By a 5-4 vote, the justices say current protections are enough for convicts who believe old genetic evidence will exonerate them.
By David G. Savage
June 19, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The Supreme Court said Thursday that DNA possesses a unique ability to free the innocent and convict the guilty, but the justices nonetheless ruled that prisoners do not have a constitutional right to demand DNA testing of evidence that remains in police files.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court's conservative bloc agreed to stand back and allow states to work out the rules for new testing of old crime samples.
Already, 47 states and the federal government have enacted laws or rules that allow prisoners under some circumstances to obtain DNA tests, the high court said.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the majority saw no need for "a free-standing and far-reaching constitutional right of access to this type of evidence." Upholding such a right "would take the development of rules and procedures in this area of out of the hands of legislatures and state courts shaping policy in a focused manner and turn it over to federal courts," he wrote in the opinion.
While Roberts stressed the virtues of judicial restraint, the dissenters said the court was abdicating its duty to seek justice.
Alaska does not give prisoners the right to obtain DNA testing, and William Osborne, who was convicted of rape, belatedly sought testing of a semen sample. He and another man were accused of abducting a prostitute near Anchorage, beating her and leaving her nearly dead in the snow. She survived and identified Osborne as her attacker.
His lawyer did not seek DNA testing during his trial, but Osborne sued to obtain the tests after his conviction. He even offered to pay for the test.
Osborne won in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but lost in the Supreme Court on Thursday.
Justice John Paul Stevens, in dissent, said Alaska has the evidence that "will conclusively establish" whether Osborne committed the rape.
"If he did, justice has been served by his conviction and sentence," Stevens wrote. "If not, Osborne has needlessly spent decades behind bars while the true culprit has not been brought to justice."
Stevens said the prisoner in this situation has a right to "test the evidence at his own expense and to thereby ascertain the truth once and for all."
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer joined in dissent.
Besides Alaska, only Massachusetts and Oklahoma have not decreed by law that at least some inmates can obtain DNA testing. The Innocence Project in New York says 232 people have been freed from prison through DNA testing.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-dna19-2009jun19,0,5346519.story
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
NASA wants to build a toxic sewage system on the moon
The planned October 9, 2009 bombing of the moon by a NASA orbiter that will bomb the moon with a 2-ton kinetic weapon to create a 5 mile wide deep crater as an alleged water-seeking and lunar colonization experiment, is contrary to space law prohibiting environmental modification of celestial bodies. The NASA moon bombing, a component of the LCROSS mission, may also trigger conflict with known extraterrestrial civilizations on the moon as reported on the moon in witnessed statements by U.S. astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, and in witnessed statements to NSA (National Security Agency) photos and documents regarding an extraterrestrial base on the dark side of the moon.
If the true intent of the LCROSS mission moon bombing is a hostile act by NASA against known extraterrestrial civilizations and settlements on the moon, then NASA and by extension the U.S. government are guilty of aggressive war which is the most serious of war crimes under the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, to which the U.S. is subject. The U.N. Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. has ratified, requires that “ The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.” 98 nations have ratified and 125 nations have signed the U.N. Outer Space Treaty.
NASA’s LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission
The NASA LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission, which departed on Earth on June 18, 2009. According to one report, “Flying over the moon's southern hemisphere, LCROSS will use its high-precision instruments, as well as close-up images of the terrain gathered by the lunar orbiter, to seek out a crater just shallow enough and dark enough to be a prime bombing target.
“There, acting as what the Ames team calls its "shepherding spacecraft," LCROSS will guide an empty Centaur rocket weighing two tons toward its target. The rocket will crash into the crater at 5,600 mph, creating a new crater - perhaps as large as 5 miles wide. The crash is scheduled to occur Oct. 9.”
The two-ton Centaur rocket qualifies as a space-based kinetic weapon. The reason alleged by NASA for the mission is that “the [LCROSS} probes will map possible landing sites and search for water sources that could be used by a future lunar colony.”
According to NASA, “The Mission Objectives of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) include confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole. The identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the Moon. LCROSS will excavate the permanently dark floor of one of the Moon’s polar craters with two heavy impactors in 2009 to test the theory that ancient ice lies buried there. The impact will eject material from the crater’s surface to create a plume that specialized instruments will be able to analyze for the presence of water (ice and vapor), hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.
U.S. astronauts, NASA employees, Soviet scientists, NSA confirm the extraterrestrial presence on the moon
There are confirmed reports of an extraterrestrial presence on the moon, both from U.S. astronauts who have visited the moon, from NASA employees, from Soviet scientists and observers of the NASA moon visits, and from witnessed NSA (National Security Agency) reports on a moon based on the far side of the moon.
One report states that, “In a 2006 television documentary, ‘Apollo 11: The Untold Story,’ Buzz Aldrin admitted for the first time publicly that the astronauts saw UFOs on their trip to the Moon, but they were not allowed to discuss this information on the live audio feed to NASA. He stated that he felt it would have caused a ‘panic.’”
Other research on witnessed corroboration of U.S. astronaut sightings of an extraterrestrial presence on the Moon states, “According to hitherto unconfirmed reports, both Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin saw UFOs shortly after their historic landing on the Moon in Apollo 11 on 21 July 1969. I remember hearing one of the astronauts refer to a "light" in or on a carter during the television transmission, followed by a request from mission control for further information. Nothing more was heard.”
“According to a former NASA employee Otto Binder, unnamed radio hams with their own VHF receiving facilities that bypassed NASA's broadcasting outlets picked up the following exchange:
“NASA: What's there? Mission Control calling Apollo 11...
“Apollo: These ‘Babies’ are huge, Sir! Enormous! OH MY GOD! You wouldn't believe it! I'm telling you there are other spacecraft out there, lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They're on the Moon watching us!
“In 1979, Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems confirmed that Armstrong had indeed reported seeing two UFOs on the rim of a crater. ‘The encounter was common knowledge in NASA,’ he revealed, ‘but nobody has talked about it until now.’
“Soviet scientists were allegedly the first to confirm the incident. ‘According to our information, the encounter was reported immediately after the landing of the module,’ said Dr. Vladimir Azhazha, a physicist and Professor of Mathematics at Moscow University. ‘Neil Armstrong relayed the message to Mission Control that two large, mysterious objects were watching them after having landed near the moon module. But his message was never heard by the public-because NASA censored it.’
“According to another Soviet scientist, Dr. Aleksandr Kazantsev, Buzz Aldrin took color movie film of the UFOs from inside the module, and continued filming them after he and Armstrong went outside. Dr. Azhazha claims that the UFOs departed minutes after the astronauts came out on to the lunar surface.
“Maurice Chatelain also confirmed that Apollo 11's radio transmissions were interrupted on several occasions in order to hide the news from the public. Before dismissing Chatelain's sensational claims, it is worth noting his impressive background in the aerospace industry and space program. His first job after moving from France was as an electronics engineer with Convair, specializing in telecommunications, telemetry, and radar. In 1959 he was in charge of an electromagnetic research group, developing new radar and telecommunications systems for Ryan. One of his eleven patents was an automatic flights to the Moon. Later, at North American Aviation, Chatelain was offered the job of designing and building the Apollo communications and data-processing systems.
“Chatelain claims that ‘all Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin-flying saucers, or UFOs, if you want to call them by that name. Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who then ordered absolute silence.’ He goes on to say:
“I think that Walter Schirra aboard Mercury 8 was the first of the astronauts to use the code name 'Santa Claus' to indicate the presence of flying saucers next to space capsules. However, his announcements were barely noticed by the general public.
“It was a little different when James Lovell on board the Apollo 8 command module came out from behind the moon and said for everybody to hear:
'PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS.'
“Even though this happened on Christmas Day 1968, many people sensed a hidden meaning in those words."
NSA photos, documents of an extraterrestrial base on the dark side of the moon
Former USAF U.S. Sgt. Karl Wolfe, a Disclosure Project witness, describes photos, documents of extraterrestrial bases on the dark side of the moon that he witnessed at the NSA (National Security Agency), in the 1960s. One report states that “Sgt Wolfe was working with Tactical Air Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in 1965. There, he was assigned to the lunar orbital project with the National Security Agency where he met an airman who confided in him that they had discovered bases in the far side of the moon.”
Sgt Wolfe’s Disclosure Project testimony, in which he states that he is willing to testify under oath before the U.S. Congress, can be seen in the video below.
One account states, “The airman told him (Wolfe) that all of the NASA photographs were sent to Langley, where they were enhanced, and eventually made into photographs to be sent to and studied by the different branches of the military. He was also told why security was of the utmost importance at the lab on this particular day-recent enhanced imagery had clearly shown structures on the far side of the Moon. These structures were definitely not created by natural forces-they were made by intelligent beings.
“’We discovered,’ the airman said, ‘a base on the back side of the Moon.’
Wolfe was in no way prepared for what he had just been told. When he airman saw Wolfe nearly shaking in disbelief, he reiterated:
“’Yes, a base on the dark side of the Moon.’
“Although Wolfe had not actually been told that some alien intelligence had made the aforementioned structures, who else could it have been? Although Russia had flown unmanned vessels around to the far side, no landing had been made, and the resources and technology needed to build a station there were far beyond that of Russia at the time. Had they made a landing on the Moon, the entire world would have known about it. And Wolfe knew America was still years from a Moon landing.
“His anxiety reached a new level. He was looking at, and being told about, something that he should not have seen or known about. He was actually afraid of being arrested and a court martial. He only wanted to finish his job, and get out of there, and forget the whole incident. He would finish the repair he was called to do, but he could never forget what he had seen that day at Langley. He would tell not a soul for 30 years.
“His release from the military also required that he not leave the United States for five years. This was a condition of his security status. He also was sworn to not reveal anything he had seen while performing his duties in the military. Wolfe would eventually put a report on what he had seen on video, which is now available on the Internet. There have also been several ex-NASA employees who have come forward telling of their experiences in air brushing structures out of NASA photographs of the Moon.”
NASA’s lunar bombing violates space law and must be stopped
NASA’s use of a 2-ton empty Centaur rocket as a kinetic weapon violates space law in multiple ways and must be stopped, in flight or in lunar orbit, which the LCROSS lunar orbiter reaches on Tuesday June 23, 2009.
The bombing of the moon with a kinetic weapon to create a 5 mile crater is a per se violation of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. has ratified, irrespective of its being designed as part of an experiment related to lunar colonization.
The U.N. Outer Space Treaty (Article III) provides that “States Parties to the Treaty shall carry on activities in the exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, in accordance with international law, including the Charter of the United Nations.”
The Moon Treaty (Agreement Governing The Activities Of States On The Moon And Other Celestial Bodies (1979)) addresses and bans the specific activity bombing of the moon carried out unilaterally by the U.S. The Moon Treaty prohibits disruption of the environment of the Moon. The LCROSS bombing constitutes a disruption of the delicate balance of the lunar ecology. Article 7 of the Moon Treaty states:
Article 7 of the Moon Treaty
“1. In exploring and using the moon, States Parties shall take measures to
prevent the disruption of the existing balance of its environment whether
by introducing adverse changes in that environment, by its harmful
contamination through the introduction of extra-environmental matter or
otherwise. States Parties shall also take measures to avoid harmfully
affecting the environment of the earth through the introduction of
extraterrestrial matter or otherwise.
“2. States Parties shall inform the Secretary-General of the United
Nations of the measures being adopted by them in accordance with
paragraph 1 of this article and shall also, to the maximum extent
feasible, notify him in advance of all placements by them of radio-active
materials on the moon and of the purposes of such placements.
“3. States Parties shall report to other States Parties and to the
Secretary-General concerning areas of the moon having special scientific
interest in order that, without prejudice to the rights of other States
Parties, consideration may be given to the designation of such areas as
international scientific preserves for which special protective
arrangements are to be agreed upon in consultation with the competent
bodies of the United Nations.”
Although the U.S. has not ratified the Moon Treaty, 13 nations have, and it can be construed as a relevant international standard of what constitutes “international law” under the U.N. Outer Space Treaty.
Is NASA’s LCROSS bombing of the moon a camouflaged attack or attempt to impose moon sovereignty by the U.S.?
There is witnessed evidence, through the testimony of UASF SGT Karl Wolfe and through the statements of U.S. astronauts, NASA employees, former Soviet scientists that the U.S., and its agencies NASA and the NSA has had scientific evidence that the moon has extraterrestrial civilizations and present settlements on it for more than 40 years, since the 1960s.
The U.S. has not attempted any public, peaceful diplomacy with the civilizations on the moon. In fact, the U.S. has imposed an embargo on public knowledge that settlements and an extraterrestrial presence exist on the moon.
What is touted as a scientific experiment – the bombing of the moon – may in reality be an attempt to impose de facto U.S. sovereignty on the moon. Article II of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. has signed, states: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
Moreover, the LCROSS bombing of the moon may be an intentional hostile act by the U.S. (which has know the moon is inhabited for at least 40 years by other civilizations), a kind of “shot across the bow” to mark turf against other intelligent civilizations on the moon.
The U.N. Outer Space Treaty prohibits non-peaceful activities on the moon. Article IV states, “The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.”
NASA’s LCROSS bombing of the moon must be stopped, while the lunar orbiter is in orbit, before the bombing occurs on October 9, 2009.
Twitter Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Centre, to stop LCROSS bombing
If you are interested in stopping NASA’s LCROSS bombing, please write Pete Worden,
Director of the NASA Ames Centre, which oversees LCROSS. You can twitter Worden at http://twitter.com/worden.
For more info:
Space Preservation Treaty: http://www.peaceinspace.org/
http://www.examiner.com/x-2912-Seattle-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2009m6d19-NASA-moon-bombing-violates-space-law--may-cause-conflict-with-lunar-extraterrestrial-civilizations
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Nasa prepares to bomb the moon
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Nasa scientists are preparing to launch a space mission from Cape Canaveral carrying a missile that will fire a hole deep in the surface of the moon
Telegraph UK
By Ben Leach
Published: 8:36AM BST 18 Jun 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5566137/Nasa-prepares-to-bomb-the-moon.html
The aim is to see whether any traces of water will be revealed by the disruption caused to the planet's surface. Nasa will analyse the space cloud caused by the explosion for any sign of water or vapour.
Scientists expect the impact to blast out a huge cloud of dust, gas and vaporized water ice at least 6 miles high - making it visible from Earth.
If the search is successful it could provide vital supplies for a moonbase. The moon is mostly dry desert but ice may be trapped in craters which never see sunlight.
The unmanned Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission (LCROSS) will fire a Centaur rocket into the surface at twice the speed of a bullet.
An accompanying spacecraft will orbit the moon for a year looking for possible landing sites for astronauts. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will spend at least a year creating the most minutely detailed map of the moon's surface ever seen.
The vessel swill be the first American spacecrafts to make a lunar trip since 1999.
Astronomers have long thought that a rain of comets brought water to the arid, lifeless moon over billions of years.
In the past few years, at least two American spacecraft reported the presence of water by detecting hints of hydrogen and oxygen - the constituents of water - frozen deep in the darkest recesses of craters around both the north and south lunar poles.
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NASA/Ames ready to explode one of the coolest space missions ever
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Mercury News
By Mike Swift
Posted: 06/15/2009 12:00:00 AM PDT
http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_12590357?nclick_check=1
In an unprecedented scientific endeavor — and what may be one of the coolest space missions ever — NASA is preparing to fly a rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm the presence of water.
The four-month mission of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will be directed from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, is to discover whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. As a potential source of oxygen for life support and hydrogen for rocket fuel, that water would be a tremendous boost to NASA's plans to restart human exploration of the moon.
But the launch is scheduled for Thursday at Cape Canaveral, Fla. It was delayed a day to allow repairs to the space shuttle.
Shuttle Endeavour must fly by this weekend. Otherwise the mission to deliver the final piece of the Japanese space station lab must wait until mid-July because of unfavorable sun angles that would heat up the shuttle. The moon mission — NASA's first in a decade — must be launched by Saturday as well. Otherwise it will have to wait until the end of the month for another shot.
LCROSS is a crucial mission for Ames because it marks a return to the business of controlling space missions from Silicon Valley's NASA base, something the center hopes to build on during the next five years. Ames has planned a public
ceremony around the launch, starting at about 11 a.m., featuring Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt.
And for the 20-odd scientists who helped plan the $79 million LCROSS mission and who will take command of the spacecraft after the launch, the final days before the scheduled launch have been filled with goose-bump anticipation and nagging midnight worries.
"This has been years," Paul Tompkins, the LCROSS flight director, said of the mission preparations. "All of us have poured our lives into this."
Intense period
For Kimberly Ennico, the LCROSS payload scientist, those worries are focused on a critical moment less than two hours into the mission, when controllers will signal the spacecraft to turn itself on.
NASA is launching two spacecraft to the moon on a single Atlas V rocket — LCROSS and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a probe that will map the surface in a search for safe landing sites for astronauts. Because LRO is the primary spacecraft, LCROSS must be switched off at launch. Ennico's nine precious instruments have been cold and dark since February — she can tell you the exact number of days — and they will need to work well as the spacecraft hurtles toward a flyby of the moon scheduled for about 3:30 a.m. next Monday, assuming the spacecraft is launched Wednesday.
The entire first week will be an intense period for the controllers at Ames. Working overlapping 13-hour shifts, they will turn the spacecraft on after the orbiter separates, confirm LCROSS was not damaged during launch, perform a critical trajectory burn and complete the 40-minute lunar flyby, which NASA will stream on its Web site.
"Nothing," Ennico said, "is really routine about this mission."
LCROSS will use the moon's gravity during the flyby to catapult itself into an orbit that will take it as far as 500,000 miles away from the moon while NASA finalizes which crater to aim the spacecraft at in October.
Visible debris
LCROSS may be one of NASA's most participatory missions. If the spacecraft launches on schedule at 12:51 p.m. Wednesday, it would hit the moon in the early morning hours of Oct. 8. The cloud from the 350 metric tons of debris kicked up by the Centaur booster should spread six miles above the surface of the moon, hitting the sunlight and making it visible to amateur astronomers across North America. The space agency is enlisting telescopes around the country to help monitor the impact.
The 1,664-pound spacecraft will have the best view. LCROSS will separate from the Centaur booster less than 10 hours before impact and will be less than 400 miles above the moon when the spent rocket booster collides at a speed five times faster than a bullet from a .44 Magnum. NASA plans to stream a live view from LCROSS as the Centaur, followed by the spacecraft, plows into the moon.
Over the final four minutes of its existence, as it follows the same terminal trajectory as the Centaur, LCROSS will train its instruments and cameras on the debris cloud, searching it for the chemical signature of water.
Previous spacecraft and ground-based instruments have detected signs of hydrogen near the moon's poles, and scientists are split over whether that is from ice that could have arrived through the impact of comets or by other means. That ice could have lingered for more than a billion years at the bottom of craters near the lunar poles that have never seen sunlight, where temperatures are more than 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
And despite all the serious scientific talk about hydrogen signatures and lunar regolith, flying a rocket booster into the moon at 5,600 mph to trigger a massive explosion is just flat-out cool.
"We're certainly going to be making a big splash," Ennico said. "We're going to see something, but I don't know what to expect. I know on the night of the impact, I'll be running on adrenaline."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Mike Swift at mswift@mercurynews.com or 408-271-3648. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/swiftstories.
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Japan’s moon probe makes crash landing
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Kaguya orbiter ends mission after more than a year of lunar observations
MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 8:33 p.m. CT, Wed., June 10, 2009
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31214827/
TOKYO - A Japanese probe ended more than a year of orbiting the moon with a controlled crash-landing on the lunar surface, officials said Thursday.
The Kaguya probe hit the moon at about 1825 GMT (2:25 p.m. ET) Wednesday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said in an online status report.
The probe was launched in September 2007 and completed all of its scheduled observations. Its mission was extended, and it had been in low lunar orbit since January last year.
Kaguya was due to hit the moon's surface at an angle of less than 1 degree, probably creating a red flash, a JAXA official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, citing agency policy.
If left alone, Kaguya would have eventually fallen to the moon on its own, but JAXA wanted to control its crash and make final observations, the official said.
Kaguya's trajectory took it near the moon's southern pole, JAXA said. There was a slight possibility that the impact flash might have been observed from Earth. The space agency asked sky observers to send imagery of any flashes that might have been seen.
During the Kaguya project, Japan launched two other orbiters to relay data. One fell to the moon in February, while the other has been measuring gravity around the moon and is still in orbit.
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Kaguya Moon Probe Impacts Surface
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Aviation Week
Jun 11, 2009
Kazuki Shiibashi/Tokyo
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/KAG061109.xml&headline=Kaguya%20Moon%20Probe%20Impacts%20Surface
Japan's Kaguya moon probe smashed into the lunar surface as planned at 3:25 am JST June 11, concluding a 21-month mission that began with launch on an H-IIA rocket from Tanagashima Space Center on Sept. 14, 2007.
The satellite crashed at 1.6 kilometers per second (3,600 mph) at an angle of 10 degrees on the southeast quadrant of the near side of the moon, near the Gill Crater at 80.4 degrees east longitude and 65.5 degrees south latitude.
"Everything went exactly as planned thanks to the detailed observation/operation data acquired by Kaguya itself," Project Manager Susumu Sasaki said.
"I was delighted at the point of impact, but now a couple hours later it's beginning to sink in," Sasaki continued. "I've been with the project for 14 years and it's almost as though I've lost a son. But I am also relieved it went so well." The mission previously was led by Project Manager Yoshisada Takizawa, who moved on to other administrative responsibilities last year.
Also known as the SELenological and ENgineering Explorer, or Selene, the probe began lowering its altitude in February, dropping from its 100-kilometer (60-mile) science orbit down to 50 kilometers (30 miles) to spend two months measuring the moon's magnetic field. Then in April the spacecraft descended to 10-30 kilometers for detailed observations of the lunar south pole.
Finally, at 2:36 am JST June 10, half an orbit before impact, Selene performed a 140-second thruster burn around the north pole, creating a small reverse thrust of 2.5 meters per second and setting the next predicted perigee at four kilometers below the lunar surface to ensure a crash. Sasaki said attitude control went better than expected and Kaguya's Laser Altimeter managed to measure down to around 400 meters (1,300 feet) before loss of signal.
Sasaki believes the 2,600-kilogram (5,730-pound) satellite would have only created a small crater five to ten meters wide and about a meter deep, and it would have been difficult to spot the rising debris cloud from the Earth. However he has received unconfirmed reports that ground observations were made. He says what observers saw was most likely the 40 kilograms of remaining hydrazine fuel burning at the point of impact, rather than the impact itself.
After entering its final science orbit in December 2007, Kaguya spent 10 months in its formal observation phase, followed by 7.5 months of extended operations, creating global topographic, gravitational and magnetic maps of the moon. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says it is preparing to release most of the mission data worldwide over the internet on Nov. 1, and hopes this will aid further scientific research and understanding of the moon for future space missions.
Selene was Japan's second lunar probe. India's first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan, is in orbit now, and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is set to blast off June 17. China's first lunar probe, Chang'e 1, was launched in 2007 and deorbited around the moon in March 2009.
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'Moon missiles' survive high-impact tests
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NewScientist. com news service
Rachel Courtland
09 June 2008
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14083-moon-missiles-survive-highimpact-tests.html
A UK plan to drive four 'missiles' into the Moon to study its internal structure recently got a boost when tests suggested the missiles' instruments would survive the violent impact
The probes, part of a proposed UK-NASA collaboration called MoonLITE, could launch as early as 2013. Each would carry a seismometer on board. Together, the network of sensors could use the energy of lunar quakes to map the Moon's interior and help reveal whether the Moon has an iron core, which could shed light on how it formed. A drill and instruments to test for water and other chemicals will also be on board
Each 'penetrator' may hit the Moon's surface at a speed of more than 1100 kilometres per hour, rapidly coming to a halt as much as 3 metres into lunar dust
In recent tests, the penetrators were driven by a rocket-powered train into a pile of sand at the speed they would likely hit the Moon. The collision decelerated the load by 10,000 times the strength of gravity – by comparison, ordinary rockets typically do not experience vibrations of more than 100 gs
The probe's scientific instruments seemed to survive the heavy jolt, says project lead Alan Smith of University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey, UK. "We're very very pleased," Smith told New Scientist. "We achieved far more than we expected in a very short time"
Light and rugged
To enable the penetrators' scientific instruments to survive the impact, Smith and colleagues embedded the probes' electrical components in a clear block of epoxy and bolted down everything else. Silicon microelectronics were used in some instruments to make the probe lighter and more rugged
The probes might be able to push metres down into the lunar surface before stopping. But exactly how far is unclear. "The Moon regolith is not like sand. It's more like compressed talcum powder," says Smith. "It does make it harder to penetrate"
If all goes well, the penetrators might be the first to successfully crash into an extraterrestrial object and survive to carry on measurements. The last such attempt to slam instruments into a lunar or planetary surface was in 1999, when NASA's Deep Space 2 mission sent two miniature probes to the surface of Mars
Organic chemistryAlthough the probes seemed to have impacted the surface, the agency was never able to establish communication with them. Other missions have focused on creating impacts to kick up dust or other debris that could be analysed by an orbiting spacecraft
Communication and power can be two challenges when it comes to developing such impacting probes, says Phil Christensen at Arizona State University in Tempe, US. "But penetrators have always been on the horizon," says Christensen. "There's certainly a lot of things you could do if you poke things into the ground"
On the ground, an impacting probe should be more sensitive to components like organic chemicals than an orbiter studying a plume of soil ejected by a 'dummy' penetrator would be, Christensen says
Smith says a radioactive source should be able to keep each probe's electronics warm in the cold environment of space. The probes should still be able to communicate by radio through the lunar soil, as it is relatively dry, he adds Crashing into
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John Lear - "Who Lives on the Moon?"
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Veritas Show interview - February 13th, 2009:
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/
John Lear, 66, retired airline captain and former CIA contract pilot with over 19,000 hours of flight time, over 11,000 in command of 3 or 4 engine jet transports, has flown over 100 different types of aircraft in 60 different countries around the world.
He retired in 2001 after more than 40 years of flying. Son of Learjet inventor, Bill Lear, John holds more FAA airman certificates than any other FAA certificated airman. John flew secret missions for the CIA in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa between 1967 and 1983.
During the last 17 years of his career John worked for several passenger and cargo airlines as captain, check airman and instructor. He was certified by the FAA as a North Atlantic navigation check airman. He has extensive experience as command pilot and instructor in the Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8 and Lockheed l-1011.
