Puppet MastersS


Dollars

The Fed's Plan B: "We're going to kill the dollar"

Mike Whitney
Counterpunch
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:37 UTC
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"How do you solve a problem when you're running a 10% fiscal budget deficit? You are not going to get growth without private sector credit demand. The government's idea right now is that we're going to export our way out of this, and when I asked a senior member of the Obama administration last week how are we going to grow exports if we will not allow nominal wage deflation? He said, "We're going to kill the dollar." Kyle Bass interview.

Last week, amid growing rumors of a global currency war, the Fed's balance sheet broke the $3 trillion-mark for the first time in history. According to blogger Sober Look: "For the first time since this program was launched (QE) it is starting to have a material impact on bank reserves ... which spiked last week. 2013 will look quite different from last year. The monetary base will be expanded dramatically as long as the current securities purchases program is in place. 'Money printing" is in now full swing.'" ("Fed's balance sheet grows above $3 trillion, finally impacting the monetary base", Sober Look)
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Eye 1

Perception Management: Someone pretending to be Ryan Lanza gives Facebook interview to the New York Post

Dylan Stableford
Yahoo! News
Sun, 23 Dec 2012 06:39 UTC
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© CIA
A Facebook user claiming to be Adam Lanza's brother took to the social network to mourn the 27 people--including his mother and 20 schoolchildren--killed by Adam in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, before the younger Lanza turned the gun on himself.

"I am a victim," Ryan Lanza told the New York Post via Facebook on Saturday. "I [lost] my mom and brother."

The 24-year-old, who lives in Hoboken, N.J., was initially misidentified by several media outlets as a suspect on the day of the shootings. He was questioned by police and later released.

According to the Post, Ryan Lanza posted a photo of Adam on Facebook Saturday under the message:
R.I.P
Adam Peter Lanza
April 22, 1992- Dec. 14, 2012(20 years old)
"I will miss you bro. I will always love you as long as I live"
-Ryan
When another Facebook user wrote that Adam deserved to "rot in hell," Ryan responded: "You have no right to call my brother names when he isn't here no more. Just let my brother rest in peace. Please. Respect that."

According to the paper, Ryan also posted a photo of his mother, Nancy, who was shot and killed by Adam in their Newtown home before the troubled 20-year-old fired his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 children and 6 adults.

"You all will be truly be missed," Ryan wrote on Facebook. "God Bless."
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Hourglass

Aaron Swartz, Wikileaks, & Senator John Cornyn


TheYoungTurks
Wed, 23 Jan 2013 05:43 UTC
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) sent a sharply worded letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday questioning the Department of Justice's prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who was found dead of a suspected suicide last week after fighting federal hacking charges for two years... The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down, including the link to Wikileaks.

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Bad Guys

Outrage grows as records reveal bishops covered up California sex abuse


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:04 UTC
Clerics
© AFPCardinals and bishops follow the pontif's weekly general audience at St. Peter's square in October 2012 at the Vatican.
Victims of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic clerics voiced anger after newly-released records showed church leaders discussing how to cover up priests' alleged crimes in California in the 1980s.

Prosecutors also said they wanted to study the previously confidential records, including exchanges involving then Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony about how to prevent police hearing about alleged abuse cases.

Excerpts from the documents were published Monday by The Los Angeles Times, including exchanges between Mahony and a top aide talking about how to conceal pedophile priests from law enforcement.

The records include secret memos between Mahony and Monsignor Thomas Curry, his top aide on sex abuse cases, about how to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to the church that they had abused young boys.

Specifically Curry suggested stopping suspected priests from seeing psychiatric therapists who might alert authorities about alleged abuse, or keeping them outside of California to avoid police investigations, the Times reported.
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War Whore

US military wants to hide drones under sea


Press TV
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:06 UTC
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Hollywood films often show alien ships or giant monsters rising from the ocean depths to threaten humanity's existence. The U.S. military envisions a more realistic scenario of hiding robotic drones, sensors or decoys on the ocean floor so that they can rise to the occasion when needed.

The idea of hiding sneaky spy technologies beneath the waves comes from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency described its Upward Falling Payloads program as an effort to hide underwater capsules that could be triggered remotely to activate, float to the surface and release their payloads of sensor buoys or even flying drones.

"The concealment of the sea also provides opportunity to surprise maritime targets from below, while its vastness provides opportunity to simultaneously operate across great distances," DARPA said in a broad agency announcement on Jan. 11.

