Puppet MastersS


Nuke

TNK-BP Russian Joint Venture with British Petroleum may be Facing Involuntary Exit

Luke Harding
The Guardian
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:06 UTC
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© Sergei Karpukhin/ReutersA police officer walks past a plaque of the oil firm TNK-BP at its headquarters in Moscow.
In the opaque world of Vladimir Putin's Russia, business and politics are invariably linked. Especially when the business in question is Russian oil and gas, the source of modern Moscow's global influence and geopolitical might.

It's possible, of course, to read the announcement that BP may sell its 50% stake in its Russian joint venture TNK-BP as a purely corporate decision. BP has, after all, been at war with its powerful oligarch partners for more than five years.

The battle has been long, acrimonious and at times surreal. TNK-BP's chief executive, Bob Dudley, was hounded out of Russia in 2008 after his visa wasn't renewed; Moscow police raided BP's offices; Mikhail Fridman, the smooth frontman for BP's Russian partners, accused BP of spreading "Goebbels-like propaganda". "It was impossible to know what was going on. Or why," one former employee said of the bloody period.

And yet sources say a Russian state oil and gas group is about to buy out BP. The group's identity is unknown but it is most likely to be Gazprom or Rosneft. Both are powerful, state-owned behemoths. It is inconceivable their "unsolicited" approach for BP's share could take place without approval at the top of the Kremlin - the very top.
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Bad Guys

Flashback White House Covered-Up Extent of BP Oil Spill in the Gulf


The Intel Hub
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:24 UTC
During the height of the BP oil spill Americans were pumped full of propaganda from the corporate controlled mouth pieces of both the media and the White House.

It has now been admitted through a series of emails that the White House and BP settled on figurative numbers (a placeholder) of only 5000 barrels per day emptied into the gulf as part of a massive cover-up.


The 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident killed 11 and released a minimum of 4.9 million barrels of oil and over 2 million gallons of toxic dispersant into the gulf before it was capped.
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Star of David

Israel ready for 30-day war after Iran strike


Terra Daily
Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:39 UTC
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Israel is prepared for a 30-day war on multiple fronts should it decide to strike Iran, and is "ready as never before" for such a clash, the outgoing home front defence minister said Wednesday.

In an interview with the Maariv newspaper, Matan Vilnai said Israel was ready to face the consequences of a clash with Iran that could be sparked if the Jewish state decides to launch a strike against Tehran's nuclear programme.

But he warned that any military engagement should be weighed carefully, and cautioned that Israel should "always coordinate" with the United States.

"The assessments are for a war that will last 30 days on a number of fronts," he said, repeating the predictions of other senior Israeli officials that the Jewish state would suffer around 500 deaths in such a clash.
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USA

Best of the Web: Fox News Reports that The US Government is Supporting 'al-Qaeda'

Reality Check
Fox News
Wed, 15 Aug 2012 06:35 UTC
Ben Swann of Fox News' 'Reality Check' does a very good job of explaining the reality of the US relationship with 'al-Qaeda'.

Your eyes are not deceiving you, this really is Fox News, or at least a segment of the Fox 'Entertainment Group' corporation, exposing one of the greatest lies ever to be told to the world.

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Chart Pie

Paul Ryan's Economic Policies - Tax Cuts for Wealthy, Spending Cuts for Everyone Else

Aaron Task
Yahoo. News
Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:00 UTC
Game changer" is a fitting description of Mitt Romney's selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate. Saturday's announcement has been widely hailed as a bold political choice that's reinvigorated Romney's campaign and shown him to be an effective executive who shrewdly oversaw the decision and kept the process a secret - no small feat in the era of the 24/7 news cycle.

But good politics does not necessarily make for good policy. While Rep. Ryan gets credit for proposing solutions to the federal budget deficit - rather than just criticizing President Obama's handling of the nation's finances - he's offering the wrong prescription for what ails America, according to Mark Dow, a former policy economist at the IMF and Treasury Department and author of the Behavioral Macro blog.

"Just because rich guys will believe any economic theory that ends up in a tax cut doesn't make it the right policy for the time - even if it will get you their vote," he quips.

In a nutshell, Dow says supply-side economics - the basis of Ryan's budget proposals - will not work in today's economy.
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Bad Guys

False Flag Terror and Conspiracies of Silence

Prof. James F. Tracy
Global Research
Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:06 UTC
CIA seal
The news media's readiness to accept official pronouncements and failure to more vigorously analyze and question government authorities in the wake of "domestic terrorist" incidents contributes to the American public's already acute case of collective historical amnesia, while it further rationalizes the twenty-first century police state and continued demise of civil society.