John held 17 world records including speed around the world in a Lear Jet model 24 set in 1966 and was presented the PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association) Award for outstanding airmanship in 1968. He is a senior vice-commander of the China Post 1, The American Legions Post for “Soldiers of Fortune”, a 25 year member of the Special Operations Association and member of pilotsfor911truth.org
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John Lear Tells All
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Part 1 of 4
A Project Camelot interview
Las Vegas, April 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj-HzHi3dF0
...now some of you may be asking why so many airlines collapsed that I worked for and why I got fired so many times. My excuse is simple. I am not the brightest crayon in the box, I am extremely lazy, I have a smart mouth and a real poor f**king attitude
John Lear
Yes, he's incorrigible and fun loving, with a great sense of humor that has served him well over these many years. Our 2006 interview with John Lear (see below) remains one of our favorites
When we met again with him recently, with considerably more time at our disposal than we had two years ago, John piled his studio table high with books, diagrams and research papers and sat down to tell us "everything he knew"
With special emphasis on the Bob Lazar saga - as only John can tell it - we cover the inconsistencies in the 911 theories and why as a world renowned pilot he is uniquely qualified to judge just what kind of planes, if
any, hit the World Trade Center (answer, none: John explains why they were holograms); why the moon's gravity may be as much as 64% that of the Earth's, and could retain a very thin atmosphere; how Ben Rich, the former Director of the Lockheed Skunk Works, was a Mossad agent; the location of the "new Area 51", called Sandia, deep within the Nevada desert; what really happened at Above Top Secret, an internet forum where he was attacked and which he has subsequently left... and much more
There's nothing here about 2012 or 'Planet X' - both of which John dismisses - but we think you will be entertained and fascinated by the reported detailed experiences and opinions of someone who deserves to be respected and admired for his courage, character, and maverick commitment to revealing what he believes is the truth
To contact Bill Ryan or Kerry Cassidy, please e-mail us at support@projectcamelot.org
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John Lear Bio
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http://www.greatdreams.com/John-Lear.htm
John Lear, retired airline captain, with over 19,000 hours of flight-time, has flown in over 100 different types of planes in 60 different counties around the world
Son of Lear Jet inventor, Bill Lear, John is the only pilot to hold every FAA airplane certificate, to include airplane transport rating, flight instructor, ground instructor, flight navigator, engineer, aircraft dispatcher, airframe powerplant mechanic, parachute rigger, and tower operator
He flew secret missions for the CIA in Central and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa between 1966 and 1983 He has flown as Captain and check pilot for over 10 different airlines
John held 17 world records including speed around the world in a Lear Jet Model 24, set in 1966. He was presented with the PATCO award for outstanding airmanship in 1968, and the Symons Wave memorial He was the youngest American to climb the Matterhorn in Switzerland in 1959 and in the 1970's owned and skippered the Americas Cup boat, the Soliloquy, out of Marina Del Rey
In 1968, John raced a Douglas B26 Invader in the unlimited class at the Reno air races
He was a Senior Vice Commander of the China Post 1, the American Legion Post for Soldiers of Fortune He is a 20 year member of the special operations Association
John is the current owner and operator of the only permitted gold mine operation Cutthroat Mining Corporation in Clarke County, Nevada. His efforts to clean up the Treasure Hawk Gold Butte mine won him the state of Nevada award for excellence in mining reclamation in 1999 John is a MSHA (Mine, Safety, and Health Administration) and holds a blaster license from the Nevada certified mining instructor from the Nevada State Fire Marshall
John's passion for the preservation and documentation of the history of the Gold Butte has made him a authority on the area
John has been a resident of Las Vegas since 1994 and was a republican State Senate candidate in 1980
John has 4 daughters, 2 grandchildren, and lives with his wife in Las Vegas - Las Vegas businesswoman, Mary Lee Lear in Sunrise Manor
In 1988, John met and became friends with Bob Lazar, the government scientist who worked on the back-engineering of the propulsion system of the extraterrestrial UFOs at area S-4 That's just outside the infamous and ultrasecret Area 51
In March 1989, Lazar took John to an area close to Rachel Nevada where he witnessed the flight of a flying saucer at the exact time Lazar told him it would occur
Two weeks later on another UFO spying mission, John, Lazar and 3 others were caught by security forces - (that's CAUGHT folks) - and the next day, - the very next day - Lazar lost his job at the government program for that breach of security. Lazar has been branded by many as a fraud, a charge to which John responds, " Those who say that Lazar was a fraud simply don't know the facts of this incredible 12 month period I was there - they weren't"
During the late 1980's, John tracked down and found the Army Intelligence Analyst who read, probably by accident, the U.S. government report Grudge 13, which documented the history of the U.S UFO coverup and details of saucer recoveries, disposition of their occupants, and handling (That's HANDLING) of civilian witnesses
The report included clear photographs of these recovered extraterrestrial craft and beings - (That's BEINGS) found inside It further detailed how recoveries were made worldwide and specially designed transports to accommodate the craft
John spent time poking around other UFO related areas to include Dulce, Secora, Aztec, Alamagorda, Albuquerque, Los Alamos and Bentwaters airbase near London
Since that time, John has learned many incredible and interesting facts about the solar system and planets including the existence of huge structures, arches, bridges and domes on the moon, cities on Mars, huge extraterrestrial ships mining the rings of Saturn, the incredible but secret agenda of Apollo 17, to the huge rectangular opening in the south massif of the Taurus-Littrow Highlands called Nansen.
If the true intent of the LCROSS mission moon bombing is a hostile act by NASA against known extraterrestrial civilizations and settlements on the moon, then NASA and by extension the U.S. government are guilty of aggressive war which is the most serious of war crimes under the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, to which the U.S. is subject. The U.N. Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. has ratified, requires that “ The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.” 98 nations have ratified and 125 nations have signed the U.N. Outer Space Treaty.
NASA’s LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission
The NASA LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission, which departed on Earth on June 18, 2009. According to one report, “Flying over the moon's southern hemisphere, LCROSS will use its high-precision instruments, as well as close-up images of the terrain gathered by the lunar orbiter, to seek out a crater just shallow enough and dark enough to be a prime bombing target.
“There, acting as what the Ames team calls its "shepherding spacecraft," LCROSS will guide an empty Centaur rocket weighing two tons toward its target. The rocket will crash into the crater at 5,600 mph, creating a new crater - perhaps as large as 5 miles wide. The crash is scheduled to occur Oct. 9.”
The two-ton Centaur rocket qualifies as a space-based kinetic weapon. The reason alleged by NASA for the mission is that “the [LCROSS} probes will map possible landing sites and search for water sources that could be used by a future lunar colony.”
According to NASA, “The Mission Objectives of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) include confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole. The identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the Moon. LCROSS will excavate the permanently dark floor of one of the Moon’s polar craters with two heavy impactors in 2009 to test the theory that ancient ice lies buried there. The impact will eject material from the crater’s surface to create a plume that specialized instruments will be able to analyze for the presence of water (ice and vapor), hydrocarbons and hydrated materials.
U.S. astronauts, NASA employees, Soviet scientists, NSA confirm the extraterrestrial presence on the moon
There are confirmed reports of an extraterrestrial presence on the moon, both from U.S. astronauts who have visited the moon, from NASA employees, from Soviet scientists and observers of the NASA moon visits, and from witnessed NSA (National Security Agency) reports on a moon based on the far side of the moon.
One report states that, “In a 2006 television documentary, ‘Apollo 11: The Untold Story,’ Buzz Aldrin admitted for the first time publicly that the astronauts saw UFOs on their trip to the Moon, but they were not allowed to discuss this information on the live audio feed to NASA. He stated that he felt it would have caused a ‘panic.’”
Other research on witnessed corroboration of U.S. astronaut sightings of an extraterrestrial presence on the Moon states, “According to hitherto unconfirmed reports, both Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin saw UFOs shortly after their historic landing on the Moon in Apollo 11 on 21 July 1969. I remember hearing one of the astronauts refer to a "light" in or on a carter during the television transmission, followed by a request from mission control for further information. Nothing more was heard.”
“According to a former NASA employee Otto Binder, unnamed radio hams with their own VHF receiving facilities that bypassed NASA's broadcasting outlets picked up the following exchange:
“NASA: What's there? Mission Control calling Apollo 11...
“Apollo: These ‘Babies’ are huge, Sir! Enormous! OH MY GOD! You wouldn't believe it! I'm telling you there are other spacecraft out there, lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They're on the Moon watching us!
“In 1979, Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems confirmed that Armstrong had indeed reported seeing two UFOs on the rim of a crater. ‘The encounter was common knowledge in NASA,’ he revealed, ‘but nobody has talked about it until now.’
“Soviet scientists were allegedly the first to confirm the incident. ‘According to our information, the encounter was reported immediately after the landing of the module,’ said Dr. Vladimir Azhazha, a physicist and Professor of Mathematics at Moscow University. ‘Neil Armstrong relayed the message to Mission Control that two large, mysterious objects were watching them after having landed near the moon module. But his message was never heard by the public-because NASA censored it.’
“According to another Soviet scientist, Dr. Aleksandr Kazantsev, Buzz Aldrin took color movie film of the UFOs from inside the module, and continued filming them after he and Armstrong went outside. Dr. Azhazha claims that the UFOs departed minutes after the astronauts came out on to the lunar surface.
“Maurice Chatelain also confirmed that Apollo 11's radio transmissions were interrupted on several occasions in order to hide the news from the public. Before dismissing Chatelain's sensational claims, it is worth noting his impressive background in the aerospace industry and space program. His first job after moving from France was as an electronics engineer with Convair, specializing in telecommunications, telemetry, and radar. In 1959 he was in charge of an electromagnetic research group, developing new radar and telecommunications systems for Ryan. One of his eleven patents was an automatic flights to the Moon. Later, at North American Aviation, Chatelain was offered the job of designing and building the Apollo communications and data-processing systems.
“Chatelain claims that ‘all Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin-flying saucers, or UFOs, if you want to call them by that name. Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who then ordered absolute silence.’ He goes on to say:
“I think that Walter Schirra aboard Mercury 8 was the first of the astronauts to use the code name 'Santa Claus' to indicate the presence of flying saucers next to space capsules. However, his announcements were barely noticed by the general public.
“It was a little different when James Lovell on board the Apollo 8 command module came out from behind the moon and said for everybody to hear:
'PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS.'
“Even though this happened on Christmas Day 1968, many people sensed a hidden meaning in those words."
NSA photos, documents of an extraterrestrial base on the dark side of the moon
Former USAF U.S. Sgt. Karl Wolfe, a Disclosure Project witness, describes photos, documents of extraterrestrial bases on the dark side of the moon that he witnessed at the NSA (National Security Agency), in the 1960s. One report states that “Sgt Wolfe was working with Tactical Air Command at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in 1965. There, he was assigned to the lunar orbital project with the National Security Agency where he met an airman who confided in him that they had discovered bases in the far side of the moon.”
Sgt Wolfe’s Disclosure Project testimony, in which he states that he is willing to testify under oath before the U.S. Congress, can be seen in the video below.
One account states, “The airman told him (Wolfe) that all of the NASA photographs were sent to Langley, where they were enhanced, and eventually made into photographs to be sent to and studied by the different branches of the military. He was also told why security was of the utmost importance at the lab on this particular day-recent enhanced imagery had clearly shown structures on the far side of the Moon. These structures were definitely not created by natural forces-they were made by intelligent beings.
“’We discovered,’ the airman said, ‘a base on the back side of the Moon.’
Wolfe was in no way prepared for what he had just been told. When he airman saw Wolfe nearly shaking in disbelief, he reiterated:
“’Yes, a base on the dark side of the Moon.’
“Although Wolfe had not actually been told that some alien intelligence had made the aforementioned structures, who else could it have been? Although Russia had flown unmanned vessels around to the far side, no landing had been made, and the resources and technology needed to build a station there were far beyond that of Russia at the time. Had they made a landing on the Moon, the entire world would have known about it. And Wolfe knew America was still years from a Moon landing.
“His anxiety reached a new level. He was looking at, and being told about, something that he should not have seen or known about. He was actually afraid of being arrested and a court martial. He only wanted to finish his job, and get out of there, and forget the whole incident. He would finish the repair he was called to do, but he could never forget what he had seen that day at Langley. He would tell not a soul for 30 years.
“His release from the military also required that he not leave the United States for five years. This was a condition of his security status. He also was sworn to not reveal anything he had seen while performing his duties in the military. Wolfe would eventually put a report on what he had seen on video, which is now available on the Internet. There have also been several ex-NASA employees who have come forward telling of their experiences in air brushing structures out of NASA photographs of the Moon.”
NASA’s lunar bombing violates space law and must be stopped
NASA’s use of a 2-ton empty Centaur rocket as a kinetic weapon violates space law in multiple ways and must be stopped, in flight or in lunar orbit, which the LCROSS lunar orbiter reaches on Tuesday June 23, 2009.
The bombing of the moon with a kinetic weapon to create a 5 mile crater is a per se violation of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. has ratified, irrespective of its being designed as part of an experiment related to lunar colonization.
The U.N. Outer Space Treaty (Article III) provides that “States Parties to the Treaty shall carry on activities in the exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, in accordance with international law, including the Charter of the United Nations.”
The Moon Treaty (Agreement Governing The Activities Of States On The Moon And Other Celestial Bodies (1979)) addresses and bans the specific activity bombing of the moon carried out unilaterally by the U.S. The Moon Treaty prohibits disruption of the environment of the Moon. The LCROSS bombing constitutes a disruption of the delicate balance of the lunar ecology. Article 7 of the Moon Treaty states:
Article 7 of the Moon Treaty
“1. In exploring and using the moon, States Parties shall take measures to
prevent the disruption of the existing balance of its environment whether
by introducing adverse changes in that environment, by its harmful
contamination through the introduction of extra-environmental matter or
otherwise. States Parties shall also take measures to avoid harmfully
affecting the environment of the earth through the introduction of
extraterrestrial matter or otherwise.
“2. States Parties shall inform the Secretary-General of the United
Nations of the measures being adopted by them in accordance with
paragraph 1 of this article and shall also, to the maximum extent
feasible, notify him in advance of all placements by them of radio-active
materials on the moon and of the purposes of such placements.
“3. States Parties shall report to other States Parties and to the
Secretary-General concerning areas of the moon having special scientific
interest in order that, without prejudice to the rights of other States
Parties, consideration may be given to the designation of such areas as
international scientific preserves for which special protective
arrangements are to be agreed upon in consultation with the competent
bodies of the United Nations.”
Although the U.S. has not ratified the Moon Treaty, 13 nations have, and it can be construed as a relevant international standard of what constitutes “international law” under the U.N. Outer Space Treaty.
Is NASA’s LCROSS bombing of the moon a camouflaged attack or attempt to impose moon sovereignty by the U.S.?
There is witnessed evidence, through the testimony of UASF SGT Karl Wolfe and through the statements of U.S. astronauts, NASA employees, former Soviet scientists that the U.S., and its agencies NASA and the NSA has had scientific evidence that the moon has extraterrestrial civilizations and present settlements on it for more than 40 years, since the 1960s.
The U.S. has not attempted any public, peaceful diplomacy with the civilizations on the moon. In fact, the U.S. has imposed an embargo on public knowledge that settlements and an extraterrestrial presence exist on the moon.
What is touted as a scientific experiment – the bombing of the moon – may in reality be an attempt to impose de facto U.S. sovereignty on the moon. Article II of the U.N. Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. has signed, states: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
Moreover, the LCROSS bombing of the moon may be an intentional hostile act by the U.S. (which has know the moon is inhabited for at least 40 years by other civilizations), a kind of “shot across the bow” to mark turf against other intelligent civilizations on the moon.
The U.N. Outer Space Treaty prohibits non-peaceful activities on the moon. Article IV states, “The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.”
NASA’s LCROSS bombing of the moon must be stopped, while the lunar orbiter is in orbit, before the bombing occurs on October 9, 2009.
