this would  B   funny  if ???        our  tax   $$$    ----and WE  wonder why  :)    AH  OH yea      how many "terrorists"      have  these   numb   nuts   caught?   OH  forgot      moneys   for  the other civ ???    not us !

Homeland Security Spent $430-Million To Tune Its Radios To A New Frequency, And Failed

from the taxpayer-money-at-work dept

The incompetence of Homeland Security when it comes to actually doing things is well documented -- though, they're often so clueless that they take credit for successfully misleading Congress about their own failings. So I guess it should come as little surprise that a new report shows that DHS spent about $430 million of your taxpayer dollars to get all of its radios to communicate on the same frequency and it doesn't work. At all.

Of 479 radio users the DHS inspector general tested, only one knew how to tune into the common channel, the report stated. Personnel either were unaware the channel existed, could not find it, or switched to an outdated channel inherited from the Treasury Department.
“Personnel do not have interoperable communications that they can rely on during daily operations, planned events and emergencies,” acting IG Charles K. Edwards wrote in the report.

So what was the problem? Apparently no one in top management at DHS ever thought to tell the various departments that they should be using this common channel that they were spending so much money on getting ready for this usage:

The root of the disconnect, according to the report, is top department leaders have provided little guidance and no enforcement to ensure personnel use the channel. The shift to a single frequency began when the department formed in 2003.

“Components independently developed and managed their own radio programs with no formal coordination from DHS,” and as a result, “internal interoperability was not a priority for DHS components,” Edwards reported.

The report suggested that there should be someone in charge of actually coordinating all of this (what an idea!), but DHS officials shot back that they already have a "Joint Wireless Program Management Office." Of course, this only makes the situation worse, in that they basically admit that they have an entire office set up to work on this issue... and it's now apparent that the office did little to nothing in terms of actually accomplishing what needed to be accomplished. The author of the report pointed out that it's a bit silly to point to the office that failed to do its job as proof that they're now ready to deal with this issue.

So, in a normal business, when you screw something up this badly, people get fired. Lots of them. Who's getting fired for this? Shouldn't the head of DHS have to answer to the public as to why $430 million was spent under what appears to be totally incompetent management? What are they doing over there other than seizing domains and making up terrorist plots?

In the meantime, can we get our $430 million back?
             

Selling War to the Public – An Interview with James Corbett

http://www.corbettreport.com/selling-war-to-the-public/             

Selling War to the Public – An Interview with James Corbett

Posted by Corbett

via GlobalResearch.ca
Interview with James Corbett of The Corbett Report pertaining to war propaganda, the ongoing crisis in Syria and the role of what he describes as “the real alternative media”. The real alternative media is independent and grassroots, and is not funded by the NGOs or foundations. Devon DB begs the question: How can people break free from the current system of oppression and media disinformation?
* * *
Devon DB: What is your opinion of the ongoing crisis in Syria?
James Corbett: The crisis in Syria can only be understood through the lens of what the mainstream Western media is leaving out of their reporting, namely the ongoing, on-the-record support of outside actors in arming, equipping, and training the so-called “opposition” that is currently waging a ground war against the Syrian government.
This help is coming in the form of equipment and tactical involvement from the US State Department and the CIA, arms and supplies from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, logistical support and operational bases in Turkey, and armed militants associated with Al Qaeda and other Wahabbi Sunni terror organizations from Libya, Iraq, and elsewhere. In this context, the constant demands of Clinton and other Western representatives for Russia to “stop arming Assad” can be seen as the hypocritical and deeply dishonest position that it is.
In fact, the entire conflict can only be understood when it is seen not as the spontaneous outgrowth of a popular internal resistance, as portrayed by the West, but as a foreign-funded and armed terrorist insurgency whose open terror campaign of car bombings, ethnic cleansing and other war crimes are consistently praised as heroic by the new “humanitarian interventionists” of the neoliberal imperialist set. Given what has taken place in Libya in recent days, those gun-ho interventionists who are currently praising the “Syrian freedom fighters” would be well-served to contemplate who it is they are helping to bring to power in Damascus.
Devon DB: Many in the alternative media are focusing on the actions of the rebels, while, some would say, ignoring the actions of the Assad regime. This usually results in one being accused of being a regime supporter. Why do you think that the focus is so much on the rebels rather than on the regime and how would you respond to such accusations as being a regime supporter?
James Corbett: Selling war to the public has always involved portraying the issue as a clear-cut case of black and white, good and evil. Once the issue is framed in that way, anyone who opposes the war can be portrayed as a supporter of evil. In every instance, the case for peace is effectively taken off the table by arguing that “if you’re not for the war, you’re supporting X,” where X is the boogeyman du jour.
This has transitioned easily from the Bush era “axis of evil” and “war on terror” to the Obama era of “humanitarian intervention.” The rhetoric and reasoning are virtually identical, but they have been transposed into a liberal-friendly context. This thinking necessarily begs the question of who gets to decide who to “help” and what groups will take over in the aftermath. I do not support Assad any more than I supported Gaddafi or Assad. But neither do I support Mugabe, or the Al Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, or the House of Saud, or Netanyahu, or any of the other leaders of repressive regimes. Why is one leader demonized and the other feted? The answer is obvious.
So the question is whether refusing to support the bombing and military invasion of a foreign country is morally equivalent to supporting that government’s leader. This comes down to the question of moral responsibility. As a Canadian citizen in Japan I have absolutely no control over what happens in Syria. I do have a say over what the Canadian government does, what actions it takes, and what its military does. When it lends its support to the bombardment of Libya, I become implicated in the deaths of those civilians who were killed in those strikes. So it is up to us to stop the violence, bloodshed and power grabs made by our leaders under the guise of “humanitarian intervention” as it is up to the people of Syria to deal with the Assad government however they can. This is the nature of moral responsibility.
Devon DB: In the alternative media, we have read and heard time and again that the situation is Syria could lead to “a World War 3 scenario.” Do you actually think that this is possible?
James Corbett: If NATO were to roll into Damascus tomorrow with guns blazing, there would be military repercussions. Russia has face to save in the Syria situation as well as strategic interests to protect in the country, so it would not sit idly by while the country is taken over by a foreign military. This is precisely why there has been no direct military intervention by any outside military, nor is there likely to be barring some international outrage like a false flag event.
More worrying, perhaps, is the relentless, years-long campaign by Israel to drum up support for a military strike on Iran. Such an event is very much on the table, very much a possibility, and would almost inevitably draw Russia, China, and other military powers into armed conflict with the NATO powers, which very well could lead to a third world war scenario.
Devon DB: Switching gears now, how would you define alternative media and what do you think its purpose is?
James Corbett: There are two types of alternative media. There is the establishment alternative media and the real alternative media. The establishment alternative media is usually funded (at least partially) by the big name foundations and NGOs with ties back to the usual cast of behind-the-scenes oligarchs. They will present differing views from the mainstream media, and often offer more balanced, thoughtful and contextual reports to their audience. When it comes to key paradigmatic issues like the necessity of R2P or the responsibility of Al Qaeda for 9/11, however, they will circle the wagons and defend the system.
The real alternative media is independent and grassroots, and is not funded by the NGOs or foundations. As a citizen journalist movement, it cannot be defined by any particular ideology or viewpoint; it is a representative of the population at large. Given this media landscape, it is tempting to portray the mainstream and establishment alternative media as inherently bad and the real alternative media as inherently good, but this is too simplistic.
The establishment media occasionally does good work and often reports true facts (with heavy amounts of spin and lies by omission). The establishment alternative media contains some of the best critiques of the prevailing mainstream opinion, even if those critiques are careful never to cross certain lines. The real alternative media is completely unmuzzled, but it is also unfiltered. There will be brilliant examples of truly independent reporting and analysis, and there will be dreadful examples of unreasoned speculation. No one medium is inherently good, and it is up to all of us to do the (sometimes laborious) work of piecing together the truth from a myriad of sources, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, good points and blind spots.
Devon DB: What role would you say the Corbett Report plays in the overall alternative media scene?
James Corbett: The Corbett Report is nothing more nor less than my own attempt to fill in the context that is being left out of much of the so-called debate in the mainstream and establishment alternative media. Initially spurred on by the dreadful lack of contextualization of the events of 9/11 in the media, I have branched out my own investigation into economic, social, geopolitical, scientific and philosophical matters. Through my tendency to link back all of my factual statements to source documents, I hope to be in the process of creating a resource that will be valuable for those who are seeking to come to a better understanding of the world at large.
Devon DB: Why do you think more and more people seem to be turning to the alternative media?

James Corbett: The internet has surpassed newspapers and is the process of eclipsing television as the main source for news and information for most people. This means necessarily that more people are turning to the types of alternative media outlets that can only be found on the web to keep them informed about the world. There are a number of technological and social factors that are playing into this transformation, but the number one issue has to be the public’s growing awareness of the information controls that exist in the traditional media. With the internet, people are suddenly able to become their own editors, deciding what stories are important, what sources are reliable, and what pieces of information are worth pursuing.
Why would anyone relinquish the power that comes from this very liberating experience of the world of information back into the hands of a few corporations run by the same few rich, well-connected men who have a vested interest in keeping the current order the way it is? And now that social media and blogging are making the tools for creating media platforms accessible by nearly everyone on the planet, the very idea that “news” is something that is organized by some centralized company in New York or London or Tokyo is being overthrown. The end of the old media paradigm is already here, the newspaper, magazine and tv companies just don’t know it yet.
Devon DB: In your podcasts and radio shows, you have used the term “global enslavement grid” or variations of it. What exactly do you mean by that term?
James Corbett: The global enslavement grid is an interlocking system of economic, social, political and psychological controls that have been put in place to direct society toward a planned future global government structure. Although it has existed in some form or other for centuries (and, presumably, millennia), its modern form can be traced back to the British eugenicists of the late 19th century and the Fabian socialists of the early 20th century. One can trace a line stretching from Francis Galton to Paul Ehrlich, going through such figures as H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley, Walter Lippmann, B.F. Skinner and Bertrand Russell, amongst others, who were all obsessed with the problem of how to create a well-ordered society through scientific methods. To one extent or another, they all wrestled with the question of society and how it is to be governed, as well as the possibility of using scientific methods to control the lower strata of society for the benefit of a ruling elite.
We see this coming to fruition in the creation of the modern surveillance society, where the centuries-old idea of the panopticon is being implemented at a societal level, and in the modern environmental movement, which has produced in many the conviction that humanity itself is a cancer and that the control (and eventual eradication) of humans is in itself a good thing. The history of the development of this enslavement grid and the ways that it operates is too large to encapsulate in short form like this, and it’s difficult to do justice to an idea this expansive in so few words. Articulating the enslavement grid has been one of the primary goals of my website, which has so far produced thousands of hours of media and will hopefully be able to produce many thousands more, exploring this idea and its development, as well as fruitful forms of resistance for those who are opposed to this agenda.
Devon DB: How do you think people can unplug from this matrix that has been created by the elites and is fed to us on a daily basis?
James Corbett: The most important thing people can do (and what I have come to believe is the only thing that people can do) is to realize that the power to change society truly rests with you. We tend to shunt off the big questions about “how to change the world” to the political arena, where we can support this or that political movement or put our hopes in this or that political candidate. This is part of the global enslavement grid itself. By constantly focusing on what is outside of us and waiting for a savior to come and put society back in order, we are ceding our power over our own lives to the very corporate-military-banking-governmental superstructure that is creating the global dictatorship that we are seeking to resist. Worse yet, we continue to support that very structure in the most straightforward way possible: by buying their products, shopping at their stores, banking at their banks, and voting for their politicians. How can we possibly presume to have any effect on changing the current course of society when we are still supporting the very corporations, businesses, governments and institutions that are behind it with our time, money, and energy on a day to day basis?
The only solution is to begin to create the alternative society that we want to live in. That means beginning the long, hard process of decoupling ourselves from the corporate/retail/banking system that we are born into and transitioning into a local, independent economy that bypasses that corporate structure altogether. There are thousands of ways to do this: growing your own food, buying what you need at local markets and independent retailers, participating in local alternative currency systems, supporting independent alternative media and detaching ourselves from the technology that is increasingly embedding us in this matrix. It is not an easy process, and in all likelihood it is a generational project. But it will not begin unless we take those first steps.
James Corbett is an independent journalist based in Japan. He is the producer of The Corbett Report. He is also producer and film director for Global Research TV.
Devon DB is a 20 year old independent writer and researcher. He is studying political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He can be contacted at devondb[at]mail[dot]com.

The DHS And FBI Present: You Might Be A Terrorist If... (Hotel Guest Edition)

from the glass-container-in-the-pool-area?-threat-level-upgraded-to-'orange' dept

As we seem to be told repeatedly, seeing something and saying something is perhaps the greatest duty an American citizen can perform in service to this country. It's simply not enough anymore to install an American flag in the front yard and purchase domestic vehicles. Now, every citizen should be keeping his eye out for (and on) his fellow citizens. The price of freedom may be eternal vigilance, but the price of security is endless paranoia.

To that end, the DHS and the FBI have joined forces to compile a list of oddities that might well indicate you are sleeping one paper-thin wall away from death personified (via Bruce Schneier's fine blog). 

Possible indicators of terrorist behaviors at hotels: The observation of multiple indicators may represent—based on the specific facts or circumstances—possible terrorist behaviors at hotels:

- Not providing professional or personal details on hotel registrations—such as place of employment, contact information, or place of residence.

[Place of employment? Seriously? "Alan Smithee, 123 Main Street, Anytown USA 5578H. Occupation: Death Hug Merchant."] 

- Using payphones for outgoing calls or making front desk requests in person to avoid using the room telephone.

[Payphones? Are terrorists unaware of "burners?"]

- Interest in using Internet cafes, despite hotel Internet availability.

[This seems to suggest that the Feds have already let themselves in the back door on the (sometimes prohibitively expensive) hotel wi-fi.]

- Non-VIPs who request that their presence at a hotel not be divulged.

[Let me get this straight: normal, "non-VIP" people will just have their information divulged to whoever asks, simply because they're not "important" enough to deserve privacy? Perhaps that should be posted on a sign somewhere up by the check-in desk: "All guests are created equal, but some are more equal than others."]

- Extending departure dates one day at a time for prolonged periods.

[Something only a terrorist would do. Let me give you a real life, happened-to-me example: in town to visit the famous Mayo Clinic seeking medical help for my wife. What started out as three days turned into seven days, with the stay at the hotel being extended one day at a time. Open-ended hotel stays: not just for terrorists anymore.]

- Refusal of housekeeping services for extended periods.

[This I believe. No one wants to make their own bed.]

- Extended stays with little baggage or unpacked luggage.

[Unless the staff have been instructed to do a little snooping in every room, how would anyone know how much baggage someone brought and never unpacked? No doubt this will soon make its way onto propaganda posters: "HAVE YOU PACKED ENOUGH? Traveling light is traveling with terror."]

- Access or attempted access to areas of the hotel normally restricted to staff.

- Use of cash for large transactions or a credit card in someone else’s name.

- Requests for specific rooms, floors, or other locations in the hotel.

[Close to the parking lot, ground floor. Convenience or criminal intent?]

- Use of a third party to register.

- Multiple visitors or deliveries to one individual or room.

[Ruthless cabal or post-prom drinking party?]

- Unusual interest in hotel access, including main and alternate entrances, emergency exits, and surrounding routes.

[IN CASE OF FIRE, PLEASE REMAIN IGNORANT.]

- Use of entrances and exits that avoid the lobby or other areas with cameras and hotel personnel.

[Like the one nearest your vehicle?]

- Attempting to access restricted parking areas with a vehicle or leaving unattended vehicles near the hotel building.

[During your stay at the hotel, please remain in your vehicle at all times.]

- Unusual interest in hotel staff operating procedures, shift changes, closed-circuit TV systems, fire alarms, and security systems.

- Leaving the property for several days and then returning.

- Abandoning a room and leaving behind clothing, toiletries, or other items.

[You'd think the Feds would be happy to have CLUES and EVIDENCE just laying around.]

- Noncompliance with other hotel policies.

[Ah. The handy catch-all. If the other points don't directly implicate you, then maybe something from this list will!]

So, to be a standup, non-terrorist citizen, here's what you need to do:

Pack for two weeks if you're staying for two days. Park your vehicle a safe distance away from the hotel, perhaps across the street or at another hotel. Leaving your vehicle dangerously unattended, walk directly through the main entrance with hands open and displayed in a non-threatening manner.

When registering, present as many forms of ID as possible. Be sure to mention where you work EVEN if no one asks. Brag if you have to. Hand out business cards to the staff. Let the desk clerk know that your stay here is no secret and that your room number should be given to anyone who asks, including those who don't ask. When asked if you have a room preference, answer with a bright, but unfrightening, "I've never had a 'preference' in my life! I'm easy to please and an American citizen!"

Head directly to your room, carefully avoiding eye contact with doors marked "Employees Only." Immediately unpack all of your luggage. Make several phones calls using ONLY the in-room phone. Call the front desk several times so as to avoid appearing suspicious. Return to your unattended vehicle and clone yourself using existing, but non-potentially-dangerous technology. Make no sudden movements and keep your ID and passport displayed prominently. Return one of yourselves to your hotel room, again using the front entrance in a non-threatening, flag-waving manner.

Stay in your room. Use the provided wi-fi. Avoid sites that use any form of encryption. Be careful not to stay in your room too long. When venturing out for something to eat or a non-suspicious conversation with the suspicious staff, avoid stairwells, hallways, exits/entrances, and connecting roads. On second thought, just stay in your room. This will make it easier to avoid being caught up in the middle of a personnel shift change.

If you must leave your room, smile and wave at each and every security camera. Lift your shirt to display lack of weapons, explosives or identifiable scars and tattoos. If purchasing anything from the hotel, use only credit cards, checks or DNA. Return to your room using the most surveilled route. Use the in-room phone to order room service. Turn down the delivery when it comes, stating that you're trying to keep visitors and deliveries to a minimum. Apologize for not having any cash to tip with, but explain that this lack of cash directly contributes (not monetarily, of course) to the safety of everyone in the hotel. Repeat this apology to housekeeping when they arrive, being sure to answer the door before they get to the second knock. Try to ignore their just-out-of-earshot griping about having to clean around the scattered contents of four large suitcases. Smile in a non-threatening fashion and shrug as if to say, "LOOK AT HOW MUCH I DON'T HAVE TO HIDE."