Some may recall "Bugs Raplin" (Giancarlo Esposito), the resolute investigative journalist depicted in Tim Robbins' 1992 political mockumentary Bob Roberts. After being framed as the culprit in a false flag assassination attempt by corrupt political huckster Bob Roberts (Robbins), Raplin delivers a perceptive soliloquy that among other things effectively describes the American public's moribund civic condition and short-circuited democracy. "The reason Iran-Contra happened," Raplin begins,
is because no one did anything substantial about Watergate. And the reason Watergate happened is because there were no consequences from the Bay of Pigs. They're all the same operatives - the foot soldiers at the Bay of Pigs, the plumbers that got busted at Watergate, the gunrunners in Iran-Contra - all the same people, same faces. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out the connection here: A secret government beyond the control of the people and accountable to no one. And the closer we are to discovering the connection, the more Congress turns a blind eye to it. "We can't talk about that in open session," they say. "National security reasons." The truth lies dormant in their laps and they stay blind out of choice. A conspiracy of silence.
Twenty years later amidst the vast outsourcing of intelligence and military operations many more events may arguably be added to such a shadow government's achievements - the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing, the September 11 terror attacks, the non-existent weapons of mass destruction prompting the occupation of Iraq, the July 7, 2005 London tube bombings, the shoe and underwear "bombings" - all of which have contributed to the official justification of imperial wars abroad and an ever-expanding police state at home.

Lacking meaningful contexts with which to understand such events in their totality the general public is incapable of recognizing the road it is being forced down. The most recent set of events that give pause are the horrific, military-style shootings in Aurora Colorado and Oak Creek Wisconsin that authorities maintain were carried out by "lone wolf" gunmen.
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Bomb

Dozens killed in Afghan suicide bomber attacks

Atia Abawi
NBC News
Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:00 UTC
Islamist suicide bombers targeted markets crowded with Ramadan shoppers and a major provincial hospital in Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing at least 38 people and wounding close to 100.

The bloodshed underscored a surge in fighting ahead of a withdrawal by most Western combat troops and handover to Afghan forces winding up in 2014. NATO-led forces have been struggling to eliminate Taliban insurgent bastions, especially in the east.

Suicide bombings in markets in the southwest province of Nimroz killed at least 28 people - 18 of them civilians and three policemen - and wounded over 70, police said, in the deadliest day of violence in the normally peaceful region since 2001.

Women and children and at least three members of the Afghan security forces were among the dead in Zaranj, the capital of the largely rural province, which lies on Afghanistan's western border with Iran.

Comment: The cycle of Violence continues.


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Blackbox

US Officials: Russian attack submarine sailed in Gulf of Mexico undetected for weeks?

Bill Gertz
The Washington Free Beacon
Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:20 UTC
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© APRussian Akula Submarine
A Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks and its travel in strategic U.S. waters was only confirmed after it left the region, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. It is only the second time since 2009 that a Russian attack submarine has patrolled so close to U.S. shores.

The stealth underwater incursion in the Gulf took place at the same time Russian strategic bombers made incursions into restricted U.S. airspace near Alaska and California in June and July, and highlights a growing military assertiveness by Moscow.

The submarine patrol also exposed what U.S. officials said were deficiencies in U.S. anti-submarine warfare capabilities - forces that are facing cuts under the Obama administration's plan to reduce defense spending by $487 billion over the next 10 years.
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Gear

Ecuador to Respond to Assange Plea This Week


The Raw Story
Tue, 14 Aug 2012 06:49 UTC
Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks
© unknownJulian Assange, founder of Wikileaks
Quito - Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa has said he expects to respond to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's application for political asylum some time this week.

"Hopefully this week we will be able to make a statement on the matter," the leftist leader said in an interview with public broadcaster ECTV late Monday.

Assange, 41, took refuge at Ecuador's embassy in London on June 19 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is accused of sexual assault.

"We expect to have a meeting no later than Wednesday," Correa said, referring to his diplomats in London.

The WikiLeaks founder fears that from Sweden, he could subsequently be re-extradited to the United States to stand trial for espionage, after a trove of leaked US diplomatic cables and military logs were published on his website.
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Mr. Potato

Honeymoon Over, Outlook Worse for French President

Angus MacKinnon
Yahoo! News - Canada
Mon, 13 Aug 2012 00:00 UTC
Francois Hollande
© EPA
Francois Hollande will celebrate 100 days since his election as French president on Tuesday knowing his honeymoon with the electorate is over and that life is not going to get easier any time soon.

Record unemployment and an economy headed back into recession provide a sombre backdrop to an event Hollande will mark by interrupting his summer break to visit police officers in a village where two of their female colleagues died in a shootout in June.

The village, Pierrefeu-du-Var, is located close to the Fort de Bregancon presidential retreat where Hollande has been on holiday with his glamorous journalist girlfriend, Valerie Trierweiller, since the beginning of August.

Political observers say the choice of location is no accident as Hollande attempts to portray himself as a president who shares voters' concerns over insecurity and is willing to take tough measures to fight crime.

On Saturday, after attending a memorial service for the 88th French soldier to die in Afghanistan, Hollande made an unannounced detour to Grenoble to visit victims of a recent violent hold-up, promising that the city would be added to a list of priority areas for tougher action on crime.
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