Suspicious Activities

There was a quip about this a while ago, now it is more established. Posted in full cause it's a big deal.... via Agonist .

These people are criminals!

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions

• The Observer, Sunday 13 December 2009

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime's influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way." Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.

"That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another. The progressive liquidisation to the system and the progressive improvement by some banks of their share values [has meant that] the problem [of illegal money] has become much less serious than it was," he said.

The IMF estimated that large US and European banks lost more than $1tn on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009 and more than 200 mortgage lenders went bankrupt. Many major institutions either failed, were acquired under duress, or were subject to government takeover.

Gangs are now believed to make most of their profits from the drugs trade and are estimated to be worth £352bn, the UN says. They have traditionally kept proceeds in cash or moved it offshore to hide it from the authorities. It is understood that evidence that drug money has flowed into banks came from officials in Britain, Switzerland, Italy and the US.

British bankers would want to see any evidence that Costa has to back his claims. A British Bankers' Association spokesman said: "We have not been party to any regulatory dialogue that would support a theory of this kind. There was clearly a lack of liquidity in the system and to a large degree this was filled by the intervention of central banks."

*****

Thanks Costa!!

Pros: Gave me energy

Cons: then gave me akathisia and blurry vision

The new energy quickly morphed into marked akathisia. I couldn't not move for more then 5 minutes at a time, extreme restlessness, and extreme anxiety. The akathisia if largely gone after 3 days after discontinuation but blurry vision remains. Terrible stuff, especially at that price.

[[PsychCentral.com review of Abilify]]

I caught an ad for "Abilify" on the Conan show, I believe, and it was billed as a secondary drug for depression.

The name itself was quite artful... 'Abilify' makes you able to do things! Hooray... How did we get here? Iowa's Senator Grassley is after the pharma corporations for ghost-writing drug studies...

One clue was provided six years ago by four researchers who, using the Freedom of Information Act, obtained FDA reviews of every placebo-controlled clinical trial submitted for initial approval of the six most widely used antidepressant drugs approved between 1987 and 1999—Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone, and Effexor.^[10] They found that on average, placebos were 80 percent as effective as the drugs. The difference between drug and placebo was so small that it was unlikely to be of any clinical significance.

[....] Of the 170 contributors to the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.

--Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption - The New York Review of Books

The handy AdPharm blog had a copy of an ad run in People Magazine pitching this as an add-on depression med:

Thetans or Abilify? What's Better for the Modern Unhappy Mind?
I went past the Scientology outpost on Nicollet Avenue this afternoon, thinking that it's a bad idea to bug them, lest a bunch of Thetans get stuck to your soul. (Can E-Meters spook the Thetans from hanging around the Nicollet shop? I wonder...)

It's funny how they have to take the lead on criticizing the mass pharmaceutical treatment of society... Not a perfect advocate against big pharma!

After checking out this yummy add-on, I have to concede that I'd rather recalibrate my worldview to L. Ron Hubbard's invisible alien-oriented model of psychotherapy than sample the delicious world of Abilify. [[image via IrinTech.com-source]]

What is Abilify? A large and yummy molecule that intervenes with dopamine and serotonin, intended for whatever it gets approved for. It's aripiprazole, and appears to enter into the cocktail for severe bipolar cases and others, but also plain depression, according to the People ad.

It also carries a really large warning about adult dementia patients. I found the rather depressing Psychcentral thread of reviews of Abilify, and it reminded me of the vast, growing galaxy of entirely off-kilter people getting pumped full of drugs and corn syrup out there.

It definitely jacks your blood sugar, and causes 'zombie' like behavior according to FIVE people on the thread. The akathisia ("jumping out of skin") problem also seemed quite pronounced. But tons of people on the thread already had 'tactile' hallucinations and took tons of different drugs in combination.

It's such a damn mess to push these pills on people, as more and more get marked with permanent, drug-oriented mental disorders, newly minted in the DSM IV. Abilify looks pretty rough for most -- it seems only 20% of the people on the thread got any better.

Another review...

Pros:	None
Cons:	Zombie like feeling, extreme weight loss, extreme dry mouth, catatonic.

Trying to keep this short ... I think the drug nearly killed my mother. She had 22 years since diagnosis (bipolar w/psychosis) under her belt and was fairly stable (occassional manic and psychotic epidsodes, but overall if she was doing great) they had her on depakote but she gaining weight on it so she complained. They put her on abilify and she did well at first.
There were a TON of side effects for her... but when I finally got her off the drug 6 months later she was 90 lbs lighter, sat staring at walls for days on end, not eating, not showering, unresponsive, and when she did respond it was violent. It was EXTREMELY unlike her and doctors told me she was going into dementia. I had her hospitalized - she was dehydrated, malnourished, had a BAD kidney infection , was diagnosed as diabetic and had lesions in her mouth that were severe. I thought it was the end (she is elderly) and I'd be putting her in a nursing home and telling her good bye soon. Then I started trying to figure out what "started" this and the abilify came back as a glaring change around the time the decline started.
I got her off the drug and within a week she was up, moving around, responding. It was like her brain was on vacation for 6 months ... she didn't remember any of it. Within 2 months she was pretty much her old self and stable again. And she doesn't have diabetes.

Check out the delicious health warning on the official label/website:

Lightheadedness or faintness caused by a sudden change in heart rate and blood pressure when rising quickly from a sitting or lying position (orthostatic hypotension) has been reported with ABILIFY.

Decreases in white blood cells (infection fighting cells) have been reported in some patients taking antipsychotic agents, including ABILIFY. Patients with a history of a significant decrease in white blood cell (WBC) count or who have experienced a low WBC count due to drug therapy should have their blood tested and monitored during the first few months of therapy.

ABILIFY and medicines like it can affect your judgment, thinking, or motor skills. You should not drive or operate hazardous machinery until you know how ABILIFY affects you.

Medicines like ABILIFY can impact your body’s ability to reduce body temperature; you should avoid overheating and dehydration.

ABILIFY and medicines like it have been associated with swallowing problems (dysphagia). If you had or have swallowing problems, you should tell your healthcare professional.

Tell your healthcare professional if you have a history of or are at risk for seizures, or are pregnant or intend to become pregnant, and about all prescription and non-prescription medicines you are taking or plan to take, since there are some risks for drug interactions.

While taking ABILIFY, avoid:

• Drinking alcohol
• Breast-feeding an infant

Most common side effects (≥10%) from all clinical trials involving adults or pediatric patients include:

• ADULTS: Nausea, vomiting, constipation, headache, dizziness, an inner sense of restlessness or need to move (akathisia), anxiety, insomnia, and restlessness
• PEDIATRIC PATIENTS (10 to 17 years): Extrapyramidal disorder (for example, uncontrolled movement disorders or muscle disturbances such as restlessness, tremors and muscle stiffness), headache, sleepiness, and nausea

It is important to contact your healthcare professional if you experience prolonged, abnormal muscle spasm or contraction which may be signs of a condition called dystonia.

For patients who must limit their sugar intake, ABILIFY Oral Solution contains sugar.

INDICATIONS: ABILIFY is indicated for:

• Use as an add-on treatment to antidepressants for Major Depressive Disorder in adults
• Treatment of manic and mixed episodes associated with Bipolar I Disorder in adults and in pediatric patients 10 to 17 years of age
• Treatment of Schizophrenia in adults and in adolescents 13 to 17 years of age

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION:

Elderly people with psychosis related to dementia (for example, an inability to perform daily activities as a result of increased memory loss), treated with antipsychotic medicines including ABILIFY, are at an increased risk of death compared to placebo. ABILIFY is not approved for the treatment of people with dementia-related psychosis (see Boxed WARNING).

Antidepressants may increase suicidal thoughts or behaviors in some children, teenagers, and young adults, especially within the first few months of treatment or when the dose is changed. Depression and other serious mental illnesses are themselves associated with an increase in the risk of suicide. Patients on antidepressants and their families or caregivers should watch for new or worsening depression symptoms, unusual changes in behavior, or thoughts of suicide. Such symptoms should be reported to the patient’s healthcare professional right away, especially if they are severe or occur suddenly. ABILIFY is not approved for use in pediatric patients with depression (see Boxed WARNING).

Contraindication: Patients should not use ABILIFY if they are allergic to aripiprazole or any of the ingredients in ABILIFY. Allergic reactions have ranged from rash, hives and itching to anaphylaxis, which may include difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue.

Serious side effects may include:

• An increased risk of stroke and ministroke have been reported in clinical studies of elderly people with dementia-related psychosis
• Very high fever, rigid muscles, shaking, confusion, sweating, or increased heart rate and blood pressure. These may be signs of a condition called neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS), a rare but serious side effect which could be fatal
• Abnormal or uncontrollable movements of face, tongue, or other parts of body. These may be signs of a serious condition called tardive dyskinesia (TD), which could become permanent
• If you have diabetes, or risk factors for diabetes (for example, obesity, family history of diabetes), or unexpected increases in thirst, urination, or hunger, your blood sugar should be monitored. Increases in blood sugar levels (hyperglycemia), in some cases serious and associated with coma or death, have been reported in patients taking ABILIFY and medicines like it

For patients with phenylketonuria or PKU, ABILIFY DISCMELT^® (aripiprazole) contains phenylalanine. [[i.e. delicious aspartame - Equal/NutraSweet]]

*****

Oh, Bristol-Myers Squibb, why in the hell did you have to buy an ad for this tonight? Why did I have to get exposed to this?!!? And >10% from "all" clinical trials is really impressive!!

This sort of thing really got put in perspective for me by a pretty serious piece in the New York Review of Books about the corruption of the DSM IV and the accepted practices of the medical community these days. You can't just blame Big Pharma and the insurance companies for this mess, not at all!

You have got to read the tri-fold review of several books in the scorching article by Marcia Angell, including "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, "Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drug" and "Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial."

I can't help but share some grafs of this mess... it's such a big mess!

Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption - The New York Review of Books

Take the case of Dr. Joseph L. Biederman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of pediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital. Thanks largely to him, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.

Legally, physicians may use drugs that have already been approved for a particular purpose for any other purpose they choose, but such use should be based on good published scientific evidence. That seems not to be the case here. Biederman's own studies of the drugs he advocates to treat childhood bipolar disorder were, as The New York Times summarized the opinions of its expert sources, "so small and loosely designed that they were largely inconclusive."^[1]

In June, Senator Grassley revealed that drug companies, including those that make drugs he advocates for childhood bipolar disorder, had paid Biederman $1.6 million in consulting and speaking fees between 2000 and 2007.

[........] No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top nine US drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year. By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.

Consider the clinical trials by which drugs are tested in human subjects.^[5] Before a new drug can enter the market, its manufacturer must sponsor clinical trials to show the Food and Drug Administration that the drug is safe and effective, usually as compared with a placebo or dummy pill. The results of all the trials (there may be many) are submitted to the FDA, and if one or two trials are positive—that is, they show effectiveness without serious risk—the drug is usually approved, even if all the other trials are negative. Drugs are approved only for a specified use—for example, to treat lung cancer—and it is illegal for companies to promote them for any other use.

But physicians may prescribe approved drugs "off label"—i.e., without regard to the specified use—and perhaps as many as half of all prescriptions are written for off-label purposes. After drugs are on the market, companies continue to sponsor clinical trials, sometimes to get FDA approval for additional uses, sometimes to demonstrate an advantage over competitors, and often just as an excuse to get physicians to prescribe such drugs for patients. (Such trials are aptly called "seeding" studies.)

Since drug companies don't have direct access to human subjects, they need to outsource their clinical trials to medical schools, where researchers use patients from teaching hospitals and clinics, or to private research companies (CROs), which organize office-based physicians to enroll their patients. [....]

A few decades ago, medical schools did not have extensive financial dealings with industry, and faculty investigators who carried out industry-sponsored research generally did not have other ties to their sponsors. But schools now have their own manifold deals with industry and are hardly in a moral position to object to their faculty behaving in the same way. A recent survey found that about two thirds of academic medical centers hold equity interest in companies that sponsor research within the same institution.^[6] A study of medical school department chairs found that two thirds received departmental income from drug companies and three fifths received personal income.^{[7] [...]}

Because drug companies insist as a condition of providing funding that they be intimately involved in all aspects of the research they sponsor, they can easily introduce bias in order to make their drugs look better and safer than they are. Before the 1980s, they generally gave faculty investigators total responsibility for the conduct of the work, but now company employees or their agents often design the studies, perform the analysis, write the papers, and decide whether and in what form to publish the results. Sometimes the medical faculty who serve as investigators are little more than hired hands, supplying patients and collecting data according to instructions from the company.

In view of this control and the conflicts of interest that permeate the enterprise, it is not surprising that industry-sponsored trials published in medical journals consistently favor sponsors' drugs—largely because negative results are not published, positive results are repeatedly published in slightly different forms, and a positive spin is put on even negative results. A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies were published.^[8]But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. It is not unusual for a published paper to shift the focus from the drug's intended effect to a secondary effect that seems more favorable.

The suppression of unfavorable research is the subject of Alison Bass's engrossing book, Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial. This is the story of how the British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline buried evidence that its top-selling antidepressant, Paxil, was ineffective and possibly harmful to children and adolescents. [....]

The book follows the individual struggles of these three people over many years, culminating with GlaxoSmithKline finally agreeing in 2004 to settle charges of consumer fraud for $2.5 million (a tiny fraction of the more than $2.7 billion in yearly Paxil sales about that time). It also promised to release summaries of all clinical trials completed after December 27, 2000. Of much greater significance was the attention called to the deliberate, systematic practice of suppressing unfavorable research results, which would never have been revealed without the legal discovery process. Previously undisclosed, one of GlaxoSmithKline's internal documents said, "It would be commercially unacceptable to include a statement that efficacy had not been demonstrated, as this would undermine the profile of paroxetine [Paxil]."^[9]

Many drugs that are assumed to be effective are probably little better than placebos, but there is no way to know because negative results are hidden. One clue was provided six years ago by four researchers who, using the Freedom of Information Act, obtained FDA reviews of every placebo-controlled clinical trial submitted for initial approval of the six most widely used antidepressant drugs approved between 1987 and 1999—Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Serzone, and Effexor.^[10] They found that on average, placebos were 80 percent as effective as the drugs. The difference between drug and placebo was so small that it was unlikely to be of any clinical significance. The results were much the same for all six drugs: all were equally ineffective. But because favorable results were published and unfavorable results buried (in this case, within the FDA), the public and the medical profession believed these drugs were potent antidepressants.

[...]. In short, it is often possible to make clinical trials come out pretty much any way you want, which is why it's so important that investigators be truly disinterested in the outcome of their work.

Conflicts of interest affect more than research. They also directly shape the way medicine is practiced, through their influence on practice guidelines issued by professional and governmental bodies, and through their effects on FDA decisions. A few examples: in a survey of two hundred expert panels that issued practice guidelines, one third of the panel members acknowledged that they had some financial interest in the drugs they considered.^[11] In 2004, after the National Cholesterol Education Program called for sharply lowering the desired levels of "bad" cholesterol, it was revealed that eight of nine members of the panel writing the recommendations had financial ties to the makers of cholesterol-lowering drugs.^[12] Of the 170 contributors to the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), ninety-five had financial ties to drug companies, including all of the contributors to the sections on mood disorders and schizophrenia.^[13] Perhaps most important, many members of the standing committees of experts that advise the FDA on drug approvals also have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.^[14]

In recent years, drug companies have perfected a new and highly effective method to expand their markets. Instead of promoting drugs to treat diseases, they have begun to promote diseases to fit their drugs. The strategy is to convince as many people as possible (along with their doctors, of course) that they have medical conditions that require long-term drug treatment. Sometimes called "disease-mongering," this is a focus of two new books: Melody Petersen's Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs and Christopher Lane's Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness.

To promote new or exaggerated conditions, companies give them serious-sounding names along with abbreviations. Thus, heartburn is now "gastro-esophageal reflux disease" or GERD; impotence is "erectile dysfunction" or ED; premenstrual tension is "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" or PMMD; and shyness is "social anxiety disorder" (no abbreviation yet). Note that these are ill-defined chronic conditions that affect essentially normal people, so the market is huge and easily expanded. For example, a senior marketing executive advised sales representatives on how to expand the use of Neurontin: "Neurontin for pain, Neurontin for monotherapy, Neurontin for bipolar, Neurontin for everything."^[15] It seems that the strategy of the drug marketers—and it has been remarkably successful—is to convince Americans that there are only two kinds of people: those with medical conditions that require drug treatment and those who don't know it yet. While the strategy originated in the industry, it could not be implemented without the complicity of the medical profession.

