Puppet MastersS


Attention

Everyone is fair game: Spy agency conducts surveillance on all US citizens

Spying
© Reuters/Chris Morgan/Idaho National LaboratoryU.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees.
The Obama administration overruled recommendations from within the US Department of Homeland Security and implemented new guidelines earlier this year that allow the government to gather and analyze intelligence on every single US citizen.

Since the spring, a little-know intelligence agency outside of Washington, DC has been able to circumvent the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution and conduct dragnet surveillance of the entire country, combing massive datasets using advanced algorithms to search and seize personal info on anyone this wish, reports the Wall Street Journal this week.

There's no safeguard that says only Americans with criminal records are the ones included, and it's not just suspected terrorists that are considered in the searches either. The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) has been provided with entire government databases and given nearly endless access to intelligence on everyone in the country, regardless of whether or not they've done anything that would have made them a person of interest. As long as data is "reasonably believed" to contain "terrorism information," the agency can do as they wish.

What's more is the NCTC can retain that information for years, reviewing it whenever they'd like to take a look.

The update to the agency's policies, reported by RT at the time and reexamined this week in the Journal, expose any person in the country to invasive and nearly endless government surveillance.

"This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public," Mary Ellen Callahan is reported by the Journal to have said during a Situation Room meeting earlier this year within the walls of the White House. At the time, Callahan was chief privacy officer at DHS as well as one of the only staffers inside the Obama administration concerned with what was about to happen.

According to documents obtained by the Journal through Freedom of Information Act requests and conversations between the paper and persons familiar with that Situation Room sound-off, Ms. Callahan unsuccessfully argued against updating a 2008 Justice Department memo about what intel the NCTC can have and how they use it. Just weeks after that meeting, new guidelines were authorized and, within months, Ms. Callahan was working elsewhere.

Gear

Green light for fracking in UK: Government gives go-ahead for controversial gas extraction process to resume

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Fracking site in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland
The Government has given the green light for "fracking" for shale gas to resume in the UK.

Moves by gas company Cuadrilla to exploit the unconventional gas in Lancashire were put on hold 18 months ago after fracking, which uses high-pressure liquid to split rock and extract gas, caused two small earthquakes.

Energy Secretary Ed Davey said today that fracking could resume in the UK, subject to new controls which aim to reduce the risk of seismic activity.

Mr Davey said shale gas represented a promising new potential energy resource for the UK, although it was not yet known what contribution it could make to the energy mix, jobs and the economy.

He insisted that exploiting shale gas in this country would not undermine efforts to cut emissions to tackle climate change.

Wall Street

All large banks in Eurozone come under control of European Central Bank in new 'European banking union'

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ECB HQ, Frankfurt
David Cameron and other EU leaders will today approve banking union in Europe after Britain won concessions to protect the City of London.

EU finance ministers including George Osborne reached agreement after a marathon all-night 14-hour session in Brussels. The landmark deal, the first step towards "fiscal and economic union" in the eurozone, will make the European Central Bank (ECB) the supervisory body for about 200 of the biggest banks in the 17-member euro area and non-euro nations that decide to take part.

Although the UK will not join banking union, there are fears that London's premier position as a financial centre will be undermined by the 17 euro nations voting en bloc on the European Banking Authority (EBA), which sets banking rules throughout the EU.

Cult

UK police investigating allegations senior politicians abused children in the 1980s and used 'connections' to escape justice

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Peter Righton was already convicted of crimes related to pedophilia in 1992
Metropolitan Police's child abuse investigation team have interviewed several adults who claim that they were sexually assaulted as children by MPs in a paedophile ring

Scotland Yard detectives are looking into allegations that senior politicians abused children in the 1980s and escaped justice because they were protected by their powerful connections.

During past weeks officers from the Metropolitan Police's child abuse investigation team have interviewed several adults who claim that they were sexually assaulted as children by MPs in a paedophile ring.

The team was set up following claims by Labour MP Tom Watson in the House Commons that the police should look afresh at claims of a "powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10".

Until today when the Metropolitan Police confirmed its existence, the inquiry, Operation Fairbank, had been operating in secret at the headquarters of the Child Abuse Investigation Team at Empress State Building in Earl's Court, London.

Pharoah

Taxes are for slaves: Google boss says "I'm very proud of our tax avoidance scheme - it's called capitalism"

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Google's Chairman Eric Schmidt said £2.5 billion tax avoidance 'is called capitalism'

The head of the internet giant Google has defiantly defended his company's tax avoidance strategy claiming he was "proud" of the steps it had taken to cut its tax bill which were just "capitalism".

In an interview in New York Eric Schmidt, Google's Chairman, confirmed the company had no intention of paying more to the UK exchequer. Documents filed last month show that Google generated around £2.5 billion in UK sales last year but paid just £6m in corporation tax.

The Californian based search giant has also been revealed to have sheltered nearly $10bn of its revenues in Bermuda allowing it to avoid some $2bn in worldwide income taxes in 2011.

