Puppet MastersS


Monkey Wrench

How democracies die

Liberté guidant le Peuple, by Eugène Delacroix, 1830
Liberté guidant le Peuple, by Eugène Delacroix, 1830

Picture a country at the height of its international power and prestige. It has military forces stationed around the globe. It is an intellectual leader. Its citizens are pleased to insist that the national idea, their country's way of life, is a beacon of enlightenment and human rights for the rest of the world. Indeed, they are wont to harp on the notion that the country embodies the very concept of Western Civilization.

But beneath the façade of greatness there is creeping rot. The rich (who are accustomed to getting their way in all things) corrupt the system and buy the people's representatives in this venerable democracy. The country lurches towards political polarization and, predictably, the machinery of orderly governance becomes gridlocked. The politicians of the right, who take every opportunity to bellow for increased spending on the military, refuse to raise the revenues to pay for it. Why?

Because the wealthy citizens who happen to own these representatives refuse to pay a single cent in additional income taxes. Their class solidarity as alleged "'job creators"' who are owed unconditional deference outweighs their loyalty to the nation at large. They successfully demand that even the crushing expense of a long war should be paid for by loans from abroad (the interest payments on which merely add to the expense) rather than by direct taxes from those citizens best able to afford them. Naturally, a growing share of the population develops a visceral sense that the system is rigged.

Pistol

CNBC exec's children murdered, 1 day after CNBC reports $43 trillion bankster lawsuit

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This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which "Banksters" and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains.

The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector.

Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters.

Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior vice president Kevin Krim received news that his children were killed under very suspicious circumstances.


Comment: It's alleged that the nanny killed the children and then attempted to cut her own throat!? Suspicious indeed!


Stop

UK said to refuse use of its bases for U.S. attack on Iran

Diego Garcia
© AFPUS diplomats are said to have also lobbied for permission to use US bases on British territory such as Diego Garcia.
Secret legal advice states pre-emptive strike could be in breach of international law as Iran not yet 'clear and present threat'

Britain has rebuffed US pleas to use military bases in the UK to support the build-up of forces in the Gulf, citing secret legal advice which states that any pre-emptive strike on Iran could be in breach of international law.

The Guardian has been told that US diplomats have also lobbied for the use of British bases in Cyprus, and for permission to fly from US bases on Ascension Island in the Atlantic and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, both of which are British territories.

Comment: It is concerning that the U.S. are at the stage (they call 'contingency') where they are finalising logistics for an unprovoked pre-emptive attack on Iran. If true, the British position is a step forward from 'Bush's-Poodle' Blair's blind support of the illegal attack of Iraq. It remains to be seen, however, whether this does represent a real change in British-US relations or whether this information is just for public appeasement.


Attention

Siege of Bani Walid, Libya: Foreign fighters, phosphorus bombs and nerve gas

The besieged Libyan city of Bani Walid has been plunged into chaos. RT sources say that the former Gaddafi regime stronghold is under attack by militias bolstered by foreign mercenaries, and they used banned weapons like white phosphorous.

­The sources denied reports of the last few days that Bani Walid was retaken by the Libyan government. Residents said that militia forces have continued their assault, while preventing the refugees who fled from reentering the city.

A man who claimed his relatives are trapped inside the besieged city spoke with RT, saying, "There is no food; there is nothing to support the life of people. And the militia does not allow anyone to come back to their homes."

"They are demolishing homes with machinery and tanks. There is no communication or internet so people are not able to connect with each other," the source said. He is currently in Egypt, and refuses to reveal his identity over fears of personal safety.

People

Catalan MEPs ask for EU help against Spanish Army

sagrada
© vgm8383Barcelona - the MEPs' letter met with ridicule
Brussels - Four Catalan MEPs have asked the European Commission to tell Spain it cannot use military force to stop Catalonia from splitting away.

The deputies - centre-left MEP Maria Badia, Greens Ana Miranda and Raul Romeva i Rueda and Liberal Ramon Tremosa - wrote to EU justice commissioner Vivianne Reding on 22 October.

The letter says: "We are writing to you to convey our deep concern over a series of threats of the use of military force against the Catalan population ... In these circumstances, the European Union should intervene preventatively to guarantee that the resolution of the Catalan conflict be resolved in a peaceful, democratic manner."

It notes that politicians from the centre-right People's Party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy have spoken of article 8 of Spain's constitution, which says the army can be used to protect Spanish sovereignty.

