Charlie Rangel Must Die To Purge Congress Of Sin
Charles Rangel must die, politically that is. He has become an embarrassment to a House Speaker who vowed to “clean the swamp” of Congressional corruption. It took him 80 years but Harlem’s war-hero turned Congressional elder, Charles Rangel, is this week’s media poster boy for all the ills of an institutionally corrupt system.
He must be purged so that honesty can be seen to prevail in an institution that only enjoys a 22% approval rating. Oh, the damage he’s done to the “reputation” of the House. How dare him lie on his rental application–a crime, which if enforced widely—would indict half of his fellow New Yorkers. And never mind, no one is talking of indicting his landlord who winked at the transgression. Remember, wherever there are takers, there are also givers.
So, Charlie must die. He had stuffed his Merc in the wrong parking lot. He has violated every sense of propriety…
Katie Couric Gets ‘Tapped’ – The Bottled Water Debate
Is bottled water bad for the environment? Katie Couric talks to Stephanie Soechtig, director of the disinformation documentary Tapped, and Joe Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Association.
Google & CIA Invest Together To Predict The Future
Noah Schachtman reveals yet another confluence of public and private intelligence gathering, for Wired:
The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down…
Inception: Lucid Dreaming Goes Mainstream
I just went to see the biggest movie in America, Warner Bros.’ Leonardo DiCaprio summer smash, Inception. Surprisingly it really revived, for me at least, the notion that Hollywood can still make truly interesting, challenging films — one of the first since The Matrix. Lucid Dreaming is generally relegated to New Age backwaters with most people probably unaware even of the term, let alone what it refers to, but director Christopher “Batman” Nolan has changed that in no uncertain terms.
Robert Waggoner, author of the book Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, has written an excellent analysis of the movie for Reality Sandwich:
Inception raises many fascinating questions that experienced lucid dreamers (those who become consciously aware of dreaming while in the dream state) have wrestled with for decades:
- If you become consciously aware of dreaming, can you lucidly enter another’s dream, or bring them into your dream?
- If they share unknown information with you,…
Graham Hancock: Entangled
Graham Hancock, an international bestselling author, has sold over five million copies of his books worldwide. The books have been translated into twenty-seven different languages. Hancock has hosted two television series, Quest For The Lost Civilization for Channel 4 in the UK, and Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Ace for The Learning Channel in the US.
Scottish born, Hancock graduated from Durham University in 1973, with First Class Honors in Sociology. His writing career began as a journalist for several English newspapers (The Independent, The Times, The Guardian, etc) as well as co-editor for New Internationalist magazine. Hancock’s shift to books began in the early eighties with travel based books such as Journey Through Pakistan, Under Ethiopian Skies, Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger, and AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic.
Hancock began writing non-fiction books a decade later, focusing on lost civilizations and ancient myths. Within fifteen years he wrote eight books: The Sign and The Seal,…
Grave Mistake at Arlington National Cemetery Could Be Over 6,000
The most disciplined organization in our government seems to have the least organized cemetery. With more and more records being lost or found incorrect, and graves left without tombstones, the number of burial errors has risen from hundreds to thousands at Arlington National Cemetery. The Associated Press reports:
Estimates of the number of graves that might be affected by mix-ups at Arlington National Cemetery grew from hundreds to as many as 6,600 on Thursday, as the cemetery’s former superintendent blamed his staff and a lack of resources for the scandal that forced his ouster.
John Metzler, who ran the historic military burial ground for 19 years, said he accepts “full responsibility” for the problems.
But he also denied some of the findings by Army investigators and suggested cemetery employees and poor technology were to blame for remains that may have been misidentified or misplaced. He said the system used to track grave sites relied…
Russian Court Bans YouTube Website
Russia joins the company of Turkey, China, Pakistan and Iran, in banning YouTube. After an “extremist” nationalist video appeared on the website, a Russian court ordered YouTube to be blocked within the Khabarovsk region. The Guardian reports:
Russia’s blogosphere reacted with anger today after a regional court banned YouTube because it carried a single video containing “extremist” content.
The court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in Khabarovsk region in the Russian far east ordered Rosnet, a local internet provider, to block YouTube as well as three online libraries and a website that archives deleted web pages.
The regional ban was made because YouTube hosted Russia For Russians, an ultra-nationalist video which was added to the justice ministry’s federal list of banned extremist materials after a separate court decision in Samara region in November.
The other four sites – Web.archives.org, Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru – all carried copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Anton Nosik, Russia’s leading internet guru, condemned the…
U.S. Army Report: Crime, Prescription Drug Use Makes Soldiers ‘More Dangerous Than the Enemy’
The content of the report is not as shocking as its source: the U.S. Army itself. ABC News investigates:
After nine years of war, the U.S. Army is showing signs of stress because of repeated deployments and inadequate support for soldiers when they return, according to a blunt internal report released today. It blasts the Army’s leadership for failing to recognize the problem.
The figures in recent years are staggering.
The number of soldiers committing suicide has increased since 2004, surpassing civilian rates in 2008. Use of prescription drugs has tripled in the past five years; prescription amphetamines use has doubled between 2006 and 2009. One third of soldiers take at least one prescription drug and 14 percent of soldiers are on some form of powerful painkiller.
Crime is rising every year as well. Each year has seen an increase of 5,000 misdemeanors over the previous year, meaning soldiers are expected to commit around 55,000…
A Free Buffet To Beat Whole Foods
The LA Times profiles Christopher Nyerges, founder of the School of Self-Reliance and an expert on how to survive on food he finds in the urban wild:
Nyerges, who has been teaching for more than 30 years, says that it isn’t uncommon for hard-core survivalists to take his class, as well as people with end-of-the-world-related fears. “There have been individuals who have been seriously upset about things over the years. During Y2K they were petrified; now I get a lot of that with the 2012 baloney,” he says, referring to what some believe is the Mayan calendar’s end date.
“I tell people that society is not going to change, only the individual can change and that’s the source of calm that comes from true self-reliance,” he continues. “I’m convinced I will never go hungry, I’ll never be homeless, I’ll never be broke…
Justice Department Investigates FBI Agents Cheating on Exams
Oh the irony! Agents being investigated because of the lack of surveillance while they cheated on a surveillance test. It seems the SATs are harder to cheat on than an FBI exam. Associated Press has the story:
FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that he does not know how many of his agents cheated on an important exam on the bureau’s policies, an embarrassing revelation that raises questions about whether the FBI knows its own rules for conducting surveillance on Americans.
The Justice Department inspector general is investigating whether hundreds of agents cheated on the test. Some took the open-book test together, violating rules that they take it alone. Others finished the lengthy exam unusually quickly, current and former officials said.
The test was supposed to ensure that FBI agents understand new rules allowing them to conduct surveillance and open files on Americans without evidence of criminal wrongdoing. If agents can’t pass…
Beepers to Protect Children From Sexual Predators
South Korea has taken steps toward keeping their children safe from sexual predators. Each child was given a beeper with a GPS device installed. After atrocious attacks on minors, the government has decided to equip children with these beepers in order to warn police of any danger. The beepers will also activate surveillance cameras. An interesting use of technology as police protection, but how do you remind your child to remember his/her rape beeper every morning? The Himalayan Times reports:
Some 1,200 elementary school children in Anyang City, south of Seoul, will receive the beepers in a test run from October.
Authorities will then consider adopting the system nationwide, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security said.
Each child will be able to use their matchbox-sized beeper, fitted with GPS (global positioning device) technology, to activate any nearby cameras and alert parents and police via mobile phone.
The government has strengthened monitoring of elementary schools…
The Year America Dissolved
Paul Craig Roberts, an economist who served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, puts to pen the vision of Alex Jones and the Infowars camp (see Alex’s video monologue below too) for a Mad Max type of collapsed society:
It was 2017. Clans were governing America.
Clans organized around families and individuals who possessed stocks of food, bullion, guns and ammunition.
The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.
As society broke down, the police became warlords…
Alan Moore’s ‘Unearthing’
Leave it to Alan Moore, subject of the disinformation documentary The Mindscape of Alan Moore, to go against the grain with his latest project, a tribute of sorts to another British comics pioneer, the unrelated Steve Moore. David Itzkoff interviewed Moore for the New York Times:
Typically, the appearance of Alan Moore’s name on a comic book has been a harbinger of heady, consequential writing inside: a promise of mighty champions empowered through mystical or superscientific methods and whose conflicts would challenge the reader’s perceptions of heroism and humanity.
So perhaps the first indication that “Unearthing,” a new work by Mr. Moore, is not typical of his pioneering graphic novels, like “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta,” is that its subject is not a costumed adventurer, but a friend and fellow comics writer named Steve Moore, who inspired him to enter the business.
The second sign is that “Unearthing” is not a comic book at all, but a lengthy spoken-word recording accompanied by an atmospheric musical soundtrack and a book of photographs…
Baby Chaps: Eco-Friendly Diaper-less Baby Clothes
Source: Passed Ports blog
From the Passed Ports blog:
All over China little babies and toddlers are running around with their bums hanging out. It’s kind of hilarious. From Lhasa to Chengdu to Beijing, many people simply don’t use diapers at all. But, if you put an untrained, diaperless kid in regular clothes, there’s going to be a mess. So the solution? Tiny baby crotchless chaps.
The littlest babies have a one-sie version: imagine a long bib, with strings that tie around the waist, and strings hanging down from the bottom corners which tie around the thighs. From the back it’s nothing but strings. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of these.
It is socially acceptable for babies and toddlers then just do their business whenever/wherever they need to, so long as they are outside. However there comes a point when it is not so cute. Some might argue that when kids achieve a certain…
BP Fakes Cleanup Effort Photos
Apparently BP is about as good at Photoshop as they are at keeping oil out of the ocean. Observers have noted that some of the response effort photos on BP’s web site seem a bit faked. For instance, the below shot of their crisis command center:
Dr. Deepak Sarma and the History of Hinduism on The Black Fridays
The Black Fridays Bonus Episode 27 — Dr. Deepak Sarma
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The Black Fridays welcomes Dr. Deepak Sarma this week for a discussion on the nature of faith, the Hindu faith, and Hindu interpetations of paranormal phenomena. A fascinating discussion that I am sure you will enjoy. Dr. Sarma is a Professor or Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University. Sarma earned his M.A. in religious studies and his Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from the University of Chicago. He has a B.A. in religious studies from Reed College in Portland, Ore.
Oakland Approves Large-Scale Marijuana Farms
The City Council has signed off on a plan making Oakland the first American city authorize large-scale industrial pot farms. Is this the first step in the McDonald’s-ization of marijuana? Associated Press reports:
The city intends to license four production plants where marijuana would be grown, packaged and processed for medical use.
Under the plan, which would take effect in January, license recipients would be heavily taxed and regulated. They would have to pay the city $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million in liability insurance and be prepared to devote up to 8 percent of gross sales to taxes.
The measure also would require bidders to meet certain labor, environmental and product safety standards. However, there would be no size restrictions on the facilities.
Catch 22 For Right Wing Conservatives: Support Climate Change Actions Or Suffer Mass Immigration From Mexico
You have to love the irony of this: right-wing conservatives in America tend towards the climate change denial camp and refuse to support measures to combat global warming, yet a new report suggests that if we don’t arrest the warming trend, there will be unprecedented mass migration from Mexico into the U.S. — another issue that drives this crowd crazy. Reported in the Los Angeles Times:
Climbing temperatures are expected to raise sea levels and increase droughts, floods, heat waves and wildfires.
Now, scientists are predicting another consequence of climate change: mass migration to the United States.
Between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate to the U.S. by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico, according to a study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The number could amount to 10% of the current population of Mexicans ages 15 to…
The Tea Party is Perverted and Irrelevant
Photo: HKDP (CC)
Matt Taibbi mouths off in the wake of the Shirley Sherrod affair, at Rolling Stone:
“You don’t get control of the White House and two governors and the Justice Department, and then start arguing with people carrying signs.” – Al Sharpton
Years ago a friend of mine in the media told me a story about an experience he had covering the execution of John Wayne Gacy in Joliet, Illinois. You won’t find anyone in the world who’d have been sad to see serial child murderer in a clown suit like Gacy die, but this reporter friend of mine said the crowd outside the prison on execution night freaked him out almost as much as Gacy had. There were something like 400 people outside the gates at Joliet and there were people selling commemorative t-shirts and pounding beers and chanting (“Kill the Clown!” was a popular one) all night.
At the moment of…
U.S. ‘Fails To Account’ For Iraq Reconstruction Billions
From BBC News:
A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the US Department of Defence is unable to account properly for 96% of the money. Out of just over $9bn (£5.8bn), $8.7bn is unaccounted for, the inspector says.
The US military said the funds were not necessarily missing, but that spending records might have been archived. In a response attached to the report, it said attempting to account for the money might require “significant archival retrieval efforts”.
Reconstruction money
The funds are separate from the $53bn allocated by the US Congress for rebuilding Iraq.
Much of the money came from the sale of Iraqi oil and gas, and some frozen Saddam Hussein-era assets were also sold off.
The money was in a special fund administered by the US Department of Defense, the…
Philip Coppens on The Black Fridays
The Black Fridays Episode 26 — Philip Coppens
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We welcome Philip Coppens to The Black Fridays! Philip was recently featured on the History Channel Special “Ancient Aliens,” and we will of course discuss his views on the UFO topic. We also cover The Island of Iona, as well as Chartres Cathedral and its mysteries. An awesome conversation with a well rounded researcher and author. We cover everything from Bernard of Clairvaux to Terence Mckenna!
Al Franken, Senator, On Dangers Of Corporate Control Of Media (Video)
Sen. Al Franken (D.-Minn.) told more than 2,000 bloggers and organizers attending the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas on July 24, 2010, that our media system is at risk everywhere we turn – from our free speech online to the growing power of companies who own a massive number of media outlets.
