“A Damned Murder Inc.”

http://counterpunch.org/cockburn07242009.html

Some time in early or mid-1949 a CIA officer named Bill (OBVIOUSLY Wild Bill Donovan) (his surname is blacked out in the file, which was surfaced by John Kelly in the early 1990s) asked an outside contractor for input on how to kill people. Requirements included the appearance of an accidental or purely fortuitous terminal experience suffered by the Agency’s victim.

Bill’s  friend – internal evidence suggests he was a doctor – offered practical advice: “Tetraethyl lead, as you know, could be dropped on the skin in very small quantities, producing no local lesion, and after a quick death, no specific evidence would be present.”   Another possibility was “the exposure of the entire individual to X-ray.”  (In fact these two methods were already being inflicted on a very large number of Americans in lethal doses, in the form of leaded gasoline and radioactive fallout from the atmospheric nuclear test program in Nevada.) “There are two other techniques,” Bill’s  friend concluded bluffly, which “require no special equipment beside a strong arm and the will to do such a job. These would be either to smother the victim with a pillow or to strangle him with a wide piece of cloth, such as a bath towel.”

As regular as congressmen being taken in adultery or receiving cash bribes, every year or two the Central Intelligence Agency has go into damage-control mode to deal with embarrassing documents like the memo to Bill, and has to  square up to the question – does it, did it ever, have its in-house assassins, a Double O team.

Oliver Stone: JFK and the Unspeakable

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-stone/jfk-and-the-unspeakable_b_243924.html
The murder of President Kennedy was a seminal event for me and for millions of Americans. It changed the course of history. It was a crushing blow to our country and to millions of people around the world. It put an abrupt end to a period of a misunderstood idealism, akin to the spirit of 1989 when the Soviet bloc to began to thaw and 2008, when our new American President was fairly elected. Today, more than 45 years later, profound doubts persist about how President Kennedy was killed and why. My film JFK was a metaphor for all those doubts, suspicions and unanswered questions. Now an extraordinary new book offers the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance. That book is James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. It is a book that deserves the attention of all Americans; it is one of those rare books that, by helping us understand our history, has the power to change it. The subtitle sums up Douglass’s purpose: Why He Died and Why it Matters. In his beautifully written and exhaustively researched treatment, Douglass lays out the “motive” for Kennedy’s assassination. Simply, he traces a process of steady conversion by Kennedy from his origins as a traditional Cold Warrior to his determination to pull the world back from the edge of destruction. Many of these steps are well known, such as Kennedy’s disillusionment with the CIA after the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, and his refusal to follow the reckless recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. (This in itself was truly JFK’s shining moment in the sun. It is likely that any other president from LBJ on would have followed the path to a general nuclear war.) Then there was the Test Ban Treaty and JFK’s remarkable American University Speech where he spoke with empathy and compassion about the Soviet people, recognizing our common humanity, the fact that we all “inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.” But many of his steps remain unfamiliar: Kennedy’s back-channel dialogue with Khrushchev and their shared pursuit of common ground; his secret opening to dialogue with Fidel Castro (ongoing the very week of his assassination); and his determination to pull out of Vietnam after his probable re-election in 1964. All of these steps caused him to be regarded as a virtual traitor by elements of the military-intelligence community. These were the forces that planned and carried out his assassination. Kennedy himself said, in 1962, after he read Seven Days in May, which is about a military coup in the United States, that if he had another Bay of Pigs, the same thing could happen to him. Well, he did have another “Bay of Pigs”; he had several. And I think Kennedy prophesied his own death with those words. Why does it matter? The death of JFK remains a critical turning point in our history. Those who caused his death were targeting not just a man but a vision — a vision of peace. There is no calculating the consequences of his death for this country and for the world. Those consequences endure. To a large extent, the fate of our country and the future of the planet continue to be controlled by the shadowy forces of what Douglass calls “the Unspeakable.” Only by unmasking these forces and confronting the truth about our history can we restore the promise of democracy and lay claim to Kennedy’s vision of peace. But don’t take my word for it. Read this extraordinary book and reach your own conclusions.

Pirate Party Hoists its Jolly Roger in Sweden

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/23/pirate-party-on-the-rise_n_243410.html

Swine flu a bigger threat to Britain than terrorism, says Alan Johnson

http://www.infowars.com/too-many-other-people/
Swine flu poses a greater threat to Britain than terrorism, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said yesterday. ‘We have been preparing for this for a long time,’ he told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show. ‘It came above terrorism as a threat to this country, so we had the whole Cobra machinery and inter-agency working. We have gone through simulation exercises where everyone was involved.’ Cobra is the Government’s emergency committee that handles (or creates?) major disasters.

