Archive for May, 2011
Britain’s Stylishly Mod Secret Underground City
How To Be A Retronaut has an arresting set of images of Burlington, the 35-acre “Cold War City” lying twelve stories beneath Wiltshire, England. Built during the 1950s, it was to be home to the prime minister and a few thousand others in the event of nuclear apocalypse. With record players, rotary phones, and Singer sewing machines folding out from enclosures in the walls, it makes the prospect of a post-disaster future seems quite charming:
It was equipped with the second largest telephone exchange in Britain and a BBC studio from where the prime minister could make broadcasts to what remained of the nation. 100,000 lamps that lit its streets and guided the way to a pub modeled on the Red Lion in Whitehall. The bunker’s very existence was meant to be top secret until it was decommissioned in 2004.
Osama Was Crazy About American Soft Drinks, Apparently
A nugget from a Bloomberg article — Abbottabad shopkeepers say that the men revealed to be bin Laden’s aides would regularly purchase bulk quantities of both Pepsi and Coke. It seems his hatred for the infidels was matched only by his love for our sweet, sweet carbonated colas.
The two polite Pakistanis who helped Osama bin Laden hide in the shadow of their country’s army bought bulk food orders, chose major brands and equally favored Pepsi and Coke, neighbors and a local shopkeeper said.
The men called themselves Akbar and Rashid Khan and they owned the fortified home where U.S. commandos killed bin Laden in an early morning raid May 2. They did the daily shopping in the Pashtu-language accents of Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, said grocer Anjum Qaisar, 27, who works 150 meters from the compound.
“I was curious about why they bought so much food, but I did not…
Al-Qaeda Confirms Death Of Osama Bin Laden
The jihadis vow to take revenge, of course, posting messages on extremist websites saying that Al-Qaeda will remain “a curse chasing the Americans and their agents.” Peter Walker reports for the Guardian:
Al-Qaida has confirmed the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden, and vowed vengeance, pledging in a statement posted on militant websites that his blood “will not be wasted”.
In what is apparently the first official reaction from the militant Islamist group since Bin Laden was gunned down by US special forces troops who raided his hideout in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, the group called on the people of Pakistan, “where Sheik Osama was killed”, to rise up against their leaders.
The group would soon release an audio message from Bin Laden recorded a week before his death, said the statement, dated 3 May and signed by “the general leadership of al-Qaida”. There was no independent confirmation that the message…
Nudists Seek Out The Young And The Naked
Nudism is back — sort of. Douglas Belkin reports for the Wall Street Journal:
OXAHATCHEE GROVES, Fla.—On a recent Friday morning, Jessi Bartoletti arrived at the Sunsport Gardens Nudist Resort here in a T-shirt and shorts.
By evening, the 19-year-old had stripped down to a string of purple Mardi Gras beads and was dancing around a bonfire with about 200 young nudists, many of them first-timers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this free,” Ms. Bartoletti yelled over pounding drums.
That’s good news to the nudist resort industry, which is desperate for young nudists like Ms. Bartoletti to augment its clientele of graying baby boomers.
Membership in the two big nudist umbrella groups has been flat or declining for years, prompting a youth-recruitment effort that includes reverse-strip-poker nights, volleyball tournaments, naked 5K road races and music festivals like Nudepalooza and Nudestock.
One new group, Young Nudists and Naturists of America, this month is having a naked…
Nailing Bin Laden: Was It A Military Or A Media Operation?
The tip on bin Laden’s whereabouts came in back in 2010. You have to assume the house was under surveillance. If they thought they “bagged him” they would be watching closely and choosing the right time to deep six the target (I actually wrote this lead paragraph sentence before reading this “Breaking News” from the Washington Post: “CIA had secret outpost in Abbottabad”).
“The CIA maintained a safe house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for a small team of spies who conducted extensive surveillance over a period of months on the compound where Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special operations forces this week (U.S. officials).”
Both Afghan agents and Pakistani intelligence now say they told the US about the house as early as 2001.
So, they knew he was there. That was a reason drones weren’t used.
The CIA wanted a more controlled high profile and dramatic intervention for public consumption,…
Texas Teacher To 9th Grade Student: “I Bet You’re Grieving About Your Uncle (Bin Laden)”
ABC 13 reports:
HOUSTON (KTRK) — The death of Osama bin Laden is related to an investigation of a teacher at Clear Brook High School. The teacher is accused of making a racially insensitive comment to a student in front of the entire class.
A Friendswood mom says she was offended by what her daughter says happened Monday in ninth grade algebra.
She said, “The teacher told the student that ‘I bet you’re grieving.’ And she basically looked at him and said what are you talking about? And he said I heard about your uncle’s death and she said wow, because she understood that he was referring about Osama bin Laden being killed and was racially profiling her.”…
U.S. Government Considering Taxing Cars By The Mile
Photo: Skippy13 (CC)
Pete Kasperowicz writes for The Hill:
The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.
The plan is a part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.
The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.
“This is not an administration proposal,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. “This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”
News of the draft follows a March Congressional Budget Office report that…
Jim Marrs On Obama And Osama
Let me get this straight:
A super-secret U.S. team of death-dealing operatives claims to have killed an unarmed Osama bin Laden and killed or wounded about two dozen other people in Pakistan, a nation with which we are not at war (yet), then dumped his body into the ocean saying it was custom in his homeland of Saudi Arabia—a predominately desert country—and without any objective forensics performed.
Even though several Congressmen have stated publicly that they were shown photos of the dead Osama which turned out to be fakes, the Government now tells us that this was all a victory, a great achievement and everything is now okay, although the fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya continues, as does the lethal Corexit spraying of the Gulf and the ongoing spewing of deadly radiation from the Fukushima reactors.
