Puppet MastersS


War Whore

Senate committee: U.S. will aid Israel if it strikes Iran

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© REUTERS/Jim Bourg
Resolution to provide diplomatic, economic, military support to Israel if it strikes Iran adopted by Senate Foreign Relations C'tee.

On Israel's 65th Independence Day, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee adopted "Senate Resolution 65," stipulating that the US will assist Israel diplomatically, economically and militarily if the Jewish state is compelled to take military action against Iran "in its defense of its territory, people, and existence."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sponsored Tuesday's resolution, which garnered a bipartisan group of 79 co-sponsors. The resolution also emphasizes that the US must be committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Eye 2

Brought to you by cops posing as terrorists: The big sleep

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Why is there no trail of blood? Why is he conscious? And why is the knee so far away from his main body?
When are we going to wake up?

Will we ever be able to see how our government deliberately turns our joyous days into tragedies, and now has advanced its criminality into killing innocent people as part of a drill to show us why we have to be frisked, molested or irradiated at every public event we attend?

It's not exactly new stuff, this Boston Massacre Marathon Drill. For those who still haven't gotten the message, the Boston Police have admitted and numerous witnesses have observed that before the bombs that killed and maimed hundreds of happy observers of an innocent road race that the authorities were conducting an anti-terror drill during the race.

The bombs that went off on that sunny, happy spring afternoon prove beyond doubt - and once again, for the hundredth time - that it is our government that are the terrorists, and they're not out to protect us - they're out to kill us - and rob us and enslave us - while they demonstrate this demented need for security as they themselves create the terror.

How many recent examples do you need?

Mail

Phoenix police: 2 'suspicious' envelopes sent to Sen. Flake's office

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© KTAR photo/Jim CrossPolice and fire departments respond to Sen. Jeff Flakes office after a suspicious letter has been found there.
Two suspicious envelopes were found Wednesday at the offices of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). The first two floors of the offices near 22nd Street and Camelback Road were evacuated for almost two hours before occupants were allowed to return.

Inspection by the Postal Service revealed nothing harmful in the envelopes.

The envelopes contained an oily substance, according to Phoenix Fire. Two hazmat teams, FBI, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and firefighters responded to the incident.

Phoenix Police said they were told by office staff that the envelopes looked "suspicious." "That's all we know," said Sgt. Tommy Thompson. "(The envelopes) are secured."

This will be the fifth suspicious letter or package sent to U.S. politicians, including President Barack Obama, around the country in two days.

Cowboy Hat

Official: Suspect in custody in Boston bombings

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© JULIO CORTEZ / APInvestigators comb through Boylston Street just beyond the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
A suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was taken into custody Wednesday in a breakthrough that came less than 48 hours after the deadly attack, a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said Wednesday.

The official spoke shortly after several media outlets reported that a suspect had been identified from surveillance video taken at a Lord & Taylor store between the sites of the two bomb blasts, which killed three people and wounded more than 170.

The official was not authorized to divulge details of the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The suspect was expected at a Boston courthouse under heavy security, the official said.

A news briefing was scheduled later Wednesday.

Vader

Initial tests show ricin in letter to Obama

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© Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images
Federal authorities are investigating a letter containing a "suspicious substance" that was addressed to President Obama, the agency confirmed Wednesday, and at least four U.S. senators also reported receiving suspicious mail.

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said preliminary tests on the letter to Obama showed evidence of ricin, a powerful toxin that is generally considered to be ineffective as a weapon for mass terrorism.

The letter was sent to Obama on Tuesday, and was intercepted at the White House mail screening facility, according to Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary.

The screening facility is a remote facility, not located near the White House complex, Leary said.

Bad Guys

Boston, cowardice & America the blind

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As I write this, we still don't know who was responsible for the horrific bombing attack in Boston. Perhaps it will turn out to be the work of home grown rightwing nuts; perhaps it's the act of foreign terrorists. But, whatever the source, what strikes me is the number of times the barbaric assault is being denounced as "cowardly".

As in Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis's warning that "This cowardly act will not be taken in stride."

Indeed, "Cowardly" is the epithet being used by political figures across the United States; it was used by an editorial writer in Kansas City Star and a spokesman for the United Maryland Muslim Council in Baltimore.

"Cowardly" is the term being used in messages of support from abroad, from the Prime Minister of India to the Prime Minister of Italy.

After all, what could be more cowardly than for some unknown, unseen, unannounced killer to blow apart and maim innocent men women and children, without any risk to himself.

But, if that be the definition of cowardice, what could be more cowardly, than the now cliché image of the button-down CIA officer agent driving to work in Las Vegas to assume his shift at the controls of a drone circling high over some dusty village on the other side of the world?

Bizarro Earth

Bombs from Boston to Baghdad: What is the value of a human life?

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Boston bomb, 15 April 2013. At least three killed, bombers unknown.
The bombing in Boston is a tragedy, and everyone should condemn the actions of people who have destroyed the lives of people enjoying themselves watching the marathon.

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Afghan bomb, 7 April 2013. Eleven children killed by US airstrike.
But last week in Afghanistan a US airstrike killed eleven children and several women. This Afghan bombing is only one of many that are killing civilians every week.

In Iraq bombs go off in crowded areas regularly. A wave of bombings across the country yesterday left at least 75 Iraqis dead.
And in Syria too, there is a daily repetition of carnage that is killing countless civilians.

Judged by the media coverage, it is hard not to conclude that western lives are valued much more highly than those of people in Afghanistan or the Middle East, and that bombs in the middle of major US cities are regarded as more newsworthy than those in the Afghan countryside or in Baghdad.

USA

The brutal face of neocolonialism in Afghanistan

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Anne Smedinghofff: a victim of misguided idealism, she bought the whole brainwash, and is now cynically exploited to score propaganda points.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has made a series of public statements ostensibly in mourning for the 25-year-old Foreign Service officer Anne Smedinghoff - one of five Americans, including three soldiers, killed in a Taliban car bomb attack in Afghanistan's southern province of Zabul on Saturday.

The death of someone so young is tragic, as it has been for nearly 2,200 American troops killed in 11 years of war and occupation. Yet Kerry's remarks aim not so much at comforting grieving family members and friends, as at justifying and defending the war that cost this young woman's life.

He said that the death presented "a stark contrast for all of the world to see between two very different sets of values." On the one hand, he said, was "a brave American ... determined to brighten the light of learning through books written in the native tongue of the students that she had never met, but whom she felt compelled to help," while on the other, were "cowardly terrorists determined to bring darkness and death to total strangers."

The same day that Anne Smedinghoff lost her life, a US airstrike killed at least 18 people, including 11 children ranging from a few months to eight years old. Six women were badly wounded in the attack. Kerry uttered not a word of sympathy for the loss of these young lives, nor for the parents left to grieve them. Needless to say, the death of 11 children received not one one-hundredth of the coverage given to that of the American diplomat in the US media, which, as always, is contemptuous of Afghan lives.

Question

If autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and the Gulf are acceptable, what's wrong with Assad's in Syria?

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© AP
Leading US senators have urged President Obama to get involved directly and use military force in the two years old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria. It isn't that UK and US haven't been involved so far; it's just that both imperial powers have used their proxies to oust Assad from power. The proxies doing the bidding of the western powers are mainly Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey.

Syria has traditionally remained under Russian influence and has relied on Russian military equipment as most of the Arab countries bought military hardware from the western powers. Russia has had a naval port facility in Tartus, Syria, since 1971. Intriguingly, why is Russia, by its inaction, absent from the Syrian scene, despite the presence of its naval force at Tartus when the western powers unite to shore up insurgency against Asad's government?

"Russia is not looking to oust Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and wants the conflicting parties to negotiate and stop the 'massacre', putting an end to the 'catastrophe' in Syria", President Vladimir Putin recently told a German broadcaster in an interview. "We do not think that Assad should leave today, as our partners suggest. In this case, tomorrow we will have to decide what to do and where to go" Putin said. Instead of asserting itself forcefully, the Russian response to the ongoing insurgency in Syria is apathetic. Once Assad goes and the western powers install their proxy in Syria, Russia will have to vacate the naval port there. It seems Russia's withdrawal to self-isolation after its misadventure in Afghanistan continues.

War Whore

Syria's civilian suffering - Western imperialism resorts to medieval barbarity

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The human suffering in Syria, which has escalated from crisis to disaster over the past two years, is the nefarious work of Western governments and their regional allies. It is a simple, provable, glaringly obvious truth. Yet, the thought-control Western mainstream media manage to somehow turn reality on its head, and make a virtue out of something vile and unspeakably villainous.

Western imperialism has created a human tsunami of suffering in Syria. And rather than making any effort to mitigate this suffering by delivering on much promised refugee aid, the Western powers seem to exploiting the massive misery for political advantage to further undermine the Syrian state and government. This tactic of enforced human deprivation is straight out of the Middle Ages, when invading armies would hold siege of cities by enforcing starvation on the occupants.

Two reports this week testify to the above conclusion - albeit indirectly. The first comes from various United Nations relief organizations for refugees. The UN agencies say that food, water and other basic provisions to some 1.3 million refugees that have poured out of Syria and to more than 4 million remaining within the war-torn country will soon no longer be afforded. The dire situation is because only a fraction of the $1.5 billion pledged earlier this year by international donors has actually been received.

Reuters cited Panos Moumtzis, the UN refugee agency's regional coordinator for Syrian refugees, as saying: "The speed with which the crisis is deteriorating is much faster than the ability of the international community to finance the Syrian humanitarian needs".