Puppet MastersS


War Whore

Britain leads dash to explore for oil in war-torn Somalia

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Western oil exploration techniques in the 21st century
Government offers humanitarian aid and security assistance in the hope of a stake in country's future energy industry

Britain is involved in a secret high-stakes dash for oil in Somalia, with the government offering humanitarian aid and security assistance in the hope of a stake in the beleaguered country's future energy industry.

Riven by two decades of conflict that have seen the emergence of a dangerous Islamic insurgency, Somalia is routinely described as the world's most comprehensively "failed" state, as well as one of its poorest. Its coastline has become a haven for pirates preying on international shipping in the Indian Ocean.

David Cameron last week hosted an international conference on Somalia, pledging more aid, financial help and measures to tackle terrorism. The summit followed a surprise visit by the foreign secretary, William Hague, to Mogadishu, the Somali capital, where he talked about "the beginnings of an opportunity'' to rebuild the country.

Comment: Just as it did in Libya, the UK will first join the US in bombing Somalia to make it safe for further oil exploitation:

Somalia: UK weighs up air strikes against rebels


Bad Guys

No surprises as Silvio Berlusconi bribery case thrown out of court

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© Associated PressSilvio Berlusconi (right) was accused of paying $600,000 to British lawyer David Mills (left) for his court evidence during two trials in the 1990s.
Judges rule that statute of limitations has run out on case involving payment of $600,000 to British lawyer David Mills

Silvio Berlusconi's trial for bribing the British lawyer David Mills has failed to reach a verdict after judges ruled that the statute of limitations has run out on the case.

Prosecutors had requested that the former Italian prime minister serve five years for allegedly paying $600,000 (£380,000) to Mills, the estranged husband of former Labour cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, to withhold evidence on his behalf in two trials in the 1990s. Berlusconi denied the charges.

Mills was convicted in 2009 on bribery charges, but his conviction was overturned by Italy's highest court after the statute of limitations expired.

Disputes between prosecutors and defence lawyers over exactly when Berlusconi's charges would time out arose after repeated delays in hearings due to his obligations as prime minister and after an immunity law he passed temporarily stopped the five-year trial.

Arrow Down

Taliban Militants Say They Shot Down U.S. Drone

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© Reuters/US Air Force/Airman Julianne ShowalterAn MQ-1B Predator from the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron takes off from Balad Air Base in Iraq, in this file photograph taken on June 12, 2008.
Peshwar, Pakistan - A U.S. drone crashed on Saturday in North Waziristan, not far from the Afghan border, Pakistan intelligence officials said, while Taliban militants said they had shot it down.

Taliban militants led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur said they had collected wreckage of the destroyed drone and would provide its pictures to the media on Sunday.

"The drone today in Machikhel was flying at low altitude and our fighters fired at and shot it down," a local commander of the Taliban said. "We have trained people for such type of job."

It is impossible to verify the militants' account and a U.S. official in Washington denied the Taliban had shot down the drone and declined further comment. The CIA, which runs the drone campaign, also declined to comment.

Pakistani security officials said they did not know what caused the drone to crash.

Pills

FDA's Outrageous New Claim: Your Body Is a Drug -- and They Can Regulate It

stem cell
© iStockphoto / Thinkstock
Adult stem cells (as opposed to embryonic stem cells, which are at the heart of the stem cell controversy) are a truly exciting part of the future of medicine, with seemingly limitless potential for anti-aging, arthritis and far more...

But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is attempting to regulate stem cell procedures at a Colorado clinic, stating that stem cells are drugs that fall under FDA jurisdiction.

Outrageously, the FDA is making this claim even though the stem cells being used in the procedure come from the patient's own body, which means they are essentially claiming that they can regulate a part of your body.

What Makes Stem Cell Treatments so Exciting?

What makes stem cells so special is their potential to develop into many different cell types.

When a stem cell divides, it either becomes another type of cell, such as a muscle cell or cartilage, or it remains a stem cell.

Furthermore, these cells act as an internal repair system in many types of tissues, dividing a seemingly indefinite number of times to replenish other cells.

As you age, your stem cells diminish in quality and quantity, so just when you require strong stem cells the most, you're becoming increasingly deficient. Hence your organs and tissues eventually wear out and need to be restored or replaced.

Bad Guys

North Korea Vows "Sacred War"' Against South Korea, U.S.

North Korea threatened on Saturday to wage a "sacred war" in response to joint military exercises planned by its arch-rival South Korea and the United States, saying it was determined to keep Washington from imposing its political will on it.

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© ReutersLast week the North vowed "merciless retaliatory strikes" if any shells landed in waters claimed by Pyongyang during a live-fire artillery exercise near the disputed Yellow Sea border
The statement was issued by the North's National Defense Commission a day after the secretive state held its first round of talks with the United States since the young and untested Kim Jong-un took office in December upon the death of his father.

"Now that a war has been declared against us, the army and people are firmly determined to counter it with a sacred war of our own style...," said the statement, carried by the state KCNA news agency.

"The U.S. imperialists are the sworn enemy keen to launch another war of aggression to impose an 'American style political mode' upon us...." The sacred war, it said, would use "strong means unknown to the world."

Pyongyang has periodically used the term "sacred war" to counter what it sees as a threat from the South and its U.S. ally.

Red Flag

FBI Tries To Coax Muslim Into Bombing US Capitol

Once again a "foiled terror plot" is the work of US government agents who since 9/11 have been working overtime to create crimes in order to 'solve' them, keeping that terror myth alive and the American War Machine rolling.


Comment: FBI Organizes Almost All Terror Plots in the US (The CIA organises the others).


2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Big Agri-Business, Big Pharma, Arms Trafficking, Suicide Cults and MIVILUDES - The Truth Behind France's Cult-Hunting Policies Exposed

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Caveat lector: Nothing in the following investigative report should be construed as evidence that Sott.net condones the manipulative activities of organisations like Scientology or any other organisation that preys upon human frailty. Not only do we accept the need to protect the vulnerable in society from such 'New Age' con-artists, over the past 10 years we have repeatedly sought to expose such predators. It is the very New Age con artists that we exposed who then began to smear us with the "cult" label. The problem however, is that state-funded bodies that have been created supposedly to protect citizens from 'mental manipulation' have their own agenda that is, in the long run, just as pernicious as the spiritual snake oil-peddling groups they claim to stand against. This is revealed in the fact that MIVILUDES has only undertaken a token attack on Scientology; they were never raided nor interrogated (as many harmless groups have been), and at the end of a long, well-publicized legal action, were fined only 600,000 euros, a veritable slap on the wrist for such a wealthy organization. Meanwhile, France's president, Sarkozy, cosied up to Scientology's representative, Tom Cruise on several occasions. In short, MIVILUDES' actions against Scientology are merely for show.

Since the 1970s, successive French governments have used, abused and exaggerated the danger posed by New Age groups to enforce an oppressive conformity of belief in the state itself on the French people. This simply supplants one destructive and manipulative cult ideology for another. As the preeminent anti-cult organisation in France, MIVILUDES, has stated: "State repression must take place when a certain number of elements are gathered [...] when one or several people start getting fond of ideas not commonly shared and agreed upon by society." That is to say, when ordinary people start to get fond of ideas that could, in a general way, threaten the control of the psychopaths in power over the masses of normal human beings.

The troubling state of affairs that we outline in the following paragraphs does not, however, concern only the French people. It is global in scope and has its roots in the 1960s and '70s and the efforts by Western 'intelligence agencies' and elements within Western governments to co-opt and discredit what was known as the 'Human Potential Movement' and the subsequent 'New Age' movement and enforce a conformity of thought and belief on hundreds of millions of people.

