Puppet MastersS


Cell Phone

To prevent ACLU review, U.S. Marshals transfer controversial 'Stingray' cellphone surveillance

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© Globalresearch
The US Marshals Services has intervened in a dispute between a Florida police department and the ACLU, with the Marshals sweeping in at the last minute to seize controversial cell phone records before the ACLU was able to review them.

Earlier this year the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Sarasota Police Department in an attempt to compel them to turn over records on the police's use of its "Stingray" devices.

The powerful Stingray equipment has drawn the ire of civil liberties advocates nervous about its ability to essentially act as a fake cell tower and collects information from each of phone that connects to it.

The ACLU, which asserts that the Stingray enables the "electronic equivalent of dragnet 'general searches' prohibited by the Fourth Amendment," convinced the court to force the Sarasota police to make the documents available for review.

ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed told Wired that the US Marshals sent an agent from the Tampa area to Sarasota to pick up the documents so the police would be unable to disclose them.

Comment: FBI loses appeal in StingRay surveillance case


Bomb

Russia sez Kiev's use of heavy weapons in 'crackdown' violates international law - It does

Donbass artillery
© RIA Novosti / Evgeny BiyatovKiev violates international law, gets away with it.
Moscow has raised the issue of Kiev using heavy armaments in its special operations against independence supporters in eastern Ukraine at OSCE session, Russia's envoy Andrei Kelin said on Wednesday.

"The punitive operation led by Ukrainian forces reflects signs of an international human rights violation, in particular, of the Geneva convention of 1949," Kelin said.

"We drew attention to the tragic outcome of an operation in the Donbas [in eastern Ukraine], a barbaric shelling of a building of the Luhansk local administration," he added.

He referred to reports claiming the Ukrainian military had used exploding bullets, cluster bombs and artillery.

"There are reports on the use of inhumane weapons - exploding bullets, cluster bombs - and the shelling of civilian targets in Ukraine. If they are confirmed, such acts have to be treated as war crimes. If it is proven that Right Sector killed the wounded in a Krasnyi Lyman hospital, there are no words to justify such an action," Kelin said.

The envoy added that the latest report from the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine confirmed pro-Kiev forces had been using tanks, artillery and aircraft in its special operations.

"We asked a lot of questions, but Ukraine's permanent representative [to the OSCE] gave no answers, aside from the usual attempts to shift responsibility to Russia," Kelin added.

Chart Pie

Japan, China vie for India's new prime minister Narendra Modi's heart

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe follows only three personalities on Twitter. One is India's newly minted Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So it came as no surprise when Abe dispatched a congratulatory tweet to Modi minutes after it became clear that the latter would occupy the prime minister's official residence at 7 Race Course Road in New Delhi. Modi's tweet in response read, "I am sure we will take India-Japan ties to newer heights." It sounded as though the two politicians were continuing a previous conversation rather than forging a new relationship.

Much of Shinzo Abe's economic reforms in Japan will not bear fruit without a significant emerging market driving the growth of Japanese industry. Japanese exports to China declined by 18% in the 12 months leading to the Indian elections. The decline was triggered by the controversy over the Senkaku (or Diaoyu, in Chinese) Islands and is unlikely to reverse course in the near future.

Meanwhile, many Japanese companies are well entrenched in India but suffered at the hands of the previous outgoing United Progressive Alliance government. Two major Japanese corporations, Mitsubishi and Honda, were slapped with tax recovery notices to the tune of US$2.6 billion following a retrospective amendment to a tax law in India. All this makes Modi look like a white-bearded Samurai savior in the eyes of Abe's business-minded constituents.

Cowboy Hat

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: Dissecting Globalistan: Interview with Pepe Escobar

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This week on SOTT Talk Radio we spoke with legendary Brazilian journalist, Pepe Escobar, roving correspondent for Asia Times, analyst for RT and frequent contributor to websites and radio shows from the U.S. to East Asia.

Escobar's extensive travels and reporting bring witty insights to Western audiences starved of real information to what is going on in the world. Since before 9/11, Escobar has specialized in covering Brzezinski's "arc" from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars.

He's the author of three books - Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War, Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge, and Obama Does Globalistan. You can check out some of his recent articles on SOTT.net.

Running Time: 02:08:00

Download: MP3


Attention

Strict Baltimore curfew places minors in detention centers past bedtime

Curfew sign
© Police State USACurfew sign.

Maryland - The City Council of Baltimore voted to create one of the most stringent government curfew systems in the nation. Under the new restrictions, youths will be legally permitted to appear in public for only a few hours per day.

Police may seize them on sight and take them to detention centers where they will be interrogated by social workers. Parents face stiff fines and jail time if their children are discovered in public during curfew hours.

The ordinance passed the city council in a 13-2 vote last week, in favor of enhancing Baltimore's curfew policies. Supporters championed it as a step forward for safety and order. But at what cost?

The restrictions can be summarized as follows:
Daytime Curfew
  • 7:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on weekdays - People under 16 years old subject to detention.
Evening Curfew
  • 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. any night - People under 14 years old subject to detention.
  • 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. on weekdays - People ages 14-16 subject to detention.
  • 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. on weekends and summer nights - People ages 14-16 subject to detention.
Without explicitly doing anything wrong, younger Americans can be scooped up by police officers and detained just for showing their faces in public. They will be involuntarily taken to juvenile detention centers which the city affectionately calls "connection centers."

Dollar

Seven things America could buy with the $181 billion in taxes uncollected because of corporate loopholes

Teacher, teaching
© Unknown
The federal government forgoes billions of dollars in revenue each year due to corporate tax write-offs and loopholes enshrined in America's tax code. The Government Accountability Office estimates that we lose out on $181 billion as a result. Some of our tax credits ostensibly serve a social good, such as the credit for low-income housing investment. But other parts of the corporate tax code encourage companies to hide their profits in offshore tax havens. The revenue lost through this loophole is $65 billion a year, according to the National Priorities Project. (Other estimates are much higher.)

Here are some of the ways we could be spending those lost dollars.


Blackbox

Author Brad Thor says this is the 'biggest question' not being asked about the Bergdahl exhange

Brad Thor
© TheBlaze TVNumber one bestselling author Brad Thor appears on Dana June 6, 2014.
Number one bestselling author Brad Thor appeared on TheBlaze TV's Dana Friday to discuss what he believes is the "biggest question" the mainstream media is not asking about the recent trade of five senior Taliban leaders from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was held captive by militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan for nearly five years.

Was the White House directly or indirectly involved in a financial exchange to ensure Bergdahl's release, Thor asked, thereby knowingly funding a terrorist organization?

Syringe

Psychopathic religious orders allowed over 2,000 Irish children to be subjected to medical experiments

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A new report has revealed that more than 2000 Irish children living in religious run homes in the 1930s were subjected to drugs trials.
More than 2000 Irish children in religious run homes were subjected to drugs trials in the 1930s according to a shocking new report.

As the Tuam burial ground scandal erupts, it has now emerged that Catholic Church run homes and state institutions let the children of unmarried mothers be used in medical experiments.

The Irish Daily Mail has published a damning report which outlines how scientists secretly vaccinated more than 2,000 children in religious-run homes in suspected illegal drug trials.

The paper says that old medical records show that 2,051 children and babies in Irish care homes were given a one-shot diphtheria vaccine for international drugs giant Burroughs Wellcome between 1930 and 1936.

The report adds that no evidence exists that consent was ever sought.

Comment: Abuse endemic in Irish boys' schools, says independent report


Nuke

Innocent mistake? Japan underreports 80 nuclear bombs-worth of plutonium to IAEA

Japanese nuclear workers
© Reuters / Kimimasa Mayama
Japan has failed to mention having about 640 kg (1,411 lbs) of unused plutonium in reports it submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2012 and 2013. The unreported amount is enough to make about 80 nuclear bombs.

The missing 640 kilograms Japan kept as Mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, a plutonium-uranium mixture that could be burned in a reactor. It was found in an offline reactor in a nuclear plant in Saga Prefecture in the southern Japanese town of Genkai.

The MOX fuel was loaded into the No. 3 reactor of Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Genkai nuclear plant in March 2011 during its regular checkup, shortly before the Fukushima Nuclear disaster happened later that month. It was then taken out two years later as the reactor remained offline.

The unreported plutonium was first found by Kakujoho, a nuclear information website.

Comment: Double standards for friends of empire... Iran isn't so lucky.


Star of David

No kidding! Israel's opposition leader states Netanyahu 'loathes' Obama

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© Unknown
PM's hostility to president is 'endangering Israel's security,' claims Labor's Isaac Herzog, in rare confirmation of long-rumored strained ties between 'Bibi' and 'Barack'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "loathes" Barack Obama, and his hostile attitude to the US president constitutes a danger to Israel's well-being, the head of the Israeli opposition charged on Friday night, in a highly unusual acknowledgement of the long-rumored strained personal ties between the two leaders

In a bitter verbal assault on the prime minister, Labor party chairman Isaac Herzog slammed Netanyahu for failing to listen to the international community, failing to present peace proposals of his own for an accord with the Palestinians, and failing to work properly with Obama.

It was "a tragedy" that Netanyahu had not presented a peace plan, and was instead "dragged" into responding to other proposals, said Herzog. "The second tragedy, that endangers the security of Israel, is his loathing and hostility for Barack Obama," Herzog went on, describing this as "one of Netanyahu's gravest failures.

Herzog, who was minister of welfare under Netanyahu from 2009-2011, was speaking in an interview on Channel 2 news in the aftermath of this week's formation of a new Hamas-backed Palestinian unity government. Netanyahu had called on the international community to stand up against what he described as a government backed by a terrorist organization, but instead the US led the world in making clear that it would work with the new Palestinian government, and the EU, the UN and much of the rest of the international community quickly followed suit.

Comment: Too bad Herzog couldn't go a step or two further and declaim Bibi for the psychopath that he clearly is.

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