Twitter Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Centre, to stop LCROSS bombing
If you are interested in stopping NASA’s LCROSS bombing, please write Pete Worden,
Director of the NASA Ames Centre, which oversees LCROSS. You can twitter Worden at http://twitter.com/worden.
For more info:
Space Preservation Treaty: http://www.peaceinspace.org/
http://www.examiner.com/x-2912-Seattle-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2009m6d19-NASA-moon-bombing-violates-space-law--may-cause-conflict-with-lunar-extraterrestrial-civilizations
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Nasa prepares to bomb the moon
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Nasa scientists are preparing to launch a space mission from Cape Canaveral carrying a missile that will fire a hole deep in the surface of the moon
Telegraph UK
By Ben Leach
Published: 8:36AM BST 18 Jun 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5566137/Nasa-prepares-to-bomb-the-moon.html
The aim is to see whether any traces of water will be revealed by the disruption caused to the planet's surface. Nasa will analyse the space cloud caused by the explosion for any sign of water or vapour.
Scientists expect the impact to blast out a huge cloud of dust, gas and vaporized water ice at least 6 miles high - making it visible from Earth.
If the search is successful it could provide vital supplies for a moonbase. The moon is mostly dry desert but ice may be trapped in craters which never see sunlight.
The unmanned Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission (LCROSS) will fire a Centaur rocket into the surface at twice the speed of a bullet.
An accompanying spacecraft will orbit the moon for a year looking for possible landing sites for astronauts. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will spend at least a year creating the most minutely detailed map of the moon's surface ever seen.
The vessel swill be the first American spacecrafts to make a lunar trip since 1999.
Astronomers have long thought that a rain of comets brought water to the arid, lifeless moon over billions of years.
In the past few years, at least two American spacecraft reported the presence of water by detecting hints of hydrogen and oxygen - the constituents of water - frozen deep in the darkest recesses of craters around both the north and south lunar poles.
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NASA/Ames ready to explode one of the coolest space missions ever
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Mercury News
By Mike Swift
Posted: 06/15/2009 12:00:00 AM PDT
http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_12590357?nclick_check=1
In an unprecedented scientific endeavor — and what may be one of the coolest space missions ever — NASA is preparing to fly a rocket booster into the moon, triggering a six-mile-high explosion that scientists hope will confirm the presence of water.
The four-month mission of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will be directed from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, is to discover whether water is frozen in the perpetual darkness of craters near the moon's south pole. As a potential source of oxygen for life support and hydrogen for rocket fuel, that water would be a tremendous boost to NASA's plans to restart human exploration of the moon.
But the launch is scheduled for Thursday at Cape Canaveral, Fla. It was delayed a day to allow repairs to the space shuttle.
Shuttle Endeavour must fly by this weekend. Otherwise the mission to deliver the final piece of the Japanese space station lab must wait until mid-July because of unfavorable sun angles that would heat up the shuttle. The moon mission — NASA's first in a decade — must be launched by Saturday as well. Otherwise it will have to wait until the end of the month for another shot.
LCROSS is a crucial mission for Ames because it marks a return to the business of controlling space missions from Silicon Valley's NASA base, something the center hopes to build on during the next five years. Ames has planned a public
ceremony around the launch, starting at about 11 a.m., featuring Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt.
And for the 20-odd scientists who helped plan the $79 million LCROSS mission and who will take command of the spacecraft after the launch, the final days before the scheduled launch have been filled with goose-bump anticipation and nagging midnight worries.
"This has been years," Paul Tompkins, the LCROSS flight director, said of the mission preparations. "All of us have poured our lives into this."
Intense period
For Kimberly Ennico, the LCROSS payload scientist, those worries are focused on a critical moment less than two hours into the mission, when controllers will signal the spacecraft to turn itself on.
NASA is launching two spacecraft to the moon on a single Atlas V rocket — LCROSS and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a probe that will map the surface in a search for safe landing sites for astronauts. Because LRO is the primary spacecraft, LCROSS must be switched off at launch. Ennico's nine precious instruments have been cold and dark since February — she can tell you the exact number of days — and they will need to work well as the spacecraft hurtles toward a flyby of the moon scheduled for about 3:30 a.m. next Monday, assuming the spacecraft is launched Wednesday.
The entire first week will be an intense period for the controllers at Ames. Working overlapping 13-hour shifts, they will turn the spacecraft on after the orbiter separates, confirm LCROSS was not damaged during launch, perform a critical trajectory burn and complete the 40-minute lunar flyby, which NASA will stream on its Web site.
"Nothing," Ennico said, "is really routine about this mission."
LCROSS will use the moon's gravity during the flyby to catapult itself into an orbit that will take it as far as 500,000 miles away from the moon while NASA finalizes which crater to aim the spacecraft at in October.
Visible debris
LCROSS may be one of NASA's most participatory missions. If the spacecraft launches on schedule at 12:51 p.m. Wednesday, it would hit the moon in the early morning hours of Oct. 8. The cloud from the 350 metric tons of debris kicked up by the Centaur booster should spread six miles above the surface of the moon, hitting the sunlight and making it visible to amateur astronomers across North America. The space agency is enlisting telescopes around the country to help monitor the impact.
The 1,664-pound spacecraft will have the best view. LCROSS will separate from the Centaur booster less than 10 hours before impact and will be less than 400 miles above the moon when the spent rocket booster collides at a speed five times faster than a bullet from a .44 Magnum. NASA plans to stream a live view from LCROSS as the Centaur, followed by the spacecraft, plows into the moon.
Over the final four minutes of its existence, as it follows the same terminal trajectory as the Centaur, LCROSS will train its instruments and cameras on the debris cloud, searching it for the chemical signature of water.
Previous spacecraft and ground-based instruments have detected signs of hydrogen near the moon's poles, and scientists are split over whether that is from ice that could have arrived through the impact of comets or by other means. That ice could have lingered for more than a billion years at the bottom of craters near the lunar poles that have never seen sunlight, where temperatures are more than 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
And despite all the serious scientific talk about hydrogen signatures and lunar regolith, flying a rocket booster into the moon at 5,600 mph to trigger a massive explosion is just flat-out cool.
"We're certainly going to be making a big splash," Ennico said. "We're going to see something, but I don't know what to expect. I know on the night of the impact, I'll be running on adrenaline."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Mike Swift at mswift@mercurynews.com or 408-271-3648. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/swiftstories.
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Japan’s moon probe makes crash landing
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Kaguya orbiter ends mission after more than a year of lunar observations
MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 8:33 p.m. CT, Wed., June 10, 2009
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31214827/
TOKYO - A Japanese probe ended more than a year of orbiting the moon with a controlled crash-landing on the lunar surface, officials said Thursday.
The Kaguya probe hit the moon at about 1825 GMT (2:25 p.m. ET) Wednesday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said in an online status report.
The probe was launched in September 2007 and completed all of its scheduled observations. Its mission was extended, and it had been in low lunar orbit since January last year.
Kaguya was due to hit the moon's surface at an angle of less than 1 degree, probably creating a red flash, a JAXA official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, citing agency policy.
If left alone, Kaguya would have eventually fallen to the moon on its own, but JAXA wanted to control its crash and make final observations, the official said.
Kaguya's trajectory took it near the moon's southern pole, JAXA said. There was a slight possibility that the impact flash might have been observed from Earth. The space agency asked sky observers to send imagery of any flashes that might have been seen.
During the Kaguya project, Japan launched two other orbiters to relay data. One fell to the moon in February, while the other has been measuring gravity around the moon and is still in orbit.
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Kaguya Moon Probe Impacts Surface
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Aviation Week
Jun 11, 2009
Kazuki Shiibashi/Tokyo
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/KAG061109.xml&headline=Kaguya%20Moon%20Probe%20Impacts%20Surface
Japan's Kaguya moon probe smashed into the lunar surface as planned at 3:25 am JST June 11, concluding a 21-month mission that began with launch on an H-IIA rocket from Tanagashima Space Center on Sept. 14, 2007.
The satellite crashed at 1.6 kilometers per second (3,600 mph) at an angle of 10 degrees on the southeast quadrant of the near side of the moon, near the Gill Crater at 80.4 degrees east longitude and 65.5 degrees south latitude.
"Everything went exactly as planned thanks to the detailed observation/operation data acquired by Kaguya itself," Project Manager Susumu Sasaki said.
"I was delighted at the point of impact, but now a couple hours later it's beginning to sink in," Sasaki continued. "I've been with the project for 14 years and it's almost as though I've lost a son. But I am also relieved it went so well." The mission previously was led by Project Manager Yoshisada Takizawa, who moved on to other administrative responsibilities last year.
Also known as the SELenological and ENgineering Explorer, or Selene, the probe began lowering its altitude in February, dropping from its 100-kilometer (60-mile) science orbit down to 50 kilometers (30 miles) to spend two months measuring the moon's magnetic field. Then in April the spacecraft descended to 10-30 kilometers for detailed observations of the lunar south pole.
Finally, at 2:36 am JST June 10, half an orbit before impact, Selene performed a 140-second thruster burn around the north pole, creating a small reverse thrust of 2.5 meters per second and setting the next predicted perigee at four kilometers below the lunar surface to ensure a crash. Sasaki said attitude control went better than expected and Kaguya's Laser Altimeter managed to measure down to around 400 meters (1,300 feet) before loss of signal.
Sasaki believes the 2,600-kilogram (5,730-pound) satellite would have only created a small crater five to ten meters wide and about a meter deep, and it would have been difficult to spot the rising debris cloud from the Earth. However he has received unconfirmed reports that ground observations were made. He says what observers saw was most likely the 40 kilograms of remaining hydrazine fuel burning at the point of impact, rather than the impact itself.
After entering its final science orbit in December 2007, Kaguya spent 10 months in its formal observation phase, followed by 7.5 months of extended operations, creating global topographic, gravitational and magnetic maps of the moon. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says it is preparing to release most of the mission data worldwide over the internet on Nov. 1, and hopes this will aid further scientific research and understanding of the moon for future space missions.
Selene was Japan's second lunar probe. India's first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan, is in orbit now, and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is set to blast off June 17. China's first lunar probe, Chang'e 1, was launched in 2007 and deorbited around the moon in March 2009.
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'Moon missiles' survive high-impact tests
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NewScientist. com news service
Rachel Courtland
09 June 2008
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn14083-moon-missiles-survive-highimpact-tests.html
A UK plan to drive four 'missiles' into the Moon to study its internal structure recently got a boost when tests suggested the missiles' instruments would survive the violent impact
The probes, part of a proposed UK-NASA collaboration called MoonLITE, could launch as early as 2013. Each would carry a seismometer on board. Together, the network of sensors could use the energy of lunar quakes to map the Moon's interior and help reveal whether the Moon has an iron core, which could shed light on how it formed. A drill and instruments to test for water and other chemicals will also be on board
Each 'penetrator' may hit the Moon's surface at a speed of more than 1100 kilometres per hour, rapidly coming to a halt as much as 3 metres into lunar dust
In recent tests, the penetrators were driven by a rocket-powered train into a pile of sand at the speed they would likely hit the Moon. The collision decelerated the load by 10,000 times the strength of gravity – by comparison, ordinary rockets typically do not experience vibrations of more than 100 gs
The probe's scientific instruments seemed to survive the heavy jolt, says project lead Alan Smith of University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey, UK. "We're very very pleased," Smith told New Scientist. "We achieved far more than we expected in a very short time"
Light and rugged
To enable the penetrators' scientific instruments to survive the impact, Smith and colleagues embedded the probes' electrical components in a clear block of epoxy and bolted down everything else. Silicon microelectronics were used in some instruments to make the probe lighter and more rugged
The probes might be able to push metres down into the lunar surface before stopping. But exactly how far is unclear. "The Moon regolith is not like sand. It's more like compressed talcum powder," says Smith. "It does make it harder to penetrate"
If all goes well, the penetrators might be the first to successfully crash into an extraterrestrial object and survive to carry on measurements. The last such attempt to slam instruments into a lunar or planetary surface was in 1999, when NASA's Deep Space 2 mission sent two miniature probes to the surface of Mars
Organic chemistryAlthough the probes seemed to have impacted the surface, the agency was never able to establish communication with them. Other missions have focused on creating impacts to kick up dust or other debris that could be analysed by an orbiting spacecraft
Communication and power can be two challenges when it comes to developing such impacting probes, says Phil Christensen at Arizona State University in Tempe, US. "But penetrators have always been on the horizon," says Christensen. "There's certainly a lot of things you could do if you poke things into the ground"
On the ground, an impacting probe should be more sensitive to components like organic chemicals than an orbiter studying a plume of soil ejected by a 'dummy' penetrator would be, Christensen says
Smith says a radioactive source should be able to keep each probe's electronics warm in the cold environment of space. The probes should still be able to communicate by radio through the lunar soil, as it is relatively dry, he adds Crashing into
****************************************
John Lear - "Who Lives on the Moon?"
****************************************
Veritas Show interview - February 13th, 2009:
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/
John Lear, 66, retired airline captain and former CIA contract pilot with over 19,000 hours of flight time, over 11,000 in command of 3 or 4 engine jet transports, has flown over 100 different types of aircraft in 60 different countries around the world.
He retired in 2001 after more than 40 years of flying. Son of Learjet inventor, Bill Lear, John holds more FAA airman certificates than any other FAA certificated airman. John flew secret missions for the CIA in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa between 1967 and 1983.
During the last 17 years of his career John worked for several passenger and cargo airlines as captain, check airman and instructor. He was certified by the FAA as a North Atlantic navigation check airman. He has extensive experience as command pilot and instructor in the Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8 and Lockheed l-1011.
