Puppet MastersS


Sherlock

The Sharyl Attkisson approach to journalism

Dylan Byers
Politico
Fri, 24 May 2013 16:13 UTC
Attkisson
© CBS PhotoProducers at CBS News once nicknamed Attkisson 'Pit Bull.'
Sharyl Attkisson has problems.

The Obama administration won't answer the CBS News correspondent's questions because her investigations - into Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Solyndra - often reflect negatively on it. Some colleagues at CBS News, where she has worked for two decades and earned multiple Emmy awards, dismiss her work because they perceive a political agenda. And now, she says, someone may have hacked into her computers.

Attkisson's one piece of solace may come from finally gaining some like-minded colleagues in the media. For years, Attkisson has been one of the few mainstream reporters pursuing critical stories about the Obama administration. Today, as "scandal season" takes hold in Washington, she has seen her longstanding skepticism of the White House and the Justice Department become the conventional attitude among a formerly deferential Beltway press corps.
Read More...
Sheriff

Woolwich murder: Theresa May vows to get tough on extremist websites

Patrick Wintour
Guardian
Sun, 26 May 2013 13:28 UTC
Image
© AFP/Getty ImagesThe family of Drummer Lee Rigby on Sunday visited the site of his murder in Woolwich.
Home secretary outlines measures to prevent radicalisation of British Muslims, including pre-emptive censorship of jihadist sites

A dramatic battery of measures to prevent radicalisation of British Muslims was outlined on Sunday by the home secretary, Theresa May, including tougher pre-emptive censorship of internet sites, a lower threshold for banning extremist groups and renewed pressure on universities and mosques to reject so-called hate preachers.

May also signalled that she was prepared to do battle with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, over his veto of the communications data bill.

After four days in which ministers have been praised in some quarters for avoiding a kneejerk response to the killing of soldier Lee Rigby outside his Woolwich barracks in south London, Whitehall swung into action. It has promised a new taskforce, chaired by the prime minister, and a root and branch review of Prevent, the government strategy to combat radicalisation.

M15 will also deliver a preliminary report to the intelligence and security committee on how it failed to realise that Michael Adebolajo, one of the Woolwich suspects, represented a serious threat to national security, even though the services had been tracking him for years and at one point sought to recruit him.
Read More...
Magnify

French ponder similarities between London, Paris attacks on soldiers

Kim Willsher
LA Times
Sun, 26 May 2013 13:24 UTC
Image
© Francois Guillot / AFP / Getty Images / May 25, 2013Police investigators and forensic experts work at the site where a man armed with a knife or box cutter attacked a French soldier patrolling a subway station on Saturday, stabbing him in the neck
French anti-terrorist investigators are hunting for a man who stabbed a soldier in the throat at a busy Paris shopping and transport center.

Detectives are also examining whether there is a link between the attack and the killing of a British soldier who was hacked to death in London on Wednesday.

The 23-year-old French soldier, Pfc. Cedric Cordier, was patrolling the busy underground corridors beneath the La Defense arch in the French capital's business district with two other soldiers when an attacker approached him from behind shortly before 6 p.m. on Saturday, authorities said. They said Cordier was stabbed in the neck with a knife or cutter that narrowly missed his carotid artery.

The soldier, a member of the Gap 4th Rifle Regiment, was taken to a hospital, where doctors said his life was not in danger. The attacker, who fled into a nearby shopping center, was described as of North African appearance and around 30 years old. He was still being sought on Sunday.

The area where the attack occurred adjoins the busy La Defense train station, and is monitored by video cameras run by the city transport network. Investigators are now going through footage from the cameras.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who visited Cordier in the hospital a few hours after Saturday's attack, said it was clear the victim was targeted because he was a soldier. Le Drian and Interior Minister Manuel Valls issued a joint statement condemning what they described as a "cowardly attack" on the soldier.

