White House Approves Costly, New Spy Satellites
April 8th, 2009Via: Houston Chronicle:
The Obama administration on Tuesday approved the purchase of pricey new spy satellites and will buy more commercial imagery from the private sector to plug immediate gaps in satellite coverage.
…
Defense giant Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md., is almost certain to win the secret multibillion-dollar contract for the two new high-altitude spy satellites. It built the spacecraft now in orbit that will be roughly duplicated in the “2-plus-2” program.
The intelligence official acknowledged the possibility that the massive contract could be awarded this year to Lockheed without a competitive bidding process.
New and Worse Secrecy and Immunity Claims from the Obama DOJ
April 7th, 2009Via: Salon:
When Congress immunized telecoms last August for their illegal participation in Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, Senate Democratic apologists for telecom immunity repeatedly justified that action by pointing out that Bush officials who broke the law were not immunized — only the telecoms. Here, for instance, is how Sen. Jay Rockefeller justified telecom immunity in a Washington Post Op-Ed:
Second, lawsuits against the government can go forward. There is little doubt that the government was operating in, at best, a legal gray area. If administration officials abused their power or improperly violated the privacy of innocent people, they must be held accountable. That is exactly why we rejected the White House’s year-long push for blanket immunity covering government officials.
Taking them at their word, EFF — which was the lead counsel in the lawsuits against the telecoms — thereafter filed suit, in October, 2008, against the Bush administration and various Bush officials for illegally spying on the communications of Americans. They were seeking to make good on the promise made by Congressional Democrats: namely, that even though lawsuits against telecoms for illegal spying will not be allowed any longer, government officials who broke the law can still be held accountable.
But late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government’s first response to EFF’s lawsuit (.pdf), the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush’s NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the “state secrets” privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new “sovereign immunity” claim of breathtaking scope — never before advanced even by the Bush administration — that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is “willful disclosure” of the illegally intercepted communications.
In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad “state secrets” privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they “willfully disclose” to the public what they have learned.
150,000 People in the U.S. Have Been Implanted with Defective Medtronic Defibrillator Cables
April 7th, 2009If you think that Medtronic is going to get nailed to the wall with endless lawsuits over this… Guess again!
Via: New York Times:
Consider the Sprint Fidelis, a heart defibrillator cable. In 2007 its maker, Medtronic, stopped selling it after five patients who had the cables died.
But only now is the full scope of the public health problem becoming clear for the Sprint Fidelis, which is still used by 150,000 people in this country.
In the next few years, thousands of those patients may face risky surgical procedures to remove and replace the electrical cable, which connects a defibrillator to a chamber of the heart.
Medtronic estimates that the cable has failed in a little more than 5 percent of patients after 45 months of being implanted. But as a preventive measure, some patients with working cables are having them removed.
…
Medtronic has been shielded so far from legal claims over the recalled device. More than 1,000 patient lawsuits involving the Sprint Fidelis have been thrown out because of a ruling last year by the Supreme Court. The court held in a ruling involving a different medical device that federal law protects device makers from liability suits involving some products, as long as the F.D.A. has approved their products.
Some Democrats in Congress have vowed to pass legislation that would override the Supreme Court decision. They cite the Sprint Fidelis problem as one reason, also noting the F.D.A. let it onto the market without extensive testing.
Medtronic is supplying replacement cables, but the cost of the operation to implant a cable, which can run $15,000 to $20,000 is being borne by Medicare or private insurers.
St. Francis of Afece and Craptonite: Meet the Sodfather
April 7th, 2009This is a long article about an old time compost freak, nothing more, nothing less. I enjoyed it.
One problem: About making compost, the article says, “no meat, cat, dog or human poop.” Please see The Humanure Handbook for clarification on this. You can compost that stuff, no problem, if you know the rules. If you don’t know the rules, yeah, keep that shit out of your pile.
