Puppet MastersS


Life Preserver

French non-profit Maison des Journalistes offers a home to exiled journalists

Marie Schuster
France24
Sat, 03 May 2014 08:47 UTC
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© maisondesjournalistes.org
In honour of World Press Freedom Day, the Maison des Journalistes (MDJ), a French non-profit organization that offers shelter and support to journalists forced to flee their home countries, opened its doors to FRANCE 24.

Based in Paris's 15th arrondissement, the MDJ was founded in 2002, and has since housed more than 250 journalists from 54 different countries.

Johnny (who declined to give his last name), a journalist from the Central African Republic (CAR), left his home in the capital Bangui after his brother was killed. For the past four months, he has been living in a tiny room at the non-profit overlooking a nearby cemetery.

"The first few nights were rough, but I got used to it," he said of his new lodgings.
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Bad Guys

US takes on the Russians, only this time it's over the International Space Station

James Vincent
The Independent
Sun, 18 May 2014 19:32 UTC
Image
© NASAAstronaut Rick Mastracchio works outside the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Dec. 24, 2013.
Even during the paranoia and antagonism of the Cold War, the United States and Russia managed to find common cause in space. In July 1975, both countries celebrated the first joint space flight, as Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked in orbit, astronauts and cosmonauts smiling for the cameras as they shook hands through the air lock.

But now the spirit of co-operation appears to have died, with the International Space Station - the $150bn (£89bn) international research laboratory that is still physically divided along Cold War lines - becoming the rope in a tug-of-war between American and Russian politicians.

The dispute began in April, when a leaked Nasa memo revealed that the agency would be suspending all contact with the Russian government because of the country's "ongoing violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity".
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Bizarro Earth

Nice mask, psycho: Obama 'madder than hell' over VA allegations


Associated Press
Sun, 18 May 2014 19:22 UTC
Image
© Associated Press/Cliff Owen
The White House chief of staff says President Barack Obama is "madder than hell" about reports of treatment delays at veterans' hospitals across the country.

Top aide Denis McDonough tells CBS' Face the Nation that Obama is demanding that Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki (shin-SEHK'-ee) and others in the administration "continue to fix these things until they're functioning the way that our veterans believe they should."
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Bad Guys

Big owner of Monsanto shares: Does Bill Gates want population control?

Christina Sarich
Natural Society
Sun, 18 May 2014 00:27 UTC
Bill Gates_Monsanto
© Unknown
"The world today has 6.9 billion people and that's headed up to about 9 billion. If we do a really great job, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent." ~ Bill Gates (video here)

Bill Gates believes the density of the population in poor areas is too big, and with his depopulation plans he can 'solve' that problem. Consider his huge buyout of Monsanto stock - he owns millions of shares of Monsanto and Cargill stock, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation keep scooping it up. He owns more than $23 million worth, or 500,000 Monsanto shares.

Seattle-based Agra-Watch, part of the Community Alliance for Global Justice, has said:
"Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well being of small farmers around the world... [This] casts serious doubt on the foundation's heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa."
It also casts serious doubt on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its true interests in supporting the 'poor' populations they so proudly claim they are trying to 'help.

'Gates also funds programs that blast men's reproductive organs with radiation so that they can no longer produce progeny, and covert nanotechnology that delivers dangerous vaccines. The Gates Foundation is also teaming up with the British government in raising $4 billion to fund their birth control agenda worldwide by 2020.

Comment: Male Fertility May Be in Trouble: Testosterone and Sperm Counts Plummet
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Backing Untested Vaccines Causing New Wave of Polio-Like Paralysis Across India
Watch Out for Flying Syringes, GMO Food Vaccines, and Forced Vaccinations

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Question

Obama's new India problem: What to do with Narendra Modi?

Mark Sappenfield,
Christian Science Monitor
Sun, 18 May 2014 00:00 UTC
Obama's new India problem: What to do with Narendra Modi? (+video)

NancyPowell-Modi
© Gujarat state government/AP/FileUS Ambassador to India Nancy Powell receives flowers presented to her by Narendra Modiin Gandhinagar, India, earlier this year. Mr. Modi is almost certain to become India's next prime minister.

