Witnessing 9/11: Explosions & Explosives

9/11 Firefighters Reveal Bombs Destroyed WTC lobby

BUSH TORTURE POLICY: John Yoo and David Addington @ Congress

"The Real Terrorist Was Me And The Real Terrorism Is This Occupation" | ...

Exposing Child Abuse In Australia's Prison System

Official who oversees whistleblower complaints files one of his own

The Obama administration’s top official overseeing how intelligence agencies handle whistleblower retaliation claims has lodged his own complaint, alleging he was punished for disclosing “public corruption.”

Daniel Meyer, who previously oversaw the Defense Department’s decisions on whistleblowing cases, also says he was targeted for being gay, according to records obtained by McClatchy.

Meyer made the allegations in a complaint before the Merit Systems Protection Board, an administrative panel that handles employment grievances from federal employees, after another agency rejected his claims.

Meyer’s claims add to a barrage of allegations that the federal government’s handling of defense and intelligence whistleblower cases is flawed.

In the complaint, Meyer, who once worked for the Pentagon’s inspector general’s office, accused his former Defense Department bosses of “manipulation of a final report to curry favor” with then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

The inspector general’s report concluded that Panetta had leaked classified information to the makers of the film “Zero Dark Thirty,” Meyer said. That conclusion was later removed after then-acting Inspector General Lynne Halbrooks met privately with Panetta, he said. Meyer does not accuse Panetta or Halbrooks of making the change.

Halbrooks, who is now practicing law at a private firm, said she’s certain Meyer’s complaint will be rejected. “During my time in the Office of Inspector General, I strongly supported the rights of whistleblowers throughout the Department of Defense,” she said in an email. “I am confident that any government agency’s review of Mr. Meyer’s allegations will find them to be without any merit.”...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article91949562.html

11 Police Robots Patrolling Around the World

LAW ENFORCEMENT ACROSS the globe use semi-autonomous technology to do what humans find too dangerous, boring, or just can’t. This week, the Cleveland Police had a few nonlethal ones on hand at the Republican National Convention. But even those can be outfitted to kill, as we saw in Dallas earlier this month when police strapped a bomb to an explosive-detonation robot, and boom: a non-lethal robot became a killer. If that thought scares you, you’re not alone. Human rights activists worry these robots lack social awareness crucial to decision-making. “For example, during mass protests in Egypt in January 2011 the army refused to fire on protesters, an action that required innate human compassion and respect for the rule of law,” said Rasha Abdul Rahim of Amnesty International in a statement last year arguing that the UN should ban killer robots. More than a thousand robotics experts, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, signed a letter last summer warning against machines that can select targets without human control. We wanted to find out just how many of these things are in use around the world. But law enforcement isn’t exactly forthcoming about the topic, so this list is not exhaustive. Here’s what we found...

https://www.wired.com/2016/07/11-police-robots-patrolling-around-world/

1973: Mossad Peeves Norway by Killing a Waiter There

On July 21, 1973, Israeli secret agents shot dead a man they believed was a Palestinian terrorist in the Norwegian town of Lillehammer. They had misidentified their target, however, and the man they killed was not arch-criminal Ali Hassan Salameh, but rather a Moroccan-born waiter named Ahmed Bouchiki.

The shooting of Ahmed Bouchiki took place within the context of an ongoing Israeli campaign codenamed Operation Wrath of God, which Prime Minister Golda Meir had set in motion following the terror attack on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich the preceding summer.

That attack, carried out by the Black September organization, which was in turn associated with the Fatah Palestinian resistance organization headed by Yasser Arafat, had resulted in the murder of 11 Israeli athletes. In its wake, Israel resolved to track down and kill each of the people involved in the massacre.

Black ops vs the Red Prince

Intelligence pointed to Ali Hassan Salameh, nicknamed “the Red Prince,” as being the Black September operations chief and responsible for planning in Munich.

