Americans Selling Heirlooms And Prized Belongings To Get By

We're turning into a third world country as wealth flows upward

"To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms.
"This is not about downsizing. It's about needing gas money," said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, N.C. One former affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts.
At Craigslist, which has become a kind of online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared 70 percent since last July. In March, the number of listings more than doubled to almost 15 million from the year-ago period.
Craigslist CEO Jeff Buckmaster acknowledged the increasing popularity of selling all sort of items on the Web, but said the rate of growth is "moving above the usual trend line." He said he was amazed at the desperate tone in some ads."

Shell made $3,000,000 an hour in 2007

The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

Repeating the Crime

"It is 1939 all over again. The world waits helplessly for the next act of naked aggression by rogue states. Only this time the rogue states are not the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. They are the United States and Israel.
The targeted victims are not Poland and France, but Iran, Syria, the remains of the Palestinian West Bank and southern Lebanon.
The American mass media is overjoyed. War coverage attracts viewers and sells advertising.
The neoconservatives are ecstatic. Hegemony uber alles is back on track.
The US Air Force can’t wait “to show what it can do.”
Defense contractors see no end of the profits.
Under cover of the mayhem and propaganda, Israel can grab the remains of the West Bank and have another go at grabbing the water resources of southern Lebanon.
Unlike the US and Israel, Iran is neither occupying any other country’s territory nor threatening to invade another country. Nevertheless, propaganda against Iran is spouting from US and Israeli mouths at an increasing rate. Lie after lie rolls off the tongues of leaders of the “two great democracies.”

Cabal Still Squirms Five Years Later

It was supposed to be one of those triumphant photo ops the posturing war criminals loved back then - Dim Son smirking in front of a hand picked crowd of wildly cheering servicemen to impress the rubes back home. Get the camera angles just right with that Mission Accomplished banner positioned just so in the background and cue the Preening Buffoon to deliver the money lines to wild huzzahs. And right from the start it all came undone.

Even though he played dress up in that flight suit, the Drunken Frat Brat didn't have anything to do with landing the jet on that carrier. He shouted to reporters "Yes I flew it" because supposedly he grabbed the controls during the brief flight to the ship. But at least assorted press whores fell all over themselves to rave about the show. Tim Russert gushed his man love as commander Game Boy strutted about the deck in his codpiece. And at Faux Spews:
"I'll tell you what, [First Lady Laura Bush] has a hottie on her hands--look how good he looks," swooned E.D. Hill, a co-host of the morning program Fox & Friends. In a line that the White House could have scripted, Miss Hill's co-host Steve Doocy exclaimed: "If you're a Democratic presidential candidate ... maybe you should just join a lobbyist group for the next four years or something. 'Cause I don't think you're going to be taking that man's lob anytime soon."

Oh how they meticulously arranged the photo op that day. There was no reason for Captain Codpiece to go to the USS Abraham Lincoln except to stage this spectacle worthy of Cecil B. DeMille. The crew was finally coming back to port after 10 months at sea but the propagandists slowed the crew's homecoming for their supposed triumphant lollapalooza. They and their expectant families had to wait an extra day to be reunited while the bastards treated the crew as expedient props. We were told the ship was too far out at sea for Sockpuppet to make a boring helicopter arrival but it turned out it was only 30 miles off the coast. They turned the ship into the fading light of day so the cameras would get that dramatic sun angle so the whole cartoon might appear more forceful. As an extra bonus for the manipulators, according to the May 12 issue of Time, the ship was positioned "to obscure any view of the nearby coastline and ensure a picture-perfect azure backdrop."

Then the banner itself. The propagandists at the white house initially denied any responsibility for it as the deaths mounted in the weeks and months afterwards. Of course that was a lie, which is the default position they always take. They blamed the navy for putting it up. But just like the shifting reasons for destroying Iraq they kept throwing shit up against the wall hoping something would stick. The story was then changed to "the Navy requested the banner and the White House staff produced it." A year later they changed their tune again as if they had never lied all that time: "We put it up. We made the sign," Fleischer said."
Reality for the criminals is whatever the hell they can get away with.

So five years after that tawdry effort the "White House admits fault on 'Mission Accomplished' banner", but this is how they spin it:
"WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq."

Poor little boy, it's all about him, isn't it?

Mysogynists Wanted Current Conditions

Mission Accomplished

"Women Are Being Beheaded for Taking Their Veil Off": Honor Killings On Rise in Iraq
"At first glance Shawbo Ali Rauf appears to be slumbering on the grass, her pale brown curls framing her face, her summer skirt spread about her. But the awkward position of her limbs and the splattered blood reveal the true horror of the scene."

No place for a woman - Plans to rebuild Iraq exclude women, May 08, 2003

Life in Iraq is worse now than under Saddam, Iraqi woman tells MCC students

Iraqi women: Prostituting ourselves to feed our children

The Iraq Legacy: Millions of Women's Lives Destroyed

No, the fascist legacy.

The Bubble People

Conservatives Increasingly Tuned Out Everything Except Fox News Between 1998-2006

"A new analysis by University of Georgia associate professor Barry Hollander finds that between 1998 and 2006, Americans became increasingly polarized in their news-gathering habits. After examining five national Pew Center for the People and the Press during that time period, Hollander concluded that the public now lives in “a huge echo chamber of attitudes and ideas.” (...)

Hollander also notes that conservatives “dramatically dropped news sources that they perceive as being biased against their position.” Evidently, this included C-SPAN, which also saw a dramatic drop in conservative viewers.
These findings are similar to a Norman Lear Center/Zogby International poll from November 2007, which found that 22 percent of conservatives say they “never” enjoy entertainment that reflects values other than their own, as opposed to just 7 percent of liberals. Fox News was also the “most politically divisive TV channel,” with 70 percent of conservatives and just 3 percent of liberals watching it daily.
But too much Fox News may be bad news for conservatives. An April 2007 Pew Research Study survey found that viewers of the conservative Fox News channel had the lowest knowledge of national and international affairs."

LSD Pioneer Takes His Final Trip

Born January 11, 1906(1906-01-11)Baden, Switzerland
Died April 29, 2008 (aged 102)Burg, Switzerland

Take acid and live to be 100.

Our "Special Little Buddy" In The Middle East

Celebrating 60 years of throwing filth at cowering Palestinians

"Across the occupied West Bank, raw untreated sewage is pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements, along large metal pipes, straight onto Palestinian land. From there, it can enter the groundwater and the reservoirs, and become a poison.
Standing near one of these long, stinking brown-and-yellow rivers of waste recently, the local chief medical officer, Dr Bassam Said Nadi, explained to me: "Recently there were very heavy rains, and the shit started to flow into the reservoir that provides water for this whole area. I knew that if we didn't act, people would die. We had to alert everyone not to drink the water for over a week, and distribute bottles. We were lucky it was spotted. Next time..." He shook his head in fear. This is no freak: a 2004 report by Friends of the Earth found that only six per cent of Israeli settlements adequately treat their sewage.
Meanwhile, in order to punish the population of Gaza for voting "the wrong way", the Israeli army are not allowing past the checkpoints any replacements for the pipes and cement needed to keep the sewage system working. The result? Vast stagnant pools of waste are being held within fragile dykes across the strip, and rotting. Last March, one of them burst, drowning a nine-month-old baby and his elderly grandmother in a tsunami of human waste. The Centre on Housing Rights warns that one heavy rainfall could send 1.5m cubic metres of faeces flowing all over Gaza, causing "a humanitarian and environmental disaster of epic proportions".

Meet One Of The Top Racecar Drivers In Iran

Laleh Seddigh, not quite the carefully manufactured image of muslim horribleness now, is she?



“Ms. Seddigh loves speed. She also loves a challenge. Last fall, she petitioned the national auto racing federation in this male-dominated society for permission to compete against men. When it was granted, she became not only the first woman in Iran to race cars against the opposite sex, but also the first woman since the Islamic Revolution here to compete against men in any sport.
What's more, she beat them.”



"Resistance from men does not bother me. Once I get on the track I like to use my technical skills, take control and dominate the other drivers."

The Consequences Of Bombing Iran's Nuclear Facilities

Or, what the psychopaths are about to do in your name

"The US is said to have 10,000 targets in Iran. Primary among these are all nuclear facilities, including the nuclear power plant at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf coast near Kuwait, and the nuclear enrichment facilities in Natanz near Esfahan. Bushehr is an industrial city, with nearly 1 million residents. As many as 70,000 foreign engineers work in the region, which includes a large gas field. Natanz is Iran’s primary enrichment site, north of Esfahan, which also has nuclear research facilities. Esfahan is a world heritage city with a population of 2 million.
Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor has 82 tons of enriched uranium (U235) now loaded into it, according to Israeli and Chinese news reports. The plant is scheduled to become operational this summer, producing electricity. The Natanz enrichment facility is operating a full capacity, enriching uranium for use in reactors according to IAEA reports.
According to the Center for Disease Control, the uranium 235 used in nuclear reactors has a half life of 700 million years. As nuclear reactor fuel is used, it turns into uranium 238, which has a half life of 4.5 billion years. These radioactive isotopes are dangerous to health because they emit alpha particles and because they are chemically toxic. When inhaled, they damage lung tissue. When ingested, they damage kidneys and cause cancer in bones and in liver tissues. According to a recent review of medical research, uranium exposure causes babies to be deformed or born dead.
Never in history has it happened that nuclear power plants and nuclear enrichment facilities have been deliberately bombed. Such facilities, everywhere in the world, operate under severe safety conditions because the release of radioactive materials is deadly, immediately and also long after exposure. If the USA or Israel deliberately bomb a fully fueled nuclear power plant or nuclear fuel enrichment facilities, containment will be breached; radioactive elements will be released into the environment. There will be horrific deaths for families in the surrounding vicinity. The Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated 3 million deaths would result in 3 weeks from bombing the nuclear enrichment facilities near Esfahan, and the contamination would cover Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the way to India. (...)

Either Americans do not understand what it is they are preparing to do, or they think themselves immune to the consequences. The planet is not large. What goes around, comes around. Smoke from the Gulf War oil fires went around the world and was detected in South America. Radioactive fallout from bombing a nuclear reactor will also go far, especially considering that it has millions of years to make the trip.
The Persian Gulf nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran have more than half the world’s known oil reserves. The 1981 study by Fetter and Tsipis in Scientific American on “Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity” estimated that bombing a nuclear reactor would cause 8600 square miles around the reactor to be uninhabitable, depending on which way the wind blows. Bombing the Bushehr reactor will mean half of the world’s oil is instantly inaccessible. Bombing Iran means that Americans will not be driving cars any where, any more, for a long, long time. The American Way of Life will be finished. An economic collapse unimagined by Americans will follow."

Any rational individual would conclude that doing such a thing is an unthinkable proposition. But of course we have insane criminals at the helm who don't think in rational terms. Believe that they aren't crazy enough to do such a thing? Two things - their fondness for "depleted" uranium munitions that have poisoned untold millions already in the middle east, europe and the US military itself, leaving a toxic time bomb for thousands of future generations. And the fact that for years now they've purged their ranks of all personnel who aren't on board with them to commit this monstrous, self annihilating crime.

Added - Think I'm exaggerating the poisonous danger of what the american military is spreading around with such extravagant abandon? Look what you're paying for now.

US Importing DU Contaminated Sand From Kuwait
"Longshoremen should finish unloading 6,700 tons of sand contaminated with depleted uranium and lead Tuesday afternoon, said Chad Hyslop, spokesman for the disposal company American Ecology.The BBC Alabama arrived at the port Saturday afternoon with the 306 containers carrying the contaminated sand from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army base in Kuwait. The sand was packaged in bags designed to transport hazardous waste.Longshoremen unloaded the containers in two shifts Sunday, then two more Monday, Hyslop said. They wore standard safety gear, and dust protection equipment and respirators were available, he said."

Faux Spews© Still Featuring Lying Pentagon Shills

They know what their job is

"The New York Times publishes an exposé on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon that most likely violate federal "covert propaganda" laws.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) calls for an investigation of the propaganda purveyors, especially those with business ties to the Pentagon.
The Pentagon announces that it is immediately suspending their Retired Military Analyst Program.
And Fox is still airing -- without disclosure -- two of the exposed pundits, Robert H. Scales and Thomas McInerney. See them for yourself."

Fleshing Out That Proposed Disney PsyOp In Baghdad

Replacing millenia old culture with the american dream machine

"The entertainment park is an integral part of war propaganda.
Establishing an American cultural outpost in an occupied land serves to uphold the legitimacy of the invaders and their Worldwide "cultural values".
Most of the country's cultural and educational infrastructure including museums, schools, universities, parks, theaters, cinemas have been destroyed and now the invaders are "helping to rebuild". Under this reconstruction effort, America is to donate 200,000 skateboards to Iraqi children.
Through Hollywood imagery, the Baghdad style Disneyland is intended to nurture Iraqi public opinion, to mould a pro-American view of the World."

"Through the use of motion based simulations and sophisticated entertainment equipment, the harsh daily realities of poverty and military occupation are replaced by a World of fiction and fantasy.
The concept underlying Disney's Imagineering (developed by RSE) is to "overcome the barriers between reality and dreams". The objective is to replace reality by a dream world.
Iraq's daily realities of death, destruction and torture are replaced by a "Dream World Made in America".

"Iraq's cultural heritage is destroyed. The historical memory of Mesopotamia is wiped out. US investors are to "bring badly needed fun" to the war theater."



"Imagine the road-blocks and military check points that impoverished Iraqi children will have to go through to see Mickey Mouse..."

Deep Murasaki

Smoke On The Water, Japanese Version



h↑t Unknown News

Spineless Punks Shovel More Billions Into Iraqi Black Hole

Democrats wearing out their knee pads

"House Democratic leaders are putting together the largest Iraq war spending bill yet, a measure that is expected to fund the war through the end of the Bush presidency and for nearly six months into the next president's term.
The bill, which could be unveiled as early as this week, signals that Democrats are resigned to the fact they can't change course in Iraq in the final months of President Bush's term. Instead, the party is pinning its hopes of ending the war on winning the White House in November."

