Puppet MastersS


Stormtrooper

UK: RAF helicopter death revelation leads to secret Iraq detention camp

RAF helicopter in Iraq
© Matt Cardy/Getty ImagesAn RAF helicopter in Iraq.
Death in RAF helicopter and secret prison camp in Iraq desert raises questions about legality of British and US operations

On the evening of 11 April 2003, a pair of RAF CH47 Chinook helicopters swept over Iraq's western desert towards a remote rendezvous point beside Route 10, the highway that begins life on the outskirts of Baghdad before running for mile after mile towards the border with Jordan.

As they approached their destination, the crews assumed they were on an operation that would be uneventful. Two days earlier Saddam Hussein's statue had been toppled after American tanks rolled into the Iraqi capital; three weeks later George Bush would stand in front of a banner saying "mission accomplished".

The helicopter crews had been told that a number of detainees were under armed guard at the side of the highway. They were to pick them up after dark and take them to a prison camp. What followed was far from routine: before the night was out, one man had died on board one of the helicopters, allegedly beaten to death by RAF personnel.

The incident was immediately shrouded in secrecy. When the Guardian heard about it and began to ask questions, the Ministry of Defence responded with an extraordinary degree of obstruction and obfuscation, evading questions not just for days but for weeks and months. The RAF's own police examined the death in an investigation codenamed Operation Raker, but this ended with some of the most salient facts remaining deeply buried. The alleged culprits faced no charges.

Airplane

Best of the Web: US - Drones: Coming Soon to An Airspace Near You

Drone
© Digital Trends
Congress has approved a bill that will allow military, commercial, and private unmanned drones to fly over regular US airspace.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it's an unmanned drone! Congress today approved a bill that allows unmanned aircraft to fly in the same airspace as commercial airliners, private planes, and cargo jets. The legislation allocates $63.4 billion over the next three and a half years to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), $11 billion of which will be used to update air traffic control systems at 35 US airports to handle the remote-controlled aircrafts. The deadline for the systems update is June 2015.

The change to flight regulations will allow military, commercial, and private drones to fly over US territory. Currently, drones are only allowed over certain military airspace, along US borders for surveillance purposes, and to about 300 public agencies, according to the Associated Press. The FAA must submit its plan for how to safely allow wide-spread drone flight within nine months of the bill's passage.

Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: US: New DHS Report: If You Love "Individual Liberty" Or If You "Believe In Conspiracy Theories" You Are A Potential Terrorist

Am flag/crosshairs graphic
© n/a
Do you love America? Are you against a one world economy and a one world government? Do you deeply love individual liberty? Do you believe in conspiracy theories? If you answered any of those questions affirmatively, then you are a potential terrorist according to a brand new Department of Homeland Security report that was just released in January 2012. The report is entitled "Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008", was produced by the "National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism" for the Department of Homeland Security.

As you will see detailed later on in this article, the most shocking part of this report is when it discusses the "ideological motivations" of potential terrorists. The report shamelessly attempts to portray red-blooded Americans that love liberty and that love their country as the enemy. Once upon a time, deeply patriotic Americans were considered to be the backbone of America, but today they are considered to be potential terrorists.

And this report is yet another example of how the definition of "terrorism" has changed. A decade ago, the entire focus of the "war on terror" was on radical Muslims and we were told that we had to send our boys and girls to the other side of the world to defeat them.

Propaganda

Propaganda Alert: US Professor Tells Newsweek Israel Must Attack Iran - Now

Israeli jet
© Flash 90
Iranian threat is like the Arab threat to destroy Israel in 1967, a history professor tells Newsweek. The danger: Western complacency.

The Iranian Threat is like the Arab world's threat to destroy Israel in 1967, and Israel must attack Iran now, a Harvard University history professor told Newsweek. He said the he biggest danger is Western complacency.

The magazine,which last week published a scenario of how Israel till attack Iran if it decides to do so, featured on its website on Monday an article by Prof. Niall Ferguson.

He pooh-poohed five arguments why Israel should not stage a military strike on Iran: Iranian retaliation, new Arab Spring rebellion, a recession caused by doubling of the price of crude oil, boomerang support for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad within Iran, and the ability to live with a nuclear Iran.

Prof. Ferguson maintains that whether he likes it or not, President Barack Obama will comes to Israel's defense if it attacks Iran in an attempt to slow down its nuclear development, if not destroy its nuclear facilities altogether.

War Whore

Fear Mongering: Iran says can hit U.S. interests worldwide if attacked

Image
© Unknown
Moscow - Iran is capable of carrying out military strikes on U.S. interests all around the world if the Islamic Republic is attacked by the United States, Iran's ambassador to Moscow said on Wednesday.

The United States has tried to force Tehran to scrap sensitive nuclear work by imposing sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and giving U.S. banks new powers to freeze Iranian government assets.

Iran's ambassador to Moscow said that the United States would be making a serious mistake, akin to suicide, if it risked a military strike on OPEC's No. 2 oil exporter.

Washington has announced no such plans, but has said a military option is always on the table if Iran cannot be otherwise prevented from developing atomic weapons.

"The Americans know what kind of country Iran is. They are well aware of our people's unity," Iranian ambassador Seyed Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi told a news conference in Moscow.

