http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.thought-criminal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/
http://www.independent.co.uk/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
Adrienne Kinne is one of "Them". She is, or was, an agent for "Military Intelligence" (which from what I can tell translates as "The NSA" in this instance). She is however making a name for herself by whistle blowing about the NSA's warrentless wiretapping program. Concerning, among other things, their tendency to zero in not on terrorist related transmissions, but on phone sex.
According to Ms. Kinne No Such Agency was using Carnivore & Echelon for tracking down lurid bits of communications. Phone calls, e-mails, texts, etc.. and spreading them around the office for entertainment/spanking material. Needless to say, this is a tad embarrassing for the intelligence community. Usually when someone "blows the lid off" something in the deep black world of espionage it relates to murder. Murder, while illegal and immoral, is cool. Well, it's a lot cooler than being the nerd in the tree watching his neighbor undress in the bedroom or scamming free phone sex with a fake credit card. Being James Bond and shooting the bad guy off of a radio telescope is cool, being the old guy jerking off under a raincoat behind two young lovers on the bus is not.
Of course thats not the only impropriety Agent Kinne is talking about, its just the only one the mainstream media will discuss.
The CIA and NSA added the Palestine Hotel to a list of viable targets for the US Military in 2003 during the invasion of Baghdad. The hotel, while outside what would come to be the "Green Zone", was the staging point for a majority of the international press corp (and the unembedded American journalists).
Now its a big building, with a big sign that says "Palestine Hotel", and its in Baghdad to boot. So its easy to see why when the target list came down the pipe a tank crew driving along a bridge nearby fired a few shells into the building. Target of Opportunity they call it.
Several journalists were killed, everyone was both shaken and stirred, and as soon as the hotel was confirmed as shelled the CIA removed it from the list of "kill this as quick as you can" targets. Ms. Kinne says that was entirely deliberate.
The facts seem to support that story. Go ahead and find pictures from that day of the tank crew, take a look at how they feel after firing on unarmed civilians (some of which were American citizens). They did not know. They were told it was a viable military target. They were used to murder innocent people at random. Maybe there was a specific target in mind and it was a clumsy assassination attempt, or maybe it was just malice that lead to the deaths of Taras Protsyuk (Reuters) and Jose Couso (Telecinco) and the wounding of three others.
The US Military has been accused of everything from criminal negligence to murder in this case. If Agent Kinne is telling the truth then they are no more guilty than a gun or knife in a murder. I am not normally what you would call an apologist for the military, but those kids in that tank killed innocent people, and it was not their faults. They get to live with that for the rest of their lives while the nameless suit that is responsible will sleep soundly on a pillow of taxpayer money tonight.
Phantom Clowns 2: Chicago South Side Super Creepy Pony Ride
http://cbs2chicago.com/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/
http://www.suntimes.com/news/
The Phantom Clowns, one of Americas creepiest historical oddities/urban legends is back. This time a silver sedan and your standard issue child molestation family van are on the prowl on the South Side of Chicago. The very same area Barack Obama started his political career as a community organizer.
Two per vehicle they come, bearing candy, balloons, and wicked grins. Trying to entice children into their vehicles just like in the 1980's. Also just like the 1980's they have yet to actually abduct a child. Well, so far no child abductions can be reliable attributed to them, thats not to say they have not done it.
The last time the clowns stalked the streets of Americas cities we had Satanic Ritual Abuse Syndrome dominating the news cycle. This time its the Presidential election and the collapse of Wall Street. The clowns are showing up in an area with a connection to the Obama campaign, in an area rife with the dealings of Tony Rezco. A man the Obama campaign would certainly like to forget, as Barack's ill-advised land deal with him has been a stick which his rivals have beat him with non-stop for almost two years. Not that there is a connection at all mind you, I just think its weird that out of all the places for this to crop up its right there. Little weird.
Copy Cats? The same clowns? Distraction from something else? Supernatural weirdness? Who knows. It will be interesting to see if it spreads again, like last time.
Dark Flow: Not a new Jam Band, not a PS3 game, not what happens to your girlfriend once a month. No, it is both cooler and scarier than those.
http://www.space.com/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/
How big is the universe? Big. Really, really big. Is it infinite? Well, no. Probably not. For as large as it is it might as well be, but its not. What is outside of the universe? Until a few months ago most scientists would shrug and say "probably nothing". Recently however "probably nothing" became "most likely something so fucking weird and scary that your human brain cannot properly conceive of it without going mad".
No, this is not a ham-fisted intro to a Lovecraft story. Rather its a ham-fisted introduction to high weirdness on a universal scale. Dark Flow.
Assume the Big Bang happened. OK. So we have ALL matter and energy in the Universe (even that which is contained inside Steven Seagal) traveling outward from the zero point at impossible speeds. So we have an ever expanding sphere of matter and energy which Al Gore likes to call "The Universe".
Everything inside this "The Universe" is moving at more or less the same speed in predictable directions as its a spherical model. So flash forward about 15 or so billion years and you have everything where it is now. Some things slowed down a bit, some sped up, but aside from various crashes and explosions shaking up the model its all pretty predictable. Right Science? Science says well, um, no. Not entirely.
A few Galactic Clusters (which are not hair metal bands or Little Debbie cakes but rather are giant cloud-like clusters of galaxies) are moving in the wrong directions. In the wrong direction at about 2 million kilometers per hour (our galaxy takes about 200 million years to make a complete orbit around galactic central point). They are not moving how they should be moving, but are moving in a straight line outwards, towards the edge of the observable universe. Once they get there they will then exit reality as we know it.
Thats pretty weird right? It gets better, in the way that Lovecraft's stories get more "hopeful" and "optimistic" at the end. This is being caused by "Dark Flow". A name scientists made up because the only cause for this problem that fits the math is gigantic structures of impossible geometry and material alien to our universe sitting outside normal space and time warping the very fabric of reality. The gravity well of these structures is affecting a certain region of our universe and pulling material (in this case galactic clusters) outside of observable space and time into another, weirder something (its not another dimension, or universe, its just something sitting outside of our universe).
So there you have it. Sleep tight.
* * *
I promised a full post and here it is. I guess my article about the Battle of Las Angeles was not as popular as my paranoid ranting about the government and martial law. I had to take a little break from writing about it for a week, I was about to pop a blood vessel deep in my brain. We are back this week however with a little of column A and B. Look closely at the first article, you can see my potential aneurysm throbbing...
/End Transmission.