Puppet MastersS


Megaphone

UK: corrupt Met helped plan serious civil disorder via agents provocateurs

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© Sinead Lynch/EPAProtesters attack a McDonald's in the City of London during the J18 Carnival Against Global Capitalism on 18 June 1999
From the Stephen Lawrence inquiry we learned that the police were institutionally racist. Can it be long before we learn that they are also institutionally corrupt? Almost every month the undercover policing scandal becomes wider and deeper. Today I can reveal a new twist, which in some respects could be the gravest episode yet. It surely makes the case for an independent public inquiry - which is already overwhelming - unarguable.

Before I explain it, here's a summary of what we know already. Thanks to the remarkable investigations pursued first by the victims of police spies and then by the Guardian journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis (whose book Undercover is as gripping as any thriller), we know that British police have been inserting undercover officers into protest movements since 1968. Their purpose was to counter what they called subversion or domestic extremism, which they define as seeking to "prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy ... outside the normal democratic process". Which is a good description of how almost all progressive change happens.

Comment: SOTT.net has repeatedly warned of the role played by COINTELPRO (CounterIntelligence Program) in the 9/11 Truth Movement. COINTELPRO's origins infiltrating political movements in the Civil Rights era are reasonably well known. But when we look at the history of COINTELPRO, it is clear that while groups have been infiltrated on a wide scale, the more successful operations have been those which are created from scratch by agents of the PTB. They know that people will begin to see through the wall of lies surrounding events sooner or later, so alternative groups are formed, fed resources and armed with a certain amount of information. They have vectored whole movements of people and in this way effectively neutralised any real opposition. Only by networking together what we can see of our reality can we learn to stalk the deception that is coming at us from every direction.




Arrow Up

Decades of U.S. terrorism come to nothing as socialist takes lead in El Salvador presidential election

salvador sanchez ceren
© Roberto Escobar/EPASalvadorean presidential favourite Salvador Sanchez Ceren after casting his vote accompanied in Sunday's election with his wife Margarita Villalta.
Salvador Sanchez Ceren was rebel leader in bloody civil war but with nearly half votes counted he is favourite to win March run off

A former leftwing guerrilla leader took a strong early lead in El Salvador's presidential election on Sunday but he could still face a run-off against a conservative rival who wants to deploy the army to fight powerful street gangs, early results showed.

Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a rebel commander who rose to the top of the now-ruling leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) during El Salvador's civil war, had 49.2% support with votes in from about 45.4% of polling booths.

His rightwing opponent, former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, had 38.9%. If no one wins more than half of the vote, the two leading candidates will go to a run-off on March 9.

Two foreign election officials said they expected the vote to go to a run-off given a closer race in El Salvador's two most populated districts.

The FMLN took power at the last election in 2009 and Sanchez Ceren's campaign was helped by its popular welfare policies, including pensions and free school supplies.

Comment: For more background on U.S. involvement in El Salvador read:
Terrorism with a "human face": The history of America's death squads
Romney's Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched With Millions From Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Atrocities


Dollar

Peso panic and rocketing prices shake Argentina

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© Victor R. Caivano/APSocial welfare activists wait for the start of a protest march for higher pay as riot police stand guard behind them in Buenos Aires last week.
Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and her ministers blame foreign 'vultures' for an economic meltdown as power cuts hit Buenos Aires and goods vanish from supermarket shelves

Even in normal years, the summer heat in Buenos Aires is overwhelming. Among a population of nearly 13 million packed into the long shore of the wide River Plate, the phrase most often heard from the lips of porteños is: "It's the humidity that kills you."

For those who can't afford to escape to the exclusive summer resort of Punta del Este, across the river in Uruguay, or make the longer trip to the golden beaches of Brazil, there is only one solution: air conditioning. But a combination of global warming and an abrupt economic collapse scuppered even that consolation for shopper Graciela Fernández last week. When the temperature insisted on staying at around 40C and humidity levels rose to a drenching 90%, Fernández rushed to buy an air-conditioning unit she had seen on sale a week before.

"When I went to buy it, the price had gone up 25% since when I checked prices last week," she complained outside the Alto Palermo shopping mall. "The same thing just happened to me at the pharmacy where I went to buy the medicine my husband takes: the price was up 20%."

The economic panic leading to price mark-ups of this kind began in mid-January, when Argentina's central bank reserves dipped below $30bn, forcing the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to drop its policy of injecting large quantities of dollars into the exchange market to shore up the overvalued peso.

