Puppet MastersS


Eye 1

Playing the victim: BP complains of 'injustices' in oil spill claims process

BP sought the intervention of federal judges in New Orleans yesterday in the way a court-appointed administrator is assessing and approving claims for payments from a partial settlement over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, calling on them correct what it termed "irreparable injustices".

Billions of dollars of settlement payments are at stake for the oil giant, which initially estimated that it would have to pay just under $8bn (£5.4bn) to resolve claims by affected residents and business in the Gulf coast. Concerned that the final figure could far exceed its estimate, BP's lawyer attacked the process being followed by Patrick Juneau, the court-appointed administrator. "Irreparable injustices are taking place and money is being dispensed to parties from whom it may not be recoverable," Ted Olson, a former US solicitor general, said in his opening argument before a panel of three federal judges.

But a lawyer representing local businesses and residents, Samuel Issacharoff, said that BP was well aware of the terms of the settlement. "There is no order of the lower court that is capable of being reviewed by this court," he said, questioning the appeals panel's authority to amend the settlement deal.

Stormtrooper

Lawmakers call for removal of guards at mining site

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© Rob Ganson
Visitors uneasy about new security measures

Madison, Wisconsin -Two lawmakers are asking a mining company to remove armed security guards at a proposed mining site in northern Wisconsin.

In a letter to the president of the Gogebic Taconite, State Sen. Bob Jauch and state Rep. Janet Bewley call the images of the armed guards "horrifying" and say the decision to hire the security firm is appalling.

"While no one can argue that your company does not have the right to protect your private property, these armed guards serve no purpose other than to intimidate local citizens and increase local tensions,"

Photos taken by visitors to the site in the Penokee Hills show guards dressed in camouflage uniforms with masks covering most of their faces. They are also armed with rifles, and some appear to have multiple weapons.

A Gogebic Taconite spokesperson said they are employing the armed guards for the safety of their employees after drilling opponents allegedly attacked the drill site a few weeks ago.

The lawmakers question why the guards are carrying assault weapons because they don't have the legal right to use them to protect property. The letter also states that the property is open to the public and not owned by the mining company.

"Not only does this decision reflect bad judgment, it is unfortunate that you don't understand how damaging an image it creates of Northern Wisconsin. Those who live here and work here hardly want to spend their time explaining that our forests are not filled with mercenaries from third world countries."

Gogebic Taconite officials said they will keep the armed guards on duty for the foreseeable future.

USA

No military coups for America? What about November 1963?

US Flag
© Wikimedia Commons
An interesting aspect of the military coup in Egypt has been the attitude of American mainstream commentators who suggest that unlike Egypt and other countries, the chances of a military coup in the United States are virtually nil. See, for example, "America the Coupless" by Rosa Brooks and "Could a Military Coup Happen in America?" by Paul Greenberg.

Really? What about November 22, 1963?

"Oh, Jacob, don't be silly. President Kennedy's assassination couldn't have been orchestrated by the U.S. national-security state, notwithstanding the overwhelming amount of evidence pointing in that direction, because it's just inconceivable that such a thing could happen here in our country. That's just a conspiracy theory. Such things only happen in places like Egypt ... or Chile ... or Iran ... or Guatemala ... or South Vietnam and, yes, oftentimes with the support and participation of the U.S. military and the CIA, but such a thing could never happen here in our country."

Oh, really? So, what you're saying, Mr. Statist, is that if the democratically elected president of the United States is engaged in policies and actions that are leading to the nation's destruction, the U.S. national-security state apparatus - i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA - will simply stand aside and let it happen - despite the fact that the U.S. military and the CIA have supported and even participated in military coups that purportedly save foreign countries from their rulers.

Consider Chile. The Chilean people elect a communist, Salvador Allende, in a democratic election at the height of the Cold War. U.S. officials say that this cannot stand. So, President Nixon orders the CIA to foment a massive economic crisis within the country, much like the economic crisis leading up to the military coup in Egypt. "Make the economy scream" are Nixon's exact words. The CIA faithfully obeys his orders notwithstanding the fact that the Constitution does not authorize any such action. The Chilean military, with the support of the U.S. national-security state, ousts Allende in a coup and imposes brutal military rule under Army General Augusto Pinochet.

Comment: Also read Laura Knight-Jadczyk's JFK: The Debris of History series.


Bomb

Hariri blames Israel for Beirut suburb bombing

Saad Hariri
© The Daily Star/Mohammad AzakirFormer Prime Minister Saad Hariri speaks during a ceremony in Beirut, Thursday, March 31, 2011.
Beirut: Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri blamed Israel Tuesday for the "terrorist explosion" that rocked Beirut's southern suburbs and accused the country of trying to provoke Sunni-Shiite strife in Lebanon.

"[The blast] requires the highest level of awareness and vigilance in the face of dangers that surround the country and the entire region, especially while facing attempts by the Israeli enemy to push [Lebanon] to strife by organizing terrorist attacks, as happened today," Hariri said in a statement.

"After of terrible criminal scene that Beirut's southern suburbs witnessed, the Lebanese can only express indignation and condemnation of the crime that targeted one of the most populated neighborhoods," the statement said.

A car bomb explosion ripped through the Beirut's southern suburb neighborhood of Bir al-Abed, a pro-Hezbollah area, wounded dozens of people.

"As I strongly condemn the terrorist bombing that harmed innocent civilians, I ask God Almighty to bless the wounded with safety and health," Hariri said.

Hariri said that the blast should shock Lebanese "to go back to the national consensus on keeping Lebanon away from external conflicts and to avoid slipping into wars that will only inflict further divisions in the country, place national stability at risk and expose Lebanon to the conspiracies of the Israeli enemy."

Monkey Wrench

Contamination report: Unapproved GM rice found in U.S. exports to over 30 countries

GM rice
© AFP Photo
A new report has revealed that the rice supply in at least 30 countries may have already been contaminated with genetically modified strains from US exports, thereby threatening worldwide contamination.

A new report by the GM Contamination Register has disclosed US Department of Agriculture findings from 2006 and 2007, which show that the department detected traces of unapproved GM rice in over 30 countries. At the time, all of the Bayer CropScience varieties discovered had not been approved for cultivation or consumption abroad, and only one of the three types had been approved for domestic cultivation.

The USDA believes that the source of the contamination is field trials which occurred between the mid 1990s and early 2000s.The genetically modified LLRICE62, LLRice601 and LLRICE604 varieties are herbicide resistant. The trials were terminated in 2002 and none of these varieties ever made it onto the US market. But years later, traces of these strands were found worldwide.

The USDA report said the agency was unable to conclude whether pollen from the trials escaped and contaminated other fields or mechanical mixing was to blame.

USA

Wall Street rips off 'The Sting'

Eric
© Brendan Bannon/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesNew York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Hilarious corruption story hit the news wires this week. It's actually a two-part joke.

Part one is that Thomson Reuters got slapped in the face by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for its absurd practice of selling early access to the results of the Survey of Consumer Confidence Survey it conducts each month in conjunction with the University of Michigan.

It turns out that in recent times, if you paid them an extra subscription fee of a few thousand dollars a month, Thomson Reuters would allow you access to the Consumer Confidence data a full two seconds earlier than the rest of its subscribers - at 9:54:58 a.m., as opposed to 9:55:00 exactly.

Thomson Reuters suspended the activity at the request of Schneiderman, who released a statement about this humorously brazen effort at the systematic sale of inside information. From the L.A. Times:
The consumer confidence data can move financial markets, and Scheiderman's office said "that two-second advantage is more than enough time for these traders to take unfair advantage of their early access to this information as they execute enormous volumes of trades in the blink of an eye."

"The securities markets should be a level playing field for all investors and the early release of market-moving survey data undermines fair play in the markets," Schneiderman said Monday.
The two-second head start allows high-speed traders to plunge into the markets en masse and retreat all the way back again before most of the world sees this market-altering economic data.

Chess

Russian inquiry to UN finds Rebels, not Army, behind Syria Aleppo sarin gas attack

Vladimir Churkin
© RIA Novosti / Ruslan KrivobokRussia’s UN envoy Vladimir Churkin
Samples taken at the site where the chemical weapons were allegedly used indicate that it was rebels - not the Syrian army - behind the attack, Russia's UN envoy Vladimir Churkin has said.

