Archive for July, 2010
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!
You Have The Right To Photograph Federal Buildings – So Long As You Don’t Actually Try It
One of Matt Urick's photos
Why do we put up with this kind of police state nonsense? Good to see Washington’s mainstream newspaper, the Post, highlighting the issue:
A few weeks ago, on his way to work, Matt Urick stopped to snap a few pictures of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s headquarters. He thought the building was ugly but might make for an interesting photo. The uniformed officer who ran up to him didn’t agree. He told Urick he was not allowed to photograph federal buildings.
Urick wanted to tell the guard that there are pictures of the building on HUD’s Web site, that every angle of the building is visible in street views on Google Maps and that he was merely an amateur photographer, not a threat. But Urick kept all this to himself.
“A lot of these guys have guns and are enforcing laws they obviously don’t understand, and…
Oliver Stone Infuriates The Jewish Media
When will the media learn that certain moviemakers are habitual gadflies who can’t resist winding up journalists with some timely, controversial statements that will afford them way more publicity than the craziest Hollywood marketing budget could dream of? Oliver Stone, whose 10-hour television documentary “A Secret History of America” will air this year on Showtime, chose the British Sunday Times to launch his latest assault. The Times is a Murdoch rag that’s placed its content behind a pay wall. The National Post grabbed this excerpt:
The 10-part documentary [which Stone is planning] will address Stalin and Hitler “in context”, he says. “Hitler was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support.”
He also seeks to put his atrocities in proportion: “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30m.”
Why such a focus on the Holocaust…
Beer With Highest Alcohol Percentage Sold In Road Kill Taxidermy
It’s understandable that the strongest beer ever made would be sold-out within a few hours, but what’s with the road kill? Brewdog released The End of History as part of their experimental, highly-alcoholic, beers. With an alcohol content equivalent to liquor, the beer is eclectically unique with its own beer cozy. The Telegraph details:
The stunt has been condemned by animal rights groups as “cheap marketing tactics”.
Twelve bottles of The End Of History ale have been made and placed inside seven dead stoats, four squirrels and one hare.
And at 55 per cent volume, its makers claim it is the world’s strongest beer.
A taxidermist in Doncaster worked on the animals, which were not killed for bottling the new drink, with some having been killed on the roads.
Outfits featured on some of the animals include a kilt and a top hat.
BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, created the ale, which is stronger than whisky and vodka.
The brewer recommend…
First Full Face Transplant Patient Reveals Success of Operation
Although this sounds like the plot of Face/Off, the success of this operation is a medical breakthrough. The Vall D’Hebron hospital in Barcelona which conduction the surgery on “Oscar” had thirty experts working the 24-hour operation working to replace his lost jaw, nose and other features. Metal plates were used to support facial structure including the reconstructing of the roof of his mouth. While his facial features are constructed at healed, “Oscar” will continue to improve his speech through therapy. BBC reports:
The 31-year-old thanked his donor’s family and the medics that gave him a new face in March at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona.
A shooting accident meant his entire facial skin and muscles – including nose and lips – needed replacing.
Doctors say he can expect to regain up to 90% of his facial functions. He had been left unable to breathe, swallow, or talk properly after an accident five years ago. Now the man, identified only as Oscar, still struggles to speak with clarity and will need months of physical therapy.
He told the news conference: “Friends, I want to thank the hospital coordinators, the entire medical team, the family of the donor and most of all my family who are supporting me these days.”
Oscar was considered for a full face transplant after nine previous operations failed.
A team of 30 experts carried out the 24-hour long operation on 20 March at the hospital in Barcelona. Led by Dr JP Barret, the team transplanted muscles, nose, lips, maxilla, palate, all teeth, cheekbones, and the mandible by means of plastic surgery and micro-neurovascular reconstructive surgery techniques.
It was the first full face transplant performed worldwide, as the 10 operations performed previously had been only partial. The first successful face transplant was performed in France in 2005 on Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old woman who had been mauled by her dog.
