Puppet MastersS


Gear

Israel briefly closes Eilat airport, citing security threats

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© Jack Guez / AFP/Getty Images / February 24, 2011A plane glides toward touchdown at Eilat airport in southern Israel in 2011.
Israel's military on Thursday night ordered the nation's southern airport in Eilat closed until further notice, citing unspecified security threats.

[Updated 1:28 p.m. PDT, Aug. 8: The airport was reopened about two hours later.]

The airport is predominantly used by tourists traveling to the Red Sea resort city, and the shutdown comes during the peak vacation season.

Due to the airport's proximity to the restive Sinai Peninsula, the military has from time to time closed the facility for security reasons.

Israel's military has long been concerned about the possibility that Sinai militants would attempt to shoot down Israeli airplanes using shoulder-fired missiles and recently considered equipping planes with anti-missile defenses.

The last shutdown, lasting a few hours, was in April after rocket attacks against Eilat.

The latest closure may be related to an ongoing crackdown by the Egyptian military against militants operating in the Sinai, Israeli media reported.

Bad Guys

Flashback The Turkish Gambit: Mossad and the Aselsan suicides

Back in February this report from Turkey got me interested:
The suspicious deaths of four engineers who were declared to have committed suicide might have been murder, according to a new indictment into an espionage gang within the naval forces.

All four men worked for ASELSAN, a defense industry giant that produces technology for the Turkish military. The deaths are being investigated again as part of the ongoing probe into a gang that faces accusations of making use of prostitutes, blackmail and espionage. There are 56 suspects in the investigation, including military officers.

Recently, the İstanbul Police Department's Anti-Organized Crime Unit requested the closed case files of Hüseyin Başbilen, Halim Ünsem Ünal and Evrim Yançeken -- who were reported to have killed themselves between 2006 and 2007 -- in order to re-launch an investigation. All three were assigned to encryption and decryption projects at ASELSAN and had worked on highly strategic projects in the past.
Was the police really interested in those suicides or was this one of those political investigations, not unheard of in Turkey, that are held simply to remove the suspects from their job?

Comment: While Mossad's involvement in a possible assassination ploy isn't really surprising, recent report by the Turkish Prime Ministry Inspection Board citing 'telekinesis' as possible cause of mysterious suicides does add an interesting twist to the story.


Propaganda

Propaganda Alert! Yemen on 'high alert' over warning of imminent al-Qaida attack

yemeni forces
© Khaled Abdullah/ReutersYemeni security forces have been deployed across Sana'a. Tribal sources and unnamed officials says US drone strikes have killed four al-Qaida operatives in Marib province
US and British diplomatic personnel evacuated from Sana'a as Washington warns of 'specific and immediate threat'

Yemeni security forces remained on high alert on Tuesday night amid fears of an imminent attack by al-Qaida in the capital, Sana'a, after the US and Britain withdrew all embassy staff and again urged their citizens to leave the country. The US state department later described a "specific and immediate threat".

BBC Arabic quoted a Yemeni military official as saying that "extraordinary and unprecedented" security measures had been put in place, with armoured vehicles deployed around the presidential palace and other sensitive government and foreign installations in the capital.

Dozens of al-Qaida operatives are said to have streamed into Sana'a in the last few days, apparently to take part in a terrorist attack, the BBC said. The Yemeni claim could not be confirmed but it appeared consistent with US statements.

Blackbox

Why are the founders of Microsoft, Google and Paypal investing in artificial meat?

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Google co-founder and lab-grown meat investor Sergey Brin
The taste-testers of Google founder Sergey Brin's lab-grown burger called it cake-like and "very close to meat" - perhaps not the most encouraging response to a $332,000 investment. But Brin isn't alone in making investments in artificial or lab-grown animal products, other tech entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Peter Thiel have put their money into developing alternatives to the traditional raising livestock method. Why? Because they just might be the future of food.

Brin says he was partially motivated to invest in his lab-grown burger ventures by animal welfare concerns, saying that people imagine "pristine farms" while he's "not comfortable" with the reality of factory farming conditions. But he also thinks synthetic meat is a "transformative" technology on the "cusp of viability," even if it sounds like science fiction to the general public.

But thanks to Brin's investment in the work of Mark Post of Maastricht University, it's no longer science fiction even if it's still decades from being on the consumer market. To grow the meat, Post took muscle stem cells from living cows via a biopsy and fed it with fetal bovine serum. One barrier to the process is the $250 per liter cost of the serum, which can require as many as three cow fetuses to produce a liter.

Comment: The claim that raising livestock has negative environmental impact is hugely uninformed. Read Lierre Keith's book, The Vegetarian Myth, to get all the facts that prove that it is agriculture indeed that destroys the top soil and the entire ecosystem of the planet.

Lierre Keith on 'The Vegetarian Myth - Food, Justice and Sustainability'
The Vegetarian Myth


Evil Rays

Mind-controlled patsy? 'I am the shooter,' Nidal Hasan tells Fort Hood court-martial

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"I am the shooter."

Maj. Nidal Hasan made that blunt declaration Tuesday at the outset of his court-martial in the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood. The Army psychiatrist is charged with killing 13 and wounding 32 at a processing center for soldiers heading into combat zones overseas.

"The evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter," Hasan told the panel of 13 senior officers who will decide his fate. "The evidence presented with this trial will show one side. The evidence will also show that I was on the wrong side. I then switched sides."

But the declaration wasn't exactly news to now-retired Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who was shot seven times that November day. Lunsford, the first of several survivors scheduled to testify against Hasan, recounted how the now-admitted gunman rose from a chair in the processing center, pulled out a pistol and began shooting.


Comment: Hasan himself may believe he was the lone shooter that day, but the evidence suggests otherwise:

Reviving the War of Terror: Patsy framed in Secret Team psy-op to generate public support for wars


Snakes in Suits

Arundhati Roy: Tony Blair is a psychopath - and Obama's no better

Writer and activist Arundhati Roy, interviewed on Democracy Now, on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, 19 March 2013. She also says Barack Obama is no different from Bush or Blair.


Beaker

Playing with our lives: Monsanto Baseball


If you are Monsanto, you can commit the most egregious crimes against humanity but you are never guilty of any safety violations. In Fact the EPA, FDA and USDA approve your products for public consumption.

Monsanto is a glaring example of everything that is wrong with Congress, the White House, the FDA, the EPA, the USDA, Media and Corporate America.

Representative Democracy ? Ya Right !

Cult

Flashback French media tycoon, cult leader and condemned 'corrupter of minors' Pierre Bellanger locks himself in office in Skyrock Radio takeover stunt

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Pierre Bellanger, founder of Skyrock - France's biggest station for under-25s - has won the support of the country's politicians after staging a sit-in over plans to replace him

The cult French radio station Skyrock, which launched the careers of the country's biggest hip-hop stars and started France's social network craze, is in crisis as its eccentric founder has locked himself in his office over a shareholder row.

Pierre Bellanger, a one-time pirate radio pioneer known for his unconventional private life, is staging a sit-in protest in his office as a rush of politicians take to the airwaves in support after shareholders tried to replace him.

At stake is the heart of French youth culture and the irreverent 25-year-old radio station, which revolutionised the musical tastes of teenagers and the multiracial suburban tower blocks. In the pre-Facebook era, Skyrock's website became one of the most important social network sites in Europe and it still hosts more than 33.5m French blogs. With 4 million listeners a day, it is France's biggest radio station for under-25s and at election time, politicians fight to appear on shows to up their street cred.

Pirates

Completing the cycle of terror: French citizens fighting in the ranks of al-Qaeda in Syria

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The French Interior Minister Manuel Valls confirmed in a recent interview with France 2, which was aired yesterday evening, that at least 50 French citizens are currently fighting alongside the armed terrorists in Syria and this also means that they are probably fighting in the ranks of the armed jihadists and Syrian Al Qaeda branch against the secular Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad in the capital, Damascus.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls also stated in this interview with France 2 that these French nationals could be "enemies to France" if they will return to France after their battles and fighting in the Arab nation. Of course, the French Interior Minister Manuel Valls warned about these at least 50 French citizens that are currently actual fighting in Syria against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the government in the capital, Damascus.

In this interview with the known channel of France 2, the French Interior Minister Manuel Valls also stated that these nationals of France could be "enemies of France" when they will return to France after they fought in the Arab nation in the ranks of jihadists and terrorists.


Comment: These guys are as much 'jihadistes' as the following were 'peace observers': 13 undercover French army officers seized in Syria


Attention

British women among those joining 'al-Qaeda-in-Syria'

It's the jihad, innit!

Can there be any doubt that the 'war' in Syria is an Anglo-French affair on behalf of the Empire?


Comment: We don't believe for a minute that they're driving those 4-wheel drives and carrying Kalashnikovs on a wage of $150 per month... Syria is riddled with European mercenaries and fundamentalists, bought and paid for by the CIA, MI6, DGSE and the Mossad...

Former French foreign minister: UK government prepared war in Syria two years before 'Syrian revolution' began
French navy officer, two others, charged with Syria-jihadi network links
French Jihadists in Syria
At least 50 French citizens 'waging jihad in Syria'
Kurds capture British commander of 'al Qaeda in the Levant and Syria'
Anglo-French arms industry forces EU to lift official embargo on sending Weapons of Mass Destruction to Al Qaeda in Syria
Syria: 120 French Troops Captured Fighting With Al Qaeda Terrorists