a dayyum watch because sixth sense too far ahead of its time...,

livemint | There has been much amusement at the way Samsung’s Pranav Mistry spoke English on Wednesday night in Berlin, Germany. The 32-year-old was picked to release the Galaxy Gear smartwatch. This is a watch that connects to and displays the screen content of your mobile phone, which can stay in your pocket or bag.

The Gear is the first product innovation Samsung has put out before Apple. Mistry’s being picked for launching it globally tells us something about how he’s regarded within the company.

Mistry is from Palanpur in northern Gujarat, and to me his speech has the inflection of the western Gujarati, which is to say Kathiawari.

He probably speaks Gujarati like Gandhi, who was from the southern part of western Gujarat, and like Jinnah. Even many Gujaratis from central and southern Gujarat—Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat—would find Mistry’s Palanpuri accent amusing, though in Gujarati, of course.

The interesting thing about the town—it is hardly a city, with barely over 100,000 people—of Palanpur is that it is man for man the most productive, most brilliant city in South Asia.

When I visited the diamond bourse in Tel Aviv, Israel, I was not surprised to observe that it was totally dominated by two communities. The Polish and other Eastern European Hasidics with their black coats, black hats and ringlets, and Palanpuri Jains with the singsong accent of Mistry.

And so, Jews and Gujjus.

Palanpuris control half the market in the world’s unpolished diamonds, and they have no equal, even among Marwaris.

It is usually in the field of business and enterprise that the Palanpuri shines and so it is unusual that young Mistry picked academia (he is from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US) as his calling, then moving to a corporate job.

At another event, whose video is available on YouTube, he talks about fantasy and innovation. Mistry says his inspiration isn’t from science fiction, as is the case with many of the other technology masters around him. It is Hindu mythology that is the root and source of his creativity.

He finds ideas in the texts and in their stories. This shows him to be grounded in his culture, which is something the English-medium Indian usually discards, even though he makes the pretence of worshipping it.

In my opinion, this rootedness is far more important intellectually for Indians than knowledge of Western popular culture, which passes for sophistication in our country.

What amused Twitter was not the content of Mistry’s talk. It was the way he delivered it.

An Indian speaking like a native before foreigners embarrasses us because the accent betrays a lack of sophistication that stigmatizes all Indians.

This, of course, says more about us than about the person speaking.

intermission...,

careful playing with that magic box eugene...,

a new model of the universe | Many people have worked at the problem of the fourth dimension

Fechner wrote a great deal about the fourth dimension. From his discussions about worlds of one, two, three and four dimensions there follows a very interesting method of investigating the fourth dimension by means of building up analogies between worlds of different dimensions, i.e. between an imaginary world on a plane and the three-dimensional world, and between the three-dimensional world and the world of four dimensions This method is used by nearly all those who have ever studied the problem of higher dimensions, and we shall have occasion to meet with it further on.

Professor Zollner evolved the theory of the fourth dimension from observations of " mediumistic " phenomena, chiefly of phenomena of so-called " materialisation ". But his observations have long been considered doubtful because of the established fact of the insufficiently strict arrangement of his experiments (Podmore and Hislop).

A very interesting summary of almost all that has ever been written about the fourth dimension up to the nineties of last century is to be found in the books of C. H. Hinton These books contain also many of Hinton's own ideas; but, unfortunately, side by side with the valuable ideas there is a great deal of unnecessary dialectic such as always accumulates round the question of the fourth dimension.

Hinton makes several attempts at a definition of the fourth dimension from the physical side, as well as from the psychological. Considerable space is occupied in his books by the description of a method, invented by him, of accustoming the mind to cognition of the fourth dimension. It consists of a long series of exercises for the perceiving and the visualising apparatus, with sets of differently coloured cubes, which are meant to be memorised, first in one position, then in another, then in a third, and after that to be visualised in different combinations.

The fundamental idea which guided Hinton in the creation of this method of exercises is that the awakening of " higher consciousness " requires the " casting out of the self " in the visualisation and cognition of the world, i.e. the accustoming of oneself to know and conceive the world, not from a personal point of view (as we generally know and conceive it), but as it is. For this it is necessary, first of all, to learn to visualise things not as they appear to us, but as they are, even if only in a geometrical sense; from this there must develop the capacity to know them, i.e. to see them, as they are, also from other points of view besides the geometrical.

The first exercise suggested by Hinton consists in the study of a cube composed of 27 smaller cubes coloured differently and bearing definite names. After having thoroughly learned the cube made up of smaller cubes, it has to be turned over and learned and memorised in the reverse order. Then the position of the smaller cubes has to be changed and memorised in that order, and so on. As a result, according to Hinton, it is possible to cast out in the cube studied the concepts " up and down ", " right and left ", and so on, and to know it independently of the position with regard to one another of the smaller cubes composing it, i.e. probably to visualise it simultaneously.

in different combinations. This would be the first step towards casting out the self-elements in the conception of the cube. Further on, there is described an elaborate system of exercises with series of differently coloured and differently named cubes, out of which various figures are composed. All this has the same purpose, to cast out the self-elements in the percepts and in this way to develop higher consciousness.

Casting out the self-elements in percepts, according to Hinton's idea, is the first step towards the development of higher consciousness and towards the cognition of the fourth dimension.

He says that if there exists the capacity of vision in the fourth dimension, that is, if we are able to see objects of our world as if from the fourth dimension, then we shall see them, not as we see them in the ordinary way, but quite differently.

We usually see objects as either above or below us, or on the same level with us, to the right or to the left, behind us or in front of us, and always from one side only—the one facing us—and in perspective. Our eye is an extremely imperfect instrument; it gives us an utterly incorrect picture of the world. What we call perspective is in reality a distortion of visible objects which is produced by a badly constructed optical instrument—the eye. We see all objects distorted. And we visualise them in the same way. But we visualise them in this way entirely owing to the habit of seeing them distorted, that is, owing to the habit created by our defective vision, which has weakened the capacity of visualisation.

