Puppet MastersS


Heart - Black

Best of the Web: Yet another bombing of Gaza (through the eyes of a neo-con loon)

israel bombing gaza
© Associated PressSmoke and debris rise after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip seen from the Israeli side of the Israel Gaza Border, Wednesday, July 9, 2014. Since the Gaza offensive began Tuesday, Israel has attacked more than 400 sites in Gaza
Right now Israel is bombing Gaza into oblivion... again. It doesn't really matter when you read this. Two years from now you will probably be able to overlay the gist of the story over the headlines of the day, and it will still be relevant.

What was the excuse this time? Oh right... three Jewish teenagers were killed by some unknown person or persons. Most assume that someone was a Palestinian, but there was no trial. Israel of course decided that they would be handling this like any civilized country handles a murder case: by bombing an entire city.


Comment: There are no words to describe the crimes perpetrated by Israel (with the help of the U.S.) on such large scale and so often, on a population that they keep imprisoned, hungry and without any human rights for decades now. The one thing that tops this outrageous and conscienceless ethnic cleansing is the complicity of the world media to spread Israeli propaganda and try to convince the global audience that the perpetrator is the victim despite the amount of evidence (and corpses) on the ground.


Monkey Wrench

Russia looking east: Major infrastructure development with upgrade of Baikal-Amur railway

Map of BAM railway in Russia
© Unknown
The construction of a new line of the legendary Soviet-era Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) railroad is an extremely important economic project that can yield large benefits for Russia and help maintain the eastern regions' infrastructure, Russian experts said on Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin inaugurated on Tuesday the ceremony of laying a silver rail joint - a section of the rails symbolizing the launch of the construction of a new railway line. The ceremony was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the start of the BAM construction.

The new project envisages a higher throughput capacity of the Baikal-Amur Mainline from current 16 to 32 railway vehicles daily by 2017.

Putin said the new project was aimed at comprehensively developing Russia's Far East and Eastern Siberia.

Stock Down

Germany approves plan to use depositors' money to prop up banks

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Germany's cabinet Wednesday approved plans to force creditors into propping up struggling banks beginning in 2015, one year earlier than required under European-wide plans that set rules for failing financial institutions.

The new bail-in rules are part of a package of German legislation on the European banking union--an ambitious project to centralize bank supervision in the euro zone and, when banks fail, to organize their rescue or winding-up at a European level.

Germany "leads the way" in Europe by implementing European rules quickly and "creates instruments that allow the winding-down of big systemically relevant institutions without putting the financial stability at risk," the country's finance ministry said in its draft bill seen by The Wall Street Journal.

"This ensures that in times of crisis mainly owners and creditors will contribute to solving the crisis, and not taxpayers."

European finance ministers agreed earlier this year on Europe-wide legislation on bank recovery and resolution, which sets a cascading hierarchy of investors who would be hit when a bank fails. These rules will come into force in 2016.

Comment: This is just one example of bail-in legislations being sneaked in by governments around the world to prepare for the market collapse that will be engineered by the ruling elites in the near future. Knowledge protects if it is applied ...


Dollars

BRICS countries are a couple of days from development bank deal to rival IMF, WB

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© RIA Novosti
The emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, are a couple of days from agreeing the $10 billion BRICS development bank, as well as a $100 billion currency pool. It could challenge global lenders like the IMF and World Bank.

The bank will be called the New Development Bank, and will provide finance for infrastructure projects. Its creation will meet the needs of emerging and poorer economies according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.

In a speech Wednesday he confirmed the funding would be divided equally, Russia will contribute $2 billion in initial capital for the BRICS bank over seven years.

The bank will start with $10 billion in cash and $40 billion in guarantees. The $50 billion will be eventually built up to $100 billion.

The bank will be able to start lending in 2016, the minister says.

The final decisions concerning the creation of the bank are expected to be made by the BRICS leaders at a summit in Brazil on 15-16 July.

Bandaid

$11k fine for West Virginia company that poisoned water for 300k people

Elk River
© AFP Photo / Getty Images / Tom HindmanThe banks of the Elk River, where Kanawha County emergency services eventually determined the chemical had seeped through a secondary containment barrier, is seen on January 10, 2014 in Charleston, West Virginia.