Comment: While you are all pondering the blatant efforts by French and British 'intelligence' agencies to manipulate you, ponder this:

Police state now! Monitoring Internet chatter the 'vital frontline in war against popular protest movements'

and this:

Anglo-French arms industry forces EU to lift official embargo on sending Weapons of Mass Destruction to Al Qaeda in Syria

Read More...
V

'March Against Monsanto' protests attract millions worldwide

Arturo Garcia
Raw Story
Sat, 25 May 2013 13:12 UTC
Image
© RT
Protesters in more than 50 countries mobilized on Saturday for a series of demonstrations against agricultural business titan Monsanto, far surpassing the organizer's expectations, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

"If I had gotten 3,000 people to join me, I would have considered that a success," activist Tami Canal told the newspaper. Instead, she said the "March Against Monsanto," which originated as a call to action via Facebook on Feb. 28, drew about two million people to demonstrations in 436 cities in 52 countries.

"It was empowering and inspiring to see so many people, from different walks of life, put aside their differences and come together today," Canal said to the Sun-Times. "We will continue until Monsanto complies with consumer demand. They are poisoning our children, poisoning our planet. If we don't act, who's going to?"

Besides protesting the company's practice of making genetically-modifying seeds, protesters vowed to make their voices heard against the U.S. Senate after it rejected an amendment introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have allowed states to require labels on foods made with modified ingredients.
Read More...
Pistol

Anglo-French arms industry forces EU to lift official embargo on sending Weapons of Mass Destruction to Al Qaeda in Syria

Ian Traynor
The Guardian
Tue, 28 May 2013 05:07 UTC
Image
Weapons 'r' us
Europe's sanctions regime against Syria was plunged into uncertainty after Britain, backed by France, forced a lifting of the EU arms embargo on what it identifies as the moderate opposition to President Bashar al-Assad.

Britain claimed victory in a long day of acrimonious negotiations, winning an easing of the arms embargo. The vast majority of EU states opposed the shift, but assented in order to preserve a semblance of unified policy.

A meeting of EU foreign ministers descended into recrimination with a vast majority against lifting the arms embargo, but William Hague, the foreign secretary, blocked a compromise deal. Austria, the biggest opponent of the British aim, reacted bitterly, stating that the EU negotiations had collapsed and that the Europe-wide sanctions regime would collapse at midnight on Friday.

Hague sounded satisfied, however, although others said 25 of 27 EU governments opposed the Anglo-French policy.

Comment: Hawks, doves, whatever. All of these countries have been funnelling weapons and mercenaries to Syria since the conflict began. That is is how it has been sustained. It would have ended as soon as it began if it weren't for Western dollars and weapons. The EU giving way to the armaments industry is merely the conclusion of a false debate to legitimise its 3-year-long proxy war against Syria.

Read More...
Snakes in Suits

Imperial envoy John McCain makes surprise visit to Al-Qaeda allies in Syria

Dan Roberts
The Guardian
Tue, 28 May 2013 04:55 UTC
Image
John McCain spends Memorial Day with Al Qaeda in Syria... treason much?
Hawkish war veteran's meeting coincides with new French reports of chemical weapons use by regime forces

Pressure on the White House to arm Syrian rebel groups is intensifying after a surprise visit by hawkish US senator John McCain and fresh reports of chemical weapons attacks.

The Republican war veteran met rebel leaders inside Syria to discuss their calls for heavy weapons and a no-fly zone to help them topple President Bashar al-Assad and bring the bitter civil war to a conclusion.

McCain's office confirmed to the Guardian that he had slipped into the country in recent days but declined to comment on the outcome of his talks with the rebel groups or whether it had hardened his views on arming them.

The Arizona senator has been leading efforts in Congress in recent weeks to force Barack Obama to intervene in Syria following reports of alleged chemical weapons use by forces loyal to Assad.
Read More...
Eye 1

Best of the Web: Police state now! Monitoring Internet chatter the 'vital frontline in war against popular protest movements'

Paul Cahalan & Jonathan Owen
The Independent
Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
An actual British government propaganda campaign poster to remind the people why they need totalitarian government

Comment: The following UK Independent article reveals the true reason for the Woolwich 'terror attack' and subsequent moves to increase 'the watchful eyes' of the British police state. The British government was quick to cast the south London knifing (by people MI5 tried to recruit as informants and whose families have stated were manipulated for years by the security services) as a 'terrorist attack', recalling the entire cabinet for an emergency meeting to discuss reviving legislation that had previously been shelved because the Liberal Democrats leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg resisted this Orwellian move. The Communications Data Bill requires Internet service providers and mobile phone companies to maintain records of everyone's internet browsing activity (including social media), email correspondence, voice calls, internet gaming, you name it. Although the draconian law is now couched in terms of clamping down on 'extremist Islamic websites', it's clear that its real goal is to monitor online chatter, gauge the general mood, then insert sockpuppets to 'win hearts and minds' and dampen the potential for mass protest movements overthrowing their despotic rule.

