Puppet MastersS


Propaganda

Flashback Did Saddam Hussein Really Gas His Own People?

Don Sellar
Common Dreams
Sat, 01 Mar 2003 14:08 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Halabja (pop. 80,000) is a small Kurdish city in northern Iraq. On Wednesday, the Star reminded readers that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army killed 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 chemical weapons attack on Halabja near the end of a bloody, eight-year war with Iran.

The statement that Saddam was responsible for gassing the Kurds - his own people - was straightforward.

Indeed, U.S. President George W. Bush has used similar language about the disaster at Halabja in making a case for a military strike to oust Saddam.

Yet the Star also reported, in a Jan. 31 Opinion page column, that there's reason to believe the story about Saddam "gassing his own people" at Halabja may not even be true.
Read More...
Pirates

'Monsanto Protection Act' sneaks through Senate

Steve Holt
takepart.com
Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:16 UTC
Image
© Cristian Baitg/Getty ImagesAn earmark on the budget bill passed this week in Washington will allow GMO crops to be harvested and sold even if a court has ruled that their patents were obtained illegally.
Non-GMO groups are furious over the measure, saying it backs biotech and agribusiness over farmer and consumer safety.

When the Senate passed a budget resolution Wednesday that appears to prevent some of the potential damage from sequestration, the Continuing Resolution included several food- and agriculture-related earmarks.

But one inclusion in particular is especially controversial. The "biotech rider" would require the USDA to approve the harvest and sale of crops from genetically modified seed even if a court has ruled the environmental studies on the crop were inadequate. This aspect of the bill infuriated many sustainable food and agriculture groups, who nicknamed the bill the "Monsanto Protection Act."

If signed into law by President Obama, here's what the rider would do: It will allow farmers to plant, harvest and sell genetically engineered plants even if the crops have been ruled upon unfavorably in court. A Center for Food Safety statement called the rider "an unprecedented attack on U.S. judicial review of agency actions" and " a major violation of the separation of powers."

Comment: Meet Monsanto's Number One Lobbyist: Barack Obama
During his 2008 campaign for president, Barack Obama transmitted signals that he understood the GMO issue. Several key anti-GMO activists were impressed. They thought Obama, once in the White House, would listen to their concerns and act on them.

These activists weren't just reading tea leaves. On the campaign trail, Obama said:
"Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they're buying."
Making the distinction between GMO and non-GMO was certainly an indication that Obama, unlike the FDA and USDA, saw there was an important line to draw in the sand.

Beyond that, Obama was promising a new era of transparency in government. He was adamant in promising that, if elected, his administration wouldn't do business in "the old way." He would be "responsive to people's needs."

Then came the reality.


Read More...
Cow Skull

Boris Berezovsky found dead


UK Guardian
Sat, 23 Mar 2013 14:17 UTC
Image
Boris Berezovsky. Now he's dead, we may never know who killed Alexander Litvinenko.
Speculation that Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky may have taken his own life after losing much of his personal fortune

Comment: For some background on Berezovsky, read Joe Quinn series of articles: Litvinenko: By Way of Deception

Read More...
Target

War Propaganda: 'Very high probability' Iraq hid WMDs in syria

David Edwards
The Raw Story
Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00 UTC
A Fox News military analyst who has previously justified the U.S. invasion in Iraq by asserting that Russia conspired to hide Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now says that there is a "very high probability" that those WMDs are in Syria.

Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney
© Unknown
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Friday spoke to retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney about recent rumors of a chemical attack near Aleppo, Syria.

"What are the chances of the return address on these chemicals being from Iraq?" Kilmeade wondered.

"Well, I think there is a high probability of that," McInerney declared. "That's conjecture, but we do know prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, there was a lot of vehicles crossing the border into Syria. And there was a great deal of conjecture. A Iraqi major general swore by it. He said he delivered it."

"And so I think that it would be a very high probability if we could get into those bunkers that they would have Iraqi signatures on them."

In 2006, McInerney told Newsmax that there was "clear evidence" that Iraq had WMDs before the war and that the Bush administration "ignored Russia's involvement" in helping to hide the weapons.
Read More...
Calculator

Best of the Web: Iraq War deaths exceed Vietnam War numbers

Gary Vey
viewzone
Tue, 23 Mar 2010 05:06 UTC
Department of Veterans Affairs Reports 73 Thousand U.S. Gulf War Deaths

Image
More Gulf War Veterans have died than Vietnam Veterans. This probably is news to you. But the truth has been hidden by a technicality. So here is the truth.

The casualties in the Vietnam War were pretty simple to understand. If a soldier was dead from his combat tour, he was a war casualty. There are 58,195 names recorded on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.

Some of these brave men died in the jungles of Vietnam while others died in Medivac units or hospitals in Japan and America. A dead soldier can surrender his life anywhere in service to his country. It really doesn't matter where this happens. The location of a soldier's death in no way colors his sacrifice.

But something odd has happened with the Iraq War. The government, under the Bush administration, did something dishonest that resulted in a lie that's persisted since the war began -- and continues to this very day. They decided to report the war deaths in Iraq only if the soldier died with his boots on the ground in a combat situation.

What's the difference, you might ask?

Image
Read More...
Chess

US extracts Netanyahu apology to Turkish PM for Israeli role in Gaza flotilla raid

Harriet Sherwood and Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian
Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:20 UTC
Turkish activists
© AFP/Getty ImagesNine Turkish activists were killed when Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara in 2010 to stop a it reaching Gaza.
Israel has apologised to the Turkish government for the deaths of nine people on board the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in a flotilla attempting to breach the blockade of Gaza three years ago, in a move to repair a damaging diplomatic breach between the two countries.

The move, apparently brokered by US president Barack Obama during his three-day trip to Israel, has long been resisted by the government in Tel Aviv despite pressure from the international community.

According to White House officials aboard Air Force One, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu placed a call to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan while closeted with Obama in a trailer on the tarmac at Ben Gurion airport in the last minutes before the president's departure for Jordan. Obama joined the call at one point.

The Israeli prime minister's office said Netanyahu "apologised to the Turkish people for any errors that could have led to the loss of life". Erdogan accepted the apology, White House officials said.

This was the "first step" towards normalisation of relations between the two countries, US officials said, and had been the subject of talks between Obama and Netanyahu in Jerusalem this week.

Comment: So just before Obama is about to fly off, Bibi phones Erdogan to say sorry. It sounds like the behaviour of school children in a playground. The US/Israeli discussion obviously concluded they needed Turkish support for the next leg of their empirical warmongering. Whether that be escalation in Syria or Iran. Also possible is countering Turkey's potential positioning over Cypriot gas resources.
It gets worse. Very large underwater gas deposits were recently discovered between Cyprus and Israel. Both Cyprus and Israel, who are to jointly develop them, could become energy exporters. They have become very close allies.

"Not so fast" say Cyprus' Turkish minority. 'That gas also belongs in part to us!" Ankara insists the gas must be shared and has sent ships to back its claim.

Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria are also advancing claims to the "Aphrodite" gas field off Cyprus -shades of the tense South China Sea. But most likely to clash are the Turks and Israelis.


Read More...
Dollar Gold

Russia, Turkey, EU and Israel scavenging Cypriot carcass: Could Cyprus banking crisis trigger a war?

Lew Rockwell
Market Oracle
Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:30 UTC
Russia Turkey
© Business Insider
Eric Margolis writes: Realizing they will never be a world power, the Cypriots have decided to settle for being a world nuisance. ~ George Mikes, Hungarian writer

Cyprus is a big pain in the neck for one and all. Its banks are bust due to reckless lending to Greece. The sunny island is a beehive of tax evasion, money laundering, dodgy trade and espionage.

Now, the threatened bankruptcy of Cyprus has triggered the latest European financial crisis.

Russian businessmen and the Russian Mafia have some 30 billion euros stashed away in Cyprus. Russians make up the second largest biggest cohort of Greek Cyprus' 869,000 people. Some 260,000 ethnic Turks live in the isolated Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which no one but Turkey recognizes.

A 10 billion euro EU bailout is in the works. But the Germans, who will have to fund most of the rescue, are loathe to rescue the Russian mob, and who can blame them?
Read More...
Vader

Citizens' campaign to arrest Tony Blair for war crimes over Iraq invasion continues


Aljazeera
Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:15 UTC
Tony blair
War Criminal
It was only as David Cronin saw Tony Blair and his entourage striding towards him that he finally plucked up the courage to go through with his plan to attempt to arrest the former British prime minister over his role in the invasion of Iraq and claim a bounty on his head.

"I walked up to him very briskly and managed to put my hand on his arm and say, 'Mr Blair, this is a citizen's arrest,'" Cronin told Al Jazeera of the 2010 encounter at the European Parliament in Brussels, where he worked as a journalist.

"I didn't have time to say anything else before his bodyguards pushed me away, so I just shouted at him, 'You are guilty of war crimes!' He looked at me for a split-second before I was bundled off. I can only describe it as a look of puzzlement and contempt."

Ten years since British forces joined the US-led assault, many in the UK are more critical than ever of the country's involvement in a conflict documented by the Iraq Body Count database to have killed more than 112,000 civilians.

More than a fifth - 22 percent - of Britons polled by YouGov this month said they believed Blair should be tried as a war criminal for his role in the conflict, which was preceded by massive anti-war demonstrations in London and other cities.
Read More...
Heart - Black

Beekeepers sue EPA over failing to stop harmful pesticides

Damian Carrington
Raw Story
Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:33 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
Beekeepers, conservation and food campaigners accuse Environmental Protection Agency of failing to protect the insects

The US government is being sued by a coalition of beekeepers, conservation and food campaigners over pesticides linked to serious harm in bees.

The lawsuit accuses the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of failing to protect the insects - which pollinate three-quarters of all food crops - from nerve agents that it says should be suspended from use. Neonicotinoids, the world's most widely used insecticides, are also facing the prospect of suspension in the European Union, after the health commissioner pledged to press on with the proposed ban despite opposition from the UK and Germany.

"We have demonstrated time and time again over the last several years that the EPA needs to protect bees," said Peter Jenkins, an attorney at the Centre for Food Safety who is representing the coalition. "The agency has refused, so we've been compelled to sue."

"America's beekeepers cannot survive for long with the toxic environment EPA has supported," said Steve Ellis, a Minnesota and California beekeeper and one of the plaintiffs who filed the suit at the federal district court. "Bee-toxic pesticides in dozens of widely used products, on top of many other stresses our industry faces, are killing our bees."
Read More...
Arrow Down

For anyone that ever wondered if our news is scripted...

Peter Sinclair
ClimateCrocks
Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:02 UTC
Watch this, and ask yourself, who might be writing that script?

Read More...