The company responsible for spilling enough toxic chemicals into West Virginia's Elk River to spoil drinking water for 300,000 people for days has been fined $11,000 by a federal agency for two workplace safety violations related to the incident.

The Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Heath Administration (OSHA) fined Freedom Industries $7,000 for improperly operating storage tanks of the crude MCHM chemical behind a diked wall that was not liquid tight, according to the Charleston Gazette.

OSHA also fined Freedom Industries $4,000 for not having standard railings on an elevated platform at their Elk River facility.

Inspectors said both citations, issued on July 3, were "serious," meaning the hazards posed to workers could cause accident or illness that would likely result in death or serious physical damage.

About 10,000 gallons of the coal-cleaning chemical MCHM - a moniker for 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol - leaked on January 9 from one of Freedom Industries' holding tanks through a diked wall into the Elk River.

State authorities, quickly inundated with complaints of stomach pains, rashes, and other maladies, instituted a "do not use" order. Residents were told to avoid drinking, cooking with, or bathing in the water - even if they boiled it or used filtration devices.

Some 300,000 people in nine counties were told not to drink the water for up to 10 days, while officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised pregnant women to consider a different water source beyond that point. Federal officials finally gave the water a complete bill of health nearly a month later.

Bad Guys

Economy and market lies getting thicker

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For the average person trying to decide how to feel about the economy, the single biggest data point is the stock market. When share prices are rising, the implicit message is that finance professionals - who, after all, dedicate their lives to understanding such things and should therefore know what's happening - have decided that life is good and getting better.

So the rest of us relax and go shopping. Known as the "wealth effect," this tendency of asset prices to affect consumer behavior is now a key policy goal of the US and pretty much every other major government.

But what if it's all a gigantic, multi-trillion-dollar con? That's the conclusion a growing number of analysts are reaching as they dig into the reality behind the recent record highs in US equity prices.

Comment: More from Gordon T Long:




Igloo

Co-founder of Greenpeace: 'I fear global cooling'

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© Cfact.org
Moore: 'President Obama seems to say it is sufficient to say the 'science is settled'. It is hollow statement with no content.

On Kids: 'Change the way our kids are being taught about this subject because if we don't there will be a whole generation of people who are just blindly following this climate hysteria.'

Ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, warned "I fear a global cooling," during his keynote address to the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Moore, who left Greenpeace in 1986 because he felt it had become too radical, is the author of "Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist." (Watch climate conference live here)

Moore noted that a cooling would adversely impact agriculture, and said: "Let's hope for a little warming as opposed to a little cooling. I would rather it got a little warmer." (Watch Moore video here at the Heartland Institute event)

Moore noted that "the U.S. is currently been cooling" and noted that there has been "no global warming for nearly 18 years." He also mocked the notion that "everything is due to global warming."

"If it warms two degrees, hopefully more in Canada in the North...maybe it would be a good thing if it did," Moore explained.

Comment: To understand what is going on with the climate change here on the big blue marble, read the Comet and Catastrophe Series on SOTT.


Pirates

Sick bastards: Israeli government destroyed the homes of Palestinian murder suspects

Palestinian protesters
© Ammar Awad/ReutersPalestinian protesters clash with Israeli soldiers after Friday prayers in the Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud July 4, 2014.
The government of Israel says it will treat the July 2 abduction and murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian boy, the same way it treats terrorism against Jews. The killers "will face the full weight of the law," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Sunday. "We do not differentiate between the terrorists."

To this, Muhammad's parents have issued a simple challenge: Prove it. Demolish the homes of the Jews who murdered him.

Demolition played a central role in the drama leading up to Khdeir's death. According to Israeli officials, two West Bank Arabs, Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha, kidnapped and murdered three Jewish boys on June 12. Israeli authorities haven't found Qawasmen or Aisha, much less tried them. Nevertheless, on June 30, Israeli soldiers destroyed the suspects' homes in Hebron. They broke windows, wrecked furniture, smashed sinks and toilets, and trashed kids' bedrooms. Then they used explosives to blow out the ceilings and walls.