If you find that, despite your careful planning, your stay is going to be extended indefinitey, switch hotels. Pack all of your belongings carefully. Police the room for any stray socks, unused condoms or stealable toiletries. Turn the coffee maker OFF (if applicable). Leave in an unhurried fashion, but don't dawdle. Return to your attended vehicle and (most likely) dead clone. Drive to another hotel, preferably one a non-suspicious distance away and repeat the process. Once you return to your hometown, turn yourself into the nearest authorities for a thorough post-travel debriefing.                http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121110/17435521005/dhs-fbi-present-you-might-be-terrorist-if-hotel-guest-edition.shtml

http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/clip-board/201211/man-holds-his-breath-world-record-22-minutes         

Man Holds His Breath For A Record 22 Minutes

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 2:56 pm

Written by: ThePostGame Staff

congrats   !!!   :)

The next time you're watching a TV show, think about this: One man recently held his breath for nearly the entire duration of that half-hour program.
Stig Severinsen, a world champion freediver and breathing expert, captured the Guinness World Record with this amazing feat.
Granted, Severinsen did have some assistance -- before going underwater, he inhaled pure oxygen so as to saturate his body with oxygen. That said, this is still incredibly impressive.
For the past decade Severinsen has experimented with different methods of breath-hold to examine their effects on the mind and body. He even wrote a book titled Breatheology: The Art of Conscious Breathing.
This man has spent his entire life in and around water, so if you're waiting for someone to top his record, don't hold your breath.

If You Read Just One Article About The Patent Mess, Make It This One

from the infuriating dept

Steven Levy has always been a great writer covering the tech industry, but his article on "the patent problem" for Wired is a must read, even if you're familiar with these stories. He does a great job illustrating just how screwed up the patent system is, focusing on a few key trolls, and pulling in some important information and data to support the anecdotal claims. Much of the story is about Mitchell Medina, who took a ridiculous patent that came from an idea about scanning medical documents into electronic format, and turned it into a belief that he held a patent on which practically every website infringed. You really should read the whole thing, but a few tidbits: first off, Medina and the two other people named on the patent never actually could build a working product.

Although the three had never tried to build a working model before they were granted the patent, they now set out to create a business based on the idea. Elias made a prototype, albeit one that Medina would later admit “didn’t work particularly well.” He claimed to have visited “every big player” they could think of in the computer industry to see if they would like to license his patent and build a commercial version themselves. He also claimed that he had attempted to raise venture capital to create a company of his own. But no corporation or VC would put money into it. According to Medina, they were particularly annoyed when, during a meeting, an executive from IBM’s Lotus division rudely dismissed the idea of paying to use the concept. “He acted as if these kinds of patents were somehow laughable,” Lech says.

Eventually Medina cut out the guy who actually came up with the idea of scanning documents, and set himself up as a patent troll. He sued over 100 companies -- and realized that as long as the "license" he asked for was cheaper than fighting him in court, everyone would pay up, and everyone did... except one company, Flagstar Bancorp. Levy goes through details of the seven years spent fighting the case, including two separate district court judges who absolutely slammed the lawsuit (one said the case had "indicia of extortion") and told Medina he had to pay up for filing such a ridiculous lawsuit (in between all that, the appeals court, ridiculously, disagreed and sent it back). Eventually the appeals court agreed with the lower court, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, but it was a massive waste of time and energy. Amazingly, the guy who demanded payment from all those companies (and got it from most), for doing absolutely nothing to actually help with the development of e-commerce, claims he's a "victim."

Mitchell Medina, who has sued more than 100 companies for infringing his patents, sees himself as a victim. “When Jobs and Wozniak or Hewlett and Packard start in a garage, they’re heroes and captains of industry,” he says. “If you apply for a patent first, you’re a troll.” Via email from Africa, he continues to attack the Flagstar decision, claiming that Martinez ignored key evidence and ruled incorrectly. (Medina felt it best not to talk by phone, because, as he put it, “I tend to speak my mind, and it would be unwise for me to do so without the self-censorship of writing.”)

“We did nothing improper,” he writes. “The judges in this case comported themselves like spectators in a Roman coliseum who wanted to see plenty of blood on the floor in the form of litigant’s money before they considered the show worthy of their interest.”

Really, this is just touching the surface. Even if you're familiar with the Flagstar case (which we wrote about last year when the final CAFC ruling came down), reading Levy's detailed piece is worth it. The problem, of course, is that this kind of thing is happening over and over and over again -- nearly all of it taking money from productive purposes of building companies and products, and sending it to lawyers. It's a massive drain on the economy and it's about time we fixed it.

German Court Sees Through The DOJ Fairy Tale, Rejects Attempt To Seize Megaupload Assets

from the a-string-of-failures dept

We've covered a series of embarrassing setbacks for the US government's case against Megaupload over the past few months. It's a pretty stunning trail of errors by US officials who seemed to think that a scary story about a "bad man" would trump a lack of actual evidence or following legal procedure. While the case may hold up in the long run, it seems like everywhere you look there's evidence of highly questionable activity by the government.

The latest setback comes from Germany, where the US sought assistance from officials in seizing various assets of Dotcom's or Megauploads. However, the court has now rejected the request:

The Frankfurt judges have since rejected this request, because it contains insufficient evidence. The US legal team failed to demonstrate that a web hosting service for the illegal upload of copyrighted files, amounts to a criminal offence.

According to the German 'Telemediengesetz' (communications legislation), a hosting service for foreign files will generally not be accountable unless the host had active knowledge of illegal activity. The judges also emphasised that the concept of knowledge is limited to positive knowledge. Therefore if the service provider believes that it is possible or likely that a specific piece of information is stored on their server, this is not sufficient evidence of knowledge of abuse.

According to the court ruling, there is no legal obligation to monitor the transmitted data or stored information or to search for any illegal activity.

Of course this was the same point that we raised the day that Megaupload was shut down. While it may be true that many Megaupload users have infringed on copyrights, there's a massive leap from that point to the idea that Megaupload is a criminal enterprise -- yet the US government's case basically skips over any details to make that leap. Thankfully cooler heads are recognizing that a significant amount of the US's case seems to be based on a fairy tale that US officials -- under the influence of Hollywood -- keep telling.

Tip to DOJ officials under the sway of Hollywood's version of the internet: remember, these people make their livings telling fairy tale stories. You know those opening credit lines about how something is "based on a true story"? Yeah, quite frequently the actual truth is a long way from what's shown. It seems that you may have been taken in by another such Hollywood "true" tale.

http://www.jayweidner.com/InnocentMurder.html               

Innocent Murder -
The Real Story Of
JonBenet's Death Pt 1

By Jay Weidner & Vincent Bridge
3-13-00

Genesis 1: 18 - ". . .to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good."

Psalms 118: 27 - "The Lord is God, and he has made his light shine upon us. With boughs in hand, bind the festal sacrifice with ropes to the horns of the altar."

The Revelation of St. John 1: 18 - "I am the Living one. I was dead and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and hell."

On Christmas Night, 1996, in an upper class neighborhood of quintessentially yuppie Boulder, Colorado, six year old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in her own home. The crime was made to look like a botched kidnapping, and the fumbling of the local police created an unsolvable problem. Over three years after the murder, after endless investigations by police, the district attorney's office and a grand jury, it looks as if there will never be enough physical evidence to make an arrest.

And so the Ramseys, John and Patsy, have decided at long last to tell their own version of the story in their new book, The Death of Innocence, due out Friday, March 17. To promote the book, John and Patsy will also appear on ABC-TV that night in a supposedly no-holds barred taped interview with Barbara Walters.

Things had been quiet on the JonBenet murder story since the dismissal last fall of the Boulder County grand jury without handing down an indictment, but last month's television ratings period saw a revival of interest in the case. Two made for TV movies, one a two-nighter based on the best-selling Perfect Murder, Perfect Town by Lawrence Schiller, aired in the last week of the ratings month to better than average audiences.

This new wave of interest in the case, some of it sympathetic or at least non-judgmental to the Ramseys, will undoubtedly help the sales of the Ramseys' new book. In that book, according to Boulder's Daily Camera, the Ramseys supply a list of possible suspects as they present their version of the intruder theory. Perhaps most interesting of all is a peek at the new book in the Star tabloid for the week of March 7 - 14 which reveals that Patsy had two strange premonitions of disaster in the days before Christmas. The first involved the lookalike doll that Patsy gave JonBenet as a Christmas present. Seeing it in its wrapping carton suggested, to Patsy, JonBenet in her coffin.

The second premonition was more subtle but goes directly to the heart of the case. Patsy claimed that she liked the purple of the Easter vestments and chose to use purple as her Christmas tree colors that year. In the book, Patsy reveals that she realizes now she had unconsciously introduced death into the Christmas celebration by using the color that signifies Christ's sacrifice, rather than his birth.

A quote given to the Star by Richard Ressler, former FBI profiler, addresses the meaning of these premonitions. "It is strange," Ressler commented, "that Mrs. Ramsey would have one premonition of an impending murder but to have two is highly suspicious. From a psychological standpoint, one has to ask, did these things really happen or is she now just trying to convince herself? Could it all be a smokescreen to avoid tougher questions when she goes on TV to discuss her book?"

