Puppet MastersS


Attention

Goldman Sachs made $400 million betting on food prices in 2012 while hundreds of millions starved

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:09 UTC
Starving Child
© The Economic Collapse Blog
Why does it seem like wherever there is human suffering, some giant bank is making money off of it? According to a new report from the World Development Movement, Goldman Sachs made about 400 million dollars betting on food prices last year.

Overall, 2012 was quite a banner year for Goldman Sachs. As I reported in a previous article, revenues for Goldman increased by about 30 percent in 2012 and the price of Goldman stock has risen by more than 40 percent over the past 12 months. It is estimated that the average banker at Goldman brought in a pay and bonus package of approximately $396,500 for 2012. So without a doubt, Goldman Sachs is swimming in money right now. But what is the price for all of this "success"?

Many claim that the rampant speculation on food prices by the big banks has dramatically increased the global price of food and has caused the suffering of hundreds of millions of poor families around the planet to become much worse. At this point, global food prices are more than twice as high as they were back in 2003.

Approximately 2 billion people on the planet spend at least half of their incomes on food, and close to a billion people regularly do not have enough food to eat. Is it moral for Goldman Sachs and other big banks such as Barclays and Morgan Stanley to make hundreds of millions of dollars betting on the price of food if that is going to drive up global food prices and make it harder for poor families all over the world to feed themselves?
Read More...
Pistol

Connie Mack: Ban LGBT marriage, but 'you cannot legislate morality' on guns

David Edwards
Raw Story
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:07 UTC
Image
Connie Mack speaks to CNN
A former Republican congressman from Florida who has voted to ban same sex marriage says that "you cannot legislate morality" when it comes to guns.

During a Wednesday panel discussion on CNN, host Soledad O'Brien said that she could understand NRA executive director Wayne LaPierre's point of view that the federal government would be punishing people if it kept a list of assault weapon purchases.

"It's a punishment because then the government uses it as a form of intimidation," former Rep. Connie Mack (FL) told O'Brien. "This is the first step that the Obama administration wants to do. They want to go much farther than this. And there's a lot of people, including myself, that don't believe the federal government should have this type of registry."
Read More...
USA

More cannon fodder: Pentagon to overturn ban on women in military combat roles

Adam Gabbatt
Guardian
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:55 UTC
Image
© Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty ImagesPanetta's decision gives the military until January 2016 to seek special exceptions if they believe any positions must remain closed to women.
Move announced by defence secretary Leon Panetta will allow women to serve in infantry and commando units for first time.

Women could assume combat roles in the US army for the first time as early as this year, following a landmark decision by defense secretary Leon Panetta to lift a military ban on women serving on the frontline.

The groundbreaking move could open up hundreds of thousands of frontline positions, and could see women working in elite commando units.

One official told the Associated Press, which revealed details of the move, that military chiefs will report to the Pentagon on how to integrate women into combat roles by 15 May.

Panetta's decision was hailed as a "historic step" by one senator and could eventually open up 230,000 jobs to female military personnel. The Pentagon had previously opened around 14,500 combat positions to women in February 2012, but females were still prevented from serving in the infantry, in tank units and in commando units.

Women, although banned from serving in combat roles, have been heavily involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 12 years, serving as pilots, military police, intelligence officers and other roles attached to, if not formally part of, frontline units. By last year, around 130 women had died and 800 had been wounded since the wars began.
Read More...
Eye 1

'Pathetic coward': Prince Harry blasted for Taliban comments

Hasnain Kazim
Spiegel
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:49 UTC
Image
© AP
Taliban fighters are full of derision for Prince Harry following the broadcast of an interview in which he brags of killing rebel fighters. NATO officers in Kabul are likewise unimpressed.

Prince Harry, 28, had barely returned from his second tour of duty in Afghanistan before he found himself back in the spotlight. Comments he made during interviews conducted while he was still in the country immediately made headlines: "I've Killed Taliban Fighters." His comments were publicized after the prince returned from a five-month tour, during which he was stationed in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan as the co-pilot gunner of an Apache helicopter.

In the interview, in which he spoke about his mission in the restive province, Prince Harry told the BBC: "If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we'll take them out of the game." He added: "We fire when we have to, take a life to save a life." When asked by a journalist if he, as helicopter gunman, had taken lives as well, Harry responded, "yeah, so, lots of people have."
Read More...
USA

Ending unconstitutional 'stop and frisks' would be too much hassle for cops, says judge

Robert Gearty
NY Daily News
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:44 UTC
Image
© MARK BONIFACIO/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin lifted the order after agreeing with city lawyers who said the immediate halt of some "Clean Halls" trespass stops would impose an undue burden on the NYPD.

A judge is allowing the NYPD to resume certain stop-and-frisk tactics in the Bronx after ordering they be halted because they were unconstitutional.

Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin lifted the order Tuesday after she agreed with city lawyers who said the immediate halt of some "Clean Halls" trespass stops would impose an undue burden on the NYPD, requiring some form of "notification to and/or training of" thousands of NYPD officers and their supervisors.

She ordered an immediate halt to trespass stops outside Bronx "Clean Halls" buildings on Jan. 8 unless the officer has a "reasonable suspicion" that a violation has occurred.
Read More...
Bad Guys

Rise of the machines


Information Clearing House
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:26 UTC
Image
Most people see drones as a controversial weapon prowling over foreign battlegrounds. But as America's military campaigns wind down, these machines are coming home and set to change civilian lives forever.

Read More...
MIB

"I Infilitrated Al-Qaeda": Danish man claims he's CIA-backed double agent

Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
The New American
Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:18 UTC
Morten Storm
© APMorten Storm claims to have worked for six years as an informant for the CIA, Britain's MI5 and MI6 and D
enmark's security service, PET.
A member of a Danish motorcycle gang converts to Islam, travels to Yemen to learn more about his new faith, meets radical imams preaching death to the infidels, and just as the preaching is sinking in and he's about to embrace a life as a militant Muslim, the gang member jilts the jihadists and decides to switch sides and go undercover for the CIA and help the intelligence agency track, target, and kill his erstwhile militant brethren.

This is the incredible story being told to the press and sold in a new book by Morten Storm, a 37-year-old Dane who claims to have worked on several secret missions with intelligence groups from several Western nations.

Storm tells the Associated Press that "he worked for six years as an informant for the CIA, Britain's MI5 and MI6 and Denmark's security service, PET."

"Could they just say 'he never worked for us'? Sometimes silence is also information," Storm told the AP in Copenhagen. "I know this is true, I know what I have done."

Comment: Storm's story is not too hard to believe as stated. There is a wealth of evidence pointing to Al qaeda being essentially a CIA operation that enables perpetuating of the War of TerrorTM.

Read More...
Bad Guys

Air Force sex scandal prompts House Committee hearing on sexual assault in military

Jim Forsyth
Huffington Post
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:08 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Jacquelyn MartinAir Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh III, left, and Air Force Gen. Edward Rice, Jr., testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, before a House Armed Services Committee hearing on sexual misconduct by basic training instructors at Lackland Air Force Base
The U.S. House Armed Services Committee will hold a public hearing on Wednesday into sexual assault in the military, prompted by outrage over a sex-with-recruits scandal at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

The Washington hearing comes after nearly 60 current and former personnel, including two men, came forward with what the Air Force considered credible reports that they were sexually abused by their drill sergeants at the base in San Antonio.

Six drill sergeants have been convicted and six more Lackland Military Training Instructors are awaiting court martial in the case. The probe also recently expanded to a recruiting sergeant who was charged with sexually assaulting women who were discussing joining the Air Force.
Read More...
Sherlock

Library of Congress pulls sketchy Iran intel report 'for revisions' after criticism


RT.com
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:46 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo / Atta KenareIranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi
The Library of Congress has pulled a report on Iran's intelligence activities from circulation after an American journalism watchdog showed that the widely cited text was playing fast and loose with the facts.

American and international media outlets had jumped in the report's claim that Iranian intelligence was employing 30,000 people, a figure called "ill-supported" by ProPublica, a New York-based non-profit reporting on public interest matters.

The report had been produced by a Pentagon office and posted to a US government intranet site before leaking to the public in early January.

And a massive Iranian intel staff wasn't the only dubious claim brought to light by ProPobulica: the report also alleged, without much evidence, that Vienna was the European hub for the Iranian foreign spy network and that Tehran was gathering information by way of "signals intelligence stations" throughout the Middle East, with many of them in Syria.
Read More...
Nuke

Greece's fragile political stability at risk as violence escalates

Helena Smith
Guardian
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:38 UTC
Image
© Photograph: Simela Pantzartzi/EPAPolice officers investigate after a bomb explosion in Athens: the government is said to be 'very, very concerned' about the surge in violence
Attacks targeting politicians, journalists, banks and now a shopping mall stoke fears of growing extremism.

In the space of just a couple of weeks Greece's largest shopping mall has been targeted in a bomb attack, gunmen have fired on the headquarters of the ruling New Democracy party, and gas canisters have been set off outside an array of political party offices, banks and the homes of journalists.

Now three days after the attack on the shopping centre - which sent counter-terrorist officials on a painstaking hunt that has, as yet, borne little fruit - fears are mounting that Greece's fragile political stability could be shattered by extremists determined to exploit fury over unpopular austerity.

"The government is very, very concerned," said a senior aide to one of the coalition's tripartite leaders. "Political stability is essential to getting through the year."
Read More...