Puppet MastersS


Brick Wall

Sarkozy wants EU partners to toughen border controls

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, chasing far-right voters in a troubled re-election bid, will press EU partners Thursday to make it easier to recall border guards in Europe's visa-free travel area.

Sarkozy's interior minister will present to EU counterparts a German-backed proposal that would allow states to reintroduce border controls for 30 days as a last resort if another Schengen nation fails to police its external frontiers.

After coming second to Socialist candidate Francois Hollande in Sunday's first round, Sarkozy told a campaign rally on Monday that the French "no longer want a sieve-like Europe" and that "borders are meant to be protected."

Bomb

Finding the Culprits of the Crisis

Janet Tavakoli
© AdvisorOne
Janet Tavakoli calls it as she sees it - and what she often perceives isn't a pretty picture. But for any advisor, or other investment professional, to ignore this industry veteran's razor-sharp insights would be folly.

A gutsy critic of both Wall Street and the federal government, the Chicago-based consultant, specializing in derivatives and structured products, pulls no punches. Through her independent research into the global financial crisis, Tavakoli uncovered what she calls massive, widespread fraud committed by a network of mortgage originators, securitizers, and rating and regulatory agencies, among others.

Earlier, the founder of Tavakoli Structured Finance, 58, predicted the thrift industry blow-up and the demise of Enron. Then she foresaw that excessive leverage and structured products' misratings would lead to a global financial crisis.

In her just-published e-book, The New Robber Barons, Tavakoli charges that the relationship between failed mortgage lenders and investment banks that securitized and sold risky loans was "the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of our capital markets ... a financial Pearl Harbor," where "investment bankers piloted many of the planes."

Now Tavakoli sees another huge financial crisis looming.

The University of Chicago MBA has traded, structured and sold derivatives at firms including Merrill Lynch, PaineWebber and Westdeutsche Landesbank; and she had earlier stints at Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. Research recently talked with her about red flags and preventive solutions.

Handcuffs

New sex scandal hits US military, foreign service in Brazil

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Amerika: Making the world safe for sexual predators since 1776
The United States military and foreign service are embroiled in yet another sex scandal as fresh revelations surface concerning the misconduct of a number of US military service members and an embassy staffer in Brazil.

The incident took in the capital Brasilia late last year, when three Marines on a US Embassy security team and one embassy staff member pushed a female escort out of a car after a dispute over payment. The woman broke her collarbone in the incident, the Associated Press reported.

"There were at least two women with the Marines outside a nightclub," a US defense official said on condition of anonymity.

The official added it appears that one of the women started a fight in a vehicle, then she was removed from the car, and when she tried to re-enter, she fell to the ground and was injured.

He also said that no charges were filed by Brazilian authorities.

Another defense official said the embassy staff member was a supervisor. The embassy tracked the woman down and paid for her medical expenses.

Comment: Now that the US government (claims to be) cleaning house, they should deal with this next. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this

... in fact, if they just pulled all their employees home from everywhere, the world would be a whole lot safer for women and children.

Pedophilia Coverup? Secret Service "Prostitutes" were children


Alarm Clock

Waking Up to Propaganda and Unplugging From the Matrix

When did things begin going wrong in America?

"From the beginning," answer some. English colonists, themselves under the thumb of a king, exterminated American Indians and stole their lands, as did late 18th and 19th century Americans. Over the course of three centuries the native inhabitants of America were dispossessed, just as Israelis have been driving Palestinians off their lands since 1948.

Demonization always plays a role. The Indians were savages and the Palestinians are terrorists. Any country that can control the explanation can get away with evil.

I agree that there is a lot of evil in every country and civilization. In the struggle between good and evil, religion has at times been on the side of evil. However, the notion of moral progress cannot so easily be thrown out.

Consider, for example, slavery. In the 1800s, slavery still existed in countries that proclaimed equal rights. Even free women did not have equal rights. Today no Western country would openly tolerate the ownership of humans or the transfer of a woman's property upon her marriage to her husband.

Heart - Black

Teenage Protester Killed in Drone Strike

The attentive, unassuming young man sitting near me in the pictures on the right is Tariq Aziz.

He was 16 when we met last October, just a year older than my own teenage son, although with his neatly trimmed beard and traditional shalwar kameez he looked more like the grown men alongside him.

Tariq had travelled many hours to the relative safety of Islamabad from his home in Waziristan, a rugged Pakistani tribal area on the border with Afghanistan.
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Drone strike: Tariq Aziz, circled, was at the same meeting, sitting just yards away from Jemima
He was there to join a protest about the plague of American 'drones' - the remote-controlled aircraft that have left a bloody trail of death and fury among the innocent villagers who struggle to earn a living in the unforgiving mountainous region.

