These chemtrails gave me Morgellons Disease

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DIGITAL HARINEZUMI 1 VS DIGITAL HARINEZUMI 2

DIGITAL HARINEZUMI 1 VS DIGITAL HARINEZUMI 2
Originally uploaded by Mijonju

DIGITAL HARINEZUMI 1 VS DIGITAL HARINEZUMI 2

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0s2XV9JYDo
A video of how to make black and white video with the new digihari2!!! tutorial!

DIGITAL HARINEZUMI 1 and 2 VIDEO COMPARISON
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General review
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DIGITAL HARINEZUMI 2 REVIEW!

I personally like the digital harinezumi 1 more

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Who's to blame for attacks against Pakistan civilians? CIA/MOSSAD Mercs

In a surprising move, the Pakistani Taliban has denied responsibility for the recent attacks in Pakistan. Instead, they blame Xe Services as well as the country's own security forces. Author and investigative journalist Webster Tarpley gives his take on the situation. We've been told time and again that 'al Qaeda' is the sworn enemy of the Jews. Then why do those 'jihadists' blow up mosques, schools, markets and other places filled with Muslims? THEY DON'T. The same ghouls that blew up mosques, schools, markets and other places filled with Muslim women and children in Gaza are the same murderous psychos that blow up civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, aided and abetted by CIA/Pentagon mercs that gladly kill for money. If 'al Qaeda' is such an enemy of Israel, then why don't they strike at Jewish interests around the world, there's sure as hell enough targets.

Fort Hood Shooting is Another Zionist False Flag

US Senator for Israel weighs in on Fort Hood shootings

US Senator Lieberman is an Ashkenazi Islamophobe

Today President Barack Obama will be at Fort Hood, Texas to say some words on the shootings that took place at the US Army base on November 5. The shootings which killed 13 soldiers and wounded 30 others is the worst inside a US military installation and the third worst in US History. The second worst, coincidentally, took place just outside Fort Hood in 1991 when George Hennard massacred 23 people and wounded another 20 at a family restaurant.

The alleged shooter is US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a highly educated officer with a doctorate in psychiatry who is presently recovering from wounds received during the shootings at a San Antonio army hospital. Major Hasan is a Muslim who according to his family was constantly harassed by others in the military because of his faith. According to family members, Major Hasan was frequently demeaned by being referred to as a "raghead" and a "camel jockey." The harassment did not merely stop at name calling but also included physical attacks on his property.

According to a Killeen Police Department report, a White soldier who had just returned from Iraq in August, was arrested and charged with maliciously causing over $1,000 dollars in damage to Major Hasan's automobile. The bigot was not, however, charged with a hate crime even though he admitted he did it because he did not appreciate Muslims. A neighbor said Major Hasan was not upset by the incident even though his car was damaged so badly that he had to get a new one. According to the neighbor, Major Hasan forgave the culprit and moved on because it was Ramadan.

In addition, the manager of the apartment where Major Hasan lived in Killeen, said that a bumper sticker was torn off the major's automobile. He said the man who ripped off the bumper sticker objected to Major Hasan's faith. The torn bumper sticker said, "Allah is Love" which means God is Love. Fort Hood and the adjoining area in Central Texas is full of ignorant rednecks. These racist rednecks are similar to the vicious Minutemen vigilantes in Arizona who recently invaded the home of a Mexican-American family and murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father.

Today, Americans are again scratching their heads, like after 911, and trying to make sense of the Fort Hood shootings. Enter the Ashkenazi Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut who comes forward to explain the situation to perplexed and puzzled Americans. According to Lieberman, who represents the interests of Zionist Israel in the US Senate more than he does those of Connecticut, US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan is a "dangerous terrorist jihadist working on orders from al Queda and on orders from the Imam Anwar al-Awlaki out of the Islamic country of Yemen and on orders from the Muslim Brotherhood and that in addition he yelled 'Allahu Akbar' during the shootings." Well this is pure Zionist hogwash! It is nothing but Ashkenazi propaganda now being parroted by every lackey in the Zionist controlled mainstream media. Unfortunately, naive "patriotic" Americans, the ones who like to wave the USA flag in political rallies, fall for these lies like they did by believing the "official" explanation of the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The true explanation for the shootings is that the Ashkenazis like Lieberman, along with others in Congress owned by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have now involved the USA in a war of civilizations. This war pits the West against Islam and it has replaced the Cold War. Both wars have been extremely profitable for the Ashkenazis and the arms industry and it is to their interests to continue fomenting conflicts and especially in regions where they can benefit from the conquest of valuable natural resources such as gas and oil. The war against Islam in contrast to the so-call Cold War has special religious implications. It involves the creation of the Zionist state of Israel and the pushing out of the native Palestinians by the non-semitic Ashkenazis.

US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan is a Muslim of Palestinian descent and the brainwashing of the American mind by the Zionist media against Islam resulted in ignorant White redneck soldiers insulting, demeaning and abusing the officer. These White soldiers are so uneducated that they do not realize that they are fighting and dying for the Ashkenazis. They should ask themselves, are the sons and daughters of the Liebermans fighting alongside their fellow soldiers? How many Ashkenazis completed boot camp along with all the Whites. Latinos and Blacks in their units? I would say none. They are too busy making money on Wall Street, running banks and working for Goldman Sachs in deals which lend money to the huge corporate weapons manufacturers. It has been known that the Ashkenazis, like the Rothschilds, have made huge profits by lending money to both sides of a war.

Americans should stop believing lies if they are to save the country. They already fell for the lies that were utilized to attack Iraq. How many "patriotic" American families lost loved ones in Iraq? How about the lies that even fooled many members of congress when they approved the biggest money scam in the history of mankind and that was the 700 billion bailout most of which went into the pockets of the Ashkenazis. Remember Bernie Madoff? He is an Ashkenazi like Lieberman. Another Ashkenazi is Larry David(ovich) who recently offended the entire Christian world by urinating on a painting of Jesus Christ.

