LinkBlog

Jackson was still gone. My guess is that all of this took place within a period of 10 minutes or less. It felt like hours… days even. My son was gone.

Be that as it may - I would very much rather have an old whore extol the virtues of chastity to me than have mainstream media tell me what is or is not ethical for the simple reason that I expect the former to be far more entertaining than the latter. OK, mainstream media, now that you've heard this little rant - carry on. Keep on doin' Pravda and Der Sturmer proud!

Note: A friend on the Hill made an important point to me by email. Maxine Waters and Ron Paul get almost nothing [from the financial lobby. Sherman, Kucinich, Grayson and Kaptur are some other congress members who have not been bought and paid for]. The story isn’t just that a lot of members are bought and paid for, it’s that some aren’t.

I graduated from the University of Miami with a BS in Broadcast Journalism. In my four years of "higher learning," never once do I recall a professor telling us to be even remotely skeptical of government mouthpieces. Never do I once recall a professor insisting that we do our own research. In fact, everything was about reading AP stories off the wire and re-writing them for our own purposes. It was about using correct grammar... saying "alleged" when appropriate... and meeting deadlines.

But shouldn't "laws" against murder and theft be obeyed? Yes and no. People should refrain from committing theft and murder, but NOT because there are "laws" against them. Theft and murder are wrong because they deprive others of their rights, not because some political windbags sat down and scribbled a "law" about it. In fact, most thefts and murders that occur today are seen as necessary, if not good, because those crimes have been declared "legal" (and are called "taxation" and "war"). So my question for today is, are YOU willing to be a criminal? By that, I'm not asking if you're willing to commit real crimes--the kind with victims--because I hope you're not. I'm asking whether you would ever be willing to do the right thing, even when "authority" tells you to do the wrong thing. If not, please stop pretending to be pro-freedom.

Occasionally someone tells me I'm a "true patriot." I assume they mean it to be nice, but I'm not fond of "patriotism" at all. What I'm loyal to, and what I love, is not about an imaginary line around a piece of dirt, or about people who live inside such a line. It's not about any flag, or any republic "for which it stands." What I care about is humanity, which requires free will, which in turn requires liberty. I don't much care WHERE it happens, or to whom it happens. I don't want freedom any less for the guy in Alberta than I do for the guy in New Mexico, nor do I feel any special connection or bond to one over the other. The trouble is, what most people call "patriotism" is nothing but mindless pack mentality. They "love" what they call their country based purely on the ACCIDENT of where they were born. So, it follows, if they were born in Germany in 1900, they would have ended up as "patriotic" Nazis. What would be good about that?

The six-and-a-half minute video - released on the eighth anniversary of the disaster - opens with news reports and footage of the incident with Sheen's voiceover: "The questions Mr President, the questions." He then runs through the various "unanswered questions" such as World Trade Center workers and rescuers claiming the building imploded after the collision (as if with detonations), sections of the media supposedly reporting the collapse before it actually happened and FBI translator Sibel Edmonds claiming Osama Bin Laden was working for the CIA up until 9/11.

From 1998 - 2007, financial and banking companies "spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists." In 1999, Glass-Steagall was repealed, the landmark 1933 law that curbed speculation and separated commercial from investment banks and insurance companies. In January 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act legitimized swap agreements and other hybrid instruments, at the core of today's problems by preventing regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging, thus letting Wall Street legally pillage and speculate, so they did. The result was a financial coup d'etat "cement(ing) the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders" who choose candidates, control elections, weaken financial regulations, and run the country for their own self-interest. As a result, Washington today is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Wall Street financial giants. What they want, they get, no questions asked.

Child deaths from swine flu were ’shooting up” in the United States, with 19 deaths from influenza reported in recent days, a US health official said Friday. “Nineteen more pediatric deaths for influenza were reported to us this week. We’re now up to 76 children having died from the 2009 H1N1 virus,” said Anne Schuchat, a senior official at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As shown below, the articles fail to meet the Posts’s own published ethical standards for journalism such as the requirements of intellectual honesty, to present all sides, to be fair and even-handed, and to avoid loaded phrasing. None of the authors has attempted to present any facts or a reasoned analysis for their dismissal of these citizens. They instead have all stooped to ad hominem attacks, displaying a striking and perplexing lack of curiosity as to why a new investigation is supported by 45% of American citizens (2006 Zogby poll). Thus, the overall tone of each piece is that of propaganda and not news or journalism.

