December 29, 2006: Recent links of interest

Mike Gallagher Hates the First Amendment

Friday, 29 December 2006 7:01 P GMT-05

It seems Gallagher, the 6th most listened-to radio talk show host in the United States, currently tied with Neal Boortz, who tells his listeners Rep. Cynthia McKinney “looks like a ghetto slut,” at about 3,750,000 listeners, is clueless when it comes to natural rights, George Mason’s 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and the bedrock philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, all increasingly under attack. Gallagher, and no shortage of other “conservatives,” in essence authoritarian thugs, including Newt Gingrich, who has called for the First Amendment be struck, lest the “terrorists” use the internet and attack us, are routinely provided with substantial airtime to push their fascistic ideas, especially over at the unitary decider network, Fox News, where the Führer Principle (Führerprinzip) is on display 24/7.

Tags: us media dictatorship

Living in America’s Fringe Economy

Friday, 29 December 2006 5:08 P GMT-05

Maria Guzman and her family are part of the 10% of U.S. households -- more than 12 million -- that have no relationship with a bank, savings institution, credit union, or other mainstream financial service provider. Being "unbanked," the Guzmans turn to the fringe economy for check cashing, bill payment, short-term pawn or payday loans, furniture and appliance rentals, and a host of other financial services. In each case, they face high user fees and exorbitant interest rates. Without credit, the Guzmans must buy a car either for cash or through a "buy-here/pay-here" (BHPH) used car lot. At a BHPH lot they are saddled with a 28% annual percentage rate (APR) on a high-mileage and grossly overpriced vehicle. They also pay weekly, and one missed payment means a repossession. Since the Guzmans have no checking account, they use a check-casher who charges 2.7% for cashing their monthly $1,500 in payroll checks, which costs them $40.50 a month or $486 a year.

Tags: us economics social issues immigration

Lawyer Ends Up Dead After Taking On Rove

Thursday, 28 December 2006 7:06 P GMT-05

Of course, there is no evidence Paul Sanford was pushed from “at least nine floors” above the large ventilation grate where he met his fate. As well, there is no evidence he committed suicide, or did he fit the profile of a suicide. However, there is plenty of evidence Sanford was a thorn in the side of the neocons, committing the ultimate sin of accusing one particularly nasty top drawer neocon, Karl Rove, of treason.

Tags: karl rove paul sanford

Gerald Ford forced to admit the Warren Report fictionalized

Wednesday, 27 December 2006 4:23 P GMT-05

Thirty-three years ago, Gerald R. Ford took pen in hand and changed - ever so slightly - the Warren Commission's key sentence on the place where a bullet entered John F. Kennedy's body when he was killed in Dallas. The effect of Ford's change was to strengthen the commission's conclusion that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and severely wounded Texas Gov. John Connally - a crucial element in its finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman.

Tags: gerald ford jfk crime coverup warren commission history

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Boston Tea Party for 9/11 Truth

Google Video link

See also:

Boston 9/11 Tea Party Inspires Nationwide Events

Scenes from the Boston Tea Party for 9/11 Truth

Boston Tea Party for 9/11 Truth

Interview with former Boston Center Air Traffic Controller regarding 9/11

New Orleans: Big Easy to Big Empty

August 29th, 2006 marked the one year anniversary of the devastation in New Orleans caused by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This Special Report brings you exclusive footage and the stories you won't hear on the other networks--the hidden political agendas and the suppressed eyewitness reports. Includes on-the-spot reporting from independent journalist Greg Palast.

In this half-hour film, Greg Palast and his team travel to New Orleans to investigate what has happened since Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast last year. On his visit, he discovers that the population of New Orleans is miniscule, the reconstruction sparse, suicide rates are climbing, and many have not, nor know how to, return to the city that care forgot. He examines why residents had to leave, what really caused the flood and why they aren't returning.

Bonus Features Include: Tomorrow's New Orleans - Whose City Will it Be? A half-hour conversation with Amy Goodman and Greg Palast where they sit down to discuss who is accountable for the ongoing disastrous situation in New Orleans.

Google Video link

See also:
Refuge of Last Resort

Spooky Halloween Post: Louisiana's Real-Life Ghost Towns

Katrina trip: short timeline

Fleet of rescue boats was ready to rescue New Orleans residents, but no-one at FEMA could "authorize it"

Incompetence? Crime? You decide

Fifty Dollars and a Dream

Doctor says FEMA ordered him to stop treating hurricane victims

The Forever Elsewhere Management Agency

The federal response to Katrina is a disaster in its own right

My Katrina-related Link Blog entries

December 26, 2006: Recent links of interest

Death by Dust: The frightening link between the 9-11 toxic cloud and cancer

Tuesday, 26 December 2006 4:15 P GMT-05

And that was before anyone knew of the apparent cancer link, first reported in the New York news media in the spring of 2004. Even more shocking is the incidence of cancer and other life-threatening illnesses that have developed among those participating in the recovery workers' lawsuits. Given the fact that some cancers are slower to develop than others, it seems likely to several doctors and epidemiologists that many more reports of cancer and serious lung illnesses will surface in the months and years to come. The fact that 8,500 recovery workers have already banded together to sue, only five years later--with 400 total cancer patients among their number--leads many experts to predict that these figures are likely to grow, meaning a possible death toll in the thousands. In many ways, these illnesses suggest the slow but deteriorating health issues that faced the atomic-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where thousands died in the years and decades that followed the United States' use of nuclear weapons. And that similarity has not been lost on David Worby, the 53-year-old attorney leading the joint-action suits on behalf of those workers who are already sick, and even dying. "In the end," Worby declares, "our officials might be responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden on 9-11."

Tags: epa wtc 911 911 truth healthcare deception

Congress rebukes FBI's Okla. City probe

Monday, 25 December 2006 9:19 P GMT-05

The House International Relations investigative subcommittee will release the findings of its two-year review as early as Wednesday, declaring there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack but far too many unanswered questions remain. The subcommittee's report will conclude there is no doubt McVeigh and Nichols were the main perpetrators, and it discloses for the first time that Nichols confirmed to House investigators he participated in the robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer that provided the proceeds for the attack.

Tags: okcbomb terrorism history us congress

America Has Become Incarceration Nation

Friday, 22 December 2006 9:50 P GMT-05

Drug policies have been responsible for a disproportionate share of the rise in the inmate population, with the 40,000 drug offenders in prison or jail in 1980 increasing to a half million today. A substantial body of research has documented that these laws have had virtually no effect on the drug trade, as measured by price or availability of drugs. Most of the drug offenders in prison are not the "kingpins" of the drug trade. Indeed, the low-level sellers who are incarcerated are rapidly replaced on the streets by others seeking economic gain.

Tags: prisons us law war on drugs crime

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December 20, 2006: Recent links of interest

Neocon Lapdogs: "Round Up Traitors And Put Them In Camps"

Wednesday, 20 December 2006 11:12 P GMT-05

So we have a government that will have the right to strip American people of their citizenship, we have current internment camps being restored and pristine new ones being built, and we have a lapdog media not questioning this but instead asserting that anyone who does question it should be thrown into the camps. What was that about Hitler again?

Tags: adolf hitler donald rumsfeld germany us fascism dictatorship jose padilla

Former U.S. Detainee in Iraq Recalls Torment

Wednesday, 20 December 2006 1:16 A GMT-05

“Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”

Tags: iraq war abuse us military donald rumsfeld donald vance nathan ertel

In Whose Times?

Sunday, 17 December 2006 3:20 P GMT-05

Yes, the Truth Movement "raises questions", and the questions are of vastly greater importance than any theories that might arise from them. It is not necessary -- perhaps not even desirable -- to resort to scenarios that can then be dashed by the belittling label of "conspiracy" which, like the word "paranoia", can be applied to neutralize valid concerns. The questions themselves are so numerous and significant that demands for honest answers are implicit within them.

Tags: 911 truth history media philosohy psychology politics

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December 15, 2006: Recent links of interest

Boston Tea Party for 9/11 Truth

Friday, 15 December 2006 4:33 P GMT-05

In the spirit of American patriots who on December 16, 1773 rebuked Great Britain's tyranny by tossing crates of British tea into Boston Harbor, the Boston 9/11 Truth Committee will enact a "9/11 Truth Tea Party" on December 16, 2006, calling on "all American Sons and Daughters of Liberty to cast-off the tyranny, deceit and lies imposed on the American public by way of the official 9/11 Commission Report."

Tags: 911 truth local us massachusetts boston activism

Death by Consensus

Thursday, 14 December 2006 6:35 P GMT-05

When John Kerry came back from fighting in Vietnam, he famously inquired, How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake? Regarding the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), a lot of people would like to know, How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bipartisan compromise?

