Puppet MastersS


Pistol

Egypt massacre: Snipers and death squads, the terror tactics of U.S. 'soft power'

Libya360 Editorial Comment: After Monday's tragic massacre at the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo, I thought this article was worth reposting. One must question who really was responsible for the shootings...
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© Businessinsider.com
Who has the most to gain by fomenting a civil war in Egypt?

Who benefits if genuine revolution fails?

Unknown Snipers and Western backed "Regime Change"
Unknown snipers played a pivotal role throughout the so-called 'Arab Spring Revolutions' yet, in spite of reports of their presence in the mainstream media, surprisingly little attention has been paid to to their purpose and role.

Eye 1

Le Carré's latest fiction can't do justice to Snowdens' NSA revelations

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© David Cheskin/PA'When I heard William Hague say the innocent had nothing to fear, I distinctly heard Le Carré give a hollow laugh. I thought of the Lawrence family, bugged to get dodgy coppers out of a hole. I thought of British families discovering their dead offspring had their identities stolen by police.
Whistleblower and writer both finger the enemy as their own side. But the full horror of truth always outdoes the imagination

Shocked, or not shocked? The chasm widens. The New York Times this week carried a story from a whistleblower close to Washington's foreign intelligence surveillance court, known as the Fisa court - a secret body set up in 1978 to monitor federal phone taps. It now gives legal cover to intelligence trawling of millions of individuals, at home and abroad.

The recent revelations by another whistleblower, Edward Snowden, accused the court of breaking the fourth amendment to the US constitution. This entitles Americans "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". The operative word, as so often, is unreasonable.

The new leak alleges that more than a dozen new "rulings" have been passed by Fisa, declaring categories of data-scooping that were within the "special needs" of security, and thus no different from breath-testing or body-searching at airports. NSA operations such as Prism, Tempora and Boundless Informant - many in collusion with Britain's GCHQ - used covert access to Google, Apple and Facebook to go where they pleased. They could cite not just terrorism but espionage, matters of interest to a foreign power, cyber-attacks and "weapons of mass destruction".

These judgments, all in secret, confirmed the gist of Snowden's evidence - and validated his motive. The reason why a previously loyal ex-soldier broke cover was not to aid an enemy. It was to inform a friend, his own country. He was simply outraged by the lies told to Congress by his bosses about NSA operations. As Harvard's Stephen Walt said, Snowden was performing a public service in drawing attention to a "poorly supervised and probably unconstitutional" activity.

Comment: For more information on the NSA spying scandal see:
Full Disclosure: NSA's Criminal Activity
Ed Snowden's magic thumb drive and other NSA fantasies
Did someone help Ed Snowden punch a hole in the NSA?


Eye 1

Millions in US tax dollars go to Big Data for wiretap capabilities

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© (AFP Photo / Spencer Platt) Ivan Seidenberg (L) , Chairman and CEO of Verizon and and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson

The US government uses American tax dollars to pay major Internet companies and telecommunications giants like Verizon and AT&T for unprecedented access into millions of phone records and the ability to scour vast online databases.

AT&T charges the government a $325 "activation fee" for each individual wiretap and a daily fee of $10 to maintain it. Verizon, on the other hand, charges government eavesdroppers $775 for the first month of monitoring an individual then $500 in each month that follows, Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) told the Associated Press.

Bad Guys

Black U.S. caucus member to GOP: 'You all do not care about the 47 percent'

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus took to the House floor Thursday to decry the GOP's move to separate food stamps from the Farm Bill, with one of them invoking Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comment.

"Mitt Romney was right: You all do not care about the 47 percent,"
Corrine Brown
© C-SpanRep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.)
Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) said. "Shame on you."

At one point, Republicans objected to Brown's direct attacks, which technically are not allowed on the House floor.

"This is a sad day for the House of Representatives," she said. "Shame on the Republicans."

Cheeseburger

Eat this: U.S. Farm Bill passes in House - without funding for food stamps

combine harvester
© AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File
House Republicans successfully passed a Farm Bill Thursday by splitting apart funding for food stamps from federal agricultural policy, a move that infuriated the White House and congressional Democrats who spent most of the day trying to delay a final vote.

Lawmakers voted 216 to 208 make changes to federal agricultural policy and conservation programs and end direct subsidy payments to farmers. But the measure says nothing about funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, which historically constitutes about 80 percent of the funding in a Farm Bill.

No House Democrat voted for the measure. Twelve Republicans also opposed it. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) voted in favor of it, even though speakers traditionally don't vote.

