Thursday, December 31, 2009

TSA goes after the real enemy

Bloggers.

    Associated Press -

    As the government reviews how an alleged terrorist was able to bring a bomb onto a U.S.-bound plane and try to blow it up on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration is going after bloggers who wrote about a directive to increase security after the incident.

    TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public.

    Frischling said he met with two TSA special agents Tuesday night at his Connecticut home for about three hours and again on Wednesday morning when he was forced to hand over his lap top computer. Frischling said the agents threatened to interfere with his contract to write a blog for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines if he didn't cooperate and provide the name of the person who leaked the memo.

    "It literally showed up in my box," Frischling told The Associated Press. "I do not know who it came from." He said he provided the agents a signed statement to that effect.

    In a Dec. 29 posting on his blog, Elliott said he had told the TSA agents at his house that he would call his lawyer and get back to them. Elliott said late Wednesday he could not comment until the legal issues had been resolved.

    The TSA declined to say how many people were subpoenaed.

    The directive was dated Dec. 25 and was issued after a 23-year-old Nigerian man was charged with attempting to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam. The bomb, which allegedly was hidden in Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's underwear, malfunctioned and no one was killed. Authorities said the device included a syringe and a condom-like bag filled with powder that the FBI determined to be PETN, a common explosive.

    The near-miss attack has prompted President Barack Obama to order a review of what intelligence information the government had about Abdulmutallab and why it wasn't shared with the appropriate agencies. He also ordered a review of U.S. aviation security. The government has spent billions of dollars and undergone massive reorganizations since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

    The TSA directive outlined new screening measures that went into effect the same day as the airliner incident. It included many procedures that would be apparent to the traveling public, such as screening at boarding gates, patting down the upper legs and torso, physically inspecting all travelers' belongings, looking carefully at syringes with powders and liquids, requiring that passengers remain in their seats one hour before landing, and disabling all onboard communications systems, including what is provided by the airline.

    It also listed people who would be exempted from these screening procedures such as heads of state and their families.

    This is the second time in a month that the TSA has found some of its sensitive airline security documents on the Internet.

The Fluoride Cover-Up: Look Under the Mother of All Bandaids

Hesh Goldstein
NaturalNews -

Why would fluoridation be a bandaid? As you know a bandaid covers something up. Upon reading this that cover-up will be apparent. Coca-Cola announced they were going to investigate the possibility of including fluoride in some of their bottled waters to help combat the evils of tooth decay. A person with half a brain would probably deduce that water is not a problem but maybe sugar laden beverages are. But no, Coke wants to focus on those that drink water rather than the sugar drinkers.

Tooth decay is caused by Streptococcus Mutans (SM), a bacterium that lives in our mouths. SM only likes one thing, SUGAR! Feeding SM sugar causes it to produce plaque and lactic acid. Plaque cannot be made without sugar. Without plaque there is no decay. You want to rot your teeth? Give SM a constant supply of sugar by bathing your teeth in sugar laden liquids.

The amount of sugar laden sodas, juices and other sugar garbage that we drink has risen from virtually nothing prior to WW 2 to almost 1 quart per person a day, with the consumption of soda doubling. So has our need for dental services.

The dentists are elated. Fixing decayed teeth is very expensive. In countries with "free" public health systems, government has been reluctant to include cavity-fixing costs. So, desperate to avoid the popular demand for them to pay the bill for a disease that affects everyone that consumes sugar, they turn to their idiotic quick-fix solution of mandatory, mass fluoridation.

When the U.S. started The Manhattan Project, the forerunner of the Atomic Energy Commission, they found that fluorosilicic acid makes uranium fissionable. This was a toxic by-product of the phosphate fertilizer, aluminum, and steel industries. It was previously disposed of as toxic waste to the tune of millions of dollars a year. But, government and business decided it was necessary to add this to the water supply despite knowing how toxic it was and damaging to health. The purpose was not to prevent tooth decay but to prevent spending money for disposal. In return, those industries would receive money for the use of their toxic waste being dumped into the water supply. 90% of swallowed fluoride is retained by the body and accumulated in the bones and teeth causing fluorosis or rotting of the teeth and symptoms mimicking osteoporosis in the bones.

There is no supportive evidence whatsoever that suggests that fluoridating the water cures tooth decay. Even the Centers For Deceit Control and Procrastination say that fluoride's effectiveness is on the surface of the tooth and only after the tooth comes into the mouth. It says nothing about ingestion.

Fluoridation lets government and Big Sugar look like they are doing something good about dental health without actually doing anything that challenges the status quo or the money trail. Strangely enough, neither government nor Big Sugar contemplates the possibility of removing or changing the sugary drinks that cause the problem in the first place.

So, if mass medication is the way we solve society's lifestyle influenced problems, why stop at fluoride? Why not add Metamucil for constipation, Prozac for depression, aspirin for headaches, or Viagra for sexual dysfunction?

If Big Business and Government weren't so deeply entrenched in bed together, maybe then the people would stand a chance. One day we'll all look back and remember when we were a government of the people, by the people and for the people and wonder how it became a government of, by and for the corporation.

Aloha!

The Old 'False-Flag Trick'

Will Grigg is the man, and if you need a good source for info on the staged 1993 WTC bombing, be sure to read it all.

    Will Grigg
    LewRockwell.com -

    You know, Chief, this nude bomb might solve a lot of problems. For one thing, flashers.... And there'd be no more trouble with concealed weapons. I mean, if everyone were nude, there'd be no place to hide a gun or knife. Well, there is a place, but it could be painful.

    Maxwell Smart, the redoubtable Agent 86, finding the upside to KAOS's terrorist threat to destroy the world's clothing with its dreaded Nude Bomb.*

    In an utterly predictable response to an unsuccessful attempt by a would-be Jihadist to emasculate himself in mid-air by detonating a small explosive charge (a very small one, of course), the Regime is moving, slowly but inexorably, in the direction of requiring airline passengers to strip nude.

    There is plentiful evidence to suggest that the same Regime acted as an accomplice – most likely a passive one – in that same failed bombing attempt. Call it a delayed-action nude bomb: One Nigerian nutcase conceals a firecracker in his wedding tackle, and before long everybody will have to strip nude in order to fly.

