“President Barack Obama is a nerd. A geek. A dork.
Last March, he said:
I grew up on Star Trek. I believe in the final frontier.

Obama fulfilled the fanboy fantasy of flashing Leonard Nimoy the Vulcan salute, and on his now defunct official Senate web page, he posted an image of himself posing with the statue of Superman in Metropolis, Illinois. As a kid, he copied pictures of Spider-Man and Batman out of a friend’s comic books and he even uses geek speak while decked out in formalwear. Obama’s such a Spider-Man fandork that Marvel Comics made him a character this month in Amazing Spider-Man # 583. Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said: “A Spider-Man fan moving into the Oval Office is an event that must be commemorated in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man.”

So, at the dawn of his presidency, SG would like to offer Mr. Obama a few important political lessons that can be learned from the adventures of everyone’s favorite wall-crawler.”

(via Suicide Girls)

(Picture via The Sun-Times News Group)

“The pathetic behavior of the Illinois governor – his brazen attempt to sell a Senate seat – raises the larger question of power and corruption, and whether having a position of power reliably leads to unethical behavior. (My first thought, upon hearing that Blagojevich had been recorded by the Feds, was that even the lowliest corner boys on the Barksdale crew were smart enough to not say incriminating stuff over the phone.) Here’s some suggestive evidence:

Researchers led by the psychologist Dacher Keltner took groups of three ordinary volunteers and randomly put one of them in charge. Each trio had a half-hour to work through a boring social survey. Then a researcher came in and left a plateful of precisely five cookies. Care to guess which volunteer typically grabbed an extra cookie? The volunteer who had randomly been assigned the power role was also more likely to eat it with his mouth open, spew crumbs on partners and get cookie detritus on his face and on the table.

Why does feeling a sense of power change our behavior? Part of the problem is that power is isolating. Our sense of fairness is innate, but it’s also fragile. As the Times notes:

Mr. Blagojevich had grown increasingly isolated in recent years, particularly from his own state’s Legislature and even from his father-in-law, Dick Mell, a powerful longtime Chicago alderman who showed him the political ropes as a younger man.The governor was rarely seen around his offices in Chicago and Springfield, preferring instead to spend time at home on the North Side.

“I believe he became a prisoner of his own home,” Mr. Jacobs said.”

(via The Frontal Cortex)

(“Rat sign vanishes from Blagojevich’s alley” via Chicago Breaking News)

“Hey Friends.Two years ago I began a campaign to expose a massive circle of corruption on Wall Street involving something called ‘naked short selling.’ The financial press, which had previously been quite generous towards me, immediately began devoting a tremendous amount of energy to misrepresenting, dismissing, and downplaying my allegations. It began to seem as though they were taking part in a cover-up, especially given that I simultaneously became persona non gratis on Wall Street, so that the entire discourse about whether or not I was right went forward with precisely one person precluded from taking part: me. The lengths to which this cover-up was prosecuted astonished even me: for example, last year a large conference (‘Value Investors’ Congress’) invited me to speak, but some powerful hedge funds threatened to boycott if I were allowed to tell me side of the story, and the invitation was rescinded.Times are changing, however, and a few weeks ago I was invited to speak to an even bigger conference of hedge funds. I did so, and was finally able to connect the dots for the public.”

(“Deep Capture” the Movie. “Deep Capture”, The (very long) Story)

“Pete Takeda’s book An Eye At The Top of The World has reportedly be optioned for a movie, and will be coming to the big screen soon, according to this story over at RockandIce.com. Producers Steve Schwartz, Paula Mae Schwartz and Nick Wechsler have purchased the rights to the true story and intend to make it into a fictional film.

The book, which I reviewed back in May of 2007, deals with a CIA plot back in the 60’s to install a nuclear powered listening device on Nanda Devi in a remote region of India. The device was suppose to watch the burgeoning Chinese nuclear program and watch for test of their atom bombs. After months of extensive training, a climbing team went up the mountain carrying the device, but near the top, bad weather set in, so rather than carrying the heavy device back down the mountain, they elected to lash it to a rock, and return in the spring to complete the mission.

When the team returned several months later, they discovered that an avalanche had swept the device off the mountain, and it was never seen again. Presumably it was deposited thousands of feet below in a glacier. Over time, the area was closed off, and rumors arose that the mountain was radioactive. The nuclear power plant had more than four pounds of plutonium in it, enough to poison everyone on the planet, and the theory is that it was broken open on the glacier, and may be moving towards Ganges River, home to millions of people.”

(via The Adventure Blog)

(Related: “Spies on The Roof of The World” via Damn Interesting. “Brown: Author Talks About ‘Eye on Top of The World’ via Daily Camera. Excerpts from “An Eye at the Top of The World” via Google Books)

“A fundamental problem in the financial markets right now – a problem that’s often traced to the failure of Lehman Brothers last month – is the breakdown of trust. Because financial institutions don’t “trust” the solvency of other institutions and corporations, they aren’t willing to lend money. The end result is a frozen credit market. This is precisely what happened during the Great Depression. After Black Friday, the public lost confidence in the economy, and people began to hastily withdraw their money from banks. The result was a rash of bank failures, and an even larger push to withdraw cash. From 1929 to 1933, over nine thousand banks collapsed, leading to a loss of deposits worth over $6 billion. Because the normal bonds of economic trust were broken, a moderate recession became a devastating and deflationary depression.

But what triggers the breakdown of trust?”

(via The Frontal Cortex)

(Related: “Loss Aversion and the Stock Market”. And the follow-up to “The Giant Pool of Money”, “Another Frightening Show About the Economy” via This American Life. This excellent show goes into detail about exactly what happened to cause the mess we’re in. Thanks Stewart!)

An old radio show from May that gives a good explanation on the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

“A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.”

(via NPR. Thanks Stewart!)

(Related: “Hear: Is The Bailout Worth It?”)

“The woman behind the infamous e-mail that aired criticisms of Sarah Palin to millions across the cyber-globe sat at a computer screen scrolling through unread messages, as dozens more popped into her inbox. “Let’s see, what is the next one?” Anne Kilkenny said with a smile, killing time before her family attended a Saturday evening church service. She clicked and skimmed the words: “Hateful liar.”

Kilkenny, 57, lives with her husband and son in a one-level home surrounded by raspberry bushes, crab apple trees, birch and fireweed. She speaks in a high-pitched voice, cheerful as a grade school teacher, pausing for deep breaths between thoughts. She parts her steel gray hair down the middle, wears ankle-length skirts, irons meticulously and grows potatoes and asparagus in her backyard.

After Sen. John McCain named Palin, the governor of Alaska and former mayor of Wasilla, as his Republican vice presidential running mate on Aug. 29, friends of Kilkenny’s in other states began asking, “What do you know about her?” Two days later, Kilkenny decided to set down her observations about Palin in a 24,000-word sober critique, e-mailed to 40 of her friends in the Lower 48.”

(via The L.A. Times)

‘By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy – indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction’- William Osler (Canadian Physician, 1849-1919)

“It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment”- Elie Weisel

“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all-the apathy of human beings.”- Helen Keller

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”- Plato

“The biggest conspiracy has always been the fact that there is no conspiracy. Nobody’s out to get you. Nobody gives a shit whether you live or die. There, you feel better now?” -Dennis Miller

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment”- Robert M. Huchins

“Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don’t know and I don’t care”- Jimmy Buffet

(I originally wrote this to take a look at the apathy prevalent in our society today without intending to look at this as a ‘generational thing’ because it generalizes entire groups of unique individuals, but I discovered that in order to talk about the current situation it was necessary to go back in time and look at the sociological trends that got us here.)

Recently someone sent me a link to the famous article written by Tom Wolfe, ‘The ?Me’ Decade and the Third Awakening’. When it first came out it in the mid-seventies it caused quite a stir. So much so that it became the label for an entire group of young people growing up at that time. ‘The Me Decade’ or ‘The Me Generation’ went on to become the ‘Baby Boomers’ new title. ‘See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.’ Analyze me, listen to me, and talk to me, me…me!! After reading through the article, it occurred to me that Voltaire was right. ‘Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose’. The more that things change, the more they stay the same.

