Ashton Lundeby, a Sixteen-Year-Old American, Has Been Disappeared by Homeland Security
May 6th, 2009UPDATE: This Looks Like a More Conventional Federal Case Now
Via: Wired:
The boy’s mother, Annette Lundeby, has even acknowledged in interviews that her son has been formally charged, has a court-appointed attorney, and has already made appearances in front of a judge.
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Long ago, I took a class called Soviet Society and Culture. One of the many readings was a book called Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya:
The novel opens with Sofia Petrovna, a mother who has recently discovered the joys of a paying job as a typist. Sharing her apartment with several other families or attending mandatory meetings at work – all are simply parts of her daily life as a Soviet citizen, as unquestioned and necessary as brushing one’s teeth or washing dishes. When the purges begin and the director of her office is taken away, even after her own son is arrested, she tries to believe in both the government and in the innocence of people she loves. But as Sofia Petrovna stands in line after line – attempting to gain information, pass along money, plead for her son – she slowly loses her innocence and her sanity. Sofia Petrovna is not Lydia Chukovskaya, but the emotion and experience for the book came from the author’s life, including the arrest and murder of her husband. In this slim novel Lydia Chukovskaya was determined to describe, through the life of an ordinary woman, “an educated society driven to loss of consciousness by lies.”
Flash forward to today. Here’s what the American iteration of this looks like so far:
Via: WRAL:
Sixteen-year-old Ashton Lundeby’s bedroom in his mother’s Granville County home is nothing, if not patriotic. Images of American flags are everywhere – on the bed, on the floor, on the wall.
But according to the United States government, the tenth-grade home-schooler is being held on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his home on the night of Feb. 15.
The family was at a church function that night, his mother, Annette Lundeby, said.
“Undoubtedly, they were given false information, or they would not have had 12 agents in my house with a widow and two children and three cats,” Lundeby said.
Around 10 p.m. on March 5, Lundeby said, armed FBI agents along with three local law enforcement officers stormed her home looking for her son. They handcuffed him and presented her with a search warrant.
“I was terrified,” Lundeby’s mother said. “There were guns, and I don’t allow guns around my children. I don’t believe in guns.”
Lundeby told the officers that someone had hacked into her son’s IP address and was using it to make crank calls connected through the Internet, making it look like the calls had originated from her home when they did not.
Her argument was ignored, she said. Agents seized a computer, a cell phone, gaming console, routers, bank statements and school records, according to federal search warrants.
“There were no bomb-making materials, not even a blasting cap, not even a wire,” Lundeby said.
Ashton now sits in a juvenile facility in South Bend, Ind. His mother has had little access to him since his arrest. She has gone to her state representatives as well as attorneys, seeking assistance, but, she said, there is nothing she can do.
Lundeby said the USA Patriot Act stripped her son of his due process rights.
“We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution,” she said. “It wasn’t intended to drag your barely 16-year-old, 120-pound son out in the middle of the night on a charge that we can’t even defend.”
Research Credit: pookie, anothernut
Thought Police Muscle Up in Britain
May 6th, 2009Via: The Australian:
BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.
There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.
Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution’s principal tasks was “to alter people’s actual psychology”. Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people’s psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.
Research Credit: TR
Italian Government Paid Mob to Build Wind Turbines
May 6th, 2009Via: Financial Times:
Like giant sentinels, dozens of wind turbines straddle the mountain ridges near Sicily’s infamous mafia stronghold of Corleone. But despite a strong breeze rippling the leaves in groves of olive and fig trees, the soaring blades of the turbines have stood motionless for over a year.
Further west, near the port of Trapani and the ancient hill-top town of Salemi, two more wind farms are similarly frozen.
Just who approved, built and sold these renewable energy projects, which were developed on the basis of public subsidies, has become the subject of investigation for Sicily’s anti-Mafia magistrates, who are trying to keep track of organised crime’s latest bid to move into mainstream business.
As one official put it: “Sicily is blessed with sun and wind, but it is also cursed by the Mafia.”
Multinationals are starting to find out something that is well known to Italian investors: that concealed beneath Europe’s most generous system of incentives – supported by “green credits” that industrial polluters have to purchase – there exists a web of corruption and shady deals.
Bush Library: $100 Million In 100 Days
May 6th, 2009That’s a whole lotta copies of The Pet Goat.
Via: CBS News:
George W. Bush may have left office with just 22 percent approval rating, but the former president certainly still has his fans: According to Time, Mr. Bush’s backers have raised more than $100 million for his planned presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
That’s an impressive pace: Time notes that Bill Clinton did not raise $100 million for his presidential library until the second year of his post-presidential life. Mr. Bush, like past presidents, has met with potential donors and called wealthy benefactors seeking large sums to fund the facility. But his effort has also been “organized much like a modern political campaign.”
U.S. Says Bank of America Needs $33.9 Billion
May 6th, 2009Via: New York Times:
The government has told Bank of America it needs $33.9 billion in capital to withstand any worsening of the economic downturn, according to an executive at the bank.