John held 17 world records including speed around the world in a Lear Jet model 24 set in 1966 and was presented the PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association) Award for outstanding airmanship in 1968. He is a senior vice-commander of the China Post 1, The American Legions Post for “Soldiers of Fortune”, a 25 year member of the Special Operations Association and member of pilotsfor911truth.org
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John Lear Tells All
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Part 1 of 4
A Project Camelot interview
Las Vegas, April 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj-HzHi3dF0
...now some of you may be asking why so many airlines collapsed that I worked for and why I got fired so many times. My excuse is simple. I am not the brightest crayon in the box, I am extremely lazy, I have a smart mouth and a real poor f**king attitude
John Lear
Yes, he's incorrigible and fun loving, with a great sense of humor that has served him well over these many years. Our 2006 interview with John Lear (see below) remains one of our favorites
When we met again with him recently, with considerably more time at our disposal than we had two years ago, John piled his studio table high with books, diagrams and research papers and sat down to tell us "everything he knew"
With special emphasis on the Bob Lazar saga - as only John can tell it - we cover the inconsistencies in the 911 theories and why as a world renowned pilot he is uniquely qualified to judge just what kind of planes, if
any, hit the World Trade Center (answer, none: John explains why they were holograms); why the moon's gravity may be as much as 64% that of the Earth's, and could retain a very thin atmosphere; how Ben Rich, the former Director of the Lockheed Skunk Works, was a Mossad agent; the location of the "new Area 51", called Sandia, deep within the Nevada desert; what really happened at Above Top Secret, an internet forum where he was attacked and which he has subsequently left... and much more
There's nothing here about 2012 or 'Planet X' - both of which John dismisses - but we think you will be entertained and fascinated by the reported detailed experiences and opinions of someone who deserves to be respected and admired for his courage, character, and maverick commitment to revealing what he believes is the truth
To contact Bill Ryan or Kerry Cassidy, please e-mail us at support@projectcamelot.org
*****************
John Lear Bio
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http://www.greatdreams.com/John-Lear.htm
John Lear, retired airline captain, with over 19,000 hours of flight-time, has flown in over 100 different types of planes in 60 different counties around the world
Son of Lear Jet inventor, Bill Lear, John is the only pilot to hold every FAA airplane certificate, to include airplane transport rating, flight instructor, ground instructor, flight navigator, engineer, aircraft dispatcher, airframe powerplant mechanic, parachute rigger, and tower operator
He flew secret missions for the CIA in Central and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa between 1966 and 1983 He has flown as Captain and check pilot for over 10 different airlines
John held 17 world records including speed around the world in a Lear Jet Model 24, set in 1966. He was presented with the PATCO award for outstanding airmanship in 1968, and the Symons Wave memorial He was the youngest American to climb the Matterhorn in Switzerland in 1959 and in the 1970's owned and skippered the Americas Cup boat, the Soliloquy, out of Marina Del Rey
In 1968, John raced a Douglas B26 Invader in the unlimited class at the Reno air races
He was a Senior Vice Commander of the China Post 1, the American Legion Post for Soldiers of Fortune He is a 20 year member of the special operations Association
John is the current owner and operator of the only permitted gold mine operation Cutthroat Mining Corporation in Clarke County, Nevada. His efforts to clean up the Treasure Hawk Gold Butte mine won him the state of Nevada award for excellence in mining reclamation in 1999 John is a MSHA (Mine, Safety, and Health Administration) and holds a blaster license from the Nevada certified mining instructor from the Nevada State Fire Marshall
John's passion for the preservation and documentation of the history of the Gold Butte has made him a authority on the area
John has been a resident of Las Vegas since 1994 and was a republican State Senate candidate in 1980
John has 4 daughters, 2 grandchildren, and lives with his wife in Las Vegas - Las Vegas businesswoman, Mary Lee Lear in Sunrise Manor
In 1988, John met and became friends with Bob Lazar, the government scientist who worked on the back-engineering of the propulsion system of the extraterrestrial UFOs at area S-4 That's just outside the infamous and ultrasecret Area 51
In March 1989, Lazar took John to an area close to Rachel Nevada where he witnessed the flight of a flying saucer at the exact time Lazar told him it would occur
Two weeks later on another UFO spying mission, John, Lazar and 3 others were caught by security forces - (that's CAUGHT folks) - and the next day, - the very next day - Lazar lost his job at the government program for that breach of security. Lazar has been branded by many as a fraud, a charge to which John responds, " Those who say that Lazar was a fraud simply don't know the facts of this incredible 12 month period I was there - they weren't"
During the late 1980's, John tracked down and found the Army Intelligence Analyst who read, probably by accident, the U.S. government report Grudge 13, which documented the history of the U.S UFO coverup and details of saucer recoveries, disposition of their occupants, and handling (That's HANDLING) of civilian witnesses
The report included clear photographs of these recovered extraterrestrial craft and beings - (That's BEINGS) found inside It further detailed how recoveries were made worldwide and specially designed transports to accommodate the craft
John spent time poking around other UFO related areas to include Dulce, Secora, Aztec, Alamagorda, Albuquerque, Los Alamos and Bentwaters airbase near London
Since that time, John has learned many incredible and interesting facts about the solar system and planets including the existence of huge structures, arches, bridges and domes on the moon, cities on Mars, huge extraterrestrial ships mining the rings of Saturn, the incredible but secret agenda of Apollo 17, to the huge rectangular opening in the south massif of the Taurus-Littrow Highlands called Nansen.
Twenty Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime
Twenty years ago, Corporate Crime Reporter, a weekly print newsletter, was launched.
From the beginning, the most popular feature of Corporate Crime Reporter has been a question/answer format interview.
Over the years, we've interviewed hundreds of prosecutors, defense attorneys, law school professors, reporters, and activists.
Our first interview, which appeared in Volume One, Number One on April 13, 1987 was with the premier corporate crime prosecutor of his day.
That was Rudolph Giuliani, then U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York.
At the time, he was prosecuting the likes of Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and Marc Rich.
President Clinton later pardoned Marc Rich.
Apparently Marc Rich's wife was dumping big cash into the Clinton library.
Rudy is now solidly in the hands of the corporate crime lobby. He prosecuted corporate crime as a way to achieve higher office. Then he learned one of the key lessons of corporate crime prosecution.
You can achieve higher office by prosecuting corporate crime. But as you move up the ladder, you have to make nice with the corporate powers that be. And so you turn your attention and rhetoric to various forms of street crime.
Now, Rudy is ready to be President.
So, corporate crime lesson number one – prosecute corporate crime to achieve higher office, then prosecute street crime to protect your political position.
Or to simplify it, corporate crime is all about power politics.
And the corporate crime game is a bi-partisan affair – it is played the same by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Eliot Spitzer, the former Attorney General of New York, prosecuted corporate crime to achieve higher office.
And now as Governor of New York, Spitzer is making nice with Wall Street.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Corporate Crime Reporter, I present to you the Top 20 Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime.
With a tip of the hat to David Letterman, let us proceed.
Number 20
Corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.
Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.
The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery – street crimes – costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.
The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds – Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron – swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.
Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year.
The savings and loan fraud – which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called "the biggest white collar swindle in history" – cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion.
And then you have your lesser frauds: auto repair fraud, $40 billion a year, securities fraud, $15 billion a year – and on down the list.
Number 19
Corporate crime is often violent crime.
Recite this list of corporate frauds and people will immediately say to you: but you can't compare street crime and corporate crime – corporate crime is not violent crime.
Not true.
Corporate crime is often violent crime.
The FBI estimates that, 16,000 Americans are murdered every year.
Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice.
These deaths are often the result of criminal recklessness. Yet, they are rarely prosecuted as homicides or as criminal violations of federal laws.
Number 18
Corporate criminals are the only criminal class in the United States that have the power to define the laws under which they live.
The mafia, no.
The gangstas, no.
The street thugs, no.
But the corporate criminal lobby, yes. They have marinated Washington – from the White House to the Congress to K Street – with their largesse. And out the other end come the laws they can live with. They still violate their own rules with impunity. But they make sure the laws are kept within reasonable bounds.
Exhibit A – the automobile industry.
Over the past 30 years, the industry has worked its will on Congress to block legislation that would impose criminal sanctions on knowing and willful violations of the federal auto safety laws. Today, with very narrow exceptions, if an auto company is caught violating the law, only a civil fine is imposed.
Number 17
Corporate crime is underprosecuted by a factor of say – 100. And the flip side of that – corporate crime prosecutors are underfunded by a factor of say – 100.
Big companies that are criminally prosecuted represent only the tip of a very large iceberg of corporate wrongdoing.
For every company convicted of health care fraud, there are hundreds of others who get away with ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, or face only mild slap-on-the-wrist fines and civil penalties when caught.
For every company convicted of polluting the nation's waterways, there are many others who are not prosecuted because their corporate defense lawyers are able to offer up a low-level employee to go to jail in exchange for a promise from prosecutors not to touch the company or high-level executives.
For every corporation convicted of bribery or of giving money directly to a public official in violation of federal law, there are thousands who give money legally through political action committees to candidates and political parties. They profit from a system that effectively has legalized bribery.
For every corporation convicted of selling illegal pesticides, there are hundreds more who are not prosecuted because their lobbyists have worked their way in Washington to ensure that dangerous pesticides remain legal.
For every corporation convicted of reckless homicide in the death of a worker, there are hundreds of others that don't even get investigated for reckless homicide when a worker is killed on the job. Only a few district attorneys across the country have historically investigated workplace deaths as homicides.
Corporate crime prosecutors are underfunded by a factor of say – 100.
White collar crime defense attorneys regularly admit that if more prosecutors had more resources, the number of corporate crime prosecutions would increase dramatically. A large number of serious corporate and white collar crime cases are now left on the table for lack of resources.
Number 16
Beware of consumer groups or other public interest groups who make nice with corporations.
There are now probably more fake public interest groups than actual ones in America today. And many formerly legitimate public interest groups have been taken over or compromised by big corporations. Our favorite example is the National Consumer League. It's the oldest consumer group in the country. It was created to eradicate child labor.
But in the last ten years or so, it has been taken over by large corporations. It now gets the majority of its budget from big corporations such as Pfizer, Bank of America, Pharmacia & Upjohn, Kaiser Permanente, Wyeth-Ayerst, and Verizon.
Number 15
It used to be when a corporation committed a crime, they pled guilty to a crime.
So, for example, so many large corporations were pleading guilty to crimes in the 1990s, that in 2000, we put out a report titled The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s. We went back through all of the Corporate Crime Reporters for that decade, pulled out all of the big corporations that had been convicted, ranked the corporate criminals by the amount of their criminal fines, and cut it off at 100.
So, you have your Fortune 500, your Forbes 400, and your Corporate Crime Reporter 100.
Number 14
Now, corporate criminals don't have to worry about pleading guilty to crimes.
Three new loopholes have developed over the past five years – the deferred prosecution agreement, the non prosecution agreement, and pleading guilty a closet entity or a defunct entity that has nothing to lose.
Number 13
Corporations love deferred prosecution agreements.
In the 1990s, if prosecutors had evidence of a crime, they would bring a criminal charge against the corporation and sometimes against the individual executives. And the company would end up pleading guilty.
Then, about three years ago, the Justice Department said – hey, there is this thing called a deferred prosecution agreement.
We can bring a criminal charge against the company. And we will tell the company – if you are a good company and do not violate the law for the next two years, we will drop the charges. No harm, no foul. This is called a deferred prosecution agreement.
And most major corporate crime prosecutions are brought this way now. The company pays a fine. The company is charged with a crime. But there is no conviction. And after two or three years, depending on the term of the agreement, the charges are dropped.
Number 12
Corporations love non prosecution agreements even more.
One Friday evening last July, I was sitting my office in the National Press Building. And into my e-mail box came a press release from the Justice Department.
The press release announced that Boeing will pay a $50 million criminal penalty and $615 million in civil penalties to resolve federal claims relating to the company's hiring of the former Air Force acquisitions chief Darleen A. Druyun, by its then CFO, Michael Sears – and stealing sensitive procurement information.
So, the company pays a criminal penalty. And I figure, okay if they paid a criminal penalty, they must have pled guilty.
No, they did not plead guilty.
Okay, they must have been charged with a crime and had the prosecution deferred.
No, they were not charged with a crime and did not have the prosecution deferred.
About a week later, after pounding the Justice Department for an answer as to what happened to Boeing, they sent over something called a non prosecution agreement.
That is where the Justice Department says – we're going to fine you criminally, but hey, we don't want to cost you any government business, so sign this agreement. It says we won't prosecute you if you pay the fine and change your ways.
Corporate criminals love non prosecution agreements. No criminal charge. No criminal record. No guilty plea. Just pay the fine and leave.
Number 11
In health fraud cases, find an empty closet or defunct entity to plead guilty.
The government has a mandatory exclusion rule for health care corporations that are convicted of ripping off Medicare.
Such an exclusion is the equivalent of the death penalty. If a major drug company can't do business with Medicare, it loses a big chunk of its business. There have been many criminal prosecutions of major health care corporations for ripping off Medicare. And many of these companies have pled guilty. But not one major health care company has been excluded from Medicare.
Why not?
Because when you read in the newspaper that a major health care company pled guilty, it's not the parent company that pleads guilty. The prosecutor will allow a unit of the corporation that has no assets – or even a defunct entity – to plead guilty. And therefore that unit will be excluded from Medicare – which doesn't bother the parent corporation, because the unit had no business with Medicare to begin with.
Earlier, Dr. Sidney Wolfe was here and talked about the criminal prosecution of Purdue Pharma, the Stamford, Connecticut-based maker of OxyContin.
Dr. Wolfe said that the company pled guilty to pushing OxyContin by making claims that it is less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications and that it continued to do so despite warnings to the contrary from doctors, the media, and members of its own sales force.
Well, Purdue Pharma – the company that makes and markets the drug – didn't plead guilty. A different company – Purdue Frederick pled guilty. Purdue Pharma actually got a non-prosecution agreement. Purdue Frederick had nothing to lose, so it pled guilty.
Number 10
Corporate criminals don't like to be put on probation.
Very rarely, a corporation convicted of a crime will be placed on probation. Many years ago, Consolidated Edison in New York was convicted of an environmental crime. A probation official was assigned. Employees would call him with wrongdoing. He would write reports for the judge. The company changed its ways. There was actual change within the corporation.
Corporations hate this. They hate being under the supervision of some public official, like a judge.
We need more corporate probation.
Number 9
Corporate criminals don't like to be charged with homicide.
Street murders occur every day in America. And they are prosecuted every day in America. Corporate homicides occur every day in America. But they are rarely prosecuted.