Russia has handed over the analyzed samples to the UN, he added.

"I have just passed the analysis of samples taken at the site of the chemical attack to the UN Secretary General (Ban Ki-moon)," Churkin said on Tuesday.

Evidence studied by Russian scientists indicates that a projectile carrying the deadly nerve agent sarin was most likely fired at Khan al-Assal by the rebels, Churkin pointed out.

"It was determined that on March 19 the rebels fired an unguided missile Bashair-3 at the town of Khan al-Assal, which has been under government control. The results of the analysis clearly show that the shell used in Khan al-Assal was not factory made and that it contained sarin," he said.

Churkin stressed that unlike other reports which have been handed to the UN, the samples were taken by Russian experts at the scene, without any third party involvement.

Bad Guys

Snowden: Towards an endgame

The working title of the Edward Snowden movie is still The Spy Who Remains in the Cold. Here's where we stand:
Snowden could only fly out of Hong Kong because China allowed it.

Snowden could only arrive in Moscow because Russia knew it - in co-operation with China. This is part of their strategic relationship, which includes the BRICS group (along with Brazil, India and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. No official source though would ever confirm it.

With the Latin American offers of asylum (Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua; even Uruguay would consider it), we're approaching the clincher: Moscow is now calculating whether - and how - to help Snowden reach his final destination while extracting maximum political capital out of Washington.
Into this script comes roaring the coup-that-is-not-a-coup sub-plot in Egypt. Cynics' eyebrows will be raised that just as the Barack Obama administration was going mental over the National Security Agency (NSA) spy scandal a revo-coup-o-lution explodes in Egypt. New revelations about the extent of the NSA-centric Orwellian Panopticon keep on coming, but they have been totally downgraded by US corporate media; it's all Egypt all the time. After all, the Pentagon - to which the NSA is attached - owns the Egyptian military, something that even the New York Times had to acknowledge. [1]

Yet they don't own Snowden. This has nothing to do with "terra".

Meanwhile, the US intelligence gambit of intercepting a non-adversarial presidential plane spectacularly backfired in true Mad magazine Spy vs Spy fashion. Obama had said he would not "scramble fighter jets" to catch Snowden; of course not, just ground them.

Pistol

SOTT Focus: Manufacturing civil war in Egypt: 'Mystery' snipers massacre Morsi supporters

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A week after the Egyptian Army deposed President Mohamed Morsi, supporters of the ousted leader were massacred yesterday, allegedly during a sit-in protest at an "elite army base" in Cairo. So far over 50 have been reported dead, with hundreds injured. The Muslim Brotherhood is blaming the Egyptian army and police, but a military spokesman has said a "terrorist group" was responsible.

"We have people hit in the head, we have bullets that exploded as they entered the body, cluttering organs and body parts", said Gehad Haddad, a spokesman for Muslim Brotherhood.

Adamant that the role of police and army is to "safeguard the people's revolution", no matter their particular political affiliation, military spokesman Ahmed Ali said security forces acted "in self-defense against armed men attacking them from various locations, including rooftops."

No one disputes that there were clashes between Morsi supporters - at least some of whom also appeared to be armed and intent on violence - and the security forces sent in to remove them, but it's unclear who the gunmen were:
Witnesses, including Brotherhood supporters at the scene, said the army fired only tear gas and warning shots and that "thugs" in civilian clothes had carried out the deadly shooting.
This bloodbath comes on the heels of arguably the largest mass demonstrations in modern history, and is almost certainly going to spiral out of control and plunge Egypt into chaos.

Take 2

Egypt prepares for backlash as Morsi allies reject new regime


Ousted Muslim Brotherhood mobilises for day of protest as hundreds of party's members are seized

Egypt is braced for further dramatic events on Friday as the vanquished Muslim Brotherhood called for a "day of rejection" following a widespread crackdown on its leadership by the country's new interim president, Adli Mansour.

Supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi, still reeling from the military coup that removed their leader from power, are expected to take to the streets after Friday prayers following a series of raids and arrests that decimated the Muslim Brotherhood's senior ranks and consolidated the miltary's hold on the country.

In a stark sign of Egypt's new political reality, the group's supreme leader, Mohamed al-Badie, who was untouchable under Morsi's rule, was one of those arrested.