I just put out a batch of compost that contained a bunch of beef bones that Becky had previously boiled up in her stockpot, as well as as some blood from our last heifer slaughter. I wanted to see if the bones would succumb to the ravages of my new barrel-based compost system. The bones didn’t disappear, but they broke up into dust with ease. These would be the biggest no-way-would-those-break-down type of bones. Corn cobs? Nope. Not really. They were still…corn cobs. I’ll have to write about this in more detail in Farmlet.
Via: Arthur:
“That’s the powder that makes you prouder and prouder,” he says, bringing up a handful of rich humus. He lets it run through his fingers and sings a verse from Creedence’s “Proud Mary:” “Big wheel keeps on turnin’/ Proud Mary keeps on burnin’.” He smiles. “See, it’s burning with the fire of life. I call it yea-palm instead of napalm. Rather than burn people to death it brings ‘em more alive. This stuff here, the raw material?” he comes up with another handful of the same fine black soil. “I call that craptonite. Craptonite does to the forces of evil what kryptonite does to Superman.
…
“I had a vision in early ‘73—I was right over there,” he points through the trees to a spot a hundred yards or so from where we’re sitting. “All of a sudden it dawned on me that that this was something that could change the whole world. People could create their own well-being, their own good health, happiness, have peace on earth, just by using organic material, turning it into a game or a competition or whatever to get everyone excited and involved. Something that could really work.”
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
Man Shoots Himself in a Movie Theater Midway Through a Showing of The Watchmen
April 7th, 2009If you know of any info that looks at MK related triggers or themes in The Watchmen, let me know. I haven’t seen the film.
Note: If your comment has anything to do with how bad the film is/”I don’t blame the guy”/making a joke out of this etc.: Please don’t bother. We get it already. I must have come across two dozen of these so far, and it was old after the first one.
Via: Register Guard:
Police said a 24-year-old man shot and killed himself early this morning during a movie screening at a Eugene theater.
About 10 people were seated in the Regal Cinema theater at Valley River Center when the man used a handgun to commit suicide midway through a showing of the film “Watchmen,” Eugene police spokeswoman Jenna LaBounty said.
The closest patrons were seated two rows in front of the man, who was a Eugene resident.
LaBounty said police were called to the theater just after midnight, after patrons reportedly heard a loud “popping sound” behind them. Investigators determined that the man died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
LaBounty said theater managers stopped the movie and refunded patrons’ money following the shooting.
March Earnings
April 7th, 2009In March, earnings from all sources came to a total of $1759.59. That’s a great month!
Big Thank Yous to everyone who sent direct contributions and/or used any of the affiliate links in March.
That Amazon result is a shocker. (In a good way.) $551.38 in commissions… It’s everything from used paperbacks that cost about a buck to multi-thousand dollar whizzbangery that I never knew existed. Whatever it was that you guys bought, a little bit of it came our way.
Thanks to the owners of the following domains for signing up for hosting with BlueHost:
BlueHost represents an astonishing webhosting value. I’ve hosted Cryptogon with them since 2005. If you’re looking for webhosting for the first time, or dissatisfied with your present host, check out what BlueHost has to offer.
Professional web developers in at least four countries—who also happen to be Cryptogon readers—are placing their clients with BlueHost…via Cryptogon, of course. (Thanks guys. Make sure to tell me when appearances need to be maintained for your clients and I won’t link to their sites. Lots of people like getting hundreds of visits from Cryptogon readers. Others might collapse in shock.) The reason I’m mentioning this is that these guys wouldn’t place their clients with a webhost that was going to let them down.
How can it be that BlueHost will pay me $90 if you sign up for hosting via Cryptogon? Man, I don’t know, but the hosting business is obviously a white-knuckle death match. They must be assuming that you will be so impressed with the service that you’ll stick around for a while… Like I have. Anyway, we both benefit. You get an outstanding hosting deal, I get $90.
Goldbugs remain active on BullionVault. Thanks for thinking of Cryptogon when you established your BullionVault accounts.
Finally, NitroPak and Swanson Vitamins had a couple of orders. Thanks for that.
Pfizer to Pay £50 Million After Deaths of Nigerian Children in Drug Trial Experiment
April 7th, 2009Via: Independent:
A divorce case was all that passed for excitement at Richard P Altschuler’s “kinda small” lawyer’s office in West Haven, Connecticut, when the phone rang nine years ago. On the other end of the line, a world away in the heat of Nigeria, was Etigwe Uwo, a young lawyer with “an incredible story about Pfizer”. The Lagos attorney was going to take on the largest pharmaceutical company in the world in an unprecedented class action pitting African parents against an American corporate giant. And he needed help.
Mr Etigwe had chosen Mr Altschuler because, back in 1979, the Connecticut lawyer had successfully defended a friend of the Nigerian. The unlikely pair were about to embark on a marathon journey into the world of “big pharma”. Nine years on and their efforts have finally been rewarded with a reported $75m (£50m) settlement, the terms of which are likely to be released this week.
If it sounds like the script of a Hollywood blockbuster that’s because it was this story that prompted John Le Carre to write The Constant Gardener, according to Mr Altschuler.
In real life it was to Nigeria, not Kenya, that Pfizer turned. In 1996, the company needed a human trial for what it hoped would be a pharmaceutical “blockbuster”, a broad spectrum antibiotic that could be taken in tablet form. The US-based company sent a team of its doctors into the Nigerian slum city of Kano in the midst of an appaling meningitis epidemic to perform what it calls a “humanitarian mission”. However the accusers claim it was an unlicensed medical trial on critically-ill children.
U.S. Fighter Jets Scrambled to Intercept Stolen Plane
April 7th, 2009Uh… Um. Hmm.
I don’t have any idea what category to even use for this. I’ll just use War for now because it involves U.S. fighter planes.
Via: Reuters:
A pilot stole a small airplane in Canada on Monday and headed south, forcing U.S. military officials to scramble F-16 fighter jets to trail him, before landing on a highway in Missouri and fleeing on foot.
The pilot was captured and arrested by Missouri State Troopers a short time after landing the Cessna 172, news reports said.
Lt. Commander Gary Ross of the North American Aerospace Defense Command said the plane was not believed to be a terrorist threat nor a threat to civilians. Still, the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, was evacuated as a precaution while the plane was in its area.
The incident started at Confederation College in Thunder Bay, Ontario, about 785 miles north of where the pilot eventually landed near Piedmont, Missouri.
“Apparently somebody jumped over the fence and just jumped into an aircraft,” Confederation College Vice President Judi Maundrell said. “It was sitting as usual parked on the ramp. The keys are in all the aircraft because students are using them.”
Only the pilot, who was not immediately identified, was believed aboard the plane.
The F-16s intercepted the Cessna at about 3:30 p.m. EDTand shadowed it for about seven hours over Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri until it landed on the highway near Piedmont, NORAD said. CNN reported the pilot ran away after landing.
The pilot acknowledged the trailing fighters early on but did not respond to non-verbal commands, Ross said in a telephone interview.
“The pilot was not talking to us at all,” Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown said.
Ross said the Cessna 172 was a “long-range variant” and that it was fully fueled when it left Canada and capable of flying for about seven hours without refueling.
Useless Currencies of the World Unite!
April 7th, 2009Via: Daughty:
My brain went into some kind of weird spasm when Zhou Xiaochaun, head of the People’s Bank of China, went on record as saying that he doesn’t trust the dollar to be the world’s reserve currency anymore, and wants, instead of gold, the International Monetary Fund to expand the supply of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), which is just another stupid fiat currency, to use as the world’s reserve currency! Gaaahhhh!
