Sunday, January 31, 2010

Dear Internet,

Evans-Pritchard ECB Prepares Legal Ground for Euro Rupture as Greek Crisis Escalates

The original was quickly taken down by the Telegraph... & its remains, picked up before the deletion, now scatter the Internet; which, of itself, explains why the Internet is truly dear.

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On the latter note, all who value the Internet (not to mention life on Earth and the Earth itself) should beware of Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates, who are dreaming up insidious plans for the cybersphere, the biosphere, and the atmosphere respectively...

Time: Microsoft's Craig Mundie wants driver's licenses for the Internet

FT: Gates pledges 10bn for vaccines -If the scheme seems innocuous enough, one should reconsider in light of this bright idea of Gates'... 'Flying syringe' mosquitos, other ideas get Gates funding

Science: Bill Gates Funding Geoengineering Research

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Bloomberg: Secret Banking Cabal Emerges from AIG Shadows

Another case of conspiracy theories going mainstream.

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Raw Story: Pentagon calls for 'Office of Strategic Deception'

In reference to The Open Conspiracy

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Sibel Edmonds: The Makings of a Police State -Part IV

And to bring the point home...

PressTV: Israeli mind-scanner may take over US airports

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Kurt Haskell: The Sharp Dressed Man Who Aided Mutallab onto Flight 253 was a U.S. Government Agent

Article by the passenger of Flight 253 who witnessed the "SDM"

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Reuters: UPDATE 1-US missle test mimicking Iran strike fails

Read this one with caution - why would the Pentagon advertise failure?

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Andy Capper: The Vice Guide to Liberia

Gonzo journalism at its best, with music by Cut Hands

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Dear Internet

At this time, WXXX initiates a new format to not replace, but to supplement its usual editorial policy. Though we cannot claim this to be a genuine news outlet, it was the intention to avoid simply repeating stories posted elsewhere unless if there were some detail, aspect or synthetic copula with another story or stories that warranted the making of the observation.

Now, we will not refrain simply repeating, or merely linking to stories that strike as worth noting, if only for the sake of archiving them where they can be easily accessed for future reference. The reason being that there is so much out there... on the internet... that we cannot begin to digest it all and add to, analyze or synthesize it in order to meet the editorial injunction to be unique.

For the time being, until it grows weary, posts under this format shall go by the title...

"Dear Internet!!!"

...in honor of Conan O'Brien, who delivered these words in his inimitable style on his last night with The Tonight Show, thus summing up the utter futility of my-opinion-matters! internet publishing. We know this. Get on youtube, twitter, or blogger & give 'em a piece of your mind!

Oddly enough, at around the same time, John Young of cryptome offered a similar observation, though with a decidedly acerbic tone, describing the site in response to inquiries of an internet scholar researching wikileaks and the like...

Cryptome aspires to be a library not a social media mosh pit, or worse, a blog... It hosts documents for study and informed action to offset ineffective opinionating. Most of its documents are not controversial, attention-mongering leaks, breaking news, ideology peddling, product spin, fund-raising, and to the extent possible, not intended as reputaion flogging for readers and the site operator -- the most pervasive addiction of the Internet.

Alright then. A library, by no means complete, but of as many stories worth noting that we come across as we scan the internet - without the benefit of massive Cray computers such as the NSA has at its disposal, but with that old-fashioned information processing device: a human brain.

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Chris Strohm: Terrorism watch lists don't necessarily bar entry

At a Senate hearing last Wednesday, in response to questions about Abdulmutallab, the Christmas undie bomber, boarding Northwest flight 253 in spite of being on a terrorist watch list, Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said:

"I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another."

The "some reason or another" in the case of Abdulmutallab slipping through the homeland security panopticon could refer to the "alternative agenda" of a certain faction within intelligence agencies wishing to deal the Obama Administration a grave political blow on national security, as an unofficial Obama spokesman, Dick Wolff, suggested Jan. 4 on Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Well, I was speaking to White House folks earlier today and it‘s clear the president is still deeply concerned and troubled, even angry at the intelligence lapses... ...the question here is: why didn‘t the centralized system of intelligence that was set up after 9/11, why didn‘t it work? Is this conspiracy or cork up?... It seems that the president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals who maybe had an alternative agenda.

Of course, the next day, Wolff was on to deflate the trial balloon that he had just floated. Nevertheless, the President airing conspiracy theories, even if by proxy, is significant. Mr. Sunstein should have a talk with him.

Webster Tarpley: Obama White House Probing Rogue Network of Moles...

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Nafeez Ahmed: Yemen. Energy Crisis, and the Nigerian Crotch Bomber: The Privatization of Security and the Militarization of Society - Part I - Part II - Part III

An excellent series on some of the geo-political machinations afoot in Eurasia, and the roles Al Qaeda plays within these machinations.

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Daily Mail: David Kelly post mortum to be kept secret for 70 years as doctors accuse Lord Hutton of concealing vital information

In follow-up to The Death of Dr. Keeley

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Secrecy News: Book: Change of State

A central claim of the book is that the very nature of government has been altered and transformed from the bureaucratic welfare state into what may be called the informational state, in which governments "deliberately, explicitly, and consistently control information creation, processing, flows, and use to exercise power."

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Robert Eringer: Spy Lord 9

Some interesting observations by former KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov on then Director of CIA (and current Defense Secretary) Robert Gates, who correctly predicted the demise of the Soviet Union, though ten years later than it happened. Also: "We had information that he was particularly concerned with our improved relations to China." This is noteworthy, particularly as the Nafeez Ahmed stories linked above essentially argue that much of the current geopolitical maneuverings ultimately boil down to engaging China by proxy.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Tungsten & Gold

A slight revision of the Burl Ives classic, Silver & Gold...

Tungsten & gold,
Tungsten & gold,
Everyone should wish for tungsten & gold
How do you measure it's worth?
Just by the pleasure it gives here on Earth...

Tungsten & gold,
Tungsten & gold,
Means so much more when I see
Tungsten alight gold on
Every Christmas tree...

Indeed, tungsten is the substance within every (incandescent) lightbulb, illuminating golden Christmas ornaments... Without it, all your silver & gold would be left in the dark.

So, what's all this fuss from the Chinese about gold-plated tungsten bars being counterfeit?

The Fort Knox Conundrum: Chinese say they received bogus bars of gold traced to U.S.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

On Geopolitic Testicles

We were startled to see this title...

Greg Palast: The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust

Is the WXXX News practice of sexualizing headlines starting to take off on the internet?

The implication of the article in question seems to be that, despite the fact that Iceland and Haiti are respectively left and right testicles of IMF, debt obligated austerity plans - as llustrated with the Google-map connecting Iceland and Haiti - nevertheless Iceland was able to send relief supplies to Haiti even before the United States.

It should be added, however, Iceland is only now beginning to deal with this kind of debt colonialism (at the hands of Anglo-Dutch financiers) that Haiti has endured for the past two centuries And it is perhaps in large account thanks to Haitian experience, as well as that of other countries, that the Icelanders are getting wise to what is afoot, and doing something about it...

Birgitta Jonsdottir: Iceland against financial blackmail

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Open Conspiracy

In response to the increasing promulgation of conspiracy theories through the general public, co-authors Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule propose a government conspiracy in order to dispel theories about government conspiracies.

One might ask, is this paper, Conspiracy Theories, serious? The authors acknowledge that any government effort to dispel conspiracy theories only has the effect of reinforcing those theories; regardless, they suggest the following measures:

...the government can minimize this effect by rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independent groups to supply rebuttals, and by cognitive infiltration designed to break up the crippled epistemology of conspiracy-minded groups and informationally isolated networks. (Pg. 30)

And they published the paper for all to see, so that these conspiracy-minded groups would know that "independents" offering rebuttals might not be so independent, that indeed their own ranks may be compromised by agents of "cognitive infiltration" - an academic jargon term for mind control. Simply by publishing this paper then, the seeds of suspicion have been planted into conspiracy theory networks, thus induced into Cartesian realms of conspiratorial speculation... the Evil Genius is among US. The effect, then, is not to break up "crippled epistemology," but rather to further compromise it - to make rational agents question their own epistemological foundations... But, where the logical measure for repairing "crippled epistemology" would be to present false conspiracy theorists with verifiable information in order to clear up their empirical lacuna, such as could be done through FOIA disclosures, the authors spend several unconvincing pages explaining why this approach should not be taken.

Seeing that one of the authors, Cass Sunstein, now heads President Obama's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and is regarded as a candidate nominee for the next Supreme Court Justice position to open up, the conspiratorial speculation is only ramping up and expanding even into usually non-conspiracy theory outlets, like Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald: Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal


Update, January 19

Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News posts the PDF of a Jan. 7 Department of Defense Joint Cheifs of Staff Publication, Psychological Operations, along with a brief synopsis...

DoD "Clarifies" Doctrine on Psychological Operations

As Aftergood notes, the term "propaganda" is redefined (GL-5 in the publication) to apply specifically to adversaries, to replace the traditional, neutral sense of information propagation...

Propaganda: Any form of adversary communication, especially of a biased or misleading nature, designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, or behavior of any group in order to benefit the sponser, either directly or indirectly...

The definition retains generality with the operative word "any" used twice: "Any form of adversary communication..." directed against "any group..." Moreover, anything that is "biased or misleading" may thus be regarded as propaganda. This would then appear to open doors for the sorts of operations Sunstein and Vermuele are proposing.

As for the restriction against deploying PSYOPS on domestic targets, there are exceptions, stated in section VI-6:

In the same manner that infrantry units with a primary mission to find, fix, and kill the enemy can be used to provide humanitarian relief to US citizens following natural disasters or other crises, PSYOP forces can provide CAISE [civil authority information support element] within the United States and its territories.

The wide open door here would be "other crises..."

