Puppet MastersS


Extinguisher

Ukraine base "stormed" by pro-Russians, wedding still goes on

Jim Heintz
Yahoo News
Sun, 23 Mar 2014 17:43 UTC
Pro-Russian Forces Storm Ukrainian Air Force Base

A Ukrainian air force commander is being held after his base in Crimea was stormed by pro-Russian forces, and the acting president called for his release Sunday.

Col. Yuliy Mamchur is the commander of the Belbek Air Force base near Sevastopol, which was taken over Saturday by forces who sent armored personnel carriers smashing through the base's walls and fired shots and stun grenades. One Ukrainian serviceman was reported wounded in the clash.

It was unclear if the forces, who didn't bear insignia, were Russian military or local pro-Russia militia.

Ukraine President Oleksandr Turchynov, in a statement, said Mamchur was "abducted" by the forces. He didn't specify where Mamchur is believed to be held.


Comment: He probably asked to be "arrested" to save face for his troops failing to obey his commands to resist.


However, prominent politician Vitali Klitschko said Sunday that Mamchur is being held by the Russian military in a jail in Sevastopol, the Crimean city that is the base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Klitschko was one of the leaders of the three months of protests in Ukraine that culminated in late February with President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country and interim authorities taking power before a May 25 presidential election. The protests were triggered by Yanukovych's decision to reject a deal for closer ties with the European Union and turn to Moscow instead.
Read More...
Vader

Bill Gates' psychopathic solution to unemployment: tax the workers more, reduce taxes on employers

Neil Munro
The Daily Caller
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 19:08 UTC
Image
© Reddit
Billionaire software mogul Bill Gates has joined the growing chorus of tech experts who predict that low-skill Americans will face greater unemployment because more jobs are being done by software and robots.

The Microsoft founder, whose net worth is $76 billion, suggested the problem could be fixed by reducing taxes on employers and raising taxes on employees, via the reduction of payroll taxes and the addition of new federal consumption taxes.

The widening recognition of greater low-skill unemployment is also creating a problem for the many executives - including Gates - and lobbyists and legislators pushing for increased immigration. They back the Senate's immigration bill, which would dramatically increase the supply of foreign labor, despite Americans' high unemployment rates.

"Software substitution, you know, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses or even, you know, whatever it is you do ... is progressing," Gates told university-trained Washington professionals gathered at a March 13 talk hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.
Read More...
Bullseye

Ron Paul: Crimea secedes. So what? What's the big deal?

Ron Paul
USA Today
Mon, 17 Mar 2014 20:09 UTC
Image
© Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Residents of Crimea voted over the weekend on whether they would remain an autonomous region of Ukraine or join the Russian Federation. In so doing, they joined a number of countries and regions - including recently Scotland, Catalonia and Venice - that are seeking to secede from what they view as unresponsive or oppressive governments.

These latter three are proceeding without much notice, while the overwhelming Crimea vote to secede from Ukraine has incensed U.S. and European Union officials, and has led NATO closer to conflict with Russia than since the height of the Cold War.

What's the big deal? Opponents of the Crimea vote like to point to the illegality of the referendum. But self-determination is a centerpiece of international law. Article I of the United Nations Charter points out clearly that the purpose of the U.N. is to "develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples."

Why does the U.S. care which flag will be hoisted on a small piece of land thousands of miles away?
Read More...
Hotdog

Israel's defense chief says U.S. is a weenie

Jeffrey Heller
Reuters
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 07:53 UTC
Weenie
© Unknown
Israel's defense minister has accused the United States of projecting weakness internationally and said Israel could not rely on its main ally to take the lead in confronting Iran over its nuclear program.

Moshe Yaalon, whose remarks were reported in the Haaretz daily on Tuesday, caused friction with the United States only two months ago when he described Secretary of State John Kerry's quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace as messianic and obsessive.

His latest comments, confirmed by an Israeli official who was present at lecture Yaalon delivered at Tel Aviv University on Monday, displayed deep disappointment with U.S. President Barack Obama's handling of burning world issues.

"We had thought it would be the United States that would lead the campaign against Iran," said Yaalon, who pointed to the Ukraine crisis as an example of Washington "showing weakness".
Read More...
Telephone

The Share Everything Plan: NSA surveillance program reaches 'into the past' to retrieve, replay phone calls

Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani
The Washington Post
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 15:23 UTC
Image
© Occupy.comFeeling safe yet?
The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording "100 percent" of a foreign country's telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.

A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine - one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.

The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for "retrospective retrieval," and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.

In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording "every single" conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.

The call buffer opens a door "into the past," the summary says, enabling users to "retrieve audio of interest that was not tasked at the time of the original call." Analysts listen to only a fraction of 1 percent of the calls, but the absolute numbers are high. Each month, they send millions of voice clippings, or "cuts," for processing and long-term storage.
Read More...
Bullseye

Putin says U.S. guided by 'the rule of the gun' not international law in foreign policy

Alexei Anishchuk
Reuters
Tue, 18 Mar 2014 07:43 UTC
Image
© Gerasa News
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Monday of being guided in its foreign policy not by international law but by the "rule of the gun."

"Our Western partners headed by the United States prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun," he told a joint session of parliament.

"They have come to believe in their exceptionalism and their sense of being the chosen ones. That they can decide the destinies of the world, that it is only them who can be right."
Read More...
Stock Down

Russia Dumping U.S. Treasuries got you worried? Forget it. Here's the REAL Economic Threat


WashingtonsBlog
Fri, 21 Mar 2014 12:33 UTC
Russia Could Crush the Petrodollar


Russia threatened to dump its U.S. treasuries if America imposed sanctions regarding Putin's action in the Crimea.

Zero Hedge argues that Russia has already done so.

But veteran investor Jim Sinclair argues that Russia has a much scarier financial attack which it can use against the U.S.

Specifically, Sinclair says that if Russia accepts payment for oil and gas in any currency other than the dollar - whether it's gold, the Euro, the Ruble, the Rupee, or anything else - then the U.S. petrodollar system will collapse:

Indeed, one of the main pillars for U.S. power is the petrodollar, and the U.S. is desperate for the dollar to maintain reserve status. Some wise commentators have argued that recent U.S. wars have really been about keeping the rest of the world on the petrodollar standard.

The theory is that - after Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard, which had made the dollar the world's reserve currency - America salvaged that role by adopting the petrodollar. Specifically, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia agreed that all oil and gas would be priced in dollars, so the rest of the world had to use dollars for most transactions.

But Reuters notes that Russia may be mere months away from signing a bilateral trade deal with China, where China would buy huge quantities of Russian oil and gas.

Comment: While Mr. Sinclair's characterization of Mr. Putin's character may be off, as Putin's actions thus far have been nothing but gentlemanly, his analysis of the economic weapon in Russia's hands is spot on. It's a mark of the blindspot of the 'reality-creating' neocons that they seem to not be taking this into account.

Creating Reality And The "War On Terror" - A 'How To' Guide

Read More...
Propaganda

The dirty little secret about White House news conferences: The president almost always knows the questions in advance

Clay Waters
Huffington Post
Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:55 UTC
The New York Times' Peter Baker posted a semi-defense Thursday of Barack Obama for pre-arranging a question from a blogger for the liberal Huffington Post website at his Tuesday White House press conference. The White House gave Nico Pitney, who has been monitoring Internet traffic from protestors in Iran, a heads-up the night before that he might be called upon.

Pitney, a reporter for Huffington Post, got the second question of the day from Obama, right after the Associated Press. Here's the exchange:
President Barack Obama: Since we're on Iran, I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post.

Nico Pitney, Huffington Post: Thank you Mr. President.

Obama: Nico, I know that you, and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?

Pitney: Yes, I did, I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions last night from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online, and one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working towards?
Baker began his Thursday posting:
Here is the dirty little secret about White House news conferences: The president almost always knows the questions in advance.

But here is the rest of that secret: That is not because White House officials are planting questions or reporters are colluding with them.
But the Times has in the past implied the Bush White House was planting questions, during its coverage of the Jeff Gannon controversy in 2005. And while Baker didn't seem 100% comfortable with the ethics of the Pitney situation, he certainly did not call Pitney, who asked Obama a challenging question, "an administration plant."

Comment: Of course White House press conferences are staged. Those talking points don't create themselves on the fly. Gotta make sure the questions match the prepared answers.

WH Press Corps Goes Seven Weeks Without a Question
White House reporter: Obama administration 'most hostile' to journalists in US history
White House press corps angrily confronts Press Secretary over lack of access

Contrast the above with the intelligent conduct of Vladmir Putin, who in this hour-plus press meeting takes questions as they are asked (even writing them down), then answers in-depth, often including mini-lessons in history, economics or international law to amplify his point:

A true statesman: Vladimir Putin press conference, March 4, 2014 - video and transcript

Read More...
Wine n Glass

Drunk with power: US government spent 1.3 million dollars on booze in 2013

Joe Battaglia
Newsmax
Fri, 21 Mar 2014 10:44 UTC

Federal records show the government has racked up a seven-figure bar tab.

In fiscal 2013, the government spent nearly $1.3 million on alcohol, more than quadruple the $315,000 spent in 2005, according to The Washington Times. Spending on beer, wine, and liquor in 2013 was up more than $400,000 over the year before.

The spending has fiscal watchdogs up in arms.

"You could say that Washington's quite literally drunk on other people's money," Jonathan Bydlak, president of the Coalition to Reduce Spending, told the Times. "It's very symbolic of the kind of problem we have in a whole host of government areas."
Read More...
Bad Guys

He'll fit right in! California GOP candidate is registered sex offender and was convicted of manslaughter

Tom Boggioni
Raw Story
Sat, 22 Mar 2014 17:40 UTC
Glenn Champ
© Image: Champ for Governor websiteGlenn Champ
One of the four gubernatorial candidates introduced to at the California Republican state party's semi-annual convention last week spent a decade in prison for convictions for voluntary manslaughter and assault with intent to commit rape, according to the LA Times.

Speaking before hundreds of delegates and supporters, Glenn Champ, 48, did not directly address colorful history, choosing instead to explain, "In my life, I've been held accountable because of my stupidity. I do not want anyone else to be enslaved because of their lack of knowledge."

Champ was one of four candidates speaking at the convention - introduced by party chairman Jim Brulte - speaking between leading GOP gubernatorial candidates, former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari, and state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino County.

Champ's criminal history is extensive. Court records show that he pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed firearm in 1992. In 1993, he was convicted of two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and was placed on the state's sex-offender registry.
Read More...