    Granted, the nudity would be "virtual," temporary, and limited in its exposure. Passengers would be violated one at a time by the same thoughtful people who have made a career out of rifling through other people's dirty underwear.

    Airport security screeners have "got to have some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren't easy to get at," insists former Homeland Security Commissar Michael Chertoff. "It's either pat-downs or imaging."

    A third alternative is to avoid commercial aviation outright whenever possible. I suspect an ever-larger number of Americans are going to join me in choosing what's behind door number three.

    Government is the only human enterprise that profits from failure. Once that principle is understood, many otherwise inexplicable choices made by ruling elites and their servants can be made intelligible.

    For instance, we can begin to understand the perverse persistence governments display in courting preventable catastrophes, and then capitalizing on such incidents to enhance their power to do exactly the same things that resulted in disaster. In this case, in addition to requiring the helotry to undergo unconscionable personal violations before flying, the Regime is exploiting the incident aboard Northwest Flight 253 to escalate the ongoing military assault on Yemen, thereby increasing the human misery that helps propel international terrorism.

    And so it is that the Regime – which has squandered trillions of debased dollars in the name of "fighting terrorism" (hundreds of billions to build a domestic garrison state, and even greater sums to conduct wars of aggression overseas) – will continue to do exactly the same thing following an episode that demonstrates, beyond serious dispute, that the "war on terror" has done exactly nothing to make Americans safer.

    While it's not clear that the flight was in mortal danger, it is clear that the plot failed because a detonator failed to ignite, and a group of passengers shed the shackles of government-imposed docility to subdue the terrorist suspect. The attempt to massacre the passengers of Flight 253 was stopped without the Regime's help – and in spite of what has to be considered, at very best, the Regime's criminal negligence.

    Owing to what must have been an anguished report from his father, Umar Abdulmutallab was known to the CIA and the State Department as a potential terrorist. Umar Abdulutallab the elder, a banking official from Nigeria, met personally with CIA officials to express concerns that his son – who had gone to Yemen for the supposed purpose of studying Arabic – was falling into the company of suspected terrorists.

    U.S. officials took this valuable intelligence and promptly buried Abdulmutallab's name in an official database. Yet it was not placed on the official "no-fly list"; apparently, that status is reserved for people who make themselves troublesome to the Executive Branch without actually posing a threat to innocent people.

    Additional layers of official negligence were revealed by a passenger named Kurt Haskell, who was next to Abdumutallab as the would-be bomber checked in at the airport in Amsterdam:

    "An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said `This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport.' The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17 (although I think he is 23 he doesn't look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said `you can't board without a passport.' The Indian man then replied, `He is from Sudan, we do this all the time.' I can only take from this to mean that it is difficult to get passports from Sudan and this was some sort of sympathy ploy. The ticket taker then said `You will have to talk to my manager,' and sent the two down a hallway. I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn't on the flight. It was also weird that the terrorist never said a word in this exchange. Anyway, somehow, the terrorist still made it onto the plane. I am not sure if it was a bribe or just sympathy from the security manager."

    Haskell also says that he stood a few yards away from another Indian man who was handcuffed and held in customs "after a bomb sniffing dog detected a bomb in his carry on bag and he was searched after we landed. This was later confirmed while we were in customs when an FBI agent said to us `You are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. Read between the lines. Some of you saw what just happened.'.... What also didn't make the news is that we were held on the plane for 20 minutes AFTER IT LANDED! A bomb could have gone off then. This wasn't too smart of security to not let us off the plane immediately."

    Assuming that Haskell's account is correct, Abdulmutallab received some variety of official help to board the plane, and was apparently part of a team of bombers. The reported connection to India is of particular interest, given a growing dispute between Mumbai and Washington over a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen allegedly involved in the 2008 terrorist rampage at the Taj Mahal Hotel that left 166 people dead.

    David Headley (formerly Daood Syed Ginlani; he changed his name in 2006) moved from Pakistan to Philadelphia in 1977. After being convicted of heroin smuggling in 1998, Ginlani served 15 months before agreeing to work as an informant for the DEA. Indian officials believe that Headley/Ginlani was working for the federal government – the CIA and FBI, in addition to the DEA – up until last October, when he was arrested in Chicago.

    Indian officials accuse Headley of working with Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency in coordinating the Taj Mahal Hotel assault. They also assert that in a return trip to India last March, Headley cased potential targets for another terrorist attack by the Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure"), a Pakistani terrorist group. Indian officials are desperate to question Headley, but Washington refuses to grant access.

    After wading in the tenebrous waters of the global "intelligence community," brief recap is appropriate here:

    The CIA was informed that Abdumutallab was a potential terrorist. Yet he wasn't put on the "no-fly list," and was even permitted to board a U.S.-bound plane without a passport. The individual who reportedly shepherded the bomber aboard the plane was a well-dressed, official-looking fellow from India. After Flight 253 landed in Detroit, a second individual from India was arrested after a bomb was detected in his luggage. All of this happens a little more than a year after India suffered an horrific terrorist attack in which (according to both U.S. and Indian intelligence officials) an American intelligence asset named David Headley was implicated. Headley is in the custody of the government that employed him as an informant, and which now refuses to permit investigators representing a supposed ally to interrogate him.

    Those of a cynical cast of mind might wonder if RAW (the Research and Analysis Wing, India's CIA) helped Abdumutallab hitch a ride on Flight 253 in order to send a message to Langley. Those whose cynicism is a bit riper might wonder if the boys at Langley had become aware of the plot involving Abdumutallab and permitted it to go forward in the service of Washington's agenda – which includes escalating a previously covert military campaign in Yemen, the country where the jockstrap bomber reportedly was tutored in terrorism by al-Qaeda.

    Remember: No matter how cynical one becomes, its never quite enough to keep up with our rulers.

    Whenever somebody ventures into conspiratorial speculation of this kind he can expect a reminder from the bien-pensants that government is too inept to carry out secret schemes of such detail and complexity.