Monday, January 11, 2010

The Yemeni Base

There are differing histories regarding the genesis of Al Qaeda. The standard history, as found in Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower, has it that Al Qaeda was founded in 1988 by Usama bin Laden and his associates in order to expand the scope of jihad, as the Soviet Union was then on its last legs in Afghanistan. By other accounts, however, there was never an organization whose members called it by this name. Rather, it was the term with which Western intelligence agencies referred generally to a list - a database - of mujaheddin and jihadists that they had accumulated over the years. Thus, it was a blanket term of sorts, thrown over a hodgepodge of Islamist militants, in the same manner that, for instance, we might make up a word to apply to the disorganized set of white supremacist groups throughout the West.

Al Qaeda - the Database

Context of '1988: ’Al-Qaeda’ Possibly the Name of a Computer Database'

Taking it a step further, there are claims that bin Laden, aka Tim Osman, is a full-fledged CIA asset, thus making "al Qaeda" really al-CIA'da.

Whatever the case may be, "the Base" is coming home to roost... in Yemen. Consider, to begin with, that Yemen is bin Laden's ancestral home, where the patriarch Muhammed bin Awed bin Laden was born in 1908. But in more recent times, as we read from the AP...

Thousands of Yemenis are battle-hardened veterans of 'holy wars' in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Iraq, and though most are not engaged in violence now, they preserve a die-hard al-Qaeda ideology.

Finally, to gratuitously take a fictional episode as a strange, unwitting parable of the situation, consider this scenario in the spy novel Death Beam, by former British spook Robert Moss (unwitting, presumably, because it was published nearly thirty years ago). Sammy Hamad is a Palestinian terrorist recruited by the Russians whose mission is to sabotage U.S. air defense and to assassinate the President. Following his attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan while disguised as a wealthy Saudi, Hamad somehow manages to escape the U.S. and then finds his way to Yemen... to al-Gheidda, Yemen, to be specific. There, he is hunted down by agents of "the Club" (an informal collaboration of CIA, MI6, & Mossad agents) at a place called the "Camp of the Martyrs" - into the canteen kitchen he is chased and executed like a sacrificial lamb.

A little word-play here reveals the uncanniness of the fiction... "Sammy" Hamad posing as a wealthy Saudi, like the one who goes by the name, O-SAM-A* bin Laden... this Sammy takes refuge in the Yemeni coastal city of "al-Gheidda" - not at all phonetically distant from al-Qaeda - near the region that was the ancestral home of the bin Ladens, the Hadhramaut, or "Court of Death" as it is biblically known, where he meets his demise in... we might say... a Feast of Martyrs (as it happened in the canteen of the Camp of Martyrs) ... or as it is known among some Egyptians, the Feast of Nayrouz, which falls on September 11th...

Robert Moss has since become a practitioner of "active dreaming," which suggests a familiarity with what James Shelby Downard called "twilight language"

*That is, "Sam" flanked by an Omega & Alpha, or variably spelled, U-(as in Uncle)-Sam-A.... U-S-A-ma... The CIA acronym for bin Laden, UBL, would indeed indicate the preferred spelling as "Usama" - though this deprives us of "Bad Mason In Lead," among other possibilities.

Undie Bomber Turns Xmas into XXXmas

It was quite predictable... Soon after the non-event of a botched attempt at performance art - a piece entitled "Liar Liar Pants on Fire!" - on a Detroit bound Delta flight on Christmas day, the usual media whores would revisit their post-9/11 glory days, doing what they do best, with a vigorous campaign to fear-monger the public into videodrome corrals. So, come next holiday season, travelers can express the spirit of the season by saying to their TSA screeners.... "Merry XXXmas you fucking perv!"

PrisonPlanet: Inverted Body Scanner Image Shows Naked Body In Full Living Color

But on a more serious note, there are solid geo-political factors behind these events to consider...

Aangirfan: USA vs. Russia & China; Yemen & Saudi Arabia

Asia Times: Obama's Yemeni odyssey targets China

Wayne Madsen: Plane incident a false flag involving CIA, Mossad, RAW

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Correction (Nov. 2010)

It has been brought to our attention (thank you MM) that the image in the PrisonPlanet article does not originate from a naked body scanner. It came from Bildagentur F1online - Body in 360°

The give-away is the hair. An image from a backscatter X-ray scanner should have no hair whatsoever, and these images are in black and white. Nevertheless, with a little bit of photo-shop editing, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to come up with something worthy of the pages of Celebrity Sleuth

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Hot Air to Inflate Rare Earth Bubble

As the old bubble has completely deflated, a new bubble shall rise...

The bubble conspiracy and the search for rare earth metals

How the bubble inflates? Global warming, or, hot air scare:

Precious metals that could save the planet

Who holds this bubble? China:

Concern as China clamps down on rare earth exports

Why export raw materials? Better to export their manufactured product:

China funds green gold rush

Destroying the Earth, to save it:

Earth-friendly elements are mined destructively

But China beware, your bubble may pop:

Rare earth materials extracted from industrial waste

And, there are other possibilities:

Free energy, first commercial production in 2010

Though, the enemies are ruthless...

Inventor's terminal cancer courtesy Verichip?