Puppet MastersS


Top Secret

Feds move to strike lewd details from Homeland Security sexual-discrimination lawsuit

Geoff Earle
New York Post
Sat, 18 Aug 2012 08:18 UTC
Janet Napolitano
© n/aJanet Napolitano
The feds have asked a judge to strike from the public record the most "scandalous" details of a bombshell sexual-discrimination lawsuit against Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security that refer to oral sex and an odd bathroom prank.

The lewd details are included in senior law-enforcement official James Hayes' suit claiming retaliation anti-guy bias.

The filing claims top immigration aide Suzanne Barr "humiliated" a male employee by calling him in his hotel room and screaming that she wanted his "c--k in the back of [her] throat."

It also states that Barr, a close adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, who went on leave this week after the suit appeared, "rewarded those male employees who would play along with her sexually charged games."
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Airplane

Drone strike kills five more in Pakistan


The Times of India
Sun, 19 Aug 2012 00:00 UTC
drones espías‎
© hispantv.com
Islamabad - At least five people were killed in a US drone strike launched early Sunday morning in Pakistan's northwest tribal area of North Waziristan, said media reports.

Xinhua, citing Urdu TV channel Dawn, said two drones fired four missiles at two vehicles suspected of carrying militants in the Shawal area in Miranshah, a town in North Waziristan, early Sunday morning, killing at least five people on the spot.

This is the second strike launched by US drones in the same area since Saturday noon, when drones launched a strike in the same area, in which four missiles were fired at two targets of a house and a vehicle, killing at least six suspected militants and wounding two others.

US drones have launched a total of 25 strikes in Pakistan this year, killing at least 182 people.

Source: IANS
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Dominoes

U.S. says Iraqis help Iran skirt sanctions over nuclear program

James Risen & Duraid Adnan
The New York Times
Sat, 18 Aug 2012 19:15 UTC
Blind eye allegedly turned toward smuggling, trade, financial flow
Image
© Unknown
When President Obama announced last month that he was barring a Baghdad bank from any dealings with the American banking system, it was a rare acknowledgment of a delicate problem facing the administration in a country that American troops just left: for months, Iraq has been helping Iran skirt economic sanctions imposed on Tehran because of its [alleged] nuclear program.

The little-known bank singled out by the United States, the Elaf Islamic Bank, is only part of a network of financial institutions and oil-smuggling operations that, according to current and former American and Iraqi government officials and experts on the Iraqi banking sector, has provided Iran with a crucial flow of dollars at a time when sanctions are squeezing its economy.

The Obama administration is not eager for a public showdown with the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki over Iran just eight months after the last American troops withdrew from Baghdad.

Still, the administration has held private talks with Iraqi officials to complain about specific instances of financial and logistical ties between the countries, officials say, although they do not regard all trade between them as illegal or, as in the case of smuggling, as something completely new. In one recent instance, when American officials learned that the Iraqi government was aiding the Iranians by allowing them to use Iraqi airspace to ferry supplies to Syria, Mr. Obama called Mr. Maliki to complain. The Iranian planes flew another route.

Comment: "American and Iraqi oil experts say..." Which experts, how long have they been in the field, what are their credentials, do they have names...?

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Stormtrooper

Collaboration with Terrorist MKO Shows Real Face of Syrian Rebels


Fars News Agency
Sat, 18 Aug 2012 04:18 UTC
Image
© Fars News Agency
A senior Iranian legislator reiterated that the visits and collaboration between the ringleaders and members of the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCR and PMOI) and the so-called Free Syrian Army display the real face and goals of insurgents in Syria.

"The invitation of the deputy commander of the so-called Free Syrian Army, the armed forces who are opposed to the Damascus government, to the terrorist Monafeqin (hypocrites as MKO members are called in Iran) grouplet shows that they themselves are terrorists," member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Ebrahim Aqa-Mohammadi said on Saturday.

He added that the invitation of the Syrian group to the MKO to visit Damascus displays that the terrorist MKO is a role model for the Syrian insurgents.

In related remarks earlier this month, a commander of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) also described the terrorist MKO as a role model for Syrian insurgents.