Tags: iraq war

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Interview with former Boston Center Air Traffic Controller regarding 9/11

By Boris Epstein
December 14, 2006

Interview with former Boston Center Air Traffic Controller and pilotsfor911truth.org member Robin Hordon. Visit http://pilotsfor911truth.org for latest analysis into the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Google Video link

911Blogger.com discussion



Partial transcript courtesy Prison Planet.com:

"On September 11th I'm one of the few people who really within quite a few hours of the whole event taking place just simply knew that it was an inside job, and it wasn't because of the visuals, the collapses, whatever....I knew that it was an inside job I think within about four or five o'clock that afternoon and the reason that I knew is because when those aircraft did collide and then we got the news and information on where the aircraft were and where they went....if they knew where the aircraft were and were talking to them at a certain time then normal protocol is to get fighter jet aircraft up assist," said Hordon.

...

"I know people who work there who confirmed to me that the FAA was not asleep and the controllers could do the job, they followed their own protocols," he stated.

Hordon said that the only way the airliners could have avoided being intercepted was if a massive electrical and communications failure had occurred which it didn't on that day, adding that there was "no way" the hijacked airliners could have reached their targets otherwise.

He highlighted the fact that only an emergency handling of aircraft protocol change on that day could have interrupted standard operating procedure and hijacking protocol. Hordon said it was unbelievable how far American Airlines Flight 11 was allowed to go off course without the appropriate action being taken on behalf of flight controllers.

"What you do is you don't wait for the judge, jury and executioner to prove it's an emergency, if things start to go wrong you have the authority to simply say I am going to treat this craft as if it is an emergency, because if everybody's wrong then fifteen minutes later no big thing."

Hordon emphasized that the debate has deliberately been channeled by NORAD and the government to focus on reactions to hijackings, when the real issue is the emergency condition of the aircraft well before a hijacking is even confirmed.

He went on to explain how as soon as the hijacking of Flight 11 was confirmed at around 8:24am, the entire system, from every FAA center coast to coast, to the Pentagon, to the President were informed and knew of the hijacking.

"The system now had to make some phone calls and call up Rummy's Pentagon and Rummy's Pentagon is the one that would then make the decision."

"Well, Rummy's Pentagon on American 11 didn't answer the phone, neither 175, didn't answer the phone and they didn't answer the phone until they were absolutely embarrassed into answering the phone somewhere along the flight of United 93 and American 77 - first formal contact was at this particular time," said Hordon.

"That is all distractionary, that is all designed to keep people off the focus - the real focus is what the air traffic controller did immediately upon seeing that American 11 was in trouble and what we do as air traffic controllers is we get eyes and ears on this flight."

Hordon underscored the fact that after the confirmed hijacking of Flight 11, the entire FAA system would have been on full alert and obsessively watching the skies for any unusual activity, and that such activity as the hijacking of Flight 77 would have been immediately reported to supervisors instantaneously, as well as being continually tracked.

"If the air traffic controller were going by emergency procedures which he is trained to do, he would have reached out directly to ADC (NORAD) and say what do you see?" said Hordon.

This highlights the absurdity of Dulles controllers mistaking Flight 77 for a fighter jet as it approached Washington as was reported, and the plane's over 40 minute uninterrupted journey to the Pentagon after a hijack was confirmed.

Hordon debunked the recent Vanity Fair piece that whitewashed NORAD's response as a consequence of confusion and the supposition that NORAD needs exact flight coordinates to enact any kind of response, and that the planes were supposedly invisible to radar and couldn't be tracked properly.

"It's very clear now through testimony and documents given to us by the federal government that indeed....the Boston Center actually tracked American 11 as a primary target after it lost its radar, after it lost its transponder, all the way to World Trade Center," he said.

"Further information indicates later the NORAD radars had it tracked....the bottom line of the story is that all of those aircraft were always tracked all the time by the FAA air traffic control centers," said Hordon, pointing out that information showing air traffic controllers tried insistently to alert military command structures is being locked down because it points to finger of responsibility to Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon, who were also tracking all the aircraft from the point of hijacking to the impact on their targets.

This is the reason why, as Hordon stated, that we don't have complete access to flight data recorders and FAA tapes, which in the case of a conversation between six New York Air Route Traffic Control Center controllers was ordered to be shredded, because if studies of that evidence were undertaken it would become very clear as to who was really behind the attack.

"What they did is they cherry picked transmissions, communications and statements made all on these four flights that were able to paint and write a story that the public would look at and so ooh wow, this really happened - but it wasn't factual, it was a story and it tell not tell anything other than what the high perps wanted the public to hear - they cherry picked this information," said Hordon.

Hordon ended by saying that only with the testimony from the dozens of flight controllers who have been silenced or ignored would the true story about who carried out 9/11 begin to emerge.

