Puppet MastersS


Heart - Black

Woman injured in LAPD manhunt says cops won't pay taxes on replacement truck

Arturo Garcia
Raw Story
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:24 UTC
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© Shutterstock
The attorney for a woman who was mistakenly targeted by Los Angeles police during the manhunt for Christopher Dorner in February has accused the department of breaking its promise of a new truck for her.

"You tried to murder the woman, you put 102 bullet holes in her truck," Glen Jonas told KNBC-TV on Monday. "Now you're telling her she can't have a 4-wheel drive."

Jonas his client, 47-year-old Maggie Carranza, refused a police offer of a new Ford F-150 truck if she agreed to pay taxes on it, in part because it meant Carranza would have to pay an additional $10,000 in personal income taxes she cannot afford. He said the department's offer also barred Carranza from selling the vehicle for a year.

According to KCBS-TV the truck was offered as a donation by former police commissioner Bert Boeckmann, who currently owns a car dealership. Boeckmann also asked Carranza to take a picture with him, another item Jonas said he told current police chief Charlie Beck was a deal-breaker.
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Bad Guys

NYPD surveillance had 'devastating' impact on Muslim communities: report

Eric W. Dolan
Raw Story
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:19 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
A new report on the New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslims suggests the program has impacted nearly every facet of Muslim life in a negative way.

"This report provides a powerful rebuttal to the NYPD and its supporters' assertion that surveillance is harmless and victimless," Diala Shamas, a Liman Fellow at the CLEAR project and one of the report's authors, said in a statement. "It is a first-of-its kind opportunity to hear directly from affected community members, many of whom would only speak with us on condition of strict anonymity."

The NYPD launched its surveillance program in 2001 following the September 11 terrorist attacks, monitoring Muslims in New York City and beyond. The intelligence gathering effort was revealed by the Associated Press has faced heavy criticism for both trampling the rights of Muslims and failing to produce any leads of terrorist activities.
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Ambulance

Helicopter crash in Afghanistan kills five Americans

Paul Tait and David Alexander
Reuters
Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:01 UTC
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Five U.S. military personnel were killed in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, although there were no immediate details about the cause of the crash.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said the crash occurred on Monday. It happened on the same day that two U.S. troops and five Afghan police and soldiers were killed by a person in an Afghan military uniform in the restive east of the country.

"The cause of the crash is under investigation, however initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the incident," ISAF said in a statement.

The Pentagon said all five killed in the crash were Americans.
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War Whore

True, he's the first black president, but Obama is the worst U.S. president ever

Ron Ridenour
thiscantbehappening.net
Sun, 10 Mar 2013 09:42 UTC
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Obama's drones have killed nearly 200 children since he won his Nobel Peace Prize
Yes, I mean it: the worst ever!

We've had James Monroe and his doctrine of supremacy over Latin America. We've had Theodore Roosevelt and his invasion of Cuba; Nixon, Reagan, Bush-Bush and their mass murder, and all the war crimes and genocide committed by most presidents. Yes, but we never had a black man sit on the white throne of imperialism committing war crimes.

And there he is, murdering even more people in Afghanistan than Bush, backing coups in Latin America, continuing to undermine Iraq, sending drones, mercenaries, saboteurs to Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Uganda, Libya and now Syria. He bores deeper into several African countries, rich with oil and minerals, than his white predecessors, Democrats and Republicans. The US is eliminating the few secular governments that there were in the Middle East and North Africa.

Obama is busier fulfilling total USAmerican world domination than even Bush, Reagan and Nixon.
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Bad Guys

Private Prisons: The more Americans they put behind bars the more money they make

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:52 UTC
Prison
© The Economic Collapse Blog
How would you describe an industry that wants to put more Americans in prison and keep them there longer so that it can make more money? In America today, approximately 130,000 people are locked up in private prisons that are being run by for-profit companies, and that number is growing very rapidly.

Overall, the U.S. has approximately 25 percent of the entire global prison population even though it only has 5 percent of the total global population.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate on the entire globe by far, and no nation in the history of the world has ever locked up more of its own citizens than we have. Are we really such a cesspool of filth and decay that we need to lock up so many of our own people?

Or are there some other factors at work? Could part of the problem be that we have allowed companies to lock up men and women in cages for profit? The two largest private prison companies combined to bring in close to $3,000,000,000 in revenue in 2010, and the largest private prison companies have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade.

Putting Americans behind bars has become very big business, and those companies have been given a perverse incentive to push for even more Americans to be locked up.

It is a system that is absolutely teeming with corruption, and it is going to get a lot worse unless someone does something about it.
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Attention

Who spends the most dollars lobbying Washington, DC?

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:45 UTC
Oil? Financials? Aerospace? When someone asks who the biggest sources of lobby dollars for DC's politicians-for-purchase are, these are the three usual suspects that come to mind. Some may, therefore, be surprised to learn according to the database kept by OpenSecrets between Pharmaceutical and health product industry, hospital and nursing homes, health professionals and health services, HMOs, or more broadly Pharma/Healthcare/HMO, the total lobby dollars spent between 1998 and 2012 was a staggering $5.3 billion, or nearly three times greater than the second most generous industry: insurance, and well above Oil and Gas at $1.4 billion, and Securities and Investment at $1.0 billion. Is it becoming clearer why the US government has few qualms about unsustainable taxpayer funded healthcare spending, especially when there are so many current benefits accruing to the politicians who see so many billions in benefits from passing lobby-friendly laws now (by which we mean generous taxpayer funding, the bulk of which benefits the healthcare industry's bottom line)?

