Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Best of the Web: IDF's Gaza assault is to control Palestinian gas, avert Israeli energy crisis

Nafeez Ahmed
The Guardian
Wed, 09 Jul 2014 15:03 UTC
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© Khalil Hamra/APA Palestinian boy plays in the rubble of a house destroyed in an Israeli air strike on Beit Hanoun, Gaza.
Yesterday, Israeli defence minister and former Israeli Defence Force (IDF) chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon announced that Operation Protective Edge marks the beginning of a protracted assault on Hamas. The operation "won't end in just a few days," he said, adding that "we are preparing to expand the operation by all means standing at our disposal so as to continue striking Hamas."

This morning, he said:
"We continue with strikes that draw a very heavy price from Hamas. We are destroying weapons, terror infrastructures, command and control systems, Hamas institutions, regime buildings, the houses of terrorists, and killing terrorists of various ranks of command... The campaign against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organization will pay will be very heavy."

Comment: Apparently innocent families are terrorists.


But in 2007, a year before Operation Cast Lead, Ya'alon's concerns focused on the 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas discovered in 2000 off the Gaza coast, valued at $4 billion. Ya'alon dismissed the notion that "Gaza gas can be a key driver of an economically more viable Palestinian state" as "misguided."
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Mr. Potato

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: Watch this caliph rip

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Sat, 12 Jul 2014 02:57 UTC
Caliph
© Unknown
So The Caliph is now a global superstar. Ever since Dr Ibrahim al-Badri of Samarra, a minor Sunni cleric who impersonates neo-medieval Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, showed up in the stone pulpit of a Mosul mosque at the start of Ramadan, he's been on a roll.

He fully advertised his piece of transnational real estate - from the suburbs of Aleppo to Mosul (and promised more takeovers). He cut his own video - essentially his own, a monotone rap, dressed in trademark Men in Black regalia. He eliminated the competition, essentially by killing them all. He exalted the mujahid, inviting them to follow jihad in the name of Allah. He condemned miscreants and hypocrites, exalting the "victory of Muslims" from "the West to the East".

Modestly sporting a US$7,000 watch (or Chinese replica) and asking for "corrections" in his behavior, The Caliph announced that his Islamic State (IS) business, former ISIS, is not only about the Levant. Want an IS passport? Just ask The Caliph.

He firmly set his sights on conquering Rome (Saracens sacked St Peter's in 846); "You will conquer Rome and will be masters of the world." It won't happen before Sunday though, so Pope Francis can watch Argentina against Germany in peace without fear of decapitation.

Comment: It's a big tell-tale sign that this latest incarnation of the Islamic bogeyman has nothing to say about Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza. He obviously wouldn't want to hurt the feelings of his masters and get in the way of their fun.

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Stormtrooper

Mafia rule! Blackwater awarded over $1bn from State Dept. since threat on investigator's life


RT
Sat, 12 Jul 2014 02:26 UTC
Blackwater in Iraq
© AFP Photo / Ahmad AL-RubayeUS taxpayer funded Blackwater goons in Iraq.
The US State Department has allocated more than a billion dollars in contracts to the security firm Blackwater and its later manifestations since a top official for the company threatened a government investigator's life in 2007.

The Huffington Post reported that the notorious security contractor Blackwater, its subsequent incarnations, and its subsidiaries have received more than $1.3 billion since the fall of 2007 for training and operations the world over.

In August 2007, State Department investigator Jean C. Richter said a Blackwater project manager, Daniel Carroll, told Richter"that he could kill me at that very moment and no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," where the investigator was observing - and criticizing - the company's operations. The New York Times reported the details of the threat last month.

Richter and his partner in the probe were later asked by officials at the American embassy in Baghdad to leave. The next month, Blackwater guards infamously shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square. The incident sparked outrage with American presence in Iraq among the local population. The US is currently trying to prosecute four of the five guards involved in the incident after a first failed attempt to do it in 2009.

Comment: Psychopaths rule and protect each other. The rule of law is only to be applied to the lesser people like you and me, who of course are meant to pay for the crimes of the ruling elite.

Rule of the jungle: How Blackwater survived Iraq probes of being "Above the Law" - by threatening to kill investigators

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Eye 2

Meet the Muslim-American leaders the FBI and NSA have been spying on

Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain
The First Look
Wed, 09 Jul 2014 18:32 UTC
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The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans - including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers - under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies.

