HT: Adam Taylor
A 9/11 Truther paper, of course: Some Misunderstandings Related to WTC Collapse Analysis.
The abstract:
This article elaborates on variables associated with the collapse of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The previously published quantifications of inertia, column capacity, and the assumptions related to the beginning of downward motion, are examined and corrected. The reasons for false conclusions reached in several previous analyses are presented.
Congratulations to Gregory Szuladziński, Anthony Szamboti, and Richard Johns.
UPDATE: Other peer reviewed 9/11 Truther papers.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
"No, the Obama administration is afraid of you."
Glenn Greenwald has confirmed that a Wikileaks release was actually written by Edward Snowden. I've copied it from the Huffington Post and pasted it here:
"
But are we "an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised"?"One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many."Edward Joseph SnowdenMonday 1st July 2013
"I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker."
Thus spoke President Obama about attempts to capture Edward Snowden during a visit to Senegal. Instead, the President twisted the arms of our allies to close their airspace and force the landing of the plane of the president of a sovereign nation, in order to try to capture "a 29-year-old-hacker."
This should make us wonder: why is this 29-year-old-hacker so important to the President? UPDATE: If, this article's argument that forcing down the Bolivian president's plane was an act of piracy is correct, then what does that say about America and its allies?
This should make us wonder: why is this 29-year-old-hacker so important to the President? UPDATE: If, this article's argument that forcing down the Bolivian president's plane was an act of piracy is correct, then what does that say about America and its allies?
Friday, July 5, 2013
A Surveillance State Means No More Whistleblowers
A friend sent me this post from Jesselyn Radack's blog. Radack was an attorney with the Department of Justice in 2001, and advised the people holding the "American Taliban," Jeffrey Walker Lindh not to interview him without his lawyer being present. They ignored her advice, interrogated him (probably using waterboarding), and then called her back and said, "Oops. We interviewed him. Now what?" She then told them they could use the information for military purposes, but not for evidence in a trial. Again, they ignored her advice and used it in the trial. She found out that her email advice to the prosecution was "lost." She recovered it from her computer, gave a copy to her supervisor and resigned. When she found out that the illegally obtained evidence was being used against Lindh at his trial, she leaked the emails to Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff. The leaks saved Lindh from getting the death sentence. Somehow the FBI was able to obtain Isikoff's phone records and tracked down the leaks to Radack. Consequently, her life was made a hell by the government for the next decade
In her post, Radack points out one of the true dangers of a surveillance state: If whistleblowers know that every attempt at communication with the press will be observed by the government, then there will be no more whistleblowers. In a democracy, we depend upon the honesty of our government. Whistleblowers are one of the major means of insuring this honesty. Without them, what goes on in government will remain a complete black box.
In her post, Radack points out one of the true dangers of a surveillance state: If whistleblowers know that every attempt at communication with the press will be observed by the government, then there will be no more whistleblowers. In a democracy, we depend upon the honesty of our government. Whistleblowers are one of the major means of insuring this honesty. Without them, what goes on in government will remain a complete black box.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Denouncing Snowden Distracts, by Design, from Dastardly Deeds of Others
Guardian jounalist Glenn Greenwald grows grim:
"The first NSA story to be reported was our June 6 article which exposed the bulk, indiscriminate collection by the US Government of the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Ever since then, it has been undeniably clear that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence,outright lied to the US Senate - specifically to the Intelligence Committee, the body charged with oversight over surveillance programs - when he said "no, sir" in response to this question from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
That Clapper fundamentally misled Congress is beyond dispute. The DNI himself has now been forced by our stories to admit that his statement was, in his words, "clearly erroneous" and to apologize. But he did this only once our front-page revelations forced him to do so: in other words, what he's sorry about is that he got caught lying to the Senate. And as Salon's David Sirota adeptly documented on Friday, Clapper is still spouting falsehoods as he apologizes and attempts to explain why he did it.
"The first NSA story to be reported was our June 6 article which exposed the bulk, indiscriminate collection by the US Government of the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Ever since then, it has been undeniably clear that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence,outright lied to the US Senate - specifically to the Intelligence Committee, the body charged with oversight over surveillance programs - when he said "no, sir" in response to this question from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
That Clapper fundamentally misled Congress is beyond dispute. The DNI himself has now been forced by our stories to admit that his statement was, in his words, "clearly erroneous" and to apologize. But he did this only once our front-page revelations forced him to do so: in other words, what he's sorry about is that he got caught lying to the Senate. And as Salon's David Sirota adeptly documented on Friday, Clapper is still spouting falsehoods as he apologizes and attempts to explain why he did it.
How is this not a huge scandal? Intentionally deceiving Congress is a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison for each offense. Reagan administration officials were convicted of misleading Congress as part of the Iran-contra scandal and other controversies, and sports stars have been prosecuted by the Obama DOJ based on allegations they have done so.
Beyond its criminality, lying to Congress destroys the pretense of oversight. Obviously, members of Congress cannot exercise any actual oversight over programs which are being concealed by deceitful national security officials....