Some friends and I were talking over dinner when their 20 year old son commented on the attitude of some of his generation. He said that his peers are (and I quote) ‘very spoiled, selfish, and unrealistic about work and life in general. They tend to be self-indulgent, messy, and wait for others to take care of things. Some want a good paying job without having to be too inventive or work too hard for it, and many are foolish about handling money. Immediate self-gratification is expected and pursued. There is a tendency to blame others for things and many have to be rescued from their own lack of experience or incompetence.’

The youth of ANY generation has some of these qualities, so what’s different?

Much of the ‘Me Generation’ were the product of hard working parents who grew up during the Great Depression, and who fought and lived through WWI and WWII. Scarcity was the norm, and family and community were of priority. The future rebels of the 60’s grew up hearing about war and the enormous struggle to make ends meet in the quest for the ‘American Dream’. The anti-war protests, civil rights movement, sexual liberation, and other movements of the 60’s and 70’s, were led by a youth whose idealism and vision led them to believe that united together they could ‘change the world’. In essence this was correct. Many things did change, and some issues we’re still fighting for today.

Read the rest of this entry »

“A scene from the airport of the future: A man’s pulse races as he walks through a checkpoint. His quickened heart rate and heavier breathing set off an alarm. A machine senses his skin temperature jumping. Screeners move in to question him.Signs of a terrorist? Or simply a passenger nervous about a cross-country flight?

It may seem Orwellian, but on Thursday, the Homeland Security Department showed off an early version of physiological screeners that could spot terrorists. The department’s research division is years from using the machines in an airport or an office building – if they even work at all. But officials believe the idea could transform security by doing a bio scan to spot dangerous people.

Critics doubt such a system can work. The idea, they say, subjects innocent travelers to the intrusion of a medical exam. The futuristic machinery works on the same theory as a polygraph, looking for sharp swings in body temperature, pulse and breathing that signal the kind of anxiety exuded by a would-be terrorist or criminal. Unlike a lie-detector test that wires subjects to sensors as they answer questions, the “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST) scans people as they walk by a set of cameras.”

(via USA Today)

Mr. Schneider Goes to Washington is a documentary about lobbyists and campaign finance reform in Washington. The film was made after Jonathon Schneider became irate watching a 60 Minutes episode with Senator Hollings’ candid account of the corruptive influence of money in Washington. You can see it for free for the next week and a half on YouTube.

“In a recent CNN poll 67% of Americans said they believe the American government is corrupt. Even more alarming, it seems 99.9% of the population does nothing to change it. Frustrated by Washington and his apathy towards it, I was finally shaken off my comfortable couch and compelled to storm to the capital of the worlds only superpower to find out what is going on with his government.

Quickly, I discovered that things in Washington are even worse than I imagined. Because of their dependence on big business and special interests to finance their political futures, almost every decision the President, Vice-President and Members of Congress make is corrupted. After all, there is no bigger issue facing our political leaders than getting re-elected. From education to health care, social security to taxes, foreign policy to gas prices, Americans interests repeatedly take a back seat to that of special interests.

Amazingly, Washingtons political elite agrees. Lobbyists, Members of Congress, lawyers, even the Commissioner of the agency responsible for regulating the influence of money in Washington candidly admit this is the most destructive influence on American democracy. Yet no one seems to care. More people voted for their favorite American Idol candidate than for their favorite candidate for President of the United States. We care more about the marital status of our favorite celebrity than what our elected leaders are doing in Washington. This isnt lost on the media, whose news coverage reflects its audiences preoccupation. The result: a population of uniformed, disengaged and disenfranchised non-voters hold the worlds only super power in check.”

(“Mr. Schneider Goes To Washington”. A.P.E . (Americans Pissed-off Enough) site)

“Today, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) announced that seventy new organizations from across the United States have joined a June petition calling on Congress to enact sweeping new whistleblower rights for government employees. The groups are calling on Congress to finish the job before adjourning for the upcoming elections. Both chambers have approved legislation to revive the discredited Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), but efforts to reconcile the different versions have stalled.

