed the ideal meeting place for these two leaders of regimes bombing the natives into submission in Africa today.


Jefferson was the US envoy to France leading up to the French revolution in 1795, before he went on to become the third president of the US following its war of independence from the British Crown.

Comment: See also:

US Military Intervention in Africa: The East African Response Force, A Creation of the Pentagon

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Arrow Down

Nicole Miller CEO tells the poor in the U.S. to stop whining

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Wed, 12 Feb 2014 18:23 UTC
Bud Konheim
© Business Insider, AustraliaBud Konheim
The following clip from CNBC of Nicole Miller's CEO Bud Konheim is absolutely disgusting. Then again, this simply continues the recent trend of wealthy people coming on financial outlets and telling the poor how they are supposed to feel.

Rather than me rewriting what I already wrote on this topic, I encourage you to read my very well received post from last week:

An Open Letter to Sam Zell: Why Your Statements are Delusional and Dangerous.

This is how I ended that article:
I don't think you're a bad guy with evil intent. I think you are a money obsessed financier who hasn't taken the time to actually understand what is really going on within your own country because you have your head so far up your own ass. It's hard for anyone to actually look at themselves in the mirror and be honest about themselves and the myths they create. However, history shows us that when decadent plutocrats are unable to do so, we end up with disastrous situations. Situations which are often times violent and result in despotism. A situation I desperately hope to avoid, and I truly hope you and others like you recognize your error before it is too late.
While the CNBC clip below is priceless, equally disturbing are the results from CNBC readers to the poll question:
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Megaphone

Food fight turns on local rights

Bennette Hall
Corvallis Gazette-Times
Fri, 07 Feb 2014 17:07 UTC
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© store.coupstreet.com
What started out as an effort to keep genetically modified crops out of Benton County appears to be morphing into a fight over community versus corporate rights. It's also part of broader argument that's playing out in other jurisdictions around the state and around the country.

Corvallis-area organic farmers Harry MacCormack, Clint Lindsey and Dana Allen filed paperwork in 2012 for an initiative petition to create the Benton County Local Food System Ordinance. The effort hit several legal roadblocks along the way, with the county clerk ruling three times that the proposed ballot measure did not meet all the legal requirements to be approved for circulation.

But on Jan. 31 the group won a partial victory in Benton County Circuit Court when Judge Locke Williams ruled that the measure had passed the single subject test. Williams is expected to rule soon on a second question regarding the full text of the measure.

If Williams signs off on that issue, the petitioners and their group, the Benton County Community Rights Coalition, could begin gathering signatures to place the initiative on the November ballot.

The measure, if approved, would ban the planting of genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs, or the patenting of seeds anywhere in Benton County.
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