Assassination of Russia [video]

From Moscow Metro Blasts: Another FSB Inside Job?

A U.S. Biometrics Agency

FAS Secrecy News
March 29th, 2010 by Steven Aftergood

As of last week, there is now a U.S. Government national security agency called the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA).  It supersedes a Biometrics Task Force that was established in 2000.

Though nominally a component of the Army, the biometrics agency has Defense Department-wide responsibilities.

“The Biometrics Identity Management Agency leads Department of Defense activities to prioritize, integrate, and synchronize biometrics technologies and capabilities and to manage the Department of Defense’s authoritative biometrics database to support the National Security Strategy,” according to a March 23 Order (pdf) issued by Army Secretary John M. McHugh that redesignated the previous Biometrics Task Force as the BIMA.

Biometrics is generally defined as “a measurable biological (anatomical and physiological) [or] behavioral characteristic that can be used for automated recognition.”

“Biometric data [are] normally unclassified,” according to a 2008 DoD directive (pdf).  “However, elements of the contextual data, information associated with biometric collection, and/or associated intelligence analysis may be classified.”

“Biometrics-enabled Intelligence [refers to] intelligence information associated with and or derived from biometrics data that matches a specific person or unknown identity to a place, activity, device, component, or weapon that supports terrorist / insurgent network and related pattern analysis, facilitates high value individual targeting, reveals movement patterns, and confirms claimed identity.”

“Biometrics is an important enabler that shall be fully integrated into the conduct of DoD activities to support the full range of military operations,” the 2008 directive stated.

“Every day thousands of [biometric] records are collected and sent to the Department of Defense (DOD) Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) to store and compare against existing records,” a 2009 DoD report (pdf) said. “The technology is improving such that a submission from theater [e.g., in Afghanistan] can be searched in the DOD ABIS and a response sent back to theater in less than two minutes.”

“Realtime positive identification of persons of interest enables Coalition forces to target, track, and prosecute known or potential adversaries,” the DoD report said.

Fox News Trawls Infowars Comments, Reports Alex Jones To Authorities

Unlike Fox News, whose lies about WMD in Iraq led to the deaths of over a million people, we have no interest in promoting violence

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, March 31, 2010

For anyone who thought Fox News would offer any kind of alternative to the fever pitch media demonization campaign being run by the likes of CNN and MSNBC against conservatives, libertarians, and anyone angry at the passage of Obamacare – think again. It turns out that Fox News has been spending its time trawling the comments section of Infowars.com looking for any excuse to shop Alex Jones in to the authorities.

That’s right – amidst thousands of political websites and millions of comments left on articles and forums across the entire spectrum of the world wide web, Fox News decided to target Alex Jones’ websites for a Nazi-style denunciation campaign in an effort to have the powers that be crack down on Infowars and shut down their competition.

“Hundreds of comments were posted in response to an incendiary story on infowars.com, the radical far-right Web site owned by radio host Alex Jones. The story, entitled, ‘The Cost Of Defying Obamacare: $2,250 a Month And IRS Goons Pointing Guns At Your Family,’ focused on the ‘increasing militarization of the IRS’ and its expansion of powers under the new health care law,” writes Fox News’ Jana Winter, adding that a “federal probe has been launched into the comments”.

In a separate Fox News article about an investigation into comments allegedly posted on Infowars.com by an individual calling himself “ACA,” we learn that it was Fox News itself who reported the comments to authorities.

“ACA,” the husband of a military servicewoman living on a Tennessee Naval base, had his weapons seized and is under scrutiny by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service as a result of alleged threats he made to kill police officers and other government officials.

“This action was taken after FoxNews.com inquired about the online comment,” states the article. The Fox News story is posted in the “Terror” section of the website, an effort to link Alex Jones and Infowars.com to terrorists.

So in actual fact Fox News is paying its employees to search through the thousands of comments Infowars receives each day that even our own moderators cannot properly keep up with, in a desperate effort to find any hint of violent rhetoric as an excuse to turn in Alex Jones to the authorities, in some kind of bizarre thought police/Nazi denunciation campaign.

Fox News isn’t interested in Neo-Nazi and white supremacist websites that openly call for violence on a daily basis, nor do they care about the hundreds of comments that can casually be found on any day of the week underneath You Tube videos calling for Obama to be assassinated – no – they’re only interested in sifting through mountains of comments on websites owned by Alex Jones that might be perceived as violent.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Anyone who listens to the Alex Jones Show will know that Jones repeatedly denounces violence on a daily basis and constantly urges people to follow the non-violent principles of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. This can hardly be considered a political doctrine of the “radical far-right,” as Fox frames it.

Unlike Fox News, whose lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq led to the slaughter of over a million people, we have no interest whatsoever in falling into the government’s trap by promoting violence.

Unlike Fox News, who aggressively push for Iran to be bombed on a regular basis, an attack that would slaughter 16-20 million people, we do not want to see anyone killed.

Behind every so-called “patriot” spouting violence you will find a federal informant. Just as OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh was directed by an FBI agent, so were the members of the Hutaree militia arrested this past weekend. Precisely as we predicted on Monday, it turns out that the group had been infiltrated by an undercover FBI agent named Thomas William Piatek.

As we have highlighted in every other major terror bust in the U.S., planned violence is always provocateured by a federal informant who has penetrated the group, providing the excuse for the bust and allowing the media to enjoy more grist for their endless fearmongering about how we need to give up our rights because terrorists are everywhere.

While scaremongering about Americans turning to violence in response to the passage of Obamacare, the government itself funds double agents like Hal Turner to pose as patriots, telling them directly to spout violence and threaten to kill federal judges.

Let us be clear – unlike the government, we don’t pay people to make violent threats against public figures, and unlike Fox News we don’t allow our media platform to be used to disseminate baseless propaganda that leads to the violent slaughter of millions of innocent people.

Fox News’ ludicrous agenda to frame Alex Jones and Infowars as instigators of violence is a blatant ploy to chill free speech, characterize opponents of Obamacare as violent thugs, and demonize us as extremists that should be silenced through the power of the state – thereby pushing the same rhetoric constantly invoked by their so-called “liberal” adversaries over at CNN and MSNBC.

This proves once again that while some of its hosts, people like Glenn Beck, masquerade as great defenders of conservatives and libertarians, Fox News itself is hell bent on joining the rest of the establishment media in framing Tea Partiers, Constitutionalists, Ron Paul supporters and patriots as violent radicals and even terrorists.

We Are Change LA at Los Angeles Anti-War March

We Are Change L.A.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010

WeAreChangeLA brought the 9-11 Truth message to the Anti-War march in Los Angeles in a HUGE way. We brought our four massive 2-sided blue banners. This babies are so big, it takes five of us to carry one. We showed up early and it paid off, because we got a good spot up front.

Right off the bat, a young representative from the local chapter of ANSWER, the organization that organized this Anti-War demonstration, approached us and told us that we would have to take our banners to the back of the march. Bruno Bruhwiler from WeAreChangeLA immediately confronted him about trying to kick us to the back of the bus. He said that Answer has the permit for the march, and they can tell us what to do. Bruno reminded him that they do not have a permit to trespass on our Freedom of Speech, and went on to advise the young man to go back and tell his team that they do not want to incur the liability for trespassing on our First Amendment Rights. The young man walked away after warning us that we would have to deal with the Police.

It wasnt long before he came back with four more gentlemen, one of whom began barking at us about a mish mash of reasons why we had to go to the back of the march, and Bruno explained to him why we did not. Was I done talking?! Dont interrupt me! I am not done talking, the agitated man barked or something to that effect. Bruno says. We dont really want to hear what you have to say. One of the gentleman said to us that our message is not conducive to the message of the march, so Bruno asked them all What reason did Obama give for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
We dont want to have a conversation about this. The reason he gave was because of 9-11! Our message is THE anti-war message. There is no message that is more important to the anti-war movement than 9-11 Truth. You could see what looked almost like shame on their faces, and they had nothing to say in dispute.

Bruno alerts them, I need to see IDs from everyone. As far as we know you could be anybody off the sidewalk. How do we know you are actually the organizers? They refused to show IDs, and instead began stating their names, one of which is Jim Lafferty. Jim Lafferty! exclaims Bruno with a smile. Jim Lafferty is the president of the Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles, and also one of the primary aholes at the local radio station, KPFK, who has been instrumental in pushing 9-11 Truth out of the programming over the past couple of years. Jim, are you prepared to incur the liability for trespassing on our First Amendment Rights, today? Jim had absolutely nothing to say, and began taking steps back. He was then verbally accosted by a KPFK employee who kept right in his face wagging his finger as the two of them walked away. That left 2 gentleman with us, one of whom was quite level headed. The other seemed no older than 20, wearing an orange vest, who apparently was the head of security. He said to Bruno something along lines of We are not violating your rights, this is our march. Bruno corrected him, Just by talking only to us, and not everyone here today, you violated our Constitutional rights because you picked us out for our message. Well, you will have to deal with the police, he says to us. Great! Send them over. We talk to the police all the time. We love them, and they love us. Needless to say, not one police officer confronted us the whole day.

Watch the YouTube video, and you will see that our participation in the march was an extreme success. Nelson Martias made a genius move by having a table at the beginning of the march where he handed out 911 Truth signs, and stapled them to sticks, back to back. He even stapled the signs to the sticks of other signs, so folks who came with one group or another, added 9-11 Truth to their message. Throughout the march, everywhere we looked, we saw people carrying those 9-11 Truth signs! We also passed out all of our hundreds of brochures and cards from ae911truth.org. Those went really fast. Folks love those.

One final note, Cheryl Gaskill came up with the message, 9-11: What you dont know is killing people a couple of years ago at our brainstorming meeting for the banners. It turned out to be a very humble but effective message for outreach. We get lots of compliments for that one.

Peace and love to all!

Photos: Mike Chickey, Amy Ultch, Nelson Martias
Video and edit: Steve Wright

KBR on Trial At Last

Karen Houppert
The Nation
Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:20 EDT

Five years after alerting authorities that she was gang-raped in Iraq, KBR/Halliburton employee Jamie Leigh Jones will finally get her day in court.

On Wednesday, after fighting tooth-and-nail in the lower courts to keep the case from going to trial, KBR announced that it was dropping its Supreme Court appeal in the case. (The company actually withdrew its petition to the court on March 11, according to KBR spokesperson Heather Browne. This was less than two weeks after it was awarded a new $2.3 billion logistics contract by the Army.) Jones, who says she was raped by coworkers and then imprisoned in a shipping container for three days by KBR staffers who wanted to keep her complaint quiet, had been barred from pursuing her sexual harassment case in the courts by a provision in her employee contract: The fine print said all such issues must be resolved via the company’s own binding arbitration process.

I first reported on the case for The Investigative Fund, in partnership with The Nation, as part of an expose on the rash of rape and sexual harassment allegations lodged against Halliburton, KBR, and its subsidiaries. One Houston firm alone was representing more than fourteen women with similar rape or harassment complaints. But Jones, like the other women, was hit with a double-whammy of obstruction.

First, there was the contractual requirement that Jones pursue her complaint in an extralegal Halliburton dispute-resolution program implemented in 1997 under then-CEO Dick Cheney. Instead of taking their case to the US courts, employees agreed, before they were hired and shipped to Iraq, that all disputes would be resolved via the clandestine arbitration process.

Second, the US Justice Department is charged with pursuing criminal investigation of US defense contractor employees in Iraq, but seems disinclined to do so. Even though the alleged rapes took place in Iraq, they occurred on the quasi-US soil of a military base. That means the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction act and the Patriot Act’s special maritime and territorial jurisdiction provisions put the US Department of Justice in charge of prosecutions.

But the DOJ wasn’t being very aggressive in its pursuit of these crimes. At the time of Jones’s rape, approximately 180,000 American civilians were working for defense contractors there–a small city of people–and the DOJ had not convicted a single one in a violent crime.

