Puppet MastersS


Whistle

Another whistleblower dead: journalist Michael Hastings

Michael Hastings was working on a story about the CIA prior to his death, according to LA Weekly. "That Hastings had the Central Intelligence Agency in his sights is no surprise to those who knew his work," writes Dennis Romero, adding that "the shadowy world of intelligence and off-the-record American aggression was a favorite topic of the journalist."

The story gets even more suspicious. Hastings apparently contacted Wikileaks a few hours before his death. The whistleblower organization posted the following tweet:

Eye 1

Psychopath Avigdor Lieberman: Israel needs to conquer and thoroughly cleanse Gaza Strip

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest political ally has called for Israel to carry out a "thorough cleansing" of the Gaza Strip as a tenuous ceasefire between its Hamas rulers and the Jewish state frayed.

Speaking on Israel Radio, the far-right former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman called for Israel to reconquer the crowded coastal enclave to avoid "finding ourselves in two years with Hamas having aircraft and hundreds of missiles that will reach beyond Tel Aviv".

His comments came as the Israeli Air Force attacked targets in the Gaza Strip after six rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel into the early hours of Monday morning. No one was injured. It was the first ceasefire breach since April.

Mr Lieberman suggested that neither the eight-day aerial campaign Israel launched in November with the stated goal of halting rockets from Gaza, nor the devastating Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 in which more than 1,100 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died, had proven effective at quelling the violence.

"Without willingness to take things to their conclusion we merely increase the threats," he said, adding that Hamas "has no intention of coming to terms with the Jewish presence in the land of Israel and therefore what is needed is to seriously consider conquering the Strip and carry out a thorough cleansing." Mr Lieberman was number two on Mr Netanyahu's electoral list during elections last January, and currently holds the post of chairman of parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee. Mr Netanyahu's office declined to comment on Mr Lieberman's statements. Yair Lapid, the centrist Finance minister, said the remarks were "irresponsible".

After the rocket fire, Israeli warplanes pounded what the military said were arms storage facilities and a rocket launch site in the Strip. There were no injuries from either the rockets or the air strikes. Israel ordered the closure of the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings between Gaza and Israel, a step condemned as a "collective punishment" by Jaber Wishah, a spokesman for the Gaza City-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Israeli army officials believe the rockets were fired by the Islamic Jihad group, a small militant faction currently at loggerheads with Hamas. But Israel said Hamas, which has controlled the Strip since seizing power there in 2007, bears overall responsibility.

Meanwhile, police said vandals slashed the tyres of 21 cars in the Arab Beit Hanina neighborhood of East Jerusalem in the latest of a wave of anti-Arab crimes by suspected Jewish extremists who have struck three times in and around Jerusalem in the past 10 days. Palestinian residents said the government was not doing enough to stop the vandalism. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police are treating the matter as a "high priority".

Comment: For more on Lieberman's poisonous attitude, see this -

Paramoralisms, twists and lies are the psychopaths trade: Spiegel interviews Avigdor Lieberman


Chess

The show continues: Snowden didn't cross Russian border - Russian foreign minister

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© Reuters/ Bobby YipSnowden Didn’t Cross Russian Border - Foreign Minister
Russia said on Tuesday that Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee wanted by the US for leaking state secrets, had not crossed the Russian border.

Snowden, who leaked details of a US surveillance program to newspapers in the US and UK earlier this month, was widely reported to have flown from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday, from where he was expected to fly - via Cuba - to Ecuador, where he has requested asylum.

"I want to say right away that we have nothing to do with Snowden, or with his attitude to the American legal system, or with his movements around the world. He chose his own route, and we found out about it - like most people here - from the media," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference.

"He did not cross the Russian border," the foreign minister said.

MIB

Flashback Spying on the spies

The National Security Agency has its ear to the world, but doesn't listen to everyone at once.

That was one conclusion of a new report, Interception Capabilities 2000, accepted late last week by the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel (STOA).

The panel commissioned Duncan Campbell, a British investigative reporter, to prepare a report on Echelon, the US-led satellite surveillance network.

