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“Almost all people are hypnotics.
The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced and the people believed properly.”
— Charles Hoy Fort

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Discovery UFO stabilized, now even stranger


A little while ago a UFO video was released on YouTube by a dude who was taping it alongside a pro video crew supposedly from the Discovery Channel. Not your usual saucer-type trip, no, this was one of those new shape-shifting, constantly morphing jobs that really throw a spanner in the works. Naturally, anything like this is to my liking, as I appreciate a good ruckus.

Now this version is up. In it the thing is cropped and stabilized... which has made it much easier to appreciate the high strangeness of this object. It looks like an amoeba on crack, trying to bust out of its own skin. As it spins about areas of high reflectivity come and go and morph along with the tentacular appendages. Which brings to bear, of course, the tantalizing thought that this thing could be alive and not an artificial construct at all. If that's true, then where exactly did it come from and why haven't such forms been seen hitherto?

I was pondering the possibility that if it is a lifeform, then perhaps this is an altitude-challenged eggcase of sorts for the worm-type objects seemingly common in low Earth orbit and popularized by astronaut Story Musgrave - the probable cause of similar objects seen in many videos. Maybe the lit'l-uns just want out, already!


Monday, September 22, 2008

Yikes! Are Bi-Pedal Reptiles, Giant Monitors Still Alive Today?

Are Bi-Pedal Reptiles, Giant Monitors Still Alive Today?

http://newsblaze.com/story/20080920144610tsop.nb/topstory.html

Are Bi-Pedal Reptiles, Giant Monitors Still Alive Today?
By Todd Jurasek
9/20/08

What would it be like to encounter a giant 20-foot monitor lizard? Take Australia`s presumed to be extinct Megalania Prisca for example.

Imagine walking down a trail enjoying the scenery then "boom"! You`re grabbed by huge jaws with curved one-inch razor-like serrated teeth. Though excruciatingly painful there would not be much of a struggle as your exposed blood incites the massive, powerful creature to feeding frenzy.

Besides saltwater crocodiles, no other animal in the fossil record struck more fear into the heart of ancient man in this part of the world. Megalania Prisca was a colossal reptile and it may still exist today. That`s right. Today.

In 1961, Robert Grant and David George were exploring the Strachan Island District of Papua New Guinea when they encountered and enormous goanna (monitor lizard). In 1970, Grant told cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy, this beast was approximately thirty feet long and four feet tall on all fours, with a three to four foot long neck.

A similar creature was sighted in Australia in April of 1982. Walter Lake had been traveling to Karratha when a huge 20-foot plus mottled colored monitor cut across the road directly in front of him. Lake estimated its length at "about 22 feet from head to tail."

There is another predator equally as fierce in appearance and demeanor who potentially roamed Australasia (Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand) and Indonesia with man. Huge therapods, sometimes called Burrunjor or Murra Murri, may have even put even the giant monitors to flight.

The sighting of a living giant therapod occurred near Mt. Isa, Australia in 1961. A dust storm forced a group of hunters, including Tom Geoghan, to take shelter. In the distance across flat terrain, a huge bipedal reptile crossed in front of them. Geoghan reported the creature was up around 25 ft. tall standing on two legs, and had a very large head. Once the storm past, the men immediately got out of the area.

Two 20 to 25 ft. tall mottled colored bipedal reptiles were reportedly seen by travelers near Roper River Mission during 1986. As eyewitness Greg Asby reported to Gilroy "they looked like dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus or some similar species."

Giant reptiles, including Megalania sized goannas and living dinosaurs such as the bipedal Burrunjor, may exist in parts of Australasia and Indonesia today for a variety of reasons. There are for example, vast tracks of relatively unexplored, uninhabited land in the region. Habitat here is known to support a myriad of reptile species including some of the world`s largest such as the Komodo dragon, reticulated python, and the salt crocodile.

The fossil record additionally points to the fact that monster reptiles once roamed this part of the earth. If they were here in the past, then it stands to reason that some may have survived into the present. If the coelacanth and wollemi pine survived, why not a living therapod or super goanna?

Reptile metabolism is another factor to consider. Reptiles being cold blooded require less food to survive than mammals. Snakes for example, can go for months without food. Large reptiles such as Megalania and Burrunjor would likely not require the same amount of food to survive as a mammal of similar weight and size. The possibility also exists that such creatures, if left alone for a long enough period of time, could reach massive size within their genetic potential.

Proof of therapod dinosaur and Megalania survival additionally comes in the form of folklore, myth, and anecdotal eyewitness accounts within the region. Aboriginal "dreamtime" stories for example, spoke of fascinating mythical creatures known as bunyips. Some of these creatures may have been dinosaurs. The Aborigines certainly spoke of giant monitors or goannas, such as Megalania.

In 2001, 2002, and again in 2004, I explored the wilds of Australia. Additionally in 2002, I ventured to prehistoric Papua New Guinea. The major focus of my latter two trips was to search for and collect information on primarily Allosaur-sized therapods, other remnant land living dinosaurs, and giant monitor lizards. My research is ongoing and more expeditions are in the works.

Rather than go extinct, some dinosaurs, including giant therapods like Burrunjor and super varanids such as Megalania Prisca, may have just adapted to their ever changing environments. They could still survive in some form currently, possibly just a smaller version. As academia scours the planet in search of the last remaining animal life, crypto researchers such as myself, Rex Gilroy and others hope to discover the "big one" somewhere in the hidden realms of the Pacific.

Oh, if you`re still pondering escaping the jaws of megalania prisca ponder this. Freedom would only be temporarily as you would likely have been infected by deadly bacteria similar to those found in the saliva of a Komodo dragon, resulting in death hours later. Escape or not you end up lizard fodder.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
If anyone has any information regarding living dinosaurs, giant monitors or giant snakes feel free to contact me at:

T. Jurasek
P.O. Box 700068
Tulsa, OK 74170
Email: dragoncatcher777 at hotmail.com

To comment on this story, email to comment at newsblaze.com

===================================================

That was a neat read. I really would like to think it's all true, especially as I can see no good biological or other reason as to why it couldn't be so.

Just a note: Funding needed for a lengthy-enough film/video mission to the area. Lengthy enough meaning long enough to actually find one, assuming there aren't many about, as opposed to the usual expeditions one hears about that are just a week or two. Contact me at the email in the sidebar.

Note 2: The reporter's surname is wonderfully apropos, isn't it?

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Fake 9 11 Call From Flight 93 Exposed!


Fake 9 11 Call From Flight 93 Exposed!

Rest In Peace CeeCee Lyles. This courageous woman did something that allowed the reality of her situation to be subtly revealed, as you'll hear after a while. I don't necessarily hold to the timeline espoused but this one would surely fit the events, but no matter, as the results would be exactly the same. God... Such evil... needs to be destroyed... completely and utterly destroyed.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Don't Fear The Re-Run, by Mick Farren

My friend Mick wrote this great piece encapsulating much of what we've bandied about for a while now... it was a cover story for LACityBeat magazine.
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The YouTube paranoia crew claims 9/11-2 (The Sequel) will be a hundred times worse than the original


By Mick Farren

An anonymous video showing a half million plastic coffins stashed in a formidably fenced field near Hartsfield Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, is guaranteed to grab attention. One can hardly help but question the reason for the stacked ranks of the ugly, airtight, grey-green boxes. Is someone somewhere expecting a massive body count? And, if so, why? The veracity of the video is hard to question. A simple handheld camcorder shoots continuously from a vehicle driving along a two-lane backroad in broad daylight. The coffins are in plain sight, right in the open, piled geometrically for hundreds of yards. We appear to have a mystery, especially when an extensive Google search reveals that, aside from a single brief squib on WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina, the story of the coffins in the field has failed to surface anywhere in the mainstream media. The line between curiosity and paranoia, however, can be hard to define, so I proceed with caution.

