The Agonist - Unproven Stories

Did Chandrayaan find water on Moon’s surface?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:49:46 -0700

Srinivas Laxman | Mumbai | September 23

Times of India - Did India’s maiden Moon mission Chandrayaan-1 find water on the lunar surface before the project was aborted? There were indications on Tuesday that it had. An announcement about a ‘‘major discovery’’ made by Chandrayaan-I is expected on Thursday, and the buzz is that this could be about water on the Moon.

If true, credit for this much-awaited discovery, however, could go to Nasa’s Moon Minerology Mapper (M3), one of the payloads on board Chandrayaan. The Rs 386-crore craft was launched on October 22 last year and terminated on August 30 following a communication failure. One of the mission’s main goals was to sniff for water.

For now, neither Isro nor Nasa is speaking about the discovery.

An announcement is expected at a media interaction scheduled for Thursday at the Nasa headquarters in Washington DC.

Indian critics have compared this to trying to make lemonade out of a lemon (Chandrayaan was an embarrassing failure for India)

Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:11:48 -0700

Peter Wallsten | Washington | September 14

LAT - Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP's broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid.

Such insiders point to theories running rampant on the Internet, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, or that he is a communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents. Those theories, the insiders say, have stoked the GOP base and have created a "purist" climate in which a figure such as Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) is lionized for his "You lie!" outburst last week when Obama addressed Congress.

They are "wild accusations and the paranoid delusions coming from the fever swamps," said David Frum, a conservative author and speechwriter for President George W. Bush who is among the more vocal critics of the party base and of the conservative talk show hosts helping to fan the unrest.

"Like all conservatives, I am concerned about this administration's accumulation of economic power," Frum said. "Still, you have to be aware that there's a line where legitimate concerns begin to collapse into paranoid fantasy."

Some are pressuring the Republican National Committee and other mainstream GOP groups to cut ties with WorldNetDaily.com, which reports some of the allegations. Its articles are cited by websites and pundits on the right. More than any other group, critics say, WorldNetDaily sets the conservative fringe agenda.

Critics charge that the RNC has paid WorldNetDaily for access to its mailing list, estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands, and that the RNC is therefore subsidizing the website's anti-Obama writings.

Frum? Couldn't they get an American to opine? -- Oops - he's defected from Canada to the US. On September 11 (2007) no less. I suppose he would be more at home here... Still, it's nice that leading conservative lights recognize that distancing themselves from the crowds they've incited to just this side of violence might be politically opportune. Why, though, wait so long to attempt to drain the fever swamps?

Russian navy declassifies UFO encounters

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:14:05 -0700

Rich Bowden | July 28

The Tech Herald - The Russian navy is the latest to join the bandwagon of world official agencies anxious to declassify its encounters with Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

According to Svobodnaya Pressa news website, records of unexplained encounters by submarines and ships of the Russian navy have been revealed to the public for the very first time.

** France opens secret UFO files covering 50 years
** Is there anybody out there? How the men from the ministry hid the hunt for UFOs
** MoD: Files released on UFO sightings

Vladimir Azhazha, former navy officer and a famous Russian UFO researcher, told Russia Today of a peculiar characteristic of UFOs, never before revealed to the general public - that they (UFOs) apparently enjoy water.

“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said to RT.

Following in a similar vein to recently-released NASA encounters with UFOs, the Russian records reveal an unexplained encounter a nuclear submarine had with six unknown objects underwater. After failing to get away from the UFOs, the captain allegedly gave the order to surface. The mysterious objects followed suit, then took off, according to the records.

Young stockbroker's death fall stuns family and friends

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:09:15 -0700

SMH - A young London stockbroker - reportedly worried about losing his job - put on an expensive suit, bought himself a glass of champagne from a fancy eighth-floor restaurant, and leapt to his death, his parents say. Anjool Malde was to celebrate his 25th birthday tonight. He had created flyers to promote his party, which was being staged by the event management company he started with friends. But on Sunday, the Oxford graduate is believed to have taken his own life by jumping from the rooftop of the Coq d'Argent hotel.

A story I glanced at earlier but moved on, but wait money laundering, intelligence investigations, a 24 year old with achievements of men 10-15 years older, hmmmm.

a once in a lifetime singularity...

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:40:23 -0700

...will absolutely take place july 8 at 4:05.06...

