Archive for December, 2010
Non-Surprise: Assange’s Accuser Linked To CIA
Anna Ardin
An interesting ‘coincidence’ in the still unfolding honey pot trap that has ensnared Julian Assange. From Kirk Murphy at Firedoglake.com:
Yesterday Alexander Cockburn reminded us of the news Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett broke at Counterpunch in September. Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.
Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes…
American Psycho Attacks Broadway
When Brett Easton Ellis’s classic ’80s New York story American Psycho was made into a Hollywood movie in 2000 it was extremely controversial and had trouble finding theaters willing to screen it. Fast forward a decade and it’s now an American classic worthy of a major Broadway musical. Personally I think Ellis was spot-on with his satire of the excess of New York in the ’80s, far more so than, say, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. The funny thing is, too, that some of the satire doesn’t even seem odd anymore; I could swear I’ve seen items like “rare roasted partridge breast in raspberry coulis with a sorrel timbale” in a real New York restaurant… From the New York Post:
Move over, Sweeney Todd — another singing psycho is nearing his Broadway debut.
The tale of Patrick Bateman — a fictional Wall Street banker obsessed with designer clothes, Phil Collins, rape and murder —…
WikiLeaks Revelation: The U.S. Tortured an Innocent Man and Threatened Germany to Not Prosecute the Torturers
While the U.S. media simultaneously wrings its hands over whether Julian Assange should get life imprisonment or the death penalty and claims WikiLeaks revealed nothing important except about Iran’s WMD ambitions, Scott Horton reports at Harper’s:
Over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday in 2003, Khaled El-Masri traveled by bus to Skopje, Macedonia. There he was apprehended by border guards who noted the similarity of his name to that of Khalid al-Masri, an Al Qaeda agent linked to the Hamburg cell where the 9/11 attacks were plotted. Despite El-Masri’s protests that he was not al-Masri, he was beaten, stripped naked, shot full of drugs, given an enema and a diaper, and flown first to Baghdad and then to the notorious “salt pit,” the CIA’s secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan.
At the salt pit, he was repeatedly beaten, drugged, and subjected to a strange food regime that he supposed was part of an experiment that his captors were performing on him. Throughout this time, El-Masri insisted that he had been falsely imprisoned, and the CIA slowly established that he was who he claimed to be. Over many further weeks of bickering over what to do, a number of CIA figures apparently argued that, though innocent, the best course was to continue to hold him incommunicado because he “knew too much.”…
Peace Through Truth: 9/11 and State Crimes Against Democracy (Podcast)
Interchange — The Truth About 9/11: Graeme MacQueen and Laurie Manwell
Direct Download • RSS • Website
Graeme MacQueen and Laurie Manwell are prominent researchers in the national 9/11 Truth movement, seeking to educate the public regarding the facts of September 11, 2001 and calling for a new and independent investigation. Graeme MacQueen is founder of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University and now a retired professor from that university. Laurie Manwell is a professor at Guelph University in Neuroscience and Applied Cognitive Sciences. MacQueen and Manwell were in Bloomington for a public presentation called “Peace Through Truth: 9/11 and State Crimes Against Democracy”. During their visit they sat down with local 9/11 Truth advocate Byron Bangert for an exploration of fact vs. fiction and how fear colors our perceptions.
Do Intelligent People Drink More?
Hunter S. Thompson
Here’s a recent story from Discovery News as Liz Day writes:
The next time you’re inclined to enjoy an extra glass of wine, consider that it may be a reflection of your intelligence.
That is one of the findings from data from the National Child Development Study in the United Kingdom and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the United States.
Childhood intelligence, measured before the age of 16, was categorized in five cognitive classes, ranging from “very dull,” “dull,” “normal,” “bright” and “very bright.”
The Americans were revisited seven years later. The British youths, on the other hand, were followed in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Researchers measured their drinking habits as the participants became older.
More intelligent children in both studies grew up to drink alcohol more frequently and in greater quantities than less intelligent children. In the Brits’ case, “very bright” children grew up to consume nearly eight-tenths of a standard…
Watch Sunshine Melt A Rock!