"I have no objection to these systems monitoring serious criminals and terrorists," said Glyn Ford, a British Labour Party member of parliament and a committee member of STOA. "But what is missing here is accountability, clear guidelines as to who they can listen to, and in what circumstances these laws apply."

Campbell was asked to investigate the system in the wake of charges made last year in the European Parliament that Echelon was being used to funnel European government and industry secrets into US hands.

"What is new and important about this report is that it contains the first ever documentary evidence of the Echelon system," said Campbell. Campbell obtained the document from a source at Menwith Hill, the principal NSA communications monitoring station, located near Harrogate in northern England.

Eye 1

Undercover police whistleblower reveals disturbing details about his undercover deployment

In extracts from a joint Guardian and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation, police whistleblower Peter Francis reveals disturbing details about his undercover deployment. His full story is detailed in the book Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police, by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis.

USA

The biggest ponzi scheme in the history of the world

Unlce Sam
© The Economic Collapse Blog

Did you know that you are involved in the most massive Ponzi scheme that has ever existed? To illustrate my point, allow me to tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was a man named Sam. When he was younger, he had been a very principled young man that had worked incredibly hard and that had built a large number of tremendously successful businesses.

He became fabulously wealthy and he accumulated far more gold than anyone else on the planet. But when he started to get a little older he forgot the values of his youth. He started making really bad decisions and some of his relatives started to take advantage of him. One particularly devious relative was a nephew named Fred.

One day Fred approached his uncle Sam with a scheme that his friends the bankers had come up with. What happened next would change the course of Sam's life forever.

Even though Sam was the wealthiest man in the world by far, Fred convinced Sam that he could have an even higher standard of living by going into a little bit of debt. In exchange for IOUs issued by his uncle Sam, Fred would give him paper notes that he printed off on his printing press. Since the paper notes would be backed by the gold that Sam was holding, everyone would consider them to be valuable.

Sam could take those paper notes and spend them on whatever his heart desired. Uncle Sam started to do this, and he started to become addicted to all of the nice things that those paper notes would buy him.

Eye 1

US: Hong Kong's failure to arrest Snowden 'troubling'

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© APA banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, is displayed in a Hong Kong shopping mall.

The United States is disappointed by Hong Kong's "troubling'' failure to arrest fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden before he fled the territory, an official said Sunday.

A Department of Justice spokesperson insisted US officials had fulfilled all the requirements of Washington's extradition treaty with the autonomous Chinese region and were "disappointed'' by the decision to let him go.

Snowden, a 30-year-old former intelligence contractor, is wanted by the United States on espionage charges, after he quit his job with the National Security Agency and fled to Hong Kong with a cache of secret documents.

Yesterday Snowden left Hong Kong and fled for Moscow, despite Washington having requested his arrest and extradition.

He's been offered asylum in Ecuador.

Hong Kong officials said the documentation supporting the extradition request had been incomplete.

But the US Department of Justice denied there was anything missing.

"The US is disappointed and disagrees with the determination by Hong Kong authorities not to honour the US request for the arrest of the fugitive,'' the spokesperson said in a statement.

"The request for the fugitive's arrest for purposes of his extradition complied with all of the requirements of the US-Hong Kong Surrender Agreement.

"At no point, in all of our discussions through Friday, did the authorities in Hong Kong raise any issues regarding the sufficiency of the US's provisional arrest request.

"In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling.''

The statement said senior US officials had been in touch with their Hong Kong counterparts since June 10, when they learned Snowden was in Hong Kong and leaking details of secret surveillance programs to the media.

On Wednesday, US Attorney-General Eric Holder spoke to Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen and urged Hong Kong to honour the request for Snowden's arrest.

The Hong Kong government had said that, as it "has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.''

Source: Agence France-Presse

Eye 1

Flashback Best of the Web: Somebody's listening: How the NSA, GCHQ, Germany and China have spent decades working together to spy on the whole world

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Echelon aka PRISM aka many other 'top secret spy names yet to be 'revealed''
. . . and they don't give a damn about personal privacy or commercial confidence. Project 415 is a top-secret new global surveillance system. It can tap into a billion calls a year in the UK alone. Inside Duncan Campbell on how spying entered the 21st century . . .