So do not believe the US Senator for Israel Joseph Lieberman when he talks about anything related to Islam or Muslims. We Californians are having our own problems with the Ashkenazis. Presently we have no choice among the candidates for the next governor of the state. There is the Ashkenazi US Senator Diane Feinstein and the Ashkenazi US Senator Barbara Boxer. Now we are having to put up with another Ashkenazi by the name of Meg Whitman who is a leading candidate for governor. Whitman worked and has strong support from Goldman Sachs. She owned E-Bay and through it had control of Pay Pal on the Internet. Some years ago Pay Pal froze our account because they did not like what we wrote and published. Worst of all, Meg Whiman's campaign manager is the notorious anti-Mexican former governor Pedro "Pito" Wilson.

The Brooke Shields Doll and 'Tate Modern removes nude picture of 10-year-old Brooke Shields after police pornography probe'

The Brooke Shields Doll and 'Tate Modern removes nude picture of 10-year-old Brooke Shields after police pornography probe' A provocative nude picture of a 10-year-old Brooke Shields has been removed from a major exhibition following a police pornography probe. [Daily Mail article + some additional symbolic images/video, info at end.] The picture of the American actress was due to go on show today at the Tate Modern, but bosses closed off its room after meeting officers from the Obscene Publications Unit. Richard Prince's image of Shields shows her from the knees up, naked, oiled and wearing make-up, looking directly at the viewer. [The image in question is below, I'd like to think readers are mature enough to handle it as it's necessary to show how public and 'in your face' they are with their obsession with pedophilia; but I will remove if there's a huge backlash. And yes, this stuff should make you feel sick to your stomach... who takes photos of an oiled up naked 10 year old... pedophiles! But probably more importantly what kind of parent allows this to happen to their daughter. You can find some of the original kiddy porn photos, I mean "art" taken by Gary Gross here by the way.] Removed: A 14-year-old Brooke Shields, left, in the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon and, right, on the red carpet aged 44. A portrait of a naked 10-year-old Shields had been withdrawn from an exhibition at the Tate Modern It is hung in a room at the south London gallery with a notice on the door warning visitors they may find the image 'challenging'. A Scotland Yard spokesman said officers from the unit met with Tate staff yesterday. He said: 'The officers have specialist experience in this field and are keen to work with gallery management to ensure that they do not inadvertently break the law or cause any offence to their visitors.' The picture of Shields, titled Spiritual America, was contained in a room separate from the rest of the exhibition which features images including huge sexually explicit images of penetration and works made from the pages of pornographic magazines. Jack Bankowsky, the exhibition's co-curator, said previously he hoped the artistic interest in Spiritual America would not be overshadowed by controversy over its content. Gallery chiefs said they sought legal advice before including the work and had given careful consideration to the work and the reaction it could provoke before including it in the exhibition. Full on: American artist Jeff Koons' [see comments in this post for more on Koons & Cicciolina] Dirty-Jeff On Top' statue stands in front of a billboard for Made In Heaven The artist himself described the 1983 work, which is a photograph of a photograph taken by another artist, Gary Gross, as 'an extremely complicated photo of a naked girl who looks like a boy made up to look like a woman'. [androgyny/gender confusion (in mind control a slave would be programmed with alters who think they're the opposite sex)] It was originally displayed anonymously in a disused shop in a run-down area of New York, and the Tate show is believed to be the work's first appearance in a UK gallery. The Gross picture was taken after the artist hired Shields to pose as a model in 1975 and is said to have been done with her mother's consent. When the photographer later tried to republish the pictures in the 1980s, Shields and her mother [also was an actress] launched a legal battle to stop him, but he won the case. Controversial: A visitor photographs an installation by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami during the Pop Life exhibition Children's and religious groups criticised the decision to show the work earlier this week. Michelle Elliot, founder of charity Kidscape, said: 'This is the kind of excuse people make for showing soft kiddy porn and I can't think anyone would want their child portrayed this way and I think it is obscene to do so. 'I don't care if they show naked adults, I have got no trouble with nudity, but I do have trouble with children being portrayed in sexually provocative ways.' Simon Calvert, of The Christian Institute, added: 'I think that any parent of young girls would just be so shocked to hear that a taxpayer funded gallery thinks it is alright to show photographs of a nude ten-year-old in the middle of a pornography exhibition.' The rest of the Tate show, entitled Pop Life: Art In A Material World show, remains open. The show has a room dedicated to U.S. artist Jeff Koons' Made In Heaven work, which includes sexually explicit images of him with the Italian porn star La Cicciolina. Impact: The show also features this visual installation by Keith Haring [end of Daily mail article] It's worth briefly going into Brooke Shields' career to show the characteristics of her life that follows many of these mind control victims' lives. She started modeling at 11 months old, showing what her parents always intended for her (again, what kind of parent allows their child to be photographed naked in a bath?!) and eventually covered Vogue and others. The kind of parent that allows this to happen is one like her father Francis Alexander Shields, a wealthy businessman; executive at evil cosmetics company Revlon. He is the son of tennis player (Brooke married tennis player Andre Agassi by the way) turned actor Frank Shields (pictured below with the 'happy family' including her former actress mother Teri) and Italian Princess/royal lineage Donna Marina Torlonia, Princess di Civitelli-Cesi; showing the "elite"/Illuminist, inbred bloodline that runs in her family and is evidence of her Monarch multigenerational mind control. Here is one of the many suggestive Calvin Klein adverts she produced, essentially she is describing part of the basic concept of Monarch mind control here (organized multigenerational programmed slave families), "The secret of life [removes glasses] lies hidden in the genetic code, genes ["jeans".. how clever] are fundamental in determining the characteristics of an individual and passing on these characteristics to succeeding