Puppet MastersS


USA

U.S. veterans angered by cuts to pension benefits

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© Press TVThe authors of the budget deal say they will amend the provision to exempt disabled retirees and survivors of those killed in action.
A controversial provision in a recent US budget deal that will trim pension increase for working-age military retirees has angered younger military veterans in the United States, a report says.

The deal approved by Congress and signed last week by President Barack Obama.

The one-percentage-point reduction in the annual cost-of-living increase has provoked outrage among veterans, some of whom argue that the country is reneging on a solemn pact, The Washington Post reports.

"This is a pact between the greater population of the United States and the fraction of people who served and sacrificed. If you didn't want to pay us what you promised us, then you probably shouldn't have promised it," retired Lt. Col. Stephen Preston said, as quoted by the Post.

"I'm not an angry man, but I was very, very angry," Preston, 51, said in a telephone interview with the newspaper from his home in Tampa.

Many lawmakers have vowed to roll the cut back when Congress returns to work next week even though GOP lawmakers have fulminated about the need to cut the cost of federal health and retirement benefits, the report says.

Snakes in Suits

Shameless, crack smoking Ogre of Toronto, mayor Rob Ford, signs up for re-election despite scandal

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© Gangstersout.blogspot
Toronto mayor Rob Ford has put his name on the ballot to run for another term, defying repeated calls for him to step down after admitting he smoked crack "in a drunken stupor".

Ford was the first candidate to show up at city hall when registration opened Thursday for the city's municipal election on 27 October.

He promised "Ford more years", the Toronto Star reported. He also called himself "the best mayor this city has ever had".

"If you want to get personal, that's fine," Ford told reporters, according to the Star. "I'm sticking to my record, and talk is cheap. You're going to see action like you've never seen before."

He was more restrained on Twitter, tweeting a photo of himself signing up to run again and saying simply, "Just filed my paperwork for the 2014 election. Vote on October 27."

The conservative mayor of Canada's largest city has said he would run again, even after the revelations last year about his drug use.

Red Flag

Texas: Surplus armed forces equipment further militarizes local police

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© DMNA.ny.govMine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle
The sheriff of Bastrop County, Texas, is a pretty happy man.

He just took possession of a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle for his police force. It's a gift from the US military -- paid for by taxpayers -- part of a surplus giveaway program to police deparments.

Bastrop County Sheriff's Office Lt. Joey Dzienowki told the Austin Statesman, "I look at this as the fire department looks at a new fire truck." Gee, I wonder when the kids can get a free ride on the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, July 4th? "When it's not in use on calls, the county's SWAT team will use the MRAP in training and the county may display it at various events for citizens to examine," Dzienowki explained to the Statesman.

To be fair to Lt. Dzienowski, he also avows, "We're not militarizing the department at all." Given that law enforcement agencies in cities and hamlets alike across the land are being given such defense department surplus items, you can be sure that one of the goals of the program is indeed to blur the distinction between local police and the military. This was begun long ago, and was most visibly evident in the emergence of SWAT teams a few decades back.

Bulb

Volgograd blasts follow same template as US, Syrian, Afghan attacks - MOSSAD & CIA?

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© AFPA destroyed trolleybus stands on a street in Volgograd on December 30, 2013 after ten people were killed in a bombing on the packed vehicle, the second attack in the city in two days after a suicide strike on its main train station, officials said.
The suicide blasts in Volgograd signal that it's time for international players to stop dividing terrorists into "good" and "bad" ones based on geopolitical agenda, and to unite the globe in a battle against the threat, Russia's Foreign Ministry stated.

"A strike, cynically planned on the eve of New Year celebrations, is another attempt by the terrorists to open a domestic 'front,' spread panic and chaos, cause interfaith strife and conflicts within the Russian society," the ministry said in a statement.

The two consecutive suicide attacks in the southern Russian city of Volgograd - which killed more than 30 people on Sunday and Monday - will not see Russia retreating in its "tough and consistent battle against the insidious enemy that knows no boundaries and can only be stopped collectively," the ministry said.

The ministry stressed that the Volgograd blasts were staged using the same template as recent terror attacks in the US, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and other countries.

"The position of some politicians and political strategists, who are still trying to divide terrorists as 'good' and 'bad' ones, depending on current geopolitical aims, is becoming evidently mischievous," the ministry stressed. "Terrorism is always a crime and the punishment for it must be inevitable."

Control Panel

Sorry for letting them snoop? Dell apologizes for 'inconvenience' caused by NSA backdoor

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© AFP/Getty Images/Justin Sullivan
Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum dropped a bombshell of sorts earlier this week when he accused American tech companies of placing government-friendly backdoors in their devices. Now Texas-based Dell Computers is offering an apology.

Or to put it more accurately, Dell told an irate customer on Monday that they "regret the inconvenience" caused by selling to the public for years a number of products that the intelligence community has been able to fully compromise in complete silence up until this week.

Dell, Apple, Western Digital and an array of other Silicon Valley-firms were all name-checked during Appelbaum's hour-long presentation Monday at the thirtieth annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. As RT reported then, the 30-year-old hacker-cum-activist unveiled before the audience at the annual expo a collection of never-before published National Security Agency documents detailing how the NSA goes to great lengths to compromise the computers and systems of groups on its long list of adversaries.

