Puppet MastersS


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Restricted web access to The Guardian is Armywide, officials say

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© Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesThe offices of The Guardian and The Observer in London.
Security concerns cited in blocking Guardian news

The Army admitted Thursday to not only restricting access to The Guardian news website at the Presidio of Monterey, as reported in Thursday's Herald, but Armywide.

Presidio employees said the site had been blocked since The Guardian broke stories on data collection by the National Security Agency.

Gordon Van Vleet, an Arizona-based spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, or NETCOM, said in an email the Army is filtering "some access to press coverage and online content about the NSA leaks."

He wrote it is routine for the Department of Defense to take preventative "network hygiene" measures to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

"We make every effort to balance the need to preserve information access with operational security," he wrote, "however, there are strict policies and directives in place regarding protecting and handling classified information."

In a later phone call, Van Vleet said the filter of classified information on public websites was "Armywide" and did not originate at the Presidio.

Pistol

Flashback Released FBI documents reveal plans for snipers to assassinate Occupy Wall Street activists

OWS activists
© Unknown
Jason Leopold, an investigative journalist for Truth-Out, has obtained FBI documents - through the Freedom of Information Act - relating to Occupy Wall Street. Most of the pages in the documents are redacted, and show concerns of cyber threats against the financial sector. However, there are questions of assassination plots against Occupy activists in Houston, Texas. Because the documents have redactions, it is not clear who or what group was planning the assassinations.

On page 61, the section reads: "An identified [redacted] of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary. An identified [redacted] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. [Redacted] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles."

The bottom of page 68 and the top of page 69 reads: "On October 13, 2011, writer sent via email an excerpt [redacted] regarding FBI Houston's [redacted] to all IA's, SSRA's and SSA [redacted]. This [redacted] identified the exploitation of the Occupy Movement by [redacted] interested in developing a long-term plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire." ragingchickenpress.org

Comment:

No doubt these plans will come to fruition one day soon...

They've already done it in Venezuela, Iran and Syria... not long now before the methods tried and tested abroad are applied on U.S. soil.


Che Guevara

Best of the Web: Largest demonstration in world history? 20 million people take to the streets in Egypt, give Muslim Brotherhood leader Morsi two days to step down... or face rebellion

Egypt's protest movement has given the president an ultimatum to step down by Tuesday or face a mass rebellion. Some 20 million outraged citizens have flooded cities across the nation in a show of frustration at Mohamed Morsi's failure to keep the promises he made when he came to power a year ago. At least 7 people have been killed and more than 600 injured during the rallies so far. RT's Bel Trew reports from Cairo.


Black Magic

FBI document: Unknown organisation planned to assassinate Houston Occupy Movement leaders "if necessary"

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Would you be shocked to learn that the FBI apparently knew that some organization, perhaps even a law enforcement agency or private security outfit, had contingency plans to assassinate peaceful protestors in a major American city - and did nothing to intervene?

Would you be surprised to learn that this intelligence comes not from a shadowy whistle-blower but from the FBI itself - specifically, from a document obtained from Houston FBI office last December, as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington, DC-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund?

To repeat: this comes from the FBI itself. The question, then, is: What did the FBI do about it?

The Plot

Remember the Occupy Movement? The peaceful crowds that camped out in the center of a number of cities in the fall of 2011, calling for some recognition by local, state and federal authorities that our democratic system was out of whack, controlled by corporate interests, and in need of immediate repair?

That movement swept the US beginning in mid-September 2011. When, in early October, the movement came to Houston, Texas, law enforcement officials and the city's banking and oil industry executives freaked out perhaps even more so than they did in some other cities. The push-back took the form of violent assaults by police on Occupy activists, federal and local surveillance of people seen as organizers, infiltration by police provocateurs - and, as crazy as it sounds, some kind of plot to assassinate the "leaders" of this non-violent and leaderless movement.

Heart - Black

Psychopathic traits are useful tools in politics

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Is Kevin Rudd a psychopath?
Kevin Rudd is "a psychopath with a giant ego" tweeted the ALP's member for Bendigo, Steve Gibbons, last year.

Calling someone a "psychopath" is a provocative and alarming term that shouldn't be thrown around lightly - instantly conjuring up images of Ivan Milat, Charles Manson and John Jarratt in Wolf Creek.

It's also a term that's always fascinated me - as I'm uncomfortable with the idea our everyday lives are intertwined with people who are genuine, clinically diagnosed psychopaths.

And they're out there. In recent times there have been numerous articles written about psychopaths in the workplace - psychologist Robert Hare even wrote a book Snakes in Suits about psychopaths in the corporate world.

Comment: Making tough decisions is not a 'psychopathic trait'. Decisions are only 'tough' when someone tries to take all the known factors, and all the interested parties' points of view, into account. Psychopaths don't do this: they just do whatever pleases them, and with complete disregard for others.

More to the point; Psychopathic traits aren't just useful tools in politics today, psychopathic traits constitute the essence of the entire body politic today.


Stop

Without conscience: Israel Prison Service tries to break Eritreans' hunger strike

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© Eliyahu HershkovitzSaharonim detention facility in southern Israel.
Nearly 350 Eritrean migrants being held at the Saharonim detention center were transferred to other wings or other prisons.


In an attempt to end the hunger strike by Eritrean migrants being held at the Saharonim detention center, the Israel Prison Service on Sunday began transferring them to other wings in the prison, or to other facilities entirely.

The Prison Service moved about 344 detainees - some to other wings in Saharonim and others to prisons in the south, including the Ketziot Prison near the Egyptian border and the Eshel Prison in Be'er Sheva.

The IPS said that force was not necessary to transfer the detainees, although some passively resisted the move.

This morning 113 prisoners resumed eating, the IPS said. But 230 people from another section joined the strike and refused to accept the breakfast served to them.

MIB

Ex-NSA agent: Secret deals between U.S. and European governments to hand over private data to NSA have been in place for decades

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Wayne Madsen, an NSA worker for 12 years, has revealed that six EU countries, in addition to the UK, colluded in data harvesting.
Germany 'among countries offering intelligence', according to new claims by former US defence analyst

At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data, according to a former contractor to America's National Security Agency, who said the public should not be "kept in the dark".

Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.

Madsen said the countries had "formal second and third party status" under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.

Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.

Comment: So now Wayne Madsen, ridiculed to date as a 'conspiracy theorist' by mainstream commentators, is being cited as an authority in the Guardian?

Apparently the Guardian/Observer is already backtracking on this story because the article has been taken down, "pending an investigation."


Cult

Vatican rentboy and satanism claims revealed by paedophile priest Don Patrizio Poggi

Serving and former priests hired rentboys for sex in churches from pimp who sold consecrated hosts to satanists, says defrocked clergyman.

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© ReutersThe Vatican has denied Don Patrizio Poggi’s allegations over the existence of an underage prostitution ring.
Italian investigators have opened an inquiry into claims by a convicted paedophile priest that an underage prostitution ring has been operating inside the Holy Roman Church with clergymen hiring rentboys for sex inside churches.

Don Patrizio Poggi, 46, told Italian authorities that a former Carabinieri pimped boys for nine clergymen.

Poggi, who served a five-year sentence for abusing teenage boys while he was a parish priest at the San Filippo Neri church in Rome, said he made the allegations to "protect the Holy Church and the Christian community."

The boys were chosen because they were starving and desperate, he claimed, according to Il Messaggero newspaper.

Snakes in Suits

Was Osama Bin Laden a CIA asset named Tim Osman?

With friends like these, does the CIA need enemies?

A look at the evidence that the US regime created Bin Laden's 'al Qaeda' by recruiting disaffected and unemployed youths from Muslim countries and shuttling them to Afghanistan via the US embassy in Saudi Arabia.


Dollar

A priest, a banker and a spook walk into The Vatican's money-laundering rabbit hole...

Scarano
© AP Photo/Francesco PecoraroMonsignor Nunzio Scarano is under investigation.
A priest, a banker and a spook... not the start of a joke or a John LeCarre spy novel, but merely the latest addition to a long list of financial scandals involving the Vatican Bank. Yet despite its quasi comedian if convoluted plotline, the latest attempt to defraud the Catholic church will likely pale in comparison to the most infamous incident involving the Institute of Religious Works (or IOR) as the Vatican Bank is also known.

That one involves one Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, who in 1982 was found hanging from London's Blackfriars bridge, a short distance away from JPMorgan's gold vault, his pockets stuffed will cash and bricks in what at the time was a presumed hit by the mafia taking revenge for funds lost through the collapse of Calvi's bank - a bank in which the Vatican was a significant shareholder.

That particular murder will likely remain unsolved, and the question whether the Vatican uses the mob as its tool of "retribution and righteous punishment" will remain unanswered, as the man who stonewalled the Vatican's response at the time on the grounds of sovereign immunity: the US archbishop Paul Marcinkus who was then-head of the Vatican Bank, took his secrets to the grave with him in 2006.

This time, however, with plenty of living loose ends, we may finally get a glimpse into how deep the rabbit hole involving the legal, and more importantly illegal, (ab)use of Catholic funds really goes.

Fast forward to today when we learn courtesy of the FT that the priest involved in the developing financial scandal is one Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, 61, a banker-turned priest, who was ordained at the age of 35 after working for many years at the Banca d'America e d'Italia, a Naples-based lender which was acquired in the late 1980's by Deutsche Bank. His Vatican career began in the financial wing of the Holy See, or Apsa, where he worked his way up to a senior post in the organization's analytical accounting division. He had been recently suspended once the Vatican learned he was under investigation for alleged money laundering.