Bovine Excrement Meter Explodes! Sept. 11 families: Keep Guantanamo Bay open

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/17/gitmo.families/index.html
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (CNN) — Families of September 11 victims visiting Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday urged the Obama administration to drop plans to close the facility and to restart terror trials there. “I am opposed to the closing of this facility because of political reasons,” said Gordon Haberman whose daughter, Andrea, was killed when terrorist planes struck the World Trade Center. “I believe that the current administration spoke too quickly on this.” Haberman said he thinks President Obama should not insist on carrying out his campaign pledge to shutter the detention facility. Haberman was one of nine people visiting Guantanamo this week who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks. He and the others had the opportunity to observe pre-trial hearings for some suspects on Wednesday and Thursday. Several were critical of Obama’s decision to suspend military commissions at Guantanamo Bay while the administration reviews what to do with each detainee.

Experts: Cyberstrikes originated from Britain, not North Korea

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/15/hacking-usa
A recent wave of cyber attacks that crippled thousands of computers and websites in the United States and South Korea could have originated from inside Britain, experts have warned. According to security researchers in Vietnam, the source of last week’s string of attacks by the Mydoom virus – which overwhelmed systems belonging to the US Treasury and the office of the South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak – can be traced to the UK. “We have analysed the malware pattern that we received” said Nguyen Minh Duc, a director of Vietnamese security company BKIS, in a post on the company’s blog. “We found a master server located in the UK.” Investigators said they had discovered new details on how the strikes took place by investigating and tracing back the attacks. According to BKIS, infected computers had tried to contact one of eight so-called command and control servers every three minutes. These machines then gave instructions to the hacked PC – generally ordering them to direct traffic straight at victim websites, in attempt to overload them and force them to crash. But these eight servers were themselves being controlled by a single source, which evidence indicated was located somewhere in Britain. “Having located the attacking source in UK, we believe that it is completely possible to find out the hacker,” wrote Nguyen. “This of course depends on the US and South Korean governments.”

Senior KKK Member Arrested in Tel Aviv, Israel

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1246443798661
33-year-old Micky Louis Mayon, one of America’s 100 most wanted criminals, and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was arrested in a Florentine apartment by the National Immigration Authority’s newly formed Oz enforcement unit. Mayon is wanted in the US on charges of racist assaults, setting fire to vehicles belonging to federal agents, and a host of violent incidents. The Oz unit was acting on intelligence relayed by Interpol, which informed authorities in Israel that Mayon had entered Israel illegally. He is said to have often moved apartments in order to evade police, but his efforts proved fruitless on Monday when a delicate operation by the Oz unit saw officers break into his hideout and arrest him. Oz unit members have the powers of a police officer but can only use them in cases of illegal entry into the country. Mayon was the subject of an American arrest operation in November 2007, but officers soon realized he had flown to Israel on a one-way ticket. Earlier that year, he reportedly fired his gun in the air repeatedly after being involved in an argument with an African-American. US authorities have described him as a dangerous fugitive. Oz Unit head Tziki Sela said Mayon was surprised to be arrested, but cooperated with the officers. He has been transferred to a Holon jail facility, where he underwent an immigration hearing. He was then taken to an Israel Prisons Service jail facility.

Ebola Reston Found in Phillipines Swine, Virus Contains Ability to Cross Species to Humans

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=swine-ebola-discovered
Since the discovery of the Marburg and Ebola species of filovirus, seemingly random, sporadic fatal outbreaks of disease in humans and nonhuman primates have given impetus to identification of host tropisms and potential reservoirs. Domestic swine in the Philippines, experiencing unusually severe outbreaks of porcine reproductive and respiratory disease syndrome, have now been discovered to host Reston ebolavirus (REBOV). Although REBOV is the only member of Filoviridae that has not been associated with disease in humans, its emergence in the human food chain is of concern. REBOV isolates were found to be more divergent from each other than from the original virus isolated in 1989, indicating polyphyletic origins and that REBOV has been circulating since, and possibly before, the initial discovery of REBOV in monkeys.

Naomi Wolf on Russia Today: “Obama has the right to lock any US citizen up forever without trial”

http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-07-13/_Obama_has_the_right_to_lock_any_US_citizen_up_forever_without_trial_.html

New Live Poll Allows Pundits to Pander to Viewers in Real Time

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/new_live_poll_allows_pundits_to?utm_source=a-section