Comment: For more on the war in Syria, please read the following: State-Sponsored Terrorism - Western Journalists Embedded With 'al-Qaeda' in Syria

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Cult

SOTT Focus: From Internet Troll to Psychopathy Expert: The Con-Artistry of Thomas Sheridan

Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley
Sott.net
Sun, 19 Aug 2012 00:20 UTC
Image
Thomas Sheridan - New Age Grifter, Internet Troll, Con Artist?
Compared to, say, ten years ago, a lot of people today are aware of and talking about psychopaths. On the one hand this is encouraging, but on the other, it's a little troubling. It is heartening to see awareness of psychopathy breach the mainstream frequency fence here and there, but the signal-to-noise ratio, as with all knowledge relevant to the growth and survival of decent human beings, remains high on the 'noise' side. We see ridiculous studies in the news portraying psychopaths as curable and articles making the rounds about how not having a Facebook account may indicate that someone is a psychopath. We've also seen Twitter being touted as a tool for 'spotting psychopaths' and, just today, news that the US justice system is considering acceptance of biological evidence that someone is a genetic psychopath in court with a view to using it to mitigate the sentences of criminal offenders. The reasoning being that psychopaths can't help being psychopaths, that they lack free will and therefore they bear diminished responsibility for their crimes.

Well, yeah, that's exactly why they need to be held under lock and key permanently.

Perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised that the burgeoning awareness of psychopathy has been vectored away from the truth of the matter in this way. This is an information war after all, so if the psychopaths in positions of power gauge that the 'psychopath awareness train' has left the station, they would naturally be working around the clock to load it with nuclear capabilities in the hope of derailing it, or at least sending it down the wrong track. The name of their game is to misinform people about what psychopaths are really like by trivialising and obscuring the issue: hence the proliferation of junk science that claims psychopaths can be cured, that psychopathology is a harmless evolutionary adaptation, or that psychopaths can be spotted based on analyses of their Twitter feed and Facebook page (or the lack thereof).
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Chart Pie

Mitt's 13% Tax

Robert Reich
Information Clearing House
Sat, 18 Aug 2012 16:52 UTC
counting money
© Reuters
Mitt Romney says "every year I've paid at least 13 percent [of my income in taxes] and if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above 20 percent."

This is supposed to be in defense of not releasing his tax returns.

Assume, for the sake of the argument, he's telling the truth. Since when are charitable contributions added to income taxes when judging whether someone has paid his fair share?

More to the point, Romney admits to an income of over $20 million a year for the last several decades. Which makes his 13 percent - or even 20 percent - violate the principle of equal sacrifice that lies at the core of our notion of tax fairness.

Even Adam Smith, the 18th century guru of free-market conservatives, saw the wisdom of a graduated tax embodying the principle of equal sacrifice. "The rich should contribute to the public expense," he wrote, "not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more in proportion."

Equal sacrifice means that in paying taxes people ought to feel about the same degree of pain regardless of whether they're wealthy or poor. Logically, this means someone earning $20 million a year should pay a much larger proportion of his income in taxes than someone earning $200,000, who in turn should pay a larger proportion than someone earning $50,000.

But Romney's alleged 13 percent tax rate is lower than that of most middle class Americans who earn a tiny fraction of what he earns.

At a time when poverty is increasing, when public parks and public libraries are being closed and when public schools are shrinking their offerings and their hours, when the nation's debt is immense, and when the 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together - Romney's 13 percent is shameful.

Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. http://robertreich.org
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Attention

Propaganda Alert! Czech Supporter of Breivik Probably Planned Bomb Attack - Police


ČTK
Sat, 18 Aug 2012 14:08 UTC
Czech Breivik
© n/a
Ostrava - The Czech police have caught a man from Ostrava, a supporter of Norwegian killer Anders Breivik, who gathered weapons and explosives probably with the aim to use them, the police announced at a press conference today.

The investigation has shown that the man planned an extensive bomb attack. He probably wanted to pass himself off as a policeman, since he had acquired parts of police uniforms. He was convicted over bomb blasting once in the past, the police said.

The 29-year-old man has been accused of endangering the public and of illegal arms possession.

The police have came to the conclusion that the suspect is a fan of Breivik as he used Breivik´s name in e-communication. The police would not elaborate in this respect for now.