But, according to Hinton, there is no necessity to visualise objects of the external world in a distorted form. The power of visualisation is not limited by the power of vision. We see objects distorted, but we know them as they are. And we can free ourselves from the habit of visualising objects as we see them, and we can learn to visualise them as we know they really are. Hinton's idea is precisely that before thinking of developing the capacity of seeing in the fourth dimension, we must learn to visualise objects as they would be seen from the fourth dimension, i.e. first of all, not in perspective, but from all sides at once, as they are known to our " consciousness ". It is just this power that should be developed by Hinton's exercises. The development of this power to visualise objects from all sides at once will be the casting out of the self-elements in mental images. According to Hinton, " casting out the self-elements in mental images must lead to casting out the self-elements in perceptions ". In this way, the development of the power of visualising objects from all sides will be the first step towards the development of the power of seeing objects as they are in a geometrical sense, i.e. the development of what Hinton calls a " higher consciousness ".

did he get fed up being poor and exploited at the institute?

wikipedia | Pranav Mistry (born 1981) is an Indian computer scientist. He joined Samsung electronics as the Director of Research in 2013, and leads the Think Tank. He introduced Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch in September 2013.^[1] Previously he was a research assistant and a PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab. Before joining MIT, Pranav worked as a UX Researcher with Microsoft. Pranav holds a Master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and Master of Design from Industrial Design Center, IIT Mumbai. He has completed Bachelors’ degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Nirma Institute of Technology in Gujarat.^[2][3] He is from Palanpur, which is situated in northern Gujarat in India. Mistry is best known for his work on SixthSense.^[4][5][6] Among some of his other work, Pranav has invented Mouseless – an invisible computer mouse; SPARSH – a novel way to copy-paste data between digital devices; Quickies – intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, located and can send reminders and messages; Blinkbot - a gaze and blink controlled robot; a pen that can draw in 3D; and a public map that can act as Google of physical world. Pranav’s research interests include Augmented reality, Ubiquitous computing, Gestural interaction, AI, Machine vision, Collective intelligence and Robotics.

erno rubik's magic cube...,

wikipedia | Permutations: The original (3×3×3) Rubik's Cube has eight corners and twelve edges. There are 8! (40,320) ways to arrange the corner cubes. Seven can be oriented independently, and the orientation of the eighth depends on the preceding seven, giving 3⁷ (2,187) possibilities. There are 12!/2 (239,500,800) ways to arrange the edges, since an even permutation of the corners implies an even permutation of the edges as well. (When arrangements of centres are also permitted, as described below, the rule is that the combined arrangement of corners, edges, and centres must be an even permutation.) Eleven edges can be flipped independently, with the flip of the twelfth depending on the preceding ones, giving 2¹¹ (2,048) possibilities.^[25]

which is approximately 43 quintillion.^[26]

The puzzle is often advertised as having only "billions" of positions, as the larger numbers are unfamiliar to many. To put this into perspective, if one had as many standard sized Rubik's Cubes as there are permutations, one could cover the Earth's surface 275 times.

The preceding figure is limited to permutations that can be reached solely by turning the sides of the cube. If one considers permutations reached through disassembly of the cube, the number becomes twelve times as large:

which is approximately 519 quintillion^[26] possible arrangements of the pieces that make up the Cube, but only one in twelve of these are actually solvable. This is because there is no sequence of moves that will swap a single pair of pieces or rotate a single corner or edge cube. Thus there are twelve possible sets of reachable configurations, sometimes called "universes" or "orbits", into which the Cube can be placed by dismantling and reassembling it.

Centre faces: The original Rubik's Cube had no orientation markings on the centre faces (although some carried the words "Rubik's Cube" on the centre square of the white face), and therefore solving it does not require any attention to orienting those faces correctly. However, with marker pens, one could, for example, mark the central squares of an unscrambled Cube with four coloured marks on each edge, each corresponding to the colour of the adjacent face; a cube marked in this way is referred to as a "supercube". Some Cubes have also been produced commercially with markings on all of the squares, such as the Lo Shu magic square or playing card suits. Thus one can nominally solve a Cube yet have the markings on the centres rotated; it then becomes an additional test to solve the centres as well.

Marking the Rubik's Cube's centres increases its difficulty because this expands the set of distinguishable possible configurations. There are 4⁶/2 (2,048) ways to orient the centres, since an even permutation of the corners implies an even number of quarter turns of centres as well. In particular, when the Cube is unscrambled apart from the orientations of the central squares, there will always be an even number of centre squares requiring a quarter turn. Thus orientations of centres increases the total number of possible Cube permutations from 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (4.3×10¹⁹) to 88,580,102,706,155,225,088,000 (8.9×10²²).^[27]

When turning a cube over is considered to be a change in permutation then we must also count arrangements of the centre faces. Nominally there are 6! ways to arrange the six centre faces of the cube, but only 24 of these are achievable without disassembly of the cube. When the orientations of centres are also counted, as above, this increases the total number of possible Cube permutations from 88,580,102,706,155,225,088,000 (8.9×10²²) to 2,125,922,464,947,725,402,112,000 (2.1×10²⁴).

Algorithms: In Rubik's cubers' parlance, a memorised sequence of moves that has a desired effect on the cube, is called an algorithm. This terminology is derived from the mathematical use of algorithm, meaning a list of well-defined instructions for performing a task from a given initial state, through well-defined successive states, to a desired end-state. Each method of solving the Rubik's Cube employs its own set of algorithms, together with descriptions of what effect the algorithm has, and when it can be used to bring the cube closer to being solved.

Many algorithms are designed to transform only a small part of the cube without interfering with other parts that have already been solved, so that they can be applied repeatedly to different parts of the cube until the whole is solved. For example, there are well-known algorithms for cycling three corners without changing the rest of the puzzle, or flipping the orientation of a pair of edges while leaving the others intact.

Some algorithms do have a certain desired effect on the cube (for example, swapping two corners) but may also have the side-effect of changing other parts of the cube (such as permuting some edges). Such algorithms are often simpler than the ones without side-effects, and are employed early on in the solution when most of the puzzle has not yet been solved and the side-effects are not important. Most are long and difficult to memorize. Towards the end of the solution, the more specific (and usually more complicated) algorithms are used instead.

Relevance and application of mathematical group theory: Rubik's Cube lends itself to the application of mathematical group theory, which has been helpful for deducing certain algorithms - in particular, those which have a commutator structure, namely XYX⁻¹Y⁻¹ (where X and Y are specific moves or move-sequences and X⁻¹ and Y⁻¹ are their respective inverses), or a conjugate structure, namely XYX⁻¹, often referred to by speedcubers colloquially as a "setup move".^[28] In addition, the fact that there are well-defined subgroups within the Rubik's Cube group, enables the puzzle to be learned and mastered by moving up through various self-contained "levels of Difficulty". For example, one such "level" could involve solving cubes which have been scrambled using only 180-degree turns. These subgroups are the principle underlying the computer cubing methods Thistlethwaite and Kociemba, which solve the cube by further reducing it to another subgroup.

a moment of abject lucidity brought to you by retired colonel lawrence wilkerson

Chris Hayes: What do you think when you watch him talk about the Iraq experience. Do you think we’ve learned our lesson?