All Hell Will Break Loose – Today!
Well that’s what astrologer-cum-stockpicker Arch Crawford claims anyway, reported by Peter Brimelow at MarketWatch:
Crawford predicts “ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE”–beginning, as a matter of fact, on Monday July 26, 2010.
…the opening of Crawford’s July issue [of his newsletter, Crawford Perspectives] is definitely the sort of thing that upsets people: “NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE JULY! We mean, of course, the planetary pictures in the sky which are developing towards the tightest harmonic alignments in the most potent areas of the zodiacal circle ever recorded in Earth’s written history. These portend increasing and maximizing intensity and rapidity of ‘change’ on every level of existence: mineral, vegetable, animal, human and spirit. Will Capitalism survive? Will Democracy survive? Will our markets survive? Will governments survive? Will humanity survive? Will Earth survive?
“We don’t know, but we’ll be SHORT for it!”
Crawford–along with other astrologers, who however are merely worried about nuclear war, the end of the world…
American Banks Laundering Hundreds Of Billions Dollars For Mexican Drug Cartels
Who are the Mexican drug cartels’ biggest allies north of the border? Major banks such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, who blatantly break U.S. anti-money-laundering laws by laundering hundreds of billions of dollars for the cartels, Bloomberg reports. That’s a pretty huge “stimulus package” our banks are getting from Mexican drug traffickers:
Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history — a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.
“It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,” says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from…
Video Of Swedish $5 Million Bank Heist
Authorities in Sweden have released this video of a bank heist which occurred last September, now that several of the thieves are set to go on trial. This seems like something that should happen only in movies: the outlaws helicoptered onto the roof, broke through the ceiling and were out in minutes with $5 million in Swedish kronar. It’s hard not to applaud their efforts, just a little bit.
Small Steps On The Economy Are Not Enough
When the extension of unemployment benefits squeaked through the Senate, there was a sigh of relief among those in need, and cheers from Democrats who have not been able to move the unemployment needle or restore confidence in the economy.
Putting money in the hands of wannabe consumers will create some bounce, but it doesn’t deal with the deep structural and systemic problems that worry economists and governments worldwide.
What they see are 800 insolvent banks, industries shrinking, state and local governments on the verge of bankruptcy and escalating debt. They see China rising and the West sinking. What do you see?…
UK Gives EU ‘Big Brother’ Powers To Spy On Britons
Just when we thought the UK government was going to reverse some of its aggressive nanny-state surveillance laws, it appears that instead they are passing the baton to European Union police forces, as reported in the Daily Mail:
Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.
Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons.
They will be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples.
Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers.
The move will spark a damaging row with backbench Tory MPs opposed to giving such draconian powers to Brussels.
The Tories were opposed to the directive in opposition, saying it showed a ‘relish for surveillance and…
Does Language Shape Culture?
New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world. Lera Boroditsky reports for the Wall Street Journal:
Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?
Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.
In Russian, you would have to mark tense and also gender, changing the verb if Mrs. Dumpty did the sitting. You would also have to decide if the sitting event was completed or not. If our ovoid hero sat on the…
Pentagon Workers Found To Have Downloaded Child Pornography
Ewen MacAskill writes for the Guardian:
Dozens of Pentagon staff and contractors with high-level security clearance have been found by US federal investigators to have downloaded child pornography.
A spokesman said the defence department takes such matters seriously but would not comment on specific cases.
The Pentagon concern is not just that crimes have been committed, though that alone would be grounds for dismissal, but that it makes those involved security risks.
One of those charged was a contractor who had security clearance at the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on communications worldwide. He fled the US and is thought to be hiding in Libya.
Details about links between the Pentagon and child pornography were disclosed yesterday in the Boston Globe.
