Puppet MastersS


Telephone

Five U.S. surveillance programs destroying global human rights

Sarah St. Vincent, Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Center for Democracy & Technology
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 00:00 UTC
statue liberty binoculars
© thinksquad.tumblr.com
Those of us in the United States often like to think - rightly or wrongly - that our overall human-rights record is in pretty good order. However, even those who view the US as a global human-rights leader have had to take a deep breath when considering the past year of Big Brother-like surveillance revelations. A major UN body highlighted these revelations - along with a decidedly sobering array of other US human-rights issues - in a set of recommendations back in April. In order to keep drawing attention to these surveillance-related problems, CDT and the ACLU submitted comments this past Monday to the United Nations describing five particularly egregious surveillance programs that have had a grievous impact on human rights around the world.

Every four years, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) evaluates all of a country's human-rights commitments during a process called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). During the UPR, the UN HRC examines the promises a country has made - i.e., in human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - and evaluates to what extent that country is living up to its obligations.

Comment: This article offers a whole new meaning to the phrase: "From your lips to God's ear."

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Document

Watchdogs Inspector General Council to gain subpoena power under new house bill

Charles S. Clark
Govexec.com
Thu, 18 Sep 2014 00:00 UTC
This story has been updated to include comment from Sen. Tom Carper.
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© Scott Applewhite/APReps. Elijah Cummings, left, and Darrell Issa introduced the bill to expand IG authority.
Following a series of hearings on alleged agency stonewalling of inspectors general, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday approved a bipartisan bill to expand watchdogs' subpoena power and streamline ethics probes by the IG council.

The Inspector General Empowerment Act (H.R. 5492) would authorize inspectors general to write testimonial subpoenas for federal government contractors and former federal employees.

"With inspectors general facing obstruction by agencies, this legislation provides much-needed tools to our independent watchdogs as they work to reduce agency waste and mismanagement," said Oversight panel Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who introduced the bill with ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.

"Under this administration, inspectors general have encountered unprecedented hindrance to their oversight efforts," Meadows said. "This important legislation will ensure that IGs, who provide impartial insight into the conduct and management of federal agencies, will not be politically stonewalled."

Comment: Foxes guarding the henhouse.

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Megaphone

Best of the Web: Scottish independence stolen: Petition demanding referendum be re-held reaches 70,000 signatures in one day

Charlotte Meredith
The Huffington Post, UK
Sat, 20 Sep 2014 22:23 UTC
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Scots have been robbed by London once again
Despite more than two million people voting to keep Scotland a part of the United Kingdom yesterday and acceptance from Alex Salmond that the outcome of the vote was the "the democratic verdict of the people of Scotland", a petition saying the outcome of the referendum vote was rigged has garnered more than 70,000 supporters.


Comment: That's because it blatantly WAS rigged:

Scottish referendum result undoubtedly rigged


It may have been the largest turnout in UK history with a majority vote of 'No', but thousands are demanding a revote because of "strange occurrences", that have already been dismissed as examples of vote rigging.

The petition states:
Countless evidences of fraud during the recent Scottish Referendum have come to light, including two counts of votes being moved in bulk into a No pile, Yes votes clearly being seen in no piles and strange occurrences with dual fire alarms and clear cut fraud in Glasgow. We demand a revote be taken of said referendum, where each vote shall be counted by two individuals, one of whom should be an international impartial party without a stake in the vote.
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Black Magic

SOTT Focus: Scottish referendum result undoubtedly rigged

Niall Bradley
Sott.net
Sat, 20 Sep 2014 12:51 UTC
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Apparently terrorized by the fear-mongering tactics of the British establishment media, in the form of hysterical warnings about food price rises and "societal disintegration", the fiercely independent Scottish people voted to remain in the UK. Or so the British establishment media would have us believe.