The last homicide prosecution brought against a major American corporation was in 1980, when a Republican Indiana prosecutor charged Ford Motor Co. with homicide for the deaths of three teenaged girls who died when their Ford Pinto caught on fire after being rear-ended in northern Indiana.
The prosecutor alleged that Ford knew that it was marketing a defective product, with a gas tank that crushed when rear ended, spilling fuel.
In the Indiana case, the girls were incinerated to death.
But Ford brought in a hot shot criminal defense lawyer who in turn hired the best friend of the judge as local counsel, and who, as a result, secured a not guilty verdict after persuading the judge to keep key evidence out of the jury room.
It's time to crank up the corporate homicide prosecutions.
Number 8
There are very few career prosecutors of corporate crime.
Patrick Fitzgerald is one that comes to mind. He's the U.S. Attorney in Chicago. He put away Scooter Libby. And he's now prosecuting the Canadian media baron Conrad Black.
Number 7
Most corporate crime prosecutors see their jobs as a stepping stone to greater things.
Spitzer and Giuliani prosecuted corporate crime as a way to move up the political ladder. But most young prosecutors prosecute corporate crime to move into the lucrative corporate crime defense bar.
Number 6
Most corporate criminals turn themselves into the authorities.
The vast majority of corporate criminal prosecutions are now driven by the corporations themselves. If they find something wrong, they know they can trust the prosecutor to do the right thing. They will be forced to pay a fine, maybe agree to make some internal changes.
But in this day and age, in all likelihood, they will not be forced to plead guilty.
So, better to be up front with the prosecutor and put the matter behind them. To save the hide of the corporation, they will cooperate with federal prosecutors against individual executives within the company. Individuals will be charged, the corporation will not.
Number 5
The market doesn't take most modern corporate criminal prosecutions seriously.
Almost universally, when a corporate crime case is settled, the stock of the company involved goes up.
Why? Because a cloud has been cleared and there is no serious consequence to the company. No structural changes in how the company does business. No monitor. No probation. Preserving corporate reputation is the name of the game.
Number 4
The Justice Department needs to start publishing an annual Corporate Crime in the United States report.
Every year, the Justice Department puts out an annual report titled "Crime in the United States."
But by "Crime in the United States," the Justice Department means "street crime in the United States."
In the "Crime in the United States" annual report, you can read about burglary, robbery and theft.
There is little or nothing about price-fixing, corporate fraud, pollution, or public corruption.
A yearly Justice Department report on Corporate Crime in the United States is long overdue.
Number 3
We must start asking – which side are you on – with the corporate criminals or against?
Most professionals in Washington work for, are paid by, or are under the control of the corporate crime lobby. Young lawyers come to town, fresh out of law school, 25 years old, and their starting salary is $160,000 a year. And they're working for the corporate criminals.
Young lawyers graduating from the top law schools have all kinds of excuses for working for the corporate criminals – huge debt, just going to stay a couple of years for the experience.
But the reality is, they are working for the corporate criminals.
What kind of respect should we give them? Especially since they have many options other than working for the corporate criminals.
Time to dust off that age-old question – which side are you on? (For young lawyers out there considering other options, check out Alan Morrison's new book – Beyond the Big Firm: Profiles of Lawyers Who Want Something More.)
Number 2
We need a 911 number for the American people to dial to report corporate crime and violence.
If you want to report street crime and violence, call 911.
But what number do you call if you want to report corporate crime and violence?
We propose 611.
Call 611 to report corporate crime and violence.
We need a national number where people can pick up the phone and report the corporate criminals in our midst.
What triggered this thought?
We attended the press conference at the Justice Department the other day announcing the indictment of Congressman William Jefferson (D-Louisiana).
Jefferson was the first U.S. official charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Federal officials alleged that Jefferson was both on the giving and receiving ends of bribe payments.
On the receiving end, he took $100,000 in cash – $90,000 of it was stuffed into his freezer in Washington, D.C.
The $90,000 was separated in $10,000 increments, wrapped in aluminum foil, and concealed inside various frozen food containers.
At the press conference announcing the indictment, after various federal officials made their case before the cameras, up to the mike came Joe Persichini, assistant director of the Washington field office of the FBI.
"To the American people, I ask you, take time," Persichini said. "Read this charging document line by line, scheme by scheme, count by count. This case is about greed, power and arrogance."
"Everyone is entitled to honest and ethical public service," Persichini continued. "We as leaders standing here today cannot do it alone. We need the public's help. The amount of corruption is dependent on what the public with allow.
Again, the amount of corruption is dependent on what the public will allow."
"If you have knowledge of, if you've been confronted with or you are participating, I ask that you contact your local FBI office or you call the Washington Field Office of the FBI at 202.278.2000. Thank you very much."
Shorten the number – make it 611.
Number one.
And the number one thing you should know about corporate crime?
Everyone is deserving of justice. So, question, debate, strategize, yes.
But if God-forbid you too are victimized by a corporate criminal, you too will demand justice.
We need a more beefed up, more effective justice system to deal with the corporate criminals in our midst.
Thank you.
(This is the text of a speech delivered by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter to the Taming the Giant Corporation conference in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2007.)
Corporate Crime Reporter
1209 National Press Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20045
From the beginning, the most popular feature of Corporate Crime Reporter has been a question/answer format interview.
Over the years, we've interviewed hundreds of prosecutors, defense attorneys, law school professors, reporters, and activists.
Our first interview, which appeared in Volume One, Number One on April 13, 1987 was with the premier corporate crime prosecutor of his day.
That was Rudolph Giuliani, then U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York.
At the time, he was prosecuting the likes of Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and Marc Rich.
President Clinton later pardoned Marc Rich.
Apparently Marc Rich's wife was dumping big cash into the Clinton library.
Rudy is now solidly in the hands of the corporate crime lobby. He prosecuted corporate crime as a way to achieve higher office. Then he learned one of the key lessons of corporate crime prosecution.
You can achieve higher office by prosecuting corporate crime. But as you move up the ladder, you have to make nice with the corporate powers that be. And so you turn your attention and rhetoric to various forms of street crime.
Now, Rudy is ready to be President.
So, corporate crime lesson number one – prosecute corporate crime to achieve higher office, then prosecute street crime to protect your political position.
Or to simplify it, corporate crime is all about power politics.
And the corporate crime game is a bi-partisan affair – it is played the same by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Eliot Spitzer, the former Attorney General of New York, prosecuted corporate crime to achieve higher office.
And now as Governor of New York, Spitzer is making nice with Wall Street.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Corporate Crime Reporter, I present to you the Top 20 Things You Should Know About Corporate Crime.
With a tip of the hat to David Letterman, let us proceed.
Number 20
Corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than all street crime combined.
Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.
The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery – street crimes – costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.
The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds – Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron – swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.
Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year.
The savings and loan fraud – which former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called "the biggest white collar swindle in history" – cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion.
And then you have your lesser frauds: auto repair fraud, $40 billion a year, securities fraud, $15 billion a year – and on down the list.
Number 19
Corporate crime is often violent crime.
Recite this list of corporate frauds and people will immediately say to you: but you can't compare street crime and corporate crime – corporate crime is not violent crime.
Not true.
Corporate crime is often violent crime.
The FBI estimates that, 16,000 Americans are murdered every year.
Compare this to the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice.
These deaths are often the result of criminal recklessness. Yet, they are rarely prosecuted as homicides or as criminal violations of federal laws.
Number 18
Corporate criminals are the only criminal class in the United States that have the power to define the laws under which they live.
The mafia, no.
The gangstas, no.
The street thugs, no.
But the corporate criminal lobby, yes. They have marinated Washington – from the White House to the Congress to K Street – with their largesse. And out the other end come the laws they can live with. They still violate their own rules with impunity. But they make sure the laws are kept within reasonable bounds.
Exhibit A – the automobile industry.
Over the past 30 years, the industry has worked its will on Congress to block legislation that would impose criminal sanctions on knowing and willful violations of the federal auto safety laws. Today, with very narrow exceptions, if an auto company is caught violating the law, only a civil fine is imposed.
Number 17
Corporate crime is underprosecuted by a factor of say – 100. And the flip side of that – corporate crime prosecutors are underfunded by a factor of say – 100.
Big companies that are criminally prosecuted represent only the tip of a very large iceberg of corporate wrongdoing.
For every company convicted of health care fraud, there are hundreds of others who get away with ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, or face only mild slap-on-the-wrist fines and civil penalties when caught.
For every company convicted of polluting the nation's waterways, there are many others who are not prosecuted because their corporate defense lawyers are able to offer up a low-level employee to go to jail in exchange for a promise from prosecutors not to touch the company or high-level executives.
For every corporation convicted of bribery or of giving money directly to a public official in violation of federal law, there are thousands who give money legally through political action committees to candidates and political parties. They profit from a system that effectively has legalized bribery.
For every corporation convicted of selling illegal pesticides, there are hundreds more who are not prosecuted because their lobbyists have worked their way in Washington to ensure that dangerous pesticides remain legal.
For every corporation convicted of reckless homicide in the death of a worker, there are hundreds of others that don't even get investigated for reckless homicide when a worker is killed on the job. Only a few district attorneys across the country have historically investigated workplace deaths as homicides.
Corporate crime prosecutors are underfunded by a factor of say – 100.
White collar crime defense attorneys regularly admit that if more prosecutors had more resources, the number of corporate crime prosecutions would increase dramatically. A large number of serious corporate and white collar crime cases are now left on the table for lack of resources.
Number 16
Beware of consumer groups or other public interest groups who make nice with corporations.
There are now probably more fake public interest groups than actual ones in America today. And many formerly legitimate public interest groups have been taken over or compromised by big corporations. Our favorite example is the National Consumer League. It's the oldest consumer group in the country. It was created to eradicate child labor.
But in the last ten years or so, it has been taken over by large corporations. It now gets the majority of its budget from big corporations such as Pfizer, Bank of America, Pharmacia & Upjohn, Kaiser Permanente, Wyeth-Ayerst, and Verizon.
Number 15
It used to be when a corporation committed a crime, they pled guilty to a crime.
So, for example, so many large corporations were pleading guilty to crimes in the 1990s, that in 2000, we put out a report titled The Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s. We went back through all of the Corporate Crime Reporters for that decade, pulled out all of the big corporations that had been convicted, ranked the corporate criminals by the amount of their criminal fines, and cut it off at 100.
So, you have your Fortune 500, your Forbes 400, and your Corporate Crime Reporter 100.
Number 14
Now, corporate criminals don't have to worry about pleading guilty to crimes.
Three new loopholes have developed over the past five years – the deferred prosecution agreement, the non prosecution agreement, and pleading guilty a closet entity or a defunct entity that has nothing to lose.
Number 13
Corporations love deferred prosecution agreements.
In the 1990s, if prosecutors had evidence of a crime, they would bring a criminal charge against the corporation and sometimes against the individual executives. And the company would end up pleading guilty.
Then, about three years ago, the Justice Department said – hey, there is this thing called a deferred prosecution agreement.
We can bring a criminal charge against the company. And we will tell the company – if you are a good company and do not violate the law for the next two years, we will drop the charges. No harm, no foul. This is called a deferred prosecution agreement.
And most major corporate crime prosecutions are brought this way now. The company pays a fine. The company is charged with a crime. But there is no conviction. And after two or three years, depending on the term of the agreement, the charges are dropped.
Number 12
Corporations love non prosecution agreements even more.
One Friday evening last July, I was sitting my office in the National Press Building. And into my e-mail box came a press release from the Justice Department.
The press release announced that Boeing will pay a $50 million criminal penalty and $615 million in civil penalties to resolve federal claims relating to the company's hiring of the former Air Force acquisitions chief Darleen A. Druyun, by its then CFO, Michael Sears – and stealing sensitive procurement information.
So, the company pays a criminal penalty. And I figure, okay if they paid a criminal penalty, they must have pled guilty.
No, they did not plead guilty.
Okay, they must have been charged with a crime and had the prosecution deferred.
No, they were not charged with a crime and did not have the prosecution deferred.
About a week later, after pounding the Justice Department for an answer as to what happened to Boeing, they sent over something called a non prosecution agreement.
That is where the Justice Department says – we're going to fine you criminally, but hey, we don't want to cost you any government business, so sign this agreement. It says we won't prosecute you if you pay the fine and change your ways.
Corporate criminals love non prosecution agreements. No criminal charge. No criminal record. No guilty plea. Just pay the fine and leave.
Number 11
In health fraud cases, find an empty closet or defunct entity to plead guilty.
The government has a mandatory exclusion rule for health care corporations that are convicted of ripping off Medicare.
Such an exclusion is the equivalent of the death penalty. If a major drug company can't do business with Medicare, it loses a big chunk of its business. There have been many criminal prosecutions of major health care corporations for ripping off Medicare. And many of these companies have pled guilty. But not one major health care company has been excluded from Medicare.
Why not?
Because when you read in the newspaper that a major health care company pled guilty, it's not the parent company that pleads guilty. The prosecutor will allow a unit of the corporation that has no assets – or even a defunct entity – to plead guilty. And therefore that unit will be excluded from Medicare – which doesn't bother the parent corporation, because the unit had no business with Medicare to begin with.
Earlier, Dr. Sidney Wolfe was here and talked about the criminal prosecution of Purdue Pharma, the Stamford, Connecticut-based maker of OxyContin.
Dr. Wolfe said that the company pled guilty to pushing OxyContin by making claims that it is less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications and that it continued to do so despite warnings to the contrary from doctors, the media, and members of its own sales force.
Well, Purdue Pharma – the company that makes and markets the drug – didn't plead guilty. A different company – Purdue Frederick pled guilty. Purdue Pharma actually got a non-prosecution agreement. Purdue Frederick had nothing to lose, so it pled guilty.
Number 10
Corporate criminals don't like to be put on probation.
Very rarely, a corporation convicted of a crime will be placed on probation. Many years ago, Consolidated Edison in New York was convicted of an environmental crime. A probation official was assigned. Employees would call him with wrongdoing. He would write reports for the judge. The company changed its ways. There was actual change within the corporation.
Corporations hate this. They hate being under the supervision of some public official, like a judge.
We need more corporate probation.
Number 9
Corporate criminals don't like to be charged with homicide.
Street murders occur every day in America. And they are prosecuted every day in America. Corporate homicides occur every day in America. But they are rarely prosecuted.
