Puppet MastersS


Propaganda

Surprise! Elite propaganda unit propels Peña Nieto to victory in fake Mexico elections

Early count gives PRI candidate 38% of vote and signals return to power for party that ruled Mexico for most of 20th century


Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) is poised to regain the power it lost 12 years ago after seven decades in charge of the country.

The official quick count of a large sample of polling stations announced late on Sunday gave the PRI's candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, around 38% of the vote and a lead of around seven percentage points over his nearest rival.

"This Sunday Mexico won", Peña Nieto said at his party's headquarters in the capital to the strains of a popular mariachi song, accompanied by his soap opera star wife and children. "Mexico voted for change with direction," he added.

During his speech, the slick, telegenic former governor of the country's most populous state was at pains to address fears that a PRI comeback would mean a return to the periodic authoritarianism, corruption and corporatist hubris that had characterised the party's political hegemony for most of the last century.

Comment: See also:
More staged 'Democratic' elections: Secret elite propaganda promoted right-wing Mexican candidate


Oscar

More staged 'Democratic' elections: Secret elite propaganda promoted right-wing Mexican candidate

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No point in voting when the game is rigged
Broadcaster commissioned videos rubbishing rivals of candidate who is now favourite to win presidential race on Sunday, documents seen by the Guardian reveal


A secretive unit inside Mexico's predominant television network set up and funded a campaign for Enrique Peña Nieto, who is the favourite to win Sunday's presidential election, according to people familiar with the operation and documents seen by the Guardian.

The new revelations of bias within Televisa, the world's biggest Spanish-language broadcaster, challenge the company's claim to be politically impartial as well as Peña Nieto's insistence that he never had a special relationship with Televisa.

The unit - known as "team Handcock", in what sources say was a Televisa codename for the politician and his allies - commissioned videos promoting the candidate and his PRI party and rubbishing the party's rivals in 2009. The documents suggest the team distributed the videos to thousands of email addresses, and pushed them on Facebook and YouTube, where some of them can still be seen.

Cult

Scientology Cult stalks actress Katie Holmes

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Worried Katie Holmes is convinced she is under surveillance by private investigators hired by Scientologists.

Two mystery men were first spotted allegedly keeping watch on her at Tom Cruise's New York home - days BEFORE she filed for divorce from him.

And when Katie and daughter Suri, six, moved to a secret apartment in the Chelsea district of the city, the creepy pair suddenly appeared outside.

A source said: "About three days before the divorce was announced a Mercedes SUV was sitting outside Tom's apartment in Greenwich Village.

"They were sat about a hundred yards from the house - a couple of suspicious-looking characters in sunglasses.

Comment:



Star of David

'Israel Master of Puppets in Syria Unrest'

Syria unrest
© AFP/Getty Images
Israel is the "ultimate outside power" that is behind the Syrian crisis and foreign countries' pushes to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government, says an analyst.

The assertion comes as the foreign ministers of Russia, China, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq, as well as the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the Arab League Secretary-General, Nabil El-Araby, and the secretary of state of the United States attended a meeting on the situation in Syria at the United Nations office in Geneva on Saturday.

Press TV has conducted an interview with political commentator Mark Dankof to further discuss the issue.

The video also offers the opinions of an additional guest: Lawrence Freeman of US weekly newsmagazine Executive Intelligence Review.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview:

Bad Guys

Police officers and abuse of powers in the UK: the list

The Guardian has documented 56 cases involving police officers and staff who have been found to have abused their position to inappropriately target, assault or harass vulnerable individuals or have been investigated for such offences.

The cases below involve 48 police officers, five police community support officers, one special constable, one civilian police officer and one member of police staff. The cases took place across the country over the last four years from 2008 to 2012.

Dollar

Mainstream Economics is a Cult

trojan horse
© n/a
Neoclassical Economics Is Based on Myth

Neoclassical economics is a cult which ignores reality in favor of shared myths.

Economics professor Michael Hudson writes: [One Nobel prize winning economist stated,] "In pointing out the consequences of a set of abstract assumptions, one need not be committed unduly as to the relation between reality and these assumptions."

This attitude did not deter him from drawing policy conclusions affecting the material world in which real people live....