Lawrence Wilkerson: In some ways perhaps, in other ways not. My first reaction and this in no way meant to be cold. It is meant to be the exact opposite. What’s the difference in a child dying of sarin gas in the night, a child dying in the morning with napalm, and a child dying in the afternoon with white phosphorous? Personally as a soldier I rather die of the sarin gas than the other two; those other two perfectly legal. And many people in Syria are dying of other causes than chemical weapons. So I have a real problem with this from that point of view.

Chris Hayes: So you question drawing this ring around this class of weapon in the way the civilized world, if we can use that phrase, has basically said you can’t do this.

Lawrence Wilkerson: The main reason we have a chemical weapons ban and the success we do with over a hundred and eighty eight countries members of the convention is because they aren’t very good weapons. That’s the real reason. Look at why the United States continues to use depleted uranium, white phosphorous, wouldn’t join the land mine ban and so forth is all because we find utility in the weapons. That’s not to be cold. That’s simply to be rational about it.

harridans and soulless whores in the flotsam and jetsam tanks...,

visibleorigami | I watching that corrupt hack John Kerry yesterday at the Senate hearings and I noticed, sitting behind him, this extraordinarily corrupt looking woman. The arrogance and imperious disdain on here features was palpable. She looked depraved in the way that only a lifetime of depravity will confer on a person. I wondered who she was. In the process of watching this dog and pony show, where Senate leaders were conveying virtual blowjobs on those being inquired of, one them, who had been playing poker on his cellphone the whole time (John McCain) mentioned how delighted they were to have the wife of John Kerry back in the flotsam/jetsam tank. It turned out to be her.

This is Origami and I do want to stay metaphysical so let's keep that in mind as we go. Looking at John Kerry's face was an experience.

The Satanic aspect of his persona was near hypnotic. If you play poker and... I have, enjoyably so, you know what a 'tell' is. Kerry was Tell City. The tics and giveaways were many. He was lying out of his ass, which I am confident happened to be on his neck at the time. He and his smug and 'in on it', privileged associates, on both ends of the charade, were engaged in a hideous mockery of all that they were put into power to defend against.

What is it that these twisted fiends want? What makes them think (how can they be so confident?) that they will get away with these massive violations? The forces arrayed against them are not inconsiderable. One answer is that the power of Israeli blackmail and dirty money leverage is so strong that all of these men and women are compelled to go along with it. On the other hand, Israel will definitely get hit, as well they should. There’s a real puzzle here. There's a real confidence on both sides. The bad guys, which are, at this moment, Israel and her bitch, America (England and France would be on this list but they're a tad stymied at the moment) seem to think they can do whatever they please. They're talking about a sixty day window of freedom to bomb at will with... with the option of another 30 days. It's ridiculous but... remember, 'no boots on the ground', 'no boots on the ground' as if that were to matter at all, given this enormous opportunity to carpet bomb Syria. What happened to the limited strikes over no more than several days? This was all a set up to go to a completely compromised, bought and sold congress, under the pretense of adhering to the letter of the law and coming away with far more than they would have had before.

Meanwhile, the confidence factor with the Syrian government, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia (don't forget China) is also very high. Someone has to be wrong in their presumptions. I can only pray and hope that it is the Satanic nation of Israel and their crack whore police state, bitch- America that's delusional about their optimism and capacity. I'm confident that both the United States and Israel are going down. Given that, it makes sense that sooner or later they will make the big mistake. Hubris is a guaranteed fall, quite often a spectacular fall and those fateful words of Nietzsche are indisputably true, “those whom the God's will destroy, they first drive mad.” We are seeing that. It's going on before our eyes.

the syrian war what you're not being told...,

stormcloudsgathering | In this video we're going to show you evidence that the Syrian government was framed in the chemical weapons attack of August 21st, 2013, we're going to explain why they were framed, and we're going to propose a course of action.

The use of chemical weapons on civilians in the Syrian conflict was a crime against humanity. As such it should be the subject of a real criminal investigation, and those responsible should be brought to justice. However, if the U.S. and NATO have their way that's not going to happen. In their book a simple accusation is as good as a conviction and therefore there's no point providing any real evidence. Let's just skip right to missile strikes shall we?

This really isn't surprising to anyone who's been paying attention though.
The United States has had Syria and Iran in their cross hairs for a long time. The plans for these wars have been in the works for over a decade.

[Wesley Clark video]

There are three primary psychological techniques that the powers that be in any given era use to build up the public support needed to take a country to war:

1. Create the impression that the aggressor is actually acting in self defense or in defense of a helpless nation. This can be done by exaggerating the danger posed by an enemy, fabricating an attack and blaming it on the enemy, or by intentionally provoking the enemy into a response.

2. Build up a crusade mythology, one that presents the aggressors as fighting for a higher ideal, or for the good of all humanity. In our current era the meme of “Spreading Democracy”, “Fighting Terrorism” or "Defending human rights"are the most commonly used.

3. De-humanize the enemy. War is mass murder, therefore presenting the enemy as evil, barbaric, or subhuman is essential unless you want your citizens and your soldiers questioning the morality of their actions. This pattern is often supported and augmented by a sense of cultural or racial superiority. The way Islamophobia is capitalized on to build moral support for this phony war on terror is a perfect example.

The U.S. government has a long illustrious history of using these techniques, and they keep using them because they work.

[clip Patrick Clawson Washington institute September 21st, 2012]

The United States has been trying to get Iran under its thumb for a long time. In 1953, the CIA and the UK's MI6 organized a coup to topple the democratically elected prime minister of Iran Mohammad Mossadegh. They then installed the Shah as their puppet. The Shah, who also just happened to be brutal dictator, ruled until 1979 when he was overthrown during the Iranian revolution.

The U.S. didn't like that so they tried to take Iran down by arming and funding Saddam Hussein against the Iranians. This was during the Iranian Iraq war, also referred to as the first Persian Gulf War which lasted from 1980 to 1988. The U.S. continued its support for Iraq even though they knew full well that he was using chemical weapons against the Iranians.

This now declassified top secret memo from Nov. 4, 1983 documents chemical weapons use by Iraq, and discusses Iran's likely reactions.

Here's a second memo, written on Feb. 24, 1984 to the director of Central Intelligence predicting that Iraq will use nerve agents against Iran.

