Puppet MastersS


Cult

America under the management cult

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© PressTV
Save for residual rhetoric, at the beginning of 2014 the United States lies further from its intended course than at any time during its history.

Never has it had an elite so powerful yet so removed from its purported purposes, one more loyal to multinational corporations than to domestic citizens, and one whose conscience has been drained by decades of increasing corruption.

The components of this dismal establishment includes not only the obvious such as the most reactionary right since the Civil War, but major factors that are either ignored or denied such as a national leadership without moral voices, a Democratic Party backed by its liberal fans that has been dismantling 60 years of progress accomplished by the New Deal and Great Society, an academia heavily beholden to its funding sources - whether government or corporate, a media whose Washington branch is deeply embedded in the interests of the very institutions and individuals about which it is supposed to be telling the truth, and a culture driven by the corporations that control it rather than by the artists creating it.

There are other problems, such as intelligence institutions wielding unprecedented improper powers. The NSA, for example, is the most prolific - albeit not most violent - criminal operation in the country, with its victims of illegal spying numbering in the millions. And its challengers are getting at best only mild support from a media that used to care when the government broke the law.

But then we live in an America in which every president since 1988 has had a direct or familial connection with the CIA.

In the latter category are the two Bushes, the elder having been its director. Unreported, however, is the fact that this connection is also shared by Bill Clinton who worked as a CIA informer while briefly and erratically a Rhodes Scholar in England. And Barack Obama worked for a CIA front operation called Business International and reportedly had his tuition debt at Columbia paid off by BIC. Yet, as William Blum has written, "In his book, not only doesn't Obama mention his employer's name; he fails to say when he worked there, or why he left the job." It also appears likely that his mother and grandfather had intelligence connections.

Handcuffs

Best of the Web: Judicial Watch announces list of Washington's "Ten most wanted corrupt politicians" for 2013

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Judicial Watch today released its 2013 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes: Dishonorable Mentions for 2013 include:

Comment: Judicial Watch needs to do some more digging they haven't even scratched the surface. Nevertheless, it's a start.

Bad Guys

In 'Eisenhower's Death Camps': A U.S. prison guard remembers

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© Institute for Historical ReviewMartin Brech
They never taught this in history class

In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the U.S. army. Largely because of the "Battle of the Bulge," my training was cut short, my furlough was halved, and I was sent overseas immediately. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France, we were quickly loaded into box cars and shipped to the front. When we got there, I was suffering increasingly severe symptoms of mononucleosis, and was sent to a hospital in Belgium. Since mononucleosis was then known as the "kissing disease," I mailed a letter of thanks to my girlfriend.

By the time I left the hospital, the outfit I had trained with in Spartanburg, South Carolina, was deep inside Germany, so, despite my protests, I was placed in a "repo depot" (replacement depot). I lost interest in the units to which I was assigned, and don't recall all of them: non-combat units were ridiculed at that time. My separation qualification record states I was mostly with Company C, 14th Infantry Regiment, during my seventeen-month stay in Germany, but I remember being transferred to other outfits also.

In late March or early April 1945, I was sent to guard a POW camp near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was forbidden. Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret out members of the S.S. (I found none.)

In Andernach about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure that I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets. Many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring, and their misery from exposure alone was evident.

Laptop

What happens when authorities seize your laptop?

David Miranda
© BBC imagesDavid Miranda (left) had his laptop seized by UK authorities - presumably because he is the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald
A federal judge in New York has ruled authorities can seize travellers' laptops at the border without citing a legal reason, suspecting the traveller of a crime, or explaining themselves in any way. What happens if they take yours?

The news over the past year has been filled with stories of the National Security Agency (NSA) and its surveillance operations and the risks to online privacy.

The release of documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sheds new light on its global electronic spying programme.

Yet authorities can also find out about you in a more traditional manner - by seizing your possessions at the border.

Long ago the authorities could read your diary. Now they can go through your laptop's hard drive. The federal judge was upholding a policy about border seizures formalised after the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks.

Stop

Best of the Web: At last, a law to stop almost anyone from doing almost anything - if you're rich, you have nothing to fear

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2013: Protesters, campaigners and activists gather in Trafalgar Square for a 'death party' celebrating the passing of Baroness Thatcher.
Protesters, buskers, preachers, the young: all could end up with 'ipnas'. Of course, if you're rich, you have nothing to fear

Until the late 19th century much of our city space was owned by private landlords. Squares were gated, streets were controlled by turnpikes. The great unwashed, many of whom had been expelled from the countryside by acts of enclosure, were also excluded from desirable parts of town.

Social reformers and democratic movements tore down the barriers, and public space became a right, not a privilege. But social exclusion follows inequality as night follows day, and now, with little public debate, our city centres are again being privatised or semi-privatised. They are being turned by the companies that run them into soulless, cheerless, pasteurised piazzas, in which plastic policemen harry anyone loitering without intent to shop.