Tom Devine, Legal Director of GAP, which helps coordinate whistleblower rights advocacy for the 182 groups now supporting the legislation, explained, ‘Groups demanding reform have increased by over 60% in a week of outreach since Labor Day. Our goal is credible free speech rights enforceable through jury trials for all employees paid by the taxpayers. Government employees need the same free speech rights that Congress has passed three times since 2006 for corporate workers in various sectors. This should not be controversial.’

Until Congress acts, the current law will remain a trap that rubber stamps almost any retaliation government whistleblowers challenge. The administrative board where employees receive a ‘day in court’ only has conceded illegal retaliation against government whistleblowers in two cases during the entire seven and a half years of the Bush administration (the board has found against whistleblowers 55 times). Ironically, this has made a so-called good government law the best reason for those witnessing fraud, waste or abuse to remain silent observers, instead of blowing the whistle.”

(via GAP)

“On his way across the wastes of Mongolia in 1921, Polish writer and refugee Ferdinand Ossendowski witnessed some strange behaviour on the part of his Mongol guides. Stopping their camels in the middle of nowhere, they began to pray in great earnestness while a strange hush fell over the animals and everything around. The Mongols later explained that this ritual happened whenever ‘the King of the World in his subterranean palace prays and searches out the destiny of all people on Earth.’

From assorted lamas, Ossendowski learned that this King of the World was ruler of a mysterious, but supposedly very real, kingdom, ‘Agharti.’ In Agharti, he was told, ‘the learned Panditas [masters of Buddhist arts and sciences] write on tablets of stone all the science of our planet and of the other worlds.’ Whoever gained access to the underground realm would have access to incredible knowledge – and power. Ossendowski was not exactly a casual listener. As noted in a previous article [The 'Bloody' Baron von Ungern-Sternberg: Madman or Mystic?, New Dawn No. 108 (May-June 2008)], during 1921 he would become a key adviser to ‘Mad Baron’ Roman von Ungern-Sternberg who established a short-lived regime in the Outer Mongolian capital of Urga. A self-proclaimed warrior Buddhist who dreamed of leading a holy war in Asia, the Baron allegedly tried to contact the ‘King of the World’ in hopes of furthering his scheme.

Ossendowski’s credibility later was assailed by the likes of Swedish explorer Sven Hedin. Among other things, Hedin accused the Pole of plagiarising the story of Agarthi from an earlier work by French esotericist Joseph Alexandre St.-Yves d’Alveydre. To one extent or another, that probably was true, but Hedin, a veteran seeker after lost cities, did not dismiss the possibility of a hidden Kingdom; indeed, he likely harboured the aim of finding it himself. In any event, Ossendowski did not invent the story of a fabulous land secreted somewhere in – or under - the vastness of Central Asia, be it called Agharti, Agarttha, Shangri-la, or, most commonly, Shambhala. Some believed it to be a physical, subterranean realm inhabited by an ancient, advanced race, while to others it was a spiritual dimension accessible only to the enlightened.”

(via New Dawn Magazine)

Imagine receiving a letter in your mailbox asking you to participate in a study for cancer research, and that your doctor didn’t mention anything about cancer during your last physical. This is what happened to 400 women in Maryland. According to the Baltimore Sun, ‘A state contractor tampered with Maryland’s cancer registry, a database used by researchers to track the disease’s impact, counting hundreds of patients as having cancer when they did not, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. The company, Macro International Inc., found in an internal investigation that data were deliberately altered between August 2004 and December of that year. The company fired the employee responsible for the cancer registry. State officials said that Macro employees apparently overreported the incidence of cancer to ensure that the database met standards set by a national certification association, which closely monitors registries to ensure that states have a complete count of cases.’ These letters were sent in 2005, and they’re just addressing it now.

If this can happen with a cancer registry’s database, imagine what could happen with someone’s personal health records. The argument for computerized records is simple. It will eliminate many errors that occur with paperwork, and will help emergency workers to assist a patient if the patient is unable to communicate. While this seems like a great idea in general, the issues of privacy, confidentiality, and abuses of the system lie in the back of many people’s minds. And for good reasons.

It’s not only our health records that are vulnerable. The WSJ Health Blog reports ‘In yet another example of the health industry mishandling private patient records, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia sent some 202,000 explanation of benefits letters to the wrong addresses last week, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The letters, which were mistakenly directed to the addresses of other policyholders, included names and insurance identification numbers of patients as well as the names of the doctors and other medical providers they were using.[..] A small proportion of the letters also had Social Security numbers, a spokeswoman for the company told the paper. Vulnerability to identity theft is one concern. But EOB letters are especially sensitive from a privacy standpoint because they contain some treatment information. And this is one of a steady stream of mistakes by the health-care industry when it comes to protecting electronic data. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia told the AJC that a computer system change was to blame, and it’s taken steps to avoid the problem in the future.’

Read the rest of this entry »

“This morning, I heard an astonishing interview on WNYC that discussed a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) draft document that was just leaked. This document proposes to redefine nearly all forms of birth control, especially birth control pills, as a form of abortion and allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman’s access to contraception [PDF]. Considering that roughly half of all American women use birth control pills, I think this is a shocking proposal that, if enacted, will change modern American society as we know it.

Currently, the federal government accepts the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ definition of pregnancy as beginning at implantation. However, the HHS proposes to reject that definition — provided by medical experts — and to change the federal definition of pregancy to conform with public polling data, as stated in the “Definitions” section of the proposal;

Abortion: An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. There are two commonly held views on the question of when a pregnancy begins. Some consider a pregnancy to begin at conception (that is, the fertilization of the egg by the sperm), while others consider it to begin with implantation (when the embryo implants in the lining of the uterus). A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term “abortion.” Those who believe pregnancy begins at implantation believe the term “abortion” only includes the destruction of a human being after it has implanted in the lining of the uterus.

And then they propose;

[T]he Department proposes to define abortion as “any of the various procedures – including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action – that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

(via Living The Scientific Life)

“Chalmers Johnson has produced a superb new article on what privatization has meant to the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Focusing on Tim Shorrock’s new book, Spies for Hire, Johnson traces the history of “the wholesale transfer of military and intelligence functions to private, often anonymous operatives” from Ronald Reagan’s day to the present, reminding us of just how crucial the Clinton administration was to this development. He also lays out just what can happen when the intelligence budget soars and startling amounts of it are placed in private, for-profit hands. Not only, he claims, has the privatization of intelligence made it easier for enemies to penetrate American intelligence and greased the slippery slope to the loss of professionalism within the community of intelligence analysts, but, perhaps most serious of all, it has ensured the loss of the most valuable asset any intelligence organization possesses — its institutional memory.

Johnson concludes: “The current situation represents the worst of all possible worlds. Successive administrations and Congresses have made no effort to alter the CIA’s role as the president’s private army, even as we have increased its incompetence by turning over many of its functions to the private sector. We have thereby heightened the risks of war by accident, or by presidential whim, as well as of surprise attack because our government is no longer capable of accurately assessing what is going on in the world and because its intelligence agencies are so open to pressure, penetration, and manipulation of every kind.”

(via Alternet)

“Millions of passengers flying from British airports will be fingerprinted from next year under the latest controversial Government anti-terror plans. The measures, which will apply to both domestic and international passengers, are being introduced despite opposition from the Information Commissioner, Britain’s privacy watchdog.

The Commissioner forced Heathrow to abandon a similar plan earlier this year after warning that it was potentially illegal under data protection laws. As a result, ?common departure lounges’, where both domestic and international passengers can mix freely, are being introduced at all major UK airports. This poses an obvious security risk in that an incoming international passenger – possibly a terrorist or a criminal – could switch tickets with an accomplice booked on a domestic flight. The international passenger would then be able to fly elsewhere in Britain and enter the country without being checked by immigration authorities.

