Link to the original article here.

According to Dutch scientists, a moon rock that was given as a gift to the Dutch government by the U.S. in 1969 is just a piece of petrified wood. No response from NASA as of yet as to why they tried to pass off petrified wood to world governments as a “moon rock”. From the article:

A treasured piece of moon rock showcased in a key Amsterdam museum is nothing but petrified wood, museum authorities said of a gift made to a former Dutch prime minister by a US envoy.

The exhibit at the Rijksmuseum, was originally gifted to Willem Drees in 1969 by then US ambassador William Middendorf as a souvenir of a pathbreaking trip by three US astronauts on July 20, 1969.

Lets the conspiracies begin!

For years throughout human history there have been the murmurings of dark alliances. Improbable and outrageous conspiracy theories regarding the “true” powers that controlled the world… and for years, despite evidence to the contrary, the people that have adamantly proselytized over and over that there was a “worldwide conspiracy to control the world by unseen powers” were dismissed as “alarmist” and “unbalanced”. While I do no argue that there are unbalanced people in this world recent world events have pushed some ugly truths out into the light.

The age old conspiracy was that there is a global international banking cartel that plots to subjugate every man, woman, and child on this earth through financial means is an old one. Growing up, I would watch as adults would guffaw in outrage and pass such ideas off as radical fringe behavior. I was guilty of the same behavior myself but the conspiracy cat is out of the proverbial bag at this point.

In a strange sort of way this financial collapse is a good thing for everyone (everyone who is paying attention that is…). Its positive in the regard that it has pushed into the light, the fact that the world’s banking and financial system DOES in fact run the civilized world. I don’t think it was planned this way but the “masterminds” behind this financial disaster forgot to include one important factor in their calculations, and that is the fact that greed takes on a life of its own and ends up consuming itself.

The financial institutions, investment firms, hedge funds and loan providers got so greedy, that its culminated into a “DEFCON 1″ scenario where the whole financial system was on the verge of total collapse. So in response, the insolvent banking systems, freshly “evaluated” from the recent government stress tests are now pillaging the very citizens in which they intended to enslave, and our government is in complete support of the saddling of insurmountable debt for many generations to come.

What does it say about the power structure in this country and more importantly, the world when the flailing banking and financial industry has consumed itself in endless greed and now crawl back to world governments and begged for bailouts? The government gives the banking system the bailouts they groveled for and in response, the banks take the money that the citizens have loaned them by proxy and then re-loan our money back to us with interest!

How much more uncapitalist can you get? So my question is “when does it stop being a conspiracy and start becoming fact?”.

In another news story out of Afghanistan, which the corporate controlled mass media is again failing to report (and you wonder why traditional news outlets are dying?), There is evidently a mass protest going on in the largest prison in Afghanistan. From the Sydney Morning Herald article:

The prisoners are refusing to leave their cells, but they are not engaging in hunger strikes or violence. Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer for a Yemeni held at Bagram, said prisoners are protesting being held indefinitely without trial or legal recourse. The US military declined to comment.

Unlike Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners have access to lawyers, the 620 prisoners at Bagram are not allowed to visit their lawyers. Afghan Government representatives are generally not allowed to visit or inspect the prison.

In April the justice department appealed a U.S. judge’s decision that the prisoners at Bagram had the same Habeas Corpus rights that the prisoners at Guantanamo had. I’m not saying we should coddle the “terrorists” but they are human beings and a civilization is judged by how it treats its prisoners. If they are in fact guilty of crimes put them on trial. Holding someone indefinitely is unjust by any standards.

Since the global “recession” has been in full effect, there have been several cases of worker uprisings in France of all places. The latest uprising was diffused this past friday in Tonneins, south-western France. It seems as though the french warehouse workers at the JLG Industries facilities were protesting the layoff of 53 workers and threatened to blow up fuel tanks on the plant they were working on unless the corporation gave a $42,000 dollar severance bonus for each of the workers. The corporation evidently acquiesced and forked the money over.

There is another incident where workers are threatening to go BOOM, if money is not exchanged, from the BBC article:

Meanwhile, a tense stand-off continues at the bankrupt New Fabris car plant in Chatellerault, south-west of Paris, where workers have also made a threat to blow up the factory.

They have given a 31 July deadline for Renault and Peugeot, which provided 90% of the plant’s work, to pay them 30,000 euros each.

Renault and PSA Peugeot said it was not their responsibility to pay workers.

Who knew that the French would rise up and essentially commit terroristic acts against their masters and walk away with piles of cash? What an unpredictable world we live in.

In an explosive accusation out of Russia Today, a correspondent in Washington D.C. has claimed that after speaking to several intelligence officials in the U.S., that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated while exposing herself to supporters in December 2007, was a possible target of Dick Cheney’s personal “hit squad”?!?! Quoted from the article:

On Wednesday, Washington-based investigative journalist Wayne Madsen quoted US intelligence officials as making ‘prominent’ references to Bhutto as a probable target of the program.

“I spoke to several US intelligence officials who were telling me that this assassination team may have targeted politicians in other countries,” Madsen told Russia Today.

“One name mentioned prominently was former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who may have been a victim of this particular program.”

This new unspecified CIA program, which was hidden from Congress for 8 years, sounds like the resurrection of the Phoenix program from the Viet Nam war era. The Phoenix program was a U.S. government sanctioned covert effort in which elite military units working in conjunction with the CIA and a host of other intelligence agencies carried out assassinations and kidnappings targeting the neutralization of enemy leaders, infrastructure and informants.

I am reticent to publish anything on this blog without independent verification but the allegations are potentially catastrophic to the Bush administration, and they are just that, allegations. Having not fully comprehended the impact of  this pontification if this were ever reported in the mainstream press here in the U.S.– regardless, the insinuation is enough to be the “tipping point” that may get Cheney and friends prosecuted if this turns out to be factual.

Surely, the next stage of arguments will be that this program “kept America safe”, that is if the U.S. mass meddia ever reports the issue…

Click the link to the story along with a video news piece with the wild allegation…

I ran into this interesting article on the Computerworld blogs and the upcoming trend is that the IT workers in the U.S. will eventually have to equalize with workers in other parts of the world in order to stay competitive.

IBM is increasingly outsourcing the IT work to India while keeping the high paid executives here in the U.S. (sound familiar?) to manage offshore teams. I guess its sort of like Walmart buying cheap chinese goods and selling back to the consumers here in the U.S but instead its technology being developed in places like India and China and being resold back to the U.S. corporations.

From the article:

Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of Outsourcing America, says this chart represents a departure point for IBM.

“I think this moment was so important because it was when Big Blue made the fateful decision to compete by substituting low cost workers in India and elsewhere for high-cost American workers,” said Hira. “Instead of choosing to compete by investing in better tools, technologies, and training for their American workforce, they chose to compete their American workers head to head with workers in other countries who can afford to be paid less. And they gave those workers in low-cost countries the same, or better, tools, technologies and training, as their American workforce,” he said.

Is IT the next domino to fall?

The United States Naval Institute is reporting that the Chinese military has an operational anti ship ballistic missile (ABSM) system that can sink a U.S. aircraft carrier with one strike. It supposedly has a 2000 kilometer range and flies at speeds of Mach 10!

From the article:

The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike.

Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.

Supporting the missile is a network of satellites, radar and unmanned aerial vehicles that can locate U.S. ships and then guide the weapon, enabling it to hit moving targets.

What is even more troubling is that according to the article there is no reliable defense systems on ships that deter ballistic missiles.

I can’t help but to wonder that while China stresses engineering and mathematics in their school systems while the U.S. wallows in beer bong fraternities and M TV spring break. Was this disconcerting news ever in doubt?

Once again the American corporate controlled media fails to report important world news (for example, this is the front page article from CNN.com at the time of this post). What happened this time? Only a potential worldwide avian bird flu pandemic that could have infected and killed millions of people worldwide!

Thankfully, catastrophe was narrowly averted by a subcontractor who ran a series of last minute tests on a batch of “flu vaccines” from an Austrian plant owned by Baxter Pharmaceutical which was scheduled to ship to three other countries.  From the AP article:

People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted.

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.

While H5N1 doesn’t easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.

So basically, the H5N1 Avian bird flu virus, which is THE most deadly and pathogenic strain of the bird flu (according to WHO, it has a 50-70% fatality rate when contracted by humans) was somehow “accidentally” mixed with the common flu virus (which is very easy to transfer from human to human). This “virus cocktail” which could have easily mutated into a super lethal, easily transmittable world wide killer, would’ve been unleashed on unsuspecting recipients and caused untold damage.

There are “suspect” actions that are associated with the delivery of this batch of “flu vaccines”. Primarily, the contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses were labeled appropriately, but the H5N1 viruses were not labeled at all. How could this happen? What is the explanation behind this potentially disastrous mistake?  According to Daily Kos:

Yes, Baxter is in the midst of finalizing it’s own version of a bird flu vaccine. Here’s a recent clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

So just in summary: Here you have a company finalizing a license on a bird flu vaccine that ‘accidentally’ ships out the exact formula in it’s vaccines for creating a potential bird flu pandemic. A flu that would have at least a 60% kill rate among humans.

So a pharmaceutical company releases a super contagious strain of the most deadly form of avian bird flu on the unsuspecting public and then swoops in to save the day with the exact vaccine to stop any further infection? Sounds like a plot line for the next Resident Evil game…

So, you would think that some heads would roll after this incident right? Someone is losing their job if not sanctions, fines and possible prosecution right (quote from daily Kos below)?

And according to this interview with a spokesperson at Baxter, all procedures were followed correctly and no one is losing their job. Well, it’s good to know everything’s just fine.

I just want to personally thank the subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. I owe you a beer.