Puppet MastersS


Satellite

Japan launches new satellites to boost surveillance


Raw Story
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 19:13 UTC
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© AFP Photo
Japan on Sunday launched two satellites to strengthen its surveillance capabilities, including keeping a closer eye on North Korea which has vowed to stage another nuclear test.

One of them was a radar-equipped unit to complete a system of surveillance satellites that will allow Tokyo to monitor any place in the world at least once a day.

The other was a demonstration satellite to collect data for research and development.

The H-IIA rocket blasted off from the southern island of Tanegashima around 1:40 pm (0440 GMT) and released the satellites as planned, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

"The rocket flew as planned and released both satellites," JAXA said in a statement, confirming its success.
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Handcuffs

Shocking: Reporting factory farm abuses to be considered "Act of Terrorism" if new laws pass

Katherine Paul & Ronnie Cummins
Alternet
Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:20 UTC
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© schankz/ Shutterstock.com
Three states are the latest states to introduce Ag-Gag laws and lawmakers in 10 other states introduced similar bills in 2011-2012.

How do you keep consumers in the dark about the horrors of factory farms? By making it an "act of terrorism" for anyone to investigate animal cruelty, food safety or environmental violations on the corporate-controlled farms that produce the bulk of our meat, eggs and dairy products.

And who better to write the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, designed to protect Big Ag and Big Energy, than the lawyers on the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force at the corporate-funded and infamous American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska are the latest states to introduce Ag-Gag laws aimed at preventing employees, journalists or activists from exposing illegal or unethical practices on factory farms. Lawmakers in 10 other states introduced similar bills in 2011-2012. The laws passed in three of those states: Missouri, Iowa and Utah. But consumer and animal-welfare activists prevented the laws from passing in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York and Tennessee.

Comment: The following article was carried on SOTT.NET in December 2011. It is obvious that the Ag-Gag laws have been in the 'works' for some time. According to the authors of the article above: "ALEC (Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act)-inspired bills take direct aim at anyone who tries to expose horrific acts of animal cruelty, dangerous animal-handling practices that might lead to food safety issues, or blatant disregard for environmental laws designed to protect waterways from animal waste runoff. In the past, most of those exposes have resulted from undercover investigations of exactly the type Big Ag wants to make illegal":

FBI Says Activists Who Investigate Factory Farms Can Be Prosecuted as Terrorists
The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has kept files on activists who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms and recommended prosecuting them as terrorists, according to a new document uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act.

This new information comes as the Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a lawsuit challenging the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) as unconstitutional because its vague wording has had a chilling effect on political activism. This document adds to the evidence demonstrating that the AETA goes far beyond property destruction, as its supporters claim.


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War Whore

Kiriakou and Stuxnet: The danger of the still-escalating Obama whistleblower war

Glenn Greenwald
Guardian
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:37 UTC
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© Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/APFormer CIA officer John Kiriakou becomes the only government official convicted in connection with the US torture program: not for having done it, but for having talked about it.
The only official punished for the illegal NSA program was the one who discussed it. The same is now true of torture.

The permanent US national security state has used extreme secrecy to shield its actions from democratic accountability ever since its creation after World War II. But those secrecy powers were dramatically escalated in the name of 9/11 and the War on Terror, such that most of what the US government now does of any significance is completely hidden from public knowledge. Two recent events - the sentencing last week of CIA torture whistleblower John Kirikaou to 30 months in prison and the invasive investigation to find the New York Times' source for its reporting on the US role in launching cyberwarfare at Iran - demonstrate how devoted the Obama administration is not only to maintaining, but increasing, these secrecy powers.

When WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables in 2010, government defenders were quick to insist that most of those documents were banal and uninteresting. And that's true: most (though by no means all) of those cables contained nothing of significance. That, by itself, should have been a scandal. All of those documents were designated as "secret", making it a crime for government officials to reveal their contents - despite how insignificant most of it was. That revealed how the US government reflexively - really automatically - hides anything and everything it does behind this wall of secrecy: they have made it a felony to reveal even the most inconsequential and pedestrian information about its actions.
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Heart - Black

CIA's secret prison: 'Poland dragging out investigation'


RT.com
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:34 UTC
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© AFP Photo/Anne-Christine Poujoulat
A Polish investigation into secret CIA jails is being suppressed because it will embarrass the top echelon of the country's government, lawyers of two men held illegally in one of the CIA's 'black sites' in Poland tell media.

Reportedly, the results of this investigation could link some of Poland's most senior politicians with illegal detention and torture, as well as impact negatively on the relationship between Poland and its key ally, the US, according to Reuters.

The news agency's sources, including lawyers and human rights activists, reveal that the investigation was halted after the original investigators were taken off the case early last year.

The probe began in 2008 with prosecutors from the capital Warsaw, but in early 2012 the prosecutor-general transferred the investigation to the southern city of Krakow.

"The image is of a complete lack of action," Mikolaj Pietrzak, lawyer for Saudi national Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri who says he was detained in a CIA jail on Polish soil, told Reuters. "The case is obviously, in my opinion, under political control ... The most convenient thing politically is for the case to drag on," Pietrzak added.
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No Entry

'Assange effectively denied opportunity to enjoy asylum' - Ecuadorian FM


RT.com
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:30 UTC
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© AFP Photo/Rodrigo BuendiaEcuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino
By not allowing passage to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from London to Latin America, where he was granted asylum, Britain infringes same international documents it vigorously lobbied for, Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino tells RT.