Typical of this now widespread attitude is the textbook Microeconomics by William Vickery, winner of the 1997 Nobel Economics Prize:
"Economic theory proper, indeed, is nothing more than a system of logical relations between certain sets of assumptions and the conclusions derived from them... The validity of a theory proper does not depend on the correspondence or lack of it between the assumptions of the theory or its conclusions and observations in the real world. A theory as an internally consistent system is valid if the conclusions follow logically from its premises, and the fact that neither the premises nor the conclusions correspond to reality may show that the theory is not very useful, but does not invalidate it. In any pure theory, all propositions are essentially tautological, in the sense that the results are implicit in the assumptions made."
Such disdain for empirical verification is not found in the physical sciences.

Pistol

Gunman in Afghan Police Uniform Kills Three Nato Troops

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© ReutersForeign forces are training their Afghan counterparts ahead of a full handover in 2014
A gunman wearing an Afghan police uniform has killed three Nato staff in the south of the country, the coalition has said.

The gunman was injured and later detained, Nato said.

Officials did not confirm the nationalities of the killed service members, or any other details of the incident.

More than 20 foreign personnel have been killed in so-called rogue shootings this year.

Observers say this has eroded morale among foreign forces.

Rocket

Iran to Fire Missiles in Desert War Games in Warning to U.S. and Israel Threats

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© Al Arabiya File PhotoAlthough Iran frequently holds war games, the upcoming exercises appeared to underline Tehran’s threat to strike U.S. military bases in neighboring countries.
Tehran - Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced they are to fire ballistic and other missiles at desert targets during three days of war games starting Monday in a warning to threats of military action by Israel and the United States.

"Long-, medium- and short-range surface-to-surface missiles will be fired from different locations in Iran... at replica airbases like those used by out-of-region military forces," the head of the Guards aerospace division in charge of missile systems, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said.

"These maneuvers send a message to the adventurous nations that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is standing up to bullies alongside the determined and unified Iranian nation, and will decisively respond to any trouble they cause," he was quoted as saying by the Guards' official Sepah news website.

Although Iran frequently holds war games, these exercises appeared to underline Tehran's threat to strike U.S. military bases in neighboring countries -- in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia -- if it comes under attack by Israel or the United States.

Propaganda

Propaganda Alert! Al-Qaida planning to crash U.S. airline during London Olympics

Royal Marines
© APRoyal Marines exercise on the river Thames in London.
According to the Sunday Times, a Norwegian who was trained in Yemen plans to crash the plane on a suicide mission; British authorities say there is a shortage of personnel to carry out proper security screenings.

The al-Qaida branch in the Arabian Peninsula is believed to be planning a terror attack during the Olympic Games in London, scheduled to begin at the end of the month. According to a report in today's Sunday Times, quoting intelligence services, the organization has recruited a Norwegian Muslim convert who was supposed to hijack a U.S. passenger plane and crash it on a suicide mission. It is not clear though that the attack targeted one of the Olympic venues, despite the timing.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been involved in a number of attempts to carry out high-profile attacks on Western targets.

Comment: The usual ridiculous fiction from 'unnamed' sources we've come to expect from the Murdoch empire. Continuing the 'everyone is a terrorist' illusion to justify civil liberty clampdowns and scaremongering to make the public believe their leaders will protect them by shooting down passenger air planes. Sadly predictable to see the Haaretz article end with Iran's nuclear program.

It becomes obvious this is complete propaganda when one considers the feasibility of hijacking a U.S air plane to fly it all the way over the Atlantic to crash into a table tennis match or archery competition. Complete nonsense designed to spread fear on both sides of the pond.


Bad Guys

Turkey Scrambles F-16 Jets on Syria Border

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© ReutersContinuing violence in Syria has prompted fears of a wider regional conflict
Turkey has scrambled six F-16 fighter jets near its border with Syria after Syrian helicopters came close to the border, the country's army says.

Six jets were sent to the area in response to three such incidents on Saturday, the statement said, adding that there was no violation of Turkish airspace.

Last month, Syrian forces shot down a Turkish jet in the border area.

The incident further strained already tense relations between former allies.

Turkey's government has been outspoken in its condemnation of Syria's response to the 16-month anti-government uprising, which has seen more than 30,000 Syrian refugees enter Turkey.