Puppet MastersS


Footprints

Saudi Arabia offers bribe to Russia over Syria


Fars News Agency
Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:21 UTC
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© UnknownSaudi Arabia has offered Russia economic incentives, including a major arms deal and a pledge not to challenge Russian gas sales if Moscow scales back support for the Syrian government, Middle-East sources and western diplomats said.
The proposed deal between two of the leading power brokers in Syria's crisis was set out by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week, they said on Wednesday.

Russia has supported the Syrian government with arms and diplomatic cover throughout the conflict and any change in Moscow's stance would remove a major obstacle to action on Syria by the certain western and Arab states, al-Alam reported.

Syrian opposition sources close to Saudi Arabia said Prince Bandar offered to buy up to $15bln of Russian weapons as well as ensuring that Persian Gulf gas would not threaten Russia's position as a main supplier to Europe.

In return, Saudi Arabia wanted Moscow to ease its strong support of the Syrian government and agree not to block any future UN Security Council resolution on Syria, they said.
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Info

Vlad the Hammer vs Obama the Wimp

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Fri, 09 Aug 2013 14:24 UTC
Make a plan; then make another plan. Both won't work.
- Bertolt Brecht
This is getting ridiculous. The President of the United States (POTUS) screamed and shouted because he wanted his spy (Edward Snowden) back. Snowden, following Russian laws, was granted temporary asylum. The White House was "disappointed".

Then POTUS snubbed the bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow coinciding with the Group of 20 in St Petersburg in early September. The Kremlin was equally "disappointed".

Putin sent a telegram to George "Dubya" Bush - wishing him a quick recovery from heart surgery. [1] POTUS went to a US talk show and said Russia tended to "slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality."

Brechtian distancing tells us that "ridiculous" does not even begin to describe it. The Cold War mentality is actually impregnated in the Beltway genes - from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon. As for POTUS, he acted like a diplomatic dilettante at best. "Yes, We Can" has morphed into "Yes, We Scan"; and now it's "Yes, We Scorn". This may apply to assorted poodles of European breeding, but it won't stick to Vlad the Hammer.

The White House justified its decision by "lack of progress" on everything including missile defense, arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, human rights and civil society. Nonsense; this was all about an impotent POTUS prevented from prosecuting his war against whistleblowers. Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yury Ushakov, was closer to the truth when he said, "The US is not ready to build relations on an equal basis."
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Bad Guys

Water Wars: Corporations laying claim to the world's H20

Jordan Rubin
Greenmedinfo.com
Thu, 08 Aug 2013 09:30 UTC
Privat H20
© UnknownWater Wars: Corporations Begin To Lay Claim To the World's H20
It's bad enough that Nestlé former CEO - now Chairman of the Board - Peter Brabeck-Letmathe supports GMO farming, saying that genetically modified (GM) foods are "perfectly safe" and don't cause any health problems, while also saying that organic farming is "not the best.

But now he's dipped his toes into the water supply, indicating that the world's water supply should - and will soon - come under the control of corporations such as Nestlé. He believes that water should be managed by businesses and governing personnel. In short, Brabeck-Letmathe wants water to be controlled, privatized and delegated, monitoring and controlling people's water use - including amounts and how and where it's used.

And let's be honest . . . since Brabeck unwaveringly supports GM farming, you can bet that GM foods would have first priority of water rights, while organic farming would be forced out.

You can view the video of Brabeck-Letmathe speaking his mind about GM farming and water supply in this interview:

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Bad Guys

Persistence of Fascism: What the German Greens do not say about the Bavarian intelligence service

Sven Heymann
World Socialist Web Site
Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:40 UTC
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Early last week, the Green faction in the Bavarian state parliament announced the results of an investigation into the Bavarian intelligence agency's historical connections to the Nazi Party. The report shows that, by the end of World War II, several high-ranking Gestapo and SS officials had assumed leading positions in the Bavarian secret service and police force.

Under conditions where the report has potentially explosive consequences for contemporary politics, the Greens are seeking to conceal issues relating to the involvement of today's Bavarian state apparatus in murders perpetrated by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist group.

The two Green Party parliamentary members, Sepp Dürr and Susanna Tausendfreund, emphasised in their initial statements that the current mindset of the Bavarian intelligence agency - the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) - had been brought into question because "for years investigations have been launched in the wrong direction". In the investigation of murders of immigrants committed by the NSU, there had been repeated references to the "attitude of the authorities".
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War Whore

Paranoid U.S. withdraws diplomats from Pakistan consulate after 'specific threat': prelude to imminent drone attacks in Pakistan?


The Guardian
Fri, 09 Aug 2013 03:36 UTC
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The only 'specific threat' in Pakistan is this one
Americans warned not to travel to Pakistan and non-essential staff withdrawn after specific threat to consulate in country's second-largest city

The US state department has pulled out diplomats from its consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, and warned citizens against travelling to the country.

Washington said it had received a specific threat to its diplomatic mission in Pakistan's second-largest city and said it had ordered non-essential staff to leave.

In a travel warning, the state department said the presence of several foreign and indigenous terrorist groups posed a potential danger to US citizens throughout Pakistan.

The personnel drawdown at the Lahore consulate was a precautionary measure and not related to the recent closures of numerous US diplomatic missions in the Muslim world, two US officials said.

The consulate in Lahore was scheduled to be closed for the Eid holiday from Thursday through Sunday and no reopening had been scheduled, one of the officials said.

Comment: When the U.S. made a similar announcement with respect to Yemen three days ago, and followed up with airstrikes to 'make real the threat', SOTT.net called it correctly:

Lies, damn lies: U.S. warns citizens to leave Yemen after Feds issue fake terror alert - prelude to more Americans being assassinated by Obama's drones?

