Puppet MastersS


Whistle

New Jersey police officer files lawsuit over profiling quotas

Peggy Wright
USA Today
Thu, 29 May 2014 16:53 UTC
Image
© Mendham Township Police Department
A cop who said he refuses to profile young drivers for tickets has filed a lawsuit saying he's been passed over for promotions and overtime because of his actions.

Patrolman Robert Wysokowski, 43, of the Mendham Township Police Department filed suit Wednesday in Superior Court here under New Jersey's Conscientious Employee Protection Act, also known as the Whistleblower Law. He seeks promotion to sergeant, punitive and compensatory damages for "all lost benefits, wages and rights," and damages for emotional distress.

Wysokowski contends that he has consistently met department standards on enforcement of motor vehicle laws but beginning in 2005, under now-former Police Chief Thomas Costanza, he was told he had to "increase his numbers." The suit said that in 2005, Steven Crawford, who was then a sergeant but now is chief, advised Wysokowski to "seek out and target younger drivers for motor vehicle stops."

"Crawford told plaintiff that it was 'good police work,' or words to that effect," the lawsuit said. The complaint said superiors advised Wysokowski that he always could find an infraction when he stopped a vehicle.
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Star

Federal Appeals court rules citizens can film police under First Amendment

Scott Kaufman
The Raw Story
Thu, 29 May 2014 12:11 UTC
Image
© AFP/Robyn Beck
The First Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that American citizens have the right to film police officers in public.

The federal appeals court declared that Carla Gericke was exercising her First Amendment right when she attempted to film a late-night traffic stop. Gericke was driving behind Tyler Hanslin, because she did not know the way to his home. When she saw police lights flash behind her, she assumed she was being hailed and pulled over.

Sergeant Joseph Kelley approached her vehicle and told her that he had meant to pull Hanslin over, and she moved her vehicle to a nearby parking lot. Once there, she exited her vehicle and approached Hanslin's with her video camera, informing Sergeant Kelley that she was going to record the encounter. Sergeant Kelley ordered her back to her car, and she complied.

Shortly thereafter, Officer Brandon Montplaisir arrived at the scene, and he approached Gericke and demanded to know where her video camera was. When she refused to tell him, he arrested for her disobeying a police officer. At the station, officers also charged her with unlawful interception of oral communication.
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Dollars

Monsanto goes to college - And buys the professor & the student center . . .

Aaron J. Freiwald
The Law Matters
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:36 UTC
Image
© aaronfreiwald.com
If you need a science expert to support your cause and you have unlimited cash, what better way to find an expert you can trust than to buy the university where the scientist works?

When it comes to food and agricultural policy, it is hard to know which raging debate burns hotter. Ballot initiatives and grass-roots campaigns in several states, including California, would require labeling on food products containing genetically modified components. Food products falsely claiming to be "natural" or to have health benefits face challenges in court. Policymakers receive more intense scrutiny over the way millions and millions of dollars are spent in subsidies and tax breaks for industrial agribusinesses.

When the media or litigators or regulators tackle one of these issues, they will look for experts in the agricultural "field" of interest, so to speak. That is where the rights and interests of consumers are vulnerable.

Recently, Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit group advocating safe and sustainable food, water and fish, published a devastating report on the prominent role private industry now enjoys in agricultural programs at universities around the country. You can find the report, entitled, "Public Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence Over University Agricultural Research".
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Light Saber

Best of the Web: President Bashar al-Assad defies NeoCon democrazis with landslide Syria election victory


RT
Wed, 04 Jun 2014 15:44 UTC
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Bashar Assad has won a landslide victory in the Syrian presidential poll with 88.7 percent of the vote. This will secure him a third seven-year term in office amidst a bloody civil war, which stemmed from protests against his rule.

"I declare the victory of Dr Bashar Hafez Assad as president of the Syrian Arab Republic with an absolute majority of the votes cast in the election," parliament speaker Mohammad Laham said in a televised address from his office in the Syrian parliament.