Note that the source of these documents is Foreign Policy Magazine which is an extremely pro-establishment publication by any standards.

In spite of this, friendly diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Saddam continued. This video of Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan meeting with Saddam, was taken on December 20, 1983, which was after the first memo. This means that those running the U.S. knew Saddam was killing people with poison gas and they didn't care. Taking down Iran was more important to the U.S. government than protecting human rights, and it still is.

Saddam failed to defeat Iran, so the U.S. switched tactics, and for a long time they tried going after Iran directly by accusing them of building nuclear weapons in order to justify military strikes. However, this line of worn out propaganda didn't gain any traction, largely because the U.S. government had lost most of its credibility in their trumped up claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. You can only cry wolf so many times before people start rolling their eyes.

Their agenda fell apart completely when elements within the CIA and Mossad came forward stating that there was no evidence that Iran even intended to build such a weapon.

Not to be deterred by little details like the truth, these chicken hawk neo-cons decided to go after Syria to get to Iran. They know that Syria and Iran have a mutual defense agreement and if NATO forces enter Syria Iran will be drawn into the fight, and then these little deranged psychopaths in suits will get their war.

We still have to maintain appearances though, we wouldn't want people to think this was about controlling the world's oil supply and protecting the petrodollar would we? No, no, put those crazy conspiracy theories out of you mind. We're here to spread democracy and freedom with 50 caliber machine guns and drone strikes.

If it were obvious that the U.S. was attacking Syria it would be very difficult to obtain international or domestic support, so rather than attacking Syria directly the U.S. and NATO have been running a proxy war by arming and funding the Syrian rebels. To obscure the source of this support U.S. allies in the region such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been used to purchase weapons and then route them to Syria via Turkey.

This pattern of arming and funding dictators or extremist groups to get take down non-cooperative governments has been a key element in America's foreign policy since the creation of the CIA after World War II. 

[Clinton clip]

Let's not just talk about this in general sense. Who was running that operation?

[Zbig clip]

Just in case you're thinking this is irrelevant to this current situation we should point out that Zbigniew Brzezinski is an acknowledged friend and mentor to Barack Obama.

[Obama Zbig clip]

History proves that these dictators and extremists that the U.S. government installs are disposable and the very qualities that made them useful against enemies are later used to demonize them and thereby providing the justification for a full on invasion. This should be taken as a warning to those rebel groups that the U.S. is using to to destabilize Syria right now.

Now who are these Syrian rebels, this Free Syrian Army that the U.S. government so vocally supports? Well, while the West has tried to paint them as local freedom fighters, the reality is that the conflict has attracted foreign Jihadist from multiple countries, many of whom openly declare their intent to replace Assad's secular government with Sharia law. Numerous mainstream reports are already surfacing of Sharia motivated atrocities committed by the rebels. These reports are backed up by video footage that is far too graphic for me to show here. If you do a google search you can videos of men being beheaded and women being shot by rebels from the Al-Nusra Front. Yet the U.S. government isn't deterred by these details. They still want to help these extremists topple the Syrian government.

Funny isn't it how they require FBI background checks to buy a deer rifle in the states, but if you're a foreign Jihadist trying to overthrow a government that Washington isn't on good terms with they'll send you rocket launchers and heavy artillery no questions asked? And how do you reconcile the fact that the U.S. is fighting religious extremists in Afghanistan calling them terrorists, while supporting those same groups in Syria calling them freedom fighters. It doesn't make sense at all if you take the U.S. government's propaganda at face value.

cash rules everything around me CREAM get the money dollah, dollah bill y'all....,

slate | While the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration have been debating Syria, the fallout from the civil war in Libya turns out to be producing a crisis in world oil markets as "workers and armed militias that guard oil installations are pushing federalist demands and calling for a bigger share in the country's oil wealth":

Oil industry executives say Zeidan's shaky central government risked widening violence that could descend into civil war if it uses force to recapture oilfields.

Libya's oil production has fallen further to around 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) - from around 1.4 million bpd in April - confined to offshore rigs protestors cannot reach, a National Oil Corp (NOC) official said.

Armed groups have also threatened to close the Wafa gas field, which if shut would cause severe power shortages in the capital, an oil official told Reuters.

Wafa, in the south west, is the only major gas field left open to supply power stations. Libya is importing much more diesel and fuel oil for electricity plants that previously relied on gas.

Obviously the proximate loser here is the domestic economy of Libya. But Libya's oil is unusually high-quality stuff, so its withdrawal from global markets has a substantial impact on worldwide prices.

some of you would've had to change your draws...,

who's at the top of this war pyramid?

In this sixth part of the ongoing Sibel Edmonds Gladio B conversation, we ask the question: Who is at the top of the pyramid. We look beyond the usual suspects and follow the money back to the industries and lobbies whose existence depends on the perpetuation of boogeymen enemies.

 

Listen to the previous parts of this series:

Part One – Sibel Edmonds on NATO, Terrorism, 9/11 and Drug Running

Part Two – Sibel Edmonds on Gladio B, Protected Terrorists and Stifled Investigations

Part Three – Sibel Edmonds on Turkey, the Hood Event, Israel and Gladio B

Part Four – Sibel Edmonds on Gladio Protected Drug Running and Money Laundering

Part Five – Sibel Edmonds Answers Your Questions on Gladio B

SHOW NOTES:

10 companies profiting the most from war

The 25 Biggest Defense Companies In America

Graph of US Military Spending Since 1962

The American Turkish Council: US Association Helps Create New World Order

Sibel Edmonds Case: Richard Perle continues criminal enterprise, MSM still silent

Guardian Exposes West-Jordan-Syria Axis … But Only 15 Months Late

American Judas – Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part One

Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part Two

naw boo-boo, go sitchyass down somewhere...,

maddowblog | If there's anyone in America who should go enjoy a little quiet time right about now, it's failed former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld. Nevertheless, he just keeps talking, appearing this morning on Fox News (thanks to my colleague Tricia McKinney for the heads-up).

...Rumsfeld, who earned public scorn for his leadership of the Pentagon during the Iraq War, said Obama didn't need to ask Congress for authorization and may have made a mistake in doing so.

"Now, did he need to go to Congress? No. Presidents as commander in chief have authority, but they have to behave like a commander in chief."

He referred to Obama as "the so-called commander in chief," and questioned whether a strike on Syria would be effective given the way Obama has handled it.

Rumsfeld, who seemed generally supportive of intervention in Syria, added that President Obama "doesn't have the kind of support that President Bush had in respect to his military actions."

