This posting is for humor only, not fact.
Several 20th-century Noble Prizes stretch the boundaries of WTF, starting that Prince of Peace Yasser Arafat (we won't mention Henry Kissinger here, of course) to three wall street whiz kids, economists Myron Scholes, Fischer Black and Robert Merton, who came up with the now infamous Black-Scholes Model for Equity, which allowed the geniuses of Wall Street to predict a stock's long-term value based on previous performances and on whether people are betting for or against it sort of like the Google Page Rank Algorithm. In other words, it could predict the stock market. But what the whiz kids forgot was the simple fact of the human species: people are not cold analytical computers. Their firm, Long Term Capital Management. tanked in the 90's and almost sucked down western civilization with it.
But the true outer space Nobel went to two "Being There" clones who were led by "noise" interference from a coating of pigeon shit on the new super-sensitive antenna they built for Bell At&T Telephone Labs in New Jersey to the accidental discovery of cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang (image above).
A hilarious Nobel Prize Dickhead Hall of Fame has been compiled by our more creative brothers at cracked.com who asked themselves how awesome would it be if you accidentally spilled Benadryl into a jar of expired tomato sauce and found the cure for cancer? Or if you fell and discovered a new species of nuclear-powered cockroach staring back at you on the floor?
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
A message from Transport Canada, a division of the US Dept. of Homeland Security.
This is for those of you who enjoy humor, too.
Cass Sunstein, Obama's Next Supreme Court Appointee Is Against The Right To Keep And Bear Arms
Cass Sunstein, the same info-czar that wants to tax dissent and infiltrate/disrupt the truth movement, argues that the US Supreme Court was wrong to interpret the Second Amendment as an individual right.
In other words, Cass Sunstein is basically attacking the entire Bill of Rights one at a time.
In other words, Cass Sunstein is basically attacking the entire Bill of Rights one at a time.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
CIA Cable 'Granting Permission' to Destroy Torture Videotapes Surfaces
by Jeff Kaye
A January 8 release of documents in the ACLU FOIA lawsuit seeking materials related to the CIA's destruction of videotapes of interrogators using "enhanced interrogation techniques" has revealed the first evidence of a precise instruction for the destruction of those tapes.
According to Rachel Myers at the ACLU, while there was previous evidence of requests from the "field" that the videotapes be destroyed, this is our first verification of the exact date CIA headquarters gave its approval. (Photo by webponce)According to Rachel Myers at the ACLU, while there was previous evidence of requests from the "field" that the videotapes be destroyed, this is our first verification of the exact date CIA headquarters gave its approval.
The approval came in the form of "a two-page cable discussing a proposal and granting permission to destroy the videotapes." (emphasis added) The cable was sent from "HQ" to the "Field" on November 8, 2005, the same day an earlier request was made from the "Field". Confirmation of the destruction of the tapes was already revealed in a cable "from the field to CIA headquarters, confirming the destruction of the videotapes." (11/20/2009 Vaughn Index 4).
Requests for destruction of interrogation videotapes, and discussions around such an action are documented as far back as September 2002 (11/20/2009 Vaughn Index 55). It's presumed that these requests came from the Thailand CIA black site where Abu Zubaydah had been an experimental victim of the new so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which were based on stress inoculation torture survival schools for the military, known as SERE. Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, formerly of SERE and its parent agency, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA)
The new cable has been withheld, citing numerous FOIA "exemptions," as have hundreds of other such pieces of evidence, including emails and draft memoranda, by the CIA. Its existence is revealed as part of a Vaughn index of withheld documents, wherein some description of the document is given, in addition to the reasons for withholding the document.
The "permission" cable is Document 154 in Part 6 of the latest Vaughn release/dump. It's on pg. 13 out of 35 (all doc links are PDF). A full timeline on the CIA videotape destruction actions, which has not however been updated for the latest crop of documents, has been put together by the ACLU. All the documents released thus far can be accessed here.
Emptywheel has been covering this issue from the beginning. For instance, see this relevant story, wherein EW reports that "The CIA Asked to Destroy Torture Tapes on Same Day They Claimed They Didn't Torture."
Meanwhile, the investigation into the destruction of the videotapes, with prosecutor John Durham leading, has languished for over two years now. While justice is supposed to be blind and disinterested, the investigation will probably go nowhere unless public pressure is put on the Department of Justice and the Obama administration to hold the torturers accountable.
