Puppet MastersS


Bizarro Earth

Flashback US: DynCorp Disgrace

Kelly Patricia O'Meara
Corp Watch
Mon, 14 Jan 2002 00:00 UTC
Image
© unknown
Middle-aged men having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds was too much for Ben Johnston, a hulking 6-foot-5-inch Texan, and more than a year ago he blew the whistle on his employer, DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing business in Bosnia.

According to the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) lawsuit filed in Texas on behalf of the former DynCorp aircraft mechanic, "in the latter part of 1999 Johnston learned that employees and supervisors from DynCorpwere engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in other immoral acts. Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased."

Rather than acknowledge and reward Johnston's effort to get this behavior stopped, DynCorp fired him, forcing him into protective custody by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) until the investigators could get him safely out of Kosovo and returned to the United States. That departure from the war-torn country was a far cry from what Johnston imagined a year earlier when he arrived in Bosnia to begin a three-year U.S. Air Force contract with DynCorp as an aircraft-maintenance technician for Apache and Blackhawk helicopters.
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Padlock

UK Violates UN Pact on Rights of Kids


Press TV
Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:24 UTC
UN children's fund, Unicef has deplored Britain for putting behind bars children with no criminal records, who were detained during August unrest in the country.
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© unknown

Unicef slammed the UK judicial system for violating its obligations to protect children rights after figures showed 45 percent of under-18s detained during August unrest had no criminal records.

The UN body described the UK judiciary's measure as "very worrying", which violated the 1989 UN convention on the rights of a child.

The agency is responsible to uphold the international treaty, which Britain signed up to in 1991.

Under article 37, remand must only be used as a last resort in criminal proceedings, where there are no alternatives to stop a child re-offending.

Two other UK-based agencies, the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Children's Rights Alliance for England (CRAE), said they believed custodial arrangements, especially for children who had not yet been put on trial, breached the convention.

The latest Ministry of Justice figures show that more than 40 percent of the 269 children whose court hearings were not completed by mid-September were remanded in custody. This compares with an average remand rate of 10 percent last year.

Of those on remand, 60 percent had no previous convictions and 45 percent had had no contact with the judicial system at all, including official reprimands or warnings.
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Che Guevara

Protest chic vs. getting things done

Eric L. Green
Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:06 UTC
Let's face facts: #OccupyWallStreet isn't going to accomplish anything unless somehow the movement starts costing our lizard people overlords money. LOTS of money. Because money is all that our lizard people overlords from planet Sociopath care about. Not ethics. Not morality. Not fairness. Not human decency (remember, they're LIZARD people, they view humanity as PREY, not as fellow travelers through the brief flash of time we call "life"). Money. That's it.

This is what has bothered me about protest chic for quite some time. Protests are flashy and reporters love them. But let's not forget that what took down segregation was not morality, was not protests, but, rather, that it was bad for business (same reason the Vietnam War ended). Mega-corporations only care about one color - green - that's it, and being told they had to leave 20%+ of their profit on the floor in the South because of legally or socially enforced segregation forcing them to turn away black patrons had always chapped their ass in the post-WW2 period. The purpose of the Civil Rights marches and such was primarily to give them cover to do the right thing (for their profits).

And yes, MLK Jr. understood this. Economics was something he used both as a carrot and a stick when he was talking with elites. Remember that the whole point of getting Rosa Parks thrown in jail was to give the black community a rallying point for a strike against the bus companies that enforced segregation, it was never about being arrested as an end in and of itself, the way it is with today's protest chic street theater.
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Light Saber

Chavez slams "horrible repression" of U.S. protests

Enrique Andres Pretel
Reuters
Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:00 UTC
Hugo Chavez
© Reuters/Miraflores PalaceVenezuela's President Hugo Chavez takes part in a meeting with members of the political coalition "Great Patriotic Pole" at Miraflores Palace in Caracas October 8, 2011.
Socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez condemned on Saturday the "horrible repression" of anti-Wall Street protesters and termed a Republican presidential candidate "crazy" for his criticism of Cuba and Venezuela.

Although still convalescing from cancer surgery in June followed by four rounds of chemotherapy, the 57-year-old Venezuelan president is quickly returning to the tough rhetoric and strong views that have made him famous worldwide.

Not surprisingly, Chavez expressed solidarity with American activists who have been staging rallies and marches against what they view as corporate greed by Wall Street.

The U.S. protests, which began last month in New York and have spread to Tampa, Florida, Seattle and other cities, have mostly been peaceful but sometimes resulted in confrontations. Dozens were arrested and police used pepper spray in New York earlier this week.

"This movement of popular outrage is expanding to 10 cities and the repression is horrible, I don't know how many are in prison now," Chavez said in comments at a political meeting in his Caracas presidential palace shown on state TV.
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Arrow Up

GAO: Federal network security breaches spike 650 percent

Aliya Sternstein
Nextgov
Mon, 03 Oct 2011 00:00 UTC
GAO, government accountability office
© unknown
Reports of network security incidents at federal agencies have soared 650 percent during the past half-decade, jeopardizing the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive government information, federal auditors charged in a congressionally mandated report.

