thedailywhat: This Seems Kind Of Wrong of the Day: Cell phone service was temporarily suspended in several Bay Area Rapid Transit stations to prevent protesters from communicating with each other, according to BART police Lt. Andy Alkire. Word that members of “No Justice No BART” would be protesting the shooting death of Charles Hill by a BART police officer reached BART’s media relations department, which asked wireless providers to shut off service at four downtown San Francisco stations to prevent “disruptive activities.” A similar protest on July 11th delayed trains for hours during the evening commute. “Paid areas of BART stations are reserved for ticketed passengers who are boarding, exiting or waiting for BART cars and trains, or for authorized BART personnel,” BART said in a statement explaining their actions. “No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms.” Alkire called the service disruption “a great tool to utilize for this specific purpose.” Charles Hill, a heavily intoxicated 45-year-old transient, was shot and killed by a BART police officer who claimed Hill was threatening him with knives. According to witness testimony, Hill was not running or lunging as the two officers who intercepted him reported. CCTV footage released by BART does not appear to verify either version of the story. [ktvu / bart / image: baycitizen.]
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thedailywhat:

This Seems Kind Of Wrong of the Day: Cell phone service was temporarily suspended in several Bay Area Rapid Transit stations to prevent protesters from communicating with each other, according to BART police Lt. Andy Alkire.

Word that members of “No Justice No BART” would be protesting the shooting death of Charles Hill by a BART police officer reached BART’s media relations department, which asked wireless providers to shut off service at four downtown San Francisco stations to prevent “disruptive activities.” A similar protest on July 11th delayed trains for hours during the evening commute.

“Paid areas of BART stations are reserved for ticketed passengers who are boarding, exiting or waiting for BART cars and trains, or for authorized BART personnel,” BART said in a statement explaining their actions. “No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms.”

Alkire called the service disruption “a great tool to utilize for this specific purpose.”

Charles Hill, a heavily intoxicated 45-year-old transient, was shot and killed by a BART police officer who claimed Hill was threatening him with knives. According to witness testimony, Hill was not running or lunging as the two officers who intercepted him reported.

CCTV footage released by BART does not appear to verify either version of the story.

[ktvu / bart / image: baycitizen.]

Angola detains journalist over report on mass fainting

New York, August 5, 2011—Angolan authorities should explain Tuesday’s arrest and incommunicado detention of a radio journalist for reporting on a nationwide wave of mass fainting of people, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. 

“The arrest of journalist Adão Tiago highlights the Angolan government’s obsession with controlling information and dictating the narrative instead of focusing on addressing a very serious national crisis,” said CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator Mohamed Keita. “We call on Angolan authorities to explain Tiago’s detention immediately.”

Since April, more than 800 people, mostly teenage schoolchildren, have fainted after complaining of sore throats and eyes, shortness of breath, and coughs, the Catholic Church-run station Radio Ecclesia reported. Amid news reports of unidentified toxic substances, Interior Minister Sebastião Martins ordered investigations into the cause last week, and on Tuesday, Rui Falcão Pinto de Andrade, a spokesman for the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola,asked citizens who were able to help address the problem in any way to come forward, according to state media reports.

The same day, four police officers in the capital, Luanda, picked up Radio Ecclesia reporter Adão Tiago over a July 29 report about the fainting of some 20 students at a local school where he teaches English, according to local journalists. Tiago was arrested without a warrant in front of his students, driven to a police station without explanation, and detained incommunicado for 23 hours, he later told CPJ. A police interrogator questioned the journalist about why he reported the incident, he said. According to CPJ research, Radio Ecclesia works under intense government pressure and self-censorship.

On the day of Tiago’s arrest, Rui Pires, a physician working for the health ministry, blamed the fainting on “mass hysteria” and sensational media reporting, according to news reports.

#NWO - Obama Prepares US For Plans After A Nuclear Detonation! (by DerektQuote) - #WTF 0_o

Source: youtube.com

Mobile phones soon required to receive, display White House propaganda messages

(NaturalNews) If you’re tired of all the half-truths, the propaganda and the complete disinformation that has been spewing from the White House for at least the last twelve years, you can always turn off your television. Switch off the radio. Or just like everybody else, stop reading printed newspapers. But the U.S. government has decided it must reach you with its official propaganda one way or another, so now it is mandating that all mobile phones sold in the United States automatically receive and display “terror messages” from the White House.

Verizon and AT&T have already signed on to the scheme, and starting in 2012, all mobile phones will be required to have this capability. This “feature” will continue for as long as the U.S. federal government continues to exist. Can you imagine what Bush would have done with this technology?