Earth's oceans provide plenty of hiding places for robots to engage in some "cheap stealth" -- about 50 percent of the oceans reach depths deeper than 2.5 miles. DARPA's ideal payload would fit within a spherical capsule 17 inches in diameter or a cylinder about 5 inches in diameter and 36 inches in length.
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Eye 2

Obama's overlooked war and lethal presidency

Jason Kottke
Information Clearing House
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 19:06 UTC
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Tom Junod has been on the drone beat since writing The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama in July.
Sure, we as a nation have always killed people. A lot of people. But no president has ever waged war by killing enemies one by one, targeting them individually for execution, wherever they are. The Obama administration has taken pains to tell us, over and over again, that they are careful, scrupulous of our laws, and determined to avoid the loss of collateral, innocent lives. They're careful because when it comes to waging war on individuals, the distinction between war and murder becomes a fine one. Especially when, on occasion, the individuals we target are Americans and when, in one instance, the collateral damage was an American boy.
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Target

The conflict in Mali has nothing to do with fighting terrorists

Assed Baig
Information Clearing House
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:58 UTC
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© Photograph: Ouoba Yempabou Ahmed/AFP/Getty ImagesMalian refugees arrive at the Goudebou campsite in neighbouring Burkina Faso.
Another Western nation and former colonial power, has engaged in yet another conflict with an African country, bombing from the air and attacking from the ground. We are told that France is fighting in Mali to push back 'Islamist' rebels (not too comfortable with the word 'Islamist', I've never heard of a Christianist) who are extremists, terrorists and fanatics - take your pick of which label you wish to adopt for the current enemies of the West.

Again, as in Afghanistan, we are being told that this battle is being fought for ideological reasons. The rebels are extremists, they have destroyed ancient heritage and amputated limbs according to their literalist religious interpretations. However the idea that France has gone into Mali to fight against extremists is a myth that I wish to dispel.

The West has no moral high ground; a short reading of their colonial past can easily show us that - France's colonial legacy in North Africa reads like a state terrorism handbook. If the West was really concerned about the destruction of ancient historical heritage, limb amputations and executions then there is a state that dwarfs anything that the Malian rebels have partaken in, that state is Saudi Arabia.
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Bad Guys

Imperialist powers escalate war in Mali

Ernst Wolff
World Socialist Web Site
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:53 UTC
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Amid continuing offensives by French troops in Mali, the imperialist powers are making clear that the assault on Mali is part of a lasting, neo-colonial escalation of military intervention throughout Western Africa and beyond.

"This is a global threat and it will require a global response... that is about years, even decades, rather than months," British Prime Minister David Cameron said over the weekend.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian defined his aim in Mali as "the total re-conquest of the country," using troops provided by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). France, which is currently spearheading the war in Mali, plans to expel Tuareg and Islamist fighters from Mali to pursue its agenda. Its goal is to stabilize the corrupt regime in Bamako, currently led by the military junta of Captain Amadou Sanogo, as its stooge regime in Mali, where France has significant corporate interests.
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Arrow Down

Will China-Japan-U.S. tensions sink the global economy?

Michael Klare
Mother Jones
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:38 UTC
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© Pete Souza/White House PhotoPresident Obama announces an expanded military presence in Australia, November 2011.
A looming crisis in the Pacific could have big consequences for the United States.

Don't look now, but conditions are deteriorating in the western Pacific. Things are turning ugly, with consequences that could prove deadly and spell catastrophe for the global economy.

In Washington, it is widely assumed that a showdown with Iran over its nuclear ambitions will be the first major crisis to engulf the next secretary of defense - whether it be former Senator Chuck Hagel, as President Obama desires, or someone else if he fails to win Senate confirmation. With few signs of an imminent breakthrough in talks aimed at peacefully resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, many analysts believe that military action - if not by Israel, than by the United States - could be on this year's agenda.

Lurking just behind the Iranian imbroglio, however, is a potential crisis of far greater magnitude, and potentially far more imminent than most of us imagine. China's determination to assert control over disputed islands in the potentially energy-rich waters of the East and South China Seas, in the face of stiffening resistance from Japan and the Philippines along with greater regional assertiveness by the United States, spells trouble not just regionally, but potentially globally.
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X

France imposes media blackout on Mali war


Press TV
Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:40 UTC
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Photo shows French army soldiers standing on armored vehicles as they leave Bamako and start their deployment to the north of Mali.
France has reportedly imposed a media blackout on its invasion of Mali amid a growing war that rages on in the West African nation.

On January 11, France launched the war under the pretext of halting the advance of fighters in Mali. However, as Paris has stepped up its ground offensive and aerial strikes in Mali few images of the conflict have come out of the African country.
French networks TF1 and France Televisions have also sent several teams to Bamako, but a media blackout on images of the clashes has confined all journalists to the city.
This comes as French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said the number of French troops on the ground in the West African country could top the initially-planned number of 2,500.
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