Puppet MastersS


Vader

Damascus terror bombing: Made in the USA

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"Our policy is to try to accelerate the arrival of that tipping point" at which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is toppled, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman explained last March to the US Senate's foreign relations committee.

Thursday saw the latest incarnation of this policy. The devastating car bombs that slaughtered 55 people and left nearly 400 more wounded in Damascus mark a new stage in the criminal imperialist campaign for regime change in Syria.

Having hijacked the protest movement that began in Syria in March of last year in the bid to turn it into a vehicle for installing a client regime in Damascus, Washington went on to back the formation of the "Friends of Syria", modeled upon a similar international formation used to prepare the war on Libya.

It declared the Syrian National Council, a collection of Islamist politicians from the Muslim Brotherhood and aging exile assets of various Western intelligence agencies to be the "legitimate representative" of the Syrian people and backed the formation of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) to carry out armed attacks on Syrian security forces.

Bomb

Al CIA-duh: Islamist group al-Nusra Front claims responsibility for Damascus bombings

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© Sana/EPACars burn at the scene of two blasts that hit the Syrian capital Damascus on 10 May 2012.
Video posted online says twin car bombings that killed 55 people in Syrian capital were revenge for Assad regime's aggression

An obscure Islamist group, the al-Nusra Front, has posted a video online claiming responsibility for two bomb attacks that killed 55 people in Syria's capital, Damascus, earlier this week.

The video, narrated by a man whose voice was disguised, showed no images of militants making or setting up the bomb and did not claim the attacks as suicide bombings.

Footage showing black smoke rising over Damascus from the day of the blast was shown at the end of the statement, labelled as coming from the 'Camera of the Mujahideen [holy warriors]'.

The video emerged amid reports by activists of renewed fighting between rebels and the army in northern Syria on Saturday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported fighting in Idlib province, on Syria's northern border with Turkey - a hotspot of the 14-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

MIB

Prolonging Obama's Peaceful War: Afghan peace negotiator shot dead by 'unknown gunman'

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© Mohammad Ismail/ReutersArsala Rahmani, shot by unknown gunmen (ahem, western agents)
Arsala Rahmani, a senior member of Afghanistan's high peace council, killed by an unknown attacker in Kabul

A gunman has shot dead a top member of the Afghan peace council in Kabul, striking another blow to efforts to negotiate a political resolution to the decade-long war.

Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban official turned Afghan peace negotiator, was in his vehicle when he was killed by an unknown attacker at an intersection in the west part of the city, according to Mohammad Zahir, head of the Kabul police department's criminal investigation division.

The Taliban denied responsibility for the killing, although they had earlier indicated that they would target peace negotiators.

Evil Rays

London 2012: army to use 'sonic weapon' on Thames during Olympics

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Crowd Control: the LRAD was designed in the US, tested in Iraq and now it's coming to the London Olympics to keep protesters/terrorists (same thing really) away.
American-built 'long-range acoustic device', used by US military in Iraq, can produce deafening 150db levels at one metre


The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that a device that can be used as a "sonic weapon" will be deployed in London during the Olympics.

The American-built long-range acoustic device (LRAD), which has been used by the US army to control crowds in Iraq, can emit an ear-piercing beam of sound.

An MoD spokesman said the device, which can also be used as a loudspeaker, was among a "broad range of assets" being used by the armed forces to provide security during the Games.

He said it would be used primarily in loud hailer mode to issue verbal warnings to any boats on the river Thames that were causing concern.

Eye 1

And the Privacy Invasion Award Goes To ...

1984 film screenshot
© Umbrella-Rosenblum Films
Who's playing fast and loose with your data? The Big Brother Awards, billed as the "Oscars for data leeches" by the hackers and privacy advocates who hand out the prizes, shine a high-intensity spotlight on companies and individuals with poor privacy track records. Since 1998, Privacy International and a host of affiliated organizations have singled out the worst privacy violators in various countries including the UK, Austria, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand and the U.S. The title evokes the totalitarian cult personality featured in George Orwell's 1984, set in a dystopic world of mass surveillance.

