Puppet MastersS


Smiley

If we policed the U.S. the way we do Afghanistan

I'd really like to see the response of drone-strike supporters if we tried taking out the dangerous criminals in their cities with remote-controlled aerial bombings. 'Cause I don't think that would play well in most 'hoods.

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Eye 1

Merry Christmas from the Feds, who can still read your emails without a warrant

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© AllGov.com
The federal government will continue to access Americans' emails without a warrant, after the U.S. Senate dropped a key amendment to legislation now headed to the White House for approval.

Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved an amendment attached to the Video Privacy Protection Act Amendments Act (which deals with publishing users' Netflix information on Facebook pages) that would have required federal law enforcement to obtain a warrant before monitoring email or other data stored remotely (i.e., the cloud).

The Senate was set to approve the video privacy bill along with the email amendment, which would have applied to a different law, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. But then senators decided for reasons unknown to drop the amendment.

Handcuffs

United Arab Emirates 'arrests members of terror cell'

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© BBC
The United Arab Emirates says it has arrested members of what it called a terror cell which was planning attacks.

According to an official statement carried on the state news agency WAM, the arrests were made in conjunction with Saudi Arabia.

The cell had obtained "materials and equipments with the aim of executing terrorist operations", WAM said.

Those detained were reportedly both UAE and Saudi nationals and were members of what was termed a "deviant group".

The phrase "deviant group" is often used by authorities in Saudi Arabia to describe al-Qaeda members.

Sherlock

Syria military police chief defects to rebels

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© Screengrab: YouTubeSyrian General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal, head of the military police, making a statement about his defection.
Major General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal says army has 'committed massacres against an unarmed population'

The head of Syria's military police has defected from the army and declared allegiance to the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Major General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal was shown making a statement confirming his defection in a video broadcast on al-Arabiya TV late on Tuesday, saying he was joining "the people's revolution".

The defection came as a delegation of Syrian officials headed to Moscow on Wednesday to discuss proposals for ending the conflict following talks with the UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in Damascus this week.

Wearing his uniform with a red insignia on the shoulder, Shalal spoke from a desk in a room in an undisclosed location. Some rebel sources said he had fled to Turkey. It was not clear when Shalal changed sides.

"The army has destroyed cities and villages and has committed massacres against an unarmed population that took to the streets to demand freedom," he said. "Long live free Syria."

War Whore

Suicide bomber targets Nato base in Afghanistan

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© Mohammad Rasool Adil/AFP/Getty ImagesAfghan police carry the body of a civilian into a hospital morgue after the suicide attack in Khost province.
A suicide bomber driving a minibus full of explosives has attacked a base in eastern Afghanistan used by Nato troops and CIA operatives, killing three Afghan civilians and a security guard and injuring at least seven others.

The attacker struck when his vehicle was detained at a checkpoint a short distance from the east gate of the base in Khost province, also known to locals as "the old airport", the deputy provincial governor Abdul Waheed Patan told the Guardian.

"The security people stopped the bus at the checkpoint, but he kept going for a few more metres then detonated the explosives," Patan said by phone from Khost. "Two drivers who bring passengers from town to the area near the base, one civilian passerby and one security guard were killed."

The provincial police chief, General Abdul Qayoum Bakaizoi, confirmed the attack had happened at around 8am near one of two main gates to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman.

The attack came almost exactly three years after a much more devastating suicide bomber hit US intelligence officers operating out of FOB Chapman. A Jordanian doctor and militant posing as a double agent, he killed the station chief and six other CIA employees as well as a Jordanian intelligence official.

Bizarro Earth

Gaza's children haunted by nightmare of war

A recent UNICEF report indicates that the vast majority of Gaza's children are struggling to cope with war trauma and PTSD. TRNN correspondent Jihan Hafiz reports from the most densely-populated and most routinely terrorised place on Earth.


Bulb

UK's largest food bank says government ministers lack empathy with the poor

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"Haha, feeding the poor because they're hungry, that's funny!"
Britain's largest organizer of food banks, the Trussell Trust, has accused British ministers particularly Chancellor George Osborne of lacking "empathy" with the poor.

The charity's executive chairman Chris Mould condemned the UK government's austerity policies and urged Osborne to put himself "in other people's shoes".

He also said that if cabinet ministers had a "deeper understanding" of the causes of poverty, "they would choose to nuance their policy differently".

The Trussell Trust, which runs a network of 270 food banks across the UK, announced earlier that it expects to feed 15,000 Britons over the Christmas fortnight alone, almost double the number of people who turned to the organization last Christmas.

Harsh benefit cuts and low wages have added weight to the uneasiness of the lives of many low to middle income families in Britain.

Comment: More People Ask: Are Politicians Psychopaths?


Stock Up

Fiscal Cliff: Let's call their bluff

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"Fiscal cliff" is the US code word for "austerity measures"
The "fiscal cliff" has all the earmarks of a false flag operation, full of sound and fury, intended to extort concessions from opponents. Neil Irwin of the Washington Post calls it "a self-induced austerity crisis." David Weidner in the Wall Street Journal calls it simply theater, designed to pressure politicians into a budget deal:
The cliff is really just a trumped-up annual budget discussion. . . . The most likely outcome is a combination of tax increases, spending cuts and kicking the can down the road.
Yet the media coverage has been "panic-inducing, falling somewhere between that given to an approaching hurricane and an alien invasion." In the summer of 2011, this sort of media hype succeeded in causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plunge nearly 2000 points. But this time the market is generally ignoring the cliff, either confident a deal will be reached or not caring.

The goal of the exercise seems to be to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, something a radical group of conservatives has worked for decades to achieve. But with the recent Democratic victories, demands for "fiscal responsibility" may just result in higher taxes for the rich, without gutting the entitlements.

Vader

Best of the Web: End of the world? Oliver Stone on Obama's empire, Big Brother's creepiest toys

Abby Martin Breaks the Set on the End of the World', ínterviews Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick about their documentary series, the Untold History of the United States, and looks at the Top 5 Surveillance Toys of Big Brother in 2012.


Star of David

Israel violated Lebanese sovereignty 3,477 times in 2012


Israel has violated Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity over 3,000 times in 2012 in blatant violation of UN Security Council resolution, Press TV reports.

In the year 2012, Israel has approximately violated Lebanon's sovereignty 3,400 times through air, water and ground.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brokered a ceasefire in the war of aggression Israel launched against Lebanon in 2006, calls on Israel to respect Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The most frequent breaches of Israel are overflights by Israeli war planes and drones to Lebanese skies.

Following Israel's 2006 attack on Lebanon, the total number of violations exceeded 20,000, which is an average of more than nine violations per day.