Puppet MastersS


Attention

USS Nimitz carrier group sails into Red Sea in 'prudent' move

USS Nimitz
© Reuters/Hugh GentryThe USS Nimitz sails about 150 miles north of the island of Oahu during the RIMPAC Naval exercises off Hawaii July 18,2012.
The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and four other ships in its strike group moved into the Red Sea early on Monday, U.S. defense officials said, describing the move as "prudent planning" in case the ships are needed for military action against Syria.

The officials said the Nimitz entered the Red Sea around 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), but the strike group had not received any orders to move into the Mediterranean, where five U.S. destroyers and an amphibious ship, the USS San Antonio, remain poised for possible cruise missile strikes against Syria.

Moving the Nimitz into the Red Sea was aimed at putting more U.S. assets in place if they are needed to support what U.S. officials still describe as a limited attack against Syria after it used chemical weapons against civilians.

"It does place that strike group in a position to respond to a variety of contingencies," said one official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The nuclear-powered Nimitz is accompanied by the Princeton, a cruiser, and three destroyers - the William P. Lawrence, Stockdale and Shoup, according to the officials.

They said there had been no change regarding six U.S. Navy ships now in the eastern Mediterranean, but military planners were reassessing the situation given a delay in the cruise missile strikes that had been expected this past weekend.

President Barack Obama on Saturday backed off imminent strikes by the destroyers off the coast of Syria until Congress had time to vote its approval. Defense officials said the delay gave them more time to reassess which ships and other weapons will be kept in the region - and whether some may be allowed to leave. Congress returns to Washington September 9.

The U.S. Navy doubled its presence in the eastern Mediterranean in the past week, effectively adding two destroyers to the three that generally patrol the region, and diverting the San Antonio, which carries four massive CH-53 helicopters and 300 Marines, from another mission.

Two of the destroyers were due to be relieved but are now serving along with the ships that were to replace them.

Arrow Down

Monsanto insiders dump stock as the truth about GMOs spreads across Wall Street

Monsanto
© Unknown
Monsanto executives and insiders are dumping Monsanto stock in record volumes, sending the stock price spiraling downward. CEO Hugh Grant just sold off 40,000 shares at $97.74, and both Janet Holloway and Gerald Steiner - both high-level Monsanto executives - recently ditched more than 10,000 shares each. Tom Hartley also bailed on another 6,000 shares at $100.15.

Hedge funds, meanwhile, are also dumping Monsanto stock, most likely due to sharply increased "negative sentiment." This means people increasingly don't like Monsanto, and that's a direct result of all the growing realizations about the dangers of GMOs, Monsanto's predatory business practices, the company's dangerous experiments that have already unleashed genetic pollution, and the fact that GM corn has been experimentally found to cause widespread cancer tumors in rat studies.

Just the fact that Monsanto's GE wheat trials got out of control and contaminated a wheat field in Oregon - causing Japan and South Korea to ban U.S. wheat imports - has resulted in 150 groups now demanding the USDA keep a tighter lid on Monsanto's GMO experiments. These groups are fed up with seeing the market value of their crops destroyed by sloppy "open field" experiments being conducted by Monsanto that spread genetic pollution across the country and contaminate non-GMO crops. (Monsanto goes even further and actually sues the farmers whose fields they contaminated!)

Target

Impeachment: congress fires opening shot across Obama's bow

"Mr. President, in the case of military operations in Libya you stated that authorization from Congress was not required because our military was not engaged in "hostilities." In addition, an April 1, 2011, memorandum to you from your Office of Legal Counsel concluded:..."President Obama could rely on his constitutional power to safeguard the national interest by directing the anticipated military operations in Libya - which were limited in their nature, scope, and duration - without prior congressional authorization.'"