[...] Christopher Lane's book has a narrower focus—the rapid increase in the number of psychiatric diagnoses in the American population and in the use of psychoactive drugs (drugs that affect mental states) to treat them. Since there are no objective tests for mental illness and the boundaries between normal and abnormal are often uncertain, psychiatry is a particularly fertile field for creating new diagnoses or broadening old ones.^[17] Diagnostic criteria are pretty much the exclusive province of the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the product of a panel of psychiatrists, most of whom, as I mentioned earlier, had financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Lane, a research professor of literature at Northwestern University, traces the evolution of the DSM from its modest beginnings in 1952 as a small, spiral-bound handbook (DSM-I) to its current 943-page incarnation (the revised version of DSM-IV) as the undisputed "bible" of psychiatry—the standard reference for courts, prisons, schools, insurance companies, emergency rooms, doctors' offices, and medical facilities of all kinds.

Given its importance, you might think that the DSM represents the authoritative distillation of a large body of scientific evidence. But Lane, using unpublished records from the archives of the American Psychiatric Association and interviews with the principals, shows that it is instead the product of a complex of academic politics, personal ambition, ideology, and, perhaps most important, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. What the DSM lacks is evidence. Lane quotes one contributor to the DSM-III task force:

There was very little systematic research, and much of the research that existed was really a hodgepodge—scattered, inconsistent, and ambiguous. I think the majority of us recognized that the amount of good, solid science upon which we were making our decisions was pretty modest.

Lane uses shyness as his case study of disease-mongering in psychiatry. Shyness as a psychiatric illness made its debut as "social phobia" in DSM-III in 1980, but was said to be rare. By 1994, when DSM-IV was published, it had become "social anxiety disorder," now said to be extremely common. According to Lane, GlaxoSmithKline, hoping to boost sales for its antidepressant, Paxil, decided to promote social anxiety disorder as "a severe medical condition." In 1999, the company received FDA approval to market the drug for social anxiety disorder. It launched an extensive media campaign to do it, including posters in bus shelters across the country showing forlorn individuals and the words "Imagine being allergic to people...," and sales soared. Barry Brand, Paxil's product director, was quoted as saying, "Every marketer's dream is to find an unidentified or unknown market and develop it. That's what we were able to do with social anxiety disorder."

Some of the biggest blockbusters are psychoactive drugs. The theory that psychiatric conditions stem from a biochemical imbalance is used as a justification for their widespread use, even though the theory has yet to be proved. Children are particularly vulnerable targets. What parents dare say "No" when a physician says their difficult child is sick and recommends drug treatment? We are now in the midst of an apparent epidemic of bipolar disease in children (which seems to be replacing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder as the most publicized condition in childhood), with a forty-fold increase in the diagnosis between 1994 and 2003.^[18] These children are often treated with multiple drugs off-label, many of which, whatever their other properties, are sedating, and nearly all of which have potentially serious side effects.

Save me from the Thetans!!!! :-/

According to popular saying.... [i.e. not verified]

"If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota."

-- Dick Cheney to Paul Wellstone, related by Wellstone to veterans in Willmar, MN.

*****

Ahh, electoralism - the belief that bits of paper will add up to some kind of true plurality judgment about which people should control government offices.

As we have re-discovered here in Minnesota, sometimes things are so close to even that no clear winner emerges; the clever games of attorneys combine with dumb luck to produce a winner for Paul Wellstone's seat. (Fortunately, in this state there's a strong degree of integrity among the relevant officials - likely producing an essentially honest Al Franken victory. Paper ballots are Good!)

In places like Ohio and Florida, the citizens are not so lucky. In particular, devious political parties conspire to lock out the possibility of minor parties gaining power, while also installing generally the shittiest voting machines that flaky and quite often insanely evil corporations can ooze into existence.

Who even knows how many votes there are? Who cares??

Blah... it's getting late and my sentence structures are unwieldy...

Anyway here is the story so far... This guy Michael Connell was essentially Karl Rove's top computer nerd -- he just finished leading John McCain's tech efforts, too. He helped design the so-called 'alternative White House email system', the one they were using to send around all the fun stuff like the corrupt orders to US Attorneys. Connell designed the web systems for Congressional committees, as well.

So it seemed as if Connell was getting dragged into the extended legal fight over the insanely dodgy 2004 presidential election in Ohio. (I got pretty pissed off about that, and made a fairly game effort to follow things on this website.)

I didn't realize until this evening that the Ohio 2004 Secretary of State website and the secret White House parallel email servers were actually run from the same set of servers - Connell's babies. Now this is starting to make sense...

Perhaps Connell was going to spill the beans about his secret backdoors in the voting machines, or whatever let them flip the nasty bits around for so-called 'electronic voting machines.' (in reality they are of course Black Boxes without fundamental safeguards.)

As it turns out, Connell was on his way back to Ohio and likely to spill the whole damn thing, and wouldn't ya know it, his plane went down!

The circumstances are unclear, but it seems not to be your usual crash or esoteric phenomena (such as the well known Paul Wellstone electromagnetic pulse weapon conspiracy theory [a.k.a "why not? They've murdered for less..."])...

Politicians of rebellious stripes have such bad times with aircraft... Sen. Paul Wellstone, Sen. John Heinz, General Alexander Lebed, Congressman Hale Boggs, Congressman Nick Begich, Governor Mel Carnahan, Congressman Lawrence McDonald.. to cite a few crashes noted on one thread.

It hasn't gotten the notice it deserves, but Dick Cheney suddenly does seem extra demented and threatening right now, openly taunting anyone with scruples. He might just be blowing up more planes for fun, at this point.

