Puppet MastersS


Cult

Pope says future of mankind at stake over gay marriage


The Telegraph, UK
Sat, 22 Dec 2012 05:06 UTC
Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in on a heated debate over gay marriage, criticising new concepts of the traditional family and warning that mankind itself was at stake.

Pope Benedict XVI
© ReutersPope Benedict XVI
"In the fight for the family, the very notion of being - of what being human really means - is being called into question," the Pope said in Italian during an end-of-year speech.

"The question of the family ... is the question of what it means to be a man, and what it is necessary to do to be true men," he said.

The Pope spoke of the "falseness" of gender theories and cited at length France's chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, who has spoken out against gay marriage.

"Bernheim has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper," he said.

He cited feminist gender theorist Simone de Beauvoir's view to the effect that one is not born a woman, but one becomes so - that sex was no longer an element of nature but a social role people chose for themselves.
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Snakes in Suits

After resigning, Monti weighs running for office as Italy's president sets stage for elections


Fox News
Sat, 22 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
Mario Monti
© ReutersItaly's former Prime Minister Mario Monti.
Rome - Italy's president is meeting with political leaders to set the stage for general elections early next year as Premier Mario Monti weighs whether to run for office after having handed in his resignation.

Monti, appointed 13 months ago to steer Italy away from a Greek-style debt crisis, stepped down Friday after ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's party yanked its support for his technical government.

His resignation sets the stage for President Giorgio Napolitano to dissolve parliament and set a date for elections, expected in February, after consulting Saturday with leaders of Italy's political parties. More eagerly anticipated though is Monti's decision, expected Sunday, as to whether he will run.

Small centrist parties have been courting Monti, but Italian newspapers said Saturday he was inclined to refuse. The center-left Democratic Party is expected to win.

Source: The Associated Press
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Eye 1

Google starts watching what you do off the Internet too


RT
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
Google
© Reuters / Jason Lee
The most powerful company on the Internet just got a whole lot creepier: a new service from Google merges offline consumer info with online intelligence, allowing advertisers to target users based on what they do at the keyboard and at the mall.

Without much fanfare, Google announced news this week of a new advertising project, Conversions API, that will let businesses build all-encompassing user profiles based off of not just what users search for on the Web, but what they purchase outside of the home.

In a blog post this week on Google's DoubleClick Search site, the Silicon Valley giant says that targeting consumers based off online information only allows advertisers to learn so much. "Conversions," tech-speak for the digital metric made by every action a user makes online, are incomplete until coupled with real life data, Google says.

"We understand that online advertising also fuels offline conversions," the blog post reads. Thus, Google says, "To capture these lost conversions and bring offline into your online world, we're announcing the open beta of our Conversions API for uploading offline conversion automatically."
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Snakes in Suits

Obama nominates John Kerry as next Secretary of State


RT
Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
John Kerry
© Agence France-Presse/Karen BleierJohn Kerry
President Barack Obama has nominated Senator John Kerry to be the next secretary of state on Friday.

Kerry is noted for his experience and relationship-building skills that could help him succeed outgoing Sec. Hilary Clinton. Sec. Clinton recently announced she would step down after Obama's inauguration in January.

"In a sense, John's entire life has prepared him for this role," Pres. Obama said Friday afternoon when he made the announcement official in Washington.

"He's not going to need a lot of on the job training," Obama said of Sen. Kerry.

Citing his nominee's military experience during the Vietnam War as well as his efforts to resolve the conflict after serving, Pres. Obama said the senator is "a perfect choice to guide American diplomacy in the years ahead."

President Obama also celebrated Sen. Kerry's tenure as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, a position he will have to resign from before moving to his new cabinet role.

"It won't be easy to leave the Senate that you love," the president said.
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Arrow Down

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti steps down


RT
Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
Mario Monti
© Agence France-Presse/Donato FassanoMario Monti
Mario Monti has resigned as Prime Minster of Italy, saying he no longer has the support he needs to govern. Monti replaced Silvio Berlusconi a little over a year ago after the previous govt proved unable to cope with the financial problems facing it.

Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian President, has accepted his resignation but has asked Monti to stay on as a head of a caretaker government until new elections in a couple of months.

His resignation comes as MPs passed the 2013 budget drawn up by his government with 309 votes in favor and 55 against.

Monti is widely credited with overseeing a recovery in Italy's bonds and repairing the country's tattered image abroad. His leadership has also been praised by Angela Merkel and other European leaders such as Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the group of euro area finance ministers.

When Monti took over, Italy's borrowing was approaching unaffordable levels. He introduced pension reform and raised the retirement age to 66 for men and 62 for women. He also did away with a system of seniority pensions, which allowed many civil servants to retire at 58.