Without warning, US bombs Yemen

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USA

Greenwald exposes double standards on Obama's cancellation of summit with Putin and extradition

Glenn Greenwald
Information Clearinghouse
Thu, 08 Aug 2013 21:44 UTC
President Obama today canceled a long-scheduled summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in part because the US president is upset that Russia defied his personal directive to hand over Edward Snowden despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the two nations. That means that US media outlets will spend the next 24 hours or so channeling the government's views (excuse the redundancy) by denouncing the Russian evil of refusing extradition. When doing so, very few, if any, establishment media accounts will mention any of these cases:

New York Times, February 28, 2007:

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Washington Post, July 19, 2013:


The Guardian, September 9, 2012:

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Eye 2

Guardian's Glenn Greenwald has up to 20,000 unpublished Snowden documents

John Thomas Didymus
Allvoices
Wed, 07 Aug 2013 03:37 UTC
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Edward Snowden
Glenn Greenwald, US journalist based in Brazil, who published information about Edward Snowden's leaked NSA files in The Guardian, said in a testimony before Brazil's Senate of foreign relations committee Tuesday that he has in his possession up to 20,000 secret US government files obtained from Snowden.

Responding to questions from Brazilian legislators about details of the files, Greenwald said, "I did not do an exact count, but he gave me 15,000, 20,000 documents. Very, very complete and very long. The stories we have published are a small portion. There will certainly be more revelations on the espionage activities of the US government and allied governments... on how they have penetrated the communications systems of Brazil and Latin America."

According to AFP, Greenwald said he could not give the Brazilian lawmakers details about the content of the files because the US government is currently conducting investigations. But he said, "The pretext [given by Washington] for the spying is only one thing: terrorism and the need to protect the [American] people. But the reality is that there are many documents which have nothing to do with terrorism or national security, but have to do with competition with other countries, in the business, industrial and economic fields."
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Rocket

US bombs Yemen without warning

Jon Queally
Commondreams.org
Tue, 06 Aug 2013 00:00 UTC
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© AP Photo/Hani MohammedA Yemeni soldier stops a car at a checkpoint in a street leading to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2013. Security forces close access roads, put up extra blast walls and beef up patrols near some of the 21 U.S. diplomatic missions in the Muslim world that Washington ordered closed for the weekend over a "significant threat"of an al-Qaida attack
Hours ahead of evacuation of US embassy, 'five missiles' from suspected drone turn truck into 'fireball'

No travel warnings were issued for Yemen citizens ahead of a US drone attack on Tuesday.

According to ABC News, Yemeni officials said a suspected US drone "fired a missile at a car carrying four men in the al-Arqeen district of Marib province, setting it on fire and killing all of them. They believed that one of the dead is Saleh Jouti, a senior al-Qaida member."

The US bombing - the latest in a string against the poverty-stricken and politically fractured nation - comes amid a global travel warning for US citizens issued by the State Department late last week and the closure of more than twenty embassies and consulates across the Middle East and North Africa.

Comment: Propaganda Alert! Yemen on 'high alert' over warning of imminent al-Qaida attack
Yemen is America's Next Battleground
51st state of USA (UK) follows suit by ordering British subjects to leave Yemen

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Gear

Israel briefly closes Eilat airport, citing security threats

Edmund Sanders
Los Angeles Times
Thu, 08 Aug 2013 17:14 UTC
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© Jack Guez / AFP/Getty Images / February 24, 2011A plane glides toward touchdown at Eilat airport in southern Israel in 2011.
Israel's military on Thursday night ordered the nation's southern airport in Eilat closed until further notice, citing unspecified security threats.

[Updated 1:28 p.m. PDT, Aug. 8: The airport was reopened about two hours later.]

The airport is predominantly used by tourists traveling to the Red Sea resort city, and the shutdown comes during the peak vacation season.

Due to the airport's proximity to the restive Sinai Peninsula, the military has from time to time closed the facility for security reasons.

Israel's military has long been concerned about the possibility that Sinai militants would attempt to shoot down Israeli airplanes using shoulder-fired missiles and recently considered equipping planes with anti-missile defenses.

The last shutdown, lasting a few hours, was in April after rocket attacks against Eilat.

The latest closure may be related to an ongoing crackdown by the Egyptian military against militants operating in the Sinai, Israeli media reported.
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Bad Guys

Flashback The Turkish Gambit: Mossad and the Aselsan suicides


Moon of Alabama
Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:52 UTC
Back in February this report from Turkey got me interested:
The suspicious deaths of four engineers who were declared to have committed suicide might have been murder, according to a new indictment into an espionage gang within the naval forces.

All four men worked for ASELSAN, a defense industry giant that produces technology for the Turkish military. The deaths are being investigated again as part of the ongoing probe into a gang that faces accusations of making use of prostitutes, blackmail and espionage. There are 56 suspects in the investigation, including military officers.

Recently, the İstanbul Police Department's Anti-Organized Crime Unit requested the closed case files of Hüseyin Başbilen, Halim Ünsem Ünal and Evrim Yançeken -- who were reported to have killed themselves between 2006 and 2007 -- in order to re-launch an investigation. All three were assigned to encryption and decryption projects at ASELSAN and had worked on highly strategic projects in the past.
Was the police really interested in those suicides or was this one of those political investigations, not unheard of in Turkey, that are held simply to remove the suspects from their job?

Comment: While Mossad's involvement in a possible assassination ploy isn't really surprising, recent report by the Turkish Prime Ministry Inspection Board citing 'telekinesis' as possible cause of mysterious suicides does add an interesting twist to the story.

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