Puppet MastersS

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Debt crisis: Angela Merkel Dismisses Spain and Italy's Pleas for Aid

Angela Merkel
© Agence France-PresseAngela Merkel
Pleas from Spain and Italy for urgent financial aid from the eurozone to bring down borrowing costs were dismissed by Angela Merkel as divisions hardened on the eve of a critical summit.

Germany's Chancellor angrily rejected desperate pleading by Italy and Spain as a Franco-German rift over eurozone debt sharing threatened to unravel efforts to find a fix for the single currency at a meeting of European leaders on Thursday.

Before flying last night to Paris for emergency talks with Francois Hollande, the French President, Mrs Merkel told German MPs that instead of more cash the eurozone needed to step up debt reduction and economic reforms.

"I fear that at the summit we will talk too much about all these ideas for joint liability and too little about improved controls and structural measures," she said.

Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish Prime Minister, said he would plead with other leaders to allow euro bail-out funds or the European Central Bank to stabilise financial markets by helping to reduce borrowing costs, running at nearly 7pc for Spain.

"We can't keep funding ourselves for a long time at the prices we're currently funding ourselves," he said. "There are institutions and also financial entities that cannot access the markets. It is happening in Spain, it is happening in Italy and it is happening in other countries."

Dollar

Best of the Web: Undercover Reporter Infiltrates Private Security Firm to Expose London Olympic Evacuation Plan, Predator Drones and Delivery of '200,000 Casket Linings'

Wenlock
© London 2012London 2012 Olympic Games Mascot, Wenlock, Policeman
The 2012 London olympics start in 4 weeks time. Exclusive interview with investigative journalist Lee Hazledean who is training undercover as a security guard for the London olympics with private security firm G4S. Lee is a filmmaker and investigative TV journalist. He has also been involved in major stories on the IRA and how British Army infiltrated the organisation and carried out false flag operations. He has managed to get undercover as part of the security team at the 2012 Olympics with G4S. He has found there is a media black out on all major news outlets to do with the Olympics unless the story is broken in a news paper or foreign news agency it's unlikely to see the light of day. Security training and officers are so appalling that the safety and security of the London 2012 Olympics are in jeopardy.



Comment: The London Olympics is becoming a veritable profit bonanza for the Industrial security complex.The reporter does sound genuine in the information he learned during training for the private security firm GS4. One possible reason for the flippant way the evacuation and 'casket lining' information was given to the reporter could be that the terrorist threat has been overplayed by GS4 to maximise their profits on the security contract. The practicalities of evacuating 11 million people were not relayed in such a manner to suggest this would be a realistic necessity. At the very least one would expect personnel receiving training would receive specific details of logistics such as transportation requirements, muster points and roles. At this stage there seems very little real threat of the type of event prophesied by the Rockerfeller foundation in 2010, however, it remains to be seen whether 'terror warnings' and the accompanying arrests of patsies will be orchestrated in order to justify the obscene costs the security contractors are reaping.

At the same time the PTB are well aware that there is no 'terror threat' except the one they themselves organise. All of the fighter jets and SAMs on buildings are designed for their manipulative and mind programming effect on the local population, not to protect them. Of course, this lax (or lack of) security is also useful in the event that MI5 or the Mossad etc. are planning on staging a "Muslim terror attack".


Bizarro Earth

Turkey Increases its Military Presence at Syrian Border

Turkey deploys rocket launchers and artillery down to bases near the Syrian border as rhetoric from Ankara increases over tensions.


A military convoy left from a base at the port city of Iskenderun and arrived at military compounds near Syrian border, the Dogan news agency reported.

Tensions have escalated between Turkey and Syria following the shooting down of a Turkish military aircraft by Syrian air defences, giving a new international dimension to the worsening conflict in Syria.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told Syria to beware the wrath of Turkey after the shooting down of the plane and said he had ordered the armed forces to react to any military threat from Syria near the two countries' border.

Laptop

MI5 Chief: Massive Cybercrime Wave Putting Businesses at Risk

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© Security ServiceMI5 boss Jonathan Evans has warned that companies in the UK are fending off an 'astonishing' level of cyberattacks.
Businesses in Britain are under sustained attack from governments and gangs bent on intellectual-property theft and other cybercrime, with one company suffering millions of pounds in losses, the head of MI5 has revealed.


They are victims of the black cyber-economy, which has a huge pool of resources to draw on for conducting state-sponsored cyber-espionage and cybercrime, MI5 director general Jonathan Evans said in a speech on Monday.

"Vulnerabilities in the internet are being exploited aggressively, not just by criminals but also by states," Evans told an audience at the Mansion House in London. "The extent of what is going on is astonishing - with industrial-scale processes, involving many thousands of people, lying behind both state-sponsored cyber-espionage and organised cybercrime."

MI5 worked with one major London-listed company that estimated it had lost ยฃ800m in revenue as a result of a hostile cyberattack from a state, he said. The damage came through intellectual-property loss and commercial disadvantage during contract negotiations.

"They will not be the only corporate victim of these problems," Evans said.

While the MI5 head did not mention particular attacks, companies have been grappling with threats such as Flame, which Kaspersky Labs has described as "a sophisticated cyber-espionage toolkit primarily targeting Windows computers in the Middle East". The US and Israel developed Flame to collect data on the Iranian nuclear programme, so that the countries could develop cyber-sabotage tools, according to the Washington Post.