Initially the strategy involved the infiltration and co-opting of any group that was beginning to see (and speak about) the problems with big governments and big corporations dominating (and destroying) the world. It was, and is, about control of the population - mind, body and soul - of any given country. But the agenda was not limited to mere infiltration of such groups. After all, it would take a lot of effort and manpower to continually keep tabs on each new group and try to subvert them. What was needed was the ability to automatically demonise any group that 'deviated' from social norms or proposed ideas that were at odds with the agenda of big government and big corporations. Within the process of subverting such groups, the logical answer was found.

Once a group had been infiltrated (or created from scratch by an intelligence agency), they could, quite easily, be made to appear quite insane. Groups that have lost touch with reality ultimately resort to extreme measures, like suicide, or so the logic goes. What better way to demonise the very idea of 'alternative lifestyles' than to create some high-profile cases where such groups commit 'collective suicide'?

But people involved in such subterfuge are always on the lookout for an opportunity to maximise their gains with the least effort. Groups that have been targeted for transformation into a 'cult' are ultimately expendable, and expendable assets of intelligence agencies are traditionally used as cover for highly illegal activities on the part of government and corporate leaders.

If certain influential and well-connected individuals want to engage in illegal money-making activities, they organise themselves in secret and attempt to ensure a significant level of deniability. If they want to engage in some HIGHLY illegal activity (like weapons sales prohibited under international law, money laundering, overthrowing governments, phony terrorist attacks, pedophilia rings, etc.) they organise themselves under the cover of an organisation that can, if necessary, be denounced as a 'suicide cult'. After all, 'suicide cult' members tell no tales and few questions are asked about their motives because, clearly, they were just insane.

In addition, such 'cult suicides' very effectively establish the 'reality' of dangerous cults in the public mind and that 'reality' can then be used to defame, threaten and, if possible, destroy any group that threatens the status quo of psychopaths in power and the general population as their slaves.

The 'Jonestown' cult and 'collective suicide' (which was clearly a CIA operation) is an example of this very strategy, but there have been many other such operations, which together have produced the 'cult' meme in modern society. But it has been in France, where adherence to, and admiration for, 'normal' French cultural values is seen as the quintessence of sanity, that the 'cult' meme has been used to such great effect in the modern world.


Crusader

SOTT Focus: Human Rights Violations in France

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Since the 1990s, there have been several legal entities created in France that are supported by the government whose sole purpose is to mandate what people can think and believe. These organizations have the capability (expressly designed into them) of bypassing and/or superseding any rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. These French organizations, for instance MIVILUDES, are essentially full-spectrum Fascism created and run by psychopaths and their Authoritarian Followers. Anybody who is discovered to have the slightest tendency to adopt alternative views is seemingly a danger because they are undoubtedly going to turn into an "apocalyptic cult" at any moment! The examples of the mass suicides of the People's Temple, the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate are trotted out at the beginning of the 2010 MIVILUDES report, thereby making the label "cult" as scary as "Muslim Terrorist". (Never mind that those events were CIA PsyOps designed as a sort of '9-11' against non-mainstream thinking, the way 9-11 was designed to initiate the War on Terror.)

Particularly targeted by these organizations are any and all individuals or groups which advocate practices such as alternative medicine (including nutritional approaches to getting and staying healthy), non-mainstream cancer therapies, yoga, meditation and other stress-relieving techniques, especially if such discussions include scientific support. Additionally targeted are any individuals who discuss 'conspiracy theories' (especially about 9-11, but also including economic collapse and NWO topics), UFOs/aliens, psychology other than Freudianism (especially if such discussions include cutting edge scientific support; Jungian psychology is especially targeted), Earth Changes and cometary bombardments (especially if it includes scientific support), increasing earthquake and volcanic activity (especially if it includes scientific support) and more. All of these activities, or even thoughts about these activities, will get you labeled as a cult or a follower of a cult and subject to some pretty frightening procedures designed to "help" you reorganize your thinking more in line with what is accepted by the mainstream authorities such as the American Medical Association (AMA), Big Pharma, Big-Agri, NASA and certainly the CIA. Anything that is not handed down from those authorities is labeled "pseudo-science", no matter how credible the scientist or how accurate the research. In short, it is as much a war against real science - as opposed to the corrupt science that has dominated the world for the past 100 years and is used to support wars more than anything else - as it is against religious beliefs. Moreover, if you are researching religions (Bible scholars beware!), mysticism, ancient wisdom and alternative history, you are also a cult. And if you have no apparent cultic beliefs, it's just a ruse; you are just trying to appear like a researcher to lure people in, waiting to turn into an apocalyptic cult at any moment. The whole approach is reminiscent of the Bush gang's claims about WMDs vis-a-vis Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and I think you all realize what that kind of rhetoric led to.

