90 dead in joplin after deadliest US tornado in 60yrs from abc: The death toll in Joplin, Mo., rose to 90 today as officials described the monster tornado that hit the city as a "once in a generation event." Meteorological records show that this was the deadliest tornado since 1953 when a twister hit Worcester, Mass., and caused 90 fatalities. Rescuers shifted through rubble today looking for survivors as high winds and hail continues to plague the area. The tornado blasted a six mile wide path through the city and left trapped survivors crying out for help this morning. "You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That's really what it looked like," Kerry Sachetta, the principal of Joplin High School, which was mangled by the tornado. "I couldn't even make out the side of the building. It was total devastation in my view. I just couldn't believe what I saw."
The somber ceremonies commemorated for occasion started on Saturday and in Louisiana residents staged a symbolic burial of their loved ones. President Obama is scheduled to visit New Orleans. He will deliver a speech at Xavier University which was also flooded during the Hurricane Katrina.
A district where many houses are still vacant will hold a march and a healing ceremony and many of these houses have a circle painted on them to ensure that these houses have been searched for victims.
While President is visiting the area, the doubts about spending of the $20 billion in direct federal relief after Hurricane Katrina are still looming as much of this money is still unspent even after 5 years. The fact is given due consideration by one of the congressmen who wants to spend this money somewhere else.
please donate to zero point radio & ground zero media! from clyde lewis: Now the mainstream media has another crisis that they have to tell you about & that is the evils of digital drugs or I-dosing. A story in Oklahoma highlighted a perceived crisis of children downloading Mp3s containing sounds that according to the report induced the same effects as Marijuana & LSD. The report was first filed by KWTV News channel 9 & demonstrated how a TV channel desperately wants to be the first to induce a mass psychosis & hysteria by showing young people wearing headphones listening to binaural beats & psychotronic drones & tripping out.
from corbett report: This week we turn the focus of our open source investigation to Sgt. Terrance Yeakey, one of the first responder heroes at the scene of the OKC bombing who discovered something that conflicted with the official story of the bombing... something that cost him his life.
op-ed: upcoming police exercise is unsettling from augusta chronicle: There will be a government exercise conducted July 27-31. It is called National Level Exercise '09, or NLE '09. Although the focus of this exercise is on terrorism, it will not be focused on bearded men from the Middle East. The focus will be on internal threats: Americans. If this seems a bit absurd to the reader, let me expound on it.
The Pentagon, in their own documents, and the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Virginia State Police, in their own documents, have labeled Americans as possible terrorist threats. These people are known as Christians, pro-life activists, gun-rights advocates, homeschoolers, Ron Paul supporters, 9/11 truth activists, tea party demonstrators, etc. If this is hard to believe, one need only to type "Missouri Information Analysis Center" in a search engine to learn more.
The aforementioned exercise will focus on terrorism prevention. This exercise will be a multinational, multi-agency effort. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, state, county, local and tribal agencies will focus on intelligence- and information-gathering.
When all the documentation suggests that hard-working, honest citizens who believe in God, life and liberty are terrorists, then this country is in danger. The focus of the exercise is unsettling. If the mayor of one city can suspend our rights, what is the full might and muscle of our federal government capable of?
from kurt nimmo: FEMA is preparing to take its martial law exercises to the next level this July. According to a factsheet buried on the FEMA website, the agency will host National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09) on July 27 through July 31, 2009. “NLE 09 will be the first major exercise conducted by the United States government that will focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery,” the factsheet states. It is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise, or TOPOFF, which are exercises conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), “which serves as the nation’s overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating national level exercises,” according to FEMA. NLE 09 “will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants” in the “aftermath of a notional terrorist event outside of the United States.” So-called “exercise play” will concentrate on “preventing subsequent efforts by the terrorists to enter the United States and carry out additional attacks... NLE 09 will be an operations-based exercise to include: activities taking place at command posts, emergency operation centers, intelligence centers and potential field locations to include federal headquarters facilities in the Washington D.C. area, and in federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector facilities in FEMA Region VI, which includes the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas."
the copycat effect: 4/20 again from copycat effect: Obviously, one meaning of "420" is directly linked to the Columbine date, as "4/20" is April 20, the anniversary of the Littleton, Colorado shootings. This date is also Adolf Hitler's birthday. The Columbine shooters, Klebold and Harris were extremely conscious that it was Hitler's birthdate, and often spoke German to each other, while walking around in long black trench coats, videotaping themselves... The use of "420" for almost four decades is related to the use of marijuana... Adolf Hitler, marijuana, Columbine: For copycats, 420 appears to have served as a reflective mirror. For the rest of us, 420 may reflect a dangerous combination that has resulted in terrible memories that now reach beyond the mere date of April 20th.
