Puppet MastersS


Vader

Chairman of EU Trilateral Commission and Bilderberger Leads Italy After Berlusconi Crisis

Mario Monti
© Unknown
Monti made his name as the powerful Competition Commissioner who took on U.S. corporate titans General Electric and Microsoft, blocking GE's planned merger with rival Honeywell and imposing a record 497 million euro ($683 million) antitrust fine on the software giant.

His technical expertise, sharp intellect and diplomatic skills added to his refusal to bow to intense lobbying pressures made him one of the most highly regarded officials the Commission has seen.

"He didn't have a very Italian way of going about things," recalls one former ambassador, who worked with Monti in Brussels and remembers him as a hard but reliable negotiating partner. "His nickname in those days was 'The Italian Prussian'".

Bell

SOTT Focus: Occupy Tokyo: Mass demonstrations go unreported by Japanese media

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You've heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, Los Angeles, London, Toronto, Berlin, Tel Aviv and elsewhere around the world. But did you know that huge demonstrations have been taking place in Tokyo as well? We certainly didn't until a SOTT forum member sent us the details. The general lack of awareness of the protests in Japan is probably due to the fact that there has been zero coverage of 'Occupy Tokyo' - which has grown out of the country's large (and growing) grassroots anti-nuclear movement - in Japan's mainstream media.

Several large demonstrations have taken place all over Japan in recent months, especially in Tokyo. The general mood is the same as elsewhere: ordinary people in Japan are fed up with their leaders' lies, particularly the lies told by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and how the government has handled the Fukushima disaster. Or rather, how it has avoided handling it. This should all be eerily familiar to Americans of course; BP's lies and the US government's enabling role from the moment the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010 has continued to this day, with the tragedy continuing to unfold in deathly silence. What is happening in Japan is almost a carbon copy; denial, smear campaigns, heavy-handed tactics and, of course, total media blackout. Up to one million people may have died as a result of Chernobyl, although we'll never really know the true death toll. Fukushima is many orders of magnitude worse...

Stormtrooper

Ruin & Rebuild: Warfare worth $300bln Libya windfall

jets
© unkonwn
Libya has big plans for its post-war future, hoping to be reborn as the next Dubai and having all the necessary sun and beaches, with oil reserves aplenty. British companies are likely to come out on top of those lining up for a piece of the action.

It was France and the UK who initially led the effort to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Britain, together with France, sent their navy and fighter jets to establish a sea blockade and assault military targets on Libyan territory.

Now the National Transitional Council (NTC) of Libya says its friends will be rewarded - and these are not just words.


Stormtrooper

Occupy Wall Street: New York Police Department Evicts Protesters, Clears Zuccotti Park [LATEST UPDATES]

In an unexpected move, the New York City Police Department descended on Zuccotti Park around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning, proceeding to evict protesters, clear the park and arrest those that stood in their way.




Bad Guys

Updates on Iran's "mysterious blast"

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© Associated PressAP photo from video of blast
From Time:

Israeli newspapers on Sunday were thick with innuendo, the front pages of the three largest dailies dominated by variations on the headline "Mysterious Explosion in Iranian Missile Base." Turn the page, and the mystery is answered with a wink. "Who Is Responsible for Attacks on the Iranian Army?" asks Maariv, and the paper lists without further comment a half-dozen other violent setbacks to Iran's nuclear and military nexus. For Israeli readers, the coy implication is that their own government was behind Saturday's massive blast just outside Tehran. It is an assumption a Western intelligence source insists is correct: the Mossad - the Israeli agency charged with covert operations - did it. "Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident," the official tells TIME, adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. "There are more bullets in the magazine," the official says.

The powerful blast or series of blasts - reports described an initial explosion followed by a much larger one - devastated a missile base in the gritty urban sprawl to the west of the Iranian capital. The base housed Shahab missiles, which, at their longest range, can reach Israel. Last week's report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran had experimented with removing the conventional warhead on the Shahab-3 and replacing it with one that would hold a nuclear device. Iran says the explosion was an accident that came while troops were transferring ammunition out of the depot "toward the appropriate site."

Chess

Iranian Parliament to Revise UK Ties

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© unknownBritish Embassy in Tehran, Iran.
Iranian Parliament (Majlis) Speaker Ali Larijani has ordered the Foreign Policy and National Security Commission to reconsider a motion to revise Iran's relations with the UK.

The order came after Member of Parliament from the central city of Mahallat, Alireza Salimi called for the motion to be revived in response to latest British anti-Iran hostilities as far as the issue of Iran's peaceful nuclear activities is concerned.

It was recently reported that British military authorities are considering contingency plans for potential military invasion of Iran.

According to the reports, Britain had said it would endorse any U.S. action plan aimed at launching an invasion on Iran amid decisions made in Washington to fast-forward missile strikes at the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities, The Guardian had reported.

MP Salimi urged the parliament to put the motion on its agenda urgently and make a final decision on how to reduce the level of Tehran-London relations.

Vader

Israel Not to Release Palestinians' Taxes

Benjamin Netanyahu
© unknownIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), Sunday, Nov. 13, 2011.
Israel has said it will hold on the transfer of Palestinian tax collections as punishment for the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s successful membership admission to UNESCO.

On Monday, Israeli Cabinet ministers decided not to release about $100 million in taxes owed to the Palestinians, the Associated Press reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers decided to accelerate illegal construction work in the occupied territories and to freeze the transfer of funds to the PA on November 1, a day after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to admit Palestine into the organization as its newest member at its Paris headquarters.

The transfers were suspended on November 3.

Newspaper

US: Bachmann: Media, Not Voters, Picking Winners

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© Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesRepublican presidential candidate U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) addresses a rally at a GOP Picnic August 9, 2011 in Humboldt, Iowa.
Michele Bachmann just weighed in "Debategate," telling Whispers that the media is trying to pick the Republican presidential winner, cutting voters out of the process.

"There's always a suspicion of maybe a bias and I guess this just confirmed it," she said of a CBS memo before Saturday's debate, which suggested that the Minnesota Republican congresswoman would be ignored during the foreign policy chatfest.

The memo, she said, "demonstrates that the media wants to choose who our nominee will be and who the next president of the United States will be."

Clock

Eurozone crisis 'toughest hour since World War II', says Merkel

Angela Merkel
© unknownAngela Merkel
Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel described the ongoing euro zone crisis as the continent's "toughest hour" since World War II on Monday as new leaders in Italy and Greece hustled to form governments amid growing fears over their debt-hit economies.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that Europe could be living through its toughest hour since World War Two as new leaders in Italy and Greece rushed to form governments and limit the damage from the euro zone debt crisis.

A rally on financial markets sparked by the appointment of respected European technocrats in Rome and Athens soon stalled. Analysts warned that daunting obstacles could hinder the decisive action needed to revive their ailing economies.

Italy had to pay a euro-lifetime record yield of 6.3 percent to sell five-year bonds with investors wary of buying its debt until prime minister-designate Mario Monti can undertake profound economic reforms.

In a first sign of trouble for new Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, the leader of the main conservative party rejected any toughening of austerity and refused to sign a letter sought by European authorities pledging support for a new 130 billion euro bailout.

Black Cat

Psychopathology for Sale: Blair to advise dictator of Kazakhstan on how to win Nobel Peace Prize

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Tony Blair: Lovin' it
Tony Blair's decision to advise the president of Kazakhstan sits oddly with his oath to the Queen.

It could become a pub quiz question: who was the first British prime minister to sell himself to a foreign power?

It would be too easy to guess the answer - Tony Blair, who recently signed a multimillion pound contract to advise President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. He has reportedly opened an office in the capital, Astana. Other than the president, no-one knows what advice Mr Blair is giving. His client does not need any advice on winning elections: grateful Kazakhs gave him over 95 per cent of their votes in their last presidential elections in April this year. His party already holds all the seats in parliament. Some media reports suggest that he is advising on financial institutions. According to other reports, he is helping the president prepare a bid for next year's Nobel Peace Prize. Again, Tony Blair seems a strange source of advice, until one remembers that the prize was once given to Henry Kissenger.

Comment: ...and Barack Obama.

As with other British ex-politicians, Tony Blair's paid activities in Kazakhstan are virtually beyond any public scrutiny or control. They are not mentioned on the website of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), the fangless watchdog over ex-ministers who sell their services in the marketplace. Since Tony Blair is not a peer, he did not have to supply the minimal and haphazard information required for the Register of Lords Interests. He did not have to notify the Foreign Office of his Kazakh appointment and it is not mentioned on the website of our local embassy.

Comment: The author is confused as to how Blair could do something that is so transparently treasonous. Tony Blair is a psychopath, so it's all just words to him. He has no emotional attachment to the words coming out of his mouth. The appearance of emotions he produces is just him acting out, which psychopaths learn to do from an early age. He can't actually feel those emotions, of course. So whether he's advising that government, this government or his own government makes no difference to him. All provides golden opportunities to con people out of their money, energy and, ultimately, their lives. It's perfectly fitting that Blair is making money from a dictator who really does 'torture his own people'.