generations..." then goes on to describe selective breeding and such. Brooke's programming is also shown by her being a "circus performer" here, showing her being extremely flexible (often made that way by traumatic stretching) and check out her spinning (dissociative/disorientating) like crazy here. She's also a great "dog trainer" ;) She was around age 16 at this point. Last one from this of her walking on shattered glass (not very difficult but very symbolic of her shattered mind). The above video has little to do with exercise, just more perverse exploitation of their manipulated slaves. She modeled for the cover of the occult band (checkout some of their album covers and whatnot) Nektar's album 'Magic is a child' when she was about 10-11 in 1977... The gushing white waterfall is I think symbolic of female sexuality and rebirth (and can be used in programming to "wash away memories"), with Brooke nude covered by a pillow or something (Edit: Yeah thanks for correction, that's actually a white dress; symbolizing purity/virginity and such) as she appears to be elevated by a source of light. In her movie debut in 'Pretty Baby' she played a typical debut role for an MK'd sex-kitten, the child of a prostitute played by Susan Surandon (so themes of multigenerational [Monarch] slavery/mind control) and a child prostitute herself (note the doll), called Violet who seduces a photographer (real life one E.J. Bellocq who took photos of prostitutes/sex-slaves wearing masks and such, his brother was a Jesuit Priest...), her mother planning to auction her virginity to the highest bidder (like sex-slaves in reality whose virginity is preserved because it means they are worth more to the sick "elite" buyers of slaves). The film was released when Brooke was 12 so was probably filmed when she was 11, the character is supposed to be age 12. Below is an image from the film (image borrowed from this good article, I picked the least explicit one there). An 11 year old Brooke with her prostitute mother in the film Susan Sarandon (she has popped up a couple of times in the blog like in Disney's Enchanted, and Speed Racer; obviously she's been in many more symbolic stuff like this). The photographer was played by Keith Carradine of the Carradine acting clan, half brother of David. Before 'Pretty Baby' she was in 'Alice, Sweet Alice' as Karen (think Mulder), Lostworld did a good post on this in the Stepford Wives Icke thread, also some of this stuff is covered in the Cobain thread. Karen has a two-faced porcelain doll (dual/split personalities; the mask also is extremely mind control symbolic) which her sister Alice steals, and she terrorizes people wearing a grinning mask (potentially killing her sister Karen, though it wasn't her). Brooke's character Karen is killed by a mask wearing psychopath (standard mind control theme you'll find in many horror films). In one scene "Catherine tells Alice to deliver a rent cheque to Mr Alphonso (Alphonso DeNoble) their obese cat-loving landlord. After he tries to fondle and molest her, Alice goes down to the basement where she lights a candle and puts on her grinning mask." I have not seen it myself but I'm sure it is loaded with more mind control symbolic themes. She had previously worked on a film by pedophile director Woody Allen [whose films are truly awful, why do you think he is so revered by Hollywood?! Like Polanski; whose films are admittedly excellent though it's good to see him finally get arrested, though I doubt he will ever go to prison or anything], pictured below with Allen directing her in a scene for 'Annie Hall'; all her scenes (flashbacks) were cut from the film. She was of course in other explicit films like 'The Blue Lagoon' which has more exploitation with the usual underage sexual themes, the below movie poster for is pretty disturbing I feel ("Just you and me, kid") if you can read into what it's really referring to ["Bill (played by George Burns) finds the naked Kate (Brooke; kat/cat/kitten) in his trunk with a tire wrapped around her."]. She was 'friends' with mind controlled Michael Jackson (still definitely planning to do a post on him) and was a major part of the memorial (here's her speech). Below pictured with one of Jacko's many victims Macauley Culkin, also with another probable slave, a very young Laura Bundy. Michael "surrounded himself with mannequins and loved Brooke Shields", they are from nearly the same generation of programmed Monarchs so have this connection (they can only make "friends"/go out on "dates"/etc with other slaves). I was surprised to see she was part of the slave performers at many of slave handler Bob Hope's USO tours (slaves like Marilyn Monroe are often used to "entertain the troops", covered in past posts), in the below scene she is pictured with Scientology controlled slave Cathy Lee Crosby, Ann Jillian (started acting at age 10 in a Disney film 'Babes in Toyland', appeared in an Alice in Wonderland as the Red Queen + some of the usual kind stuff), the winner of Miss USA at the time, Vic Damone, and George Kirby. Brooke below as a Pocahontas type figure with Bob as the 'big chief', that's Mickey Rooney (covered a bit here) on the end there by the way. She is probably a 'Presidential Model' kitten, here she is pictured with Gerald Ford and his wife Betty (former fashion model). Below pictured with republican super hero/rapist/slave handler Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy Reagan (daughter of actress, her smile always looks very programmed/false), and with other probable Monarch kitten models Christie Brinkley (USO "entertainer", check out her relationships and whatnot) and Cheryl Tiegs. What is the "CIA connection" (at CBS) I wonder ;) [it's telling those "in the know" that both generations are probably products of it's Project Monarch, you'll often find phrases on different articles that seem to match up in some way suggestively, almost in a code-like way] Another CIA suggestion in the below cover in relation to Brooke... note the daisies too. Brook with a cat at a Whiskas cat food event (?!) called "Whiskas Salutes Cats as the Purr-fect Art Form". Brooke with children Rowan Francis and Grier Hammond at Disneyland above, below dressed as a kitten for Halloween (cheers for tip in comments a while back). She appeared on the cover of Lolita inspired 'Helene' by John Bowers. Brooke with Britney from the younger generation of Monarchs, she of course plays the mother of the main one of the next generation of Monarchs down, "Miley's mom", Miley Cyrus' mother in Hannah Montana (pictured below). She appeared on the Muppet Show (most special guests are MK'd puppets), you can probably guess which mind control themed role she played, Alice in Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and they even get it confused with the other main programming script from the time, the Wizard of Oz (embedded videos of it both below, I didn't watch it all the way through in detail; note in the Muppet intro song all the Masonic twin pillars/arches).

