September 2009
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Dugard's Kidnapper and Mind Control? →
from Mercury News, Aug. 29
“He was telling me about his voices. And then he said, ‘You know I’ve been to prison, and I don’t masturbate anymore.’ Out of the blue,” she said. “Then he started crying, and she was crying. I was looking at them — what is this about? I got freaked out.”
To some, he announced plans to give up the printing business and...
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‘Blood Oath’ Sealed Stanford Deal, Court Is Told -... →
HOUSTON — R. Allen Stanford’s relationship with the chief regulator of his Antigua bank was closer than most.
At a meeting in 2003, they became blood brothers, cutting their wrists and mixing their blood in a “brotherhood ceremony” that Mr. Stanford’s chief financial officer said promoted an elaborate scheme to hide a multibillion-dollar fraud from American and other regulators.
The assertion...
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US commander in Afghanistan proposes revamped... →
The new US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, today submitted an eagerly-awaited assessment of the war in Afghanistan that acknowledges the disastrous approach of the past eight years and proposes a completely revamped strategy.
The revised strategy, in the face of the Taliban’s expanding influence and waning support for the Kabul government, switches the emphasis from...
August 2009
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5 Ways to Build a Fascist-Proof America →
First: Ironically, passing health care reform would be a colossal trust-builder, as I’ve argued before. The right wing knows this, which is precisely why it’s recruited the very people most likely to benefit from reform to fight as their shock troops against it.
Second: We need to re-establish the rule of law. You cannot have a credible democracy as long as there’s so obviously...
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Study Says World's Stocks Controlled by Select Few →
WASHINGTON — A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world’s finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This is the first clear picture of the global concentration of financial power, and point out the worldwide financial system’s vulnerability as it stood on the brink of the current economic...
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Al Taqwa Bank →
The Al Taqwa (Arabic for “Fear of God”) network of financial companies was set up in 1988 by prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, most notably Al Taqwa’s chairman and co-founder, Youssef Nada. Later, Swiss Islamic convert Ahmed Huber, a vocal admirer of Adolf Hitler, was hired because the company needed at least one Swiss citizen on its board. Another co-founder was...
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Gmail may hand over IP addresses of journalists →
(via azspot)
A California court has issued a subpoena demanding Google reveal the IP addresses of journalists writing for a corruption busting journal from the Caribbean.
The August 28 subpoena, issued by the Superior Court, County of Santa Clara, as part of a “libel tourism” action taken by non-US property developers, demands detailed information about the operators of...
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Disney to buy comic book powerhouse Marvel for $4B →
I was hoping they were doing so well with the movies they would be able to stay independant, especially of a transnational corp like Disney.
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Man threatens Obama for apocalyptic attention →
JACKSON, Miss. - A Wisconsin man pleaded guilty to threatening to assassinate Barack Obama in January, but said he was just trying to get word out about the apocalypse.
Forty-two-year-old Steven Joseph Christopher told U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate on Friday that he is the second coming of Christ, and wanted people to know that much of the world will be...
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Swine Flu Pandemic: What will Government do to... →
The worst-case scenarios percolate on the edges of thought: bans on public gatherings, restricting the movement of afflicted individuals, and compelled vaccinations. Conspiracy theorists go farther, suggesting that the World Health Organization is behind a secret plan to inoculate Americans at gunpoint with immune-system depleting vaccines to depopulate the globe.
The CDC’s report,...
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Colombian president comes down with the swine flu →
BOGOTA – Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has the swine flu and officials have advised other South American leaders who met with him at a summit of the infection, authorities said Sunday.
During a Union of South American Nations summit of the region’s presidents Friday, Uribe spent hours defending his plan to give U.S. troops more access to Colombian bases as part of his government’s...
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China Launches Organ Donor System to Reduce... →
how thoughtful.
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“We are now into the third presidential term in which the US government remains...”
– Paul Craig Roberts (via azspot)
Don’t forget, Paul, coming soon to a war theatre not near you: US goes to Yemen.
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French spy escapes Somali captors →
A French intelligence agent has escaped his Somali captors more than one month after being taken from a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.
The man, who was one of two French agents abducted on July 14, identified himself to Somali government troops on Wednesday and was taken to the presidential palace.
“We understand he killed three [anti-government] al-Shabab guys who...
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Convicted Scientist Was Cooking Up ‘Space Cannon’ →
Last week college professor Andrew Pakhomov was found guilty of murdering his wife, Yelena Zakin. She was strangled and her naked body was found in the Tennessee River in June 2006. But Pakhomov was not some dusty academic. He worked at the cutting edge of military technology, working on laser-powered propulsion for space launches.
Pakhomov is President of the American Institute of Beamed Energy...
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Why We Believe Lies, Even When We Learn the Truth →
For their study, the scientists whittled down surveys filled out by 246 voters, of whom 73 percent believed in a Saddam-9/11 link, to 49 believers who were willing to be interviewed at length in October 2004. Even after the 49 were shown newspaper articles reporting that the 9/11 Commission had not found any evidence linking Saddam and 9/11, and quoting President Bush himself denying it, 48 stuck...
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Bill would give president emergency control of... →
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of...