The 2010 MIVILUDES report tells us:
The fact of offering people the possibility to search for mysticism, wisdom and a forgotten ideal world, all the while assuring them of happiness, can be an extremely efficient bait.

There exists as well the risk that current social topics may be used (such as ecological aspirations) in order to play on people's anguish and anxiety such as: frustration concerning the meaning of life, solitude, the pervasive anonymity and isolation, the lack of interpersonal communication and social acceptance, the need for the religious and the sacred in one's life, refusal of a crushing social way of life.

By feeding into this environment of social anxiety via the use of references to pseudo-scientific elements, even those which have not been verified, in reality these beliefs are a tool that promotes collective fear, with the purpose of exerting more power over people and, in extreme cases, this can possibly lead to a vital risk [risk of mass suicide!] for the members of the group, or to questioning mainstream society through more or less violent actions.
I think that the perceptive reader can see what this organization is set up for and what it is they are really afraid of: they are afraid of people waking up and recognizing that the lunatics have taken over the asylum! It is clear to any normal person with empathy that the authors of this report are inquisitors set up to defend the status quo of the rule of a pathological elite who are not fit to rule as evidenced by their psychopathic behavior and intolerance towards anything truly human and who are able (and have been able) to get away with the most outrageous human rights violations in modern day France.

Did you know that alternative medicine and homeopathy are labeled as cults in France? People have gone to jail and have had their children taken away from them for giving alternative treatments to their children even when they were told in advance by their doctors that the child's case was terminal and they would die even with the mainstream treatments (chemotherapy and radiation?!). The parents were destroyed for seeking something, anything, that might save the life of their child or, at least, not subject them to the horrors of modern cancer treatments. (See Maître Jean-Marc Florand, avocat de monsieur et madame de M, in French.)

The fact is that it is the psychopaths who rise to the top who have no stress. Normal people who feel empathy and who have a conscience are the ones who are being crushed in this pathological society. To whom do French people turn to in order to get help for their sufferings and wounds? As it happens, the psychological sciences in France are as backward as almost everything else; they still consider Freud to be the only psychological authority! How Dark Ages is that? Most psychology in the rest of the modern world is NOT Freudian and more and more psychologists are coming to the realization - as Jung did - that Freud was a psychopath himself. Which means that psychological help in France can only add to people's suffering.

Gear

Not in CIA's interest at the moment: US spies find no hard evidence Iran building bomb

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© Davis Turner/Getty Images/AFPUS troops
US intelligence analysts continue to believe there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Citing unnamed US officials, the newspaper said the latest assessments by US spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program.

The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America's 16 intelligence agencies, the report said.

The report came after the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that it continued to have "serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program."

The Times said there was no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran had been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power.

Red Flag

Monsanto Found Guilty of Chemical Poisoning in France

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© Lance Page/Truthout; Adapted: Carl Mueller/Flickr
In a major victory for public health and what will hopefully lead to other nations taking action, a French court decided today that GMO crops monster Monsanto is guilty of chemically poisoning a French farmer. The grain grower, Paul Francois, says he developed neurological problems such as memory loss and headaches after being exposed to Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller back in 2004. The monumental case paves the way for legal action against Monsanto's Roundup and other harmful herbicides and pesticides made by other manufacturers.