An Occupy Wall Streeter has modified a Parrot AR helicopter drone to be used to spy on the NYPD!
It has a built in camera and costs around $300. It can be controlled using a smartphone or iPad.
There are plans to further modify it so control could be passed from one protestor to another, and they’re hoping to give it true remote piloting capabilities.
They hope to use the ‘occucopter’ to provide live video of OWS protests on the internet.
“Based on our continuing research, the actual death count here may be as high as 18,000, with influenza and pneumonia, which were up five fold in the period in question as a cause of death. Deaths are seen across all ages, but we continue to find that infants are hardest hit because their tissues are rapidly multiplying, they have undeveloped immune systems, and the doses of radioisotopes are proportionally greater than for adults.”-Janette Sherman, MD toxicologist
According to the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services, an estimated 14,000 deaths in the United States can be connected to the ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan!
The peer reviewed report also points out that within 17 weeks following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster 16,500 people in the U.S. died.
The report says one week after the explosions at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a toxic cloud was detected over the west coast of the United States. I had posted several times how most EPA RadNet sites were not working.
The EPA did report radiation detected in water, milk and other agricultural products, but it was downplayed and the U.S. neo-conservative controlled mainstream media went along with it! What was reported by the EPA showed that Idaho had the highest Iodine 131 readings; 390 picocuries per liter of water (2 picocuries of I-131 per liter of water is considered normal)!
Interestingly this was claimed to be in Boise, Idaho, which is on the western side of the state. The only RadNet site in Idaho is in Idaho Falls, on the eastern side of the state.
The report says there were at least 14,000 unexplained deaths in the United States within the first 14 weeks of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster (that’s 1,000 per week, and the nuclear disaster is ongoing). They also noted a sudden 1.8% jump in infant deaths compared to the same time the previous year. They claim there is enough evidence for scientists to suspect radiation contamination, and they’re asking for more studies to be done.
After missing the December 14 deadline to turn over accounting books to government prosecutors, Olympus’s offices, and the homes of Olympus executives have been raided by government prosecutors and police.
Weeks ago Olympus executives made promise after promise saying they would meet the December 14 deadline for making their accounting books public. Of course they did not keep that promise, not surprising when they ‘lost’ tens of billions of dollars since the late 1990s.
The losses are connected to an investment company that was based in the United States, and run by former Olympus officials. Apparently it was an elaborate shell game, where investment losses were hidden under the guise of buying out other companies.
The latest reports out of Japan are saying that two Olympus executives have confessed to the crime; former Olympus vice president Hisashi Mori and former auditor Hideo Yamada.
In Netherlands, the aviation museum on Deelan air base had their huge model of an F-104 Starfighter stolen.
It’s made of aluminum and other metals, and the owners are fearful it will be sold for scrap.
Just how big is the model plane? It’s bigger than a small Fiat car, and could weigh more than 1,000 pounds (reports vary from hundreds of kilos to 500 kilos)!
“I don’t think there actually has been a revolution yet. I think that what’s happened is that the figurehead of the military regime has been deposed very dramatically. Certainly that was a hugely significant event, it was an earthquake….Until then I think the two sides are stuck in their current positions, fighting it out through a range of ways. And one of these ways is street battles between the military security forces and the people.”-Yaakov Lappin, Jerusalem Post
On December 17, Egyptians protesting the pro-U.S. military government of Egypt, set the Shura Council building on fire. Unfortunately the fire spread next door, to the oldest science library in Cairo.
Egyptian Scientific Institute burned, destroying more than 150,000 books going back to the late 1700s. It was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798, and first called L’Institut d’Egypte.
Among the books, maps and charts destroyed is the first edition of the Description de l’Egypte, started under Napoleon Bonaparte by French scientists. Egyptian officials say they still have two other editions located at two separate libraries.
Egyptians have been protesting the U.S. backed military government, mainly because of the thousands of people who’ve been rushed through military court trials, something the protestors were against from the beginning. The military court trials convinced many Egyptians that they were not getting a new government, but just more of the same after the resignation of U.S. backed Hosni Mubarak.
1. “The war in Iraq is finally over after nine years.”
Rothkopf notes the U.S. has been militarily engaged in Iraq since the early 1990 and this will likely be just the end of another installment in the long running series of U.S. warmongering policies in the region.
2. “America’s mission in Iraq was a success.”
He expresses astonishment at such a claim while Iraq is divided, undemocratic, corrupt, and the U.S. invasion has cost U.S.$1 trillion, thousands of U.S. lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and its national reputation. U.S. war in Iraq bears greater semblance to a full-scale “fiasco”, he says.
