'Real-Politik Ditto'

Learning to understand our 'now' as a cycle that's repeating in Time...

2012-02-12T21:50:00.000-05:00

Learning to understand our 'now' as a cycle that's repeating in Time
Posted by queridia at 12:33 AM

Via
Food for thought: Arnold Toynbee's book, Greek Thought contains selections from the writings of some Greek historians that he believed wrote about history honestly. I want to present one selection:

The Burden of Rome, from Polybius Book VI, Chapter 57 because the content is specific and it reads as a description of our present global condition:

"The disintegration and transformation to which everything in the Universe is exposed may really be taken for granted as a self evident corollary to the Uniformity of Nature. There are however two possible processes by which the disintegration of any given type of commonwealth may be effected—one external and the other internal; and while the external process is not amenable to scientific study, the internal obeys fixed laws."

"I have already described the successive phases of political development and the transitions from one phase to the other, sufficiently to enable readers capable of drawing the logical deductions from the present inquiry to forecast the future for themselves. In my opinion the future is clear.
In the case of any commonwealth which has repelled a series of acute dangers and has subsequently attained to a position of undisputed predominance and supremacy, it is evident that the violent influx of prosperity will produce a more extravagant standard of living and an excessively keen competition between individuals for office and other objects of ambition. "

"As these tendencies develop, a process of deterioration will be initiated by the thirst for office and the reproach of an undistinguished career, as well as by the pretentiousness and extravagance of the standard of living."

"The nominal responsibility for this transformation will attach to the masses, when they are inspired with a sense of injustice by the material greed of some of their masters, and with a false conceit by the material greed of some of their masters, and with a false conceit by the insincerity of others in pursuit of a political career. At this point the masses become so intensely exasperated and so completely guided by passion that they repudiate all subordination to or even equality with the upper classes and identify the interests of the community with their own."

"When this point is reached the commonwealth acquires the flattering appellations of liberty and democracy, while it is subjected to the appalling reality of the ‘despotism of the crowd.’"

There are so many changes that are happening in our 'now' stream of events, but there are more people alive now than have ever been alive that collectively know much more about life on this planet. There are more who can read and who do read and think for themselves, (lots of them are like me a female that had a real world problem that led to discovering her own thoughts have never been recorded in his story, history being his story, not her story. )

There is a mystery behind those changes but many individuals are working on what the 'mystery' is, and experiencing it in a personal situation. If its the same now as it was then when that historian descript how a democracy is initiated, a person has to wonder why this 'mysterious thing' continues through generations, what it's purpose is, and what it's intending to convey in any 'now. I read that every thing that happens in an individual life happens eventually to the collective, bundled life of 'us', 'we', 'our' experiences cached, stored, batched. That pattern, as a cycle is expressed now, when it was also obvious so long ago at least by Greek historians.

I'm not the first woman to want to understand why the stereotyped patterns about life do not match up as accurate descriptions of every woman's real world experiences. I had a limited social life, in a small town so I heard certain words much of my life that had no masculine counterpart. They were always remarkes made about a female. Until about 1985 when I read a chapter in a book about 'male' menopause. I had never heard 'male' and 'menopause' together! And I had seen the movie, Ash Wednesday which is a graphic movie about 'male menopause' in the exact form it was described in that chapter in a book. Another word was 'neurotic' it was always a female that was neurotic. But the most commonly heard was 'ball breaker'. I had to think for a while to form a masculine counterpart for that phrase, but I'm not going to put it in print.

This post is about cycles in Time, perhaps we on the planet are going through 'mid life crisis', in a state of neurosis and psychosis. The Greek historians knew there was a pattern, a cycle that repeated and that cycle is repeating now. A few educated individuals in the past are still speaking now, thanks to Arnold Toynbee, who wrote about an experience he had, as an eye witness to a scene in which he was in Ancient Rome! The mind itself is under the microscope, in this cycle. How the mind participates in reality is under the microscope of more individuals in this cycle.

There is evidence that the individual experience, can be and should be understood by that individual, and when that happens the realization does mean something that benefits humanity overall. Too much has been written about the 'invisible world' and patterns in the past to dismiss that aspect of life as 'delusional' thinking. More about that later.

Al-Qaeda leader backs Syrian rebels against Bashar Assad...

2012-02-12T19:12:00.000-05:00

Al-Qaeda leader backs Syrian revolt against Assad
Reuters
February 12, 2012

Via
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in a video recording posted on the Internet on Sunday, urged Syrians not to rely on the West or Arab governments in their uprising to topple President Bashar Assad.

In the eight-minute video, titled “Onwards, Lions of Syria” and posted on an Islamist website, the Egyptian-born Zawahri also urged Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan to come to the aid of Syrian rebels confronting Assad’s forces.

“Wounded Syria still bleeds day after day, while the butcher, son of the butcher Bashar bin Hafiz (Hafez Assad), is not deterred to stop,” Zawahri, wearing his white turban and seated against a green curtain, said.

“But the resistance of our people in Syria despite all the pain, sacrifice and bloodshed escalates and grows,” he added.

Zawahri took command of al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces in a raid in Pakistan last May.

A Muslim should help “his brothers in Syria with all that he can, with his life, money, opinion, as well as information,” Zawahri says.

The secret behind Whitney Houston's death (Video)

2012-02-12T18:58:00.000-05:00

Via

"In its 1984 World Development Report, the World Bank suggests using “sterilization vans” and “camps” to facilitate its sterilization policies for the third world. The report also threatens nations who are slow in implementing the bank’s population policies with “drastic steps, less compatible with individual choice and freedom"...

2012-02-12T18:44:00.000-05:00

1984 World Bank Report Contemplates “Sterilization Vans” & “Camps”
Jurriaan Maessen
Infowars.com
February 11, 2012

In its 1984 World Development Report, the World Bank suggests using “sterilization vans” and “camps” to facilitate its sterilization policies for the third world. The report also threatens nations who are slow in implementing the bank’s population policies with “drastic steps, less compatible with individual choice and freedom.”

The report, literally saturated with dehumanizing proposals, is devoted entirely to the World Bank’s long-term strategies in regards to population control and does not shy away from proposing the most draconian methods in order to depopulate the planet:

“Male and female sterilization and IUDs can be made more readily available through mobile facilities (such as sterilization vans in Thailand) or periodic “camps” (such as vasectomy and tubectomy-camps in India and IUD “safaris” in Indonesia).”

To illustrate how serious the World Bank is in achieving the overall strategy objectives on population control, the report makes use of outright threats:

“Population policy has a long lead time; other development policies must adapt in the meantime. Inaction today forecloses options tomorrow, in overall development strategy and in future population policy. Worst of all, inaction today could mean that more drastic steps, less compatible with individual choice and freedom, will seem necessary tomorrow to slow population growth.”

In the preface, then President of the World Bank and 1985 Bilderberg attendee, A.W. Clausen stated:

“(…) although the direct costs of The World Bank programs to reduce population growth are not large, a greater commitment by the international community is sorely needed to assist developing countries in the great challenge of slowing population growth.”

“(…) governments can use incentives and disincentives to signal their policy on family size”, the report continues. “Through incentives, society as a whole compensates those couples willing to forgo the private benefits of an additional child, helping to close the gap between private and social gains to high fertility.”

To give an adequate illustration of the World Bank’s preference for all-out government control over the people, and their intent on meddling in people’s personal decisions, the following quote will suffice (page 107):

“By taxing and spending in ways that provide couples with specific incentives and disincentives to limit their fertility, government policy can also affect fertility in the short run. Government can offer “rewards” for women who defer pregnancy; it can compensate people who undergo sterilization for loss of work and travel costs; and it can provide insurance and old-age security schemes for parents who restrict the size of their families. Each of these public policies works through signals which influence individual and family decisions- when to marry, whether to use contraception, how long to send children to school, and life expectancy, and whether and how much family members work.”

Under the header “Incentives and disincentives” (page 121), the World Bank proposes several more examples of government interference in the affairs of free humanity:

“To complement family planning services and social programs that help to reduce fertility, governments may want to consider financial and other incentives and disincentives as additional ways of encouraging parents to have fewer children. Incentives may be defined as payments given to an individual, couple, or group to delay or limit child-bearing or to use contraceptives. (…). Disincentives are the withholding of social benefits from those whose family size exceeds a desired norm.”

The report uses the example of China to make clear such measures can be highly successful if governments would only be willing to implement them:

“With the possible exception of China, efforts to raise the age at marriage by persuasion and edict have not been particularly successful.”

“In China the birth rate at the end of 1982 was estimated to be nineteen per 1,000 people, down from forty in the 1960s. The current figure, based on birth registrations rather than on a census, may slightly understate the actual birth rate; but it would still be well below current rates in South Asia, Africa, and most of Latin America.”

On page 124, the World Bank report further marvels at the Chinese government’s accomplishments:

“China has the most comprehensive set of incentives and disincentives, designed (most recently) to promote the one-child family. Since the early 1970s women undergoing various types of fertility-related operations have been entitled to paid leave: in urban areas fourteen days for induced abortion; ten days for tubal ligation; two to three days for insertion or removal of an IUD; and in the case of postnatal sterilization, seven extra days over the normal fifty-six of paid maternity leave.”

Making clear that the overall World Bank population reduction strategy must be implemented in a country-specific manner, the report states:

“The specific policy agenda for each country depends on its political culture, on the nature of the problem it faces, and on what it has already accomplished.”

What does have to be global, according to the World Bank, is continuing urbanization: people nicely locked up in massive townships. The report explains:

“Living in small towns does less to reduce fertility than does living in larger cities. That many of these changes take time to have an effect only underlines the need to begin them now. At the same time, other measures that complement and speed socioeconomic change can hasten a decline in fertility.”

This report is completely in step with the strategies outlined by the UN, the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, World Health Organization and IMF as they move to depopulate the earth in a consorted global effort. The pretexts for fertility reduction given throughout the report are “sustainable development” and “poverty reduction”. The truth is, so states the World Bank itself, to introduce and further develop “policy measures to increase people’s welfare as well as (and as a means) to reduce fertility.”

"The medical profession, the medical doctors have statistically the shortest life-span of fifty-six years of age,the highest abuse rate of alcohol and drugs,the highest suicide rate..So u go to somebody that has the lowest life-span,highest suicide rate,highest drug abuse rate to ask them how to have a healthy, happy long life?" (Video)

2012-02-12T18:28:00.000-05:00

Via

New insurance policy in UK will use tracking device to monitor drivers...

2012-02-12T18:01:00.000-05:00

New AA insurance policy will use sat-nav tracker to monitor drivers
By David Gerges
Last updated at 9:31 PM on 10th February 2012

Via
The AA is launching a new service which promises to cut the cost of insurance for safe drivers.

Motorists will be offered the chance to instal a small tracking device in their car which will monitor how fast they are driving.

And those who keep their speed to a minimum could save up to £850 a year on their policies.

Simon Douglas, director of AA Insurance said: 'It is likely to appeal to inexperienced drivers as well as parents, whose youngsters have their first car.

'Parents know driving behaviour is being tracked by a system that also provides crash, breakdown and theft alerts.'

Douglas added that the system will offer drivers tips and alerts to improve their performance behind the wheel.

He told The Daily Telegraph: 'Most people can improve their driving standard and Drivesafe can help them to do that.

'I believe that in time, systems of this type will become increasingly widely used by drivers of all ages.'

The AA will be able to identify the exact location of the car in the event of an accident or if the vehicle is stolen.

Whilst users will be able to view their performance either on their computers or courtesy of a free phone app that has been launched for smartphones.

It has emerged that a number of other insurers have launched similar products with Direct Line believed to be piloting their own technological tool.

Cancer rates triple among 9/11 first responders...