From BBC’s Bang Goes The Theory: “If you had three people sun-bathing, they would collect that amount of sunshine, [and] despite having to travel 93 million miles, [that amount of] energy from the sun can melt rock.”
Agnostic Father Stripped Of Custody Of Kids
The court system has spoken, and it says, if you’re not Christian, you’re not fit to be a parent. A divorced veteran in Indiana says he lost custody of his children, with a judge’s ruling explaining, “the father did not participate in the same religious training as the mother…father was agnostic.”
Let Them Ingest Saccharine…
Reality telling-vision ‘talent’ shows, aside from being another hastily buffed facet of the bread and circus, alpha-wave inducing media trivio-sphere, also, I believe, serve to substantiate and maintain an ugly and inevitably destructive cultural and social paradigm.
The Celebritocrats lean over us from their polished pedestals, purporting to be our salvation, overseeing the next chosen one’s ascent into their domain, casting aside all those deemed unworthy to be stood before their vapid (pay no heed to the man behond the mirror) visage. How easily the discomforting pornography of schadenfreude that parades in the initial stages of these shows, seems forgotten; contestants disposed of, ‘deleted’, mercilessly and without recourse, culturally guillotined whilst the baying hoardes jeer and mock.
The first myth that these events promulgate is that of audience (electorate) participation in outcome, that is bolstered by the temporary feeling of belonging that comes from a large (in this case discomfortingly vicarious) social…
The Best 40 Free Movies You Can Download Legally Online
An Australian technology blog has collected a list of 40 of the best free movies that have fallen into the public domain and are available online.
There’s two Christmas classics — a 1935 version of A Christmas Carol and Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe — plus Orson Welles’ “The Stranger,” and four Alfred Hitchcock movies. And you can also watch William Shatner’s legendary anti-racism film for Roger Corman, several Vincent Price classics and the original “Night of the Living Dead.”
These aren’t video clips, but entire movies, including one about a bank robbery that stars Johnny Cash. And if you want something even more offbeat, try the 1970s TV movie “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island” or — for Christmas — “Santa Conquers the Martians.”
‘Demon Squirrel’ Stars In New Russian Anti-Alcoholism Campaign (Video)
Man, this rodent needs to lay off the sauce. Via BBC News:
A Russian cartoon on alcoholism featuring a red-eyed “demon squirrel” with “the shakes” has had more than a million views on YouTube.
The squirrel rants about “chasing spiders up the walls” with a friend, who then murders his wife. The public information ad has created a buzz word, “kudyapliki” — imaginary creatures the squirrel and his friend want to hunt during their binge. “Are you on the booze yourself?” he asks at the end. “I’ll be seeing you.”
Prisoner Killed Girlfriend In Jail, Body Found In Prison Cell Three Months Later
In the Peruvian prison that houses four times as many prisoners than capacity allows, it’s hard to believe anything goes unseen. Especially a rotting corpse. Daily Mail reports:
A prisoner murdered his girlfriend and buried her body in his cell where it lay undetected for THREE months.
Dutchman Jackson Conquet confessed to strangling Leslie Paredes, 22, when she visited him at his Peruvian jail.
He killed her after she said she wanted to end their relationship and hid the body under a concrete bench he built over her grave.
Police only realised what had happened when they launched an investigation into a ’strong smell’ coming from the cell.
Conquet, 32, admitted the killing at Lima’s Lurigancho prison, which holds more than 8,000 inmates, many of them dangerous.
[Continues at Daily Mail]
Air Force’s Mysterious Space Plane Lands As Twin Prepares For Launch
Via Wired’s Danger Room:
After 225 days in orbit the Air Force’s mysterious X-37B space plane touched down today at 1:16 am local time at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. It was only the second fully-automated re-entry and runway landing in the history of space flight. The Soviets achieved the first in 1988 with the robotic prototype of their Buran Space Shuttle clone.
Space plane program manager Lt. Col. Troy Giese says that “today’s landing culminates a successful mission” which “completed all the on-orbit objectives.” But the Air Force has been consistently vague about what that mission really was; for a while, military personnel claimed they didn’t even know when the X-37B was coming back to Earth.