By the summer of 1973, Salameh had been tracked to Lillehammer, a resort town in central Norway. A team of some 15 Israelis assembled in the town, where they were joined by Mossad head Zvi Zamir and the supervisor of the operation, Mike Harari.

A UPI news report from 2005 refers to then-recently declassified British records claiming that members of the Israeli team in Lillehammer followed a man they had identified as a Palestinian courier to a public swimming pool, where he spoke with a man who matched their photos of Salameh.

In fact, the man the courier was speaking with was Ahmed Bouchiki, and he only resembled Salameh. His conversation with the Palestinian courier was apparently incidental.

With their presumed target now in their sights, the Israelis tracked Bouchiki until the following evening, when he and his wife, a Norwegian woman named Torill Larsen, alighted from a bus after seeing a movie together.

Bouchiki and Larsen began walking toward home when two assassins appeared and shot him, 13 times. Larsen, who was pregnant, was unharmed. By the time police and rescue squads arrived, Bouchiki was dead...

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/this-day-in-jewish-history/.premium-1.732289

Humans can now use mind control to direct swarms of robots

There have been some amazing breakthroughs that enable humans to control a single machine with their thoughts. The next step is figuring out how to operate an entire fleet of robots with mind control.

A team of researchers at Arizona State University's (ASU) Human-Oriented Robotics and Control Lab have developed a system for managing swarms of robots with brain power.

ASU's new system can be used to direct a group of small, inexpensive robots to complete a task. If one robot breaks down, it's not a big loss, and the rest can continue with their mission. ASU researcher Panagiotis Artemiadis tells ZDNet that swarms of robots can be used for "tasks that are dirty, dull, or dangerous".

In the future, humans can use their thoughts to manage a team of robots that will work together to accomplish a goal. Artemiadis says:

Applications of this research can be found in a plethora of tasks that include delivery of medical help to remote areas, search and rescue to inaccessible environments and disaster areas or exploration of unknown and remote environments, ranging from underwater to space. Since most of the applications require the human in the loop, our work focuses on the optimization of the human control interface in order to increase the operation efficiency and accuracy.
In the prototype system, a user wears a skull cap with 128 electrodes wired to a computer. The cap records electrical brain activity, which is then translated by advanced-learning algorithms into commands that are wirelessly sent to the robots. The user watches the robots and mentally pictures them doing different tasks, such as spreading out or moving in a certain direction. Conventional joysticks only control one robot at a time, but our minds can control an entire flock...

http://www.zdnet.com/article/humans-can-now-use-mind-control-to-direct-swarms-of-robots/

Prison operator Serco slammed over treatment of inmate at Mt Eden Prison

A report has exposed a shocking lack of medical care for a prisoner at Mt Eden prison, formerly run by Serco.

The cellmate of a cancer-stricken elderly prisoner was forced to clean his friend's gangrenous toes with toilet paper after the prison failed to provide adequate care.

Details of the incident, which happened at Auckland's Mt Eden Prison in 2013 while it was managed by the multinational company Serco, were revealed in a report released by the Health and Disability Commissioner.

As well as failing to treat the prisoner's toes, the report slams Serco for failing to provide painkillers and denying him a wheelchair despite there being two available.

The man died later in the year...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/82241264/prison-operator-serco-slammed-over-treatment-of-inmate-at-mt-eden-prison

The Iron Triangle - The Carlyle Group Exposed

'The Carlyle Group is a massive "private equity firm," which raises money from wealthy individuals and companies, and then reinvests the money into private defense companies with extremely high profit margins. It is made up of well known politicians such as George Bush, Sr. and James Baker, and it is one of the most powerful elements of the "military industrial complex," which is a business built around the defense industry being so large and powerful that it able to influence the politics of war. This video discusses the structure of the group and explains its history of many abuses.'