LOCKERBIE DISASTER

Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, has applied to abandon his second appeal against his conviction, his lawyers said on 14 August 2009. (BBC NEWS UK Scotland Lockerbie bomber withdraws appeal) South of Scotland SNP MSP Christine Grahame said: "I know from the lengthy discussions I had with him that he was desperate to clear his name, so I believe that the decision is not entirely his own. "There are a number of vested interests who have been deeply opposed to this appeal continuing as they know it would go a considerable way towards exposing the truth behind Lockerbie. "Some serious scrutiny will be required to determine exactly why Mr Megrahi is now dropping his appeal and examination of what pressure he has come under. "In the next days, weeks and months new information will be placed in the public domain that will make it clear that Mr Megrahi had nothing to do with the bombing of Pan Am 103." Robert Gates, (Lockerbie, October Surprise, Iran-Contra) A. According to The Herald, 19 February 2009, the Crown is fighting to keep 48 pieces of Lockerbie trial evidence secret "Prosecutors are trying to keep secret 48 pieces of evidence relating to the Lockerbie trial, including a secret fax that could discredit a key Crown witness. "Lawyers for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the 1988 bombing, yesterday began a challenge over material they believe will free their terminally ill client. "But the Crown Office and the UK Advocate General are fighting against disclosure." B. Lockerbie witness ‘put up for reward’ Tony Gauci was a key Lockerbie witness. According to The Herald, on 20 February 2009, previously undisclosed documents show that Scottish police recommended to US authorities that both the main witness in the Lockerbie trial (Gauci) and his brother should be paid up to $3m. In 1988, the FBI's Robert Mueller (above) supervised the Lockerbie Bombing investigation. "He successfully kept the CIA's connection to the bombing from becoming public. "The CIA and FBI took control of the crash scene for the first day (keeping Scottish police at bay), searching through and removing numerous pieces of evidence and luggage from the wreckage to obscure the connections of the bombing to the CIA special team that was on board the aircraft. "One CIA defector has said that the team had been returning to the states against orders to blow the whistle on CIA drug and terrorist connections in the Middle East." - FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION · Edward Bollier of MEBO In the Lockerbie Bombing (PanAm 103) case, it appears that the CIA and its friends arranged to have a 'timer' stolen from the Swiss firm of MEBO. It appears that the security services then pretended that this 'timer' was the one used in the Lockerbie Bombing. The Herald letters column, 23 August 2008, has a letter about the PanAm 103 - Lockerbie Bombing entitled High Court decision rapid and welcome The author of the letter writes: "Probably the most crucial item of physical evidence, namely the timer fragment PT35B, was not even tested for explosive residues." Some of the comments on the Herald website are as follows: Posted by: Edwin & Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO, Zurich "MEBO LTD and myself have obviously been misused by the Scottish Justice and Lord Advocate Colin Boyd to construct a wrong link from Lockerbie to Libya... More news on our webpage: http://www.lockerbie.ch/... (Homepage www.mebocom-defilee.ch & www.lockerbie.ch) "Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd. give the Crown, Lord Advocate General and the Appeal Court, the full warranty that the manipulated MST-13 timer fragment (PT-35B) does not come from a timer supplied to Libya and therefore cannot be brought in connection with Libya... "Libya did pay the compensation under explicit objection that Libya had absolutely nothing to do with the PanAm 103 Lockerbie-Tragedy and could therefore not be made responsible. In the world media this objection is never mentioned. "This tricky suppression of the whole statement by the world's leading news agencies leads to the generally accepted but nevertheless totally wrong notion: If they paid, they did it. "Why Libya pays?: > Regain full diplomatic and economic status. This would allow oil companies to negotiate hundreds of billions of dollars worth of contracts, to drill the state's oilfields. "US President Bush signed on August 4, 2008 into law: S.3370, the 'Libyan Claims Resolution Act.' The bill that grants Libyan immunity law and full diplomatic and economic status." Lockerbie from commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lockerbie.jpg Posted by: Mark Boyle, Johnstone "Jeez Edwin & Mahnaz Bollier, you'll find few in Scotland that don't know that al Megrahi was just the fall guy (the main reason for the Yanks wanting him jailed was his expertise as Libya's No 1 sanction buster via Malta)." Posted by: Peter Biddulph, Worcestershire, England "Few folks will be aware of two important background features of the Lockerbie investigation and trial. Both are verified by historical and declassified documents and available for easy reference. "1. The forensic scientist who claimed to be the first to find the famous bomb fragment was, a year after finding it, revealed by a Parliamentary investigation by Sir John May to be a co-conspirator with two colleagues in the with-holding of evidence in the trial of the alleged IRA Maguire Seven. "The Maguires were released on appeal. "This aspect was under-investigated by the Lockerbie trial defence, and ignored by the judges in the Lockerbie judgment. "2. The career of the American agent in overall charge of the investigation includes several years involvement with the murderous Nicaraguan campaign, working alongside Colonel Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair of the mid-eighties, and the covert arming of the Afghanistan Mujahadeen in the late eighties. "The man was not called to give evidence at the Lockerbie trial. "In an on-camera interview, he admitted that his name was on the original list of witnesses, but he presumed that the US authorities had removed it. "We shall have to wait and see whether these two aspects will fully emerge during a second appeal.

Timer device

Two years after the Lockerbie bomb, investigators allegedly found a fragment of a timer device. It has been alleged that the evidence concerning the timer fragment was fabricated by the CIA and its friends in order to implicate Libya in the bombing. In the summer of 2007, a report from Darik Radio DARIK News revealed a confession: "Ulrich Lumpert, a Swiss electronic engineer and former employee at the Zurich-based MEBO Ltd Telecommunication, has admitted that he stole from the company a hand manufactured MST-13 Timer PC-Board that was later used as evidence against the defendant, Libyan agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi. Lumpert says: "I realized that the MST-13 PC-board, after it was handed over by me without permission was misused for deliberate politically criminal 'action'." - Lockerbie Bombing Trial Faces U-Turn after Perjury Confession Thomas Thurman On 19 February 2006, The Mail on Sunday reported that new forensic tests have been carried out by the lawyers representing Al Megrahi, the Libyan jailed in connection with the Lockerbie bombing. Defence experts simulated the Lockerbie explosion. The results showed that the device which detonated the bomb could not have survived the explosion. According to The Mail on Sunday: "Sources close to Megrahi's lawyers said the new tests pointed to the evidence having been planted at the scene of the crash... "The source added that Megrahi's legal team claimed they had obtained 'clear proof' that investigators had 'planted and manipulated' evidence... "He said... if there is any justice in Scotland... certain Scottish police officers will be jailed for their part in the proceedings... "Megrahi's lawyers already have a sworn statement from a retired Scottish police officer confirming that evidence had been planted to secure the Libyan's conviction. "A similar claim was made by a former CIA agent... "The ex-CIA man (claimed) that the fragment of circuit board had been planted under orders from a very high level in the organisation... "The fragment was found by two policeman during a search of a wood near Newcastleton, 35 miles from Lockerbie. "It was later identified by the CIA's Thomas Thurman as being part of a sophisticated timer device made by the Swiss firm of Mebo. "Thurman was later unmasked as a fraud who had given false evidence in American murder trials..." Orr Who were the people involved in the Lockerbie investigation and trial?