Walter Cronkite Gravely Ill

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:21:01 -0700

Gail Shister | New York | June 18

TVNewser - TVNewser has learned legendary CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, 92, who once held the title of "Most Trusted Man in America," is gravely ill, according to multiple CBS News sources. The network began updating his obituary more than a week ago, a source adds.

CBS News executive Linda Mason, designated to speak on Cronkite's behalf, had no comment.

The avuncular Cronkite anchored "CBS Evening News" for 19 years, until 1981, when he was forced to retire. Dan Rather was named his successor. Cronkite maintained an office at CBS, where he was a special correspondent.

A native of St. Joseph, Mo., Cronkite made his mark as a World War II correspondent for United Press. He joined CBS in 1950 as a Washington correspondent. In 1962, he was named anchor of "CBS Evening News," then 15 minutes in length. The following year, it became network TV's first 30'minute weeknight newscast.

Cronkite's nightly sign-off -- "And that's the way it is..." - became part of the popular lexicon, and his gravelly voice was instantly recognizable. During his tenure, he led "Evening News" to first place in the Nielsen ratings.

Thursday night, New York Newsday, The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Sun-Times all reported Cronkite's illness. Officials with CBS news have refused to comment on Cronkite's condition.

Cronkite assistant disputes "exaggerated" report
The Names Blog (Boston Globe), By Mark Shanahan & Meridith Goldstein, June 19

Former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite isn’t well, but he is not nearly as ill as some web sites are reporting. “His condition is being grossly exaggerated,” Cronkite’s executive assistant Cynthia Dicrocco told us today. “He’s dealing with the challenges of being a 92-year-old man.”

Buggy Whips Come Roaring Back

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:20:18 -0700

Buggy whips, long-time objects of derision from college accounting faculty teaching the costs and problems of holding outdated inventory, are once again viable. With the costs of oil production soaring, and with world supplies of petroleum reaching scarcity, transportation planners are looking to encourage production of buggies and therefore buggy whips.

The emergency need for buggy whips has spawned a worldwide search for supplies left over and stored at the beginning of the automobile age. The only stores of buggy whips thought to be left on the planet are being held in warehouses in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana Amish Mennonite communities, now under protection of the National Guards of those states.

"This could reprise the United States' world leadership in exports," gleefully exclaimed Dilbert Fauxman, Director of the National Statistical Obfuscation Institute, "as China, South Korea, and other Eastern countries struggle to tool up."

Meanwhile, in Iran, overshadowing even the election confrontations, diplomatic protests are being planned against the rumored U.S. 'secret weapon for world conquest.' "This is just another Israeli/U.S. plot against our national integrity," an Iranian anonymous source was quoted as saying.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is launching a diplomatic counter-offensive on Voice of America to reassure the world that these buggy whips are only for the United States' own transportation needs and that no plans are being made to develop nuclear buggy whips. U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have issued a joint announcement that no plans are being made to obtain buggy whips for White House children Malia and Sasha Obama "until they are old enough to secure driver's licenses."

We will stay with this developing story and report any new issues and developments as they arise.

Anatomy of a Cabinet coup: how Blairite ministers tried to remove Brown

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:56:57 -0700

Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite | June 6

Sunday Telegraph -
Over three days last week a group of senior ministers, with a degree of co-ordination and timing, severely damaged the Prime Minister and came close to toppling him.

The background to the plot began less than two years ago, when Mr Brown he took over from Tony Blair. He offered Government jobs to a number of leading supporters of the former prime minister in a bid to heal the damaging divisions of the old TB-GB wars that had scarred Mr Blair's premiership. Many of those who accepted – including James Purnell, David Miliband, Hazel Blears, John Denham and Caroline Flint – did so despite their profound doubts over Mr Brown's suitability as Prime Minister.

As time went on – and Mr Brown's time at Number 10 lurched from crisis to crisis – those doubts grew. Last summer Mr Miliband had the chance to strike against Mr Brown after writing a provocative newspaper article, but failed to so.

Since the Telegraph itself has been instrumental in trying to topple Brown, I've marked this as 'unproven'. It's an interesting read, whether fact or fiction

STOP THE PRESSES! BILDERBERG AGENDA EXPOSED!

Fri, 22 May 2009 01:41:38 -0700

Just in from American Free Press.
I love the adverts at the bottom of the page, Gideons, Scriptures for America, Poem of the Man God, Miracles of St Joseph...

AFP’s (heh ~graham) editor crashed the secret meeting of the global elite and uncovered some scary schemes.