    Dismissive arguments of that kind generally come from people who are quite convinced of the ability of that same incompetent government to carry out very challenging undertakings, such as running a nationalized health-care system, or creating western-style democracy in Iraq.

    While it is true that government is incurably incompetent with respect to any genuinely worthwhile productive enterprise, it is an astonishingly efficient engine of plunder and destruction. However useless the CIA and its kindred agencies may be in collecting and analyzing reliable intelligence, they display considerable gifts when it comes to arranging politically useful mischief.

    One useful case study that bears more than a passing resemblance to the abortive bombing of Flight 253 is the plot to carry out a bombing rampage in New York City following the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.

    Omar Abdel-Rahman, the radical Egyptian mullah who was convicted in 1996 of inspiring and giving direction to that plot, became a CIA asset in 1987, despite the fact that he was on a State Department terrorist "watch list."

    Abdel-Rahman's role was to recruit mujahadeen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, and to act as a cut-out to provide them with financial and material aid. He remained on the CIA's payroll after the Red Army left Afghanistan in January 1989.

    In 1990, Abdel-Rahman obtained a visa to travel to the United States – once again, despite the fact that his name was on a "watch list." It was his monumental good fortune to apply for that visa at the U.S. consulate in Khartoum while the official who usually handles such details was out to lunch; that official's replacement was a CIA operative.

    Abdel-Rahman's relocation to Brooklyn was arranged by a small knot of radicals who included at least two people who were on Washington's payroll: Mahmoud Abouhalima, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (the taproot of modern Islamic terrorism and – not surprisingly – a major beneficiary of CIA largesse) who had been part of a CIA-sponsored mujahadeen group in Afghanistan; and former Special Forces Captain Ali A. Mohammed, an Egyptian-born member of Islamic Jihad who had recruited and trained Muslim warriors to fight in Afghanistan.

    Mohammed, it was later revealed, also worked as an informant for the FBI. It's not clear if he was on the Bureau's payroll at the time of the 1993 WTC bombing. If so, that means that there were two FBI assets within that cell – Mohammed and an Egyptian intelligence agent named Emad Salem.

    Although the January 1993 WTC bombing failed to achieve its objective – which was to collapse one of the towers into the other, creating a domino effect that would have slaughtered thousands – the assault did kill several people and injure hundreds more.

    Salem, who secretly recorded many of his conversations with his FBI handlers, later revealed that the FBI had detailed prior knowledge of that plot and had promised him that the WTC bomb would secretly be rendered inert before it was used.

    "You saw this bomb went off ... and you know that we could avoid that," Salem rebuked FBI special agent John Anticev following the blast. "You get paid, guys, to prevent things like this from happening."


    How many federal assets does it take to build a terrorist bomb? There are at least two in this picture. One of them, Egyptian intelligence agent/FBI informant Emad Salem, is the figure in green with his back to the camera.

    After the bombing, the FBI inserted Salem into the cell once again. In that capacity he helped create a "battle plan" that targeted various official buildings in New York City, as well as the Holland and London tunnels.

    On June 23, 1993, FBI agents arrested the plotters as they were mixing fertilizer and diesel fuel to build another bomb.

    This story (which I have recounted in greater detail elsewhere) took a really interesting turn just shortly before Abdel-Rahman's trial. Ali Mohammed, who played a central role in the first WTC attack, was listed as an "un-indicted co-conspirator" with Abdel-Rahman. Roger Stavis, the attorney for indicted co-conspirator El Sayyd Nosair, attempted without success to deliver a subpoena to Mohammed as a defense witness. Mohammed – who was in federal custody – didn't answer the summons, despite the fact that the prosecution knew where he was and was in contact with him.

    In March 2001, Mohammed pleaded guilty – in exchange for "considerations" – to charges arising from the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 258 people. He then promptly disappeared without being sentenced. He is nowhere to be found in the U.S. prison system.

    Intelligence analyst J.M. Berger, publisher of the valuable Intelwire news service, points out that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who was considered the Justice Department's "top gun" on al-Qaeda, regarded Mohammed as the architect of "al Qaeda's terrorist infrastructure in the U.S."

    On the basis of his extensive study of the available evidence, Berger concludes that Mohammed "called the shots" on the 1993 WTC bombing – the man behind Ramzi Yousef, the individual convicted of building the bomb – and was the most important organizer of the network behind the 9/11 assault.

    And Mohammed – a former U.S. Special Forces sergeant and FBI asset – is being protected by the Regime to this day.

    Many serious and sober people believe that the accepted narrative of the 9/11 atrocities is entirely fictitious. But in light of the role played by veteran U.S. asset Ali Mohammed, it's incontestable that the attack was, in some sense, an "inside job" even if one accepts the standard "nineteen Muslims armed with boxcutters" version of the event.

    According to the Regime, Abdulmuttab is telling his interrogators that there are many more mad bombers in the pipeline. This is probably true, and it's likely that at least some, if not most, of them have cashed checks written by the same people who hired the likes of Adbel-Rahman and Ali Mohammed.

    False-flag terrorism is among the oldest tricks in the intelligence playbook. It has been an official option of the military-industrial-homeland security complex since 1962, when General Lyman Louis Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, filed the "Operation Northwoods" memorandum outlining various elaborate schemes to stage terrorist attacks against Americans as pretexts for war.

    It's doubtful that this side of eternity we'll ever learn the full truth about 9/11 or the first World Trade Center bombing. But we have learned enough from those atrocities, as well as subsequent episodes of what Lew Rockwell aptly calls "security theater," to justify suspicions that the Christmas drama about Flight 253 was another example of what Maxwell Smart, the patron saint of self-important spooks, would call the old "False-Flag Trick."

    *Yes, I'm aware that this quote comes from the dismal, vulgar, and lifeless 1980 film The Nude Bomb, which discerning Smartians consider apocryphal at best.

8 Americans, 5 Canadians dead in Afghan attacks; Afghan civilians continue to be slaughtered

The Americans were CIA agents; the media is calling them "civilians". Listen, if foreign nationals are aiding and abetting a foreign occupation, it doesn't matter if they're wearing a uniform, they're not civilians. It doesn't matter to the "Taliban", and it wouldn't matter to you or I either if we were the ones occupied. So get over it.