"We view the precedent this opinion sets, where "national interest" is enough to engage in hostilities without congressional authorization, as unconstitutional."
Text from letter of Rep. Scott Regall (R, VA) to Pres. Obama
Signed by 140 Reps, including 21 Democrats
The letter of Scott Regall (1) to Barak Obama has exploded on the scene with its opening words:

Comment: What if enough Americans contacted their representatives NOW, and demanded that Obama be impeached (and Bush indicted) for his crimes against humanity, which he perpetuates in their names, when in fact the American people are against such bloody wars and tired of being hated around the world for their president's unconscionable actions. Who knows, maybe hundreds and thousands of lives will be saved!


Nuke

Japan's online nuclear reactors to be halted

Ohi nuclear plant
© UnknownOhi nuclear plant
The only 2 nuclear reactors online in Japan will soon be shut down for regular inspections. That means all nuclear power generators in the country will be offline for the first time in about 14 months.

Due to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in 2011, all of Japan's nuclear reactors were offline at one point in the past 2 years.

But last year, Kansai Electric Power Company, the operator of the Ohi nuclear power plant on the Sea of Japan, restarted the facility's Number 3 and Number 4 reactors.

The 2 are the only reactors currently online in Japan.

On Monday afternoon, Kansai Electric began lowering the power output of the Number 3 reactor for regular inspections. The reactor will come to a halt on Tuesday morning.

The plant operator also plans to halt the Number 4 reactor for a regular check on September 15th.

To gain approval for the restart of their offline reactors, Ohi and 5 other nuclear plants are undergoing assessments by the Nuclear Regulation Authority.

Stop

The last chance to stop the NDAA

Image
© Mr. Fish
I and my fellow plaintiffs have begun the third and final round of our battle to get the courts to strike down a section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that permits the military to seize U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military facilities. Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran, the lawyers who with me in January 2012 brought a lawsuit against President Barack Obama (Hedges v. Obama), are about to file papers asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear our appeal of a 2013 ruling on the act's Section 1021.

"First the terrorism-industrial complex assured Americans that they were only spying on foreigners, not U.S. citizens," Mayer said to me recently. "Then they assured us that they were only spying on phone calls, not electronic communications. Then they assured us that they were not spying on American journalists. And now both [major political] parties and the Obama administration have assured us that they will not detain journalists, citizens and activists. Well, they detained journalist Chris Hedges without a lawyer, they detained journalist Laura Poitras without due process and if allowed to stand this law will permit the military to target activists, journalists and citizens in an unprecedented assault on freedom in America."

Last year we won round one: U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the Southern District of New York declared Section 1021 unconstitutional. The Obama administration immediately appealed her ruling and asked a higher court to put the law back into effect until Obama's petition was heard. The appellate court agreed. The law went back on the books. I suspect it went back on the books because the administration is already using it, most likely holding U.S. citizens who are dual nationals in black sites in Afghanistan and the Middle East. If Judge Forrest's ruling were allowed to stand, the administration, if it is indeed holding U.S. citizens in military detention centers, would be in contempt of court.

X

Stocks of vital medicines hit zero as Egypt and Israel tighten Gaza siege

egypt gaza crossing
© Eyad Al Baba / APA imagesA Palestinian girl waits to cross into Egypt from the Gaza Strip, at the Rafah crossing, on 24 August 2013
The Egyptian army began demolishing homes along the country's border with the Gaza Strip today, an Israeli-style tactic carried out under the pretext of creating a "buffer zone" to "reduce weapons smuggling and illegal crossings by militants."

In fact, Egypt is tightening its side of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, deepening the economic and medical crisis faced by the territory's almost 1.7 million Palestinian residents.

The dramatic effects of the tightening siege are revealed in the July monthly humanitarian report, published on 23 August by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Meanwhile, the UN reports that Israel more doubled its number of violent attacks on Gaza fishermen in the first half of this year.

Arrow Down

God visited me, says Swazi king

Swaziland's King Mswati III
© Associated PressSwaziland's King Mswati III.
Manzini - Swaziland's absolute monarch, King Mswati III, said he was visited by God at the weekend and this resulted in unseasonal electrical storms in the country - and a new name for the country's controversial political system.

