Puppet MastersS


Bomb

Notorious anti-immigration Arizona sheriff wants fleet of drones


RT
Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:11 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Laura SegallMaricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Yet another law enforcement agency is looking to acquire a fleet of surveillance drones, but don't act too surprised. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the controversial lawman from Maricopa County, Arizona, is interesting in adding drones to his arsenal.

Arpaio, 81, has made headlines before over his vehement stance against immigration and his thoughts about United States President Barack Obama. Now he's in the news again, and this time because he wants to bring unmanned aerial vehicles to Maricopa County to protect its almost 4-million residents.

"I want two of these drones, unmanned and of course unarmed," Arpaio told local network ABC15.

The US Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation already have drones on the ready that can be deployed during emergency situations, and dozens of small law enforcement agencies and organizations as of late have applied for permits to control unmanned aerial vehicles in a limited airspace. Now Arpaio wants Maricopa County to be on the list of locales cleared for drone use in certain situations, and he's hoping an eye-in-the-sky surveillance tool will help stop crime and catch criminals.
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Star of David

Israel benefits as world loses

Dr. Paul J. Balles
intifada-palestine.com
Sat, 26 Oct 2013 15:39 UTC
Paul Balles
Paul Balles

Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?
--Peter Hitchens

What started off as Arab Spring has turned morbidly into Arab Fall. What began as a seasonal description became directional and self-destructive. Not only have movements that looked promising failed to benefit anyone but Israel, they have drawn their sponsors exorbitantly toward bankruptcy.

The Israelis and their lobbyists in the United States laugh quietly when they hear someone complain about the $3 billion in annual gifts America sends to Israel. Why is that funny? Because it only represents a tiny portion of what Israel really costs America. Add the total costs of all the wars the US has fought for Israel. The Iraq war alone has cost America $815 billion and it's still not over. It has benefitted no one but Israel - not America and certainly not Iraq. The number of Iraqis slaughtered in the US war and occupation of Iraq: 1,455,590.

Comment: Very succinct description and great summary of the current state of affairs in the Middle East. The pathology of the Israeli leaders is becoming more and more obvious as the death toll rises and costs increase by hundreds of billions every year. When will this stop?

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Eye 2

Police perform "simulated drug raid" on 5th graders; child attacked by police dog


Police State USA
Fri, 25 Oct 2013 15:48 UTC
Image
A "drug awareness" event turned out to be more of a "police state" conditioning drill for a group of 5th graders.

Children were subjected to a "simulated raid" of a party so they could witness police searching citizens with dogs and look for reasons to arrest them in a "drug awareness" event. The idea went from bad to worse when one of the children was attacked by the police dog as it sniffed them for drugs.

This week is apparently "Red Ribbon Awareness week," in which children across the country are told how important it is to keep up the status quo with drug prohibition. The Clay County Courthouse set up a police state demonstration for a group of 5th graders which involved a simulated police raid of a party involving searches and seizures using a vicious police dog.

With the goal of "educating the Clay County fifth-graders on drug awareness," police crashed into a simulated party to search the attendees for narcotics. The children involved were told to hold very still while they were searched by police and their K-9.
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Bad Guys

War crime: Rebels conduct new chemical weapons attack in Syria near Turkish border


RT
Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:13 UTC
UN arms expert in Syria
© AFPA United Nations (UN) arms expert collects samples on August 29, 2013, as they inspect the site where rockets had fallen in Damascus' eastern Ghouta suburb during an investigation into a suspected chemical weapons strike near the capital.
The rebels used chemical weapons in north-eastern Syria near the border with Turkey on Tuesday, a Lebanese TV channel Al-Mayadeen reported.

The toxic shell exploded near a Kurdish defense forces' checkpoint close to the border with Turkey in the city of Ras al-Ayn al-Hasakah.

The attack was reported by Kurdish defense forces who are conducting military operations against the rebels in the region.

They are quoted as saying they saw toxic yellow smoke that followed the shell explosion, while some of them had symptoms of severe chemical intoxication accompanied by nausea.

The reported chemical attack comes amid the second day of fierce fighting in the town.

The Kurdish forces have successfully repelled several attacks by armed groups of extremists of the Nusra Front ( Jabhat al-Nusra), and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, killing 28 militants.

Comment: Will the UN respond and demand and enforce a stop to the West's support of the terrorists?

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Family

Punishing pension savers

Nita Ghei
The Washington Times
Sun, 27 Oct 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
Closed empty branch of Bank of Cyprus
Just a few short months ago, the Cyprus "bail-in" plan, which forcibly extracted assets from almost anyone with a bank account while the island nation fought to stave off creditors, seemed to forge a new frontier for cash-strapped governments.

Unfortunately, as Russia and Poland have recently demonstrated, overwhelming pension obligations and the demographic realities of a shrinking labor force could all too easily lead governments to raid the one remaining stash: private savings for retirement.

Penalizing saving and thrift is terrible policy at any time. It is particularly self-defeating at a time when governments are finding it increasingly difficult to fulfill the promises they made to retirees. Raiding pensions not only discourages savings, it doubles down on the difficulty of caring for the nation's aging population.

Cyprus and Poland are examples of what happens to deeply indebted countries in crisis. The "bail-in" in Cyprus from earlier this year eventually required up to a 47.5 percent haircut on depositors as part of the deal to shore up troubled banks. This forced savers, including small savers, to pay for the risky bets that sophisticated parties took.

Comment: The raiding by governments of savings and pension funds is increasing in attempts to preserve borrowing power and balance sheets. Promises of protection of payment will prove empty. Savers and pensioners the world over need to prepare now.

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Dollars

Long Green: Squandering taxpayers' money on the Green Climate Fund

Willis Eschenbach
Watts Up With That
Sun, 27 Oct 2013 12:37 UTC
The US has some of the world's most boring looking money - it's all green. So we have terms like "greenbacks" for dollars, and "long green", meaning lots of money.

I offer this as context for what I found when I got to wondering what had happened to the United Nations "Green Climate Fund". You may recall that the Green Climate Fund was set up by the UN as the only result of the recent Rio de Janeiro Cancun conference on climate idiocy. When the Fund is going full throttle, it is supposed to disburse no less than $200 billion ($200,000,000,000) dollars each and every year to the developing countries.

It turns out that, unlike those of us skeptics who are falsely accused of receiving big bucks from big oil, the "Green Climate Fund" has already raked in millions of dollars to spend on fighting the evil forces of carbon. They have a catchy slogan, viz: "The urgency and seriousness of climate change call for ambition in financing adaptation and mitigation". Ambition in financing? What's not to like?

Now, I've worked for development organizations before. The rule of thumb is that no more than 15% of the funds should go for administration, the rest needs to go to the eventual intended recipients of the largesse.

Climate Fund
© WattsUpWithThat
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Red Flag

Did China just join the War on Terror? Tiananmen car crash may have been suicide attack, officials claim


The Guardian
Tue, 29 Oct 2013 11:52 UTC
Image
© ReutersSmoke rises from the scene of Monday's crash at the Forbidden City, in which a sport utility vehicle mounted the pavement and burst into flames.
Police investigating incident at Forbidden City in which five people died say they are seeking two Muslim Uighur suspects

Police investigating Monday's car crash at Beijing's Forbidden City are searching for information on two suspects from the Muslim Uighur minority. A day after a car ploughed through a crowd, crashed and burst into flames, killing five people and injuring 38, government sources have said the "major incident" may have been a suicide attack.

"It looks like a premeditated suicide attack," a government source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Two bystanders, including a Filipino woman, were killed when a sport utility vehicle veered inside a barrier separating a crowded pavement from a busy avenue and then drove toward Tiananmen Gate, which stands opposite Tiananmen Square. Three passengers inside the car were also killed.

The 38 injured were among the crowds in front of the gate, where a large portrait of Mao Zedong hangs near the southern entrance to the former imperial palace. Three other Filipinos and a Japanese man were among the injured, police said, but there were no immediate details on their conditions.
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Pirates

British army criticised for recruiting 16-year-olds

Chris Atkins, Gemma Atkinson, Fred Grace and Mustafa Khalili
guardian
Tue, 29 Oct 2013 10:31 UTC

Britain is one of just 19 countries that still recruit 16-year-olds to the armed forces. A new report claims that younger recruits are more likely to suffer from PTSD, alcohol problems and suicide than those who join as adults. This video tells the story of David Buck who joined the army at 17 but now feels he was conned by misleading recruitment marketing
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Nuke

Going nuclear: Russia to construct first $10bn facility in energy-hungry Jordan


RT
Tue, 29 Oct 2013 06:09 UTC
Nuclear plant
© RIA Novosti / Alexandr Kryazhev
Russia's State Nuclear Energy Corporation Rosatom has won a contract to build and operate Jordan's first nuclear power plant. The $10 billion contract is one of the world's first reactor projects since the disastrous Fukushima leak of 2011.

The chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) Khaled Toukan said Atomstroyexport (ASE), Rosatom's international arm, will construct, and possibly operate, the plant which will provide 12 percent (2000 megawatts) of the kingdom's energy needs, and is due for completion in 2020.

ASE will finance 49 percent of the project and Jordan will pay for 51 percent and take a controlling share.

A or build-own-operate (BOO) scheme will be used to construct the two separate 1000-megawatt reactors 25 miles from the capital Amman, the International Business Times reported.

ASE used the same business model to finance a plant in Turkey, where it is building a 4.8 gigawatt facility worth $20 billion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to make an official state visit to Jordan in November, and will meet with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Comment: In the calculations of cost the long term storage of used nuclear fuel rods and the massive clean-up after meltdowns such as in Fukushima are not incorporated. They are costs that are all passed on to the taxpayers and to the many generations that come after us.

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Nuke

TEPCO must address 'institutionalized lying' before it restarts world's biggest nuclear power plant - governor


RT
Tue, 29 Oct 2013 05:46 UTC
Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant
© AFPTokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant at Okuma town in Fukushima prefecture
Tokyo Electric Power Co must give a more thorough account of the Fukushima disaster and address "institutionalized lying" in the company, before it will be permitted to restart the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant, according to a local governor.

"If they don't do what needs to be done, if they keep skimping on costs and manipulating information, they can never be trusted," Niigata Prefecture Governor Hirohiko Izumida told Reuters on Monday, adding that these limitations need to be overcome before the plant is restarted.
It is up to Izumida to approve plans to restart the reactor at the TEPCO-run Kashiwazaki Kariwa - the world's biggest nuclear complex, located on the Japan sea coast, north-west of Tokyo. His personal commission would examine both the causes and handling of the disaster at Fukushima and lay them alongside existing regulatory safeguards to ensure a similar crisis could not reoccur.

Comment: Just a few articles showing TEPCO lying:

Water leaks at Fukushima could contaminate entire Pacific Ocean

American sailors sue Tepco for lying about Fukushima - on the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan for rescue work

Radiation Blowback: 10 Times Lethal Level Registered at Fukushima

Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout?

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