3. “We are winning in Afghanistan.”
Rothkopf describes this one as a hot from the oven “howler” by the U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Washington has strengthened the region’s extremists and the threat of instability in nuclear Pakistan is now actually higher than it was when U.S. went in, he says.
4. Tie: “Pakistan is America’s ally” and “Afghanistan is America’s partner.”
Neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan can by any “credible definition” be called a U.S. ally. This is attested to by the animosity of Islamabad towards Washington and Kabul’s belittling of the U.S. on the world stage, Rothkopf says.
5. “America is unthreatened by China’s growth.”
A “prayer” by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rothkopf says. “It should be true. But it’s not,” he adds.
6. Tie: “Republicans are the problem” and “Democrats are the problem.”
Rothkopf dubs this one as “the great lie of American politics.” He says the problem with U.S. politics is not the parties, but the money. “The system is so resolutely corrupt that recent scandals have only resulted in more money flowing into the system and past reforms being undone,” he notes.
7. “Cutting the taxes of millionaires helps create U.S. jobs.”
There is not even one single solitary shred of evidence to support this “idiotic” suggestion, Rothkopf notes.
8. “This next summit of European leaders will be decisive …”
Rothkopf says despite the fact that this claim has been made every few weeks for the past months, the “supposedly sophisticated financial markets” of the United States continue to fall for it.
9. “The Obama administration is committed to serious financial services reform.”
The U.S. financial system is still plagued by all the threats that instigated the 2008 recession. “Not an inch of progress,” Rothkopf says.
10. “Only nine percent of Americans approve of Congress.”
“This can’t possibly be true. There can’t possibly be that many,” Rothkopf says in a stinging sarcastic tone.
11. “The operation in Libya will be over in a matter of days or weeks.”
Rothkopf says the operation was wrong to begin with, “and then wrong and then wrong again for months.”
12. “I love Israel.”
Even though everyone in U.S. politics makes such an assertion, nobody really means it, Rothkopf notes. What the politicians really mean, however, is that “I want American Jews to think I love Israel enough to vote for me and give me money,” he says.
“Those are just a few of a bumper year for duplicity, mendacity, and craven misstatements.”-David J. Rothkopf, Foreign Policy
Once again, the New York cops have incriminated themselves by posting comments that prove they are not there to serve and protect you.
“On my way to wall street…..Let the savagery begin…”-Michael DeRosa Sr, NYPD
“wish I was there with you guys..it would be nice to crack a white guy over the head.”-Rey Hernandez, NYPD
Not only that, but it turns out that while most of the focus has been on the NYPD’s handling of the Occupiers, a writer and social media guru, and his family, have been bullied by the NYPD simply because of where they live.
They live in a house that was sold to a NYPD cop. The cop apparently didn’t know the house was already ocupado. The tenants refused to leave. They knew their rights under New York laws. But the NYPD actually helped their fellow cop harass and threaten the family in the hopes they would move out.
The tenants stood their ground and now, supposedly, there will be an investigation, and two city councilman have taken up the family’s cause. You can read the first hand accounts of the harassment.
“We want our kids to learn that you don’t have to be scared or run away when you are bullied….What we hope that our kids take away from this situation, as uncomfortable as it is for them now, is that you if you don’t stand up for yourself no one will.”-Bryan Eisenberg, best selling author bullied by NYPD
“100%. They are 100% responsible for what they did to my husband. They killed my husband.”-Rondha Gibson, blaming the Veterans Administration for her husband’s death because they took him off his PTSD meds and cancelled his benefits
On December 12 Las Vegas police shot and killed a 1991 Persian Gulf War veteran. They shot him seven times in the back of the head as he sat in his car.
According to newly released police report, cops responded to claims of an attempted burglary. Apartment residents said two men tried to break into an apartment, failed and then took off in a white Cadillac. As the cops were writing down the info, a white Cadillac pulled into the apartment parking lot.
The cops surrounded the car, the driver apparently panicked a tried to get away but ran into a parked police car. For 30 minutes the cops yelled at him to get out of the car. They decided to shoot a bean bag to break a window, and then spray riot control gas into the car. For some reason another cop grabbed a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle. When the one cop fired the bean bag round, the cop with the AR-15 fired also. The reason has yet to be revealed.
The cop with the AR-15 fired seven times into the back of the war veteran’s head. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic version of the automatic military M16. What that means is that the cop had to pull the trigger seven times to fire seven rounds!
Police officials are investigating why the cop with the AR-15 fired seven rounds off, when that was obviously not part of the plan to get the veteran out of his car.
