Posts Tagged ‘conspiracy’

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Catchin’ Up

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

I’m catchin’ up with myself!

Talking Heads

I’m'a just go semi-chronologically through some stuff I’d have posted here (& that I didn’t post over at the We are the Dead site) had this site not been in limbo (due, according to the HostGator support guy, to “the database” having “a hiccup” [or to "the powers that be" having "it in for me", if you're not into the whole Ockham's Razor heuristic]).

First, from way back on April 10, Annalee Newitz yakked with Peter Watts about his research background, current science in current science fiction (and in Blindsight specifically), the moving target of “timelessness”, unrepentant criminality, and other fun stuff.

On a related note, via Deanna, some space intrigue I missed from late last month.

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

***

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

“Don’t talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking” by Jonathan Leake, Sunday Times UK 4-25-10

Sounds like Hawking has also been reading Blindsight (and maybe Tiptree’s “Mama Come Home” and “Help” and Reynolds’ Revelation Space and Banks’ Matter and… well, the list goes on).

Somewhere above earth is America’s latest spaceship, a 30ft craft so classified that the Pentagon will not divulge its mission nor how much it cost to build.

The mysterious X37B, launched successfully by the US Air Force from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, using an Atlas V rocket, looks like a mini-Space Shuttle — but its mission is top secret.

It is officially described as an orbital test vehicle. However, one of its potential uses appears to be to launch a surge of small satellites during periods of high international tension. This would enable America to have eyes and ears orbiting above any potential troublespot in the world.

The X37B can stay in orbit for up to 270 days, whereas the Shuttle can last only 16 days. This will provide the US with the ability to carry out experiments for long periods, including the testing of new laser weapon systems. This would bring accusations that the launch of X37B, and a second vehicle planned for later this year, could lead to the militarisation of space.

***

With all the focus on the launch of the secret X37B, another space launch by a Minotaur IV rocket from Vandenberg Air Force base in California received less attention.

It was carrying the prototype of a new weapon that can hit any target around the world in less than an hour.

The Prompt Global Strike is designed as the conventional weapon of the future. It could hit Osama bin Laden’s cave, an Iranian nuclear site or a North Korean missile with a huge conventional warhead.

“Launch of secret US space ship masks even more secret launch of new weapon” by Michael Evans, Times UK 4-25-10

Aside from a few episodes of The Ray Bradbury Theater I remember from my childhood, this PBS/Wonderworks joint from the year I was born has to be the the finest adaptation of a Bradbury story I’ve ever seen.  Cinematography by Robert Elswit (who went on to relative greatness), music by David Frank (who went on to relative obscurity, but who was apparently working on some kind of symphonic collab with Michael Jackson at the time of Jackson’s death).

A few months back, John Allen clued me in to another Ray, whose track “Triangle Walks” put me in mind of Bradbury’s “Tomorrow’s Child”, in which a woman gives birth, kinda, to a small blue pyramid.

Via Margaret Killjoy, here’s Fever Ray’s cover of Nick Cave’s “Stranger Than Kindness”.

Bit with the lamps reminded me, inevitably, of this.

Also via John Allen, now they‘ve gone and done it.

According to India’s DARPA-type deal, Prahlad Jani also did some things you’re not supposed to be able to do (live without food & water for 70 years, be nourished instead by amrit), but Indian spook scientists, shockingly, have yet to present the study data.

In other old news, editorial standards at The Telegraph are just as abysmally low as those at any other major pape you’d care to name.

India’s Defence Research Development Organisation, whose scientists develop drone aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles and new types of bombs. They believe Mr Prahlad could teach them to help soldiers survive longer without food, or disaster victims to hang on until help arrives.

“Man claims to have had no food or drink for 70 years” by Dean Nelson, Telegraph 4-28-10

As an Anglophile and proofreader, stuff like this drives me nuts.  I mean, it’s your language, arseholes!  We Yanks are just usin’ it.

Last, but certainly not least, I give yinz Director, CEO, President and CFO of Matrixx Initiatives, Bill Hemelt.

He may not melt, but Bill’s eyes do sorta shapeshift at around 0:50.

Keep on keepin’ on keepin’ on and cuídate.

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I’m the police chief.

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

So, Pittsburgh police have this carayzee conspiracy theory involving one of their own officers, her son and a cell phone.

Harper said Rowser’s 18-year-old son, Stephon Stewart, lost his cell phone on a school bus and has been charged with simple assault for allegedly punching a boy who found it and demanded a reward for its return in Northview Heights on April 21. [Looks like somebody played hooky and missed the lesson on verb tense agreement. -Qd]

“She had grabbed me and that’s when he had punched me … my eyes went back into my head,” said Jayson Daniel.

“She just grabbed my son’s wrist and her son sucker-punched my son and knocked him out and he hit his head on the concrete,” said the victim’s mother, Darlene Daniel.

Harper said the victim’s family claims Rowser flashed a badge, called herself the “chief” and may have grabbed the boy before her son punched him.

Pittsburgh police Commander Rashall Brackney said Daniel’s son spent two days in Children’s Hospital as a result of hitting his head on the concrete.

“Off-Duty Officer Investigated, Son Charged With Assault” WTAE 5-1-10

The district attorney’s office will decide next week whether to charge Officer Gladys Rowser, 43, of the North Side with conspiracy in the April 21 incident, Harper said.

***

Witnesses said Rowser grabbed a boy’s wrist, flashed her badge to the group and said, “I’m the police chief,” Brackney said. Any criminal charges would stem from Rowser’s grabbing the boy’s wrist, not from identifying herself as the police chief, she said.

“Pittsburgh officer may face conspiracy charge” by Chris Tongeri, Trib 5-1-10

But it’s apparently one of those ungrounded conspiracy theories.

The district attorney is trying to determine whether Officer Gladys Rowser, 43, of the North Side, should be charged with conspiracy after her son was charged with simple assault for punching the boy, sending him to the hospital.

“We told detectives that we did not have enough information at this time to charge her,” Mike Manko, a spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., said Tuesday.

Police Chief Nate Harper, who last week reassigned Rowser to administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation, could not be reached for comment. Harper has said Rowser faces an internal charge of conduct unbecoming an officer.

Rowser could not be reached for comment.

Daniel O’Hara, president of Fort Pitt Lodge No. 1, Fraternal Order of Police, said he never believed charges were warranted.

“However, we wanted to make sure a thorough investigation was conducted before we passed judgment,” O’Hara said. “She still possibly could face internal discipline. We’ll wait and see.”

“DA lacks evidence to charge Pittsburgh police officer” by Michael Hasch, Trib 5-5-10

So, that means I can identify myself as the police chief any time I feel like it and, even if my hypothetical co-conspirator punches the hypothetical person to whom I identified myself in the hypothetical face, the worst consequence to me is maybe “internal discipline” (from my conscience, I guess), but no criminal charges, right?

Cool, I’m the police chief!

Yinz have the right to have fun and cuídate.

Update, 5-7-10

Luke Ravenstahl is making a big o’l show of being pissed.

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He’s got a car bomb.

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

He’s got a car bomb.  He puts the key in the ignition and turns it – the car blows up.  He gets out.  He opens the hood and makes a cursory inspection.  He closes the hood and gets back in.  He turns the key in the ignition.  The car blows up.  He gets out and slams the door shut disgustedly.  He kicks the tire.  He takes off his jacket and shimmies under the chassis.  He pokes around.  He slides back out and wipes the grease off his shirt.  He puts his jacket back on.  He gets in.  He turns the key in the ignition.  The car blows up, sending debris into the air and shattering windows for blocks.  He gets out and says, Damn it!  He calls a tow truck.  He gives them his AAA membership number.  They tow the car to an Exxon station.  The mechanic gets in and turns the key in the ignition.  The car explodes, demolishing the gas pumps, the red-and-blue Exxon logo high atop its pole bursting like a balloon on a string.  The mechanic steps out.  You got a car bomb, he says.  The man rolls his eyes.  I know that, he says.

