Obama environmental advisor resigns over 9/11 truth petition controversy

Van Jones with the White House Council on Environmental Quality touches a solar panel to be used at one of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s solar-powered emergency stations during the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 August 11, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Getty Images

Environmental official had signed 9/11 petition

Associated Press | Sep 5, 2009

Obama adviser Jones resigns in controversy

By WILL LESTER

WASHINGTON – An environmental adviser for President Barack Obama, Van Jones, has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.

Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs,” has been linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.

Jones issued an apology on Thursday. When asked the next day whether Obama still had confidence in him, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said only that Jones “continues to work in the administration.”

The matter surfaced after news reports of a derogatory comment Jones made in the past about Republicans, and separately, of Jones’s name appearing on a petition connected to the events surrounding 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

That 2004 petition had asked for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether high-level government officers had allowed the attacks to occur.

Jones flatly said in his statement that he did not agree with the petition’s stand and that “it certainly does not reflect my views, now or ever.”

As for his other comments he made before joining Obama’s team, Jones said: “If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize.”

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Glenn Beck Attacks 9/11 Truth Again

Beck equates the 9/11 truth movement with radical Communist ideology

Police give man CPR after shooting him with Taser

9news.com | Sep 3, 2009

by Jeffrey Wolf

AURORA – Two people, including an Aurora Police officer, were taken to the hospital on Thursday morning after a man was shot with a Taser and then given CPR.

Aurora Police say it happened near South Mission Parkway and South Kalispell Street around 11:30 a.m.

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Police had gone to the home and found a 19-year-old man, Markus Gabel, wanted on a felony warrant. They arrested him and also found drug paraphernalia.

About a half-dozen people were also at the house and police say for some reason, one of them jumped up and began to run.

Police chased the man across the street, through Mission Viejo Park and into a canal area.

When they caught the man, there was some sort of fight and police shot the man twice with a Taser and arrested him.

Officers say the man then started to have a medical issue and needed CPR. He was taken to a local hospital. His condition and name were not immediately released.

Police say an officer injured his back during the pursuit and was also taken to the hospital. The officer’s name was also not released.

Another officer was also injured, but was not taken to the hospital.

Lawyers, families say 5 girls strip-searched at school

The superintendent acknowledged that no money was found in the girls’ possession.

Desmoines Register | Sep 5, 2009

By JENNIFER JACOBS

School officials in Atlantic forced five teenage girls to take off their clothing for a search after a classmate reported $100 missing from her purse, according to the girls’ families and two lawyers.

The classmate and a female counselor stood watch in the girls’ locker room at Atlantic High School as the five girls removed their clothing, lifted up their underwear, and in one case took off all her clothing, according to lawyers Ed Noethe of Council Bluffs and Matt Hudson of Harlan.

Strip-searching is illegal in Iowa schools.

Dan Crozier, the interim superintendent of the Atlantic school district, said the search took place Aug. 21, the third day of school, during a gym class in the last period of the day.

Crozier said faculty members denied it was a strip-search. “According to our board policy, it was an allowable search,” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that no school official has free rein to do intimate searches of students. Making a girl pull the waistband of her underwear away from her body constituted a strip-search, the court ruled.

Michelle West, whose sophomore daughter was one of the Atlantic girls searched, believes there was no justification for the teachers’ actions. “It’s not like it was a firearm. No one was in any danger. There was no reason for the girls to be strip-searched,” she said.

Families said the girls have reacted differently to the embarrassment of the search, and at least one was deeply troubled by it. Three of the five girls’ parents hired lawyers, and a fourth family said they intend to do so. They are considering a lawsuit.

The Register chose not to identify the girls.

The superintendent acknowledged that no money was found in the girls’ possession, but he declined to share details about the search.

“I guess I really can’t comment on that because of confidentiality of those involved,” Crozier said.

The girls told their parents that after the classmate reported the missing money, gym teacher Tim Duff consulted with Assistant Principal Paul Croghan. The girls said a new female counselor, whose name they were unsure of, then was called in to supervise the search in the locker room. Crozier confirmed those facts Friday.

