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NYPD Launches Lower Manhattan Security Initiative
NEW YORK — The New York Police Department has quietly flipped the switch on a high-tech command center designed to protect lower Manhattan from terrorist threats. The center, located in a nondescript office tower, is part of an ambitious $100 million security initiative launched in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Earlier this month, about 30 officers assigned to the command center for the first time began monitoring 150 closed-circuit cameras trained on Wall Street. Police say there will be 3,000 cameras in the financial district by 2011. The program was modeled in part after the “ring of steel” surveillance measures in London’s financial district. But Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says it will exceed that effort in scope and sophistication.

The SEC, an integral part of the (PPT) Plunge Protection Team known for stock market manipulation, and Christopher Cox, who made false statements during his confirmation hearing related to his involvement in massive investment fraud, (among a host of other crimes since) are nothing but crooks themselves, and don’t have the credibility to charge anybody with anything. Nevertheless, according to the Huffington Post, insider trading claims against Mark Cuban are politically motivated:

In what the Times characterized as a “purported email” from an SEC staffer to Mr. Cuban, it is revealed that there was bad blood between the agency and Cuban not just as a result of the accusations about his sale of stock in mamma.com. Cuban is taken to task for his financial backing of the series of documentaries entitled, “Loose Change.” The films set forth a case for a conspiracy among individuals in the U.S. government to bring about the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001.

Max Keiser on current (Laundering) $700 Bn Bailout
Max Keiser: “Remember, these congressmen all are huge stock owners in all these banks and corporations. American congress has been co-opted by the corpocracy in America; I don’t really believe that they are speaking absolutely in the best interest of the American people; they’re speaking in their own self interest. John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi, for example, have huge stock positions in the very companies that are suppose to be subjected to some kind of oversight….” Max says there will be NO election in November. See Video

When everyone’s attention was focusing on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s less-than-reassuring interview about foreign policy with ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson, the Republican nominee for vice president was off delivering a speech in which she suggested a dramatically greater ignorance of recent history and international affairs than was on display in the interview. Speaking at Alaska’s Fort Wainwright on Thursday, where she hailed the combat deployment of her son’s Army unit to Iraq as a “righteous cause,” Palin explicitly and repeatedly renewed the discredited claim that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was initiated as a necessary and credible response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “You’ll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans,” Palin told the departing soldiers. More

(Reuters) - Russia’s most famous conductor, Valery Gergiev, said on Thursday Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia was comparable to the September 11 attacks on the United States. Gergiev, an ethnic Ossetian, drew the parallel after seeing the bombed and burnt out houses of Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s capital which was shelled by Georgian forces earlier this month. Feted as one of the world’s top conductors, Gergiev — who grew up in the neighboring Russian region of North Ossetia — visited the devastated Jewish Quarter of Tskhinvali before conducting a special concert on the town’s central square.

“When the U.S. lost three and a half thousand people on September 11th, Russia became the first country to express its support,” said Gergiev, referring to the al Qaeda attacks in 2001 which in fact killed nearly 3,000. “For South Ossetia to lose 1,500 or 2,000 people today is a terrible tragedy but no one knows about it,” he said. “To shoot at kids, at children from a tank, it’s a shame and the world should know about this shame.” Gergiev looked shocked as he was shown around the ruins of houses reduced to mangled rubble. More

Gore Vidal: …Congress has never been more cowardly, nor more corrupt. All Bush has do is to make sure certain amounts of money go in the direction of certain important congressmen and that’s end of any serious investigation. After all, one of the bravest members of Congress is Denis Kucinich who brought the article of impeachment in to the well of the House of Representatives.

Postmodern Times is a series of short animated films presenting new ideas about global consciousness and techniques for social and ecological transformation. Our first episode, “Toward 2012″, introduces the project, explaining concepts from the best-selling book, “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl” (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) by Daniel Pinchbeck, in the author’s own voice.

Patrick Martin
A senior adviser to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, in the course of an interview with Fortune magazine made public Monday, declared that a new terrorist attack like September 11, 2001 would be good for his candidate’s electoral prospects. Such an event “certainly would be a big advantage to him,” declared Charles R. Black Jr., in a comment that even the monthly business magazine felt compelled to describe as “startling.”

Black added that the assassination last December of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, while “unfortunate,” had given McCain a boost in the final days before the New Hampshire primary, by focusing public attention on a major international crisis. “His knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us,” Black said. More