what police learned from columbine from washington times: The first officers on the scene had never trained for what they found at Columbine High School: No hostages. No demands. Just killing. In the hours that followed, the nation watched in horror as the standard police procedure for dealing with shooting rampages in the U.S. proved tragically, heartbreakingly flawed on April 20, 1999.
okc bombing, columbine tragedy remembered back-to-back from associated content: The Oklahoma City bombing and Columbine school shooting tragedy may be the most publicized acts of domestic terrorism in recent memory. The Oklahoma bombing took away 168 people in 1995, while Columbine took far less lives by comparison. But both Oklahoma City and Columbine shook America, with brands of violence that could scarcely be imagined by many, in those pre-War on Terror days. The Oklahoma City and Columbine tragedies are side-by-side even further, considering they almost have the same anniversary date.
2yr anniversary of virginia tech shooting from wtap: Thursday mark[ed] the two-year anniversary of a college campus tragedy. 32 people died April 16, 2007 in a shooting on Virginia Tech's campus. Since then colleges across the nation have become better prepared for similar situations. Campus police at Marietta College have created "pioneer connect" that sends e-mails and text messages to notify students and staff of emergencies. They've also started utilizing the campus radio station to broadcast emergencies. "Since Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Northern Illinois, it goes to show that these things are continuing and they're continuing to escalate, so we all have to be prepared because we just don't know where it's going to happen," Chief David Valkinburg said. Campus police now train with the city police to be ready for an active shooter situation.
new rfid tech tracks you without your knowledge from rfid wizards: By invitation, I recently visited a remote facility in northern Virginia to see a demonstration of NOX – a new Intelligent Perimeter Defense system deployed by the FBI that uses covert Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track people and assets without their knowledge. That’s right, using RFID to track people without their knowledge. This system is exactly what the privacy advocates have long feared: Big Brother tracking us with spy chips. As Orwellian as this sounds, the undisputed fact is that this system catches thieves and does so at a fraction of the cost of traditional security solutions. NOX combines high-resolution video pictures and RFID for identification, tracking and tracing, overlaid in real time on a facility map to show the movement of people and assets. The system allows security officers to see theft as it happens, even if the stolen object is inside a briefcase, under a jacket, or stuffed inside a sock. What makes the NOX system I saw different from traditional security systems is that it uses RFID for clandestine surveillance: RFID readers are hidden inside walls, floors, and ceilings; RFID tags are discretely placed; and only the security personnel know that the system is in place – until the thief gets caught. Then, all the thief knows is that he or she was caught in the act, on video.
saic scores US army biometrics contract for $500m from prnewswire: Science Applications International Corporation today announced it has been awarded a contract by the Army's Biometrics Task Force (BTF) to provide biometrics support services in support of the Biometrics Operations and Support Services Unrestricted (BOSS-U) program. The multiple award, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract has a three year base period of performance, two one-year options and a total contract ceiling of $497 million for all awardees. The BTF leads Department of Defense activities to program, integrate, and synchronize biometric technologies and capabilities and to operate and maintain DoD's authoritative biometric database to support the National Security Strategy.
rioters were paid to provoke the police in bulgaria from bnn: The provokers at yesterday's [jan14] anti-government protest turned into riots were hired and paid 300 leva (EUR150) to start fights with the police and ruin the peaceful march, DeltaNews reports on Thursday, quoting rumors. People with black masks were roaming through the crowds giving the sum to people under the influence of alcohol. Some of the provokers claim to have been paid days in advance. "I met a guy from the suburb of Lulin came and gave us 300 leva each in order to organize a mass fight with the police at the protest", two members of a FC Levski's ultras group told the Bulgarian National Radio. He had instructed them that it is not bad if the situation escalated into street riots. The men were offered extra money for a job well done. "I understood there are provokers among the protesters when we all knelt down in memory of the murdered student Stoyan Baltov", a declaration by the organizers of the peaceful march says - "The men with black masks continued to stand up."