A dispassionate review of the facts makes clear that, if a large number of coffins had to be stockpiled in anticipation of some ultra-dire national emergency, Atlanta would be a good place to do it. It is a major confluence for road, rail, and air traffic. Hartsfield Jackson is one of the nation’s biggest and busiest hubs for commercial aviation. Atlanta is also home to the Centers for Disease Control. Is it the CDC that knows something we don’t? Is a plague expected and no one is telling us? As radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wrote on his website Prison Planet, “I don’t want to alarm anyone, but usually you don’t buy 500,000 plastic coffins just in case something happens; You buy them because you know something is going to happen.”

I discover a link to a site called the Neithercorp web forum where the Atlanta coffins are under constant discussion. I’m informed that a possible manufacturer of the coffins is Vantage Products Corporation in Covington, Georgia, and the unsubstantiated plot thickens when I learn that Vantage is allegedly a government contractor, a spin-off of DuPont, and has a chief legal officer who was supposedly a former Monsanto bigwig. Unfortunately, the possible conspiracy deflates with word from a poster using the pseudonym “dingoistheman” who claims to live near the coffin dump. “These things have been there for 10 years. There has never been any activity on the site since they brought them in.” Did I really need to call the CDC for an official statement that the coffins had nothing to do with them, and a denial that we were all going to die from bird flu this winter? Instead I followed another set of links to YouTube. And, to my surprise, the conspiracy suddenly re-inflated itself tenfold.

With a combination of delight and dismay, I learned that the video clip I had already seen was only one among many. It was simple and linear, but many of the others I found on YouTube were professional-quality productions. I discovered that they were not only raising all the possible questions posed by the half million coffins in Atlanta, but also offering some truly horrific answers.

The basis of this YouTube crew’s collective theory is a near-unthinkable power scenario. It may be paranoia, but it’s high-impact. Sometime before he’s scheduled to leave office next January, George W. Bush will engineer an epic pretext to suspend the Constitution, cancel or nullify the November elections, and declare martial law. Normally a coup is when a military junta – like the fictional Pentagon plot in the movie classic Seven Days in May – deposes the civilian authority and seizes power, but Bush can seemingly be counted on to reverse the traditional sequence. According to these uploads on YouTube, he is going to use the military to ensure that he and his cronies remain in permanent command, world without end. And the coffins in Atlanta – plus more on other sites around mainland USA – will be used for disposal of those executed in the bloody aftermath of the coming Bush putsch.

Either a war with Iran, or a massively violent incident on the same scale as the falling towers of 9/11, will become the pretext to round up millions of supposed “terrorists,” “terrorist sympathizers,” and “dissidents,” and either execute them or imprison them in concentration camps run by FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). This at least is the story, as presented by these YouTube videos – created by individuals and groups with names like pushforfreedom, earthlasthope, or razzaq19 – and comes with a wealth of detail. According to these YouTube subversives, the Department of Homeland Security already has comprehensive lists that divide the population into three color-coded categories.

Those with the designation “Red” have no chance. Anyone who has opposed George Bush during his eight-year reign will be arrested – dragged from bed in the dark of night, face covered, protest muffled by black hood – and held for extermination. The “Blue” category is reserved for less-threatening malcontents, petty criminals, and the rank and file followers of “Reds.” They will be held for forced labor and re-education in the joys of totalitarian capitalism. The final, and by far the largest group, are the “Yellow,” the already docile, who Kenn Thomas, of the online conspiracy magazine Steamshovel Press, describes in an interview with Karmapolis magazine in Belgium as “happy, SUV-driving, George Bush-supporting McCitizens who have no need for a tank to be pointed at them in order to get them to obey.” To view the full theoretical horror, one only has to run a YouTube search for “FEMA coffins” or “FEMA concentration camps.”

FEMA figures significantly in this whole simmering mythology. Its sweeping emergency powers are continuously cited as the crucial Trojan horse that disguises the infiltration mechanisms of the great and global – but probably fictional – oppression of what’s known in the conspiracy subworld as the New World Order. This, though, is nothing new. Conspiracy veterans recall how, in the Clinton era of the 1990s, FEMA and the New World Order loomed large in the “black helicopter” fantasies of the paranoid far right. Back in the 20th century, the militia movement, readers of The Turner Dairies, and extreme evangelicals were convinced that Bill Clinton would choreograph a phony national emergency, all the excuse needed for FEMA, supported by United Nations troops (usually from Turkey and Pakistan) to invade the country and deprive Americans of their national sovereignty as power was ceded to the NWO.

The New World Order is a more venerable preoccupation than even FEMA. It has cast its murky and threatening shadow for more than a century, perpetually poised to steal power from both hereditary dynasties and elected governments. At various times it has supposedly been controlled by Freemasons, Fabians, the British royal family, the alleged Elders of Zion, munitions barons, Communists, Nazis, Trilateralists, the Bilderberg Group, and – at furthest stretch – extraterrestrials from Zeta Reticuli. Mercifully, the NWO has always remained an apparent figment of the paranoid mindset. FEMA, on the other hand, is uncomfortably real. It was created by Jimmy Carter’s 1979 executive order to bring civil defense and disaster preparedness under one roof, and the unprecedented power it acquired in the process is well-recognized as potentially disastrous if it ever fell into the wrong hands. And many of this YouTube crew firmly believe, if George Bush and his Department of Homeland Security control FEMA, it is now in the worst possible hands.

Even the supposition that any fear of FEMA would have died after the debacle of the agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and the 2005 flooding of New Orleans, does nothing to allay the apprehension of the YouTube crew. They claim that the whole NOLA mess was merely a smokescreen. As Kenn Thomas put it, again in Karmapolis, “When George Bush patted former FEMA management head Michael Brown on the back and said ‘Good job!’ he was rubbing it in, announcing that he really didn’t give a damn about taking responsibility for Katrina’s aftermath.” On YouTube, the accusations go further. Sixteen hundred people were confirmed dead (before the search of New Orleans’s attics was discontinued), and the lower Ninth Ward was deliberately allowed to turn into a toxic swamp, to conceal FEMA’s real capabilities. The agency will function with brutal efficiency if so required by its political masters.

When first confronted by this elaborate conspiracy theorizing, the whole idea seems far-fetched and hideously implausible. Even the smirking Bush could not actually bring himself to initiate a holocaust that would deliberately take the lives of millions of Americans. Could he? Unfortunately Bush could, if he so desired. Much of what the conspiracy theorizers’ fear is already – under current federal law – more than theoretically possible. The President of the United States already has what amounts to dictatorial power. In February of this year, environmentalist Lewis Seiler and former congressman Dan Hamburg published a scary compendium of Bush’s extraordinary powers in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissenters (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse,” they wrote.

The Bush power grab began within hours of the towers falling on 9/11, when Bush put down The Pet Goat and issued his “Declaration of Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks” as defined by the National Emergencies Act. This sweeping declaration could be rescinded by joint resolution of Congress, but has actually been extended six times. In 2007, the declaration was quietly strengthened by National Security Presidential Directive 51, which gave the president the power to do whatever he deemed necessary in a vaguely defined “catastrophic emergency,” from canceling elections and suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Seiler and Hamburg cite how the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) gives the executive the power to invoke martial law, and “the Military Commissions Act of 2006 – rammed through Congress before the 2006 midterm elections – allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a ‘terrorist’ organization, or speaks out against government policies.” Seiler and Hamburg continue grimly, “The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.”

If the coffins in that Georgia field were the only evidence supporting fears of a Bush dictatorship, the entire scenario might be dismissed out of hand. Regrettably that is not the case. The coffin videos are not alone. They are flanked on YouTube by similar footage of a complete and extensive U.S. gulag with camps and prison trains. The paranoia crew offers what purport to be mindbending outlaw tapes of FEMA prison trains, grim but brand-new, double-decker railcars allegedly manufactured by Gunderson Steel in Portland, Oregon, complete with shackles for prisoners and guard shacks at each end. Actual FEMA concentration camps, with full complements of guards, stadium lights, gleaming razor wire, and huge AGA gas furnaces, are supposedly ready to accept inmates. All this makes dismissal difficult. When the images are on the Internet for all to see, it’s hard to argue with groups like the Friends of Liberty who claim “over 800 prison camps in the United States are all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners should Martial Law need to be implemented. All it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the Attorney General’s signature on a warrant.”

The scenarios of the YouTube crew and the Friends of Liberty are also supported by Seiler and Hamburg, again in the San Francisco Chronicle, as they quote the claims of diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott that “beginning in 1999, the government entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of rail cars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees. According to the KBR contract the work is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of ‘all removable aliens’ and ‘potential terrorists.’”

In another blast from the past, the legal underpinning for something like ENDGAME in fact dates back to Orwell-apocryphal 1984, when, in the basement of the Ronald Reagan White House, Oliver North and National Guard Colonel Louis Giuffrida, in preparation for a possible invasion of the Sandinista-controlled Nicaragua, devised a plan called REX 84 to “crush national opposition to any military action abroad” by the sus­pension of the Constitution, the turning of control of the govern­ment over to FEMA, and “internment in concentration camps of up to 100,000 ille­gal immigrants and political dissidents.” At the time, columnist Jack Anderson warned it would “clamp Americans in a totalitarian vice.”

The seeds for REX 84 were originally planted during the Kennedy administration, when Executive Order 11051 provided for suspension of the Constitution and martial law in the event of nuclear attack. Under Richard Nixon it was expanded to cover multiple national emergencies including civil insurrec­tions. Finally North and Giuffrida redefined it so it could be activated by the president alone, causing professor Diana Reynolds of Northeastern University to comment, “America is only a presidential directive away from a civil secu­rity state of emergency.” Although Iran-Contra investigations sidelined REX 84, it remains on the books.

History again repeats itself in that the majority of these YouTube videos, warning us about REX 84, ENDGAME, and a possible American tyranny, are posted by conservatives and right wingers. Many are also veterans of the 9/11 Truth movement who refuse to accept the official accounts of the attacks on Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon. Ron Paul’s name is often invoked, with followers of the libertarian-leaning presidential contender fearing they will be arrested and victimized as a result of their break with Bush/McCain Republican neo-orthodoxy. Others see the neocon takeover of the party as a step on the road to dictatorship, while still more, recalling the carnage at the Weaver farm on Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, distrust the federal government under any president. In this they are not alone. A recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University national poll of 1,010 adults revealed that “anger against the federal government is at record levels,” with 54 percent responding that they “personally are more angry at the government than they used to be.” The poll also found that more than a third of those contacted suspected that the feds under Bush either “assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them.”

But anxiety over the Bush regime moving toward tyranny and dictatorship is not by any means limited to the right. Progressive intellectuals like “third-wave” feminist Naomi Wolf also issue warnings. “Beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable – that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize.” In her book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, she spells out the 10 steps needed for a fascist takeover, from propaganda-induced fear to a complete suspension of the rule of law, and she is quoted in more than one of the YouTube conspiracy videos.

None of the YouTube crew has so far quoted alternative press veteran Joe Conason. His 2007 book It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush does not totally agree that a Bush coup is hard upon us, but claims to sense a move in that direction. “For the first time since the resignation of Richard M. Nixon more than three decades ago, Americans have had reason to doubt the future of democracy and the rule of law in our own country. Today we live in a state of tension between the enjoyment of traditional freedoms, including the protections afforded to speech and person by the Bill of Rights, and the disturbing realization that those freedoms have been undermined and may be abrogated at any moment.”

A dispassionate evaluation of whether this fear is paranoid fantasy or potentially terrifying reality is crucial. It’s a lurid tale, but do we seriously believe Blackwater storm troopers in ski masks and combat boots are about to kick down our doors in the dead of night? The evidence of the plastic coffins, the Gunderson Steel railcars, the KBR detention camps all comes from unorthodox sources, but it comes in sufficient quantity, and with enough plausible detail, to have an uncomfortable credibility, especially at a time when – with pitifully few exceptions – “legitimate” news sources have lost the cowboy courage to investigate any story that does not have a publicist attached. Paranoia, of course, requires a massive vanity. The ultimate narcissism is the belief that any one of us might pose such a threat to our leaders they will have to execute us or confine us in concentration camps. The argument could also be made that, after eight years of Bush, the national psyche is so badly bruised by the serial punishment of lies, deception, and vicious neocon ideology, we will believe our leaders capable of any iniquity. America has been stumbling through the miasma of neocon mistakes, cover-ups, and misinformation for so long that it becomes hard to tell what’s real and what’s not.

The comfortable course is to reject the YouTube paranoia crew as a collection of psychotic obsessives. Thinking the unthinkable is hard enough, but believing and preparing for it is even more difficult. On the other hand, to write off the video evidence as well-executed fakery is also tempting, but the clips are so damned believable it isn’t easy. Plus coordinating them would have been an extraordinarily mammoth task. With the whiff of madness on both sides, the mind casts around for alternatives. If, for the sake of argument, we accept the images on YouTube as tacit proof the federal government has indeed been stockpiling coffins, commissioning detention camps, and building custom railcars to deliver prisoners to those camps, does that automatically mean a totalitarian coup is at hand? Is it in any way possible that a gulag could really have been built, but then not used?

The observation has more than once been made that the Bush/Cheney administration is an alliance of fools, fanatics, and crooks. Would it be possible that the crooks sold the unthinkable to the fanatics? KBR/Halliburton has already given Bush and his neocon cronies a hugely expensive and hugely profitable war in Iraq. Would it be that hard to pitch an equally profitable, black-budget domestic fascism to the neocon ilk of Paul Wolfowitz, Max Boot, or John Bolton? They already have a philosophical contempt for the masses, and a fetishized worship of power. Perhaps the gulag was commissioned, but enough of the fools (and maybe the Pentagon) had enough vestigial humanity to shy away from a complete plunge into totalitarian horror, leaving those who like that kind of thing in need of a sufficiently grandiose excuse.

This story has no reassuring end. Three alternatives stare back at us. Either a crew of Ron Paul supporters and others are running a great anti-Bush/McCain Internet fraud. Or the FEMA camps exist but the neocons have yet to find the evil heart to use them. Or the Blackwater thugs will shortly be dragging us away. While friends and neighbors are not actually being disappeared, we can breathe easy and not need to study routes to Canada. While I can still write this story and have it published, democracy is still in shape and functioning. Of course, if I was to suddenly vanish it would mean

Mick Farren blogs at Doc40.blogspot.com.

Published: 09/10/2008

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

vid - UFOs years of denial - photographs 1870 to 2008


This is a very nice slideshow that even has quite a few images of our buds that I'd not seen yet. Good tunes, too. 8 1/2 min or so...

Banned Interview With Putin - Pt II + III

INTERVIEW WITH PUTIN BANNED - Pt II
By Brother Nathanael Kapner, Copyright 2008

Articles May Be Reproduced Only With Authorship of Br Nathanael Kapner
& Link To Real Jew News (SM)

___________________________________

Thomas Roth: But Mr Prime Minister, that is not your decision, that is a Georgian decision.

Putin: Naturally. But we know different precedents.

We remember how the American troops marched into Iraq and what they wished to do with Saddam Hussein because he destroyed some villages of the Shiites. In contrast to this, in just the first hours of Georgia’s invasion, ten villages in S.Ossetia were destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth.