The vote made clear that Republicans intend to make significant reductions in food stamp money and handed Republican leaders a much-needed victory three weeks after conservative lawmakers and rural state Democrats revolted and blocked the original version of the bill that included food stamp money.

Light Sabers

Russia turns the tables on US chemical weapons claims in Syria

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© Murad Sezer/AP

Chemical weapons were "clearly" used in Syria - but most likely by Syrian rebels, not the Syrian army, according to Moscow's ambassador to the United Nations.

A team of Russian experts made the assessment after visited Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo, where Syria claimed rebels had used chemical weapons in a March attack, CNN wrote.

The attack reportedly killed 26 people, including 16 regime troops.

CNN quoted Russia's envoy, Vitaly Churkin, as saying:

"The results of the analysis clearly indicate that the ordnance used in Khan al-Assal was not industrially manufactured and was filled with sarin [poison gas]."

Rebels had accused Syria of using chemical weapons in another part of the country at the same time, CNN added.

Cupcake Pink

Monsanto awarded World Food Prize, 'Nobel peace prize for agriculture'

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An executive with Monsanto Co and two other pioneers in agricultural biotechnology said their selection as winners of the $250,000 World Food Prize on Wednesday should encourage the wider use of genetically engineered crops.

The Iowa foundation that administers the prize, created by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug, said genetically modified crops offer higher yields and more resistance to pests, plant disease and harsh weather.

It was the first time the award, often regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for agriculture, has gone to a creator of GM crops.

While engineered varieties of crops like soybeans and corn are popular among U.S. farmers, they are not approved for cultivation in Europe. Some U.S. consumer groups also say genetically modified foods should be labeled, despite government assurances that the foods are safe.

Question

Small Utah ISP firm stands up to 'surveillance state' as corporations cower

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Xmission owner Pete Ashdown
Despite having fewer resources and a fraction of the customers that broadband giants like Verizon and AT&T boast, one small internet service provider has resisted pressure from the NSA and refused to turn over customer data without a warrant.

Xmission, an independent company based out of one office in Salt Lake City, Utah, has spent nearly two decades protecting its customers' privacy as the National Security Agency, Department of Justice, and prosecutors have ramped up pressure on internet service providers (ISPs).

Owner Pete Ashdown told RT that every data collection request stops at his desk, since he is the sole proprietor of Xmission. At a larger company, a panel of stockholders would bow to government pressure, he added.

"It's pretty basic for me. Most of their requests are not constitutional. They're not proper warrants so I turn them back," he said.

USA

Corruption and Cronyism: Obama donors take over top embassy jobs

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People who donated to Obama's campaign get plush appointments on taxpayers' dime.
Former ambassador likens practice to 'selling of public office' as figures show average amount of cash raised is $1.8m per post

Barack Obama has rewarded some of his most active campaign donors with plum jobs in foreign embassies, with the average amount raised by recent or imminent appointees soaring to $1.8m per post, according to a Guardian analysis.

The practice is hardly a new feature of US politics, but career diplomats in Washington are increasingly alarmed at how it has grown. One former ambassador described it as the selling of public office.

On Tuesday, Obama's chief money-raiser Matthew Barzun became the latest major donor to be nominated as an ambassador, when the White House put him forward as the next representative to the Court of St James's [British ambassador], a sought-after posting whose plush residence comes with a garden second only in size to that of Buckingham Palace.

As campaign finance chairman, Barzun helped raise $700m to fund President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. More than $2.3m of this was raised personally by Barzun, pictured, according to party records leaked to the New York Times, even though he had only just finished a posting as ambassador to Sweden after contributing to Obama's first campaign.

Attention

The world is getting more corrupt, and these are the 5 worst offenders

Bribery and Corruption
© Getty/AnthonyMarslandThe world is getting more corrupt, and you won't believe who are the worst offenders.
On Tuesday, Berlin-based watchdog Transparency International released its Global Corruption Barometer 2013, a worldwide survey of 114,000 people that analyzes bribery and corruption in 107 countries.

The report found that corruption and bribery are prevalent across both developed and underdeveloped nations: More than 50 percent of respondents in the world said corruption had worsened in recent years, and 27 percent admitted to paying bribes in order to access public services and institutions.

Few respondents see an easy way out of this growing problem. The majority of people don't believe in their government's capabilities to fight corruption.

Nearly 88 percent think that their leaders are doing a poor job at it, and most blame public institutions as the main corruption sources.

Here are five of the world's most corrupt institutions, according to the survey: