Since the 9/11 attacks, a dramatic shift has occurred in the way the United States deploys its military and intelligence forces. In his new book, “The Way of the Knife,” Mark Mazzetti documents the militarization of the CIA and the stepped-up intelligence focus of Special Operations forces. As Mazzetti observes in his deeply reported and crisply written account, over the past decade “the CIA’s top priority was no longer gathering intelligence on foreign governments and their countries, but man hunting.” The bin Laden operation was far from the only deadly mission that Panetta presided over.
The CDC has produced junk science that demonstrates absolutely nothing, but claims it shows no connection between autism and the vaccine schedule. It's now spinning it as if it proves that there's no link between the modern day nightmare of autism and the vaccines that they push for Big Pharma. Here's the evidence.
This is the first of two stories. I am running them both today, because I want to make the point that in nuclear accidents there is a question as to whether they are ever really “over;” this is the thing that is different about nuclear power. Tar sands oil leaks, such as the one in Arkansas, eventually get cleaned up. Nuclear waste is forever.
US residents near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation may be in grave danger: a nuclear safety board found that the underground tanks holding toxic, radioactive waste could explode at any minute, due to a dangerous buildup of hydrogen gas.
In addition to everything else Fukushima has shown us the unintended consequence of radioactive tuna. This technology is fine, until it's not fine. Then it's a problem for we know not how many years, and creates horrible social problems.
Phi Beta Iota: The irresponsibility — partly in ignorance but mostly in corruption — of most governments — cannot be understated. The “inudstrialization” of the knowledge industry led to fragementation, a disconnect from ethics, and ultimately to a perversion of how knowledge is used, to internalize profits and externalize hazards, risks, and lasting costs. Very uncivilized.
Pirate Parties: A new poll today places the Icelandic Pirate Party in parliament, with their election three weeks out. This follows a continuous and rapid ascent for the Icelandic Pirate Party. The poll will probably have the additional effect of putting the media spotlights on the party, further accelerating its growth.
The poll gives the Icelandic Píratar 5.6% of the votes, translating to four seats in the Icelandic Parliament. This growth is nothing short of phenomenal, even within the Pirate Party movement, and it would seem that the Icelandic pirates will be the first to put people in a regular, proportional, national-level parliament. (Sweden was first with the European Parliament, Germany was first with state-level parliament, and the Czech pirates were first with a senator.)
I predict that this will have the exact same effect as happened when the Swedish Pirate Party was first polling at parliamentary levels a month ahead of the European elections in 2009, and when the Berlin Pirate Party was first polling at parliamentary levels ahead of the Berlin state elections in 2011. Tons of media spotlights turn to focus on the newcomer darling, at which point support surges further. The Icelandic elections are on April 27.
First the US fanfared the placement of two F-22 Raptors in the Osan airbase of South Korea. Then it demonstratively launched a B-2 stealth bomber on a training mission over a South Korean gunnery range. Then it deployed an anti-ballistic missile defense system to Guam and positioned two guided-missile destroyers in the waters near Korea. And now, courtesy of the Aviationist, we learn that the Pentagon has escalated once more in an ongoing cat and mouse game with North Korea, of who blinks first, and dispatched several B-1 (“Bone”) Lancer strategic long-range bombers to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. What is different this time, however, is that unlike the previous very public and widely trumpeted reciprocal escalation steps, this particular deployment has been kept secret from the public (at least the broader public), “a fact that could be the sign that the U.S. is not only making symbolic moves (as the above mentioned ones), but it is preparing for the worst scenario: an attack on North Korea.”
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Finally, and most disturbing, is that another aircraft also in the process of deployment is none other than the E-6 Mercury “Doomsday” plane, which are among the pinnacle in US Airforce nuclear war preparedness, tasked with “providing command and control of U.S. nuclear forces should ground-based control become inoperable” and whose core functions include conveying instructions from the National Command Authority to fleet ballistic missile submarines and also to further command post capabilities and control of land-based missiles and nuclear-armed bombers.
You can read more about the military air activity recently monitored by Steve Douglass in an extremely interesting article he posted on his blog that not only summarize the contents of the messages he sent to The Aviationist, but provides some more details about the alleged overseas deployment of E-6 Mercury “doomsday” planes from Tinker AFB, Oklahoma.
Perhaps to Kim Jong-un the military escalation to nuclear war is only one big joke, but to the US it is increasingly appearing very serious. And perhaps this is precisely what the Pentagon wanted all along?
The missile. News services have published no additional reports about the missile detected on the east coast. As a rule, when the North Koreans allow a missile to be detected, other than in a parade, they launch it. Readers should expect a launch.
Apparently South Korean National Defense Minister Kim expects a launch as a demonstration and for training. Another reason to launch is to test US missile defense capabilities, reaction times and crisis management discipline.
A missile that splashed into the ocean without starting a general war is a way for the North Koreans to back down.
Comment: Many mainstream media commentaries have disparaged the North Koreans. An excellent article in The Economist reinforces the judgment that North Korean leaders do not intend to start a general war.
NightWatch judges it is a mistake to judge Kim Jong Un by the behavior of his risk-averse father. Jong Un has taken action that not even his grandfather dared take in ending the Armistice.
He also has reversed his father's work by ordering a resumption of construction on nuclear power plants. He surpassed his father in institutionalizing the nuclear industry, including nuclear weapons. One open-source imagery readout reported work started last month on construction of a new cooling tower at Yongbyon.
Flip comments that the leadership is irrational are belied by the care with which North Korea has managed its side of the confrontation, beyond the rhetoric.
An international network of journalists has obtained some 2.5 million records from tax havens detailing shell companies, offshore accounts and dubious financial deals. The unprecedented leaks include the names of 130,000 people who at one time or other moved their money offshore.
Oligarchs and dictators' daughters apparently have a penchant for bunkering their assets on the British Virgin Islands. Barons and composers, on the other hand, seem to prefer the Cook Islands. To cheat on taxes, they create bogus firms with imaginative names like Tantris, Moon Crystal or Sequoia.
Those are just a few details published this week on a major global system of tax evasion, which sheds new light on the methods used to deceive fiscal authorities and hide money. In what is believed to be the largest data leak in history, anonymous informants have provided an international consortium of journalists with around 2.5 million documents detailing activities in tax havens around the world.
The virtual Everest of data exposes some 120,000 letterbox entities, offshore accounts and other dubious deals in more than 170 countries, in addition to the names of 140,000 individuals alleged to have placed their money in known tax havens. The list includes politicians, celebrities, weapons dealers, oligarchs, financiers and a very diverse cast of characters. It also includes hundreds of Germans. Reporters at the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper noted that the most famous German featured on the list is society playboy Gunter Sachs, best known abroad as Brigitte Bardot's husband for a brief period in the 1960s, who committed suicide in 2011 at the age of 78.