Sidebar for conspiracy journalism: The outcome of this mess has some extra meaning for Wayne Madsen, the outside-the-box hound of all things implausible, nasty and weird within the Bush Administration. Madsen got ripped by Keith Olbermann, yet denied a chance to speak on his own behalf, as Olbermann carefully made a big deal about the mess in Ohio. It was like Olbermann needed to have someone more conspiratorial to mark against, or rather, to act as 'left gatekeeper' against. (others also shouted down the story)

Madsen claimed there were a series of crazy offshore front companies paying for all of the programmers needed to develop the voting machine hacks (I posted about it at the time - good to look @ now); in turn, these people got stiffed by the System anyway. I gather the idea is that Connell was a central cog in this classic-style arrangement.

Thus, if Madsen's angle turns out to be roughly true - and as he reported it years ago - then, at least, Olbermann owes him an apology. And of course, we'd learn yet again that the most bizarre criminal conspiracy type behavior was what they were up to, surprise surprise...

Anyway...

Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation

Last update: 11:24 a.m. EST Dec. 20, 2008

WASHINGTON, Dec 20, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution ("VR"), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell's activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how he can tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus."

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell's life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR's attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell's not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

On October 31, Mr. Connell appeared before a federal judge in Ohio after being subpoenaed in a federal lawsuit investigating the rigging of the 2004 election under the direction of Karl Rove. The judge ordered Mr. Connell to testify under oath at a deposition on November 3rd, the day before the presidential election. Velvet Revolution received confidential information that the White House was extremely concerned about Mr. Connell talking about his illegal work for the White House and two Bush/Cheney 04 attorneys were dispatched to represent him.

An associate of Mr. Connell's told VR that Mr. Connell was involved with the destruction of the White House emails and the setting up of the off-grid White House email system.

Mr. Connell handled all of John McCain's computer work in the recent presidential campaign. VR has received direct evidence that the McCain campaign kept abreast of the legal developments against Mr. Connell by reading the VR dedicated website, www.rovecybergate.com.

VR demands that the Ohio Attorney General and the United States Justice Department conduct a complete investigation into the activities of Mr. Connell and determine whether there was any foul play in his death. VR demands that federal law enforcement officials place the following people under protective custody pending this investigation. Heather Connell who

is the owner of GovTech Solutions, Randy Cole, the former President of GovTech Solutions, and Jeff Averbeck, the CEO of SmartTech in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Both GovTech and SmartTech have been implicated in the rigging of the 2000 and 2004 elections and the White House email scandal. Our prior request to have Mr. Connell protected went unheeded and now he is dead.

SOURCE Velvet Revolution

http://www.rovecybergate.com

BradBlog is of course all over it - they're part of the Velvet Revolution gig.

Duly noted on BoingBoing: Man who set up alternate email for White House dies in plane crash and Larisa Alexandrovna considers that, in fact, she knew this guy real well, he was scared, and ready to talk about the White House's silly illegal email system:

One of my sources died in a plane crash last night...

UPDATED BELOW (1, 2, and 3)

I don't usually reveal sources, but I think this is incredibly important. Michael Connell died in a plane crash last night. He was a key witness in the Ohio election fraud case that I have been reporting on. More importantly, however, he had information that he was ready to share.

You see, Mike Connell set-up the alternate email and communications system for the White House. He was responsible for creating the system that hosted the infamous GWB43.com accounts that Karl Rove and others used. When asked by Congress to provide these emails, the White House said that they were destroyed. But in reality, what Connell is alleged to have done is move these files to other servers after having allegedly scrubbed the files from all "known" Karl Rove accounts.

In addition, I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman. This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.

Uhm, so there is that... What is the nut of this Ohio thing? Alexandrovna & co reported earlier:

King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell

The case, known as King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, was filed against Kenneth J. Blackwell on Aug. 31, 2006 by Columbus attorneys Clifford Arnebeck, Robert Fitrakis and others. It initially charged Blackwell with racially discriminatory practices -- including the selective purging of voters from the election rolls and the unequal allocation of voting machines to various districts -- and asked for measures to be taken to prevent similar problems during the November 2006 election.

On Oct. 9, 2006, an amended complaint added charges of various forms of ballot-rigging as also having the effect of "depriving the Plaintiffs of their voting rights, including the right to have their votes successfully cast without intimidation, dilution, cancellation or reversal by voting machine or ballot tampering." A motion to dismiss the case as moot was filed following the November 2006 election, but it was instead stayed to allow for settlement discussions.

The case took on fresh momentum earlier this year when Arnebeck announced in July that he was filing to "lift the stay in the case [and] proceed with targeted discovery in order to help protect the integrity of the 2008 election." The new filing was inspired in part by the coming forward as a whistleblower of GOP IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore, who said he was prepared to testify to the plausibility of electronic vote-rigging having been carried out in 2004.

Arnebeck’s hope was that in the course of the discovery procedure it would be possible to subpoena Michael Connell, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and others to obtain additional information and improve the focus of the case. The stay was lifted Sept. 19, 2008 by an order from Magistrate Judge Terrence P. Kemp of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and a subpoena was served to Connell on the following Monday, Sept. 22.

Allegations against Connell

The interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell’s name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to presented the 2004 presidential returns as they came in.

Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates. This in itself might have raised questions about his involvement in creating Ohio’s official state election website.

However, the alternative media group ePluribus Media further discovered in November 2006 that election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted on the servers of a company in Chattanooga, TN called SmarTech, which also provided hosting for a long list of Republican Internet domains.