Mark Leyner, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist

In the past, I have wrung my hands in fear of what my countrymen will do if Islamic terrorists ever succeed in setting off a bunch of car bombs.  While I still worry about that, I now worry less.  It appears that the terrorists we’re facing at home these days are basically the Generation Veal of terrorists.  “Yeah, Osama, I, like, forgot to read the bomb manual.  And then I left some supplies at home.  Can I, like, get some funding for another attempt?  No?  That’s, like so unfair.  I mean, I tried and everything.  Don’t I get credit for that?  Not even partial credit?”

“Fizzle your bomb once [...]” by Thoreau, Unqualified Offerings 5-2-10

It has also emerged that the bomb could have been aimed at the creators of the controversial cartoon South Park.

Viacom, which makes the comedy show, has offices near where the bomb was found and defused in Times Square.

The show’s writers were threatened with reprisals last month over an episode mocking the prophet Mohammed.

***

Police Commissioner Mr Kelly dismissed suggestions the car bomb was an ‘amateurish’ device.

Mr Kelly said: ‘The intent of whoever did this to cause mayhem, create casualties.’

He added that the bomb was a reminder New York ‘is clearly a target of people who want to come here and do us harm’.

The bomb squad eventually used a robot to make the device safe.

‘We are very lucky,’ said New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. ‘We avoided what could have been a very deadly event.

‘Terrorists around the world who feel threatened by the freedoms that we have always focus on those symbols of freedoms and that is New York City.’

The square was opened to the public again yesterday. But there were fears of a 9/11-style sequence of attacks after another explosive device laid on a marathon route in Pittsburgh was found and defused.

“Times Square bomb: New York police defuse ‘car bomb’” by Daniel Bates, DailyMail 5-3-10

I guess, if you consider a microwave containing ravioli “another explosive device” and blowing stuff up defusing it…

Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed “We were very lucky. We avoided what could have been a very deadly event.”

For much of the evening, Midtown New York, from 43rd – 48th streets, was closed, heightening fear reported for hours on cable news shows, including statements by Bloomberg, Governor David Paterson, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, saying the bomb “appeared (to be) in the process of detonating, but it malfunctioned.”

Good luck or something else? We’ve seen this too often not to be suspicious. This one, like others, has all the earmarks of a false flag, more likely given its coverage and location in Times Square on Saturday night, followed by a May 2 video saying the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.

Who could imagine they had a branch office in New York, and no one even noticed. At least that’s the impression from media disinformation, hyped to spread fear and prepare the public for what’s to come, perhaps something much worse.

In addition, like previous times, a suspect is already in custody, a Muslim, of course, as part of the anti-Islamic post-9/11 rage, and given how abusively he may be treated (including frightening threats of life in prison or the death penalty), perhaps will confess to anything or make it appear that he did so headlines can blare it.

“New York Car Bomb Incident: Another False Flag?” by Stephen Lendman, BLN 5-5-10

A You Tube clip shot by an eyewitness near the Times Square car bomb incident on Saturday night highlights why many people who were caught up in the bomb scare thought that the police were running a drill at the time of the botched attack.

Eyewitnesses, including those who comment on the video on the You Tube page, are baffled as to why police chose to evacuate some locations and not others, as if certain buildings had been chosen to be evacuated beforehand while others were left alone.

Despite the fact that people were being told to leave McDonalds, police did not stop anyone from entering the theatre next door. In addition, the staff at McDonalds were not told to leave and remained in the restaurant.

“None of this made sense when the audience was let in to see West Side Story,” states the text in the video.

“Times Square Eyewitness: Bomb Scare Looked Like Drill” by Paul Joseph Watson, PrisonPlanet 5-5-10

Faisal Shahzad, 30, has been charged over the attempted car bomb attack in New York last Saturday. Meanwhile, the Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Air Vice-Marshal Baharul Haq, Shahzad’s father and a retired Pakistani Air Force commander, said he was not aware of any links with terror groups. “This is at least what I know,” he said, to the Sun newspaper.

“We are liberal people.”

He added: “How can I appeal for his release if he is really involved in the terror plan? I need to see what happens and then I will contact the government. I do not know the truth. But I am not sure he is doing all this.”

“New York bomb suspect was not a terrorist, says father” Telegraph 5-6-10

To recap, this is the man who founded the group now emerging in connection with the botched Times Square bombing – a CIA and MI6 asset.

“Experts believe Jaish-e-Muhammad still benefits from links with Pakistan’s powerful government intelligence community. Some experts believe Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency facilitated the group’s formation,” states yesterday’s L.A. Times article.

As the vast majority of geopolitical analysts concur, the Pakistani ISI is virtually nothing more than a CIA outpost. The ISI does nothing without the Agency giving its approval. The CIA has paid millions of dollars to the ISI since 9/11, accounting for no less than a third of the ISI’s entire budget, despite the foreign spy agency’s notorious history of funding and arming terrorist groups like Jaish-e-Muhammad and despite the fact that it bankrolled the 9/11 hijackers.

Since the CIA has its fingerprints all over almost every Middle Eastern terror group, it’s unsurprising that an Agency connection to the Times Square bomber has come to light. We’ve never come across a terrorist who wasn’t trained, equipped, radicalized, entrapped, or provocateured by a western intelligence agency or a terror group controlled by a western intelligence agency.

“Times Square Bomber Linked With CIA-Controlled Terror Group” by Paul Joseph Watson, PrisonPlanet 5-6-10

Irish Car Bomb is made with 3 different Irish drinks.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pint (8 oz, 24 cl) Guinness stout
  • 1 oz (3 cl) Jamison Irish whiskey
  • 1 oz (3 cl) Bailey’s Irish cream

Glass

Instructions

  • Pour Guinness into pint glass.
  • Pour Jamison into shot glass and then without mixing pour Bailey’s into the shot glass.
  • When ready to drink drop the shot glass into the pint, be mindful of spilling.

When the Bailey’s mixes with the beer it will start to curdle very fast, this forces the need to drink the car bomb very fast.

Cocktails.org

Sip a less gross-sounding cocktail for freedom and cuídate.

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Built to Spill

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.

The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful.

By Friday afternoon, she said, the Defense Department had agreed to send two large military transport planes to spray chemicals that can disperse the oil while it is still in the Gulf.

“U.S. Missed Chances to Act on Oil Spill” by Campbell Robertson and Eric Lipton, NYT 5-1-10

Seriously, how many ecosystems devastated, how many benighted critters smothered by national significance will it take, how many wells of human possibility must splutter and run dry, before we are at last freed from our destructive dependence on this grossly overvalued substance?

Oh, hang on, oil? Hivemind actually has a half-decent summary of BP’s sordid origins.

In May 1901, William Knox D’Arcy was granted a concession by the Shah of Iran to search for oil which he discovered in May 1908.[6] This was the first commercially significant find in the Middle East. On 14 April 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was incorporated to exploit this.[6] In 1923, the company secretly gave £5,000 to future Prime Minister Winston Churchill to lobby the British government to allow them to monopolise Persian oil resources.[7] In 1935, it became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC).[6]

After World War II, AIOC and the Iranian government initially resisted nationalist pressure to revise AIOC’s concession terms still further in Iran‘s favour. But in March 1951, the pro-western Prime Minister Ali Razmara was assassinated.[8] The Majlis of Iran (parliament) elected a nationalist, Mohammed Mossadeq, as prime minister. In April, the Majlis nationalised the oil industry by unanimous vote.[9] The National Iranian Oil Company was formed as a result, displacing the AIOC.[10] The AIOC withdrew its management from Iran, and organised an effective boycott of Iranian oil. The British government – which owned the AIOC – contested the nationalisation at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, but its complaint was dismissed.[11]

By spring of 1953, incoming U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to organise a coup against the Mossadeq government with support from the British government.[12] On 19 August 1953, Mossadeq was forced from office by the CIA conspiracy, involving the Shah and the Iranian military, and known by its codename, Operation Ajax.[12]

Mossadeq was replaced by pro-Western general Fazlollah Zahedi,[13] and the Shah, who had left the country briefly to await the outcome of the coup, returned to Iran. He abolished the democratic Constitution and assumed autocratic powers.