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes:

- Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;

- Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases;

- Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;

- Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights;

- Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.
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Heart - Black

Growing Gaza death toll leaves psychopath Netanyahu unrepentant


TheIndianSubcontinent
Fri, 11 Jul 2014 21:25 UTC
Gaza funeral
© Getty ImagesRelatives and friends of al-Hajj family gather in a mosque to pray over the bodies of the eight family members during their funeral.
The Israeli PM said that, in spite of the mounting death toll, air strikes would continue. "I am not speaking with anyone about a ceasefire. That is not under consideration," he said.

The deadliest Israeli strike yesterday killed eight members of the al-Haj family in Khan Yunis refugee camp in the southern part of the Strip.

Mahmoud al-Haj, 57, died along with his wife Basma and three sons and three daughters, including Fatma, 12. There were 23 people injured.

Late on Wednesday night, the Israeli air force struck a beach café in Khan Yunis, where dozens of Palestinians were gathered to watch the World Cup. Nine people died.

According to the al-Mezan human rights group, more than 76 Palestinians, including 20 children and 10 women have died since Israel's Operation Protective Edge was launched on Tuesday with the stated objectives of halting Hamas-led rocket fire from Gaza to Israel and dealing a severe blow to the Islamist group.

Hamas kept up its rocket barrages yesterday, targeting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in addition to southern Israel. A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, said it was ready to "fight to the end".

There have been no Israeli fatalities or serious injuries in the violence.
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Pistol

Albuquerque police purchase 350 AR-15 rifles despite widespread protests over excessive force and reprimands from DOJ


RT
Fri, 11 Jul 2014 18:50 UTC
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© AFP/Karen BleierAn AR-15 rifle
The Albuquerque (New Mexico) Police Department has ordered a cache of high-powered rifles despite reprimands from the US Department of Justice, as well as widespread community protests, over the department's recent record of excessive force.

Albuquerque police have called on a local vendor to supply 350 AR-15 rifles, according to KOB-TV, which cost approximately $1,000 each. The contract calls for the rifles to arrive over the next two years. Subsequent quantities of 50 rifles are part of the deal, if the department deems them necessary.

An AR-15 was used to kill James Boyd, a homeless man who was gunned down by the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) in March. APD approached Boyd because he was camping in a mountain area outside the city.

Video footage of the shooting quickly went viral, inciting mass demonstrations in the city and pleas with police to institute training programs that would better prepare officers for confronting the mentally ill.


Comment: Calling the police these days (for any reason) is bad idea:
"Horror stories of police murdering, beating, raping and plundering citizens are daily news in a cities large and small. One city, Albuquerque, NM is now murdering more people per capita than NYPD during arrests, yet NYC is 14 times more populated.

According to sources [1,2]:

The APD routinely kills more suspects per capita than the NYPD, which serves a metro area 16 times the size of Albuquerque and has 34,000 officers to the APD's 1,000. Since 2010, the APD has been involved in 37 shootings in which 23 people died. Between 2010 and March 2012, the APD was involved in 18 fatal shootings to the NYPD's 22 in the same time period. No officer involved in any of the cases has been prosecuted or even fired, despite a body trail that suggests a department with wildly inappropriate use-of-force." [1]"
Police are more dangerous to citizens than criminals

Listen to a recent SOTT Blog Talk Radio show where the editors discuss the excessive brutality and militarization of the police force.

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Take 2

Recovered Nixon tapes reveals paranoia, misogyny, and homophobia in Nixon and closest aides


Vanity Fair
Thu, 10 Jul 2014 17:50 UTC
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© POLARIS
OVAL TEAM: President Richard Nixon with National-Security Adviser Henry Kissinger (right) and Kissinger’s deputy, Alexander M. Haig Jr., 1972.
In an adaptation from their forthcoming book, Vanity Fair contributing editor Douglas Brinkley and historian Luke A. Nichter draw on 3,700 hours of President Nixon's White House tapes to convey the inner workings of Nixon's action-packed first term. Over the last several years, the tapes - many of which were muffled and, at times, indecipherable - have been cleaned up, pored over, and painstakingly transcribed.

The result - excerpted below - includes conversations with Nixon's national-security adviser Henry Kissinger, Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, and chief domestic aide John Ehrlichman is a verbatim narrative of a pivotal period in Nixon's presidency that portrays him as a geopolitical strategist, a crisis manager, and a duplicitous paranoid.

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Light Sabers

Ukrazies demand Nazis be reinstated as national heroes


RT
Fri, 11 Jul 2014 17:20 UTC
Ukrainian ultra-nationalists
© AFP Photo / Yuriy DyachyshynUkrainian ultra-nationalists they march in the center of the western city of Lvov on April 27, 2014 to mark the 71st anniversary of 14th SS-Volunteer Division "Galician" foundation.
The city council of Lvov in western Ukraine has urged the Nazi collaborators and nationalist icons, Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich, be reinstated as heroes of Ukraine.