However, just as the apparently orchestrated media blitz leading up to the publication of the Ramseys' book was taking shape, a story appeared in Boulder's Daily Camera that had the potential to break the stalemated case wide open. Headlined "Huge Breakthrough In JonBenet Ramsey Murder Case?" the February 25 story, by Daily Camera editorial writer Barrie Hartman, opened with a bold lead sentence.

" District Attorney Alex Hunter has turned over new information to Boulder police and the FBI that he says could provide a major breakthrough in solving the 3-year-old JonBenét Ramsey murder case." Hartman continues, writing that "the information is from testimony and documents provided voluntarily by a 37-year-old California woman who was brought forward by Boulder attorney Lee Hill. The woman said she has suffered a lifetime of sexual and physical abuse, beginning at age 3. Her story, if true, could mean the Ramsey case is tangled in sexual abuse and involves more people than originally thought. Hunter said he finds the woman to be 'very believable.' Boulder police detectives, however, aren't so sure. 'Even if only 15 percent of what she says is true,' Hunter said, 'this case warrants investigation. And if Boulder cops don't want to do it, I will take the case to the US. Attorney.' "

And now, two weeks later, after Boulder detectives have questioned the informant and her therapist in California, long time Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter has decided to not run again for relection ending a 28 year career. On March 9, he issued a short and terse statement to the effect that he was ending his reign as District Attroney. No reason was given, certainly none related to the on-going investigation of child sexual abuse and JonBenet's death. Did the breakthrough in the case break Alex Hunter?


Trying to get a handle on the JonBenet Ramsey murder is like attempting to catch a rattlesnake blindfolded and with one hand tied behind your back, without getting bit. It's not easy, but it can be done. District Attorney Hunter has been trying to grab the rattlesnake longer than any official currently involved in the investigation. It comes as no surprise then that the rattlesnake got him first. In dealing with rattlesnakes, hesitation and uncertainty can be fatal.

Unfortunately, confusion and uncertainty are the only certainties to be found, three years later, amid the ruins of the case. Every crime scene, especially a murder, has a signature, an individual identity, imposed upon it by the criminal. In this case however, someone attempted to obscure that identity and the mistakes made by the police in the early hours of the investigation served to compound the problem. Therefore, before we make a grab at the rattlesnake, let's listen carefully for its rattle.

When we look at the evidence, and most of it has been published in one form or another and is available on the internet, we find that we forced to make an immediate choice of assumptions. Either the Ramseys are complicit in some way, or they are completely innocent. The mere choice of an assumption forces on us certain conclusions. And so we go looking for evidence to support that conclusion.

For instance, let us suppose that, as implausible as it sounds on the face of it, the Ramseys are telling the absolute truth. They went to bed a happy family exhausted from a busy Christmas Day and looking forward to the trip to their vacation house the next morning. Patsy got up first to prepare for the trip and discovered a ransom note on the back stairway. She called 911 and the story proceeded from there.

If we make that assumption, we must go looking for traces of the Intruder. Someone entered the Ramsey home, without a trace of forced entry, wrote a ransom note on paper found there, abducted JonBenet from her room, took her to the basement to an obscure corner where she was sexually assaulted, killed and then cleaned, dressed and wrapped in a blanket. The Intruder then left, leaving the ligature in place around her neck, while taking with him the leftover cord and duct tape. But he does not take a weapon possibly used in the assault, the flashlight.

Now, this is a truly unusual signature for an intruder sexual assault kidnapping. In fact, it is unique. Intruder assaults and kidnappings do happen, although their frequency is so low as to make them the rarest of all molestations and assaults on children. We can search the annals of such cases going back to the 19th century without finding anything remotely resembling the Ramsey case.

Intruders, particularly strangers, do not make unforced entries. At the very least, this suggests an intruder who had some access to the house. Kidnappers do not linger to write long ransom notes, and sexual predators do not assault their prey in the house where the abduction takes place; screams could bring unwanted attention. Most of all, vicious sex killers do not carefully bathe, dress and wrap their victims. They are more likely to leave them displayed as a message than to hide them in the deepest corner of the basement.

However, if we have made this assumption, then we must somehow find facts to fit the profile. So the Ramseys have suggested that it was someone close to them who entered the house while they were at the Christmas party. This person then entertained themselves by writing an extensive ransom note as they waited for the family to return. After everyone had gone to bed, this familiar person -- "She would have gone with Santa Claus," Patsy tells us -- lures her down to the basement where they sexually assault and kill her. Filled with remorse, this familiar person then cleans, dresses and wraps the dead child and leaves, forgetting all about the ransom note. Of course, that also leaves open the question of why the note was written in the first place. If the motive was sexual assault, why leave the note? If the motive was kidnapping, why the sexual assault in the house?

In the end, the Intruder theory leads only to more complications and the sort of academic stretching of a point that allowed the Scholastics of the Renaissance to argue with the round earth theory even after Columbus and Magellan proved it. At some point, we must apply Occam's razor to the endless knotted string of "Yes, but. . ." speculation. Like the Emperor's new clothes, and the flat earth, the Intruder theory exists only in the mind of those who believe. One look at the evidence, and the Intruder disappears.

So who's left? Only those in the house that night.

Statistically, the vast majority, over 98 percent, of child murders in the home are committed by a family member, usually a parent. John Ramsey's two older children by his first wife were cleared by alibi and absence. In the house that night were only John, Patsy and their 9 year old son Burke. If we reject the Intruder theory, then the murderer must be one of these three.

In the last three years, the tabloids and the rest of the media have endlessly rehashed the scenarios involving these three suspects. Unfortunately, none of these scenarios answer all the issues raised by the signature of the crime.

If John Ramsey did it, perhaps accidentally as part of a sex game, and then tried to concoct an abduction scheme to fool his wife and the authorities, then we must ask why he didn't dispose of the body to help support the kidnapping claim? He would have had plenty of time before his wife awoke and discovered the note.

Similarly, if Patsy or Burke had killed JonBenet, either accidentally or as part of a punishment that got out of hand, then why stage the elaborate and ineffective abduction attempt? Let us say that Burke and JonBenet were up after their parents went to bed and that Burke hit JonBenet over the head with the flashlight for instance, severely injuring her. Why then would John and Patsy finish the job by strangulation and then fake the abduction? Even if we assume that Burke not only hit his sister with the flashlight but choked her to death as well, why would his parents cover it up with a fake abduction?

Or suppose that Patsy, arising early for the trip, discovered that JonBenet had wet the bed again and in a rage killed her. To save herself, Patsy concocts the Intruder theory, writes the ransom note, throttles and sexually assaults JonBenet and hides her in the basement. She then calls 911 and brazens it out from there. In many ways, this is the most satisfying scenario.

And yet it does not explain many of the bizarre points of the crime, such as the complexities of the note and JonBenet's death by strangulation. In addition, it presupposes serious mental conditions on Patsy's part. Psychosis, sociopathy and a deep disassociative disorder are all indicated by Patsy's supposed behavior in this scenario. If we grant the existence of these disorders in Patsy's psyche, then we must speculate on how she got that way.

But, before we do that, one last scenario remains to be examined. As horrific as it is, this last scenario covers the facts better than any other yet presented, and has a key piece of so-far unexplained physical evidence to support it. The perpetrator in this view is JonBenet's brother Burke, not as an accidental event covered-up by his parents, but as a full scale, premeditated sex crime.

In the three years since JonBenet's death, many things have happened, including two years of school shootings, culminating in the recent shooting death of a classmate by a six-year old in Michigan. With that in mind, it is no longer so easy to dismiss the possibility that 9 year-old Burke planned and executed the perfect murder.

Perhaps the attention being shown to JonBenet in her new role as Patsy's beauty queen surrogate made her a prime target. Burke, fed on a diet of action movies and comic books, spends months planning out the scenario just so, to match some distorted fictionalized image of a kidnapping and sexual assault. He plants his seeds by telling JonBenet that Santa Claus will visit them special on Christmas night. He lures her quietly downstairs where they wait, eating pineapple, for Santa's appearance. Burke slugs JonBenet with the flashlight and then drags or carries her to the basement where he sexually assaults her with a paint brush and then strangles her to death. He hides the body with care, plants the note and goes back to bed. Patsy awakens early for the trip, and the story goes on from there.

Except for one thing. Burke, waiting for the sound of pandemonium, gets up and joins in as Patsy calls 911. On the enhanced tape, Burke's voice is clearly heard in the background, as is John's voice telling him to be quiet. Burke was sent back to bed, and by 7 o'clock had been dispatched to the Whites, where he remained all day. The Ramseys have insisted under oath that Burke slept through the whole thing. They have done everything possible to keep Burke and any question of Burke's role out of the official record, including a credibility stretching insistence on the Intruder theory.

So, do we have the world's youngest psychopathic sex killer? Not quite. It is very unlikely, as we will see below, that he could have written the note. We might imagine a precocious and deranged nine year old killing his sister, but the psycho-sexual component of the crime forces us into special pleading. Violent sexual activity in prepubescent children almost always stems from the desire to act out the abuse perpetrated on them. Therefore, if young Burke is sick enough to commit the crime on his own, then, as with his mother Patsy, we must ask how he got that way. Finally we must deal with the fact that Burke attended his school for an entire semester following the murder. It is almost impossible to believe that he didn't confide in anyone about his nefarious act. Furthermore, if John and Patsy were covering up for Burke it is doubtful that they would have insisted on sending him to school for a half a year.