Yep, he really said that.

Part of me continues to wonder why Rumsfeld is still allowed to speak in polite company. Lance Armstrong isn't asked for his opinions about athletes and performance-enhancing drugs; Miley Cyrus isn't sought out for analysis on public modesty; so why should anyone take seriously what Donald Rumsfeld has to say foreign policy and the use of military force abroad?

And yet ol' Rummy just can't seem to help himself -- he's talking about the incomplete justifications for military intervention; he casually attacks the president's patriotism; and he routinely makes incoherent, self-defeating observations about national security.

Don't go away mad, Rumsfeld. Just go away.

i'm so broke, I can't even pay attention...,

theatlanticcities | Human mental bandwidth is finite. You’ve probably experienced this before (though maybe not in those terms): When you’re lost in concentration trying to solve a problem like a broken computer, you’re more likely to neglect other tasks, things like remembering to take the dog for a walk, or picking your kid up from school. This is why people who use cell phones behind the wheel actually perform worse as drivers. It’s why air traffic controllers focused on averting a mid-air collision are less likely to pay attention to other planes in the sky.

We only have so much cognitive capacity to spread around. It's a scarce resource.

This understanding of the brain’s bandwidth could fundamentally change the way we think about poverty. Researchers publishing some groundbreaking findings today in the journal Science have concluded that poverty imposes such a massive cognitive load on the poor that they have little bandwidth left over to do many of the things that might lift them out of poverty – like go to night school, or search for a new job, or even remember to pay bills on time.

In a series of experiments run by researchers at Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Warwick, low-income people who were primed to think about financial problems performed poorly on a series of cognition tests, saddled with a mental load that was the equivalent of losing an entire night’s sleep. Put another way, the condition of poverty imposed a mental burden akin to losing 13 IQ points, or comparable to the cognitive difference that’s been observed between chronic alcoholics and normal adults.

The finding further undercuts the theory that poor people, through inherent weakness, are responsible for their own poverty – or that they ought to be able to lift themselves out of it with enough effort. This research suggests that the reality of poverty actually makes it harder to execute fundamental life skills. Being poor means, as the authors write, “coping with not just a shortfall of money, but also with a concurrent shortfall of cognitive resources.”

This explains, for example, why poor people who aren’t good with money might also struggle to be good parents. The two problems aren’t unconnected.

“It’s the same bandwidth," says Princeton’s Eldar Shafir, one of the authors of the study alongside Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Jiaying Zhao. Poor people live in a constant state of scarcity (in this case, scarce mental bandwidth), a debilitating environment that Shafir and Mullainathan describe in a book to be published next week, Scarcity: Why having too little means so much.

What Shafir and his colleagues have identified is not exactly stress. Rather, poverty imposes something else on people that impedes them even when biological markers of stress (like elevated heart rates and blood pressure) aren’t present. Fist tap Dale.

the "common good" is a hopelessly lost cause...,

slate | You are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad—but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.

I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. (Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way to game the system: That shouldn’t be an argument against an all-in approach to public education any more than it is a case against single-payer health care.)

So, how would this work exactly? It’s simple! Everyone needs to be invested in our public schools in order for them to get better. Not just lip-service investment, or property tax investment, but real flesh-and-blood-offspring investment. Your local school stinks but you don’t send your child there? Then its badness is just something you deplore in the abstract. Your local school stinks and you do send your child there? I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better.

And parents have a lot of power. In many underresourced schools, it’s the aggressive PTAs that raise the money for enrichment programs and willful parents who get in the administration’s face when a teacher is falling down on the job. Everyone, all in. (By the way: Banning private schools isn’t the answer. We need a moral adjustment, not a legislative one.)

There are a lot of reasons why bad people send their kids to private school. Yes, some do it for prestige or out of loyalty to a long-standing family tradition or because they want their children to eventually work at Slate. But many others go private for religious reasons, or because their kids have behavioral or learning issues, or simply because the public school in their district is not so hot. None of these are compelling reasons. Or, rather, the compelling ones (behavioral or learning issues, wanting a not-subpar school for your child) are exactly why we should all opt in, not out.

 I believe in public education, but my district school really isn’t good! you might say. I understand. You want the best for your child, but your child doesn’t need it. If you can afford private school (even if affording means scrimping and saving, or taking out loans), chances are that your spawn will be perfectly fine at a crappy public school. She will have support at home (that’s you!) and all the advantages that go along with being a person whose family can pay for and cares about superior education—the exact kind of family that can help your crappy public school become less crappy. She may not learn as much or be as challenged, but take a deep breath and live with that. Oh, but she’s gifted? Well, then, she’ll really be fine. Fist tap Dale.

education is not free, equitable, or public...,

salon | “Indescribably insane”: A public school system from hell. Pennsylvania's right-wing governor drains public schools of basic funds -- and the sickening details will shock you. Want to see a public school system in its death throes? Look no further than Philadelphia. There, the school district is facing end times, with teachers, parents and students staring into the abyss created by a state intent on destroying public education.

On Thursday the city of Philadelphia announced that it would be borrowing $50 million to give the district, just so it can open schools as planned on Sept. 9, after Superintendent William Hite threatened to keep the doors closed without a cash infusion. The schools may open without counselors, administrative staff, noon aids, nurses, librarians or even pens and paper, but hey, kids will have a place to go and sit.

The $50 million fix is just the latest band-aid for a district that is beginning to resemble a rotting bike tube, covered in old patches applied to keep it functioning just a little while longer. At some point, the entire system fails.

Things have gotten so bad that at least one school has asked parents to chip in $613 per student just so they can open with adequate services, which, if it becomes the norm, effectively defeats the purpose of equitable public education, and is entirely unreasonable to expect from the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

The needs of children are secondary, however, to a right-wing governor in Tom Corbett who remains fixated on breaking the district in order to crush the teachers union and divert money to unproven experiments like vouchers and privately run charters. If the city’s children are left uneducated and impoverished among the smoldering wreckage of a broken school system, so be it.

To be clear, the schools are in crisis because the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania refuses to fund them adequately. The state Constitution mandates that the Legislature “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education,” but that language appears to be considered some kind of sick joke at the state capital in Harrisburg.