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Trying to search past the Disinfo - A Primary...
Open Call: Can anyone out there can find an English translation of Yulia Latynina’s actual editorial for Novaya Gazeta that states Mossad was behind the Arctic Sea’s hijacking?
Not looking for the crackpot secondary articles (ie, Alex Jones crap) that are exponentially proliferating all over the web, I want to see the source.
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US fears Yemen next staging ground for al-Qaida →
WASHINGTON – American authorities are pressuring Yemen to counter a rising internal al-Qaida threat more aggressively and improve intelligence-sharing amid growing worries that the country could become the next significant terrorist staging ground.
As insurgent attacks have spiked in the embattled Middle East nation over the past year, the U.S. has bolstered counterterrorism training there,...
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Mexico legalizing usage of drugs →
MEXICO CITY — Mexico now has one of the world’s most liberal laws for drug users after eliminating jail time for small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and even heroin, LSD and methamphetamine.
Enacted last week, the Mexican law is part of a growing trend across Latin America to treat drug use as a public health problem and make room in overcrowded prisons for violent traffickers rather than...
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10 Rules for INTERNET INFOWAR : Global Guerillas →
Umair Haque, blogging for the Harvard Business Publishing, has an interesting take on information warfare. He lists ten rules for information warfare, many of which are best applied to tech heavy societies (I’ve added some notes and spin of my own to the list). This list applies to conflict from politics to market destabilization to guerrilla warfare to counter-insurgency.
Speed it up....
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WatchIn an interview released today by Digg and the Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was pressured about the growing popular movement to Audit the Fed… A visibly uncomfortable Geithner attempts to dismiss the question by stating “I’m sure people understand that you want to keep politics out of monetary policy.” When Geithner is again pressed on the...
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“As for the traditional warriors, they should lie in wait: When the drones — and,...”
– Ezra Klein (via azspot)
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PR firm to Screen US War Journalists for... →
As more journalists seek permission to accompany U.S. forces engaged in escalating military operations in Afghanistan, many of them could be screened by a controversial Washington-based public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to determine whether their past coverage has portrayed the U.S. military in a positive light.
U.S. public affairs officials in Afghanistan acknowledged to...
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Canadian scientist aims to turn chickens into... →
MONTREAL (AFP) - After years spent hunting for the buried remains of prehistoric animals, a Canadian paleontologist now plans to manipulate chicken embryos to show he can create a dinosaur.
Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal’s McGill University, said he aims to develop dinosaur traits that disappeared millions of years ago in birds.
Larsson believes by...
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Autonomous Systems Report '09 - PDF →
Within a decade, we could be routinely interacting with machines that are truly autonomous – systems that can adapt, learn from their experience and make decisions for themselves. Free from fatigue and emotion, they would perform better than humans in tasks that are dull, dangerous or stressful.
“If you take an autonomous system and one day it does something wrong and it kills somebody,...
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SIBEL EDMONDS' DEPOSITION: VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT... →
americansatori:
what the Bush mob doesn’t want anyone to know. i have been following this woman’s story for years and it is very important information that needs to be considered.
Thanks to a subpoena issued by the campaign of Ohio’s 2nd District Democratic U.S. Congressional candidate David Krikorian, her remarkable allegations of blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, and...
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Russia admits mystery ship may have had suspect... →
MOSCOW (AFP) – Top Russian officials admitted Wednesday that a cargo ship hijacked under murky circumstances in the Baltic Sea may have been carrying a suspicious cargo, after initially playing down such reports.
Speculation has been raging that the Arctic Sea — a ship that was seized by pirates near Sweden last month and vanished for weeks before being recaptured by the by the Russian...
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Can Obama be deprogrammed from Neoliberalism? |... →
Beginning in the Carter years, the Democrats later called neoliberals supported the deregulation of infrastructure industries that the New Deal had regulated, like airlines, trucking and electricity, a sector in which deregulation resulted in California blackouts and the Enron scandal. Neoliberals teamed up with conservatives to persuade Bill Clinton to go along with the Republican...
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Geithner asks Congress for higher US debt limit →
WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner formally requested that Congress raise the $12.1 trillion statutory debt limit on Friday, saying that it could be breached as early as mid-October.
“It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United...
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“For from what impression could this idea [of self] be derived? This question it...”
– David Hume: A Treatise of Human Nature (via fuckyeahphilosophy)
Hume was a barn burner for me in college. Reading the Treatise always left me with the impression that he was some kinda western buddha.
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The US, GLOBALIZATION and the RED QUEEN : Global... →
Since the treaties of Westphalia nearly 400 years ago, competition between nation-states was the primary driver of social evolution. The method or model of competition was between predator and prey and between predators, made stable through creeping global expansion (new competition) and a wide diversity of competitive models. That competition narrowed during WW2 and again through the cold war...
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Bernanke May Leave Lasting Legacy on Fed’s Mission... →
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — Ben S. Bernanke will have a chance to become one of the most influential Federal Reserve chairmen in history as he oversees the expansion of the Fed’s authority over financial markets and tries to pull back an unprecedented surge in central bank credit, economists say.
Topping Bernanke’s agenda during the next four years will be elevating the Fed’s role in reducing...