December 13, 2006: Recent links of interest

Alleged Liquid Bomb Plot Credibility Crumbles

Wednesday, 13 December 2006 6:52 P GMT-05

The alleged ringleader of a much vaunted plot to blow up multiple transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives has been cleared of terrorism charges and of being a member of any terrorist group, rendering August's terror scare another hyped creation of government scare mongering.

Tags: uk terrorism liquid terror deception war on terror

Pressing for the Truth on 9/11

Wednesday, 13 December 2006 6:34 P GMT-05

The Kissinger-9/11 story and many other important stories related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — and the subsequent official investigations and coverups — are grippingly told in the important video documentary, 9/11 Press for Truth. Though it does not provide all the answers, this brave quest for justice by 9/11 families and independent researchers does at least ask many of the right questions — very pointed questions that most Americans have forgotten, or likely never even heard of amongst the incessant coverage related to 9/11 and its aftermath. 9/11 Press for Truth is a well-crafted exposé that will be an eye-popper to many Americans who still believe that the 9/11 Commission Report issued in 2004 represents the culmination of an exhaustive, good-faith effort by federal authorities to get to the bottom of what went wrong and how it was that this devastating attack so easily overcame our nation's defenses.

Tags: 911 truth film

Defending the Indefensible: Torture and the American Empire

Wednesday, 13 December 2006 3:19 P GMT-05

One reason that the Bush Administration can claim with a straight face that the U.S. does not torture is, of course, because all the top members of the Bush White House are world-class liars. The question here is, why? Why are they, first of all, rather openly employing torture? And secondly, what does this fact tell us about what is up with this brave new world of unspeakable horrors so thinly disguised that no one except the misinformed and gullible would believe the cover stories?

Tags: torture us law george w bush dick cheney religious issues politics history bill clinton economics

Milwaukee, San Francisco, St. Louis Join Boston Tea Party for 9/11 Truth

Tuesday, 12 December 2006 8:10 P GMT-05

Inspired by the original concept to publicly reject the 9/11 Commission's Final Report in Boston, San Francisco and Milwaukee have joined in, and now at least two other cities are holding joint events to show solidarity.

Tags: 911 truth us protest activism

Invitation to contributors

Monday, 11 December 2006 8:06 P GMT-05

And, lastly but not leastly - on more than one occasion I have been accused of presenting things in a one-sided and biased manner. Those accusations have undoubtedly been correct to some extent or other as everyone is by their very nature biased and subjective - though yours truly has tried to present his readers with a diverse variety of viewpoints, some very different from his. But regardless - here's your chance to counter this bias. Do it - or forever hold your peace.

Tags: personal boris epstein media psa

Media Coverage of Right vs. Islamic 'Terrorism'

Monday, 11 December 2006 7:00 P GMT-05

I just logged on to Nexis and did a search for Demetrius Van Crocker across all US newspapers and wire services, for all time. Crocker has been mentioned in all of 35 stories, many of those being various versions of the same 473-word AP article about his conviction earlier this year (though Google couldn't find any public versions of the story that actually worked, so their cache will have to suffice). Just today, Nexis shows countless versions (scores) of the AP's report about Shareef, as well as a UPI piece (they never published anything about Crocker, that I can find), and many more are on the Web but have yet to be indexed on Nexis. I took a related look early last year, comparing coverge of Christian extremist Eric Rudolph and Muslim extremist Zacarias Moussaoui. But this case is even more parallel, and thus more instructive.

Tags: terrorism media deception

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Invitation to contributors

By Boris Epstein
December 11, 2006

OK, I've been here by myself long enough... Time to let other voices be heard too.

First - a little history. This project was initially started in August 2004 as Sniffing Out The Higher Truth. The principal purpose was for yours truly to allow to express his views as well as counter the overwhelming bias of the mainstream media. Later on I started another blog site, Building a Pyramid. The reason for this migration were technical - the hosting service at the Blog-City at the time appeared to have some features that the Blogger lacked. In terms of those features the Blog-City has since disappointed me on several occasions but it definitely does offer one great feature - the Link Blog - which, as you can see I am using extensively. It is used to provide links to external articles I find to be worth a read as well as to articles published on my sites. You can gain access to everything this web project of mine has to offer by just reading the Link Blog.

At one point the Blog-City allowed RSS-based site mirroring which I wasted no time taking advantage of. So at this point all posts published on Sniffing Out The Higher Truth are automatically copied to Building a Pyramid. Thus both future contributors and myself are expected to publish their posts on Sniffing Out The Higher Truth. And for that they will need a Blogger invitation which ought be requested from yours truly.