9/11 MSNBC 2001 WTC Collapse Animation LOL

DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge Filament View

The Strategy of Tension

Gaza in Context

George W Bush dances during the Dallas Memorial

Photos/Videos From Inside New York's Pier 57 Detention Center During the 2004 RNC

>>> On August 31, 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York City, around 1,200 people were arrested and sent to a makeshift detention/processing center, which used to house city buses, at Pier 57. (Over 1,800 were arrested during the entire RNC.)

Images from inside the facility during that time are nearly nonexistent. The photos and videos featured here come from Jacob Richards and Connie Murillo, who were arrested that day. A couple of these photos were posted to NYC Indymedia, but Richards and Murillo have kindly allowed The Memory Hole to post more photos and several videos. Regarding how the images were taken and smuggled out, they write:

It was a Sony digital camera. We were arrested around 10pm on 17th street around 5th ave, on Tuesday, August 31st. Pier 57 was a zoo. The degree of search depended on what officer you got. Some were thorough, some were not. The camera remained in my pocket through the first search before entering the large cage. Once in there, we were searched again. This time, I handed my camera and wallet to someone who had already been searched. I got it back after the second search and took what pictures and film I could. I was worried about getting the camera confiscated, so quality suffered, plus it's a little hard to take pictures with my hands still in cuffs behind my back. (Jacob's cuffs were later removed and he took some over head shots.) During various searches while in Pier 57 and central booking, several friends helped by holding the memory card, which I removed from the camera (that later got confiscated). Most of the time it just stayed in my pocket...

http://thememoryhole2.org/blog/pier-57

Wiki: The Gehlen Organization

The Gehlen Organization or Gehlen Org was an intelligence agency established in June 1946 by U.S. occupation authorities in the United States Zone of Germany, and consisted of former Nazi members of the 12th Department of the German Army General Staff (Foreign Armies East, or FHO). It carries the name of Wehrmacht Major general Reinhard Gehlen, head of the Nazi German military intelligence in the Eastern Front during World War II.

Establishment

Reinhard Gehlen had all along been under the tutelage of US Army G-2 (intelligence), but he wished to establish and succeeded in establishing an association with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in 1947. In alliance with the CIA, the military orientation of the organization turned increasingly toward political, economic and technical espionage against the Eastern bloc and the moniker "Pullach" became synonymous with secret service intrigues.[1]

The Org was for many years the only eyes and ears of the CIA on the ground in the Soviet Bloc nations during the Cold War. The CIA kept close tabs on the Gehlen group: the Org supplied the manpower while the CIA supplied the material needs for clandestine operations, including funding, cars and airplanes....

...The Gehlen Org employed hundreds of ex-Nazis.[8]

Criticism[edit]

Once the Org emerged into the public eye, Gehlen and his group drew criticism of varying quality from both sides, the West and the East. The British in particular had a problem with Gehlen and segments of the English press made sure it became known. Beginning with an article on 17 March 1952, Sefton Delmer, senior correspondent for London's Daily Express, dragged Gehlen into the news. On 10 August 1954, Delmer set the tone by announcing that "Gehlen and his Nazis are coming". Delmer, incredibly, implied in his story that a continuation of nothing less than Hitler's aims was at hand through this "monstrous underground power in Germany".[9] In more recent days,[when?] after reviewing selected declassified CIA documents on the Gehlen Org, a Guardian article offered a new perspective on this attempt to fight the new tyranny with some of the agents of the previous one "... for all the moral compromises involved [in hiring former Nazis], it was a complete failure in intelligence terms. The Nazis were terrible spies".[10] The communist East as expected, castigated Gehlen's group as fanatical and virulent agents of revenge and of American imperialism, fitting the party's general line that the West was plotting a revival of Nazi power.[11]

There was also Alois Brunner in Syria, alleged to be an Org operative, who was responsible for the Drancy internment camp near Paris and for the death of 140,000 Jews.[12] According to Robert Wolfe, historian at the US National Archives, "US Army intelligence accepted Reinhard Gehlen's offer to furnish alleged expertise on the Red Army – and was bilked by the many mass murderers he hired".[10] It appears that this last quote conflates two issues, because the CIA Studies in Intelligence review article asserts that the Org was a capable collector of information on the Red Army but this does not rule out the possibility that U.S. Army intelligence may have been "bilked" on other issues.
End[edit]

