Puppet MastersS


Cult

Pope Benedict XVI resigns due to age and declining health

Lizzy Davies
Guardian
Mon, 11 Feb 2013 07:36 UTC
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© APPope Benedict XVI: the pontiff admitted: 'I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited' to the role.'
Pontiff, 85, who has arthritis, says he will step down on 28 February after nearly eight years as head of Catholic church

Pope Benedict XVI is to step down as head of the Catholic church at the end of this month, the Vatican has announced.

The move, which came without warning, will take place on 28 February and leave the papacy vacant until a successor is chosen.

The pope announced his decision in Latin on Monday morning during a meeting of cardinals. He informed them of "a decision of great importance for the life of the church".

Comment: A pope has not resigned since the Middle Ages, so this announcement looks to be about more than just declining health.

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Mr. Potato

Ahmadinejad: 'I'm ready for direct talks with U.S. if pressure stops'


RT
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 00:00 UTC
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
© Agence France-Presse/Behrouz MehriIranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a speech during a rally in Tehran's Azadi Square (Freedom Square) to mark the 34th anniversary of the Islamic revolution on February 10, 2013
Iran's president has said he is ready for directs talks with the US if the West stops pressuring his country. His comments directly contradict the words of the Supreme leader of Iran who rejected the US proposal of direct negotiations.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his statement at a rally to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"You pull away the gun from the face of the Iranian nation, I myself will enter the talks with you," he said.

His statement is in stark contrast to the words of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of Iran, who has the final say on all key decisions, who said earlier this week that talking to the US would not solve any problems.

"Some naïve people like the idea of negotiating with America, however, negotiations will not solve the problems," said Khamenei, who then accused the US of "holding a gun against Iran and saying you want to talk".
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Fish

Feds kill thousands of fish removing abandoned oil and gas rigs

John Dzenitis
Local15TV.com
Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:00 UTC

Mobile, Alabama - A federal mandate to remove old, abandoned oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico is blowing up a lot more than just the rigs.

Undercover video obtained by Local 15 shows thousands of pounds of dead fish, mostly red snapper, floating to the surface after one of the controversial demolitions in the Gulf.

"Good Lord," marine scientist Dr. Bob Shipp said, when Local 15 showed him the video. "As a scientist, I think it's abominable."

Shipp said the demolitions are frequent, sometimes three a week in the Gulf, but are seldom video-taped. Shipp also sits on the Gulf Fisheries Management Council, and has been a strong opponent of the demolitions.

"It's a double whammy," Shipp said, "Not only are we killing a lot of snapper, but we're also destroying their habitat."

The old rigs are an eye-sore, but under the surface, they've developed into artificial reefs with rich coral habitats. On some of the older rigs, those habitats have grown over the course of 30 to 40 years.
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Dollar

Los Angeles authorities to offer $1m reward after failure of Christopher Dorner manhunt

Rory Carroll
Guardian
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:44 UTC
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© Photograph: Jae C. Hong/APSan Bernardino County Sheriff's officers search a home for former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner in Big Bear Lake, California
Rogue ex-police officer still at large in southern California after bungling LAPD shoot at innocent members of the public

Authorities in Los Angeles are expected to offer a $1m reward for information about the rogue ex-police officer who is suspected of killing three people, after a massive manhunt failed to catch him.

City officials, law enforcement groups and private donors were due to announce the reward on Sunday as the trail for Christopher Dorner in the mountains of Big Bear went cold, leaving police across southern California tense and fearful.

Dorner, 33, a former navy reservist and trained marksman, has declared war on law enforcement officers and their families, in revenge for his firing from the force. His rampage and the LAPD's blundering response - shooting and wounding people mistaken for the fugitive - has transfixed the US and turned Dorner, in some quarters, into a rebel folk hero.

In a surprise announcement on Saturday, police chief Charlie Beck ordered a review of the disciplinary case that led to Dorner's dismissal and promised to hear him out if he surrendered.
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War Whore

Barack Obama is pushing gun control at home, but he's a killer abroad

Gary Younge
Guardian
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:37 UTC
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© Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty ImagesA supporter of Barack Obama's gun control campaign holds up a sign as the president's motorcade passes in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
President Obama's appeals to respect human life in the US are at odds with his backing for drone strikes in foreign parts

On 27 January CBS aired an interview with the newly inaugurated President Barack Obama and his outgoing secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, during which the president faced accusations that under his watch America had retreated from its key role in world affairs. "The biggest criticism of this team," said the interviewer," has been [that there is] an abdication of the United States on the world stage, sort of reluctance to become involved in another entanglement."