People 2

Syria speeds up reconciliation efforts at home

Syrian reconciliation flag
© wikipedia commons
The Syrian government, discouraged by slow-paced international efforts to bring about a political solution to a three-year crisis in the country, has chosen another route to solve the crisis by reaching out to opposition fighters battling it on the ground.

Syria has repeatedly confirmed that it seeks to make national reconciliation efforts a success and has already made strides in bringing about security and safety to several areas in the capital and its suburbs, enabling displaced families to return home.

"The government is working at more than one level to get out of the crisis that has exhausted all parties... It's spreading its wing to cover gunmen once battered by them," said Ali Deeb, a political analyst, raising prospects that reconciliation will be the best solution amid the foundering international drives.

Syria participated recently in the Geneva II conference and announced that it was ready to discuss all contentious issues with the opposition

Gold Coins

UK: Financial crisis for many, bonanza for the few

Stock market
© Reuters/Kacper Pempel

Despite what the UK's ruling politicians or statisticians from palm-greased think tanks may say, the UK's economic "recovery" is visible nowhere on the country's streets.

The opiate of Quantitative Easing (QE) or Printing Money, the £375 billion fraudulently spirited up so far, is making some of the figures look good, but it is killing the patient.

The effect of QE is to propel the nest eggs of the rich from prudent "savings accounts," where interest rates are at an all-time low, into capricious stock and bond markets to be managed by hedge funds and other pushy players. Meanwhile, everything with half a brain that moves, including the Parliamentary Commission on Banking, chaired by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, is demanding to see clear blue water between public-facing banks and the casino economy. However, precisely the opposite is happening, as billions of savings leaves the safe ground in search of higher returns.

The London media have no excuse to talk of a "recovery." They don't have to look very far to see the tell-tale signs of a nation falling apart: Try looking down next time you're in the street. None of the infrastructure of the nation is being maintained. From jutting-out high street paving slabs to potholed roads and even silted up rivers in the Somerset Levels that have been flooded since Christmas, the vital systems of the nation are clogged and breaking.

Magnify

'Turn the curse into a blessing': Netanyahu wants Israel to control the internet

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© AFP/Jack GuezSteve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of IBM Software and Systems, speaks during the opening of the "CyberTech 2014" international conference on January 27, 2014 in the Mediterranean coastal city of Tel-Aviv.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said at the Cybertech conference in Tel Aviv that he wants to create a coalition of leading companies to turn the internet from a curse into a blessing.

In the wake of a reported breach of Defense Ministry computers, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu talked of the importance of cyber security at an Israeli cybertech conference in the Israeli capital on Monday, Globes reports.

"The biggest challenge we face with the cyber world is protecting the privacy and security of the public. There could be a serious breach," he said.

"There should be a sort of UN for the internet. A coalition of the leading companies in the cyber world...and in my opinion Israel is the most advanced," he added.

Fleshing out his plan during the conference, the prime minister said he envisaged hundreds of cybertech companies being set up in an unprecedented cooperation between the government and the business world. He explained that the more computerized the world gets, the more vulnerable we all become, and so we must deal with it in a systematic and focused manner.

"This project is big and reflects our visions to develop Israel with international cooperation. We all want to see a cyber-world that is open, free and cooperative. When you think cyber, think Israel," Israel's leader said.

Pistol

'Some stirred-up Moslems': 2 killed at mosque as Kenyan government reacts to Nairobi mall false-flag terror attack

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© Associated PRess
Police opened fire on Muslim youths wielding daggers at a mosque linked to recruiting Islamic extremists, and at least one officer and a young man were killed Sunday, witnesses and officials said in the coastal resort and port city of Mombasa.

Police said they raided the Masjid Musa mosque acting on intelligence that a meeting to recruit militants was going on.

A reporter at the scene saw police shoot and kill one person as they tried to disperse a growing crowd screaming "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Great" outside the mosque, which has been the recent site of violent confrontations between young Muslims and police.

A police officer who was stabbed in the face died of his wounds, said Mombasa police commander Robert Kitur. Another officer was stabbed in the stomach and is being treated at the hospital, he said.

Comment: See also:

Nationalities of Kenya shopping mall gunmen unknown

At least 30 dead in Kenya massacre at Israeli-owned Nairobi mall

Kenya False Flag? Washington Had Advanced Knowledge, Intelligence Agents in Westgate Mall Prior to Attack

Was Kenya mall massacre 'mastermind' backed by CIA cash? Disturbing claims by 'double agent who worked with terror suspect for years'


Bug

Flashback Former Bush official runs secretive 'Cockroaches' group

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© UnknownCockroaches!
Even if they are actually "only a bit better at surviving radiation than" humans, it has often been theorized that only cockroaches might withstand a nuclear blast and "inherit the earth."