“Since early this decade, top Internet ‘gurus’ in Ohio have been coordinating web services with their GOP counterparts in Chattanooga, wiring up a major hub that in 2004, first served as a conduit for Ohio's live election night results,” researchers at ePluribus Media wrote.

A few months after this revelation, when a scandal erupted surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for reasons of White House policy, other researchers found that the gwb43 domain used by members of the White House staff to evade freedom of information laws by sending emails outside of official White House channels was hosted on those same SmarTech servers.

Given that the Bush White House used SmarTech servers to send and receive email, the use of one of those servers in tabulating Ohio’s election returns has raised eyebrows. Ohio gave Bush the decisive margin in the Electoral College to secure his reelection in 2004.

IT expert Stephen Spoonamore says the SmartTech server could have functioned as a routing point for malicious activity and remains a weakness in electronic voting tabulation.

Delicious! No wonder they had to get rid of this cat. Wow...

The BradBlog comment threads are abuzz with people snooping into aircraft registration records (which not coincidentally are among my favorite dodgy items in the security bureaucracy). But that's another twist entirely...

I have always believed, and argued, that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead not to `a few bad people,’ but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed.

--Peter Dale Scott

Currently I am reading "October Surprise" by Gary Sick... Here's a review I posted long ago...

We have to get a chunk of this! Peter Dale Scott, a Berkeley professor, is one of the classic scholars of suspicious American political conspiracies, the JFK assassination, the ongoing fake war on drugs, and other things that good kids keep their fuckin' mouths shut about.

I was impressed by the latest from ol' Scott, and it also led me around to look at L. Fletcher Prouty's "The Secret Team, The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World" which you can read for free there. Following here is an excerpt of how the Global Dominance Mindset works - and how ugly and weird events like 9/11 and the JFK assassination mark episodes of turmoil among this stratum of the American establishment.

Earlier: Feb 24 2008: What now? Homeland Security Detention Camps & Trains of course; 9/11 poisons our dreams; Zarqawi PSYOPS fake news revisited

And earlier, July 7 2007: Weekend roundup: sweeping bitesized paranoia! with some clips of Scott talking about those ol' Left Gatekeepers and 9/11... Also recommended: PD Scott on JFK and 9/11 Insights Gained from Studying Both....

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9/11, Deep State Violence and the Hope of Internet Politics:

9/11, Deep Events, and the Global Dominance Mindset in American Society

The continuity of past deep events is part of the problem facing those who wish to understand and correct what underlies them. For the mainstream U.S. media (as we now clearly see them) have become so implicated in past protective lies about Korea, Tonkin Gulf, and the JFK assassination that they, as well as the government, have now a demonstrated interest in preventing the truth about any of these events from coming out.

This means that the current threat to constitutional rights does not derive from the deep state alone. As I have written elsewhere, the problem is a global dominance mindset that prevails not only inside the Washington Beltway but also in the mainstream media and even in the universities, one which has come to accept recent inroads on constitutional liberties, and stigmatizes, or at least responds with silence to, those who are alarmed by them. Just as acceptance of bureaucratic groupthink is a necessary condition for advancement within the state, so acceptance of this mindset’s notions of decorum has increasingly become a condition for participation in mainstream public life.

In saying this, I mean something more narrow than the pervasive "business-defined consensus" which Gabriel Kolko once asserted was "a central reality," underlying how "a ruling class makes its policies operate." I would agree that, at least since the Reagan era, the mindset I am describing has become more and more clearly identified with the mentality of an overworld determined to protect its privileges and even enlarge them at the expense of the rest of society.

But the mindset I mean is narrower in focus – originally concerned with defending and now increasingly concerned with enlarging America’s dominance in the world, in an era of finite and increasingly scarcer resources. And it is also, increasingly, less a consensus than an arena of serious division and debate.

It is clear that the mindset is not monolithic. There have been recurring notable dissents within it, such as when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed in the New York Times that the Bush administration, in defiance of the FISA Act, was engaged in warrantless electronic surveillance of telephone calls inside the United States.47 But on other issues, notably the Iraq War, the Timeshas conspicuously failed to play the judicious critical role that it did with respect to the U.S. war in Vietnam. In general, as Kristina Borjesson reports in her devastating book, "Investigative reporting is dwindling…because it is expensive, attracts lawsuits, and can be hostile to the corporate interests and/or government connections of a news division’s parent company." And as to critical thinking about 9/11, as before about the Kennedy assassination, the Post has predictably gone out of its way to depict the 9/11 truth movement as a "cacophonous and free-range…bunch of conspiracists."

According to a survey of Lexis Nexis, the New York Times did not report Attorney General Gonzalez’ newsworthy claim that "There is no expressed grant of habeas corpus in the Constitution." (The Washington Post reported it, without comment, in a story of 197 words.) And on the question of torture even a liberal Harvard University professor, Michael Ignatieff, has argued in a University Press book from an even-handed starting point – "A democracy is committed to both the security of the majority and the rights of the individual" -- to an alarming defense of "coercive questioning."

In this state of affairs, I shall argue, the Internet provides an opportunity for opposition, of potentially immense political importance.

Deep Events as Intrigues within the Global Dominance Consensus

Many critics of American foreign policy on the left tend to stress its substantial coherence over time, from the War-Peace Studies for post-war planning of the Council on Foreign Relations in the 1940s, to Defense Secretary Charles Wilson’s plans in the 1950s for a "permanent war economy," to Clinton’s declaration to the United Nations in 1993 that the U.S. will act "multilaterally when possible, but unilaterally when necessary."

