Puppet MastersS


Star of David

Obama: Israeli settlement building not constructive to peace

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© Reuters/Ammar AwadU.S. President Barack Obama (C) and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (L) stand together after reviewing the honour guard during a welcoming ceremony in the West Bank city of Ramallah March 21, 2013.
President Barack Obama said on Thursday that settlement building in the occupied West Bank did not "advance the cause of peace", but stopped short of demanding a construction freeze to enable negotiations to resume.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama said he remained committed to the creation of an "independent, viable and contiguous" Palestinian state, but said achieving that goal would not be easy.

"The core issue right now is how do we get sovereignty for the Palestinian people and security for Israeli people," he told reporters following almost two hours of talks with Abbas.

"That's not to say settlements aren't important. That's to say if we solve those two problems, the settlement issue will be resolved," he added.

Bad Guys

Andrea Mitchell: Obama and Netanyahu have 'one of the worst relationships I can remember'

Brace yourselves, for NBC's Andrea Mitchell - on MSNBC no less - actually criticized Barack Obama Wednesday.

During a News Nation segment about the President's trip to Israel, Mitchell said his relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is "one of the worst" she can remember going all the way back to her years covering Ronald Reagan (video follows with transcript and commentary):


Eye 2

Iraq war: make it impossible to inflict such barbarism again

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© Jean-Marc Bouju/APAn Iraqi prisoner of war comforts his son at a center for prisoners of war captured by the US army near Najaf in March 2003.
The US and Britain not only bathed Iraq in blood, they promoted a sectarian war that now threatens the region

If anyone doubted what kind of Iraq has been bequeathed by a decade of US-sponsored occupation and war, today's deadly sectarian bomb attacks around Baghdad against bus queues and markets should have set them straight. Ten years to the day after American and British troops launched an unprovoked attack on a false pretext - and more than a year since the last combat troops were withdrawn - the conflict they unleashed shows no sign of winding down.

Civilians are still being killed at a rate of at least 4,000 a year, and police at about 1,000. As in the days when US and British forces directly ran the country, torture is rampant, thousands are imprisoned without trial, and disappearances and state killings are routine.

Meanwhile power and sewage systems barely function, more than a third of adults are unemployed, state corruption has become an institutionalised kleptocracy and trade unionists are tried for calling strikes and demonstrations (the oil workers' leader is in court in Basra on that charge tomorrow). In recent months, mass protests in Sunni areas have threatened to tip over into violence, or even renewed civil war.

The dwindling band of Iraq war enthusiasts are trying to put their best face on a gruesome record. Some have drifted off into la-la land: Labour MP Tom Harris claims Iraq is now a "relatively stable and relatively inclusive democracy", which is more or less the direct opposite of reality.

Sheriff

Blue code of silence: New York City cop says payback likely after stop-frisk testimony

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© Associated Press/Seth WenigProtesters participate in a rally near the federal courthouse in New York, Monday, March 18, 2013.
A New York City police officer testified Wednesday that he's already been labeled a rat and expects more retaliation from colleagues for testifying at a civil trial that the department routinely enforces quotas on arrests and other enforcement action and punishes those who do not achieve the artificial goals.

Officer Pedro Serrano told a federal judge in Manhattan that his colleagues in the Bronx already dumped out his locker and stuck rodent stickers on the outside, implying he is a rat for testifying.

"I fear that they're going to try and set me up and get me fired," he said.

Serrano, 43, was speaking publicly for the first time at the trial, which is challenging how the New York Police Department makes some street stops. His testimony was given to show a culture within the nation's largest department that revolves more around numbers and less around actual policing.

Lawyers for the four men who sued say officers unfairly target minorities under the controversial tactic known as stop and frisk, sometimes because of pressure to make illegal quotas. Attorneys for the city say the department doesn't profile - officers go where the crime is, and the crime is overwhelmingly in minority neighborhoods. Police officials have said that they do not issue quotas but set some performance goals for officers.

Dollar

China's new premier to enforce "painful" market restructuring

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang
China's newly installed premier, Li Keqiang, emphasised in his first press conference on Sunday that the government is preparing sweeping "free market" economic restructuring measures, including privatisation of state assets and deregulation of the banking and finance sector. The remarks of Li, who was formally appointed the successor of Premier Web Jiabao by the National Peoples Congress (NPC) that concluded on the weekend, underscore the new Chinese Communist Party leadership is committed to an accelerated assault on the jobs, working conditions, and living standards of the working class.

After the NPC, Li took questions from Chinese and foreign journalists for nearly two hours in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. During the press conference, broadcast live on Chinese state television, the new premier mentioned "reform" two dozen times to emphasise the forceful character of his policy. "The reform is about curbing government power; it is a self-imposed revolution," he declared. "It will require real sacrifice and this will be painful and even feel like cutting one's wrist".