See 151 Congress Members Are War Profiteers

I Used To Fill My VW For Less Than Two Dollars

OPEC President Sees $200 OIl

"ALGIERS (Reuters) - OPEC President Chakib Khelil does not rule out oil prices reaching $200 a barrel, even though supply is adequate, because the market is driven by the dollar's slide, Algerian government newspaper El Moudjahid reported on Monday.
"Questioned about a possible rise which would go to $200, the minister did not rule out this eventuality, explaining that this rise is indexed from now on to the fall in the dollar or to the rise in the dollar," El Moudjahid reported."

Analysts see $10 gas

"Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.
That's the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize."

Sounds about right as the ball park estimate of how much you'll pay at the pump is 1/20 of the going price of a barrel of crude.

Anti Terror Powers Used To Crack Down On Dog Poop

How town hall snoopers hijack anti-terror powers to crack down on dog fouling

"Surveillance powers designed to track terrorists are being deployed by councils to crack down on littering, dog fouling and planning law breaches, a survey reveals.
Its findings expose the vast scale of Big Brother spying by town halls and brought urgent demands for "root and branch" reforms to curb the fast-growing snooping culture.
Some councils have used the sweeping powers granted by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) more than 100 times in the last year to follow and watch residents or monitor their calls - often while dealing with the most minor of suspected offences."

This is in the UK but the same thing is happening here. It was supposed to happen, because the excuse for turning the country into a snoop society, the justification for construction of a police state was always based on a lie. 9/11 was a lie, every phony terror cell they bellow about is a lie, their endless war is a lie. That camera, those security checkpoints, Halliburton's camps - those are all meant for you, Binky.

151 Congress Members Are War Profiteers

Think they want to stop the carnage?

Blood money stains the hands of more than 25% of members of the U.S. House and Senate

"Who profits from the Iraq war? More than a quarter of senators and congressmen have invested at least $196 million of their own money in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD) that profit from the death and destruction in Iraq.According to the latest reports, 151 members of Congress invested close to a quarter-billion in companies that received defense contracts of at least $5 million in 2006. These companies got more than $275.6 billion from the government in 2006, or $755 million per day, according to FedSpending.org, a website of the watchdog group OMBWatch."

Next 9/11 Scheduled For Week Of May 1-8

Martial law tossed in as a bonus

"With the next new moon arriving May 5, 2008, which is usually the time the Pentagon War Mongers love to attack countries Israel wants bombed, this next terror drill, coming up next week, could be more than interesting. Especially the part about invoking "Continuity Plans and Capabilities."
That's bureaucrat speak for Martial Law.
Bet the "Dick", Cheney, has already slithered into his bunker in an undisclosed location.

The overall exercise scenario unfolds as a Category 4 hurricane threatens the National Capitol Region (NCR) while events in the Pacific Northwest include terrorist attacks involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the state of Washington and an accidental release of a chemical agent at chemical stockpile facility in Umatilla, Oregon. The scenario culminates with the hurricane's imminent landfall combined with a credible terror threat to the NCR which causes the federal government to invoke continuity plans and capabilities."

You know, this truly sucks that we have to play this "Guess When The Government Will Kill Us" game. We know their agenda is to pull some murderous shit as justification to rain missiles on Syria and Iran, and we're forced to connect the dots to try and figure out just when it all goes down. CapitolHillBlue mentions two of them - the fascists' penchant for utilizing their night vision during the new moon and using existing "terror drills" as cover for the confusion it creates.

Remember, FEMA was in NY the day before 9/11.

Oops

Made in China: Thousands of 'Free Tibet' flags

"BBC News reports that a factory in Guangdong was caught making thousands of the colorful "Free Tibet" flags that protesters have used to show their support for Tibetan independence.
"Workers said they thought they were just making colorful flags and did not realize their meaning," the broadcaster says, citing a report in Hong Kong's Ming Pao. "But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities."
The Snow Lion Flag is banned in China."

Cedar Point, Ohio

Such Subtle Rudeness

Classes must be given on this. All from the first paragraph.

Rev. Wright Defends Church, Blasts Media

"In three major appearances in the last four days, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. offered a full-throated historical defense of black church traditions. But his re-emergence on the national stage has certainly served to provide more sound-bites that already have begun to haunt Senator Barack Obama on the campaign trail."

Translation from despicable MSM speak to plain english:

1. Apparently Rev. Wright has minor appearances.

2. Wright "offered" something for your consideration. A lot different than "stated" something.

3. Have you ever seen the Times, or any MSM rag call something emanating from any Bushista lips "full throated"?

4. Two letters away from "hysterical" defense.

5. Re-emergence? As if the Times and other filthy rags haven't rammed Wright down everybody's throats?

Behold More James Bond Craftiness From A Loathsome Nemesis

I suppose we should all beseech the Bushistas to save us from this latest cartoon threat that has us all shaking in our boots.

Kim Jong-il builds ‘Thunderbirds’ runway for war in North Korea
"North Korean military engineers are completing an underground runway beneath a mountain that can protect fighter aircraft from attack until they take off at high speed through the mouth of a tunnel.
The 6,000ft runway is a few minutes’ flying time from the tense front line where the Korean People’s Army faces soldiers from the United States and South Korea.
The project was identified by an air force defector from North Korea and captured on a satellite image by Google Earth, according to reports in the South Korean press last week.
It is one of three underground fighter bases among an elaborate subterranean military infrastructure built to withstand a “shock and awe” assault in the first moments of a war, the defector said."

Whoosh! Boom!
Runway for war. US soldiers just a few minutes from doom! Found on Google! You know google, don't you?
Jeebus, they must have a good time thinking this Death Star garbage up. I'm imagining a room full of twenty something nerdy creeps they lure from Stanford as they fire up some spliff and bounce ideas off each other to scare the hell out of us rubes.
Submarines of Doom! Axis of Evil Intent! Nook-u-ler playdough!

You may remember Saddam, way back in the eighties, when he ostensibly dreamed up his deadly Supergun, a gigantic cannon that was supposed to threaten the known universe. It was a big piece of rusting pipe laying up against a hill out in the desert, and was never used until UN teams dismantled it after the first Gulf slaughter.



Or recall his Poison Spewing Drones Of Misery that Fox trumpeted to make us pee in our pants when the lying warmongers forced their Iraq invasion down our throats.



Who can forget Osama's Fortress Of Terpitude cave complex where all kinds of nefarious activity was supposedly hatched amid opulent surroundings?



Sweet jeebus they pull this stuff all the time, and I don't know how they can breathlessly announce this garbage with a straight face and keep from laughing. As for that supposed underground runway coming out of a mountain, a few well aimed missiles is all it would take, but we're not supposed to realize that.

$100 Fill Up. Shell And BP - 12 Billion In 12 Weeks

Shell and BP earn £6bn in 12 weeks amid fuel crisis

"OIL GIANTS BP and Shell will fuel motorists' anger over the latest surge in petrol prices this week when they are expected to disclose they have made a total of more than £6 billion in profit in the opening three months of the year."