John Orr, joint head of CID in Strathclyde police, was the chief investigating officer in the Lockerbie case. Sir John Orr got promoted to Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police (1995 to 2001). (The Herald : News: OTHER NEWS)

'The Golfer' is the former Scottish police chief who has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated. 'The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.' (Scotsman.com News - Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked) Two state prosecutors from the US Department of Justice played an important role in the Lockerbie trial. The United Nations observer at the Lockerbie trial, Dr Hans Kochler, reported that two state prosecutors from the US Department of Justice were in court, and, although not listed in any of the official documents about the Court's officers, they were constantly briefing Scottish prosecutors. ( UN Claims Lockerbie Trial Was Rigged) Lord Fraser was the lord advocate (1989-92) who initiated the case against Megrahi. On 20 December 2006 Lord Fraser was detained by police after they were called to Dundee Airport following reports of a disturbance on board an aircraft. Lord Fraser was charged with disorderly conduct. It was announced on 2 February 2007 that the Crown Office had dropped these charges due to insufficient evidence that an offence had been committed. Lord Hardie, as Lord Advocate 1997-2000, was due to lead the prosecution team in the Lockerbie trial. Lord Hardie resigned just before the Lockerbie trial began. There were rumours that there was a lack of evidence to convict the Libyans. Colin Boyd was Lord Hardie's successor as Lord Advocate. He became Lord Boyd of Duncansby. Norman McFadyen, then regional procurator-fiscal for Edinburgh, headed the Crown Office trial team at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. He got promoted to Crown Agent, head of department for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. Alan Turnbull, QC, was one of the two senior counsel leading the Crown team in the Lockerbie trial. In 2006, he became Scotland's youngest judge at the age of 47. Advocate-depute Alastair Campbell, QC, was senior prosecution counsel in the Lockerbie trial. In 2003, he was appointed a judge and became Lord Bracadale. Bill Taylor, QC, was defence counsel for Megrahi at Camp Zeist. He has been heavily criticised for failing to defend Megrahi successfully. ( We have removed an error here pointed out to us by The Lockerbie Case ) Alistair Duff was the defence lawyer for Megrahi. Professor Hans Koechler, the United Nations' observer at the Lockerbie trial and appeal, has accused Mr Taylor and Mr Duff of betraying Megrahi by failing to represent him properly. Eddie MacKechnie was solicitor to Fhimah who was acquitted. Tony Gauci was the key crown witness and owner of the Maltese shop where Megrahi was said to have bought the clothing reportedly placed around the bomb. At the trial, Tony Gauci was uncertain about the date he sold the clothes in question, and was not sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold. Gauci gave two earlier statements in which he identified convicted Egyptian terrorist Abu Talb as the person who bought clothing. Gauci gave earlier statements saying he did not sell a shirt to the man but six months later remembered selling shirts and the man. Two of Gauci's statements are missing. A babygro said to have been wrapped around the bomb and shown to the court blown to pieces was recovered intact, according to a statement from the woman who found it. Five years after the trial, Lord Fraser allegedly described Gauci as a “simple” man who might have been “easily led”. Lord Fraser was the lord advocate (1989-92) who initiated the case against Megrahi. The Strathclyde police reportedly arranged for Gauci to go fishing, hillwalking and birdwatching in the Scottish Highlands. The Mail on Sunday newspaper said Gauci had been recorded on tape talking about five or six visits he had made to Scotland since 1988. Four members of Gauci's family are also said to have received some form of police hospitality during the investigation. (The Scotsman - Scotland - Lockerbie trial row over witness’s trip) J Thomas Thurman was the FBI man who identified a fragment of a circuit board from a timing device which, he said, was from the Lockerbie bomb. Thurman was later removed from his FBI job after a US Department of Justice investigation concluded his FBI forensics lab had a record of fabricating evidence. Edwin Bollier is head of the Swiss-based Mebo group which was supposed to have sold the timing device reportedly used in the Lockerbie bomb. Bollier claims that one of his employees supplied the Scottish police with a stolen timing device, which was then presented in the trial as having been found amidst the plane's wreckage. The other two judges were Lord Coulsfield and Lord MacLean. Lord Cullen was head of the five-judge panel which presided over the appeal of Megrahi at Camp Zeist in 2002. The other four judges were: Lord Kirkwood, Lord Osborne, Lord Macfadyen, and Lord Nimmo Smith. ~~ MEBO breakthru DARIK News Perjury confession in Lockerbie bombing trial Click here to see A Just Dispatches, Just Television Production for Channel Four Television http://www.lockerbie.ch/ aangirfan: Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked Lockerbie - new forensic tests suggest evidence was planted by the CIA

Lockerbie: possible retrial

We need a New Brain Trust

While the U.S. economy sputters, France and Germany appear to have exited their recessions and returned to modest growth during the spring. There’s been a distinctly different approach to macroeconomic policy taken by Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy and their respective finance ministers that deserve elucidation.

The French and German economies both grew by 0.3% between April and June, bringing to an end year-long recessions in Europe’s largest economies.

Stronger exports and consumer spending, as well as government stimulus packages, contributed to the growth.

Germany is a manufacturer and exporter. Yes, that’s right. Germany has trade unions, good vacation packages, excellent schools, universal health care, lots of solar power and tough environmental regulations and they still have a manufacturing economy and they export. Their form of government is basically a type of democratic socialism. All the things we are taught to view with suspicion. Still, Germany manages to manufacture things and export to China the country to whom the U.S. has practically sold their collective soul so we can massively import junk on a rapidly decreasing credit line.

The latest figures showed German exports had grown at their fastest pace for nearly three years at 7%, with particularly strong growth in demand from rapidly-growing economies such as China.

The country’s Federal Statistics Office said that household and government expenditure had also boosted growth.

It added that imports had declined “far more sharply than exports, which had a positive effect on GDP growth”.

“These [GDP] figures should encourage us,” said Germany’s Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. “They show that the strongest decline in economic performance likely lies behind us.”

It’s the same story with France. Household consumption and export markets are improving. I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to Finance Minister Christine Lagarde but she’s undoubtedly one of the best in the world. Compare her to our Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner and you’ll see who comes up quite short. First, she’s a noted anti trust lawyer as compared to a noted monopoly enabler.