Despite all the celebrating over this proclaimed “achievement” over Bin Laden and his terrorists, there has…
NASA: There Is A Space-Time Vortex Around Earth
Ah, now we know why the Doctor visits our planet so often. Via NASA’s website:
Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity.
Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).
“The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts,” says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.
“This is an epic result,” adds Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis. An expert in Einstein’s theories, Will chairs an independent panel of the National Research Council set up by NASA in 1998 to monitor and review the results of Gravity Probe B. “One day,” he predicts, “this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of…
5.8 Earthquake Shakes México
How is Mexico celebrating Cinco de Mayo? It’s rockin’ the country, or rather, the land is doing the rocking. The capital, Mexico City, felt the tremor of the quake, but there have been no reports of injury or damage. AlterNet reports:
A magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook Mexico on Thursday, causing buildings to sway in the capital some 300 kilometers (187 miles) away from the epicenter, an AFP correspondent and US seismologists said.
The quake struck at 1324 GMT near the town of Ometepec in the state of Guerrero, at a depth of 10 kilometers (six miles), the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The tremor rattled Mexico City, where earthquake alarms rang out in some quarters and office workers briefly spilled onto the streets.
Helicopters patrolled the capital — whose metropolitan area has a population of about 21 million people — while civil protection authorities reported no immediate damages.
[Continues at AlterNet]
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Florida Seniors Fight The Billionaire Koch Brothers (Video)
Meet three Florida seniors who rely on Social Security and are fighting back against the Koch brothers attempt to make them homeless:
The Bilderberg Group’s Tax Returns
As a rule of thumb, when Henry Kissinger and Coca Cola are involved with something behind closed doors, it’s probably not good. Parapolitical notes:
Document sharing site Public Intelligence has posted the 2008 and 2009 tax returns of the American Friends of Bilderberg, the U.S. fundraising arm of The Bilderberg Group.
According to the returns, the group received $775,500 in contributions from U.S. sources during 2008 and 2009 to help cover the expenses of the organization’s once-per-year meeting for 150 invitees. Donors included Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, the Washington Post Company, PayPal founder Peter Thiel and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Kartoonz Fer Krist’s Sake . . .
Found these bizarre clips on Youtube . . . from an old RTÉ series called “Give Up Yer Aul Sins”
Pretty amazing in its own way. The narrative content shows a pretty deep familiarity with the characters and plots central to the Christian drama, even if its skimpiness with the gorey brutality of The Passion seems a little naive. I guess I have to keep in mind that this thing was produced by foreigners, so I shouldn’t expect them to demonstrate the sublte mastery of an American artiste like Mel Gibson…
Living Inside The Westboro Baptist Church
Wondering what it would be like to live in a cult? British documentarian Louis Theroux spent several days in the Kansas homes of members of the Westboro Baptist Church and filmed the experience for the BBC — basically opening a giant can of crazy.
Population Explosion Continues – 10 Billion People By End Of Century
So much for a population peaking and declining by 2050 (the so-called “Demographic Bomb“). The UN is now saying that the Earth’s human population will carry on growing exponentially, as reported by the New York Times:
The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.
Growth in Africa remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said — a sobering forecast for a continent already struggling to provide food and water for its people.
The new report comes just ahead of a demographic milestone, with the world population expected to pass 7 billion in late October, only a dozen years after it surpassed 6 billion. Demographers…
Michael Moore: ‘Bin Laden Wasn’t Killed, He Was Executed’
Michael Moore. Photo: nicolas genin (CC)
Michael Moore gives his take on the Osama affair exclusively to TheWrap:
Osama bin Laden wasn’t killed by a Navy SEAL team, he was straight up executed, Michael Moore told TheWrap on Wednesday,
The “Fahrenheit 9/11” director has been setting Twitter aflame Wednesday afternoon urging the Obama administration to come clean about the circumstances surrounding the terrorist leader’s death — particularly in light of the White House’s shifting account of last weekend’s firefight in Abbottabad.
The Oscar-winning director has been tweeting about his belief that Bin Laden should have received a trial, and his theory that Pakistan was keeping the Al Qaeda head under house arrest. TheWrap grilled Moore about his controversial views.
Is Obama lying about how Bin Laden died?
Common sense tells you he was executed. That was the plan all along. Just tell us that and quit treating us like children.
I have a lot of faith in Obama,…
Woman Awakens From Surgery With British Accent
Another baffling case as foreign accent syndrome (an actual medical condition) strikes again. When will a cure emerge? I prescribe being wrapped tightly in an American flag for two days, followed by 10 cc’s of apple pie. Spokane, WA’s Spokesman-Review reports:
Over the next few days, the swelling subsided and the pain vanished, but Butler’s newly acquired accent did not. Though it has softened over time, she’s never again spoken like a native Oregonian from Madras. To most people, she sounds British.
It took months to find an explanation: foreign accent syndrome, a disorder so rare that only about 60 cases have been documented worldwide since the early 1900s.
Foreign accent syndrome is usually caused by a stroke, though it also has been associated with multiple sclerosis, head injuries and migraines.
One of the first cases was reported at the turn of the last century by a French neurologist. But the best known case, documented…
President Bush Kills A Gopher (Video)
Via Funny Or Die:
Barack Obama sent Navy Seal Team 6 to take out Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad and made a statement confirming it on Sunday night. Former President George W. Bush finally responds to who and what has been terrorizing him for years.
‘Star Wars’ Existential Style (Video)
I know this has been floating ’round the interwebs, but still makes me laugh. Thank you George Lucas for not suing:
