from nytimes.com: The coming 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster (on April 15) hasn’t escaped the notice of the home video industry, whose eagle-eyed marketing executives have pounced on the opportunity to release what seems to be every known basic-cable documentary, television mini-series and feature film to examine the subject. It would probably take another hundred years to watch them all end to end, so rich has been our culture’s fascination with the Titanic, a tragedy large enough to provide a functioning allegory for the apocalypse, yet not so huge as to defy rational comprehension. This is a catastrophe you can get your mind around.
The king of this world is James Cameron’s 1997 romantic fantasy “Titanic,” which returns to theater screens on Wednesday, tricked out in a computer generated 3-D version. But there have been many other film versions, including “Saved From the Titanic,” a 1912 one-reeler starring Dorothy Gibson, who had actually survived the disaster and is credited as a co-writer, and a German propaganda film from 1943 that did not please Joseph Goebbels and was quickly banned. (The German “Titanic” was restored in 2004 and is available from Kino International.) The most sober in tone and historically reliable of the Titanic films remains Roy Ward Baker’s British production of 1958, “A Night to Remember.” An early release of the Criterion Collection, the film has now been reissued, in Blu-ray and standard definition, from a thoroughly restored print, accompanied by a generous selection of supplementary material.
cnn reports growing outrage against porno scanners from threat level: Air travelers, mark your calendar. An activist opposed to the new invasive body scanners in use at airports around the country just designated Wednesday, Nov. 24 as a National Opt-Out Day. He’s encouraging airline passengers to decline the TSA’s technological strip searches en masse on that day as a protest against the scanners, as well as the new “enhanced pat-downs” inflicted on refuseniks.
“The goal of National Opt-Out Day is to send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change,” reads the call to action at OptOutDay.com, set up by Brian Sodegren. “No naked body scanners, no government-approved groping. We have a right to privacy, and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we’re guilty until proven innocent.”
The planned protest taps a growing unease over the full-body scans. Privacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center are seeking a court order to halt the use of invasive scanners, saying the scanners are illegal and violate passenger privacy.
They also say the government has done little to ensure that images taken by the devices are not saved. The TSA has asserted that the machines cannot store pictures, but security personnel at a courthouse in Florida were found to not only have saved images but shared them among colleagues in order to humiliate one of their co-workers.
"don't let a pregnancy get in the way of your crack habit":
why drug addicts are getting sterilized for cash from time: When Joanne Chavarria's grandmother died last summer, she coped by turning to the bottle. "I started to drink. And then I started to smoke some weed. And then I started doing meth," says the 32-year-old from Merced, Calif. Chavarria, who began abusing drugs at the age of 12, was eight months pregnant at the time. Last August, she gave birth to drug-addicted twins, and California's Child Protective Services took the infants, as well as Chavarria's three other children, into custody. As with other addicts, the road to recovery for Chavarria began with counseling and a drug-rehabilitation program. Less orthodox, however, was her decision to undergo a tubal ligation. "Addicts in my situation need to get their tubes tied," she says. "When you stop having kids, it makes you think about what else you can do in life." Chavarria had the procedure done after meeting with Project Prevention, a North Carolina–based charity that gives drug addicts $300 if they go on long-term birth control or undergo sterilization. The aim of Barbara Harris, 57, the organization's controversial founder, is to prevent addicts from having children they can't care for and reduce the number of babies who are born exposed to drugs.
'national level exercise 2010' overview - may17-21: 'nle 10' w/ domestic nuke scenario from socal martial law alerts: NLE 09 which occurred at the end of July last year, had an unprecedented amount of military movement and training for martial law. This year's National Level Exercise will be fully integrated with Eagle Horizon 2010, a drill focusing on continuity of government (COG--also known as Rex 84, and the implementation of PDD-51). NLE 09 did not have this added component.
Scenario: An improvised nuclear device detonation in a major US city. This is a "domestic terrorism" focused drill. Response to such destruction and COG plans enacted. Summary of NLE 10 here. Summary of Eagle Horizon 2009 (for reference) here.
former nazi is 'a great american,' say oregon neighbors from west linn tidings: The federal government is charging that Peter Egner is a Nazi war criminal. His friends in West Linn cannot believe it. It came as a shock to them last week when the Department of Justice issued an announcement that it is requesting that Egner’s citizenship be revoked for lying about his service with a notorious SS mobile killing unit. The charges listed in the DOJ complaint are of the utmost severity: During Egner’s service in the organization in 1941 and 1942, the Einsatzgruppe was responsible for the deaths of more than 17,000 Serbian civilians – Jewish men, women and children, communists, suspected communists and Gypsies.
aipac founder's files reveal shift to stealth lobbying from prnewswire: Six decades ago Americans working as registered Israeli foreign agents launched New York, Washington and Los Angeles "Israel Office of Information (IOI)" branches. Newly declassified records document IOI actions that forever changed foreign government lobbying on Capitol Hill. The 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was strictly enforced at that time to shield the US Congress and American citizens from the effects of foreign propaganda and stealth lobbying. FARA required biannual disclosure of all propaganda activities on behalf of foreign principals to the DOJ. Beleaguered by reporting requirements and citations for deficient declarations, IOI director Isaiah L. Kenen coordinated shifting Israel lobbying away from FARA oversight, as he later noted in his book Israel's Defense Line: "Israelis began looking for a lobbyist to promote the necessary legislation...would I leave the Israeli delegation for six months to lobby on Capitol Hill? ... There were other questions. Should I continue my registration as an agent of the Israel government? Was it appropriate for an embassy to lobby? Embassies talked to the State Department, and American voters talked to their congressmen."
hitler's bookmark surfaces in federal bust from dpa: A man was charged in the United States on Wednesday with trying to sell a golden bookmark once given to Adolf Hitler to cheer him up after losing the Battle of Stalingrad. Christian Popescu, 37, of Kenmore, Washington, was arrested after FBI agents posing as potential buyers set up a meeting to purchase the 18-carat-gold artifact in a Starbucks parking lot, the US Justice Department said. Hitler's companion, Eva Braun, is believed to have given the bookmark to the dictator after the Soviet Red Army defeated Nazi German forces in the 1943 battle for Stalingrad, a key turning point in the war on the Eastern Front. 'My Adolf, don't worry. The mischievous event with Paulus was only an inconvenience that will not break your certainty of victory,' said the bookmark's inscription in German, referring to the German Army general who lost the battle. 'My love for you will be eternal, just like our Reich.' It features a side view of Hitler's face below an eagle clutching a swastika.
vatican to keep hitler’s pope papers secret from tribune magazine: Archival material pertaining to the pontificate of Pius XII – the man known as “Hitler’s Pope” – will not be disclosed to the public within the next six or seven years, the Vatican has announced. In response to a request by Rabbi David Rosen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Department for Interreligious Affairs, who was received last weekend at the Vatican by Pope Benedict XVI, the Reverend Federico Lombardi said that while requests to make the wartime archive available were “understandable” it would take “six or seven years” to prepare the 16 million documents. But Rabbi Rosen added that Benedict XVI would give “serious consideration” to his request not to proceed with the beatification of Pius XII, the penultimate step to canonisation, until the archives have been opened. The papacy of Pius XII from 1939 to 1958 was extremely controversial and continues to plague the Vatican today.
US opposes anti-nazi resolution at un general assembly from ria novosti: The UN General Assembly on social and humanitarian issues has adopted a draft resolution proposed by Russia on tackling a rise in the glorification of Nazism and the desecration of WWII monuments. The draft resolution on "combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," is aimed at tackling the practice in the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Estonia of honoring SS veterans who fought for Nazi Germany during WWII. "Nazi monuments are unveiled in a ceremonial atmosphere and the dates of liberation from the Nazis are proclaimed as days of mourning," Russia's UN representative, Grigory Lykyantsev, told the UN, adding that "this attitude towards anti-fascist veterans plays into the hands of those who call for 'a pure race.'" The resolution was passed with 122 countries voting in favor, while 54 delegations abstained, including Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia. Only the U.S. voted against. The resolution is now practically guaranteed to be adopted at the next UN General Assembly session in December.
(...and again, it's just coincidence that there's a movie coming out about all this...)
evidence suggests cia funded experiments at state hospital from rutland herald: Few people in Vermont remember Dr. Robert W. Hyde, but one of his former patients can’t forget him. The doctor was involved in one of the nation’s darkest chapters in medical science: In the 1950s, Hyde conducted drug and psychological experiments at a Boston hospital through funding that apparently originated with the CIA. Later, he became director of research at the Vermont State Hospital. The patient, Karen Wetmore, is convinced that Hyde and other researchers subjected her and possibly other patients to experiments paid for by the CIA at the Waterbury facility. In addition to her claim, new evidence, though incomplete, suggests that such tests might have been conducted at the Vermont State Hospital. Several books and numerous newspaper accounts have detailed how techniques developed through testing, including on mental health patients at hospitals in other parts of the country, are related to the interrogation methods used in Guantanamo and other locations in the war on terror. These well-known and well-documented drug experiments began in secret after the Korean War and were sponsored by the U.S. government. News accounts and histories of the experiments have not mentioned the Vermont State Hospital, but a congressional committee concluded that dozens of institutions, some of which have never been identified, were involved in secret experiments for the CIA.
jim jones, guyana 'suicides' & harvey milk's premonitions of death
from alex constantine: The murders of Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk had all the earmarks of mind control. Dan White, their assassin, had been a paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne Division, in which capacity he served in Vietnam. He was discharged from Fort Bragg in 1967, returned to San Francisco and joined the police department. He lived in Sausolito, drove a Porsche and generally lived far beyond his means. In 1972 he gave it all up and took a vacation since known as White's "missing year." Back in San Francisco, he joined the fire department. His temper tantrums were an embarrassment to co-workers, though his work record was without blemish. In his run for the Board of Supervisors, White spoke as if he was "programmed," according to Stan Smith, a local labor leader. During Board sessions, White was known to slip into lapses of silence punctuated by goose-stepping walks around the chambers. White used illegal hollow-point bullets. After Milk's body was cremated, the ashes were enshrined at his prior direction with bubble bath, signifying his homosexuality, and several packets of Kool-Aid, a clue that Milk left behind, per the will he'd revised a week before the shootings, to signify Jim Jones of the People's Temple, a CIA mind control experiment that ended with the destruction of 1200 subjects. "I can be killed with ease," Milk noted in a poem written the month he died, "I can be cut right down." In his new will, he wrote: "Let the bullets that rip through my brain smash every closet door in the country."
the 30 greatest conspiracy theories in history from rogue government: The London Telegraph goes over, according to them, the 30 greatest conspiracy theories of all time trying to convince people that factual information on historical events are actually conspiracy theories. Everything from Chemtrails to the 9/11 attacks is covered and they are all crazy conspiracy theories according to the fine journalists at the London Telegraph.
the irony of george carlin being bleeped, posthumously, at awards from washington post: George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" was so far ahead of its time - or maybe just so plain profane - in 1972 that you still can't utter the Big Seven on prime-time broadcast television, or read them in a fine upstanding newspaper such as this one. And as it happens, you can't necessarily hear them at the Kennedy Center, either. The center, which programs many high-minded acts and shows, has no specific prohibition on profanity or nudity, and has occasionally hosted events that have had both... "We do not censor the art on our stages," spokesman John Dow says. People who attended the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony this week, however, got a bleepin' earful when a clip was shown of Carlin, the night's posthumous honoree, doing the "Seven Words" routine. But in place of the those words - which Carlin famously described as the ones that will "infect your soul, curve your spine and lose the war for the Allies" - came . . . bleeps. Lots and lots of bleeps - a veritable censorious symphony of them.
from thinkprogress: During an event in San Francisco Tuesday morning, a protester tried to “smack handcuffs onKarl Rove, but Rove slapped back, and the woman was taken off stage.” ... When Rove complained of negative campaign tactics by Democrats, his co-panelist — former Sen. Majority Leader George Mitchell — quipped, “I have to say, I feel like Dorothy in the Land of Oz hearing you lecture about negative campaigns by others.”
from kgo: Police and firefighters are testing the city's response time in a theoretical weapons attack. Several blocks in San Francisco's financial district were closed down for the day.
The fire department was calling this a real public-private partnership as they got the owners of the downtown building at 555 California Street to allow them to let it fall victim to a mock emergency. The scene was the aftermath of a chemical attack in a downtown high rise - luckily this was only a drill.
About 500 emergency responders from San Francisco, surrounding cities, the FBI and the Army are participating in this mock release of weapons of mass destruction.
There was also drama at 1 Post Street. A mock shooter went on a rampage where another unidentified chemical had been released.
olympic torch relay was started by the nazis from the sun: The Olympic flame dates from ancient Greece – but the torch relay was devised by the Nazis. Propaganda chief Carl Diem had the idea for the Berlin Olympics in 1936. The relay from Greece to Berlin was meant to represent the “progression” of Adolf Hitler’s “superior race”. It ended with a youth plunging the torch into the brazier at the Olympic Stadium. Despite its Nazi links, the concept of the eternal Olympic flame caught on.
gulf war illness 'chemical link' from bbc: There is evidence linking chronic health problems suffered by Gulf War veterans to exposure to pesticides and nerve agents, US research has found. A third of veterans of the 1991 war experienced fatigue, muscle or joint pain, sleeping problems, rashes and breathing troubles, the research found. US Congress-appointed committee on Gulf War illnesses analysed more than 100 studies in the research. It found evidence linking the problems to a particular class of chemicals. These were an anti-nerve gas agent given to troops, pesticides used to control sand-flies, and the nerve-gas sarin that troops may have been exposed to during the demolition of a weapons depot.
plan to spray toxic bio-chemicals over san francisco from natural news: People of the world, the US Government is planning to poison more than two million people, in California, using an untested biological "pesticide" this summer. The chemical to be sprayed is classified by the EPA as a "pesticide" and the plan is to douse cities with this chemical designed to stick on everything for 90 days or longer. This application is not a one time event, but will continue every 1-3 months for as long as five years. The pesticide to be sprayed is not designed to harm the light brown apple moth's who it is designed for, but merely to confuse its mating habits. While harmless to moths, the pesticide has been documented to harm humans.
mankind's secrets kept in lunar ark from sunday times: If civilisation is wiped out on Earth, salvation may come from space. Plans are being drawn up for a “Doomsday ark” on the moon containing the essentials of life and civilisation, to be activated in the event of earth being devastated by a giant asteroid or nuclear war. Construction of a lunar information bank, discussed at a conference in Strasbourg last month, would provide survivors on Earth with a remote-access toolkit to rebuild the human race.
9/11 victims identified from new dna finds from guardian: A fresh effort to identify victims of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre is under way in New York following the discovery of fragments of human remains in the area around Ground Zero... "We've made numerous links to previously identified victims," said Adams. "We also have new IDs that have come out of this project. Once the DNA testing really comes full circle it will be fascinating to see how many new IDs we get."
who warned willie brown?
from 9/11 blogger: Prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, Willie Brown, who was the incumbent mayor of San Francisco at the time, received a warning advising that Americans should be cautious about their air travel (San Francisco Chronicle 9/12/01). The warning, given to Brown eight hours before the onset of the 9/11 attacks, reportedly came from his “security people at the airport” as he tells it.
unraveling of the official 9/11 story continues from people's voice: Today in America, we are witness to a great unraveling, the likes of which we have never seen before. There are no historical precedents. For many months now the official narrative about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on America has been coming apart, and I mean: at the seams. The official story about that terrible day is disintegrating. The trend shows no sign of abating and in recent weeks it even appears to have accelerated. At the present rate, soon there will be nothing left of the official version of events but a discordant echo and a series of extremely rude after shocks. Is our nation prepared to face those rude shocks?
fair use notice: this site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. we are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, & social justice issues, etc. we believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. In accordance with title 17 usc section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