Ms Lagarde said that consumer spending and strong exports had helped to pull France out of recession.

“What we see is that consumption is holding up,” she said.

Official figures showed that household consumption rose by 0.4% in the second quarter.

She said government incentive schemes for trading in old cars, together with falling prices, were helping consumers.

Foreign trade contributed 0.9% to the GDP figure – a “very strong impact”, said Ms Lagarde.

We are daily fed this propaganda that other countries come up short when compared to the United States and our economic machine. We are told that countries with high union participation, with universal health care, with high standards for the work environment and tough regulations for business and standards for the environment come up short when compared to the U.S. These countries both undertook solid fiscal stimulus. Here is some information on the French package passed in February. The Obama stimulus package passed during February also.

France’s economic stimulus package encompasses a three-pronged plan: €11 billion ($14.5 billion) each to go to direct state investment and to inject capital into private-sector enterprises, plus €4 billion ($5.24 billion) for state-run companies to be applied toward improvements for the national postal service, energy supplies and the rail network. Of that amount, some €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) is to go into refurbishment of higher educational institutions, prisons, monuments and court.

Here’s some information on the German package also passed in February.

Germany has approved a 50bn euro ($63bn, £44bn) stimulus plan aimed at boosting Europe’s largest economy.

The plan was approved by the upper house of parliament, which represents Germany’s 16 state governments.

It includes infrastructure investments, tax relief, reductions in health care contributions and money for families with children.

The package follows an earlier 23 bn-euro plan that was criticised for being too cautious.

U.S. News and World Report critiques the impact of the Obama stimulus in “Mixed, Incomplete Economic Results So Far on Obama’s Stimulus: There are signs of hope, but there’s a way to go“. Remember, we had $787 billion in fiscal stimulus signed into law on February 17, 2009. The stimulus has slowed the pace of decline in the economy. One of the primary impacts of the U.S. stimulus is that it has allowed states to maintain some services by replacing lost revenues. This is different, however, from boosting employment. You’ll also notice that many of the direct spending measures are still in the wings. This is unlike those of our two European friends who released funds immediately and directly.

For the most part, too few projects have been started and data are too scattered to indicate how many jobs the package has added. Only $73 billion of the act’s $499 billion in direct spending measures had been dispensed by the end of July. One employment sector that the stimulus has seemed to directly affect, though, is state and local governments. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funneled cash-strapped states $144 billion, helping to minimize layoffs or program cuts. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that’s enough money to cover 30 to 40 percent of overall state budget shortfalls. According to today’s unemployment report, it seems to have helped. State governments lost 5,000 jobs—not as bad as it could be, considering states face budget shortfalls of more than $160 billion—while local governments didn’t see any change at all. “You don’t see the declines in employment at the state and local levels that would be associated with a real disaster,” says Gary Burtless, senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “Partly, I think, it’s because states are confident that the federal government is making a lot of aid directly available to them.”

Since we do not have a robust export sector, we must rely on consumer spending for much of our stimulus. This will have mixed results because much of our consumer spending is import-based which means it stimulates economies elsewhere. Much of the stimulus in the Obama plan was based on tax cuts rather than direct spending. This part of the plan is not having the desired effect as many folks are being frugal and holding on to what little extra money they’ve been given. I warned of this early this year (here and here)when we discussed the formation of the stimulus package.

So far, the package’s $288 billion in tax cuts and credits haven’t seemed to significantly affect consumer spending. Spending on goods and services, ranging from TV sets to T-shirts, decreased by 1.2 percent in the second quarter. That’s after they increased by 0.6 percent in the first. The Conference Board reported last week that its Consumer Confidence Index continued to decline in July for the second month in a row.

That’s partly, of course, because people are still losing their jobs or seeing paychecks slashed. And it’s partly because credit is still tight, making it difficult to go out and buy that computer even for those who want to. But it’s also because even those in relatively secure positions are changing their habits, experts say. “The recession has gotten to people,” says John Irons, research and policy director of the progressive Economic Policy Institute. “People have a generic anxiety about what’s going on, and rightfully so.” The response is to cut back on consumption.

Meanwhile, Dr. Doom (Nourielle Roubini) added his voice to the numbers of us that believe this will be a jobless recovery. He extended that analysis to include the label of wageless recovery. That’s not good. That means we can’t rely on the U.S. household to buy ourselves into prosperity.

Companies need a certain head count to run their businesses. After cutting jobs, companies are increasingly reducing compensation and work hours to keep a lid on labor costs. Labor compensation slowed significantly to 0.4% in Q2 2009, after slowing to 0.3% in Q1 2009. The slowdown in wages and salaries (0.4%) and benefits (0.3%) is significant, especially in the private sector (0.2%). Private sector labor compensation slowed to 1.5% in the 12 months ending June 2009, the smallest increase on record. Firms are reducing benefits significantly in the service sector while employers in manufacturing are largely cutting wages.

Nourielle considers the future for household spending to be “bleak”. Notice that companies are reducing compensation. This not only means wages and salaries but benefits. An increasing number of people will lose health care and any hope of a match towards retirement plans. After huge losses in any current savings, this can only cause people to retreat from any spending not completely necessary.

Any sustained and strong improvement in growth has to come from a revival in private demand, and not from temporary factors like inventory adjustment and policy measures. The U.S. consumer, who, as we’ve noted, still accounts for close to 70% of GDP, is pulling back. Investment, which still trails consumer spending at home, will be weak. Exports will be a source of growth only in the medium term. In the short term, the rest of the world will remain dependent on the U.S. to drive demand while consumption abroad will be unable to offset the decline in U.S. consumption.

These factors suggest a sluggish economic recovery for the U.S. in the coming years until new sources of growth emerge (such as exports to emerging markets, investment, new energy and technology). Factors such as unsustainable public debt, higher structural unemployment, lower credit growth and higher taxes in the future will also constrain growth.

This is some really eye opening analysis. Can we continue to live in denial that some of the industrial plans, export/import management strategies, and policy priorities of our European cousins may actually have viability? We need a Brain Trust, not unlike FDR’s, to determine what works and what doesn’t work for others. This is especially true for health care policy and something akin to a national industrial plan. There are many things (globalization, illegal immigration, lack of unions, outlandish executive compensations and return to capital, etc.) that are sapping the real wages of many workers. In an economy dependent on 70% spending by households, this is a zero sum game. If we continue on this path we will undoubtedly become the largest developing economy in the world. That’s right, not advanced economy, but developing economy. Something has to give. Something has to change.

