|
|
 |
|
| | Google Earth accused of aiding terrorists | | | Tuesday, December 9, 2008 (5:29 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | Rhys Blakely
Times Online
An Indian Court has been called to ban Google Earth amid suggestions the online satellite imaging was used to help plan the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people in Mumbai last month.
A petition entered at the Bombay High Court alleges that the Google Earth service, "aids terrorists in plotting attacks". Advocate Amit Karkhanis has urged the court to direct Google to blur images of sensitive areas in the country until the case is decided.
There are indications that the gunmen who stormed Mumbai on November 26, and the people trained them, were technically literate. The group appears to have used complex GPS systems to navigate their way to Mumbai by sea. They communicated by satellite phone, used mobile phones with several different SIM cards, and may have monitored events as the siege unfolded via handheld Blackberry web browsers.
Police in Mumbai have said the terrorists familiarised themselves with the streets of Mumbai's financial capital using satellite images, according to the sole gunman to be captured alive. The commandos who stormed the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai said the militants had made a beeline for the building's CCTV control room.
The legal petition also follows unconfirmed reports that Faheem Ahmed Ansari, a suspected militant who was arrested in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in February, said he was shown maps of Indian locations on Google Earth by members of Lashkar-e-Taiber, the Pakistan-based terrorist faction that Indian officials are convinced was behind the Mumbai attacks.
Ansari was carrying a fake Pakistani passport and a list and maps of nine targets in southern Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal hotel and other sites attacked last month, a senior police officer told The Times.
Security agencies have called for the wealth of data available on Google Earth to be limited for several years amid fears the freely available application may prove invaluable for militants planning terrorist attacks.
In 2005, the operators of Australia's nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights called on the internet giant to censor images of the plant, warning that the images could be used by terrorists.
Earlier, the satellite photographs of the installation would have been available only to a handful of government agencies and NASA, they said.
In the same year, it was reported that Google omitted to blur the roof of the White House in Washington when it updated the images available on Google Earth – something it had done previously.
South Korea and Thailand also complained after the layout of air bases was revealed.
The Mumbai terrorists concentrated their attacks in south Mumbai, a popular tourist location. However, the plea filed with the Bombay High Court claims that Google Earth includes "absolutely no control to prevent misuse or limit access" to details of nearby sensitive locations, such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
The complaint comes just weeks after India said it would launch its own version of Google Earth.
The project, dubbed Bhuvan (Sanskrit for Earth), is being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), which is based in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of the subcontinent.
It comes as India redoubles its efforts to reap profits from its 45-year-old space programme, long criticised as a drain on a country where 700 million people live on USD2 a day or less.
Bhuvan will use a network of satellites to create a high-resolution, birds-eye view of India – and later, possibly, the rest of the world – that will be accessible at no cost online and will compete with Google.
Isro officials say Bhuvan will provide images of far greater resolution than are currently available online – particularly of the subcontinent, a region where large areas remain virtually unmapped.
The agency intends to refresh its images every year – a feature that would give it an edge over its biggest rival and help keep track of the frenetic pace at which India's cities are growing.
About 2.5 million people used Google Earth in the UK last month, according to Neilsen, the web analysts, making it the web's seventh most popular application behind tools such as Apple's iTunes (fourth with 5.7 million users) and Windows Live Messenger (first with 14.8 million).
| | | 61 Views | 0  Thumbs Up | 0 Comments |  |
|
|
| | Economic crisis: US, China and the coming monetary storm | | | Tuesday, December 9, 2008 (5:22 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | Maurizio d’Orlando
AsiaNews
The massive levels reached by the foreign debt of the United States and the excessive and unjustified devaluation of China’s yuan are two high risk factors for the world economy and stability. Solutions found so far may be useful for financial institutions but not for the population. A “transnational” oligarchy is emerging that includes central banks, the Chinese Communist Party, Russia’s oligarchies and oil sheiks.
Milan (AsiaNews) – After the crises in subprime lending, the banking sector and the stock market, the same tsunami is sending a new tidal wave that could crash against the dollar and the Euro but also against China and Asia, Eastern Europe as well other emerging nations.
This view does not fit well with the agreement reached in Washington by G-20 heads of government and heads of state whose countries represent almost 90 per cent (1) of the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In the US capital the leaders of these countries pledged not to erect new trade barriers. In their view globalisation must not stop; we should not return to protectionism, making the same error made in the 1929 crisis. However, such a unanimous consensus seems more lips service to an idea than any actual meeting of the minds. In reality the development of globalisation has been based on an unbalanced economic model. Until now it has relied on controlling monetary emission and non tariff barrier protectionism. The coming monetary storm will thus be a violent and dangerous rebalancing act of the system of international exchange.
Many countries, especially the United States, have printed more money in order to cope with the crisis. Solvency, not liquidity is at the root of the current economic turmoil. Flooding the system with debt liquidity will exacerbate the problem, not solve it. In a short period of time the US Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department are raking up a mammoth level of debt for US taxpayers—US$ 7,740 billion according to Bloomberg (2), 11 times what was in Secretary Paulson’s original plan, or 56,19 per cent of the US GDP in 2007. It is not even clear whether this is legal, but one can wonder whether it is fair not only to the American people but also towards the rest of the World, especially to Asian countries which are among the major holders of wealth in US dollars.
An unbalanced economic model
Globalisation is based on an unbalanced economic model. So far public and private consumption in the United States have driven world demand. US consumers made export-driven growth in many countries possible. The absurdity of this method lies in the fact that producers get underpaid and are forced into saving in order to provide credit for those who do not produce and could hardly afford to buy. Workers in China, Brazil and India get starvation wages to produce goods tailored-made for the US (and Western) market (3) whilst US consumers are unable to generate corresponding resources and value. In fact, the trend for the US GDP is negative since the third quarter of 2000 when calculated on the basis of inflation as calculated prior to the Clinton era (4). Yet US consumers have been pushed, flattered and funded to live above their means, almost forced to buy every kind of goods. This is why there is a solvency problem.
Two factors are at the basis of this absurdity: available financial liquidity and accumulation of monetary reserves. On the one hand, US monetary authorities had agreed to an extraordinary increase in financial bank money supply, the so-called M3. Too much of this, even in the form of large or medium term securities, reduces its real value. It should have led to the devaluation of the dollar, but instead, the monetary mass in dollars as a means of payment was maintained an unchanged worth, especially in Asia and emerging countries. This was possible by the role of the dollar, which was boosted by the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the world’s reserve currency as well as by deliberate policies of the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department. Thanks to a series of financial engineering instruments made possible by the abolition of the Glass-Steagall law in 1999 like ABSs, CDSs, interest rate forward contracts, securities in US dollars were declared to be “secure”. Credit rating agencies rated these securities as safe (like those of Lehman Brothers for example), giving them the famous AAA or Triple-A grade. This way debt by private institutions could be treated like currency, at face value, and could be registered as balance sheet without the need to set aside reserves for any risk. Similarly greatly underestimating the exchange rate of some emerging economies, especially China’s, in terms of purchasing power parity resulted in what is an actual subsidy to their exports with the effect that their take-off was far greater than their capacity to guarantee quality, delivery, service, sale network, etc.
Rapidly, the monetary reserves of countries like China, Brazil, India and Russia, not to mention oil exporters, shot up quickly to the benefit of local oligarchies. At this juncture an absurd situation turnes into a tragic one as the international system becomes more unstable. In fact since most people in emerging countries are paid in local currencies, they are denied the benefits brought by higher currency reserves. In China alone this means some 900 million people. The consumptions priorities of by local oligarchies are quite different from those of the rest of the population. Not only can the former expand their ideological or religious influence, but they can also push their countries into a military build-up (conventional and nuclear), raise national prestige (space exploration), and buy luxury items and so on. This could have meant that people in emerging nations might get more food supplied by countries like the United States, Canada, Australia and even the European Union that are rich in water and farmland. Higher food consumption in emerging economies could have balanced capital flows. Instead artificially low exchange rates for emerging nations’ currencies, especially China, pushed up the cost of food. (5) This, in turn, raised domestic tensions to which local ruling oligarchies reacted by re-directing attention externally.