The most prevalent types of cyber events included infections from malicious code -- 30 percent of incidents; violations of acceptable use policies; and intrusions into networks, applications and other data resources, states a Government Accountability Office report released on Monday. GAO auditors are required by law to periodically update Congress on departments' compliance with a computer security measure called the 2002 Federal Information Security Act, or FISMA.

During the past five years, the number of reported events has grown from 5,503 in 2006 to 41,776 in 2010.

The main reason agency computers are vulnerable to contamination is departments have failed to implement security controls, according to the audit. Agencies do not always adequately train personnel responsible for system security, regularly monitor safeguards, successfully fix vulnerabilities or resolve incidents in a timely fashion.

"These shortcomings leave federal agencies vulnerable to external as well as internal threats," wrote Gregory C. Wilshusen, GAO director for information security issues. "As long as agencies have not fully and effectively implemented their information security programs, including addressing the hundreds of recommendations that we and inspectors general have made, federal systems will remain at increased risk of attack or compromise."
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Vader

America's Conquest of Africa: The Roles of France and Israel

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya & Julien Teil
Global Research
Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:50 UTC
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Introduction by Cynthia McKinney

Operation Gladio Then and Now...

I will begin with the scandal of Operation Gladio that climaxed in the murder of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, who on the day of his kidnapping, was to announce an Italian coalition government that would include the Italian Communist Party.

Leader of the Christian Democratic Party at that time, Francesco Cossiga, admits in the 1992 BBC Timewatch documentary about Operation Gladio, that he chose to "sacrifice" Moro "for the good of the Republic." Not unlike the targeted assassinations that the U.S. government engages in around the world, where someone extrajudicially makes decisions on who lives and who dies. In the three-part documentary, Cossiga states that the decision caused his hair to turn white.

Operation Gladio is the ugly real-life tale of the U.S. government's decision to hire members of the state security apparatus of various European countries, and in collaboration with recruited community allies, wreak terror on innocent citizens by blowing up train stations, shooting customers in grocery stores, and even killing police officers in order to convince populations in Europe to give up their rights in exchange for certain security measures and enhanced state power.
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Cult

Flashback Operation Gladio: Did the CIA use a Ouija board to discover the location of Aldo Moro before he was killed?


EuroNews
Sat, 10 May 2008 15:21 UTC
Thirty years ago this month, the extreme left terrorist group, the Red Brigades murdered former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro who they'd kidnapped and held for nearly two months. Moro was the head of the Christian Democratic Party, which was moving towards a parliamentary coalition with the Italian Communists, a move opposed by some in the far left and which worried western power, particularly the US. Italy's interior minister at the time was Francesco Cossiga, who took a hard line and refused to negotiate with the Red Brigades for Moro's release. In an interview with Cossiga, EuroNews has tried to get at the truth of an incredibly tangled tale involving allegations of CIA involvement and claims of vital clues sent via a Ouija board.


Comment: The Strategy of Tension - NATO's Hidden Terrorism

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Cult

Italy: Berlusconi causes outrage with suggestion to rename party 'Go Pussy'

Tom Kington
The Guardian
Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:00 UTC
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© Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty ImagesDisgusting
Italian prime minister's quip in response to his party's flagging fortunes brings condemnation from all quarters

Italian opposition politicians have been joined by a leading Catholic publication and even government MPs in expressing outrage after Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi joked he was thinking of renaming his political party Forza Gnocca, which translates as Go Pussy.

The criticism came as Berlusconi, whose political career is widely considered to be on the wane, was accused of parking an old friend in a safe job after a former pet food executive was nominated as the new head of the Venice Biennale, Italy's foremost art and architecture exhibition.

Responding to the slide in the polls of his Freedom People party caused by the financial crisis and his sex scandals, Berlusconi reportedly told MPs he had commissioned surveys to find a new name for the party, which started life in 1993 as Forza Italia, or Go Italy.

"Some of polls say the best choice would be Forza Gnocca," he joked, according to the Italian daily La Stampa.
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Chess

Occupy Wall Street and the Democratic Party

Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site
Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:54 UTC
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Transport Union workers at Occupy Wall Street
As the Occupy Wall Street protest enters its fourth week, it confronts increasingly sharp political pressures and choices that center on the question of the Democratic Party.

On Thursday, both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made statements meant to project sympathy for the protesters. Obama, at a White House press conference, declared that they "are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works." In virtually the same breath he defended his support for the TARP bailout of the banks.

At a forum in Washington, Biden asserted that the protests have "a lot in common with the Tea Party." He continued: "The Tea Party started, why? TARP. They thought it was unfair."

Biden's reference to the Tea Party was by no means offhand. As a number of statements by Democratic strategists and newspaper columns by figures around the Democrats indicate, there is a desire within the party to exploit the protests for its own purposes, much in the way the Republicans have utilized the Tea Party.
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Cult

Flashback Madsen: Diplomat pedophilia is widespread


Russia Today
Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:53 UTC
Wayne Madsen, investigative journalist, says that the recent arrest of 3 American men in Vietnam for engaging in sex with children is only the tip of the iceberg.

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