The "would-be terrorists" are YOU.


Experts are trying to pre-empt terrorism by bombarding jihadist websites with alternative messages

The major battle in the war against extremism is being fought over the internet by elite teams stationed behind keyboards and engaged in winning the hearts and minds of would-be terrorists.

It is a sign of the increasing understanding that small-scale, unsophisticated attacks such as the one in Woolwich are a growing threat: the Government, police and other agencies are involved in a propaganda war to counter extremism.

Comment: This has in fact been going on for quite some time; here the British government is using the recent so-called 'terrorist attack' to retrospectively win public approval for totalitarian measures that are already up and running.

See also:

CIA media infiltration is real: From Operation Mockingbird to Pentagon social media trolls

The Pentagon and its Sock Puppets

"Infocrafting" or Propaganda Online? USA Today journalists targeted by Pentagon sockpuppets

Read More...
USA

Obama losing the moral authority to lead this nation says Rand Paul

David Edwards
The Raw Story
Sun, 26 May 2013 10:33 UTC
Tea party-backed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sunday warned President Barack Obama that he was in danger of "losing the moral authority to lead this nation" because the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unfairly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.

"I don't know if people were targeted for conservative religious values or just conservative political values, and sometimes there's an overlap," Paul told ABC's Martha Raddatz, adding that the IRS scandal, last year's terrorist attacks in Benghazi and the news that some journalists were investigated for national security leaks were all taking away from "the president's moral authority to lead the nation."

"Nobody questions his legal authority," the Kentucky Republican explained. "But I think he's really losing the moral authority to lead this nation. And he really needs to put a stop to this."

"If no one is fired over this, I really think it's going to be trouble for him trying lead in the next four years," Paul added.

The president announced earlier this month, that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had asked for and received a letter of resignation from Steven Miller, the IRS acting commissioner.

Comment: This is just the tip of the iceberg - Obama lost what little "moral authority" he had ages ago!
Memorial Day THIS
Obama speech: 'Stop me before I kill again'
Bradley Manning: A tale of liberty lost in America

Read More...
Vader

Obama speech: 'Stop me before I kill again'

Eric W. Dolan
The Raw Story
Sun, 26 May 2013 11:11 UTC
Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume thinks it is very peculiar for President Barack Obama to call for executive power to be scaled back.

Hume noted on Fox News Sunday that Obama had "made generous use of" drone strikes.

"There's an odd quality to this whole thing, and it is almost like he's saying, with regard to the drone policy, 'We need something to stop me before I kill again,'" he explained. "We can see that in his support on an unrelated matter on the shield law for journalists. He's carried out these oversteps in pursuing journalists who are doing their job, and now he says 'we need a shield law,' as if to say we need a law to protect them from us."

Obama called for additional oversight of drone strikes on suspected terrorists in a major speech at the National Defense University on Thursday. Earlier this month, the President called for legislation to protect journalists from being coerced into revealing their sources.
Read More...
Eye 1

Criminalising journalism: Obama administration facing widespread backlash over seized phone records

Nikhil Kumar
The Independent
Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
© Doug Mills/The New York TimesAttorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. defended the seizure of journalists’ telephone records, calling an article one of “the top two or three most serious leaks” in decades.

The Obama administration has been accused of criminalising the press, as US lawmakers called for an independent investigator to look into the way the Justice Department conducts cases involving reporters.

President Barack Obama is facing widespread criticism for the aggressive way in which his government investigates leaks, after it emerged that officials had secretly seized phone records from the Associated Press and monitored personal emails of the Fox News reporter James Rosen.

Mr Obama last week directed his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to review the Justice Department's procedures. Mr Holder is due to report back in July - but his position as the head of the department at the centre of the controversy has led lawmakers to question whether he is the right person to lead the review.
Read More...