Puppet MastersS


Stormtrooper

French comedian Dieudonne holds press conference, accepts ban of his show 'The Wall', announces new show about French-African issues, government immediately bans it without having seen the material

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Dieudonne arrived in costume for a news conference to announce his new show on Africa and black issues. Didn't matter, it was banned anyway.
The French comic Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, who has convictions for anti-Semitic hate speech, has dropped a controversial show after it was banned.

He told reporters in Paris he would no longer perform The Wall, after France's highest court upheld a ban on the opening night of his tour on Thursday.

Citing "blatant political interference", he said he wanted to perform a new show devoted to Africa.

This new show has already been banned by the authorities in Paris.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls is seeking to keep Dieudonne kept off all stages in France, condemning the comic's "mechanics of hate".

Padlock

Police State: Insane Clown Posse defends fans with F.B.I. lawsuit

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© Marcus Yam for The New York TimesThe Insane Clown Posse during a 2011 performance at Gramercy Theater in New York.
The Michigan rap group Insane Clown Posse filed suit on Wednesday against the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying that the United States government had made the "unwarranted and unlawful decision" to classify fans of the band as criminal gang members, leading to their harassment by law enforcement and causing them "significant harm."

The lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in Detroit by lawyers for the band and for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. Plaintiffs include the Insane Clown Posse founders Joseph Bruce and Joseph Utsler, who perform as Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, and whose fans call themselves Juggalos.

Also listed as plaintiffs are four Juggalos from Nevada, California, North Carolina and Iowa, who offered details of incidents in which they said they had been subjected to police harassment or other punishments for identifying with Insane Clown Posse.

Brandon Bradley, from Citrus Heights, Calif., and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said at a news conference in Detroit on Wednesday that he had been stopped and questioned by police on several occasions because he wore Juggalo tattoos and clothing. He said that after a lifetime of feeling like an outsider, the music of Insane Clown Posse "told me I wasn't alone."


Comment: This is crazy to define a group of musical fans as a criminal gang. It's a classic example of expanding the scope of a law that at first glance seems reasonable: "Gangs are bad, there should be a law that helps police crack down on gangs," etc. For gangs, you could substitute "terrorists" and the same process applies. Now they're going after people who follow a band. Of course, to test this, they picked an easy target. The Insane Clown Posse's lyrics are deliberately offensive and frightening, albeit in a kind of silly way, and the working class white kids who follow them (Juggalos) will look unsavory to the public. But given the broad definition applied here, what's next? People who follow Phish? Even Jimmy Buffet? No doubt some laws are broken by those fans, too.


Lemon

EU to ban heirloom seeds and criminalize unregistered gardens

seed mapping
If the global domination is allowed to take root, biotech and Big Agra will control the world food supply, at the expense of personal liberty.

Because independence is the greatest of all crimes under the emerging global government, which essentially works to protect the dominance established by the biggest of corporations, who participate, in turn, as de facto members of the ruling oligarchy - and in baby steps through the EU, and emerging North American Union, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, et al.

Related: Trans-Pacific Partnership Breaks Down Sovereignty and GMO Protections via Intellectual Property Rights

The U.S. has already seen its fair share of cases where backyard gardens and rain collectors are raided by SWAT teams, shut down through regulations and otherwise intimidated out of proliferation.

Now, official policies to support this kind of dominance by biotech, pesticide companies and other plays in big agribusiness are being pushed through in Europe, in this case by the European Commission through a truly bunk proposed law.

Star of David

Best of the Web: An Obituary for Ariel Sharon

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We mark with some regret the passing of Ariel Sharon in Israel who has been surviving in a vegetative state since 2005. The regrets are not because the world has lost a person of any value but because he died in a long-term care facility rather than the prison cell which he deserved.

Sharon was born in Palestine in 1928 to Belarusian Zionist Jews who fled the Russian Revolution. His parents were a contentious couple who, it appears, reared him in the psychopathic spirit. He came to young manhood embodying the highest ideals of Zionism, in particular its antisocial character. By the age of 14 he was already involved in Zionist paramilitary groups that used terror and massacres to drive Palestinians off their lands.

Sherlock

SOTT Focus: Were The Boston Marathon Bombers 'Mind Controlled'?

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Just your average dysfunctional immigrant American family...with "spontaneous, self-radicalized marathon bombers"
Were the 'Boston Bombers' mind controlled?

