Puppet MastersS


Eye 2

Israeli Pathocrats Demand Villagers to Pay for Their Own Eviction

Amrutha Gayathri
International Business Times
Sun, 31 Jul 2011 17:53 UTC
Call it dictatorial or simply ironic, the residents of a Bedouin village in Israel's Negev desert are facing peculiar circumstances, where they are being forced to pay for the government expenses involved in demolishing their own homes!

Israeli authorities filed a claim for 1.8 million NIS (more than $500,000) with a court on July 26 for the expense of destroying the structures and evicting the residents of al-'Araqib village as many as 28 times over the past year, reports Amnesty International. The most recent eviction took place on July 25.

The villagers claim that the settlement is within the limits of their ancestral land, but the authorities accuse residents of illegally encroaching "unrecognized" property.
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Star of David

Max Blumenthal: Network of Zionist Interests is Behind Hatred of Muslims


Russia Today
Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:48 UTC
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and contributor to outlets including The Nation, Al Jazeera English, Salon.com, Alternet, the Huffington Post, and the Washington Monthly. The winner of the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Award for his investigative print journalism, he has produced numerous widely-recognized video reports that have garnered hundreds of thousands of hits on Youtube. His book, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party," was published by Basic Books in 2009.

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Briefcase

Israel's Supreme Court orders state to dismantle largest West Bank outpost


Haaretz
Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:23 UTC
Image
© Olivier Fitoussi West Bank settlement outpost of Megron.
Unprecedented ruling states that Migron must be razed by April 2012; Israeli government had admitted outpost was built on lands belonging to Palestinians, but has thus far failed to dismantle it.

Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday issued an unprecedented ruling ordering the state to dismantle the largest illegal settlement outpost in the West Bank by April 2012.

The decision follows a petition filed by Peace Now movement.

Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch harshly criticized the Israeli government for failing to dismantle the outpost of Migron, which is home to some 50 families, despite earlier promises it would do so and after it had admitted that it was in fact built on lands belonging to Palestinians.

Beinisch said the Supreme Court has tried to show restraint despite the blatant illegality of the outpost.
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Arrow Down

US is 'parasite' on global economy, Russian PM Vladimir Putin says


Reuters
Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:14 UTC
Image
© Alexei Nikolsky / AFP - Getty ImagesRussian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin tries to bend a pan as he visits a summer camp on Monday.
'They are living beyond their means ... Thank God that they had enough common sense and responsibility to make a balanced decision'

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Americans Monday of "living like parasites" on the global economy, noting that Russia owns a large amount of the U.S. debt.

"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow.

"They are living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar," Putin said at the open-air meeting with admiring young Russians in what looked like early campaigning before parliamentary and presidential polls.
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Alarm Clock

The Four Great Hypocrisies of the Debt Deal


Current.com
Mon, 01 Aug 2011 09:33 UTC
Keith's Special Comment covers the "four great hypocrisies" of the debt deal and the necessity of taking the governance of this nation back from politicians.
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Cult

America's own Taliban

Paul Rosenberg
Al Jazeera
Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:49 UTC
A fast growing right-wing politico-religious presence plans to implement an end-times, Christian theocracy in the US.

Rick Perry
© GALLO/GETTY2012 presidential hopeful, Texas Governor Rick Perry (left), will be hosting a prayer meeting called 'The Response' on August 6 with many sponsors from the New Apostolic Reformation
Prior to 9/11, the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not register very much on American radar screens, with one notable exception: when it blew up two colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan province in early 2001. But destruction of treasured artifacts isn't just limited to the Taliban.

There's a right-wing politico-religious presence centred in the US, but with a global reach, engaging in similar practises, destroying religious and cultural artifacts as a key aspect of its ideology of "strategic level spiritual warfare" (SLSW).

Until recently a fringe evangelical movement, warned against as deviant, "spiritual warfare" is rapidly positioning itself within America's mainstream political right. It's well past time for political journalists to start covering what this movement is up to.

Comment: And as far as our journalists here at SOTT, we've been hot on the trail of dominionism for some time now:

Mad as a Hatter: The Hidden Roots of the Tea Party Movement - Part 1

Hijacking The Holy - C Street, Dominionism and Sarah Palin

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People

Organic Versus Monsanto

Danielle Magnuson
Cornucopia Institute
Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:22 UTC
Image
© Creative Commons/ NatalieMaynor
More than 270,000 organic farmers are taking on corporate agriculture giant Monsanto in a lawsuit filed March 30. Led by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, the family farmers are fighting for the right to keep a portion of the world food supply organic - and preemptively protecting themselves from accusations of stealing genetically modified seeds that drift on to their pristine crop fields.