In some countries and under some historical circumstances, export-driven expansion can go hand in hand with a stable system as long as monetary circulation is not distorted. Above all this can happen if the solvency of the system is not jeopardised.(6) But under present circumstances, this risk is high because certain levees have been breached.
US debt
A first parameter of instability is the gross US foreign debt, which rose from US$ 6,946 trillion as of 31 December 2003 to US$ 13.427 trillion as of 31 December 2007.(7) This is how much is in circulation in the world. As of the end of last year it was almost equal to the US GDP (8). Having doubled in a just a few short years, the US economy is not big enough to continue to provide sovereign debt (as monetary reserve currency) in accordance with the growth needs of the world economy.
A second parameter is the staggering rate of growth of the total public debt of the United States. Until 31 December last year, the US public debt stood at US$ 10.6 trillion or 76.75 per cent ratio of GDP. Adding the Paulson plan and the rescue package for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (but not counting that of AIG), the ratio jumped to 118.02 per cent.(9)
If the these figures published by Bloomberg are correct—US$ 7.74 trillion in rescue packages—we arrive at about US$ 23.3 trillion of public debt for a ratio of 169 per cent of GDP. In just a short period of time the public debt of the United States almost doubled or tripled. Whatever the case may be, it is by far too high.
Although important, these parameters are not decisive. A study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (10) found that when the external public debt of a country reaches 60 per cent of the GDP that country is in dangerous territory and risks a major monetary crisis. Similarly, other circumstances—a high current government deficit (11) and a negative trade balance—contribute to this kind of risk. At present, all of them come together in the United States.
A crucial point is the high percentage of public debt held by foreign investors. For many years after the Second World War the United States was a net creditor to the rest of the world. Since 1987 that is no longer the case. What proportion of the US public debt is held by foreign non-residents after the United States adopted a number of rescue packages this fall remains unclear. The latest available official figures show that at the end last year the ratio between gross foreign debt and net claims of foreigners on the United States (Table 13-5 of the US Government budget for the 2009 Fiscal Year) stood at 61.82 per cent, (12) up from 54.42 per cent in the previous year. It is probable that this year it rose even further. But let us assume that it was the same as that of 2007. Even on the basis of the first number (118.02 per cent of the public debut with respect to the GDP), the threshold indicated by the aforementioned IMF study has been crossed (the ratio is about 73 per cent of the US GDP).
One thing must be made clear. The IMF study obviously referred to emerging economies whose currencies unlike the US dollar are not reserve currencies.(13) It is therefore impossible to determine with any certainty what the level is in the current US case. We can none the less roughly assume that a breaking point is quickly coming up because if we add up US public debt and spending commitment in health case (Medicaid and Medicare) and pensions (social security) we get to 429,27 per cent of GDP.(14)
Last but not least let us not forget that in 2007 Asian investors, especially Japanese and Chinese, led foreigners in investing in financial operations in the United States.
China and the devaluation of the yuan
For years AsiaNews has been focusing on another danger, namely the highly and arbitrarily undervalued currencies of many emerging economies. In the case of China the currency is undervalued by 55.54 per cent. In practice this has enabled China to maintain the devaluation it carried out on 1 January 1994 when it set the yuan (CNY) or renminbi (RMB) at 8.62 against the US dollar when it unified the two different exchanges rates that existed at the time. Devaluation gave China an opportunity to create favourable conditions for itself before it had to drop custom duties to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Currently, because the exchange rate is controlled by the People’s Bank of China, the US dollar is worth about 6.8798 CNY. A simple calculation using 2007 World Bank data can show how much the yuan is undervalued. At the current exchange rate China’s GDP stands at US$ 3.280 trillion. But it that same data is expressed in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), it rises to US$ 7.055 trillion. What this means is that the real exchange rate should be quite different were it to express the same purchasing power. In fact if we applied the same relationship between China’s GDP in current dollars (6.04 per cent of world GDP) and China’s GDP at purchasing power parity (which is 10.78 per cent of World GDP), a US dollar should be exchanged at 3.821 yuan (hence the latter is undervalued by 55.54 per cent).