Meanwhile, Afghans living under this vicious occupation, of which the CIA is participating, continue to be slaughtered. Earlier this week, 10 Afghan civilians - almost all children - were killed in a US-led raid; allegedly dragged out of their beds and handcuffed before being executed. But no, damn you, we're not perpetually creating enemies over there. We're going to win this war!

    Associated Press -

    A suicide bomber at a base in Afghanistan's volatile east killed eight American civilians, U.S. officials said, the worst loss of life for Americans in the country since October. Four Canadian soldiers and a journalist were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan's south, NATO said.

    U.S. officials in Washington said the suicide attacker detonated explosives Wednesday at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province near the Afghan border with Pakistan, killing eight American civilians. A congressional official said CIA employees were believed to be among the dead.

    "We mourn the loss of life in this attack, and are withholding further details pending notification of next of kin," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.

    An attacker wearing a suicide vest caused the explosion, according to a senior U.S. official in Washington. Another senior U.S. official in Washington said there were conflicting reports on the number of casualties, but that others were injured in the attack.

    A senior State Department official said all of the victims were civilians. A former senior CIA officer who was stationed at the base said a combination of agency officers and contractors operated out of the remote outpost with the military and other agencies. He said contractors also might be among those who died.

    The CIA has not commented or confirmed any deaths.

    All the officials in Washignton spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

    NATO said only that the base is used by provincial reconstruction teams, which consist of both soldiers and civilians, and other personnel.

    In Kabul, a spokesman for the international coalition force in Kabul said no U.S. or NATO troops were killed in the afternoon explosion. The attack was the bloodiest day for Americans since eight soldiers were killed in an insurgent attack on a base in eastern Afghanistan on Oct. 3.

    In the south, NATO said that the four Canadian troops and a reporter embedded with their unit died when their armored vehicle hit a bomb while on an afternoon patrol south of Kandahar city. It's the third deadliest day for Canadians in Afghanistan since the war began.

    Michelle Lang, a 34-year-old health reporter with the Calgary Herald, was the first Canadian journalist to die in Afghanistan. Lang arrived in Afghanistan just two weeks ago and on Wednesday she made her first trip beyond the safe confines of Canada's base on Kandahar Airfield.

    "She was one of those journalists who always wanted to get to the bottom of every story so this was an important trip for her," said her Calgary Herald colleague, Colette Derworiz.

    The military has not disclosed the names of the Canadian troops because relatives had not all been notified.

    "We are all very saddened to hear this tragic news," Alberta Health and Wellness Minister Ron Liepert said in a statement. "Michelle covered health issues with professionalism, accuracy and thoroughness. She was tenacious in her quest to inform Albertans, and for her diligence she was very well respected."

    Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard, commander of coalition forces in Kandahar, said that the soldiers were conducting a community security patrol in order to gather information about daily life in the area and how to maintain security.

    Wednesday was the second lethal strike against the Canadian force in a week. One Canadian soldier and an Afghan soldier were killed Dec. 23 during a foot patrol in Panjwayi district of Kandahar province. According to figures compiled by The Associated Press, the latest casualties bring to 32 the number of Canadian forces killed in Afghanistan this year; in all, 138 have died in the war.

    Separately on Wednesday, NATO questioned Afghan reports that international troops killed 10 civilians, including schoolchildren, in a weekend attack that prompted hundreds of angry Afghan protesters to burn an effigy of U.S. President Barack Obama and chant "death" to America.

    The head of an investigative team appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai told The Associated Press by telephone that eight students between the ages of 12 and 14 were among the dead discovered in a village house in a remote section of Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan. NATO said in a statement released late Wednesday night that while there was no direct evidence to substantiate the claims, the international force had requested and welcomed a joint investigation to reach an "impartial and accurate determination" of what happened in the attack.

    Conflicting accounts of what occurred during fighting in Kunar's Narang district prompted an emotional outcry over civilian deaths, one of the most sensitive issues for international troops fighting the more than eight-year-old war. Although insurgents are responsible for the deaths of far more civilians, those blamed on coalition forces spark the most resentment and undermine the fight against militants. With 37,000 more U.S. and NATO troops being deployed to the battle zone, concern over civilian casualties is unlikely to ease anytime soon.

    Several hundred Afghans demonstrated in the capital of Kabul and in the eastern city of Jalalabad where the likeness of Obama, adorned with a small American flag, burned on a pole held above demonstrators.

Benign negligence?

It's not funny anymore. It was amusing, for a while, but I'm getting tired of it. I'm getting tired of politicians, intelligence "experts", talking heads, and newspaper columnists feigning confusion and bewilderment at how the intelligence community dropped the ball on this one.

All the pieces of the puzzle were available to them. They knew who this kid was. As I discussed yesterday, they knew he supposedly had terrorist tendencies. His own father contacted our government multiple times and warned us. He was on the watch list (but not the no fly list - of course, an unintentional bureaucratic SNAFU). He paid cash for a one-way ticket, and boarded without luggage. He might as well have tattooed "I have a bomb" on his forehead. Then consider that he was escorted past security by a mysterious man in a suit without a passport or ID of any kind, and was videotaped throughout the entire flight by another strange person. And now we know that this "isolated extremist" had at least one accomplice, who also had a bomb.

Yet no one in the establishment deigns to speculate that maybe our government, at the very least, allowed this attack to happen as justification for escalating the GWOT, distracting us from the grotesque "healthcare" legislation they're about to rape us with, and of course as an excuse to clamp down further on our liberties - the chorus is rising demanding millimeter wave scanners that see us all naked (and the government will comply). Nobody bothers to ask, how dare this government punish the American people for their own malfeasance? Their own negligence?

And of course don't dare ponder the possibility that this malfeasance, this negligence, was willful. My goodness, you can't go there. God forbid they open that can of worms, because then people start wondering if all these whacko conspiracy theories about 9-11 have some merit. Maybe people won't think the whole thing was a black op, but it won't seem so crazy to wonder if the government knew about it and allowed it to happen. Never let a good crisis go to waste, especially one you can manufacture. No, just sweep this under the rug, fire some people, send in Dick Cheney to attack Obama, accuse him of being weak on terror, give him an F, place all the blame at his feet. Let his poll numbers continue to drop. Blame liberals. Blame Muslims. Anything except what really happened, or even remotely close to what really happened.