A total of 10.2 million people voted for Assad. The voter turnout stood at 73.42 percent. No violations have been reported, Syria's Higher Judicial Committee for Elections said as quoted by SANA news agency.

Syrian officials said the result was a vindication of Assad's three-year campaign against those fighting to get rid of him.

Comment: 120,000 dead people later, it has all come to nought.

Assad is more popular than ever and the U.S. empire is one step closer to its grave.

Stupid, bloody psychopaths.

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Gold Bar

Flashback $1 Trillion motherlode discovered in Afghanistan

Lorimer Wilson
Mining.com
Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:56 UTC
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© Daily Mail, UK
A recently unearthed 2007 United States Geological Service survey appears to have discovered nearly $1 trillion in mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.

Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.FinancialArticleSummariesToday.com, provides below further reformatted and edited [..] excerpts from articles by James Risen* (www.nytimes.com) and Una Galani** (www.breakingviews.com) for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read. Smith goes on to say:

The previously unknown deposits - including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium - are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world. An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

Comment: Where are those weapons of mass destruction?
Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
BP 'Has Gained Stranglehold Over Iraq' After Oilfield Deal is Rewritten
The War On Terror is a Fraud

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Boat

Money talks! France responds to US BNP fine, will train hundreds of Russian seamen to operate French-made warship

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:12 UTC
French Mistral warship
© UnknownThe French Mistral is built to launch amphibious attacks
In the aftermath of the Russian sanctions, which French president Francois Hollande vehemently approved after constantly slamming Russia's involvement in the Ukraine conflict, and even went so far to threaten the cancellation of a delivery of a powerful French-made amphibious assault warship, the Mistral, to be delivered to Russia something happened: in the latest demonstration of its impotence to punish domestic bankers, the US decided to slap a French bank, BNP Paribas with a $10 billion fine for money laundering.

As a result, France has suddenly found itself battling two populist fronts: on one hand it had to continue its foreign policy track of siding with NATO and the US when it comes to Russian developments; on the other it had to responds to howls of protest from the population bashing the US for having the temerity to punish its flagship bank (recall "France Furious At US $10 Billion BNP "Masterful Slap", "Racketeering" Fine").

Today, it was revealed that in weighing the two evils, it picked what it thought was the lesser one, and as the WSJ reports "a group of 400 Russian sailors are scheduled to arrive on June 22 in the French Atlantic port of Saint-Nazaire to undergo months of instruction before some of them pilot the first of two Mistral-class carriers back to Russia in the fall, said one of these people."

As the WSJ explains, the training is a pivotal step that deepens France's commitment to fulfilling the €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) contract to supply Russia with the carriers, which are built to launch amphibious attacks with landing craft, helicopters and tanks.
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Cow

Best of the Web: Making sense of Obama's billion dollar hammer: Throwing a piece of meat to placate the dogs

The Saker
The vineyard of the Saker
Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:44 UTC
Obama
© AFPUS President Barack Obama addresses US and Polish airmen in front of a F-16 fighter jet in a hangar at Warsaw Chopin Airport, Poland, on June 3, 2014. Obama arrived for a two-day Polish visit, the first stop on a European trip, and will discuss the Ukraine crisis with his central and eastern European counterparts.
You probably heard it by now: Obama has pledged a billion dollars to what my "beloved" BBC called "European security". The official name for this initiative is the "European Reassurance Initiative". You see, Obama and the BBC apparently believe that Europeans are really terrified and that they believe that Russian tanks might roll into Warsaw, Athens, Rome or Lisbon any moment now. The good news is that Uncle Sam is here to reassure them that he will let no such thing happen and that this additional 1 billion dollars will deter the Russian Bear.

Have you ever read something more ridiculous?

So what is really going on here?

There is a wonderful American expression which says that "to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail". Well, to Obama, the EU and the Ukraine sure does look like nails because the only instrument the USA has used in its foreign policy for many decades now is a "hammer" composed of money and guns. But let's backtrack for a second.

