Puppet MastersS


Eye 2

Report: Obama brings chilling effect on journalism

Brett Zongker
Associated Press
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:26 UTC
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© J. Scott Applewhite, APIn this June 6, 2013, file photo, Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 6, 2013. The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday, Oct. 10, 2013, on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration.
The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration.

The Committee to Protect Journalists conducted its first examination of U.S. press freedoms amid the Obama administration's unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources and seizures of journalists' records. Usually the group focuses on advocating for press freedoms abroad.

Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press." The report notes President Barack Obama came into office pledging an open, transparent government after criticizing the Bush administration's secrecy, "but he has fallen short of his promise."

"In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press," wrote Downie, now a journalism professor at Arizona State University. "The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate."
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Road Cone

We paid over $500 million for the Obamacare sites and all we got was this lousy 404 Error

Andrew Couts
Digital Trends
Tue, 08 Oct 2013 22:14 UTC
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It's been one full week since the flagship technology portion of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) went live. And since that time, the befuddled beast that is Healthcare.gov has shutdown, crapped out, stalled, and mis-loaded so consistently that its track record for failure is challenged only by Congress.

The site itself, which apparently underwent major code renovations over the weekend, still rejects user logins, fails to load drop-down menus and other crucial components for users that successfully gain entrance, and otherwise prevents uninsured Americans in the 36 states it serves from purchasing healthcare at competitive rates - Healthcare.gov's primary purpose. The site is so busted that, as of a couple days ago, the number of people that successfully purchased healthcare through it was in the "single digits," according to the Washington Post

The reason for this nationwide headache apparently stems from poorly written code, which buckled under the heavy influx of traffic that its engineers and administrators should have seen coming. But the fact that Healthcare.gov can't do the one job it was built to do isn't the most infuriating part of this debacle - it's that we, the taxpayers, seem to have forked up more than $500 million of the federal purse to build the digital equivalent of a rock..
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Vader

Is Obama locked in a victim mentality?

Dr. Keith Ablow
Fox News
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:10 UTC
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© AP PHOTO/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS President Obama speaks about the budget and the partial government shutdown in the Brady Press Room of the White House in Washington.
President Obama's rhetoric is finally coming closer to what appears to be his psychological truth: Because America victimized him and countless millions of others, any person or party or movement that opposes his views and does not yield to him is not just his adversary, but abusive, predatory and even threatening.

Again and again, President Obama has described members of Congress who insist on fiscal responsibility as having taken "hostages," "demanding a ransom," using "extortion," and threatening to "blow up" the government.

On Tuesday, in fact, the president used these exact words when speaking to the press, "What you haven't seen before, I think from the vantage point of a lot of world leaders, is the notion that one party in Congress might blow the whole thing up if they don't get their way," he said. Later he added, "you do not hold people hostage or engage in ransom taking to get 100 percent of your way."
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Dollar

Feds to let states pay to open parks

Matthew Daly
breitbart.com
Thu, 10 Oct 2013 22:05 UTC
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The Obama administration said Thursday it will allow states to use their own money to reopen some national parks that have been closed because of the government shutdown.

Governors in at least four states have asked for authority to reopen national parks within their borders because of the economic impacts caused by the park closures.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the government will consider offers to pay for park operations, but will not surrender control of national parks or monuments to the states.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said his state would accept the federal offer to reopen Utah's five national parks.
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V

Park service abuses spark new 'Battle of Yorktown'

Charlene Israel
CBN News
Fri, 11 Oct 2013 21:58 UTC
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The shutdown of Washington has now become the battle of Yorktown.

In the same place where America fought its final battle of independence, one American businessman is refusing to bow to pressure to close up shop during the shutdown.

His story is just one example of what many view as the Obama administration's widespread overreach during the government gridlock.
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MIB

Flashback Mexcian drug baron 'El Chapo' Gúzman nearly caught by Mexican authorities after close brush with Hilary Clinton and 'dozens of other foreign ministers'

Katherine Corcoran
Associated Press
Mon, 12 Mar 2012 11:34 UTC
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Joaquín Guzmán Loera
Much like the late Osama bin Laden, the man the U.S. calls the world's most powerful drug lord apparently has been hiding in plain sight.

Mexican federal police nearly nabbed Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in a coastal mansion in Los Cabos three weeks ago, barely a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with dozens of other foreign ministers in the same southern Baja peninsula resort town.