A January 8 release of documents in the ACLU FOIA lawsuit seeking materials related to the CIA's destruction of videotapes of interrogators using "enhanced interrogation techniques" has revealed the first evidence of a precise instruction for the destruction of those tapes.
According to Rachel Myers at the ACLU, while there was previous evidence of requests from the "field" that the videotapes be destroyed, this is our first verification of the exact date CIA headquarters gave its approval. (Photo by webponce)According to Rachel Myers at the ACLU, while there was previous evidence of requests from the "field" that the videotapes be destroyed, this is our first verification of the exact date CIA headquarters gave its approval.
The approval came in the form of "a two-page cable discussing a proposal and granting permission to destroy the videotapes." (emphasis added) The cable was sent from "HQ" to the "Field" on November 8, 2005, the same day an earlier request was made from the "Field". Confirmation of the destruction of the tapes was already revealed in a cable "from the field to CIA headquarters, confirming the destruction of the videotapes." (11/20/2009 Vaughn Index 4).
Requests for destruction of interrogation videotapes, and discussions around such an action are documented as far back as September 2002 (11/20/2009 Vaughn Index 55). It's presumed that these requests came from the Thailand CIA black site where Abu Zubaydah had been an experimental victim of the new so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which were based on stress inoculation torture survival schools for the military, known as SERE. Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, formerly of SERE and its parent agency, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA)
The new cable has been withheld, citing numerous FOIA "exemptions," as have hundreds of other such pieces of evidence, including emails and draft memoranda, by the CIA. Its existence is revealed as part of a Vaughn index of withheld documents, wherein some description of the document is given, in addition to the reasons for withholding the document.
The "permission" cable is Document 154 in Part 6 of the latest Vaughn release/dump. It's on pg. 13 out of 35 (all doc links are PDF). A full timeline on the CIA videotape destruction actions, which has not however been updated for the latest crop of documents, has been put together by the ACLU. All the documents released thus far can be accessed here.
Emptywheel has been covering this issue from the beginning. For instance, see this relevant story, wherein EW reports that "The CIA Asked to Destroy Torture Tapes on Same Day They Claimed They Didn't Torture."
Meanwhile, the investigation into the destruction of the videotapes, with prosecutor John Durham leading, has languished for over two years now. While justice is supposed to be blind and disinterested, the investigation will probably go nowhere unless public pressure is put on the Department of Justice and the Obama administration to hold the torturers accountable.
The mystery of the vanishing NOAA and GISS weather stations
Climategate goes American: NOAA, GISS and the mystery of the vanishing weather stations
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 16th, 2010
For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a link to US weatherman John Coleman’s magisterial demolition of the Great AGW Scam. I particularly recommend part 4 because that’s the one with all the meat. It shows how temperature readings have been manipulated at the two key climate data centres in the United States – the NASA Goddard Science and Space Institute at Columbia University in New York and the NOAA National Climate Data Center in Ashville, North Carolina. (Hat tip: Platosays)
This is a scandal to rank with Climategate.
What it shows is that, just like in Britain at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) temperature data records have been grotesquely distorted by activist scientists in order to exaggerate the appearance of late 20th century global warming. They achieved this – with an insouciant disregard for scientific integrity which quite beggars belief – through the simple expedient of ignoring most of those weather station sited in higher, colder places and using mainly ones in warmer spots. Then, they averaged out the temperature readings given by the warmer stations to give a global average. Et voila: exactly the scary “climate change” they needed to persuade bodies like the IPCC that AGW was a clear and present danger requiring urgent pan-governmental action.
The man who spotted all this is a computer programmer called EM Smith – aka the Chiefio. You can read the full report at his excellent blog. In the 70s, the Chiefio discovered, GISS and NOAA took their temperature data from 6,000 weather stations around the world. By 1990, though, this figure had mysteriously dropped to 1500. Even more mysteriously this 75 per cent reduction in the number of stations used had a clear bias against those at higher latitudes and elevations.
Here’s an excellent example of this: Bolivia.
Notice that nice rosy red over the top of Bolivia? Bolivia is that country near, but not on, the coast just about half way up the Pacific Ocean side. It has a patch of high cold Andes Mountains where most of the population live.
One Small Problem with the anomally map. There has not been any thermometer data for Bolivia in GHCN since 1990.
None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.
So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data from the last 20 years?
Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away. So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Chili, Peru and the Amazon Jungle.
Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks and high cold desert, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know?
Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo has also been on the case. You can find a link to his superb analysis of the scandal at Watts Up With That. (Sorry: I would give you a more direct link to his pdf file but I can’t work out how to do it)
In Canada the number of stations dropped from 600 to 35 in 2009. The percentage of stations in the lower elevations (below 300 feet) tripled and those at higher elevations above 3000 feet were reduced in half. Canada’s semi-permanent depicted warmth comes from interpolating from more southerly locations to fill northerly vacant grid boxes, even as a pure average of the available stations shows a COOLING. Just 1 thermometer remains for everything north of latitude 65N – that station is Eureka. Eureka according to Wikipedia has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” .
You know what this means, don’t you? It means the ragbag of eco-loons, politicians and technocrats pushing AGW can no longer plausibly deploy their main excuse about Climategate – that it was all a little local difficulty of no great importance because the HadCrut temperature data sets were independently confirmed by those at GISS and NOAA. What this story demonstrates, as many of us suspected all along, is that not just the British temperature records but those in the US too have been hijacked by political activists. I need hardly say that this breaking scandal has been almost completely ignored by the MSM.
Not unpredictably, the director of one of the two institutions implicated in this – Dr James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies – has issued a (very carefully worded – which makes you wonder what he’s not telling us) denial of any skullduggery.
“NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis.”
The idea that a man of Dr Hansen’s radical persuasion should be running an organisation as important as GISS is looking increasingly absurd. To get an idea how absurd, think Tony Benn in charge of Britain’s defence policy, or – let’s get really weird – imagine if Ed Balls were in charge of Education or Gordon Brown were running the country. More on Hansen’s activist sympathies in another blog.
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 16th, 2010
For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a link to US weatherman John Coleman’s magisterial demolition of the Great AGW Scam. I particularly recommend part 4 because that’s the one with all the meat. It shows how temperature readings have been manipulated at the two key climate data centres in the United States – the NASA Goddard Science and Space Institute at Columbia University in New York and the NOAA National Climate Data Center in Ashville, North Carolina. (Hat tip: Platosays)
This is a scandal to rank with Climategate.
What it shows is that, just like in Britain at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) temperature data records have been grotesquely distorted by activist scientists in order to exaggerate the appearance of late 20th century global warming. They achieved this – with an insouciant disregard for scientific integrity which quite beggars belief – through the simple expedient of ignoring most of those weather station sited in higher, colder places and using mainly ones in warmer spots. Then, they averaged out the temperature readings given by the warmer stations to give a global average. Et voila: exactly the scary “climate change” they needed to persuade bodies like the IPCC that AGW was a clear and present danger requiring urgent pan-governmental action.
The man who spotted all this is a computer programmer called EM Smith – aka the Chiefio. You can read the full report at his excellent blog. In the 70s, the Chiefio discovered, GISS and NOAA took their temperature data from 6,000 weather stations around the world. By 1990, though, this figure had mysteriously dropped to 1500. Even more mysteriously this 75 per cent reduction in the number of stations used had a clear bias against those at higher latitudes and elevations.
Here’s an excellent example of this: Bolivia.
Notice that nice rosy red over the top of Bolivia? Bolivia is that country near, but not on, the coast just about half way up the Pacific Ocean side. It has a patch of high cold Andes Mountains where most of the population live.
One Small Problem with the anomally map. There has not been any thermometer data for Bolivia in GHCN since 1990.
None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nothing. Empty Set.
So just how can it be so Hot Hot Hot! in Bolivia if there is NO data from the last 20 years?
Easy. GIStemp “makes it up” from “nearby” thermometers up to 1200 km away. So what is within 1200 km of Bolivia? The beaches of Chili, Peru and the Amazon Jungle.
Not exactly the same as snow capped peaks and high cold desert, but hey, you gotta make do with what you have, you know?
Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo has also been on the case. You can find a link to his superb analysis of the scandal at Watts Up With That. (Sorry: I would give you a more direct link to his pdf file but I can’t work out how to do it)
In Canada the number of stations dropped from 600 to 35 in 2009. The percentage of stations in the lower elevations (below 300 feet) tripled and those at higher elevations above 3000 feet were reduced in half. Canada’s semi-permanent depicted warmth comes from interpolating from more southerly locations to fill northerly vacant grid boxes, even as a pure average of the available stations shows a COOLING. Just 1 thermometer remains for everything north of latitude 65N – that station is Eureka. Eureka according to Wikipedia has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” .