Roth: Does this give you the right to remain not only in the conflict zone but to march beyond that into a sovereign country and to bombard this sovereign country? That I sit here before you now I owe to sheer luck. For a bomb from your airplane exploded one hundred meters from me in Gori in a residential area. Isn’t it a clear violation of international law that you in fact now occupy a sovereign nation? Where do you get this right?

Putin: We responded within the parameters of international law. The assault on the posts of our peacekeeping forces in S.Ossetia which resulted in the murder of our peacemakers and the killing of our citizens, we have considered without a doubt to be an assault upon Russia.

In the first hours of the fighting, the Georgian armed forces immediately killed several dozen of the soldiers of our internationally-recognized Russian peacekeeping forces. In our southern position, as there were positions of the peacekeeping forces both in the south and in the north, Georgian tanks encircled the lightly armed Russian peacekeeping forces and opened direct fire on them.

When our peacekeeping forces tried to take heavy munitions from the hanger, they were shelled by the Grad rocket stations. Ten Russian soldiers who were still in the hangers were killed on the spot - burned alive.

Roth: Mr Prime Minister…

Putin: I am not finished yet. Then, the Georgian Air Forces attacked various points in S.Ossetia - not in the Tskhinvilli region, but in the center of S.Ossetia itself. We were forced to fire beyond the combat & security zone owing to these air attacks. These were the places where the Georgian troops were controlled from and the operation centers from which our peacekeeping forces & citizens were attacked from.

Roth: But I have told you that residential areas were bombarded by Russia. I experienced this, otherwise I would not have told you. Can it be that perhaps you do not have all the information?

Putin: Perhaps I do not have all the information. Errors during military operation are also possible. Only recently, in Afghanistan, US air forces supposedly engaged in an attack on a Taliban contingent, but destroyed instead, hundreds of civilians who were killed in one strike. This is a first example of military errors.

But the second example is even more convincing. The matter is, that the fire and control posts, the control of the Air Force and the radar stations on the Georgian side, were stationed in residential areas with the aim to restrict the possibility of Russia defending its people in S.Ossetia - using the civilian population - and you - as hostages.

Roth: Well, that is an assumption. Mr Prime Minister, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Bernard Kouchner, has expressed grave concerns that the next center of conflict will be in Ukraine. He mentioned in particular, the Crimean peninsula and the city of Sevastopol as the next center of Russian aggression. Is the Crimea the next target for Russia? The seat of the Black Sea fleet?

Putin: He said, ‘the next center of Russian aggression?’ But this is not the case in the Georgian conflict. We were the victims of aggression.

Our American partners trained the Georgian armed forces, provided substantial funds, and sent a vast number of instructors who mobilized the army there. Instead of searching for solutions to inter-ethnic disputes, they simply pushed one of the parties to the conflict - the Georgian side - to aggressive actions. And we are accused of being the aggressors? What a powerful propaganda machine the West has!

Now you ask, ‘What is Russia’s next target?’ In the current conflict we had no ‘target’ to begin with. Therefore it is misleading to speak of a ‘next target.’ Should we have swung our penknives at them? What is the proportional use of force when tanks and heavy artillery are used against us? Should we have fired with a slingshot? They had to expect to get their teeth knocked out.

Roth: So you exclude targeting the Crimea?

Putin: Allow me to answer and you will be satisfied. The Crimea is not disputed territory. There is no ethnic conflict there in contrast to the conflict between S.Ossetia and Georgia. Russia recognized the current borders of today’s Ukraine a long time ago. We basically concluded all the negotiations regarding the borders. Only demarcation issues are now being discussed. But these are purely technical issues.

The question about ‘targets’ for Russia only serves as provocation. There within the Crimea, complicated processes are in view: Crimean Tatars, Ukrainian people, Russian people, a Slovak population. But this is an internal problem of Ukraine itself.

With Ukraine we have a contract regarding the docking of our fleet in Sevastopol until 2017. We will be guided by this present Treaty.

Roth: Mr Prime Minister, another Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed his concerns, in this case, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr David Miliband. He warned of a new - I use this word as his quotation - ‘cold war’ - between Russia and the West. He warned of an ‘arms race’ beginning. Are we now on the border of a new ‘Ice Age?’ What is your assessment of this situation?

Putin: There is a Russian saying: ‘Stop the thief! The one who screams the loudest, he is the thief!’

Roth: The thief, then, would be, the British minister of foreign affairs…

Putin: This is what you say. Excellent! It is a pleasure to converse with you. Remember, you said that.

Russia seeks no provocation, no tension, with whoever it may be. We want good neighborly partnership relations. If you allow, I will say what I think about this.

Look, there was the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. And there were the Soviet forces in the German Democratic Republic. And we must honestly admit, they were the occupying forces which were left in Germany after the Second World War.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, these occupation forces went away. The threat of the Soviet Union is gone. However, NATO and the US forces in Europe are still there. What for? I will tell you what for.

It is to establish order and discipline in their own US-NATO camp - to hold them within ‘bloc discipline’ they need an outside threat. And because Iran is not entirely suitable for this role, there is a strong movement, initiated by the US, to revive the enemy in Russia. But in Europe, no one is scared.

Roth: On Monday the European Union in Brussels meets. It will talk about sanctions against Russia. Do you or do you not care since you say that the European peoples’ voice will not be represented?

Putin: If I would say we do not care, that we are indifferent, this would not be true. Of course we care. Of course we will watch very carefully what takes place there. We only hope that common sense will prevail.

And we hope that an objective and not a politicized appraisal of the S.Ossetian events will be given. We hope that the actions of the Russian peacekeeping forces will be supported. Whereas actions of the Georgian side which performed the criminal actions, we hope will be denounced.

Roth: In this context I would like to ask this next question. How do you solve this dilemma: On the one hand Russia is keen on cooperating with the EU. You cannot act differently given the economic interchange between you and Europe. On the other hand, Russia wants to play by its own rules. How can you satisfy these two issues at once?

Putin: We are not going to play by any special rules. We want all to world to act in accordance with the same rules referred to as ‘international law.’ We don’t want, however, these notions to be manipulated by anyone. In one region of the world, they will obey these rules, in another region, something else rules, only to satisfy someone’s self interests. We want unified rules that check the interests of all participants.

Roth: Do you mean that the EU plays with different rules in different regions of the world which do not correspond to international law?

Putin: Absolutely, how otherwise? How did they recognize Kosovo? They ignored the territorial national integrity attached to Serbia completely, and the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 which they together discharged and supported. There they could do it. But one wasn’t allowed to proceed in such a way in S.Ossetia and in Abkhazia. Why not?

Roth: Does this mean that Russia is the only one who can define international law? That all others manipulate the situation - does that make it right for Russia to define and dictate international law? Do I understand you correctly?

Putin: You have misunderstood me. Do you recognize the independence of Kosovo? Yes or no?

Roth: Me personally? I am a journalist and it is my job to report.

Putin: I mean Western countries. In fact, all have accepted the unlawful independence of Kosovo. But if you recognized it there, then you must recognize it here - the independence of S.Ossetia and Abkhazia. There is absolutely no difference. No difference at all. This is an invented difference by the West.

There it was an ethnic conflict - and here it is an ethnic conflict. There, it was crime on both sides. And here, probably we can find it. Probably we can find it if we ‘dig.’ There the decision has been taken that these two people cannot live together in one state - and here they do not want to live together in the same state. There is no difference at all and everybody realizes this. This is all twaddle for the West’s unlawful decisions to cover.

This is the law of the jungle and Russia cannot agree to this. Mr Roth, you have been living in Russia for a long time and you speak perfect Russian, nearly accent free. That you have understood me I am not surprised. I am very pleased. Now I would like our European colleagues who will meet on September 1 to talk about this problem, to understand all of this.

Was the UN Resolution 1244 adopted? Yes, it was adopted. Was the territorial integrity of Serbia explicitly mentioned? Yes, explicitly. It was then, in their recognition of the independence of Kosovo, that Resolution 1244 was thrown into the trash. They simply forgot it in spite of our many protests.

They tried to re-interpret it. Turn it inside-out. It was impossible to wiggle out of it — so they simply forgot it. Why? They had orders from the White House and all have obeyed.

If European nations continue with this policy of obeying orders from the White House, then we will just go straight to the source of their policies and of all European affairs, and negotiate with Washington!


Thomas Roth: Given the crisis which is currently present in your relations with the US and the EU, what contribution can you support to cool off this crisis?

Vladimir Putin: First of all, it appears that to a great extent this crisis was provoked by our American friends in order to enhance their election campaign. This is the use of administrative resources in its most deplorable form — in order to ensure the advantage of one candidate. In this case, the advantage of the current ruling party.

Roth: But this is not a fact.

Putin: Perhaps. However, we know that there were many American military advisors in Georgia. This is very bad to arm one side in order to solve the ethnic problems in a military way. At first glance, it is much easier than to lead long term negotiations and to search for compromises. But at the same time, it is a very dangerous way, a way that the US so often chooses, and the order of events has proved this.

American instructors - all of the personnel teaching on using military techniques — where should have they been engaged? At training grounds and training centers. But where were they? In combat areas!

This suggests that the US administration was fully aware of the preparing military action - and moreover, probably participated in this military action. Because without the order of the senior management, American citizens had no right to be present in the conflict area.

Only the local residents, observers of the OSCE, and the Russian peacekeepers were allowed to stay in the security zone. We have, however, found evidence of US citizens in the security zone that belong neither to the first, second, or third category. Why were they there? That is the question! If they will not tell us, and did allow this, then I suspect that it has been done on purpose — to organize a small victorious war.

And should it fail in their planning? Then they compose an enemy image out of Russia, and on this basis, mobilize the voters around one of the presidential candidates. Of course, the candidate they are promoting is of the present ruling party - because only the ruling party has such resources.

Roth: The last question I would like to ask you is a question that I am very interested in myself.

Don’t you think that you personally are in the trap of your authoritarian state? In the existing system, you receive information from your secret services and from other sources which include the highest economic environment — even the mass media in Russia. These, no doubt, are all afraid of telling you anything different from what you are willing to hear.

Is it not then the case that your existing authoritarian system obstructs a broad view for you to see the processes that happen today in Europe, the US, and in other countries?

Putin: Dear Mr Roth, you have characterized our political system as ‘authoritative’ and therefore a political system to be censured. But please, in this context, let us consider the conflict which we are presently discussing.

Don’t you know what has been happening in Georgia in recent years? The mysterious death of Saakashvili’s opponent, Zurab Zhvania, the prime minister? The reprisals against the opposition? The violent dispersion of the opposition demonstration in November last year? The rigging of national elections practically in the conditions of a state of emergency? Then this criminal action in S.Ossetia resulting in many civilian deaths.

And yet for all of this, does the West still tout Georgia as a ‘democratic country’ with which a dialogue must be held and which is to be taken into NATO and perhaps in the EU? The regime in Georgia is a far cry from what the West wants the world to believe.

Yet if another country protects its interests, simply its citizens’ right to life — who have been attacked — 80 of our people were immediately killed by the Georgian attack, 2000 civilians are dead in the end — and what, we are accused of being ‘authoritarian?’

And if we protect the lives of our citizens, we will have Kolbasa [Russian sausage since Russia relies on European food imports] taken away from us? Do we have a choice between Kolbasa and life? We choose life, Mr Roth.

Roth: But in your own country..

Putin: Please - let me to talk about freedom of the press since you brought it up. How have these events been represented in the US media, one of the so-called beacons of democracy?

I was in Beijing when all these events happened. There began the massive bombardment of Tskinvhalli, there were already ground operations of the Georgian troops, many victims, and no one had reported anything about these incidents!

Hardly had we pushed back the aggressor, knocked his teeth out, he hardly had his American weapons dropped in haste and fled - all at once the Western press remembered all about international law & called Russia, the aggressor. All began to wail! Why this selectivity?

Roth: Does not Russia need to care for its own economic interests rather than alienate its European partners?

Putin: Alright, let’s talk about ’sausage’ -the economy. We want normal relations with our European partners. We are a very reliable partner. We have always fulfilled our obligations.

When we built a pipeline system in Germany in the early 60’s, our partners across the Atlantic advised the Germans not to approve this project. You should be aware of this. But then, the leadership of Germany made the right decision and this system was built together. Nowadays, this is one of the reliable sources of energy supply for the German economy.

Let us look at the global economic situation. What are our exports to Europe and also the US? More than 80% of the resources — oil, gas, timber, metals, and fertilizers. That is all that the world economy and also European industry demand. These are all things that can very well be sold on the world markets should there be sanctions against us.

Concerning your imports to us, Russia is a large and reliable market. Does someone want to stop selling to us any longer? Well, then, we will buy these products elsewhere. Who profits from it? Not our partners in Europe. Those across the Atlantic?

We are a victim of aggression and the West’s distorted propaganda. We want an objective analysis of the situation which we are not getting. We only hope that common sense and justice will prevail.

The Bill Of Rights

The preamble

Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution expressed a desire in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several states as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures to be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the said Constitution. viz: Articles in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress and Ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

###

Let's keep it, shall we?

!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Interview With Putin Banned - Read It Here! (Pt I)

INTERVIEW WITH PUTIN BANNED - READ IT HERE! (Pt I)
By Brother Nathanael Kapner, Copyright 2008

Articles May Be Reproduced Only With Authorship of Br Nathanael Kapner
& Link To Real Jew News (SM)

OWING TO THE ZIONIST OCCUPATION of the Western press, not only will crucial news be distorted, but essential news will also be suppressed. Such is the example of Vladimir Putin’s defense of Russia’s recent actions in S.Ossetia and Georgia.

The Zionist-occupied mainstream media in the West has banned an August 29 2008 interview with Putin conducted by Thomas Roth of the National German Broadcast Services. Even in Germany, the interview was censored. The Zionist Jews fear Vladimir Putin and wish only to vilify this great Christian leader rather than allow the truth to vindicate him.

Because of my contacts in Germany, the full length interview in German was sent to me Here & Video. Through much expense and effort, I now make this crucial interview available in English with the hope that readers will not only benefit from hearing Putin’s defense, but will contribute to the heavy expense involved in having this interview translated.

Thomas Roth, a German national who resides in Russia, conducted the interview in Russian then translated it into German. I have availed myself of both texts through my friend, Dr E L Magerovsky, who is fluent in both Russian and German. A translation professional was also consulted. Before making your comments, please consider offsetting the huge expense involved to make this interview available in English. Thank you - Brother Nathanael.

Thomas Roth: Mr Prime Minister, after the escalation in Georgia, the international public and the press sees Russia in isolation against the rest of the world and beginning a war in Georgia. Why have you placed your country in this isolation?

Vladimir Putin: What do you think, who began the war in Georgia?

Roth: As I see it, the conflict was incited by the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali in S.Ossetia.

Putin: I thank you for this answer. That is correct, that was it indeed. We will deal more in greater detail with that later. Now I want to emphasize that we did not prompt this situation. And as regards the reputation of Russia, I am convinced that the reputation of any country capable of following an independent foreign policy that would protect the lives of its citizens, would only enhance its reputation.

And vice versa. The reputation of other countries which make for themselves a rule to interfere in the politics of other nations by extending themselves beyond their own national interests, their reputation would decrease. This says it all.

