Puppet MastersS

Snakes in Suits

Bill O'Reilly take four: Fox News admits his tall tales about Irish terrorists

Bill O'Reilly
© Reuters / Lisa Miller
Fox News issued a mea culpa for one of anchor Bill O'Reilly's too-good-to-be-true stories โ€’ but not for all his anecdotes that critics complain are fake. The controversial talk show host has been under fire for recollections of his reporting career.

In his 2013 book, Keep It Pithy, O'Reilly wrote, "I've seen soldiers gun down unarmed civilians in Latin America, Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with bombs."

Asked about O'Reilly's statements Friday, a Fox News spokesman told the Washington Post that O'Reilly was not an eyewitness to any bombings or injuries in Northern Ireland. Instead, he was shown photos of bombings by Protestant police officers.

Comment: Finally more transparency on his outrageous words and behavior. Sure doesn't help the mainstream news credibility.


Bizarro Earth

Ukraine shuts down and conscripts 800 protesting coal miners from Western region

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One way to deal with dissent.
This article originally appeared at Vesti (a Russian-language Ukrainian news portal). It was translated by J.Hawk at Fort Russ.

The coal miners of Western Ukraine who threatened a large-scale rebellion due to the three- month delay of salaries are being inducted into the army.

800 rebellious miners received notices directly from military commissars who delivered them to the coal mines.

According to the deputy mayor of Novovolynsk, Eduard Savik, the notices were delivered to coal mines no. 1 and no. 9 in Novovolynsk, which the state is planning to close. That's where the majority of rebellious miners is employed.

Comment: Ukraine really is in bizarro world! Kiev's actions just don't make any sense.


Bad Guys

Poroshenko graduates Ukrainian cadets early due to 'military threat from the East'

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As it stated on the 2th of March 619 graduates all over the country got their officer ranks. According to decree of the President of Ukraine P.Poroshenko, graduation of cadets happened this time three months earlier than usually. It happened for the first time since the end of the Great Patriotic War.

In Odessa 144 cadets graduated from military academy ahead of time. Also in Kiev 268 cadets from two military academies got their officer ranks.

Their main qualifications: troopers, intelligence officers, artillerists and workers on the home front.

The main emphasis during cadets training was laid on tactical training and weapons practice. Besides, much emphasis was laid on the experience of combat operations in the South of Ukraine.

Comment: More 'cannon fodder' for the glory of Ukraine. Can't have cadets hanging around in school during the war.


TV

CNN wins new accreditation for Russian airwaves

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© EPA/ERIK S. LESSER
Federal broadcasting authority Roskomnadzor has issued American news channel CNN with the first of two licences required for a return to the airwaves after a two-month break in transmission.

Accreditation now needs support from a general broadcasting licence from the Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media before the channel's output is back on Russian screens.

"Accreditation for Russia has been signed off," said Roskomnadzor representative Vadim Ampelonskiy, noting the two-stage approval process.

Comment: Interesting since this comes on the heels of John Kerry begging Congress for more money to counter RT in Russia.


Magnify

Best of the Web: Keeping fear alive: If terrorism is such a grave threat, why does the FBI need to manufacture plots?

fbi arrests brooklyn men plot
The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency's latest counterterrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain ably documents, "it appears that none of the three men was in any condition to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI informant." One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI informant that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in following through on the FBI's plot: his mom had taken away his passport. Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain noted on Twitter that this case "sounds like another victory for the FBI over the mentally ill."

In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month โ€” after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol โ€” these cases follow a very clear pattern:

Comment: The FBI will continue using these tactics for as long as the public continues to be fooled. Nothing will change until enough people have the knowledge and awareness to resist this propaganda.


USA

Best of the Web: Totalitarian rule in America: False flags, secret prisons, extrajudicial assassinations, media censorship, the rounding up of alleged "terrorists" ...

1984
© Global Research
Every day signs are looming larger than life as we know it in the wealthiest nation on earth that it's about to crash and burn, forever changing not for the better. The latest wake-up call arrived in a Guardian article earlier this week. The story features a secret prison not unlike the CIA torture detention centers all over the world whereby the Chicago police hold rounded up US citizens for hours or days at a time for interrogation. The same internationally illegal roundups of suspected "potential terrorists" (which by latest Gestapo America standards can easily be you or me) that the CIA and military black ops deploy globally, are being covertly conducted not only in Obama's hometown where his thug buddy Rahm rules, but likely every US city and soon coming to a neighborhood near you.

The complete loss of constitutional civil liberties where we can be taken in without warrant, locked up and shackled for indefinite periods of time, where to all our friends and family we simply disappear, those totalitarian Orwellian tactics are here today in secret CIA-like "black site" locations throughout the nation. Lawyers are summarily turned away. Those imprisoned are not booked nor entered in any record-keeping system, only to typically be beaten and shackled. It was determined that one man at the Chicago site already died while in custody. If this inhumane brutality hidden from public view is operating in one major US metropolis, it means that these secret police detention centers are no doubt also up and running in secret locations throughout America. This worst case scenario of police state USA is just one more nightmare come true. And this comes after it's been determined that Americans are at least 100 times more likely to die at the hands of murdering police than in all other industrialized nations.

For numerous decades the United States has engaged in both high intensive and low intensive counterinsurgency and counterterrorism wars around the globe. But now in the twenty-first century all those same black ops wars have come home to roost right here in the land of the not-so-free. To police state USA all American citizens are the potential enemy. It's also fair to say that the police in countless jails and prisons have unlawfully beaten and killed thousands of US citizens while in police custody over the years. Sadly, this form of murder in covert black sites where inmates are literally tortured to death takes police state brutality and slaughter to a whole new unprecedented level. And of course those of color and poor are most often the victims. Two years ago it was reported that a black man is killed by police every 28 hours. And with the deaths spiking last year, it's more apt to be closer to every 24 hours now.