The older sister of one of the girls said the teen took off her bra and underwear after specifically asking if she had to do so. She complied because she did not want to cause a scene, the sister said.

Crozier said the faculty denied the searches were strip-searches, but he added that there are different interpretations of what the term means.

“According to the people that we’ve talked to the first time, and I’ve talked to them maybe once or twice, they’ve said it would not fall into that category,” he said. “I’m real careful about saying that because it could be interpreted differently.”

State education officials said the law is clear — school officials cannot force students to disrobe to search for contraband.

“There’s an absolute prohibition on strip-searches in Iowa,” said Carol Greta, legal counsel for the Iowa Department of Education, who was speaking in general and not referring to the Atlantic case. “It’s an absolute no-no.”

The Iowa Board of Education Examiners, which has the power to discipline teachers for unethical or illegal behavior, investigated a similar complaint of a strip-search in 2005. The principal and a guidance counselor at Beckman High School in Dyersville claimed they did not know their actions constituted a strip-search.

Both were reprimanded but kept their licenses, state records show.

In the Atlantic case, none of the boys in the gym class was searched because “that incident didn’t happen when there were any boys around,” Crozier said.

The superintendent declined to answer more questions, but in a written statement he said: “The district was made aware of a considerable amount of money that was lost at school. The actions taken were in compliance with the school district policies.”

West, the parent, said the girls all complied with the directive to remove their clothing.

“The idea was, ‘If we refuse we’re guilty,’ ” the mother said. “One girl said, ‘Well, if I say no, I’m not taking my clothes off, for the rest of my life I’m going to seem guilty if I don’t.’ That really upset me.”

Each girl stripped in varying degrees, families and the lawyers said.

Hudson’s client, who is 15, “was asked to remove all of her clothing including her undergarments,” he said.

One mother said the girl refused to take off her underwear in front of everyone, but went around a corner and did so.

Some of the girls didn’t take off their underwear because it was more revealing than the other girls’, making it more obvious that nothing was hidden underneath, said Noethe, one of the lawyers.

Hudson said, “Someone asked if they could just lift up their bra and they were told that wasn’t good enough.”

One of Noethe’s clients was searched twice, he said.

“She was told to take her clothes off and put them back on, then told to do it again because we need you to take your bra off,” Noethe said.

The search occurred in the presence of the student who reported the missing $100, the lawyers said.

Hudson said: “I think Ed and I are in agreement that we just find it inexcusable and unacceptable and are very surprised to find school officials were unaware of the Iowa law and a very recent Supreme Court decision.”

The Iowa Legislature in 1986 passed a law banning school strip-searches.

Ben Stone, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, said: “If a strip-search occurred as it’s been described to us, it was an absolutely intolerable act by the government and there should be very high accountability.”

Young people who are ordered to take off their clothing in front of a stranger whose intention is to search them “creates an anxiety that is extremely heightened, especially with kids in their formative years,” Stone said.

“The fact that the girls were in a locker room means absolutely nothing. They weren’t taking off their clothes to go back to class. They were taking off their clothes because a person in authority has demanded they take off their clothes. That type of psychological stress can be long-lasting.”

Queensland Australia May Consider Ban on Taser Gun Use

Bloomberg | Sep 4, 2009

By Iain Wilson

The Australian state of Queensland may scrap the use of Taser stun guns following a review that says the weapons could kill, the Australian newspaper said.

The police review follows the heart attack death in June of a north Queensland man who was shot 28 times with a Taser, the Australian reported, without saying where it got the information.

The review will conclude for the first time in Australia that Taser stun guns carry the potential to injure or kill, particularly when fired repeatedly, the newspaper said.

Queensland’s police minister, Neil Roberts, and Commissioner Bob Atkinson will hold a media conference in Brisbane later today to discuss the findings of the review, the minister’s office said in an e-mailed notice.