Roth: You have not yet answered the question why you have risked the isolation of your country from the rest of the world.

Putin: I thought I answered the question. But if it requires additional explanations, I will give it.

I am of the opinion that a country, in this case Russia, which would defend the honour of its citizens, whose lives it acts to protect, and acts according to international-law obligations in the context of the peacekeeping forces, it follows that such a country would not come into isolation. With regard to Europe and the United States - they do not rule the world.

And vice versa. I would like to emphasize again: If any countries believe that they are justified in serving their own personal and national interests by disregarding the foreign policy interests of other states, the reputation of such countries in the world would gradually decline. If the European countries fall in line with the foreign policy interests of the United States, they are not, in my opinion, going to succeed.

And now to our international-law obligations. According to international agreements the Russian peacekeeping forces were granted the obligation to take the peaceful population of S.Ossetia under its protection. Let us recall in this connection, the year 1995 in Bosnia.

It is well-known that the European peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, which consisted of Netherlands military members, did not stop one of the attacking sides and thus brought about the destruction of an entire locality. Hundreds were killed.

This tragedy in Bosnia’s Srebrenica is very well known in Europe. Should we have acted likewise? Should we have ignored the aggression and thereby making it possible for Georgian military units to destroy human lives in Tskhinvali?

Roth: Mr Prime Minister, your critics say that your goal in S.Ossetia was not to protect people, but to try to further destabilize Georgia and to remove the Georgian president from office. Why? In order to prevent Georgia from joining NATO. Is that so?

Putin: This is not so, it is a perversion of the facts, this is a lie. If this were our goal - then we would have probably started this conflict. But you yourself have admitted that the Georgian side started this conflict.

Now let me recall the facts of recent history. After the illegal decision on the recognition of the independence of Kosovo, everybody expected that Russia would recognize the independence and sovereignty of S.Ossetia and Abkhazia. And we had a moral right to do so. But we did not do so. We acted more than cautiously and we ’swallowed’ the unlawful Kosovo action.

But what did we get in return for our restraint? An escalation of the conflict, the attack on our peace keeping forces, the raid and destruction of the civilian population in South Ossetia! These are facts that are very well known and have been published throughout Europe.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of France was in N.Ossetia where he met with refugees fleeing from the Georgian aggressors. Even eye-witnesses reported that Georgian military units ran over women and children with tanks. They drove civilians into homes and churches and burned them alive. And Georgian soldiers bursting into Tskhinvali, when they had passed by cellars where women and children hid themselves, threw grenades into the cellars. What is this, if not genocide?

Georgian leadership, who instigated this catastrophe, has undermined the territorial integrity of Georgia by their actions. Such leaders have no right to steer a country regardless of its size. If they were decent human beings they would resign immediately.

Roth: But Mr Prime Minister, that is not your decision, that is a Georgian decision.

Putin: Naturally. But we know different precedents.

To Be Continued

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Breakthrough Conference on New Science, Extraterrestrial Life, UFOs

Breakthrough Conference on New Science, Extraterrestrial Life, UFOs
Rangeley, Maine Conference Presents Open-Minded Scientific Look at Controversial UFO-Extraterrestrial Phenomenon

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Sep 08, 2008 – Maine Conference Explores
New Science of Extraterrestrial Life and UFOs

Contact: Michael Mannion—Mannionabc@aol.com
Trish Corbett or Michael Mannion—212-721-6785 or 413-238-4433
Organization: The Mindshift Institute www.mindshiftinstitute.org
Event: Cosmos and Consciousness VI: New Scientific Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life in Our Living Universe
Date: September 20, 2008, 10 a.m.—5:30 p.m.
Place: Rangeley, Maine

The Mindshift Institute is holding its annual conference Cosmos and Consciousness VI: New Scientific Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life in Our Living Universe on Saturday, September 20, 2008 from 10:00 a.m.—5:30 p.m. at The Rangeley Inn in Rangeley, Maine.

The speakers at the event are Dr. Bruce Maccabee, an Optical Physicist with the US Naval Surface Warfare Center; Michael Mannion, medical-science writer and novelist; Carol Rainey, a documentary filmmaker and author; and Dr. Rudy Schild, an astrophysicist and cosmologist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The conference hosts are Trish Corbett and Michael Mannion, the co-founders of The Mindshift Institute

Cosmos and Consciousness VI will focus on the recent developments in science that provide a new way of looking at one of our oldest questions: Are we alone? The scientific answer to that question, increasingly, seems to be “No.” The conference is a truly open-minded exploration of what the latest scientific discoveries reveal about extraterrestrial life in our universe.

In the past few decades, science and technology have progressed enough so that speculative astrophysics and cosmology now can be subjected to scientific testing. The old era of pure speculation in cosmology and astrophysics has ended. The new era of the confirmation of scientific cosmological and astrophysical hypotheses has begun.

The conference will provide a rigorous, open-minded look at what science is now discovering about the nature of our living universe, bringing us face-to-face with the inadequacies of our current picture of reality. New knowledge is inexorably leading to a new worldview. When the four presentations being offered this year are put together, we begin to see the outlines of this emerging worldview, one that may not be evident when the information in each talk is looked at separately.

All of this year’s presentations share something in common—they show that new scientific developments are helping us to understand such phenomena as UFOs and extraterrestrial life whose comprehension has so far eluded us. No one is claiming to have “the answer.” What we are offering in this conference are new paths to evolving answers to our eternal questions about the universe we inhabit and our place in it.

There is a Premium Weekend Package available. Call 212-721-6785 or go to www.mindshiftinstitute.org for more information. General admission is $85; student admission is $45. Call 212-721-6785 for information on income sensitive admission.

# # #

The Mindshift Institute is focused on (1) expanding our worldview through new discoveries in frontier science and (2) waking up from "the trance,' a profound detachment from our inner and outer reality.

###

While you're there, stop in at Wilhelm Reich's house and museum, it's right up the street, sort of, and very, very cool...

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Disturbing Facts and Impressions

8 More Shocking Revelations About Sarah Palin

8 More Shocking Revelations About Sarah Palin
By Isaac Fitzgerald, Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
More skeletons come out of Palin's closet. Read more »

Top Ten Most Disturbing Facts and Impressions of Sarah Palin

Top Ten Most Disturbing Facts and Impressions of Sarah Palin
By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet
It's not hard to stir up negative publicity when you advocate gunning down wolves from airplanes and deny the human causes of climate change. Read more »



Palin Fails by Her Own Standards
By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Palin went on attack Wednesday night, deriding Democrats, mischaracterizing Obama and insulting Americans, who she must think won't know any better. Read more »

As Sarah Palin's Family Life Becomes Public, Will She Stay on the GOP Ticket?

As Sarah Palin's Family Life Becomes Public, Will She Stay on the GOP Ticket?
By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
In 1972, Tom Eagleton was the Democratic VP nominee for 18 days when another private drama became public. Read more »

Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested at RNC

Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested at RNC
Democracy Now!
Goodman has been charged with obstruction; felony riot charges are pending against producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Read more »

Sarah Palin's Big, Sleazy Safari

Sarah Palin's Big, Sleazy Safari
By John Dolan, AlterNet
For most of us, zooming around in an airplane to shoot wolves sounds insane. For Sarah Palin, it's a "safari." Read more »

Palin Has Chosen to Exploit Her Own Daughter's Pregnancy

Palin Has Chosen to Exploit Her Own Daughter's Pregnancy
By Bonnie Fuller, Huffington Post
If Palin succeeds in "normalizing" her daughter's pregnancy, will other teen girls look at this and say what is the problem with having a baby? Read more »

As Unlawful Arrests Continue, St. Paul Feels Like a City Under Siege for Some Residents

As Unlawful Arrests Continue, St. Paul Feels Like a City Under Siege for Some Residents
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
"It's like we don't have rights. Like we don't even live here." Read more »

RNC Raids Have Been Targeting Video Activists

RNC Raids Have Been Targeting Video Activists
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
In the run-up to the Republican convention, Minnesota police launched a series of preemptive raids to intimidate protesters and quash dissent. Read more »

Lakoff: Palin Appeals to Voter Emotions -- Dems Beware

Lakoff: Palin Appeals to Voter Emotions -- Dems Beware
By George Lakoff, AlterNet
The initial Democratic response to Palin indicates that many Democrats have not learned the lessons of the Reagan and Bush years. Read more »

McCain Wins by a Landslide - Tells Country to F**k Off...