The paper quotes an internal report from the defence criminal investigative service in 2009 which says that though the number found to be involved is small compared with the number employed by the defence department…
Cancer Rate in Fallujah Worse than Hiroshima
You can’t drop massive amounts of depleted uranium on a nation without causing severe radiation poisoning. It’s one of the worst legacies of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and criminally under-reported by the embedded media. The fallout is starting to be noticed now, however, as reported by the Centre for Global Research:
The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.
According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.
The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence of these conditions in Fallujah…
Wikileaks And The Afghanistan War Logs
All hail Wikileaks and the Internet for giving us a glimpse of what’s really happening in the can’t-win war. The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel have published a huge cache of secret military files from the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, detailing the war in Afghanistan. Here’s a summary from the Guardian of what is still a breaking story, so expect more to come:
• The whistleblowing website Wikileaks has today published more than 90,000 secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan.
• Key disclosures relate to the relationship of the Pakistani intelligence service with the Taliban and how the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.
• The White House said Wikileaks was “irresponsible” for publishing the leaked documents, accusing the website of putting the lives of troops in danger…
[full investigation from the Guardian here]
Alex Jones Goes ‘On the Edge’ With Max Keiser
From MaxKeiser.com, On the Edge from Friday, July 23rd with Alex Jones to talk about the surveillance state now being reported in MSM:
Blogetery And The FBI’s War On Terror
Greg Sandoval writes for CNET News:
The U.S. war on terror may have inadvertently stripped as many as 70,000 people of their blogs, but those bloggers may get their work returned to them.
Blogetery.com, a small blogging platform based in Toronto, was abruptly shut down on July 9 by Burst.net, its Web host, after FBI agents alleged Blogetery was home to links that led to bomb-making tips and the names of Americans targeted for assassination by al-Qaeda. Joe Marr, Burst.net’s chief technology officer, said Wednesday that the company is considering its options and there’s a chance executives there could hand over a copy of most of the information found on Blogetery’s server–it won’t be returning anything created by al-Qaeda. That means the service’s users could see their blogs again. What they won’t see is Burst.net hosting Blogetery in the future, said Marr. That relationship is severed.
After the FBI requested information about Blogetery, Scranton,…
BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle
The Democracy Now! summary of Abe Louise Young’s article in The Nation:
The Nation magazine has revealed new details about how BP is receiving tax credits by relying on cheap or free prison labor to help clean up the Gulf spill. BP’s reliance on prison labor has been criticized by many in the region since the disaster has left so many people out of work. But the hiring of prison labor has apparently been financially beneficial for BP. Each new prisoner hired by BP comes with a tax credit of $2,400. On top of that, BP may earn back up to 40 percent of the wages they pay to prisoners. Prison workers are required to work up to twelve hours a day, six days a week, and are liable to lose earned good time if they refuse the job. Inmates are also forbidden to talk to the public or media. It is unclear…
A Cure For HIV And AIDS
A cure may not be so far from reality, as reported by ABC News:
For years, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) researchers have shied away from the whole notion of a cure, largely because evidence showed the virus can persist even under intensive treatment.
But now, they are — tentatively — expressing a renewed interest in the idea.
That interest is sparked by clinical data showing an apparent cure in a single case and some technical advances that make it easier to track very low levels of HIV infection, experts said at the International AIDS Conference here.
But progress is hampered by lack of money for research in the field and by what one prominent researcher called “fundamental gaps” in the understanding of how HIV and the human body interact…
[continues at ABC News]
Addicted To Bush
Paul Krugman says Republicans can’t live without a bit of Bush, in the New York Times:
For a couple of years, it was the love that dared not speak his name. In 2008, Republican candidates hardly ever mentioned the president still sitting in the White House. After the election, the G.O.P. did its best to shout down all talk about how we got into the mess we’re in, insisting that we needed to look forward, not back. And many in the news media played along, acting as if it was somehow uncouth for Democrats even to mention the Bush era and its legacy.
The truth, however, is that the only problem Republicans ever had with George W. Bush was his low approval rating. They always loved his policies and his governing style — and they want them back. In recent weeks, G.O.P. leaders have come out for a complete return to the…