Suicidal Thoughts and Rage Associated With Anti-depressants and Smoking Cessation Drugs

Suicidal Thoughts and Rage: What are Causing Your Symptoms of Side Effects

US Recall News | Sep 4, 2009

Suicidal thoughts and Rage are often symptoms of conditions like clinical depression, and bipolar disorder. Since everyone handles depression differently, the symptoms of this disease manifest in different ways. Extreme anger is a common – but often ignored – symptom of depression, especially in men.

Rage and suicidal thoughts can also be related to diseases like Lyme disease, or could be side effects associated with certain medications, such as Chantix and Welbutrin. Below is a list of diseases and conditions associated with symptoms like Suicidal Thoughts and Rage, as well as a list of medications related to similar side effects.

We are not medical professionals, and these are not comprehensive lists. Please contact your doctor if you are experiencing any of the following symptoms or side effects, or similar health issues.

Suicidal Thoughts and Rage are Symptoms of:

Depression: Clinical depression, or major depressive disorder, can easily lead to suicidal thoughts and for some can cause rage. The symptoms of depression can be misleading to doctors and patients alike because so many things can be at the root of the problem including nutritional imbalance, hormonal imbalance, environmental toxins, and side effects from medications.

Bipolar Disorder: Bipolar disorder, also called manic-depression, is a form of depression with a very high suicide rate. It is characterized by extreme mood swings which include rage. Rage is an aspect of bipolar disorder that is often overlooked and many people are not aware that it is something to expect with the condition.

Traumatic Brain Injury: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) effects each victim differently. When there is no loss of consciousness and/or no blow to the head, it often goes undetected or undiagnosed. Mood swing, depression, suicidal thoughts, and episodes of extreme rage are common after TBI and the symptoms can be life-long. To complicate matters further TBI can cause epilepsy. When we think of seizures, we typically think of convulsions, but a seizure is really electrical misfiring in the brain and does not always cause convulsions. Seizures can be mistaken for outbursts of rage.

Lyme Disease: Lyme disease is carried by some ticks and can be transmitted to humans by a tick bite. It is an inflammatory disease that can affect different areas of the body and has widely varying symptoms. Rage is such a common complication of Lyme disease that it is simply referred to as “Lyme rage.” Suicidal thoughts are not uncommon in people with Lyme disease and can be a result of the disease in action or due to excruciating symptoms from which there is no relief.

Suicidal Thoughts and Rage Are Side Effects Associated With:

Chantix: Chantix is a smoking cessation drug. Instead of delivering nicotine, as many smoking cessation aids do, it attaches to the receptors in the brain that nicotine normally attaches to, blocking the nicotine out.

Zyban and Wellbutrin: Bupropion, sold as Zyban and Wellbutrin, is used as a smoking cessation aid and an antidepressant. It is a norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor and, like Chantix, blocks the reception of nicotine.

Zoloft: Zoloft is an antidepressant also sold under the brand name Lustral and generically as sertraline hydrochloride. It is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI).

Neurontin: Neurontin is used to treat nerve pain in people with herpes or shingles and to treat epilepsy. It affects the chemical and nerves in the body, but exactly how it works is not yet known.

Cymbalta: Cymbalta is used to treat depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, and pain caused by diabetic neuropathy. It was tested as a treatment for stress urinary incontinence, but failed due to suicides and liver toxicity.

‘9/11: Junk Science and Conspiracy – The Fairy tale narrative that goes down like Soma

Deadline Live | Sep 1, 2009

By Jack Blood

Well … I guess I can turn in my “truther” membership card now. Watching the half baked “scientific” experiments performed on the National Geographic Channel last night, embedded with the Cheshire like Matt Taibbi, I was left thinking… Where’s the beef.

Nope, this highly promoted documentary intended to be the final debunking of the crazy 911 truther movement, and the science that drives it….Completely collapsed into it’s own foot print, and went down like over cooked mac n cheese.