unconstitutional & illegal gun licensing program proposed from rogue government: The terrorists in the federal government are continuing to destroy any freedom and liberty that might be left in this country. Now that the Democrat faction of the one party system has a majority in both houses of Congress and will shortly be in control of the executive branch, we can expect a different agenda of enslavement and dehumanization to be implemented. One of these agendas will be the continued destruction of the Second Amendment. Not satisfied with the current mechanisms of control already in place, a new piece of legislation has been proposed that will further impose more unconstitutional regulations on people who only wish to defend their life, liberty and property by owning a firearm. House Resolution 45 or the Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009 introduced by Representative Bobby Rush (D-IL) is essentially a national firearm licensing program that will place all sorts of unconstitutional requirements on people attempting to obtain a firearm. The rationale behind this bill is that they believe it will reduce gun violence in the United States. This is of course ridiculous because criminals will never go through any licensing process in order to obtain a firearm.
house resolution would open US up to democratic dictatorship from rogue government: A series of insane pieces of legislation are being introduced by the Democrat-led Congress that has the potential to seriously undermine any freedom and liberty that is left in this country. One such piece of legislation is House Joint Resolution 5 which calls for the abolishment of the Twenty-Second Amendment which places a limitation on the amount of terms a President can serve. This Amendment was passed after FDR decided to run for additional terms beyond a second, breaking from traditional precedent. If House Joint Resolution 5 is successfully approved by two-thirds of the U.S. House and ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, we would essentially have a democratic dictatorship in this country. The elections are completely staged in this country with unsecured electronic voting machines and the mass media mind control apparatus brainwashing people to vote for establishment candidates that will do the bidding of Israel, rich bankers and the military industrial complex.
former nsa analyst: nsa ‘monitored all communications’ of americans, targeted journalists from thinkprogress: Last night on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” former analyst for the National Security Agency Russell Tice revealed that the NSA had “monitored all communications” of Americans and specifically targeted journalists... Tice, a major whistleblower who helped reveal President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program to the New York Times in 2005, also told Olbermann that the agency sought specifically “to be deceptive” to prevent congressional committees from learning more about the program, calling it “a shell game”
rockefeller: nsa may have spied on me from raw replay: Sen. Jay Rockefeller told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that he was “quite prepared to believe” that the NSA may have eavesdropped on journalists. Rockefeller said, “I think they went after anyone they could get — including me.” This video is from MSNBC’s Hardball, broadcast Jan. 22, 2009.
'vigilant guard' managers put the kaboom in terrorism exercises from national guard bureau: KaBOOM! Exercise managers for the Vigilant Guard homeland security exercise here added realism Sept. 16 by blowing up balloons filled with explosive gas. KaPOW! They tested the balloons today. Tomorrow the noisemakers will prompt police swat teams to move in on a suspected fake terrorist hideout at a hotel. Along with phony blown up cars, it’s all been fabricated by the National Guard’s civilian exercise managers. Vigilant Guard began here Sept. 12 with a regional tabletop exercise at the Guam Guard’s Joint Forces Headquarters. It continues through this week, culminating with a simulated terrorist attack on the island’s Tumon Beach, which is a popular tourist and vacation spot.
atf missing 418 laptops & 76 guns from ap: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) lost 76 weapons and hundreds of laptops over five years, the Justice Department reported Wednesday(3.4mb PDF), blaming carelessness and sloppy record-keeping. Thirty-five of the missing handguns, rifles, Tasers and other weapons were stolen, as were 50 laptops, the internal audit found. Two of the stolen weapons were used in crimes. The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found "inadequate" oversight of weapons and laptops resulted in "significant rates of losses" at the ATF.
oklahoma firefighters team up with wmd unit for drill from kten: Wednesday in Ardmore, The National Guard's 63rd Weapons Of Mass Destruction Team out of Norman, paired up with local emergency responders to conduct a mock drill. The drill involved a chemical release in The Ardmore Convention Center with a large group of people inside. KTEN's Hailee Holliday reports.
drive-through clinic offers booster shots targeting hepatitis a from buffalo news: There were no burgers or fries at this drive-through. This weekend, hepatitis A booster shots are being given out drive-through style at the Amherst Highway Garage. On Saturday, hundreds of people rolled down their windows and pulled up their sleeves to receive the booster shot in their arms — without leaving their cars. “We’ve had minivans with entire families pull up and single cars, too,” said Daniel Neaverth, Erie County deputy commissioner of emergency medical services. By 3 p. m., more than 300 people had participated... The idea was to administer the shots in the most efficient way possible. But it also served as an exercise in giving out mass doses of a vaccine in the event of a pandemic outbreak or a biological attack. Neaverth said Erie County is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “City Readiness Initiative.” Participants are encouraged to develop new ways to administer medicines to the masses.
