Puppet MastersS


USA

Extrajudicial killing: Official U.S. policy

Stephen Lendman
Information Clearing House
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:20 UTC
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Since taking office, Obama headed America toward full-blown tyranny. He enforces Bush administration police state laws. He added more of his own. He governs like a tinpot despot.

He targets free expression, dissent, whistleblowing, and other constitutional freedoms. He usurped diktat authority.

He spurns civil protections, judicial fairness, and other fundamental rights. Abuse of power is institutionalized.

By executive order, he authorized anyone indefinitely detained with or without charge on his say. He promised to close Guantanamo but keeps it open. He operates a secret global torture prison network.

In January, Law Professor Jonathan Turley called America "no longer the land of the free," saying:
"An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them."

"If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will."
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Eye 1

Hundreds of Afghan children killed in U.S. attacks


Rawa News
Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:12 UTC
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Children are victims of bloody war in Afghanistan.
The United States government should promptly carry out the recommendations of a United Nations committee of experts to improve protection of children abroad from armed conflict. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child released a report and recommendations to the US government on February 5, 2013.

The committee raised a number of concerns regarding US practices during armed conflict that were harmful to children, Human Rights Watch said. The committee said it was "alarmed" at reports of the deaths of hundreds of children from US attacks and air strikes in Afghanistan since the committee last reviewed US practices in 2008. It also expressed "deep concern" at the arrest and detention of children in Afghanistan, laws that exclude former child soldiers from securing asylum in the US, and presidential waivers to US laws that have allowed governments using child soldiers to receive US military assistance.

"The US can and should do more to protect children affected by armed conflict," said Jo Becker, children's rights advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "The US should take decisive action on the child rights committee's common-sense recommendations."

On January 16, the 18-member, Geneva-based committee conducted a formal review of US compliance with an international treaty, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict. The protocol was ratified by the US in 2002. It bars governments from forcibly recruiting children under 18 and from using them in direct hostilities. It also requires countries to take steps to prevent the use of child soldiers and to rehabilitate and assist children who have been involved in armed conflict. The committee's report and recommendations regarding US compliance with the protocol were adopted on January 28.
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Target

Targeting the Iranian threat to "stability": Israel enters Syria

Ben Schreiner
Counterpunch
Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:32 UTC
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With its air strikes against targets inside Syria last week, Israel announced its formal entry into the Syrian crisis. The Israeli targeting of Iran has thus entered the Syrian theater.

According to McClatchy, the Israeli strikes on January 30 targeted anti-aircraft missiles at a military base outside of Damascus. The missiles, according to Israeli intelligence sources, were headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"Israel relies heavily on the strength of our air force, and its strategic deterrence," an Israeli official explained to McClatchy. "Weapons systems that make our air force vulnerable will not be allowed to fall into the hands of terrorist groups."

Accordingly, Washington reacted to the Israeli assault by sternly warning Damascus. "Syria," White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes warned, "should not further destabilize the region by transferring weaponry to Hezbollah."
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Star of David

Washington speaks with forked tongue to Iran

Finian Cunningham
PressTV
Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:27 UTC
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Only days after American Vice President Joe Biden made a very public and tantalizing offer of bilateral talks between the US and Iran, there then follows another round of punitive trade sanctions imposed by Washington on Iran's vital oil industry.

What to make of this seemingly contradictory US position? Some commentators say that the above anomalous attitude reflects a carrot-and-stick policy in Washington, by which incentives dangled in front of Iran are quickly followed by a blow of hardship, with the objective of forcing an end result.

The supposed end result in this case is that the Americans and their Western allies want Iran to demonstrate definitively to the rest of the world that it will never develop capability for nuclear weapons. This demonstration would be achieved, according to Washington, if Iran were to somehow give a cast-iron guarantee that it has circumscribed its nuclear technology and the crucial uranium-enrichment process.

So, this argument goes, if Iran were to comply with this desired objective by severely limiting its nuclear research and industry, then certain "carrots" will follow: a lifting of the crippling economic sanctions and a normalization of diplomatic relations.
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Bad Guys

Ayatollah Khamenei rejects talks with U.S. under pressure and threats


PressTV
Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:22 UTC
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Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei addresses the officials and commanders of Iran’s Navy, February 7, 2013.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has rejected any talks with the United States under pressure and threats.

"I am not a diplomat. I am a revolutionary and speak frankly, honestly, and firmly. An offer of talks makes sense only when the side [that makes the offer] shows its goodwill," Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with the officials and commanders of Iran Navy on Thursday.
"Negotiation is meaningful when the two sides talk with goodwill, under equal conditions and without seeking to deceive each other. Therefore, 'negotiation for the sake of negotiation', 'tactical negotiation' and negotiation offer in order to sell a superpower's gesture to the world is a deceptive move," the Leader stated.
Ayatollah Khamenei also noted that during the past four years, nothing has been seen from the United States but continuation of conspiracies, abetting seditionists and supporting the terrorists which assassinated Iranian nation's scientists.

"You (the Americans) point the gun at Iran and say either negotiations or we pull the trigger! You should know that pressure and negotiations do not go together, and the [Iranian] nation will not be intimidated by such things."
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Snakes in Suits

U.S. goading Japan into confrontation with China - Will Japan take the bait?

John V. Walsh
Information Clearing House
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:09 UTC
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U.S. President Barack Obama shaking hands with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in 2009
"...........Their defeat

Doth by their own insinuation grow.