The last homicide prosecution brought against a major American corporation was in 1980, when a Republican Indiana prosecutor charged Ford Motor Co. with homicide for the deaths of three teenaged girls who died when their Ford Pinto caught on fire after being rear-ended in northern Indiana.
The prosecutor alleged that Ford knew that it was marketing a defective product, with a gas tank that crushed when rear ended, spilling fuel.
In the Indiana case, the girls were incinerated to death.
But Ford brought in a hot shot criminal defense lawyer who in turn hired the best friend of the judge as local counsel, and who, as a result, secured a not guilty verdict after persuading the judge to keep key evidence out of the jury room.
It's time to crank up the corporate homicide prosecutions.
Number 8
There are very few career prosecutors of corporate crime.
Patrick Fitzgerald is one that comes to mind. He's the U.S. Attorney in Chicago. He put away Scooter Libby. And he's now prosecuting the Canadian media baron Conrad Black.
Number 7
Most corporate crime prosecutors see their jobs as a stepping stone to greater things.
Spitzer and Giuliani prosecuted corporate crime as a way to move up the political ladder. But most young prosecutors prosecute corporate crime to move into the lucrative corporate crime defense bar.
Number 6
Most corporate criminals turn themselves into the authorities.
The vast majority of corporate criminal prosecutions are now driven by the corporations themselves. If they find something wrong, they know they can trust the prosecutor to do the right thing. They will be forced to pay a fine, maybe agree to make some internal changes.
But in this day and age, in all likelihood, they will not be forced to plead guilty.
So, better to be up front with the prosecutor and put the matter behind them. To save the hide of the corporation, they will cooperate with federal prosecutors against individual executives within the company. Individuals will be charged, the corporation will not.
Number 5
The market doesn't take most modern corporate criminal prosecutions seriously.
Almost universally, when a corporate crime case is settled, the stock of the company involved goes up.
Why? Because a cloud has been cleared and there is no serious consequence to the company. No structural changes in how the company does business. No monitor. No probation. Preserving corporate reputation is the name of the game.
Number 4
The Justice Department needs to start publishing an annual Corporate Crime in the United States report.
Every year, the Justice Department puts out an annual report titled "Crime in the United States."
But by "Crime in the United States," the Justice Department means "street crime in the United States."
In the "Crime in the United States" annual report, you can read about burglary, robbery and theft.
There is little or nothing about price-fixing, corporate fraud, pollution, or public corruption.
A yearly Justice Department report on Corporate Crime in the United States is long overdue.
Number 3
We must start asking – which side are you on – with the corporate criminals or against?
Most professionals in Washington work for, are paid by, or are under the control of the corporate crime lobby. Young lawyers come to town, fresh out of law school, 25 years old, and their starting salary is $160,000 a year. And they're working for the corporate criminals.
Young lawyers graduating from the top law schools have all kinds of excuses for working for the corporate criminals – huge debt, just going to stay a couple of years for the experience.
But the reality is, they are working for the corporate criminals.
What kind of respect should we give them? Especially since they have many options other than working for the corporate criminals.
Time to dust off that age-old question – which side are you on? (For young lawyers out there considering other options, check out Alan Morrison's new book – Beyond the Big Firm: Profiles of Lawyers Who Want Something More.)
Number 2
We need a 911 number for the American people to dial to report corporate crime and violence.
If you want to report street crime and violence, call 911.
But what number do you call if you want to report corporate crime and violence?
We propose 611.
Call 611 to report corporate crime and violence.
We need a national number where people can pick up the phone and report the corporate criminals in our midst.
What triggered this thought?
We attended the press conference at the Justice Department the other day announcing the indictment of Congressman William Jefferson (D-Louisiana).
Jefferson was the first U.S. official charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Federal officials alleged that Jefferson was both on the giving and receiving ends of bribe payments.
On the receiving end, he took $100,000 in cash – $90,000 of it was stuffed into his freezer in Washington, D.C.
The $90,000 was separated in $10,000 increments, wrapped in aluminum foil, and concealed inside various frozen food containers.
At the press conference announcing the indictment, after various federal officials made their case before the cameras, up to the mike came Joe Persichini, assistant director of the Washington field office of the FBI.
"To the American people, I ask you, take time," Persichini said. "Read this charging document line by line, scheme by scheme, count by count. This case is about greed, power and arrogance."
"Everyone is entitled to honest and ethical public service," Persichini continued. "We as leaders standing here today cannot do it alone. We need the public's help. The amount of corruption is dependent on what the public with allow.
Again, the amount of corruption is dependent on what the public will allow."
"If you have knowledge of, if you've been confronted with or you are participating, I ask that you contact your local FBI office or you call the Washington Field Office of the FBI at 202.278.2000. Thank you very much."
Shorten the number – make it 611.
Number one.
And the number one thing you should know about corporate crime?
Everyone is deserving of justice. So, question, debate, strategize, yes.
But if God-forbid you too are victimized by a corporate criminal, you too will demand justice.
We need a more beefed up, more effective justice system to deal with the corporate criminals in our midst.
Thank you.
(This is the text of a speech delivered by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter to the Taming the Giant Corporation conference in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2007.)
Corporate Crime Reporter
1209 National Press Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20045
Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away
by Chris Hedges
TruthDig.com
June 22, 2009
Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.
The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed. We have supported a government in Israel that has carried out egregious war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza and is daily stealing ever greater portions of Palestinian land. We have established a network of military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and we have secured basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. We have expanded our military operations to Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And no one naively believes, except perhaps us, that we have any intention of leaving.
We are the biggest problem in the Middle East. We have through our cruelty and violence created and legitimized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads and the Osama bin Ladens. The longer we lurch around the region dropping iron fragmentation bombs and seizing Muslim land the more these monsters, reflections of our own distorted image, will proliferate. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that “the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.” But our hypocrisy no longer fools anyone but ourselves. It will ensure our imperial and economic collapse.
The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyranny. These tyrants were almost always propped up and funded by foreign powers. This suppression and distortion of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power, unleashing another tragic cycle of Iranian resistance.
“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” told me. “For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”
“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.
Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of Iran. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today—the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy—would be dead now.”
Washington has never recovered from the loss of Iran—something our intelligence services never saw coming. The overthrow of the shah, the humiliation of the embassy hostages, the laborious piecing together of tiny shreds of paper from classified embassy documents to expose America’s venal role in thwarting democratic movements in Iran and the region, allowed the outside world to see the dark heart of the American empire. Washington has demonized Iran ever since, painting it as an irrational and barbaric country filled with primitive, religious zealots. But Iranians, as these street protests illustrate, have proved in recent years far more courageous in the defense of democracy than most Americans.
Where were we when our election was stolen from us in 2000 by Republican operatives and a Supreme Court that overturned all legal precedent to anoint George W. Bush president? Did tens of thousands of us fill the squares of our major cities and denounce the fraud? Did we mobilize day after day to restore transparency and accountability to our election process? Did we fight back with the same courage and tenacity as the citizens of Iran? Did Al Gore defy the power elite and, as opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has done, demand a recount at the risk of being killed?
President Obama retreated in his Cairo speech into our spectacular moral nihilism, suggesting that our crimes matched the crimes of Iran, that there is, in his words, "a tumultuous history between us." He went on: "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians." It all, he seemed to say, balances out.
I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in Iraq, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance and uses its power to deny popular will. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the United States to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember Iran arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country. Iran never shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes-caustically nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels-when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorism within the United States, as our intelligence services currently do in Iran. The attacks on Iranian soil include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders. What would we do if the situation was reversed? How would we react if Iran carried out these policies against us?
We are, and have long been, the primary engine for radicalism in the Middle East. The greatest favor we can do for democracy activists in Iran, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the dictatorships that dot North Africa, is withdraw our troops from the region and begin to speak to Iranians and the rest of the Muslim world in the civilized language of diplomacy, respect and mutual interests. The longer we cling to the doomed doctrine of permanent war the more we give credibility to the extremists who need, indeed yearn for, an enemy that speaks in their crude slogans of nationalist cant and violence. The louder the Israelis and their idiot allies in Washington call for the bombing of Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions, the happier are the bankrupt clerics who are ordering the beating and murder of demonstrators. We may laugh when crowds supporting Ahmadinejad call us "the Great Satan," but there is a very palpable reality that has informed the terrible algebra of their hatred.
Our intoxication with our military prowess blinds us to all possibilities of hope and mutual cooperation. It was Mohammed Khatami, the president of Iran from 1997 to 2005-perhaps the only honorable Middle East leader of our time-whose refusal to countenance violence by his own supporters led to the demise of his lofty "civil society" at the hands of more ruthless, less scrupulous opponents. It was Khatami who proclaimed that "the death of even one Jew is a crime." And we sputtered back to this great and civilized man the primitive slogans of all deformed militarists. We were captive, as all bigots are, to our demons, and could not hear any sound but our own shouting. It is time to banish these demons. It is time to stand not with the helmeted goons who beat protesters, not with those in the Pentagon who make endless wars, but with the unarmed demonstrators in Iran who daily show us what we must become.
The fight of the Iranian people is our fight. And, perhaps for the first time, we can match our actions to our ideals. We have no right under post-Nuremberg laws to occupy Iraq or Afghanistan. These occupations are defined by these statutes as criminal "wars of aggression." They are war crimes. We have no right to use force, including the state-sponsored terrorism we unleash on Iran, to turn the Middle East into a private gas station for our large oil companies. We have no right to empower Israel's continuing occupation of Palestine, a flagrant violation of international law. The resistance you see in Iran will not end until Iranians, and all those burdened with repression in the Middle East, free themselves from the tyranny that comes from within and without. Let us, for once, be on the side of those who share our democratic ideals.
© 2009 TruthDig.com
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, will be out in July, but is available for pre-order.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/22-0
TruthDig.com
June 22, 2009
Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.
The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed. We have supported a government in Israel that has carried out egregious war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza and is daily stealing ever greater portions of Palestinian land. We have established a network of military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and we have secured basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. We have expanded our military operations to Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And no one naively believes, except perhaps us, that we have any intention of leaving.
We are the biggest problem in the Middle East. We have through our cruelty and violence created and legitimized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads and the Osama bin Ladens. The longer we lurch around the region dropping iron fragmentation bombs and seizing Muslim land the more these monsters, reflections of our own distorted image, will proliferate. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that “the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.” But our hypocrisy no longer fools anyone but ourselves. It will ensure our imperial and economic collapse.
The history of modern Iran is the history of a people battling tyranny. These tyrants were almost always propped up and funded by foreign powers. This suppression and distortion of legitimate democratic movements over the decades resulted in the 1979 revolution that brought the Iranian clerics to power, unleashing another tragic cycle of Iranian resistance.
“The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country,” Stephen Kinzer, the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” told me. “For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship.”
“Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians,” Kinzer said. “Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.
Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of Iran. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today—the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy—would be dead now.”
Washington has never recovered from the loss of Iran—something our intelligence services never saw coming. The overthrow of the shah, the humiliation of the embassy hostages, the laborious piecing together of tiny shreds of paper from classified embassy documents to expose America’s venal role in thwarting democratic movements in Iran and the region, allowed the outside world to see the dark heart of the American empire. Washington has demonized Iran ever since, painting it as an irrational and barbaric country filled with primitive, religious zealots. But Iranians, as these street protests illustrate, have proved in recent years far more courageous in the defense of democracy than most Americans.
Where were we when our election was stolen from us in 2000 by Republican operatives and a Supreme Court that overturned all legal precedent to anoint George W. Bush president? Did tens of thousands of us fill the squares of our major cities and denounce the fraud? Did we mobilize day after day to restore transparency and accountability to our election process? Did we fight back with the same courage and tenacity as the citizens of Iran? Did Al Gore defy the power elite and, as opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has done, demand a recount at the risk of being killed?
President Obama retreated in his Cairo speech into our spectacular moral nihilism, suggesting that our crimes matched the crimes of Iran, that there is, in his words, "a tumultuous history between us." He went on: "In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians." It all, he seemed to say, balances out.
I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in Iraq, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance and uses its power to deny popular will. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the United States to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember Iran arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country. Iran never shot down one of our passenger jets as did the USS Vincennes-caustically nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels-when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorism within the United States, as our intelligence services currently do in Iran. The attacks on Iranian soil include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and other Iranian leaders. What would we do if the situation was reversed? How would we react if Iran carried out these policies against us?
We are, and have long been, the primary engine for radicalism in the Middle East. The greatest favor we can do for democracy activists in Iran, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the dictatorships that dot North Africa, is withdraw our troops from the region and begin to speak to Iranians and the rest of the Muslim world in the civilized language of diplomacy, respect and mutual interests. The longer we cling to the doomed doctrine of permanent war the more we give credibility to the extremists who need, indeed yearn for, an enemy that speaks in their crude slogans of nationalist cant and violence. The louder the Israelis and their idiot allies in Washington call for the bombing of Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions, the happier are the bankrupt clerics who are ordering the beating and murder of demonstrators. We may laugh when crowds supporting Ahmadinejad call us "the Great Satan," but there is a very palpable reality that has informed the terrible algebra of their hatred.
Our intoxication with our military prowess blinds us to all possibilities of hope and mutual cooperation. It was Mohammed Khatami, the president of Iran from 1997 to 2005-perhaps the only honorable Middle East leader of our time-whose refusal to countenance violence by his own supporters led to the demise of his lofty "civil society" at the hands of more ruthless, less scrupulous opponents. It was Khatami who proclaimed that "the death of even one Jew is a crime." And we sputtered back to this great and civilized man the primitive slogans of all deformed militarists. We were captive, as all bigots are, to our demons, and could not hear any sound but our own shouting. It is time to banish these demons. It is time to stand not with the helmeted goons who beat protesters, not with those in the Pentagon who make endless wars, but with the unarmed demonstrators in Iran who daily show us what we must become.
The fight of the Iranian people is our fight. And, perhaps for the first time, we can match our actions to our ideals. We have no right under post-Nuremberg laws to occupy Iraq or Afghanistan. These occupations are defined by these statutes as criminal "wars of aggression." They are war crimes. We have no right to use force, including the state-sponsored terrorism we unleash on Iran, to turn the Middle East into a private gas station for our large oil companies. We have no right to empower Israel's continuing occupation of Palestine, a flagrant violation of international law. The resistance you see in Iran will not end until Iranians, and all those burdened with repression in the Middle East, free themselves from the tyranny that comes from within and without. Let us, for once, be on the side of those who share our democratic ideals.