Continually Militarizing The Police

Chicago’s Daley Issues Combat Rifles to Beat Cops

"It is so transparent as to almost be a joke. “Chicago police officers will be armed with combat rifles to better rival the firepower of street gangs, police Superintendent Jody Weis has announced,” reports the Fort Mill Times. “Weis unveiled the plan to equip and train the department’s 13,500 officers with M4 carbines on Friday.” No word on what version of the M4 Jody Weis will hand out. The M4 is basically an M16. It comes in semi-automatic with a three-round burst and full auto. It is the preferred weapon of the U.S. Army Special Forces and Navy SEALs.
Is there a reason for cops to have such awesome firepower?
“The weapons of criminals are getting bigger and bigger,” averred Chicago mayor Richard Daley, so he gave a nod to issuing the M4s. Interesting because Daley is an avowed opponent of the Second Amendment. But only for the commoners. Cops get military weapons to go along with their black Star Wars storm trooper uniforms."

There was an "incident" that occurred Feb 28, 1997, that's germane to what's happening before our eyes today, as the government is fast converting the country into a fascist police state.

That was the day two heavily armed and armored dudes supposedly tried to rob a bank in Los Angeles and then got into a shootout with police. Now, the bank robbery part of that stage play was just a setup for what happened next, because those guys were obviously going nowhere and had prepared themselves to duke it out with the local cops. They had full body armor that was sufficient to stop everything that was shot at them which means at least type IIIa or even type III, capable of stopping rifle bullets. I remember seeing videos of these guys parading back and forth in the streets for an hour, blasting away with full auto weapons, expending thousands of rounds of armor piercing bullets, before they were brought down. You can see a bunch of videos here, and a remarkably prescient bank robbery shootout scene fom "Heat", a flick that came out two years earlier.

The point of that over the top exercise was rammed home again and again. The cops were outgunned and we were repeatedly told they even had to rush to a sporting goods store to get adequate firepower to combat this dire threat to law and order. Of course it was highly instructive Kabuki theater to enlighten the great unwashed that police need much more than just their puny .38 specials to serve and protect. With the possibility of so much mayhem occurring at a moments notice nothing short of the most advanced military gear would do in the future for former Officer Joe Friendly.

The Eerie Smiley Face Murder Spree

Chris Jenkins murder connects dozens around country

"University of Minnesota college student Chris Jenkins was found in the Mississippi River in February of 2003. Minneapolis Police began investigating the case, which also caught the attention of two retired NYPD detectives. Turns out, Jenkins' death was the missing part of the puzzle for Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte. They think Jenkins connects dozens of other deaths around the country over the last decade. The stories are the same all over the country--an athletic, intelligent, well-liked college student goes missing. Family and friends launch a massive search. Weeks or months later, the young man is discovered drowned. In more than 40 cases, the deaths are blamed on a drunken accident--except for one.

The death of Chris Jenkins in Minneapolis is the only one where the cause of death was changed from 'undetermined' or 'drowning' to 'homicide.'

'Sick Signature'

Gannon and Duarte have done something that no other law enforcement agency has ever done in this case -- they looked at the big picture and visited each site where the young men disappeared. While most local investigations focused on where a body was recovered, Gannon and Duarte tried to figure out where the body went into the river.
City after city, when they'd find the spot where the body went in, they would find something else: The symbol of a smiley face."



The choice of victims in this long string of murders is very strange. What little I can find about how they met this fate makes me think several things. First these were all athletic young men who went out partying, so if they weren't dead drunk they were lured by a person or persons using drugs or sex as provocative bait. It had to take several people to overpower each one since at the crucial moment the perpetrators had no way of knowing how much resistance they'd face. The murderers, at least one of them, have to be around the same age as the victims or they'd stand out in homogenous young crowds. They seem to have been tortured before being murdered. I'm guessing a covert psychological operation of the "Beltway Sniper" variety and I'd like to see a map of the deaths because these operations can usually form some sort of occult symbol.


beltway shooting map -Nero's broken cross

Maybe He Needed To Be Taught A Lesson?

America's Afghan puppet, the derided "mayor of Kabul", gets uppity and then there's a splashy gun and rocket attack on a parade he's attending.

Afghan Leader Criticizes U.S. on Conduct of War
"KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai strongly criticized the British and American conduct of the war here on Friday, insisting in an interview that his government be given the lead in policy decisions."

Karzai Escapes an Assassination Attempt
"KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt at a military parade in central Kabul on Sunday, when suspected Taliban insurgents fired mortars and bullets at the dignitaries assembled in the spectator stand."

Poorly Conceived Logos

Forget The Torture, Here's An Amusement Park

'Disneyland' comes to Baghdad with multi-million pound entertainment park

"Mr Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland."

h↑t blondesense

A Little Piece Of Our History

From Fascism Part II: The Rise of American Fascism

"The original Pledge read as follows:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

... up until 1942, the salute used while saying the pledge was to make a military salute to the chest or brow, and then extend the arm straight out with the palm facing the flag, as shown below. This type of salute originated in ancient Rome and has been used by many groups. The salute is most widely recognized now as a "Nazi salute," but in fact it was Mussolini who adopted it before Hitler as apart of his fascist party, precisely because of its Roman origin. The Nazis later adopted it from the Italians. Its use in America prior to this time has no direct relationship to the fascists, however, it was a nationalist salute to the State. In the Italian and German usage the salute was to the leader himself, as it was used in Rome to "Hail Caesar" ("Heil Hitler").





After reciting the Pledge students were often instructed to say:
"One Country! One Language! One Flag!"

Xtian Fantasy Meets Reality

Has US Abstinence Policy Failed?

"US lawmakers are investigating whether to cut government funding for health education programmes that promote sexual abstinence until marriage. (...)
"We get sex-ed classes in school and that should be where teens get the right information - but that isn't happening," says 15-year-old Mildred, from Arizona, who volunteers as a peer educator with the pro-choice organisation Planned Parenthood.
"They don't touch on subjects like sexuality, STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), birth control - it's not allowed because of abstinence-only education. It leaves you on a cliff-hanger - and a lot of teenagers become sexually active in their middle school years."

Shitty Reason To Perpetuate Unnecessary Procedure

'Miracle' Wrinkle Cream's key ingredient: circumcised baby foreskin
"A new wrinkle cream that promises fabulous results. But the question everyone's asking is "what's in that cream?"
Barbara Blair says this new gel she's been using makes her face look a lot younger than the Retin-A and vitamin C creams she's been using.
"It's really tightened my skin. Firmed it. The little lines are much better. The texture is very appreciably different."
What Blair probably doesn't know is that a key ingredient in the cream is the foreskin of a circumcised baby.
The skin that would otherwise be tossed away. It was first made into a product that helped burn victims heal. Now it's in this antiwrinkle gel, called TNS Recovery Complex.
Betsy Rubenstone is the aesthetician in the plastic surgery department at the University of Pennsylvania and she swears by this stuff.
She knows why the foreskin is used.
"It's filled with everything we begin to lose as we age," Rubenstone says. "And that includes growth factors, amino acids, proteins, collage, elastin and holyuronic acid."
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital dermatologist Paul Bujanauskas says while TNS might have merit, he would not prescribe it for his patients because no scientific research proving its value has been published in medical journals.
The cost of one bottle of TNS is about $130. And that will last you about a month and a half. How does it smell? Well that's another downside. Just ask anybody who uses it.
"It's disgusting. It's got a sour smell to it that makes you want to gag," says Blair. "But you get used to it."