Now, the Home Office is putting the finishing touches to new rules requiring compulsory fingerprinting for all passengers. The amendments to national aviation security rules will require fingerprints to be scanned when passengers pass through security into the airside terminal. Passengers will be fingerprint-scanned again at their flight departure gate. It is likely that the scheme will later be expanded to cover passengers at major seaports and the Channel Tunnel rail links.

The measures will enable police and the Security Services to check fingerprints against international watch lists and Interpol databases, searching for suspects travelling on false identities. Critics say the main reason for the scheme is that airport operators want to maximise profits by ensuring all passengers are able to spend money in ?duty-free’ shops.”

(via The Daily Mail)

“Welcome to Thoreau-FDA.com, a website launched and operated by current and former US Food and Drug Administration staff who believe public health is being put at unnecessary risk. These concerned civil servants and ex-civil servants have either experienced or are aware of wrongful directives by US FDA upper management – directives that put public health at avoidable risk. Thoreau-FDA stands for Thorough – High – Objectivity – Review – Ends – Are – Us – FDA. Here at Thoreau-FDA.com, you will find articles by its members that describe their efforts to protect all of us and our pets from harmful drugs and other medical products. And there are also reports of ordeals of other US FDCA staff, who are not involved in setting up this web site.

You can join others in discussion about the US FDA’s broken system by clicking on the link to FDA-blog.com. Or submit articles that will be considered for publication on our site by going to ‘Contact Us.’ Finally, we ask for your help. Read as much content on the site and related links as you need to convince yourself of the truth. Then, join an effort to effect real change at US FDA by sending a letter to the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration. A sample letter is already prepared – but you can edit the letter to reflect your perspective. It prompts answers from the US FDA Commissioner about the effectiveness of the FDA’s ‘Values and Vision’ effort – a program that is supposed to correct many of US FDA’s problems that have persistently gotten worse over the last few years.”

(Thoreau-FDA.com. h/t: Pharma Law Blog)

“The government is testing drugs with severe side effects like psychosis and suicidal behavior on hundreds of military veterans, using small cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, a Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found.

In one such experiment involving the controversial anti-smoking drug Chantix, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took three months to alert its patients about severe mental side effects. The warning did not arrive until after one of the veterans taking the drug had suffered a psychotic episode that ended in a near lethal confrontation with police.”

(via Washington Times)

“US Army Field Manual FM 31-20-3, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces; 2004 edition. Made US Army doctrine (policy) on 20 September 1994; 219 printed pages. Written at the sensitive but unclassified level.

This sensitive US military counterinsurgency manual could be critically described as “What we learned about running death squads and propping up corrupt government in Latin America and how to apply it to other places”. Its contents are both history defining for Latin America and, given the continued role of US Special Forces in the suppression of insurgencies and guerilla movements world wide, history making.

The document, which is official US Special Forces policy, directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control, restrictions on labor unions & political parties, suspending habeas corpus, warrantless searches, detainment without charge, bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations, concealing human rights abuses from journalists, and extensive use of “psychological operations” (propaganda) to make these and other “population & resource control” measures palatable.”

(via Wikileaks. h/t: Conspiracy Planet)

This is a series that was never aired (no surprise there) about the CIA, Iran-Contra, drug trafficking, and the Mena cover-up.

(via Google Video. Thanks DJ!)

“The anti-Vietnam war demonstration of March 1968 was a turning point in post-war politics: it turned violent right in front of the world’s media; the police were shown throwing punches into the faces of already arrested students, and in general losing control. The police files from that event are considered too sensitive to release. But Newsnight has obtained, under Freedom of Information, a stack of police files relating to the much bigger anti-war demonstration of October that year. Watch tonight: they tell a story of rising panic in the establishment: the creation of Britain’s first bomb squad; an intelligence feedback loop between Special Branchand the press that ramped up the tension; and, farcically, the rock group The Doors being mistaken for a group of foreign revolutionaries…”

(via BBC News. Video via BBC Newsnight. h/t: Doc 40)

“There is an Esoteric Agenda behind every facet of life that was once believed to be disconnected. There is an Elite faction guiding most every Political, Economic, Social, Corporate, some Non-Governmental or even Anti-Establishment Organizations. This film uses the hard work and research of professionals in every field helping to expose this agenda put the future of this planet back into the hands of the people.”

