Puppet MastersS


Footprints

Athens plans huge wave of privatisations

Greece's ruling coalition unveiled an "everything must go" sale of the country's assets over the weekend as Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras gushed that privatisation was his "top priority.

"The privatisation programme aims at attracting important international capital," Mr Stournaras told MPs on Saturday, sketching a vista of foreign corporations rushing in to snap up Greece's infrastructure and services.

The initial wave of the project would include 28 major privatisations, including state natural gas, water and betting companies, a number of key airports including that of Athens, the state railways and various marinas and other properties.

Some services would be taken over entirely by the private sector, he said, while in others the state would rent back the infrastructure from the buyers.

Mr Stournaras added that this was just the beginning, with a second bout of sell-offs, including that of the Public Power Corporation, planned for a later date.

In a second address today ahead of a confidence vote in the government he insisted that any deviation from the demands of the "troika" - the EU, European Central Bank and the IMF - would risk the country losing the next tranche of "aid" (loans) from the trio.

And he added that privatisation was only part of the package - it would also be essential to boost Greek "competitiveness," presumably by cutting wages even further.

Binoculars

US set to deploy drones for home use

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© Image from ga-asi.com
The US Army has completed a two-week demonstration of a new ground-based sensor system for its drones. It now hopes to get the drones certified for domestic flights, but critics are concerned that their use could breach privacy rights.

The demonstrations took place at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and involved testing the Ground Based Sense and Avoid (GBSAA) system for the MQ-1C Gray Eagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The drone has been on duty in Afghanistan, but the Army now hopes to deploy it at home.

The Pentagon hopes to send the Gray Eagles to five bases throughout the country: Fort Hood (TX), Fort Riley (KS), Fort Stewart (GA), Fort Campbell (KY) and Fort Bragg (NC). However, it first needs to get the drones certified with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

In February, Congress tasked the FAA with coming up with a plan to integrate rules for drones into domestic aircraft regulations. Under the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, the aviation authority was to produce rules for the certification of the first UAVs to be used by law enforcement and emergency response agencies in May. Licenses for these drones are to be issued in August.

While UAVs are actively deployed by the US military for operations in hot spots like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, it appears that the government and private companies are now eying their potential uses in the civilian sector.

Bad Guys

X-ray vans to hit the streets of America?


Bad Guys

Israeli Spies are Active in Iran, and They are the Assassins

Israel's secret wars
Israel's foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, sends operatives into and out of Iran on a regular basis; and the mysterious men on motorcycles who have assassinated at least four Iranian nuclear scientists are Israelis.

Those are among the revelations in a new book about Israeli espionage, Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman (Levant Books: published July 9; paperback $16.99, ebook $8.99).

Raviv and Melman's previous book about Israel's intelligence community, Every Spy a Prince, was a national (New York Times) best seller for fourteen weeks in 1990. They have more details on their blog, IsraelSpy.com.

Footprints

U.S court orders Iran to pay $813 million for 1983 Beirut bombing

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© Wikimedia CommonsMarine barracks bombing in Beirut.
Washington - A US federal judge has ordered Iran to pay more than $813 million in damages and interest to the families of 241 US soldiers killed in the 1983 bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon.

"After this opinion, this court will have issued over $8.8 billion in judgments against Iran as a result of the 1983 Beirut bombing," Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in a ruling this week, a copy of which was seen Friday by AFP.

"Iran is racking up quite a bill from its sponsorship of terrorism," the Washington judge added, noting that "a number of other Beirut bombing cases remain pending, and their completion will surely increase this amount."

On October 23, 1983, 241 American soldiers, including 220 Marines, were killed in Beirut when a truck packed with explosives rammed through barricades and detonated in front of the US barracks near Beirut's international airport.

The attack was one of the deadliest ever against Americans. The same day, in a coordinated attack, 58 French paratroopers were killed by a truck bomb at the French barracks in Beirut.

The twin bombings have been blamed on Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran.

Footprints

Iran plans to sell oil via private group, evade ban

(Reuters) - Iran has reached agreements with European refiners to sell some of its oil through a private consortium, an official said on Saturday, a move designed to circumvent sanctions intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt its disputed nuclear program.