Comment: Looking at some of the facts of this story this seems to be another convenient 'domestic terrorist' incident.

Comments on this Czech news website from those who claim to know the suspect dispute the claim that he is a possible killer or Breivik sympathiser.

The police apparently found police uniforms, handguns and explosives. Photos of the found weapons can be seen here.

Regarding the uniforms, the commenters in the above link attribute the collection to the suspect's long term interest in police uniforms. The firearm is most likely a Bruni Olympic 6, often used as a starter pistol or for dog training. The 'functional' explosives were described by the Chief of police of the Ostrava department Radovan Vojta in the following way:
"If he had detonated (the explosives) they would have burned at several thousand degrees and couldn't be put out for six minutes."
Rather than an explosive this sounds more like thermite.

It seems that the suspect has come to the attention of authorities after blowing up a small shed and probably has been on their radar ever since to be possibly used at a convenient time. The fact that the Czech government is currently under pressure from the public because of trying to push through further austerity measures and ongoing corruption scandals might have something to do with the timing. All in all a good opportunity for the authorities to divert attention and to remind the population why they need their leaders to keep them safe.

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Attention

German military will in future be able to use its weapons on German streets in an 'extreme situation'


BBC
Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:52 UTC
Image
The German military will in future be able to use its weapons on German streets in an extreme situation, the Federal Constitutional Court says.

The ruling says the armed forces can be deployed only if Germany faces an assault of "catastrophic proportions", but not to control demonstrations.

The decision to deploy forces must be approved by the federal government. Severe restrictions on military deployments were set down in the German constitution after Nazi-era abuses.

The court says the military still cannot shoot down a hijacked passenger plane - fighter jets would have to intercept the plane and fire warning shots to force it to land. After World War II the new constitution ruled that soldiers could not be deployed with guns at the ready on German soil, the BBC's Stephen Evans reports from Berlin.

The court has now changed that, saying troops could be used to tackle an assault that threatens scores of casualties.
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Bizarro Earth

Baseless Deconstruction: How Your Dollars Became Ghost Towns in Iraq

Tom Engelhardt
Press TV
Sat, 18 Aug 2012 05:15 UTC
Image
A war and occupation thousands of miles away that lasted seven years and involved more than 1.5 million Americans, military and civilian, has passed into the history books and yet we still know remarkably little about so much of it. Take American military bases in Iraq. There were, of course, none in March 2003 when the Bush administration launched its regime-change invasion with dreams of garrisoning that particular stretch of the planet's oil heartlands for generations to come.

... the Pentagon built 505 bases there, ranging from micro-outposts to mega-bases the size of small American towns -- in one case, with an airport that was at least as busy as Chicago's O'Hare International. As it happened, during all but the last days of those long, disastrous years of war, Americans could have had no idea how many bases had been built, using taxpayer dollars, in Iraq. Estimates in the press ranged, on rare occasions, up to about 300. Only as U.S. troops prepared to leave was that 505 figure released by the military, without any fanfare whatsoever. Startlingly large, it was simply accepted by reporters who evidently found it too unimpressive to highlight.

And here's an allied figure that we still don't have: to this day, no one outside the Pentagon has the faintest idea what it cost to build those bases, no less maintain them, or in the end abandon them to the Iraqi military, to the fate of ghost towns, or simply to be looted and stripped. We have no figures, not even ballpark ones, about what the Pentagon paid crony corporations like KBR to construct and maintain them. The only vague approximation I ever saw was offered in an engineering magazine in October 2003 by Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army officer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq. At a moment when U.S. base building was barely underway, he was already speaking of the program being in the "several billion dollar range," adding proudly that "the numbers are staggering." So for the full seven-year figure, let your imagination run wild.

Comment: Iraq War: The End? Or Is It?

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Airplane

US Assassination Drone Attack Kills 6 in North West Pakistan


Press TV
Sat, 18 Aug 2012 05:08 UTC
Drone strike
At least six people have been killed in a fresh US assassination drone strike in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region near Afghanistan border.

According to Pakistani security officials, the attack took place on Saturday after a US drone fired two missiles on a compound in Shuwedar village of Shawal district in North Waziristan tribal region, AFP reported.

Washington claims its drone strikes target militants, although casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims of the assaults.
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