2012-02-12T17:50:00.000-05:00

Cancer Rates Triple Among 9/11 First Responders
By Erica Chang
February 9, 2012
IBTimes

Via
A recent study has revealed that 297 of the 12,000 police officers who first responded to the 9/11 attacks have been diagnosed with cancer, triple the rate before the tragedy according to the Huffington Post. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA) released figures that show that the cancer rate among NYPD officers has increased from six per year before the attacks to 16 per year after the attacks.

Furthermore, the average age at which officers were diagnosed with cancer is 44, with lung cancer being the most common diagnosis. The Fire Department of the City of New York released a similar study which revealed that firefighters who came into contact with Ground Zero toxins and dust were 19 percent more likely to develop cancer than those who did not.

The James Zadroga Act, which was passed in 2011, will provide healthcare screening and financial benefits to the officers who suffer from illnesses resulting from exposure at Ground Zero. However, because of the high costs of treatment, cancer will not be covered by the Zardoga Act.

The city of New York has refused to release the figures for cancer rates among NYPD numerous times. In response to their lack of cooperation, PBA research director Frank Tramontano said, "It is our sincere opinion that the City of New York has done nothing to facilitate any cancer study and has been actively working to prevent a comprehensive examination of the issue."

"The LAPD is fighting crime from a high-tech war room that gives it eyes all over the city. The surveillance hub is now a model for police forces around the world"...

2012-02-12T01:34:00.000-05:00

LAPD Pioneers High-Tech Crime-Fighting ‘War Room’
February 8, 2012 11:53 PM

Via
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — The LAPD is fighting crime from a high-tech war room that gives it eyes all over the city. The surveillance hub is now a model for police forces around the world and KCAL9 got an exclusive tour inside from Chief Charlie Beck.

“We are targets on our own soil,” says Beck. “We have to be ready.”

What began as a grass roots idea following the 9/11 terrorist attacks is now a state-of-the-art real-time analysis critical response center. It’s called RACR, and it’s located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

“This is a system that cuts through the red tape, that gets information to the people that need it,” says Chief Beck. He calls it “the brains of the department, twenty-four/seven.”

Police in the activity center monitor live feeds of city and traffic cameras, counter-terrorism information, and real-time crime mapping, with cutting edge software.

“If we didn’t have that we would be operating blind,” says Capt. Sean Malinowski, the Commanding Officer at RACR. “Essentially we’re always activated here.”

RACR is a critical crime-fighting tool at the center of every high profile incident in the City of Los Angeles.

“We have some real-time tools that help us analyze crime as it’s happening,” says Malinowski. “And then we feed that information out to the geographic areas and to patrol divisions.”

RACR is relied upon during events like dignitary visits from the Royals and President Obama, as well as the recent Occupy LA showdown and arrests.

“We had eyes on that, both through video cameras that the city owns, and also through video streams that were provided by the actual Occupy LA protesters,” says Malinowski.

Most recently, RACR was invaluable in putting an end to the Hollywood arsons.

Malinowski says RACR plotted each arson fire incident as it happened, creating a three-square-mile geographic hot spot that resulted in the quick arrest of accused fire starter Harry Burkhart.

“At the time he was taken into custody, this area was flooded with sheriffs and with LAPD officers,” says Malinowski. “Based on the fact that we kind of could see his movements in real time.”

RACR was born in a functioning bomb shelter, four stories below the Los Angeles Civic Center.

LAPD Commander Blake Chow remembers a time when tracking crime at RACR was done by hand. “There was very little technology,” says Chow, and RACR had no budget.

Police operated with dry erase boards, personal computers, and simple monitors.

“When we built RACR, there was no template to look at,” says Chow. “There was no police department we could go look at and ask them, ‘how did you build it?’”

Today LAPD’s RACR is the standard operating model for law enforcement agencies worldwide. It’s used as a guidebook on how to protect communities and fight crime.

Israel's Mossad trained assassins of Iran nuclear scientists...

2012-02-12T01:09:00.000-05:00

Israel's Mossad trained assassins of Iran nuclear scientists, report says
U.S. officials confirm link between clandestine Israeli operations and People’s Mujahedin of Iran activists, according to NBC News report.
By Haaretz

Mossad officials are training Iranian dissident activists to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, a NBC News report citing U.S. officials said on Thursday. The report noted, however, that Washington was not directly involvement in the alleged attacks.

The report by NBC News followed Iranian accusations that Israel and the U.S. had been orchestrating attacks against Iranian scientists and military officials associated with Iran's nuclear program.

These accusations resurfaced following the most recent alleged attack, as Iranian media reported last month that nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran.

According to the semi-official Fars news agency, Ahmadi Roshan, 32, supervised a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province.

The United States has denied involvement in the killing and condemned it. Israel has declined to comment.

Just days following the bombing, Foreign Policy, quoting U.S. intelligence memos, reported that Mossad agents posed as CIA officers in order to recruit members of a Pakistani terror group to carry out assassinations and attacks against the regime in Iran.

Foreign Policy's Mark Perry reported that the Mossad operation was carried out in 2007-2008, behind the back of the U.S. government, and infuriated then U.S. President George W. Bush.

Later, a Sunday Times report claimed that agents associated with Israel's secret services were behind Ahmadi Roshans' assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist.

On Thursday, U.S. officials speaking to NBC news claimed that Mossad agents were training members of the dissident terror group People’s Mujahedin of Iran in order assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, adding that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was aware of the operation, but had no direct link to them.

The U.S. officials reportedly confirmed the link between Israel and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), with one official saying: "All your inclinations are correct.”

Yet another American official would only tell NBC “It hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet.” All officials in question denied any U.S. involvement.

A Foreign Ministry comment to the story said that as "long as we can't see all the evidence being claimed by NBC, the Foreign Ministry won't react to every gossip and report being published worldwide."

The NBC report also cites a senior aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as describing what he said were strong links between Israel and Iranian dissident groups.

Mohammad Javad Larijani is quoted as saying that the these relations are "very intricate and close."

"[Israelis] are paying … the Mujahedin. Some of their (MEK) agents … (are) providing Israel with information. And they recruit and also manage logistical support,” the reported quoted Larijani as saying.

Obama’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers...

2012-02-11T19:47:00.000-05:00

Obama’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers
From Manning to Kiriakou, critics are aggressively targeted as the White House turns a blind eye to abuses
By Peter Van Buren

Via
On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaida suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.

Kiriakou’s plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don’t go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.

Punish the Whistleblowers

The Obama administration has already charged more people — six — under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined. (Prior to Obama, there were only three such cases in American history.)

Kiriakou, in particular, is accused of giving information about the CIA’s torture programs to reporters two years ago. Like the other five whistleblowers, he has been charged under the draconian World War I-era Espionage Act.

That Act has a sordid history, having once been used against the government’s political opponents. Targets included labor leaders and radicals like Eugene V. Debs, Bill Haywood, Philip Randolph, Victor Berger, John Reed, Max Eastman and Emma Goldman. Debs, a union leader and socialist candidate for the presidency, was, in fact, sentenced to 10 years in jail for a speech attacking the Espionage Act itself. The Nixon administration infamously (and unsuccessfully) invoked the Act to bar the New York Times from continuing to publish the classified Pentagon Papers.

Yet, extreme as use of the Espionage Act against government insiders and whistleblowers may be, it’s only one part of the Obama administration’s attempt to sideline, if not always put away, those it wants to silence. Increasingly, federal agencies or departments intent on punishing a whistleblower are also resorting to extra-legal means. They are, for instance, manipulating personnel rules that cannot be easily challenged and do not require the production of evidence. And sometimes, they are moving beyond traditional notions of “punishment” and simply seeking to destroy the lives of those who dissent.

The well-reported case of Thomas Drake is an example. As an employee, Drake revealed to the press that the National Security Agency (NSA) spent $1.2 billion on a contract for a data collection program called Trailblazer when the work could have been done in-house for $3 million. The NSA’s response? Drake’s home was raided at gunpoint and the agency forced him out of his job.

“The government convinced themselves I was a bad guy, an enemy of the state, and went after me with everything they had seeking to destroy my life, my livelihood and my person — the politics of personal destruction, while also engaging in abject, cutthroat character assassination and complete fabrication and frame up,” Drake told Antiwar.com. “Marriages are strained, and spouses’ professional lives suffer as much as their personal lives. Too often, whistleblowers end up broken, blacklisted and bankrupted,” said the attorney who represents Drake.

In Kiriakou’s case, the CIA found an excuse to fire his wife, also employed by the Agency, while she was on maternity leave. Whistleblower Bradley Manning, accused of leaking Army and State Department documents to the website WikiLeaks, spent more than a year in the worst of punitive conditions in a U.S. Marine prison and was denied the chance even to appear in court to defend himself until almost two years after his arrest. Former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Morris Davis lost his career as a researcher at the Library of Congress for writing a critical op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and a letter to the editor at the Washington Post on double standards at the infamous prison, as did Robert MacClean for blowing the whistle on the Transportation Security Administration.

Four employees of the Air Force Mortuary in Dover, Delaware, attempted to address shortcomings at the facility, which handles the remains of all American service members who die overseas. Retaliation against them included firings, the placing of employees on indefinite administrative leave, and the imposition of five-day suspensions. The story repeats itself in the context of whistleblowers now suing the Food and Drug Administration for electronically spying on them when they tried to alert Congress about misconduct at the agency. We are waiting to see the Army’s reaction to whistleblower Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who documented publicly this week that senior leaders of the Department of Defense intentionally and consistently misled the American people and Congress on the conduct and progress of the Afghan War.

And this remains the most partial of lists, when it comes to recent examples of non-judicial government retaliation against whistleblowers.

Government bureaucrats know that this sort of slow-drip intimidation keeps people in line. It may, in the end, be less about disciplining a troublemaker than offering visible warning to other employees. They are meant to see what’s happening and say, “Not me, not my mortgage, not my family!” — and remain silent. Of course, creative, thoughtful people also see this and simply avoid government service.

In this way, such a system can become a self-fulfilling mechanism in which ever more of the “right kind” of people chose government service, while future “troublemakers” self-select out — a system in which the punishment of leakers becomes the pre-censorship of potential leakers. At the moment, in fact, the Obama administration might as well translate the famed aphorism “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent” into Latin and carve it into the stone walls of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, or the main office of the State Department at Foggy Bottom where I still fight to keep my job.

Silent State

I am told that, in its 223 years of existence, I am the only Foreign Service Officer ever to have written a critical book about the State Department while still employed there. “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People“ exposed what State did not want people to know: that they had wasted enormous amounts of money in Iraq, mostly due to ignorance and a desire for short-term successes that could be trumpeted back home. For the crime of writing this book and maintaining a blog that occasionally embarrasses, State Department officials destroyed my career, even as they confirm my thesis, and their own failure, by reducing the Baghdad Embassy to half its size in the face of Iraq’s unraveling.

“The State Department was aware of Mr. Van Buren’s book long prior to its release,” explains attorney Jesslyn Radack, who now represents me. “Yet instead of addressing the ample evidence of fraud, waste and abuse in the book, State targeted the whistleblower. The State Department’s retaliatory actions are a transparent attempt to intimidate and silence an employee whose critique of fraudulent, wasteful and mismanaged U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq embarrassed the agency.”

Without allowing any rebuttal or defense, State suspended my security clearance, claiming my blogging was an example of “poor judgment,” transferred me from a substantive job into a meaningless telework position, threatened felony conviction over alleged disclosure of classified information, illegally banned me from entering the building where I supposedly work, and continues to try to harass and intimidate me.

My travel vouchers from as far back as the law allows have come under “routine” re-examination. My Internet activity is the subject of daily reports. My credit reports have been examined for who knows what. Department friends who email me on topical issues have been questioned by agents of Diplomatic Security, the State Department’s internal police. My Freedom of Information Act request for documents to help defend myself and force State to explain its actions has been buried.

Without a security clearance, and with my Diplomatic Passport impounded, I will never serve overseas again, the lifeblood of being a Foreign Service Officer (FSO). A career that typically would extend another 10 years will be cut short in retaliation for my attempt to tell the truth about how taxpayer money was squandered in Iraq.