The very idea that the White House is the best source of emergency information is unbelievably arrogant to begin with. If anything, over the last several presidents we’ve seen that the White House is probably the worst source of information you can possibly find. It is the least likely to dish out information based on facts because it always has a one-sided political agenda. To think that the White House is a credible source of information about anything is to exist in an elaborate fairytale land where facts don’t matter at all.

Alerts are mandated

Interestingly, you can’t turn off the White House alerts, meaning you’ll be forced to read whatever current disinfo is being passed off as some kind of alert. Watch out! Bin Laden is in your refrigerator! No wait, he’s stealing your light bulbs! Or as former president George Bush was fond of saying, “Today’s terror color is ORANGE!”

Get ready for a barrage of utterly fabricated, socially-engineered propaganda to be “pushed” to the population via their mobile phones. This is George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in full operation mode, clued right in to people’s fingertips. If you’re going to control the sheeple, after all, you have to have a way to push your disinfo into their heads, and this mobile phone push technology is about as good as it gets.

The FCC also says the system can push Amber alerts and any other information the government wants to put in front of your face. So on the day the dollar is crashing, you’ll all be sent a message, “Everything is fine. The banks are merely on a short holiday. Do not be concerned…”

Or I suppose the next time a nuclear power plant goes Chernobyl in the USA, and there’s radioactive fallout threatening America, the White House can send out an alert that says, “Do NOT prepare. There is nothing to be concerned about. We have it all under control.”

Someone needs to write a White House alert translator that takes the official alerts and translates them into reality. “Do not be concerned” would translate to, “The nation is on the verge of panic,” for example. “Your money is safe” means “your money is about to disappear.” And “We have it under control” means “it’s completely out of control.”

So the alert that reads, “Do not be concerned. Your money is safe. We have it under control.” actually means your money is about to become worthless and the nation will break down into a panic that will get completely out of control.

What we really need is an alternative news push

What America really needs is for mobile phones to carry an alert system from the alternative media. We’d push messages like, “Did you know mammograms cause breast cancer?” Or, “There is cancer-causing poison in hot dogs and bacon.” One tip each day, you see, based on solid facts that people really need to know. “Have you read the warning label on that vaccine?”

But of course the FCC would never allow truthful messages to be broadcast through this alert system. It only exists for propaganda, not factual information that might be useful to people.

Speaking of pushing information, NaturalNews is working on an iPhone app that will push alerts to users, but of course you have to want the alerts (and install the app) in order to receive them. The White House, on the other hand, will be pushing alerts to everyone, even if they never signed up for them. And you can’t turn them off, either. It’s a forced system in the same way that the federal government uses force for everything else: FDA raids on vitamin companies, DEA arrests of licensed medical marijuana growers, FTC threats on herbal product companies, and so on.

They’d better make sure to get their timing right on these alerts. If they send out an alert that says, “There has been a dirty bomb terrorist attack in New York” but they accidentally send it before the attack happens, some people will do the math and figure out what’s up.

You can bet the White House won’t send any alerts that you really need to know. “The U.S. national debt has hit $16 trillion and your economic future is now in doubt.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for that alert to appear on your mobile phone anytime soon.

“The U.S. dollar has been devalued yet again today by the quantitative easing of the Federal Reserve, which keeps printing trillions of dollars in new currency that dilute the value of YOUR currency.” Again, don’t sit around waiting for that message to show up, either.

“The chemical and pharmaceutical companies have polluted our farms, streams, rivers and oceans, rendering the future of life in North America questionable.” Hmmm… probably not gonna see that message, either. What you’re likely to get instead is a steady drone of “sheeple alerts” that keep people living in fear and not knowing what to do:

Red alert! Terrorists are now saying they will attack TRAINS and STADIUMS using BUTT CRACK BOMBS. So to protect you, we will install TSA checkpoints at all the train stations and sports stadiums. Please open your butt crack for inspection. Thank you for your cooperation.

What’s coming next: White House takes over internet DNS to force people to view messages online

To take this one step further, the White House could force ISPs to remap DNS requests so that all web browsers automatically point to the White House website, no matter what web address you type in.

Searching for sports scores? You’ll be rerouted to the White House alert page. Checking your sinking stock portfolio online? You’ll get the White House page. Researching how to grow your own medical marijuana using hydroponics? You’ll get the White House page yet again.

This type of technology can be implemented right now, by the way. It’s more than an internet “kill switch,” it’s an internet “reroute switch.” And it may already be in place without us even knowing about it.