As we look through our spread of scenarios, one key make-it-or-break-it point has been the ransom note. First of all its length, not so much a note as a letter, argues against its being written by an intruder. Secondly, there is a tone of barely suppressed rage against John Ramsey that permeates the entire letter. This strongly suggests a personal connection and motive. However, there is a certain degree of confusion in the note -- John is not from the South -- which suggests that the author confused John Ramsey and Patsy's father, Don Paugh, who is from the South. As we will see, this just might be the single most significant clue in the whole ransom note.

An analysis of the ransom note and a psychological profile done by SERAPH Inc., a private profiling agency run by Dale Yeager and Denise Knoke, and delivered to the Boulder Police on May 25, 1998, suggests that the case is one of "a child's murder with ritualistic overtones. Mrs. Ramsey's motives and post incident actions cannot be understood with rational thought. This crime was committed by a delusional individual who has convinced herself of her own innocence. Sociopaths always view their violent actions as justified. When a divine intervention is added to this justification pathology, you have a highly volatile individual."

The report continues: "We believe that Patsy Ramsey is a delusional sociopath. Based on our experience with religious sociopaths, we believe that she saw JonBenet's death as a sacrifice for sins she had committed." Essentially, Yeager and Knoke had cracked the case back in 1998. The only thing lacking was some justification for Patsy's sense of sin and the need to atone by sacrificing her daughter. Therefore, the real story remained elusive.

That is, until two weeks ago when news began to surface about a child sex abuse ring and their involvement in the case. Suddenly, a motive for Patsy's deeply held sense of sin and need for atonement was at hand. Finally, after three years, a coherent picture of the case began to emerge, one that explains everything from Patsy's premonitions and the ransom note to the inability of the local authorities to make an arrest. If we have the courage to look at the unthinkable, the real story of JonBenet's death appears with the sudden clarity of those 3D images hidden within apparent computer generated chaos. It all depends on your focus.


Then let's focus our attention on the ransom note. From the very first line problems emerge. Addressed to Mr. Ramsey, it reads: "Listen carefully! We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction." Of course, a real "foreign faction" would never refer to themselves as such. The whole line eerily echoes the movie Nick of Time which aired at 7:30 on Christmas night on a local Boulder cable station. The movie concerns the kidnapping of a six year old girl by an unnamed political faction and in the film the victim is told to "Listen to me very carefully!" Bill Cox, a guest that night of the Ramseys' friends the Whites, remembered watching it.

" We respect your bussiness (sic) but not the country it serves," the note continues. "At this time we have your daughter in our possession. She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter." This is a rather straight forward, if stiff and somewhat formal, attempt to support the faction kidnapping idea.

The next line however provides an important clue, one that must be examined in some depth. "You will withdraw $118,000.00 from your account." The use of such a specific amount is unusual. Terrorists, or even a normal kidnapper, would have asked for more money. The fact that this amount is almost exactly the bonus John received that year from Access Graphics is significant, giving us our first indication that the kidnapping is a personal attack on John Ramsey.

The number 118 has suggested to some investigators the biblical reference of Psalm 118. The police discovered during their initial search on December 26, 1996, that the Ramsey family Bible was open to Psalm 118 on John Ramsey's desk. Others confirm that during Patsy's bout with ovarian cancer, she used Psalm 118 as a source of spiritual strength.

http://www.jayweidner.com/InnocentMurder2.html              

Innocent Murder -
The Real Story Of
JonBenet's Death Pt 2

By Jay Weidner & Vincent Bridge
3-13-00


In the analysis of the ransom note by Yeager and Knoke referred to above, this reference becomes an important clue. "Psalm 118 is a biblical chapter that is used quite often in the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement," they write in their 1998 report to the Boulder Police Department "This subculture of the Christian Religion has many unwritten fundamentals that they adhere to. One area in which they divert from main stream Christian theology is in the area of biblical interpretation. Because of their extreme emphasis on spiritual gifts, they tend to have a more flexible view of interpretation compared to the more scholarly approach taken by their fellow Christians in main steam denominations. "

Yeager and Knoke continue, pointing out that "rather than believing the scriptures to be the general will of God being presented to all believers, they take a more mystical approach by viewing the scriptures as a prophetic tool used by God to speak to individual believers. This flexible attitude leads to extraordinarily diverse views theologically. We believe that Patsy Ramsey took this approach from the Osteen, Hickey and Barnhill books that she was introduced to during her illness."

However, Psalm 118, and particularly the verse quoted at the head of this article, verse 27, is more than just a fundamentalist text on the glory of God. As Yeager and Knoke point out, it is also suggestive of the power of sacrifice. "Based on my experience," Yeager wrote in his earlier 1997 report, "this second section of verse 27 has been used by several white supremacy groups such as the Christian Identity movement and the Aryan Nation to justify their killing of blacks, Jews and other minorities. In their non-orthodox view, the verse is speaking of offering a person as a sacrifice to God and God is accepting their sacrifice on his altar as atonement. "

Yeager's 1997 report to the Boulder Police goes on to mention that "the Hebrews where required to offer a blood sacrifice to God to atone for their sins as a nation. A lamb or sheep would be placed on the altar and tied to the four extended horns of the altar with thick cords. The animal was then cut and bled until it was dead. The blood was then used in ceremony for the 'washing away by the blood, the sins of the people.' " This idea is still found in the fundamentalist belief in the redemptive power of Christ's blood, shed as it was as part of the final sacrificial atonement. "Washed in the blood of the lamb" is a common motif in fundamentalist hymns.

Even more interesting is Yeager's reference to a similar case which "involved a woman with a very conservative Christian background, who strangled her daughter and used this verse as a justification for the killing. Her belief was that the child would be better off in 'heaven with God' and that the daughter would be a redemptive sacrifice to God for her [the mother's] sins." It is unknown whether the Boulder Police followed Yeager's advice and asked the FBI for details on the case. If they had, they would have been astounded by the similarities.

An extensive search of the ritual abuse literature turned up the facts in the case. In 1979, a Silver Springs, Maryland, woman took her five year old daughter to church and there strangled her to death. When questioned by Linda Stone for an article in David Sakheim and Susan Devine's 1992 book Out of Darkness: Exploring Satanism and Ritual Abuse, the woman confirmed Yeager's comments. She felt that she was saving her child from the same lifetime of sin that she herself had endured. The sin of course was ritualistic sexual abuse and pedophilia.

In commenting on the case, author Stone remarks that "the inability of a parent to protect his or her child while witnessing the ongoing symptomatic behavior that the child is exhibiting as a consequence of the ritual abuse is probably one of the most stressful circumstances that a person can endure." In the case of the Maryland woman, such stress and the twisted nature of the Christian cult in which she was caught combined to produce the mercy murder of her own daughter. "God required a sacrifice," the woman told Stone, "and at least she [her daughter] died before they could corrupt her."

While considering the meaning of the $118,000 ransom request, we should also look at the other two verses from the Bible quoted at the head of this article. Genesis 1:18 suggests that God approves of separating the light from the darkness while Revelation 1:18 points to the resurrection motif of ever-lasting life in the faith. Both of these could be used in the same way as verse 27 of Psalm 118 to justify a sacrificial murder in the name of salvation.

Returning to the note, the next sentence dealt with the money: "$100,000 in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills." This is straightforward, and attempts to suggest a savvy kidnapper collecting his ransom in small bills. When we consider the request more closely however, it is clear that this is an arbitrary division, perhaps designed to emphasize the one and the eighteen of the Bible references. In which case the text of Revelation 1:18 becomes even more important: "I am the Living one. I was dead and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and hell."

And then comes a curious sentence: "Make sure that you bring an adequate size attache to the bank." This sounds more like a wife instructing her husband in some household matter, than a kidnapper giving instructions. It also suggests that the writer is educated enough to spell attaché and use it correctly.

"When you get home you will put the money in a brown paper bag," the note continues in the same nagging tone. "I will call you between 8 and 10 am tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be rested." The brown paper bag is another odd note. Why not keep the money in the attaché? The advice to rest seems to be taken from the movie Dirty Harry, which aired on November 29 on TBS in Boulder.

"If we monitor you getting the money early, we might call you to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence the earlier delivery [crossed out and replaced by] pick-up of your daughter." The author of the note has used the word delivery four times in the space of a few sentences, then corrected the last usage to pick-up. This and the use of the word "hence" suggests an educated person, or the attempt to appear so.

"Any deviation from my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied her remains for proper burial. The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you so I advise you not to provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as Police, F.B.I., etc., will result in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you alert bank authorities, she dies. If the money is in any way marked or tampered with, she dies. You will be scanned for electronic devices and if any are found, she dies. You can try to deceive us but be forewarned that we are familiar with law enforcement countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back. You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities. Don't try to grow a brain John. You are not the only fat cat so don't think that killing will be difficult. Don't underestimate us John. Use that good southern common sense of yours. It is up to you now John! Victory! S.B.T.C." (Italics not in original.)