Comment: See also:



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Bullseye

Russia "betrayed" the NWO says senior US diplomat Christopher R. Hill

The Saker
The vineyard of the Saker
Wed, 04 Jun 2014 03:08 UTC
New world order
I was just watching Alain Soral's latest video when I heard him offer a very interesting explanation for why the AngloZionist Empire hates Putin so much. The article Soral quotes is entitled "The End of the New World Order" and it has been written by Christopher R. Hill, "former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009", i.e. a big shot in the US imperial nomenklatura. Here is what Hill writes:
Russia's annexation of Crimea and ongoing intimidation of Ukraine appears to mean the end of a 25-year period whose hallmark was an effort to bring Russia into greater alignment with Euro-Atlantic goals and traditions. Now the question is: What comes next? (...) [the] new world order held for almost 25 years. Except for Russia's brief war with Georgia in August 2008 (a conflict generally seen as instigated by reckless Georgian leadership), Russia's acquiescence and commitment to the "new world order," however problematic, was one of the great accomplishments of the post-Cold War era. Even Russia's reluctance to support concerted Western action, such as in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990's, was based on arguments that could be heard in other European countries. Russian democracy certainly had its share of flaws, but that hardly made it unique among post-communist countries. (...) Americans do need to understand the challenge they are facing from a Russia that no longer seems interested in what the West has been offering for the last 25 years: special status with NATO, a privileged relationship with the European Union, and partnership in international diplomatic endeavor.
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Bulb

China and Russia ditch international rating agencies to establish independent rating system


RT.com
Tue, 03 Jun 2014 11:31 UTC
Anton Siluanov
© RIA Novosti / Igor RussakAnton Siluanov, Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation
No more Fitch, Moody's, or Standard & Poor's for Russia and China, as they have agreed to establish a rating agency on joint projects, and later, international services, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Tuesday.

"The establishment of an independent rating system is being discussed. Many countries would like to have more objectivity in the assessment of rating agencies," Siluanov said.

"There will be a Russian-Chinese rating agency, which will use the same tools and criteria for assessing countries and regional investments that existing rating agencies use," the minister said.

Foreign investors are influenced by rating agencies, which provide analysis for companies investing in capital, especially abroad. Standard & Poor's recently downgraded Russia's credit rating to just above junk status citing concerns over the significant capital outflow as a result of Russia's action in Ukraine. In the first three months of 2014, a record $51 billion left the world's eighth largest economy.

Comment: It's not surprising that Russia is taking more steps to protect itself from Western domination:

More self foot-shooting: American financial rating company cuts Russia's credit rating to step above 'junk'

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Black Cat

Staged amateur night for the suckers: Snowden, Brian Williams interview

Jon Rappoport
No More Fake News
Fri, 30 May 2014 21:19 UTC
williams snowden
Brian Williams throwing Snowden softballs.
You could call it a completely incompetent interview, but Brian Williams is supposed to be incompetent. That's his job.

Don't take a Snowden comment and drill down into it. Don't connect dots. Don't delve into Snowden's history. Don't ask serious questions about the NSA.

Just make the interview seem important. That's all that counts. Give the impression that the interview is an Event.

When Snowden suddenly told Williams he was trained as a spy, he wasn't just an analyst, when he said he'd worked under false names at false jobs he didn't really have, for the CIA, NSA, and DIA...that's a show-stopper.

Hold everything. "Really, Ed? What did you do? What kind of thing? You worked for the DIA? Never heard that before. When? Why haven't you said you were a spy before? Why hasn't Greenwald mentioned this? Does the New York Times know this? The Washington Post? When you took that last systems-analyst job for NSA in Hawaii, as a contractor for Booz Allen, you'd already been a deep-cover spy for NSA? What exactly was your job at NSA in Hawaii, Ed?"

And that's just for starters.

Comment: Given that Russia has granted Snowden asylum, we wonder just how deep this web of deception goes... How does Russia fit into it all?

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