This view of America’s policies has persuaded some, notably Alexander Cockburn, to lament the displacement of coherent Marxist analysis by the "fundamental idiocy" and "foolishness" of "9/11 conspiracism." But it is quite possible to acknowledge both that there are ongoing continuities in American policy and also important, hidden, and recurring internal divisions, which have given rise to America’s structural deep events. These events have always involved friction between Wall Street and the Council on Foreign Relations, on the one hand, and the increasingly powerful oil- and military-dominated economic centers of the Midwest and the Texas Sunbelt on the other.

At the time that General MacArthur, drawing on his Midwest and Texas support, threatened to challenge Truman and the State Department, the opposition was seen as one between the traditional Europe-Firsters of the Northeast and new-wealth Asia-Firsters. In the 1952 election, the foreign policy debate was between Democratic "containment" and Republican "rollback." Bruce Cumings, following Franz Schurmann, wrote later of the split, even within the CIA, between "Wall Street internationalism" on the one hand and "cowboy-style expansionism" on the other.

Many have followed Michael Klare in defining the conflict as one, even within the Council on Foreign Relations, between "traders" and warrior "Prussians." Since the rise to eminence of the so-called "Vulcans" – notably Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz, backed by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) – the struggle has frequently been described as a struggle between the multilateralists of the status quo and the unilateralists seeking indisputable American hegemony.

Underlying every one of the deep events I have mentioned, and others such as the U-2 incident, can be seen this contest between traderly (multilateralist) and warriorly (unilateralist) approaches to the maintenance of U.S. global dominance. For decades the warriorly faction was clearly a minority; but it was also an activist and well-funded minority, in marked contrast to the relatively passive and disorganized traderly majority. Hence the warriorly preference for war, thanks to ample funding from the military-industrial complex and also to a series of deep events, was able time after time to prevail.

The 1970s can be seen as a turning-point, when a minority CFR faction, led by Paul Nitze, united with corporate executives from the military-industrial complex like David Packard and pro-Zionist future neocons like Richard Perle to forge a succession of militant political coalitions, such as the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). Cheney and Rumsfeld, then in the Ford White House, participated in this onslaught on the multilateral foreign policy of Henry Kissinger. In the late 1990s Cheney and Rumsfeld, even while secretly refining the COG provisions put into force on 9/11, also participated openly in the successor organization to the CPD, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

From his office interfacing between CIA and the U.S. Air Force, Col. L. Fletcher Prouty deduced that there was a single Secret Team, within the CIA but not confined to it, responsible for not only the Tonkin Gulf incidents (timed to enable already planned military action against North Vietnam) but other deep events, such as the U-2 incident of 1960 (which in Prouty’s opinion was planned and timed to frustrate the projected summit conference between Eisenhower and Khrushchev) and even the assassination of President Kennedy (after which the Secret Team "moved to take over the whole direction of the war and to dominate the activity of the United States of America").

In language applicable to both Korea in 1950 and Tonkin Gulf in 1964, Prouty argued that CIA actions followed a pattern of actions which "went completely out of control in Southeast Asia:"

The clandestine operator… prepares the stage by launching a very minor and very secret, provocative attack of a kind that is bound to bring open reprisal. These secret attacks, which may have been made by third parties or by stateless mercenaries whose materials were supplied secretly by the CIA, will undoubtedly create reaction which in turn is observed in the United States…. It is not a new game. [but] it was raised to a high state of art under Walt Rostow and McGeorge Bundy against North Vietnam, to set the pattern for the Gulf of Tonkin attacks.

I mention Prouty’s thesis here in order to record my partial dissent from it. In my view his notion of a "team" localizes what I call the global dominance mindset too narrowly in a restricted group who are not only like-minded but in conspiratorial communication over a long term. He exhibits the kind of conspiratorialist mentality once criticized by G. William Domhoff:

We all have a tremendous tendency to want to get caught up in believing that there's some secret evil cause for all of the obvious ills of the world …. [Conspiracy theories] encourage a belief that if we get rid of a few bad people, everything will be well in the world.

My own position is still that which I articulated years ago in response to Domhoff:

I have always believed, and argued, that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead not to `a few bad people,’ but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed.

Quoting what I had written, Michael Parenti added, "In sum, national security state conspiracies [or what I would call deep events] are components of our political structure, not deviations from it."

The outcome of the deep events I have mentioned so far has been chiefly a series of victories for the warriors. But there have been other structural deep events, notably Watergate in 1972-74 and Iran-Contra in 1986-87, which can be interpreted, if not as victories for the traders, at least as temporary setbacks for the warriors. In The Road to 9/11 I have tried to show that Cheney and Rumsfeld, while in the Ford White House, bitterly resented the setback represented by the post-Watergate reforms, and immediately set in motion a series of moves to reverse them. I argue there that the climax of these moves was the imposition after 9/11 of their long-planned provisions for COG, formulated under their supervision since the early 1980s.

Thus since World War Two the warriorly position, initially that of a marginal but conspiratorial minority, has moved since the Reagan and Bush presidencies into a more and more central position. This is well symbolized by the rise in influence since 1981 of the Council for National Policy, originally funded by Texas oil billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt and explicitly designed to offset the influence of the Council on Foreign Relations. Comparing the 1950s with the present decade, it is striking how much the status of the State Department has declined vis-à-vis the Pentagon. With the accelerated militarization of the U.S. economy, the question arises whether a more traderly foreign policy can ever again prevail.

And since 9/11, especially with the institution of unknown COG procedures, some have talked of the overall subversion of democracy, by a new Imperial Presidency in the Bush White House.

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Well that's all for now, kids. Have fun in the endless rabbit holes of Deep Politics and Cryptocracies!

Many of our choice links this afternoon come from Cryptome.org, Antiwar.com, Cryptogon.com and PrisonPlanet.com. All of these websites are only for the bad kids! They will soon be censored in the upcoming plan to kill the Internet!!