The Official Version of 9/11 goes something like this... Directed by a beardy-guy from a cave in Afghanistan, nineteen hard-drinking, coke-snorting, devout Muslims enjoy lap dances before their mission to meet Allah... Using nothing more than craft knifes, they overpower cabin crew, passengers and pilots on four planes... And hangover or not, they manage to give the world's most sophisticated air defense system the slip... Unphased by leaving their “How to Fly a Passenger Jet” guide in the car at the airport, they master the controls in no-time and score direct hits on two towers, causing THREE to collapse completely... Our masterminds even manage to overpower the odd law of physics or two... and the world watches in awe as steel-framed buildings fall symmetrically - through their own mass - at free-fall speed, for the first time in history. Despite all their dastardly cunning, they stupidly give their identity away by using explosion-proof passports, which survive the fireball undamaged and fall to the ground... only to be discovered by the incredible crime-fighting sleuths at the FBI... …Meanwhile down in Washington... Hani Hanjour, having previously flunked 2-man Cessna flying school, gets carried away with all the success of the day and suddenly finds incredible abilities behind the controls of a Boeing... Instead of flying straight down into the large roof area of the Pentagon, he decides to show off a little... Executing an incredible 270 degree downward spiral, he levels off to hit the low facade of the world's most heavily defended building... ...all without a single shot being fired.... or ruining the nicely mowed lawn... and all at a speed just too fast to capture on video...

By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary - based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids. Mrs. Norris testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime this summer. The hearing's topic: the rapid and dangerous expansion of federal criminal law, an expansion that is often unprincipled and highly partisan. Chairman Robert C. Scott, Virginia Democrat, and ranking member Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, conducted a truly bipartisan hearing (a D.C. rarity this year). These two leaders have begun giving voice to the increasing number of experts who worry about "overcriminalization." Astronomical numbers of federal criminal laws lack specifics, can apply to almost anyone and fail to protect innocents by requiring substantial proof that an accused person acted with actual criminal intent.

In their complaint in Maricopa County Court, Anthony and Lesley Arambula say an armed intruder "crashed through the front window" of their home on Sept. 17, 2008 and ran into one of their son's bedrooms. Anthony, worried about his son who was still in his bedroom, says he "held the intruder calmly at gunpoint" and called 911. Phoenix Police officers already in the neighborhood heard the crash of the Arambulas' window. When they approached the house, Lesley says, she told Sgt. Sean Coutts that her husband was inside holding the intruder at gunpoint. Lesley says Coutts failed to pass on that information to the two other officers. Inside the house, the Arambulas say, Officer Brian Lilly shot Anthony six times in the back while he was still on the phone with the 911 operator - twice when he was on the ground. The officers ran into the bedroom after Anthony told them, "You just killed ... you just killed the homeowner. The bad guy is in there." The complaint states that Officer Lilly "admitted that it was only after Tony was laying, bullet-ridden, on the ground that he assessed the situation. The 911 tape continued to record what happened even after Officer Lilly unloaded his weapon into Tony, including Officer Lilly's post-shooting, one-word 'assessment': 'Fuck.' "Tony believed he was going to die; the 911 tape records his plaintive goodbye to his family: '... I love you ... I love you.' Then Tony made what he believed was a dying request to the officers; he did not want his young family to see him shot and bloodied. Officers callously ignored his request and painfully dragged Tony by his injured leg, through the home and out to his backyard patio, where they left him bloodied and shot right in front of Lesley, Matthew and Zachary."

To the many excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty — it’s immoral, does not deter murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets.

Oh, propaganda... I see, Mr Caroll. And of course all the many statements the government has made on the subject through its many mouthpieces have been all unadulterated truth, the whole truth and nothing but... Even when those statements happened to contradict each other. Even when they were later declared to be false, by none other than the very people whose job it was to come up with the governments official interpretation of the events... Yes, Mr Caroll, I mean the members of the 9/11 Commission.

This is a professional grade documentary examining the many aspects of 9/11 the US government and mainstream media have chosen to ignore, distort or conceal. Highly recommended.