It’s worth noting that the state itself runs the Philadelphia School District after a 2001 takeover. The state is also responsible for catastrophic budget cuts two years ago that crippled the district’s finances. And in a diabolical example of circular logic, the state argues that the red ink it imposed, and shoddy management it oversees, are proof that the district can’t manage its finances or its mission and therefore shouldn’t get more money. Fist tap Dale.

banksterism, bubbles, and the titanic betrayal of public trust...,

automaticearth | On July 18th, the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy, the largest such filing in US history. After kicking the can down the road, with increasing desperation, for many years, then end of the line has been reached. The city is finally admitting that far too many financial promises have been made, and that the majority of these simply cannot be kept. It does not matter whether the promise-holders have a good case for receiving services or needing payments, or whether those promises are legally protected.

Promises that cannot be kept will not be kept. It is as simple as that. To complicate matters, however, the architecture of the financial system prioritizes promises, in a perhaps counter-intuitive, and certainly self-serving, manner. This will make the task of allocating extremely scarce resources to stakeholders lower down the financial food chain very much more difficult. It is time for a good look at the range of promises made, the competing needs of the recipients, the leverage enjoyed by powerful players in shoring up their own position, and the real world implications for municipalities far beyond Detroit.

Outside of Detroit, for the time being, one would hardly think the United States was standing on the edge of a major financial precipice. Optimism is riding high in America at the moment. Markets have been booming until recently, and consumer sentiment is at its highest level in a long time. People have been spending freely and having no trouble justifying it to themselves.

granny's first weed cookie, now really happy, soon really hungry, finally really sleepy

the soul of our nation...,

commondreams | This is how it works.

The US has been providing Egypt with nearly $2 billion a year in "aid" since 1979.  Most of this is military aid.  That "aid" is then used to buy weapons from American corporations.  So in reality most of US foreign aid becomes more welfare programs for the military industrial complex.

Because of current civil war conditions in Egypt the Obama team is having to hold off on providing more aid to that embattled nation.  A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 51% of respondents said it's better to cut off military assistance to Egypt, while 26% backed continued aid.

The "aid" now on temporary hold would include: F-16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin; M1A1 tanks from General Dynamics; and Apache attack helicopters made by Boeing Co.

CBS News reported on August 20: "The billion dollars in aid Congress approved for Egypt does not go directly to Cairo, it goes to places such as Archbald, Pennsylvania. The General Dynamics factory there makes parts for the M1A1 tank. General Dynamics is filling an order for 125 tank kits for the Egyptian Army.  One-hundred-thirty people work at the Archbald facility."

You can imagine the workers at the Archbald facility want this "aid" to continue.  Archbald Mayor Ed Fairbrother says the jobs are "extremely important" to the community. "They are some of the best jobs we have in the community," he says. "Those are the kinds of jobs that sustain communities and families."

There are 44 companies in Pennsylvania involved in production of the M1A1. The interesting thing is that Egypt does not need the tanks and many of the "kits" are still in crates after being delivered to their military.

American communities have become addicted to war spending and military production. As most traditional manufacturing industry has moved overseas seeking cheaper labor the best jobs in most parts of the nation are building weapons.  It's thus no coincidence that the #1 industrial export product of our nation is weapons.  And what is our global marketing strategy for that product line? Hello Syria!

i forgot my phone

not buyin it...,

this cat's voice and accent are special effects...,

everything else is merely conversation...,

The fourth dimension is unknowable. If it exists and if at the same time we cannot know it, it evidently means that something is lacking in our psychic apparatus, in our faculties of perception; in other words, phenomena of the region of the fourth dimension are not reflected in our organs of sense. We must examine why this should be so, what are our defects on which this non-receptivity depends, and must find the conditions (even if only theoretically) which would make the fourth dimension comprehensible and accessible to us. These are all questions relating to psychology or, possibly, to the theory of knowledge.

Further, we know that the region of the fourth dimension (again, if it exists) is not only unknowable for our psychic apparatus, but is inaccessible in a purely physical sense. This must depend not on our defects, but on the particular properties and conditions of the region of the fourth dimension itself. It is necessary to examine what these conditions are, which make the region of the fourth dimension inaccessible to us, and to find the relation between the physical conditions of the region of the fourth dimension and the physical condition of our world. And having established this, it is necessary to see whether in the world surrounding us there is anything similar to these conditions, that is, whether there are any relations analogous to relations between the region of three dimensions and that of four dimensions.

The History of the Dollar, its Relation to Oil, and the Real Motives Behind the Wars of the Past Two Decades

strategic plan - definitely! narrative plan - not so much...,

guardian | Massacres of civilians are being exploited for narrow geopolitical competition to control Mideast oil, gas pipelines. Few recall that US agitation against Syria began long before recent atrocities, in the context of wider operations targeting Iranian influence across the Middle East.

In May 2007, a presidential finding revealed that Bush had authorised CIA operations against Iran. Anti-Syria operations were also in full swing around this time as part of this covert programme, according to Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker. A range of US government and intelligence sources told him that the Bush administration had "cooperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations" intended to weaken the Shi'ite Hezbollah in Lebanon. "The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria," wrote Hersh, "a byproduct" of which is "the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups" hostile to the United States and "sympathetic to al-Qaeda." He noted that "the Saudi government, with Washington's approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria," with a view to pressure him to be "more conciliatory and open to negotiations" with Israel. One faction receiving covert US "political and financial support" through the Saudis was the exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: "I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business", he told French television:

"I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria."

The 2011 uprisings, it would seem - triggered by a confluence of domestic energy shortages and climate-induced droughts which led to massive food price hikes - came at an opportune moment that was quickly exploited. Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials confirmed US-UK training of Syrian opposition forces since 2011 aimed at eliciting "collapse" of Assad's regime "from within."

So what was this unfolding strategy to undermine Syria and Iran all about? According to retired NATO Secretary General Wesley Clark, a memo from the Office of the US Secretary of Defense just a few weeks after 9/11 revealed plans to "attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years", starting with Iraq and moving on to "Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran." In a subsequent interview, Clark argues that this strategy is fundamentally about control of the region's vast oil and gas resources.

Much of the strategy currently at play was candidly described in a 2008 US Army-funded RAND report, Unfolding the Future of the Long War (pdf). The report noted that "the economies of the industrialized states will continue to rely heavily on oil, thus making it a strategically important resource." As most oil will be produced in the Middle East, the US has "motive for maintaining stability in and good relations with Middle Eastern states":

russia and iran mull their syria options...,

rferl | U.S.-led military intervention in Syria would put Washington on a collision course with two unwavering allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- Iran and Russia.

Just how Tehran and Moscow might react is a key part of the calculus that U.S. President Barack Obama must consider in weighing his course of action in Syria.