At such an exchange rate however, Chinese exports would collapse and most Chinese factories would have to shut down and lay off workers. This would cause social upheavals and threaten the country’s ruling class. Seen as the world’s workshop, China is a great success, but if we consider the amount of human resources, capital and raw materials used with regards to GDP growth per unit then its system of production appears very inefficient. What is more, China’s yuan devaluation in 1994 led right to the 1998 Asian crisis. For Asia that crisis was the price to pay for China’s transition from Communism to a market economy, the equivalent in some ways of the collapse of the 1989 Berlin Wall. Ten years later economic history seems to be repeating itself, many times over.
Trans-national oligarchies
For its transition out of Communism China has adopted an export-oriented development model. As economic history shows, this model lacks internal balance as we are now realising. At present it has led to a mad dash for industrial delocalisation and is a contributing cause of the world’s current financial meltdown. If it goes on any further it runs the risk of provoking an unprecedented monetary crisis with a brutal re-adjustment of the system. So far the model has survived because it has served the interests of those in power, of those who control the purse (the US Federal reserve and to a lesser extent the European Central Bank), manpower (China’s Communist Party for example) and raw materials (Gulf sheiks and Russia’s ruling oligarchy, etc.).
Also the decisions made by the G-20 in Washington to lay the grounds for a new world monetary system in order to save globalisation can serve the transnational oligarchy. Controlling the instruments of payment is the basis of power.
Today an attempt is underway to create on the ashes of the dollar a new de facto world central bank, or perhaps a new Euro-American currency, or perhaps only a North American currency, the Amero. We don’t know. This may be good for the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the Financial Stability Forum, and the various United Nations agencies, the people in charge of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the People’s Bank of China, and other central banks. It is not clear whether it is good for the rest of the world.
Read article:
www.infowars.com/
| | | | 50 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| | Tortured Patsies “Confess” To 9/11 | | | Tuesday, December 9, 2008 (5:12 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
The government is set to wheel out five more tortured detainees in a desperate effort to prop up the thoroughly discredited official 9/11 story, including another appearance for the ultimate patsy - Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
“Five detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say they want to confess to conspiracy charges for planning the September 11, 2001, attacks, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Monday,” reports CNN.
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the confessed architect of the attacks, who was captured two years later in Pakistan — and four other alleged co-conspirators asked a military judge if they could withdraw all pending motions and plead guilty, Maj. Gail Crawford said in an e-mail.”
“The military judge accepted the requests from Mohammed, Ali Abdul Azziz Ali and Walid bin Attash, but ruled that competency hearings are first needed for Mustafa al Hawsawi and Ramzi bin al Shibh, because “questions exist as to their competency to stand trial,” Crawford said.”
The new set of “confessions” will hold about as much credibility of those of purported “9/11 mastermind” Khalid Sheik Mohammed when he first spilled the beans in March 2007, After only five years of torture, KSM confessed to nearly everything under the sun, only stopping short at accepting responsibility for killing Kennedy, creating AIDS and being the real Santa Claus.
Indeed, KSM was so keen on never seeing a cattle prod again that he even confessed to being responsible for attacking banks that were founded after his arrest, seemingly invoking the power of long range telekinesis to commit his dastardly deeds.
KSM mentioned the “Plaza Bank” by name despite the fact that it only came into existence in 2006, three years after his arrest. Either KSM has the power to influence objects with his mind or we were lied to, but the media and the government would never do that, would they?