On a far less shocking and dramatic note, the latest FCC 3 to 2 vote on Thursday to "maintain net neutrality" has been treated in the press as a triumph for the people. Yet before we internet users celebrate, several keys factors still need to be pondered. We already know the overriding history in North America where giant transnational corporations enjoy more individual rights than us individuals in this age of globalism. The people may have averted a disastrous lost battle but the war of corporate greed winning out over the rights of people goes on. The FCC's ruling declared that the internet falls under the rules and regulations of the telecommunications industry and we know what's been happening there. Six corporate entities virtually control all the world's major media outlets.

Cell Phone

Nemtsov murder witness Anna Duritskaya tells mom he insisted on walking to apartment

nemtsov anna
Inna Duritskaya, the mother of Anna Duritskaya, the witness of Nemtsov's murder who was next to him on the Bolshoy Moskvoretskiy bridge, told CNN about her conversation with her daughter right after the tragic event.

Inna Duritskaya said that, according to her daughter, Boris Nemtsov insisted on walking on foot to his apartment in the center of Moscow.

"She waited for Boris in the restaurant. They had supper and went outside. Anna proposed taking a cap, but Boris refused. He wanted to walk across the bridge. She held his hand while they walked. They she heard shots. Boris crumpled and fell to the ground. When Anna realized what was happening, she was so shocked that she did not see what happened. Moreover, he was shot in the back," Inna told CNN.

Anna Duritskaya said earlier that she was in shock after the murder, and that she called her mother in Ukraine during the first minutes after the murder.

Comment: See also: Duritskaya was interviewed by police for over 7 hours. From what the press is saying so far, she didn't see anything: the shooter, the car... It looks like the killer got lucky: he left behind a witness who didn't witness a thing.


Snakes in Suits

'World-leading economist' and adviser to Chancellor Osborne busted for smoking crack

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Douglas McWilliams and George Osborne.
All those times when the general population asks if panglossian, clueless economists are smoking crack... apparently there was a reason for that.

When the UK and the rest of Europe proposed and implemented a change to the way GDP is calculated last year (a change which single-handedly pushed Britain above France as the world's 5th largest economy) one which "estimated" the contribution of prostitution and illegal drugs to national economic output, little did we know that such "estimates" would be based on personal experience (also see "How Britain Calculates Its Hooker "GDP Boost": 60,879 Prostitutes x 25 Clients Per Week x ยฃ67.16 Per Visit").

Enter professor Douglas McWilliams, 63, head of the well-known Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) think tank and one of the most prominent modern economists, in fact in his own words "one of the world's leading economists...best known for his work in forecasting" as well as advisor (and cheerleader) to none other than UK Chancellor George Osborne.

Comment: Oh, the irony; economists really are on crack!


Clipboard

Man on the bridge: Comprehensive guide to the Nemtsov murder investigation

nemtsov
© SERGEI ILNITSKY/EPARussian riot police detained opposition leader Boris Nemtsov during a 2010 Moscow rally against the government of President Vladimir Putin.
How the Nemtsov murder investigation is progressing

Nemtsov was shot on Friday night in the very center of Moscow. The investigators immediately classified his murder as a contract killing, however, there are so many possible scenarios that none of them can be classified as the favorite one. The only thing of which the investigators are certain is that the killers were not professionals. In any event, they used an unreliable weapon and ammunition more than 20 years old, and they moreover left alive the main witness of the murder.


Comment: On the other hand, some details of the shooting seem to imply a high level of organization, as Jacque Sapir writes:
  1. How could the assassins be sure of the route that Nemtsov and his companion would take. If a strong degree of certitude existed, this would permit the killers to intercept on the bridge at the chosen time. But if no certainty existed, how could they be sure that Nemtsov would be, at the chosen time, on the bridge? Visibly, this implies an important level of organization.
  2. The car, a white Lada, could not circle Red Square. Nemtsov could not have been followed by the killers from the time he left the restaurant to the moment when he got to the route of the street. For several hundred meters, the car could neither follow nor precede Nemtsov. The car had to intercept the trajectory of the couple. This holds true whether it was the case of a shooter in the car, or of a shooter getting in after firing. This means very probably one or more accomplices who tailed Nemtsov and who informed the future killers on the location of Nemtsov and his companion (via mobile phone?). But one can also think of another hypothesis, which is technically possible: he or the young lady could unknowingly (or voluntarily?) be wearing a radio-tag that would give the car of the assassin the position and exact placement of the couple.
  3. The difference in speed between pedestrians and a car implies again, a perfect synchronization so the car would come up to Nemtsov when he was on the bridge. Here again, this is compatible with the hypothesis of accomplices as well as with the idea of a radio tag.

Comment: See also: Insignificant 'Putin critic' gunned down by someone who hates Putin


Vader

Germany: former politician confesses to child porn charges

Former German politician Sebastian Edathy has confessed in court to using his official work laptop to download pornographic videos and images of children from the Internet. He was fined 5,000 euros.
Sebastian Edathy
Following Edathy's admission, the Verden District Court in the German state of Lower Saxony on Monday handed the former Social Democrats (SPD) deputy a fine of 5,000 euros ($5,600), bringing the trial to an end.

Comment: Five thousand euros amount to little more than a slap on the wrist. It's highly likely that this reaches into the upper echelons of German politics and society.

German cabinet minister warned lawmaker of global child porn investigation