"The lightning was flashing even though it was (a time of year) when there is usually no clouds or rain," Mswati said when he opened a trade fair in Manzini on Saturday.

He said the storm was sent by God to accompany his vision.

The South African Weather Service interpreted it differently, reporting that a cold front from South Africa to the north colliding with warm air from the Mozambique Channel had created thunderstorm conditions in Swaziland.

"As I was wondering at this (weather), I saw the new name of the Swazi government," Mswati told a rapturous audience.

Stormtrooper

Another infringment of human rights: mosques declared terrorism organizations by NYPD

nyc mosque
© Agence France Presse/Stan HondaA New York Police Department portable observation post outside the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in the Queens borough of New York
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has secretly label entire mosques as terrorism organisations, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

The label has allowed the department to spy on imams and record sermons without having specific evidence of criminal activities.

This means that anyone attending the prayer service is part of organisation and can potentially be investigated and go under surveillance.

As per confidential police documents and interviews, NYPD has initiated more than a dozen "terrorism enterprise investigations" into mosques following the terror attacks on World Trade Centers (WTC) in New York.

V

People Power: British govt. urged to learn lessons from past invasions

Anti-war protest
© UnknownPeace activists in the US, UK and several other countries have been marching against a military intervention in Syria -
A big protest gathering has been in London to highlight huge popular opposition to Britain's military intervention in Syria.

Protesters chanted slogans against war and urged the government to learn lessons from the experiences of lies and deception circulated to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The overwhelming majority of the population who attended Saturday's protest voiced strong opposition to an invasion of Syria based on U.S.-led attempts to proclaim the popular government of President Bashar al Assad in Syria of using chemical weapons against its own people in Ghouta.

Various speakers from the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) hailed the British parliament's vote against an invasion of Syria as a "victory".

STWC convenor Lindsey German, lauded the vote saying "it was a victory in parliament. It was a vote that the politicians should have had the guts to hold 10 years ago and they didn't."

German described STWC's objective as to remind British imperialism of its national interests.

"We've said for some years that one of our aims as a movement should be to break Britain from following the US in every step of its foreign policy," she said. "This week we made that possible".

Comment: It is clear that the average man in the street is able to see through the lies.


Dollars

How will you deal with $10 a gallon gas?

Obama And Gas Prices
© EricPetersAutos

The Dear Leader has Decided to pause - briefly - for a perfunctory congressional approval before triggering what could be TEOTWAWKI - the end of the world as we know it - by lobbing bombs at Syria. Which will likely result in Syria (and perhaps Iran, allied with Syria) lobbing bombs at Israel, the proxy poodle (or is it the reverse?) of the United State ("s" left of in the interests of accuracy). Whereupon the entire region - then the world - may well go up in flames. At least, until it runs out of oil.

It is shit statue-carving crazy.

Yet, "we" - meaning, they - Dear Leader and his relative handful of minions who control the missiles, the ships and "the troops" - appear determined to pursue this course nonetheless. Despite the obvious implications - and in spite of the equally obvious horn o' plenty of reasons not to do it. Wait. Check that. There is a reason - several of them, actually. Just not the ones publicly stated. No one but a madman could entertain the idea of deliberately batting at a hornet's nest that one could just as easily walk around.

What goes on inside Syria may be tragic, but it's not our tragedy. We - that is, the Dear Leader, et al, - are neither wanted nor requested - and have about as much right to lob bombs at the Syrian government over its alleged abuse of its people as Syria has to lob bombs at America over its government's abuses of its people - none of them mere assertions based on iffy "intel" but admitted to, openly, by its government. For instance, rendition.

And torture as state policy. Indefinite detention. And that's only the recent stuff. Let's not forget who helped "Saddam" gas Iranians back in the '80s. Or helped violently depose the "democratically" elected leader of Iran - ushering in the Shah and his Savak. "We" are in no position to lecture anyone about "human rights." Much less bomb them over it.