Would discarded tissue from female circumcision be used if it was thought it had similar properties?

Cops On Acid

Student gets $628 ticket for sitting on park ledge

"Most people who walk by Émilie Gamelin Park downtown see its many granite surfaces as an invitation to sit and relax.
Dozens were doing just that in the sun yesterday and ever since the park opened in 1992.
But as a Concordia University student found out Saturday, Montreal police, if they so choose, can hit you with a $628 ticket for nothing more menacing than sitting on a ledge. (...) The Victoria native's ticket cited his offending behaviour as "using urban equipment for uses other than those intended."

The gendarmes saw him take pictures of them leaning on some people having a drink in the park so they probably took offense and leaned on him. In western culture now it's a crime to just live your life.

Woman fined for letting crumbs hit the pavement

"She said: "I had just picked up Chloe from nursery. We were both hungry so I got us a sausage roll to share. I had a bite and then bent down to give a bit to Chloe who was on her bike.
“A tiny bit missed her mouth and fell on the floor and seconds later some pigeons flew down and grabbed it. I crossed the road and was approached by two men - at first I thought they were canvassers as they were dressed in tracksuit bottoms.
“But one came up to me, said he was from the council and said I was going to be fined for dropping litter.”

She added: “I felt really small and humiliated. I was treated like I was a criminal. Where is the common sense? It was a small, bite-sized piece - just big enough for her mouth.
“I went back to take a picture of the 'litter’, but it had been gobbled by pigeons. There was no litter there at all.”

Massachusetts Police Get Black Uniforms to Instill Sense of 'Fear'

"The city's new police commissioner, William Fitchet, says members of the department's Street Crime Unit will again don black, military-style uniforms as part of his strategy to deal with youth violence.
Fitchet's predecessor, Edward Flynn, had ditched the black attire as part of an effort to soften the image of the unit. Flynn left Springfield in January to become the police chief in Milwaukee.
Sgt. John Delaney told a city council hearing Wednesday that the stark uniforms send a message to criminals that officers are serious about making arrests.
Delaney said a sense of "fear" has been missing for the past few years."

Border Patrol To Use Paintball Guns

I think they feel that if they can't catch 'em they'll make it a sport.

London cop fired for sampling the wares

"LONDON (Reuters) - A police officer was forced to resign on Wednesday for having sex with a prostitute at a building he had been sent to investigate to see if it was a brothel."

He found out, didn't he?

Torture Light

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
hilarity ensues.

Cattle Prod News

Lake View man hit by Taser dies
"A 24-year-old Lake View man died Thursday, five days after suburban Cincinnati police shocked him with a Taser outside a bar there."

Cop tasers, shoots fellow cop
"He claims Stamp was coming out of the bar armed with a pair of brass knuckles when Officer John Torrez used his Taser to bring the off-duty officer to his knees.”

But they look so much alike -A police news release says Lt. Billy Jones intended to use a taser to stop a fight outside the Nicholasville Police Department.... and instead pulled out his gun and shot McCarty.

Taser shock triggers fire in man's pants"A Hamilton man Tasered by police is in hospital after the stun gun ignited a "flammable object" in his pants, burning him."

Cops pretend to help a guy, then kill him
"The officers used their hands, pepper spray, a Taser and finally batons to subdue 6-foot-3, 350-pound Uriah Dach at his home on the 3200 block of Florida Avenue. They were trying to get him to an ambulance, which was waiting to take him to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
"When they reached the driveway, the officers were able to bring the decedent to the ground and handcuff him," police Lt. Mark Gagan said. "At that point, they discovered that he was not breathing."
As in dead.

Taser sues medical examiner, says it's product is harmless
"Taser International Inc. wants a judge to order Summit County Medical Examiner Dr. Lisa Kohler to change her rulings that "electrical pulse incapacitation" contributed to three men's deaths."

Taser first quarter profit up 146%

What The Iraq War Is About

The final several paragraphs in Paul Craig Roberts' article that some websites refused to print.

The Agenda Behind the Hoax

"Why does the Bush Regime want to rule Iraq? Some speculate that it is a matter of “peak oil.” Oil supplies are said to be declining even as demand for oil multiplies from developing countries such as China. According to this argument, the US decided to seize Iraq to insure its own oil supply.
This explanation is problematic. Most US oil comes from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela. The best way for the US to insure its oil supplies would be to protect the dollar’s role as world reserve currency. Moreover, $3-5 trillion would have purchased a tremendous amount of oil. Prior to the US invasions, the US oil import bill was running less than $100 billion per year. Even in 2006 total US imports from OPEC countries was $145 billion, and the US trade deficit with OPEC totaled $106 billion. Three trillion dollars could have paid for US oil imports for 30 years; five trillion dollars could pay the US oil bill for a half century had the Bush Regime preserved a sound dollar.
The more likely explanation for the US invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush Regime’s commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel. Israel hopes to steal all of the West Bank and southern Lebanon for its territorial expansion. An American colonial regime in Iraq not only buttresses Israel from attack, but also can pressure Syria and Iran from giving support to the Palestinians and Lebanese. The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush’s “war on terror” is a hoax that serves to cover US intervention in the Middle East in behalf of “greater Israel.”

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.

That Check That's Coming In The Mail Soon Is A Wonderful Bank Bailout

Here's stimulus: What you need to know
A how-to guide for checks that could be coming to your mailbox as soon as next week.

"The rebates serve as a one-time tax cut initially based on their 2007 incomes - an advance on a credit taxpayers will receive on their 2008 return."

Got that? Plenty of apologists are insisting that this won't be like 2001 where big brother sent out a few hundred bucks to taxpayers that lo and behold, had to be paid back the following spring. There's no free lunch and this isn't free money. This is an unrequested loan that will have to be paid back in one form or another, whether in raised taxes or cut from next year's refund. Count on it.

The entire premise is a lie also. The scumbags know we're all hanging by our fingernails and will pay bills, mostly bank credit cards. Very few people will blow it on a wide screen TV. As a matter of fact the last time they did this "A survey conducted at the University of Michigan, found that only 22% of households in 2001 said they would spend their Treasury rebate." It's around the same this time. This isn't a jump start for the economy at all. It's a scam to prop up banks who are getting hit from their bad loans and massive defaults.

"War Is The Health Of The State"*

Latin America: the attack on democracy
Our fascists may have been sidetracked a little in the middle east but their total war on the world and any threat to their supremacy continues.

US: North Korea helped Syria build nuclear plant
Translation - Syria and North Korea must remain enemies in our minds so that when military action is eventually taken it will be seen as justified by us acquiescent sheep.