'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes

Between the pass and fell incensèd points

Of mighty opposites."

- Hamlet on the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
At the height of the 2012 election campaign in late October, a U.S. delegation tiptoed into Japan and then China with scant media coverage. It was "unofficial," but Hillary Clinton gave it her blessing. And it was headed by two figures high in the imperial firmament, Richard L. Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State for George W. Bush; and Joseph S. Nye Jr., a former Pentagon and intelligence official in the Clinton administration and Dean Emeritus of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The delegation also included James B. Steinberg, who served as the Deputy Secretary of State in the Obama administration and Stephen J. Hadley, Bush Two's national security adviser.

The delegation was billed as an attempt by the U.S. to defuse tensions between Japan and China over a number of small islands both claim. But was it? What is the outlook of these influential figures? Interestingly, Armitage and Nye provide us with a partial answer in a brief paper published the preceding August by the Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS), entitled "The Japan-U.S. Alliance. Anchoring Stability in Asia," the carefully crafted fruit of a CSIS Study Group they chaired. The strategy proposed therein, as outlined below, should be very distressing to the Chinese - as well as to the Japanese and Americans.
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Eye 2

Best of the Web: Obama grants himself license to kill: This is the power claimed by kings and tyrants

Andrew P. Napolitano
Information Clearing House
Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:03 UTC
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After stonewalling for more than a year federal judges and ordinary citizens who sought the revelation of its secret legal research justifying the presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas - even Americans - claiming the research was so sensitive and so secret that it could not be revealed without serious consequences, the government sent a summary of its legal memos to an NBC newsroom earlier this week.

This revelation will come as a great surprise, and not a little annoyance, to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon, who heard many hours of oral argument during which the government predicted gloom and doom if its legal research were subjected to public scrutiny. She very reluctantly agreed with the feds, but told them she felt caught in "a veritable Catch-22," because the feds have created "a thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret."

She was writing about President Obama killing Americans and refusing to divulge the legal basis for claiming the right to do so. Now we know that basis.
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Bad Guys

The Mali blowback: More to come?

Stephen Zunes
Foreign Policy in Focus
Fri, 01 Feb 2013 15:49 UTC
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The French-led military offensive in its former colony of Mali has pushed back radical Islamists and allied militias from some of the country's northern cities, freeing the local population from repressive Taliban-style totalitarian rule. The United States has backed the French military effort by transporting French troops and equipment and providing reconnaissance through its satellites and drones. However, despite these initial victories, it raises concerns as to what unforeseen consequences may lay down the road.

Indeed, it was such Western intervention - also ostensibly on humanitarian grounds - that was largely responsible for the Malian crisis in the first place.

The 2011 NATO military intervention in Libya effort went well beyond the UN Security Council mandate to protect civilian lives, as the French, British and U.S. air forces - along with ground support by the Saudi and Qatari dictatorships - essentially allied themselves with the rebel armies. The African Union - while highly-critical of Qaddafi's repression - condemned the intervention, fearing that the resulting chaos would result in the Libya's vast storehouse of arms might fueling local and regional conflicts elsewhere in Africa and destabilize the region.

This is exactly what happened.
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Vader

Test-driving Martial Law? Temporary driving ban declared in several Northeastern U.S. states 'because of the bad weather'

Jeffrey Phelps
Examiner
Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:54 UTC
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As of 5:00 PM EST Friday, authorities in multiple Northeastern US states have implemented martial law, due to "the weather."

Facing up to one year in jail and a $1000 fine for merely driving their own cars on public streets and highways, citizens in various areas within the New England region have been hit with executive orders, threatening residents with criminal penalties if they leave their homes and attempt to drive during the current snowstorm.

Using the color of law to impose demands on the public that can only be seen as a massive overreach of power, individuals in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts thus far have been issued bans on driving in those areas.

R.I. Gov. Lincoln Chafee, for instance, has ordered vehicles off of Routes I-95, I-195, RI-146, RI-24 and I-295, beginning at 5 p.m., according to the R.I. Emergency Management Agency.

Comment: It's rather ironic that they put a driving ban in place so snow plows could clear the road - when no one is allowed to drive on the road in the first place. Far heavier snowfalls have hit other US states in recent years, yet no driving ban was instituted. So this is very odd and seems like another example of the federal government using extreme weather to acclimatize the populace to total control by restricting their movement.

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Radar

US missile defense shield flawed - classified studies


RT.com
Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:44 UTC
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© Reuters / Peter AndrewsA U.S. soldier stands next to a Patriot surface-to-air missile battery at an army base in Morag, Poland
The planned multibillion-dollar missile shield for Europe is flawed to a degree that it might never be able to fulfill its ostensible goal - protecting the US from Iranian missiles - secret Defense Department studies reveal.

The classified studies were outlined to lawmakers in a briefing by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) which was obtained by the Associated Press.

The four-phase shield, which would be based in select NATO member states and the Mediterranean Sea, would culminate in the deployment of SM-3 Block IIB interceptors. Those interceptors would theoretically protect America and Europe from InterContinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) threats.

But it is this fourth and final stage that has now come under scrutiny. The GAO investigators said that classified reports by the Missile Defense Agency concluded that Romania was a poor location for an interceptor to protect the US. It was also revealed that the Polish site would only work if the US developed capabilities to launch interceptors which could target an Iranian missile while in its short initial phase of powered flight.

The White House has opted not to pursue that capability because it is not viewed to be feasible, said one senior defense official.
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