military aircraft to conduct training exercises over washdc from wtop: If you see and hear military aircraft overhead Wednesday and Thursday, it's just an exercise. The North American Aerospace Defense Command starts conducting a two-day exercise in the D.C. area Wednesday. The exercise, a series of training flights, is designed to hone NORAD's intercept and identification operations. Civil Air Patrol and Coast Guard helicopters will participate in the exercise. The training flights were occur during late night and early morning hours. In the event of inclement weather, NORAD will run the exercise on the next clear day until the exercise has been completed.
nation inadequately prepared for severe pandemic from govtech: States are making significant progress toward safeguarding their citizens against an influenza pandemic, but the nation as a whole remains inadequately prepared for a severe pandemic outbreak according to a new report by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center). The report, Pandemic Preparedness in the States: An Assessment of Progress and Opportunity(412kb PDF), presents an overall appraisal of the current level of pandemic preparedness in the states and offers recommendations for improvement in five areas. "Even though this issue largely has fallen off the public's radar, states recognize that successfully managing a pandemic outbreak requires a sustained effort to combat the threat in all sectors of the economy and in society as a whole," said Chris Logan, program director of the NGA Center's Homeland Security and Technology Division. "The conclusions of this report serve a vital national service: they demonstrate both the extent of our readiness as well as the gaps in our current preparedness."
neocon think tank says US still lacks good continuity plan from aei: Seven years is a long time, but the enormity and depravity of the acts are fresh. Nonetheless, one would think that seven years is enough time for even a slow-moving political system to create basic insurance to prevent the kind of chaos and injury to the American constitutional system that would come with another, more successful, attack on official Washington. Never mind. In one of the more shameworthy lapses in our dysfunctional government, especially in Congress, nothing constructive has been done to protect our elections, our legislative branch, our presidential succession process or our Supreme Court from the consequences of the kind of terrorist attack that every expert we have believes is quite likely to occur in the future... The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 has no relevance to the challenges and potential disasters of 2008 and beyond... We are approaching an inauguration that will be historic in many ways--and also the single most vulnerable day for our constitutional system. The plans to ensure that the worst-case scenario there will not turn into an even worse scenario for the country and its future? Zero. Happy seventh anniversary.
new york offers 'enhanced' rfid driver’s licenses from times union: Starting Tuesday, New Yorkers will be able to buy new driver's licenses containing a radio chip that will let them travel between the U.S. and Canada or Mexico without a passport. The new Enhanced Drivers License, which will cost an additional $30 on top of the standard $50 license fee, also will allow those on boats or ships to travel to Bermuda and Caribbean nations without a passport. Starting in June, federal law will dictate that passports or other proof of citizenship - or an enhanced license - will be needed to visit neighboring countries, including Canada and Mexico. "This is an opportunity for individuals, at their option, to get through the borders more quickly," said Ken Brown, a spokesman for the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
mukasey's justice dept codifies cointelpro into fbi 'ground rules' from 9/11 blogger: Every once in a while, the Washington Post actually prints something of note. Yesterday, they published this article, Rule Changes Would Give FBI Agents Extensive New Powers. Previously, the FBI was required to have a case before they started screwing around with you. Under Mukasey's "New Rules", we now have a situation ripe for abuse. The Justice Department is currently working out the wording for placing "undisclosed participants" in organizations... Just in time for the November elections.
lieberman wins: youtube bans videos that incite violence from washington post: The video-sharing service YouTube is banning submissions that involve "inciting others to violence," following criticism from Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) that the site was too open to terrorist groups disseminating militant propaganda. The company earlier this year removed some of the videos that Lieberman targeted, many of which were marked with the logos of al-Qaeda and affiliated groups. But the company refused to take down most of the videos on the senator's list, saying they did not violate the Web site's guidelines against graphic violence or hate speech. Now that videos inciting others to violence are banned, more videos by the terrorist groups in question may be removed. "YouTube reviews its content guidelines a few times a year, and we take the community's input seriously," YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes said. "The senator made some good points."