Not that anyone who has done a modicum of research into the so called official story of 911 didn’t know what was coming… personally I expected more. In the war for hearts and minds, the generals of 911 debunking came at us with a wet thud from their expert pea shooters. In other words, the “docuganda” piece was highly predictable, and toothless.

The two hour hit piece of crap began by setting up the credibility of their experts, IE: Random controlled demo guys, and several men in hard hats with official sounding titles.. These geniuses would then set up a series of “gotcha” conclusions for a panel of 911 luminaries such as David Ray Griffin (PhD, theologian, author of A New Pearl Harbor etc…), Richard Gage (An Architect with years of experience designing steel framed buildings, architects and engineers for 911Truth) Steven Jones (PhD, and “retired” er Defrocked professor / Physicist) and Dylan Avery (writer, director of the famed Loose Change series)

Full Story

Rebellion-B-Gone: Chemical Neurowarfare

Neuroworld | Sep 3, 2009

by Ryan Sager

Imagine a future where the Iranian regime didn’t need to spend weeks in the streets beating, killing, and jailing protesters to put down the reform movement. Imagine in this future that the beatings would be replaced with something gentler, but ultimately more sinister: non-lethal, weaponized drugs designed to decrease aggression and increase trust.

That’s the future imagined and fretted over in an opinion piece (non-gated, samizdat version here) and editorial (PDF) in the current issue of Nature.

Currently, the Chemical Weapons Convention does not ban nonlethal, domestic uses of chemical agents for uses such as riot control. Likewise, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention states that biological agents may be used for “prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes.”

At present, chemical weapons intended to change behavior — as opposed to simply incapacitate — are fairly crude. The Nature opinion piece begins with a discussion of the 2002 Russian theater hostage standoff, in which the Russian government used an “incapacitating agent” to knock out the Chechen terrorists — clumsily, as it happens, ultimately killing 124 of the hostages with the gas.

However, a future is not too far away when much more sophisticated agents could be ready for deployment.

Full Story

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Marketing new chemical weapons

To market these weapons as somehow separate from the chemical and biological weapons that are banned by international treaties, they are being given new, obfuscating names. In this intentional narrative (.pdf), chemical weapons become “calmatives” or “advanced riot control agents.” And they are promoted as part of a group of so-called “nonlethal” weapons. Worse yet, the semantic confusions go farther. These weapons aren’t really weapons at all but “capabilities,” “technologies,” and “techniques.” Similarly, other weapons under this umbrella lose their descriptive edge: laser weapons become “optical distractors,” acoustic weapons become “acoustic hailing devices,” and electrical weapons become “electromuscular incapacitation devices.”

Fort Lee military police deal with mock protesters as part of anti-terrorism exercise

Fort Lee military police are confronted by mock protestors, including Bertha Hicks (center) during a training exercise designed to train security personnell to handle protestors. P. KEVIN MORLEY/TIMES-DISPATCH

SLIDESHOW: Mock protest at Ft. Lee

Fort Lee law-enforcement, civilian and military personnel were simulating a protest as part of a three-day anti-terrorism exercise.

Fort Lee is considered a critical infrastructure, just like all military bases, airports and power plants, and ensuring the integrity of these facilities has become a homeland security priority, particularly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Richmond Times Dispatch | Sep 2, 2009

By Luz Lazo

FORT LEE — Motorists along state Route 36 just outside Fort Lee slowed down yesterday morning to take a peek at the soldiers in full gear guarding the main gate.

About a dozen protesters held posters and chanted, “No more hate! No more hate!”

The base’s law enforcement made sure the demonstrators stayed calm and outside Fort Lee’s perimeters.

It was a peaceful and short demonstration, but such an unusual scene that a traffic backup seemed inevitable.

“What’s going on?” asked a passing driver.

Fort Lee law-enforcement, civilian and military personnel were simulating a protest as part of a three-day anti-terrorism and force-protection exercise at the Army base.

“It is really important to do training like this,” said Garrison Commander Col. Mike Morrow, noting the Army’s dedication to protect its soldiers and their families.