McCain's history of hot temper raises concerns

WASHINGTON — John McCain made a quick stop at the Capitol one day last spring to sit in on Senate negotiations on the big immigration bill, and John Cornyn was not pleased.

Cornyn, a mild-mannered Texas Republican, saw a loophole in the bill that he thought would allow felons to pursue a path to citizenship.

McCain called Cornyn's claim "chicken-s---," according to people familiar with the meeting, and charged that the Texan was looking for an excuse to scuttle the bill. Cornyn grimly told McCain he had a lot of nerve to suddenly show up and inject himself into the sensitive negotiations.

"F--- you," McCain told Cornyn, in front of about 40 witnesses.

It was another instance of the Republican presidential candidate losing his temper, another instance where, as POW-MIA activist Carol Hrdlicka put it, "It's his way or no way."

There's a lengthy list of similar outbursts through the years: McCain pushing a woman in a wheelchair, trying to get an Arizona Republican aide fired from three different jobs, berating a young GOP activist on the night of his own 1986 Senate election and many more.

McCain observers say the incidents have been blown out of proportion.

"I've never seen anything in the way of an outburst of temper that struck me as anything out of the ordinary," said McCain biographer Robert Timberg .

"Those reports are overstated," said Rives Richey, who attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va ., with McCain in the early 1950s.

Historians point out that it's not unusual for a president to have a fierce temper, but most knew how to keep it under control.

" Harry Truman wrote scathing letters, but he almost never sent them," said author Robert Dallek .

"George Washington spent a lifetime trying to control his temper," added historian Richard Norton Smith .

But Washington didn't have YouTube replaying videos of his tantrums, nor did he have to make decisions about nuclear weapons.

HE WAS FEISTY

At age 2, McCain's tantrums were so intense that he'd hold his breath for a few minutes and pass out. His parents would dunk him in cold water to "cure" him, he wrote in his memoir, "Faith of My Fathers ."

"I have spent much of my life choosing my own attitude, often carelessly, often for no better reason than to indulge a conceit," he wrote. He conceded that some of his actions have been embarrassing, and "others I deeply regret."

He was a tough little guy. At Episcopal High , he was a 114-pound wrestler classmates called "Punk" and "McNasty."

Richey, though, noted that such monikers weren't unusual in those days. "There was a tremendous amount of sarcasm in the way we talked to each other at Episcopal," he recalled. "That's the way we all talked to each other."

McCain, Richey said, "was not looking for a fight. He was feisty."

McCain entered the Naval Academy in 1954, and he was popular, the leader of a group that Timberg described as the Bad Bunch, known largely for its ability to have a good time.

Malcolm Matheson , who knew McCain at Episcopal High and stayed friendly with him in college, said his buddy had no trouble controlling his temper in those days.

"He was a little guy, but he was tough, and no bully ever got in his face," Matheson said.

But as McCain ascended in politics, he began to acquire a reputation for hotheadedness. On election night 1986, then- Arizona Republican Party executive director Jon Hinz recalled, McCain was unhappy, even angry, even though he'd just won a U.S. Senate seat and his party had just made a virtually unprecedented sweep of state offices.

McCain had hoped that night would help launch him as a national figure. Instead, when the 5-foot-9 senator-elect spoke at the Phoenix victory party, the podium was too tall.

"You couldn't see his mouth," Hinz said.

A furious McCain sought out Robert Wexler , the Young Republican head in charge of arrangements.

"McCain kept pointing his finger in Wexler's chest, berating him," Hinz recalled. The 6-foot-6 Hinz stepped between them and told McCain to cut it out. "I told him I'll make sure there's an egg crate around next time," he said. McCain walked away angrily.

About a year later, McCain reportedly erupted again, this time at a meeting with Arizona's then-Gov. Evan Mecham , who was about to be impeached after being indicted on felony charges.

Karen Johnson , then Mecham's secretary and now an Arizona state senator, recalled how McCain told Mecham that he was "causing the party a lot of problems" and was an embarrassment to the party.

"Sen. McCain got very angry," Johnson recalled, "and I said, 'Why are you talking to the governor like this? You're causing problems yourself. You're an embarrassment.' "

Johnson would go on to work at three different jobs over the next five years, and she said that each time, McCain would contact her boss and try to get her removed.

The McCain campaign didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

LOSING HIS COOL

When John McCain came to the Senate in 1987, he quickly got two reputations: a Republican who'd do business with Democrats on tough issues and an impatient senator who was often gruff and temperamental.

In January, Sen. Thad Cochran , R-Miss., told The Boston Globe that, "the thought of (McCain) being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." (Cochran has since endorsed McCain.)

Added Sen. Christopher Bond , R-Mo., who has a long list of vociferous, sometimes personal disagreements with McCain, "His charm takes a little getting used to." (Bond, too, supports him.)

Democrats are less guarded.

"There have been times when he's just exploded, " said Sen. Tom Harkin , D- Iowa .

"Look, around here, people lose their tempers once in a while. But it doesn't happen very often, and it usually happens in some contextual framework. A lot of times there's just not much of a contextual framework for his blowing up."

John Raidt worked for McCain more than 15 years. "Yeah, he could get prickly," he said. "Sometimes that's exactly what's needed to move an issue or get attention. I think he uses it as a tool."

Stories abound on Capitol Hill: How McCain told Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici , R-N.M., how "only an a-hole" would craft a budget like he did. Or the time in 1989 when he confronted Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama , then a Democrat and now a Republican, because Shelby had promised to vote for McCain friend John Tower as secretary of defense, and then Shelby voted against Tower.

McCain later wrote how, after the vote, he approached Shelby "to bring my nose within an inch of his as I screamed out my intense displeasure over his deceit . . . the incident is one of the occasions when my temper lived up to its exaggerated legend."

Cochran recalled earlier this summer that he saw McCain manhandle a Sandinista official during a 1987 diplomatic mission in Nicaragua .

Cochran told the Biloxi Sun Herald that McCain was talking, and, "I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever."

McCain said the incident never took place. "I must say, I did not admire the Sandinistas much," he told a news conference. "But there was never anything of that nature. It just didn't happen."

Former Kansas Sen. Robert Dole , who led the mission, couldn't be reached to comment.

Back in Washington, families of POW-MIAs said they have seen McCain's wrath repeatedly. Some families charged that McCain hadn't been aggressive enough about pursuing their lost relatives and has been reluctant to release relevant documents. McCain himself was a prisoner of war for five-and-a-half years during the Vietnam War.

In 1992, McCain sparred with Dolores Alfond , the chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen and Women, at a Senate hearing. McCain's prosecutor-like questioning of Alfond — available on YouTube — left her in tears.

Four years later, at her group's Washington conference, about 25 members went to a Senate office building, hoping to meet with McCain. As they stood in the hall, McCain and an aide walked by.

Six people present have written statements describing what they saw. According to the accounts, McCain waved his hand to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins , whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall.

As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor , the mother of another missing serviceman, approached the senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.

"McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself and pushed the wheelchair away from him," according to Eleanor Apodaca , the sister of an Air Force captain missing since 1967.

