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.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended Wednesday that all Americans over the age of 6 months -- with the exception of those who are allergic to eggs -- should receive a seasonal flu shot every year, beginning this fall. The advice must be accepted by the CDC director and the Department of Health and Human Services before it becomes official, but that ratification is usually pro forma.
The CDC has been slowly broadening the recommendations for flu shots over the last few years to the point where about 85% of the population is now covered. The primary exception now is adults ages 19 to 49 who do not have underlying medical conditions. But the committee noted that many such adults do not realize they are at risk because of diabetes, hypertension or other hidden problems and do not seek the shots.
...bipartisanship is bad. Achieving it often requires splitting the baby type compromises. It spreads the blame around by making everybody and therefore nobody responsible. It obscures the real differences between the parties, and those differences are good because they provide voters with a real choice.Yet major politicians and particularly the national media are OBSESSED with bi-partisanship. Bi-partisanship clearly leads to inaction in Congress when good things could be done, and then when bi-partisan, clearly faulty legislation is passed, bi-partisanship leads to no-one clearly being responsible. This is a subtle but definite way that our political system is being destroyed.
I'm not suggesting that lawmakers should never vote with the other side, but in general voters and democracy are much better served by having political parties with clear, if not extreme, differences.
On the Daily Kos Web site, one blogger noted the standing ovation [at the CPAC conference, ed.] given to "the self-confessed war criminal Dick Cheney."Digby:
Whatever one might think of Cheney's interrogation policies, the former vice president has never been charged with a war crime, much less confessed to one.
It's true that Cheney has never been formally charged with a war crime, but Dick Cheney did go on national television just a week ago and blithely admit, “I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” when he was asked about waterboarding.
Waterboarding is a war crime.
The client list from the software programmer believed to have crashed his plane into the Echelon* building in Austin Texas reads like a guidebook to defense contractors with connections to 9/11, NSA and Homeland Security.
The FBI had his webpage removed (the screen message previously said that the FBI had it removed) from the internet, but of course the client list from the webpage has been archived. As first discovered by Cryptogon, the client list has corporations on it such as Interstate Electronics Corporation, which needed Mr. Stack's help on developing a GPS-based Fight Management System of all things. IEC is a wholly owned subsidiary of L-3 which is a defence contractor with obvious Homeland Security and NSA connections. There is also this report from Wayne Madsen on Oped News of an L-3 consultant to the NSA who had watched a live feed of the first 9/11 plane impact as it happened. L-3 is included among corporations which were investigated by the SEC for unusual stock put-options in relation to 9/11.
Cylink Corporation, another on Mr. Stack's client list had as it's Chief Executive Officer, William P. Crowell who "came to Cylink from the National Security Agency, where he held a series of senior positions, including Deputy Director of Operations and the Deputy Director of the Agency. From 1989 to 1990, Crowell served as a vice president at Atlantic Aerospace Electronics Corporation, now a subsidiary of Titan Systems, leading business development in space technology, signal processing and intelligence systems."
Hughes Aircraft, one of Stack's clients, developed the ground mission control segment of the Global Hawk. Another Stack client, Teledyne, is the prime contractor for the Global Hawk, and L3 supplied its communications system.
Other clients on the list such as DMC Stratex Networks and Sorrento Electronics also are defense contractors and probably a closer examination of these and other corporations on Stack's client list will reveal more interesting details.
*Note: the name echelon itself refers to a "signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network" coordinated by the NSA.
A trusted source has told this office that the FBI knew Austin was going to be attacked today and had dispatched officers from its Dallas headquarters yesterday afternoon to be in place for today’s incident.Kind of figures-- Clinton had his right-wing domestic terrorist, in OK City, which fit with his "pro-government" agenda. He also had the Unabomber. Then Bush had the "foreign terrorists" with 9/11-- now Obama gets back to domestic terrorism, ostensibly to tamp down on the right-wing extremists. In reality, these were all inside jobs, and molded to fit the prevailing politics.
The source claims that a confidential memo was circulated yesterday detailing that a building in Austin was going to be the target of an attack today. He was told this by an informant who works in the Dallas FBI office.
So the former vice-president has just confessed to a war crime. I repeat: the former vice-president has just confessed to a war crime.I'll further note that the complete lack of major media outlets calling for accountability on these admitted war-crimes shows beyond any doubt their criminal complicity in these matters.
There is no statute of limitations for such a crime; and the penalty under law is either the death penalty or a prison sentence for life: (snip)
The question is therefore not if, but when, he is convicted as a war criminal - in his lifetime or posthumously.
In fact, the attorney general of the United States is legally obliged to prosecute someone who has openly admitted such a war crime or be in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on Torture. For Eric Holder to ignore this duty subjects him too to prosecution. If the US government fails to enforce the provision against torture, the UN or a foreign court can initiate an investigation and prosecution.
These are not my opinions and they are not hyperbole. They are legal facts. Either this country is governed by the rule of law or it isn't. Cheney's clear admission of his central role in authorizing waterboarding and the clear evidence that such waterboarding did indeed take place means that prosecution must proceed.
Cheney himself just set in motion a chain of events that the civilized world must see to its conclusion or cease to be the civilized world. For such a high official to escape the clear letter of these treaties and conventions, and to openly brag of it, renders such treaties and conventions meaningless.
More on the similarities at KT's blog-- particularly noteworthy is that some people think the Pentagon strike took place at exactly the same time-- 9:32am.The NRO exercise, which had been planned for several months, was set to commence at 9:00 a.m. on September 11, when its observers would meet to be briefed. The observers and exercise role players were to move to their positions for the exercise 10 or 15 minutes later. In the exercise scenario, a Learjet 35A with two pilots and four passengers on board would take off at 9:30 a.m. from Washington Dulles International Airport. This airport, which is located four miles from the NRO headquarters, is where American Airlines Flight 77–the plane that reportedly hit the Pentagon–took off from earlier that morning.
About a minute after the Learjet took off, an explosion would be heard, and the pilot would complain that one of the engines was on fire and he was losing altitude. Around 9:32 a.m., the plane would crash into tower 4 at the NRO headquarters. Since the Pentagon was hit at 9:37 a.m., this means the crash in the scenario was scheduled to occur just five minutes before the actual attack occurred at the Pentagon, which is 24 miles away from the NRO headquarters.
Several People Killed and Injured in Scenario
The Associated Press has revealed that no real plane was going to be used in the exercise, and the crash was to be the result of mechanical failure, not terrorism. But the consequences of the simulated crash would be similar to those of the actual 9/11 attacks, albeit on a smaller scale. The newly released document describes the scene: “Various parts of the aircraft struck the outside portions of the building, spraying jet fuel. The final portions of the wreckage were scattered around the entryway between tower 1 and 2. Jet fuel was burning uncontrollably in the vicinity of the flagpoles. There are a number of injured and dead NRO employees.” Some stairwells and exits at the NRO headquarters were going to be closed off in order to simulate the damage from the crash, thereby forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate their building.
Exercise ‘Inputs’
The document reveals that the exercise was set to include numerous “inputs,” which appear to have been communications and other actions intended to make it appear more realistic to its participants.
Planned inputs included, at 9:30 a.m. a smoke generator was going to be started, to simulate the fire resulting from the crash. At 9:32, numerous phone calls would begin flooding in, from people reporting fires in various locations in the building. At 9:34, after someone reported that a small civilian jet had crashed, NRO personnel were to be instructed to evacuate their building.
When NIST sampled 236 pieces of steel, it found 233 had not even been exposed to temperatures above 500°F....As AP has discussed, 33 is code for all things nuclear and the PTB. Given the twin 233's here, I can only surmise that Fetzer is sending a message in this blog.Posted by Jim Fetzer at 2:33 PM
Coalition Begins Major Afghan OffensiveSince we're destroying a whole city, probably a lot.
Largest Push Against Taliban Since the 2001 Invasion
An American, British and Afghan force swept into the city of Marja to destroy the insurgency’s largest haven.
“Jackson family patriarch Joe Jackson appeared on Larry King Live just hours after Dr. Conrad Murray was arraigned on involuntary manslaughter charges stemming from the death of Michael Jackson and revealed his belief that Murray was part of a conspiracy to murder the King of Pop — and that the real individuals responsible have yet to be charged. “To me, he’s just a fall guy,” Jackson said of Murray, according to CNN. “There’s other people, I think, involved with this whole thing. But I think that [if Murray's] interrogated — he would come clean and tell everything he knows.”
“Joe Jackson isn’t the only member of the Jackson family to contend Michael’s death was the result of a murder plot: In a statement read after Murray’s arraignment, LaToya Jackson told the press, “Michael was murdered and although he died at the hands of Dr. Conrad Murray, I believe Dr. Murray was a part of a much larger plan. I will continue to fight until all of the proper individuals are brought forth and justice is served.” Joe Jackson told Larry King that Michael expressed concern he would be murdered because he felt he would be unable to complete his planned This Is It run of 50 concerts at London’s O2 Arena. “He couldn’t do all those shows back-to-back. Even his kids say that he had told them that he would be murdered,” Joe Jackson said.”
The world's tallest skyscraper in Dubai has unexpectedly closed to the public a month after its lavish opening, the tower's owner said.
The Burj Khalifa was closed due to "unexpected high traffic," and "technical issues with the power supply", Emaar Properties said on Monday.
Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash. (snip)And wow, this just has to be satire:
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”
“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said.
“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.Obama better start behaving better-- or else!
“I understand the public outcry,” he continued. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.”
An executive summary was released today regarding the October Taliban attack on Combat Outpost Keating, a Nuristan Province base. The attack was driven back, but not before eight Americans were killed.
But while the military’s report praised the troops “gallantry, courage and bravery” in the clash, it cast serious doubt on why the troops were put there in the first place, noting that the outpost had “no tactical or strategic value” and was virtually undefendable.
At the last hearing I attended, which must have been the 25th of March, I spoke to both John and Paul Keating. The younger brother I had a fairly long conversation with. Tom Foti was standing with me. [can't remember if the man's first name was John or Paul, but it was one of them.]There were some links I found some time back to a forum, that discussed this trial issue more-- but the links don't work anymore -- or the forum is locked now. But typical 9/11 craziness.
One of the Keating brothers told me something incredible: The Court will not need any passenger paperwork [ he said "luckily" since they are not releasing it ?! and so there is no other way for his case to be tried] , boarding passes, for the trial since there was a man who worked for the airline who came on the airplane and saw their mother sitting in her seat and was able to identify her from a photo. The same man made a few other ID's and statements. He also ID'ed the stewardess, Low.
It seems (Judge) Hellerstein is just "trying" a particular case if there is a witness to attest to the "victim's" presence on the jet-- in lieu of any paperwork or documentation!?
Isn't paperwork easier to forge than that? Or does it just create too much jeopardy to do so?
I remember thinking at the time this "witness" was obviously fraud, especially as the number of places and corroborating evidence the man in question was able to provide kept increasing. Do not know his name nor even if this trial has taken place.
I found out yesterday that Ellen Mariani is under strict gag order from an appeals court in Boston over the management of her husband's estate [such as it must have been since I am told Neil was a delivery man.] That she has not given Luann a reachable phone number. Her last one is no longer good. And that she is for all purposes in hiding.
My friend Luann went to the most recent Hellerstein hearing. Ellen requested we be in attendance [I couldn't go. It was at the last minute and I had to work elsewhere.] Luann said yesterday that she didn't understand what went on, nor did Ellen tell her going into it that it was an appeal.
She suggested I contact a few writers who have been following this. One, of whom, I remember now, I sent a full account of the first hearing I attended, but did not publish anywhere myself.
With a firm trial date looming for thousands of lawsuits brought by workers at ground zero against the city, lawyers for both sides are engaged in intensive talks aimed at settling some or all the cases.
The first 12 cases are scheduled for trial on May 16 in Manhattan. But Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who is overseeing the litigation — involving rescue and cleanup workers who sued over illnesses and injuries they say stemmed from working at the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack — said at a recent hearing that a detailed settlement plan about 70 pages long had been drafted.
“There have been intensive discussions going on looking to settlements of individual cases and globally of all cases,” he said.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the city declined to comment on the negotiations.
“The parties have been working very hard,” said Judge Hellerstein, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. “The settlement is complicated.”
The lawsuits were filed beginning in 2006 by more than 9,000 plaintiffs against 90 government agencies and private companies. Several hundred lawyers are working on the cases, and the court documents run to tens of millions of pages.
The plaintiffs claim that the city, along with its contractors and other major defendants like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, offered inadequate safety procedures and supervision to shield them from exposure to contaminants while working amid the debris in a 16-acre area at the site. Plaintiffs seek compensatory damages for pain and suffering and economic loss, as well as, in certain cases, medical monitoring. The plaintiffs may also seek punitive damages in appropriate cases.
James E. Tyrrell Jr., the lead lawyer for the defendants, contends that no link can be proven between the illnesses of plaintiffs and exposure at ground zero, and that some plaintiffs are making false claims. If the cases come to trial, juries will have to decide whether the defendants are at fault, whether the plaintiffs are actually sick and whether their conditions were caused by their work at the disaster site, Mr. Tyrrell said.
The litigation is complex and politically charged, involving plaintiffs that include firefighters, police officers, construction workers and other responders who draw public sympathy. Many elected officials and advocacy groups are demanding compensation, long-term medical treatment and monitoring for the workers from the federal government.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg supports a bill pending in Congress that would offer federal relief to people harmed by work at the site. But the city has, at the same time, been fighting the workers in court, arguing, among other things, that it is immune from damages in cases involving a civil defense disaster or a national emergency. At issue is how great the city’s liability would be if it lost the cases.
There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?Read the whole thing to appreciate its fine sense of idiocy-- at your own risk. So is Cohen really this dumb? Or is he some sort of weird intel goon trying to spread disinfo/propaganda?
Bit by bit, circumstances are forcing President Obama and his aides to come to grips with reality.
While Scheper-Hughes emphasizes that traffickers and procurers come from numerous nations and ethnicities, including Americans and Arabs, she is unflinchingly honest in speaking about the Israeli connection:The article should be read in its entirety.
“Israel is at the top,” she states. “It has tentacles reaching out worldwide.”
In a lecture last year sponsored by New York’s PBS 13 Forum, Scheper-Hughes explained that Israeli organ traffickers, “had and still have a pyramid system at work that’s awesome…they have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they’ve got recruiters, they’ve got translators, they’ve got travel agents who set up the visas.”
Lest this sound simply like a successful international concern, it’s important to understand the nature of such a business.
As Scheper-Hughes describes it, organ trafficking consists of “paying the poor and the hungry to slowly dismantle their bodies.”
Organ traffickers prey on the world’s poorest, most desperate citizens—slum dwellers, inhabitants of dying villages, people without means or hope. Traffickers promise them what seem like astronomical sums of money (from $1,000 to $10,000)—which they frequently don’t even deliver—in return for vital internal organs.
For traffickers, human body parts are commodities, to be cut out of the bodies of the poor and sold to the rich. The organ “donors” receive no follow-up care and end up worse off on many levels—physically, financially, psychologically, socially—than even their original tragic situation. Sometimes they are coerced into such “donations.”
Organ sales have been illegal in most countries for years. The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which covers prevention, enforcement and sanctions in trafficking of humans, includes in its definition of human exploitation the extraction of organs for profit. Israel finally passed legislation against organ trafficking in 2008.
In her Forum 13 lecture Scheper-Hughes discussed the two motivations of Israeli traffickers. One was greed, she said. The other was somewhat chilling: “Revenge, restitution—reparation for the Holocaust.”
She described speaking with Israeli brokers who told her “it’s kind of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We’re going to get every single kidney and liver and heart that we can. The world owes it to us.’”
Scheper-Hughes says that she “even heard doctors saying that.”
In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.I suppose if this diminishes the US war machine to some extent, that is a good thing.The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.
But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.
For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.
"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is going to meet justice and he's going to meet his maker," said President Barack Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs. "He will be brought to justice and he's likely to be executed for the heinous crimes that he committed in killing and masterminding the killing of 3,000 Americans. That you can be sure of.""...he's going to meet his maker...That you can be sure of." Why are we even bothering with a trial, again? Why spend $200 million on a trial when the event has been pre-determined?
I blog about politics, interesting ideas and conspiracy theories. Many or most of the official stories for key events are lies. For instance, the 9/11 plane hijackings and crashes appear to be clever hoaxes. The WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 towers were brought down by demolition, and there is evidence for the use of small nuclear bombs in the demolition of WTC1 and 2. It seems that 9/11 was an evil hoax foisted upon the world, done in order to spark the obscene "war on terror", to cover up financial fraud and to further the ends of the global elite. However, 9/11 was only part of the fraud and evil committed by the evil powers that be (PTB).