If the bank is unable to raise the capital cushion by selling assets or stock, it would have to rely on the government, which has provided $45 billion in capital through the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
It could satisfy regulators’ demands simply by converting non-voting preferred shares it gave the government in return for the capital, into common stock.
But that would make the government one of the bank’s largest shareholders.
Executives at the bank, one of the largest being examined, sparred with the government over the amount, which is higher than executives believed the bank needed.
But J. Steele Alphin, the bank’s chief administrative officer, said Bank of America would have plenty of options to raise the capital on its own before it would have to convert any of the taxpayer money into common stock.
“We’re not happy about it because it’s still a big number,” Mr. Alphin said. “We think it should be a bit less at the end of the day.”
She Loved Them to Death at Ray’s Hell Burger
May 6th, 2009Oh, brother, the Christians are going to love this.
Look at the order number on the table.
42.
I know, I know. It’s all a coincidence; just like when they covered up references to Jesus and photographed Obama so that he appeared to be speaking in front of a pyramid. Anyway, here’s what’s going to be on the minds of Christians who see this picture:
Revelation 13:5-8 (King James Version)
5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
My best guess is that all of this is intended to confirm, in the minds of Christians, that, “Yes, Mildred, Obama is the Antichrist.” But to what end?
The elite know that gun stores haven’t been able to keep weapons of any description in stock since Obama came on the scene. Is this an attempt to provoke something? I have no idea. But when you consider Christian extremists, in terms of mind control victims, you have to look at the triggers that the handlers are going to use to set them off. What are the elite trying to accomplish by carrying out stunts like this? Maybe it’s just a case of: Boo! Made you look.
You won’t find a more agnostic person than me, but, wow, the elite do like to play games with those of us who are… paying attention, so to speak.
GM Plans 1-for-100 Reverse Stock Split
May 6th, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Shorts drool and autoflagellate with anticipation.
Via: AP:
General Motors Corp. notified shareholders Tuesday it is planning a reverse stock split that would give them one share of new stock for every 100 shares they currently own.
The automaker said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the deal would be part of an agreement with the Treasury Department in which the government would assume at least half of GM’s debt in exchange for company shares. GM will send the information to shareholders currently holding a total of 610.5 million outstanding shares.
GM spokeswoman Julie Gibson said the company is merely notifying shareholders of what it may do if it reaches deals to swap debt for stock with the Treasury Department and bondholders. The company, she said, is not making an offer to shareholders.
White House Won’t Release Alleged Photos from Air Force Operation Over Lower Manhattan
May 5th, 2009And Now: White House Will Release a Photo
The White House plans to soon release a photo from the controversial Air Force One-style flyover of Manhattan last week, despite claiming earlier that there was no need to release any official images from the incident.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday that an internal report will probably be completed this week.
“We’ll release its findings and release a photo,” he said.
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Seriously, people, WTF was this?
Via: New York Post:
The $328,835 snapshots of an Air Force One backup plane buzzing lower Manhattan last week will not be shown to the public, the White House said yesterday.
“We have no plans to release them,” an aide to President Obama told The Post, refusing to comment further.
The sole purpose of the secret photo-op, which sent thousands of New Yorkers running for cover, was to take new publicity shots of the presidential jet over the city.
“The photos . . . are classified — that’s ridiculous,” Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., said.
The photos have not technically been “classified,” a White House aide said, but they are being kept from public view.
Georgia Says Foils Rebellion; Points Finger at Russia
May 5th, 2009Via: Reuters:
Georgia said it put down a mutiny at a military base on Tuesday and accused Moscow of financing a coup on the eve of NATO war games in the former Soviet republic.
Russia, which fought a war with Georgia last year, denied any involvement and said President Mikheil Saakashvili was trying to shift the blame for his domestic problems.
Georgia’s opposition said the incident was “a show” to deflect attention from protests against the president.
Saakashvili called the rebellion at the Mukhrovani tank base a “serious threat.” Police kept reporters at a distance and it was not clear how many of the 500 soldiers there were involved.
About three hours after news broke of a military uprising, around 30 tanks and armoured personnel carriers entered the base, followed later by Saakashvili and the ministers of defence and interior, a Reuters reporter said.
Officials said officers had surrendered and their commander had been arrested.
Google Deletes Alex Jones Channel on YouTube
May 5th, 2009Via: InfoWars:
You Tube has once again proven itself to be a corporate gatekeeper working to destroy free speech and the alternative media after it suspended the popular ‘Alex Jones Channel’ – primarily because Alex Jones showed a print out of a news article during a live show.
The Alex Jones Channel, started by a fan but since embraced as the “official” Alex Jones micro-site on You Tube, has routinely featured in the website’s most popular ranking charts and has collectively attracted millions of views for videos painstakingly catalogued and uploaded over the past two years.
Those videos are now completely gone after You Tube bosses deleted the channel, primarily because the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette complained that Alex Jones had shown a computer print out of one of their articles about the Poplawski cop killer incident last month.
To claim that showing a print out of an article is a violation of copyright is of course completely insane – not a day goes by without TV news anchors showing newspaper stories on live television. Indeed, C-Span’s popular Washington Journal program almost entirely consists of the host showing clippings of newspaper stories every morning.