After all, it’s a reasonably safe bet to trust a press release from a heavily redacted secret military tribunal of a tortured detainee conducted by individuals representative of an oligarchy whose every deception, gross violation of U.S. law, and act of imperial bloodletting over the last seven years rests on maintaining the orthodoxy of the official 9/11 myth.
And it’s a safe bet in the case of the Gitmo detainees - the waterboarding, the sleep deprivation and the beatings have got nothing to do with it, these guys simply want to get things off their chest and tell the truth about their role in 9/11.
I’m sure being chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more a day, urinating and defecating on themselves, led in no way whatsoever to the detainees telling their captors whatever they wanted to hear.
In reality, polls at the time showed a massive 74% disbelieved KSM’s numerous confessions and the same skepticism is likely to emerge this time around, but not with any influence from the corporate media, who are happily playing up the “confessions” and taking them as gospel without stopping for a second to question if they were obtained through torture.
| | | | 57 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| | Financial Times Editorial Admits Agenda For Dictatorial World Government | | | Tuesday, December 9, 2008 (5:15 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
The Financial Times, one of the most respected and widely read newspapers on the planet, features an editorial today that openly admits the agenda to create a world government based on anti-democratic principles and concedes that the term “global governance” is merely a euphemism for the move towards a centralized global government.
For years we were called paranoid nutcases for warning about the elite’s plans to centralize global power and destroy American sovereignty. Throughout the 1990’s people who talked about the alarming move towards global government were smeared as right-wing lunatics by popular culture and the media.
Now the agenda is out in the open and in our faces, the debunkers have no more ammunition with which to deride us.
A jaw-dropping editorial written by the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman entitled ‘And now for a world government’ lays out the plan for global government and how it is being pushed with deceptive language and euphemisms in order to prevent people from becoming alarmed.
“For the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible,” writes Rachman, citing the financial crisis, “global warming” and the “global war on terror” as three major pretexts through which it is being introduced.
Rachman writes that “global governance” could be introduced much sooner than many expect and that President elect Barack Obama has already expressed his desire to achieve that goal, making reference to Obama’s circle of advisors which includes Strobe Talbott, who in 1992 stated, “In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
Rachman then concedes that the more abstract term “global governance,” which is often used by top globalists like David Rockefeller as a veil to offset accusations that a centralized global government is the real agenda, is merely a trick of “soothing language” that is used to prevent “people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland”.
“But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on,” says Rachman. “Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.
Rachman proceeds to outline what the first steps to an official world government would look like, including the creation of “A legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force”.
“A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations,” writes Rachman. “It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.”
“So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government,” concludes Rachman, before acknowledging that the path to global government will be “slow and painful”.
Tellingly, Rachman concedes that “International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic,” citing the continual rejection of EU expansion when the question is put to a vote. “In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters,” writes Rachman.
So there you have it - one of the world’s top newspapers, editorially led by chief economics commentator Martin Wolf, a top Bilderberg luminary, openly proclaiming that not only is world government the agenda, but that world government will only be achieved through dictatorial measures because the majority of the people are dead against it.
Will we still be called paranoid conspiracy theorists for warning that a system of dictatorial world government is being set up, even as one of the world’s most influential newspapers admits to the fact? Or will people finally wake up and accept that there is a globalist agenda to destroy sovereignty, any form of real democracy, and freedom itself in the pursuit of an all-powerful, self-interested, centralized, unrepresentative and dictatorial world government?
| | | | 52 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| | Former ISI Chief: Mumbai And 9/11 Both “Inside Jobs” | | | Tuesday, December 9, 2008 (4:56 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
General Hamid Gul, the former head of the Pakistani ISI, told CNN yesterday that both the Mumbai attacks and 9/11 were “inside jobs,” much to the chagrin of host and CFR luminary Fareed Zakaria, who told viewers that Gul’s opinions were “absolutely wrong and thoroughly discredited”.
“When you look at the full spectrum of possibilities, who could have done it, then one knows that Samjhauta Express was a similar case, in which Pakistan ISI was accused. But it turned out that it was the militant Hindus themselves who had killed 68 passengers in that train, and that it was an inside job,” said Gul.