All this kicked up a flurry of concern when The Nation story broke in April 2008 and, on the heels of multiple Congressional investigations, indignation grew. How could US taxpayers be awarding billions of dollars in defense contracts to companies allowed to skirt the law? US Senator Al Franken stepped into the fray and in December 2009 was able to get a provision included in the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that banned government contracts from going to companies that used this sneaky “binding arbitration” clause to circumvent the courts. (He had a little help whipping up righteous anger from Jon Stewart who referred to it on his show as ” the old ‘it’s okay if you get raped’ clause in government contracts” and re-enacted the imaginary employee’s first meeting with HR: “Here’s your inoculation verification form, your rape consent form, your 1099.”)

Does this mean KBR is graciously giving up on the Jones case?

No way.

The company seems to be laying the groundwork for a battle that must now take place publicly, in the courts, by invoking that old she-wanted-it canard. In a document posted on the company’s website, KBR, after first stating “it would be inappropriate to comment on the specifics of the case,” goes on to do just that: A firefighter accused of raping Jones says it was “consensual sex,” KBR states. And get this: “several witnesses present at the social gathering outside the barracks observed her having several drinks and flirting” with the firefighter.

In an e-mailed statement, KBR’s spokesperson Heather Browne told me that KBR’s decision to withdraw its petition from the Supreme Court was directly related to passage of the Franken amendment. But she conceded little ground. “It is our belief that the language of the amendment is very broad and vague,” she said. “As a result, KBR did not want to risk being in violation of the amendment, so the company withdrew its petition.”

It’s Official – America Now Enforces Capital Controls

Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge 03/28/2010 14:27 -0500

Replacement Bones, Grown to Order in the Lab

Researchers at Columbia use a bioreactor, left, to house and help cultivate material, right, that evolves into a bone.

By ANNE EISENBERG , NY Times

IF a lover breaks your heart, tissue engineers can’t fix it. But if sticks and stones break your bones, scientists may be able to grow custom-size replacements.

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, has solved one of many problems on the way to successful bone implants: how to grow new bones in the anatomical shape of the original.

Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic and her research team have created and nourished two small bones from scratch in their laboratory. The new bones, part of a joint at the back of the jaw, were created with human stem cells. The shape is based on digital images of undamaged bones.

Tissue-engineered bones have many implications, according to a leading figure in the field, Dr. Charles A. Vacanti, director of the laboratories for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has no connection to the Columbia work. “If your imaging equipment has sufficient high resolution, you can construct virtually any intricate shape you want — for example, the middle ear bone, creating an exact duplicate,” he said. “It’s a splendid example of tissue engineering at its best.”

Engineered bones are being tested in animals and in a few people, and may be common in operating rooms within a decade, said Rosemarie Hunziker, a program officer at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which sponsors research in the field, including that at Columbia.

Many businesses, including Osiris Therapeutics and Pervasis Therapeutics are forming around tissue engineering techniques. (Pervasis, for instance, is creating blood vessel linings.)

“It’s a field that is attracting much interest from venture capitalists,” said Robert Langer, a professor at M.I.T. Dr. Langer has more than 750 patents issued or pending in tissue engineering and drug delivery systems, and is an adviser to many companies that have started businesses based on his work.

Scott Hollister, a professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is a co-founder of Tissue Regeneration Systems, a company that is commercializing technology his group is developing for skeletal reconstruction in the face, spine and extremities.

Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic, who has filed a patent application through Columbia, said that her lab’s work had attracted considerable interest from investors, but that it was too soon to talk about commercial applications. “We are starting studies with large animals that will establish safety and feasibility before commercialization, “she said.

Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic, Dr. Warren L. Grayson and other members of the team used digital images of the joint to guide a machine that carved a three-dimensional replica, called a scaffold, from cleansed bone material. The team turned the bare scaffold into living tissue by putting it into a chamber molded to its exact shape, and adding human cells, typically isolated from bone marrow or liposuctioned fat. A steady source of oxygen, growth hormones, sugar and other nutrients was piped into the chamber, or bioreactor, so the bone would flourish.

“The cells grow rapidly,” Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic said. “They don’t know whether they are in the body or in a culture. They only sense the signals.”

Traditional bone grafts are typically harvested from other parts of the body, often a traumatic step, or made of materials like titanium that aren’t always compatible with host bones or cause inflammation, said Dr. Francis Y. Lee, a professor of clinical orthopedic surgery at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Lee also has no connection to Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic’s work.

“If we have an anatomically matching scaffold that can host bone cells,” Dr. Lee said, “this will provide a new way of reconstructing bone and cartilage defects.”

The design of the bioreactor is ingenious, said Dr. Vacanti of Boston, because it allows sources of nourishment and other fluids to permeate the pores of the scaffold as new bone grows within the pores. Often, cells make tissue mainly on the outside of a scaffold, while cells inside tend to die. But Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic’s bioreactor permits close observation and control of additives by the research team. “They can direct the flow and monitor the effect on the development of tissue,” Dr. Vacanti said.

PROFESSOR Hollister at Michigan is also working on creating bones of a jaw joint. But instead of using a bioreactor to grow them, he plans to use the human body as the incubator. The scaffold for the new bone, designed from a CT scan and printed directly using a laser system, is filled with cells from bone marrow or fat that are taken from the patient to prevent immune-system reactions. “Then we will let the patient’s body naturally heal and reconstruct the tissue as the implant is resorbed by the body,” he said.

Many of the components to generate good bones are in place, said David L. Kaplan, professor and chairman of the department of biomedical engineering at Tufts University. “The technology is here,” he said, “to control the size, shape and functional features of human tissue in the lab.”

The complex problems of keeping tissue alive and integrated when implanted in the body are also well on their way to being solved, Dr. Hunziker said. “We are starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together in various combinations to generate good bone,” she said, “and it’s all going to come together in a reasonable amount of time.”

Psych doctor wrote 1,000 prescriptions a week for psychotropic drugs

Natural News

Saturday, March 27, 2010 by: E. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) is reporting that a Miami psychiatrist has prescribed nearly 14 million pills to Medicaid patients since 2004. According to the report, Fernando Mendez-Villamil wrote about 285,000 prescriptions in just six years with a total taxpayer cost of $43 million.

The astounding find is part of an investigation into the legitimacy of Mendez-Villamil’s practice; after all, the numbers suggest that he would have had to prescribe about 4,000 prescriptions a month, or 1,000 a week, in order to achieve the large total.

Mendez-Villamil is already recognized as the most profuse drug prescriber in the state of Florida. Prior to the state’s implementation of new computer tracking protocols around 2007, Mendez-Villamil’s prescription rate was at its highest; after those measures began taking effect, his prescription rate slowed by almost 33 percent.

Mendez-Villamil’s highest year was 2004 when he issued over 62,000 prescriptions totaling $12.2 million. The numbers averaged out to almost 2,700 patients that year who all received roughly 23 prescriptions each. When all was said and done, each patient received an average of 1,200 pills in 2004.

Senator Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) instigated the AHCA review into Mendez-Villamil, alleging that he is taking advantage of the system and wasting taxpayer money for illegitimate purposes. Sen. Gaetz is citing the case as evidence that better oversight of the Medicaid system is needed. In response to a freedom-of-information request, the in-depth review he requested was published in Health News Florida.

When recently contacted about the issue, Mendez-Villamil refused to speak to the media. His attorney made a statement in his defense, insisting that all such numbers are normal for the volume of patients seen by the doctor. Mendez-Villamil did personally speak to the media back in December, however, where he explained that he typically sees patients for about 10 minutes every few months which allows him to see a large number of patients. Most of these patients, he said, are on four or five drugs each, all of which he says are necessary.

According to the report, Mendez-Villamil often prescribes some of the most expensive psychotropic drugs to his patients, including Zyprexa which costs about $840 for a 30-day supply. Other common prescriptions include Abilify at over $630 a month and Seroquel at $430.

In 2007, the Bureau of Medicaid Program Integrity received a complaint about Mendez-Villamil which it handed over to the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. The investigation is still in progress but, since receiving more intense scrutiny, Mendez-Villamil has reduced his number of patients by 25 percent.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.healthnewsflorida.org/in…