In Germany, privacy advocates held their annual edition of the Big Brother Awards in April. The panel of judges was made up of representatives from privacy advocate FoeBuD and other organizations campaigning for data protection and human rights. Curious to know who made Germany's list of privacy offenders? Here's the rundown.

Markus Ulbig, Saxon Minister of the Interior

Markus Ulbig, Saxon Minister of the Interior, snagged a Big Brother Award in the category "Government and Administration" for presiding over a veritable data tsunami that swept up mobile phone data belonging to hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens. Police filed data requests with cell phone service providers for connection logs over a 12-hour period in Dresden, resulting in the staggering release of more than a million phone records associated with some 55,000 identified subscribers. The requests were filed in the wake of a February 2011 mass demonstration against a Dresden Nazi parade. The police were targeting the anti-Nazi protesters.

Eye 1

India Moving Ahead With Universal Biometric ID Program Despite Growing Concern

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Only three months ago, I wrote an article entitled "Cashless Society: India Implements First Biometric ID Program for all of its 1.2 Billion Residents," where I discussed the implementation of a relatively new policy in India geared toward the creation of a massive biometric identification database for all 1.2 billion Indian residents.

The system consists of fingerprints, iris scans, and facial photographs - information which will be attached to a Unique Identification Number to be referenced when combined with the traditional methods of identification and included on the chip-enhanced National ID card.

Thankfully, after some time with little or no opposition, the UID program is receiving a bit more attention in the mainstream press as well as from privacy protection organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation which recently produced an excellent article entitled, "Growing Mistrust of India's Biometric ID Scheme," which reaffirms everything I had previously written.

Although the program is allegedly voluntary, as I have written on numerous occasions in the past, the mask of being "voluntary" is inevitably removed after the program has been in place for a set amount of time, particularly as more and more people begin to participate or as the government gradually forces more and more to participate for one reason or another. Eventually what was once voluntary always becomes mandatory. In addition, it always carries with it the full force of the State backing the change.

Pirates

No surprise: BP wins delay of Gulf spill trial until 2013

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A trial to assign blame and damages that could total tens of billions of dollars for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been put off until January, in a setback for the U.S. government, which wanted to try its case this summer.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans on Thursday scheduled a trial for Jan. 14, 2013, more than 10 months after it had originally been scheduled.

The decision means the federal government and Gulf Coast states, which also wanted a summer trial, may have to wait longer to recover money from BP Plc and its drilling partners.

It is unclear how the new timetable will affect strategy, or whether it might spur the federal government to press harder for settlements and help local residents seeking money for cleanup or restoration.

"This may spur the government to settle," said Edward Sherman, a professor at Tulane University Law School in New Orleans. "The Obama administration may want to show its stuff before the November elections."

Stormtrooper

Lords of the Rings: Olympic paranoia targets protests

As London prepares for the Olympics, bureaucrats and law-makers have been busy too - enacting a range of rules and regulations. Draconian measures are already excluding some people from the country, while a number of residents have been banned from the games -simply because they've objected to the construction of Olympic facilities near their homes. RT's Laura Smith has more.


USA

The Jones Plantation

One cannot change reality by changing the words you use to describe reality. Look beneath the rhetoric, and glimpse the truth.


Light Sabers

Putin to skip G8 summit, talks with Obama in US

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Russia's newly-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin speaks during a reception marking Victory Day at the Kremlin in Moscow, on May 9, 2012.
Russia's newly-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin has pulled out of the Group of Eight summit in Maryland, US, and ice-breaker talks with US President Barack Obama next week, the Kremlin says.

Raising new questions about Moscow-Washington ties, Putin, who took the oath as the new Russian leader on Monday, informed Obama of his decision during a telephone call on Wednesday.

He noted the need to stay in Moscow to finalize cabinet appointments in the new Russian government, citing he will send Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in his place.

Putin had been expected at the G8 summit at Camp David to hold talks with the US president in a first test of whether the "reset" policy between the Kremlin and the White House will survive his return to the presidency.