Twenty people were living in Aisha's house. At Qawasmeh's house, all the men had been arrested, so the only people still there were women and children.

Why did Israel destroy the homes of these children? Officially, the rationale is to "disincentivize" future terrorism. Unofficially, it's ramped-up retribution. Israeli courts have accepted the government's authority to do it, on the grounds that anyone considering violence "should know that his criminal acts will not only hurt him, but are apt to cause great suffering to his family."


Comment: Israel's idea of justice sounds more like that of the mafia or a street gang. Collective punishment? Seriously?


Nine years ago, after hundreds of demolitions, Israel suspended this practice, conceding it had failed as a deterrent. Now, in the wake of the June 12 kidnappings, the practice has resumed. Qawasheh and Aisha aren't the only targets. Last week, Israel's high court approved the pre-trial demolition of another Arab suspect's home, citing deterrence as the basis. The Israeli military is considering whether to destroy dozens of other West Bank homes, including those belonging to leaders of Hamas.

Comment: Can you imagine if U.S. cops (who are barbaric enough) went around destroying murder suspects' homes? Not even convicted murderers -- suspects. This is the face of Israel: exemplar of pathocracy.


No Entry

Vials of smallpox vials found in unsecured lab near Washington, DC - FBI investigating

smallpox
© Reuters / Edward Echwalu
The FBI is investigating several vials of smallpox that were found in an unused laboratory storage room on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has taken the vials for testing.

Only July 1, employees found the box of vials when they were cleaning out the storage room in preparation to move the lab, which has been operated by the Food and Drug Administration since 1972, over to the FDA's main campus in nearby Silver Spring.

The six freeze-dried vials were labeled as containing variola, which the CDC says is "the severe and most common form of smallpox." Another 10 vials were also found, but the labels on them were unclear as to what they contained, Dr. Steven Monroe, who directs the CDC's division of high consequence pathogens and pathology, told ABC News.

No one knows how long the smallpox has been in the storage area, which is kept at 5 degrees Celsius. But the boxes they were stored in may date back to the 1950s, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said.

On Monday, the CDC arrived at the NIH campus to remove the specimens to their high-containment facility in Atlanta, where overnight testing in the Biosafety Level-4 (BSL-4) Lab confirmed the presence of smallpox. The Georgia-based agency is currently performing additional testing to discover whether the materials inside the vials are viable. This testing could take up to two weeks, the CDC said in a statement.

Comment: Mysterious smallpox vials, missing chemical weapons in Iraq... Is something in the works? Remember this:


Popcorn

Surprise! New jihadist group takes credit for Israeli teens' killings

ISIL
© photo credit: APDemonstrators chant in support of al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as they wave al-Qaeda flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul.
A new Palestinian jihadist group pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the killing of three Israeli teenagers last month in the West Bank, as well as other recent deadly attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians.

In a statement posted on jihadi websites Tuesday, the Supporters of the Islamic State in Bayt al-Maqdis said it was behind the capture and killing of "the three soldiers" in Hebron (actually, it was in the nearby Etzion bloc), sniper attacks in Hebron and Tarqumia, and missile launches from Gaza into Israel a month and a half ago.

The actions were carried out in honor of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed "caliph" of the Islamic State, the reincarnation of the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL) declared last month, the statement said.

Comment: This is beyond ridiculous propaganda, and is good for nothing except to encourage the paranoia and confusion of the population.

First, let's put things in perspective and consider that in the age of the Internet anyone can claim any crime after the fact, create an imaginary army of jihadists and give it any name they want. Indeed, ever since the attacks of 9-11, 'previously unknown' terrorist groups are a dime a dozen, popping up across the world and usually claiming some sort of obscure affiliation to 'al Qaeda'. The only difference with this one is that 'al Qaeda' is sooo last year, so the affiliation is with the brand new bad kid in the neighbourhood: ISIS.

Second, if Hamas has denied they were behind the murder of the three Israeli teenagers, and even the Israeli media give more credit to the supposed ISIS franchise in Palestine, then why is the Israeli government insisting on blaming Hamas without any evidence whatsoever? Well, the answer to that question is pretty obvious. Just read the latest news.