I'm sending you a few selections from the cover story in the recent New Statesman. Check out # 41. This is rather amazing: Even though it's a backhanded compliment, it is QUITE a compliment to me and the 9/11 Truth Movement. This famous left-wing British magazine does, to be sure, say that we are "pernicious," but it seems to think that we are quite significant, being one of the 50 most important groups in the world at this time. My only regret is the number 41 position: I always hated it in the 1980s when little old ladies would tell me that I looked "just like George Bush. (For those of you in other countries, "41" is the short-hand reference for George H.W. Bush, our 41st president.) Seriously, this appraisal of our importance suggests to me that we need to keep doing what we've been doing (albeit perhaps with some new methods), building up both the percentage of the population that rejects the official story and also the credibility of our movement's public face by means of books, articles, public lectures, DVDs, professional 9/11 groups (3 more, incidentally, are about ready to go public), films, and, when possible, lawsuits (one or two may get going soon), and authorized investigations (such as NYC CAN may succeed in getting). I have just been re-reading about the American war in Vietnam in preparation for writing something about the similarities between it and our war in Afghanistan. The anti-war movement got going in earnest in 1965, and yet the U.S. did not pull out of Vietnam until 8 long years later, in 1973. During that time, the White House tried to pretend that it was indifferent to the anti-war movement, although in reality it spent much of its time trying to decide how to deal with it (see John Prados, "Vietnam"). We don't have the big marches and hence TV coverage that the anti-Vietnam-war movement generated. But we may, in our own way (dealing with a quite different type of problem), be causing similar concerns.

The swine flu virus of 2009 appeared suddenly and without warning, and evaded all routine flu surveillance and quarantine. This flu is not like other flu viruses seen in the past. It is a triple-reassortant flu virus. Examination of the longer phylogenetic branch length compared to its nearest genetic neighbors indicates that the appearance of this novel H1N1 swine flu virus of 2009 is unlikely to be a recent event. [Virus Genes, early online, August 20, 2009] But this would mean it had to be in circulation for many years, for which there is no evidence. However, a long development period assumes natural variation and gene mutation rates, not mutations induced by artificial means, or the actual creation of this virus in a laboratory and subsequent instillation into human populations. Six of this flu virus’ genes came from a "triple-reassortant" influenza virus (or viruses). * These viruses were found in North American pigs more than a decade ago, then completely disappeared, and have never been found in Europe. The other two genes came from Eurasian "avian-like" viruses common in Europe for longer, but never found in North America. However, both groups of H1N1 viruses have been found recently in pigs in southeast Asia. Movement of live pigs between Eurasia and North America may have facilitated mixing of diverse swine influenzas, leading to the multiple reassortant events. This goes unquestioned. But there is a strong reason to think the possibility of swine-to-human transmission is a misdirection. While pigs are exported from one country to another, they are exported from North America to Asia, not the other way around. Strict quarantine measures are employed when pigs are exported so as not to contaminate an existing herd with disease. Usually imported pigs are kept in quarantine, away from a larger herd, for a period of two weeks. If an imported herd brought a suspect gene sequence with it, it would have had to somehow evade quarantine measures. The development of this virus would require at least two trans-continental trips to get together in one place, and hence this theory requires at least two quarantine failures, probably three say Drs. Gibbs and Downie. This is not likely. None of the genes found in this swine influenza had been in current circulation. The NA (nearuaminidase) gene had not been identified in samples for 17 years before it reappeared in early 2009, and the others, including the MP gene, for around 11 years. Drs. Gibbs and Downie say this suggests the virus emanated from a swine herd vaccine. Or it could have emanated from an accidental release from an infected human working at a vaccine plant, or it was intentionally induced into human populations in Mexico.

G20 security officials took responsibility Friday afternoon for a video that seemed to depict US troops ‘kidnapping’ a protester. The military was not involved in the incident, but G20 security did acknowledge that “law enforcement officers from a multi-agency tactical response team” had detained a protester they said was believed to be vandalizing a store. Video posted at YouTube shows onlookers calling out “what the fuck” and “what the fuck is wrong with you?” as people in camo uniforms haul a protester along by his collar, shove him into the back seat of a car, and rapidly drive off.

On a larger scale, I hope the March For Answers generates a referendum for America in the next voting cycle. 9/11 occurred first in New York City, but it obviously was, or made to appear to be, an attack on America. So let New York direct America into the awareness it deserves as to what really happened on that day, first by a new investigation in New York City, which could lead to a new, impartial, commission -- one whose members are not all directly connected to George Bush, his administration, the military, oil interests, and the usual band of bandits.