(via Google video)

“Let me state at the beginning that I am agnostic as to whether former President Bush drank the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s “holy wine.” But history is filled with religious stories that, even if not true, deliver lessons. Lesson later. Story now.

The Rev. Michael Jenkins, president of Moon’s Unification Church in the United States, says Bush did drink the wine. Bush’s spokesmen neither confirm nor deny the story. One told John Gorenfeld, author of the recent book Bad Moon Rising, that he would not dignify the question by answering it. Another, Jim McGrath, didn’t deny it to me, but he did point out an apparent error in Jenkins’ account.

That entertaining account can be found at www.youtube.com. [..] In the video, Jenkins begins by mentioning that Bush, despite objections by his advisers, praised Moon last year at a Washington gala for the Washington Times, the conservative newspaper founded, subsidized and owned by Moon. Jenkins says the praise was quoted in the Times. It wasn’t.

Then Jenkins moves into the more interesting part. He recounts with the cadence and hand gestures of a veteran preacher a meeting at the Bush Library at College Station between Bush and members of a Moonie group called the Women’s Federation for World Peace and high-ranking members of other Moon organizations.”

(via Houston Chronicle. Picture: American Politics Journal)

(Related: Bad Moon Rising-”King of America”)

With the all the current heated debates going on about the links between vaccinations and autism, I found this film to be thought provoking. Let me state for the record that I am “neutral” on this issue. There are just too many conflicting factors to consider when looking at both sides. So, I’m posting a link to this film along with a site focused on articles defending vaccines. If nothing else, this film will make you THINK about some issues you may have not thought much about.

“This feature length documentary about medical madness, cloaked in bioterrorism preparedness, will awaken the brain dead. It exposes health officials, directed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for conducting a ‘War of Terror’ that is killing millions of unwitting Americans.

[..] This monumental film exposes the agents and agencies behind: Hollywood films and the media creating a profitable culture of bioterror; the ‘War on Terrorism’ used to control populations; the most lucrative war in history-the ‘War on Cancer;’ the onslaught of dozens of new immunological diseases and deadly flus; the ‘War on AIDS’ triggered by contaminated vaccines; the anthrax mailings resulting in restricted freedoms, and sales of toxic drugs, deadly vaccines, and more.”

(“In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood and Bioterrorism” via Google Video)

(Counter-argument: Concerned about Vaccines? site)

Behind the powerful din created by the popular and celebrity-embraced “Save Tibet,” campaign is the fact that the CIA is behind the Tibet independence movement.

According to many reports, the Dalai Lama himself may be a long-time CIA asset. See The Role of the CIA behind the Dalai Lama’s holy cloak and The Tibet Card.

In addition to being geostrategically situated, Tibet is also rich with oil and gas, and minerals — and this is just part of the larger superpower warfare between the US and China. See Tibet, the "great game", and the CIA.

The legions of pro-Tibet activists also seem largely unaware of the historical fact that the “holy land of compassion” has been a CIA pawn since the end of World War II. The infamous Tolstoi Mission sent CIA operatives into Tibet, with plans to establish it as a US military base, from which the US could control the entire Asian region. This activity flourished under the US-supported, opium-banked Nationalist Kuomintang regime of Chiang Kai-Shek.

When the Communists rose to power, the CIA trained Tibetans in guerrilla tactics to use against the regime in Peking, and thousands of Tibetans lost their lives in these battles. Who benefited? Who really gave the orders then — and who is driving the agenda now?

There is little doubt that Anglo-American interests continue to use Tibet, exploit the image of Tibet as a holy place under siege, and bamboozle naïve (and well-heeled) outside activists with slick marketing, in order to undermine Beijing.

Denunciations of Beijing’s brutal crackdowns do not take into account the covert operations and outside infiltrations that triggered the crackdowns in the first place.

Read the whole article via Online Journal