Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Scott Noble Documentary: Counter-Intelligence: Shining a Light on Black Operations (5 parts)

The Company


Snakes in Suits

Ex-FBI director to investigate BP settlement program

BP
A federal judge has appointed former FBI Director Louis Freeh to conduct an independent investigation of alleged misconduct by a lawyer who worked for the court-supervised administrator of BP's multibillion-dollar settlement along with a team of private attorneys.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier issued an order Tuesday naming Freeh a "special master."

Freeh is a private consultant and recently led a university-sanctioned investigation of the Pennsylvania State University sex abuse scandal.

Claims administrator Patrick Juneau announced last month that his office is investigating allegations that an attorney on his staff received a portion of settlement proceeds for claims he had referred to a law firm before he started working on the settlement program.

BP had called for an independent review of the allegations.

Freeh served as FBI director from 1993 to 2001.

Airplane

Bolivian president's flight rerouted on suspicion Snowden on board: plane lands in Austria

Edward Snowden
© ReutersEdward Snowden
Vienna - The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was rerouted to Austria after various European countries refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, Bolivian officials said Tuesday.

Officials in both Austria and Bolivia said that Snowden was not on the plane, which was taking Morales home from a summit in Russia, where he had suggested that his government would be willing to consider granting asylum to the American.

A furious Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said France and Portugal would have to explain why they cancelled authorization for the plane, claiming that the decision had put the president's life at risk.

"We don't know who invented this lie" that Snowden was travelling with Morales, Choquehuanca said in La Paz. "We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales."

In a midnight press conference, Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia said that not only France and Portugal, but also Italy and Spain were denying the plane permission to fly through their airspace.

He described Morales as being "kidnapped by imperialism" in Europe.

"The ambassador for Spain in Austria has just informed us that there is no authorization to fly over Spanish territory and that at 9 a.m. Wednesday they would be in contact with us again," said Defence Minister Ruben Saavedra, adding that the Spanish government had put as a condition for passage the "revision of the presidential plane."

Magic Hat

'Self-radicalized' nonsense: Two arrested in 'pressure cooker terror plot' on Canada Day

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© ca.yahoo.comThree pressure cookers to be used as improvised explosive devices (IEDs)
The arrest of two people on Canada Day helped avoid a terrorist attack that would have seen the B.C. legislature targeted by an explosive device, RCMP said on Tuesday.

John Stewart Nuttall and Amanda Korody have been charged with the knowing facilitation of a terrorist act, possession of an explosive device and conspiring to commit an indictable offence in connection to an alleged attack planned on the provincial legislature.

The charges were part of a "national security investigation" dubbed Project Souvenir, launched in February based on information received from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Officials with the RCMP described the two suspects as "self-radicalized" terrorists who were willing and ready to cause mass causalities on the public.

Comment: Two Canadians inspired by al Qaeda ideology? Are they serious?

Pressure cooker bombs like those allegedly used at the Boston Bombings?

Timed to happen on the Canadians' equivalent to Patriots' Day?

Foiled thanks to an intel operation that had been monitoring the suspects for months?

If, like us, you're already smelling bullshit, that's because it is...

Strategy of Tension - Boston Marathon bombing


Eye 1

Crickets from White House on Largest Protest in Human History

Egyptian activists hold applications for
© AP Photo/Hassan Ammar
The White House has had no comment since what's being called the largest protest in human history demanded the end of Mohamed Morsi's regime.

Estimates for the Sunday "Tamarod" protests across Egypt reach as high as 17 million. Sixteen were killed and 781 were injured, according to the country's health ministry, in clashes; the Muslim Brotherhood unleashed its armed squad of supporters into the opposition crowd to sexually assault people, multiple reports said.

Many protesters held signs decrying President Obama and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson as supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood government.

Protesters stormed the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters and set parts of it on fire. By this morning, four cabinet ministers are reported to have stepped down "in solidarity with the people's demand to overthrow the regime," according to the BBC.

Question

Why Obama is making an African power-play against China

Three-country tour meant to entice African trading partners away from China

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© ReutersU.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at a business leaders' forum in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Monday.
When U.S. President Barack Obama wraps up an African tour today, it will mark the end of what some international development experts say is an attempt to counter China's growing influence throughout sub-Saharan Africa and assert American economic dominance on the continent.

China surpassed the U.S. in total trade in sub-Saharan Africa in 2009, but its increasingly strong economic ties took root in 2000, when then-Chinese president Hu Jintao hosted representatives from 44 African nations in Beijing to establish the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation.

That meeting "set a mandate for China to become Africa's largest trading partner," says Richard Poplak, a Johannesburg-based Canadian author and journalist writing a book about China's growing role in Africa.

Dollar

Then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan tried to protect money from claims, records show

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© Associated PressArchbishop Timothy Dolan, seen in this 2009 file photo, listens as the Apostolic letter is read by the Vatican's ambassador to the United States during his installation Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
Four years before the Archdiocese of Milwaukee filed for bankruptcy, then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan sought Vatican approval to move nearly $57 million in cemetery funds off the archdiocese's books and into a trust to help protect them "from any legal claim or liability," according to documents made public Monday.

Gear

Here we go: Edward Snowden threatens new U.S. leaks, applies for Russian asylum

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© Reuters
Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden broke his silence on Monday for the first time since fleeing to Moscow to say he remains free to make new disclosures about U.S. spying activity.

In a letter to Ecuador seen by Reuters, Snowden said the United States was illegally persecuting him for revealing its electronic surveillance program, PRISM, but made it clear he did not intend to be muzzled.

"I remain free and able to publish information that serves the public interest," he said in an undated letter in Spanish sent to Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

"No matter how many more days my life contains, I remain dedicated to the fight for justice in this unequal world. If any of those days ahead realize a contribution to the common good, the world will have the principles of Ecuador to thank."

Laptop

Israeli who murdered his parents used tips he found online

An Israeli who stabbed his mother and father to death was convicted of murder on Monday partly because he searched online for tips including "how to kill your parents and get away with it".

Daniel Maoz, 29, wanted money from his inheritance in order to pay heavy gambling debts, the Jerusalem District Court found. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2011 murders.

The case presented an unusual challenge to the prosecution: DNA evidence linking Maoz to the killings was found at the murder scene, his parents' apartment, and he tried to explain that away by accusing his identical twin brother of the crime.

Heart - Black

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria: Cheer-leading another blood bath in the name of peace

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Lies, Perfidies and Tony Blair
"Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it is an act of terrorism." President Barack Obama, April 15th 2013.
Having learned nothing from the catastrophes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, it seems President Obama, the equally clueless UK Prime Minister Cameron and his culturally challenged Foreign Secretary William Hague are cheer-leading another bloodbath in formerly peaceful, secular, outward looking Syria.

Having covertly provided arms and equipment to insurgents from numerous different countries for over two years, they have now moved to the overt stage, a move over which even arch hawks such as former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former Republican Senator Richard Luger, six term leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urged caution.

Luger said such action would boost extremists, with Brzezinski dismissing Obama's talk of "red lines" as thoughtless and risking: "a large-scale disaster for the United States."