They've got it taped
In the booming surveillance industry they spy on whom they wish, when they wish, protected by barriers of secrecy, fortified by billions of pounds worth of high, high technology. Duncan Campbell reports from the United States on the secret Anglo-American plan for a global electronic spy system for the 21st century capable of listening in to most of us most of the time...
American, British and Allied intelligence agencies are soon to embark on a massive, billion-dollar expansion of their global electronic surveillance system. According to information given recently in secret to the US Congress, the surveillance system will enable the agencies to monitor and analyse civilian communications into the 21st century. Identified for the moment as Project P415, the system will be run by the US National Security Agency (NSA). But the intelligence agencies of many other countries will be closely involved with the new network, including those from Britain, Australia, Germany and Japan--and, surprisingly, the People's Republic of China.


Comment: ... and yet, in the aftermath of the Snowden 'leaks', German and other world leaders seem surprised that the NSA is watching and listening... what's up with that?!
World leaders seek answers on US collection of communication data
The Guardian, 10 June 2013


Peter Schaar, Germany's federal data protection commissioner, told the Guardian that it was unacceptable for the US authorities to have access to EU citizens' data...

New satellite stations and monitoring centres are to be built around the world, and a chain of new satellites launched, so that NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham, may keep abreast of the burgeoning international telecommunications traffic.

Comment: Well, there you have it folks.

The global mass surveillance system has been operational for quite some time. In addition, it was being reported on in great detail a quarter of a century ago.

All the world's superpowers (and not-so-super powers) are in on it, linked together through 'back-channels' of spies who all ultimately work on the same team: the psychopathic elite against humanity.

So what's really going on here with these June 2013 'NSA Leaks'? Andy why are the Russians, Germans and Chinese pretending to be surprised about it?

PRISM for your Mind: NSA, WikiLeaks and Israel

Through the PRISM of public amnesia


Vader

U.S. training Syrian rebels; White House 'stepped up assistance'

Syria
© AMC
WASHINGTON - White House officials refused to comment Friday on a Los Angeles Times report that CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have been secretly training Syrian rebels with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons since late last year, saying only that the U.S. had increased its assistance to the rebellion.

The covert U.S. training at bases in Jordan and Turkey began months before President Obama approved plans to begin directly arming the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to U.S. officials and rebel commanders.

"We have stepped up our assistance, but I cannot inventory for you all the elements of that assistance," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. "We have provided and will continue to provide substantial assistance to the Syrian opposition, as well as the Supreme Military Council."

The Supreme Military Council is the military arm of an umbrella group that represents more moderate rebel factions, including the Free Syrian Army.

The training and Obama's decision this month to supply arms and ammunition to the rebels have raised hope among the beleaguered opposition that Washington ultimately will provide heavier weapons as well. So far, the rebels say they lack the weapons they need to regain the offensive in Syria's bitter civil war.

The tightly constrained U.S. effort reflects Obama's continuing doubts about getting drawn into a conflict that already has killed more than 100,000 people and the administration's fear that Islamic militants now leading the war against Assad could gain control of advanced U.S. weaponry.

The training has involved fighters from the Free Syrian Army, a loose confederation of rebel groups that the Obama administration has promised to back with expanded military assistance, said a U.S. official, who discussed the effort anonymously because he was not authorized to disclose details.

Headphones

Flashback This is how we know Echelon exists

The European Parliament published its report into the Echelon spying system last week in which it concluded it did exist, was against the law and that the UK had a lot of explaining to do.

We've sifted through about 100 of the 194 pages and decided that since no one had yet to officially admit its existence, you may be interested in how the European Parliament decided it was definitely out there.

The report admits from the outset that the existence of Echelon can only be proved by gathering together as many clues as possible so that it remains the only possible explanation. Since we are talking about an extremely secretive spying mechanism run by some of the most secretive (and powerful) organisations in the world, this is the only method at our disposal.