Bilderberg boys are a bunch of grumpy old men but remain fiercely dedicated to usurping sovereignty in the United States and throughout the world. Patriots can celebrate their setbacks but never let up: Bilderberg still threatens the sovereignty of all nations while fighting for world government.

Major goals remain exploiting the global recession and an imaginary “swine flu pandemic” to establish global departments of treasury and health under the United Nations. But at the May 14-17 meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece, near Athens, Bilderberg took a keen interest in persuading the United States to surrender sovereignty to the International Criminal Court, or ICC.

Bilderberg is also setting up a “summit” in Israel June 8-11 so “the world’s leading regulatory experts” can “address the current economic situation in one forum,” said Zohar Goshen, chairman of a subgroup of the International Association of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). Mary Shapiro, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, will represent this country.

Bilderberg found President Obama a Willing Wilkie at its June, 2008 meeting in Chantilly, Va. near Washington. They were reassured when he chose their boy, Harold Koh, a strong advocate of the U.S. accepting the ICC, as the State Department’s top lawyer.

In the Penn State Law Review, Koh wrote sneeringly of “nationalists” who oppose surrendering sovereignty to international institutions, including the ICC. He praised the “transnationalist faction” on the Supreme Court and the wisdom of the jurists for their rejection of the “nationalist faction.”

{tinfoil}Annual Elite Meeting May 14-17{/tinfoil}

Thu, 07 May 2009 02:56:38 -0700

Here are a few of the talking points and concerns for this year’s meeting:

•The future of the US dollar and US economy: The plan is for the Bilderberg Group players, through their allies in Washington and Wall Street to continue to deceive millions of savers and investors who believe the hype about the supposed up-turn in the economy. They are about to be set up for massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead. The bank “stress tests” now being conducted by Washington are little more than a shameless hoax: Based on the irrational assumption that the economy won’t get as bad as it already is!
•US unemployment: Solutions and assumptions (Stated as such in the pre-meeting booklet sent out to attendees.)
Bilderberg is quietly assuming that US unemployment numbers will hover around 14% by the end of this year, far higher than the official numbers released by the US government.
•Depression or a prolonged stagnation? (Stated as such in the pre-meeting booklet sent out to attendees.) Bilderberg is looking at two options: Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline, and poverty ... or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.
•There will be a final push for the enactment of Lisbon Treaty, pending on Irish voting YES on the treaty in Sept or October. One of their concerns is addressing and neutralizing the anti-Lisbon treaty movement called “Libertas” led by Declan Ganley. One of the Bilderberger planned moves is to use a whispering campaign in the US media suggested that Ganley is being funded by arms dealers in the US linked to the US military.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/10854

Iran accuses Netherlands of overthrow plot: report

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 05:46:22 -0700

Tehran | April 11

AFP - Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards has accused the Netherlands of plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime by supporting the opposition through the media and the Internet, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

"One of the countries which has given financial support to the opposition over the past few years is Holland," according to a statement issued by a centre run by the Guards, the Khorasan newspaper said.

It said the parliament in the Netherlands had in 2005 adopted a 15 million euro budget proposed by a Dutch MP of Iranian origin which was used to fund Persian Internet sites hostile to the Islamic regime and to help rights groups.

"The Dutch project aimed to encourage sexual and moral deviation in society," the Revolutionary Guards centre said, and to support the idea that the "threats (against Iran) are increasing (and) ... the idea that the current Iranian government is incapacitated."

more

[Comment: Gotta watch those Dutch. Gives one an idea of the paranoia the IRGC operates with on the topic. Thanks Sy, very helpful - sure hope the boost to your readership was worth it! ~ JPD]

The Pope should outreach to nerds :D

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:28:52 -0700

http://www.forwardon.com/view.php?e=Id1200c8f6b7f5f813

Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy uncovered by Oklahoma lawmaker

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:59:22 -0700

Behold: The Synthesis...

Reading the OKGazette over a ribeye steak at Bev's Restaurant, I chortled at finding this:

Oklahoma lawmaker talks about plotting diabolical forces

State Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow (Oklahoma) ...His 'revelation' of the 'Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy' is one story, but for me, this interview is itself another in that he, a Republican Oklahoma lawmaker, actually spoke out publicly about such things as war profiteering, Halliburton, no-bid contracts, et al.

To me, this is news. Hilarious to read (he's so emphatically scandalized!) but also something of moment to note for those details alone at least. (While reading the interview, I almost expected him to mention Webster Tarpley's book and Prescott Bush and Nazi Germany -or false flag operations -but he seemed to me to be really trying to keep to a presumably circumspect limit...)

30 years he's been studying these things, he says. Why wait til now to speak up on at least the material aspects? Corruption is such a dicey thing to speak of politically. In this state, I don't think any republican lawmaker actually could until now, now that the federal government is again in enemy hands. The tinfoil hat aspects may well coat the bitter pill and give it an indirect face and name, intentionally or not. I was first inclined to believe he'd be interviewed by Alex Jones within the week but now I believe that would be too over the top. To my mind, where and how far this story goes (by what I presume to be it's unknown handlers if such exist) will say a lot in itself.

Yes, I chortled. I giggled, hooted and hollered. It's okay, I'm an old regular.

Obama & Biden chipped or wearing tracking devices?

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:21:40 -0800

New Yorker: Obama & Biden chipped or wearing tracking devices?

By Russ Kick at 2 March, 2009, 5:04 pm

While profiling White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza saw something interesting in Emanuel’s office. It's mentioned only in passing:

Next to his computer monitor is a smaller screen that looks like a handheld G.P.S. device and tells Emanuel where the President and senior White House officials are at all times.

So, Obama, Biden, and other “senior White House officials” are lojacked? It makes sense that they’d be wearing/carrying something (or is it, as seems likely, an injected RFID chip?) that always gives their location in case of kidnapping, medical emergency, etc.

But here’s the kicker: The device is obviously giving off a signal, which is how it can be tracked, and that signal could theoretically be intercepted by unauthorized parties. And it could probably be blocked, faked, etc.

more

***

An interesting aside: Russ Kick, the author of this piece, runs a blogsite on books I'd been to a while back and then promptly forgot about and am now glad to be reminded of:
http://www.booksarepeopletoo.com/

This is from it's 'About' page:

Lord, do I love books. Reading them, writing them, editing them, reviewing, publishing, designing, collecting, discovering, buying, gifting, donating, perusing, fondling, smelling. My dreams regularly take place in libraries and bookstores, one time on a book-lined spiral staircase, and another in the book-filled basement of a dark mansion straight out of Poe. Stashes and piles of books fill my living space. Boxes of them clog my entire storage unit, front to back, floor to ceiling. My first published pieces were book reviews. My first two books were books of book reviews (1,800+ total). I have ideas for more books than I may be able to write or edit/compile in my lifetime.

How could I not blog about books? And magazines. Newspapers. Comics. Documents. The printed word, the electronic word, the spoken word. Words without books. Books without words.

–Russ Kick

drugs!

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:38:03 -0800

Obama Orders 17,000 U.S. Troops to Afghanistan
February 18th, 2009

Via: Reuters:

U.S. President Barack Obama, in his first major military decision as commander-in-chief, has ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan to tackle an intensifying insurgency, the White House said on Tuesday.

But in an interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Obama also said military means alone would not solve the problem.

The Invisible Hand of the Market: British Troops Seize £50 Million of Afghan Opium

February 18th, 2009

What I think is happening here is that the USUK smack industrial complex has decided to drive up the street price of heroin.

My theory will be confirmed if we hear that Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan includes counter-narcotics operations.

Why now?

First of all, heroin is cheap. Too cheap:
A gram of heroin can now be bought for as little as £25, with the average price somewhere between £40 and £50 per gram. In 1998, the average was £74.

The USUK is a victim of its own success with regard to heroin production in Afghanistan. The Taliban virtually eliminated it in the run up to 9/11 and then, after the U.S. invaded, opium production soared, year after year.

So, here we are, with cheap heroin.

Second (closely related to the first point), if heroin money is going to be used to buy U.S. Treasuries, it would be desirable for the price of heroin to be as high as possible. We’re in an economic crisis, after all. This is no time for cheap heroin!

*** from here, kevin goes on to correlate much, particularly a recent post on Xe.

and the beat goes on.

opium news

more opium news

drugs. a major underground economy. the one, even. ya, we know. do we? and the beat goes on. drugs. what drugs? head drugs? body drugs? alcohol? is this the time of one vs the other?

http://www.hulu.com/watch/54312/cnbc-originals-marijuana-inc

the dominator culture has pushed all it's chips across the table. take a look at the other side of the table some time. turn left and enter that laundry...

http://egodeath.com