ZOMG, Wes Clark Dissed McCain!
Meanwhile, the much more horrible truth about McCain will never, ever be mentioned by the corporate media.
This too.
Dedicated to fighting authoritarianism, bigotry, greed, corruption, climate change denial, white supremacy, racism, stupidity and general evil, as well as the exploration of interesting ideas and conspiracy theories including 9/11, UFOs, ET's, the paranormal and the general unknown.
3. How do you account for NIST's detailed analysis of the oscillatory motion including damping of the So. Tower following hit? How does one get the Tower to oscillate like that in the absence of a plane-hit? Note that Momentum must be conserved in ANY collision. A Boeing 767-200 traveling at high speed has enormous momentum, which can be calculated using P = MV. Similarly, explosives blowing OUT the side of the building would have some momentum -- but have you calculated how much? In other words, how much explosives (by weight) does one need to use, and at what velocity of the "exhaust" gases, to equal the enormous momentum of a high-speed B-767?
New Yorkers will be told the "grim truth" Monday about new delays and cost overruns at the World Trade Center redevelopment site by Port Authority executive director Christopher Ward, state officials and real-estate industry sources said yesterday.
Ward, in what one source called "the coming grim truth," is expected to outline for Gov. Paterson and the PA more than 20 major problem areas facing the $16 billion redevelopment efforts, including massive cost overruns and unrealistic construction timetables.
At least one project, the much-heralded but costly Santiago Calatrava-designed transit center, may not get built.
... Kennedy made a speech where he raised the issue of morality and the Vietnam War: “Although the world’s imperfection may call forth the act of war, righteousness cannot obscure the agony and pain those acts bring to a single child. It is we who live in abundance and send our young men out to die. It is our chemicals that scorch the children and our bombs that level the villages. We are all participants.”
In an television interview later that year Kennedy again returned to the morality of the war: “We’re going in there and we’re killing South Vietnamese, we’re killing children, we’re killing women, we’re killing innocent people because we don’t want a war fought on American soil, or because (the Viet Cong are) 12,000 miles away and they might get 11,000 miles away. Do we have the right, here in the United States, to say we’re going to kill tens of thousands, make millions of people, as we have, millions of people refugees, killing women and children, as we have.”
On September 13-14, 2008, Lawrence Velvel, the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, plans to convene a 'convention' at the school's facilities; the attendees of which will plan strategies to prosecute members of the Bush administration for war crimes.
"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," stated Velvel in a press release. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.
"We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice. And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940's."
(snip)
Velvel's sharpest words were saved for President Bush, according to a passage from ABA Journal. "The man ultimately responsible for the torture had a unique preparation and persona for the presidency," wrote Velvel. "He is a former drunk, was a serial failure in business who had to repeatedly be bailed out by daddy's friends and wanna-be-friends, was unable to speak articulately despite the finest education(s) that money and influence can buy, has a dislike of reading, so that 100-page memos have to be boiled down to one page for him, is heedless of facts and evidence, and appears not even to know the meaning of truth."
Think about this question: In the 21st century what regime is more lawless than the Bush Regime?
Everyone is entitled to his own answer. The only answer I can come up with is the Zimbabwe regime of Robert Mugabe. Voted out of power in the last election, the great man hasn’t left. Zimbabweans are going to have to vote again, and the great man has said that any vote that is not for him will be cancelled by a bullet.
Apart from understanding how and why the Bush/Cheney administration tricked the American people into going to war in Iraq, no question is more urgent than how the White House forced the adoption of torture as state policy of the United States.
Part of the hysteria over all this that you see in places like the Wall Street Journal editorial pages stems from an anxiety that congressional inquiries, like that of Levin's committee, will lead to indictments and possibly even war crimes trials for officials who participated in the administration's deliberations over torture and the treatment of prisoners.
It's true that there are a handful of European rights activists and people on the lacy left fringe of American politics who would dearly like to see such trials, but actually pursuing them would be a profound -- even tragic -- mistake. Our political system works as smoothly as it does, in part, because we've never criminalized differences over policy. Since Andrew Jackson's time, our electoral victors celebrate by throwing the losers out of work -- not into jail cells.
The Bush administration has been wretchedly mistaken in its conception of executive power, deceitful in its push for war with Iraq and appalling in its scheming to make torture an instrument of state power. But a healthy democracy punishes policy mistakes, however egregious, and seeks redress for its societal wounds, however deep, at the ballot box and not in the prisoner's dock.
"People can actually corner the market and drive up the price," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. "When there is no policeman on the beat, you know that crime can go up."
More and more fingers are pointing at one of the least-known but most powerful foreign exchanges - the InterContinental Exchange, or ICE.
By the end of 2007, the all-electronic exchange accounted for nearly a 50 percent market share of all global oil futures contracts, a total of 138.5 million contracts - up 49 percent from 2006.
Today it boasts more than 2,100 individual traders representing virtually all of the major players in oil - banks, hedge funds, energy companies, investment giants.