By the way, the reason why the veteran pulled into the apartment parking lot was because he lived there! He and his wife moved in after losing their house! There are plenty of white Cadillacs in Las Vegas, dumb cops!
It turns out the Gulf War veteran, Stanley Gibson, had lost his Veterans benefits, was taken off his PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) meds, and then lost his house! A social worker who works with veterans blames the Veterans Administration for what happened: “They’re just trying to get away with the minimal that they can, and if they dance you around the block enough you’ll go away.”-Marsha Oritt, social worker
Gibson and his wife had fought the gradual reductions in his benefits for years, but the VA won out. Rhonda Gibson says the VA totally blew them off: “If they had just listened to the man, listened to me and stopped canceling his appointments and make sure he had his medications on time, we would have been ok.”
Social worker Marsha Oritt says the VA has made the Gibson’s life a living hell: “It was just a constant nightmare for them both. Lots of tears. Lots of frustration. Lots of upset.”
According to corporate research firm Global Market Insight (GMI), Corporate America’s CEOs got big raises in 2010, even though many companies did not perform well!
The CEOs of the top 500 companies got as much as a 36.5% increase in pay. The next 3,000 U.S. corporations gave their CEOs a pay raise averaging 27%! Researchers with GMI said they were surprised, and considered the pay increases way out of line with the poor performance of many of the companies.
This news comes at the same time the U.S. Census Bureau is unofficially calling almost half of the population of the United States poor!
“SPM rates were higher than official poverty rates in 2010, overall and for most groups”-Brookings/Census Bureau Meeting on Improved Poverty Measurment, November 7, 2011
The new poverty statistics take into account “nondiscretionary” cost of living expenses such as income taxes, child care, health care, commuting to work, etc. When cost of living is factored in it raises the official number of poor people in the U.S.
The “official” poverty surveys consider before tax income only! This means the “official” poverty numbers have been way off for decades. However, the Census Bureau says the new SPM poverty numbers “Will not replace the official poverty measure” and “Will not be used for resource allocation or program eligibility”!
The new SPM numbers also include some types of welfare benefits a family might be getting, plus child support, and yet even with that data the number of poor people still went higher than the “official” poverty numbers. This is more evidence of how inaccurate the “official” count is, and how rampant poverty is in the U.S.!
The new data was released on November 7, 2011, yet I don’t recall any mainstream U.S. media reporting it. The data covers the year 2010 only, it’s called Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2010 (SPM).
When using the SPM (aka Improved Poverty Measure) a big jump in the number of poor people were found in the age group of 18 to 64 year olds. But the biggest jump in poverty was found in the age group of people 65 years or older.
If I read the Census Bureau graphs correctly (and if I understood the Bureaus’ explanations of how they figured it), when you add the “official” poverty numbers to the new SPM numbers you get 146.4 million people who are poor (49.1 million “officially” poor + 97.3 million SPM poor). Even if you go by just the new SPM data that’s nearly 100 million poor people in the U.S.
Officially there are 312 million people in the United States.
Back to Corporate America’s big pay raises for their CEOs.
The top earning CEO in 2010 was John Hammergen of McKesson Corporation, getting $145 million, not counting his stock options or retirement benefits! According to GMI, McKesson has essentially lied about how much they paid Hammergen. They reported they paid Hammergen only (hmph, ‘only’) $46.1 million.
GMI researchers said McKesson refused to explain the difference. GMI says Hammergen not only got $145 million in pay, he got $112 million in stock options, a retirement plan worth $13.5 million, and, if he ever got fired his severance package is worth $469 million! For getting fired!!! And the right wing neo-conservative ass holes complain about the average unemployed worker being on unemployment pittance (it certainly is not a “benefit”)!!!
Just like it says in HR 1905, we are slaves!
“I hope you believe America is part of the battlefield.”-Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senator from South Carolina
In a confusing back and forth between the House and Senate, on December 15 the Senate passed the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, allowing the indefinite detention and torture of U.S. citizens. It passed 83 to 13!
“What this legislation does…says from the Congress’ point-of-view, that we expressly authorize the indefinite detention…”-Carl Levin, U.S. Senator from Michigan
“We think al Qaeda operatives, citizens or not, are not common criminals. We think they are crazy people. If you’re an American citizen and you want to help…destroy your own country, here is what’s coming your way.”- Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senator from South Carolina
“If we start labeling our citizens as enemies of the United States without any due process, I think we will have done serious damage.”-Mark Udall, U.S. Senator from Colorado, who hypocritically voted for the bill while voicing objection to the bill
Yesterday the House passed their final version of NDAA 2012, HR 1905.
According to the CSPAN website: “It will now head to the President’s desk to be signed into law.”