Although analysts agree that neither country is likely to respond with direct military support for Assad, they also don't expect Tehran or Moscow to sit back passively. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has said that an attack against Assad is a "red line" that would trigger a response, although it has not said what that response might be.

Iran's reaction to date has been mild, with Tehran condemning both the use of chemical weapons and threats of foreign military intervention.

According to Will Fulton, an Iran analyst with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, the IRGC would likely not risk a direct confrontation with the United States but could act through proxies, including Hizballah in Lebanon or Shi'ite militias in Iraq.

Tehran would also seek to capitalize on anti-U.S. reaction at home and across the region. "I think we will absolutely see more condemnations, more warnings from IRGC and hard-line officials, and this will of course play into, especially, the IRGC's narrative that the conflict in Syria is a conspiracy of Israel and the West," Fulton says. "So they will use this attack to fuel that narrative and it will become a recruiting tool and a narrative defense of their own foreign interference in Syria."

nuclear program of iran

wikipedia | The nuclear program of Iran was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program.^[1] The participation of the United States and Western European governments in Iran's nuclear program continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran.^[2]

After the 1979 revolution, a clandestine nuclear weapons research program was disbanded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who considered such weapons forbidden under Muslim ethics and jurisprudence.^[3] Small scale research into nuclear weapons may have restarted during the Iran-Iraq War, and underwent significant expansion after the Ayatollah's death in 1989.^[4]

Iran's nuclear program has included several research sites, two uranium mines, a research reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include three known uranium enrichment plants. ^[5]

Iran's first nuclear power plant, Bushehr I reactor was complete with major assistance of Russian government agency Rosatom and officially opened on 12 September 2011.^[6] Iran has announced that it is working on a new 360 MW nuclear power plant to be located in Darkhovin. The Russian engineering contractor Atomenergoprom said the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant would reach full capacity by the end of 2012.^[7] Iran has also indicated that it will seek more medium-sized nuclear power plants and uranium mines in the future.^[8]

In November 2011, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors criticized Iran after an IAEA report concluded that before 2003 Iran likely had undertaken research and experiments geared to developing a nuclear weapons capability.^[9] The IAEA report details allegations that Iran conducted studies related to nuclear weapons design, including detonator development, the multiple-point initiation of high explosives, and experiments involving nuclear payload integration into a missile delivery vehicle.^[10] A number of Western nuclear experts have stated there was very little new in the report, that it primarily concerned Iranian activities prior to 2003,^[11] and that media reports exaggerated its significance.^[12] Iran rejected the details of the report and accused the IAEA of pro-Western bias.^[13] and threatened to reduce its cooperation with the IAEA

lords of the black stone...,

nazibelluncovered | Put most simply the Nazi Bell was in fact a heavy particle accelerator used as an artificial neutron source to breed Protactinium 233 from Thorium 232. Protactinium would naturally degrade after 27 days into pure bomb grade Uranium 233

Uranium 233 derived from spent reactor waste is often contaminated by Uranium 232 when Thorium 230 gets bombarded by a second neutron, but in a particle accelerator this process does not have time to occur and thus U232 contamination is as low as one part per million and thus as safe to handle as weapons grade Plutonium.

According to speech notes recently uncovered in KGB archives, Heisenberg advocated harvesting Protactinium for a nuclear weapon at the Harneck Haus conference in July 1942. Later whilst interned at Farm Hall Cambridgeshire after the War, Heisenberg also identified harvesting Protactinium as one of three methods of obtaining fissile material for a nuclear bomb.

The other two of course, being to either enrich U235, or to reprocess Plutonium from spent fuel in a thermal nuclear  reactor... Our history books tell us all about these other two methods in Nazi Germany but are strangely silent on the Protactinium harvesting project. Why is that?

The wartime Chairman of AEG, Herman Bucher revealed to OSS informant Erwin Respondek that his company was funding development of a Heavy Particle Accelerator for the Atomic Bomb Project at Bisingen.

The process harnessed the fluorescent quality of Mercury to cause collisions between electrons and photons, which in result released thermal neutrons. The device was surrounded by a concave beryllium mirror to reflect neutrons back into a mass of Thorium oxide placed at the core. The machine generated this X-ray plasma in orbit around an axle which spun two carefully frequency  phased contra-rotating drums.

Respondek also revealed to the OSS that Heisenberg worked closely with Swiss engineer Dr Walter Dallenbach at a secret facility known as "Forschungsstelle D" at Bisingen to develop the Nazi bell. A report by the OSS in November 1944, cited information from an engineer named  Nagglestein who related Otto Hahn's laboratory at Tailfingen in a town close to Bisingen was using Thorium to obtain Uranium for an Atomic Bomb.
How the Story Emerges

In August 1997 a Polish Intelligence officer with access to Polish Government documents made writer Igor Witkowski aware of the Nazi Bell. Original documents came from war crime interrogation of former SS Lt General Jakob Sporrenberg after the war.

According to Witkowski whilst working as a military journalist, an undisclosed member of Polish military intelligence showed him some interesting documents. Witkowski received discreet access over a period of a month during which he transcribed files by hand. These documents have not been independently verified, however there are several less well detailed corroborations of the Bell project from entirely different sources. Leader for the Bell project was Prof Walther Gerlach, who was also the leader of Germany's Uranium project from January 1944. It's logical to assume therefore that the Bell was part of Nazi Germany's Atomic weapons project.

Witkowski read from Sporrenberg's depositions for his War Crimes trial of a centrifuge device shaped like a Bell with a hemispherical domed top. The outer Bell was made of three inch thick ceramic, much like a high voltage porcelain insulator. Said to be 9 feet in diameter and 12-14 feet high. It consumed prodigious amounts of electrical power and glowed violet-blue when operated for short periods.

Inside the Bell was located two contra rotating drums. Norwegian born physicist Rolf Wideroe wrote in his autobiography about development of the Bell at Hamburg, by the company CHF Muller. In his patent his diagrams showed one sphere inside another spun on a common axle. As is common with particle accelerators a vacuum has to be created to propagate plasma inside these evacuated chambers. Then heated mercury vapour would have been bled into the cavity and then once spun up subjected to powerful discharges of electricity to ionise the Mercury. Under this influence the Mercury would fluoresce and photons would collide with extremely energetic electrons, creating Gamma X-rays. These X-rays in turn would stimulate the Beryllium oxide in the Xerum 525 to emit thermal neutrons. In turn these thermal neutrons would be absorbed by the Thorium 232 changing it into Protactinium 233.

