Puppet MastersS


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Best of the Web: What Israel Does

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Israeli soldiers and Palestinian medics treat Nesreen Hash'hash, an 8-year-old Palestinian girl who was injured in the face by a rubber bullet in the Fawar refugee camp, near the West Bank city of Hebron, Tuesday, March 28, 2006. Nesreen was hit in the face by the rubber bullet fired by Israeli troops during a military operation in the camp, Palestinian officials said. The girl was on the roof of her home when she was hit.

Nuke

Fluoride Propaganda: Is Our Health Being Sacrificed for the Sake of Nuclear Weapons?

atomic explosion
© n/a
Misinformation By Nuclear Weapons Producers

Above-ground nuclear tests - which caused numerous cancers to the "downwinders" - were covered up by the American, French and other governments for decades. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

Moreover, the entire idea of safe nuclear energy has arguably been a cover for nuclear weapons production ... at the expense of our health and the environment.

Believe it or not, the push to fluoridate water might have been the same thing.

Government Scientists Now Question Safety

Even government scientists now say that fluoride can cause serious health problems.

As the president of Environmental Working Group - a highly-respected environmental group which has been quoted some 1,400 times by the New York Times - notes:
For decades, people who raised concerns about fluoride being added to tap water or food were dismissed as crazy. All of a sudden we have two federal regulatory actions, announced just days apart, that tell us what was really crazy all those years: a government bureaucracy that ignored strong scientific evidence and clear warning signs of the threats fluoride has posed to public health all along.

Dollar

Oligarchy in the U.S.A.

Cover of Harper's Weekly December 13, 1913
© James Montgomery FlaggCover of Harper's Weekly December 13, 1913
In 2005, Citigroup offered its high net-worth clients in the United States a concise statement of the threats they and their money faced.

The report told them they were the leaders of a "plutonomy," an economy driven by the spending of its ultra-rich citizens. "At the heart of plutonomy is income inequality," which is made possible by "capitalist-friendly governments and tax regimes."

The danger, according to Citigroup's analysts, is that "personal taxation rates could rise - dividends, capital gains, and inheritance taxes would hurt the plutonomy."

But the ultra-rich already knew that. In fact, even as America's income distribution has skewed to favor the upper classes, the very richest have successfully managed to reduce their overall tax burden. Look no further than Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, who in 2010 paid 13.9 percent of his $21.6 million income in taxes that year, the same tax rate as an individual who earned a mere $8,500 to $34,500.

How is that possible? How can a country make so much progress toward equality on other fronts - race, gender, sexual orientation and disability - but run the opposite way in its policy on taxing the rich?

Mr. Potato

Sarkozy Admits Lying About Visiting Fukushima

Sarkozy
© APMr Sarkozy admitted he had not visited Fukushima, adding there had been an exclusion zone around it
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy has conceded he did not visit Fukushima on a visit to Japan after last year's tsunami, despite saying he had.

Election rival Francois Hollande had queried Mr Sarkozy's claim that he had been to the stricken nuclear plant.

Mr Sarkozy admitted on Friday that he had not. "I'm not an engineer, I don't need to stick my nose in the situation at Fukushima," he said on I-tele.

Nuke

Enriched Uranium secrets and Fukushima Radiation

Professor Chris Busby talks about the enriched uranium weapons used in Iraq, and the radiation dangers in Fukushima.


Whistle

Best of the Web: Millions Against Monsanto: The Food Fight of Our Lives

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© Shutterstock/Zvonimir Atletic
Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry's contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We're fighting back.
"If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."
- Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994
"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job."
- Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1998

X

Egypt MPs Bar Mubarak-Era Officials from Standing for Office

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© Agence France-Presse/Amro MaraghiA supporter of former Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman
Cairo - Egypt's parliament on Thursday approved a law that would ban members of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's regime from standing for public office, in the latest twist to Egypt's political roller coaster.

The law, which still has to be approved by the ruling military council, could see former officials including ex-intelligence chief Omar Suleiman disqualified from standing in a presidential election scheduled for next month.

The amendment to the political activity law "bars any president, vice president, prime minister or leader or (senior member) of the now-dissolved National Democratic Party from exercising political rights for 10 years," the MPs said in a parliamentary session aired live on television.

The law still needs to be ratified by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) which took power after Mubarak was ousted on February 11 last year.

The text applies to Mubarak-era officials who served in the decade prior to the date of his ouster, which would also disqualify Ahmed Shafiq -- the last premier to serve under the longtime strongman.

The contest has pitted the country's powerful and organised Islamist forces against Mubarak-era officials, with only a handful of the 23 candidates representing the secular political forces that were at the frontline of last year's revolt.

Immediately after the uprising, anyone associated with Mubarak kept a low profile for fear of reprisals, but after a year of political upheaval and insecurity some no longer shy away from voicing support for ex-regime members.

Bad Guys

The war on terror is corrupting all it touches

Every student agitator is a terrorist, every internet hacker, cafeteria dissident, freedom fighter and insurgent leader
Tony Blair and Gaddafi
© Stefan Rousseau/PA Prime Minister Tony Blair meets Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2007.
On Monday the BBC Panorama programme substantiated an extraordinary allegation that suggested how far the war on terror has descended into legal abyss. The claim was that MI6 rolled the pitch for Tony Blair's bizarre 2004 hug-in with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi by apparently arranging for the CIA to kidnap Gaddafi's opponent in exile, Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He was seized in Bangkok, where he and his wife were en route to Britain. It's been suggested they were "rendered" via the British colony of Diego Garcia to Tajoura jail in Tripoli. Belhaj spent six years, and his wife four and a half months, at the tender mercies of Gaddafi's security boss, Moussa Koussa. Belhaj's pregnant wife was taped like a mummy on a stretcher, and he was systematically tortured. Koussa himself denies any involvement in torture.

Heart - Black

Robert Bales: Mass Murderer and PTSD Poster Boy

Robert Bales
© unknownStaff Sgt. Robert Bales during an exercise at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California
The medicalization of wartime atrocities

The story of Robert Bales, mass murderer, has pretty much disappeared from the headlines: news of the grisly killing spree, during which he slaughtered nine children and eight adults, has been displaced by the sudden "discovery" that 100,000-plus US soldiers are heavily medicated with anti-depressants and other drugs, as well as much talk of "PTSD" and discussion of how multiple deployments are "unfair" to those who have signed up to fight America's imperialist wars.

In short, the excuse-making has begun. In a signal that the case may never even come to trial - an outcome the US military is no doubt desperately hoping for - it has been announced that a "sanity hearing" will precede the actual trial. This is unusual in itself: normal procedure is to go ahead with the court martial first, and determine if the perpetrator was mentally incapacitated at the time of the crime later. As the military's Manual for Court Martial puts it:
"An accused lacking the mental capacity to understand the punishment to be suffered or the reason for imposition of the death sentence may not be put to death during any period when such incapacity exists. The accused is presumed to have such mental capacity. If a substantial question is raised as to whether the accused lacks capacity, the convening authority then exercising general court martial jurisdiction over the accused shall order a hearing on the question."
Whether to hold such a hearing before referral of charges is up to "the convening authority," i.e. Bales's commanding officer, and, presumably, higher ups in the Pentagon who are no doubt choreographing every legal step in this case. Bales's defense lawyer, John Henry Browne, may have submitted a request for a sanity hearing, but the Convening Authority was under no obligation to grant it.

Comment: For more information on this story read the Sott Focus: US Soldiers Look Deep Inside Their Souls - Find Vacuum - Decide To Kill Afghan Villagers by Joe Quinn.

Also read: Child witnesses to Afghan massacre say Robert Bales was not alone


Stop

Iran halts oil flow to Germany one day after Spain

Iranian flag and oil platform
Iran has cut oil exports to Germany one day after halting crude sales to Spain as part of its counter sanctions against the European Union (EU).

Tehran has already stopped oil exports to France, Britain, and Greece and is now considering halting crude sales to Italy.