The only way to circumvent this tactic and get directly to the web server you want is to know the IP address of the server. For example, NaturalNews.com can be reached at: http://174.132.185.226

If you keep this address handy (bookmark it or whatever), then the White House cannot reroute your website requests via DNS. This is why it’s a good idea to know the IP addresses of all the key websites you’ll need to access to get good information during a “total information blackout” attempt by the U.S. government. Remember: The Internet is the last place on Earth where you can get truthful information about what’s really happening. That is exactly why it will be targeted for a shutdown during the next big crisis to strike America.

Because the very last thing any government wants its people to have is access to truthful information. Hence the assaults on Wikileaks and anyone who dares to question the status quo.

Senate Democratic Aide: Deal To Avert Shutdown Reached 1.5 Hours Before Deadline

As House Speaker John Boehner briefed his conference on the broad strokes of a government funding bill, aides behind the scenes were still hammering out actual language and details, reaching a deal at about 10:30 p.m., a senior Senate leadership aide told reporters.

The aide said negotiators from the House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the White House met for a final time Friday evening, finally agreeing to a figure of roughly $38 billion. Each side made some final concessions: Democrats agreed to add half a billion dollars in additional cuts to mandatory spending, while Republicans agreed that no language related to Planned Parenthood and Title X funding would be in the short-term funding bill.

They finished negotiations only an hour and a half before government funding expired. If one chamber had not moved by about 11 p.m., the government would have begun to shutdown, the aide said.

And yet, there remained some disputes, including over the actual size of the overall cuts. While Speaker Boehner’s office was talking about $38.5 billion in cuts, Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) emailed that the total is “definitely 37.7 billion.” Boehner’s office could not immediately explain the difference in figures.

On the particulars, too, who actually got the best of the battle was a topic of disagreement. While Boehner’s office triumphantly blasted around a fact-sheet of all the policy changes and spending cuts it secured, Democratic aides insisted they didn’t get a raw deal.

One top aide noted that of the cuts the party signed off on, $17 billion came from mandatory as opposed to discretionary spending. Why was that significant? Because when the debate shifts to the 2012 budget, the baseline numbers lawmakers consider for those mandatory programs reverts back to the previous level. (Had all the cuts been to discretionary spending, it would have had longer-term implications).

“It doesn’t leave scars,” the aide said, “it is a one-year one-time savings.”

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Funding for health care reform implementation and Planned Parenthood were major sticking points, all sides acknowledged. GOP aides originally said the language to block funding for Planned Parenthood was non-negotiable, only to back down when the president and Reid said the bill could go down over that issue. Republican leadership responded by suggesting that it would support putting that rider in the bill while granting Senate Democrats the option of voting it out, a Democratic aide relayed. Instead, they got the inverse. The Planned Parenthood rider would be kept out of the bill with Republicans getting the option to add it in via a vote in the Senate.

Other abortion riders — such as one involving the Mexico City Policy, which requires all non-governmental organizations that receive federal funding to refrain from performing abortions — were either removed or watered down. The one that remained, outlawing federal funds from being used for abortions in D.C., was a “tough” pill to swallow, the Democratic aide acknowledged. But it would only last for five months (until the end of the CR) and, in the end, that measure was cleared with pro-choice Senate Democrats such as Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) before it was inserted to the final legislative language.

The handling of negotiations was as scrutinized as the actual language. Reid, the leadership aide said, was careful in picking his moments to speak up. One of his main contributions was to ask Boehner if it would move the process along to have the Senate hold a vote on H.R. 1, the House-passed funding bill, to show House Republicans that their bill was a non-starter in the Senate.

Obama, meanwhile, became more forceful as negotiations went on, the aide said, growing frustrated as Boehner refused to name specific figures for his desired spending cuts.

One low point came on Wednesday evening, when talks broke down over all major aspects of the deal. The likelihood of reaching a compromise was pegged by Democratic officials at less than 20 percent. House Republicans set certain policy riders as a priority, including language over Guantanamo Bay, the Environmental Protection Agency and financial oversight.

Over time, they walked away from that demand, trading votes on Planned Parenthood and health care reform funding for audits on aspects of health care and financial regulatory reform. A rider relating to EPA language was removed from the bill, after Democrats said the issue had already been decided in a congressional vote held earlier this week. House Republican language blocking funding for National Public Radio and net neutrality were also axed.