Now, before you rip me for expecting honesty out of the establishment, I know this. I know they lie for sport. I know the media is bought and paid for, that there are journalists on the CIA payroll. I know. What's frightening about all of this is, obviously not al Qaeda, which is our own government; nor that our government stages terror attacks - it's actually comforting to be awake and aware and able to see when our government is pulling these black ops on us. It angers me, but at least I know I'm being lied to. At least I'm not duped.

No, what scares me is that the average American is so dumbed down, so distracted, so indoctrinated, that they themselves never even think to suspect a conspiracy on the part of anyone other than Muslim jihadists desperate to kill every last one of us. The thought is totally alien to them, that our government would even think of such a thing, much less actually do it. Such lack of scrutiny is akin to handing your teenage daughter a bottle of vodka, your credit card, and the keys to your Corvette. So, rather than actually think, they are now out for blood. They want Janet Napolitano's head. They want Obama's head. They want to carpet bomb the whole of Yemen, which, magically, is suddenly the headquarters of al Qaeda, not Afghanistan. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Or is it Eurasia?

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Bankers Get $4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank

ALL of these bailouts are really just the banks robbing us. It's not capitalism. It's not socialism. It's piracy. They're stealing everything that isn't nailed down, and when they've looted every penny they can loot from us, they'll leave us a stinking, rotting, crumbling third world nation, and we'll be homeless and starving in the lands our forefathers conquered.

    David Reilly
    Bloomberg -

    To close out 2009, I decided to do something I bet no member of Congress has done -- actually read from cover to cover one of the pieces of sweeping legislation bouncing around Capitol Hill.

    Hunkering down by the fire, I snuggled up with H.R. 4173, the financial-reform legislation passed earlier this month by the House of Representatives. The Senate has yet to pass its own reform plan. The baby of Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the House bill is meant to address everything from too-big-to-fail banks to asleep-at-the-switch credit-ratings companies to the protection of consumers from greedy lenders.

    I quickly discovered why members of Congress rarely read legislation like this. At 1,279 pages, the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” is a real slog. And yes, I plowed through all those pages. (Memo to Chairman Frank: “ystem” at line 14, page 258 is missing the first “s”.)

    The reading was especially painful since this reform sausage is stuffed with more gristle than meat. At least, that is, if you are a taxpayer hoping the bailout train is coming to a halt.

    If you’re a banker, the bill is tastier. While banks opposed the legislation, they should cheer for its passage by the full Congress in the New Year: There are huge giveaways insuring the government will again rescue banks and Wall Street if the need arises.

    Nuggets Gleaned

    Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank’s handiwork:

    -- For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery.

    -- Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

    -- Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can’t authorize these funds unless “there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back.” Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well.

    More Bailouts

    -- The bill also allows the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms’ debts. Bondholders can sleep easy -- there are more bailouts to come.

    -- The legislation does create a council of regulators to spot risks to the financial system and big financial firms. Unfortunately this group is made up of folks who missed the problems that led to the current crisis.

    -- Don’t worry, this time regulators will have better tools. Six months after being created, the council will report to Congress on “whether setting up an electronic database” would be a help. Maybe they’ll even get to use that Internet thingy.

    -- This group, among its many powers, can restrict the ability of a financial firm to trade for its own account. Perhaps this section should be entitled, “Yes, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., we’re looking at you.”

    Managing Bonuses

    -- The bill also allows regulators to “prohibit any incentive-based payment arrangement.” In other words, banker bonuses are still in play. Maybe Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. shouldn’t have rushed to pay back Troubled Asset Relief Program funds.

    -- The bill kills the Office of Thrift Supervision, a toothless watchdog. Well, kill may be too strong a word. That agency and its employees will be folded into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Further proof that government never really disappears.

    -- Since Congress isn’t cutting jobs, why not add a few more. The bill calls for more than a dozen agencies to create a position called “Director of Minority and Women Inclusion.” People in these new posts will be presidential appointees. I thought too-big-to-fail banks were the pressing issue. Turns out it’s diversity, and patronage.

    -- Not that the House is entirely sure of what the issues are, at least judging by the two dozen or so studies the bill authorizes. About a quarter of them relate to credit-rating companies, an area in which the legislation falls short of meaningful change. Sadly, these studies don’t tackle tough questions like whether we should just do away with ratings altogether. Here’s a tip: Do the studies, then write the legislation.

    Consumer Protection

    -- The bill isn’t all bad, though. It creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, currently head of a panel overseeing TARP. And the first director gets the cool job of designing a seal for the new agency. My suggestion: Warren riding a fiery chariot while hurling lightning bolts at Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

    -- Best of all, the bill contains a provision that, in the event of another government request for emergency aid to prop up the financial system, debate in Congress be limited to just 10 hours. Anything that can get Congress to shut up can’t be all bad.

    Even better would be if legislators actually tackle the real issues stemming from the financial crisis, end bailouts and, for the sake of my eyes, write far, far shorter bills.

Under Obama climate legislation, planting trees will be more lucrative than producing food

You don't need me to connect the dots on this one. Sure, they'll make it worth the farmers' while to plant less food, and I'm sure farmers won't mind it at all if they can farm less land but make more money. It's a win-win for them. But as the article states, the lucrativeness of this whole scheme revolves around increased food prices due to decreased supply. That means not only will it cost more for you and I to survive, if you're still sucker enough to be attached to the grid when all this goes down, but impoverished nations around the world, already devastated by food shortages due to a massive percentage of corn yields being diverted to biofuel, will suffer even more massive starvation.

Which, as you know, is really the point of this whole grotesque eugenics scam in the first place. Folks, if you don't have organic heirloom seeds by now, holy god, get them immediately!

    Washington Times -

    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food.

    The latest Agriculture Department economic-impact study of the climate bill, which passed the House this summer, found that the legislation would profit farmers in the long term. But those profits would come mostly from higher crop prices as a result of the legislation's incentives to plant more forests and thus reduce the amount of land devoted to food-producing agriculture.