Consumers are powerful. For more than a decade, a cultural shift has seen shoppers renounce the faster-fatter-bigger-cheaper mindset of factory farms, exposéd in the 2008 documentary Food, Inc. From heirloom tomatoes to heritage chickens, we want our food slow, sustainable, and local - healthy for the earth, healthy for animals, and healthy for our bodies.

But with patented seeds infiltrating the environment so fully, organic itself is at risk. Monsanto's widely used Genuity® Roundup Ready® canola seed has already turned heirloom canola oil into an extinct species. The suing farmers are seeking to prevent similar contamination of organic corn, soybeans, and a host of other crops. What's more, they're seeking to prevent Monsanto from accusing them of unlawfully using the very seeds they're trying to avoid.
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Bad Guys

Afghan Civilians Pay Lethal Price for New Policy on Air Strikes

Brian Brady
The Independent
Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
Afghan men carry the bodies of those killed in a coalition air strike on 14 July
Reducing 'collateral damage' is seen as a 'secondary consideration' as the coalition prepares withdrawal.

Civilians are bearing the brunt of the international forces' onslaught against the Taliban as the coalition rushes to pacify Afghanistan before pulling out its troops, it was claimed last night.

Human rights groups warned that civilians are paying an increasingly high price for "reckless" coalition attacks, particularly aerial ones. The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week that five Afghan children were injured in an air strike carried out by a British Apache attack helicopter.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) has found that the rate of civilian casualties has reached a record high, with 1,462 killed in January to June this year. But, while the number of civilian victims of "pro-government action" fell, those who died as a result of coalition air attacks were 14 per cent higher than in the same period in 2010 - despite the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) issuing "tactical directives" designed to minimise risk to civilians.
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Arrow Down

Deadly Syrian Crackdown Continues


Al Jazeera English
Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:06 UTC

Syrian activists say at least eight people have been killed after government forces launched fresh attacks in several cities.

Six people were reported killed in Hama on Monday amid shelling by army tanks, with two more killed in Al-Bukamal and Deir ez-Zoor in the east.

Residents of Hama say the military resumed indiscriminate shelling and firing as residents were breaking their daily dawn-to-dusk fast on the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

The attacks appeared aimed at preventing mosque gatherings during special evening prayers, which security forces feared could trigger large anti-government protests.

The latest deaths bring the number of people killed since Sunday to at least 150.

A witness in Deir ez-Zor told Al Jazeera that government forces launched fresh attacks on the town early on Monday morning.

"Military forces stormed the city from the west side and 25 people are killed and more than 65 injured," the witness said.

"Artillery and anti-aircraft weapons are being used. The situation in the city is very bad, and medical and food supplies are low."

Deir ez-Zor, Syria's main gas and oil-production hub in the east, has become a rallying point for protests along with Hama.

Activist group Avaaz cited unconfirmed reports on Monday that the resort town of Zabadani near the Lebanese border was also under seige by the army.
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War Whore

Lebanese President Blames Israel for 'Renewing Aggression' on Border

Jonathan Lis, Anshel Pfeffer, Avi Issacharoff, Eli Ashkenazi, Amos Harel
Haaretz.com
Mon, 01 Aug 2011 08:57 UTC
Image
© ReutersLebanon's President Michel Suleiman inspects the area where clashes between Israeli forces and the Lebanese army took place on Tuesday in southern Lebanon on August 7, 2010.
President Suleiman praises Lebanese Armed Forces for resisting Israeli 'attacks and provocations' after Monday's clash between Lebanese, IDF soldiers.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman blamed Israel on Monday for "renewing its aggression" on the border with Lebanon after Israel Defense Forces troops traded fire with Lebanon's army in the Mount Dov region on the border between the two countries.

Suleiman, who was speaking at a ceremony commemorating the 66th anniversary of the Lebanese Armed Forces, praised the army the army for standing guard against Israeli "attacks and provocations", as well as its resistance during the 2006 Lebanon war between Israel and Hezbollah.
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