Puppet MastersS


Newspaper

New York Times takes down the Clinton Foundation: Could be devastating for Bill and Hillary

Clinton Foundations
© The TelegraphAn internal review of the Clinton Foundations' workings has proved troubling
Is the New York Times being guest edited by Rush Limbaugh? Today it runs with a fascinating takedown of the Clinton Foundation - that vast vanity project that conservatives are wary of criticising for being seen to attack a body that tries to do good. But the liberal NYT has no such scruples. The killer quote is this:
For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.
Over a year ago Bill Clinton met with some aides and lawyers to review the Foundation's progress and concluded that it was a mess. Well, many political start-ups can be, especially when their sole selling point is the big name of their founder (the queues are short at the Dan Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center). But what complicated this review - what made its findings more politically devastating - is that the Clinton Foundation has become about more than just Bill. Now both daughter Chelsea and wife, and likely presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton have taken on major roles and, in the words of the NYT "efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons' charity work from Mr Clinton's moneymaking ventures and Mrs Clinton's political future." Oh, they're entangled alright.

Eye 1

Oliver Stone: Barack Obama is a "snake" for his role in NSA spying programs

Oliver Stone
© Getty ImagesFilm director Oliver Stone speaks before press in Tokyo on August 12, 2013.
Film director Oliver Stone - who has made no secret of his liberal political views - called President Barack Obama a "snake" for his role in National Security Agency spying programs that have become, he said, more about silencing protestors than finding terrorists.

"Obama is a snake," Stone told an audience in Tokyo on Monday. "He's a snake. And we have to turn on him."

"The Boston Marathon, they were so busy tracking down potential protestors...that they missed the bombers," Stone told the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. "It's never about terrorists, it always becomes about the way J. Edgar Hoover did it; he brought all the weight of government to bear against protestors. He didn't like protestors. He thought they were left-wing communists. He never could find the proof, but by the time the Vietnam War came around, as you know, 500,000 people were on the list, and they were being eavesdropped on. And where are we now? Same place."

Cult

Evangelical pastor who 'accused gays and lesbians of having genocidal tendencies' to stand trial in Massachusetts for alleged crimes against humanity

Pastor Scott Lively
© ScreenshotPastor Scott Lively
A federal judge on Wednesday denied a motion to dismiss a crimes against humanity case brought against evangelical pastor Scott Lively of Massachusetts.

Lively is accused of violating international law by inciting the persecution of LGBT individuals in Uganda. The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG) in 2012.

"We are gratified that the court recognized the persecution and the gravity of the danger faced by our clients as a result of Scott Lively's actions," CCR Attorney Pam Spees said. "Lively's single-minded campaign has worked to criminalize their very existence, strip away their fundamental rights and threaten their physical safety."

Arrow Down

The forgotten cold war plan that put a ring of copper around the Earth

Ringed Earth
© Black Cat StudiosArtist Ron Miller’s rendition of a ringed Earth.
During the summer of 1963, Earth looked a tiny bit like Saturn.

The same year that Martin Luther King, Jr. marched on Washington and Beatlemania was born, the United States launched half a billion whisker-thin copper wires into orbit in an attempt to install a ring around the Earth. It was called Project West Ford, and it's a perfect, if odd, example of the Cold War paranoia and military mentality at work in America's early space program.

The Air Force and Department of Defense envisioned the West Ford ring as the largest radio antenna in human history. Its goal was to protect the nation's long-range communications in the event of an attack from the increasingly belligerent Soviet Union.

During the late 1950's, long-range communications relied on undersea cables or over-the-horizon radio. These were robust, but not invulnerable. Should the Soviets have attacked an undersea telephone or telegraph cable, America would only have been able to rely on radio broadcasts to communicate overseas. But the fidelity of the ionosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that makes most long-range radio broadcasts possible, is at the mercy of the sun: It is routinely disrupted by solar storms. The U.S. military had identified a problem.

Pirates

400 surface-to-air missiles were stolen from Libya and are now 'in the hands of some very ugly people', says whistleblowers' attorney

 US consulate compound in Benghazi
© AFP/Getty ImagesThis file photo taken on September 11, 2012 shows an armed man waving his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in flames after being set on fire inside the US consulate compound in Benghazi.
A former U.S. attorney representing Benghazi whistleblowers is claiming that 400 surface-to-air missiles were "stolen" and "taken from Libya" and are now "in the hands of some very ugly people." He also said the Obama administration is "deeply concerned" that the weapons may be used to shoot down airliners.

In an interview with WMAL radio, Joe DiGenova explained that the stolen missiles also represent one of the reasons the U.S. State Department shut down 19 embassies across the Middle East last week.