All of this has taken place in such a way that I cannot challenge it (except by writing and speaking about it in public — at additional risk). The State Department has standard disciplinary procedures that it could have invoked against me, but those leave room for public challenges and, in some cases, would allow me to force documents into the open that State would rather not share with you.

Hall Walkers: Ghosts in the Machine

Before “telework” existed as an option that allowed undesirable employees to be sent home and into a kind of benign house arrest, people like me at State were called “hall walkers.” They were the ones whom the Department no longer wanted as employees, but who could not be fired due to lack of evidence. So they would have their security clearances suspended without recourse, be removed from their assignments, and yet told that, to get paid, they needed to be physically present in the main State building eight hours a day.

Since they were not assigned to an office, State was wholly unconcerned about how they occupied themselves during those long empty days. And though as a “teleworker” I am not one, the hall walkers are still with us.

The main State building is enormous, with literally miles and miles of corridors, and the hall walker might wander them, kill time at the library, have a long lunch, stop in to chat with former colleagues still willing to be seen in his or her company. Even in the first FSO training course called A-100, young diplomats are advised that the most ignominious end to a career is not failing at your job, but being thrown into the purgatory of hall walking — still on the payroll but no longer a member of the tribe. Disowned, shunned, exiled in the ancient Greek tradition.

Hall walking is a far cry from being dragged through a trial or spending two years in solitary, but it exists on the same continuum. No one at State will say how many employees still exist in the shadow world of hall walking, but at least dozens is a reasonable guess.

I am told as well that State Department officials are increasingly moving to suspend security clearances for acts wholly outside the realm of security, like blogging they find offensive. One State Department Human Resources employee confided to me that this has, in fact, become the go-to strategy for winnowing out unwanted employees in the too-hard-to-fire category, a sad evolution, given the sorry history of the State Department in the McCarthy era.

Fighting Back

For a government employee being punished extra-legally by an agency ignoring its own rules, there is still one recourse: the Office of the Special Counsel. Created in 1979, it was to be an ombudsman meant to keep an eye on governmental nastiness and ensure the implementation of the Whistleblower Protection Act. Empowered, among other things, to investigate and “make right” instances of federal retaliation against legitimate whistleblowers, the office was sidelined through several administrations.

Under George W. Bush, it was embroiled in scandal when its head, Special Counsel Scott Bloch, instead purged its staff of lawyers who disagreed with him and announced that he would not follow up on cases of discrimination based on sexual orientation. Last summer, Bloch pleaded guilty to deleting evidence from his computer while under investigation for retaliating against his own staff.

At a moment when government extra-legal retaliation against whistleblowers and leakers is on the rise, call it ironic, but the Office of the Special Counsel has seen a rebirth under its current head, Obama appointee Carolyn Lerner. As the Washington Post recently described her, Lerner has “gone to the mat and tried to expand the boundaries of the law’s protections for whistleblowers. She has lifted long-sagging morale at an agency that, instead of behaving as an independent watchdog, has treaded water for much of its existence.”

Specifically, Lerner reassignedstaff members to review a backlog of cases against whistleblowers facing reprisals, including “veterans’ hospital staff members reporting poor lab procedures [and] air traffic controllers claiming flight-pattern dangers.” She has enforced a 60-day limit on responses from federal agencies. The Office seems to have re-embraced its mission. “She’s a pit bull,” saysTom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, which defends whistleblowers.

There are other signs of resistance in Washington to the urge to cloak the government in silence. For example, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) launchedan investigation into the Food and Drug Administration’s secret email monitoring of scientists warning that unsafe medical devices were being approved over their objections. Whistleblowers, said Grassley, often are treated “like skunks at a picnic.”

The Senator demanded that FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg disclose who authorized the monitoring, how many employees were targeted, and whether the agency obtained passwords to personal email accounts, allowing communications on private computers to be intercepted. He also wants to know whether the agency’s two-year surveillance campaign is still ongoing.

In another recent case, the Office of the Special Counsel formally asked the Air Force to take harsher disciplinary action against supervisors at the Dover mortuary who had tried to fire two whistleblowers who raised accusations about the mishandling of soldiers’ remains.

The Government Accountability Project has filed a complaint on my behalf with the Office of the Special Counsel demanding that the State Department cease its retaliatory personnel practices against me. The Department is particularly vulnerable, given its drumbeat of support for the rights of bloggers and other dissidents in the Middle East and China. State has already been forced to readmit me to the building and return my access badge. I remain an optimist, believing that my complaint will succeed and that, someday, I will return to work at a State Department where employees can talk openly about the bad as well as the good.

It Matters

Americans, who elect and pay for their government in Washington, deserve to know exactly what it does there — and elsewhere around the world — with their dollars. As in my case in Iraq, such information often is only available if some insider, shocked or disturbed by what he or she has seen, decides to speak out, either directly, in front of Congress, or through a journalist.

The Obama administration, which arrived in Washington promoting “sunshine” in government, turned out to be committed to silence and the censoring of less-than-positive news about its workings. While it has pursued no prosecutions against CIA torturers, senior leaders responsible for Abu Ghraib or other war crimes, or anyone connected with the illegal surveillance of American citizens, it has gone after whistleblowers and leakers with ever increasing fierceness, both in court and inside the halls of various government agencies.

There is a barely visible but still significant war raging between a government obsessed with secrecy and whistleblowers seeking to expose waste, fraud and wrongdoing. Right now, it is a largely one-sided struggle and the jobs of those of us who are experiencing retaliation are the least of what’s at stake.

Think of those victims of retaliatory personnel practices and imprisoned whistleblowers as the canaries in the deep mineshaft of federal Washington, clear evidence of a government that serves its people poorly and has no interest in being held accountable for that fact. This administration fears the noise of democracy, preferring the silence of compliance.

[Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the U.S. government. The Department of State most certainly does not approve, endorse or authorize this article.]

Madonna fans plead with Israeli government not to bomb Iran until after her concert...

2012-02-11T19:35:00.000-05:00

Madonna fans oppose bombing Iran before Israel gig
IANS | Feb 10, 2012, 02.45PM IST

Via
Israeli fans of pop star Madonna have asked the government not to launch any air strikes against Iran until after the diva's concert in Tel Aviv May 29.

In a newly opened Facebook page, fans of the "Queen of Pop" fear that the US star will cancel her scheduled performance for political reasons if Iran is bombed over its controversial nuclear programme, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

Using the nickname for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the the Facebook group said: "Bibi don't start a war with Iran until after Madonna's show on May 29."

In the past, other international performers have cancelled performances in Israel, including Depeche Mode in 2006 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2001.

The Hollywood head: Anatomy of a cover-up (Video)

2012-02-10T22:42:00.002-05:00

Via

Congressmen Steve King and White Nationalist CPAC panel warn that America's greatest threat is it's diversity

2012-02-10T22:11:00.000-05:00

Right Wing Watch: Steve King and White Nationalist CPAC Panel Warn that America's Greatest Threat is its Diversity
PFAW.ORG

URL LINK N/A

Today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the group ProEnglish organized the panel, “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American identity,” and host Robert Vandervoort thanked CPAC for hosting the panel despite the work of “leftist thugs” who are trying to “shut down freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.” Vandervoort is a former leader of the White Nationalist group Chicagoland Friends of the American Renaissance, a racist magazine published by fellow White Nationalist Jared Taylor. Presumably, Vandervoort was referring to the efforts of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which issued an alert on his background, and People For the American Way, which called on Republican leaders attending CPAC to denounce another panelist, Peter Brimelow, founder and head of the White Nationalist hate website VDARE.

In 2009, Brimelow reflected on CPAC after “Obama’s racial-socialist coup” and expressed his fear that the U.S. is doomed to face a “minority occupation government.” He called on the Republican Party to start focusing on becoming the party of white voters by attacking “ethnic lobbies,” affirmative action, bilingual education and “taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens.”

Prior to Brimelow’s talk, Vandervoort delivered a rambling speech from Serge Trifkovic (who wasn’t able to attend) that focused on how the “cult of non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual victimhood” and “multiculturalist indoctrination” is ruining the West. “The native Western majorities will melt away,” Trifkovic’s speech concluded, “Europeans and our trans-Atlantic cousins are literally endangered species. The facilitators of our destruction must be neutralized if we are to survive.” Afterwards, Rosalie Porter bemoaned the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act for giving too much political influence to minorities.

Brimelow stayed on message and warned that multiculturalism and bilingualism were “diseases” that could wreck American society as they empower minorities and suppress traditional American (read: white) groups. He claimed that Canada, which is officially bilingual, was a good example of how bilingualism becomes a tool of elites to help minorities (Quebecers) at the expense of the majority, and went on to call multiculturalism and bilingualism a “ferocious attack on the working class.”

But the surprise guest of the panel was the fiercely anti-immigrant Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who came to discuss his bill to make English the official language of the U.S.

During a panel discussion, Brimelow said that the Democratic Party has “given up on the white working class” and is using immigration to “elect a new polity,” i.e. increase the number of ethnic minorities. Before he could turn to King, the congressman giddily told Brimelow, “I read your books!” King went on to say that Brimelow “eloquently wrote about the balkanization of America.”

Following the panel, King dismissed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s classification of VDARE as a hate group in an interview with BuzzFeed, saying, “I wouldn’t take them seriously.”

With the blessing of a leading Republican congressman, it looks like Brimelow’s dream of having a conservative movement which focuses on challenging cultural diversity may finally be coming to fruition.

"These billionaires are smart men. Devious men. I've followed them for years, and they do nothing in a straight line. The super PAC that (Paul) Singer and the gang control, Restore Our Future, is supposed to be for (Mitt) Romney. But it's not; it's for Singer and Bill Koch. The future they want to restore is their own, not yours or mine - or Romney's...Then the Vulture and the Richie Rich Club can gnaw at Romney's political corpse and regurgitate the nomination for the cat's paw of their choice"

2012-02-09T23:08:00.000-05:00

The Billionaires' Brokered GOP Convention
by: Greg Palast, Truthout | Op-Ed
Thursday, February 9, 2012

Via
The Plan is working.

Mitt Romney's biggest backer didn't want him to win.

We know that Paul "The Vulture" Singer, Romney's Daddy Warbucks, organized the "grassroots" campaign to replace Romney with Gov. Chris Christie back in September.

That flopped, so Singer and the billionaire boys' club that courted Christie moved over to Romney. Not that they had a choice. They knew Moonrocks Gingrich, who thinks he's running for Master Jedi, and Saint Santorum who thinks he's running for pope, would end up road kill in November.

But despite their million-dollar checks for Romney's campaign, the billionaires are handling the ex-governor with very long and slippery tweezers. The fact that Singer and the Koch brothers went on bended knee to Christie means they are just nauseated over Romney, a man losing a war with the English language and his own tax returns, carrying their standard against President Obama.

These billionaires are smart men. Devious men. I've followed them for years, and they do nothing in a straight line. The super PAC that Singer and the gang control, Restore Our Future, is supposed to be for Romney. But it's not; it's for Singer and Bill Koch. The future they want to restore is their own, not yours or mine - or Romney's.

Now, if your ultimate goal is to beat Obama and you need Christie to do it, you want the GOP race to end in a brokered convention. Then, the billionaires become the brokers. In the best of all worlds for these super PAC men, no candidate gets the 1,144 delegates needed to win. Restore Our Future can then restore the nomination to Christie (or, say, Sen. Marco Rubio, or both), someone who can win.

So, think about it. The Singer-Koch super PAC has access to more money than Fort Knox. It has raised over $30 million and has left as much as half sitting unspent. Yet, they didn't bother to run major ads in cheap media markets like Grand Junction, letting Romney go down in Colorado by less than 4,000 votes.

For a few bucks, they could have sealed it for Governor Romney this week. But they chose not to. Why?