“Now Colonel Srikant Purohit, who is a serving army officer, he has been caught in this particular case. And the whole thing has turned around.”
“So, obviously, there is an inside job.”
The revelation that Mukhtar Ahmed, a “counterinsurgency police officer who may have been on an undercover mission” working for Indian authorities was arrested for illegally buying mobile phone cards used by the Mumbai gunmen, allied with the numerous intelligence warnings proving that the method, arrival and targets of attack were all known well in advance, proves Gul right in his assertion that the terrorists could not have achieved such carnage without help from people on the inside.
Asked by Zakaria, “What is your hunch as to who did - who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks?,” Gul responded, “Well, I have been on record, and I said it is the Zionists or the neocons. They have done it. It was an inside job.”
“And they wanted to go on the world conquerors. They were looking upon it as an opportunity window, when the Muslim world was lying prostrate. Russia was nowhere in sight. China was still not an economic giant that is has turned out to be.”
“And they thought that this was a good time to go and fill those strategic areas, which are still lying without any American presence. And, of course, to control the energy tap of the world.”
“Presently, it is the Middle East, and in future it is going to be Central Asia,” added Gul.
Gul told Zakaria that the evidence for 9/11 being planned by Osama Bin Laden and executed by Al-Qaeda has not emerged and that the events are still “shrouded in mystery”.
“A lot of people have a lot of misgivings about that. And it’s not only me. I think a lot of people in America would be thinking the same way. There are scientists, there are scholars, who have written articles on it,” added Gul, calling for President elect Barack Obama to set up a new commission to investigate the attacks.
Gul said the attacks were planned inside America by people with a dangerous agenda who have “turned the world upside-down”.
Returning from a commercial break, Zakaria, editor of Newsweek, Council on Foreign Relations kingpin and also a Trilateral Commission board member, told his viewers, “Some of General Gul’s views are simply false. There is a mountain of evidence about 9/11 that refutes his assertions,” but Zakaria failed to cite any of it.
Zakaria was then joined by counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen who said that the Mumbai attacks bore all the hallmarks of a “clandestine operation or a covert operation style activity,” but when pressed he refused to directly implicate Pakistan in the attack.
| | | | 54 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| | YouTube is Dead | | | Sunday, December 7, 2008 (11:05 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | IPower: Reports.
As of yesterday YouTube has replaced its list of ‘Most Viewed’ videos on the site’s ‘Videos’ section with a varied selection of sponsor-friendly videos that the site calls ‘Most Popular’. Where users normally see videos with high view-counts that have become popular due to viral spreading and community activity, we now see videos like the new MacBook commercial that gets showcased on the ‘Most Popular’ #1 spot while having very low view-counts and even lower ratings.
YouTube will no longer give massive exposure to its community’s video productions and instead is now tightly controlling its Videos pages to attract more sponsors and a more mainstream audience.
The consequences are drastic, YouTube’s ‘Videos’ front page used to give its community so much exposure that it allowed the instant birth of global grassroots movements such as Anonymous and that it was even a deciding factor in the 2008 US presidential elections as it was constantly being flooded by Obama speeches and fan videos.
YouTube’s decision to finally move the site into a more profitable direction is understandable, since the Google-owned company has long been struggling in this area. But it is a great loss for (what used to be) Internet celebrities, online communities and activists around the globe who found YouTube to be the only platform for such massive exposure at no cost but of their own creativity.