The head of the oil products exporters' union said the agreement between the exporters' union, Iran's central bank, and the oil ministry would get round a European Union ban on shipping insurance for tankers carrying Iranian oil, though he gave few details and did not name the refiners involved.

The EU put into effect a ban on the importation, purchase, or shipping of Iranian oil on July 1, and the Islamic Republic will see its oil exports fall by more than 50 percent this month from last year's regular levels, costing it billions of dollars a month in revenue.

"There have been discussions with European refiners, and a final agreement has even been reached," said Hassan Khosrojerdi, the exporters' union head, according to Iran's Mehr News Agency.

"In accordance with the agreement, it is planned that 20 percent of Iran's oil exports will go through this private consortium."

Chess

Russian official urges Moscow to deliver S-300 air defense missiles to Iran

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© Unknown
Chairman of the Russian Defense Ministry's Public Council Igor Korotchenko has called on Moscow to fulfill its contractual obligations to Tehran and deliver S-300 air defense missiles to Iran, MNA reported.

Bad Guys

What Did Reagan Know About the Argentine Dictatorship's Baby Thefts?

Reagan
Ronald Reagan, supporter of fascists
The Reagan administration was aware of a scheme to murder leftist mothers in Argentina and give their infants to military personnel often complicit in the killings.

An Argentine court has convicted two of the nation's former right-wing dictators, Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, in a scheme to murder leftist mothers and give their infants to military personnel often complicit in the killings, a shocking process known to the Reagan administration even as it worked closely with the bloody regime.

Testimony at the trial included a videoconference from Washington with Elliott Abrams, then-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, who said he urged Bignone to reveal the babies' identities as Argentina began a transition to democracy in 1983.

Abrams said the Reagan administration "knew that it wasn't just one or two children," indicating that U.S. officials believed there was a high-level "plan because there were many people who were being murdered or jailed." Estimates of the Argentines murdered in the so-called Dirty War range from 13,000 to about 30,000, with many victims "disappeared," buried in mass graves or dumped from planes over the Atlantic.

Attention

Executive Tyranny

General Obama
© FactsNotFantasy Blogspot
The use of Executive Orders (EO) goes back to the first President, George Washington. Every chief executive has issued them since then. Some have been historic, but the latest Executive Orders of President Obama are downright scary.

The Executive Order signed on June 25 is titled "Russian Highly Enriched Uranium" and offers as its justification the fact that "the accumulation of a large volume of weapons-usable fissile material in the territory of the Russian Federal continues to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat."

A national emergency? Over Russian nuclear material?

Are we still in the Cold War?

Are we facing another Cuban Missile Crisis?

Are the Russians getting ready to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S.?

Are the Russians provocateurs? Yes, but what else is new?

The justification for this Executive Order is absurd.

The world is filled with nuclear weapons held by both our allies and our presumed enemies.

Having proclaimed a national emergency, why hasn't Obama gone on television to inform Americans? Because, like everything else he does, it is done with stealth.

Footprints

French President Hollande vows new Armenia 'genocide law'

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© AFPArmenians say up to 1.5m people were killed by the Ottoman Turks in 1915-16.
French President Francois Hollande has said he plans a new law to punish denial that the 1915-16 killing of Armenians was genocide. A previous law approved by the French parliament was struck down in February by the Constitutional Council, which said it infringed freedom of speech.

Turkey rejects the term "genocide" for the deaths of Armenians during their deportation by the Ottoman Empire. The issue has strained Franco-Turkish relations in recent years.

Mr Hollande's predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy had also ordered his government to draft a new law after the old one was struck down. "Francois Hollande has again expressed his willingness to propose a bill designed to curb the denial of the Armenian genocide, as he had said during his campaign and even before," the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organisations of France (CCAF) told the AFP news agency.

A delegation from the CCAF will meet Mr Hollande before the end of the month to discuss what form the new law would take, French media reports say.

On Thursday, remarks by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius during a meeting with his Turkish counterpart appeared to indicate that the Constitutional Council's ruling would make it impossible to take up the issue again. However, Mr Hollande's office said on Saturday: "The president expressed his commitments during the campaign. He will keep them.

"We must find a path, a road that allows for a text that is consistent with the constitution."