Puppet MastersS


Whistle

Best of the Web: Monsanto's GMO Corn Approved Despite 45,000 Public Comments in Opposition

Image
© Activist Post
As previously reported, while people were de-stressing and enjoying their much needed time off during the holidays, the United States Department of Agriculture announced its approval of Monsanto's 'drought tolerant' genetically engineered corn.

The decision to give the green light to Monsanto regarding their GE corn didn't seem too difficult for the Obama Administration, despite receiving nearly 45,000 public comments voicing opposition and only 23 comments in favor since comments opened.

Prepare to see this new GE corn unleashed into the environment as well as the American food supply.

Bad Guys

Guantanamo Bay 10th Anniversary: Obama's Detention Law Could Fill Prison Obama Tried To Close

Camp America-Guantanamo
© Getty
President Barack Obama failed two years ago to close the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison, and with Wednesday marking the 10th anniversary of its creation, debate is raging over whether a law he signed will ensure it will stay open for decades to come, jailing even United States citizens.

Tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which Obama signed on New Year's Eve, are provisions that appear to allow indefinite military detention of American terrorism suspects, and to require it of suspected foreign enemies.

The Obama administration insists the law merely codifies existing standards, but its strong supporters and vehement opponents are sure it does much more, legally enshrining for the first time in 60 years the authority to hold citizens without trial.

"We're no longer in the box of having to read Miranda rights to terrorists who come to America to try to kill us," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an author of the bill who praised its passage on his website earlier this month.

Star of David

Mosque Defaced, 3 Cars Torched in West Bank

Israeli police say a mosque has been defaced with Hebrew graffiti and three cars have been torched in a Palestinian village in the West Bank.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Wednesday that vandals painted "price tag" and "Gal Arye Yosef" overnight on a wall of the mosque in the village of Dir Istiyya.

"Price tag" refers to a practice by Jewish extremists of accosting Palestinian property - and more recently, Israeli military bases - in retaliation for Israeli government action against settlers.

Gal Arye Yosef is the name of a small, unauthorized settlement outpost that Israeli security forces demolished on Tuesday.

Attention

US Fires 1st Drone in Pakistan in 6 Weeks; 4 Dead

US Drone
© unknown
The U.S. carried out its first drone strike into Pakistan since errant November airstrikes by U.S. forces killed two dozen Pakistani troops along the Afghan border. The latest missile attack killed four militants, three of them Arabs, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

The drone strike took place Tuesday near Miran Shah in North Waziristan, an al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold that has been pounded by the U.S. since the drone program began in earnest in 2009. The intelligence officials didn't give their names because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Relations with Pakistan plummeted after the Nov. 26 airstrikes prompted Islamabad to shut down vital supply routes into Afghanistan and force the U.S. to vacate Shamsi Air Base in southwestern Baluchistan province. The U.S. used the base to service drones that targeted militants in the tribal regions close to Afghanistan.

American officials say there had been no promise by Washington that drone operations would be avoided since the deadly airstrikes, but that the lull was part of a broad effort to tamp down tensions with Pakistan. While there has long been some level of agreement by Pakistan over the drone attacks, their scope and frequency has been a source of friction between the two countries.

Bomb

Bomb Blast Kills Nuclear Scientist in Iran; Israel Accused

Image
© The Associated PressThe bomb was reportedly attached with magnets to the car
An Iranian nuclear scientist was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran on Wednesday, and a city official blamed Israel for the attack, similar to attacks on nuclear scientists just over a year ago.

Fars news agency identified the victim as Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a 32-year-old graduate of an oil industry university. It said he had supervised a department at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility. Iran's atomic energy organization said it would issue a statement shortly.

"The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and the work of the Zionists (Israelis)," Fars quoted Deputy Tehran Governor Safarali Baratloo as saying.

Witnesses told Reuters they had seen two people on the motorbike fix the bomb to the car. As well as the person killed in the car, a pedestrian was also killed. Another person in the car was gravely injured, they said.

Light Sabers

China Warns U.S. to be "Careful" in Military Refocus

Image
© unknown
China's Ministry of Defence warned the United States on Monday to be "careful in its words and actions" after announcing a defence rethink that stresses responding to China's rise by shoring up U.S. alliances and bases across Asia.

The statement from the ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng was Beijing's fullest reaction so far to the new U.S. strategy unveiled last week. It echoed the mix of wariness and outward restraint that has marked China's response to the Obama administration's "pivot" to Asia since late last year.