Stop

Best of the Web: The Evils of Humanitarian Wars - Iraq, Libya, Syria: We Have No Right to Play God

humanitarian intervention
© Ingram Pinn
In a traditional cowboy movie, we know what to do: we look for the guy wearing the white hat to be sure who to cheer, and for the one wearing the black hat to know who deserves to die, preferably gruesomely, before the credits roll. If Hollywood learnt early to play on these most tribal of emotions, do we doubt that Washington's political script-writers are any less sophisticated?

Since 9/11, the United States and its allies in Europe have persuaded us that they are waging a series of "white hat" wars against "black hat" regimes in the Middle East. Each has been sold to us misleadingly as a "humanitarian intervention". The cycle of such wars is still far from complete.

But over the course of the past decade, the presentation of these wars has necessarily changed. As Hollywood well understands, audiences quickly tire of the same contrived plot. Invention, creativity and ever greater complexity are needed to sustain our emotional engagement.

Declarations by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu aside, there are only so many times we can be convinced that there is a new Hitler in the Middle East, and that the moment is rapidly approaching when this evil mastermind will succeed in developing a doomsday weapon designed to wipe out Israel, the US, or maybe the planet.

Better Earth

Palestinian Gov't Asks Mursi to Remove Gaza Blockade

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The Palestinian government asked Egypt's President-elect Mohammad Mursi to remove the siege of Gaza after the Islamist ascended to power in the first presidential election since the fall of Israel's ally Hosni Mubarak.

A political advisor to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh urged Mursi to reopen the Rafah border crossing to end the siege of Gaza which, he said, has caused deep pain and agony among the residents of the Palestinian enclave.

"We hope that the first action to be taken by the new Egyptian president will be the removal of the siege of the Gaza Strip, reopening of the border crossings and facilitating transit of the construction materials and financial aids dispatched by international Arab organizations for the reconstruction of this war-stricken region," Yousef Rezqeh said.

He further stated that the win of the Islamic candidate has deeply gladdened the Palestinians, specially those in Gaza.

Che Guevara

'Fake government': Paraguay's Ousted President Fernando Lugo Defiant After 'Coup'

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© Jorge Adorno / ReutersParaguay's ousted President Fernando Lugo holds a news conference outside his home on Sunday.
Ousted Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo branded the country's new government illegitimate on Sunday and called for democracy to be restored as neighboring countries intensified criticism of his sudden impeachment.

Lugo, a leftist former Roman Catholic bishop, said his removal from office was "a parliamentary coup against the will of the people" and said he would back any peaceful effort to restore democracy in the South American nation.

Congress voted overwhelmingly on Friday to remove Lugo from office, saying he had failed in his duty to maintain social order following a bloody land eviction.

Under the Paraguayan constitution, the impeached president was replaced by Vice President Federico Franco, a vocal critic of Lugo for much of his presidency.

Evil Rays

Syrian pro-government news channel attacked

State TV reports station three employees killed in assault

Gunmen stormed the headquarters of a Syrian pro-government news channel on Wednesday morning, planted explosives and killed three employees, state media said.

"The terrorists planted explosive devices in the headquarters of al-Ikhbariya following their ransacking of the satellite channel studios, including the newsroom which was entirely destroyed," the state media said.

"Three colleagues were killed as a result of the brutal terrorist attack," it added, without giving details on how the employees died.


Comment: Checklist?
Afghanistan
Iraq
Libya
Syria ..then off to?


Question

"Arab Spring" Coming to Latin America?

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© AFP Photo / Leo RamirezVenezuelans stand a demonstration in support of Syrian President Bashir al-Assad in front of the Syrian embassy in Caracas
A wave of protests have rolled across Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia - countries taking a strong stance against the US and its allies' policies in the region. Are we witnessing a "Latin American Spring"?

ยญWhilst engineering violent insurgency does not yet seem to be on the agenda of the Global Power Masters, there are indications of growing PsyWar activity by "pro-democracy", "pro-human rights", "aid" agencies and NGO's acting through local players aligned to US/UK/EU interests.

Pistol

Assad: Syria at war as battle reaches capital

Assad
© REUTERS/SANA/HandoutSyria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks to the new government in Damascus in this handout photo distributed by Syrian News Agency (SANA) June 26, 2012.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared on Tuesday that his country was at war and ordered his new government to spare no effort to achieve victory, as the worst fighting of the 16-month conflict reached the outskirts of the capital.

Video published by activists recorded heavy gunfire and explosions in suburbs of Damascus. A trail of fresh blood on a sidewalk in the suburb of Qudsiya led into a building where one casualty was taken. A naked man writhed in pain, his body pierced by shrapnel.

Syria's state news agency SANA said "armed terrorist groups" had blocked the old road from Damascus to Beirut.

The declaration that Syria is at war marks a change of rhetoric from Assad, who had long dismissed the uprising against him as the work of scattered militants funded from abroad.

"We live in a real state of war from all angles," Assad told a cabinet he appointed on Tuesday in a speech broadcast on state television.

"When we are in a war, all policies and all sides and all sectors need to be directed at winning this war."

The rambling speech - Assad also commented on subjects as far afield as the benefits of renewable energy - left little room for compromise. He denounced the West, which "takes and never gives, and this has been proven at every stage".