Four killed as car bomb ends lull in Pakistan violence
"The blast is the first since the swearing-in at the end of March of Pakistan's new government, which has since began talks with the Taliban and vowed to discard pro-US President Pervez Musharraf's strongarm tactics. (...)
The White House has warned Pakistan against negotiating with militants, saying that its key ally in the "war on terror" should not bow to Islamic extremism."

"And we'll keep blowing up police stations untill you catch our drift."

Joint Chiefs Chairman Says U.S. Preparing Military Options Against Iran
"The nation's top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq."

The pentagon has been preparing a massive, genocidal assault on the people of Iran since the 80s, see The Grand Chessboard by Obama's good buddy Zbigniew Brzezinski.
And of course Iran has influence in Iraq. For fucks sake these cultures have lived next to each other for thousands of years, this is some sort of new and startling revelation?

US policy 'recipe for fueling extremism'
"The Bush administration's 'abject policy failures' on 'war on terror' has backfired, strengthening extremists in Afghanistan and Somalia. (...)
Foreign policy projection under President Bush has been both insular and divisive, with the overly simple 'with us or against us' axiom being a blanket formula applied to all parts of the globe with results that can best be described as unequal, the report concluded ."

It strengthens extremists all around the globe, because it's meant to. These criminals thrive on adversity, they profit from enemies and the subsequent ability to scare us all into submission with their newly created dire threats.

*Randolph Bourne

Rearming America

The military's plan to regrow body parts

"The regeneration of lost body parts has just moved from science fiction to U.S. military policy.
Yesterday the Department of Defense announced the creation of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, which will go by the happy acronym AFIRM. According to DOD's news service, AFIRM will "harness stem cell research and technology … to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers." The government is budgeting $250 million in public and private money for the project's first five years. NIH and three universities will be on the team."

All Hail Our Free Society

U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations

"The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences."

step right in, terrorist

Sanitizing Needless Deaths

Family wants media presence at marine's funeral, pentagon refuses

"The family of 38-year-old Hall, who leaves behind two young daughters and two stepsons, gave their permission for the media to cover his Arlington burial -- a decision many grieving families make so that the nation will learn about their loved ones' sacrifice. But the military had other ideas, and they arranged the Marine's burial yesterday so that no sound, and few images, would make it into the public domain. (...)
Journalists were held 50 yards from the service, separated from the mourning party by six or seven rows of graves, and staring into the sun and penned in by a yellow rope. Photographers and reporters pleaded with Arlington officials."

This happens because not only does this government not care about it's wounded and killed service members, they don't want you to know about or care when they get wounded and killed.
Remember the filthy Walter Reed scandal?
Recall how they sneak the corpses home in the middle of the night?
Soldiers are used as props by the fascists who couldn't give a shit about them when they suffer and die, except to make sure we don't dwell on why the fuck they had to suffer and die in the first place.

Cops Gone Wild

The law gives these guys guns and tasers and the power to arrest YOU.

DARE officer makes drug sale plans that are accidently broadcasted over police scanner
"A Pineville Police DARE officer and Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office corrections officer were arrested after the DARE officer reportedly made a drug deal with a police informant while on duty Wednesday afternoon at Lessie Moore Elementary School in Pineville, officials said today.(...)
Much of the undercover drug deal involving the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office Metro Narcotics Division was somehow broadcast over the police scanner, although sheriff’s officials still aren’t sure how."

Cop with a hard on for DUI arrests charged with lying about them
"Three Chicago cops -- including one honored for arresting more drunken drivers than any other Illinois officer -- face felony charges for allegedly lying about arrests they made."

Police Dept. suspends cop accused of hiring hitman to kill wife without pay
I wonder if he still would have wanted to kill her if she had pay?

Cop who e-mailed kiddie-porn from police computer gets 14 years
"A Pennsauken cop e-mailed 1,017 digital photos and 11 movies of prepubescent children engaged in sexually explicit acts - with titles including "lilrape" and "ria licking lise" - using a Police Department computer.
His reasoning? The 17-year police veteran didn't want his own two children to see the child porn on his home computer, according to assistant U.S. Attorney Howard Weiner in Camden."

Rookie cop with inside help robs her bank - twice
"Christina Dasrath told the disgraced transit cop about Sovereign Bank's "lax" security then feigned fear when Christian Torres twice held up the Avenue A branch where she was a teller, authorities said."

Cop passes out drunk at intersection
"A Fort Worth police officer allegedly found passed out behind the wheel of his marked patrol vehicle at a Burleson intersection was arrested April 6 on suspicion of driving while intoxicated."

Moorestown cop charged with porking cows
"New charges involving sex acts with cows have been filed against a Moorestown police officer who was charged with sexually assaulting three girls earlier this month."

Arrest This Scumbag For Terrorism

Rush Limbaugh Calling For Riots In Denver

"DENVER -- Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is sparking controversy again after he made comments calling for riots in Denver during the Democratic National Convention this summer.
He said the riots would ensure a Democrat is not elected as president, and his listeners have a responsibility to make sure it happens."

But no. Brownshirts get a free pass.



No doubt Limbacile's slavish dead-from-the-neck-up dittohead pinheads slammed this poll to help save his pimply ass. Wonder what the reaction would be if instead of "the far left" he said "the Jews"?

The Sole Purpose Of This Is To Make Life Unbearable

Can You Imagine what it sounds like to babies and animals?

"NEW YORK (AP) -- A wall-mounted gadget designed to drive away loiterers with a shrill, piercing noise audible only to teens and young adults is infuriating civil liberties groups and tormenting young people after being introduced into the United States.
Almost 1,000 units of the device, called the Mosquito, have been sold in the United States and Canada after the product debuted last year, according to Daniel Santell, the North America importer of the device sold under the company name Kids Be Gone.
The high-frequency sound has been likened to fingernails dragged across a chalkboard or a pesky mosquito buzzing in your ear. It can be heard by most people in their teens and early 20s who still have sensitive hair cells in their inner ears. Whether you can hear the noise depends on how much your hearing has deteriorated."

Don't worry, eventually you won't hear a thing.

Crisis In Food Prices Threatens Worldwide Starvation - Is It Genocide?

Looks like we might be on to something here. Policies over decades are reaching culmination.

"It is now April. Already food has run out in some parts of the world. In a few months winter will come, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. What will happen then? Are you certain food will be on your table?

And suppose you wanted to make a contribution to your own well-being and to that of your family and community by going into farming. In most parts of North America you can look around and see plenty of underutilized land.

But could you do it? Could you buy or lease land and pay taxes on it after the galloping inflation of the real estate bubble? Could you get bank loans for equipment and operating expenses under today's constrained credit conditions? Could you afford fuel for your equipment when petroleum costs over $115 a barrel? Is water readily available from developed supplies and is electricity available at regulated prices? Could you purchase anything other than genetically-modified seed? Would local supermarkets buy your produce when your prices are undercut by massive corporate distributorships importing food from abroad? Does the system even exist in your home town for marketing of local farm products?

And does anyone in power even care?"

John McCain Lives The Fabulous Life

With a little gravy on top.