Time Travel Theory Avoids Grandfather Paradox
From Physorg.com:
The possibility of going back in time only to kill your ancestors and prevent your own birth has posed a serious problem for potential time travelers, not even considering the technical details of building a time machine. But a new theory proposed by physicists at MIT suggests that this grandfather paradox could be avoided by using quantum teleportation and “post-selecting” what a time traveler could and could not do. So while murdering one’s relatives is unfortunately possible in the present time, such actions would be strictly forbidden if you were to try them during a trip to the past.
The model of time travel proposed by Seth Lloyd, et al., in a recent paper at arXiv.org arises from their investigation of the quantum mechanics of closed timelike curves (CTCs) and search for a theory of gravity. In simple terms, a CTC is a path of spacetime that returns to its starting…
The Five Biggest Revelations of The Wikileaks Documents
By Max Fisher for The Atlantic Wire::
Six years’ worth of secret U.S. documents relating to the war in Afghanistan have been released by Wikileaks, an Iceland-based website that collects and distributes such information. Some news organizations were given the tens of thousands of documents several weeks early so that they could sift through the files and prepare their coverage. The revelations are sure to spark wide debate about the U.S. role in Afghanistan and the nature of the ongoing war. Here are what currently appear to be the five biggest things we’ve learned so far.
- Pakistani Intelligence Possibly Aiding Taliban. The New York Times reports, “Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of…
Uranium Is Getting Some Glowing Reviews On Amazon
By MG Siegler at TechCrunch:
Did you know you can buy uranium ore on Amazon? Well you can. It’s actually been on sale for a while — BoingBoing pointed it out back in 2007. But talk of it has recently started popping up around the Internet once again this past week. Our sister site CrunchGear did a quick post pointing it out last week. Since then, a whole new batch of great customer reviews have been flowing in, as Amazon CTO Werner Vogels points out today.
Some of the negative reviews note that uranium is “bad for you.” …
“Who Framed Yigal Amir?” With Barry Chamish
Co-hosts Ashnfara Judy and Tyler Bass return to discuss with journalist Barry Chamish the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Barry Chamish has concluded that the official story of the assassination, in which the prime minister was gunned down by Yigal Amir, is utterly impossible, and that in fact Rabin’s own bodyguards caused the undoing of the Israeli leader’s life. In “Who Framed Yigal Amir?”, They Radio will delve into the forensics, the motives and the covert murderers, Chamish says, had everything to gain at Rabin’s ultimate loss.
From the latest episode of They on Blog Talk Radio.
The Decline Of The U.S. As A World Power
James Kanata starts off his essay the way every article here should: by citing Robert Anton Wilson! From Helium:
Robert Anton Wilson was perhaps the first to popularize the observation that during the history of human civilization, power and money has always moved west. From the beginnings of civility in Sumer to modern day China, there has always been a westward flow of technology, money, power and manufacturing capacity. In the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, we witnessed the flow of influence from the Vatican to Britain, an empire on which it was said that the sun never set. As Britain’s power waned in the early 20th century, so the flow moved westwards to America. Now in the 21st century we have witnessed a further flow westwards towards East Asia. While America still holds most of the cards as the world’s richest economy, the focal point of industry and manufacture has…
Unemployment Is Worse Than We Know, The Recovery Challenge Harder Than We Think
As we move into the dog days of summer, and a coming Congressional recess, the Obama Administration has shifted its focus back on to the economy and wants to convince one and all that an economic recovery is just around the corner.
In recent speeches, the President warns that the Republicans, if they take over, will support policies that will usher in a new recession, as if the current recession is over. “They are the same policies, “ he said, ”that led us into this recession. They will take us backward at a time when we need to keep America moving forward.”
He wants to push “distractions” like the Shirley Sherrod affair and the BP spill out of media view so we can all get back to the economy.
Wake me up when reality intrudes into a “debate” that is flawed on all sides.
The “signs” of recovery, so breathlessly trumpeted by the politicians…
Barry Cooper’s Marijuana Legalization Odyssey
Barry Cooper, star of the disinformation DVD Never Get Busted Again sent us this message:
The Odessa American just reported on our Hollywood movie deal and the 40 million dollar lawsuit we just filed. The lawsuit and movie are all a part of our vision that we have maintained since releasing Never Get Busted four years ago. Our vision is to release our drug war prisoners and end the arrests of non-violent Americans. There is a real battle for freedom taking place in our case so be sure and blog your comments.
Here’s the Odessa American article:
Barry Cooper’s conversion from dogged narcotics agent to outspoken pot advocate may seem stranger than fiction.
But Cooper’s story — including his no-holds-barred, if sometimes quixotic quest to unearth police corruption in the Lone Star State — could be headed for the big screen.
Given Cooper’s penchant for attention, it’s perhaps no surprise that he announced his newly inked movie deal…