The official result matched the predictions of polls conducted by huge for-profit City of London market research companies. Prime Minister David Cameron declared that "this settles the independence debate for a generation." Case closed? I don't think so. We're being asked to believe that a majority of Scots voted 'Yes' to more austerity, 'Yes' to more wars in their name, 'Yes' to keeping nuclear weapons, 'Yes' to the continued theft of Scottish natural resources and 'Yes' to less democracy.

If all of that sounds unbelievable, it's because it is:
"It's not who votes that counts. It's who counts the votes."

~ Attributed to Stalin
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MIB

Flashback Best of the Web: Scots MP: Scottish National Party and Yes Campaign riddled with MI5 and other agents of British security state

Paul Hutcheon
Sunday Herald
Sun, 09 Jun 2013 22:29 UTC
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British Military Intelligence sez: 'Better together'
Margo MacDonald MSP, who says she believes there are undercover agents operating in the SNP, told MI5 chief Andrew Parker that his staff should only be used to thwart criminal and terrorist acts, rather than engage in dirty tricks against those who support Scottish independence.

A Home Office spokesman declined to comment on the letter.

The purpose of MI5 is to protect the UK "against threats to national security", a form of words that could be interpreted as resisting the break-up of Britain. Some Nationalists have long believed the SNP was infiltrated in the 1970s by agents worried booming North Sea oil revenues could lead to independence.

MacDonald, a former deputy leader of the SNP and now an independent MSP, believes MI5 was active during the constitutional debate in this period and wants a commitment that such activity has ceased.

Comment: For the record, the newspaper that published the above article was the ONLY media outlet in the entire UK that supported Scottish independence. Margot MacDonald has since died.

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Alarm Clock

Russian Union of Engineers report on the crash of flight MH17


Sott.net
Sat, 20 Sep 2014 20:51 UTC
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The Russian Union of Engineers released a report on the crash of MH 17. Below is an excerpt of their findings. You can read the full report here for the impressive evidence they marshal to back up their conclusions.
"Between 17.17 - 17.20, the Boeing 777 was in Ukrainian airspace near the city of Donetsk at the height of 10100 m. An unidentified combat aircraft (presumably a Su-25 or MiG -29), which was a tier below, on a collision course, in the cloud layer, sharply gained altitude and suddenly appeared out of the clouds in front of the civilian aircraft and opened fire on the cockpit, firing from a 30 mm caliber cannon or smaller. The pilot of a fighter jet can do this while in "free hunting" mode (using onboard radar) or with the help of navigational guidance using airspace situation data from ground-based radar.

As a result of multiple hits from shells there was damage to the cockpit, which suddenly depressurized, resulting in instant death for the crew due to mechanical influences and decompression. The attack was sudden and lasted a fraction of a second; in such circumstances the crew could not sound any alarm as the flight had been proceeding in regular mode and no attack was expected.

Since neither the engines or hydraulic system, nor other devices required for the continuation of the flight were out of commission, the Boeing 777, running on autopilot (as is standard), continued on its horizontal flight path, perhaps gradually losing altitude."
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Mr. Potato

Obama's 'don't do stupid stuff' turned upside down

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Sat, 20 Sep 2014 21:55 UTC
Obama stupid stuff cartoon
© Washington Examiner
I've been rovin' around Europe for a while and the star of the show is definitely The Caliph. Former Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has totally outstripped Vladimir Putin as Doctor Evil of the hour. Where's a good ol' Cold War 2.0 when you need it? Well, upstaged by the Pentagon's "long war" - our familiar GWOT (Global War on Terror).

First Obama promised there would be no ground troops to fight The Caliph - as in a re-invasion of Iraq. Then General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that if the current gambit of Obama's self-defined "Don't So Stupid Stuff" foreign policy doctrine does not work - and it won't - he'll go for ground troops, embedded or otherwise.

Right on cue, The Caliph went Hollywood, releasing the trailer of The Caliphate's upcoming mega-production, Flames of War. Directed by Michael Bay (Fall, 2014). Will that go straight to Netflix?

