Puppet MastersS


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."

No Entry

Restricted web access to The Guardian is Armywide, officials say

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© Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesThe offices of The Guardian and The Observer in London.
Security concerns cited in blocking Guardian news

The Army admitted Thursday to not only restricting access to The Guardian news website at the Presidio of Monterey, as reported in Thursday's Herald, but Armywide.

Presidio employees said the site had been blocked since The Guardian broke stories on data collection by the National Security Agency.

Gordon Van Vleet, an Arizona-based spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, or NETCOM, said in an email the Army is filtering "some access to press coverage and online content about the NSA leaks."

He wrote it is routine for the Department of Defense to take preventative "network hygiene" measures to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

"We make every effort to balance the need to preserve information access with operational security," he wrote, "however, there are strict policies and directives in place regarding protecting and handling classified information."

In a later phone call, Van Vleet said the filter of classified information on public websites was "Armywide" and did not originate at the Presidio.

Pistol

Flashback Released FBI documents reveal plans for snipers to assassinate Occupy Wall Street activists

OWS activists
© Unknown
Jason Leopold, an investigative journalist for Truth-Out, has obtained FBI documents - through the Freedom of Information Act - relating to Occupy Wall Street. Most of the pages in the documents are redacted, and show concerns of cyber threats against the financial sector. However, there are questions of assassination plots against Occupy activists in Houston, Texas. Because the documents have redactions, it is not clear who or what group was planning the assassinations.

On page 61, the section reads: "An identified [redacted] of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary. An identified [redacted] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. [Redacted] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles."

The bottom of page 68 and the top of page 69 reads: "On October 13, 2011, writer sent via email an excerpt [redacted] regarding FBI Houston's [redacted] to all IA's, SSRA's and SSA [redacted]. This [redacted] identified the exploitation of the Occupy Movement by [redacted] interested in developing a long-term plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire." ragingchickenpress.org

Comment:

No doubt these plans will come to fruition one day soon...

They've already done it in Venezuela, Iran and Syria... not long now before the methods tried and tested abroad are applied on U.S. soil.


Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Largest demonstration in world history? 20 million people take to the streets in Egypt, give Muslim Brotherhood leader Morsi two days to step down... or face rebellion

Egypt's protest movement has given the president an ultimatum to step down by Tuesday or face a mass rebellion. Some 20 million outraged citizens have flooded cities across the nation in a show of frustration at Mohamed Morsi's failure to keep the promises he made when he came to power a year ago. At least 7 people have been killed and more than 600 injured during the rallies so far. RT's Bel Trew reports from Cairo.


Black Magic

FBI document: Unknown organisation planned to assassinate Houston Occupy Movement leaders "if necessary"

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Would you be shocked to learn that the FBI apparently knew that some organization, perhaps even a law enforcement agency or private security outfit, had contingency plans to assassinate peaceful protestors in a major American city - and did nothing to intervene?

Would you be surprised to learn that this intelligence comes not from a shadowy whistle-blower but from the FBI itself - specifically, from a document obtained from Houston FBI office last December, as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington, DC-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund?

To repeat: this comes from the FBI itself. The question, then, is: What did the FBI do about it?

The Plot

Remember the Occupy Movement? The peaceful crowds that camped out in the center of a number of cities in the fall of 2011, calling for some recognition by local, state and federal authorities that our democratic system was out of whack, controlled by corporate interests, and in need of immediate repair?

That movement swept the US beginning in mid-September 2011. When, in early October, the movement came to Houston, Texas, law enforcement officials and the city's banking and oil industry executives freaked out perhaps even more so than they did in some other cities. The push-back took the form of violent assaults by police on Occupy activists, federal and local surveillance of people seen as organizers, infiltration by police provocateurs - and, as crazy as it sounds, some kind of plot to assassinate the "leaders" of this non-violent and leaderless movement.

Heart - Black

Psychopathic traits are useful tools in politics

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Is Kevin Rudd a psychopath?
Kevin Rudd is "a psychopath with a giant ego" tweeted the ALP's member for Bendigo, Steve Gibbons, last year.

Calling someone a "psychopath" is a provocative and alarming term that shouldn't be thrown around lightly - instantly conjuring up images of Ivan Milat, Charles Manson and John Jarratt in Wolf Creek.

It's also a term that's always fascinated me - as I'm uncomfortable with the idea our everyday lives are intertwined with people who are genuine, clinically diagnosed psychopaths.

And they're out there. In recent times there have been numerous articles written about psychopaths in the workplace - psychologist Robert Hare even wrote a book Snakes in Suits about psychopaths in the corporate world.

Comment: Making tough decisions is not a 'psychopathic trait'. Decisions are only 'tough' when someone tries to take all the known factors, and all the interested parties' points of view, into account. Psychopaths don't do this: they just do whatever pleases them, and with complete disregard for others.

More to the point; Psychopathic traits aren't just useful tools in politics today, psychopathic traits constitute the essence of the entire body politic today.


Stop

Without conscience: Israel Prison Service tries to break Eritreans' hunger strike

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© Eliyahu HershkovitzSaharonim detention facility in southern Israel.
Nearly 350 Eritrean migrants being held at the Saharonim detention center were transferred to other wings or other prisons.


In an attempt to end the hunger strike by Eritrean migrants being held at the Saharonim detention center, the Israel Prison Service on Sunday began transferring them to other wings in the prison, or to other facilities entirely.

The Prison Service moved about 344 detainees - some to other wings in Saharonim and others to prisons in the south, including the Ketziot Prison near the Egyptian border and the Eshel Prison in Be'er Sheva.

The IPS said that force was not necessary to transfer the detainees, although some passively resisted the move.

This morning 113 prisoners resumed eating, the IPS said. But 230 people from another section joined the strike and refused to accept the breakfast served to them.