DOUBLE STANDARDS – Guest Patrick Henningsen speaks out about Press TV now banned in Europe
November 1, 2012 By 10 Comments
Press TV’s top current affairs show ‘Double Standards’, invites 21st Century Wire’s Patrick Henningsen on the program to discuss the hypocrisy and censorship by the European Commission and the UK’s Ofcom regulator for banning Press TV’s global news channel from European satellite and cable broadcasting. When it comes to broadcaster integrity, networks like the BBC and CNN should have their licenses revoked for reporting fake news and covering up internal investigations into criminal activity…
Furry Over Poland Claims of Explosives on 2010 Presidential Plane Crash – Key Witness Found Hanged
November 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment
The plane crash that killed Poland’s president and more than 90 other people was not an accident—at least for a little while.
A Polish newspaper, Rzeczpospolita, reported that traces of explosives were found in the plane’s wreckage, including enough evidence of TNT and nitroglycerine on 30 seats to jolt a detection device “off the scale.” The claim provoked a public uproar as well as condemnation from the Polish government, whose official inquiry concluded the accident was just that and that no foul play was involved.
Shortly after publishing its story, the newspaper issued a partial retraction that said the findings of explosive residues were not as definitive as it had initially reported. Soil, perfume or everyday objects are no different than TNT in how they would cause the explosives detectors to respond, professed the newspaper. Another theory it offered is that the equipment may have sniffed out some old World War II bombs and shell casings that had been lying around the area for over six decades.
The plane carrying President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others crashed in 2010 on approach to Russia’s Smolensk North Airport, which was shrouded in a thick fog.
Conspiracy theories surrounded the accident even before the controversial story. A flight engineer, Remigiusz Mus, who flew into the airport before the crash, claimed Russian air traffic controllers allowed his plane to descend to a low altitude before landing, which contradicted an official investigation by the government.
Mus was scheduled to testify before a parliamentary investigation. But his body was found over the weekend hanged in his house in Warsaw, presumably a suicide. Antoni Macierewicz, head of the parliamentary commission investigating the case, urged that the only other surviving witness, Artur Wosztyl, be placed in protective custody.
Another bizarre tragedy occurred in January 2012, when a Polish prosecutor working on the case inexplicably shot himself in the head during a press briefing.
Source: All Gov SUPER TECH: World’s Fastest Computer Quietly Turned On by U.S. Gov’t
November 1, 2012 By 467 Comments
“ORNL is home to Titan, the world’s most powerful supercomputer for open science with a theoretical peak performance of over 20 quadrillion calculations per second…”
After three years of not owning the world’s fastest computer, the U.S. government is once again back on top, thanks to the Department of Energy.
Energy officials on Monday unveiled Titan, a supercomputer so fast that its speed is measured in something called petaflops. One petaflop is equal to one thousand trillion calculations per second, and Titan is capable of doing 20 petaflops.
At that speed the government is expecting to reclaim the honor of having the fastest computer in the world when rankings are announced next month.
For the past three years, Japan, China, and Germany held the title.
Titan is not a new computer. The Energy Department took an existing one, the Cray at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, upgraded it and gave it a new name.
Scientists are hoping Titan will help with research in a wide range of fields and challenges, from climate change to biofuels to nuclear energy.
Source: All Gov DRY RUN? 18 Major Internet Hubs Down Across North America This Week
November 1, 2012 By 558 Comments
This week, 18 major internet hubs were downed across North America. Though several of them are in the areas hit by Hurricane Sandy, many others are not.
