I don't read much but this has a very strong feeling of authenticity — certainly enough to warrant a Truth & Reconciation Commission before Papa Bush dies. The photos and graphics in this account, two included below, are best I have seen.
This is not the first time and surely will not be the last that George H.W. Bush, former Director of the CIA and the 41st President of the United States, has been implicated in the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, our 35th president. In an earlier study, for example, “Was George H.W. Bush involved in the assassination of JFK?”, John Hankey and I both address this question, where he provides a great deal of evidence supporting a role for GHWB in the Dealey Plaza turkey shoot. In this new study, Richard Hooke substantiates that claim and advances additional proof of his own. I believe that they are right.
Several nuggets of interest are presented in the latest biennial report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, summarizing the Committee's oversight activities in the 112th Congress:
* The Director of National Intelligence abruptly cancelled a multi-year effort to establish a single consolidated data center for the entire Intelligence Community a year or so ago, in favor of a migration to cloud computing.
* Under criticism that the number of intelligence contractor personnel has grown too high, too fast, intelligence agencies have been cutting the number of contractors they employ or converting contractors to government employees. But some of those agencies have continued to hire additional contractors at the same time, resulting in net growth in the size of the intelligence contractor workforce.
* A written report on each covert action that is being carried out under a presidential finding is provided to the congressional committees every quarter.
The March 22 report also provides some fresh details of the long-awaited and still unreleased Committee study on CIA's detention and interrogation program. That 6,000 page study, which was completed in July 2012 and approved by the Committee in December 2012, is divided into three volumes, as described in the report:
“I. History and Operation of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program. This volume is divided chronologically into sections addressing the establishment, development, and evolution of the CIA detention and interrogation program.”
“II. Intelligence Acquired and CIA Representations on the Effectiveness of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. This volume addresses the intelligence attributed to CIA detainees and the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, specifically focusing on CIA representations on how the CIA detention and interrogation program was operated and managed, as well as the effectiveness of the interrogation program. It includes sections on CIA representations to the Congress, the Department of Justice, and the media.”
“III. Detention and Interrogation of Detainees. This volume addresses the detention and interrogation of all known CIA detainees, from the program's inception to its official end, on January 22, 2009, to include information on their capture, detention, interrogation, and conditions of confinement. It also includes extensive information on the CIA's management, oversight, and day-to-day operation of the CIA's detention and interrogation program,” according to the report's description.
“I have read the first volume, which is 300 pages,” said CIA Director John O. Brennan at his February 7 confirmation hearing. “There clearly were a number of things, many things, that I read in that report that were very concerning and disturbing to me, and ones that I would want to look into immediately, if I were to be confirmed as CIA Director.”
Look at this astonishing visualization of deaths in Pakistan from drones, it was made by a professional studio that specializes in visualizations: “The visualization, seen below, tracks the victims of the strikes using data from the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, specifically noting children and civilian collateral damage. Note the sharp uptick after President Obama takes office in 2009″:
Also note at the top right corner the number of “high-profile” or “bad guys” killed, which amounts to 1.5%, or 47 out of a total of 3,105 killed. The rest killed, 98.5%, should not have been, are innocents. Watch a brief interview of the creator of this amazing graphic (which is regularly updated):
Drones Visualization: Every U.S. Drone Strike In Pakistan Since 2004 (GRAPHIC)
“We want to shock people,” Grubbs said. “What we tried to do though with this was not just shock people with the number of casualties, but to shock people with the amount of information that we really don't know.”
This is an insightful comment about the visualization that appears in the link:
When I saw this story this morning I could hardly believe it was real. But I have checked and it is. You can click through to download the CDC .pdf report.
I find it highly ironic that this story is appearing in a conservative religious website, because much of this enormous spread of venereal disease is arising because the Theocratic Right has done everything it can to stop useful sex education in the U.S. leaving teens, particularly teens in Red value states, completely unprepared to practice safe sex. Not surprisingly, the incidence of unintended pregnancies and STDs in those states are much higher than in Blue value states.
Below find excerpts of Harvard Professor Linda Bilmes latest analysis of the costs of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Note that the costs are now estimated to lay somewhere between $4 trillion and $6 trillion.
N.B. The final sentence: “In short, there will be no peace dividend, and the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be costs that persist for decades.”
It's not going to be a “peace dividend;” it is going to be a decades long and gigantic expense–in addition to the moral tragedy.
The excerpts from her cogent, well written text explain how she got to her conclusion. (The relevant page numbers are noted in parentheses.)
Collectivists have a favorite target. Big bad corporations. This is a complete scam. Why did Goldman Sachs turn out to be the biggest funder of Obama’s 2008 election bid? Why weren’t the corporate banksters who demanded and received those enormous bailouts, under both Bush and Obama, prosecuted for crimes?
Collectivists actually love big corporations. Collectivists just want to distract us from their real goals. And in order to enact those goals, they need banks, they need the military-industrial complex, they need Big Pharma and Big Oil.
They especially need somebody to control the world’s food supply, because that’s one of the ultimate squeeze plays on the global population. So who do they bow down to, in that arena? Monsanto, Dow, DuPont.
Washington politicians aren’t victims who can’t fight off big bad corporations. They aren’t at the mercy of those corporations. That’s a load of nonsense. That’s Politics 101 for brainwashed college students.
O poor little politicians! No power. No way to win against the big boys. No chance.
If you buy that, you’re ready to buy condos on Mars.
Yet more evidence of environmental degradation. We simply cannot seem to achieve the political will to save the world in which we live, and on which our own wellbeing depends.