At this point, the temptation is to see this as the War and Peace of ransom notes. It is as if the author became involved in their own creation and spun it out as far as it would. go This section is filled with references to movies, Dirty Harry again as well as Speed, and fairly drips with venom toward John Ramsey and/or Don Paugh. Clues also abound, as marked in italics in the above section of the note. We will look at these clues individually and then try to determine their pattern.

The word execution tells us that the author of the note felt that JonBenet was executed. The threat of no body to bury suggests the reason why the killer did not dispose of the body. The two gentlemen is very curious, suggesting that the author felt that two men were to blame. Certainly one of those men could be John Ramsey, and the other could be his father-in-law. The beheading reference seems to be an extra piece of nastiness, hiding perhaps a deep seated desire to castrate male authority. Stray dog echoes a line from Dirty Harry and has the added connotation of describing the author's view of his or her self as isolated and degraded like a stray dog. Scanned is a word that has different connotations depending on how it is used. Here it is used in the sense of supermarket scanner, rather than a computer image scanner. The phrase law enforcement countermeasures has an oddly formal and made-up quality to it, as if the author was uncertain how to say it. Grow a brain comes from the movie Speed, with Dennis Hopper. Constant scrutiny is another indicator of the author's state of mind. Obviously, since the idea is present throughout the note, the feeling of being watched constantly is a powerful component of the author's psyche. Fat cat seems to be a reference to Don Paugh, who, according to Access Graphics employees, used the words cat in its slang sense all the time. The confusion between John and Don continues with the good southern common sense phrase. It is also possible that this is another slap at John because he doesn't have any, as he isn't from the south.

The last two key words are the most important. In their 1998 profile, Yeager and Knoke found them to be very revealing. "In the Charismatic subculture, acronyms are quite common and used quite frequently as teaching tools and on banners [In church icons]. S.B.T.C. is a well-used acronym that represents the words "saved by the cross". In our extensive database of terroristic groups, we find no use of this phrase with White Supremacy or International Organizations. The author of the ransom note uses this acronym along with the word "victory". The word "victory" is used in the Charismatic subculture as a verb. It is seen as the result of actions taken by believers to bind and overcome Satan's power primarily in the areas of physical health."

What a strange way to end a ransom note! It is almost as if the author is trying to convey a very precise message, one that implies a victory of some kind over the forces of evil. Saved By The Cross becomes even more important when we remember Patsy's supposed premonition over using Easter colors at Christmas. The closing actually forces us to the conclusion that Patsy is the author.

When we look at the totality of the clues and hints in the ransom note, we are struck first of all by its theatricality. The note was staged to convey a message, one that had nothing to do with any real kidnapping. When we look closely at that message, we come face to face with a Christian sacrificial victory, an innocent saved by the cross, even unto death. The similarities to the Maryland case cited above are only too clear.

In the note, the author places the blame on two "gentlemen," who might be John and her father Don Paugh. The good southern common sense phrase, whether we interpret it as a dig at John or a confusion with Don Paugh in the manner of a Freudian slip, could only have come from Patsy. Add to this the amount of the bonus, the ransom request and the Biblical connections, including the open Bible on John's desk, and Patsy is the only possible author. "Victory" and "S.B.T.C." clinches the identification, and announces that the deed is done, the innocent is saved and beyond their reach.

The note was an attempt to tell those she felt were truly responsible that the sacrifice had been made, and at the same time to point the finger at the perpetrators of the true evil. Patsy made it as obvious as she could, and in the first hours after JonBenet's body was discovered it is possible that Patsy wanted to be caught. Perhaps, she really wanted to tell her story, at least unconsciously. The note suggests that she did. But the opportunity was lost, and the "justification pathology" became fixed.


Everything detailed above was known to the Boulder Police as early as the summer of 1997. It was generally agreed that this evidence made Patsy the prime suspect, but no conclusive motive could be demonstrated that would be horrific enough to justify, even in Patsy's mind, the murder of her daughter. In other words, what could be so bad that a mother would think that death was preferable? If the Boulder Police followed up on the Maryland case cited in the Yeager analysis, then they had an idea of what would drive a mother to such a deed.

But until Boulder Attorney Lee Hill showed up with his California informant, such a motive was pure speculation. Suddenly, it looked as if there might be something solid to the idea of sexual abuse. Patsy might have had a motive after all.

Barrie Hartman, in his February 25 story in the Boulder Daily Camera reported the details. "The woman has described to police years of sexual and physical abuse in California homes at the hands of adults who stayed at holiday and other parties after other guests had left for the evening. Then, she said, another "party," one of sexual abuse for the gratification of a select group of adults, would begin. In talking to detectives, the woman draws parallels between sexual techniques used at these sessions and the physical evidence of garroting that investigators found on the body of JonBenét Ramsey."

California ranks number one in both pedophilia and ritualistic sexual abuse. In a study of 57 ritual abuse cases done by "Margaret Smith," herself an abuse survivor, 37% of the cases occurred in California. She also found that 98% percent of perpetrators fell into four large occupational categories; 35% were professionals, either doctors or lawyers, 25% were teachers, 22% priests and ministers, and 15% were police officers. Given these statistics, the victim's fears of authority are well justified . "The woman told detectives she believes JonBenét was killed accidentally when an asphyxiation technique used to stimulate an orgasmic response during a child sex and porno "party" went too far," Hartman's story continued. "The woman told police she knows firsthand about asphyxiation (choking) to produce a sexual response because it had been done to her when she was a child. The woman said in her experience little girls were dressed provocatively and trained to say provocative things, such as, "It's a pleasure to please you." She told police that when girls did not perform as expected, they were struck on the head. That was because their hair covered the wound. A big night for such "parties" was Christmas night, she said. Over the years, she said, many parties were held then because a large number of cars around a house did not arouse suspicion in the neighborhood and the children had a full week to heal from their wounds before returning to school."

And then the story turns to the crucial element, a connection to the Ramsey case. "The woman said she knows the Ramseys through the Fleet White family. She said the godfather to her mother is Fleet White Sr., 86, of California. Fleet White Jr. of Boulder and John Ramsey were close friends until the death of JonBenét. White Jr. was with John Ramsey when JonBenét's body was found in the basement of the Ramsey's Boulder home." What is curiously not mentioned is that the Ramseys actually attended a Christmas party at the Whites on Christmas Night. Fleet White Jr. was cleared by police in April of 1997, but this information casts new light on many of the strange elements of the case.

As Alex Hunter, Boulder District Attorney, said earlier in the same story, even if only 15% of the story is true, then it deserves to be investigated. Whether that investigation will go the way of all the rest remains to be seen.

However, this new information, combined with an analysis of the ransom note, allows us to piece together a scenario of the crime that fits the peculiarities of its signature. Whether this is the truth or not, only Patsy knows.

Patsy Paugh Ramsey fits the classic profile of an abuse survivor. Emotional and physical abuse are most likely, but sexual abuse can not be ruled out. Much of this trauma seems to be associated with her father, whom she recreated by marrying the older John Ramsey. We have no way of knowing how deeply the abuse went in her own family, but the symptoms are there.

Soon after the Ramseys moved to Boulder, they met the Fleet Whites, the family implicated by the California informant. Whether this was the beginning of the problem, or merely another step along the way is uncertain. All we can tell is that it marks a turning point.

Perhaps John was recruited by Fleet and began to receive child pornography in the "brown paper bag" that Patsy chides him with in the ransom note. Perhaps it was at first a social thing that grew slowly into something more. We may never know.

Patsy's illness marks another turning point. She emerged from it with a strong fundamentalist Christian belief, one that curiously enough either allowed her to participate in her daughter's pedophilic involvement or blinded her to it. A quote from "Margaret Smith," who was a member of a Christian cult not unlike the one the Maryland mother who killed her daughter was involved in, shows how confusing the message can be. "In our belief system, the ultimate deity is God manifested through the actions of Jesus. . . We believed that Jesus' teachings should not be dictated by some church. . . We believe that through Jesus radiated the perfect emanation of Heavenly Light. . . The heavenly light is also. . . Lucifer, the Light Bearer. . ."

What starts out as Christianity has subtly shifted to a worship of Lucifer. "We most certainly would not consider ourselves to be Satan worshipers," Ms. Smith goes on. "We believe that Satan is a term used by the church to separate the world into good and evil through the eyes of the God of the Old Testament." The emphasis in the cult was on Jesus as Light Bearer, and awaiting a Luciferian return. "We believe we have to create the perfect race: a race of warriors to prepare for his second coming."

From the outside, it is hard to determine what the group around the Ramseys truly believed and whether the child abuse ring had cultic or ritualistic overtones. All we can be sure of, as Yeager's report reminds us, is that is was "a child's murder with ritualistic overtones."

The beauty pageant frenzy in the last year of JonBenet's life seems to have been part of her preparation for entry into the group. As the California informant said, the children were required to act adult and provocative at these gatherings. Several other beauty pageant mothers who knew JonBenet have commented on the inappropriateness of her routines. Her pageant coach claims that these moves did not come from her. Apparently, Patsy herself taught her daughter how to do her very adult bumps and grinds.