Street life in these places is reduced to a trance-world of consumerism, of conformity and atomisation in which nothing unpredictable or disconcerting happens, a world made safe for selling mountains of pointless junk to tranquillised shoppers. Spontaneous gatherings of any other kind - unruly, exuberant, open-ended, oppositional - are banned. Young, homeless and eccentric people are, in the eyes of those upholding this dead-eyed, sanitised version of public order, guilty until proven innocent.

Now this dreary ethos is creeping into places that are not, ostensibly, owned or controlled by corporations. It is enforced less by gates and barriers (though plenty of these are reappearing) than by legal instruments, used to exclude or control the ever widening class of undesirables.

The existing rules are bad enough. Introduced by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, antisocial behaviour orders (asbos) have criminalised an apparently endless range of activities, subjecting thousands - mostly young and poor - to bespoke laws. They have been used to enforce a kind of caste prohibition: personalised rules which prevent the untouchables from intruding into the lives of others.

Arrow Down

'Americans have no constitutional right to privacy'

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© SodaheadKaren Kwiatkowski
A former Pentagon official says that Americans don't have the constitutional right to privacy per se and if they want to have this right they should ensure it themselves.

"This problem with the NSA 's action in their vast collection of information and emails and phone calls from American citizens and everybody else in the world appears to be a privacy issue but in the United States it is a constitutional issue," said
Karen Kwiatkowski in an interview with Press TV on Sunday.

She added that in the United States people "don't have the constitutional right to privacy per say. What we have is the right to be secure."

Kwiatkowski said that everybody in the world knows that the NSA is "a criminal organization" which has broken the American law and violated the constitution.

"We have judges that in the past couple of weeks ruled that the NSA is in violation of the constitutional rights of the Americans."

Toys

As millions of homeless suffer: First Lady stays in Hawaii for 'girl time' with Oprah

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© Daily Caller
Michelle Obama is spending her extended Hawaiian vacation at Oprah's "exquisite" Maui getaway, The Daily Caller has learned.

While White House pool reports indicate the first lady stayed behind this week in Hawaii to chill out with friends before her 50th birthday, there weren't many specifics. But sources with direct knowledge tell TheDC that the first lady is relaxing in Maui at Oprah's estate with CBS' Gayle King, Valerie Jarrett and Sharon Malone, who is Attorney General Eric Holder's wife.

Sources say she's there for a "girl's getaway" before the big 5-0.

"Yesterday we saw bomb sniffing dogs and Maui police in the bushes," Heather Long, the manager of nearby Grandma's Coffeehouse, told TheDC. "We're very close to Oprah's property. They'll probably walk up and down the road."

Oprah frequents the coffee shop, said Long. "We try not to make it a big deal. We try to treat her like she's another customer. I would die if I saw the first lady."

Oprah's home, described as "an ordinary little gray ranch" has been transformed into "the perfect" 21st century farmhouse. The residence is located in a remote up-country region where the houses there face the ocean. The house has reportedly undergone dramatic renovations since Oprah purchased it. Horses surround the ranch.

In a story for Oprah.com, Oprah says this about her Hawaiian house. "I love, love, love my house," she says. "It's a gem, so sweet and exquisite. Such a real, normal house. It feels like a nice blanket. A lovely and soft cashmere one."

Che Guevara

Dieudonné M'bala M'bala interview: "I'm just trying to show that the age of colonialism never ended"

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In 2010, Press TV interviewed Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, French actor and comedian, about his run-in with the Zionist lobby in France and his efforts to stand up for freedom of speech.

Part 1


Arrow Down

Meet the MQ-4C Triton - A new Navy drone with the wingspan of a Boeing 757

Spying on humanity's every electronic move is clearly not good enough for the U.S. government. It is also necessary to be able to surveil the species' every move from 50,000 feet in the sky. You know, because of the terrorists and all.

The past couple of years have seen many frightening new advances from the U.S. military. From "Atlas" the 6 Foot Tall Humanoid Robot, to "ARGUS" The World's Highest Resolution Video Surveillance Platform, to domestic drone use, the Department of Defense is hard at work making sure that you can never engage in a private act again without the fear of a hellfire missile landing on your head.

Now here's the latest...a Northrop Grumman drone with the wingspan of a 757.
MQ-4C Triton Drones
© U.S. NavyThe MQ-4C Triton drones are getting flight-tested in Palmdale, California.

Oscar

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls has a paranoid conspiracy theory: 'Comedian Dieudonne is financed by Iran'

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Translated by SOTT.net


Manuel Valls is not releasing the pressure on Dieudonné. As the debate rages about banning the comedian's shows, the president of the republic François Hollande reiterated his vows Tuesday to the religious authorities at the Champs Elysee in a ceremony attended by Manuel Valls in his capacity as Minister of Religious Affairs.

During an 'off-the-record' conversation, the minister disclosed that he had to be "uncompromising" towards Dieudonné, before adding: "And anyway, he is financed by Iran..."

A film produced by an Iranian production company

Dieudonné had reached an agreement with an Iranian production company, Haft Aseman, to finance his film The Anti-Semite, released in 2011.

The film tells the story of a woman with cancer who asks her husband to be psychoanalyzed by a Jew in order to cure his anti-Semitism.

Comment: Who is Manuel Valls? France's Socialist Sarkozy