UPDATE: Shortly after the release of this article and our already very popular video on the subject, YouTube has put its ‘Most Viewed’ back as default Videos page. However, YouTube contacts say they may switch back to the new system, spread the word, digg it, make videos, let YouTube realize how important we feel this is.
| | | | 69 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| | New World Order Being Taught In Schools! | | | Sunday, December 7, 2008 (5:46 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | We Are Change Ohio
www.youtube.com/watch
Despite being told by his teachers that the ‘New World Order’ is a laughable conspiracy theory, one 9/11 truth activist found that a chapter in his high school-issued history book was titled ‘Chapter 33: America and the New World Order’– which lays out the supposed benefits of NAFTA and the United States’ world-wide ‘peacekeeping’ mission.
| | | | 148 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
|
|
| | Charges Dropped Against 9/11 Rescue Worker due to Hero Status | | | Sunday, December 7, 2008 (5:23 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | Mark Fass
New York Law Journal
A Long Island judge has dismissed charges of driving under the influence and illegally possessing a weapon against a 9/11 rescue worker, citing the man’s status as an “American hero.”
“The Court notes with admiration the Defendant’s lengthy service to his country and to his community, and acknowledges the many letters and documents concerning his outstanding service on September 11, 2001 and his injuries,” District Court Judge Paul M. Hensley of Suffolk County wrote in People v. McCormack, 06SU51940.
“[T]he Court finds that the Defendant has demonstrated the existence of compelling factors, considerations or circumstances which show that his prosecution or conviction upon the accusatory instruments herein would constitute an injustice.”
Shortly after the planes hit the World Trade Center, defendant Michael McCormack, a major in the National Guard, was called to the scene. At home in Suffolk County while on Workers’ Compensation following a construction accident, he arrived at Ground Zero around noon, about three hours after the second crash.
McCormack later told reporters that he spent the next eight days futilely looking for survivors. On his final day, McCormack came across a red piece of cloth buried under the rubble. As he tells it, he lifted the rocks, believing the fabric to be a woman’s dress. Rather, the red was a stripe on the flag that came to be known as the “World Trade Center flag.” (Other accounts, including a Congressional Record report cited by Hensley, state that the flag was found four days earlier, on Sept. 14.)
McCormack toured the country with the now-iconic flag. He also became a frequently quoted critic of the government, suggesting that the 9/11 attack might have been an “inside job” and comparing the Bush administration to Nazi Germany.
McCormack suffered a range of injuries, including asbestosis, damaged sinus cavities and post traumatic stress disorder. He also inhaled a five-inch piece of shrapnel, which remains lodged in his lung.
Five years later, in September 2006, McCormack was arrested in two separate incidents.
On Sept. 12, a police investigation of his house uncovered an unlicensed firearm. The reasons for the investigation remain murky, though McCormack told one reporter that the officers were responding to complaints of a “chemical smell” emanating from his house.
Twelve days later, McCormack was pulled over for driving erratically. He later tested positive for Alprazolam, the anti-anxiety drug most commonly marketed as Xanax.
In separate informations, prosecutors charged McCormack with fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of drugs.
He moved to dismiss the charges in the interest of justice.
Judge Hensley, citing McCormack’s work at Ground Zero and the symbolic significance of the flag he uncovered, has granted the motion.
The judge listed the 10 factors a court must consider when determining a motion to dismiss in the interest of justice under CPL §170.40, including “the history, character and condition of the defendant” and “any other relevant fact indicating that a judgment of conviction would have no useful purpose.”
The judge also cited District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S.Ct. 2783, the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision finding that “the Second Amendment conferred an individual the right to keep and bear arms.”
Noting that a court “need not recite an analysis of each of the factors in reaching its determination,” Hensley dismissed the gun charges, citing “the totality of the circumstances presented.”
“Captain (Michael) McCormack was digging through the rubble of Tower One when he noticed a bright red cloth amid the debris, assisted by four men the American flag was recovered,” Hensley wrote. “Since its recovery, this flag has become an important symbol of that day, and has been treated with reverence wherever it has been displayed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which now has possession of the flag, a symbol of national strength and pride.”
The judge also dismissed the Vehicle and Traffic Law violation, without explanation.
Calls to Hensley’s chambers, McCormack and his attorney. A spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment, noting that the files were automatically sealed following the judge’s dismissal.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202426427894 | | | | 45 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| | Pentagon expanding number of foreigners recruited | | | Sunday, December 7, 2008 (5:14 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon plans to recruit more foreigners in a fresh effort to make up for chronic shortages of doctors, nurses and linguists available for wartime duty.