Christmas Night at the Whites has an atmosphere of an initiation, an audition to see if all the hard work had paid off. JonBenet apparently passed the test, and may even have been scheduled as the main attraction at the next major event. The California informant, as reported by her attorney Lee Hill, has suggested that JonBenet was killed at the party. This raises some interesting questions. If she had been killed at the party, which must occasionally happen given the nature of the goings-on, then her death would have been handled in a more direct manner. Certainly, no one on the inside of the group would have concocted something like the ransom note.

The most likely scenario is that all went relatively well at the audition. It is possible that JonBenet was not sexually violated, although sex play, including asphyxiation probably did occur. However, it just may be that Patsy did not fully grasp what was about to happen to her little angel. Patsy's own abuse and sexualization at the hands of her father, Don Paugh, would allow her not to see the sexual objectification of her routines as anything out of the ordinary. The group itself may have appealed to her Christian and mystical side. Who knows exactly what, in her mind, Patsy was training the child to become?

However, after the Christmas party, something snapped in Patsy. In the early morning hours of the 26th, Patsy sat up at the kitchen table pondering what to do. She wrote the ransom note to carefully send a message to John, and subliminally to her father. She goes upstairs, gets the sleeping JonBenet out of bed, and carries her to the basement.

Patsy probably prayed, thinking of Abraham and Isaac, and the great sin for which she must atone. Just as in the letter, her intent in the murder was to leave clues, point a finger, at what she felt was the true evil, the true perpetrators, John and her father, or John and Fleet White. Praying, she slugged JonBenet with the flashlight.

The child awoke from the blow and screamed, once. Patsy stopped her scream with the garrote and strangled her to death. To make the point even more clear, she sexually assaulted her with the same paint brush used to fashion the garrote. Then, without removing the garrote, she dresses her and wraps her in a blanket in the far corner of the basement.

When everything is staged to her satisfaction, she goes upstairs, and puts the flashlight on the kitchen counter. Perhaps she sits for a while in the dark brooding, perhaps she does a load of laundry, and when it is time to get up, still in the clothes she wore to the party the night before, she goes downstairs to find the note.

John of course is confused. Burke is up and running around screaming. Patsy is on the phone to 911. But as John reads the note, it becomes clear that this no ordinary kidnapping. How soon John suspected Patsy is unknown, but it must have been soon. At no time does John show the least regard for the instructions in the note, which warn him that if talks to anyone, JonBenet will be killed.

John gets on the phone and calls the Whites and the others. By 7 o'clock that morning, there were nine people, not including the Boulder Police, wandering through the Ramsey house. By the time the body was found at 1 o'clock that afternoon, no such thing as a crime scene existed. John's immediate reaction was to call his pilot and tell him to stand by in the company jet. Patsy of course was hysterical, making a variety of bizarre comments, such as publicly begging their priest to bring her back to life.

Soon however, Patsy was tranquilized, becoming by the end of the day totally incoherent. In the meanwhile, the word spread, reaching perhaps many other people in the Boulder community, as Alex Hunter speculated. The pedophiles needed damage control.

And so, two and a half weeks after the story broke, and five days after Alex Hunter decided to quit his job, the JonBenet Ramsey murder case remains in limbo. The real story almost emerged, but where formally there was a media rush, now the quiet is deafening. The Daily Camera's stories have been picked up by few other media outlets. And now, with Alex Hunter soon to be gone, we face the possibility that the story will never be told.

In closing, we would like to encourage the California woman and her therapist, Ms. Mary Bienkowski, to go public with their information if the Boulder authorities failed to follow up on it. We think it is important that the Ramseys don't get the last word.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121113/02590921027/musicians-weave-elaborate-cnet-conspiracy-theory-attempt-to-get-bittorrent-banned.shtml                            

Musicians Weave Elaborate CNET Conspiracy Theory In Attempt To Get BitTorrent Banned

from the scorched-earth dept

Last year, we wrote about a silly and uninformed lawsuit filed by eccentric rich guy Alki David against CBS. David has an online TV company, FilmOn, which has some similarities to Aereo and other online rebroadcasters. The networks sued the company, of course, and David has since gone on an odd and vindictive campaign against them. As someone who tends to think services like his should be both legal and embraced, I'd like to support him, but his legal campaign is just ridiculous and now has the possibility of causing real and serious harm. His reason for suing CBS was that a few years ago CBS bought CNET, and CNET has (for many, many years) run a site called Download.com. Download.com is a service that many software providers use to distribute their software. David claimed that because Download.com (a site owned by CNET which was -- only relatively recently -- purchased by CBS) distributed Limewire -- which was eventually found to be infringing -- that CBS was also guilty of copyright infringement. That original lawsuit was dumped pretty quickly, after the judge noted that David had failed to show what copyrights were being infringed (a key piece in any copyright claim).

David regrouped and found a group of musicians to file a similar lawsuit -- led by Sugar Hill Music -- and so far that lawsuit has had slightly more success, though it has serious problems. The latest filing in the case, embedded below, involves the plaintiffs arguing that the court should issue an injunction blocking CNET/CBS from allowing any BitTorrent client from being downloaded. Yeah. The proposed injunction is full of complete crazy talk.

True to form, Defendants have enthusiastically embraced this new engine of piracy, distributing over 65 million copies of bittorrent applications and, again, shamelessly promoting their use for purposes of infringement. Defendants' inducement has sometimes become somewhat more sophisticated and subtle, in that, for example, Defendants now include a mild, disingenuous disclaimer about piracy on some of their web-pages and evidently no longer host certain P2P applications on their servers. Defendants, however, still expressly and explicitly show users how to use bittorrent programs to find copyrighted files to download. At all times, Defendants were aware that the bittorent programs they distributed were used overwhelmingly for infringing copyrighted works – primarily music, software, movies and video games. Although some court cases have found the proprietors of torrent websites liable for secondary copyright infringement,3 no court case has yet directly involved bittorrent applications and technology itself. Like a leopard that cannot change its spots and despite this Court’s clear admonishment that Defendants cannot simultaneously distribute software applications that they have encouraged to be used for purposes of infringement,4 Defendants continue to distribute bittorrent applications under the intentionally lazy and under-reactive guise that they cannot be held liable for this activity until a court order specifically prohibits the use of bittorrent technology to infringe Plaintiffs’ works. Although Plaintiffs believe it probable that courts will soon explicitly find the popular bittorrent applications to be secondarily liable for copyright infringement just as Napster and LimeWire were, it is beyond doubt that Defendants’ distribution of these programs and concurrent intent to induce infringement subjects Defendants to inducement liability, independent of any further inquiry. Bittorrent is a clear and present danger to copyrighted works. From evidence readily available in CNET’s own “news” articles, it is clear that bittorrent applications like uTorrent are growing explosively to fill the infringement vacuum left by Gnutella applications.

Yes, despite the fact that BitTorrent itself has been around for many, many years, and the software/protocol has never been found to be infringing in any way, these musicians are now insisting that it's "only a matter of time" and that CNET should be forced to block downloads of any and all BitTorrent products. There are so many crazy points here. First, Download.com is just a platform provider, which software providers use to distribute software, not the creator of the software. Second, BitTorrent is just a protocol and is quite different than the apps that the lawsuit relies on as previous generations, which were often complete ecosystems. BitTorrent software has always been just about a tool to download or distribute content -- legal or infringing. And, yes, there are a ton of legal uses of BitTorrent, even if the plaintiffs here pretend otherwise.

There are some other howlers as well, including the rise of copyright trolls, filing over 250,000 lawsuits against people for copyright infringement -- which the filing here uses as some sort of weird evidence that BitTorrent must be illegal, apparently completely unable to distinguish between a tool and the actions that some use that tool to accomplish.

Even more bizarre, the filing uses the fact that CNET had an article highlighting a legal use of BitTorrent (by the band Counting Crows who purposely released some tracks via BitTorrent) as evidence that CNET encourages people to infringe:

Defendants also use the purported “news” arms of their websites to dress up the marketing of bittorrent applications as legitimate news reporting. For example, CNET editor Seth Rosenblatt (the same individual who authored the fivestar review of uTorrent), wrote a May 14, 2012 article published and available on Defendants website titled “Download This Mr. Jones,” ostensibly about how the recording artist the Counting Crows had partnered with the software publisher of uTorrent to release their music for free download via torrent.... In a portion of the article quoting the lead singer of the Counting Crows regarding the 150 million users of uTorrent, Rosenblatt included hyperlinks accompanied by the word “download” to the CNET download pages for uTorrent and BitTorrent.

The idea that CNET's news operation deserves sarcastic "quotes" around it is ridiculous. News.com has been one of, if not the, leading tech news publication for at least a decade and a half. And the idea that this story wasn't actually newsworthy, as implied here, is simply ridiculous. Lots of publications covered it, not to push people to download BitTorrent, but because it was newsworthy. But much of the argument relies on news reporters talking about various issues related to BitTorrent, and then arguing that this is all some sort of front to push more people to download BitTorrent. To put it simply: this is insane. News.com and Download.com. I've known people associated with both properties, and the idea that they write articles about BitTorrent to try to drive more downloads is ridiculous.

But, even ignoring that, then arguing that all BitTorrent-related products should be barred from download isn't just overkill, it's pushing a rather scary and unique legal theory that sites should be barred from distributing software -- made by parties not even represented in the lawsuit -- just because one party doesn't like how some of the users of that software use it. If there's infringement it's on the part of some potential end users, but rather than going after them, this lawsuit doesn't just go one step back (to the software providers), but an even further level back to the platform that enables software downloads, and claiming that somehow they're all responsible for this.