Patino says London's pressure, which forces Assange to live in the Ecuadorian embassy in Britain, is a serious infringement of his rights. The WikiLeaks frontman applied for and was eventually granted asylum by Ecuador in August 2012 to avoid UK extradition to Sweden, where police want to question him over sex crime allegations. Assange believes extradition would result in his being turned over to the US and prosecuted for disclosing thousands of classified US documents.
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Star of David

Israel may rely on US 'scalpels' to contain Iran - defense minister


RT.com
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:27 UTC
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© AFP Photo/Johannes EiseleIsraeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak speaks during a session of the 2013 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting on January 24, 2013 at the Swiss resort of Davos.
Instead of going to a full-scale war with Iran over its nuclear program Israel may be satisfied with a US-led operation, says Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Previously Tel Aviv was determined to resolve the issue on its own, if the US refuses to help.

Apparently after the Knesset election this month left the Netanyahu cabinet weakened, Israeli hawks are toning down their war drumming rhetoric. In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Barak said the Pentagon had prepared a surgical operation that can be used as a last-ditch measure to slow Iranian progress.

"I used to tell them [American friends], you know, when we are talking about surgical operations we think of a scalpel, you think of a chisel with a 10-pound hammer," Barak joked as cited by The Daily Beast. But that's not the case with the plan, he noted. "The Pentagon prepared quite sophisticated, fine, extremely fine, scalpels. So it is not an issue of a major war or a failure to block Iran. You could under a certain situation, if worse comes to worst, end up with a surgical operation."

Such an operation "will delay [the Iranians] by a significant time frame and probably convince them that it won't work because the world is determined to block them," Barak said.
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Star of David

Israel admits Ethiopian women were given birth control shots

Talila Nesher
Haaretz
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 02:29 UTC
Members of the Falashmura community in Ethiopia, waiting to immigrate to Israel.
© Anshel PfefferMembers of the Falashmura community in Ethiopia, waiting to immigrate to Israel.
Health Minister director general instructs all gynecologists in Israel's four health maintenance organizations not to inject women with long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera if they do not understand ramifications of treatment.

A government official has for the first time acknowledged the practice of injecting women of Ethiopian origin with the long-acting contraceptive Depo-Provera.

Health Ministry Director General Prof. Ron Gamzu has instructed the four health maintenance organizations to stop the practice as a matter of course.

The ministry and other state agencies had previously denied knowledge or responsibility for the practice, which was first reported five years ago.

Gamzu's letter instructs all gynecologists in the HMOs "not to renew prescriptions for Depo-Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment."

He also instructed physicians to avail themselves of translators if need be.
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Pistol

Nationwide plan for gun confiscation exposed

Alex Thomas
theintelhub.com
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:05 UTC
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In the last month we have seen what can only be described as the largest attack on 2nd Amendment in the history of the United States.

Within hours of the horrific mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, elements of the corporate controlled media, in conjunction with a majority of politicians in a position of power, launched an all out propaganda blitz to convince the American people to accept not only a severely limited 2nd Amendment, but possibly a total gun ban.

Whether it be by Senator Dianne Feinstein, billionaire eugenicist Michael Bloomberg or President Obama himself, calls for and plans to limit private firearm ownership in America have been outlined and, in some cases, already put into law.

During the propaganda blitz that has accompanied President Obama's task force and subsequent executive orders, each and every proponent of stricter gun control has claimed that they support the 2nd Amendment and do not want any sort of all out ban or confiscation.
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Bomb

Roadside bomb kills 10 in Afghanistan

Mirwais Khan
Associated Press
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:02 UTC
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© AP Photo/Rahmatullah NikzadSecurity officers investigate the scene of a bomb in Gazni, Afghanistan, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013. A remote controlled bomb planted on a bicycle killed several people including a police officer and a civilian in the eastern city of Ghazni and Gen. Zirawer Zahid, the provincial police chief, says another five people were wounded
A police truck packed with officers and detainees struck a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan's largest city, killing 10 of those aboard, officials said Sunday.

It was one of four blasts Saturday that left at least 24 people dead across the country. Attacks by insurgents are a daily occurrence around Afghanistan and the Afghan police with their unarmored pickup trucks and remote checkpoints are a common target.

In the Kandahar city blast, police had driven to a residential neighborhood of the city at night to inspect a bomb that had been found there, said Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the provincial government. They detained three suspects and were driving back with them in a police pickup truck when the vehicle struck another explosive buried in the road. Eight police officers and two detainees were killed in the blast.
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Target

India test fires missile from under sea, completes nuclear triad


NDTV
Sun, 27 Jan 2013 08:59 UTC
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After a smooth countdown at 1.40 pm today, India's missile, named BO5, emerged effortlessly breaking the balmy waters of the Bay of Bengal. The missile was launched from an approximate depth of about 50 metres, simulating exactly the conditions as would prevail during an operational launch from India's indigenously made nuclear-powered submarine bINS Arihant. The missile whose name has been variously given as Sagarika or at times K-15 or even Dhanush has finally been christened as BO5 and is a medium-range ballistic missile.

After emerging from the water, the missile followed a copy book track of its trajectory and hit its target about six minutes after launch in a very precise manner. The trajectory was tracked using several cameras and radars specially deputed for this launch.
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