It adds the commission should: "Make a public statement insisting on the withdrawal from the public debate of any military threat or use of force as a way of resolving this political conflict."

The letter met with ridicule in Madrid.

Bomb

Bomb attached to bus kills 5 in Baghdad

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© Reuters/Mohammed AmeenA general view shows Baghdad International Airport October 25, 2012.
Baghdad - Iraqi authorities say that a bomb attached to a bus carrying Iranian Shiite pilgrims has killed five people, including a woman, and wounded nine others.

Police officials say that the so-called sticky bomb hidden on the underside of the bus detonated Saturday morning. The Iranian pilgrims were heading to a Shiite shrine in Baghdad to mark the major Muslim holiday, the Eid al-Adha.

Medics in nearby hospitals confirmed the casualties. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Violence has ebbed across Iraq, but insurgents frequently attack security forces and civilians in an attempt to undermine the country's Shiite-led government.

Bizarro Earth

Syrian clashes break ceasefire


Two deadly car bombs and sporadic fighting have marred a shaky holiday truce in Syria, although thousands of protesters used the brief respite in the civil war to pour into the streets and demand president Bashar Assad's removal.

Chants of "Syria wants freedom!" rang out in the streets in the largest demonstrations in months, suggesting that a 19-month-old crackdown and sustained violence has not broken the spirit of those trying to rid the country of Assad's rule.

But even if a ceasefire holds for the intended four-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, it is unlikely to be a springboard for ending the conflict that has already claimed more than 35,000 lives.

A few hours after the truce took effect, a car bomb in a residential area of Damascus, near a housing complex for police, killed 10 people and wounded more than 30, Syrian state media said.

War Whore

Zionist lobbyist Patrick Clawson reveals more about US/Israel false flag attacks and shadow wars

Patrick Clawson, Director of Research at Washington Institute Of Near East Policy (WINEP), was in the news last month for suggesting that a false flag attack should be used to incite a war with Iran and now, in a new exclusive interview, he candidly admits to the existence of "shadow wars" in the middle east and acknowledges the deep history of false flag attacks in western military culture.

In his most recent interview, Patrick Clawson was asked about his false flag comments by radio host Bob Tuskin.

He went on to make some very telling comments in reply to the questions.

At one point Tuskin asks "a lot of people are concerned that the other side striking first would be a manufactured incident and.... there is a good percentage of people who have looked at declassified government documents that show that this would be manifested through our own powers that shouldn't be".

Vader

Institutionalized state assassinations and the November 6 election

Obama/drone
With barely a week and a half to go until the November 6 presidential elections, the entire spectrum of the American pseudo-left is exerting maximum efforts to turn out votes for Obama with the claim that the reelection of the incumbent Democrat would represent the "lesser of two evils."

If there was any need for a further refutation of this shabby political argument it has been provided in the form of the exposé run by the Washington Post this week on the Obama administration's institutionalization of assassinations orchestrated from the White House.

"Disposition Matrix," sounding like the title of a science fiction film, is the term crafted by Obama's intelligence and military advisers to describe a new system that is "codifying and streamlining" the extrajudicial killings that are being carried out on the orders of the US president on virtually a daily basis.

The media's bloodless reports referring to unmanned aircraft carrying out strikes against "compounds" and killing unnamed "militants" serve to mask the reality of US drone warfare, which in Pakistan alone has torn to pieces and incinerated thousands of civilians, men, women, children, while leaving entire communities in a permanent state of terror. An untold number more have been killed in Yemen and Somalia and no doubt elsewhere.

Pills

Wholesale murder of Africans: Most pharmaceuticals sent to Africa are fake

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Of 110 containers of pharmaceuticals entering West Africa searched in a special operation coordinated by the World Customs Organisation (WCO), 84 were found to contain fake pharmaceuticals. 82 million doses of fake medicine were confiscated which included anti-malarial and anti-HIV drugs and antibiotics.

Here in sub-Saharan Africa, over two children die every minute of malaria - which in 98% of cases can be cured with US $6 worth of genuine drugs. A spokesman for the WCO on BBC World Service radio last night said that the number of deaths caused directly by counterfeit medicine in Africa every year was in the hundreds of thousands. He called it "genocide".

I might not use that word, but it is beyond doubt true that supplying counterfeit drugs to Africa causes more deaths than narcotics, than the wars in Syria, Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East combined, and several hundred times more deaths than terrorism.