If it were possible to ask the elder of the two Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan, this question, it seems he would answer in the affirmative.

One of the stories that disappeared down the media memory hole late last year was a report about a five month-long Boston Globe investigation into the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and their alleged perpetrators.

A December 16th 2013 story on the investigation nonchalantly stated:
"Suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev heard voices inside his head and had an alter-ego."

As part of a five-month investigation, the Globe spoke to a number of sources close to the elder Tsarnaev. One of them was Donald Larking. Larking said that Tamerlan believed the voices were part of a "majestic mind control", which was "a way of breaking down a person and creating an alternative personality with which they must coexist."
Alrighty then. Not much of interest there.

Mr. Potato

'Ho-Ho' Hollande threatens to sue French tabloid over report of affair with Socialist actress

hollande affair
French President Francois Hollande threatened on Friday to sue celebrity magazine Closer, complaining of breach of privacy after it alleged he was having an affair with actress Julie Gayet.

The weekly French tabloid, criticized in 2012 for publishing topless pictures of Kate Middleton, Britain's Duchess of Cambridge, printed seven pages of photos of comings and goings outside a Paris apartment block to support its allegation.

Comment: Carla Bruni redux? French president François Hollande's affair with actress Julie Gayet exposed


Snakes in Suits

The Clinton Years: The Cocaine Administration?

the clintons
Filling in the blanks


We're going to have eight years of Obama and we had eight years of Bush Jr.

Before that we had twelve years of George Bush Sr. (eight under a senile Ronald Reagan and four of his own administration.)

It's easy to forget who came in between.

Bill Clinton...

The economy was booming so few paid attention.

The Internet was still new and not the information powerhouse it is now.

Here's just part of the history you might have missed.

Comment: The Clinton Chronicles


Stormtrooper

Chomsky: U.S. domestic policy can be summed up in two words: 'Pure Savagery'

Chomsky
© Flickr / tr.robinson / Creative Commons License
Cuts to food stamps and jobless benefits predictable result of 'neoliberal assault' on American people.

As Congress decides this week whether to re-institute emergency jobless benefits for millions of Americans and closes in on negotiations for a Farm Bill that could see billions of dollars cut out of food stamp programs, renowned activist and intellectual Noam Chomsky summed up the state of American politics in an interview Thursday in two words: "pure savagery."

"The refusal to provide very minimal living standards to people who are caught in this monstrosity - that's just pure savagery," Chomsky said during an interview with HuffPost Live. "There's no other word for it."

Coffee

Study: Washington's polarization and gridlock 'helps the super-rich stay rich, and get richer'

Republican Democrat sign
© Shutterstock
At the end of 2013, only 12 percent of Americans held a positive view of Congress - three points above the all-time low set earlier in the year, according to Gallup. Two out of three respondents to a CNN/ORC poll said this was the worst functioning Congress they'd seen in their lifetimes. And these dismal views weren't just the product of subjective impressions - in its first year, the 113th Congress managed to pass only 66 bills, the fewest in the 40 years for which reliable data exists.

But a study published last November in The Journal of Politics suggests that this sorry state of affairs is good news for a small group of Americans at the top of the economic pile. "Washington gridlock helps the super-rich stay rich, and get richer," says Thomas Volscho, a sociologist at the City University of New York and one of the authors of the study. "And the richer they get, the more the gridlock actually helps them."

The researchers looked back over 70 years of data, and found that the more dysfunctional Washington is, the bigger the share of the pie the top one percent tends to grab. And most importantly, they also found that when economic inequality is high, the kind of polarization and gridlock that have been the hallmark of Washington since Barack Obama's election make legislative efforts to change course all-but-impossible.

Sherlock

Investigation confirms evils of fracking

fracking
© AP/Keith Srakocic, FileMarch against hydraulic fracturing and gas well drilling on the Rachel Carson Bridge in Pittsburgh on November 3, 2010.
Despite roadblocks by industry and state officials, well water contamination found in four states.

The Associated Press has confirmed what residents have long known and the oil and gas industries have sought to hide: the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, as well as conventional oil and gas drilling, is polluting and contaminating well drinking water supplies.

In an investigation published Sunday, AP reporter Kevin Begos - drawing upon hundreds of complaints made by residents, as well as admissions from state officials and even drilling companies - verifies well water contamination in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Texas.