On 1 April 1956, the Gehlen Org was formally established as the Bundesnachrichtendienst (or Federal Intelligence Agency) of the Federal Republic of Germany, which still exists. Reinhard Gehlen stepped down as president in 1968 after reaching retirement age...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization

Wiki: SV40 (Simian vacuolating virus 40)

SV40 is an abbreviation for Simian vacuolating virus 40 or Simian virus 40, a polyomavirus that is found in both monkeys and humans. It was named for the effect it produced on infected green monkey cells, which developed an unusual number of vacuoles. Like other polyomaviruses, SV40 is a DNA virus that has the potential to cause tumors in animals, but most often persists as a latent infection.

SV40 discovery revealed that between 1955 and 1963 around 90% of children and 60% of adults in USA were inoculated with SV40-contaminated polio vaccines.[1]...

...The hypothesis that SV40 might cause cancer in humans has been a particularly controversial area of research.[11] Several methods have detected SV40 in a variety of human cancers, although how reliable these detection methods are, and whether SV40 has any role in causing these tumors, remains unclear.[12] As a result of these uncertainties, academic opinion remains divided, with some arguing that this hypothesis is not supported by the data[13] and others arguing that some cancers may involve SV40.[...

...An analysis presented at the Vaccine Cell Substrate Conference in 2004[28] suggested that vaccines used in the former Soviet bloc countries, China, Japan, and Africa, could have been contaminated up to 1980, meaning that hundreds of millions more could have been exposed to the virus unknowingly.

Population level studies show no evidence of any increase in cancer incidence as a result of exposure,[29] though SV40 has been extensively studied.[30] A thirty-five year followup found no excess of the cancers putatively associated with SV40.[31].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV40

'Spy services feed info to whistleblowers to keep tabs on site visitors'

THE GENERAL'S SON

The Drugs That Built a Super Soldier

Some historians call Vietnam the “last modern war,” others the “first postmodern war.” Either way, it was irregular: Vietnam was not a conventional war with the frontlines, rears, enemy mobilizing its forces for an attack, or a territory to be conquered and occupied. Instead, it was a formless conflict in which former strategic and tactical principles did not apply. The Vietcong were fighting in an unexpected, surprising, and deceptive way to negate Americans’ strengths and exploit their weaknesses, making the Vietnam War perhaps the best example of asymmetrical warfare of the 20th century.

The conflict was distinct in another way, too—over time, it came to be known as the first “pharmacological war,” so called because the level of consumption of psychoactive substances by military personnel was unprecedented in American history. The British philosopher Nick Land aptly described the Vietnam War as “a decisive point of intersection between pharmacology and the technology of violence.”

Since World War II, little research had determined whether amphetamine had a positive impact on soldiers’ performance, yet the American military readily supplied its troops in Vietnam with speed. “Pep pills” were usually distributed to men leaving for long-range reconnaissance missions and ambushes. The standard army instruction (20 milligrams of dextroamphetamine for 48 hours of combat readiness) was rarely followed; doses of

amphetamine were issued, as one veteran put it, “like candies,” with no attention given to recommended dose or frequency of administration. In 1971, a report by the House Select Committee on Crime revealed that from 1966 to 1969, the armed forces had used 225 million tablets of stimulants, mostly Dexedrine (dextroamphetamine), an amphetamine derivative that is nearly twice as strong as the Benzedrine used in the Second World War. The annual consumption of Dexedrine per person was 21.1 pills in the navy, 17.5 in the air force, and 13.8 in the army.