McCain's staff wouldn't respond to requests for comment about specific incidents.

But Mark Salter , a longtime McCain aide who functions as the senator's alter ego and the co-author of his books, said that, "McCain gets intense, and intent on his argument."

His blowups with senators often result from colleagues being accustomed to deference, he said.

"A lot of these guys aren't used to that," Salter said, so they get annoyed when a peer gets emotional.

McCain's presidential campaign has tried to use his reputation to its advantage; in an early television ad, McCain said: "I didn't go to Washington to win the Mr. Congeniality award . . . . I love America. I love her enough to make some people angry."

CAN HE CONTROL IT?

There's no easy way to judge whether McCain's temper would make him a risky president.

"Yeah, he has a temper," said Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden , the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman. "It's obvious. You've seen it.

"But is John whatever his opposition painted him to be, this unstable guy who came out of a prisoner or war camp not capable of (acting rationally)? I don't buy that at all."

Independent experts have some concerns about McCain's irascibility.

"Diplomacy is not often dealing with reasonable people," said Steve Clemons , an analyst at the New America Foundation , a centrist public policy group.

"In the nuclear age, you don't want someone flying off the handle, so it's a critical question: Can McCain control his temper?" asked Thomas De Luca , professor of political science at Fordham University in New York .

History is an inexact guide, because little evidence is available tying temper to action.

Richard Norton Smith has found that according to Tobias Lear , George Washington's secretary, "few sounds on earth could compare with that of George Washington swearing a blue streak."

On the other hand, Smith said, Washington could control himself. "One reason George Washington is this cold-blooded marble figure is that he became expert in controlling his temper," he said.

Other presidents have similar histories. Thomas Jefferson, Smith said, could be a "red-faced chief executive throwing his hat on the floor before stomping on it."

Truman had his angry letters, and one that got out showed quite a temper.

"It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful," Truman wrote Washington Post music critic Paul Hume in 1950, after Hume had panned first daughter Margaret Truman's singing performance.

Added the angry father, "Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes and perhaps a supporter below!"

Bill Clinton's infamous red-faced tirades tended to be endured by staffers in the privacy of the White House rather than public displays.

The important question, Dallek said, is whether and how McCain controls his outbursts. Though his aides insist that his temper is simply a way of expressing passion — and that he sometimes uses it for effect — some observers remain concerned.

"It seems the only way to deal with John McCain is to think the way he does," said Hinz, the former Arizona GOP official who now runs an insurance reform advocacy group in Phoenix . "If he gets more power, what's going to make him suddenly become a fuzzy, nice guy?"

###

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Sarah Palin's Book Club

Received in an email blast from a friend...

Let's spend a few moments browsing the list of books Mayor Sarah Palin tried to get town librarian Mary Ellen Baker to ban in the lovely, all-American town of Wasilla, Alaska. When Baker refused to remove the books from the shelves, Palin threatened to fire her. The story was reported in Time Magazine and the list comes from the librarian.net website.
*** Note: please see the comments regarding this post ***

Sarah Palin's Book Club

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

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Don LaFontaine, 68; voice of movie trailers

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-lafontaine3-2008sep03,0,4646300.story

Don LaFontaine, 68; voice of movie trailers
By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 3, 2008

Don LaFontaine, the highly sought-after voice-over artist whose sonorous-voiced narration on several thousand movie trailers earned him the title of "The Trailer King," has died. He was 68.

LaFontaine, who also did voice-over work on countless radio and network television promotional spots and commercials, died Monday of complications after treatment for an illness at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his family said. The illness was not specified.

He was known as "Thunder Throat," "The Voice of God" and "the highest-paid movie-trailer narrator" in Hollywood.

With a rich baritone that was once likened to the sound of someone speaking from the bottom of a well, LaFontaine dramatically narrated the movie trailers for classic films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey" ("A shrieking monolith deliberately buried by an alien intelligence"), "Fatal Attraction" ("A look that led to an evening, a mistake he'd regret all his life") and "The Terminator" ("In the 21st century, a weapon would be invented like no other").

LaFontaine's distinctive voice also was heard on the trailers for "Doctor Zhivago," "MASH," "The Godfather," "Ghostbusters," "Home Alone," "L.A. Confidential," "Independence Day" and nearly 5,000 other movies. He also narrated trailers for the "Indiana Jones," "Rambo" and "Die Hard" series.

"The industry is mourning the loss of a true Hollywood legend," Linda Bell Blue, executive producer of "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider," for which LaFontaine was the voice, said in a statement Tuesday.

"Don was not only the reference standard in the voice-over community for his skills, but gave back to all who reached out to him," she said. "Movie trailers and television promos will never be the same."

In a 1995 interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, LaFontaine said, "People think what I do is just like radio announcing, but it's not."

He viewed himself as a voice actor.

"You want to take the audience out of their seats, out of their homes, out of their complacency and pull them into the story," he said. "You want to make that trailer so compelling that they have to go buy a ticket just to find out how the movie ends."

By the early '90s, LaFontaine was so busy -- he once said he could voice about 60 promotions a week and as many as 35 in a day -- that he was saving time by traveling from job to job in a chauffeur- driven limousine. He later began working from a studio in his home, where he received scripts via fax.

LaFontaine's famously melodramatic movie-trailer voice -- he was most often identified with the introductory phrase, "In a world . . ." -- was ripe for parody and spurred sendups from Pablo Francisco and other comedians.

Despite the public's familiarity with his voice and the occasional interview on the subject of voice-overs, LaFontaine worked in relative anonymity.

But that changed in 2006 when he appeared as "that announcer guy from the movies" in a national car insurance commercial to help a "real" customer, "not an actor," tell her story.

There he was, the casually dressed man with the sandy mustache, standing at a microphone in the woman's kitchen with headphones over his bald head.

Woman, speaking matter-of-factly: "When the storm hit, both our cars were totally underwater."

LaFontaine, with deep-voiced dramatic overtones and accompanied by stirring music: "In a world where both of our cars were totally underwater."

Woman: "We thought it would take forever to get some help."

LaFontaine: "But a new wind was about to blow."

The self-parody, in which he was not only seen but also identified by name, racked up tens of thousands of hits on YouTube, promptingone viewer to write: "Finally, I get to the see who the person is with that voice."

LaFontaine was born Aug. 26, 1940, in Duluth, Minn. After working as a recording engineer in the Army, he became a sound engineer-editor at National Recording Studios in New York City.

In the early '60s, he was assigned to work with radio producer Floyd Peterson, who was creating radio commercials for the movie "Dr. Strangelove." He and Peterson joined forces in a two-man operation and Peterson's quickly expanded company became one of the first to work exclusively in movie advertising.

LaFontaine, who wrote much of the copy, launched his voice-over career unexpectedly after the announcer for a radio-spot presentation for the 1964 movie "Gunfighters of Casa Grande" failed to show and LaFontaine stepped in.

After a number of years as a head of production for Kaleidoscope Films Ltd., a top trailer production house, he launched his own production company, Don LaFontaine Associates, in 1976.

LaFontaine joined Paramount Pictures as head of the studio's trailer department in 1978. After leaving Paramount as a vice president in 1981, he returned to being an independent producer. He then became more heavily involved in doing voice-over work.

"I don't think there will ever be another career quite like mine," he once told Swindle magazine. "It can't be duplicated. I came into the field of movie promos just as it was being born. I had the opportunity to work in virtually every style, mostly reading copy that I had written or co-written. Many of the younger narrators of today grew up hearing me. And right or wrong, it became a sort of template for how trailers should be read."

LaFontaine is survived by his wife, Nita; daughters, Christine, Skye and Elyse; and a grandson.

A private funeral service will be held, and a celebration of LaFontaine's life is pending.

dennis.mclellan@latimes.com