But Mr Schmidt said such schemes were legitimate and the company paid taxes "in the legally prescribed ways".

Vader

Best of the Web: The truth about Libya, Gaddafi and why the Western elite murdered him

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Muammar Gaddafi, murdered King of Africa
The following is five-part video showing how the psychopaths in power in the Western Empire once again engineered a fake media revolution, bombed innocent civilians, blamed their deaths on their target 'régime', and got away with it by presenting it all under the guise of 'humanitarian intervention'.

Part 1


Part 2


USA

Washington humbug: Iran, Israel and International Law

Israel propaganda machine
© Latuff
The trite old phrase 'What's Sauce for the Goose is also Sauce for the Gander' means quite simply that if a person does something that is approved by society, then another person should not be criticized or penalized for doing exactly the same thing. That seems fair enough. But it doesn't apply in international affairs, in which sauce-allocation is the privilege of the powerful.

The world knows the position of the United States in regard to Israel's defiance of international law. On November 29, rather than censure Israel for its longtime rejection of dozens of UN Security Council Resolutions, Washington and its wagatail puppies rolled over and enjoyed a Tel Aviv tummy tickle for voting against a General Assembly resolution acknowledging the right of the Palestinian people to aspire to statehood. America supports the Jews of the world in having their own country called Israel but refuses to permit Arab citizens of the region to have their own country called Palestine in land which belongs to them.

There are 193 nations in the UN General Assembly, and 138 of them voted to recognise Palestine. 41 pathetic fence-sitters abstained. Five didn't even turn up. And seven little lapdogs actually voted with Israel and the US against the resolution.

The United States of America is a member of the United Nations Security Council which in its Resolution 487 required "Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards." Israel has done no such thing. Nor will it ever do. And that Resolution also "strongly condemned" Israel for its "clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct."

In the years following that unambiguous censure of Israel, Washington has changed its game dramatically. Nowadays the Council can't condemn Israel for anything.

Star of David

Israeli forces kill Palestinian teenager

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An Israeli border guard officer on Wednesday shot dead a Palestinian teenager in Hebron's Old City in the southern West Bank.

Locals identified the victim as 16-year-old Muhammad Ziad Awad Salaymah.

A local doctor, hearing shots fired, rushed to the Salaymah neighborhood, near the Ibrahimi Mosque, but was unable to revive the teenager.

The doctor told Ma'an that local women were arguing with Israeli forces who were preventing them from reaching Salaymah.

"I followed the women, and when I felt his pulse, I found that he was dead," the doctor said.

Israeli police said the victim appeared to be carrying a fake pistol.

Briefcase

Another British Government whitewash: Pat Finucane's widow dismisses report on solicitor's state assassination as 'a sham'

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Pat Finucane, an Irish lawyer who represented Irish Nationalists in the north of Ireland, was murdered by British paramilitaries in 1989
The widow of murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane today dismissed the report into his death by Sir Desmond de Silva as "a sham... a whitewash... a confidence trick", telling a London press conference: "This report is not the truth."

Renewing her call for a full public inquiry into her husband's 1989 death, Geraldine Finucane said that the British Government had suppressed the truth and attempted to throw all blame on dead individuals and disbanded organisations while exonerating ministers, serving officers and existing security agencies.

Mrs Finucane said: "Yet another British government has engineered a suppression of the truth behind the murder of my husband, Pat Finucane.

"At every turn it is clear that this report has done exactly what was required - to give the benefit of the doubt to the state, its Cabinet and ministers, to the Army, to the intelligence services and to itself.

Eye 2

Muslim Brotherhood 'paying gangs to go out and rape women and beat men protesting in Egypt' as thousands of demonstrators pour on to the streets

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© ReutersA protester in a Pharaoh headdress holds up a placard reading 'no to a dictator' during a demonstration on Tahrir Square on Friday
  • Activists claim there have been nearly 20 attacks in the last 10 days
  • Country has seen rise in mob sex attacks on protestors in the last year
  • Demonstrators in Tahrir Square yesterday protested against a draft constitution approved by allies of President Morsi
  • Muslim Brotherhood today marched in support of the president
Egypt's ruling party is paying gangs of thugs to sexually assault women protesting in Cairo's Tahrir Square against President Mohamed Morsi, activists said.

They also said the Muslim Brotherhood is paying gangs to beat up men who are taking part in the latest round of protests, which followed a decree by President Morsi to give himself sweeping new powers.

It comes as the Muslim Brotherhood co-ordinated a demonstration today in support of President Mohamed Morsi, who is rushing through a constitution to try to defuse opposition fury over his newly expanded powers.

Just 24 hours earlier around 200,000 people gathered in Tahrir Square, the heart of last year's revolution which toppled President Hosni Mubarak, yesterday to protest against a new draft constitution.

Comment: With protests growing to similar levels seen in Egypt in February 2011, it looks like people are beginning to realise that a coup has taken place: