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.
...one of the main reasons Zubaydah's early torture sessions were videotaped was to gain insight into his "physical reaction" to the techniques used against him, which was then shared with officials at the CIA and the Justice Department, who used that information to help draft the August 2002 torture memo stating what interrogation methods could be legally used, how often the methods could be employed and how it should be administered without crossing the line into torture.
For example, one current and three former CIA officials said some videotapes showed Zubaydah being sleep deprived for more than two weeks. Contractors hired by the CIA studied how he responded psychologically and physically to being kept awake for that amount of time. By looking at videotapes, they concluded that after the 11th consecutive day of being kept awake Zubaydah started to "severely break down." So, the torture memo concluded that 11 days of sleep deprivation was legal and did not meet the definition of torture.
"I would describe it this way," said one former National Security official. "[Zubaydah] was an experiment. A guinea pig. I'm sure you've heard that a lot. There were many enhanced interrogation [methods] tested on him that have never been discussed before we settled on the 10 [techniques]."
Insurers find loophole in health bill, say they don’t have to cover sick kids
When you ingest the poison of violence, even in a just cause, it corrupts, deforms and perverts you. Violence is a drug, indeed it is the most potent narcotic known to humankind. Those most addicted to violence are those who have access to weapons and a penchant for force. And these killers rise to the surface of any armed movement and contaminate it with the intoxicating and seductive power that comes with the ability to destroy. I have seen it in war after war. When you go down that road you end up pitting your monsters against their monsters. And the sensitive, the humane and the gentle, those who have a propensity to nurture and protect life, are marginalized and often killed. The romantic vision of war and violence is as prevalent among anarchists and the hard left as it is in the mainstream culture. Those who resist with force will not defeat the corporate state or sustain the cultural values that must be sustained if we are to have a future worth living. From my many years as a war correspondent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Gaza and Bosnia, I have seen that armed resistance movements are always mutations of the violence that spawned them.
Scientists have begun speculating that the root cause of disease conditions such as migraines and irritable bowel syndrome may be endocannabinoid deficiency.
Defense attorneys say an alleged plot to bomb New York synagogues was hatched and directed by a federal informant.
Lawyers for four men from Newburgh have filed a motion to dismiss the terror indictment against them.
They said the informant badgered the defendants until they got involved in the plot.
They said the informant chose the targets, supplied fake bombs for the synagogues and a fake missile to shoot down planes. The motion said he also offered to pay the defendants, who attorneys alleged weren't inclined toward any crime until the informant began recruiting them.
"The government well knew that their case had been a government-inspired creation from day one and that the defendants had not been independently seeking weapons or targets," the motion said. (snip)
The dismissal motion identified the government's agent as Shaheed Hussain, a "professional informant" for the FBI. The defense claimed he was directed to visit suburban mosques, find members with anti-American leanings and recruit them to join a fake terror plot supposedly funded by a Pakistan-based group.
He suggested there could be as much as $250,000 available and the government provided him with a BMW, a Hummer and other cars to make him appear well-funded, the defense filings said.
The defense alleged that Hussain tried to incite the defendants by blaming Jews for the world's evil and telling them that attacks against non-Muslims were endorsed by Islam.
Nevertheless, they said, he failed to motivate the defendants to any action on their own. Months went by between meetings, and the filings quote Cromitie as saying, "I'm not gonna hurt anybody" and "The plane thing ... is out of the question."
Hussain suggested the targets, paid for the defendants' groceries, bought a gun, provided the fake bombs and missile, assembled the explosive devices and acted as chauffeur, the defense said.
And of course, as shown by the Anonymous Physicist, it goes much deeper than this, when you talk about the ultimate Powers That Be.While people claiming Israel controls the US often make good points, I don’t quite believe it, for a simple reason:
HOW would a small country like Israel control the world’s only remaining superpower?
If so inclined, the US could totally obliterate Israel within mere hours, and if they’re worried about consequences, they could blame it all on an accident (“Oops, those nukes we’ve launched at Iran’s power plant fell short of their target and obliterated Israel… We’re terribly sorry!”) or terrorism committed by someone else (“The terrorists from Iraqistan stole the launch codes!”).
A scenario I think is more likely (because it would explain why this sort of thing isn’t happening): The group of criminals that run the US are working with the group of criminals that run Israel to create a country to hide behind.
Basically, they do whatever they want and make sure Israel plays along, and makes moves that imply Israel controls the US (such as making some public statements to that matter, or being very visibly involved in e.g. terrorism against the Palestinians).
If the criminals on the US side get caught red-handed (e.g. the 9/11 lies collapse completely), they go “but Israel made us do it!”, they retaliate against Israel (after telling their allies in the Israeli govt to leave the country, of course), people who don’t see through it are happy, and they’re still there and still largely in control.
Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.So, not really surprising-- but still important to have names of the biggest perps.
The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.
In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's ability to protect the nation.
"In response to the Commission's expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation," the letter read. "There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross -- the line separating the Commission's proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government's ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks."
CIA drone attacks produce America's own unlawful combatants
By Gary Solis
Friday, March 12, 2010
In our current armed conflicts, there are two U.S. drone offensives. One is conducted by our armed forces, the other by the CIA. Every day, CIA agents and CIA contractors arm and pilot armed unmanned drones over combat zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Pakistani tribal areas, to search out and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. In terms of international armed conflict, those CIA agents are, unlike their military counterparts but like the fighters they target, unlawful combatants. No less than their insurgent targets, they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to the laws and customs of war. Even if they are sitting in Langley, the CIA pilots are civilians violating the requirement of distinction, a core concept of armed conflict, as they directly participate in hostilities.
(snip)
If the CIA civilian personnel recently killed by a suicide bomber in Khost, Afghanistan, were directly involved in supplying targeting data, arming or flying drones in the combat zone, they were lawful targets of the enemy, although the enemy himself was not a lawful combatant. It makes no difference that CIA civilians are employed by, or in the service of, the U.S. government or its armed forces. They are civilians; they wear no distinguishing uniform or sign, and if they input target data or pilot armed drones in the combat zone, they directly participate in hostilities -- which means they may be lawfully targeted.
Moreover, CIA civilian personnel who repeatedly and directly participate in hostilities may have what recent guidance from the International Committee of the Red Cross terms "a continuous combat function." That status, the ICRC guidance says, makes them legitimate targets whenever and wherever they may be found, including Langley.
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.
The bill asks the President to determine criteria for designating an individual as a "high-value detainee" if he/she: (1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate.How more vague can you get than #s 3 and 5? Basically anyone could be rounded up under such a suspicion. Not to mention the other criteria are pretty bogus as well.
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop," Mario Savio said in 1964. "And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."
The capacity to exercise moral autonomy, the capacity to refuse to cooperate, offers us the only route left to personal freedom and a life with meaning. Rebellion is its own justification. Those of us who come out of the religious left have no quarrel with Camus. Camus is right about the absurdity of existence, right about finding worth in the act of rebellion rather than some bizarre dream of an afterlife or Sunday School fantasy that God rewards the just and the good. "Oh my soul," the ancient Greek poet Pindar wrote, "do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible." We differ with Camus only in that we have faith that rebellion is not ultimately meaningless. Rebellion allows us to be free and independent human beings, but rebellion also chips away, however imperceptibly, at the edifice of the oppressor and sustains the dim flames of hope and love. And in moments of profound human despair these flames are never insignificant. They keep alive the capacity to be human. We must become, as Camus said, so absolutely free that "existence is an act of rebellion." Those who do not rebel in our age of totalitarian capitalism and who convince themselves that there is no alternative to collaboration are complicit in their own enslavement. They commit spiritual and moral suicide.
The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public. He offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin-and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.
"In reality," Power shows, "the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in coordination and perpetuation of the genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term 'genocide,' for fear of being obliged to act. The United States in fact did virtually nothing 'to try to limit what occurred.'"
Street continued:
Richard A. Clarke, Power shows, was the leading policy actor behind the Clinton administration's refusal to acknowledge and act upon the threat of genocide in Rwanda. As special assistant to the president from the National Security Council and official overseer of U.S. "peacekeeping" policy, Clarke was chief manager of U.S. Rwanda policy before and during the genocide. For Clarke, Power notes, "the news" of mass Rwandan slaughter "only confirmed [his] deep skepticism about the viability of UN deployments" and sparked his fear that "UN failure could doom relations between Congress and the United Nations."
Clarke, Power shows, was a dark force behind U.S. rejection of an aggressive plan to save Rwandan lives put forth by Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who commanded the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda at the time of the genocide. The empty U.S. proposal advanced by Clarke to counter Dallaire, Power shows, abandoned "the most vulnerable Rwandans, awaiting salvations deep inside Rwanda." It falsely assuming (or pretended to assume) "that the people most in need were refugees fleeing to the border" and could actually make it to the border. "My mission," Dallaire told Power, "was to save Rwandans. Their [the U.S.] mission was to put on a show at no risk."
(snip) All three also appear to have drawn ideological nourishment from the same well: online communities of like-minded people who validate and amplify extreme views. Today, more than in recent years, such communities are tapping into a broad undercurrent of anti-government discontent fueled by economic recession, joblessness and concern over the growing federal deficit, according to experts who have studied the phenomenon.
For Bedell and others like him, Washington and its institutions are an irresistible target -- the "ultimate symbol of power for the powerless," said Jerrold Post, a professor of political psychology at George Washington University.
"We've always had individuals who strike out at the giant 'system' when they're feeling a sense of powerlessness and insignificance," said Post, author of "Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred," a book on extremist movements. "Now we see an alarming tendency in which these same individuals can find substantiation online for almost any point of view."
Researchers who track violent groups see Bedell's rampage as a distorted manifestation of the anti-Washington view that has driven the rise of right-wing militias. A report last week by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the number of such organizations jumped 244 percent since the election of President Obama, from 149 groups to 512, including 127 militias. At the same time, the number of extremist attacks in the United States that resulted in deaths has fallen since the 1990s.
(snip) Yet the motivations for the attacks differ greatly. Joseph Stack, who flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin, was inspired in part by the anti-tax movement. Bedell's anti-government views were more libertarian, and some were from the radical left, such as his belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a U.S. government conspiracy. Conservative bloggers Friday sought to label Bedell as leftist extremist, noting his online tirades against President George W. Bush's administration.
A structural engineer who was a member of the team assembled by the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate the World Trade Center site after 9/11 has described numerous phenomena indicating extremely high temperatures suffered by the WTC structural steel. This appears to be further evidence that high-temperature explosives, such as thermate, were used to bring down the towers.
Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in studying structural damage done by earthquakes and terrorist bombings. He flew to New York on September 19, 2001 to conduct a two-week reconnaissance of the collapsed towers, hoping to gain an understanding of how they'd come down. He was able to examine numerous pieces of steel taken from Ground Zero. [1]
He said the towers were exceptionally well designed and built, describing the WTC as "the best-designed building I have ever seen." [2] Yet the structural steel had suffered unusual warping and other major damage:
These observations indicate that the World Trade Center steel was subjected to very high temperatures.
- Astaneh-Asl said that steel flanges "had been reduced from an inch thick to paper thin." [3]
- At a recycling center in New Jersey, he saw 10-ton steel beams from the towers that "looked like giant sticks of twisted licorice." [4] He showed the San Francisco Chronicle a "banana-shaped, rust-colored piece of steel" that had somehow "twisted like toffee during the terrorist attack." [5]
- He noted the way steel from the WTC had bent at several connection points that had joined the floors to the vertical columns. He described the connections as being smoothly warped, saying, "If you remember the Salvador Dali paintings with the clocks that are kind of melted--it's kind of like that." He added, "That could only happen if you get steel yellow hot or white hot--perhaps around 2,000 degrees." [6]
- In an interview in 2007, Astaneh-Asl recalled, "I saw melting of girders in [the] World Trade Center." [7]
- He found a foot-long twisted shard of steel that was "like a piece of bread, but it was high-strength steel." He commented, "I haven't seen anything like this [before]." [8]
- He came across "severely scorched [steel] members from 40 or so floors below the points of impact [by the planes]." [9]
- The fireproofing that had been used to protect the WTC steel also showed evidence of extreme conditions. In some places it had "melted into a glassy residue." [10]
- Astaneh-Asl saw a charred I-beam from WTC Building 7--a 47-story skyscraper that collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11, even though no plane hit it. "The beam, so named because its cross-section looks like a capital I, had clearly endured searing temperatures. Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized." [11]
Houston, March 3, 2010 – The victory in the 22nd Congressional District yesterday by LaRouche Democrat Kesha Rogers sent an unmistakable message to the White House, and its British imperial controllers: Your days are numbered. Kesha's campaign hit relentlessly at a single theme, that President Obama must go, that his attacks on this nation – with his dismantling of the manned space program, his efforts to ram through a fascist, killer “health care” policy, his endless bailouts for Wall Street swindlers, while demanding budget cuts which will increase the death rates among the poor, the sick, the elderly and the unemployed – are not acceptable, and will not be tolerated.Kesha Rogers is also an African American woman.
Q: Our records show that on Wednesday, August 20th, beginning at 3:17PM, you made approximately 385 attempts to access a website called www.ladyboyx.com. Do you have recollection of attempting to access this site?
A: I do not. But as I indicated previously, that, you know, would not necessarily surprise me.
Q: Now I’m going to show you what has been marked as Exhibit G. This is a record from that same date, August 20th, which our records show that you made over 300 attempts to access a website called www.ladyboyjuice.com. Do you have any recollection of attempting to access this site?
A: I do not have any specific recollection on this site. But, as I indicated, on this specific day, I would not be surprised if I clicked a website on of those day.
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).