Defending the Obama administration, Paul Krugman pronounced that "the NSA stuff is a policy dispute, not the kind of scandal the right wing wants." Really? In what conceivable sense is this not a serious scandal? If you, as an American citizen, let alone a journalist, don't find it deeply objectionable when top national security officials systematically mislead your representatives in Congress about how the government is spying on you, and repeatedly lie publicly about resulting political controversies over that spying, what is objectionable? If having the NSA engage in secret, indiscriminate domestic spying that warps if not outright violates legal limits isn't a "scandal", then what is?
For many media and political elites, the answer to that question seems clear: what's truly objectionable to them is when powerless individuals blow the whistle on deceitful national security state officials. Hence the endless fixation on Edward Snowden's tone and choice of asylum providers, the flamboyant denunciations of this "29-year-old hacker" for the crime of exposing what our government leaders are doing in the dark, and all sorts of mockery over the drama that resulted from the due-process-free revocation of his passport. This is what our media stars and progressive columnists, pundits and bloggers are obsessing over in the hope of distracting attention away from the surveillance misconduct of top-level Obama officials and their serial deceit about it.
What kind of journalist - or citizen - would focus more on Edward Snowden's tonal oddities and travel drama than on the fact that top US officials have been deceitfully concealing a massive, worldwide spying apparatus being constructed with virtually no accountability or oversight? Just ponder what it says about someone who cares more about, and is angrier about, Edward Snowden's exposure of these facts than they are about James Clapper's falsehoods and the NSA's excesses."
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Call Congress and President about Binney's Two Degrees of Separation Solution for NSA
Former NSA administrator and whistleblower, William Binney, offered a simple way for the NSA to protect us from terrorists without invading our privacy. He calls it the two degrees of separation solution. The NSA would be allowed to monitor foreign terrorists, their communications with people inside the U.S., and the communications of those people, also. All other data would be thrown away. Thus, if you had no contact with terrorists or people who support them, then your private communications would remain private.
I'm willing to bet that 99% of us want to be protected from foreign terrorists, but also want to maintain as much of our privacy as possible. Binney's solution seems to be a reasonable compromise. I suggest that we call, email, or write our Congressional representatives and urge them to support his solution. We should also urge them to grant immunity to Edward Snowden and all other whistleblowers, since they are our insurance policy against government abuse of our civil rights, including the right to privacy. Mr. Snowden has put his life on the line, hoping that the American public would realize the danger of the Orwellian state we are entering. Urging Congress to do more to protect our privacy and to grant him immunity is the least we can do.
I'm willing to bet that 99% of us want to be protected from foreign terrorists, but also want to maintain as much of our privacy as possible. Binney's solution seems to be a reasonable compromise. I suggest that we call, email, or write our Congressional representatives and urge them to support his solution. We should also urge them to grant immunity to Edward Snowden and all other whistleblowers, since they are our insurance policy against government abuse of our civil rights, including the right to privacy. Mr. Snowden has put his life on the line, hoping that the American public would realize the danger of the Orwellian state we are entering. Urging Congress to do more to protect our privacy and to grant him immunity is the least we can do.
Monday, July 1, 2013
NSA Whistleblower William Binney: Simple Way to Detect Terrorists Without Invading Our Privacy
Democracy Now!'s interview of NSA whistleblower William Binney is worth watching. Among the interesting things he has to say is that there is an easy way to screen for terrorists without invading our privacy:
"Personally, I’ve had the view for any—for quite a number of decades, that the Congress and the administration have been—have been fed by the intelligence community what I call technobabble. In other words, they’re being bamboozled into thinking a certain way, that they have to do this in order to get terrorists. And that’s simply false. There’s a simple way to do it that would protect people’s privacy and not invade anybody’s telephone records or email. And that’s to say, if you have a terrorist, and he calls somebody in the United States—I call this the two-degree principle—that’s one degree of communication separation. Then you look at that as a target, and you collect that, and then you look also at the person in the United States and who they talk to. That could represent the—that’s a zone of suspicion that would, in effect, be basically a support network for that person inside the country. That defines your terrorist relationship, and that’s how you look at that. And the rest of the communication of the U.S. people don’t mean anything, as relevant, and none of that’s relevant to what’s going on there. And you also have to look at the jihadi-type sites, those that advocate jihad or violence and so on, and you see who is accessing those sites. That’s easy to monitor that, and it doesn’t invade anybody’s privacy that’s been absolutely doing nothing of—that should be in any way considered suspicious."
"Personally, I’ve had the view for any—for quite a number of decades, that the Congress and the administration have been—have been fed by the intelligence community what I call technobabble. In other words, they’re being bamboozled into thinking a certain way, that they have to do this in order to get terrorists. And that’s simply false. There’s a simple way to do it that would protect people’s privacy and not invade anybody’s telephone records or email. And that’s to say, if you have a terrorist, and he calls somebody in the United States—I call this the two-degree principle—that’s one degree of communication separation. Then you look at that as a target, and you collect that, and then you look also at the person in the United States and who they talk to. That could represent the—that’s a zone of suspicion that would, in effect, be basically a support network for that person inside the country. That defines your terrorist relationship, and that’s how you look at that. And the rest of the communication of the U.S. people don’t mean anything, as relevant, and none of that’s relevant to what’s going on there. And you also have to look at the jihadi-type sites, those that advocate jihad or violence and so on, and you see who is accessing those sites. That’s easy to monitor that, and it doesn’t invade anybody’s privacy that’s been absolutely doing nothing of—that should be in any way considered suspicious."
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