A Capitol Hill newspaper sheds some light on a secretive group using that nickname.

Roll Call's Paul Singer reports, "Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) hangs out with Cockroaches."

These are not the crunchy, skittery kind of cockroaches that terrorize your kitchen, but the well-shod Washington insider kind that gather several times a year for a high-powered confab on defense and intelligence matters.
The Cockroaches are a venerable Washington, D.C., institution that has apparently never been written about, a kind of not-so-secret society for several hundred current and former defense intelligence officials, private-sector contracting firms, lobbyists, Congressional staffers and Members of Congress. The group meets every other month or so for off-the-record dinners to discuss new developments in defense and intelligence, and to swap war stories, literally and figuratively.
....
At the center of the Cockroaches are Gary Sojka and Michael Swetnam, two former staffers who decided to start a supper club. Swetnam worked in the White House in the George H.W. Bush administration, and Sojka was a staff member on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees.

The idea was to continue to share information and stay connected to official Washington and each other, they said. Sojka also launched the lobbying firm Potomac Advocates though he points out that his firm does more strategic advising than lobbying these days. Swetnam runs a think tank/research center called the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, which he and Sojka founded to replace the independent scientific advisory capacity that Congress lost when the Office of Technology Assessment was shut down in 1995. The institute takes nearly all of its funding from government contracts and occasional earmarks, but it is prohibited from lobbying, Swetnam said.

Robot

Lloyds Banking Group 'sorry' over cash denying IT glitch

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© SkynewsTSB admits problems with its ATMs.
Lloyds, TSB and Halifax customers are demanding answers after their debit cards were declined and transactions disrupted.

Lloyds Banking Group has apologised after customers were unable to withdraw money from cashpoints or pay for goods with their debit cards.

The group - made up of Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland and TSB - has 30 million UK account holders, and became aware of the difficulties on Sunday afternoon.

It later said the problems - which lasted for several hours and were blamed on a "server failing" - had been fixed.

A spokeswoman said: "We apologise that earlier today, between 3pm and 6pm, some customers were unable to complete their debit card transactions.

"Although the majority of transactions were unaffected, we are very sorry for the inconvenience that this will have caused.

"At the same time, some customers encountered problems at approximately half of our 7,000 ATMs.

"This was resolved by 7.30pm, and all of our ATMs are now working."

Online and telephone banking were unaffected by these issues, and customers were still able to withdraw cash from other ATMs.

Quenelle

British government teams up with French government to ban stand-up 'comic-terrorist' Dieudonne from travelling to UK

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As hundreds of thousands of ordinary French people from all ethnic and political backgrounds take part in growing protests across France, the French government responds with tough measures to retain control of the situation.
The controversial French comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala has been banned from entering Britain after several of his shows were cancelled in France.

Dieudonné had said he would travel to the UK to support his friend, footballer Nicolas Anelka, who is facing a disciplinary hearing after performing a "quenelle" - an allegedly antisemitic gesture - during a Premier League match.

The Home Office has declared the performer persona non grata and warned he will not be allowed into the country.

The Home Office has sent out a warning to airlines and other transport companies as well as border officials, that the performer, known by his stage name Dieudonné, is an "excluded" individual.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We can confirm that Mr Dieudonné is subject to an exclusion order. The home secretary will seek to exclude an individual from the UK if she considers that there are public policy or public security reasons to do so."

Comment: Translation from securo-speak into English: 'We banned him because we don't want people over here to see the truth about Dieudonne'.

Wow, who would have thought a stand-up comedian could so 'terrorize' the combined military-financial establishments of two of the most powerful regimes on the planet?!

See also:

Protest turns into riot as 120,000 take to Paris streets to demand President's resignation

Dieudonné: 'Quenelle' is a gesture of emancipation, there's nothing Nazi about it

Dieudonné M'bala M'bala interview: "I'm just trying to show that the age of colonialism never ended"

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls has a paranoid conspiracy theory: 'Comedian Dieudonne is financed by Iran'

French comedian Dieudonné explained in 5 mins

Dieudonné M'bala M'bala and the Quenellization of France

French state enlists support of Jewish Defense League to crush dissent

The Move to Muzzle Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala