Puppet MastersS


Cow Skull

"Trust Us": The government continues to insist on our trust despite an incontestable track record of deceit and incompetence

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© Sodahead
On June 7 Barack Obama made his first public statements about the NSA surveillance programs leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. After justifying the programs as subject to congressional and judicial oversight, he insisted he did not want "to suggest that, you know, you just say 'trust me, we're doing the right thing, we know who the bad guys are.'"

But, he added, "If people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress, and don't trust federal judges, to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here."

The problem isn't so much that the American people don't trust their government with unprecedented powers in the realm of national security, but that the government continues to insist on our trust despite an incontestable track record of deceit and incompetence.

War Whore

Death from above: How American drone strikes are devastating Yemen

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© Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP Images An unmanned U.S. Predator drone
On the ground in a country where unmanned missile attacks are a terrifyingly regular occurrence

The people of Yemen can hear destruction before it arrives. In cities, towns and villages across this country, which hangs off the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, the air buzzes with the sound of American drones flying overhead. The sound is a constant and terrible reminder: a robot plane, acting on secret intelligence, may calculate that the man across from you at the coffee shop, or the acquaintance with whom you've shared a passing word on the street, is an Al Qaeda operative. This intelligence may be accurate or it may not, but it doesn't matter. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, the chaotic buzzing above sharpens into the death-herald of an incoming missile.

Such quite literal existential uncertainty is coming at a deep psychological cost for the Yemeni people. For Americans, this military campaign is an abstraction. The drone strikes don't require U.S. troops on the ground, and thus are easy to keep out of sight and out of mind. Over half of Yemen's 24.8 million citizens - militants and civilians alike - are impacted every day. A war is happening, and one of the unforeseen casualties is the Yemeni mind.

Arrow Down

Human rights crisis after coup and the deterioration of Egypt - thanks to U.S. support and intervention

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© Laurence Turner/Uniquedesign.net
We recently visited Egypt leading a delegation of lawyers to observe the situation of human rights in that country. We were troubled by what we saw and heard. We are also troubled by the United States' support for a government installed by a military coup.

The United States and more than 160 States have agreed to respect and ensure the right to participate in one's government, for example, by agreeing to article 25 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. Nevertheless, as this right came under serious attack in Egypt, the United States continues to support the Egyptian military as it imposes its will on the Egyptian people. This support should stop until and unless the freely and fairly elected government is restored.

The military coup that took place in Egypt on 3 July 2013 is a serious violation of the right to participate in one's democracy. It is a violation of the rights of the majority voters in the Egypt's presidential and parliamentary elections in 2011 and 2012.

Bad Guys

Psychopath Zbigniew Brzezinksi counsels fellow psychopath John Kerry: Stand Firm!

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© Headline Digest
It's time for the secretary of state to insist on America's position on Middle East peace

We commend Secretary of State John Kerry's extraordinary efforts to renew Israeli-Palestinian talks and negotiations for a framework for a peace accord, and the strong support his initiative has received from President Barack Obama.

We believe these efforts, and the priority Kerry has assigned to them, have been fully justified. However, we also believe that the necessary confidentiality that Secretary Kerry imposed on the resumed negotiations should not preclude a far more forceful and public expression of certain fundamental U.S. positions:

Settlements

U.S. disapproval of continued settlement enlargement in the Occupied Territories by Israel's government as "illegitimate" and "unhelpful" does not begin to define the destructiveness of this activity. Nor does it dispel the impression that we have come to accept it despite our rhetorical objections. Halting the diplomatic process on a date certain until Israel complies with international law and previous agreements would help to stop this activity and clearly place the onus for the interruption where it belongs.

Stock Down

Insiders tell all: Both the stock market and the SEC are rigged (but we know that already)

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President Obama Nominates Mary Jo White for Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Since bestselling author Michael Lewis appeared on 60 Minutes on March 30 to promote his new book, Flash Boys, and explained how the U.S. stock market is rigged; and Brad Katsuyama, the head of IEX, an electronic trading platform who plays a central role in the Lewis book, did the same on CNBC a few days later, the debate has gone viral.

But Lewis and Katsuyama were not the first to blow the whistle on rigged U.S. stock markets. Sal Arnuk and Joseph Saluzzi, Wall Street insiders and co-founders of Themis Trading LLC literally wrote the book on Broken Markets in 2012 and have been exposing details of the rigging on their blog ever since.

Wall Street Journal reporter, Scott Patterson, mapped out the exotic and corrupt order types permitted by the stock exchanges to fleece the little guy in his 2012 book, Dark Pools, which follows the trading career of Haim Bodek, who has set up his own web site to blow the whistle on just how badly the stock market is rigged.

Following all the media hoopla, the FBI has recently announced that it has opened an investigation into the allegations. But under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the FBI is not in charge of rigged stock exchanges - the Securities and Exchange Commission is. But according to insiders, the SEC has stood down in much the same fashion that it ignored warnings about Bernard Madoff from whistleblower Harry Markopolos for years. The explanation for the SEC's inaction, many traders feel, is that the SEC itself is rigged against Main Street in favor of big Wall Street firms. That view has found support among the SEC's own insiders.

USA

Rebel videos, photos show US-made rockets in Syria

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© Screenshot from youtube video by asim zedan
Recently emerged videos and photos show Syrian rebels armed with what experts say are US anti-tank rockets. These are the first significant American-built armaments to be seen in the country, as the civil war reaches a stalemate.

Although it was not possible to independently verify the footage - most of which has now been removed from YouTube - analysts said that BGM-71 TOW anti-tank rockets, made by the US, were shown in the videos. However, they added that the rockets could have been supplied by an American ally such as Saudi Arabia, possibly with Washington's tacit agreement, Reuters reported.

"With US-made TOW anti-tank missiles now seen in the hands of three groups in the north and the south of Syria, it is safe to say that is important," said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution Doha center, who was one of the first people to identify the weapons.

USA

Afghanistan Newspeak: 10 ways the US skews the narrative

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As the clock ticks down to the promised withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US military is trying to figure out how to market the idea that the international intervention has actually accomplished its core mission - bringing peace and stability to a nation that has known little of either for the past 35 years.

The solution: a little Newspeak.

As George Orwell described the wonders of this invention: "It means a loyal willingness to say that black is white ... But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary."

Welcome to the war in Afghanistan.

Comment: Also see: U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to 'protect women'? Really?


Cow

The Bundy Ranch video Facebook won't let you see?

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The image above may well go down in history. We can all recall a time when a black woman named Rosa Parks defied law and won. No need exists to paint the picture. You already know it. You can already see her. Here we see a modern representation as Americans awaken to the insidious growth of our federal Creature. Over the weekend, a fierce standoff between Bundy Ranch militiamen and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) came to an end - For now...

Highlights from the events that took place are finished off with a dramatic conclusion in a Youtube video watermarked by InfoWars.

Posted yesterday, the video already has 105k hits. For all intents and purposes, the video has gone viral. However, some are saying that Facebook is doing its best to stand in the way of people seeing it. Reports started flooding the internet claiming that Facebook was blocking the video from being posted directly to their walls.Highlights from the events that took place are finished off with a dramatic conclusion in a Youtube video watermarked by InfoWars.

Comment: BLM fracking racket exposed! Armed siege and cattle theft from Bundy ranch really about fracking leases


War Whore

Israel's intelligence minister slams comments by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

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Israel's intelligence minister Monday slammed as unacceptable comments by US Secretary of State John Kerry on negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme which he said indicated a "surrender" to Tehran.

"The things Kerry said in the Congress are worrying, they are surprising and they are unacceptable," Yuval Steinitz, who is also strategic affairs minister, told public radio.

"We watch the negotiations with concern. We are not opposed to a diplomatic solution but we are against a solution which is entirely a surrender to Iran and which leaves it a threshold nuclear state," Steinitz said.

In remarks to US lawmakers last week Kerry warned that the Islamic republic was two months away from breakout capability to produce enough nuclear material for a bomb should they resume their mothballed enrichment process.

Responding to reports that international negotiations with Iran should focus on extending the time it would take for Iran to produce nuclear weapons to between six and 12 months Kerry said the ultimate goal was assurance that Iran never build an atomic bomb but slowing the process would be an improvement on the current situation.

"I think it is fair to say, I think it is public knowledge today, that we are operating with a time period for a so-called breakout of about two months," Kerry said.

Bomb

War on humanity: How the U.S. coup machine has been destroying democracy since 1953

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Soon after the 2004 U.S. coup to depose President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, I heard Aristide's lawyer Ira Kurzban speaking in Miami. He began his talk with a riddle: "Why has there never been a coup in Washington D.C.?" The answer: "Because there is no U.S. Embassy in Washington D.C." This introduction was greeted with wild applause by a mostly Haitian-American audience who understood it only too well.

Ukraine's former security chief, Aleksandr Yakimenko, has reported that the coup-plotters who overthrew the elected government in Ukraine, " basically lived in the (U.S.) Embassy. They were there every day." We also know from a leaked Russian intercept that they were in close contact with Ambassador Pyatt and the senior U.S. official in charge of the coup, former Dick Cheney aide Victoria Nuland, officially the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. And we can assume that many of their days in the Embassy were spent in strategy and training sessions with their individual CIA case officers.

To place the coup in Ukraine in historical context, this is at least the 80th time the United States has organized a coup or a failed coup in a foreign country since 1953. That was when President Eisenhower discovered in Iran that the CIA could overthrow elected governments who refused to sacrifice the future of their people to Western commercial and geopolitical interests. Most U.S. coups have led to severe repression, disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture, corruption, extreme poverty and inequality, and prolonged setbacks for the democratic aspirations of people in the countries affected. The plutocratic and ultra-conservative nature of the forces the U.S. has brought to power in Ukraine make it unlikely to be an exception.