By moving money in and out of selected primaries like a piston, Restore Our Future can shoo Santorum and Gingrich away from the nomination - and, with a bit of luck, the Romney campaign ends up in Tampa dead on arrival.

Then the Vulture and the Richie Rich Club can gnaw at Romney's political corpse and regurgitate the nomination for the cat's paw of their choice.

"Purchasing a cup of coffee using cash instead of a credit or debit card, using Google Maps to view photos of sporting event stadiums and large cities, and installing software to protect your internet privacy on your mobile phone -- these and many other mundane activities are now considered to be potential terrorist activities by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). And the agency is now distributing a new series of flyers as part of its new "Communities Against Terrorism" (CAT) program that urges shop owners and others to report such "suspicious" activity to authorities"...

2012-02-09T20:02:00.000-05:00

FBI: Paying Cash for Coffee Potential Terrorism?
FBI says paying for your morning coffee with cash a potential terrorist activity, urges coffee shop owners to report cash-paying customers to authorities
February 08, 2012
by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
NaturalNews.com

Via
Purchasing a cup of coffee using cash instead of a credit or debit card, using Google Maps to view photos of sporting event stadiums and large cities, and installing software to protect your internet privacy on your mobile phone -- these and many other mundane activities are now considered to be potential terrorist activities by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). And the agency is now distributing a new series of flyers as part of its new "Communities Against Terrorism" (CAT) program that urges shop owners and others to report such "suspicious" activity to authorities.

"The Communities Against Terrorism program is funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance through the SLATT Program to provide law enforcement agencies with a tool to engage members of the local community in the fight against terrorism," writes SLATT.org, the program of the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance that is promoting the program, on its website. "To assist law enforcement in the outreach effort, templates of flyers containing potential indicators have been created for distribution to specific industries" (https://www.slatt.org/CAT).

The SLATT program offers both on-site and online training (indoctrination) for coffee shop owners, financial institution employees, tattoo shop artists, and many others into how to spot potential terrorist activities. Included among the many propaganda flyers the FBI is distributing as part of the campaign are ones for how to spot terrorists at local hobby shops and beauty supply stores, for instance, as well as flyers for owners of farm supply and home improvement stores (http://publicintelligence.net).

This little gem warns internet cafe owners to watch out for and report customers that always pay for their coffee with cash, as they could be terrorists (http://info.publicintelligence.net). Another ridiculous flyer intended for owners of boat shops warns them to be on the lookout for people interested in becoming certified scuba divers, as they could be terrorists (http://info.publicintelligence.net).

Be sure to check out the entire set of flyers here: http://publicintelligence.net.

A few years ago, this type of outlandish fear-mongering and Stasi-style spying on citizens would have been considered a crazy conspiracy theory by many. But today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with its "See Something, Say Something" campaign, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) "First Observer" citizen spying program, and the TSA's Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response" (VIPR) internal checkpoint force, together with the new FBI spying program, are making this police state nightmare in America a tangible reality (http://www.naturalnews.com/034867_TSA_Super_Bowl_surveillance.html).

"When major shocks occur at the Earth's surface or at depth, waves of different types, magnitudes and speeds may move out from the source location. Such waves can be detected by seismometers located at recording stations, and the data from the recordings can be analyzed to learn many details of the source events. Seismic signals were recorded at stations in New York and four neighboring states on September 11, 2001 during the period when the North and South Towers (WTC1 and WTC2, respectively) were struck by airliners and collapsed, as well as during the collapse of Building 7 of the WTC, which had not been hit by a plane...Seismologists have been puzzled in their analysis of signals recorded for the events at the World Trade Center, as the contradictions are significant. They are particularly intrigued by the presence of seismic "peaks" before the collapses"

2012-02-06T20:53:00.001-05:00

Were Explosives the Source of the Seismic Signals Emitted from New York on September 11, 2001?
by André Rousseau
January 20, 2012
911truth.org

INTRODUCTION

When major shocks occur at the Earth's surface or at depth, waves of different types, magnitudes and speeds may move out from the source location. Such waves can be detected by seismometers located at recording stations, and the data from the recordings can be analyzed to learn many details of the source events. Seismic signals were recorded at stations in New York and four neighboring states on September 11, 2001 during the period when the North and South Towers (WTC1 and WTC2, respectively) were struck by airliners and collapsed, as well as during the collapse of Building 7 of the WTC, which had not been hit by a plane.

Data from the Palisades, NY recording station, located 34 km north-north-east of Manhattan, published by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (LDEO), provide the most detailed seismic waveforms for analysis, particularly for the determination of the locations (aerial, surface, or subsurface) and timing of the events that created the seismic waves.

Seismologists have been puzzled in their analysis of signals recorded for the events at the World Trade Center, as the contradictions are significant. They are particularly intrigued by the presence of seismic "peaks" before the collapses. This text focuses on the study of the seismic signals from Palisades. The new interpretation presented here renders the assertions of the seismic analysis of the events at the WTC, presented by the government, null and void.

STUDY OF THE COMPOSITION OF THE DIFFERENT WAVEFORMS

Five waveforms will be analyzed below. They are attributed by the LDEO team to specific causes, as follows:

1. the signals that, according to LDEO, match the moment when the planes hit WTC1 and WTC2, respectively, shown in figures 1a and 1b;
2. the signals that match the collapses of WTC1 and WTC2, respectively, shown in figures 2a and 2b; and
3. the signal that shows the collapse of WTC7, shown in Figure 2c.

The analysis presented here will question LDEO's identifications of the causes of the waveforms.

Determination of the Timing of the Signals' Origins

In these five cases the origin of the signals was attributed, by the seismologists who published the data, to the impacts of the planes or the collapses of the buildings (Kim et al. 2001; Irvine, 2001; Hoffman, 2006). Normally in this type of study, the time of origin is known with great precision (to the millisecond), which is necessary in order to calculate the propagation speed of the different waves. Unfortunately, that precision is not possible for the events at the WTC. In this case, timing of the waves must be correlated as well as possible utilizing video evidence.

The video used in this study for the North Tower (WTC1) was from a recording made by CNN with a time stamp on the screen (Hoffman, 2006), and the results were compared with the method utilized by LDEO (Kim et al. 2001). LDEO's method consisted of assigning an estimated speed of 2km/s for a Rayleigh wave (a type of surface seismic wave) that traversed several stations (see Figure 3) situated at various distances from the point of origin. The major inconveniences of this method are that the stations are not situated on a straight line and that the surface terrain, in which the surface waves move, varies and, therefore, the waves don't have the same speed of propagation as they pass through different materials.

The Hudson River is located on a fault line that separates predominantly sedimentary terrain on the west from crystalline and metamorphic rock on the east. These eastern formations permit more rapid surface wave propagation than those found to the west, which explains why the path WTC-MANY (Fig. 3), the only site to the east of the Hudson, was more rapid than all the other paths, situated to the west. In contrast, the stations at Palisades (34 km), at ARNY (67.5 km) and at TBR (51 km), provide similar results because they are situated on similar geological formations. Finally, the enormous indeterminacy of 2 seconds in the calculations attempting to fix the time of origin of each of the signals, admitted by the LDEO authors themselves (Kim, et al.), oblige us to view the official conclusions critically.

Waveforms Attributed to the Planes Crashing Into the Towers

The waveforms that the LDEO team attributes to the impacts of the airliners into the Twin Towers are shown in figures 1a and 1b. Although the waveforms look somewhat similar, they are sufficiently different to raise questions about LDEO's analysis. Although the cause of the two signals is similar -- the crashing of a plane, according to LDEO -- the magnitude (reflected by the amplitudes, or distribution on the vertical axis) of the two signals is different. Further, the waves generated by the two events do not have the same apparent velocity. The calculation of the propagation speeds, as shown in the graphs of Figures 1a and 1b, where the origin was fixed according to the corresponding crash, indicates 2900 m/s for WTC1 and 2150 m/s for WTC2.

A more serious difficulty with LDEO's attribution of the waveforms to plane impacts at the Twin Towers is that even if the impacts had been considerably more energetic, these signals could not have been generated by such impacts. The actual waves generated by the crashes had to have been deadened before hitting the ground. Frequencies of waves generated by explosions are on the order of 1 Hertz (1 Hz, or one cycle per second) -- which is the case with the Rayleigh waves shown in figures 1a and 1b -- while those of crash impacts are above 10 Hz and are often around 100 Hz. Furthermore, the range of the recording instruments (0.6-5 Hz) cited does not allow for the recording of the high-frequency waves that would be created by plane impacts. As to the theory of the oscillation of the Towers to explain these signals, as defended by Irvine (2001), it is inadequate because in such a case we would have had a "square" signal of long duration and a constant amplitude, while in actuality we observe a "bell-like" signal, representing a strong and brief explosion, which is particularly evident in the case of WTC2.

Given that it is geophysically impossible to have two different propagation speeds for two waves of the same type at the same frequency travelling the same path only a few minutes apart, one must bow to the evidence that the supposed origins of the recorded waves are incorrect, and that they are not linked to the plane crashes but to another origin. The waveform data, far from suggesting the conclusion of LDEO that they were caused by plane impacts into the Towers, suggest instead two explosions with different time displacements from the moments of plane impact at each building. Further, the difference in the magnitude of the two signals can only be linked to differences in the volume of explosives and/or their distance from the surface.

Waveforms Attributed to the Collapse of the Towers

While the Twin Towers had approximately the same mass, the same height and size, and the same type of internal structure (as well as essentially identical points of origin of the seismic wave-data in terms of distance to the recording station), the signals attributed to the collapses of WTC1 and WTC2, instead of being similar as one would suppose from the official thesis, are in fact very different. They differ in their form, their composition, and especially in their apparent propagation speed, as calculated from the official origin time.

In fact, the recording for WTC1 (Fig. 2a) demonstrates the three types of wave characteristic of a brief explosive source confined in a compact, solid material: a P wave with a speed of 6000 m/s, the typical value for a very consolidated crystalline or sedimentary terrain (which is the case in the bedrock of Manhattan), an S wave with a speed of 3500 m/s, and a surface wave with a speed of 1800 m/s (a Rayleigh wave). These values match with those registered from an earthquake or seismic prospecting (see for example Kim et al. 2001).

On the other hand, the recording linked to WTC2 (Fig. 2b) does not show the P or S body waves observed for WTC1 but only the surface Rayleigh wave, for which the spreading of the amplitudes over the duration is different from that of WTC1. The propagation speed of 2125 m/s is also markedly different from that of WTC1. Further, this wave seems to be followed by a second Rayleigh wave four seconds later.

We find the same thing for WTC7 (Fig. 2c), where the calculation of the speed of the wave according to the determined origin time indicates a Rayleigh wave with a 2200 m/s speed. Note that the amplitudes are comparable to those of the waves emitted at the time of the crashing of the airplanes into the Towers. This wave seems to be followed by a second Rayleigh wave 6 or 7 seconds later.

In the three cases, the bell-like form points to an impulsive source of energy, not percussion on the ground due to the fall of debris. The total mass and the average mass of individual building fragments were relatively small and fell to the ground over a period of more than ten seconds (which is a very long time in geophysics). Also note that the duration of a seismic signal does not tell anything about the source, contrary to the amplitude and particularly the frequency.

TIMING DISCREPANCIES

The problem of the "displacements" between the times of origin of the seismic waves and the times at which the planes crashed into the Towers, particularly that for WTC1, is certainly a key question and one that is emblematic of all the contradictions of the official version of September 11, 2001. The LDEO published two different timetables of wave-origins (Kim et al. 2001), which are presented in the table below. The first timetable (LDEO [1]) is that furnished with the published graphs. Then the LDEO modified its timetable (LDEO [2]). The widely varying but still, somehow, official times given by the 9/11 Commission and by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are also presented in the table.

