Political observers like The Atlantic‘s Andrew Sullivan have argued that one of the most dangerous elements of the Bush administration’s torture policies was the risk that a “torture mentality” would take hold in American society.
Those who seek evidence for that theory need look no further than Great Falls, Montana, where two teacher’s aides have been charged with using water torture on a middle school student.
Julie Ann Parrish and Kristina Marie Kallies face one count each of felony abuse after allegations that they forced a 13-year-old autistic boy’s head under water after he fell asleep in class. They also stand accused of “forcing him to sit in his soiled pants for hours and making him eat his own vomit when he got sick,” reports KTLA in Los Angeles.
Gary Null spoke very passionately last week at the NY State Assembly about the dangers of Mercury, or thimerosal, in vaccines. Health Care workers were ready to lose their jobs, and many became involved in suing the State through a Union, as mentioned below. Although they say this is due to a vaccine shortage, I will quietly write this off as a victory for the people, by the people. -Brian
New York public health workers will no longer be required to be vaccinated against both the seasonal and H1N1 flu virus, state officials announced Thursday, prompted by a vaccine shortage.
A statement from Gov. David Paterson announced the policy change on behalf of State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines.
Daines had originally said that public health workers must be vaccinated for the seasonal flu and the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, by November 30 or risk discipline.
The Public Employees Federation, New York’s second-largest state employees union, sued over the requirement and was awaiting a state Supreme Court hearing scheduled for October 30.
A coalition of top musicians, including R.E.M. and Pearl Jam, want to know if their music was used by the U.S. military as part of controversial interrogation methods at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The artists have endorsed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, which were filed Thursday morning, asking the U.S. government to declassify documents that would reveal which artists’ work was used on detainees at U.S. prison facilities and military detention centers, including the one at Guantanamo Bay.
The requests are being filed with “a dozen different agencies and components of the Department of Defense,” Doyle said.
Source: The Brad Blog (Thanks for the great coverage of Sibel Brad)
The military news outlet Military.com is covering the story of FBI linguist-turned-whistelblower Sibel Edmonds as their lead story today.
Reporter Bryant Jordan’s 1,500 word feature includes a background summary of Edmonds’ story, which The BRAD BLOG has been detailing for years, and a summary of the allegations she offered under oath last August in her sworn deposition following seven years of “forced silence” under a court-ordered gag due to the so-called “State Secrets Privilege” twice-invoked by George W. Bush’s Department of Justice. A good round-up of the startling information Edmonds says she gleaned while listening to and translating wiretaps in the counterintelligence division at the FBI after 9/11 is offered throughout his coverage.
Jordan’s piece is well reported and includes, for the first time to our knowledge, several forms of denials of Edmonds allegations by some of Bush’s key State and Defense Department officials — such as Richard Perle and Douglas Feith — who, she says, were participants in espionage plots against the United States in order to share military and even nuclear secrets with Turkish and Israeli government operatives.
Note: for better readability, we have removed important references to this online version of the paper. The original published version contains several pages of references.
“Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues? … NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.” NIST Responses to FAQs, August 2006
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has had considerable difficulty determining a politically correct sequence of events for the unprecedented destruction of three World Trade Center (WTC) buildings on 9/11. But despite a number of variations in NIST’s story, it never considered explosives or pyrotechnic materials in any of its hypotheses. This omission is at odds with several other striking facts; first, the requirement of the national standard for fire investigation (NFPA 921), which calls for testing related to thermite and other pyrotechnics, and second, the extensive experience NIST investigators have with explosive and thermite materials. Read the rest of this entry »
In Part I of this series, Raw Story revealed that Bryan Whitman, the current deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, was an active senior participant in a Bush administration covert Pentagon program that used retired military analysts to generate positive wartime news coverage.
A months-long review of documents and interviews with Pentagon personnel has revealed that the Bush Administration’s military analyst program — aimed at selling the Iraq war to the American people — operated through a secretive collaboration between the Defense Department’s press and community relations offices.
Raw Story has also uncovered evidence that directly ties the activities undertaken in the military analyst program to an official US military document’s definition of psychological operations — propaganda that is only supposed to be directed toward foreign audiences.
Last Friday, I was motivated to take a local action here in
California. It is my first action in a campaign I am
starting to “Get Tough On 9/11 Crime”. Those words are in
the mainstream, and used by our politicians, and now I am
adopting them in my quest to focus attention upward, toward
those responsible for the events of September 11th.
Jerry Brown is the Attorney General of California. I
delivered the following letter to his office in the State
Building in Oakland. I hope this action inspires
other to consider what they can do on a local level.
Lenders reclaimed 585 homes in Sonoma County during the third quarter, nearly seven foreclosures per day, according to a report released Tuesday by MDA DataQuick, a San Diego real estate research firm. It marked the largest number of foreclosures in a year, up from 478 in the second quarter.
However, lenders are sending fewer mortgage default notices, a step that precedes foreclosure. Mortgage defaults declined 6 percent in the third quarter, compared to the preceding quarter, although the 1,282 notices remain close to record levels set in early 2008.
This tale begins during and shortly after 9/11/2001, when a writer named Randy Lavello published a story at Prison Planet, Bombs in the Building: World Trade Center ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is a Conspiracy Fact. Among the many tales in this article, a number of which were picked up in Mike Rivero’s web site, what really happened, is a conversation between Lavello and Lieutenant Fireman and former Auxiliary Police Officer, Paul Isaac Jr. It’s a head-spinner…
“[Lieutenant Fireman and former Auxiliary Police Officer, Paul Isaac Jr.] explained to me [Lavello] that, ‘many other firemen know there were bombs in the buildings, but they’re afraid for their jobs to admit it because the ‘higher-ups’ forbid discussion of this fact.” Paul further elaborated that former CIA director Robert Woolsey, as the Fire Department’s Anti-terrorism Consultant, is sending a gag order down the ranks. ‘There were definitely bombs in those buildings,’ he told me.”
KABUL – – A United Nations-backed panel Monday tossed out hundreds of thousands of ballots cast in August for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and independent election observers said the new figures dictated that a runoff election should take place.
Karzai and election officials loyal to the president appeared to balk at accepting the fraud investigators’ findings that he did not win the majority needed for a first-round victory in the landmark presidential election. That would trigger a runoff with his main challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.
Posted by Brian 
