Puppet MastersS


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
Image
© 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.
Read More...
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
Image
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.
Read More...
Bad Guys

Islamists attack north Mali city after suicide bombings


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:19 UTC
Image
© 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.
Read More...
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.
Read More...
Alarm Clock

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates endorses 'drone courts'


Raw Story
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 15:45 UTC
Image
© 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.
Read More...
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.
Read More...
Snakes in Suits

Rand Paul mocks Ashley Judd as 'an attractive woman' who doesn't deserve to run

David Edwards
Raw Story
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:21 UTC
Image
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is dismissing actress Ashley Judd as an "attractive woman" who does not deserve to be a Kentucky senator because she owns a home in Scotland.

During an interview with Paul on Sunday, CNN's Candy Crowley pointed out that a recent attack ad created by Karl Rove's Crossroad GPS suggested that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was threatened by the possibility that Judd could take his Senate seat.

"Is he at this point looking weak?" Crowley wondered.

"You know, when I heard Ashley Judd might run for office, I thought maybe it was [the Bristish] Parliament because she lives in Scotland half of the year," Paul smirked. "But no, I think really part of politics is making sure that people know about who you're running against."
Read More...
Cell Phone

Software that tracks people on social media created by defence firm

Ryan Gallagher
Guardian
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:13 UTC
Image
Exclusive: Raytheon's Riot program mines social network data like a 'Google for spies', drawing ire from civil rights groups

A multinational security firm has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites.

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.
Read More...
Pistol

Learning from America's history of assassinations

Gary Hart
Huffington Post
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:31 UTC
Image
It is unfortunate that senior administration officials making life and death decisions today on when, where, and against whom drone strikes should be launched did not live through, as I did, the period of 1975-76 when Congressional investigations, including the famous Church committee, discovered plots by our government to assassinate foreign leaders. In the case of Fidel Castro those plots had an almost demented insistence and caused the CIA to partner with the Mafia to achieve its objectives, ordered by at least two administrations.

Profound Constitutional and moral issues were raised by these plots and their discoveries. For a new and very young senator, it was shocking to discover that a sewer of still unknown dimensions was flowing underneath the city on a hill. Such a discovery causes you to suspect almost everyone and everything (in my case not enough) and to believe that expediency will trump principle on almost every occasion.

The drone assassination policy is the product of the confluence of the notion of preemption, terrorism as war not crime, and a mistaken notion that "national security" can be defined so broadly that any action is justified. At least one prominent Air Force general desperately wanted to initiate large-scale nuclear attacks on the Soviet Union in the 1940s. Presumably, the preemption doctrine would have justified massive bombing raids on the Imperial palace and Japanese Ministry of War if we had known they were planning Pearl Harbor. These and more actions are possible if you totally put aside what the United States of America claims to stand for.
Read More...
Star of David

Israel commits crimes without punishment

Stephen Lendman
Information Clearing House
Sun, 10 Feb 2013 11:24 UTC
Image
Israel is a rogue state. It's a serial abuser. It commits crimes without punishment. It tolerates no criticism.

Last May, it suspended contact with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

On April 30, Haaretz headlined "Israel joins UN list of states limiting human rights organizations."

Censure followed an earlier Ministerial Committee on Legislation approval to restrict foreign governments from funding NGOs. It should have been for crimes against humanity. Israel commits them daily.

It spurns fundamental rule of law principles. It rejects Fourth Geneva's de jure applicability. It's defied dozens of UN resolutions. It ignored the International Court of Justice's 2004 condemnation of its Separation Wall.

It refused cooperation with the Goldstone Commission on Cast Lead. In 2012, it denied UN investigators entry to collect testimonies on its lawless settlements.
Read More...