You know what this means, don’t you? It means the ragbag of eco-loons, politicians and technocrats pushing AGW can no longer plausibly deploy their main excuse about Climategate – that it was all a little local difficulty of no great importance because the HadCrut temperature data sets were independently confirmed by those at GISS and NOAA. What this story demonstrates, as many of us suspected all along, is that not just the British temperature records but those in the US too have been hijacked by political activists. I need hardly say that this breaking scandal has been almost completely ignored by the MSM.
Not unpredictably, the director of one of the two institutions implicated in this – Dr James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies – has issued a (very carefully worded – which makes you wonder what he’s not telling us) denial of any skullduggery.
“NASA has not been involved in any manipulation of climate data used in the annual GISS global temperature analysis.”
The idea that a man of Dr Hansen’s radical persuasion should be running an organisation as important as GISS is looking increasingly absurd. To get an idea how absurd, think Tony Benn in charge of Britain’s defence policy, or – let’s get really weird – imagine if Ed Balls were in charge of Education or Gordon Brown were running the country. More on Hansen’s activist sympathies in another blog.
The more traitor bankers I know the more I like dogs.
Super hero animals
Super Traitor Bankers and the Intelligence Agencies they control.
By J. Speer-Williams
1-16-10
Lynchpins hold the various elements of a complex structure together.
America's intelligence agencies are the lynchpins, used by the International Monetary/Banking Cartel to enforce their various agendas on the US government.
Decades ago, Congress lost control of our intelligence agencies, making a parody of the system of "checks and balances" envisioned by our founding fathers. Today, the foreign Monetary Cartel controls all three of our branches of government through their ownership of what has never really been "our" intelligence services.
Meanwhile, the Cartel's mass media deflects our attention away from the unconstitutional and secret powers of the underground intelligence community with petty exposes of how the K Street gang of lobbyists buy off our elected and appointed officials.
Do they really expect us to believe that what is reported on during the light of day exceeds thatwhich transpires during the dark of night?
The usual tools of enforcement used by intelligence agents on our elected officials and appointed bureaucrats are various, depending on what's needed: Fixing elections, bribes, blackmail, and assassinations are their usual instruments of forcing compliance from our national leaders.
Subvert a nation's intelligence services and you're one step from subverting a nation's government, something long ago accomplished by the International Monetary/Banking Cartel in America.
The thousands of outrageous and unconstitutional governmental orders, directives, laws, judicial interpretations, and actions taken by our federal government has made America no better than any other Banana Republic in history; for some time, we've been ruled by a self-appointed, corrupt and exceedingly small group of private financial oligarchs through their control of intelligence agencies. And as long as Americans continue to believe they live in a democracy, the longer this foreign Monetary Cartel will have their way with us.
The very first realization the majority of people must have to regain control of their respective nations is coming to know with certainty that the private Monetary/Banking Cartel, not only controls the central banks of the world, they own them. This ownership allows - probably no more than a few hundred financial capitalists - to create money, of any country, out of the thinest of airs, control all credit, and to then enforce into indebtedness all nations and peoples of the world.
Such edification, however, may prove to be difficult in a world wherein its super-power - the USA - is largely composed of people who believe the Cartel's US central bank - the Federal Reserve System - is a American federal government institution. The American government has more control over Federal Express than it does over the Federal Reserve System.
And before the American government can issue its own currency and credit (without debt), she must defang its intelligence community of sixteen bloated intelligence and security agencies, starting with the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency; but doing so will not be easy or without danger.
Toward the end of his term as president, John F. Kennedy swore he was going to tear the CIA into a thousands pieces: He paid the ultimate price for his patriotic intention. Disempowering US intelligence agencies will not be an easy job, as they have never been more powerful.
And under the cover of the "national security" ruse, intelligence agencies have grown even more influential and authoritative, as they turn us into a rogue nation, intent on destroying all of our liberties at home, while expanding our terrorist attacks on innocent people abroad, complete with the torture of our fellow human beings. One can only hope that the majority of Americans will stop opting for security over their freedoms.
Ben Franklin wrote, "They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
But ironically, the so-called "national security" and "consumer protection" measures taken by the US government have made our country more insecure than ever before in our history. From a plummeting economy, to wide-open borders, to dangerous full-body scanners, to poisonous vaccines, to chemtrails, to GMO foods, to the loss of habeas corpus, to the bombing of women and children, to the depleted uranium poisoning of our own troops (and the entire world), Americans have never been so insecure, all thanks to the ruling moneychangers of our world and their covert use of national intelligence agencies.
