Puppet MastersS


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Military interventions are ordered by Corporates not politicians/Governments

It is time the world realized that the West's politicians are mere political stooges placed as nominees for elections by a handful of global corporates and a transnational ruling class who use them to invisibly rule the world.
"Corporations have taken over the government and turned it against its own people." Ralph Nader
US Marines
© Wikimedia Commons

'Direct investment' has been redefined and it is this direct directive by corporates that has forced Western political leaders to advocate military interventions of the immoral and unethical nature we see unfolding before us. All these compilations of war crimes, abuses etc are nothing but a sham to give a touch of 'we did justice' to the injustice taking place. The fact is military interventions are happening primarily for the economic interests of not the country invading by the corporate lobbyists who are waiting to land and plunder invaded nations. It is not foreign invasion it is corporate invasion that is taking place and national leaders/governments are getting eliminated for standing in the way of that quest.

Iraq was a neoliberal invasion - so too have been all the countries that have fallen before and after Iraq. If it is not oil, it is some other 'monetary' interest that leads to the declaration of 'war' without any provocation. What happens thereafter is removal of restrictions to foreign ownership and trade, contracts given to foreign corporations to develop this that and the other. The smokescreens are 'production sharing agreements' where governments own the oil but the development of the oil field, the pumping, refining, shipping are all done by the foreign companies. It is simply draining out everything that should belong to the country and its people.

American corporates NOT America or its people have secured the world's second largest oil reserves which belonged to Iraq! This was why Bush immediately announced after the invasion of a Middle East Free Trade Area to spread the economic invasion to the rest of the region by 2013. That has happened through the Arab Springs! When Bush said he would 'counter terror with trade' it was a giveaway. The war plan was prepared by US consultancy firm Bearing Point Inc - which received $250millon contract to make Iraq's economic infrastructure!

The plan was to fire entire Iraqi military (500,000), so that many of these jobless would take to guns and start an insurgency, which happened according to plan. 120,000 of Iraq's senior bureaucrats were fired throughout government, schools and even hospitals, new laws reduced taxes on all corporations by 25% to open up for foreign investment and these firms were allowed to own 100% of Iraqi businesses as opposed to partnership framework, corporates could send their entire profits home without investing a cent in Iraq. More than 150 US companies won contracts in Iraq worth over $50billion. There was no law to state foreign companies had to hire Iraqis - so these firms imported foreign workers! What resulted were the Iraqis turning against the new invaders who came in as 'liberators'. Whats more new laws entitled foreigners to buy land in Iraq that are now exclusive holiday homes for foreigners - is it difficult to picture what Iraq would look like in time to come?

Che Guevara

French court overturns government's ban on comedian Dieudonne's sold-out tour

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Une quenelle pour Manuel Valls
A French court has overturned a ban on a show by controversial comic Dieudonne M'bala M'bala due to be performed on Thursday night.

The show in the city of Nantes will open Dieudonne's tour.

He has seven convictions for anti-Semitic hate speech and was recently recorded making anti-Semitic remarks about a Jewish journalist.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls has said he will appeal to the Council of State, France's highest administrative court.

The court's decision "has not exhausted legal options" in the case, Mr Valls said. The Council of State is reportedly due to give a decision at 17:00 on Thursday (16:00 GMT), with the possibility that the show may yet be prevented from going ahead.

Comment: Dieudonné's lawyer: "It's a victory for Dieudonné, he will perform tonight - January 9th 2014 - in Nantes."




Light Sabers

Greece begins EU presidency - Criticizes austerity, spending cuts and fiscal policy of Berlin and Brussels

Greece EU presidency
© Alkis Konstantinidis/EPAGreece has begun its six-month presidency of the European Union. Finance minister Yannis Stournaras said Greece does not want to have any more fiscal conditionality
Greece kicked off six months in charge of the European Union on Wednesday declaring that the imposition of austerity, spending cuts and fiscal policy by Berlin and Brussels could no longer be tolerated.

Coinciding with a growing backlash across the EU against the austerity policies mainly scripted in Berlin, the start of Greece's EU presidency reinforced the isolation of German chancellor Angela Merkel, who has dominated the policy response to the EU crisis for the past four years.

Following four years at the sharpest end of Europe's debt and currency crisis and €250bn in bailout funds, the Greek government declared enough was enough.

Evil Rays

Jacob Appelbaum: Everyone knows the NSA is spying on everyone, but did you know they conduct targeted beaming?

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Jacob Appelbaum
Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum revealed what he calls "wrist-slitting depressing" details about the National Security Agency's spy programs at a computer conference in Germany on Monday where he presented previously unpublished NSA files.

Appelbaum is among the small group of experts, activists and journalists who have seen classified United States intelligence documents taken earlier this year by former contractor Edward Snowden, and previously he represented transparency group WikiLeaks at an American hacker conference in 2010. Those conditions alone should suffice in proving to most anybody that Appelbaum has been around more than his fair share of sensitive information, and during his presentation at the thirtieth annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg on Monday he spilled his guts about some of the shadiest spy tactics seen yet through leaked documents.

Presenting in-tandem with the publishing of an article in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Appelbaum explained to the audience of his hour-long "To Protect and Infect" address early Monday that the NSA has secretly sabotaged US businesses by covertly - and perhaps sometimes with the cooperation of the tech industry - coming up with ways to exploit vulnerabilities in the products sold by major American companies, including Dell and Apple, among others.

Comment: If you want to skip the details about how they're spying/storing data, fast-forward to the 5-10 mins in the video, where you'll learn what 'conspiracy theorists' have been saying for decades.

Next time someone hits you with, 'that's crazy tin-foil hat talk!', send them a link to this article.

See also:

Snowden ally Applebaum says his Berlin apartment subject to raids


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."