It seems pretty clear that this lawsuit is really designed to be a nuisance for CBS, but the legal theories are highly questionable and the requested injunction is a massive overreach. Hopefully the court recognizes just how much an overreach this request really is.

PSYOPS 101: The technology of psych warfare

http://www.corbettreport.com/psyops-101-the-technology-of-psych-warfare/       

14
Nov
2012

PSYOPS 101: The technology of psych warfare

Posted by Corbett

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com
November 13, 2012
As we have examined in this special series of Eyeopener reports on psychological warfare in recent weeks, Psychological Operations, or PSYOPS, are every bit as vital to military strategists today as they ever were. In fact, in this age of 24/7 online access and the possibilities for new battlegrounds in the “information battlespace” that it affords, Psyops may be even more important than they have ever been in “winning the hearts and minds” (or at least confusing and stupefying the hearts and minds) of enemies the world over.
In some ways, this is precisely the point. Psyops by their very nature tend to rely on mechanical and technological trickery to deceive enemies or sneak propaganda past their defenses. Some of the greatest military victories in history did not involve fighting or bloodshed at all, but merely intimidation through demonstration of technological superiority.
During the conquest of Gaul in the 1st century BC, Julius Caesar encountered the problem of securing the eastern border of his newly acquired territory from marauding Germanic tribes. The tribes would raid Gaul when the opportunity arose and retreat back behind the natural barrier of the Rhine River before Roman forces could retaliate. To solve this problem, Caesar put the unparalleled engineering knowhow of ancient Rome into a project that had never before been attempted: bridging the Rhine.
With ingenious technology—including winch-driven stone piledrivers—and the brute manpower of 40,000 legionaries, Caesar not only accomplished the impossible, he accomplished it in an astonishing 10 days. Having completed the bridge, he marched his troops across to the eastern side, burned down the villages he found there, returned across the bridge to Gaul without a single battle and tore the bridge down behind him.
As an example of psychological warfare, the strategy was devestatingly effective. Without the loss of a single one of his troops Caesar had effectively demonstrated the awe-inspiring might of the Romans, and the message was not lost on his enemies. Gaul’s eastern border suffered no further raids from Germanic marauders for centuries.
Although the technology has changed in the ensuing two thousand years, the basic strategy of terrorizing an enemy via technology remains intact. Ancient armies used drums, pipes and horns to intimidate their opponents before battle. Doctor Richard Jordan Gatling’s eponymous gun was as useful for putting the fear of God into those unlucky enough to be caught in its sites as it was in actually killing them. Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” strategy was a combination of intimidation and technological superiority that helped the Nazis gain the upper hand in the early years of World War II. The much-touted “shock and awe” strategy of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 employed the same concept: enemy resistance can be drastically reduced by a sudden, overwhelming display of technology and force.
As technology has grown ever more sophisticated, however, so too has the ambitions of these psychological operations grown. Whereas traditional psyops have attempted merely to intimidate, bewilder or demoralize enemies into laying down their arms, modern technologies have opened up the possibility of actually controlling the mind of an opponent directly through electronic, chemical, or other means.
The quest to control the mind of an unwitting subject has long been the stuff of science fiction, but for at least 60 years it has been the subject of active research by some of the most covert programs of the intelligence agencies and militaries of the world’s superpowers. Perhaps the best known such example revolves around MK-ULTRA, a top secret and still-mysterious CIA operation to test methods of manipulating, brainwashing or controlling the minds of subjects through drugs, hypnosis and shock therapy. The program’s goals included finding substances, materials or methods for producing amnesia, dissociation, severe disorientation or unconsciousness in subjects, with the ultimate aim being to find a “wonder drug” or formula for producing the perfect “Manchurian Candidate,” a robot-like automaton who could be made to do an agent’s bidding upon command.
The project began in 1953 under the supervision of Sidney Gottleieb, a chemist and poison expert in the Technical Services Staff. The program acted as an umbrella project for 149 sub-projects carried out at 80 institutions, including universities and medical centres across the US from Boston Psychopathic to the University of Illinois Medical School to Mt. Sinai Hospital at Columbia University. Many of these experiments involved giving unwitting test subjects large doses of LSD without their knowledge and observing the results, or bribing hospitalized drug addicts with pure morphine or heroin in return for their participation in tests that included keeping some subjects on LSD for 77 days straight.
The most notorious of the MK-ULTRA sub-projects involved a program at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, Canada, headed by Dr. Ewan Cameron. Working with the CIA and the Canadian military, and partially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Cameron engaged in decades of research that included torturing subjects for weeks or months on end though coercive interrogations, hypnosis, electroshock therapy, inducing week or month long comas through forced druggings, and subjecting his human guinea pigs to constant tape loops of noises or repetitive statements. The patients, many of whom had been admitted for mild anxiety disorders or postpartum depression, were left permanently debilitated.
Although the project was eventually ruled unsuccessful and shut down in 1973, when many of its records were destroyed, the research resulted in many insights into psychological resistance and the breakdown of personality that have since been incorporated into torture techniques that have been used in CIA interrogations around the world. Some, including CIA whistleblower Victor Marchetti, have stated that the CIA’s claim that it abandoned MK-ULTRA was a cover story, and that research into mind control continued long after the project was officially abandoned.
Part of the problem in understanding how psychological warfare methods are being employed today is precisely that this research is done under cover of secrecy by intelligence agencies and military personnel in projects that are only ever exposed decades after the fact, if at all. For a clue as to where the cutting edge of psych warfare currently lies, we have to turn to reports of those technologies that are now finding commercial application and are starting to be incorporated into our everyday lives.
Minority Report is a 2002 Hollywood sci-fi movie from director Steven Spielberg presenting a dystopian future of pre-crime, total surveillance and police state technology. Unlike many science fiction fantasies, however, the technology depicted in the film has already proven remarkably prescient. From statistical analysis programs like IBM’s Blue CRUSH which purports to be able to predict criminal “hotspots” to drone technologies that are beginning to look more and more like the police tracking robots depicted in the movie, Minority Report has proven time and again to have been ahead of the curve in predicting technology. This is not accidental. During the film’s pre-production in 1999, Spielberg invited a panel of experts to a three-day “think tank” in Santa Monica, California. Including architects, biomedical researchers and computer scientists, the group wrote the “2054 bible,” an 80-page book detailing the most likely technological, sociological, architectural and political changes of the next half century.
One of the most chilling examples of a technology that it got right was the image of the face-recognition advertising billboards. The billboards read the faces of passersby and then beam advertisements directly into their ear so that only they can hear them.
Billboards that beam sound directly into the ear of passersby have been in use since 2007. The first one appeared in SoHo in 2007 in an advertisement for the A&E series, Paranormal State. They have since been used in billboards, vending machines and other advertising venues around the world.
Facial recognition advertisements, meanwhile, are slowly becoming a reality. In 2010, NEC rolled out facial-recognition advertising billboards that can tell gender, ethnicity and approximate age of those looking at them and tailor advertisements to suit. Earlier this year, GM announced a patent which will allow it to tailor highway billboards to individual cars by accessing their OnStar data for their last navigational input and crafting an appropriate advertisement based on that data.
Another technological development of note in recent years is the drastic improvements in hologram technology that have allowed Prince Charles to give a speech to an energy summit in Dubai from Clarence House in the UK, CNN anchors to interact with holographic reporters, buildings to move, morph and dance before the eyes of amazed spectators, and Tupac Shakur to rise from the dead for a show-stopping performance at Coachella.
All of these technologies, and the many, many more that are coming to market at an increasingly bewildering pace, doubtless represent just the tip of the iceberg of cutting edge technologies. What devices are being worked on behind the scenes in military or intelligence research labs funded by off-budget, classified programs we can, of course, not even begin to speculate. But the utility of even these technologies that we do no about for the perpetrators of psych warfare should be obvious.
The idea of using holographic technology in psychological operations, for example, has been openly discussed by the US Air Force since 1996, when they produced a report detailing plans for an “Airborne Holographic Projector” that could create a virtual aircraft to deceive a potential enemy about the size, strength and location of an attacking force. In 2007, Jon Ronson reported on a leaked US Air Force report proposing a “Prophet Hologram” which would project an “image of an ancient god over an enemy capitol whose public communications have been seized and used against it in a massive psychological operation.”
Arthur C. Clarke once famously wrote that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Surely this is obvious from the example of Caesar crossing the Rhine. Whereas the sight of Caesar’s legionaries constructing such a bridge—impressive as it might be—would hardly strike us as magical or superhuman, we can well imagine the sense of awe and dread it must have instilled in the poor Germanic tribes who were looking on as it was built. In the same way, how would billions around the world react were the Messiah to appear in the heavens above the Dome of the Rock and speak to them in their own language in a voice that was beamed directly into their ear?
This is the problem of perspective that always presents itself in the case of secret and classified government programs. Believing that we know all of the technology that is available to be used against us, and believing that we know precisely what our governments are capable of, we assume that such psychological operations would never work against us. Thousands of years of history, however, show that this is a delusion bred of our own ignorance, a delusion that helps to make the psychological operations, once they are launched, that much more effective.