Narendra Modi will be the next prime minister of India, but until Friday, he was banned from traveling to the US because of allegations related to a 2002 riot. It's a new complication for already-rocky US-India relations.

On Friday, President Obama did what just about everyone knew he must and invited Narendra Modi, India's new prime-minister-in-waiting, to the United States.

It was anything but a routine invitation.

Mr. Modi remains the only person ever to be banned from traveling to the United States under the International Religious Freedom Act. Until Friday, the Obama administration had not officially clarified whether the future leader of the world's largest democracy would even be allowed to come to Washington.

In truth, there was little suspense. India is important to US Asia policy, and recent relations have been so rocky that it would have been unthinkable for Mr. Obama to respond to the success of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with anything other than overt enthusiasm.

But the fact that the decision came only now - only after it was abundantly clear that the BJP had won India's recent elections in a landslide of historic proportions - hints at a reluctance.

Unfairly or not, Modi is in many ways the face of the 2002 Gujarat riots, which saw some of the worst religious violence in India's recent history. For a American president who has taken pains to reach out to the Muslim world - not to mention a president who is himself a minority - that represents an unneeded complication in America's already-strained friendship with India.
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Arrow Down

A lucrative provision in CEO contracts encourages corporate chieftains to sidle up to their competitors

Jim Hightower
Common Dreams
Sun, 18 May 2014 17:40 UTC
The Cable Show
© Flickr/The Cable Show
Psssst, Wanna Buy My Corporation?

Where's Charles Dickens when we need him? The novelist, who laid bare the shame of gross income inequality in 19th century England, came up with some perfect names for his more despicable characters, including Scrooge, Mr. Tulkinghorn, and Miss Havisham.

So I'm wondering what moniker Dickens would've given to Robert Marcus.

Who? He's the CEO of Time Warner Cable who already won gold in the 2014 Greed Olympics for grabbing the most cash with the least effort in the shortest time.

Marcus became chief of the cable company on New Year's Day. He immediately reached out to his corporation's biggest rival, Comcast, offering to sell Time Warner Cable to the giant. Only six weeks later, the deal was done.

Why would a CEO rush to eliminate both his corporation and his own job? Perhaps because of a lucrative little provision in the contract he signed to become Time Warner's honcho. It's a CCC - a "change of control clause."
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Attention

SOTT Focus: Fracking tangled web of corporate and government agendas

Richard Sawyer
Sott.net
Sat, 17 May 2014 06:30 UTC
Protestors hold signs against fracking
© AFP Photo / Justin SullivanProtestors hold signs against fracking during a demonstration.
How the fracking companies benefit from Western-lead destabalisation of Ukraine and other conflicts of interest

Citing a 'new study', The BBC, Independent and a multitude of copy & paste MSM outlets, have alarmingly reported that the UK is set to run out of its oil, coal, and gas supplies in a little over five years time.

The reality below the ground however is that the UK is not actually going to run out of energy supplies any time soon. Facts can't be allowed to get in the way of profits, and the study was (apparently deliberately) distorted for use in a PR campaign on behalf of the widely criticized Fracking Industry. The story also reveals a tangled web of connections between academia, government officials, energy company lobbyists accentuated by a Fracking company director who actually holds a ministerial position for the UK Government. Why am I not surprised?
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Bad Guys

Dollar on the brink of disaster-John Williams

Greg Hunter
USAWatchdog.com
Sun, 18 May 2014 00:00 UTC
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© UnknownJohn Williams of Shadowstats
Economist John Williams has a dire prediction for the U.S. dollar. Williams says, "I don't see what will save it at this point. . . . Now we are to the point that the dollar has been ignored for years. The federal deficit has been ignored for years. . . . That's what we are on the brink of disaster with, and that is what has to be addressed now, and that's not happening." Williams also contends, "The way I see it, the dollar could go to zero in terms of its purchasing power. You don't want to have your assets in U.S. dollars." How are we going to get there? Look no further that the dismal first quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers that officially only eked out .1% growth. This is one of the reasons why Williams thinks a "renewed broad economic downturn continues to unfold." Williams goes on to say, "We're turning down a new. The first quarter should be revised to negative territory, and I believe the second quarter will be reported negative as well. That will happen by July 30 when you have the annual revisions to the GDP. In reality, the economy is much weaker than that . . . . Generally, when you adjust for inflation and you use too low of a rate for inflation, that overstates the economic growth."