Some funding cuts were found by taking $2.5 billion from transportation appropriations, which the aide said had not yet been appropriated. Others were kept by keeping Pentagon funds at $513 billion (Republicans wanted the level raised to $514). Even more were found by re-figuring the president’s health care law, such as $3 billion that was taken out of money to establish insurance cooperatives.

The short-term funding bill, meant to give negotiators time to finalize work on the longer extension, passed through the House and Senate by about 12:30 a.m.. It includes $2 billion of the cuts from the final package, matching the House GOP’s rate of cuts for previous continuing resolutions.

Doomsday bunker sales surge in wake of Japan earthquake

Rendering of a Vivos doomsday bunker being built under the grasslands of NebraskaA rendering of the 950-person bunker that Vivos is planning to build under the grasslands of Nebraska. See inside.

A devastating earthquake strikes Japan. A massive tsunami kills thousands. Fears of a nuclear meltdown run rampant. Bloodshed and violence escalate in Libya.

And U.S. companies selling doomsday bunkers are seeing sales skyrocket anywhere from 20% to 1,000%.

Northwest Shelter Systems, which offers shelters ranging in price from $200,000 to $20 million, has seen sales surge 70% since the uprisings in the Middle East, with the Japanese earthquake only spurring further interest. In hard numbers, that’s 12 shelters already booked when the company normally sells four shelters per year.

“Sales have gone through the roof, to the point where we are having trouble keeping up,” said Northwest Shelter Systems owner Kevin Thompson.

UndergroundBombShelter.com, which sells portable shelters, bomb shelters and underground bunkers, has seen inquiries soar 400% since the Japanese earthquake. So far sales of its $9,500 nuclear biological chemical shelter tents are at an all-time high — with four sold in California last week, compared to about one a month normally.

Hardened Structures said inquiries have shot up about 20% since the earthquake — particularly for its apocalyptic 2012 shelters, radiation-protection tents, and nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) air filters.

0:00 /2:33Living large in an apocalypse bunker

Vivos, a company that sells rooms in 200-person doomsday bunkers, has received thousands of applications since the massive earthquake in Japan, with reservations spiking nearly 1,000% last week. And people are backing their fear with cash: A reservation requires a minimum deposit of $5,000.

“People are afraid of the earth-changing events and ripple effects of the earthquake, which led to tsunamis, the nuclear meltdown, and which will lead to radiation and health concerns,” said Vivos CEO Robert Vicino. “Where it ends, I don’t know. Does it lead to economic collapse? A true economic collapse would lead to anarchy, which could lead to 90% of the population being killed off.”

The last time people flocked to purchase bunkers in such droves was right before the Y2K scare, according to Stephen O’Leary, an associate professor at University of Southern California and an expert on apocalyptic thinking.

“Tens of millions of people believe in a literal apocalypse, which involves earthquakes, storms, disasters of global proportions and especially disasters related to the Middle East,” O’Leary said.

Find the nuke plant nearest to you

But, he added, “Some believe that this is just a turbulent time and they have to go somewhere to ride it out.”

Elan Yadan, a clothing store owner in Los Angeles, is one of the many customers who rushed to find a bunker last week. Yadan secured a spot for his family in a Vivos’ shelter, putting down four deposits totaling $20,000 — $20,000 that had been earmarked for a down payment on a new house.

“I honestly didn’t want to do it, but unfortunately it looks like the worst expectations about the world are starting to come true,” said Yadan, who had been reading about Mayan predictions of a global meltdown in 2012. “With the things happening this week, it’s better to be safe than sorry. And what good is a house if you don’t feel safe?”

Yadan will be riding out any apocalypse in Vivos’ most ambitious project to date. The company has more than five 200-person shelters in the U.S. that are in various stages of construction, but this facility outshines them all.

The bunker, which is being built under the grasslands of Nebraska, is 137,000 square feet — bigger than a Wal-Mart — can house 950 people for up to one year, and can withstand a 50 megaton blast. Once completed, it will boast four levels of individual suites, a medical and dental center, kitchens, bakery, prayer room, computer area, pool tables, pet kennels, a fully stocked wine cellar and a detention center to place anyone who turns violent.

Plus, there will be a fortified 350-foot lookout tower for residents who want to see what’s happening in the outside world.

Once Vivos collects deposits from at least half the number of residents needed to fill the bunker, it will take them on a tour of the near-completed site. At that point, they must pay the rest of the $25,000 reservation fee.

That’s what Yadan intends to do.

“I’m not a psychic but I’m not a scientist either, so I’d rather err on the side of caution — and I’d rather survive and live in a bunker for a year than be wiped out,” he said. To top of page

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