John McCain gets a tax free disability pension

"Sen. John McCain has long said he is in robust health and is strong enough to hike the Grand Canyon, but he also is receiving what his staff Monday termed a "disability pension" from the Navy.When McCain released his tax return for 2007 on Friday, he separately disclosed that he received a pension of $58,358 that was not listed as income on his return.(...)

Certain types of military and veterans pensions are either partially or completely tax-exempt, depending on the seriousness of the disability. In McCain's case, the exemption is 100%."

"The Rich Have Already Eaten"*

Bay Area Shoppers Asked To Limit Rice Purchases



So how do we interpret what we're seeing suddenly, this worldwide food crisis? UN bloviators have bumped the issue of food costs to the top of the agenda of UN Agencies like
the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN World Food Programme. Desperate pockets of hungry rioters have taken to the streets over high food prices in a bunch of countries. We're being told it's a perfect storm of converging factors like bad weather in key growing areas and biofuel production and, well, too many goddamn people.

There was a book published in 1967 called The Report From Iron Mountain that was supposedly "authored by a Special Study Group of fifteen men whose identities were to remain secret and that it was not intended to be made public." We all know the drill by now - inconvenient information that reaches the public is attacked as a fraud, the waters are muddied, there are claims and counter claims, innuendo flies and the sources smeared, and the stuff could even have been leaked as a psy-op. Whatever the validity of the book there's an interesting excerpt on page 7, paragraph 7:

"the mechanism of agriculture and the industrialization of the world was a terrible mistake....it has led to, and presently supports, a mass of people who perform no indispensable service....consuming the limited resources and destroying the environment of the globe....which they...the Committee of 300 representing the 'preordained leaders' of the world, say is theirs.....the remedy...lies in destroying an economy based upon agricultural and industrial expansion, because these support larger and larger populations of unwanted 'useless eaters'."

The funny thing about that book was that subsequent confirmed sources of government doctrine read like parodies of Iron Mountain, and government disdain of us common folk can't be more obvious. Why would there be trillions spent on war and nothing spent on food policies? Why do schools have to raise money through bake sales while the military budget has no limit at all? Governments have the high tech capabilities to put a computer chip on a pellet the size of a grain of rice while rice harvests fail due to neglect in planning and funding. We ueless eaters have never been high on our overlords' to-do list, except maybe now when the time might have arrived to thin the herd.

It would be wrong to think that a world wide food shortage would have taken our manipulating masters by surprise. It's not like there hasn't been a hunger problem since forever for a sizable percentage of the planet's masses. And for them to push for switching crops to ethanol production when wheat blight just happens to be wasting grain crops all over Asia is all just a coincidence, I'm sure.

It may be that the oligarchy has reached the point in their agenda where they feel it's time to cull the world population down to more manageable levels. In this country there has never been a more intense period of power and wealth consolidation in history since the Bushistas were installed. The disparity between the mega wealthy and the many just-squeaking-by is staggering. Perhaps future ills can be averted, according the Kissingers of the world, by administering some medicine now before the numbers can't be controlled.

Whatever the real reasons for these food shortages that haven't been seen since WW2, there's one thing that's obvious - they're not going away any time soon and most likely will get far worse. I think a few things are going to accelerate the problem. First, we're just beginning to see price rises that are going to feed on themselves - fuel costs and a collapsing dollar equals some pug ugly times ahead. It really is true that if you're certain the money in your pocket is going to be worth less tomorrow, you better spend it today on the things you need. Now that the MSM herd mentality has decided to jump all over this breaking crisis, shortages will be in our faces 24/7 which will instill a sense of panic at some point, and then people will start hoarding. Since our society switched to a vulnerable just-in-time marketing system, the shelves will empty as soon as they're stocked. Of course if this was planned, widespread panic will be most welcome news for the fat cat manipulators.

Anybody who had paid attention over the years could have seen this coming and a painless long term preperation could have put them in a position not to be vulnerable. Sadly if the situation gets dire that ~half a loaf of wonder bread, a quart of stale milk and day old pizza in the fridge~ Fox audience won't have much recourse. There's still a little time to get essentials to last awhile without getting chipped and moving into a FEMA camp, and I sure wouldn't wait.
Say - isn't it true that beer is a great way to store bread?


*Rev. Andres Giron

How Your Overlords View Your Privacy

Chertoff Says Fingerprints Aren’t ‘Personal Data’

"In a recent briefing with Canadian press (which has yet to be picked up in the U.S.), Chertoff made the startling statement that fingerprints are “not particularly private”:

QUESTION: Some are raising that the privacy aspects of this thing, you know, sharing of that kind of data, very personal data, among four countries is quite a scary thing.

SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, first of all, a fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private."

Nor is your breath, saliva, sweat, urine, feces, your thoughts, websites you visit, the words you speak or your social security number you give to your employer.

Epidemic Of Suicide Attempts Covered Up At VA

VA tried to conceal extent of attempted veteran suicides, email shows

"Top officials at the Veterans Administration tried to conceal information from the public about the sudden increase of attempted suicides among veterans that were treated or sought help at VA hospitals around the country, a previously undisclosed internal VA email indicates.
(...)
“Shh!” Katz wrote in his response to Chasen. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”

Invisible Wounds of War

"About 300,000 U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or major depression. Another 320,000 veterans likely suffer from traumatic brain injury (TBI), a type of physical brain damage often caused by explosions from roadside bombs."

Reptiles Love Your Fear

The World Starves As Zionist Bankers Grow Fat

"We've all read the headlines and we all know, or think we know, why the world is now poised on the brink of starvation. It's "climate change". It's the growing demand for protein in formerly poor countries. It's the business cycle. It's poor planning and the "just-in-time" food delivery chain that has collapsed on account of rising fuel costs. It's all these things, you think, and more.

They'll give you a thousand different reasons why entire societies, especially in Haiti and Africa, are now living on clay-patties mixed with oil and dusted sugar. The mainstream media will garnish you with the answers you can sleep with. Nothing to do with Pharisaic money-market speculators. It's basic economics, pure and simple. Natural shortages. Problem solved: go to sleep.

But take a look at your own grocery bill. Seems rather at variance with what you were paying just six months ago, doesn't it? You're not yet ready to riot, as they have been doing in Senegal, Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Peru, Haiti, Nigeria, India, Malaysia, Argentina, Columbia and Brazil. But you're concerned. And someone, somewhere, wants you to take that concern to bed with you and sleep on it even more.

It worries you. And they feed of off your fear. It's their nourishment."

9/11 Wasn't When It All Changed

It was when the Cheney/Bush mafia was installed by the supreme court in December 2000. 9/11 was just part of the fascist agenda, the shock and awe justification for changing the country into an autocratic police state with a decidedly techno-christian stench.
This is an excerpt from former republican senator Lincoln Chafee's "Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President", published by NPR.

"Early in December 2000, Senator [Arlen] Specter asked Richard Cheney, our Republican vice presidential candidate, to have lunch with us on Wednesday, December 13. The vote-counting fiasco in Florida was under way and no one knew whether Texas Governor George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore had been elected the nation's 43rd president. Then, the night before we were to meet with Mr. Cheney, the news broke: the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the Florida recount unconstitutional. The Court authorized Katharine Harris, Florida's Republican secretary of state, to declare Bush and Cheney victorious.