Obama interrupted. "Well, Muammar Gaddafi probably does not agree with that assessment," he said. "Or at least if he was around, he wouldn't agree with that assessment." Quite. Gaddafi, to whom the US authorised $15m worth of arms sales in 2009, is not around because he was murdered by a mob shortly after being sodomised by a bayonet following his ousting by US-led Nato bombardment. In the minutes between the sodomising and the summary execution there just wasn't time to reflect on US foreign policy.

The day after the interview was screened, Obama met with the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association and the Major County Sheriffs' Association. The president, fresh from boasting about having Gaddafi "smoked", wanted to discuss how to stop guns getting into the wrong hands, bolster the forces of law and order, and stem violence in US cities.
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Snakes in Suits

GOP strategist: We need Rubio because 'he knows who Tupac is'

Jonathan Terbush
Raw Story
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:24 UTC
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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has been hailed by many Republicans as the savior of the party, what with his youth, charisma and Cuban heritage.

Yet that's not all he has to offer. According to one Republican strategist, the freshman Florida Senator also knows a little something about 90s rap music to boot.

Sunday on ABC's This Week, GOP operative Nicole Wallace argued that Rubio was good for the party as a whole because, "he knows who Tupac is." That knowledge, she said, proved that he could connect to young voters, a demographic the GOP has typically sruggled to court.
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Bad Guys

Islamists attack north Mali city after suicide bombings


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:19 UTC
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© AFP, Pascal GuyotFrench soldiers patrol at the site where a suicide bomber blew himself up on February 10, 2013 in northern Gao
Islamist gunmen attacked the largest city in northern Mali on Sunday following two straight days of suicide bombings, intensifying their insurgency on territory reclaimed by French-led forces.

In the first large-scale urban guerrilla assault of the conflict, rebels from the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) attacked Malian troops in the streets of central Gao, sending residents running for cover as Kalashnikov bullets and 14.5-millimetre rounds pierced the air.

Rocket-propelled grenade explosions and fire from heavy machine guns and light weapons resounded late into the afternoon before dying down in the evening, when a power cut plunged the city into darkness.

A French Tiger attack helicopter was circulating over the neighbourhood around the governor's offices and the central police station, the focal points of the attack.

French and Malian forces conducted joint patrols, warning residents that snipers could be hidden in the city.

"Many Islamists were killed," said Colonel Mamadou Sanake of the Malian army.
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Che Guevara

Brennan, drones, and war: a former drone operator speaks out


CBC Radio
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:39 UTC
For the last several years, the Obama administration has been nearly silent about the military drone program which targets militants overseas. This week, the legal justification for drones and their use against American citizens offshore was leaked to NBC news. John Brennan, one of the architects of the program, was questioned about drones at the confirmation hearing for his new position as head of the CIA on Thursday. Brent spoke to Brandon Bryant, a former drone operator with the US air force for more than five years, about the human aspect of drone warfare. We reached him in Billings, Montana.
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Alarm Clock

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates endorses 'drone courts'


Raw Story
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:45 UTC
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© AFP Photo
Former US defense secretary Robert Gates on Sunday endorsed the idea of having a special court review drone strikes as a check against a president's power to, in effect, execute Americans.

The issue came to the fore last week during a Senate hearing to confirm John Brennan, President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism chief, as director of the CIA.

Gates, a former CIA director who served as defense secretary under both Obama and former president George W. Bush, said the rules followed by the Obama administration "are quite stringent and are not being abused."

"But who is to say about a future president?" he said in an interview with CNN's State of the Union.

"I just think some check on the ability of a president to do this has merit as we look to the longer-term future," he said.
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Eye 1

Electronic privacy groups slam Raytheon secret software that tracks social media and 'predicts' people's future behavior

Ryan Gallagher
The Raw Story
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:15 UTC
tracking
© Unknown
A video obtained by the Guardian reveals how an "extreme-scale analytics" system created by Raytheon, the world's fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

Raytheon says it has not sold the software - named Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology - to any clients.

But the Massachusetts-based company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing "trillions of entities" from cyberspace.

The power of Riot to harness popular websites for surveillance offers a rare insight into controversial techniques that have attracted interest from intelligence and national security agencies, at the same time prompting civil liberties and online privacy concerns.

The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can be transformed into a "Google for spies" and tapped as a means of monitoring and control.

Using Riot it is possible to gain an entire snapshot of a person's life - their friends, the places they visit charted on a map - in little more than a few clicks of a button.
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