Hence allow me to invite anyone and everyone willing to contribute to this project. A couple of guidelines to follow:

1. These guidelines are not final and may have to be revised.
2. I do reserve a right to censorship within this project though I sincerely hope never to have to excercize this right.
3. All contributors must be willing to use their own name and provide a contact e-mail or site reference in their posts.
4. Please sign and date your post in a way similar to this one (see upper right corner).
5. The topics of this forum are history, politics, psychology, science and just about anything else that helps us understand the complex world we live in. Something highly specific - such as knitting technique posts - may not belong here. Internet marketing definitely does not. If I believe your posts are too far off-topic I will contact you and inform you to that effect.
6. Needless to say, all content viewed as illegal - such as illegal pornography, for instance - will not be tolerated and if I believe you are breaking the law I consider constitutional have no doubt I will report you to the law enforcement.
7. While all criticism, no matter how harsh, is accepted try to avoid ad hominem attacks and threats. Or try to limit them to yours truly as he is quite immune to them.
8. All posts must be in English - or at least contain enough English to be of interest to English speakers.
9. Spam is not allowed. Attempts to sabotage the project by spam or by any other means will be vigourously repelled.
   

E-mail me if you are interested or have any questions. I will need your e-mail address to invite you to participate in the project. You will also need to obtain a Blogger profile in order to get started in case you haven't done so already. If you don't feel like writing a whole post but instead would like me to post a link e-mail it to me and chances are I will publish it - provided it matches the guidelines above.

And, lastly but not leastly - on more than one occasion I have been accused of presenting things in a one-sided and biased manner. Those accusations have undoubtedly been correct to some extent or other as everyone is by their very nature biased and subjective - though yours truly has tried to present his readers with a diverse variety of viewpoints, some very different from his. But regardless - here's your chance to counter this bias. Do it - or forever hold your peace.

December 10, 2006: Recent links of interest

Suburban poverty on the rise as more settle outside cities

Sunday, 10 December 2006 5:48 P GMT-05

The suburban poor outnumbered their inner-city counterparts for the first time last year, with more than 12 million suburban residents living in poverty, according to a study of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas released Thursday. "Economies are regional now," said Alan Berube, who co-wrote the report for the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Where you see increases in city poverty, in almost every metropolitan area, you also see increases in suburban poverty."

Tags: us economics social issues

End the Other War Too

Sunday, 10 December 2006 5:32 P GMT-05

It is the very nature of victimless crimes that pushes the police to use unscrupulous tactics. In a victimless crime, such as an illegal drug transaction, there is no complaining witness, no one with an interest in reporting the crime to the police. After all, the buyer and seller willingly participate in the transaction. Thus, the only way the police can detect the criminal activity is to set it up themselves or encourage informants. But the opportunity for corruption in these tactics is immense. For example, informants looking for a favor from the police have an incentive to provide false information. You have only to read the newspapers to find details of corrupt law enforcement in connection with drug prohibition. In a free society adults have the right to ingest whatever they want. It's no business of the government. But if it makes such peaceful private activity its business, law enforcement will inevitably turn to measures that jeopardize the lives of people who have harmed no one else. Let's end this madness now.

Tags: war on drugs

Boomerang Effect

Sunday, 10 December 2006 5:20 P GMT-05

Police will not be surprised by this prediction. I have talked with cops about Fourth Generation war, and they “get it” much better than do American soldiers and Marines. Many have told me that they already recognize elements of war in what they are encountering, especially in inner cities. Cops have been killed while just sitting in their cruisers, because they represent the authority of the state. How big a step is it for those cruisers to get hit with IEDs instead of pistol shots? The Bush administration, as usual, has it exactly backwards. The danger is not that the “terrorists” we are fighting in Iraq will come here if we pull out there. Rather, American involvement in 4GW in Iraq will create “terrorism” here from among the people we have sent to fight the war there. Well educated in the ways of successful insurgency, they will come home embittered by a lost war, by friends dead and crippled for life to no purpose. Thanks to America’s de-industrialization, they will return to no jobs, or lousy “service” jobs at minimum wage. Angry, frustrated and futureless, some of them will find new identities and loyalties in gangs and criminal enterprises, where they can put their new talents to work.

Tags: iraq war us crime law social issues

Rescuer called composed, 'very cool'

Saturday, 9 December 2006 5:35 P GMT-05

He had the knowledge, determination, and a ladder, so John Culhane became the leader of a band of desperate people yesterday, frantically searching for fresh air as choking black smoke billowed around them.

Tags: cambridge ma us local accident fire

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