I was there to distribute digital cameras so that the people from Waziristan could record the damage and death caused by the drones, as part of a campaign to prove that innocent civilians are dying.

Bad Guys

Pentagon Sets up New Spy Agency to Eavesdrop on a Changing World

Defense Clandestine Service will focus on global threats and emerging economic and military powers
Leon Panetta
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesLeon Panetta, the defence secretary, is a former director of the CIA.
The Pentagon is to create a new spy service to focus on global strategic threats and the challenges posed by countries including Iran, North Korea and China. The move will bring to 17 the total number of intelligence organisations in the US.

The Defense Clandestine Service is supposed to work closely with its counterpart in the CIA, the National Clandestine Service, recruiting spies from the ranks of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and deploying them globally to boost the flow of intelligence on perceived long-term threats to US national interests.

US military news website Insidedefense said the defence department had asked Congress for authority for spies to work undercover posing as businessmen when conducting covert operations abroad.

The move by the defence secretary, Leon Panetta, emerged in briefings to US journalists.

"You have to do global coverage," a senior defence official said, according to the Los Angeles Times. The new service would seek to "make sure officers are in the right locations to pursue those requirements", the Washington Post quoted the official as saying.

USA

Mother of tortured U.S. citizen appeals case to Supreme Court

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© unknown
On Monday, the mother of a U.S. citizen who was allegedly tortured at a naval base in Charleston asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other government officials on behalf of her son.

Jose Padilla, a convicted terrorist, had sued Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials over his alleged torture at the naval base, but a district court judge granted Rumsfeld immunity and dismissed the case, Padilla v. Rumsfeld. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the dismissal in January.

"If the appeals court's ruling is allowed to stand, government officials will have a blank check to commit any abuse in the name of national security, even the brutal torture of an American citizen in an American prison," said Ben Wizner, the ACLU attorney who argued the case before the Fourth Circuit. "It is precisely the role of the courts to ensure that allegations of grave misconduct by Executive Branch officials receive fair adjudication. That vital role does not evaporate simply because those officials insist that their actions are too sensitive for judicial review."

Padilla was arrested as an "enemy combatant" in May of 2002 after returning to the U.S. from Egypt. He was detained at a U.S. navy prison in South Carolina for nearly four years without charge.

Sherlock

Afghanistan Massacre: U.S. investigators Visit Afghan Shooting Site

Robert Bales
© Pic: DVIDSStaff Sergeant Robert Bales, right, has been named as the soldier accused of killing civilians in Afghanistan
Army criminal investigators have now completed their first visit to the outpost where Staff Sgt. Robert Bales served and the two villages where he is alleged to have killed 17 Afghan civilians, according to a US official.

The official declined to be identified or discuss what evidence had been gathered due to the sensitivity of the investigation. The Army will also not say when investigators were there or if they are going back, due to concerns over their safety in the vicinity of the villages.

It was the first visit by U.S. investigators, who had been staying away out of respect to angry villagers. CNN's Nic Paton Walsh reported last week that the American investigators had not been able to return to the crime scene.

Until now the Army has been relying on evidence collected by Afghan officials at the two villages. American investigators hoped to dig out of walls whatever bullets are left and examine the trajectories of bullets fired, CNN reported earlier this week.

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
Robert Bales: Mass Murderer and PTSD Poster Boy


Eye 1

Proposed Increase in Internet Surveillance Powers Threatens British Ruling Coalition

David Cameron
© David Moir/Reuters
British plans to extend the state's powers to monitor emails and other social media, and set up secret courts to hear evidence gathered by intelligence agencies, are threatening to destroy the country's ruling coalition.

When the Queen reads an annual agenda-setting speech to parliament on May 9, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to unveil sweeping legal reforms to give police and security forces the power to monitor all digital communications and establish special courts that can review top secret intelligence information.

But before the new laws have even been introduced they have ignited a storm of controversy with back-bench Conservative MPs and Liberal Democrat leaders both warning of a potential invasion of privacy and attacks on individual legal rights.

War Whore

North Korea: 'Mobile Weapons' Capable of Striking US

Pyongyang, North Korea - A senior North Korean army official says his country is armed with "powerful mobile weapons" capable of striking America.

Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho emphasized the importance of defending the North against the U.S. and South Korea as Pyongyang marked the 80th anniversary of the nation's army Wednesday.

He told officials at the April 25 House of Culture that the weapons could defeat the U.S. "at a single blow."

North Korea made another unusual claim Monday, promising "special actions" that would reduce Seoul's government to ashes.

North Korea is believed to have nuclear weapons but not the technology to put them on long-range missiles. A rocket launch that the U.S. claimed was a North Korean attempt to test missile technology failed this month.