Comment: More and more economic analysts are saying the same thing - the US Dollar is doomed to collapse and everyone should be preparing for this certain end.

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Pirates

Chantix, anti-smoking drug, blamed for murder

Michael Doyle
McClatchy DC
Sun, 04 May 2014 14:32 UTC
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© Handout/MCTArmy Pfc. George D.B. MacDonald says the smoking-cessation drug Chantix affected his mental health leading to his killing recruit Rick Bulmer. While the drug maker has denied the claims, others have blamed it for suicides, suicidal thoughts and other psychiatric problems.
Before Pfizer paid at least $299 million to settle claims that its anti-smoking drug Chantix caused harm, the pharmaceutical giant played hardball with Army Pfc. George D.B. MacDonald.

Charged with murdering fellow soldier and Fresno, Calif., native Rick Bulmer in May 2008, MacDonald claimed his mind snapped after using the medication to stop smoking. Chantix, MacDonald wrote, caused him to "go crazy for a while" before the assault in their Fort Benning, Ga., barracks.

During his court-martial, Pfizer resisted turning over certain documents to the defense team, including clinical trial studies that were conducted on Chantix.

"I mean, it is the United States and Pfizer versus Pfc. MacDonald here," MacDonald's attorney, Lt. Col. Jan Aldykiewicz, fumed at a pretrial hearing June 1, 2009, a transcript shows.

The trial judge disagreed and refused to compel the company, which wasn't a party to the case, to comply with a subpoena for the material. The military jury subsequently convicted MacDonald of murdering Bulmer, a 23-year-old private, and sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole.

Comment: 'Tis better to smoke tobacco. Let's All Light Up!

Anti-Smoking Drug Chantix May Pose Psychiatric Risks
Antismoking Pill May Ease Depression ... Or Cause Suicidal Thoughts
Lawsuits Claim Harm From Pfizer Quit-Smoking Drug
Suicide Warnings Required for Anti-Smoking Drugs
Smoking-Pill Suicides Overlooked in Missing Reports
Mind over matter: Anti-smoking drug linked to suicide
"Quit Smoking" drug Champix side effects prompt 818 complaints

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Stock Up

Portugal bucks the system and leaves IMF 'bailout' program


RT
Sat, 17 May 2014 11:34 UTC
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Protest in Portugal against IMF policies
Portugal exited its international bailout program on Saturday, regaining its economic sovereignty, which it lost after the European debt crisis. However, the country's GDP is four percent lower than in 2010, a year before it asked for financial help.

The country will become the second eurozone country to leave the bailout after Ireland. Portugal underwent three years of painful austerity, in order to receive a 78-billion euro loan (106 billion US dollars), to help a nation that was on the verge of bankruptcy.

However, not everything has gone smoothly for Portugal, with the end of the bailout coming at a time when data has shown the country's economy contracted by 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2014. Overall, the country's GDP is four percent lower than in 2010, a year before they asked the International Monetary Fund for financial help.

Comment: While the IMF tries to spin Portugal's exit from the bailout as a success story, it is clear from past examples that complete independence from the IMF's predatory loans and policies and getting one's financial house in order is wisest way to go. The unelected Ukrainian government has recently fallen under the influence of the IMF and will soon learn the hard way that it is not in their best interest to go that route.

See also:
IMF: International Monetary Fraudsters! Considered Ireland Ripe for Pillaging
EU/IMF Revolt: Greece, Iceland, Latvia May Lead the Way
Bankers unmasked: Lessons From Iceland
SOTT Talk Radio - Confessions of an Economic Hitman: Interview with John Perkins

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