Owner of company responsible for West Virginia chemical leak is a two-time convicted felon

naturalnews.com

Originally published January 18 2014

Owner of company responsible for West Virginia chemical leak is a two-time convicted felon

by Julie Wilson

(NaturalNews) The chemical plant responsible for leaking 7,500 gallons of "crude MCHM," or 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, into West Virginia's water supply, ostensibly has a less than average track record when it comes to facility inspections, and the owner is a two-time convicted felon.

As the investigation ensues, it turns out the company responsible for the chemical leak, Freedom Industries, has a bit of a sketchy past when it comes to conducting, or rather dodging, regular facility inspections. Aside from a confirmed inspection in 1991, reports are contradicting whether or not the chemical plant had been inspected since.

According to CNN, in 2010, officials were called out to inspect the chemical plant after they received complaints of the licorice-smelling foaming agent. "We went out on site and didn't find anything that would cause concern, no leaks or anything like that," said Randy Huffman, the head of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

When officials reportedly visited the plant again in 2012 to determine whether or not the company required additional air quality permits, inspectors decided that none were needed. "There's not necessarily the kind of robust environmental controls that people might anticipate that there should be on these types of facilities," said Huffman.

The state's environmental officials confirmed that the facility only required one permit to operate, an industrial storm water permit.

"Basically they had to monitor the runoff from the rain and send us the results every quarter. Those were the only regulatory requirements," said Huffman.

However, a report by the Charleston Daily Mail claims that no records of any inspections were found on the facility sites. The Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) said they arrived to examine the Elk River site in 2009 but withdrew from the inspection, because it was the "wrong type of business for that particular inspection."

Following the January 9 leak, the remaining "crude MCHM" was moved to a sister company named Poca Blending, LLC.

According to the Charleston Daily Mail, officials with OSHA attempted to inspect the Poca site in April 2012 under a national program emphasized on "process safety management." They again stopped the inspection because it was the wrong type of business.

"'The state Division of Labor has never conducted any inspections, safety consultations, or made any reports in general pertaining to the Elk or Poca Blending locations,' according to answers provided in response to a request made by the Daily Mail under the Freedom of Information Act," reported the Charleston Daily Mail.

Freedom Industries, valued at $13.5 million in 2005, is responsible for storing the foaming agent used to wash coal but doesn't process the chemical. "In 2008, the company employed 45 people, sold 10 million gallons of material and earned $26 million," according to newspaper records.

With nearly half a million W. Va. residents affected by the water contamination, it's shocking to learn that the company responsible, Freedom Industries, was partially founded by two-time convicted felon Carl Lemley Kennedy II.

A report by the Charleston Gazette reveals shocking revelations regarding Kennedy's past, including a 1987 conviction for selling 12 ounces of cocaine. The incident was connected to the removal of then-Charleston Mayor Mike Roark, a former prosecutor nicknamed "Mad Dog" for his drug-fighting advocacy, but who later faced 30 Federal charges of cocaine possession, distribution and tampering with a Federal grand jury.

Kennedy's criminal history continued into 2005 when he was charged with tax evasion and willful failure to pay employees' withholdings (approximately $1 million) to the government. He subsequently pleaded guilty to both charges in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of West Virginia. Court findings show that he owed more than $200,000 in state taxes. While working as an accountant for Freedom Industries, Poca Blending and New River Chemical Co. from 2000 to 2003, he admitted to withholding employees' paychecks and depositing would-be tax monies into a personal bank account.

"Carl L. Kennedy II took steps to conceal a large portion of his income from the Internal Revenue Service by, among other things, using his position as an accountant to ensure a W2 form was not filed in his name," read court documents, "using corporate funds for his personal benefit and writing corporate checks to cash for his personal enrichment."

Kennedy was sentenced to three years but had his sentence cut nearly in half after he agreed to act as an informant for the Feds, which included wearing a wire to help make "controlled cocaine buys" with a former business associate.

When the Gazette reached out for comment regarding Kennedy's role in the company, a woman who answered the phone said, "He left the company 'years ago.'" According to the report, Kennedy owned just 5 percent of Freedom Industries in 2005, and also owned portions of several other companies, including Poca Blending, which Freedom recently merged with on December 31, 2013.

The newly merged companies, Etowah River Terminal (the facility where the leak occurred), Poca Blending and Crete Technologies, were already doing business together.

Monday's inspection of Poca Blending by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) revealed hazardous conditions including "holes at floor level in the building's walls."

"Secondary containment within the facility was deteriorated or non-existent," read the report. "The plan indicates that the building itself acts as secondary containment, but holes exist at floor level in the building's walls."

Poca Blending received five notices of violation from the DEP:

• Above ground storage tanks were not provided with appropriate secondary containment.
• Failing to store drums containing materials that have the potential to contaminate groundwater so that spills and leaks are contained.
• Failing to provide adequate discharge monitoring reports.
• Failing to follow any pollution prevention or groundwater protection plan.
• Failing to "post a permanent marker at each permitted outfall."

The company has 20 days to respond and will be expected to take corrective action immediately.

Other sources include:

http://www.wvgazette.com

http://billmoyers.com

http://www.freedom-industries.com

http://www.charlestondailymail.com

http://www.dhsem.wv.gov

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The Stoner Rock Mysteries: The Veil of Isis

The Stoner Rock Mysteries: The Veil of Isis

One of my New Year resolutions was to get back into attending concerts. I did not take in any during 2013 save for a local hardcore band called Harsh a few days before my birthday and the invigorating night on the town immediately reminded me of all the great things rock 'n roll is capable of in a live setting. Thus, it seemed especially appropriate to start off the New Year by finally catching Clutch live.

Regular readers of this blog have no doubt begun to pickup on the fact that I am a huge fan of the Maryland-based four piece. For those of you just tuning in, check out my reviews of 2004's Blast Tyrant (which can be found here) and 2013's Earth Rocker (a two parter that is located here and here) for a more in depth account of my thoughts on the band.  In brief, I've noted that the band's unique blend of 70s hard rock and 90s alternative/stoner metal with lyrics steeped in mythology, conspiracy theories, political history, and general high weirdness are a synchro-mystical goldmine. Clutch vocalist (and occasional guitarist) Neil Fallon could easily rival the great Robyn Hitchcock when it comes to surreal word play. But more on Clutch in a moment.

Clutch

 The bill consisted of three bands: Crobot, The Sword, and Clutch. All three groups fall under the somewhat catch-all banner of "stoner rock", a genre that includes everything from desert rock, sludge metal, traditional doom, occult rock, retro heavy rock, heavy psych, space rock, drone, fuzz rock and so forth. In general, I've found this genre to be highly synchro-mystical and twilight language laden, as noted before here and here. What's more, this curious aspect of the genre has only become more pronounced in recent years as more and more groups have adopted occult and mythological trappings. In extreme cases groups such as In the Labyrinth and Sabbath Assembly have attempted to recreate the hymns of the ancient Mystery religions and the Process Church of the Final Judgment, respectively. 

Given that both The Sword and Clutch make heavy use of mythology and the occult in their lyrics and images I was expecting the concert to be quite synchro-mystical and I was not disappointed. I took in the show at Jacksonville's Freebird Live venue. Started in 1999, Freebird Live was originally a restaurant that featured live music nightly and was adorned with Lynard Skynard memorably (the legendary Southern rock outfit was founded in Jacksonville), hence the name. A few years later it dropped the restaurant aspect and focused solely on pointing on shows.

Freebird Live

 The venue had a groovy setup --It's a two-story deal with a good chunk of the second floor missing so that stage can be easily viewed. It features two fully stocked bars on either floor and a balcony that wraps around the exterior of the venue for the smokers. With a 700 person capacity, Freebird Live manages a relatively intimate feel. Frankly, its about as big a place to take in a rock concert as one wants to risk without losing some of the magic. On the whole, it comes off as a smaller and far less garish version of the House of Blues chain.  

By the time I arrived at the venue a little after eight the opening act, Crobot, was already about halfway through their set. I soon came to regret my tartness after taking in a few of the songs performed by the quartet hailing from central Pennsylvania. I had been expecting this group to be a thrash act because I inexplicably confused them with Prong (who frequently tour with Clutch) and was pleasantly surprised by their sound. Led Zeppelin is clearly the group's chief influence, with some traces of Thin Lizzy and 1970s Pentagram (singer Brandon Yeagley even vaguely resembles a young Bobby Liebling) thrown in for good measure. The group has a modern edge to their sound, however, that recalls Soundgarden as well as Clutch themselves.

Crobot

As with many retro-centric groups, Crobot has a metaphysical bent to their lyrics. "Good Times in the Bandlands", for instance, name checks the legendary Native American shaman Passaconaway and the Thunderbird (a great breakdown of the high weirdness surrounding the myths of the Thunderbird can be found here) when not warning of the necromancer. Naturally, this was the song the group lurched into shortly after I entered the venue. Other tracks are not quite so synchro-mystically laden, but frequently allude to mythology and conspiracy theories as well as reveling in sci-fi trappings --their debut is called The Legend of the Spaceborne Killer, after all. There have been some rumblings that Yeagley and guitarist Chris Bishop (who did the album's artwork) wish to do a graphic novel based upon the album's songs at some future date. Needless to say, its packed full of material idea for such things.

The Legend of the Spaceborne Killer album cover

The Sword took the stage shortly after Crobot broke down their gear, but not before Recluse procured a copy of Spaceborne Killer's from the latter's merch stand. In the process Recluse stumbled upon Yeagley, who came swaggering up to inform me that my Sleep shirt was "fuckin' awesome, brother." Thus, my streak of encountering performing musicians at shows continues unabated. Remember kids, wearing the right shirt to a metal concert is very important --members of performing bands almost always end up telling me how cool mine are as do random strangers in the crowd. Encountering both are always interesting experiences. But I digress -- On to The Sword.

The Sword is one of those groups Recluse has always felt that he should dig a lot more than he does. When the Austin, Texas quartet first started out in the mid-00s there sound was heavily influenced by Dio-era Black Sabbath and Sleep as well as the thrasher tendencies of High on Fire and Black Cobra. Their first two albums --Age of Winters and Gods of the Earth --were enjoyable enough releases featuring the type of fantasy-laden imagery and lyrical topics this author is usually a sucker for. But something about the band just didn't click.

The Sword

I began to warm up more to the group after the release of their third album, 2010's Warp Riders. With its wonderful sci-fi imagery and plot line as well as more ambitious song structures and instrumentation, the album at times echoes BOC circa Secret Treaties (which long time readers of this blog will recognize as high praise from me if they have read my examination of the album, which can be found here and here). Still, 2012's Apocryphon flew under my radar that year. I only picked it up recently in preparation for the show, a state of affairs I now regret. The album's cover should have clued me in on the fact that The Sword just keep getting more interesting with each release.

The cover, designed by acclaimed comic book artist J.H. Williams III, is in fact meant to depict Isis standing over an apocalyptic world. The Eye of Horus appears upon Isis' hooded forehead while she makes the "silence gesture" generally associated with the god Harpocrates, who in some accounts is her son and/or grandson. To say that this image is symbolically loaded would be an understatement. As I'm sure many of my readers are well aware, the goddess Isis is hugely important in the Mystery schools of the ancient Mediterranean.

"The most illustrious of all Ancient Egyptian goddesses, Isis is depicted searching for her murdered brother and husband, Osiris, whom she restored to life with her breath...; Suckling her son, Horus; or in funeral procession protecting the dead in the shadow of her wings and bringing them back to life. From her faithfulness and devotion, she would appear originally to have been a hearth-goddess, but, according to legend, she 'obtained the secret name of the all-powerful god,' Ra, and became his equal in power, spreading her influence across the universe. Every living being was a drop of Isis' blood. In fact, Isis was worshiped as the all-powerful universal goddess all around the Mediterranean Basin, as devoutly in Greece and Rome as in the Near East. 'I am the mother of the whole of Nature, mistress of the elements, the origin and principle of the ages, the supreme divinity, queen of the shades, the first of the dwellers in the sky, the unrivaled model of all the gods and goddesses. The pinnacles of the sky, the beneficial sea-breezes, the desolate silences of hell, I rule them all according to my will...' All esoteric groups regarded her as the mystagogue who held the secrets of life and death and resurrection. The ankh was the symbol of her boundless power. In all mystery religions of the early centuries of the Christian era, she was the embodiment of the female principle and sole magic source of fertility and transmutation."

(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pg. 544)

Isis

Harpocrates, who is often depicted with his index finger across his lips in an indication of silence, is often described as the God of Silence. He is thought to represent the veil of secrecy surrounding the Mysteries by the conspiratorial right. In the case of Apocryphon secrecy is likely what is being invoked as well as the word can be translated as "secret writing." Singer, guitarist and head songwriter J.D. Cronise made it clear upon the album's release that this imagery was inspired by occult traditions. Of the album's title, he stated:

"The word Apocryphon came up while I was researching Gnosticism, early Christianity, theosophy, and other esoteric subjects... They're books that were either banned or removed from the biblical canon. The early church fathers felt that these teachings were either too advanced or dangerous for the masses to be exposed to because they encouraged thought that was antithetical to the church’s system of control, so they were considered heretical and dubbed apocrypha. You've got to look beyond what you're told to the totality of knowledge available to approach any sort of true understanding."

Cronise

This of course was not the first time The Sword's work has taken a metaphysical slant --such things were already evident with earlier tracks such as "Maiden, Mother & Crone". But Apocryphon certainly took this aspect of the group to another level and its influence was prominently displayed in Freebird Live when I made the scene: a massive banner of Apocryphon's album cover hung across the back wall of the stage even during Crobot's set. Naturally a banner featuring Isis is most appropriate for any type of rock concert, but most certainly one of this nature.

Unfortunately The Sword's set was mired by a poor sound mix: Cronise's vocals were all but inaudible for much of the set. It's a really pity, because the combination of a surprisingly elaborate light show and the prominently displayed Mystery symbols created quite the atmosphere. The band was otherwise professional and their increasing use of synthesizers gives the group an even more pronounced Blue Oyster Cult feel at their most sinister. The song "Apocryphon", which closed both The Sword's set as well as the album of the same name, was quite striking thanks to the triggered use of synths throughout. They set the scene perfectly for a song steeped in Gnosticism, as the opening verse makes clear:

Set adrift in the multiverse

By the whims of fate

In thrall to the demiurge

We all await escape

"The Veil of Isis", Apocryphon's opener, also made a rousing appearance. The song, which slyly hints at the legends surrounding the death and resurrection of Osiris, revolves around the ever changing cycles of life. Of it, Cronise told Rolling Stone: "In essence, the song is about change... [It's about] moving from one phase of the natural cycle to the next and the recognition of the knowledge revealed when such transitions occur. The lyrics make reference to Isis, the goddess of nature and magic, and her brother/husband Osiris, the god of the dead and the afterlife, as agents of those changes and keepers of sacred knowledge. The 'veil' is that which hides from us the true nature of the universe that, during our earthly existence, is largely hidden from us."

Osiris

The Sword even opened with "Tres Brujas", a Warp Riders song revolving around three witches and certain herbs that had been Recluse's favorite song by the group. In general, the set drew heavily from Riders and Apocryphon, which put The Sword's growing maturity on display when paired with earlier numbers. Despite sound problems, the set was suitably metal and mystical in equal measures. 

After an extended wait following the conclusion of The Sword's set, Clutch finally took the stage. During the down time the banner of Isis was taken down and replaced by one featuring the album cover for Clutch's latest album, Earth Rocker. It was a fitting shift. The more technical and sophisticated work of The Sword is befitting of the structured Mystery schools. Clutch, by contrast, is a far looser group. While all members of the group are individually fine musicians their music is built more around hypnotic grooves and blues-based hard rock riffs that have driven heavy rock since its earliest days. The cover of Earth Rocker immediately invokes Native American shamanism, and the live presence of Clutch does a fine job of capturing that primal place in the human consciousness.

Clutch's live shows have become semi-legendary and for good reason: They have a genuinely unique atmosphere. A large and continuous mosh pit was present practically throughout Clutch's entire set, but not of the "Let's knock someone out" variety. Rather, kids jumped around and swayed into one another throughout the set. When contact was made one was reminded of padded go-karts bumping into one another and rebounding in a variety of directions. These sights fit right in with the clouds of odorless pot smoke courtesy of portable vaporizers brandished by various members of the audience.

Even more striking was the crowd's reaction to Neil Fallon's lyrics: practically the whole audience sang along to every song throughout the set. Recluse has never been around a crowd as in to a band's lyrics as the one he encountered at the Freebird show. Despite the fact that the set was heavy with tracks from Earth Rocker, everyone seemed to know all the lyrics to whatever Clutch performed by heart. Given that Fallon's lyrics frequently reference cryptids, underground bunkers, aliens, Men in Black and political assassinations as well as mythological beings and the occult, this made for quite a surreal scene.

Fallon does his part to emphasis his lyrics to the crowd as well. Throughout the show he frequently used exaggerated hand gestures to play up his words, at times recalling the motions of orators from Ancient Greece or Rome, an art know as chironomia. The crowd was not to be out done and frequently mimicked Fallon's hand gestures --People were even hoisted up on other's shoulders to do this.

Fallon

The band performed every song off of Earth Rocker, but not in the order as they appear on the album. There were also several numbers from prior albums, many of which happened to be both among Recluse's favorite Clutch song as well as their most synchro-mystical. Both "Escape From the Prison Planet" and "Animal Farm" off of 1995's self-titled album were performed. Both of these songs do an incredible job of capturing the zeitgeist of UFO and conspiracy culture in the 1990s, simultaneously echoing The X-Files and William Cooper in equal measures. The later song invokes underground bunkers and little grey men that "taste just like chicken they say" before channeling Hour of the Times at peak frenzy:

Carter is a clone

Dozen brother 'round the globe

MJ-12 damned us to hell

Scroll and Key, Skull and Bones

It's only just begun

Area 51

The spawn of Babylon

"Escape From the Prison Planet" has inevitably been co-opted by Alex Jones, but we shouldn't hold that against the song. It name checks Bob Lazar in addition to Men in Black, alien technology and an opening verse that at times feels like my day-to-day life. Clutch also performed "I Have the Body of John Wilkes Booth" from the self-titled as well, a song that alludes to the various conspiracy theories surrounding the possible escape of Lincoln's assassin as well as the creeping reemergence of fascism ("And I swear its never been like this before/Least not since 19 and 44") in modern America. At another point in the set Clutch performed the song "Abraham Lincoln" off of 2009's Strange Cousins From the West, a most fitting touch.

Lincoln and the Civil War have been alluded to frequently in Clutch's lyrics of the years

They also broke out "The Yeti" from 1998's The Elephant Riders. Not only is this song about the famous cryptid, but it also alludes to one of the most far out theories surrounding the creature, namely that it is some type of interdimensional being. The blog Phantoms and Monsters has a compelling rundown of such notions:

"A subscriber states that just because we don't understand how Bigfoot move in and out of another dimension or what their purpose is, doesn't rule out this possibility. He has questioned a variety of people that channel interdimensional beings and every time the answer turns out that Bigfoot are indeed interdimensional beings as well. There are many other beings that can move in and out of another dimension including fairies, gnomes, sprites, and others. Indigenous people worldwide will verify this as they have strived to maintain to keep their connection to earth and the natural beings while the ‘civilized’ world has nearly completely lost touch. Only young children and intuitive adults are able to see/feel these beings as they move in and out of other dimensions. It’s time for us to wake up to this possibility regardless of what conventional wisdom and science has to say about the matter. The evidence is there…time to become open to a broader perspective. 

"Well known paranormal investigator Jon-Eric Beckjord’s theories sum up much of the argument. He believed that Bigfoot and similar cryptids may be interdimensional beings that can occasionally take physical form for brief periods of time, but have the ability to ‘fade out’ and pass through ‘wormholes’, possibly to other dimensions or parallel universes. He reported to have had one of the creatures speak to him using telepathy, communicating the words ‘We're here, but we're not real, like what you think is real’. 

"Beckjord claimed that such entities may be able to actually disappear into thin air, or even shapeshift.  Beckjord maintained that the interdimensional hypothesis may possibly, if proven, explain why there are thousands of alleged Bigfoot creature sightings each year, yet no dead zoological physical body is ever found. To evidence these ideas, Beckjord accumulated a large collection of enlarged photographs that he says show, among other things, ‘half-Bigfoots’ and ‘invisible Bigfoots’, or possible aliens. The forms are often found in situations where the camera picked up images not seen by the witnesses, often due to distance. According to Beckjord, the images show primates, carnivores and beings not readily identified within known zoological classifications that resemble descriptions of aliens submitted to investigators. He conducted much field work, such as camping out at ‘window sites’ where, he said, Bigfoot activity is frequently seen. He collected his own photographic evidence of what he believes to be a ‘tribe’ of either Bigfoots or aliens at El Dorado National Forest."

In Clutch's hands the Yeti is depicted as a creature perpetually traveling through time:

The author looms above his page  

And thinks it strange that at his age 

He can not find the proper words  

To describe his only world. 

One would think that in a life  

Where no two snowflakes are alike 

One would have a brilliant rhyme  

For reaching every bit of time. 

Himalaya is my old time stomping ground  

(Oh yes, time is of the essence) 

Manitoba, better snows I've never found  

(Oh yes, time is of the essence)

During the performance I saw Clutch rearranged the verses, performing the final two (written out above) at the onset of the song, further enhancing its high strangeness. The song was carried into an extended jam that seamlessly evolved into "D.C. Sound Attack" off of Earth Rocker. It was easily one of the highlights of the night. 

When it was all said and done I slipped out of the venue just as Clutch was finishing up the final number of the encore, "Electric Worry". It was a surprisingly packed crowd for a Sunday night and having a nearly two hour drive looming ahead, I grudgingly called it a night. In the background the Earth Rocker shaman and swaying crowd loomed as my companion and I departed, silently echoing traditions that have reappeared upon these shores in one form or another since time immemorial.

Posted by Recluse at http://visupview.blogspot.com/

Obama defends Police State Spying

birds of a feather ?                                                                 

Obama defends Police State Spying

By Eric London and Barry Grey

Global Research, January 19, 2014

World Socialist Web Site

Region: USA

Theme: Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights

In a speech at the Justice Department Friday, President Barack Obama issued an unqualified defense of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the US government’s police state surveillance of the American people and countless millions around the world.
The address was an exercise in lies and historical falsifications. The fact that such a speech could even be given without provoking a massive outcry and demands for the president’s immediate impeachment is an indication of how far the American ruling class and political establishment have gone in the direction of totalitarian rule.
In the course of his 45-minute address, Obama never mentioned the Fourth Amendment, which explicitly bans warrentless and arbitrary “searches and seizures”—precisely what the NSA and other intelligence agencies are doing, and on a scale that could not have been imagined by the Founding Fathers of the American republic.
Instead, the speech was marked by repeated paeans to the military-intelligence apparatus.
“The folks at the NSA are our neighbors, they’re our friends and family,” Obama said. “Our intelligence community follows the law and is staffed by patriots,” he added, declaring that NSA operatives “follow protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people.”
Obama endorsed the surveillance programs “not only because I felt that they made us more secure, but also because nothing in the initial review [of the NSA programs] and nothing I have learned since indicated that our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of their fellow citizens.”
In another baldface lie, he said the NSA’s collection of records of all telephone calls made by US residents “does not involve the NSA examining the phone records of ordinary Americans.” He declared that the NSA “is not abusing authorities to listen to your private phone calls, or read your emails,” and “the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security.”
Since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began releasing information on the activities of the agency last June, one revelation has followed another detailing the seizure of the telephone records, emails, text messages, contact lists, credit card records and other private information of the entire US population and much of the rest of the world. Reports have emerged of the tracking of license plates and monitoring of letters of ordinary people with no connection to terrorism or any other illegal activity.
The US government has been exposed as the world’s biggest hacker, attacking the communications of individuals, governments and businesses all over the world and waging cyber warfare against ostensible friends and foes alike. Programs have been exposed involving the seizure of virtually all electronic communications by tapping into the main arteries of the Internet.
Obama gave a blanket defense of this criminal activity and those who oversee it.

He began his speech by comparing the efforts of the American revolutionaries to track the movements of British troops to the NSA’s Big Brother spying on the American people today. He failed to mention that one of the central grievances of the American colonists against British tyranny was the crown’s issuance of general warrants allowing occupying troops to break into and search people’s homes and seize their private papers. To prevent this abuse from being carried out by the new US government, the founders drafted the Fourth Amendment.

The language of the Amendment is unequivocal. It does not include an exemption on grounds of expediency or “national security” to its ban on arbitrary violations of privacy.

In his speech, Obama proceeded to invoke, yet again, 9/11 and the “war on terror” to justify police state spying on the people. He repeated the discredited myth that the massive spying dragnet is motivated entirely by a desire to protect the American people from terrorist attack. He made no attempt to explain why this supposed struggle against terrorists requires the government to spy on every American and tap the phones of foreign leaders, including nominal US allies.

Nor did he attempt to square the “war on terror” pretext with the reality of US financial and military support for Al Qaeda-linked Islamist terrorists who have served as US proxy forces in wars for regime-change in Libya and Syria.

While unreservedly vouching for his co-conspirators in the leadership of the NSA and other US intelligence agencies—despite their having been caught in repeated lies to Congress and the public—Obama launched into a vicious attack on Snowden. “If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information,” he declared, “then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy.” He went on to imply that Snowden was guilty of “revealing methods to our adversaries,” i.e., engaging in treason.

Had it not been for Snowden’s courageous and principled decision to expose the police state spying operations, the public would still be in the dark. Everything Obama has done since Snowden’s revelations began—beginning with the official witch-hunt and laying of sedition charges that forced the young whistle-blower to seek asylum in Russia—has been dedicated to limiting the damage to the intelligence agencies and defusing public outrage with phony talk of “reforms” and “transparency.”

His speech Friday was the culmination to date of these efforts. Its essential purpose was to announce a few cosmetic changes to some of the programs in an attempt to legitimize and institutionalize them.

The so-called “reforms” include a temporary requirement that the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court approve the gathering of telephone metadata (in its 34 years of existence, the FISA court has rejected only 11 surveillance requests) and a requirement that searches of the NSA’s telephone record databases be limited to persons who are two degrees of separation from the individuals targeted.

He further proposed that the telephone metadata databases be removed from direct NSA control and stored elsewhere, and that an outside government panel be set up to participate in FISA Court deliberations over certain, undefined matters.

As Obama all but acknowledged, these meaningless changes are driven by public relations considerations, not a desire to limit the power of the NSA. They are necessary, he argued, to “maintain the trust of the American people and people around the world.”

The public will remain in the dark about the secret operations of the NSA and the rubberstamp FISA Court, and all power will remain in the hands of fascistic intelligence bureaucrats, who will continue to lie at will, with the backing of Congress, the courts and the media, knowing that they are immune from prosecution for their crimes against the democratic rights of the people.

What is really driving these police state preparations is the staggering and accelerating growth of social inequality in America. Democracy is incompatible with a social system in which the richest 1 percent controls 35 percent of the country’s total wealth, the top 20 percent controls 85 percent, and the bottom 40 percent controls 0.2 percent; and where the richest 400 individuals have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

The Obama administration is, moreover, spearheading a drive, on behalf of the financial-corporate aristocracy, to further impoverish the working class and transfer even more wealth to the very top. On the same day be delivered his speech on the NSA, Obama signed a new bipartisan budget that further slashes social spending while devoting more than 50 percent of funds to the military. Meanwhile, benefits for the long-term unemployed have been terminated and the Democrats and Republicans are preparing to cut another $9 billion from the food stamp program.

The ruling class and its political representatives are terrified of the prospect of a mass movement of the working class in opposition to the social counterrevolution they are carrying out. They are preparing for the inevitable by building up the police powers of the state for mass repression and dictatorial rule.

As Obama’s speech underscored, for the US ruling elite, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights are virtually dead letters. The preparations for dictatorship are far advanced and the democratic rights of the working class are in grave danger.


Eric London and Barry Grey

Here's the latest news that the main stream media seems to lose...

3-d PRINTING A HOUSE: EXPERIMENTS UNDERWAY IN CALIFORNIA…AND SOME HIDDEN IMPLICATIONS

January 19, 2014 By Joseph P. Farrell http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/01/3-d-printing-house-experiments-underway-california-hidden-implications/

I’ve been talking about the revolution in manufacturing that 3-d printing promises, and couching this in terms of a scenario or model that I’ve been discussing with former Assistant Secretary of HUD, Catherine Austin Fitts, and some other people, that the “push” of 3-d printing that seems to be taking place in the major and associated media may be a component of a retrenching of dispersed manufacturing back into North America by the oligarhical elite. This, coupled with the push to develop energy resources in North America and elsewhere in the Western World via fracking techniques indicates the seriousness of this push. As I pointed out recently, courtesy of information that Ms. Fitts shared with me, the USA recently passed “net zero” status in terms of energy imports and exports, meaning the USA produces as much of its petroleum needs at home as it imports from abroad. That move was confirmed, you’ll recall, by the “sudden” and dramatic shift in Saudia Arabia’s orientation as well, as it has begun seriously courting China and other energy importing nations.
There’s something else happening, and that is the new focus on extending 3d printing technologies and techniques to large construction projects, and this use is rather breathtaking:
The 3D printer that can build a house in 24 hours
Notably, in addition to building the frame of a dwelling in a short period of time, as the article points out, it could dramatically reduce housing costs and also provide dwellings quickly in disaster relief efforts. Additionally, as the article notes, such dwellings would be much more robust than a conventionally built house. Basically, human construction crews would be used for the finishing, note the framing or dwelling itself. One can even imagine plumbing itself would be “injected” into the walls via metal or pvc injectors. (Repairs will be a problem).
Nice… if you want to live in a concrete house….
…or bunker. The possibilities that this large scale 3d printing offers to military and civil engineering are also enormous, from everything to quick construction of permanent bases to bunkers, and, coupled with the latest in plasma-boring technologies, underground installations…
…and, other types of structures: “Nasa’s Desert Research and Technology Studies (D-RATS) facility is investigating infrastructure elements in order to evaluate the feasibility of adapting and using the Contour Crafting technology for extraterrestrial application.” Like everything else, one gets the distinct impression that the roll-out of 3-d printing was from the black projects world, and that it may have had something to do with space and defense all along, for that “extraterrestrial application” confirms another element of the scenario we’ve been developing: the roll-out of 3d printing, the rapid increase of domestic energy production, has some connection to the collateralization of space, a collateralization that will eventually require a permanent human presence on other celestial bodies, and the technologies to construct them in the most cost effective and speedy way possible.
Enter 3-d printing.

IsoHunt.to: From Zero to the 8th Biggest Torrent Site in Just 2 Months

• Andy
• January 18, 2014
• isohunt,
  isoHunt.to

In mid October 2013 veteran torrent site isoHunt.com announced its closure at the hands of the MPAA, but just a few days later a clone site appeared to step into its considerable shoes. Now, less than three months later, isoHunt.to – a site that has nothing to do with the original – is the 8th most popular torrent site in the world. It’s a polarizing success story built on controversy.
When popular torrent site isoHunt.com shutdown on October 17, 2013, it marked the end of an era.
Having endured a several-years-long legal battle with the MPAA, owner Gary Fung sensibly negotiated a way out of his potentially ruinous copyright infringement predicament, eventually settling for a headline amount of $110 million, something (thankfully) he’ll never have to pay.
Nevertheless, the end result was that one of the Internet’s favorite torrent sites, with an owner that was both visible and well-liked, shut its doors for good leaving users without their regular home. Seeing an opportunity in waiting, a torrent-friendly group seized the day.
Within a couple of weeks, isoHunt.to was born. The site is a loose clone of isoHunt.com – graphically similar but with no connections to the original isoHunt team – with an aim to give former users a pace to share files. Just two months later at the end of 2013, isoHunt.to was making serious waves. From a standing start the site became the Internet’s 8th most popular torrent site, slotting in just behind 1337x.org in the overall top 10.
“When we launched isohunt.to we gained the level of about 200k uniques per day in about a week. Right before Christmas we hit 500k uniques per day. After that we’ve been going up and down but the overall trend remains upward,” an isoHunt.to admin informs TorrentFreak.
“Of course, many people are looking for ‘isohunt’ and that drives them to us. But there’s a lot of new traffic as well. We do lots of stuff to keep users happy and improve the site constantly. In a couple of days we’ll be rolling out another pack of features we’ve done since Christmas. Hopefully, users will be satisfied.”
While it’s certainly likely that millions of users are now happy at having a familiar looking site to frequent, the same can not be said about people who worked on the original isoHunt. When the clone site launched some quite understandably felt that it was unfairly trading on isoHunt.com’s image, not to mention their hard work.
“We tried to contact former isohunt.com members (admins and moderators) to get involved with the new site but we were rejected in a very rude way,” the isoHunt.to admin explains.
“Their position is clear – isohunt.to is a ripoff and our intention is only to make profit from the well-known brand. They have contributed so much into the original website it’s painful for them to see a wannabe isohunt in a current condition. But their rejection just means we have to continue ourselves. We may not reach the same heights as isohunt.com but we’ll definitely try to create a new wave of isohunt followers and make a new home for them.”
But in the world of file-sharing there is another bogeyman that often raises its head. When sites come out of nowhere and quickly start getting big, people question their motives. Is it money? Is it malware? Or, God forbid, do they have something even bigger up their sleeve?
“Since honeypots have been created over the last few years some people thought (and still think) our site is a honeypot made by MAFIAA,” the admin explains.
“It’s interesting to read comments where people assume we work for a government agency like the FBI, or an organization like the MPAA and others. We don’t blame them, we would probably think the same. And we don’t try to encourage these people into using isohunt.to. Everyone should decide it for himself or herself. But there are plenty of opportunities to be anonymous on the net. Just a hint,” he adds.
But despite the setbacks, the popularity of the site is booming and while some won’t use the site, others have put the past and other worries behind them.
“There are lots of people saying we made them happier with the new isohunt. When they found out the original site closed down many regular users felt like a huge part of their lives had just disappeared. They were sad and lost. That shows us again how great the original place was and how immense was the effort to keep it going. We can only see a fraction of that but are happy we can preserve something valuable for people.”
Finally, the isoHunt.to admin says he believes that the new site is in itself symbolic of torrenting.
“First there’s someone sharing something. Then others join and continue sharing when the original sharer can’t do it anymore. That feels great to be a part of something bigger. So we’ll be happy for new people to join the new-wave isohunt community and continue sharing,” he concludes.