I can tell by the way you are not screaming in fear and frantically clawing your way to the nearest exit in a generalized panic that you do not know what a Special Drawing Right is. So prepare to scream and claw when I tell you that – according to the Economist magazine, which I cite as a source since you never believe anything I say – an SDR is “a synthetic currency created by the IMF, whose value is determined as a weighted average of the dollar, euro, yen and pound”!
I deliberately put that exclamation point there at the end so that Junior Mogambo Rangers (JMRs) around the world and across this quadrant of the galaxy would not miss the salient fact that there is something Really, Really Weird (RRW) when these Chinese bastards are smart enough to reject an over-valued fiat dollar, but then being so stupid that they prefer, over gold, a basket of four fiat currencies, one of them being the damned dollar, along with their four corrupt governments, which collectively own the IMF by virtue of having funded the damned thing in the first place! Hahaha! Brilliant! Hahaha!
…
So, suddenly, you know something is wrong, and a chill overcomes you, when, even more mysteriously and spookily, the Chinese central banker says, “The scope of using the SDR should be broadened, so as to enable it to fully satisfy the member countries’ demand for a reserve currency”!!!
The three exclamation points indicates that I am on Full Mogambo Alert (FMA), as I now know that Chinese bankers are as duplicitous as all the others; he is proposing to create as much SDR money (which is just another fiat money composed of the fiat dollar, the fiat euro, the fiat yen and the fiat pound) as anyone in the world wants! Which is the problem that got us into the mess we are in, for crying out loud!
U.S. Envoy Writes of Israeli Threats
April 6th, 2009Via: The Nation:
In the wake of the accusation by Chas Freeman that his nomination to lead the National Intelligence Council was derailed by an “Israeli lobby,” a forthcoming memoir by another distinguished ambassador adds stunning new charges to the debate. The ambassador, John Gunther Dean, writes that over the years he not only came under pressure from pro-Israeli groups and officials in Washington but also was the target of an Israeli-inspired assassination attempt in 1980 in Lebanon, where he had opened links to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Dean’s suspicions that Israeli agents may have also been involved in the mysterious plane crash in 1988 that killed Pakistan’s president, General Mohammed Zia ul Haq, led finally to a decision in Washington to declare him mentally unfit, which forced his resignation from the foreign service after a thirty-year career. After he left public service, he was rehabilitated by the State Department, given a distinguished service medal and eventually encouraged to write his memoirs. Now 82, Dean sees the subsequent positive attention he has received as proof that the insanity charge (he calls it Stalinist) was phony, a supposition later confirmed by a former head of the department’s medical service.
Dean, whose memoir is titled Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests, was American ambassador in Lebanon in August 1980 when a three-car convoy carrying him and his family was attacked near Beirut.
“I was the target of an assassination attempt by terrorists using automatic rifles and antitank weapons that had been made in the United States and shipped to Israel,” he wrote. “Weapons financed and given by the United States to Israel were used in an attempt to kill an American diplomat!” After the event, conspiracy theories abounded in the Middle East about who could have planned the attack, and why. Lebanon was a dangerously factionalized country.
The State Department investigated, Dean said, but he was never told what the conclusion was. He wrote that he “worked the telephone for three weeks” and met only official silence in Washington. By then Dean had learned from weapons experts in the United States and Lebanon that the guns and ammunition used in the attack had been given by Israelis to a Christian militia allied with them.
“I know as surely as I know anything that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was somehow involved in the attack,” Dean wrote, describing how he had been under sharp criticism from Israeli politicians and media for his contacts with Palestinians. “Undoubtedly using a proxy, our ally Israel had tried to kill me.”
Dean’s memoir, to be published in May for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Memoir Series by New Academia Publishing under its Vellum imprint, has been read and approved for publication by the State Department with only very minor changes, none affecting Dean’s major points. Its underlying theme is that American diplomacy should be pursued in American interests, not those of another country, however friendly. A Jew whose family fled the Holocaust, Dean resented what he saw as an assumption, including by some in Congress, that he would promote Israel’s interests in his ambassadorial work.