"We demand the president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, reissue a decree awarding Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich the title of heroes of Ukraine," says an address by Lvov's city council, as cited by Ukraine's UNIAN news agency.

According to the MPs behind the claim, the move would confirm Poroshenko as "an independent president of the Ukrainian state, for which the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Stepan Bandera, and commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Roman Shukhevich, fought and gave their lives."

Bandera and Shukhevich were awarded the title of heroes of Ukraine in 2007 and 2010 respectively, under President Viktor Yushchenko, who came to power in 2005 after the Orange Revolution.

But the Nazi collaborators were deprived of the honors as soon as Viktor Yanukovych, who was mainly supported in the eastern regions of the country, came to power.

In April 2010, Donetsk District Administrative Court declared Yushchenko's decrees to award Bandera and Shukhevich the titles of heroes of Ukraine illegal.

There were several appeals to higher judiciaries against the Donetsk court ruling, but they were all turned down.

Comment: These people are utterly insane. It's disturbing, but the psychopathic mask of sanity seems to be dropping all over the place, like in Israel. See: Pre-army Israeli teens tweet: Death to all Arabs

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Che Guevara

Igor Strelkov, shadowy commander of the Donetsk resistance, wields "iron fist" sez NYT

Noah Sneider
New York Times
Thu, 10 Jul 2014 16:45 UTC
Igor Strelkov
© Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters Igor Strelkov after a news conference in Donetsk.
Late one afternoon last month, as separatist militia fighters and Ukrainian forces exchanged fire, a small-time thief by the name of Aleksei B. Pichko left his home on the southern edge of Slovyansk and headed for an abandoned residence at 17 Sadovaya Street. He had been drinking, and wanted to "see what could be stolen from there," according to documents recovered at the rebel headquarters after their retreat over the weekend.

Mr. Pichko, 30, never returned. An order signed and stamped by the rebels' powerful commander, Igor Strelkov, detailed Mr. Pichko's fate: death by firing squad for pilfering a pair of pants and two shirts.

"They told me they took him to the S.B.U.," said his mother, Maria Pichko, referring to the headquarters in this former separatist stronghold. "I don't know anything more."

The death sentence makes reference to a Stalin-era Soviet law, and in it Mr. Strelkov warns ominously that crimes "committed in the zone of military activity will continue to be punished ruthlessly and decisively."

Mr. Strelkov, a native Muscovite whose real name is Igor Girkin, is a figure as mysterious as he is fearsome. On Thursday, he made his first public appearance after months of fighting, attending a news conference in the provincial capital of Donetsk alongside Alexander Borodai, another Russian citizen leading the uprising here.

Having lost Slovyansk, Mr. Strelkov has moved to assert his authority over the fractious separatist militias that are gathering in Donetsk and Luhansk, the other major city in the rebellious east, rallying them for an urban war that would be both bloody and destructive - not to speak of suicidal, in the eyes of many analysts.

Comment: It's hard to tell what to think of Strelkov based on the above, but that's to be expected when reading a rag as biased as the New York Times. No mention, of course, on the things Strelkov has managed to do well:
  • Whoops! Three incompetent Ukraine 'elite' Alpha group agents captured in Donetsk region (including a Lieutenant Colonel!)

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Radar

Lugansk and Donetsk fight back: 3 Ukrainian troops dead, 12 wounded in last 24 hrs


ITAR-TASS
Fri, 11 Jul 2014 16:28 UTC
Lugansk
© ITAR-TASS/Stanislav Krasilnikov Kiev has been shelling residential quarters in Lugansk.
Kiev-controlled military units lost three in dead and 12 in wounded in fighting in eastern Ukraine over the past 24 hours, the press centre of the military operation reported on Friday.

Seven soldiers were wounded, two severely, by mortar fire in the area of the village of Dyakovo in the Luhansk region. Militiamen of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic also opened mortar fire at the Ukrainian military's positions near the villages of Staraya Krasnyanka, the Luhansk region, and Marinovka, the Donetsk region.

During the period of combat actions in the east, 173 Ukrainian servicemen have died, and 446 have been wounded, the press centre said.

How it all began

At the end of last year, Ukraine's then-President Viktor Yanukovych suspended the signing of an association agreement with the European Union to study the deal more thoroughly. His decision triggered anti-government protests that often turned violent and eventually led to a coup in February 2014.

New people were brought to power in Kiev amid riots and ultranationalist rhetoric. Crimea refused to recognize the coup-imposed authorities, held a referendum and seceded from Ukraine to reunify with Russia in mid-March after some 60 years as part of Ukraine.
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