Puppet MastersS


Vader

EU to invade Libya with ground troops

Ian Traynor
The Guardian
Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:54 UTC
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© Red Ice Creations
European member states poised to send 1,000 soldiers to besieged rebel city of Misrata to assist relief effort

The EU has drawn up a "concept of operations" for the deployment of military forces in Libya, but needs UN approval for what would be the riskiest and most controversial mission undertaken by Brussels.

The armed forces, numbering no more than 1,000, would be deployed to secure the delivery of aid supplies, would not be engaged in a combat role but would be authorised to fight if they or their humanitarian wards were threatened. "It would be to secure sea and land corridors inside the country," said an EU official.

The decision to prepare the mission, dubbed Eufor Libya, was taken by the 27 governments at the beginning of April. In recent days, diplomats from the member states have signed a 61-page document on the concept of operations, which rehearses various scenarios for the mission in and around Libya, such as securing port areas, aid delivery corridors, loading and unloading ships, providing naval escorts, and discussing the military assets that would be required.
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Bizarro Earth

One year since the BP oil spill

Tom Eley
World Socialist Website
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 12:00 UTC
Part I - Covering up a catastrophe
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© offshoreinjuries.com

This article, the first of a four-part series marking the first anniversary of the BP Gulf oil disaster, reviews the systematic corporate and government cover-up of the BP disaster and its consequences.

One year ago today, on April 20, 2010, an explosion on the BP-run Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 workers, injured 17 more, and led to the greatest single ecological catastrophe in US history. By the time the blown out Macondo well was capped on July 15, 2010, some 206 million gallons of oil had gushed out from the wellhead located one mile beneath the ocean's surface and about 50 miles from Louisiana's southeast coast. Millions more gallons of highly toxic chemical dispersant were dumped on the Gulf's surface or released underwater.

The consequences of the disaster will be felt for decades. The spill directly impacted thousands of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico and coastline stretching from Texas to Florida, including estuaries, marshlands, and beaches. Hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents face financial hardship, including many thousands who lost their jobs as a result of damages to the fishing and tourism industries. Cleanup workers will suffer serious health problems as a result of acute exposure to toxins released by the oil and chemical dispersants. Numerous species of marine and coastal life may never recover.
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Vader

Pakistan: CIA drone kills 25 on eve of mass protest against US missile strikes

Keith Jones
World Socialist Website
Sun, 24 Apr 2011 11:41 UTC
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A Pakistani child gets a lesson in America's peaceful, Jesus-loving democratic values.
A US predator drone strike killed 25 people in the village of Spinwam in North Waziristan yesterday. According to a Pakistani government official, the dead included at least five children and four women.

In response to mounting public outrage, Pakistan's government has repeatedly denounced the US drone strikes in recent months, calling them "unhelpful" and urging that they be discontinued or at least massively scaled back. But the Obama administration and the Pentagon have brushed these complaints aside, publicly insisted that the missile strikes are a pivotal part of the AfPak War, and continued to mount such strikes at a rate of well over one per week.

While Washington postures as the foremost proponent of international law, it claims the right to violate Pakistani sovereignty at will, so as to carry out summary executions with callous disregard for civilian life.
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War Whore

Mounting Libyan death toll from US-NATO bombings

Barry Grey
World Socialist Web Site
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 11:32 UTC
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NATO jets aim for Gaddafi's head but accidentally miss their target by 700 miles and blow up one of the few water treatment facilities in the country. Oops.
The death toll in Libya from US, French and British air strikes continues to mount and promises to rise sharply as the imperialist powers escalate their attacks on both military and civilian targets.

One day after the US deployed Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles and NATO warned civilians to "distance themselves from Gaddafi regime forces and equipment," Libyan state television reported that nine people were killed overnight in a NATO air attack on Sirte, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's hometown. The news bulletin of al-Jamahiriya said that some of those killed in the air strike were workers at the state water utility.

This followed a report Thursday that seven civilians were killed and 18 wounded in a NATO air raid against the southwestern Tripoli suburb of Khellat al-Ferjan late Wednesday night, and a further report that NATO warplanes struck the town of Bir al-Ghanam, about 30 miles southwest of the Libyan capital, killing four civilians.
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Oscar

"The President Who Became an Actor": And This Year's Oscar Goes To... Barack Obama

Finian Cunningham
Global Research
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 11:30 UTC
obama
© Unknown

If Ronald Reagan was known as the actor who became a president, then perhaps Barack Obama should become known as the president who became an actor.

For every facial movement evinced, every gesture of the hand, every word enunciated by the 44th president turns out to be a complete charade.

This is the guy who ran for the presidency presenting himself before the US nation, hand on heart, as the candidate who would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; end the killing of civilians in those countries; and the brutalizing of young American men. Two years on, Obama has donned the costume of US commander-in-chief with ever-frightening zeal. Far from ending the wars, Obama has not only ramped up America's foreign wars of aggression, he has expanded them into new territories, including Pakistan, Libya and East Africa, adding countless more innocent lives to Washington's global death toll.
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MIB

Propaganda Alert! New Irish terror groups are threat to UK, warn police

Mark Townsend & Henry McDonald
The Observer
Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:23 UTC
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Intelligence officials say dissidents are capable of mounting mainland attack, as fears grow of 'Easter offensive' in Ulster

Dissident republicans have developed the capability to mount an attack on the British mainland, according to the latest security assessment. Senior counter-terrorism sources confirmed the threat from dissidents attacking the mainland "now goes beyond an aspiration" and that they now possess the means to mount an attack across the Irish Sea.

Amid rising tension in the province and fears of an "Easter offensive" by dissident groups, police in Northern Ireland also warned that anti-ceasefire republicans were plotting to kill more police officers.

The increased threat from republican dissidents is certain to heighten security concerns during the build-up to the royal wedding on Friday, although there is no intelligence suggesting a specific plot related to the event.

On Friday another dissident grouping, styling itself "the IRA", issued a public statement claiming responsibility for the murder of PC Ronan Kerr in Omagh this month. The group, comprising former members of the Provisional IRA, vowed to embark on a bombing campaign. It is understood that the new group includes veteran paramilitaries who were involved in transporting and later detonating the bomb that exploded at London's Canary Wharf in 1996.
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Eye 2

Evil Banksters: ECB threatened to collapse Irish economy with run on the banks if government did not accept bailout

Jody Corcoran & Daniel McConnell
Irish Independent
Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:04 UTC
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Jean Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank points to Ireland and says: "We own you."
Economist Colm McCarthy has said that there are "widespread suspicions" that the European Central Bank fostered a run on Irish banks to force the last Government to seek a bailout from the EU-IMF.

In the Sunday Independent today, Mr McCarthy says that the ECB behaved in a "bullying fashion" towards Ireland by threatening to withdraw liquidity support and "fostering" a run on the banks.

Mr McCarthy also said that any further inquiry into the banking crisis in Ireland should explore the "murky role" of the ECB in events leading up to the exit of Ireland from financial markets and resort to EU-IMF financing in November 2010.

His comments follow the publication of a quite sensational account by former Finance Minister Brian Lenihan in which he claims that the ECB forced Ireland into the bailout.

Comment: The Essence Of The Banking Industry...



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Eye 1

10 Examples That Should Convince Anyone That We No Longer Live In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave


End of the American Dream
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:15 UTC
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© End of the American Dream
Do you know people that still believe that America is a free country? Do you have friends or family that are proud to live in "the land of the free and the home of the brave"? If you do, just show them this article. The things that you are about to read are enough to make the blood of any red-blooded American boil. We don't live in a free country anymore. Instead, we live in a "Big Brother" police state control grid that is becoming more restrictive every single day. Most of our politicians seem to be control freaks that are obsessed with running every single little detail of our lives. These days there has to be a "rule" or a "regulation" for everything. The radical social engineers in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and communist China never even dared to try some of the things that are going on in America today. We are all being treated little better than cattle and we are all being taught that it is best to just sit in our homes and absorb all of the television "programming" that is being provided for us. Meanwhile, our public schools have become little more than prison grids. Our children are being taught to enjoy living as docile slaves in a world where imagination, liberty, freedom and adventure are all greatly discouraged.

Unfortunately, none of this is an exaggeration. Our politicians love to give speeches about "liberty" and "freedom", but they always seem to have excuses to justify the endless parade of liberty-killing laws that they are imposing on all the rest of us.

Almost all of the freedoms listed in the Bill of Rights have been severely eroded. In fact, a number of them are almost totally gone at this point.
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Heart - Black

Throw Out the Money Changers

Chris Hedges
Common Dreams
Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:12 UTC
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© N/A
These are remarks Chris Hedges made in Union Square in New York City last Friday during a protest outside a branch office of the Bank of America.

We stand today before the gates of one of our temples of finance. It is a temple where greed and profit are the highest good, where self-worth is determined by the ability to amass wealth and power at the expense of others, where laws are manipulated, rewritten and broken, where the endless treadmill of consumption defines human progress, where fraud and crimes are the tools of business.

The two most destructive forces of human nature - greed and envy - drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from this system. They place themselves at the center of creation. They disdain or ignore the cries of those below them. They take from us our rights, our dignity and thwart our capacity for resistance. They seek to make us prisoners in our own land. They view human beings and the natural world as mere commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. Human suffering, wars, climate change, poverty, it is all the price of business. Nothing is sacred. The Lord of Profit is the Lord of Death.

Comment: To learn more about the "Raskolnikovs of the world" read Political Ponerology: The Scientific Study of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes

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Arrow Up

ElBaradei urges ICC trial of Bush


Press TV
Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:18 UTC
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© UnknownFormer US President George W. Bush (R) and his Vice President Dick Cheney
Former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei says former US President George W. Bush and his administration's officials should be put on trial in the "International Criminal Court" (ICC) for waging war on Iraq.

ElBaradei in a new memoir, The Age of Deception says that the Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq.

He accused then-President George Bush and his administration officials of "grotesque distortion" in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq with an excuse to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The so-called hunt for WMD in Iraq, however, yielded no results.
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