What are the indisputable data here? There are two: the time that the waves reached the Palisades station, which is relatively easy to determine, and the distance from the WTC to Palisades (34 km). If the recorded wave is actually a Rayleigh wave, its (group) velocity is around 2000 m/s. Therefore, this wave was created 17 seconds before its arrival at Palisades. Where the problem deepens for the defenders of the official version is that the time for the source of the Rayleigh wave attributed to the crash into WTC1, which officially arrived at Palisades at 8.46.42+/-1, must in fact be 8.46.25+/-1. Compare that time with the times given in the first column of the table below. Only the revised LDEO timetable (LDEO [2]) comes close.

The times put forward by the 9/11 Commission come from radar at ground level and are based on the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data. They are the only reliable times because they are based on ground radar data which do not involve any hypothetical assumptions. They are reliable to one second.

For the time of the impact of the plane into WTC1 furnished by the Commission, 8.46.40 (9/11 Commission Report, p. 7; Ritter, 2002), there is a hiatus of 15 seconds between the plausible time of the origin of the Rayleigh wave based on the Palisades data and the time -- afterwards -- of the crash of the plane into WTC1 based on the ground radar data. What else but an explosion could be the origin for this seismic wave in the absence of an earthquake? A similar discrepancy exists in the data for the seismic wave and impact times for WTC2.

Also, the crash of the plane into WTC2 cannot be the cause for a camera, solidly on the ground and probably mounted to a tripod, which is filming WTC1 (see 911Blogger.com, 2006) to strongly shake one second before the fireball following this impact and shake again five seconds later: Only strong explosions can cause such shaking. This has been discussed at length by MacQueen (Journal of 9/11 Studies 2009)

SEISMIC WAVE-GENERATION FROM IMPACTS, COLLAPSES AND EXPLOSIONS

Attributing the transformation of kinetic energy into seismic waves to the crash of a jet into a building would only make sense if such a crash involved two full, solid and non-deformable objects. In this case, the kinetic energy of the moving body would in part be transformed into heat and the rest would be transmitted to the stricken object in the form of vibrations, that is, seismic waves. However, that is not the case here because we have two hollow and deformable objects. During the crash, the whole of the energy is transformed into heat and the envelopes (exterior walls) are deformed. In the case where a little mechanical energy would remain, the waves created in the pierced envelope would be quickly dispersed because of the absence of continuity in this envelope due to the spaces between vertical and horizontal structural members, such as rooms and windows. The necessary condition for the creation of seismic waves by such a crash would be the direct impact into the central columns by a full body. Even if a Boeing engine had hit a core column, it would have been with an energy lessened by passage through the building's envelope. In conclusion, even if a seismic wave could be created in a steel column, it would hit the ground only in the form of seismic noise, and as the passage from metal to rock is a refraction that absorbs energy, there wouldn't be much left to propagate in the ground.

Could the collapse of the Towers be the source of seismic waves as claimed by LDEO and other defenders of the official account? The enormous mass of the Twin Towers could hypothetically be taken into account if the Towers had fallen in a compact block, like a meteorite. But in fact, it was mostly scattered shards, not coherent blocks, that fell, largely transformed into dust, and the fall spanned several seconds. This form of collapse could only produce a force far below that necessary to create seismic waves; in this case, the magnitudes simply don't add up.

Given that neither the crashes into the towers, nor their vibration, nor the fall of debris can be the source of the seismic waves registered 34 kilometres away, as well as the fact that the low frequencies of those waves could not have been generated by such phenomena, we must search for the actual causes of the waveforms observed. Only explosions could produce the waves observed but various possible explosive configurations must be considered. We must distinguish between 1) subterranean explosions, 2) aerial explosions and 3) subaerial explosions (close to the ground without touching it).

Subterranean explosions are similar to earthquakes in that mechanical energy is transmitted to the earth in the form of body waves of two types, P and S (for "primary" and "secondary," or "pressure" and "shear"), and surface waves (either Rayleigh or transverse L) when the signal reaches a solid-fluid interface (for example, the atmosphere at the surface). Another name for Rayleigh waves is ground roll.

Aerial explosions release all of their energy in the air (as P waves, which in the atmosphere are simply sound waves), and what remains upon hitting the ground is thus too weak to create body waves in the solid earth (although there can be surface waves over a small distance).

Subaerial explosions give off energy that splits into sound waves, mainly in the air, and surface waves in the ground.

EXPLOSIONS THE SOURCE OF 9/11 SEISMIC WAVEFORMS

In brief, a subterranean explosion would not be heard but the ground would shake and initiate a series of waves (body and surface waves). If we hear an explosion, it is either aerial, which doesn't give a seismic signal, or it is subaerial, in which case surface waves could be generated. The seismic wave data provided by Palisades prove the occurrence of surface waves radiating outward from the World Trade Center. In addition, witnesses reported hearing explosions very close to the times at which planes struck the Towers and when they collapsed.

Given these two types of evidence we can affirm that explosions, qualified as subaerial, occurred close to the base of the Towers almost or quite simultaneously with the crashes into the Towers by the planes. The sound coming from these explosions would have been mixed with the sounds generated by the impacts of the planes. The Towers were thus weakened by the breaking of the load-bearing columns. The explosion at the base of WTC1 was heard by witness William Rodriquez (Spingola 2005).

The waveforms produced by the collapses of WTC2 and WTC7 were of a different type than that generated by the collapse of WTC1. Based upon the kind of waves coming from WTC2 and WTC7, they each underwent a very large subaerial explosion, heard by witnesses. For example, in the case of WTC2, a fireman witnessed an explosion before the building collapsed into an enormous cloud of dust (see Testimony [1], below), apparently not too far from the base of the Tower, accompanied by flashes of light and noise, according to an "Assistant Commissioner" (see Testimony [2]). Another fireman, present at the base of WTC2, stated there was a large explosion about 20 floors below the impact zone of the plane just before the upper portion of the Tower began to collapse (Testimony [3]). These explosions were too high above the surface to generate body waves in the ground, and the Rayleigh wave recorded probably comes only from the explosion closer to the surface. Among the other explosions heard at the base of WTC2 (Anonymous, 2009), one of them generated the second Rayleigh wave recorded four seconds after the first. The same thing happened at WTC7. A witness watching this building heard something like a "thunderclap" that caused the windows to explode outwards, while the base of the burning building gave way a second later, before the whole building followed the movement (Testimony [4]), aided by a second explosion, which generated the second Rayleigh wave 6 to 7 seconds later.

In the case of WTC1, the collapse of which began after that of WTC2 in spite of the fact that it had been hit earlier, it was a subterranean explosion that preceded its collapse. This explosion was thus logically not heard by the witnesses outside at 10:28 EDT, except for those located next to the Tower (Testimony [5]), but it was "felt" by a camera filming the tower that was solidly on the ground and was shaken by the vibration of the ground at the moment of the explosion (see [6]). On the other hand, it is also logical that the many explosions shown in videos in the upper floors before and during the collapse didn't provoke any seismic waves, because of the aerial locations and the fragmentation in time of the detonated energy in the series of successive sources, each of which had only a limited force, insufficient to generate seismic waves in the ground.

Even if standard controlled demolitions do not create seismic waves (because the explosions are aerial), it is useful to compare the data from the World Trade Center on 9/11 with seismic data obtained during the controlled demolition of the Kingdome in Seattle (see Anonymous, 2009) and at Oklahoma City (US) (Holzer et al., 1996). The case of the Kingdome is particularly interesting because seismologists expressly asked that the explosions be measured (in order to take advantage of the occasion to gather research data), and those in Oklahoma City were part of a reconstruction, using explosives, of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. These two examples involved a powerful subaerial explosion and the emitting of Rayleigh waves. Furthermore, the falling of the debris had no seismic consequences, even at distances well below 34 km (less than 7 km and 26 km respectively). Only the seismic equipment situated close to the source during the reconstruction of the bombing in Oklahoma City was able to record the seismic energy created by the collapse of the building.

The local magnitudes (ML) that the LDEO seismologists calculated from the surface waves gave results that consolidate our analysis. They were higher than 2 on the Richter scale for the waves emitted at the moments of the collapses. It is impossible to get such a magnitude from the falling of the debris alone, especially falling over a duration of ten seconds. Even if an entire Tower had been compacted into a tight ball, it would have necessitated a higher speed than could be caused by the Earth's gravity to even approach such a magnitude. Moreover, we must note that the magnitude attributed to the subterranean explosion at the WTC1 is ML=2.3 -- comparable to the earthquake that hit New York on January 17, 2001 (ML =2.4) -- while the magnitude coming from the WTC2 explosion is ML =2.1, thus weaker. And this disparity, consistent with the explosions described by witnesses in the cited testimonies, is particularly appreciable given the logarithmic scale used to designate event magnitudes. Given that the Twin Towers were of similar height and mass, the falling debris from the collapsing Towers should have generated similar magnitudes, if they were indeed the sources of the waves.

Note that applied geophysicists know how to generate seismic waves in the ground using non-explosive techniques such as "weight dropping" -- which consists of letting a three-ton weight fall to earth -- or using vibrators attached to the ground. But the energy of the waves developed in the ground by such methods is too low for the waves to go further than several hundred meters. On the other hand, Won-Young Kim, lead author of the LDEO studies of the Palisades data, has discussed similar seismic waves generated by subterranean explosions from mining operations in the region. Kim thus confirmed our result that subterranean explosions register event magnitudes comparable to those noted for the WTC events, as well as our finding that subaerial explosions may not register those event magnitudes if not sufficiently powerful.

THE RELATION BETWEEN THE SEISMIC WAVES AND THE PROCESS OF COLLAPSE

Observation from videos of the collapses of the Towers shows they were each different, and this correlates with the differences between the corresponding seismic waves.

The collapse of WTC7 is the one that comes closest to a classic controlled demolition, with the successive collapsing of the floors starting from the base, which had been weakened by a strong subaerial explosion. As for the Twin Towers, they were first weakened by explosions at their base at the moment the airplanes crashed into them. After that we must distinguish between the parts of the building above the impact zone of the planes and those located below. If the seismic waves couldn't have been generated by the explosions visible in the floors (which allowed for the gradual collapse upwards above the impact zone and downwards below this zone), then only a powerful explosion at the base of WTC2 and a subterranean one under WTC1 could have produced the observed seismic waves. These basal explosions were necessary as well for the total, rapid disintegrations of the buildings.

In the case of WTC1, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) implicitly confirmed this scenario. They noted, "Review of videotape recordings of the collapse taken from various angles indicates that the transmission tower on top of the structure began to move downward and laterally slightly before movement was evident at the exterior wall. This suggests that collapse began with one or more failures in the central core area of the building" (FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, Chapter 2). This transmission tower was supported by a lattice of large diagonal I-beams, called a "hat truss," that connected the walls of the perimeter of the building to the central structure between the 107th floor and the roof, and therefore reinforced the central structure. Contrary to official findings that it was the hat truss that transferred the instability of the central columns to those of the perimeter, which then gave out after they were deformed because of the pulling of the floors, the logic of the events forces us to consider that the rupture of the central columns came from an explosive event prior to the collapse of the building.

CONCLUSION

At the times of the planes' impacts into the Twin Towers and during their collapses, as well as during the collapse of WTC7, seismic waves were generated. To the degree that (1) seismic waves are only created by brief impulses and (2) that low frequencies are associated with an energy (magnitude) that is comparable to a seismic event, the waves recorded at Palisades and analyzed by LDEO undeniably have an explosive origin. Even if the planes' impacts and the fall of the debris from the Towers onto the ground could have generated seismic waves, their magnitude would have been insufficient to be recorded 34 km away and should have been very similar to one another. As we have shown, they were not.

The types and magnitudes of the seismic signals show significant differences. The greatest differences occur in their propagation speeds, even though their paths were essentially identical under identical conditions. This difference is physically unexplained in the interpretation of the events offered by the LDEO researchers, the 9/11 Commission and NIST. Therefore, we must question their calculations of wave propagation speeds based on their assumption that the wave origins are shown on the video images of impacts and collapses. We can only conclude that the wave sources were independently detonated explosives at other times, thus accounting for the variable discrepancies for each wave origin in relation to the videos.

The composition of the waves is revealing both in terms of the location of the source and the magnitude of the energy transmitted to the ground. The subterranean origin of the waves emitted when WTC1 collapsed is attested by the presence of the P and S body waves along with the Rayleigh surface waves, which are present in all five explosions. The placement of the source locations of the four other explosions is subaerial, attested by the unique presence of Rayleigh waves. The aerial explosions visible on the videos of the upper floors of the Twin Towers do not produce seismic waves 34 km from the source.

There is a factor of ten between the power of the explosions at the time of the plane impacts on the Twin Towers (as well as at the time of the collapse of WTC7) and the strength of those more powerful explosions at the times of their collapses, the subterranean explosion under WTC1 being the one that transmitted the most energy to the ground.

Note as well the degree to which the surface waves are dispersive (i.e., their speed depends upon their frequency). The duration of the recorded signal is not representative of the duration of the signal at the source.

Finally, controlled demolition of the three towers, suggested by the visual and audio witness testimony as well as by observations of video recordings of their collapses, is thus confirmed and demonstrated by analysis of the seismic waves emitted at the moments of the plane impacts and at the moments of the collapses.

A Google Earth map update erases Atlantis "error"...

2012-02-05T16:47:00.001-05:00

Google Earth update erases undersea 'Atlantis' error
A suspicious-looking gridlike pattern has been removed from the sea-floor map
By Stephanie Pappas
updated 2/5/2012 1:18:40 PM ET

Via
A Google Earth map that raised rumors of the lost city of Atlantis has gotten a much-needed update, ridding the seafloor of a gridlike pattern that some vigilant users suspected were sunken streets from the mythological underwater city.

In fact, Google Ocean, an extension of map program Google Earth, was merely displaying a data artifact from the sonar method that oceanographers use to map the seafloor. This week, Google updated the application with new seafloor data from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other groups.

"The original version of Google Ocean was a newly developed prototype map that had high resolution but also contained thousands of blunders related to the original archived ship data," David Sandwell, a Scripps geophysicist, said in a statement. "UCSD undergraduate students spent the past three years identifying and correcting the blunders."

The students also incorporated new data into the archive that Google uses to create its map of underwater topography. Researchers create this data by using sonar, or sound waves, that bounce off the seafloor and return information about its shape, not unlike how a bat uses sonar to "see" bugs. When Google uses lots of these surveys together, they sometimes overlap, creating strange gridlike patterns.

That's what happened in 2009, shortly after the launch of the extension. Eagle-eyed Google Ocean explorers spotted a large grid on the seafloor that looked strikingly like the streets of a well-organized small town. Immediately, "Atlantis" rumors started flying. [Fact or Fantasy? 20 Imaginary Worlds]

In fact, the grid was merely caused by overlapping datasets, according to NOAA. Besides that, the grid that looked like a little town actually covered an area of ocean more than 100 miles (161 kilometers) wide — not exactly small-town proportions.

The updated Google Ocean has been scrubbed of this Atlantis artifact. Google Ocean is also becoming increasingly accurate in other ways. The program now has 15 percent of its seafloor image taken from shipboard soundings at a 0.6-mile (1 km) resolution. Previous versions took only 10 percent of seafloor imaging from sonar soundings and the rest from extrapolations by scientists using satellite data.

Even those estimates will soon be stronger: The next major upgrade is planned for later this year, and will use a new calculation technique that returns depth predictions that are twice as accurate as before.

"The Google map now matches the map used in the research community, which makes the Google Earth program much more useful as a tool for planning cruises to uncharted areas," Sandwell said.

US prison business: Privatize profits, socialize losses

2012-02-04T21:38:00.000-05:00

U.S. Prison Business: Privatize Profits, Socialize Losses
Joe Wright
Activist Post

Well, it's nice work if you can get it. Florida is set to privatize all of its prisons south of Orlando -- 20% of its total -- according to a report issued by Chris Kirkham for Huffington Post.

The for-profit prison scheme is a case study in crony capitalism, as it involves private prison corporations donating to the politicians best in position to grant them lucrative contracts. Cenk Uygur, in the video below, breaks down this "cherry picking" strategy that sets up FL taxpayers to carry the burden of failure, while corporate/government interests land another windfall; in this case, the largest procurement contract in the industry's history:

Beyond this single blatant example of lobbying by private interests in the state of Florida, the trend of privatizing prisons has been ongoing since the first business was established in 1984*, and is slated to rise in coming years. Furthermore, the implications of what it means that private companies are taking over captive populations should also be examined.

The U.S. prison population continues to explode, as America plunges headlong into becoming a bona fide police state. The federal policies of criminalizing just about everything, offer a built-in growth sector for any corporation that can capture it. No wonder, then, that companies like GE have gotten in on the action, while the nation's largest private contractors, Corrections Corporation of America and GEO (formerly Wackenhut), have combined revenues well into the billion of dollars per year. And they are international in scope. (Source)

America already holds 25% of the world's prison population, and the number of these prisoners held in private prisons has risen dramatically over the past 10 years from 2,000 housed in 5 private prisons, to more than 60,000 housed in 100; and is a number expected to rise to 360,000 prisoners over the next decade. (Source)

Logically, such growth would only encourage the same collusion and revolving-door policies that we see in the weapons and security industries, for example, where government officials who craft legislation and award contracts end up working for, or heading up, private companies that are well-positioned to reap the rewards. (Source)

This strategy has even found its way into immigration policy, as it has been revealed that the private prison industry helped to draft Arizona's immigration law. SB1070 was created in a hand-holding session between Corrections Corporation of America and State Senator Russell Pearce in another blatant example of corporatism. This should anger those on either side of the immigration debate, as it completely excluded the voting public:

According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in 'a significant portion of our revenues' from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants. (Source)

The "next big market" is something that is normally reserved for a new product designed to be desirable to its target audience, whether through novelty or efficiency. Turning human beings into that product is nothing short of a type of human trafficking and slavery, as discussed in the video below:

As the economy declines, there has even been a revival in debtors' prisons, formally abolished in the early 1800s. Perhaps this is the crux of the message: real pressure is mounting on local governments to trim costs in a difficult economic environment. An empathetic public is primed to be swayed by that argument. However, Kirkham clearly demonstrates in his article that even this reasoning is completely fallacious:

Proponents have advanced the move as a cost-saving measure, a business-minded response to the state's budget shortfall. But a series of studies and the experiences of several other states that have experimented with privatizing prison systems raise significant doubts about the cost savings that are supposed to accrue: Private prisons have tended to take control of the lowest-cost inmates, those lacking health problems and posing less risk of violence, while leaving states to contend with the harder cases. (Source)

Perhaps most worrisome about the growth of private control over an increasing "human product" cherry picked from the public is that it seems to be no longer reserved only for adults. A heightening wave of arresting children, some as young as five, might be tempting to corporate interests that have proven themselves to be more than happy to expand their product line and reap profits ... even from the most innocent among us.

* Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was awarded a contract to take over a facility in Hamilton County, Tennessee. This marked the first time that any government in the country had contracted out the complete operation of a jail to a private operator. (Source: Wikipedia)

US no-fly list doubles in one year...

2012-02-04T20:57:00.000-05:00

AP Exclusive: US No-Fly list doubles in 1 year
EILEEN SULLIVAN
Originally published: February 2, 2012 2:30 AM
Updated: February 2, 2012 4:53 PM

Via
WASHINGTON - (AP) -- The Obama administration has more than doubled, to about 21,000 names, its secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the United States, including about 500 Americans, the Associated Press has learned. The government lowered the bar for being added to the list, even as it says it's closer than ever to defeating al-Qaida.

The size of the government's secret no-fly list has jumped from about 10,000 in the past year, according to government figures provided to the AP.

The surge comes as the government says it's close to defeating al-Qaida, after killing many of its senior members. But senior officials said the threat does not stop there.

"As long as we sustain the pressure on it, we judge that core al-Qaida will be of largely symbolic importance to the global jihadist movement," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress on Thursday. "But regional affiliates and, to a lesser extent, small cells and individuals will drive the global jihad agenda."

Those are the people added to the no-fly list, current and former counterterrorism officials said. Most are from other countries; about 500 are Americans.

"Both U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities and foreign services continue to identify people who want to cause us harm, particularly in the U.S. and particularly as it relates to aviation," Transportation Security Administrator John Pistole said in an interview.

Affiliated terror groups in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Algeria and elsewhere, as well as individuals who ascribe to al-Qaida's beliefs -- "All are in the mix," said Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. "And no one is claiming that they are shrinking."

The flood of new names began after the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner. The government lowered the standard for putting people on the list then scoured its files for anyone who qualified. The government will not disclose who is on its list or why someone might have been placed on it.

Among the most significant new standards is that now a person doesn't have to be considered only a threat to aviation to be placed on the no-fly list. People who are considered a broader threat to domestic or international security or who attended a terror training camp also are included, said a U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.

The Christmas attack led to other changes in how the U.S. assembles its watch list. Intelligence agencies across the government reviewed old files to find people who should have been on the government's terror watch list all along, plus those who should be added because of the new standards put in place to close security gaps.

The Nigerian man who pleaded guilty in the Christmas 2009 attack over Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was listed in a large U.S. intelligence database that includes partial names and relatives of suspected terrorists. That database is a feeder to the broad terror watch list, of which the no-fly list is a component, but only when there is enough information linking the person to terrorism. Officials believe the U.S. had enough information about Abdulmutallab at the time to put him on the broader terror watch list, which would have helped the intelligence community catch him.

After the Christmas attack, "We learned a lot about the watch-listing process and made strong improvements, which continue to this day," said Timothy Healy, director of the Terrorist Screening Center, which produces the no-fly list.

As agencies complete the reviews of their files, the pace of growth is expected to slow, the counterterrorism official said.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the government on behalf of Americans who believe they're on the no-fly list and have not been able to travel by air for work or to see family.

"The news that the list is growing tells us that more people's rights are being violated," said Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney working for the ACLU's national security project. "It's a secret list, and the government puts people on it without any explanation. Citizens have been stranded abroad."

The government will not tell people whether they're on the list or why they're on it, making it impossible for people to defend themselves, Choudhury said. People who complain that they're unfairly on the no-fly list can submit a letter to the Homeland Security Department, but the only way they'll know if they're still on the list is to try to fly again, she said.

While the list is secret, it is subject to continuous review to ensure that the right people are on it and that the ones who shouldn't be on it are removed, said Martin Reardon, former chief of the Terrorist Screening Operations center and now a vice president with the Soufan Group. If a person is nominated to be on the no-fly list, but there is insufficient information to justify it, the Terrorist Screening Center downgrades the person to a different list, he said.

"You can't just say: 'Here's a name. Put him on the list.' You've got to have articulable facts," Reardon said.

On average, there are 1,000 changes to the government's watch lists each day, most of which involve adding new information about someone on the list.

The no-fly list has swelled to 20,000 people before, such as in 2004. At the time, people like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy were getting stopped before flying -- causing constant angst and aggravation for innocent travelers. But much has changed since then.

While thousands more people are on the list, instances of travelers being mistaken for terrorists are down significantly since the government -- not the airlines -- became responsible for checking the list, Pistole said. Travelers must now provide their full name, birthdate and gender when purchasing an airline ticket so the government can screen them against the terror watch list.

But with the nature of the terrorism threat, it's not likely that the list will dwindle, even as al-Qaida's core leadership is defeated, Reardon said.

"I would argue that even if (al-Qaida) as we know it ceased to exist as of tomorrow, other terrorist organizations or lone wolves with both the intent and capability of carrying out attacks against the U.S. would fill the void," Reardon said. "The consolidated terrorist watch list exists for that very reason."

Once they are identified and placed on the list, he said, "We have a much greater chance of keeping them from entering the country."