© 2009 TruthDig.com
Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, will be out in July, but is available for pre-order.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/22-0
Monday, June 15, 2009
Principles and Politics: Like Oil and Water
By Randall Holcombe
My title is taken from my review of Timothy Besley’s book, Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government, which appeared in the June 2009 issue of The Review of Austrian Economics. The reasoning behind my title is that the institutional structure of democratic politics puts elected representatives who act on their principles at a disadvantage. Unprincipled politicians come out ahead because of the design of the system.
To accomplish anything in a legislature requires the support of a majority of legislators. Nobody can do anything by themselves. The mechanism by which legislators can further their agendas is to trade votes with each other. “I’ll vote for your bill if you’ll vote for mine.” Legislators accumulate power when they agree to vote for someone else’s bill; they use up accumulated power when they call in their IOUs to secure the support of colleagues for their bills. The legislators who accumulate the most power in this setting are those who are ALWAYS ready to trade.
If a legislator always votes on principle, that legislator will have no chance to enter the political exchange process, and no chance to “buy” the support of other legislators by trading votes. If a certain measure goes against the principled legislator’s principles, the legislator will always vote against, so there’s no point in bargaining to try to change the principled politician’s vote. If a certain measure aligns with the principled legislator’s principles, the legislator will always vote for, and there is no need to buy that legislator’s vote.
An unprincipled politician can always be bought. If a measure comes up that the unprincipled legislator is inclined to oppose, supporters can offer that legislator a trade to get the legislator’s support. The legislator trades his/her vote, and gains a future claim on the vote of a colleague. That’s how power is accumulated in the legislature.
If a measure comes up that the unprincipled legislator is inclined to support, other supporters still must bribe the unprincipled legislator to keep his/her vote. Supporters know that even though the legislator is inclined to support the legislation, if the opponents make a good enough offer the unprincipled legislator will vote with the opponents. Unprincipled legislators have to be bribed even to vote the way they would be inclined to vote anyway, and in the process they accumulate even more political power in the form of claims against the future votes of their colleagues.
The system is set up to reward unprincipled politicians and punish principled ones, and the process of natural selection works here just as in many other settings. The principled politicians get weeded out as unprincipled politicians gain influence. Principles and politics don’t mix.
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=2407
My title is taken from my review of Timothy Besley’s book, Principled Agents? The Political Economy of Good Government, which appeared in the June 2009 issue of The Review of Austrian Economics. The reasoning behind my title is that the institutional structure of democratic politics puts elected representatives who act on their principles at a disadvantage. Unprincipled politicians come out ahead because of the design of the system.
To accomplish anything in a legislature requires the support of a majority of legislators. Nobody can do anything by themselves. The mechanism by which legislators can further their agendas is to trade votes with each other. “I’ll vote for your bill if you’ll vote for mine.” Legislators accumulate power when they agree to vote for someone else’s bill; they use up accumulated power when they call in their IOUs to secure the support of colleagues for their bills. The legislators who accumulate the most power in this setting are those who are ALWAYS ready to trade.
If a legislator always votes on principle, that legislator will have no chance to enter the political exchange process, and no chance to “buy” the support of other legislators by trading votes. If a certain measure goes against the principled legislator’s principles, the legislator will always vote against, so there’s no point in bargaining to try to change the principled politician’s vote. If a certain measure aligns with the principled legislator’s principles, the legislator will always vote for, and there is no need to buy that legislator’s vote.
An unprincipled politician can always be bought. If a measure comes up that the unprincipled legislator is inclined to oppose, supporters can offer that legislator a trade to get the legislator’s support. The legislator trades his/her vote, and gains a future claim on the vote of a colleague. That’s how power is accumulated in the legislature.
If a measure comes up that the unprincipled legislator is inclined to support, other supporters still must bribe the unprincipled legislator to keep his/her vote. Supporters know that even though the legislator is inclined to support the legislation, if the opponents make a good enough offer the unprincipled legislator will vote with the opponents. Unprincipled legislators have to be bribed even to vote the way they would be inclined to vote anyway, and in the process they accumulate even more political power in the form of claims against the future votes of their colleagues.
The system is set up to reward unprincipled politicians and punish principled ones, and the process of natural selection works here just as in many other settings. The principled politicians get weeded out as unprincipled politicians gain influence. Principles and politics don’t mix.
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=2407
Broke California Faces Shutdown
California’s famed redwood forests will have to close to visitors Mike Harvey in San Francisco
The state of California is in crisis and time has almost run out. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor, has spent this week haggling with state legislators to agree cuts to basic services in one of the world’s largest economies.
The state’s top finance officials warned that unless an emergency austerity plan is agreed by Monday — and there is little chance that it will be — they will not be able to borrow the billions of dollars needed to keep the current government functioning. If California was a company, it would have gone bust months ago.
The breadth and depth of Mr Schwarzenegger’s cuts are unprecedented and no one in the state, not even its dozens of billionaires, will be unaffected. His more radical proposals include wiping billions of dollars from the education budget, with the school year shortened and larger classes.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of police and firemen will be laid off, and state employees who keep their jobs face pay cuts of at least 10 per cent.
All financial aid for university students, affecting 200,000 people from low-income families, will end.
Local governments will no longer have to provide absentee ballots in elections, nor run programmes to help infants exposed to drugs. Even stray animals will no longer be kept alive for the statutory three days.
Mr Schwarzenegger, whose popularity has plunged to levels that George W. Bush would recognise, told lawmakers in Sacramento, the state capital: “California’s day of reckoning is here. Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed. Our credit is dried up.”
For the self-styled Governator and former Hollywood action hero used to getting his way, the issue has become humiliating. His proposals last month to raise taxes and boost borrowing to help to cover the deficit were rejected.Now he has embarked on a “day of reckoning” strategy, asking voters to recognise that Californians must “live within our means”.
The crisis represents a dramatic fall not only for Mr Schwarzenegger but for America’s Golden State. It faces a $24 billion (£14 billion) deficit in the fiscal year starting on July 1 — nearly $700 per head of population.
Were it an independent country, California would be among the ten biggest economies in the world, but its finances have been crippled by the recession. Unemployment already stands at 11 per cent, the fifth-highest in the nation, and another 63,700 jobs were lost last month. Now it will almost certainly need federal guarantees from Washington to borrow money from the financial markets.
Shocked welfare organisations are scrambling to protest at the savagery of the social cuts. Jean Ross, the executive director of the California Budget Project, a public policy research group, wrote in the San Diego Tribune: “These proposals target children and the young, California’s very future.”
Indeed, they would send a state that prides itself on its youthful image, its innovations, its tradition of reaching the future first, reeling backward in time into what one advocate called “an era of Dickens”.The Governor says that he “sees the faces behind those dollars” but he and other Republicans in the legislature will not raise taxes again after agreeing to $12.8 billion in sales, personal income and vehicle tax rises earlier this year.
Last year overall personal income declined for the first time since 1938. The land of Hollywood’s dream factory has turned into a fiscal nightmare.
Source: Global Research
Comments:
Marla
Jun 15, 2009 5:36 AM
Isn't it about time for the Katrina-like disaster to take place? The pillaging and real estate theft has already taken place. Imagine the insurance claims in addition to the disaster-relief funds that would allow for the upcoming development beyond Friant/Madera, where Schwarzenegger approved 5 new casinos. New dams, housing, golf courses. This is all a set up. According to Swieso, the mastermind behind the secret water diversion project, the government has "more money than they know what to do with." (Coincidence? Swieso is a long-time insurance agent/financial consultant who has invested 50 yrs into the water diversion project.) Swieso took me on a tour of where the water is being diverted ~ trust me, behind the smoke screen, huge plans are being made for major development.
Joe
The state’s top finance officials warned that unless an emergency austerity plan is agreed by Monday — and there is little chance that it will be — they will not be able to borrow the billions of dollars needed to keep the current government functioning. If California was a company, it would have gone bust months ago.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6489325.ece
The state of California is in crisis and time has almost run out. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor, has spent this week haggling with state legislators to agree cuts to basic services in one of the world’s largest economies.
The state’s top finance officials warned that unless an emergency austerity plan is agreed by Monday — and there is little chance that it will be — they will not be able to borrow the billions of dollars needed to keep the current government functioning. If California was a company, it would have gone bust months ago.
The breadth and depth of Mr Schwarzenegger’s cuts are unprecedented and no one in the state, not even its dozens of billionaires, will be unaffected. His more radical proposals include wiping billions of dollars from the education budget, with the school year shortened and larger classes.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of police and firemen will be laid off, and state employees who keep their jobs face pay cuts of at least 10 per cent.
All financial aid for university students, affecting 200,000 people from low-income families, will end.
Local governments will no longer have to provide absentee ballots in elections, nor run programmes to help infants exposed to drugs. Even stray animals will no longer be kept alive for the statutory three days.
Mr Schwarzenegger, whose popularity has plunged to levels that George W. Bush would recognise, told lawmakers in Sacramento, the state capital: “California’s day of reckoning is here. Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed. Our credit is dried up.”
For the self-styled Governator and former Hollywood action hero used to getting his way, the issue has become humiliating. His proposals last month to raise taxes and boost borrowing to help to cover the deficit were rejected.Now he has embarked on a “day of reckoning” strategy, asking voters to recognise that Californians must “live within our means”.
The crisis represents a dramatic fall not only for Mr Schwarzenegger but for America’s Golden State. It faces a $24 billion (£14 billion) deficit in the fiscal year starting on July 1 — nearly $700 per head of population.
Were it an independent country, California would be among the ten biggest economies in the world, but its finances have been crippled by the recession. Unemployment already stands at 11 per cent, the fifth-highest in the nation, and another 63,700 jobs were lost last month. Now it will almost certainly need federal guarantees from Washington to borrow money from the financial markets.
Shocked welfare organisations are scrambling to protest at the savagery of the social cuts. Jean Ross, the executive director of the California Budget Project, a public policy research group, wrote in the San Diego Tribune: “These proposals target children and the young, California’s very future.”
Indeed, they would send a state that prides itself on its youthful image, its innovations, its tradition of reaching the future first, reeling backward in time into what one advocate called “an era of Dickens”.The Governor says that he “sees the faces behind those dollars” but he and other Republicans in the legislature will not raise taxes again after agreeing to $12.8 billion in sales, personal income and vehicle tax rises earlier this year.
Last year overall personal income declined for the first time since 1938. The land of Hollywood’s dream factory has turned into a fiscal nightmare.
Source: Global Research
Comments:
Marla
Jun 15, 2009 5:36 AM
Isn't it about time for the Katrina-like disaster to take place? The pillaging and real estate theft has already taken place. Imagine the insurance claims in addition to the disaster-relief funds that would allow for the upcoming development beyond Friant/Madera, where Schwarzenegger approved 5 new casinos. New dams, housing, golf courses. This is all a set up. According to Swieso, the mastermind behind the secret water diversion project, the government has "more money than they know what to do with." (Coincidence? Swieso is a long-time insurance agent/financial consultant who has invested 50 yrs into the water diversion project.) Swieso took me on a tour of where the water is being diverted ~ trust me, behind the smoke screen, huge plans are being made for major development.
Joe
The state’s top finance officials warned that unless an emergency austerity plan is agreed by Monday — and there is little chance that it will be — they will not be able to borrow the billions of dollars needed to keep the current government functioning. If California was a company, it would have gone bust months ago.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6489325.ece
Monday, June 1, 2009
Just a little pill - Mr Zoloft - Wow! Too True.
From: Weary Tales
Just a little pill
It want hurt not that big
Easy to swallow
Then Mr Zoloft will take it all away
The doctors says
All will go
The scars inside from inside
Caused by the surgeons knife to many to count
The sights will go
The pain inside your head
The anger sadness happiness
All will go and life will be smooth cool
The whispers of people’s eyes
Their words all will go
Just take the little pill and your mind no more
Will care for the home around
No more will you see the sorrow fear hurt in their eyes
No more will you hear the hate love despair
As this little pill will take it all away
Just me and Mr Zoloft
Just ignore the little warnings
May cause coma
May cause headaches
Dizziness
Hallucinations
Nausea
Breathless
If any of these happens see your doctor quick
But what if I don’t see what it does to me
So for a while I think Mr Zoloft in the pack you stay
As I need the pain
I have to see feel my children’s eyes then I am alive
I need to care without a thought of payment due
When it comes to me I think
I will just balance my senses and feelings
I will try to be just controlled
In such an awkward mixed up unbalanced unjust world we live
As I am just me no need to be me and a little pill
As I smile and close the cupboard door
I think i will just sit here and rock for a while
if thats all right and think just think of the world we live
why you just belive what a happy place it is
stay strong in truth and love
grow weak in lies and hate
weary traveller
Just a little pill
It want hurt not that big
Easy to swallow
Then Mr Zoloft will take it all away
The doctors says
All will go
The scars inside from inside
Caused by the surgeons knife to many to count
The sights will go
The pain inside your head
The anger sadness happiness
All will go and life will be smooth cool
The whispers of people’s eyes
Their words all will go
Just take the little pill and your mind no more
Will care for the home around
No more will you see the sorrow fear hurt in their eyes
No more will you hear the hate love despair
As this little pill will take it all away
Just me and Mr Zoloft
Just ignore the little warnings
May cause coma
May cause headaches
Dizziness
Hallucinations
Nausea
Breathless
If any of these happens see your doctor quick
But what if I don’t see what it does to me
So for a while I think Mr Zoloft in the pack you stay
As I need the pain
I have to see feel my children’s eyes then I am alive
I need to care without a thought of payment due
When it comes to me I think
I will just balance my senses and feelings
I will try to be just controlled
In such an awkward mixed up unbalanced unjust world we live
As I am just me no need to be me and a little pill
As I smile and close the cupboard door
I think i will just sit here and rock for a while
if thats all right and think just think of the world we live
why you just belive what a happy place it is
stay strong in truth and love
grow weak in lies and hate
weary traveller
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