Spreading viruses and malware to infect targets and eavesdrop on their communications is just one of the ways the United States' spy firm conducts surveillance, Appelbaum said. Along with those exploits, he added, the NSA has been manually inserting microscopic computer chips into commercially available products and using custom-made devices like hacked USB cables to silently collect intelligence.

Laptop

'NSA has carte blanche to hack computers'

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© Computing.co.ukJim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group
The NSA appears to be making its own decisions about how democratic governments should be operating, what policies they follow and in general doesn't trust them to do their jobs, Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, told RT.

The latest revelations from Edward Snowden, published in Germany's Der Spiegel, show that the NSA is not only listening to people's phone calls and reading their e-mails, but actually has a special unit dedicated to bugging computers even before they get to the stores. Chips are installed in computers to be sold in geographical areas that the NSA deems to be worth spying on, the newspaper reports.

RT: Do the latest NSA revelations mean we can't even trust our own laptops?

Jim Killock: Sometimes it will mean that some people shouldn't trust their laptops, but also governments have to [watch] their own security organizations, and parts of what Der Spiegel's articles described today is how the NSA is hacking the Mexican government in order to find out more about how the Mexicans are dealing with drug issues, and so on. I think it's really quite dangerous and dramatic because the NSA appears to be making its own decisions about how the democratic governments should be operating, their policies and not trusting them to do their job.

RT: Who could be the target of this operation to intercept laptops? Are we talking about foreign governments or individuals as well?

Gear

North Korea: Kim Jong-un condemns uncle as 'filth' in new year address

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© Rodong Sinmun
Ruler makes first public reference to execution of Jang Song Thaek, saying ruling party has been strengthened as a result

Kim Jong-un has made his first reference to the execution of his powerful uncle, saying in a new year's addres that North Korea's ruling party had become stronger after it was purged of "factional filth".

Kim called for better relations with South Korea, warning that another war on the Korean peninsula would cause a massive nuclear disaster that would hit the United States.

Kim, the third generation of his family to rule North Korea, did not refer by name to his uncle Jang Song Thaek, whose execution in December in a rare public purge for alleged crimes against the ruling Workers' Party and the national interest.

"Our party took a firm measure to get rid of factional filth that permeated the party," Kim said in a broadcast on state television that appeared to be pre-recorded and did not show if he was speaking to an audience.

"Our unity strengthened hundredfold and party and revolutionary lines became more solid by purging the anti-party and anti-revolutionary faction."

Eye 1

Privacy concerns raised as more than one million pupils are fingerprinted in UK schools

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An estimated 31 per cent of schools did not consult parents before using the biometric technology
More than a million pupils have been fingerprinted at their secondary school - thousands without their parents' consent, according to new research published on Friday.

Figures show that four out of 10 secondary schools now use biometric technology as a means of identifying pupils - with nearly a third failing in their duty to seek parental consent before introducing the system.

The figures are based on Freedom of Information request returns from 1,255 schools to the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch with the group warning pupils will grow up believing "it is normal to be tracked like this all the time".

The most common uses of the system are at meal-times where headteachers claim it can be a more "discreet" method of ensuring those pupils entitled to free school meals get them - and in school libraries. Some have used the system for registration of pupils at school.

Based on the FOI returns in September, Big Brother Watch estimates 1.28 million pupils have been fingerprinted. Of those surveyed, an estimated 31 per cent did not consult parents before using biometric technology from September.

Magnet

New York Times and Guardian editorials say Edward Snowden deserves clemency

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© The Raw Story
Both the New York Times and U.K. paper the Guardian published editorials on New Year's Day calling for clemency for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The publications said that Snowden's revelations may have revealed some state secrets as part of his mission to expose the National Security Agency's massive spying apparatus, but that the revelations serve the greater need of informing the public that their privacy is being violated.

"Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight," wrote the Times editorial board.

"He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service," the editorial continued. "It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community."

The Guardian's editors, meanwhile, wrote, "Mr Snowden - through journalists, in the absence of meaningful, reliable democratic oversight - had given people enough knowledge about the nature of modern intelligence-gathering to allow an informed debate. Voters might, in fact, decide they were prepared to put privacy above security - but at least they could make that choice on the basis of information."

Books

Academic Zionist agents in U.S. go public

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© Press TV
It seems that the American Studies Association's (ASA) boycott resolution vote has rattled the Zionist cages.

They have proved that Veterans Today was right with our claim that academic espionage was one of the key areas where Israeli intelligence has invested major resources for a long time.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CoP), commonly Presidents' Conference, has been chosen by the Israeli lobby to lead the counterattack against the ASA historic resolution reported by Press TV last week.

World media described the resolution breakthrough as a sign that the tipping point toward a full Israel boycott was getting closer.

The Israeli lobby bigwigs decided it was time to take risks to diminish the ASA move by stacking up a big list of university heads to oppose it. Robert Sugarman, the Conference's chairman, and Malcolm Hoenlein, its executive vice chairman, said:

"This remarkable response is a clear declaration that American academia will not be party to the efforts to promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement."

Israeli espionage has concentrated for several decades now on subverting the leadership of any American institution that could ever be an adversary in terms of opposing Israeli crimes against humanity or their long-term exploitation of America to prop up its failed economy, one that is looted by elite Zionists like our own elite banksters and multinationals have done here. As Thomas Jefferson famously said, "Merchants have no country."