If the President is truly interested in providing hope and change, then it is about time he quit relying on the advice and consent of the very people and industries that have led us down this garden path. In his campaign speeches, he reminded us that the same tired old solutions and people had brought us to edge of this abyss. Why then, does he continue to hold hands with the same enablers?

CHILD SEX

Houston is a major hub for child traffickers. (Houston's hidden crime) A 2007 study from Shared Hope International found 400 child trafficking victims being exploited in Las Vegas in a single month. At least 100,000 children are used in prostitution every year in the United States. The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years old. (America's Trafficked Children Are Being Arrested, Not Rescued) Image from: letsgive.blogspot.com/.../end-slavery-now.html In August 2009, the head of an international child trafficking ring was jailed in the UK. Girls aged 13 to 18 had been arriving at London airports with false passports. The girls were earmarked for prostitution. (Child Sex Ring Cut) Child brothels, usually protected by the police, are found in Asia. Child brothels can also be found in the USA and Europe. According to the organisation called ECPAT, 1.2 million children are trafficked every year. (1.2m children trafficked each year: report) Around 80% of those kids are believed to end up in the $33 billion-a-year sex industry. It is said to be the fastest growing industry in the world. An estimated 325 children are thought to have been trafficked to the UK between March 2007 and February 2008. (10m Britons are helping 'pay for child sex trade') Laetitia Delhez and Sabine Dardenne were kidnapped in Belgium by the Dutroux gang. Eventually they were released from Dutroux's dungeon. In the UK, children are forced to work in brothels throughout the country. In the UK, a housing officer, Peace Sandberg, 41, recently paid £370 for a three month old baby. This was so she would qualify for a council flat in London. (Gangsters smuggle babies to sell to benefit fraudsters) A UK government Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre report in April 2009 found that trafficked children had come to the UK from 52 different countries. Ecpat figures suggest that up to 60% of children rescued from traffickers later go missing from UK local authority care. In early 2009, Gordon Brown promised to investigate claims that more than 80 Chinese children had gone missing from a children's home next to Heathrow airport since 2006. (UK 'unaware of child trafficking') There is a problem in California. "In one of several related cases, hundreds of Mexican girls between 7 and 18 were kidnapped or subjected to false romantic entrapment by organized criminal sex trafficking gangs. "Victims were then brought to San Diego County, California. "Over a 10 year period these girls were raped by hundreds of men per day in more than 2 dozen home based and agricultural camp based brothels." (U.S. - Mexico Border Region - San Diego Trafficking Crisis Index Page) Cynthia McKinney pointed out that "DynCorp was exposed for having been involved in the buying and selling of young women and children. "While all of this was going on, DynCorp kept the Pentagon contract to administer the smallpox and anthrax vaccines..." Map from: www.c-a-s-e.net/Child%20Trafficking%20Map.htm In 2006, Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones (Dyncorp and Halliburton Sex Slave Scandal Won't Go Away) asked: "Where were the investigations and convictions in other cases of establishment orchestrated child slavery and prostitution? Like the NATO officials responsible for the mushrooming of child prostitution in Kosovo?" "What happened to UN officials identified as using a ship charted for 'peacekeepers' to bring young girls from Thailand to East Timor as prostitutes?" "Across America, young ... girls are vanishing from homes, schools, and neighborhoods and reappearing in brothels, escort agencies, and strip clubs." Who's Stealing Little Girls? In the UK, "border officials took bribes from and traded favours with trafficking rings over a number or years. "In some cases, money exchanged hands directly. In others, the officials and the traffickers formed 'mutually beneficial relationships,' which allowed them to earn over $1 million a year. "A recent report from the UK states that many traffickers find it 'relatively easy' to move their victims through the UK." Who's Watching the Watchmen? Is Hershey's Secret Ingredient Child Slavery?

Chemtrails at very low altitude! Scientifically, "contrails" cannot form under 30K altitude...So why are these showing at 4000 feet?

Chemtrails at very low altitude! Scientifically, "contrails" cannot form under 30K altitude...So why are these showing at 4000 feet?
Originally uploaded by raycontin

Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told’

Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told’

The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Telegraph | Mar 28, 2009

By Christopher Booker

If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe.

Although the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish.

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, “the sea is not rising,” he says. “It hasn’t risen in 50 years.” If there is any rise this century it will “not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm”. And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on “going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world”.

When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.

One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC’s favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a “corrective factor” of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they “needed to show a trend”.

When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an “expert reviewer” on the IPCC’s last two reports, he was “astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one”. Yet the results of all this “deliberate ignorance” and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria.

•For more information, see Dr Mörner on YouTube (Google Mörner, Maldives and YouTube); or read on the net his 2007 EIR interview “Claim that sea level is rising is a total fraud”; or email him – morner@pog.nu – to buy a copy of his booklet ‘The Greatest Lie Ever Told’

Fined, frozen and now jailed

The Marine Fisheries Agency was certainly onto a winner when it enlisted the aid of the Assets Recovery Agency in its ruthless war against our fishermen. In December 2007 Charles McBride and his son Charles, from Kilkeel in Northern Ireland, were fined £385,000 for under-declaring catches of whitefish and prawns in the Irish Sea, threatening the loss of their homes and boat. But the Assets Recovery Agency, using powers designed to recover money from drug dealers, also froze all their assets. To pay the fines, the McBrides tried to borrow against their assets. Now, for this effort to pay the fines, Liverpool Crown Court has sentenced the two men to two and three months in gaol for “contempt of court”.

Blown away

The Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, timed his jibe impeccably last week when he said that opposing wind farms is as “socially unacceptable” as “not wearing a seatbelt”. Britain’s largest windfarm companies are pulling out of wind as fast as they can. Despite 100 per cent subsidies, the credit crunch and technical problems spell an end to Gordon Brown’s £100 billion dream of meeting our EU target to derive 35 per cent of our electricity from “renewables” by 2020.

Meanwhile the Government gives the go-ahead for three new 1,000 megawatt gas-fired power stations in Wales. Each of them will generate more than the combined average output (700 megawatts) of all the 2,400 wind turbines so far built. The days of the “great wind fantasy” will soon be over.