“We had the best amphetamines available and they were supplied by the U.S. government,” said Elton Manzione, a member of a long-range reconnaissance platoon (or Lurp). He recalled a description he’d heard from a navy commando, who said that the drugs “gave you a sense of bravado as well as keeping you awake. Every sight and sound was heightened. You were wired into it all and at times you felt really invulnerable.” Soldiers in units infiltrating Laos for a four-day mission received a medical kit that contained, among other items, 12 tablets of Darvon (a mild painkiller), 24 tablets of codeine (an opioid analgesic), and six pills of Dexedrine. Before leaving for a long and demanding expedition, members of special units were also administered steroid injections...

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/the-drugs-that-built-a-super-soldier/477183/

A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing

Written by Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D.
The birth and development of the American police can be traced to a multitude of historical, legal and political-economic conditions. The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation's first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.

Policing was not the only social institution enmeshed in slavery. Slavery was fully institutionalized in the American economic and legal order with laws being enacted at both the state and national divisions of government. Virginia, for example, enacted more than 130 slave statutes between 1689 and 1865. Slavery and the abuse of people of color, however, was not merely a southern affair as many have been taught to believe. Connecticut, New York and other colonies enacted laws to criminalize and control slaves. Congress also passed fugitive Slave Laws, laws allowing the detention and return of escaped slaves, in 1793 and 1850. As Turner, Giacopassi and Vandiver (2006:186) remark, “the literature clearly establishes that a legally sanctioned law enforcement system existed in America before the Civil War for the express purpose of controlling the slave population and protecting the interests of slave owners. The similarities between the slave patrols and modern American policing are too salient to dismiss or ignore. Hence, the slave patrol should be considered a forerunner of modern American law enforcement.”

The legacy of slavery and racism did not end after the Civil War. In fact it can be argued that extreme violence against people of color became even worse with the rise of vigilante groups who resisted Reconstruction. Because vigilantes, by definition, have no external restraints, lynch mobs had a justified reputation for hanging minorities first and asking questions later. Because of its tradition of slavery, which rested on the racist rationalization that Blacks were sub-human, America had a long and shameful history of mistreating people of color, long after the end of the Civil War. Perhaps the most infamous American vigilante group, the Ku Klux Klan started in the 1860s, was notorious for assaulting and lynching Black men for transgressions that would not be considered crimes at all, had a White man committed them. Lynching occurred across the entire county not just in the South. Finally, in 1871 Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which prohibited state actors from violating the Civil Rights of all citizens in part because of law enforcements’ involvement with the infamous group. This legislation, however, did not stem the tide of racial or ethnic abuse that persisted well into the 1960s.

Though having white skin did not prevent discrimination in America, being White undoubtedly made it easier for ethnic minorities to assimilate into the mainstream of America. The additional burden of racism has made that transition much more difficult for those whose skin is black, brown, red, or yellow. In no small part because of the tradition of slavery, Blacks have long been targets of abuse. The use of patrols to capture runaway slaves was one of the precursors of formal police forces, especially in the South. This disastrous legacy persisted as an element of the police role even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In some cases, police harassment simply meant people of African descent were more likely to be stopped and questioned by the police, while at the other extreme, they have suffered beatings, and even murder, at the hands of White police. Questions still arise today about the disproportionately high numbers of people of African descent killed, beaten, and arrested by police in major urban cities of America.

Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D.
Associate Dean and Foundation Professor
School of Justice Studies
Eastern Kentucky University

References

National Constables Association (1995). Constable. In W. G. Bailey (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Police Science (2nd ed., pp. 114–114). New York, NY: Garland Press.

Turner, K. B. , Giacopassi , D. , & Vandiver , M. (2006) . Ignoring the Past: Coverage of Slavery and Slave Patrols in Criminal Justice Texts. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 17: (1), 181–195.

http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing

Goldman Sachs allegedly 'misled' its Libyan clients into placing a $500 million bet on Citi right before the 2008 crisis

A former Goldman Sachs salesman used a "misleading" presentation to encourage Libya's sovereign wealth fund to sign a deal exposing them to $500 million of Citigroup stock right before the 2008 financial crisis, a London court heard on Friday.