Stormtrooper

North Korea threatens to attack US bases in Okinawa, Guam

North Korean soldiers
© Reuters / KCNANorth Korean soldiers attend military drills in this picture released by the North's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang March 20, 2013.
North Korea has threatened to target US airbases in Okinawa and Guam as it issued an air raid alert on Thursday and ordered its military to stand ready, the country's state media reported.

"The United States is advised not to forget that our precision target tools have within their range the Anderson Air Force base on Guam where the B-52 takes off, as well as the Japanese mainland where nuclear powered submarines are deployed and the navy bases on Okinawa," the North Korean command spokesman was quoted as saying by KCNA news agency.

The air raid alert was issued at 9:32 am local time (00:32 am GMT) with military units and civilians told to take cover, Korean Central Television said.

A news report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency suggested that the warning appears to be a part of a military drill, though this has not been confirmed by Pyongyang.

Bizarro Earth

Fruits of 9/11: Little reaction from human rights watchdogs as Gitmo hunger strike continues

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After 42 days on hunger strike, though acknowledged by the US military, the protest by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has so far been largely unacknowledged by international humanitarian organizations.

In a comment to RT the United Nations rights body said it is investigating allegations of mistreatment at America's detention facility in Cuba.

"While aware of some of the allegations of mistreatment of inmates said to have provoked the hunger strike - which include undue interference with the inmates' personal effects -- we are still trying to confirm the details," the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navy Pillay said.

The Red Cross, which visited the island prison from February 18 to 23, was one of the few international organizations to comment on the situation at the Guantanamo detention camp. It acknowledged that a hunger strike was actually taking place, but so far the organization has only released a statement, stating "The ICRC believes past and current tensions at Guantanamo to be the direct result of the uncertainty faced by detainees."

Military censorship makes it quite difficult to access any information about Gitmo prisoners. It was the attorneys for the detainees that first expressed urgency and grave concern over the life-threatening mass hunger strike that reportedly started in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on February 6.

Star of David

Israel's incoming defense minister evaded war crimes arrest, called Palestinians "cancer"

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© WikipediaIsrael’s next “defense” minister poses for a photo with notorious racist blogger Pamela Geller
This is Moshe Ya'alon, the Likud parliamentarian set to become minister of "defense" in Israel's new hard-right coalition government due to be sworn in early next week.

In a 2002 interview with Israeli paper Haaretz, when he was Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Ya'alon said the "Palestinian threat" was "like cancer" and an "existential threat." He explained that his solution was "applying chemotherapy."

The "chemotherapy," was the massive destruction his forces visited on Palestinian society during the second intifada. Israeli forces infamously fired over a million bullets at Palestinian demonstrators within the first few days of that popular uprising.

Under pressure, Ya'alon later back-pedaled, saying his statements were "inopportune," but that he had been "taken out of context" reported financial publication Globes in Hebrew.

Handcuffs

Bell officials guilty of defrauding California town, jury finds

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Former city manager Robert Rizzo, former assistant city manager Angela Spaccia, former councilman Victor Bello and ex-mayor Oscar Hernandez appear in court, Sept. 22, 2010. Rizzo and Spaccia have not been put on trial yet.
Small town officials were charged with unlawfully inflating salaries

The 36,000-person town of Bell, Calif., once had a city manager earning twice as much as the U.S. president, despite a quarter of the population living in poverty. Now, five former town council members have been found guilty of a slew of offenses after 18 days of jury deliberations.

Robert Rizzo, the former city manager, was characterized during the trial as the ringleader of the alleged fraud by the defendants, who claimed they were kept in the dark about city business.

Jurors didn't buy the argument, finding the five defendants each guilty of several felony charges of "misappropriation of public funds" for payment received as members of Bell's solid waste and recycling authority. The defendants were each found not guilty of charges relating to their service on the town's public financing authority.

A sixth defendant, Luis Artiga, was found not guilty of 12 charges brought against him. He sobbed in court as the verdicts were read.

Magnify

Christine Lagarde's flat raided by French police

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© Eric Vidal/ReutersChristine Lagarde's lawyer said the police raid and wider investigation would help exonerate the IMF chief from any criminal wrongdoing.
IMF chief's residence searched amid inquiry into her handling of €285m payout to Nicolas Sarkozy supporter Bernard Tapie

Police have searched the Paris home of the head of the International Monetary Fund as part of a fraud investigation centred on a supporter of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Christine Lagarde's flat was raided along with that of her office manager and the home of businessman Bernard Tapie, a former politician, actor, singer and television celebrity.

The IMF chief has been the subject of preliminary investigations for "complicity in the embezzlement of public funds", since 2011, when Tapie was awarded €284m of public money in compensation in a financial dispute while she was economy minister.

The search came hours after the French government was rocked by a separate scandal after the budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac was put under criminal investigation amid claims he hid money from the French taxman in a secret Swiss bank account. Lagarde and Cahuzac have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Lagarde's lawyer, Yves Repiquet, said Wednesday's searches would vindicate his client. "They will serve to establish the truth and will contribute to the exoneration of my client of any criminal wrongdoing," he told Reuters.