Throughout the year, Fort Lee officials conduct emergency training, analyze local crime trends and national threats to prepare for different scenarios, from protests to shootings to more violent attacks, Morrow said.

Training today consists of a more violent scenario, base officials said.

“We look at all the ways that somebody would try to do us harm,” Morrow said. “We train for as many contingencies as we can and we work closely with the local communities.”

Fort Lee law enforcement — made up of military police, Army Civilian Police and contract security guards — is conducting this week’s training in collaboration with the FBI and Chesterfield County police, Morrow said.

In yesterday’s simulation, demonstrators protested against the trial of a soldier who is a white supremacist. Police directed traffic, and military police kept the protesters outside the gate and asked them to back up from the entrance as the demonstration escalated.

In a real scenario, the Civilian Police would handle arrests on federal property, said Fort Lee Police Chief Joseph Metzger. Local police would be called to assist, he said.

Fort Lee has never dealt with such a situation, Metzger said.

Fort Lee is considered a critical infrastructure, just like all military bases, airports and power plants, and ensuring the integrity of these facilities has become a homeland security priority, particularly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Security training at Fort Lee, for example, has increased since 9/11, Metzger said.

“We have come a long way,” he said, “in training with the threats that we face today.”

Royal Society warns climate engineering could result in mass starvation

Artificial trees that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere are one of the plans that need further research, according to the Royal Society. (Institution of Mechanical Engineers)

London Times | Sep 2, 2009

Royal Society warns climate engineering ‘could cause disaster’

by Ben Webster

Giant engineering schemes to reflect sunlight or suck carbon dioxide from the air could be the only way to save the Earth from runaway global warming, according to a group of leading scientists. But they say that these schemes could have their own catastrophic consequences, such as disrupting rainfall patterns, and should be deployed only as a last resort if attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions fail.

The Royal Society, a fellowship of 1,400 of the world’s most eminent scientists, published a report yesterday on the feasibility and possible dangers of technologies for cooling down the Earth, known as geoengineering. The ideas include artificial trees that draw CO2 from the air and mimicking volcanoes by spraying sulphate particles a few miles above the Earth to deflect the Sun’s rays. The most far-fetched would would be to launch trillions of small mirrors into space to act as a sunshield.

A far cheaper solution would be a fleet of 1,500 ships that would suck up seawater and spray it out of tall funnels to create sun-reflecting clouds. However, the report said that these clouds could disrupt rainfall patterns and result in mass starvation in countries dependent on the monsoon.

The panel of 12 scientists who produced the report concluded that all these approaches were theoretically possible and, despite the potential side-effects, should be explored with a view to holding trials.

They called for a £100 million annual global research fund to study geoengineering technologies and said that Britain should contribute £10 million a year, ten times the amount being spent now on such research.

Professor John Shepherd, who chaired the panel, said: “It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions we are heading for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases.

“Our research found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and eco-systems — yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them. Geo- engineering and its consequences are the price we have to pay for failure to act on climate change.”

Professor Shepherd, Fellow in Earth System Science at the University of Southampton, admitted that there was a risk that the report would be exploited by fossil fuel companies, which might use it to argue that there was an alternative to cutting CO2 emissions.

But he said that it was better to start a thorough research programme now rather than wait until the start of rapid climate change, when the world would have no time to test solutions before deploying them.

Professor Shepherd added that he had no firm opinion on how likely it was that the world would need some form of geoengineering. “My opinion ranges from maybe to possibly to probably, depending on what I had for breakfast.”

Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution in the United States and a member of the panel, said: “We should spend 99 per cent of our effort on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and 1 per cent on this insurance policy \. We need to understand what our options are.”

The report said that an international body, possibly the United Nations, would need to oversee geoengineering projects because they would have impacts far beyond national boundaries. An international compensation scheme would also be needed to help those adversely affected by any project.

Professor John Beddington, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, endorsed the report’s call for more research into geoengineering. He said: “These are part of the armoury of dealing with what is an enormously difficult global problem.” But he added that it was “too early to say” whether trials should be approved.

Big Brother Watch launches campaign against authoritarian surveillance state

Think tank: Be warned, Big Brother, I’ve got my eye on you

Matthew Elliott begins a campaign against our surveillance state

London Times | Sep 6, 2009

by Matthew Elliott

In June, Stewart Smith, who suffers from arthritis, was handed a £50 fixed penalty notice after dropping a £10 note in the street. Last year Gareth Corkhill, a father of four, had to pay £225 and got a criminal record when magistrates found him guilty of leaving the lid of his wheelie bin open by a mere four inches. Last month Stephen White’s sister Helen was rung several times and visited at her house by police officers wanting to know the whereabouts of her trainspotter brother, who had been using her car while taking pictures of trains in Pembrokeshire.

What is going on? Over the past 10 years our government has become increasingly overbearing, creating a nation of criminals out of good British citizens. We are subject to ever more officious laws and intrusive means of surveillance. Britain has 1% of the world’s population but about 20% of its CCTV cameras; it has one camera for every 14 people in the country. Last year local authorities, the police and the intelligence services made 504,073 requests to access private e-mail and telephone data — that is nearly 10,000 requests every week.

Documents leaked earlier this year revealed that GCHQ, the government’s spy centre, had already awarded £200m to suppliers as part of Mastering the Internet, a mass surveillance project designed to enable the monitoring of all internet use and phone calls in Britain.

An Englishman’s home is no longer his castle: some 266 laws now grant the state the right to enter private homes. And if they can’t get you on tape, online or in your home, in recent months a slew of websites has appeared encouraging citizens to shop people dropping litter or acting suspiciously. Just as in Orwell’s dystopia, Britain is being turned into a nation of narks.

It is time to fight back. The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) has already led the field in exposing the outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money and malpractice throughout all levels of government. Our campaigns on MPs’ expenses, the growth of the quango state and the rise of public sector fat cats have helped to shape public opinion and the policies of both the government and opposition. Now we are launching Big Brother Watch as a check on the surveillance state.

The campaign will be headed by Alex Deane, a barrister and David Cameron’s first chief of staff, supported by Dylan Sharpe, Boris Johnson’s press officer for his London mayoral campaign.

Big Brother Watch plans to produce regular investigative research papers on the erosion of civil liberties in the UK, beginning with a detailed investigation of the ways in which individual local authorities have encroached upon the lives of the ordinary British citizen, whether it be placing microchips in rubbish bins or snooping on your private telephone records. We will name and shame the local authorities most prone to authoritarian abuses.

We will also champion individual cases. We want to use the legal system to help the man in the street fight injustice and regain his personal freedom. We are building up a legal fund to back cases in which we feel a key principle is at stake.

Not many people realise they can use the Freedom of Information Act to demand to see data held about themselves by the authorities. The Human Rights Act, which came into force in 2000, makes it unlawful for any public body to act in a way that is incompatible with the European convention on human rights. The convention includes the right of access to documents and we want to help people to use this and other provisions to extend our right to government information.

In the same way that the TPA has pioneered the use of the Freedom of Information Act to bring transparency to government spending and expose the full horrors of the wastage, wages and expenses of our public representatives, we intend to unearth the reality of the Big Brother state.

Last year the TPA produced a report that put the total cost of Big Brother government at about £20 billion — or almost £800 per household. We want Big Brother Watch to become the central hub for the latest on personal freedom and civil liberty — a forum for information and discussion on something that directly affects British citizens in their everyday lives.

Big Brother Watch also aims to expose the extent to which the web has become the first line in state surveillance. Recent examples of web companies being leant on to release personal data have opened the floodgates for the co-opting of internet activity into the state’s control. Safeguards are needed before it’s too late.

We hope Big Brother Watch will become the gadfly of the ruling class, a champion for civil liberties and personal freedom — and a force to help a future government roll back a decade of state interference in our lives.

Matthew Elliott is chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and founder of Big Brother Watch (www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)