Most importantly though was under Monti yields on Italian 10-year bonds fell to under 7%, now they are between 4 and 5%. Bonds are a key indicator of how much a country has to pay to borrow money and at over 7%, which they were before Berlusconi stepped down, they are unaffordable. However, Monti is unpopular with many Italians dealing with soaring unemployment, a shrinking economy and higher taxes. A poll conducted on November 17th showed that 62% of Italians had a negative view of Monti's government while 82% said they had little confidence in the economy improving.
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Stormtrooper

U.S. marine pleads guilty to urinating on Taliban corpse


The Guardian, UK
Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00 UTC
Hamid Karzai condemned the actions of Staff Sergeant Joseph Chamblin as inhuman, which came to light in a YouTube video.

Image
© The Associated PressA YouTube video shows U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in July 2011.
Washington - A US marine staff sergeant who urinated on dead Taliban insurgents and posed for photographs with the bodies has pleaded guilty to two charges in a military court.

His sentence was a reduction in rank and forfeiture of $500 (£307) in pay.

Staff Sergeant Joseph Chamblin pleaded guilty on Thursday at a special court martial at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to dereliction of duty for failing to properly supervise junior marines. He also pleaded guilty to wrongfully urinating on a deceased enemy combatant.

The incident occurred during a counter-insurgency operation in Helmand province in Afghanistan in July 2011. It came to light in January this year when a videotape of the incident was posted on YouTube and other websites.

The video showed four men in camouflage marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them joked, "Have a nice day, buddy," while another made a lewd joke.

The video was one of a series of offensive incidents involving US service members that roused Afghan ire and led to heightened tensions between Washington and Kabul earlier this year.
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Eye 2

Patrick Clawson is RT's 'Villain of the Day': Lobbyist openly calls for U.S. to commit false flag attack to justify war against Iran


Russia Today
Wed, 19 Dec 2012 16:47 UTC
RT pretty much spells it out for you.

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Magic Wand

Damage control? 911 Sandy Hook emergency services' live feed 'showed early confusion'

Libor Jany
Connecticut Post
Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:31 UTC
Image
Newtown - In the frantic moments after a gunman stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday and gunned down 26 people, most of them children, authorities expected to encounter a second shooter as they converged on the building, according to a recording of a 911 tape that was independently verified by Hearst Connecticut Newspapers on Tuesday.

"I have reports of two shooters running past the building, past the gym, which would be rear," a dispatcher said on the tape, before trailing off. Shortly afterward, the operator told a State Police trooper who was racing to the scene from the nearby Troop A barracks in Southbury to "make sure you have your vest on."

A review of the recording suggests that authorities were unaware of the grisly scene they were walking into.


Comment: This is the full-length version:


But here is an abridged version to save you listening to 'encrypted' chatter which dominates the back and forth radio calls:



Comment: The only "dead end" here is the place we are led to when we try to fit all the known facts of this crime into the official timeline.

Sandy Hook massacre: Official story spins out of control

Sandy Hook massacre: Evidence of official foreknowledge?

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Bug

SOTT Focus: Sandy Hook massacre: Evidence of official foreknowledge?

Niall Bradley
Sott.net
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:35 UTC
Image
© CBSThe moment it emerged that he was alive and was taken into police custody in Hoboken, New Jersey, many if not all of the statements previously made to the press by anonymous 'law enforcement officials' regarding Ryan Lanza and his connections could no longer have been known beforehand.
In the following passage of my previous article on the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, I made the following reference to Ryan Lanza being the named second suspect caught armed in the adjacent woods:
Perhaps most astonishingly, this suspect arrested in the woods was named in an Associated Press report as 24-year-old Ryan Lanza. The original report has long since vanished of course, but you can see it referenced here. This was despite the fact that Ryan had already been named as the deceased suspect inside the school, lying next to two handguns.
I have since found the original Associated Press report, which in fact states that it was "Ryan's younger brother", Adam Lanza, who was arrested in the woods. So let's take a closer look at this revealing report.
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Handcuffs

"And nobody dies in your prisons?" Russian fury at U.S. Magnitsky Act

Kommersant
Information Clearing House
Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:33 UTC
Image
Guantanamo a shinning example of an American prison

Barack Obama has signed into law a bill that establishes normal trade relations with Russia for the first time in decades, including the repeal of the 1974 Jackson-Vanick Amendment that denied "most favored nation" status to countries restricting human rights.

But the bill also included the so-called "Magnitsky" Act, which calls for sanctions against any Russian who was involved in the 2009 death of lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky. Russia is incensed by what it considers interference with an internal matter.

The editor-in-chief of a well known pro-government newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, was the first high-profile individual to be affected. He received a fax on Friday Dec. 14, the same day the law was enacted, informing him that his visa to the United States had been revoked due to the provisions of the Magnitsky Act. It is not clear what his connection to the Magnitsky case is.

What happened to Sergei Magnitsky?

Sergei Magnitsky, the auditor of the Hermitage Capital fund, was accused of tax evasion. He was held in prison for nearly a year, during which time he told doctors on several occasions that he was feeling ill. In spite of his complaints, he never received medical treatment, and his health got worse. He died on Nov. 16, 2009 after having finally been transferred to a medical facility and treated for chronic hepatitis and diabetes.
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