For Those Who Never Get Anything Done: T’ird

“Stare”

“Stare”

NORAD Revisited!!

 

 

 http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/norad200608

I subscribe to Vanity Fair. WHY? You may ask– well the answer is simple. Inside they do some of the very best investigative news reports I have ever read. This one in particular is one of their best. It is about the NORAD Tapes. This report contains original ‘audio’ clips. It is also 11 pages long– so I am only c/ping the first page– to continue and read and hear all of it, go to the above link. It is so very odd [not really] that everything seems to go together… all of history, all of the deadly power plays governments and enemies play. The Tapes tell a whole new story other than the ‘official’ tale of 9/11.

 

How did the U.S. Air Force respond on 9/11?

Could it have shot down United 93, as conspiracy

theorists claim? Obtaining 30 hours of never-

before-released tapes from the control room of

NORAD’s Northeast head-quarters, the author

reconstructs the chaotic military history of that

day—and the Pentagon’s apparent attempt to

cover it up. by Michael Bronner

***VF.COM EXCLUSIVE: Hear excerpts from the September 11 NORAD tapes.

Click PLAY after each transcript to listen.

Tucked in a piney notch in the gentle folds of the Adirondacks’ southern skirts—just up from a derelict Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern rail spur—is a 22-year-old aluminum bunker tricked out with antennae tilted skyward. It could pass for the Jetsons’ garage or, in the estimation of one of the higher-ranking U.S. Air Force officers stationed there, a big, sideways, half-buried beer keg.

As Major Kevin Nasypany, the facility’s mission-crew commander, drove up the hill to work on the morning of 9/11, he was dressed in his flight suit and prepared for battle. Not a real one. The Northeast Air Defense Sector (neads), where Nasypany had been stationed since 1994, is the regional headquarters for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (norad), the Cold War–era military organization charged with protecting North American airspace. As he poured his first coffee on that sunny September morning, the odds that he would have to defend against Russian “Bear Bombers,” one of norad’s traditional simulated missions, were slim. Rather, Nasypany (pronounced Nah-sip-a-nee), an amiable commander with a thick mini-mustache and a hockey player’s build, was headed in early to get ready for the norad-wide training exercise he’d helped design. The battle commander, Colonel Bob Marr, had promised to bring in fritters.

neads is a desolate place, the sole orphan left behind after the dismantling of what was once one of the country’s busiest bomber bases—Griffiss Air Force Base, in Rome, New York, which was otherwise mothballed in the mid-90s. neads’s mission remained in place and continues today: its officers, air-traffic controllers, and air-surveillance and communications technicians—mostly American, with a handful of Canadian troops—are responsible for protecting a half-million-square-mile chunk of American airspace stretching from the East Coast to Tennessee, up through the Dakotas to the Canadian border, including Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

It was into this airspace that violence descended on 9/11, and from the neads operations floor that what turned out to be the sum total of America’s military response during those critical 100-some minutes of the attack—scrambling four armed fighter jets and one unarmed training plane—emanated.

The story of what happened in that room, and when, has never been fully told, but is arguably more important in terms of understanding America’s military capabilities that day than anything happening simultaneously on Air Force One or in the Pentagon, the White House, or norad’s impregnable headquarters, deep within Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado. It’s a story that was intentionally obscured, some members of the 9/11 commission believe, by military higher-ups and members of the Bush administration who spoke to the press, and later the commission itself, in order to downplay the extent of the confusion and miscommunication flying through the ranks of the government.

The truth, however, is all on tape.

Through the heat of the attack the wheels of what were, perhaps, some of the more modern pieces of equipment in the room—four Dictaphone multi-channel reel-to-reel tape recorders mounted on a rack in a corner of the operations floor—spun impassively, recording every radio channel, with time stamps.

The recordings are fascinating and chilling. A mix of staccato bursts of military code; urgent, overlapping voices; the tense crackle of radio traffic from fighter pilots in the air; commanders’ orders piercing through a mounting din; and candid moments of emotion as the breadth of the attacks becomes clearer.

For the neads crew, 9/11 was not a story of four hijacked airplanes, but one of a heated chase after more than a dozen potential hijackings—some real, some phantom—that emerged from the turbulence of misinformation that spiked in the first 100 minutes of the attack and continued well into the afternoon and evening. At one point, in the span of a single mad minute, one hears Nasypany struggling to parse reports of four separate hijackings at once. What emerges from the barrage of what Nasypany dubs “bad poop” flying at his troops from all directions is a picture of remarkable composure. Snap decisions more often than not turn out to be the right ones as commanders kick-start the dormant military machine. It is the fog and friction of war live—the authentic military history of 9/11.

“The real story is actually better than the one we told,” a norad general admitted to 9/11-commission staffers when confronted with evidence from the tapes that contradicted his original testimony. And so it seems.

Subpoenaed by the commission during its investigation, the recordings have never been played publicly beyond a handful of sound bites presented during the commission’s hearings. Last September, as part of my research for the film United 93, on which I was an associate producer, I requested copies from the Pentagon. I was played snippets, but told my chances of hearing the full recordings were nonexistent. So it was a surprise, to say the least, when a military public-affairs officer e-mailed me, a full seven months later, saying she’d been cleared, finally, to provide them.

“The signing of the Declaration of Independence took less coordination,” she wrote.

I would ultimately get three CDs with huge digital “wav file” recordings of the various channels in each section of the operations floor, 30-some hours of material in full, covering six and a half hours of real time. The first disc, which arrived by mail, was decorated with blue sky and fluffy white clouds and was labeled, in the playful Apple Chancery font, “Northeast Air Defense Sector—DAT Audio Files—11 Sep 2001.”

“This is not an exercise”

At 8:14 a.m., as an Egyptian and four Saudis commandeered the cockpit on American 11, the plane that would hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, only a handful of troops were on the neads “ops” floor. That’s the facility’s war room: a dimly lit den arrayed with long rows of radarscopes and communications equipment facing a series of 15-foot screens lining the front wall. The rest of the crew, about 30 Americans and five or six Canadians, were checking e-mails or milling around the hall. A briefing on the morning’s training exercise was wrapping up in the Battle Cab, the glassed-in command area overlooking the ops floor.

On the Dictaphone decks, an automated voice on each channel ticked off, in Greenwich Mean Time, the last few moments of life in pre-9/11 America: “12 hours, 26 minutes, 20 seconds”—just before 8:30 a.m. eastern daylight time.

The first human voices captured on tape that morning are those of the “ID techs”—Senior Airman Stacia Rountree, 23 at the time, Tech Sergeant Shelley Watson, 40, and their boss, Master Sergeant Maureen “Mo” Dooley, 40. They are stationed in the back right corner of the ops floor at a console with several phones and a radarscope. Their job in a crisis is to facilitate communications between neads, the civilian F.A.A., and other military commands, gathering whatever information they can and sending it up the chain. Dooley—her personality at once motherly and aggressive—generally stands behind the other two, who are seated.

Cont. @ above link–

 

 

U.S.A. #1

B’Man: So let me get this straight. We arrest and imprison more Americans for pot use than any other country in the world, but we still have the greatest usage, even compared to very lenient laws by other countries. We fight each and every medical marijuana initiative so we can continue this war on people, but the rationale that is used is bogus. But who cares, right? Big Prison is making all that money, while cancer sufferers die.

Sound like a plan to you? Read the article from Alternet to see if you agree.

U.S. Ranks #1 in Consumption of Pot, Cocaine, Smokes

By Jordan Smith, Austin Chronicle

According to a new study released June 30 by the World Health Organization, the U.S. leads the world and — just in time for the Olympics — takes the gold for the use of tobacco, pot, and cocaine, far outpacing other countries, even the Netherlands, where drug laws are far less draconian. In the U.S., more than 42% in the study admit having used marijuana, and 16% admit having used cocaine — a cocaine-use rate four times that of New Zealand, which ranked No. 2 out of 17 countries surveyed.

For this first cross-national drug-use study, WHO researchers surveyed more than 54,000 people in the Americas (the U.S., Mexico, and Colombia), Europe (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and Ukraine), the Middle East and Africa (Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, and South Africa), Asia (Japan and China), and Oceania (New Zealand), using a standardized methodology. While WHO researchers determined that drug use is more prevalent in wealthier countries, researchers determined that income does not have a “static” effect on drug use. Overall, researchers found the greatest involvement with all drugs by younger people and “remarkable similarity” across the countries surveyed in the “age of onset” of use. Typically, alcohol and tobacco use begins earliest (between 16 and 19 years of age), followed by pot use (around 18), and coke (typically between 21 and 24).

While income and age may be factors determining drug use, it appears that a country’s drug policies have little impact on use. “Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.” Indeed. The U.S., with its harsh user penalties, outpaced all other countries on use of pot and coke — way beyond even the Netherlands, where legal action is not taken for pot possession for personal use. There, just 19.8% of the population has even tried marijuana, and just 1.9% of the population has tried cocaine. Only New Zealand comes close to the U.S. in the number of folks who have ever tried pot, with just under 42%. The U.S. far outpaced other countries in coke use too, with 16.2% of respondents having tried the drug; New Zealand posted a 4.3% lifetime coke-use rate. Colombia, the only coke-producing nation on the list, came in fourth (tied with Mexico) with a 4% lifetime use rate. Only in alcohol use was the U.S. tossed out of the top spot: We took sixth place, while Ukraine took gold with 97% alcohol use. Germany garnered the silver, with 95.3%, while New Zealand, otherwise — apparently, our drug-use sister country, imagine the cultural exchange possibilities! — took the bronze, with 94.8%.

But you’d be a fool to suggest that any correlation can be drawn between harsher drug policies and drug use (as the WHO has done), says White House Office of National Drug Control Policy flack Tom Riley. Trying to find a link between drug use and drug enforcement doesn’t make sense, Riley explained to Bloomberg News. “The U.S. has high crime rates but we spend a lot on law enforcement and prison,” he said. “Should we spend less? We’re just a different kind of country. We have higher drug use rates, a higher crime rate, many things that go with a highly free and mobile society.” Wha?

As Reefer friend Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, points out, the ONDCP actually takes an extremely opposite view any time one of the states seeks to “liberalize” its pot laws. Legalizing medi-pot, for example, invariably sends the wrong message to children, the ONDCP likes to point out, and legalization measures would certainly lead to a greater availability of drugs, it says — as it did back in 2002, Mirken reminds us, in fighting against a Nevada ballot measure that would have made legal pot sales and possession by adults.

In the end, say the WHO researchers, it may be that affluence has more influence on drug use than do anti-drug laws. “The use of drugs seems to be a feature of more affluent countries. The [U.S.], which has been driving much of the world’s drug research and drug policy agenda, stands out with higher levels of use of alcohol, cocaine, and cannabis, despite punitive illegal drug policies,” reads the study. “Clearly, by itself, a punitive policy toward possession and use accounts for limited variation in nation-level rates of illegal drug use.”

In other words, Riley may actually be right this time, says Mirken — although that doesn’t make things better. “For years, ONDCP has been saying that even the slightest moderation of our marijuana laws would unleash a wave of marijuana use and turn us into a nation of potheads,” Mirken wrote to me in an e-mail. “But when confronted with evidence to the contrary, they now say, ‘Oh, never mind.’ Okay, fine. So if cracking down on marijuana doesn’t actually reduce use, would someone please tell me why we arrest 830,000 people a year for it?”

Good question. Tom?

The World Health Organization’s study ranked countries based on their findings of “lifetime use rate” — in other words, the percentage of people who report ever having used each drug.

Alcohol

1) Ukraine — 97.0%

2) Germany — 95.3%

3) New Zealand — 94.8%

4) Colombia — 94.3%

5) Netherlands — 93.3%

6) U.S. — 91.6%

Tobacco

1) U.S. — 73.6%

2) Lebanon — 67.4%

3) Mexico — 60.2%

4) Netherlands — 58.0%

Cannabis

1) U.S. — 42.4%

2) New Zealand — 41.9%

3) Netherlands — 19.8%

4) France — 19.0%

Cocaine

1) U.S. — 16.2%

2) New Zealand — 4.3%

3) Spain — 4.1%

4) Tie: Colombia and Mexico — 4.0%

happy faces—

This video clip home movie has to be one of the sweetest ones I have seen! The Mom’s face is just a’glow and those little babies are priceless.  And just think– if McInsane really says he would stay in Iraq for 100 years, I am sure this Mom would say “hell no, your not taking my 4!”

Boone Picken’s Plan… & MORE!

This is really an extremely informative series. Of course it was easier to watch the first time around all together. lol. It’s Oil Barron Boones plan for alternative energy. AND, last but not least– a retro-fit kit to get you 67+ miles to the gallon. I actually recall this technology from back in the 40’s and 50’s..and I also recall all the patents being bought up and disappearing!! Anyway– it’s all fascinating.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Natural gas Charts

 http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/resources.aspConverter Kits for cars!!

This is well worth buying a clunker for!!

 

http://water4gassystems.net/default.htm 

 

 

MCCAIN: THE ULTIMATE SURGE PROTECTOR

h/t Hysterical Raisins (nonnie9999 is awesome):

Hey, kids! Have you seen the new Captain Underpants campaign poster? Go on over to Democratic Underground and take a look. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Didja see it? Captain Underpants all ethereal and majestic looking (not to mention about 30 years younger! ). Well, I unearthed the poster before it was totally airbrushed…

Knowing your audience–

I was thinking about the folks running for office and touring all over giving speeches.

And I started thinking about the freedom to give a speech geared purposefully to an audience of ’like minds’. And then… a speech meant to slant the truth into a soft seemingly acceptable topic. Amazing. Anyway– There are times when, depending on your personal interest/investment, you can hear a speech and it ‘seems’ to make sense. Lol. These two clips actually speak– in various inflections, about greed– capitalism etc. Yet– they are just plain and simple ; and they basically come across as if ‘to get there’ [where they are talking about] it would ‘appear’ as if nothing illegal, hurtful… or soulless took place along the way to accomplish any of it. Ya know… nothing political or lobbied for. I guess what I am saying is– speeches ALWAYS have an agenda and a purpose far past ‘handing out info!’ lol lol. And truth has nothing to do with speeches.

The above is a speech to rival that ‘stockholders’ of Danny DeVito’s in Other People’s Money. John McFarland (middle), the owner of McFarland Motors, pays a visit to Blake Washburn (on left), the editor of a local newspaper. Washburn lost his senate re-election bid to McFarland’s son. He decides to retaliate against McFarland by writing editorials disparaging big businesses. Alan Hale, Jr. of Gilligan’s Island fame is on the rights.

Other People’s Money speech by Danny DeVito

So– while I listen to all those running for the election in November… I am listening for what they are not saying. lol

Let’s Get Fired Up

LOL

h/t Alternet & Georgia Women Vote

Richard Noggin Saturday: Scar Watch Memoirs from the Cheetos Brigade

How many elitist rednecks do you know? Listen to Scar browbeat bloggers when his ideology is so easily proved bogus and sycophantic.

From my orange middle finger to your ignorant ass, Joe. Bite me!