Wideroe called this device the Wirbel-Rohr, or Vortex Tube. Patents for variations on the same theme had been applied for in 1935 by both Prof Max Steenbeck and his rival Swiss scientist Dr Walter Dallenbach. After WW2 Steenbeck co-operated with the Soviets to replicate the Nazi Bell. The Soviets named it the Tokamak.

The Bell concept exploited an even earlier patent. In March 1934 Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard applied for a patent which was titled "improvements in, or relating to the transmutation of Chemical Elements. His Patent described how radioactive bodies are generated by bombarding suitable elements with neutrons. Szilard went on to describe "such uncharged nuclei penetrate even substances containing the heavier elements without ionisation loss and cause the formation of radio-active substances."   

[1] Mercury (alternate accounts say amalgams of Mercury) were spun inside these drums. In likelihood the Mercury was introduced from beneath as a heated vapour. Jelly like compounds of Beryllium with Thorium were located in flasks contained within the central axis. The Nazis were known to have made special paraffin from Deuterium (heavy Hydrogen) because of it's catalytic qualities in radioactive exchanges. Mercury also played a role by releasing photons into the plasma. It is the collision of energetic electrons with photons which gives off gamma radiation.

Beryllium compounds used in the Nazi Bell were called “Xerum 525.” During WW2 Nazi scientists discovered paraffin was useful as a moderator in reactor experiments. Paraffin would fit the description of "Xerum 525" as a pinkish jelly like substance. Pink colour possibly came from the mixing of Mercury (II) Iodide also known as Red Mercury into the compound, thus by implication Xerum 525 most likely contained Beryllium and Thorium suspended in heavy paraffin.

the special relationship: spying on israel a very high priority

slate | The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman has another blockbuster today from the mixed-up files of Mr. Edward J. Snowden, this one providing details of the top-secret $52.6 billion “black budget” for the 16 spy agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community.

Among other details, the report discusses the recent resurgence of the CIA and the intelligence community’s new focus on “offensive cyber operations.” It also includes this striking detail:

Pakistan is described in detail as an “intractable target,” and counterintelligence operations “are strategically focused against [the] priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel.”

The inclusion of Israel on that list might seem surprising, but the United States and its “greatest friend” have a long history of spying on each other. Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo of the AP reported on some of this last year:

In addition to what the former U.S. officials described as intrusions in homes in the past decade, Israel has been implicated in U.S. criminal espionage cases and disciplinary proceedings against CIA officers and blamed in the presumed death of an important spy in Syria for the CIA during the administration of President George W. Bush.

The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence threat in the agency's Near East Division, the group that oversees spying across the Middle East, according to current and former officials. Counterintelligence is the art of protecting national secrets from spies. This means the CIA believes that U.S. national secrets are safer from other Middle Eastern governments than from Israel. […]

The National Security Agency historically has kept tabs on Israel. The U.S., for instance, does not want to be caught off guard if Israel launches a surprise attack that could plunge the region into war and jeopardize oil supplies, putting American soldiers at risk.

Matthew Aid, the author of "The Secret Sentry," about the NSA, said the U.S. started spying on Israel even before the state was created in 1948. Aid said the U.S. had a station on Cyprus dedicated to spying on Israel until 1974. Today, teams of Hebrew linguists are stationed at Fort Meade, Md., at the NSA, listening to intercepts of Israeli communications, he said.

And then there’s the high-profile case of Jonathan Pollard, the former Navy civilian intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying for Israel in 1987 and sentenced to life in prison. Pollard’s release has long been a priority of the Netanyahu government and, apparently, Anthony Weiner.

None of this has prevented the intelligence services of the two countries from working together, as they apparently did in the creation of the Stuxnet worm that crippled Iranian nuclear systems in 2010. As I noted on Monday, a certain amount of spying between allies is expected.

But leaders in Tel Aviv probably still won’t be thrilled to see themselves included on a list with Russia and Iran. 

Die Glocke was code for the forging of an Atomic weapon - REDUX (originally posted 1/28/12)

naziabomb | Put most simply the Nazi Bell was in fact a heavy particle accelerator used as an artificial neutron source to breed Protactinium 233 from Thorium 232. Protactinium would naturally degrade after 27 days into pure bomb grade Uranium 233. Heisenberg advocated this method at the Harneck Haus conference in July 1942 and worked closely with Swiss engineer Dr Walter Dallenbach at a secret facilty known as "Forschungsstelle D" to develop the Nazi bell.

It harnessed the fluorescent quality of Mercury to cause collisions between electrons and photons, which in result released thermal neutrons. The device was surrounded by a concave beryllium mirror to reflect neutrons back into a mass of Thorium oxide placed at the core. The machine generated this X-ray plasma in orbit around an axle which spun two carefully phased contrarotating drums.

dave chappelle and the prophetic tradition on Double-0 in Syria ..,

Will Double-0 Go It Alone?: New York Times: "President Obama is willing to move ahead with a limited military strike on Syria even while allies like Britain are debating whether to join the effort and without an endorsement from the United Nations Security Council, senior administration officials said Thursday. Although the officials cautioned that Mr. Obama had not made a final decision, all indications suggest that the strike could occur as soon as United Nations inspectors, who are investigating the Aug. 21 attack that killed hundreds of Syrians, leave the country. They are scheduled to depart Damascus, the capital, on Saturday. The White House is to present its case for military action against Syria to Congressional leaders on Thursday night." 

He won't have to: New York Times: President François Hollande of France on Friday offered strong support for international military action against the Syrian government, supporting the Obama administration just a day after the British Parliament rejected Minister Prime David Cameron’s call for intervention. 

A chemical attack on Aug. 21 attributed to Syrian forces in the Damascus suburbs by Western powers “must not go unpunished,” Mr. Hollande said in an interview with Le Monde, the French daily newspaper. “Otherwise, it would be taking the risk of an escalation that would normalize the use of these weapons and threaten other countries.” 

A military strike against government targets would have a “dissuasion value” and push the government of President Bashar al-Assad toward a negotiated “political solution” to the conflict, Mr. Hollande said in referring to France’s explicitly stated goal. 

France has been outspoken in saying the government of Mr. Assad must be punished for the reported poison gas attack last Wednesday, in which hundreds of people were killed. Although Mr. Hollande has presented no specific evidence linking Syrian government to the attacks, he has spoken confidently of its culpability. Parliamentary approval is not required for French military action, and Mr. Hollande has said his government is “prepared to punish” those responsible.