You just can't beat the Marvel Comics school of geopolitics.
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Cult

The Caliph and other boogymen of intelligence agencies

Wayne Madsen
Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 19 Sep 2014 20:03 UTC
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© CBNAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi leads a terrorist army known variously as ISIS or the Islamic State.
As the Barack Obama administration seeks reliable allies to confront the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) - the official U.S. Department of Defense nomenclature for the newest radical Islamist bogeyman that has eclipsed "Al Qaeda" as global "public enemy number one" - the United States is on the precipice of falling into another Middle Eastern quagmire.

The deeper one digs into the operations surrounding the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL), or, as it is variably called, "Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham" (ISIS), "Al Dawlah" (the State), or "Da'ish" (a concatenation of "al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham," the more the Islamist insurgent group's links to Western and Israeli intelligence are revealed. ISIL is an outgrowth of the Organization of Jihad's Base in the Country of the Two Rivers or Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. As with the current leader of ISIL, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, questions surrounded the background of Zarqawi.

As described in a PowerPoint slide created by the Multinational Force - Iraq (MNFI), Zarqawi was largely a menacing character created by the Pentagon's psychological operations, media operations, and special operations to leverage a xenophobic response from Iraq's religious and ethnic groups, including Shi'as, moderate Sunnis, Sufis, and Kurds.

In a 2004 slide titled "Result," the MNFI bragged that its creation of the Zarqawi threat had the following desired results:

"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents:

a.​ Terrorism in Iraq

b.​ Foreign Fighters in Iraq

c.​ Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)

d.​ Denial of Iraqi Aspirations (Disrupting Transfer of Sovereignty)

The slide concludes with a description of the effect of promoting Zarqawi as the top threatening terrorist in Iraq, which was to:

"Eliminate popular support for a potentially sympathetic insurgency. Deny ability of insurgency to 'take root' among the people."
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Easter Egg 2

Putin's maneuvers in Ukraine: A push toward ... peace?

Victor Kotsev
WhoWhatWhy
Wed, 17 Sep 2014 18:34 UTC
putin
A toast to peace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging peace his own way in Ukraine, despite a chorus of accusations from the West that he is acting aggressively.

Make no mistake, Russia is still backing Ukraine's separatist rebels. And fighting, though subdued, still continues in eastern Ukraine between the rebels and government troops. That's even after Putin and Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko formalized a ceasefire.

But there are concrete steps toward an agreement that will give Russia some of what it wants. For example, Ukraine's parliament voted to give a three-year period of limited autonomy to the breakaway eastern regions. If the ceasefire holds, Russia may find itself freed from new EU sanctions, which have sent its currency tumbling to a record low.

The worst-case scenario of renewed large-scale violence is receding as a possibility. Yet the danger of a frozen conflict that could turn hot at any point remains. Besides, an energy and trade war with unpredictable results looms unless a comprehensive solution to the crisis is crafted.

This last part may be the key to understanding why Moscow is swinging a big stick while speaking softly about the need for negotiation and the preservation of Ukraine's territorial integrity. It has everything to do with the difference between the Russian idea of making peace and the Western conception of it.
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Chess

Best of the Web: Germany is Putin's opportunity to break up NATO, EU

Paul Craig Roberts
PressTV
Sun, 25 May 2014 20:12 UTC
putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin (shown) sees in the conflict between Washington’s pressure on Germany and Germany’s real interests a chance to break up NATO and the EU, writes Craig Roberts.
Western propaganda about events in Ukraine has two main purposes. One is to cover up, or to distract from, Washington's role in overthrowing the elected democratic government of Ukraine. The other is to demonize Russia.

The truth is known, but truth is not a part of the Western TV and print media. The intercepted telephone call between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt reveals the two coup plotters discussing which of Washington's stooges will be installed as Washington's person in the new puppet government.

The intercepted telephone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU foreign policy official Catherine Ashton revealed suspicions, later confirmed by independent reports, that the sniper fire that killed people on both sides of the Kiev protests came from the Washington-backed side of the conflict.

Comment: For a wider view of the situation developing in Ukraine, see: Putin's maneuvers in Ukraine: A push toward ... peace?

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