Osama Is In Iran!

Could this be any more obvious disinfo?

Israeli Army Morphing into the Taliban

This is disturbing but not shocking:

These were Israeli soldiers and officers, who fled the celebration because of "their belief that halakha, or Jewish religious law, prohibits them from hearing a woman sing"

Low Yield Mini- or Micro-Nukes That May have Been Used By The American Regime in The WTC on 9/11, & Note The 33’s

by The Anonymous Physicist

In the debate of how small nuclear bombs could have destroyed the WTC, some (likely intel shills) post that “if nukes were used, Manhattan would have been vaporized.” We shall see that the U.S. regime has admitted to plenty of very small nukes that wouldn’t have done that— but could have “done” the WTC.

The above photo of the W48 nuclear artillery shell is telling. Wikipedia states, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W48 “The W48 was an American nuclear artillery shell, fired from a standard 6.1 inch howitzer. It was manufactured starting in 1963, and all units were retired in 1992. The W48 was 6.1 inches in diameter and 33.3 inches long. It came in two models, Mod 0 (135 were officially produced) and Mod 1 (925 were officially produced), which are reported to have weighed 118 and 128 pounds respectively. It had an explosive yield equivalent to 72 tons of TNT (0.072 kiloton), which is very small for a nuclear weapon.” This shell fit into the military’s regular 155 mm. howitzer.

Note that this yield is about 300 times smaller than the Hiroshima blast. And, of course, the small nukes used in the WTC were emplaced in the center. Note how small this artillery shell’s diameter is, and note its 33.3 inch length. An emplaced nuke with just the “gadget” itself would not need the outer shell, and would be even smaller.

Now let’s look a the U.S. Navy and Marines project called Special Atomic Demolition Munition, which was to be used for demolishing “enemy structures.” http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Special:Atomic:Demolition:Munition.htm

“The main [nuclear “device”] was the Mk-54, a cylinder 40 by 60 centimeters that weighed 68 kilograms“. It’s yield was 10 tons up to one kiloton. 300 SADMs—note the pronunciation is like Saddam— were assembled and remained in the US arsenal until 1989.” Note the very small yield of only 10 tons of TNT.

More on the W54 nuke is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54

“Early known versions could destroy a two block area, with an estimated yield comparable to approximately 10 tons of TNT.” Here is the W54 portrayed as a Backpack Nuke:

Note that the Wiki article actually compares the W54 nuke with the OKC bomb(s)! “…the smallest yield version of the W54 (10 tons) is two to four times as powerful as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing…” Now why does Wikipedia (CIA) feel the need to try to prove that the W54 mini-nuke was too small to have perpetrated the OKC bombing? They doth protest too much, methinks. And if Wiki is doing comparisons—WHY NOT THEN COMPARE THE W54 TO THE MUCH LARGER WTC DESTRUCTION?

For completeness sake, I cite the PTB’ beloved 33 used as a nuke. See here-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W33_(nuclear_weapon) and here-- http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Nuclear:artillery.htm. Officially again, “Only one type of artillery round other than the W-48 was produced in large numbers, the W-33 for use in a 203 mm shell. Around 2,000 warheads of this type were manufactured from 1957-65, each 940 mm long and weighing around 109 kg. They were fitted in the T-317 AFAP and fired from a specialised howitzer. The warhead yield was greater than the W-48 and it was made in four types, three yielding 5 to 10 kt and one 40 kt.” But this W33 nuke has too large a yield to have been employed on 9/11.

One wonders what happened to all these nukes? My previous articles here-- wtcdemolition.blogspot.com -- detailed how such mini- or micro-nukes were used in the basement, and at various points in the towers before, during, and possibly after tower (and other WTC building) “collapses.” Such nukes as the W54, and more secret smaller ones readily fit the forensic destruction evidence, and the aftermath.

And for those who lie and still say that destruction of the towers was too quiet to have been done via nukes, I repeat the following eye- and ear-witness testimony from one of my articles. http://covertoperations.blogspot.com/2007/11/eyewitness-testimony-of-firefighters.html During the commencement of WTC2 destruction, FDNY Lt. Robert Larocco stated: “The next second I heard that loudest noise in the world that I was describing before getting louder and louder.” (snip) “It was the loudest noise I've ever heard in my life. It was in both ears. Kind of like those rockets that they launch the space shuttles with, it was like I had one going off in each ear. When I thought it was the loudest noise I ever heard, every second it was just increasing getting louder and louder and louder.”

The other things that singular article of mine contains includes: Fire Dept. eyewitnesses seeing pulverized ash before “collapse” (from the early sub-basement nuke most likely), evidence of EMP (from nukes) during “collapse”, several firemen thinking that the great heat impinging on them— far from any fire— meant they were being nuked, and even seeing evidence that people were pushed out of the towers, and did not jump, and seismic events far larger than the regime officially released.

Finally, the above-cited articles officially proclaim that “In 1991 the US unilaterally withdrew its nuclear artillery shells from service [but maybe not from internal service?], and Russia responded in kind in 1992. The US removed around 1,300 nuclear shells from Europe.”

So thousands of small nukes were removed from “official” service in the decade before 9/11/2001. Is there any proof that they were all actually completely destroyed? Including the ones that could destroy only a “2 block area.” This also begs the question about the likely existence of more secret, smaller nuclear devices. Since a Gov’t scientist has admitted they experimented with nukes down to a yield of only several pounds of TNT (http://www.house.gov/jec/hearings/dualuse/leitner.htm), it is easy to see how all this demonstrates the existence of micro-nukes. And subsequently all the forensic evidence indicates the WTC was destroyed by small nuclear devices (likely with subsidiary conventional explosives to prevent “blow through”), as demonstrated here-- wtcdemolition.blogspot.com. And further, the evidence indicates that the China Syndrome resulted because of this. See here-- wtc-chinasyndrome.blogspot.com.

Just What is the Russian 9/11 Monument Telling Us?

More pictures of the monument can be seen here.

by The Anonymous Physicist

Does not the monument look more and more like it is telling the world that the towers were destroyed from within! It only shows an INTERNAL gash— there are no plane hit holes! Why not? And the teardrop is looking more and more like a nuke may be depicted.

Note carefully the internal rungs, or steps, along the internal gash. It looks like every several floors has a rung [or tooth], if created to scale. Is this depicting the placement of nukes? And why put in these rungs, in the first place— the gash could be smooth? The PTB often love to gloat, and stick in our faces what they have done to us. They do that to try to arouse fear and hopelessness.

Is there a wealth of information that the Russian 9/11 monument is showing, and not showing?

In more detail, I made an attempt to count the number of rungs [or teeth] the monument contains on each side of that internal gash. There appears to be some 30-odd rungs or steps, on each side. This is near the coveted 33 of the PTB, that I have explained in detail at this blog for the past two years. These rungs or steps also seem to be parts of separate blocks, if you follow them to the outside surface of the monument. I am asking anyone who reads this, who lives in the Metro New York area, especially in New Jersey, to go there and count these rungs on the inside of this 9/11 Russian monument. Then let us know. If possible, close-up pics would be great. Thank you.

It's Official-- We Suck

Experts On Third World Banana Republics: The U.S. has Become a Third World Banana Republic.

Pinochet judge seeks criminal probe of Bush 'torture lawyers'-- Spanish official says arrest warrants 'highly probable'.

Questions Questions

Is the financial crisis scam as blatant of a rip-off as 9/11-- or is it even MORE blatant???

Isn't the simple fact that the USG paid 9/11 victim's families on average $1.8 million* pretty much an admission of guilt???



*with stipulation not to sue the airlines. Also note "Kenneth Feinberg was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to be Special Master of the fund. He worked for 33 months pro bono."

My New Blogs

The AIG Scam

33-Watch

Old but still being updated:
Bush Administration War Criminals

World Trade Center Demolition

My New Videos

The Spire and the Staircase

So Long "Freedom"

Rather symbolic:

Once hailed as a beacon of rebirth in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Freedom Tower's patriotic name has been swapped out for the more marketable One World Trade Center, officials at the Port Authority conceded today.

But more than seven years after the terror attacks and amid an effort to market the iconic tower to international tenants, sentiment gave way to practicality.

Crop Circles

Seriously... amazing... stuff.

Shanksville Challenge

Good overview of how the official flight 93 story evolved to hide the fact THAT NO BOEING 757 CRASHED AT SHANKSVILLE.

Cause of Flight 3407 Crash Still a Mystery

The information released on Wednesday indicated that the airplane, a twin-engine turboprop Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, operated by Colgan Air for Continental, crashed because it experienced an aerodynamic stall — meaning that the combination of airspeed and the wings’ angle to the wind resulted in a loss of lift. The stall appears not to have been caused by “the light to moderate icing” likely present on the airplane.

The icing “had a minimal impact on the stall speed,” the update said, adding, “The airplane continued to respond as expected to flight control inputs throughout the accident flight.”

Rather, the stall appears to have been caused by upward movement of the nose, according to airplane performance modeling and simulation efforts. The investigation indicated that the nose rose when one of the two pilots pulled back on the control yoke with a force of 25 pounds, activating a moveable section of the tail that pushed the tail down and the nose up.

See here and here and here for significance.

Cold Fusion Watch

More evidence of cold fusion for the PTB to cover up:

Researchers at a US Navy laboratory have unveiled what they say is "significant" evidence of cold fusion, a potential energy source that has many skeptics in the scientific community. The scientists on Monday described what they called the first clear visual evidence that low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR), or cold fusion devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists say are indicative of nuclear reactions.

From the Files of "Did He Really Mean to Say That?"

NYTimes Op-Ed:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials.

Oh the outrage-- that they are being unfairly persecuted. And I'm this guy was oh so innocent-- just a hard working trader screwed over by unscrupulous colleagues (riiight). But "dismantling the company"? Is that what he means? Though clearly they helped to dismantle the economy!

CIA "Worries" About Electronic Hacking of Votes

This is rich:

The CIA got interested in electronic systems a few years ago, Stigall said, after concluding that foreigners might try to hack U.S. election systems.

UPDATE: link fixed

Predator Attacks in Pakistan-- What's the Real Story?

Officially increased drone attacks have been taking a heavy toll on "Al Qaeda leadership". But we know this is bullshit because 9/11 was an inside job and Al Qaeda is more like al-CIA-duh.

An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.

The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft.

Since Aug. 31, the CIA has carried out at least 38 Predator strikes in northwest Pakistan, compared with 10 reported attacks in 2006 and 2007 combined, in what has become the CIA's most expansive targeted killing program since the Vietnam War.

Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign despite civilian casualties that have fueled anti-U.S. sentiment and prompted protests from the Pakistani government. (snip)

The stepped-up Predator campaign has killed at least nine senior Al Qaeda leaders and dozens of lower-ranking operatives, in what U.S. officials described as the most serious disruption of the terrorist network since 2001.(snip)

Al Qaeda's founders remain elusive. U.S. spy agencies have not had reliable intelligence on the location of Osama bin Laden since he slipped across the Pakistan border seven years ago, officials said. His deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, remains at large after escaping a missile strike in 2006.

It really makes no sense that we have so much good intelligence about lower leaders but nothing on bin Laden and Zawahiri.

The offensive has been aided by technological advances and an expansion of the CIA's Predator fleet. The drones take off and land at military airstrips in Pakistan, but are operated by CIA pilots in the United States. Some of the pilots -- who also pull the triggers on missiles -- are contractors hired by the agency, former officials said.

That's rather disturbing-- who exactly are these "contractors" who are killing foreigners in our name?

Is this what these killings are really all about?

Pakistan has repeatedly criticized the Predator campaign; the attacks are reported to have caused dozens of civilian casualties. (snip)

U.S. officials say that despite such complaints, the Pakistani government's opposition has been muted because the CIA has expanded its targeting to include militant groups that threaten the government in Islamabad.

Or do we really want to DESTABILIZE the situation in Pakistan?

"There's a danger of weakening the government we want to bolster. It's already to some degree a house of cards." In fact, the stepped-up strikes have coincided with a deterioration in security in Pakistan. Over the last six months, Taliban elements tied to Al Qaeda have carried out increasingly bold attacks, including in Islamabad, and a recent truce between the government and militants in the Swat Valley was seen by some observers as a capitulation to Islamic hard-liners. (snip) "Is this really helping when you have radical militants controlling more territory than ever before?" Zarate said. "That is a good question, but that is a different question from whether this is effective against Al Qaeda."

To whatever extent we are hurting al-CIA-duh, it seems like the bigger picture is more destabilization of Paksistan-- the only Islamic nuclear-armed country. Is this accelerating the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation with India?

Deep Thought of the Day

So much for that whole "hope/change" thing.

Break Up the Banks

This looks reasonable and also seems feasible:

NATIONALIZE: Experts agree on the means -- Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention - no more blank check taxpayer handouts. (see Krugman on nationalization)

REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused. (see Simon Johnson on reorganizing)

DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place-- new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that's "too big to fail" means that it's too big for a free market to function. (see Mike Lux on decentralization)

Big bankers ruined our economy and now they are gaming the political system so they can profit even more off the crisis they caused. They must be stopped.

On April 11th, 2009, the public will come out in cities across the country to express their frustration and disapproval with how our elected officials have handled the economic crisis. No one has been left unscathed; this protest is yours.

The bankers' failure to see anything beyond short-term profit for themselves has torn this country apart and jeopardized our future. But the blame doesn't lie only with the banks; it also lies with the U.S. government that failed to protect its citizens through regulation and oversight.

Through their blind and unconditional faith in the financial markets, the banks and the government have made us all into victims of greed gone out of control. This crisis is an opportunity for President Obama to lead the U.S. in a new direction; one that values economic growth, but protects the well-being of the public before the bank accounts of the world's financial elite.

But, so far, the policies proposed by the Obama administration to deal with the crisis look too much like the Bush-Paulson bailouts.

At the personal level, we know that the smart thing to do with our money right now is generally the less flashy thing. Paying off our debts and saving for the future protects us from the risks we can't afford to take in the current market. The same rules apply to the banks. This is a time for a level-headed government to step in and steer unhealthy banks away from more risky bets, and to help them stabilize in the name of economic security for America.

Nothing tells the bankers to keep on doing what they're doing more than an endless stream of free taxpayer money. The banks know that the government considers them too big to fail; if nationalization is off the table, what incentive do they have to act in the public interest?

In a basic sense, this is a fight against corruption. Not in the sense of a quid-pro-quo (though that may be there too), but in the sense of a corrupt ideology. For the most part, the world of economists, politicians and financiers is one elite web of influence. At some point, private profit took over as the only value to consider in building an economy, and it has never subsided. This is true of the thinking from both major parties.

For example, Timothy Geithner, Obama's Treasury Secretary and a "liberal," was a key architect of Bush's original bank bailout plan in his former role as Chief of the New York Reserve Bank. Under Obama, Geithner has continued to propose what sounds like more blank-check bailouts (in various disguises) and has specifically ruled out other approaches, such as temporary nationalization, because, he says, "our system will be stronger if it remains in private hands." The necessary solutions to our economic crisis just don't compute in the minds of the financial elite.

If our government is to take decisive action to rebuild the economy in a way that protects the public, it will require Americans to fight back against this corruption. We must come out in mass to demand a new way forward or things simply will not change.

It's not enough to patch up the current system. We need to restrict the ways that bankers can lobby and serve in the government. We need to prohibit compensation plans that encourages huge short-term risk. We have to break up any bank that's "too big to fail" so that we can have a functional free market. We need serious reform that fixes the root causes in our political and economic system: excessive influence of banks, dangerous compensation systems, and massive consolidation that does nothing to serve the public interest.

In the same way that the bankers have manipulated politicians to act in their favor, we the people will fight for economic policies that are good for the public.

Credible experts from all over the political spectrum agree that the current bank bailouts are failing. Our blog gathers the most forward thinking thought on our economy and political situation. Prominent experts are highlighted in the blog with the best snippets of their arguments. We will be reaching out to top economists for their take on the economy and to post their arguments on this blog.

You can make the difference. Take this opportunity seriously, email your friends, find your rally and go with them.

The Fall of the WTC1 Spire and the Intact WTC1 Stairwell: Proof of Demolition Near Bottom of the Tower

After the destruction of WTC1, this stairwell in the core of the building remained-- three to four stories higher than the rest of the rubble pile:


Now remember the "spire" of WTC1 that remained for a few seconds during the destruction of the tower?


It was a good 70 stories high, and was part of the WTC1 core:


The spire didn't topple over, but fell more-or-less STRAIGHT DOWN:


IF THE SPIRE MERELY COLLAPSED, FALLING STRAIGHT DOWN, THE HEAVY CORE COLUMNS SHOULD HAVE OBLITERATED THE STAIRWELL AT THE BASE OF THE CORE!

Rather-- the stairwell WOULD survive if the spire was blown with bombs at the base-- a few stories above the stairwell. In this way, the higher spire columns could fall to the side as the base was blasted out. Perhaps several bombs along the base of the core were used to create this result. But it seems clear that a collapse of the spire could not result in this intact stairwell. It also seems likely that this nuclear blasting along the core/spire would account for all the missing WTC1 core columns!

The Financial Crisis: Outrageous, Maddening, Depressing, Worrisome...

Apocalyptic???

Clearly the ordinary people of the world got massively screwed--- once again. And the elites make off with the riches. But the bigger issue is where this is all going.

I suspect the economy will survive-- we're not going to have a huge depression, the country is not going to fall apart, people aren't going to be rounded up and put in detention camps or be exterminated.

But still, the country is in a hole. The Obama administration's credibility is getting (rightfully) trashed and the massive debt will severely limit future action by the government. The dream of a more progressive society seems distant. Lots of people will be hurting for years.

It's all the fucking bankers' fault, and there is rightfully populist rage against them. But yet it seems they will get away with everything, again-- except for a few fall guys like Bernard Madoff.

When will there ever be justice against the robber/predator elites? Will any leaders ever be strong enough to go after them and win?

UPDATE:
The problem in a nutshell:

If this were a medical emergency, it appears it would look something like this:

The Illness- reckless and irresponsible betting led to huge losses
The Diagnosis- Insufficient gambling.
The Cure- a Trillion dollar stack of chips provided by the house.
The Prognosis- We are so screwed.

UPDATE 2: Greenwald:

Matt Taibbi's new Rolling Stone article perfectly summarizes what the AIG scandal reveals about our political and economic system, and should be read in full. In sum: financial elites own the Government and both political parties. Their money drowns Washington and their lobbyists control it. They used that ownership of Government to abolish decades-old legal and regulatory protections which previously constrained what they could do. In the lawless environment which they literally purchased from our political leaders, they were able to pillage and pilfer and steal without limit. And even now that everything has come crashing down, they continue to dictate what the Government's response is, to ensure that they -- the prime authors of the disaster -- are the prime beneficiaries, at the public's expense, of the "solutions," solutions which preserve their ill-gotten gains and heighten even further their power and influence.

Well, yes-- though of course it's all much worse than this! For fucks' sake, the fuckers have done so much more than just financial shenanigans, things such as 9/11. But basically, they have gotten firm control over the levers of power-- and they aren't letting go UNLESS WE DAMN WELL DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

The problem also here and related items--
Madoff in lockdown... and this rant from Olbermann:

Further Observations on WTC1 Stairwell B

1. Did Pasquale Buzzelli Surf Down The “Collapse”—or Do Conflicting Reports Collapse the O.C.T.?

2. Does the Revealed “Upward Wind” During “Collapse” Prove the Final “Cleaner Nuke”?

by The Anonymous Physicist


Pasquale Buzzelli is a structural engineer who was working for the Port Authority in the North Tower on 9/11. Genelle Guzman [McMillan is added now—due to subsequent marriage] was a co-worker of Buzzelli’s at that time. Both would be among only 20 alleged survivors of the “collapse” of the two towers. Curiously all 20 were in the North Tower. Buzzelli would become famous for claims that he, in effect, “surfed” down 22 floors during “collapse” as described here.

He was found ATOP the rubble pile, and taken to safety, at least three hours after the “collapse.” Guzman-McMillan, who started out with Buzzelli on the 64th floor, would become famous as the last person rescued alive from beneath the rubble, about 24 hours after the “collapse.”

However, Guzman-McMillan’s description of events leads to the collapse of credibility of Buzzelli. As archived here, Guzman-McMillan states that she was on the 13th—not 22nd—floor just before the “Collapse” began; and that Buzzelli was BELOW her. She states that Buzzelli was below her as he led a group of people (including her) down. She does not know, at that point in time, how far below her he was. So this could be but half a flight of stairs, or several flights. But Buzzelli, and his fellow claimants thus lose AT LEAST nine flights of “collapse surfing” from Guzman-McMillan’s account. Also please consider the possible implications in the differences in how they were found. Guzman-McMillan was buried BENEATH some rubble, while Buzzelli was ATOP the rubble pile. Curiously Guzman-McMillan also relates pressure from the Port Authority on its reported orders to Tower workers to stay put after the “plane hits.” The article above states, “On instructions from the Port Authority, McMillan declines to discuss why she stayed [initially].”

Guzman-McMillan “felt hot” while awaiting rescue. Reports from the 12 firemen who survived in Stairwell B also have them saying they felt heat in the Stairwell even when initially climbing up. (This fits with my articles on the early sub-basement nuke’s thermal rays that affected many people, including Felipe David.) Indeed I might say that the following report from Rick Cushman is the very first report of what I have lengthily described as the China Syndrome Aftermath. See this blog: wtc-chinasyndrome.blogspot.com. Now Rick Cushman was a marketing manager and National Guardsman from Saugus, MA. He rushed to Ground Zero from Massachusetts. For 12 hours he searched for survivors in the rubble. “But he had not seen any — only pieces of bodies. Beneath his boots, heat billowed up through the web of steel.” Then Cushman heard Guzman-McMillan’s shouts and directed rescuers to her.

Now this article reveals numerous things. Despite the fact that there was likely a large number of people going down Stairwell B at the moment of collapse— as there were only three stairwells in each tower— people survived only at a few locations along Stairwell B. There are several possibilities, according to my many small nukes hypothesis. As previously hypothesized here, there could have been several failed or fizzled nukes. Or there is the possibility, that at certain intervals, those who were in an effective nodal region— between nukes—may have survived, at least initially.

Now Stairwell B contained 14 survivors— including 12 firefighters— who survived the tower’s final destruction. Two others— Buzzelli and Guzman-McMillan— were on Stairwell B at the onset of “collapse,” but were found elsewhere in the rubble pile. And four others were found in the underground Mall. (This includes the two Port Authority policemen depicted in the Oliver Stone movie.) Again it appears that the South Tower’s “collapse” curiously did not have any such survivors. Now the New York Magazine article indicates again that some of these Stairwell B surviving firemen surmised that they survived a nuclear attack: “[Captain] Jonas and his men, finally freed from their stairwell, looked around at fires and flattened buildings. They thought they were witnessing a nuclear attack.” My articles on the nuclear destruction of the WTC have detailed how many firefighters surmised this. Why? Firefighters are well familiar with heat from fire, but if they feel great heat on their skin and they are nowhere near a fire, they know something very different is going on! Readers of my articles, and of this blog by Spooked, and his 33 blog here can also see the involvement of the PTB, when the article states “When Buzzelli called at 3:30 everything changed, though not as she’d expected. Soon, she’d know that he’d somehow landed safely in the midst of acres of destruction, a lone soul dropped to safety on a concrete slab…”

The New York Magazine article has other quizzical matters, and should be read in its entirety. There is the matter of the 12th Floor as depicted here. “Jonas picked up a Mayday from the lieutenant of Ladder Five, who reported that he was in Stairwell B on the 12th floor. Jonas had passed him on the way down, helping a civilian. “I’m trapped and I’m hurt bad,” he said. Jonas, who was on the fourth floor, tried to climb the stairs but couldn’t ascend more than a floor, and in any case, as he’d later learn, the stairwell had no 12th floor. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” he radioed back.”

The highest-ranking officer on Stairwell B was Chief Richard Picciotto. He later wrote a book, as the article continues: “Picciotto’s Last Man Down became a best-seller. It would also end his friendship with Jonas—“It’s a very bad book,” says Jonas— and whatever camaraderie he shared that day with the others from Ladder Six. “We don’t speak to him,” says Komorowski. “Liar,” Butler wrote in his copy of the book.”

““It was part of my personality to take charge of a situation,” Picciotto writes. “I’d never been the type to sit idly by while someone else called the shots, and I wasn’t about to start now…Picciotto was the highest-ranking guy, but he was not the commanding officer. He was doing nothing. He was balled up in a corner,” says Jonas.”

Picciotto’s book says he was on the 7th Floor when the North Tower “collapsed.” These articles indicate that the extant height of Stairwell B, after tower destruction, was five flights. And this should be kept in mind when researching where people were at the moment destruction began, and where they ended up. It appears that each flight had two levels of standard zigzag stairs as depicted here. We must keep in mind that anyone being blasted on the stairwell, but remaining in the stairwell, would have been blasted in a straight line, and shouldn’t have been blasted more than a flight of stairs. This is different from those—like Buzzelli and Guzman-McMillan— who were apparently blasted OUT of the stairwell, at some point, during the tower’s destruction.

(And, of course, the stairwell above the fifth floor may have been vaporized, or otherwise destroyed.) With Guzman-McMillan ending up buried under some rubble, and Buzzelli atop the rubble. I also note that there appears to be no pictures that show the very TOP of the extant five-floor Stairwell B section. Could this be because the top contains obvious indications of the great (nuclear) heat of tower destruction? Have these photos been cropped, as many photos were in the Kennedy Assassination? I was the first to note the similarity of the remnant of Stairwell B, and the remnant of the tower from the fizzled Upshot-Knothole Ruth nuclear fission bomb test of 3/31/53. At least the bottom third of the bomb’s tower remained because the nuke had fizzled—it had a yield about 1/15th of what was expected. See here:


Note the date has a 33. The tops of the Ruth test tower and Stairwell B have some similarities as I indicated to Spooked, and as he has in his article at his blog here on 3/12/09. The tops indicate some steel has melted and twisted downward.

Finally, I cite the book, Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center by Dennis Smith [not read by me]. In particular I cite this review by Sterling D. Allan, an apparent alternative energy expert. After reading that book, and Stairwell B’s survivors’ accounts, Allan reveals, “a cohesive conclusion: A POWERFUL WIND WAS GOING UP THE STAIRS AS THE BUILDING WAS COLLAPSING DOWN. This would seem to refute the official pancake theory of collapse in which one floor after another fails as the mass from above comes down.”

Allan includes this familiar hypothesis, “One possible explanation for these survivors, in the demolition model, is that explosives that were placed in the vicinity of this stairwell section failed to go off.” Allan however appears to only consider non-nuclear matters, but his review is dated in 2006, before my articles, and that of others, on the nuclear destruction of the WTC appeared.

But I conclude with the question—does the now-revealed UPWARD WIND, of final tower destruction, indicate a nuclear blast from the ground, or perhaps more likely from the basement? Is this upward wind another indication of the final cleaner nuke that I have written about for several years now? As I have written, this final cleaner nuke may also have been seen as the so-called “nuclear glow” that TV cameras panned AWAY FROM while purporting to show what was happening at the WTC.


So-- we have seen now that “surfing the collapse” is not as the regime wishes to have it depicted. Many floors of “surfing” are missing, and ending up atop the rubble— with a huge building “collapsing” on top of you— is incredulous. Also we see that firemen’s accounts of the upward wind of final collapse fits well with my nuclear destruction scenario, but it impossible with the OCT, as there would be no wind until the pancaking floors hit that level, and that would have been a downward wind.

Israeli Bloodlust in Gaza

It was as bad as many had claimed. Basically, pure evil.

Also see this.

I Think I Figured Out the Bankers' Attitudes

All the fuckers who gambled billions on credit default swaps based on shakey mortgages-- I bet they feel ENTITLED TO GETTING BAILED OUT because they FEEL THEY DID NO WRONG. It's not their fault those mortgages went bad! It all those losers, who defaulted on their loans-- that was the problem. Not their heavily over-leveraged financial transactions. That was never the problem. In fact, I bet they think the government OWES them the money because the government was part of the problem with helping to push all those iffy loans in the first place. Yes, this is the basic wingnut attitide.)

I'm guessing this is how they rationalize it-- that is, the few of them who aren't outright criminals!

Official US Holocaust Denial

Apparently genocide doesn't count if it was Turks killing Armenians.

AIG Bonuses: $33.6 Million for 52 People Who Have Left the Company

You just can't make this stuff up (note the 33).

And....a mystery mole fought to keep the bonuses in the stimulus bill--

Who in the Obama Administration pushed to weaken a key anti-bonus provision in the stimulus bill last month? Sen. Chris Dodd, who wrote the provision -- and ultimately agreed to defang it -- isn't saying.

More outrage--

Goldman Sachs and a parade of major European banks, including Deutsche Bank , France's Societe Generale and the UK's Barclays , were major beneficiaries of more than $90 billion (64 billion pounds) of money paid out by AIG in the first three-and-a-half months after its bailout by the U.S. government last September.

The disclosure by AIG on Sunday is likely to trigger further criticism of why Goldman, with its many government links, and the European banks were funnelled such huge sums of U.S. taxpayer money after making bad bets on various securities, as well as strengthening the case of those who believe the whole bailout was botched.

And definitely-- Geithner needs to go.

The Conservative/Predator State Agenda

This sums it up nicely:

The sums of money going to bail out the financial industry dwarf the waste and pork that get John McCain and other budget hawks excited. Yet they are strangely calm about the bailout money. In fact, the amount we spent patching the financial system could well be large enough to make the Social Security system fully solvent over its 75-year planning horizon, yet we barely hear a peep from the Peter Peterson Foundation and its merry band of anti-Social Security crusaders.

I think that proves what their real agenda is. If they were really worried about fiscal responsibility they would be using some of their credibility to weigh in on this crisis. They are clearly using disaster capitalist tactics to destroy the safety net, period.

The Concept of a "Predator State" Explains Much About Our Current State of Affairs

Great article, well worth reading it its entirety:

When the top 1% of individuals in a nation own 38% of its wealth and the bottom 40% own just 1% – when the average individual in the top 1% owns 1500 times as much wealth as the average individual in the bottom 40% – it is worth asking the question: Why? Do these people own so much more wealth than other people because they earn it by contributing to society in some way? Or are they predators? Or does the answer lie somewhere in between?

James K. Galbraith, in his book “The Predator State”, notes that the concept of a predator class is not new, and he introduces the concept by first discussing Thorstein Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class”, published in 1899:

The leisure classes do not work. Rather, they hold offices. They perform rituals. They enact deeds of honor…The leisure class is predatory as a matter of course… The relation of overlords to underlings is that of predator to prey. Vested interests… live off the work of others by right and tradition, and not by their functional contribution to the productivity of the system… Predators rely on prey for their sustenance, but they also require and must motivate their assistance…

(snip)

Joseph Stiglitz explains how predation has been at work in the bailout of Wall Street by the American taxpayer:

The TARP bailout has so far been a dismal failure. Unbelievably expensive, it has failed to rekindle lending. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave the banks a big handout…The taxpayers put out $350 billion and didn't even get the right to find out what the money was being spent on, let alone have a say in what the banks did with it.

TARP's failure comes as no surprise: incentives matter. Bankers won't restart lending unless they have a reason to do so or are forced. Receiving billions of dollars in bonus pay for racking up record losses is a peculiar "incentive" structure….

And yet, they’re still trying to get more:

The financial wizards are turning to tried and true gimmicks – the same ones that got us into the mess. One strategy is to hide the costs in nontransparent accounting… The other combines this trickery with the magic of leveraging and pretends that leveraging carries no risk… Long experience has taught us that when banks are at risk of failure, their managers engage in behaviors that risk losing even more taxpayer money. They may, for instance, undertake big bets: if they win, they keep the proceeds; if they lose, so what?--they would have died anyway…. Because the government is on the hook for so much money, it has to take an active role in managing the restructuring…

James Galbraith. Galbraith describes the takeover of our country by predators, the process that made it into a predator state:

In the late 1970s and 1980s… business leadership saw the possibility of something far more satisfactory from their point of view: complete control of the apparatus of the state. In particular, reactionary business leadership, in those sectors most affected by public regulation, saw this possibility and directed their lobbies – the K Street corridor – toward this goal. The Republican Party… became the instrument of this form of corporate control. The administration… of George W. Bush became little more than an alliance of representatives from the regulated sectors seeking to bring the regulatory system entirely to heel. And to this group was added… those who saw the economic activities of government not in ideological terms but merely as opportunities for private profit on a continental scale…

This is the predator state. It is a coalition of relentless opponents of the regulatory framework on which public purpose depends, with enterprises whose major lines of business compete with or encroach on the principal public functions of the enduring New Deal. It is a coalition, in other words, that seeks to control the state partly in order to prevent the assertion of public purpose… They are firms that have no intrinsic loyalty to any country… They assuredly do not adopt any of society’s goals as their own, and that includes the goals that may be decided on by their country of origin, the United States. As an ideological matter, it is fair to say that the very concept of public purpose is alien to, and denied by, the leaders and the operatives of this coalition… In the predator state, the organization exists principally to master the state structure itself.

Is the AIG Financial Products Head a Secret Communist?

Hmmm-- this might explain some things.

Does Our Immune System Affect Our Behaviour?

This is pretty interesting-- and makes a lot of sense to me.

"Knowing" Movie Trailer-- Large Boeing Wing Sliced Off by Power Line

I just saw a trailer for the movie "Knowing" on TV where it looked like the end of a large Boeing jet's wing was sliced off by a power line right before it crashes. Interesting. Oddly, however, none of the trailers available online show this, but rather show right after this when the plane starts to hit the ground.

This imagery is in direct contrast to the Boeing wings of 9/11 that sliced right through thick steel columns.

War Crimes Watch

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

Shame on the Red Cross for keeping this report secret. Their claims of doing it to maintain neutrality don't hold water.

Russians Donated a Monument to 9/11

Interesting how obscure this is.

I like the way the monument has a gash not unlike the gashes that were made in the towers by the "planes". The plasma-like blob is supposed to be a teardrop, but I wonder if it might mean something else?

From Anonymous Physicist:

I found that the Park where it is located is the Bayonne Local Redevelopment Authority Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor. And their Telephone Number is-- naturally-- 201-823-0333. Now the zero has been said to be skipped--as if not there-- so we have the double 33! Very appropriate for a nuclear event!
Anonymous Physicist

Also, the teardrop can be symbolic of murder.

"Tales from the Topographic Oceans"-- the Greatest Obscure Album of All Time?

The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun) By Yes @ Yahoo! Video

The Remembering (High the Memory) by Yes @ Yahoo! Video

2nd Deep Thought of the Day

The mighty power of my once-mighty blog seems to be waning.

Cheney on 9/11 and Iraq and Afghanistan Wars: "Stuff Happens"

Yeah-- life's funny that way, isn't it?

And I'm just so touched by Dick's deep concern for all the Iraqis who have died since the invasion.

Though mostly I'm struck by how surreal it is to watch a war criminal get interviewed like he's someone we should actually listen to.

Deep Thought of the Day

AIG giving bonuses to the fraudsters who worked in the Financial Products division is like George Bush giving the Medal of Freedom to George Tenet after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.

Meanwhile, the crooks are holding us hostage until they get their money.

John King Asks Dick Cheney, "Is the President of the United States Trying to Brazenly Deceive the American People?"

Hmmm... can anyone imagine John King asking the same thing about Bush back in 2003 (or even earlier)?

The fact is, John King is a war-criminal-- just like his butt-buddy Dick Cheney. What a complete total waste of human life.

And frankly, this is one reason why I tend to give Obama a bit more of a break than say Bush. To a large extent, the mainstream media is all smoke and mirrors-- but nonetheless two facts remain:
1) the mainstream media has a right-wing bias
2) the mainstream media is a criminal enterprise (these two are intertwined IMO)

Thus, when the mainstream media goes coddles Dick Cheney and goes after Obama-- I'm going to give Obama the benefit of the doubt.

Again though-- I'm not saying Obama doesn't suck. He does.

Un-Fucking-Believable

Holy mother-fucking evil assholes:

Despite being bailed out with more than $170 billion from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, the American International Group is preparing to pay about $100 million in bonuses to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

In case you are not outraged enough-- here's the story of how Summers and Geithner tried so very hard to limit the bonuses.

China Harrasses US Spy Ship

Hmmm...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States Monday urged China to observe international maritime rules after the Pentagon said five Chinese ships, including a naval vessel, harassed a U.S. Navy ship in international waters.

The Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity" to the USNS Impeccable on Sunday, with one vessel coming within 25 feet of the U.S. ship, a U.S. Defense Department statement said.

The American ship, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, was conducting routine operations in the South China Sea 75 miles south of Hainan Island, according to the Pentagon.

Defense officials said the incident followed days of increasingly aggressive Chinese conduct in the area, including fly-bys of two U.S. Navy ships by Chinese maritime surveillance planes. (snip)

The Chinese used polls [sic?] in an attempt to snag the acoustic array that allows Impeccable to monitor underwater events, a defense spokesman said.

The Impeccable responded by spraying one of the vessels with fire hoses and its crew disrobed to their underwear.

The U.S. ship informed the Chinese vessels by radio that it was leaving the area and requested a safe path to navigate. Two of the Chinese vessels stopped directly in front of the U.S. ship and dropped pieces of wood in its path.

The Pentagon described accounts of half a dozen other incidents dating back to March 4, in which the Impeccable and its sister vessel, USNS Victorious, were subjected to aggressive behavior, including dozens of fly-bys by Chinese Y-12 maritime surveillance aircraft.

Remember the spy plane incident with China back at the start of the Bush presidency? There was much speculation that was a deal to transfer technology to China, perhaps as part of a deal for China to play along with 9/11.

Not clear if this is along the same lines, or China trying to exert some force on a weakened US. Along these same lines, the Chinese prime minister recently made some comments about the US making good on all the debt that has been bought by China.

What Hit WTC1?

The Naudet video plane doesn't look like a Boeing 767, if anyone cares.

Orders for the Military Not to Obey

Now this is patriotism.

Proof the Recent 9/11 Statement from Gitmo Captives Was Pure Bullflop

1. How did 5 alleged Al Qaeda members come together to form this statement, given that they are being held each in isolation at Gitmo? Are they allowed to meet and discuss various topics, including their alleged joy at bombing the United States? Somehow I don't think so. We know that some of their own attorneys were not even aware of this filing or what it said. So was this done telepathically?

2. And how is it that this filing was accepted by the court when some of the attorneys for the 5 men were not even aware that such a thing was going to be filed? Take a gander:

"The ACLU is angry that a military judge has accepted an incendiary legal pleading filed by five 9/11 suspects, despite President Obama's order stopping the Guantanamo military commissions and even though attorneys for some of the defendants were unaware of it."

Now stay with me here. 5 alleged Al Qaeda members issue a statement of guilt, an incendiary statement rejoicing at the lost American lives of those attacks 7 years back, through a filing with the court. This filing is accepted by the court despite some of the attorneys not being made aware that this was going to be filed or what was going to be declared on behalf of their clients. Moreover, defying President Obama's ruling putting a halt on all Gitmo military commissions, the judge on the case not only accepted this filing, but also released it to the public.

Et cetera...

Only goes to show how corrupt the media is that they unquestioningly propagated this propaganda. Bleagghh.

Deep Thought of the Day

CNBC is to the current financial crisis as the Rwandan radio stations that incited violence against Hutus and Tutsis are to the horrible genocide that took place in the 90's.

Madoff Admits to Running a Ponzi Scheme

Kind of interesting to read his statement of guilt.

UPDATE: Some worthwhile items on Madoff from the Rude Pundit and from Hullaballoo.

Obama Calls Iran "Unusual and Extraordinary Threat" to US

Dang-- that dude's got to lay off the neocon koolaid!


The anti-Iran bluster gets awfully tedious when it's so obviously over-blown.

The Effect of a Low Yield Nuke on a Steel Structure

The Ruth shot was a fizzle. The predicted yield was 1.5 to 3 kt, while the 200 ton yield was a fraction of that. Especially embarrassing to UCRL was that only the top 100 feet of the 300 foot shot tower was vaporized (though much of the remainder was scattered across the desert). It was standard practice at that time for each test to totally erase all evidence associated with it (automatically "declassifying" the site), which Ruth failed to do.

Hard to tell how tall this tower remnant is but I would guess about 100 feet, if the cross-sections are 10 feet apart (which would fit what looks like a ladder near the base).

Compare the above pic to this pic of the WTC1 core remnant (click to enlarge):

Note the wilted pieces of steel dangling down.

Note-- this puts the WTC destruction into good perspective. If a 200 ton yield nuke can vaporize 100 feet of steel structure, and destroy 100 feet or more of it, you can imagine the yield nuke that would be required to vaporize the innards of the 208 foot wide WTC while leaving the outer walls more or less intact. What's not clear is if there is a linear correlation between nuke yield and vaporization radius-- I would guess it's not perfectly linear.

(thanks to A.P. for the find)

Gun Rampages in the News

Just today, in Germany (note the emergency call was at (9:33 am) and in the US (in Alabama).

Many other gun rampages in recent weeks.

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I might wonder if this was all a part of a plot for the PTB to take away our guns....

Lost Nuke Knowledge: the Decline of Western Civilization?

This is odd:

PLANS TO refurbish Trident nuclear weapons had to be put on hold because US scientists forgot how to manufacture a component of the warhead, a US congressional investigation has revealed.

The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) "lost knowledge" of how to make a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank. As a result, the warhead refurbishment programme was put back by at least a year, and racked up an extra $69 million.

According to some critics, the delay could cause major problems for the UK Trident programme, which is very closely tied to the US programme and uses much of the same technology. The US and the UK are trying to refurbish the ageing W76 warheads that tip Trident missiles in order to prolong their life, and ensure they are safe and reliable. This apparently requires that the Fogbank in the warheads is replaced.

Neither the NNSA nor the UK Ministry of Defence would say anything about the nature or function of Fogbank. But it is thought by some weapons experts to be a foam used between the fission and fusion stages of a thermonuclear bomb. US officials have said that manufacturing the material requires a solvent cleaning agent which is "extremely flammable" and "explosive". The process also involves dealing with "toxic materials" hazardous to workers.

Note the close tie between the US and UK nuke program...

In a way, it's good that we have lost this particular expertise -- though I'm sure we have newer ways of making nukes. It's just very odd to me that we "lost" this particular knowledge.. very curious-- I wonder if there is more to this story...

Physicists on Wall Street

This is interesting-- something I didn't know about but makes sense that this goes on:

They are known as “quants” because they do quantitative finance. Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money.

This flood seems to be continuing, unabated by the ongoing economic collapse in this country and abroad. Last fall students filled a giant classroom at M.I.T. to overflowing for an evening workshop called “So You Want to Be a Quant.” Some quants analyze the stock market. Others churn out the computer models that analyze otherwise unmeasurable risks and profits of arcane deals, or run their own hedge funds and sift through vast universes of data for the slight disparities that can give them an edge.

Still others have opened an academic front, using complexity theory or artificial intelligence to better understand the behavior of humans in markets. In December the physics Web site arXiv.org, where physicists post their papers, added a section for papers on finance. Submissions on subjects like “the superstatistics of labor productivity” and “stochastic volatility models” have been streaming in.

Quants occupy a revealing niche in modern capitalism. They make a lot of money but not as much as the traders who tease them and treat them like geeks. Until recently they rarely made partner at places like Goldman Sachs. In some quarters they get blamed for the current breakdown — “All I can say is, beware of geeks bearing formulas,” Warren Buffett said on “The Charlie Rose Show” last fall. Even the quants tend to agree that what they do is not quite science.

I can see the appeal here for math-oriented people. But clearly a major part of the economic collapse is the massive over-leveraging by investors-- and it seems many of these "quants" are doing nothing but enabling this very destructive behavior. It's a shame these people's skills can't be used more constructively. But ultimately this just goes to show the corrosive power of money...

PTB Still Killing People in Iraq

Suicide bomber kills 33 near Baghdad.

33 people. Get it?

Israel Lobby Blocks Chas Freeman from Serving on Obama's Intelligence Council

Apparently he didn't lick Israel's butt enough.

What a sickening sham our politics has become-- particularly with regard to Israel.

Rich White Guy Who Hated Obama Planned Terrorist Attack

Always good to know who the real terrorists are.

Guantanamo Detainees Say They Planned Sept. 11

What a fraud.

IMO, a major reason for the whole detainee to-do is a way to keep 9/11 perpetually in the news.

Intact WTC1 Stairwell

Cropped and enlarged:

I posted this before-- but it's worth another look because it is so mind-blowing. Note the stairwell in the core section that escaped the destruction! (click to enlarge)

I think this intact stairwell tends to support the idea of demolition more than collapse-- as a straight-down collapse of that whole tower should have smashed this stairway to bits, whereas you could imagine with demolition, the section above this core section could have been blown away by mini-nukes before the debris fell down to smash these stairs.

Which reminds me of a story I read somewhere ( I have tried and tried to find it again but can't) where a ground zero worker described how he found a shadow on the wall of a WTC stairwell where it looked like a person had been vaporized-- leaving only their shadow on the wall behind-- much like happened with some people who had been nuked at Hiroshima. When I read this before, I was confused because I didn't know any stairwell of the WTC was left-- but now I have to think it was this one in the picture above.

UPDATE: This stairwell is likely the famous "Stairwell B" where several survivors from the destruction were found. There was a show on the History channel on them.

The first article has some interesting bits-- most notably how the firemen thought they survived a nuclear attack when they came out.

It's also not clear if the survivors were deeper in this stairwell during the destruction-- or if they were blown away from the main core, as what seems to be described in some parts of the story.

I don't quite understand what happened with this guy though:

He assured her that he and a dozen other employees were about to head down Stairwell B. He’d investigated. It was free of smoke. Buzzelli took the lead, his briefcase over his shoulder. It was slow going. The stairs were narrow, and clogged with people.

Then, as he reached the 22nd floor, the building shook, stairs started to heave. It sounded to Buzzelli like heavy objects were being dropped right above his head. The sound got louder, closer. He dove into a corner. “I felt the walls next to me crack and buckle on top of me,” he says. Suddenly, he seemed to be in free fall, and the walls seemed to separate and move away from him.

Maybe two hours later, he regained consciousness on a slab of concrete 180 feet below the 22nd floor. (He may be the source of the rumor that someone surfed the collapse and lived.) He was atop a hill of rubble in the midst of an endless field of rubble, smoke, and fire, sitting as if in an armchair, his feet dangling over the edge. His bag was gone. He felt numb. The air was thick with smoke and dust. He heard explosions.

That's freaking crazy. I tend to think this story is either totally bogus, or critical details aren't being told here.

South Tower Demolition: Last Man Out Burned by Fireball

DiFrancesco, struggling to breathe, turned around and headed up. DiFrancesco climbed to the 91st floor. He lay down on the landing for 10 minutes. Then, moved by an intense desire to see his wife and children, he got up and pushed himself back down the stairs through the smoke that had stopped him before.

"As he left the building, he saw a fireball rolling toward him. He put his arms in front of his face.

"He woke up three days later at St. Vincent's hospital. His arms were burned. Some bones were broken. His lungs were singed. But he was alive -- the last person out of the south tower.

Again, the idea that there was no heat associated with the destruction of the WTC is simply wrong.

Where Is the Bailout Money Going?

I think this piece sums up the outrageous state of affairs pretty well:

In the meantime, the massacre in financial markets and among financial firms is continuing. The debate on “bank nationalization” is borderline surreal, with the U.S. government having already committed–between guarantees, investment, recapitalization and liquidity provision–about $9 trillion of government financial resources to the financial system (and having already spent $2 trillion of this staggering $9 trillion figure).

Thus, the U.S. financial system is de facto nationalized, as the Federal Reserve has become the lender of first and only resort rather than the lender of last resort, and the U.S. Treasury is the spender and guarantor of first and only resort. The only issue is whether banks and financial institutions should also be nationalized de jure.

. . . AIG, which lost $62 billion in the fourth quarter and $99 billion in all of 2008 and is already 80% government-owned. With such staggering losses, it should be formally 100% government-owned. And now the Fed and Treasury commitments of public resources to the bailout of the shareholders and creditors of AIG have gone from $80 billion to $162 billion.

(snip)

This is all taxpayer money that's being spent, it all comes from the same pot --- and as far as I know it may even be necessary spending. But they are hiding the names of the recipients of potentially 9 trillion dollars and when it does slip out who some of them are, it turns out --- again --- that it's same people who perpetrated this crisis. Meanwhile, all day long, I'm watching simpleminded "fleecing of America" stories with some gasbag busybodies looking down their noses at some schmuck who was told that he should lie on the mortgage application for his monstrous tract home in Riverside and has lost everything. Everybody's lecturing everybody else about responsibility. And yet we have trillions going unaccounted for at the Fed and they seem to believe there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Something is rotten at the Fed and treasury --- or, at least, it sure smells that way. Maybe nobody would notice the rather shocking lack of transparency if what they were doing was actually working. But it isn't. The system is still in crisis and it's not getting any better.

The Bill Evans Trio - Re: Person I Knew

Great stuff. (Actually, I am related to Bill Evans-- he was my dad's cousin. I met Bill once, about 1972 or so at a Jazz club in Boston.)

This one-- "Autumn Leaves", shows off his chops a little more:

Rising Sea Levels Are a Major Looming Crisis

It's all too easy to dismiss global warming as a hoax, but this is quite real and dire:

Scientists will warn this week that rising sea levels, triggered by global warming, pose a far greater danger to the planet than previously estimated. There is now a major risk that many coastal areas around the world will be inundated by the end of the century because Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting faster than previously estimated.

International Criminal Court Says Bush Should Be Indicted for War Crimes

Well, yes.

More to the point-- I guess I still can't understand people who still support/rationalize/condone Bush's criminal actions. If anything should be clear by now, it's how criminal the Bush regime was-- on so many levels-- and how it's really biting us in the ass now.

Just Watched Frank Capra's "Mr Smith Goes to Washington"

What a great movie-- much better even than I remembered it from when I saw it many years ago. On the surface, the basic plot is cheesy-- but once you start watching it, it's amazingly fresh and funny and powerful in it's depiction of political corruption and the running of a powerful political machine. The most interesting parts were 1) how the Taylor political machine was able to frame Smith with phony documents and phony witnesses, and 2) how the Taylor political machine was able to control public opinion through the media-- even going so far as to shut down opposition newspapers and hose down pro-Smith protestors.

Some things just never change-- greed, graft, political manipulation, hoaxes, scams, fooling the public with lies, etc.

And the great, classic line of the movie--- "lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for"-- starts to ring a bit true for 9/11...

Teenager Killed When Run Over by Bus; Investigators Originally Said He slipped on Ice

What's gets me about this story is the outrageously ridiculous cover story the authorities initially put out about this accident:

A Carmel Clay school bus struck and killed a 15-year-old freshman in January, police said Friday.

Carmel High School student Ziang Ke was running to catch the bus after a light morning snow Jan. 7, according to what one high school student on the bus told police. None of the riders nor the bus driver said they saw Ke fall.

The students and the bus driver felt a bump about 6:45 a.m. at Teague Place and Salamone Way, before sunrise. The driver, Tony Fiore, and a high school student looked out the windows, and the driver also checked his mirrors but neither saw anything, so the driver continued on the route.

Between 6:50 and 7:05 a.m., middle school students who were going to their separate bus stop in the southwest Carmel neighborhood heard someone calling for help, moaning and groaning, police said. That's when one of the middle school students told his father about the noises, and the student's father found Ke conscious and alert on the sidewalk.

Carmel's 911 center received a call at 7:11 a.m. The caller indicated Ke was conscious and breathing. A Carmel police officer arrived about six minutes later and began heart-lung resuscitation on Ke.

Ke was taken to Clarian North Hospital, where he arrived about 7:40 a.m. His heart had stopped.

Certified forensic pathologist Dr. Jolene Clouse that afternoon conducted a preliminary autopsy and found Ke died of a cut liver and a compressed spine and rib cage, likely the result of a fall.

A few days later, Hamilton County Coroner Thurl Cecil said he thought the injuries were more consistent with being run over by a vehicle.

Police said no criminal charges will be filed against the driver because it was an accident. The driver took a leave of absence Wednesday, when investigators told him of their findings, to deal with emotional stress from the incident, school officials said.

The driver was not given a drug or alcohol test after the accident, because police initially had thought Ke fell on the ice. They did not discover until later from interviews with students and the bus driver that a vehicle may have run over Ke.

A Carmel police spokesman said the case took months to resolve because of the initial belief that the boy had died from the fall, the many interviews that had to be conducted, and the time it took for DNA results to come back.

Carmel police checked the bus for evidence after the accident but found nothing to link to Ke's death. Police could not immediately say how many days after the crash the search for evidence from the bus began.

Yeah-- because being run over by a bus looks JUST LIKE slipping and falling on the ice.

This is insanity-- a compressed spine and a cut liver from slipping on ice???? Who the fuck would make such an idiotic finding? I'm glad they finally admitted the truth here, but it took them two months when it should have been obvious from the beginning. It sounds like someone was covering this story up for a while. If I were the parents I would be absolutely furious-- and suing these people's asses off.

The Elites Killed Hundreds of Thousands of People in Iraq, Trashed the Constitution, Tortured People, and Committed Massive Global Financial Fraud

but no WAY could they have perpetrated 9/11... right?

Lynch the Bankers!

I'm sure that will happen right after we lynch the 9/11 perps.

I'd, of course, settle for jail, but realistically-- the bastards will ALL FUCKING GET OFF SCOT FREE.

The best we can hope for is some competent people to try to stabilize things so the economy doesn't get worse. I would say let it all collapse except the little guys are going to get hurt more than the elites.

We need to find a way to take the elites down.

Bach's Sinfonia in B-flat (#14) Played by Glenn Gould

I love how fresh and jazzy this 300 year old piece sounds:

Obama Is a Communist!!!

OMG!

I really had no idea that increasing the top tax rate by 4.6% (35% to 39.6%) was all that separated us from the evils of communism.

Meanwhile, it seems that CNBC has become the new Comedy Central-- one huge joke.

"The Daily Show" Takes on CNBC, Rick Santelli, AIG

Really worth watching.

UPDATE: What Jon Stewart showed about why the news business is dying--

The most talked-about journalism of this week wasn't produced in the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek or NPR. It was Jon Stewart's epic, eight-minute takedown on Wednesday night's Daily Show of CNBC's clueless, in-the-tank reporting of inflatable bubbles and blowhard CEOs as the U.S. and world economies slowly slid into a meltdown. You can quibble about Stewart's motives in undertaking the piece -- after he was spurned for an interview by CNBC's faux populist ranter Rick Santelli -- but you can't argue with the results.

The piece wasn't just the laugh-out-loud funniest thing on TV all week (and this was a week in which NBC rebroadcast the SNL "more cowbell" sketch, so that's saying a lot) but it was exquisitely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America's real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months, in a time when we all need to be tearing down myths. As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted, "it's simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this."

Deep Thought of the Day

It's really really dumb to try to fight an insurgency in Afghanistan.

REVELATION: WTC Towers Were Constructed with a "33" motif!

Note how the outer wall units were made of three columns, and three spandrel plates. Three- three, 33.

There are more threes here too-- note the units are two full stories high and then have two half stories on each end-- so each unit is three stories high. Also note the three holes at each end and the three connection plates on the inside at each spandrel plate.


For the significance of "33", see here (and here for even more background).

1978: When Men Were Men and Crash Physics Were Crash Physics

Though watching this, you can see why they faked the 9/11 crashes! Two reasons-- first, here the building doesn't completely blow up, and second this kind of (realistic) crash leaves too much plane debris on the outside of the building. Both of these would have been undesirable for 9/11.

I'm not sure how they did the special effects here-- the burned out building they show with plane debris being carted away almost suggests they had a real plane (a 747 no less) crash into a building! But I imagine they used models-- plus the explosion looks fakish-- I think it's hard to scale down something like a massive fiery explosion.

Ahh-- this link says they used models:

I also worked on the Richard Burton and Lee Remick film THE MEDUSA TOUCH, where a jumbo jet crashes into a tall building. We had three models of the jumbo jet, one four foot long and one tiny kit about ten inches long. Whenever actually had to make them, just paint the fictitious airline details on the side. If you know the film, Richard Burton looks at this jumbo jet and uses telekinesis to make it crash into the building, which was supposed to be Centre Point. Well, Centre Point's no good for anything else, is it? A company in Feltham made the building. We wanted a shot of the four-foot model approaching the camera for dramatic effect, and guess who got the job of standing by the camera holding his hand out to stop the plane hitting it. We were literally twenty feet up on a gantry. The plane flew down the wires on the first shot, I put my handout, and when the model hit my hand all the wires broke, and the model fell. Brian Johnson ran across the studio and caught it as it went down, and it was perfectly all right. Well done! Brian. He got a round of applause.

News and Link Roundup

How Pakistan is completely fucked up-- gunman attack Sri Lankan cricket team

Release of Bushco Terror memos, showing their blatant disregard for the constitution-- more from Greenwald here and NYTimes here.

CIA destroyed 92 terrorist interrogation tapes

Flashback-- Bush's offensive visit to the Social Security trust fund

'Death-Squad' Serb Was CIA Spook

The sick history of nuke testing on US servicemen

Ancient petroglyph writing in same language found on all continents suggests conventional view of human history is wrong

False Dichotomy-- Good political blog