We Republicans had won the presidency by a single vote in the Electoral College and a single vote in the Supreme Court. In the executive branch, winning by a whisker is as good as winning in a landslide, but not so in the Senate. For the first time in a century we had a Senate split down the middle, 50-50, with a Republican vice president available to break a tie in our favor. That whisker-thin margin of victory had real consequences to my way of thinking.

It meant that our small club of five moderate Republican votes would be vital to President-elect Bush if he had any hope of getting his legislative initiatives through.

That was why Vice President-elect Richard Cheney came to our lunch that day: Not to say he needed us, but to tell us that he and George W. Bush were in charge and no one else.

In steady, quiet tones, the Vice President-elect laid out a shockingly divisive political agenda for the new Bush administration, glossing over nearly every pledge the Republican ticket had made to the American voter. President-elect Bush had promised that healing, but now we moderate Republicans were hearing Richard Cheney articulate the real agenda: A clashist approach on every issue, big and small, and any attempt at consensus would be a sign of weakness. We would seek confrontation on every front. He said nothing about education or the environment or health care; it was all about these new issues that were rarely, if ever, touted in the campaign. The new administration would divide Americans into red and blue, and divide nations into those who stand with us or against us. I knew that what the Vice President-elect was saying would rip the closely divided Congress apart. We moderates had often voted with President Clinton on things that powerful Republican constituencies didn't like: an increase in the minimum wage, a patients' bill of rights, and campaign finance reform. Mr. Cheney knew this, but he ticked off the issues at the top of his agenda and did it fearlessly. It made no difference to him that we were potential adversaries; he was going down his to-do list and checking off Confrontation Number 1.

Senator Arlen Specter spoke first. As the most junior member, I would have my say last, if at all. I could hardly sit still as I waited to hear my respected friend wade into this outrageous manifesto.And then, in a moment I can only describe as infuriating, Senator Specter took no leadership role in representing the moderate point of view. He acquiesced, and others followed his example."

War as foreign policy with a concurrent fascist police state was always the agenda. 9/11 was just business as usual and the people murdered that day weren't unfortunate collateral damage, they were necessary props in a grotesque stage play. The invasion, occupation and dismantling of Iraq was planned years before 2003 and was only just another piece of the whole, which is a monstrous agenda to subjugate the entire planet to the will of a few through war, famine and disease. In this memoir Chafee shows how Cheney the thug gave his marching orders toward gutting this nation domestically, and how his traitorous colleagues sat back and nodded in agreement.

Why Do People Believe Any Of This Corrupt Farce?

Tuesday's Election Will be 'Unrecountable, Unverifiable, and Unauditable'

"On Tuesday night, you will be told who the winner of the Pennsylvania Primary is. You will accept it. You will have no choice. No matter who the winner really is. Or isn't.
This Tuesday's crucial contest will be primarily run on 100% faith-based, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen or push-button) e-voting machines across the state. There will be no way to determine after the election whether the computers have accurately recorded, or not, the intent of those voters who voted on them. As VerifiedVoting.org summarizes the crucial contest, it "will be essentially unrecountable, unverifiable, and unauditable."
Most of the votes, more than 85%, will be cast on such DRE systems which do not provide so-called "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails" (VVPATs), as their use has been found unconstitutional in the state, since its been determined, accurately, that ballot secrecy cannot be guaranteed when using such paper trail systems. Not that it matters.
With or without a so-called "paper trail" printer, all touch-screen/push-button/DRE voting machines are equally unverifiable and antithetical to American democracy. Period.
So, as with South Carolina's primary, so so long ago, and other states since, whatever the officials tell you at the end of the election is what you, and we, will have to accept. Whether votes are counted accurately is completely out of anyone's hands at this point. It's strictly Democracy of the Gods..."

It's A Miracle!

Clinton wins Pennsylvania's Democratic primary

Oh Those Silly Illuminatis And Their Playful Hand Signals

Of course, it could just mean a deformed "I love you" in american sign, but go ahead and ask an Iraqi about that.

Repugnant "Journalists" At Work

Obama doesn't seem to be the candidate that Diebold will install this year, if the fascist mouthpieces have their way.



Of course, Faux Spews is the smear champion

When Do We Get To Bomb Them?

South America goes it's own way.

Ecuador could suspend US accords
"QUITO, Ecuador -- Ecuador could suspend some military accords with the United States to block what it calls U.S. ideological influence in its armed forces, Defense Minister Javier Ponce said Sunday.
Ponce told the news program UNO that current agreements with the U.S. were signed under previous administrations "in the spirit of colonialism" and are under review. He did not give details or say which agreements could be suspended.
"The specter of (U.S.) training, financial support and technical support inevitably has permeated the structure and behavior" of Ecuador's security forces, creating "a national security problem," Ponce said."

Chief of Southern Command says US will not seek to replace air base in Ecuador
"LIMA, Peru (AP) - Washington has no plans to replace its only military post in South America if Ecuador's government refuses to renew a 10-year lease on its drug-interdiction air base in the Pacific port of Manta, the chief of the U.S. Southern Command said Monday.
Instead, the military will run drug-surveillance flights out of existing bases in El Salvador, Curacao, and Key West, Adm. James Stavridis said during a visit to Peru for meetings with military officials."

All woman show in Santiago
"Santiago, April 21 (IANS) India’s first woman President Pratibha Patil will meet Michelle Bachelet, the first elected president of a Latin American country Monday, during which both countries are expected to sign agreements on air services, sports, science and technology, including on cooperation in Antarctica."

Paraguay ends 62 years of right wing rule
"The triumph of Lugo's eclectic opposition coalition — the Patriotic Alliance for Change — is the latest in a series of electoral wins by leftist, or center-left, leaders in South America.
Mark Weisbrot, at the Washington think tank Center for Economic and Policy Research, said Lugo's election is a sign of "deep and irreversible ... changes sweeping Latin America."

US too busy in Middle East to foment coups in South America
"While George W. Bush and the neocons remain obsessed with Iraq, a series of historic progressive election victories have spread throughout South America."

The Dick Cheney Emotional Chart

Here Comes The Next Hitler

Rice frames al-Sadr as coward in Iran

"BAGHDAD (AP) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward yesterday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless U.S. and Iraqi forces end a military crackdown on his followers.
Miss Rice, in the Iraqi capital to tout security gains and what she calls an emerging political consensus, said Sheik al-Sadr is content to issue threats and edicts from the safety of Iran, where he is studying. Sheik al-Sadr heads an unruly militia that was the main target of an Iraqi government assault in the oil-rich city of Basra last month, and his future role as a spoiler is an open question."

Pretend Kindasleazy is an Iranian diplomat.

Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-Iranian President George W. Bush as a coward yesterday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless Iran stopped work on it's nuclear power facilities.
Miss Rice said President Bush is content to issue threats and edicts from the safety of Washington, where he is partying. President Bush heads an unruly military that targeted the oil-rich city of Basra last month, and his future role as a president is an open question.