And according to a securities filing, two of those giants, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, were founding partners of ICE.
"The fact that they started this shows the intent of where they wanted to go," Greenberger said. "Which was to trade crude oil and energy products without any police in the United States supervising it."
That's because it's considered a foreign exchange. Taking advantage of a loophole created by the CFTC, the company says its "energy futures business" is conducted in London, it is not subject to U.S. laws. Over strong criticism, the CFTC agreed.
All this despite the fact ICE headquarters are on the fifth floor of a building in Atlanta, it's primary data center in Chicago, and nearly all its trades settled in U.S. dollars.
"It is a charade, and ... it defies explanation," Greenberger said.
(snip)
Now Congress and others are asking just how much of the crude oil futures market is being manipulated by either excessive buying designed to drive up the price, or phony transactions that imply a supply problem that does not exist.
Jun 19, 2008 19:48 EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House Thursday approved enough new money to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for another year, while abandoning attempts to set deadlines opposed by President Bush for withdrawing American combat troops.
By a vote of 268-155, the House approved the funding for the two wars. Most of the $161.8 billion the Pentagon will get, which is slightly less than Bush requested, will be used to fight in Iraq.
Published: June 20, 2008
WASHINGTON — After months of wrangling, Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress struck a deal on Thursday to overhaul the rules on the government’s wiretapping powers and provide what amounts to legal immunity to the phone companies that took part in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The deal, expanding the government’s powers to spy on terrorism suspects in some major respects, would strengthen the ability of intelligence officials to eavesdrop on foreign targets. It would also allow them to conduct emergency wiretaps without court orders on American targets for a week if it is determined that important national security information would otherwise be lost. If approved, as appears likely, the agreement would be the most significant revision of surveillance law in 30 years.
Had he not been the son and grandson of admirals, there is scant chance he would have been admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy. Given his behavior patterns and academics, had he not been the son and grandson of admirals, there is little doubt he would have been thrown out. Instead, in 1958 he managed to graduate 894 out of 899. Had he not been the son and grandson of admirals, he is no chance he would have been accepted into the prestigious naval flight training program over far better qualified officers. On his way to becoming a North Vietnamese ace, the aviator lost 3 expensive aircraft on routine, non-combat flights. Little was made of all that, because he was, you know, the son and grandson of admirals.The article goes on quite a bit more in this vein, eventually concluding that McCain is the most flawed presidential candidate in history.
McCain’s most horrendous loss occurred in 1967 on the USS Forrestal. Well, not horrendous for him. The starter motor switch on the A4E Skyhawk allowed fuel to pool in the engine. When the aircraft was “wet-started,” an impressive flame would shoot from the tail. It was one of the ways young hot-shots got their jollies. Investigators and survivors took the position that McCain deliberately wet-started to harass the F4 pilot directly behind him. The cook off launched an M34 Zuni rocket that tore through the Skyhawk’s fuel tank, released a thousand pound bomb, and ignited a fire that killed the pilot plus 167 men. Before the tally of dead and dying was complete, the son and grandson of admirals had been transferred to the USS Oriskany.
WASHINGTON — The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers. It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials.
In August 2004, a Defense Dept. panel convened to investigate detainee abuse after the Abu Ghraib scandal issued its much-anticipated report. Interrogation techniques designed for use at Guantanamo Bay, which President George W. Bush had decreed outside the scope of the Geneva Conventions, had "migrated" to Iraq, which Bush recognized was under Geneva, concluded panel chairman James Schlesinger, a former defense secretary. Schlesinger's panel, however, did not explain which officials ordered the abusive techniques to transfer across continents -- or how and why they became Pentagon policy in the first place.
Tuesday the Senate Armed Services Committee answered those questions. In a marathon hearing spanning eight hours and three separate panels, the committee revealed, in painstaking detail, how senior Pentagon officials transformed a program for Special Forces troops to resist torture -- known as Survival Evasion Resistance Escape, or SERE -- into a blueprint for torturing terrorism detainees.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.
"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture.
A Senate investigation has concluded that top Pentagon officials began assembling lists of harsh interrogation techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that those officials later cited memos from field commanders to suggest that the proposals originated far down the chain of command, according to congressional sources briefed on the findings.
The sources said that memos and other evidence obtained during the inquiry show that officials in the office of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld started to research the use of waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and other practices in July 2002, months before memos from commanders at the detention facility in Cuba requested permission to use those measures on suspected terrorists.
The reported evidence -- some of which is expected to be made public at a Senate hearing today -- also shows that military lawyers raised strong concerns about the legality of the practices as early as November 2002, a month before Rumsfeld approved them. The findings contradict previous accounts by top Bush administration appointees, setting the stage for new clashes between the White House and Congress over the origins of interrogation methods that many lawmakers regard as torture and possibly illegal.
"Some have suggested that detainee abuses committed by U.S. personnel at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Guantanamo were the result of a 'few bad apples' acting on their own. It would be a lot easier to accept if that were true," Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote in a statement for delivery at a committee hearing this morning. "Senior officials in the United States government sought out information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."
Radio talk show host Michael Reagan is calling for the murder of political activist, Mark Dice, after hearing that Dice is mailing letters and DVDs to troops in Iraq. Reagan wants to pay for the bullets. (snip) Reagan adds, “How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.”
21 Those who dwell in the great circle,
22 Pay homage to sympathy!
23 It leads to the stars,
24 Where the Unknown reigns.
33 You bow down, millions?
34 Can you sense the Creator, world?
35 Seek him above the starry canopy.
36 Above the stars He must dwell.
57 Endure courageously, millions!
58 Endure for the better world!
59 Above the starry canopy
60 A great God will reward you.
61 Gods one cannot ever repay,
62 It is beautiful, though, to be like them.
81 He whom star clusters adore,
84 Above the starry canopy!
87 Eternally may last all sworn Oaths, secret societies
90 Brothers, even it if meant our Life and blood,
91 Give the crowns to those who earn them,
92 Defeat to the pack of liars!
93 Close the holy circle tighter,
94 Swear by this golden wine:
95 To remain true to the Oath,
96 Swear it by the Judge above the stars!
97 Delivery from tyrants' chains,
104 And hell shall be no more.
Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army reports for The Nation on the shadowy Blackwater's growing foray into the world of private espionage.The privatization of intelligence has grown dramatically under President Bush, with Washington paying $42 billion annually in private intelligence contracts, compared to just $17.5 billion in 2000. As Scahill points out, it means that 70% of the U.S. intelligence budget is going to private companies, which creates an interesting market for government operatives.
Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, started Total Intelligence Solutions in April 2006 in order to capitalize on this growing demand for privatized intelligence services:
"Total Intel brings the...skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives directly to the board room," [Blackwater's vice chair Cofer] Black said when the company launched. "With a service like this, CEOs and their security personnel will be able to respond to threats quickly and confidently -- whether it's determining which city is safest to open a new plant in or working to keep employees out of harm's way after a terrorist attack."
#33: Repeatedly ignored and failed to respond to high level intelligence warnings of planned terrorist attacks in U.S. prior to 9/11.
Clark warned the president in daily briefings of the threat. Clark was unable to convene a cabinet level position. Tenet met with the president 40 times to warn of threat. Still no meetings of top officials.
#34: Obstruction into the investigation of 9/11
#35: endangering the health of 9/11 first responders
Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP's all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These 'other' sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet.
At 9:33 a.m., Mohammed spoke to the court for the first time, uttering a single "Yes" into a microphone in answer to the question of whether he speaks English. He then asked for a translator, but a good one, because he said he had been "mistranslated" at his Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantanamo more than a year ago, when someone "put many words in my mouth."
Just 24 minutes later, after the other detainees answered a series of mundane questions, Mohammed stood up to address the court. He opened by chanting Koranic verses in Arabic, complete with an English translation for the court, offering a few unexpected lyrical moments. But his words then veered sharply. Although polite and almost deferential, Mohammed quickly made clear his dislike of America.
"I consider all American laws under the Constitution to be evil and not of God," Mohammed said. He particularly took issue with a society that allows "same-sexual marriage" and other things that "are very bad." He said he could not accept a U.S. lawyer because the nation is "still in Iraq and Afghanistan and waging their crusade."
When Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, the presiding judge, tried to interrupt Mohammed, Mohammed would hesitate and say, "Go ahead," essentially granting permission to Kohlmann to speak. While Kohlmann was extremely patient with Mohammed, he blew up several times at defense attorneys, sternly telling them to "sit down, sit down" in the middle of their arguments.
Kohlmann also had a surreal conversation with the five defendants toward the end of the hearing, discussing with them the parameters for them to review and handle classified evidence if they do represent themselves. Military prosecutors said with no apparent irony that they are prepared to hand over classified materials to the nation's arch enemies, although it is unclear whether the detainees would have access to witnesses or how a detainee would handle top-secret CIA materials.
"There will not be evidence they will not see," said Army Col. Lawrence J. Morris, the chief prosecutor for military commissions. Human rights advocates were skeptical, however.
Mohammed appeared to have equal disdain for the process, but he only briefly mentioned his "torturing" at the hands of U.S. officials, something he acknowledged he was warned not to mention in open court, lest a security official hit a button muting the audio to observers in the courtroom and at a media center nearby. That button was pushed at least a few times on Thursday when detainees appeared to discuss elements of their early captivity in secret facilities or the way they were treated.*
"All of this has been taken under torturing," Mohammed said. "Then after torturing, they transfer us to Inquisition Land here at Guantanamo, and you tell everyone to sit down, sit down."
The case will continue to go forward, and while Mohammed has asked for the death penalty so he could become a martyr, he seemed content to stir things up on his first day in court. He sat smugly at the defense table after the others declared that they wanted to represent themselves, taking a legal approach to which they are entitled but one that could turn Guantanamo's highest-profile military commission into a circus.