What’s really going on? Was Hurricane Sandy a dry run for something coming up…? |
North America Avg. Response Time: 364 Avg. Packet Loss: 32 % Total Routers: 37 Network up: 51 % |
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| This graph shows the North AmericaTraffic Index for the past 24 hours: |  Source: Internet Traffic Report |
Paedohile Savile’s £4.3m Estate Frozen By Nat West
November 1, 2012 By 561 Comments
British Bank looking after Savile’s dwindling fortune
NatWest Bank, which is acting Savile’s executor and trustee, said the distribution of his assets had been put on hold because of the allegations. His estate is reportedly worth £4.3 million. NatWest said in a statement: “Given the claims raised, distribution of the estate has been put on hold.” Savile’s will was written in 2006 and bequeaths his savings and other assets to 26 separate beneficiaries, according to the Financial Times (FT). The newspaper said it had obtained a copy of the document which instructs that £20,000 in cash was to be shared between 20 of the celebrity’s friends, family and neighbours. It says a further £600,000 was to be put into a trust fund, with the interest shared between eight people. The remainder – just under £3.7 million before expenses – was to be held by NatWest on behalf of The Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust, according to the FT. Savile’s intended individual beneficiaries include the trustees of both his charities and existing and former employees of Leeds General Infirmary and Broadmoor Hospital, the newspaper added.
Hurricane Sandy Takes Bite out of Big Apple
November 1, 2012 By 629 Comments
Significant damage was done to various locations of New York City this week, with estimates of property damage and loss of business totalling upwards of $3 billion.
Before and after photos of underground car park in Manhattan…
Russian Election Chief Rips US Elections and Fraudulent Voting Machines
November 1, 2012 By 3 Comments
Russia’s Central Election Commission chief has ranked the American electoral system among the “worst in the world.”
One of the main problems with the US electoral system is the lack of transparency, Vladimir Churov argues in an article published in Wednesday’s issue of Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
According to US law, international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are only granted access to polling stations in a handful of US states, including in Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia.
In the other states, US Governors have the final say over the question of allowing international observers to monitor the election process.
According to Churov, however, the dark side of the American election process is that “OSCE monitors have been barred from entering polling stations even in the states where they may do so under US law.”
This lack of transparency opens the door to numerous possibilities for corruption and manipulation of the system, he added.
Churov then discussed a perennial problem with American elections: electronic voting machines that do not provide voters with a receipt for their vote, and which are highly vulnerable to manipulation.
“American voting machines have not been designed to provide any documentary evidence of citizen participation in the electoral process,” the Russian observer noted. “Moreover, operators [of the machinery] are technically capable of adding or dropping votes in favor of one candidate or another, leaving behind no evidence of violations.”
In October’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, Victoria Collier shows that with the advent of modern technology, “a brave new world of election rigging emerged,” which emerged with the “mass adoption of computerized voting technology and the outsourcing of our elections to a handful of corporations that operate in the shadows, with little oversight or accountability.”
Collier called the “privatization of our elections…one of the most dangerous and least understood crisis in the history of American democracy.”
Meanwhile, another study demonstrated that a person armed with about 10 bucks and a limited knowledge of technology could hack the vote.
“Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an eighth grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois,” reported Salon.
The analysts showed that the “newly developed hack” could manipulate voting results while leaving “absolutely no trace” of the crime behind.
Read more at: RT
Straight Brad donates $100K to back ‘same-sex’ marriages
November 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment
One of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors, Brad Pitt, is donating $100,000 to America’s largest gay rights group to help raise money to support same-sex marriage initiatives in a number of US states.
The Human Rights Campaign has announced that the 48-year-old actor agreed to match contributions from the group’s members up to $100,000, AP reported.
In an e-mail to members of the largest LGBT equality-rights advocacy group, the star of ‘Inglorious Bastards’ reportedly wrote that it’s “unbelievable” that people’s relationships will be put to a vote on Election Day.
Read more at: RT Will the ‘Star Wars’ narrative change now that Disney has bought LucasFilm?
November 1, 2012 By 334 Comments
‘Why the Old ‘Star Wars’ Formula Can’t Work in the War-on-Terror Era’
D.B. Grady The Atlantic To connect with a new audience, Star Wars needs to catch up with the modern political zeitgeist…
Emperor Palpatine
Count Dooku and Yoda dueling in a spiritual war in a galaxy far far away.