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A lot of people are saying angry things about Tim Russert now that he's no longer with us. I thought that was not appropriate on the day he expired, but as we look back it seems pretty clear that Russert was a committed defender of the establishment status quo, generally an uncritical promoter of the war, and never really accounted for the huge and systemic distortions within his own media purview that led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands. Perhaps he would have recanted some of the stuff later, but now he'll never have the chance.

I have to steal this one paragraph from Electric Politics, which is a fine site:

Electric Politics | An Irish Flack:

For in reality, Russert practiced evasion and obfuscation, replacing real news with pap. He was no teller of great truths, no champion of the powerless, no voice of conscience. To the contrary, he diligently enforced the status quo. Sure, he was a nice guy. And he had a gift for handicapping political races. But the agitation surrounding his passing marks less his admirable qualities than his failings: without his happy face the establishment media may now more easily be seen for the toxic parasites that they are. Their exaggerated grieving serves the grievers, not the man. It would be better to remember Tim Russert without memorializing the system.

******Another subject Russert would never dream of touching: Fun video of Ben Bernanke @ Bilderberg!

Bilderbergers Leave Confab To Initiate Fresh Ordersand Castrated U.S. Media Remains Obediently Silent On Bilderberg. Ouch - gendered language! Suspicion Surrounds Governor's Mansion Fire, why not! Secret Bilderberg Agenda To Microchip Americans Leaked and Iran Threatened After Gates Bilderberg Visit

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Good times...******Some spy stuff: Spy Legal Reference Book from the government.
******Gore Vidal doubts McCain's story, and talks some smack! Questions For Gore Vidal - Literary Lion - Questions For Gore Vidal - Deborah Solomon - Interview - NYTimes.com

And what about Mr. McCain? Disaster. Who started this rumor that he was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?

Everyone knows he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. That’s what he tells us.

Why would you doubt him? He’s a graduate of Annapolis. I know a lot of the Annapolis breed. Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.

So what does that have to do with the U.S. Naval Academy down in Annapolis? The service universities keep track of each other, that’s all. They have views about each other. And they are very aware of social class and eventually money, since they usually marry it.

.....What do you think is your own best novel? I don’t answer questions like that. Ever. And you ought not to ask them.

Well, it was a great pleasure talking to you. I doubt that.

*******

French Government decides to censor the Internet - The INQUIRER

Feds, Denver attempt to keep DNC security info secret - Colorado Independent - News you can't find anywhere else

MadCowMorningNews: CIA "Ghost" Planes Hidden in Cayman Isles Trusts? Hell yeah!

Cool t-shirt? be+cause clothing :: SHOOTING WAR T-SHIRT

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I have been looking a bit @ The Memory Hole, although it seems like the site is not getting any fresh content lately. Consider: Justice Dept: 2006 Forfeiture and Money-Laundering Manuals, List of CIA Inspector General Investigations, FBI File: Edward Said, "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy," aka The Kerry Report Transcripts, Pfizer's Chemical/Biological Weapons Report and a compendium of some well-cited 9/11 stuff, if that's your thing.

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Some type of coverup here: Smugglers Had Design For Advanced Warhead. This seems to involve the other nuclear smuggling network - i.e. the guys that Valerie Plame's team was after. Scooter Libby's secret friends, the people Sibel Edmonds was tracing, Turkish spies, Marc Grossman, and so forth...

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Mainstream politics: Mr NeoCon End of History Fukuyama backs Obama for US presidency

Ron Paul's own convention coming to Minneapolis!

Op-Ed Columnist - Frank Rich - Do Angry Clinton Women Love McCain? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

Satire: Ex-Nickelodeon Stars Relate Horrors Of Green Slime Syndrome | The Onion

YouTube - You Can't Do That On Television - Marketing 1 (of 3)

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Good news from Supreme Court, which said that all these Guantanamo show trials are garbage! Emptywheel » Revenge of Article III

War Powers - Why This Court Keeps Rebuking This President - NYTimes.com

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Cryptome duly notes: Very naughty judge! Unfortunately, 9th Circuit Federal Judge Alex Kozinski (a Reagan appointee) put a bunch of hilarious files onto alex.kozinski.com and never bothered to lock the front door. (Muckrakers on it.) Unfortunately, he is indeed the cool kind of judge who has gone to bat blocking dumb Internet filters, and stuff like that. Here's the directory listing: Judge Alex Kozinski Stuff Directory

Cryptome also has the latest suspicious bureaucracies emitted from Homeland Security: National Infrastructure Protection Plan Review

and the equally dubious Interactive Data To Improve Financial Reporting... items like this tend to come from the Federal Register, which is where the Executive Branch declares what random things its doing without any control from the Legislative Branch.

Cryptome even has an interesting thing about the Secret Service and how they keep their hands in a kind of upper position, which could come from the Crav Maga or Aikido martial arts schools.

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Antiwar.com notes! Iran Accusations Merit Skepticism - by Philip Giraldi. There's good stuff in here from the Intel side - how the news manipulations are sallying forth, etc.

The Cult of the Presidency - by Doug Bandow

Iraqis don't feel like getting colonized under a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA): The Revolt of the Liberated- by Justin Raimondo

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan - US missile strike kills one in S Waziristan

The blueprint for Forward Base America

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News from Cryptogon.com. Also i strongly recommend Kevin's other site, Farmlet.co.nz, which is all about life on the farm in New Zealand!

Bank in crisis as shares collapse | theage.com.au - Aussie investment bank about to shatter

The computer is acting a little wonky so I'll leave it at that. Have a good Father's Day, everyone!