Tag Archives: Big Media/Big Tech

Flight 253 passenger contradicts FBI story

This is getting to be old news, but I think it’s important. Inconsistencies often appear in the big sensational stories, especially the scary ones which justify our loss of liberty in the name of security.

[Kurt Haskell:] Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.

Ever since I got off of Flight 253 I have been repeating what I saw in US Customs. Specifically, 1 hour after we left the plane, bomb sniffing dogs arrived. Up to this point, all of the passengers on Flight 253 stood in a small area in an evacuated luggage claim area of an airport terminal. During this time period, all of the passengers had their carry on bags with them. When the bomb sniffing dogs arrived, 1 dog found something in a carry on bag of a 30 ish Indian man. This is not the so called “Sharp Dressed” man. I will refer to this man as “The man in orange”. The man in orange, who stood some 20ft away from me the entire time until he was taken away, was immediately taken away to be searched and interrogated in a nearby room. At this time he was not handcuffed. When he emerged from the room, he was then handcuffed and taken away. At this time an FBI agent came up to the rest of the passengers and said the following (approximate quote) “You all are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. I am sure many of you saw what just happened (Referring to the man in orange) and are smart enough to read between the lines and figure it out.” We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway. This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn’t a law enforcement personnel or a passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for “immigration reasons.” Notice that this man was “being held” and not “arrested”, which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.

Just a question, could that mean that the man in orange had no passport?

However, a few hours later, Customs changed its story again. This time, Mr. Ron Smith of Customs, says the man that was detained “had been taken into custody, but today tells the news the person was a passenger on a different flight.”

. . . .

For the last five days I have been reporting my story of the so
called “sharp dressed man.” For those of you who haven’t read my
account, it involves a sharp dressed “Indian man” attempting to talk a ticket agent into letting a supposed “Sudanese refugee” (The terrorist) onto flight 253 without a passport. I have never had any idea how it played out except to note that the so called “Sudanese reefugee” later boarded my flight and attempted to blow it up and kill me. At no time did my story involve, or even find important whether the terrorist actually had a passport. The importance of my story was and always will be, the attempt with an accomplice (apparently succesful) of a terrorist with all sorts of prior terrorist warning signs to skirt the normal passport boarding procedures in Amsterdam. By the way, Amsterdam security did come out the other day and admit that the terrorist did not have to “Go through normal passport checking procedures”. (Read more from mlive.com)

Don’t tell Fox “News” about this. To them, the important thing about this story is the possibility of Iran’s involvement, and us remaining afraid.

Ron Paul on Rachel Maddow Show

What’s most interesting to me about this interaction is the way Maddow resolutely pushes the left vs. right narrative. I don’t presume to know if it’s witting or unwitting, but I do thing that sometimes the American people are sold the illusion of opposites where there is no difference. BOTH parties supported expanding our wars. BOTH parties supported transferring massive amounts of wealth to our politically elite banks.

Kudos to Ron Paul for refusing to accept the illusion.

Jobs Jobs Jobs and the Broken Window Fallacy

This video points to the same bit of government hypocrisy as the important broken window fallacy When money is taken away from people and spent on either unproductive jobs or the repair of a broken window, it is not a net gain for society. This principle comes up often.

Hard to believe this bullshit is in bloomberg, but here it is:

The 2010 census couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. economy.

The government will hire about 1.2 million temporary workers in the first half of the year to administer the decennial population count, possibly providing a bridge to gains in private employment later in the year.

The surge will probably dwarf any hiring by private employers early in 2010 as companies delay adding staff until they are convinced the economic recovery will be sustained. Money earned by the clipboard-toting workers going door-to-door to verify the government population survey is likely to be spent, giving the economy an extra lift.

Recovery Propaganda

Leave it to the WSJ to report the truth – and then try to paper over it:

Sales taxes declined 9% to $70 billion in the third quarter compared with the year-ago period, the Census Bureau said. Income taxes plunged 12% to about $58 billion. Together, sales and income taxes make up roughly half of state and local tax revenue.

The WSJ then goes on to opine:

State and local tax revenues tend to lag behind the downturns as well as the upturns in the economy because of the time it takes for collections to catch up with depressed store sales and diminished incomes.

This is true for income taxes.

It is absolutely false when it comes to sales taxes.

As someone who ran a registered establishment for more than a decade that was responsible for filing and paying sales taxes (I signed more returns “under penalty of perjury” than I can count during those years!) I can state that it is an absolute fact that sales tax returns are filed and monies are remitted MONTHLY – if there is an upturn in business – an actual upturn – it shows up NOT MORE THAN ONE MONTH LATER in sales tax receipts. Period. (Read more from market-ticker.denninger.net)

Recovery Propaganda

The surge in commodities “is a reflection of extremely strong demand in the emerging world, and growing hopes of stronger demand in the developed world,” said Jim O’Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs in London. It is “encouraging so long as it isn’t too persistent.” (From online.wsj.com)

Conspicuously absent is any mention of the gigantic quantities of money being printed all around the word.

German Business Journal Questions 9/11

“FOCUS Money”, is presenting most of the crucial arguments and contradictions on five glossy pages. Among other questions the article suggests that the collapse of the World Trade Center could have been a controlled demolition.

In addition, the article suggests serious doubts about the “madness” of the critics, which are usually called “conspriracy theorists”.

The magazine states, that it is “not only serious politicians who do not want to believe the official version any more “, but also, “there are also thousands of scientists, who question 9/11″.

Author of the article is Oliver Janich. He works as a freelance journalist for the Financial Times Germany, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Euro& Finance and is a regular columnist in Focus Money.

Focus-Money is a weekly business magazine and is currently the second-popular business publication with a weekly circulation of 145,788 copies sold. However, the actual range is much higher and amounts to approximately 450,000 to 720,000 readers. The magazine is published by the Burda-Verlag in Munich.

The first page of the article shows pictures of 9/11 skeptics: Charlie Sheen, Sharon Stone, Rosie O’Donnell William Rodriguez (next to GW Bush), former Governor Jesse Ventura, Richard Gage, Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth and many others.

The rest of the article is packed with information. Evidence of controlled demolition of the buildings, criticism of the fire theory, the questions on the interceptors, WTC 7 and the Pentagon. There is talk of the “impossible flight maneuvers,” the resignation of Senator Max Cleland who is quoted as saying “It’s a fraud, a national scandal” and of the myriad of lies to the Commission, hindering the investigation. The mysterious death of Barry Jenning, a former Deputy Director of Emergency Services Department of the City of New York is also mentioned. He had saved many people from WTC 7 , and covered in dust gave a live interview on ABC and then much later for “Loose Change” maker Dylan Avery. (Read more from dprogram.net)

HA! FT Calls Goldman Boss hero of 2009

The wider public might view investment bankers as ‘vampire squid’, as one commentator put it, but the newspaper of the business world has made him its ‘person of the year’

. . . .

In the parallel universe inhabited by the FT, Blankfein is a hero – a “master of risk”. The FT accepts that Blankfein has struggled to find an effective rebuttal of a deluge of public criticism unleashed on his bank.

But it says the former gold trader from the Bronx has “steered Goldman adeptly through the crisis, betting correctly that the global investment banks would survive the turmoil (with government help) and not be dismantled by regulators”.

The FT’s John Gapper continues: “The bank has stuck to its strengths, unashamedly taking advantage of the low interest rates and diminished competition resulting from the crisis to make big trading profits.”

How charitable. This is the bank that intends to distribute about $22bn in remuneration to its employees this year – more than $700,000 each – at the height of the worst recession since the war. Money, of course, partly earned through government support of the US banking sector paid for with taxpayers’ funds. (Read more from guardian.co.uk)

See Also:

Goldman Head on report White House visitors