Kevin Ryan: Demolition Access to the WTC Towers

This four-part series was originally published on the web as separate essays on several sites beginning in July 2010 and ending in February 2011. It has been collected here in a pdf document for easy reference. The only changes made were to put all the Notes at the end, rather than after each section, and to provide live links when broken ones were found.  Ryan’s Nov. 11, 2004 email to NIST, which resulted in his being fired from Underwriters Laboratories, is appended for its historical significance.

Virginia is for Misogynists

By Michael Collins

The Virginia legislature is about to enact a law that requires a transvaginal ultrasound procedure for all women who have abortions (except in the case of a medical emergency). Apparently, the legislators are unaware that the law violates existing sexual assault code or that Virginians oppose the law by a wide margin.

Here’s the procedure.

“You will lie down on a table with your knees bent and feet in holders called stirrups. The health care provider will place a probe, called a transducer, into the vagina. The probe is covered with a condom and a gel. … The health care provider will move the probe within the area to see the pelvic organs.” Medline Plus

This isn’t an option. It’s a requirement for an abortion in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The law is clear:

Happy Savages

By Robert C. Koehler

“Thirty seconds to zero . . . six, five, four, three, two, one.”

Suddenly a big orange blossom fills the screen, accompanied by ukuleles and lovely — I mean Strangelovian — Polynesian music. The blossom is actually Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb blast, the largest U.S. test ever, detonated over Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954.

This is a few minutes into Nuclear Savage: The Island Experiments of Secret Project 4.1, one of the most disturbing documentaries I’ve ever seen, and one of seven feature-length films that are part of Chicago’s fourth annual Peace on Earth Film Festival, Feb. 23-26, at the Chicago Cultural Center. The event, once again, is free of charge.

Jungle fungus eats plastic, beats cancer

Pestalotiopsis microspora image by Yale University

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

Researchers have found the first endophytic fungus that eats plastic, and can use it as its sole food source even in an oxygen-free environment. [1]

Pestalotiopsis microspora presents a massive bioremediation opportunity for landfills, where buried and surface plastics can be degraded naturally.

Before there was indefinite detention, there was Conspiracy Theory (video)

By Goodman Green
BrasscheckTV

Over a year before we heard anything about the National Defense Authorization Act having provisions that codify the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial, over a year before we heard anything about the “activation” of FEMA camps nation-wide, Jesse Ventura told us all about it on his TV show, Conspiracy Theory.

Transforming Troubled Schools

By Robert C. Koehler

What happened?

Can the world shift on such a simple question? Imagine yourself sitting eye-to-eye with a kid in trouble and that’s the first thing you ask. No lecture, no sarcasm, no judgment, no explosion of lost patience and a cry of “Why did you do that?” Just: What happened?

And then you wait for an answer. When it comes, however haltingly, you press gently and firmly on, still without judgment, just the need to know:

What were you thinking at the time?
What have you thought about since?
What do you think you need to do to make things right?

These are the four basic questions of restorative practices, a movement slowly transforming troubled schools and troubled communities around the globe

Virginia moves to repeal mandatory HPV vaccine

By Catherine J. Frompovich
VacTruth.com

Finally—and thank God, if I still can say that—some legislators have come to their senses about the obviously dangerous HPV vaccines touted as preventing either the human papillomavirus and/or cervical cancer, Gardasil® and Cervarix®.

Perhaps some Virginia state legislators examined the CDC’s VAERS reports and found what Drs. Gary Null and Nancy Ashley reported in their VacTruth article of January 25, 2012:

CDC calls Morgellons’ nanoworms a delusion, protects DARPA

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

Imagine having the mental prowess to be able to create living filaments heretofore unknown, that can reproduce themselves, some of which come with identifying letters embossed on them, and then to make them extrude from beneath your skin, all against your conscious will. [Image]

Sound like science fiction?  It’s not, says the US Centers for Disease Control.

Despite having spent four years and $600,000, and using the world’s largest forensic database, the premier health agency reports it is unable to identify the source of the fibers emanating from those suffering with Morgellons. [1]

Giuliani on WTC7 questions: Get a haircut, take a shower

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

When confronted with questions about World Trade Center 7 at a speech on Thursday at the University of Florida, bald Rudy Giuliani told long-haired radio host Bob Tuskin, “You are too rude to be entitled to an answer. May I suggest a haircut and a shower?”

Filmed by The Intel Hub, Tuskin was escorted from the auditorium.

Another audience member began questioning the former New York City mayor’s honesty, to which he responded, “Oh, get lost,” reports The Alligator, calling him a “clown.”

The Crisis of Education in America: “How to Become a Serf”

By John Kozy
Global Research

Educational systems now train workers to fulfill the needs of companies. A society in which people exist for the sake of companies is a society enslaved. But there’s a deep problem with the notion that education should equal vocational training.

Confessions of a Lukewarmist

By Rady Ananda

Today, the Wall Street Journal published a letter from 16 distinguished scientists addressed to political candidates entitled, No Need to Panic About Global Warming.

“Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now,” they write, a fact that “is known to the warming establishment…”

The piece directly attacks the notion that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the globe, concluding with:

EU signs ACTA, global internet censorship treaty

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

The European Union and 22 member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced today.  They have now joined the US and seven other nations that signed the treaty last October.

Works in Progress

By Robert C. Koehler

I’m sitting in my daughter’s Baltimore apartment thinking about works in progress. This city is a work in progress and its pockets of vibrancy delight me, partly because, like my own hometown, Detroit, it is too frequently written off in the national mindset as broken, dying — above all, an undesirable place to live.

My apolitical thought on this rainy January afternoon is this: Shatter in your own mind the prejudgments of popular culture, the grinning media dictates of who or what is in and who or what is out. Shatter also any notion of what you can and can’t do.

He’s Back: Internet censorship must be stopped

By Chris Pratt
COTO Report

After failing to get COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) passed in 2010, he is back again this year with PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and the Theft of Intellectual Property Act).

Do not forget PIPA is the son of COICA.  Back then (2010) while the Vermont ACLU was nominating Senator Patrick Leahy as the Civil Libertarian of the Year, the national ACLU office was writing him a letter in opposition to COICA legislation.  Senator Wyden from Oregon subsequently tabled it.

Castro: World Peace Hanging by a Thread

Photo released by Iranian Fars News Agency shows Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who was killed in a bomb blast in Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012, with his son.

By Fidel Castro

I am convinced that Iran will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a war. If a war were to be unleashed, it would inevitably be completely as a result of the recklessness and congenital irresponsibility of the Yankee Empire, writes former Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

PIPA vote stalled while US censorship still grows

By Rady Ananda
Activist Post

After the world’s most massive online protest on Jan. 18 against two internet censorship bills, which generated over 7 million petition signatures, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid postponed the PIPA vote set for the 24th, so that lawmakers could rework the bill.

Just Short of Treason in Georgia and Kansas

By Michael Collins

It’s official. The crazies have arrived for the 2012 presidential race, florid in their deviant and repulsive rhetoric. Andrew B. Adler, editor of The Atlanta Jewish Times, called on Israel’s President Benjamin Netanyahu to “Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence.” This reference to President Barack Obama appeared in the print edition of the paper on January 13 and was first published online by Gawker on the 20th (alternate links here and here).

Right wing Republican Mike O’Neal, speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, forwarded an email referring to the president that quoted (approximately) Psalm 109.8: “Let his days be few and brief; and let others step forward to replace him.” The Lawrence Journal World noted that the very next verse, 109.9, indicates how the president should be replaced: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” (Image SND)

The First Amendment is ignored when reactionary mayors want to stop the free speech and assemblies of Occupy Wall Street. However, free speech is expanded beyond the limits of the law when religious extremists in Atlanta and Kansas step well outside of the boundaries of U.S. Code.

Israel’s Role in Creating Hamas

Review of:
Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement
Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell
Polity Press, 2010 (340 pp.)

Beverly Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. Steven Farrell, who has dual British-Irish citizenship, is Middle East Correspondent for The New York Times.

By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

Hamas is about the militant Palestinian group which was democratically elected to run the Palestinian Authority in 2006. The main value of the book is the rich context it provides regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which is totally absent from the mainstream media. Hamas clearly documents the role Israel played in promoting the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in Palestine. The book also emphasizes the essential role foreign financial assistance plays in perpetuating this war – with the US heavily backing Israel and other Islamic states backing occupied Palestine.

The Dignity of Corpses

By Robert C. Koehler

Civilization hasn’t successfully drawn a moral border at the sanctity of human life itself, but because it needs to put some limit on human behavior, it has, apparently, taken a last stand at the dignity of corpses.

It’s OK to kill your enemy, but not to urinate on him, at least not after he’s dead.

Thyroid cancer, fracking and nuclear power

By Rady Ananda
An Activist Post Special Report

Thyroid cancer cases have more than doubled since 1997 in the U.S., while deadly industrial practices that contaminate groundwater with radiation and other carcinogens are also rising.

New information released by the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that 56,460 people will develop thyroid cancer in 2012 and 1,780 will die from it.

That’s up from 16,000 thyroid cancer cases in 1997 – a whopping 253% increase in fifteen years, while the US population went up only 18%.