"We have noted that the United States issued this guide to its defence strategy, and we will closely observe the impact that U.S. military strategic adjustment has on the Asia-Pacific region and on global security developments," Geng said in a statement issued on the ministry's website (www.mod.gov.cn).

"The accusations leveled at China by the U.S. side in this document are totally baseless," said Geng.

"We hope that the United States will flow with the tide of the era, and deal with China and the Chinese military in an objective and rational way, will be careful in its words and actions, and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries."

2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Lieberman's Bill to Kick Off Internment Camps

Image
For those readers who are part of the 40% of human beings who think Ignorance is Bliss, stop reading now. This article is about a truth so hard that it was actually depressing to write it. You might think that working on SOTT for many years, most of us are pretty tough and can deal with the hard stuff. But sometimes, you see something that rings a bell, and you know that you've had a glimpse behind the curtain, because somebody went before and left a map to show you the way. In this case, that person was Hannah Arendt.

The modern world can't be an easy place to live in for those who are born genetically predisposed to crave absolute power over others. I mean, these days, any would-be totalitarian has only a very small chance of being born into one of the world's few remaining overt dictatorships, and a much greater chance of being born into a large Western nation that is nominally democratic. While fulfillment of the megalomaniac's innate drive is a walk in the park in a dictatorship, it requires all sorts of protracted subterfuge in a democracy. Bummer.

The main problem with giving free reign to one's dictatorial leanings in a democracy is the whole 'citizen's rights' and 'Rights of Man' thing. How is any self-aggrandizing despot to lord it over the masses, and watch them squirm and suffer and beg, when everyone seems convinced that there are not only democratic and legal rights but also natural 'inalienable' rights that come with just being a human being? Ideas that everyone is 'created equal' and has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness etc. can cause a lot of problems for the average authoritarian. Naturally then, in any democracy, all those rights would have to be removed before any oligarchy could transform citizens into subjects, and they'd have to be removed under the cloak of 'protecting' the very rights that were slated for extinction. A tall order indeed, but there are ways to do it. One tried and tested way is to create a foreign or external threat from which the people of a democracy must be protected. All sorts of draconian laws that subvert civil rights can be passed to combat this 'threat', and if the 'threat' can then be made internal or domestic, and suspicion of 'siding with enemy' cast over the citizens, you're well on your way to banishing those pesky legal and natural rights.

War Whore

US: Panetta admits Iran not developing nukes

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta let slip on Sunday the big open secret that Washington war hawks don't want widely known: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.

Appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Panetta admitted that despite all the rhetoric, Iran is not pursuing the ability to split atoms with weapons, saying it is instead pursuing "a nuclear capability."

This video is from CBS News, broadcast Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012, as clipped by ThinkProgress.


That "capability" falls in line with what Iran has said for years: that it is developing nuclear energy facilities, not nuclear weapons.

Bad Guys

US: Homeland Security Monitors Journalists

Homeland Security logo
© Homeland Security
Freedom of speech might allow journalists to get away with a lot in America, but the Department of Homeland Security is on the ready to make sure that the government is keeping dibs on who is saying what.

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)'s Media Monitoring Initiative that came out of DHS headquarters in November, Washington has the written permission to retain data on users of social media and online networking platforms.

Specifically, the DHS announced the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) can collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use "traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed."

According to the Department of Homeland Security's own definition of personal identifiable information, or PII, such data could consist of any intellect "that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual." Previously established guidelines within the administration say that data could only be collected under authorization set forth by written code, but the new provisions in the NOC's write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency.

Laptop

US customs can and will seize laptops and cellphones, demand passwords

customs sign
© unknown
The American Civil Liberties Union has brought a suit against the US government over its seizure of the laptop of a computer security consultant - a seizure carried out at a Chicago airport about a year ago without a search warrant or any charges of crimes.

According to a report in Sunday's Boston Globe, the consultant - a former MIT researcher, David House - was returning from rest and relaxation in Mexico when federal agents seized his laptop.

According to the Globe, the government wanted to know more about House's connections to Bradley Manning, the US Army private accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

The seizure comes as no surprise. As Globe writer Katie Johnston notes, United States ports of entry are dubbed "Constitution-free zones" by civil liberties advocates.

Barring invasive techniques such as strip seizures, government agents are free to disregard Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. They don't need reasonable suspicion or probable cause, and they can take what they like, be it laptops or smart phones.