"While political candidates are not legally required to identify bundlers — volunteer fundraisers who collect bundles of campaign contribution checks for the campaign — a 2007 law requires that federal candidates disclose the names of any registered lobbyists who bundle large amounts for their campaign. On Tuesday, (Mitt) Romney’s campaign reported that 14 lobbyists combined to raise more than $1.6 million last year in bundled contributions.One of those lobbyist-bundlers was (Ignacio) Sanchez, who raked in $86,700 for the former Massachusetts governor...Unlike the other 13 identified lobbyist-bundlers, Sanchez is a registered foreign agent. A form filed Monday with the U.S. Department of Justice reveals that he beyond just representing the interests of those domestic clients, Sanchez also represents the embassy of the United Arab Emirates and the presidential campaign of Dominican Republic former president Hipolito Mejia"

2012-02-04T20:45:00.000-05:00

EXCLUSIVE: Major Romney Bundler Is Agent Of Foreign Government
By Josh Israel on Feb 2, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Via
Ignacio E. Sanchez is a lobbyist at DLA Piper, an influential global law firm and a major bundler for the Mitt Romney campaign. A ThinkProgress review of public records reveals Sanchez is also a registered foreign agent representing the interests of the United Arab Emirates and of a former president of the Dominican Republic.

While political candidates are not legally required to identify bundlers — volunteer fundraisers who collect bundles of campaign contribution checks for the campaign — a 2007 law requires that federal candidates disclose the names of any registered lobbyists who bundle large amounts for their campaign. On Tuesday, Romney’s campaign reported that 14 lobbyists combined to raise more than $1.6 million last year in bundled contributions.

One of those lobbyist-bundlers was Sanchez, who raked in $86,700 for the former Massachusetts governor. This major fundraising raises questions about the level of access and influence Sanchez — and by extension, his corporate and international clients — would have in a Romney administration.

Unlike the other 13 identified lobbyist-bundlers, Sanchez is a registered foreign agent. A form filed Monday with the U.S. Department of Justice reveals that he beyond just representing the interests of those domestic clients, Sanchez also represents the embassy of the United Arab Emirates and the presidential campaign of Dominican Republic former president Hipolito Mejia.

Mejia is seeking to reclaim the job he held from 2000 to 2004 and lost in a landslide defeat, amid a national economic crisis and financial near-collapse.

The United Arab Emirates has been among the stronger U.S. allies in the Middle East and is a key player in OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. But the interests of the two countries don’t always converge and groups like Human Rights Watch have raised concerns about the country’s suppression of free speech and political disagreement.

In the past, Sanchez also represented the governments of Turkey and Ethiopia. Current federal lobbying disclosure forms show that he lobbies Congress and the administration on behalf of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide (which includes the Sheraton, W, and St. Regis brands) and Diageo North America, the makers of Guinness, Jose Cuervo, Captain Morgan, and dozens of other alcoholic beverages.

President Obama does not accept campaign contributions donated or bundled by federal lobbyists or foreign agents. In last week’s State of the Union address, he called for a ban on bundlers lobbying saying “Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa — an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.”

But Romney — who has not voluntarily disclosed any other bundlers — is apparently all too happy to accept money from those who are paid to influence policy decisions on behalf of special interests, foreign and domestic.

Scientists find giant crustaceans in deep sea...

2012-02-04T19:14:00.000-05:00

Terrifying giant crustaceans found in deep sea
By Andrea Mustain
Published February 03, 2012

Via
Scientists on an expedition to sample a deep-sea trench got a surprise when their traps brought back seven giant crustaceans glimpsed only a handful of times in human history.

The "supergiant" amphipods are more than 20 times larger than their typical crustacean relatives, which are generally less than a half-inch (1 centimeter) long, and thrive in lakes and oceans around the world. They are sometimes called the "insects of the sea."

"We pulled up the trap, and lying among the fish were these absolutely massive amphipods, and there was no inkling whatsoever that these things should be there," said Alan Jamieson, a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and leader of the expedition that turned up the fantastical creatures in November 2011.

The largest of the seven specimens was about 11 inches (28 cm) long.

"They actually don't feel real," Jamieson told OurAmazingPlanet. "They feel like plastic toys. They have a waxy texture to them." [See image of the supergiant crustacean.]

The pale, leggy creatures were found 4 miles (6 kilometers) down in the Kermadec Trench, off the northeast coast of New Zealand, one of the deepest trenches on Earth.

In addition to the animals captured in the trap, a seafloor camera more than a mile (2 km) away spied at least nine supergiant amphipods. It's not clear why so many of the typically elusive creatures were in the area. A week later, when the expedition returned to the same spot, there was no sign of the supergiant amphipods, which was "very, very strange," Jamieson said.

It appears the Aberdeen expedition has retrieved the largest complete specimen ever collected. (In 1983, an albatross regurgitated a supergiant amphipod, that, not surprisingly, was in poor shape. Researchers estimated at the time that, when alive, the creature would have been 13 inches (34 cm) long.).

Supergiant amphipods (Alicella gigantea) were first discovered in 1899, when a trawling expedition turned up two specimens from the Atlantic Ocean. The species wasn't seen again for nearly 100 years. In the 1970s, scientists photographed the oversized creatures in the northern Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles north of Hawaii.

Then in the 1980s, scientists managed to bring back a few specimens of the giant crustaceans from the same area.

"Nobody has ever really mentioned them since," Jamieson said. "They're one of these strange deep-sea anomalies."

Although the amphipod find was exciting, the expedition's true quarry was a deep-sea snailfish that has only been sampled once before, in 1952.

"Nobody has ever caught one since," Jamieson said. Yet in among the weird amphipods? Seven snailfish.

"To do what we wanted to do we really just needed one fish, so to get seven fish was amazing — and to get seven supergiants is incredible," Jamieson said.

"It was a pretty good day, let's put it that way," he added.

The scientists are mounting a return sampling expedition to the same swath of deep sea off the coast of New Zealand in a week.

"The Canadian Forces spent $2.4 million last year on training at a facility run by Xe Services, the U.S. private security company formerly known as Blackwater"...

2012-02-01T19:26:00.000-05:00

Controversial contractors paid $2.4M by Canadian Forces
Documents show Canadian Forces used former Blackwater training facility
By Laura Payton, CBC News Posted: Jan 31, 2012 5:24 PM ET Last Updated: Feb 1, 2012 1:56 PM ET

The Canadian Forces spent $2.4 million last year on training at a facility run by Xe Services, the U.S. private security company formerly known as Blackwater.

The company and its training facility were used to teach precision shooting and defensive driving, as well as VIP escort requirements and close quarter combat techniques, according to documents tabled Monday in the House of Commons.

It appears the training provided by Xe instructors was for precision shooting and defensive driving. The documents note much of the training in VIP escorting and close quarter combat was done by CF instructors and standards personnel.

Special forces members also had precision shooting and defensive driving training at the facility, although for operational security reasons the government wouldn't say how many trained there.

The Department of National Defence made 14 call-ups in 2011 against a standing offer arrangement with Xe, for a total of $567,729, the documents say. Public Works, which is in charge of federal procurement, made another six call-ups and awarded one contract, spending $1,819,023.48. The total spent between the two departments in 2011 was $2,396,346.86.

The training provided at the facility is specialized and used primarily for snipers and soldiers who do close personal protection, as well as those who drive non-military vehicles like armoured SUVs while protecting VIPs or diplomats in hostile environments such as Libya or Afghanistan.

The facility is known in the defence community to be unique because of training involving live fire in a ship simulator or in a complex building structure, and driving courses that involve live fire. It's widely used by U.S. government and law enforcement, and is accredited by the U.S. government.

Facility used since 1997

Since 2005, 605 Canadian Forces soldiers have been trained at Blackwater or Xe. Some of the money was paid to rent the facility, known as the United States Training Center, but used Canadian Forces trainers to teach, the documents say.

"Note that this figure merely reflects the number of CF personnel who were trained at the facility; a number of CF elements provided their own instructors and simply utilized the facilities."

A spokesman for the Department of National Defence says the Canadian Forces have been using the U.S. Training Center since 1997. The forces can't always train in Canada because the facilities don't exist, can't accommodate the volume of training, or can't be used due to adverse weather conditions, he said.

"This type of training is highly specialized and is only required by a small portion of the CF. Contracting facilities for short periods of time is the most cost effective alternative to investing in expensive infrastructure that will only be used a few times a year to meet these unique training requirements," John Dacombe said in a statement.

"Recently, more private companies have emerged and established similar facilities, which provide the CF with a wider range of options to meet its future training requirements."

The Canadian Forces typically provide their own training, Dacombe said, but when those trainers aren't available, they hire outside trainers.

There is more training scheduled at the facility in 2012.

Blackwater a source of controversy

Blackwater, a private security contractor used widely in Iraq and Afghanistan, changed its name to Xe Services in 2009 and then changed it again last December to Academi.

The company's website says it has assisted in more than 60,000 security missions in the past seven years in hostile environments. It has also provided training to more than 10,000 foreign military and counterterrorism specialists, law enforcement agents and 50,000 U.S. government personnel.

It has also been a source of controversy, after a 2007 shooting in Baghdad that killed 17 Iraqis. It led the Iraqi government to deny the company a licence renewal. Last year, a U.S. appeals court revived a manslaughter case against four ex-Blackwater Worldwide guards involved in the shooting.

The company's website says it has a 28-square-kilometre (7,000-acre) training centre in Moyock, N.C., the largest private training centre in the U.S. The training centre includes 50 tactical ranges, three ship-boarding simulators, two airfields and three drop zones, as well as a tactical driving track and explosive training ranges.

The Canadian government has had a standing offer arrangement with Xe since 2008.

"The SOA was awarded without a competitive bid process, because it was assessed that Xe Services had the only facility capable of meeting the operational requirements for specialized training of CF personnel," the documents say.

"Commentators on all sides speak of Israel's "ceding" territory occupied in 1967 to the Palestinians. The word suggests a transfer of land by its legitimate owner. Unless there are reciprocal exchanges of territory in a final peace agreement, the issue of Israel's "ceding" territory to Palestine does not arise. Israel can withdraw from occupied Palestinian territory, but to "cede" property one must first possess legal title to it.Israel can no more cede title to occupied Palestinian lands than a squatter can cede title to an apartment which he has illegally occupied. In reality, it is Israel which continues to insist that Palestine cede to Israel indisputably Palestinian lands forming part of the meager 22 per cent remnant of historical Palestine which Israel did not conquer until 1967"...

2012-02-01T19:06:00.000-05:00

Words matter: A new language for peace
Israel's propaganda machine carefully chooses its words to assert illegal ownership over Jerusalem and Palestine.
Last Modified: 01 Feb 2012 15:03

Via
The words which people use, often unconsciously, can have a critical impact upon the thoughts and attitudes of those who speak and write, as well as those who listen and read. Dangerously misleading terminology remains a major obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

It is normal practice for parties to a dispute to use terminology which favours them. In this regard, Israel has been spectacularly successful in imposing its terminology not simply on Israeli consciousness and American usage but even on many Arab parties and commentators. It has done so not simply in obvious ways like use of the
terms "terrorism", "security", "Eretz Israel" or "Judea and Samaria" but also in more subtle ways which have had and continue to have a profound negative impact on perceptions of legal realities and other matters of substance.

The current initiative by Palestine to upgrade its status at the United Nations from "observer entity" to member state or, temporarily failing that, "observer state" is commonly referred to, by both supporters and opponents of this initiative, as an effort to "achieve statehood" or "recognition of statehood" through the United Nations. It is nothing of the sort.

The State of Palestine already exists in accordance with the relevant principles of international law. It meets all the conditions for sovereign statehood set forth in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, and more than two-thirds of the 193 member states of the United Nations, including 16 of the world's 20 most populous states, now recognise the State of Palestine as a sovereign state.