As for the costs: who cares - just dump them on future generations. It's not like anyone expects the $16.7 trillion in US debt to be ever repaid.
Lobbyist
© Center for Responsive Politics
Why is this important? Because as we showed nearly a year ago, the IRR on lobbying is by and far the highest of any investment return under the sun.
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Attention

Drone came within 200 feet of airliner over New York

Aaron Cooper
CNN
Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00 UTC
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An MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft vehicle (UAV) sits in a shelter at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, after a mission on November 10, 2008. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Reaper can carry up to 3,750 pounds of laser-guided bombs and missiles.
An unmanned drone came within 200 feet of a commercial jet over New York, triggering an FBI appeal to the public for any information about the unusual and potentially dangerous incident.

The crew of Alitalia Flight 608 approaching John F. Kennedy airport on Monday reported the sighting.

"We saw a drone, a drone aircraft," the pilot can be heard telling air traffic controllers on radio calls captured by the website LiveATC.net.

The FAA said it was investigating the incident.

The Alitalia aircraft did not take any evasive action and landed safely.

The FBI expanded on the FAA report, saying in a statement that the Alitalia flight from Rome was roughly three miles from runway 31R when the incident occurred at an altitude of approximately 1,750 feet.

The unmanned aircraft, described by the FBI as black and no more than three feet wide with four propellers, came within 200 feet of the Boeing jetliner.
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Vader

Pathocrats launched PR blitz campaign to subdue hostility against drones

Jefferson Morley
Salon.com
Tue, 22 May 2012 06:45 UTC
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Stung by mounting hostility from the left and right, America's drone industry is fighting back.

"We're going to do a much better job of educating people about unmanned aviation, the good and the bad," said Michael Toscano, president of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the industry's trade group in Washington. "We're working on drafting the right message and how to get it out there."

The P.R. blitz comes after drones suffered a round of negative attention last week. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called for a ban on drones in U.S. airspace, and two other conservative commentators endorsed the idea of shooting down unmanned aircraft flown by U.S. law enforcement agencies. (Opposition to the U.S. government's deployment of unmanned vehicles had previously come from left-liberal groups concerned about civilian casualties in the drone war in Pakistan and potential threats to civil liberties at home.) The nation also witnessed drone "scares": An unidentified flying object nearly collided with a plane over Denver, and rumors circulated of a surveillance drone flying near the NATO summit in Illinois.

After issuing a statement denouncing Krauthammer's remarks as "irresponsible" and "dangerous," Toscano said the AUVSI would go on the offensive against critics. While the strategy is still being shaped, Toscano made it sound like something straight out of a crisis-management textbook - or Orwell. The AUVSI wants to bombard the American public with positive images and messages about drones in an effort to reverse the growing perception of the aircraft as a threat to privacy and safety.

Comment: And they are here:
FAA investigating report of drone spotted near NYC
Where Is The Outrage? US government to deploy thousands of drones over US cities

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Red Flag

Venezuelan opposition leader launches "doomed" candidacy with attack against government

Vivien Sequera
myway.com
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 20:42 UTC
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© AP Photo/Rodrigo AbdOpposition leader Henrique Capriles gestures during a press conference in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, March 10, 2013. Capriles announced he will run in elections, scheduled for April 14, to replace late President Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer on March 5.
Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles on Sunday launched what many consider a doomed candidacy to replace Hugo Chavez with a no-holds-barred attack against a government he accused of coldly betraying Venezuelans' trust.

Chavez's political heirs have toyed with Venezuelans' hopes, lying to them about his deteriorating health by suggesting he could recover and even producing decrees he supposedly signed, said Capriles, whom Chavez defeated by a 12-point margin in October.

He did not make direct reference to the decision to embalm Chavez and put him on permanent display, but he said: "You are playing politics with the president's body."

Capriles accused the socialist government that Chavez left behind after 14 years in power of meticulously planning a campaign to assure the election of Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's desired successor.
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USA

Retaliation: U.S. kicks out two Venezuelan diplomats

Guy Taylor
The Washington Times
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00 UTC
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© Bullit MarquezA room with a portrait of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is prepared for supporters and members of the diplomatic corps to pay tribute and sign the book of condolences at the Venezuelan Embassy in the financial district of Makati city east of Manila, Philippines, on March 7, 2013. Chavez died Wednesday after a long bout with cancer. He was 58. (AP)
The Obama administration has moved to kick two Venezuelan diplomats out of the United States in response to Venezuela's expulsion last week of two U.S. officials from the U.S. embassy in Caracas, The Washington Times has learned.

In a sign that U.S.-Venezuelan relations are unlikely to warm quickly in the post-Chavez era, the Venezuelan government confirmed that two of its diplomats have left the U.S., a State Department spokesman told The Times.

One of the diplomats had apparently been based at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, while the other worked at a Venezuelan office in New York.

The State Department spokesman said that the Venezuelan Embassy's Second Secretary Orlando Jose Montanez Olivares, and Consular Officer Camacaro Mata have been declared "personae non gratae" in accordance with Vienna conventions on diplomatic and consular relations.
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