Robber barons have thrown us back into the Middle Ages and into a neo-feudalism, all superimposed with poisons, radiation, and a fascistic government, largely in the name of "national security."
But if we can defang the intelligence agencies, we will have defanged the nemesis of mankind - the alien, archfiends of the International Monetary/Banking Cartel. Intelligence agencies are their Achilles' heel - perhaps a small, but a potentially mortal weakness.
J. Speer-Williams
Super Traitor Bankers and the Intelligence Agencies they control.
By J. Speer-Williams
1-16-10
Lynchpins hold the various elements of a complex structure together.
America's intelligence agencies are the lynchpins, used by the International Monetary/Banking Cartel to enforce their various agendas on the US government.
Decades ago, Congress lost control of our intelligence agencies, making a parody of the system of "checks and balances" envisioned by our founding fathers. Today, the foreign Monetary Cartel controls all three of our branches of government through their ownership of what has never really been "our" intelligence services.
Meanwhile, the Cartel's mass media deflects our attention away from the unconstitutional and secret powers of the underground intelligence community with petty exposes of how the K Street gang of lobbyists buy off our elected and appointed officials.
Do they really expect us to believe that what is reported on during the light of day exceeds thatwhich transpires during the dark of night?
The usual tools of enforcement used by intelligence agents on our elected officials and appointed bureaucrats are various, depending on what's needed: Fixing elections, bribes, blackmail, and assassinations are their usual instruments of forcing compliance from our national leaders.
Subvert a nation's intelligence services and you're one step from subverting a nation's government, something long ago accomplished by the International Monetary/Banking Cartel in America.
The thousands of outrageous and unconstitutional governmental orders, directives, laws, judicial interpretations, and actions taken by our federal government has made America no better than any other Banana Republic in history; for some time, we've been ruled by a self-appointed, corrupt and exceedingly small group of private financial oligarchs through their control of intelligence agencies. And as long as Americans continue to believe they live in a democracy, the longer this foreign Monetary Cartel will have their way with us.
The very first realization the majority of people must have to regain control of their respective nations is coming to know with certainty that the private Monetary/Banking Cartel, not only controls the central banks of the world, they own them. This ownership allows - probably no more than a few hundred financial capitalists - to create money, of any country, out of the thinest of airs, control all credit, and to then enforce into indebtedness all nations and peoples of the world.
Such edification, however, may prove to be difficult in a world wherein its super-power - the USA - is largely composed of people who believe the Cartel's US central bank - the Federal Reserve System - is a American federal government institution. The American government has more control over Federal Express than it does over the Federal Reserve System.
And before the American government can issue its own currency and credit (without debt), she must defang its intelligence community of sixteen bloated intelligence and security agencies, starting with the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency; but doing so will not be easy or without danger.
Toward the end of his term as president, John F. Kennedy swore he was going to tear the CIA into a thousands pieces: He paid the ultimate price for his patriotic intention. Disempowering US intelligence agencies will not be an easy job, as they have never been more powerful.
And under the cover of the "national security" ruse, intelligence agencies have grown even more influential and authoritative, as they turn us into a rogue nation, intent on destroying all of our liberties at home, while expanding our terrorist attacks on innocent people abroad, complete with the torture of our fellow human beings. One can only hope that the majority of Americans will stop opting for security over their freedoms.
Ben Franklin wrote, "They who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
But ironically, the so-called "national security" and "consumer protection" measures taken by the US government have made our country more insecure than ever before in our history. From a plummeting economy, to wide-open borders, to dangerous full-body scanners, to poisonous vaccines, to chemtrails, to GMO foods, to the loss of habeas corpus, to the bombing of women and children, to the depleted uranium poisoning of our own troops (and the entire world), Americans have never been so insecure, all thanks to the ruling moneychangers of our world and their covert use of national intelligence agencies.
Robber barons have thrown us back into the Middle Ages and into a neo-feudalism, all superimposed with poisons, radiation, and a fascistic government, largely in the name of "national security."
But if we can defang the intelligence agencies, we will have defanged the nemesis of mankind - the alien, archfiends of the International Monetary/Banking Cartel. Intelligence agencies are their Achilles' heel - perhaps a small, but a potentially mortal weakness.
J. Speer-Williams
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