military industrial complex 2.0 from information clearinghouse: Seven years into George W. Bush's Global War on Terror, the Pentagon is embroiled in two big wars, a potentially explosive war of words with Tehran, and numerous smaller conflicts – and it is leaning ever more heavily on private military contractors to get by. Once upon a time, soldiers did more than pick up a gun. They picked up trash. They cut hair and delivered mail. They fixed airplanes and inflated truck tires. Not anymore. All of those tasks are now the responsibility of private military corporations. In the service of the Pentagon, their employees also man computers, write software code, create integrating systems, train technicians, manufacture and service high-tech weapons, market munitions, and interpret satellite images. People in ties or heels, not berets or fatigues, today translate documents, collect intelligence, interpret for soldiers and interrogators, approve contracts, draft reports to Congress, and provide oversight for other private contractors. They also fill prescriptions, fit prosthetics, and arrange for physical therapy and psychiatric care. Top to bottom, the Pentagon's war machine is no longer just driven by, but staffed by, corporations.
photo ticket cameras to track drivers nationwide from the newspaper: Private companies in the US are hoping to use red light cameras and speed cameras as the basis for a nationwide surveillance network similar to one that will be active next year in the UK. Redflex and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), the top two photo enforcement providers in the US, are quietly shopping new motorist tracking options to prospective state and local government clients. Redflex explained the company's latest developments in an August 7 meeting with Homestead, Florida officials.
smile for the cameras from willamette week: Portland Public Schools is giving the bus company that schleps around students $18,000 to buy 20 digital cameras to monitor rider behavior on district buses. The school board OK’d the expenditure at its Sept. 15 meeting on top of the district’s $58 million contract with Laidlaw Transit, now doing business as First Student. Andy Leibenguth, of the district’s transportation office, says no incident precipitated the camera purchase. The district isn’t targeting a specific route; it plans to rotate the cameras, which will supplement the 15 cameras First Student already uses.
from the oklohoman: Oklahomans may be surprised to learn the state shares a dark past with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Eugenics, the wonder science of the early 1900s, hailed by academics worldwide as a means to improve a race by sterilizing those who possessed serious heredity defects, was also embraced by Gov. Alfalfa Bill Murray. This book, In Reckless Hands: Skinner v. Oklahoma and the Near-Triumph of American Eugenics (W.W. Norton, $24.95) by Victoria F. Nourse, examines how a scientific theory about nature was transformed into the basis of social policy ordained by the power of the state of Oklahoma.
The case's backdrop began in 1927 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a forced sterilization of a feeble-minded girl in the case of Buck v. Bell. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.” The law deferred to the state of Virginia's right to regulate health and safety.
The book's title comes from a line in the 1942 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Skinner v. Oklahoma striking down this Oklahoma law, warning that "in reckless hands” an entire "race or types” might "wither and disappear.” Not coincidentally, this was the year Nazis were trying to eradicate the Jewish race on the theory of natural inferiority. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas can produce horrible consequences. Yet, as late as the 1960s, more than 100,000 people had been sterilized under U.S. federal health and welfare programs, the author writes.
Nourse, a law college professor at Emory University, provides a fascinating story of gritty and determined Oklahoma lawyers who took Skinner's case to the nation's highest court. This book should appeal to general readers of Oklahoma history and those interested in the modern science of genetics, which likewise promises a better future through the selection of desirable genetic traits. Will the history of human engineering repeat itself?
from koco: An Oklahoma sheriff resigned after an investigation reveals he was running a sex-slave operation from his jail, police said. Michael Burgess surrendered to Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents and posted bond Wednesday night, hours after he resigned as Custer County sheriff amid 35 felony charges, including accusations of forcible oral sodomy, kidnapping, rape and perjury. Investigators said at one point Burgess oversaw wet T-shirt contests at the Custer County Jail.
The military pilot thought he had dropped the BDU-33 bomb, equipped with a dummy warhead, over a field in Kansas during a routine training mission out of Tulsa on Thursday.
A couple returned home to the Canyon Creek apartment complex and found the ordnance partly buried in the foundation and the power knocked out, said Jason Willingham, a Tulsa police officer.
The fighter aircraft was en route to Smokey Hill Gunnery Range in Salina, Kan., on a routine mission, according to a statement released Friday by the Oklahoma Air National Guard’s 138th Fighter Wing.
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from abc: The death toll in Joplin, Mo., rose to 90 today as officials described the monster tornado that hit the city as a "once in a generation event." Meteorological records show that this was the deadliest tornado since 1953 when a twister hit Worcester, Mass., and caused 90 fatalities. Rescuers shifted through rubble today looking for survivors as high winds and hail continues to plague the area. The tornado blasted a six mile wide path through the city and left trapped survivors crying out for help this morning. "You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That's really what it looked like," Kerry Sachetta, the principal of Joplin High School, which was mangled by the tornado. "I couldn't even make out the side of the building. It was total devastation in my view. I just couldn't believe what I saw."