With a payload bay roughly the size of a pickup-truck bed, the 29-foot-long robot could carry sensors or even weapons. Its maneuverability — amateur skywatchers tracked the X-37 making four major course-changes — means it could sneak up on and…
Nigeria Charges Dick Cheney With Bribery
Dick Cheney is facing arrest on corruption charges…in Nigeria. You can’t get much more shady then that. The BBC reports:
Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency is to charge former US Vice-President Dick Cheney over a bribery scandal that involves a former subsidiary of energy firm Halliburton. The case centers on engineering firm KBR, which admitted bribing officials. Mr Cheney was Halliburton’s chief executive before becoming vice-president to George W Bush in 2001.
KBR last year pleaded guilty to paying $180m (£115m) in bribes to Nigerian officials prior to 2007, when it was a subsidiary of Halliburton. The firm agreed to pay $579m (£372m) in fines related to the case in the US. But Nigeria, along with France and Switzerland, has conducted its own investigations into the case.
Mr Cheney’s lawyer, Terence O’Donnell, said US investigators had “found no suggestion of any impropriety by Dick Cheney in his role of CEO of Halliburton.”
“Any suggestion of misconduct on…
Faith-Based Groups Received Massive Amounts of U.S. Stimulus Money
Hypocrisy is one thing that relgious fanatics and politicians tend to have in common. Here’s a great example revealed by Politico:
The stimulus bought Castleton United Methodist Church in Indianapolis a new heating and cooling system. In Laramie, Wyo., it bought the Church of St. Laurence O’Toole new windows for the Roman Catholic school it runs. And in Harrisburg, Pa., Christian Churches United of the Tri-County Area spent its $120,000 in stimulus funding on food and shelter for local homeless people.
“It kind of fell from the sky, and it was unbelievable that we had this much extra money,” said Jackie Rucker, executive director of the church-sponsored…
WikiLeaks To Reveal U.S. Government Documents On UFOs
Now this should be interesting! I can barely wait to see if there really were aliens at Roswell, or living on the Moon, and all those other fun theories beloved by UFOlogists. From the Guardian’s interview with Julian Assange:
Mr Assange, have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?
Julian Assange: Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules:
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.
Deathbed Globalist ‘Spills Gut’ On Plan to Destroy America
Kurt Nimmo writes on Infowars:
Pastor Lindsey Williams provides details on the ongoing plan by the global elite to destroy America, consolidate financial power, usher in world government, and reduce humanity to a slave class.
Lindsey Williams told Alex Jones his source — described only as a CEO in the Big Three Oil industry who traveled in Bilderberger circles – is suffering from terminal cancer and “spilled his guts” to him on particular details of the globalist agenda now unfolding.
JFK Fans To Bid On Lee Harvey Oswald’s Coffin
Nearly 50 years after the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, the many people still obsessed with the neverending “whodunnit” have a chance to buy various related items from Californian auction house Nate D. Sanders, including a bloodied piece of leather from the seat that the president and his wife were sitting on when he was shot, the coffin of supposed lone assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and an Easter card signed by Oswald with a personal inscription to his brother Robert. Reuters reports:
For the JFK-assassination conspiracy junkie who has everything: Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin. Body not included.
A Los Angeles auction house said on Tuesday it would sell the simple pine coffin in which the suspected assassin of President John F. Kennedy was buried for almost 20 years.
Bidding will start at $1,000, but the item is expected to fetch strong interest from museums and collectors of presidential memorabilia when it goes on…
Good Holiday Reads In A Dark And Depressing Time
My 12 Best Books of Chanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa About the Economic Crisis That Has Defined Our Times
Back in 2007, just as the markets began their meltdown, I started writing a book I called Plunder to investigate the then emerging economic calamity. I had a well-known agent representing me, and, at that time, had published ten books. My agent warned me that I was ahead of the curve but agreed that the subject couldn’t be timelier.
Before we were through, the manuscript went to and was returned by 30 publishers. I was told that there is only one person that a book like mine had to pass muster with, not an economist, not a book editor—but the book buyer who handles business books for Barnes and Noble. If she/she didn’t like it, forget it. (This was before the bottom dropped out of that company that was later nearly sold.)
So much for their…