    According to the economic model used by the department and the Environmental Protection Agency, the legislation would give landowners incentives to convert up to 59 million acres of farmland into forests over the next 40 years. The reason: Trees clean the air of heat-trapping gases better than farming does.

    Mr. Vilsack, in a little-noticed statement issued with the report earlier this month, said the department's forecasts "have caused considerable concern" among farmers and ranchers.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Changing the Narrative for War

Philip Giraldi
Campaign for Liberty -

In spite of the calamities of the past eight years, there continues to be no shortage of neoconservatives in one's face in the media, advising their fellow Americans that wars can be won quickly and decisively and that using military force to change how other nations behave is sound policy. The Washington Post features Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, all three Kagans, John Bolton, and Eliot Cohen on a regular basis. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is the epicenter for those who favor muscular interventionism. The New York Times, America's most influential newspaper, is somewhat more circumspect, featuring neocons-lite David Brooks and Thomas Friedman regularly, but also including the more measured foreign policy analysis of Frank Rich and Roger Cohen. But even at its best The Times never really breaks the mold by bringing in someone who rejects the entire American imperial and interventionist enterprise. Such individuals do exist and many appear regularly at Ron Paul events and on Campaign for Liberty, but it is as if the mainstream media has decided that such views are outside the pale, the journalistic equivalent of praising Mussolini for making the trains run on time or advocating the disenfranchisement of women voters. And occasionally the Times features a real game breaker that goes in the other direction in the form of an op-ed that sets new benchmarks in terms of audacious support of Washington's self proclaimed right to enforce its own standards on the world. Such an op-ed was "There's Only One Way to Stop Iran" by Professor Alan J. Kuperman which, ironically, appeared on Christmas Eve.

As a former intelligence officer I frequently shake my head when I read a piece like "There's Only One Way to Stop Iran" because I know exactly how what the Soviets used to call disinformation works. When the policy stinks and you have to create buzz about it anyway, you dig up someone who can plausibly describe himself as an "expert" and then find some obliging folks in the media to publish a piece that enables you to change the story line. That is what I used to do myself back in the days when I was working hard to demonize the Soviets. Take an incident or development, twist it a bit so you can come to a conclusion that is at odds with the facts, get your paid asset to write it up, hand it over to another paid agent in the media, and then let it fly. It will be picked up here and there, spread around the world and incorporated into other news coverage, and eventually everyone is saying we have to stand up to the Russians. Or Chinese. Or Iranians. Or the Yemenis.

Recently we have seen change the narrative applied to justify all sorts of outrages, including the pastel revolutions in Eastern Europe, where, so the accepted story goes, brave bands of reformers took on corrupt and authoritarian old regime leaders. The reality was much different, with European and American Non-Government Organizations funding one group of criminals against another with not a touch of genuine reform in sight. And then there is poor little Georgia, hardly plausible that Tbilisi might have been the aggressor against Russia, was it? But it was (John McCain please take note).

That kind of narrative shift is precisely what Kuperman and those who are like minded are doing, changing the story to turn black into white to make war appear to be the only option to resolve a thorny international problem. Appearing in The Times is particularly damaging because when the Grey Lady gives over its pages to someone like Kuperman they are providing their seal of approval and legitimizing his point of view. Even if they don't explicitly endorse the article they are in effect saying that the argument is extremely credible and worth considering. With the Times imprimatur, the story then becomes part of the broader neoconservative narrative which can exploit the appearance in the Times to convince Americans that a war against Iran would not be such a bad thing and could, in fact, be the best way to eliminate the possibility that Tehran might develop a nuclear weapon.

The only problem is that the entire Kuperman narrative is itself nonsense. It starts by rejecting negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program after assuming that something is true, namely that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. There is no evidence that that is the case and even the US intelligence community continues to assert that Iran abandoned its weapons program in 2003. It then goes on to assume that any agreement with Iran to enable it to buy enriched fuel for electricity generation will inevitably lead to the uranium being further enriched to weapons grade. That amounts to taking a worst case scenario and combining it with another worst case scenario to draw a conclusion. Kuperman then piles on a third worst case assumption, that Iran would unhesitatingly hand over its expensively acquired nuclear deterrent weapon to a terrorist group. In baseball, three strikes and you are out, but apparently three non sequiturs in a single article does not rule you out for a New York Times op-ed.

Kuperman then describes the mechanics of defanging Iran, how taking out the country's alleged nuclear sites would be quick and relatively painless with little in the way of collateral damage to the US. Does anyone hear the word cakewalk? Kuperman has clearly not spent much time in the real world. Using American air power to attack Iran would be piling Pelion on Ossa, with terrible consequences including making it far more likely that Tehran will actively seek a nuclear weapon while guaranteeing a wave of terrorism that could well become global. There would also be a major spike in oil prices that would sink the already struggling American economy, whether or not the US Navy succeeds in controlling the Straits of Hormuz. Kuperman concedes that military action could backfire, but he draws on the analogy of the completely dissimilar Israeli destruction of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, which he regards as a success. He notes somewhat ominously that Iran's much larger infrastructure would require repeated bombings coupled with the threat to use still more force if Tehran were to retaliate. It all sounds a bit like the Cheney doctrine of first attacking Iran and then threatening it with nuclear weapons if it seeks to defend itself. On an optimistic note, Kuperman also throws in a final added benefit to a bit of devastating aerial bombardment, concluding that "air strikes against Iran would be a strong warning to other would-be proliferators."

Actually, they wouldn't be. Attacking Iran would not necessarily destroy its ability to build an atom bomb if it chooses to do so and would only encourage other potential proliferators to proliferate, if only to obtain a deterrent against being bombed by the United States or Israel. Also, thousands of completely innocent Iranians would die, which does not appear to be a consideration that bothers Kuperman very much. As Ron Paul and others have warned, yet another illegal war of choice in the Middle East would inflict damage on the US constitution and the rule of law and would also be a human and economic catastrophe both for Iran and the United States. It would likely not do much good for Israel either. Kuperman surely understands that. The op-ed by-line indicates that Professor Alan J. Kuperman is director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas. If a sustained bombing campaign is the best policy that the Prevention Program can come up with it is perhaps time for the good people in Texas to begin to wonder what exactly their tax dollars are supporting.