The LIA was set up in 2006 to invest Libya's oil wealth internationally. The organisation claims Goldman Sachs took advantage of the low level of financial literacy of LIA staff, and suggested large and risky trades that led to heavy losses for the Libyans and large margins for the bank.

Lawyers for Goldman Sachs, responding to the claims earlier, said that the LIA was suffering from "buyers' remorse," and that the bank wasn't responsible for the losses, which were caused by the 2008 credit crunch and financial crisis.

Philip Edey QC, the LIA's lawyer, said the LIA thought they would end up owning underlying shares in Citigroup and receive dividends to pay off a loan from Goldman Sachs to help finance the deal. Instead, they got a structured derivative based on Citigroup shares...

http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-vella-derivatives-testimony-2016-7

Alphabet Puts Former Federal Reserve Member on its Board

Alphabet Inc. added former Federal Reserve member Roger Ferguson to its board, the latest Wall Street-friendly move by the internet giant.

Ferguson was appointed as a director June 24 and will join Alphabet’s audit committee, helping oversee accounting and finance, the company said Wednesday in a statement.

Ferguson was vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve from 1999 to 2006 and a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates in the U.S. He has been chief executive officer of financial services company TIAA since 2008. He has served on the boards of several companies, including General Mills Inc. and hedge fund giant Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP.

Ferguson’s appointment is the latest example of Alphabet taking a more investor-focused approach. The company hired former Morgan Stanley executive Ruth Porat as chief financial officer last year. It also started buying back shares, controlling costs more and communicating more with analysts. Before 2015, the technology company mostly shunned Wall Street...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-29/alphabet-puts-former-federal-reserve-member-on-its-board

Scientists Find New Kind Of Fukushima Fallout

Some of the radioactive material that escaped the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in 2011 took a form no one was looking for, scientists have discovered. Now they have to figure out what it means for Japan and for future disasters.

Radioactive cesium—specifically, cesium-137—is one of the waste products of nuclear power. It’s also one of the most dangerous substances in a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima.

One reason why is that the type of radiation it emits is particularly damaging to our bodies. Another is that cesium-137 dissolves in water. That means it can spread quickly through the environment and get into the plants, animal and water we consume.

Until now, scientists and disaster experts thought cesium-137 fallout from the Fukushima reactor meltdown was in this soluble form. That guided their cleanup efforts, like removing and washing topsoil, and helped them map where radiation might spread...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/samlemonick/2016/06/30/scientists-find-new-kind-of-fukushima-fallout/

CIA weapons for Syrian rebels stolen by Jordanian intelligence officers and sold on black market

Millions of dollars worth of weapons sent by the CIA to Jordan for Syrian rebels was stolen by Jordanian intelligence chiefs and sold on the black market, it has emerged.
Thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades - intended for US-backed opposition groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces - ended up in the hands of criminals.

The theft was reportedly carried out by officers with direct access to cargo, who “regularly siphoned truckloads” of the arms while still delivering some to designated drop-offs.

Jordanian officers who were part of the scheme "reaped a windfall" from sales, using the money to buy iPhones, SUVs and other luxury items, according to a joint investigation by the New York Times and al-Jazeera.

The scheme continued for some time and was only stopped a few months ago when the US became aware of reports arms dealers were bragging that they had large stocks of CIA weapons.

After the Americans complained, Jordanian investigators arrested several dozen “low-level” officers involved in the scheme, but later released them.

Most of the stolen weapons could not be accounted for, but experts speculate they could be in the possession of criminal networks or Islamic State sympathisers. Isil has in recent months become increasingly active in the Hashemite Kingdom, and on Monday claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a Jordanian army post on the Syrian border. ..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/27/cia-weapons-for-syrian-rebels-stolen-by-jordanian-intelligence-o/