After the coup, Mossadegh’s National Iranian Oil Company became an international consortium, and AIOC resumed operations in Iran as a member of it.[10] The consortium agreed to share profits on a 50–50 basis with Iran, “but not to open its books to Iranian auditors or to allow Iranians onto its board of directors.”[14] AIOC, as a part of the Anglo-American coup d’état deal, was not allowed to monopolise Iranian oil as before. It was limited to a 40% share in a new international consortium. For the rest, 40% went to the five major American companies and 20% went to Royal Dutch Shell and Compagnie Française des Pétroles, now Total S.A..[15]

The AIOC became the British Petroleum Company in 1954.

Wikipedia

Dig New Orleans Ladder, which is cool enough to quote Pynchon, for the latest dirt on this filthy business.

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News of Eleven

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

I been trying to chill on the number synchronicity posts lately, but as this stuff is interesting anyway I figure I’m well justified…

Underwater robots dived to the ocean floor yesterday in a new effort to staunch the 42,000 gallons of oil a day being pumped into the Gulf of Mexico in America’s worst offshore oil rig spill in 40 years.

The robots will attempt to activate a blowout preventer, a 450-tonne valve on the ocean floor that offers the only timely option for stemming the flow.

With the oil now coating 1,800 square miles of water, BP officials acknowledge it could take months to entirely contain two separate leaks from the wrecked oil rig.

The US coastguard discovered the leaks on Saturday, two days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig leased by BP sank off the coast of Louisiana. The rig was destroyed in an explosion last Tuesday, with 11 workers missing and presumed dead.

“Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Underwater robots trying to seal well” by Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian 4-26-10

Weird how this goes down so soon after Our Lord and Pharaoh Barakhenaton gave the magic go-ahead to expand offshore drilling.  Between this and the “Papeles, por favor?” shit in Arizona and Mexico’s recent half-assed gesture in the direction of narcotics decriminalization, I’d love to brashly predict that our amigos to the south will not be joining the NAU (or whatever) anytime soon – but Calderón and Obama are scheduled to conspire discuss shit in secret next month, and I’m'a cynically predict the upshot will be, with a few tweaks, full steam ahead with the continental serf-state.

Kinda relatedly, how many times, over, say, the past four years, have eleven miners been trapped in Chinese mines?  After just a cursory search, more times than even I would have thought possible.  Moving on,

Eleven suspected Somali pirates accused in separate attacks on two Navy ships off the coast of Africa were indicted in U.S. federal court Friday.

There was heavy security at the courthouse when the men appeared wearing handcuffs and either bright orange or olive drab prison outfits. One used crutches and had a bandage wrapped around his head. Another used a wheelchair, with his leg covered in bandages because it had been amputated below the knee.

The government said the injuries were the result of the men’s alleged battle with the Navy.

***

The 11 had been held on U.S. ships for weeks off Somalia’s pirate-infested coast as officials worked to determine whether and where they could be prosecuted and prepare legal charges against them.

The transfer of the case to a U.S. court comes amid discussions about setting up an international court to prosecute piracy suspects. Some nations have been reluctant to do that because of difficulties transporting suspects, fears they may claim asylum and thorny jurisdiction issues.

“11 Somailis in U.S. Court on Piracy Charges” AP 4-23-10

This NWO pirate court business is something the grand poobahs of Russia, Germany, Turkey and other nations fed up with the hassle of trying/imprisoning buccaneers have been fondly pushing for some time, and it looks like it might actually instantiate (15-0 vote, yo), which sucks.  The real mystery here, though, is, “Why eleven pirates?”

Don’t say apophenia or I’ll sic the numbers on ya.

Yo ho ho and cuídate.

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