Jose Cuitlahuac Salinas, Mexico's assistant attorney general in charge of organized crime investigations, confirmed on Sunday that there was a near miss in late February in the government's efforts to arrest the man who has become one of the world's top fugitives since he escaped prison in a laundry truck in 2001.

"We know he was there," Salinas told The Associated Press.

The incident fuels growing speculation that authorities are closing in on Guzman, and that the government of President Felipe Calderon is determined to grab him before his six-year term ends in December.

Comment: Guzman remains a free man. And according to informants, he works for the U.S. government.

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Stormtrooper

Police state: UK security services colluded with construction oligarchs in secret plan to blacklist 3,200 building workers

Daniel Boffey
The Guardian
Sun, 13 Oct 2013 07:48 UTC
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A protest against the UK govt's blacklisting of 'troublesome' workers this summer
IPCC tells lawyers representing victims it is likely that all special branches were involved in providing information

Police officers across the country supplied information on workers to a blacklist operation run by Britain's biggest construction companies, the police watchdog has told lawyers representing victims.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has informed those affected that a Scotland Yard inquiry into police collusion has identified that it is "likely that all special branches were involved in providing information" that kept certain individuals out of work.

The IPCC's disclosure confirms suspicions voiced by the information commissioner's office last year that the police had been involved in providing some of the information held on the files, as revealed by this newspaper.

The admission has been welcomed by campaigners for the 3,200 workers whose names were on the blacklist that was run for construction companies as "absolute evidence" of a conspiracy between the state and industry that lasted for decades.

Comment: When we first heard about this story, we assumed the blacklisted workers must have been blacklisted for some good reason (perhaps they had criminal records or were involved in unlawful activities at construction sites)... but no, they were blacklisted because they were law-abiding citizens looking out for the safety of their colleagues. And their unions, rendered utterly useless in this environment of rampant corporate greed, sided with the oligarchs every step of the way.

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Chess

Old game, new enemy: China

John Pilger
Asia Times Online
Sun, 13 Oct 2013 02:35 UTC
US targets China
© Unknown
Countries are "pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world," wrote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody facade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game.

The al-Shabaab shopping mall killers came from Somalia. If any country is an imperial metaphor, it is Somalia. Sharing a common language and religion, Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians. Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another. "When they are made to hate each other," wrote a British colonial official, "good governance is assured."

Today, Somalia is a theme park of brutal, artificial divisions, long impoverished by World Bank and IMF "structural adjustment" programs, and saturated with modern weapons, notably President Obama's personal favorite, the drone. The one stable Somali government, the Islamic Courts, was "well received by the people in the areas it controlled," reported the US Congressional Research Service, "[but] received negative press coverage, especially in the West." Obama crushed it; and in January, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, presented her man to the world. "Somalia will remain grateful to the unwavering support from the United States government," effused President Hassan Mohamud, "thank you, America."
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Arrow Down

Arafat may have been poisoned with Polonium 210 - Lancet claims


Al Jazeera
Sat, 12 Oct 2013 15:16 UTC

One of the world's leading medical journals has supported the possibility that Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader, was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium 210.

The British The Lancet journal has published a peer review of last year's research by Swiss scientists on Arafat's personal effects.

It endorsed their work, which found high levels of the highly radioactive element in blood, urine, and saliva stains on the Palestinian leader's clothes and toothbrush.

The work of the experts at Lausanne University, Switzerland, was triggered by an Al Jazeera investigation, and also led to Arafat's body being exhumed in November 2012 for further testing.

In October 2004, Arafat fell ill, suffering from a number of symptoms, including nausea and abdominal pain.
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Info

Guardian was 'entirely correct' to publish NSA stories, says Vince Cable

Dan Roberts
The Guardian
Fri, 11 Oct 2013 11:13 UTC
Business secretary confirms Nick Clegg is to launch review of oversight of intelligence agencies

Vince Cable
© Unknown
The Guardian performed a considerable public service after making the "entirely correct and right" and "courageous" decision to publish details from secret NSA files leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, Vince Cable has said.

The business secretary, who reserved judgment on Snowden's decision to leak the files, confirmed that Nick Clegg was setting in train a review of the oversight of Britain's intelligence agencies.

In an interview on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, Cable said that "arguably" Britain did not have proper oversight of the domestic intelligence service MI5, overseas agency MI6 and eavesdropping centre GCHQ.
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