The State of Palestine has simply been under the occupation of another state for more than 44 years, as Kuwait was, without ceasing to exist, for seven months two decades ago.

'Ending the occupation'

Palestine's UN initiative seeks to level the legal and diplomatic playing field and, thereby, to enhance the chances of finally negotiating an end to the occupation. The issue and objective are not "achieving statehood" or recognition thereof, which can only be accorded individually by other states, but "ending the occupation". With the expiration on January 26 of a three-month diplomatic "freeze" consented at the request of the Quartet, this last-chance effort to save a "two-state solution", if it can be saved, should resume soon.

In this context, journalists who refer to all or parts of occupied Palestine as "lands which the Palestinians want for their future state" are, consciously or unconsciously, siding with the mostly Western minority which views Palestine as an aspiration rather than as a state under occupation. More shockingly, even some high Palestinian officials still refer thoughtlessly to "our future state". Both under international law and in the eyes of most of the world's other states, Palestine is not a "future state" but an existing state under occupation by another state.

Commentators on all sides speak of Israel's "ceding" territory occupied in 1967 to the Palestinians. The word suggests a transfer of land by its legitimate owner. Unless there are reciprocal exchanges of territory in a final peace agreement, the issue of Israel's "ceding" territory to Palestine does not arise. Israel can withdraw from occupied Palestinian territory, but to "cede" property one must first possess legal title to it.

Israel can no more cede title to occupied Palestinian lands than a squatter can cede title to an apartment which he has illegally occupied. In reality, it is Israel which continues to insist that Palestine cede to Israel indisputably Palestinian lands forming part of the meager 22 per cent remnant of historical Palestine which Israel did not conquer until 1967.

There is also much talk of "concessions" - "painful", "far-reaching" or otherwise - being demanded from Israel. The word suggests the surrender of some legitimate right or position. In fact, while Israel demands numerous concessions from Palestine, Palestine is not seeking any concessions from Israel. What it has long insisted upon is "compliance" - compliance with agreements already signed, compliance with international law and compliance with relevant United Nations resolutions - nothing more and nothing less.

No "concessions", only "compliance"

Compliance is not a concession. It is an obligation, both legally and morally, and it is essential if peace is ever to be achieved.

The Palestinian territories conquered by Israel in 1967 are still frequently referred to as "disputed". They are not. They are "occupied" - and illegally so, since the status of "perpetual belligerent occupation" which Israel has been seeking to impose since 1967 does not exist in international law. While sovereignty over expanded East Jerusalem, which Israel has formally annexed, is explicitly contested, no other state has recognised Israel’s sovereignty claim and Palestinian sovereignty over the Gaza Strip and the rest of the West Bank is, in both literal and legal senses, uncontested.

Israel has never even purported to annex these territories, knowing that doing so would raise awkward questions about the rights (or lack of them) of the indigenous population living there. Jordan renounced all claims to the West Bank in favour of the Palestinians in July 1988. While Egypt administered the Gaza Strip for 19 years, it never asserted sovereignty over it.

Since November 15, 1988, when Palestinian independence and statehood were formally proclaimed, the only state asserting sovereignty over those portions of historical Palestine which Israel occupied in 1967 (aside from expanded East Jerusalem) has been the State of Palestine.

Misleading language has been particularly destructive with respect to Jerusalem. For years, Israeli politicians have repeated like a mantra that "Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli sovereignty". Understandably, Israelis have come to believe that Israel currently possesses sovereignty over Jerusalem. It does not. It possesses only administrative control. While a country can acquire administrative control by force of arms, it can acquire sovereignty (the state-level equivalent of title or ownership) only with the consent of the international community.

Israel does not "possess" Jerusalem

The position of the international community regarding Jerusalem, which the 1947 UN partition plan envisioned as an internationally administered city legally separate from the two contemplated states, is clear and categorical: Israel is in belligerent occupation of East Jerusalem and has only de facto authority over West Jerusalem.

The refusal of the international community (even including the United States) to recognise West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, evidenced by the maintenance of all embassies accredited to Israel in Tel Aviv, vividly demonstrates the refusal of the international community, pending an agreed solution to the status of Jerusalem, to concede that any part of the city is Israel’s sovereign territory.

There can be no question of Israel relinquishing or transferring sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem for the simple reason that Israel currently possesses no such sovereignty. Indeed, the only ways that Israel might ever acquire sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem are by agreeing with Palestine on a fair basis for either sharing or dividing sovereignty over the city (or doing a bit of both) which is recognised as fair and accepted by the international community or by agreeing with the Palestinians to transform all of historical Palestine into a single, fully democratic state with equal rights for all who live there, in which case the Jerusalem conundrum, as well as most of the other perennial roadblocks to peace intrinsic to any potential "two-state solution", would cease to pose any problem.

This legal reality is of fundamental intellectual and psychological importance for Israeli public opinion. There is a world of difference for an Israeli leader between being perceived as the person who achieved Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem for the first time in 2,000 years and being perceived as the person who relinquished some measure of Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem. It could be a life-or-death distinction.

"Justice" in the peace process

One word which has been too rarely used in connection with the "peace process" (and which should be invoked more often) is "justice". For obvious reasons, it is never used by Israeli or American politicians as a component of the "peace" which they envision. Yet a true and lasting "peace", as opposed to a mere temporary cessation of hostilities, is inconceivable unless some measure of justice is both achieved and perceived, by both sides, to have been achieved.

It is high time for all involved to recognise and speak clearly about these fundamental realities. The clarity of thought necessary to achieve either a decent two-state solution or a democratic one-state solution would be greatly enhanced by clarity of language, by taking care to use terminology which both reflects reality and facilitates, rather than hinders, the achievement of both peace and some measure of justice.

Actor Corey Feldman to reveal names of two Hollywood pedophiles that abused him...

2012-01-31T23:48:00.001-05:00

Corey Feldman Will Reveal the Name of Two Hollywood Pedophiles That Abused Him
By VC | January 9th, 2012

Corey Feldman caused quite a stir a few months ago when he revealed that pedophilia was rampant in Hollywood (see the article Actor Corey Feldman Says Pedophilia No. 1 Problem for Child Stars). He now plans to reveal the names of two Hollywood men who abused him while he was a minor in an upcoming tell-all book. Some critics said: “Why doesn’t he go to the police instead of attempting to make money off a book?”. Two answers immediately come to mind: First, I am not convinced that the LAPD will be too cooperative in investigating and arresting highly powerful, highly connected Hollywood handlers. Secondly, I am pretty sure that the statue of limitations has expired, making prosecution invalid today. Finally, these people (and this industry as a whole) need to be exposed to the public. Here’s an article and a video about Feldman.

‘I will reveal the names of TWO Hollywood paedophiles that abused me,’ says Corey Feldman

As a teenage star Corey Feldman starred in some classic movies and became an eighties Hollywood icon.

But on film sets such as The Goonies, Stand By me and The Lost Boys he claims to have been sexually abused by paedophiles.

The Dancing On Ice star admits he was preyed on by many men and he plans to reveal the names of two Hollywood perverts in a tell all book.

The 40-year-old actor explained how at age 14 he was being leached upon and used by men like vultures.

He told The Sun: ‘It was basically me laying there pretending I was asleep and them going about their business.’
Corey, who has been clean of drugs for 20 years, will write a book to chronicle all the abuse that he and other actors endured as children.

He decided it was time to open up about the seedy side of the industry after his Lost Boys co-star Corey Haim, 38, died and an agent was charged with child abuse.

Feldman said that Haim, who died from heart failure and pneumonia, was also sexually abused and the people who did it believe that they are above the law.

He feels Hollywood have used the pair as scapegoats and labelled them drug addicts and has-beens.

Corey said: ‘Even today people say about me, “Eighties heartthrob; hasn’t done anything since.” The truth is I haven’t stopped. Last year I did four films.’Corey and I were pegged as the scapegoats… People need to know the reason Corey and I were swept under the carpet like the beaten dogs that were sent to the pound so no one had to deal with us anymore.’

Feldman first spoke out about his troubled past last year and he believes that is the reason why an anonymous former child actor claimed he had been abused by talent agent Martin Weiss.

He said: ‘I stood up and said there is a bigger problem, that I’d lost Corey and that I didn’t want to see any more kids lost to these sick perverts.’Although Weiss, 47, did not abuse Corey, he is still helping the detective in charge of the case with investigations.

The actor is aware of the danger he is putting himself and his family in by naming those who molested him but after losing his good friend Haim he wants to protect his own son.

"Pig Man #2," a pipeline industry insider, had a good reason to be afraid.He was about to blow the whistle on a fraud, information that could blow away the XL Keystone Pipeline project.His information: The software for the crucial piece of pipeline safety equipment, the "Smart PIG," has a flaw known to the industry but concealed from regulators.The flaw allows cracks, leaks and corrosion to go undetected - and that saves the industry billions of dollars in pipe replacements.But there's a catch.Pipes with cracks and leaks can explode - and kill"...

2012-01-31T23:23:00.000-05:00

The Pig in the XL Pipeline
Insider reveals concealed "error" in pipeline safety equipment that could blow away the GOP's XL pipe dream
For Firedoglake
by Greg Palast

Via
"They threatened me. Last night I got a call and they threatened me. If I talked."

"Pig Man #2," a pipeline industry insider, had a good reason to be afraid. He was about to blow the whistle on a fraud, information that could blow away the XL Keystone Pipeline project.

His information: The software for the crucial piece of pipeline safety equipment, the "Smart PIG," has a flaw known to the industry but concealed from regulators.

The flaw allows cracks, leaks and corrosion to go undetected - and that saves the industry billions of dollars in pipe replacements. But there's a catch. Pipes with cracks and leaks can explode - and kill.

Federal law requires the oil and gas industry to run a PIG, a Pipeline Inspection Gauge, through big oil and gas pipelines. The robot porker, tethered to a GPS, beeps and boops as it rolls through, electronically squealing when it finds dangers.

But whistleblowers told us at Channel 4 Dispatches (the "60 Minutes" of Britain) that the software is deliberately calibrated to ignore or minimize deadly problems. They know because they themselves worked on the software design team.

This week, President Obama refused to issue a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, but invited its owner, Trans-Canada, to re-apply. The GOP has gone wild over Obama's hesitation, screeching that slowing the Canada-to-Houston pipe for a full safety review is a jobs killer.

But it's the Pipeline that's the killer. Here's what Pig Man #2 told me, on camera, his face in shadow:

When his team found the life-threatening flaw in the program, they immediately created a software patch to fix it. But then their supervisor ordered them to bury the fix and conceal the problem.

With the PIG calibrated to the danger sensitivity required by law, oil and gas companies would have to dig up, inspect and replace pipe at a cost of millions per mile. That's not what the oil companies wanted from their contractor that designed the PIG program.

The programmers' bosses took no chances. "We had to sign nondisclosure agreements." They were required to conceal "any problems of this sort or the nature of the software we worked." It could not "be made public at all. Under threat of lawsuit." Nice.

With the error left in place, he said, "People die."

Pig Man #2 was shaking a bit when he said it. On September 9, 2010, a gas pipeline exploded, incinerating 13-year-old Janessa Greig, her mom and six others.

A PIG - an honest PIG - would have caught the bad welds in the old pipe.

Trans-Canada says that Keystone XL won't contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer, the Plains states' crucial water source. Keystone's permit application boasts that we can rely on XL's "full pigging capability."

Sure. Last summer, an ExxonMobil pipeline burst and poisoned parts of the Yellowstone River - only months after it had been "pigged."

The danger of a muzzled PIG goes beyond Keystone XL. New gas fields opened by hydraulic fracking will require over 100,000 miles of new transmission pipe.

This week, Newt Gingrich called Obama's temporary block on the XL Pipeline, "stunningly stupid"; and Mitt Romney said Obama's decision threatened America's "energy independence." (Mitt, the oil is from, uh, Canada.)

But the real question is, can we trust these pigs? And not just the ones in the pipeline.