People of Hawaii Pass Resolution Against Forced Vaccination

They will not force us. They will stop degrading us. They will not control us. We will be victorious.

Mercola.com -

Department of Health officials in Hawaii were overruled by County of Hawaii directors supporting a resolution favoring First Amendment constitutional rights and vaccination exemptions for everyone demanding them.

The nearly unanimous vote demonstrated the power of local community activists to rebuke "top down" policies advancing "mandatory" vaccinations during declared emergencies.

The Resolution urges State and Federal legislators in Hawaii "to amend vaccine laws to include medical, religious, and philosophical exemptions from any vaccine program," including those declared urgent by health officials.

Sources:
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
This county resolution has yet to play out in Hawaii’s state politics, but, it is a good, solid example of what local municipalities can do to assert their sovereign authority over the territory they are elected to represent.
It shows that, finally, we have some local government officials who not only are listening to their constituents, but who realize that they can, and should, stand up against over-reaching, martial law-type State and Federal mandates.

‘A Victory for Health Freedom’

The Hawaii Tribune Herald tried to bury the news of the Resolution in its December 4 story titled, “Flu Mist Is Better than No Vaccine.” But online blogs and news watchers picked it up. Across the Internet, the resolution’s sponsor, Hawaii County councilwoman Emily Naeole-Beason, has been quoted as saying,
“This is a victory for health freedom, common sense, and US constitutional entitlements. I am very proud of our Council who put public safety ahead of special interests.
I couldn’t agree more, and we need more representatives like Naeole-Beason in public office. This feisty councilwoman from Hawaii has turned the tables on the FDA, CDC and the World Health Organization, as well as state and federal governments, by using their own argument for mass vaccination against them, and making it a defense for the public’s constitutional right to choose!
For too long, with no matter what vaccine was being questioned, government health officials around the world have defended mass vaccination with the mantra that they’re doing it in the interest of public safety.
In the US and abroad, anyone who dared to question, criticize or protest this mantra and the state-mandated vaccines it promoted was labeled as selfish, and accused of putting special interests ahead of the public good. No matter that some people just wanted the right to be as informed as possible about vaccines’ safety and risks – if they questioned the powers-that-be, they were against public safety.
Naeole-Beason, backed by her council, has dared to challenge the status quo and publicly say what many of us have been saying for years – that it’s really the government officials who are putting special interests ahead of public safety, not the other way around.

Some Lively Debates Going On

Even if it didn’t hit most of the mainstream press, this Resolution can be used to encourage states to exercise their own sovereignty over Federal and world health agendas, which can mandate vaccinations for every citizen under the guise of a “national emergency.”
The online debates on this Resolution are lively. This should serve as “a warning to health officials seeking mandatory vaccination authorizations under Federal ‘national emergency’ codes that expand state health official powers under the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act,’” theflucase.com said.
“The Resolution was prepared by Councilwoman Naeole's office. Her staff managed to make all the right phone calls, do all the right research, produce a resolution with all the right content and hit the issue facing American's straight on the nail, Freedom to choose what they want to do!” write-matters.com said.
Freedom to choose! There you go again – that radical idea that in the US, we should be able to exercise a constitutional right!

Others are Asserting Their Right to Choose

The Hawaii Resolution is printed in full here at bigislandchronicle.com. What I find very interesting is that the Resolution is not just about the H1N1 vaccine, which prompted it, but is about ALL vaccines.
It quotes the Hawaii statute which, like the other US states’, shields the pharmaceutical industry from lawsuits stemming from injuries of vaccines given during a state-declared emergency, but then it goes on to say:
WHEREAS, there is insufficient scientific evidence proving that vaccines are safe or effective, therefore it is not in the best interest of public health to impose mandatory vaccinations without exemptions; and
WHEREAS, swine flu and the flu vaccines both contain Thimerosal, a preservative for vaccines composed of mercury, one microgram of mercury is considered toxic and flu shots contain 25 micrograms. By age two, most United States children have received around 237 micrograms of mercury through vaccines; and
WHEREAS, the fast tracked government vaccines contain a substance called squalene that is suspected of causing serious long-term damage to the body; and
WHEREAS, in the wake of potential harm to the individual and the public from vaccinations, and the vacillating interpretation of “vaccine science,” it is in the public’s best interest to amend the vaccine laws, to include the right of medical, religious, and philosophical exemptions from mandated vaccination programs; now, therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED BY the COUNCIL OF THE COUNTY OF Hawai‘i, that it recommends that state and federal elected officials who represent the people of the State of Hawai‘i amend vaccine laws to include medical, religious, and philosophical exemptions from mandatory vaccine programs that contain thimerasol or squalene.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that any vaccine known to contain harmful viruses or any materials known to prompt autoimmune diseases or cancer risks shall provide cause for exemption for any person in the State of Hawai‘i who so desires such exemption.”
What a powerful, in-your-face proclamation this is to all the officials who want to overrule the rights of individuals and communities to govern themselves!
The good thing about this is that the community activists in Hawaii are not alone. Slowly but surely, across the US, people who are sick and tired of being told that they have to accept mandated vaccines for themselves and their children are standing up for their rights.
For example, in Idaho, public citizens are demanding that the governor grant them the right to exemptions from mandated vaccinations.
In Washington state16,000 registered nurses filed a federal lawsuit to stop MultiCare Health System from implementing a mandatory flu vaccination policy for them. This action “blatantly ignores their legal obligation to bargain with the union,” was the comment that Barbara Frye, the nurses’ association’s assistant executive director said, in explaining why the lawsuit was filed.
In New York state, a judge halted enforcement of a law that mandated health care workers there be vaccinated against H1N1 – even in the face of the state health commissioner who, like his colleagues, repeated the public safety mantra.
And in New Jersey – home to vaccine giant Merck – parents staged rallies against a state mandate requiring all children be vaccinated against H1N1.
These are just a few examples of vaccine community action movements that have begun across the country. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see that people are finally starting to see the bigger picture, and in ever increasing numbers are starting to demand more information. People are finally asking to be fully informed, and are demanding the right to be able to make a choice with that information.

What You Can Do

I urge you to continue educating yourself about vaccines, and the diseases they’re designed to treat. The National Vaccine Information Center is one of the best online sources for your continued research on this topic. Remember these two axioms as the foundation of everything you do:

  1. Nobody, anywhere or any time and under any circumstances has the right or power in this country to immunize you or your children against your will and conviction. If they attempt to do so, you can legally charge them with "assault with a deadly weapon" and have the full resources of our laws behind you.

  2. At all times in attempting to avoid unwanted immunization, you have the Law of the Land behind you. Those who would try to vaccinate you against your will are on very shaky ground. Into every compulsory immunization law in America are written legal exceptions and waivers which are there specifically to protect you from the attempted tyranny of officialdom. It is not only your right, but your obligation to use them, if this is what your conscience tells you.

For more information about how to legally avoid unwanted immunizations of all kinds, please review my previous article How to Legally Avoid Unwanted Immunizations of All Kinds.

Ethanol burns dirtier than gasoline, study finds

It was never about clean energy anyway. It was about starving people, and sucking up to ignorant farmers who are pretty much addicted to government subsidies. This story, like the devestating effects of high fructose corn syrup, will never be exposed in the mainstream.

    Mike Adams
    NaturalNews -

    A recent study conducted by researchers at Stanford University has revealed that ethanol fuel produces more ozone that regular gasoline. When ethanol is burned through combustion, it produces emissions that are substantially higher than gasoline in aldehydes, the carcinogenic precursors to ozone.

    Much of the fuel dispensed at pumps in America today is a blend of both ethanol and gasoline. E85, a typical gasoline blend that is 85 percent ethanol, was found to emit more ozone pollutants than gasoline, especially during warm, sunny days. Diana Ginnebaugh, a doctoral candidate who worked on the study, explained that even on cold days when ozone is typically not a problem, E85 could result in problematic levels of ozone.

    When a car is first started on a cold day, it takes the catalytic converter a few minutes to warm up in order to reach maximum efficiency. During the warmup period, the highest proportion of pollutants escape the car's tailpipe, resulting in increased pollution. According to Ginnebaugh, even a slight increase in pollutants could cause places like Los Angeles and Denver, cities that already have smog problems, to have significantly more days when ozone limits are exceeded and public health is at risk.

    E85 emissions contain several other different pollutants including ones that cause throat and eye irritation and lung problems. Crop damage may also occur from the aldehydes emitted from the burning of ethanol. In the worst-case scenario, E85 was found to potentially add 39 parts per billion more ozone into the air a day than normal gasoline.

    Comments by Mike Adams

    This study exposes yet another angle on the scam of ethanol -- a fuel that has been pushed as "green" by corn growers who obviously benefit from the increased demand for their crops. But ethanol is largely a scam: It takes nearly as much fuel to grow and process ethanol as you get back out of it, making it an extremely inefficient plant-based fuel.

    At the same time, as this study shows, ethanol is also causing more pollution than regular gasoline. So it's not cleaner and greener; it's actually dirtier and wasteful.

    As with everything involving fuel, ethanol has become a highly politicized issue where real science gets abandoned. Rather than focusing on real energy solutions, the U.S. government remains focused on things that give the appearance of clean energy when, in reality, they are quite the opposite.

    What we should really be pursuing as a nation is a high-priority project to enhance battery technology so that the next generation of vehicles could all run on electricity gathered from the sun via solar panels. Why burn up corn as fuel when you can collect your fuel from the sky for free?

    Sources for this story include:
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_relea...

Advancements in solar technology will allow more people to power their own homes

This isn't about lowering your carbon footprint, it's about lessening your dependency on others - usually the government - to survive. The more you can remove yourself from the grid, the more freedom you have. Besides, why pay for energy if it's free? You don't have to pay for the air you breathe do you? Oh wait...

    NaturalNews -

    A recent issue of Inorganic Chemistry contains a report about the many advancements being made in the field of solar energy production. The concept of "personalized solar energy", a model by which people power their own homes using the energy from the sun rather than rely on the power grid, is becoming more viable as scientists have discovered improved ways of storing large quantities of solar energy.

    The new method of energy storage is similar to plant photosynthesis. Scientists have designed a catalyst that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen that are then stored in fuel cells as fuel. The entire process from production to use is both clean and sustainable.

    Dr. Daniel Nocera, author of the report, noted that energy use is expected to increase three-fold in the next century as countries around the globe continue to industrialize. The ability to capture and store energy from the sun has the real potential to solve the world's energy and pollution crises.

    He further explained that self-sustained living through personalized energy production will release many in third-world countries from poverty. Since wealth is typically scaled alongside energy use, an increase in energy availability will help to increase the standard of living for those in living in the world's poorest countries.

    Although the initial cost of solar equipment is typically high, the unlimited availability of free energy from the sun after the fact is an invaluable asset. Researchers recognize the potential benefits of energy independence both for the well-being of people and the environment and they hope that the concept will become more mainstream.

    Comments by Mike Adams

    I would like to believe that "personalized solar energy" is the wave of the future, but experience has taught me that certain forces in modern society don't like individuals to have their own independent power. Independent power means independent freedom (along with zero utility bills), and if there's one thing that the big power companies don't want right now is people generating their own power on-site (because it results in them losing customers).

    Innovation is always the enemy of the status quo. Personalized solar power may, indeed, represent a technological breakthrough, but that doesn't mean the political environment will allow it to succeed. After all, free energy technologies like cold fusion (which isn't really "free" but it's close) have existed for two decades now and yet continue to be marginalized by mainstream scientists and universities.

    Affordable, personalized solar energy sounds nice, but until the political climate changes to allow more personal freedom on this matter, it's going to remain on the fringe. Energy dependence is one of the main ways people remain controlled and powerless (literally), and the powerful institutions in our society aren't about to give up that control.

    Sources for this story include:
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_relea...