The Defense Department already draws from aliens living in the United States on green cards and seeking permanent residency. But under a trial program, it will now look to also recruit from pools of foreigners who’ve been living in the states on student and work visas, with refugee or political asylum status and other temporary visas.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has authorized the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to recruit certain legal residents whose critical medical and language skills are “vital to the national interest,” officials said, using for the first time a law passed three years ago.
Gates’ action enables the services to start a one-year pilot program to find up to 1,000 foreigners who have lived in the states legally for at least two years. The new recruits into the armed forces would get accelerated treatment in the process toward becoming U.S. citizens in return for military service in the United States or abroad.
"The services are doing a tremendous job of recruiting quality personnel to meet our various missions," sometimes with bonus pay and tuition for medical school, said Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy. But they haven't been able to fill their need for 24,000 doctors, dentists and nurses in the Defense Department.
The Pentagon's doctor and nurse corps remain 1,000 short of the numbers needed to treat all the military's patients, and Carr said he hoped the program would fill the gaps.
The military's most pressing need is for neurosurgeons and dermatologists to treat troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with brain and burn injuries.
The force also lacks nurses with a broad range of specialties, Carr said.
At the same time, the U.S. Special Operations Command needs more people with special language and cultural skills for a war on terrorism that has taken the armed forces to more remote places across the globe.
Though the military has been looking for more Arabic speakers and others to help with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new program looks to recruit those proficient in some three dozen languages, including Albanian, Korean, Punjabi, Somali, Turkish, Burmese, Chinese, Czech, Malay and Swahili
There are now 29,000 non-citizens in uniform today, Carr said, with about 8,000 more enlisting every year.
He expects that among those who will be interested in the new effort are doctors with work visas who are employed at hospitals around the country, a program aimed at tackling shortages among U.S. medical professionals. | | | | 48 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| | McCain warns Pakistan of Indian strikes | | | Sunday, December 7, 2008 (5:14 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | Indian Express
US Senator John McCain has said he believes that if Pakistan does not act against individuals and groups linked to the Mumbai Terror attacks, it could be a “matter of days” before India carries out surgical strikes against such elements.
There is enough evidence of the involvement of former Inter-Services Intelligence officers in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks and terrorist training camps are still operational in Pakistan, McCain told a small group of senior Pakistani journalists at an informal lunch in Lahore on Saturday.
Ejaz Haider, a senior editor with the Daily Times group, quoted McCain as saying that he believed it could be a “matter of days” before India carried out surgical air strikes if Pakistan did not act on the evidence provided to it on elements linked to the attacks.
McCain also said that the terrorist training camps were being emptied “as we speak”, Haider told Dawn News channel.
Referring to the terror training camps as "red dots on the map", McCain indicated that their number had increased since the time the US launched its campaign in Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
McCain, who unsuccessfully contested the US presidential election, arrived in Pakistan with two other senior Senators on Friday after a brief visit to India.
Referring to his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, McCain said the Indian leader, who is not easily ruffled, had appeared visibly angry.
In a report in the Daily Times, Haider wrote McCain had said that if "Pakistan does not act, and act fast, to arrest the involved people, India will be left with no option but to conduct aerial operations against select targets in Pakistan".
McCain said this is what he and the other Senators were told by Manmohan Singh, who, as McCain put it, was "reeling from the shock" of the attacks.
"The democratic Government of India is under pressure and it will be a matter of days after they have given the evidence to Pakistan to use the option of force if Islamabad fails to act against the terrorists," McCain said.
Asked what the US would do if India carries out such a threat, McCain said Washington will not be able to do much. However, he said "privately I will try to dissuade India from doing so".
"We were angry after 9/11. This is India's 9/11. We cannot tell India not to act when that is what we did, asking the Taliban to hand over Osama Bin Laden to avoid a war and waging one when they refused to do so," he said.
| | | | 55 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