U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China's extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

San Marino, with a population of about 30,000, is at the end of the long list of 218 countries compiled by the center. It has a single prisoner.

The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

There is little question that the high incarceration rate here has helped drive down crime, though there is debate about how much.

Criminologists and legal experts here and abroad point to a tangle of factors to explain America's extraordinary incarceration rate: higher levels of violent crime, harsher sentencing laws, a legacy of racial turmoil, a special fervor in combating illegal drugs, the American temperament, and the lack of a social safety net. Even democracy plays a role, as judges — many of whom are elected, another American anomaly — yield to populist demands for tough justice.

Whatever the reason, the gap between American justice and that of the rest of the world is enormous and growing.

It used to be that Europeans came to the United States to study its prison systems. They came away impressed.

"In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States," Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured American penitentiaries in 1831, wrote in "Democracy in America."

No more.

"Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror," James Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. "Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons."

Prison sentences here have become "vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared," Michael Tonry, a leading authority on crime policy, wrote in "The Handbook of Crime and Punishment."

Indeed, said Vivien Stern, a research fellow at the prison studies center in London, the American incarceration rate has made the United States "a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach."

The spike in American incarceration rates is quite recent. From 1925 to 1975, the rate remained stable, around 110 people in prison per 100,000 people. It shot up with the movement to get tough on crime in the late 1970s. (These numbers exclude people held in jails, as comprehensive information on prisoners held in state and local jails was not collected until relatively recently.)

People who commit nonviolent crimes in the rest of the world are less likely to receive prison time and certainly less likely to receive long sentences. The United States is, for instance, the only advanced country that incarcerates people for minor property crimes like passing bad checks, Whitman wrote.

Efforts to combat illegal drugs play a major role in explaining long prison sentences in the United States as well. In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American jails and prisons for drug crimes. These days, there are almost 500,000.

Those figures have drawn contempt from European critics. "The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism," said Stern of King's College.

Burglars in the United States serve an average of 16 months in prison, according to Mauer, compared with 5 months in Canada and 7 months in England. Note: It seems that many Americans are ill-imformed, believing that up to 1/3 of the US prison population are illegal immigrants. This is false. Most illegals are deported, often to Mexico or Central America where they are tried and also receive shorter sentences than in the US. The real problem is that 60 percent who are in prison are non-violent drug offenders. So the argument that there is less crime because of the higher incarceration level is false. Non-violent drug offenders are only hurting themselves, not others....

Interactive Graphic: Global prison populations » View

One in every 31 Adults, or 7.3 Million Americans, is in Prison, on Parole or Probation

Prison Spending Outpaces All but Medicaid

One in every 31 adults, or 7.3 million Americans, is in prison, on parole or probation, at a cost to the states of $47 billion in 2008, according to a new study.

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Prison Boom

Criminal correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation and public assistance, based on state and federal data. Only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending, which quadrupled in the past two decades, according to the report Monday by the Pew Center on the States, the first breakdown of spending in confinement and supervision in the past seven years.

The increases in the number of people in some form of correctional control occurred as crime rates declined by about 25 percent in the past two decades.

As states face huge budget shortfalls, prisons, which hold 1.5 million adults, are driving the spending increases.

States have shown a preference for prison spending even though it is cheaper to monitor convicts in community programs, including probation and parole, which require offenders to report to law enforcement officers. A survey of 34 states found that states spent an average of $29,000 a year on prisoners, compared with $1,250 on probationers and $2,750 on parolees. The study found that despite more spending on prisons, recidivism rates remained largely unchanged.

Pew researchers say that as states trim services like education and health care, prison budgets are growing. Those priorities are misguided, the study says.

“States are looking to make cuts that will have long-term harmful effects,” said Sue Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States. “Corrections is one area they can cut and still have good or better outcomes than what they are doing now.”

Brian Walsh, a senior research fellow at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation, agreed that focusing on probation and parole could reduce recidivism and keep crime rates low in the long run. But Mr. Walsh said tougher penalties for crimes had driven the crime rate down in the first place.

“The reality is that one of the reasons crime rates are so low is because we changed our federal and state systems in the past two decades to make sure that people who commit crimes, especially violent crimes, actually have to serve significant sentences,” he said.

Over all, two-thirds of offenders, or about 5.1 million people in 2008, were on probation or parole. The study found that states were not increasing their spending for community supervision in proportion to their growing caseloads. About $9 out of $10 spent on corrections goes to prison financing (that includes money spent to house 780,000 people in local jails).

One in 11 African-Americans, or 9.2 percent, are under correctional control, compared with one in 27 Latinos (3.7 percent) and one in 45 whites (2.2 percent). Only one out of 89 women is behind bars or monitored, compared with one out of 18 men.

Georgia had 1 in 13 adults under some form of punishment; Idaho, 1 in 18; the District of Columbia, 1 in 21; Texas, 1 in 22; Massachusetts, 1 in 24; and Ohio, 1 in 25.

Peter Greenwood, the executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Evidence Based Practice, a group that favors rehabilitative approaches, said states started spending more on prisons in the 1980s during the last big crime wave.

“Basically, when we made these investments, public safety and crime was the No. 1 concern of voters, so politicians were passing all kinds of laws to increase sentences,” Mr. Greenwood said.

President Bill Clinton signed legislation to increase federal sentences, he said.

“Now, crime is down,” Mr. Greenwood said, “but we’re living with that legacy: the bricks and mortar and the politicians who feel like they have to talk tough every time they talk about crime.”

Mr. Greenwood said prisons and jails, along with their powerful prison guard unions, service contracts, and high-profile sheriffs and police chiefs, were in a much better position to protect their interests than were parole and probation officers.

“Traditionally, probation and parole is at the bottom of the totem pole,” he said. “They’re just happy every time they don’t lose a third of their budget.”

Note: China has 1 billion people. India has 1 billion people as well. Russia's population is almost equal to ours at 280 million. That is a total of 2.28 billion people. The United States population is 300 million, yet we have more people in the prison system than those 3 countries combined. And we are supposed to be a "free nation"? Isn't it ironic that we've been led to believe this when you consider these facts?