He said the development has the Obama administration "deeply concerned" and on alert.

Even more potentially shocking, DiGenova claimed the missiles are now in the hands of Al Qaeda operatives, according to his sources. His sources include "former intelligence officials who stay in constant contact with people in the Special Ops and intelligence community."

Megaphone

Best of the Web: Humanity is drowning in Washington's criminality

Image
© Unknown
Americans will soon be locked into an unaccountable police state unless US Representatives and Senators find the courage to ask questions and to sanction the executive branch officials who break the law, violate the Constitution, withhold information from Congress, and give false information about their crimes against law, the Constitution, the American people and those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Congress needs to use the impeachment power that the Constitution provides and cease being subservient to the lawless executive branch. The US faces no threat that justifies the lawlessness and abuse of police powers that characterize the executive branch in the 21st century.

Impeachment is the most important power of Congress. Impeachment is what protects the citizens, the Constitution, and the other branches of government from abuse by the executive branch. If the power to remove abusive executive branch officials is not used, the power ceases to exist. An unused power is like a dead letter law. Its authority disappears. By acquiescing to executive branch lawlessness, Congress has allowed the executive branch to place itself above law and to escape accountability for its violations of law and the Constitution.

Attention

This is the biggest cluster of Hindenburg Omens since the last stock market crash

Hindenburg Omens
© The Economic Collapse Blog
Are we heading for a major stock market decline? Warnings about a crash of the financial markets are quite common these days, and usually they don't materialize. But this time may be different.

A number of top analysts are pointing out the fact that the biggest cluster of "Hindenburg Omens" has appeared since the last stock market crash. And those that have studied this insist that the more "Hindenburg Omens" there are in a cluster, the stronger the signal is.

Meanwhile, another very disturbing sign is the fact that the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries is starting to soar again.

On Tuesday it shot up from 2.62% to 2.727%. As I have written about previously, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries is the most important number in the U.S. economy right now. If that number continues to rise, it is going to be very, very bad news for the financial system.

But before I discuss rising interest rates any further, I want to talk about this unusual cluster of Hindenburg Omens that we have just witnessed.

Dollars

Forget student loans...Introducing day care loans

Now that enough college age Americans have been stuffed with over a trillion dollars in student debt only to get a job a McDonalds and live with their parents, folks in New York City have come up with a brilliant new concept to ensure the production of an entirely new generation of debt slaves. Introducing day care loans...and here's the best part, they are "interest only" from childcare to kindergarden!

Of course it makes sense that these loans would originate in my hometown of NYC, which has in the past 15-20 years fully transformed itself into a corporatized, generic and unaffordable Wall Street whorehouse.

From CBS:


Gear

CIA Director Brennan confirmed as reporter Michael Hastings next target


This week Elise Jordan, wife of famed journalist Michael Hastings, who recently died under suspicious circumstances, corroborated this reporter's sources that CIA Director, John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project (CNN clip).


Last month a source provided San Diego 6 News with an alarming email hacked from super secret CIA contractor Stratfor's President Fred Burton. The email (link here) was posted on WikiLeaks and alleged that then Obama counter-terrorism Czar Brennan, was in charge of the government's continued crackdown or witch-hunt on investigative journalists.

After providing the Stratfor email to the CIA for comment, the spymaster's spokesperson responded in lightning speed. Two emails were received; one acknowledging Hastings was working on a CIA story and the other said, "Without commenting on information disseminated by WikiLeaks, any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless."

Eye 1

Best of the Web: Surveillance state! Secrecy, deception and the real war on reality

internet Surveillance graphic
© AP

If there is one thing we can take away from the news of recent weeks it is this: the modern American surveillance state is not really the stuff of paranoid fantasies; it has arrived.

The revelations about the National Security Agency's PRISM data collection program have raised awareness - and understandably, concern and fears - among American and those abroad, about the reach and power of secret intelligence gatherers operating behind the facades of government and business.

But those revelations, captivating as they are, have been partial - they primarily focus on one government agency and on the surveillance end of intelligence work, purportedly done in the interest of national security. What has received less attention is the fact that most intelligence work today is not carried out by government agencies but by private intelligence firms and that much of that work involves another common aspect of intelligence work: deception. That is, it is involved not just with the concealment of reality, but with the manufacture of it.

The realm of secrecy and deception among shadowy yet powerful forces may sound like the province of investigative reporters, thriller novelists and Hollywood moviemakers - and it is - but it is also a matter for philosophers. More accurately, understanding deception and and how it can be exposed has been a principle project of philosophy for the last 2500 years. And it is a place where the work of journalists, philosophers and other truth-seekers can meet.