"And that's why Iran is fully able to deliver retaliatory strikes on the United States anywhere in the world," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

"Even if it attacks, we have a list of counter actions. (The United States) would be disappointed with their huge mistake."

Iran has increasingly issued threatening statements against the West in recent weeks as tension has increased over its uranium enrichment program, which it moved last month to a mountain bunker better protected from possible air strikes.

Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful while Western powers fear Tehran is trying to build a nuclear bomb.

"The issue of a military attack from America on the Islamic Republic of Iran has been on the agenda for several years," said Sajjadi, adding that Iran would never strike first.

Iran has warned its response to any such strike would be "painful," threatening to target Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, along with closing the Strait of Hormuz used by one third of the world's seaborne oil traffic.

Russia, the world's biggest energy producer, opposes further U.N. Security Council sanctions over Tehran's nuclear program and has sharply criticized U.S. and European Union sanctions.

Writing by Steve Gutterman and Guy Faulconbridge

Comment: Let's not forget the 'headline' country could be changed to any of the following: Russia, China, France, Israel, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India or any countries with large armies and/or Nuclear capability. Without a good balance of reality, the fact that Iran is no greater threat than several other countries is easily overlooked. We've seen this before (Iraq, Afghanistan..).


MIB

Germany Summons Syrian Ambassador After Spying Arrests in Berlin

embassy, syria
© AFPDemonstrations took place outside the Syrian embassy after armed forces attacked the city of Homs
The German government called in Syria's ambassador after security officials in Berlin arrested two men suspected of spying for Syrian intelligence on groups critical of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"We will signal unambiguously to Syrian officials that any apparent activity against the Syrian opposition in Germany is in no way tolerable and a violation of the law," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told reporters in Berlin today as he announced the diplomatic protest.

The men, identified as 47-year-old Mahmoud El A., who holds German and Lebanese citizenship, and Akram O., 34, a Syrian national, were arrested in Berlin earlier today in an operation that involved about 70 investigators, who searched the suspects' apartments and those of six others.

The two detained are "strongly suspected of carefully observing the Syrian opposition in Germany for a Syrian intelligence agency for years," Germany's Federal Prosecutor said in a statement. Other suspects, whose apartments were searched, were accused of providing assistance, it said.

The arrests come three days after Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution backing an Arab League plan for a transfer of power in Syria. Escalating unrest directed at Assad's government has killed more than 5,400 people in the country since March, according to the UN.

Vader

US: The Department of Homeland Security Defends Globalism, Not America

Janet Napolitano
© n/aJanet Napolitano
The Department Of Homeland Security is the very epitome of unnecessary bureaucracy. Its formation was predicated on the existence of terrorist threats, many of which the U.S. government and orbiting alphabet agencies either created through acts of war, or fabricated out of thin air. Its policies of centralization were sold to the public as necessary to prevent systemic "miscommunications" that never actually took place. Throughout our history, it has been a rare occasion indeed when an attack falls upon American infrastructure or interests that was not influenced, directly or indirectly, by the actions of agencies which were supposedly employed to prevent such events from ever occurring. Whether through 'blowback', or through 'false flag', frankly, most of the harm that comes to our nation is perpetrated by the guiding hand of our inexorably corrupt government.

Knowing that the DHS was established on false pretenses forces us to question the agency's true intentions, especially when a professional fear-monger like Secretary Janet Napolitano announces that the globalization of the world economy falls within her jurisdiction:

See this

Average citizens would assume that the DHS is a U.S.-centric institution, and regardless of its Orwellian behavior, is at the very least a distinctly American brand of tyranny. However, under encroaching strategies enforced since 2006 through the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP), it is becoming very apparent that the Department Of Homeland Security is quickly taking on an "all-of-nation" role, most prominently in the defense of globalization:

National Infrastructure Protection Plan (pdf)

Bad Guys

UK: Government 'may sanction nerve-agent use on rioters', scientists fear

Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of nerve agents for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons.

A high-level group of experts has asked the Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop "incapacitating chemical agents" for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as CS gas for riot control.

The experts were commissioned by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the military. They concluded that the Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.

Bad Guys

US: Anti-Government Extremists Defined by FBI

These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Ron Paul
© ZeroHedge
Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counter terrorism division.

"We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement," he said.

In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a "sovereign citizen" in traffic.

Bad Guys

A Global History of Debt By Region: Map from 1970-2010

We all read about the U.S. national debt, and whether we should be concerned that it's in the $12 trillion range these days. But the United States isn't the only country carrying a huge amount of debt. In fact, it seems that operating just about any country is a money losing proposition.

According to the CIA's Worldbank data, the majority of countries carry huge sums of national debt. And for most countries - although there are exceptions - that debt is constantly rising.

Look at Mexico: In 2000, the country had a $150.3 billion national debt. That's miniscule by U.S. standards, yes, but, like the United States, Mexico's debt is growing. Worldbank estimates that the country's national debt has risen to $189.4 billion in 2010.

And Mexico is far from alone: Poland's national debt has risen from $65.8 billion in 2000 to a much higher $185.2 billion in 2010. Hungary's debt has jumped from $29.5 billion to $134.7 billion during the same time, a rather large bump.

Turkey, too, has seen its national debt soar. The country's debt stood at $117.3 billion in 2000, but is estimated to be at $310.6 billion now. In India, the national debt has risen from $99.1 billion in 2000 to an estimated $204.5 billion in 2010.