It's Sunday

Icelanders will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg with construction starting this month on the island’s first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age.

  Globe and Mail

Oh, hell. Now we’re going to have to expand the crusade.

Oh My

Compulsive.

A similar narrative evolution has been remarked in a story Williams has told about flying into Baghdad with members of Navy Seal Team 6, the group credited with killing Osama bin Laden. After the Bin Laden assassination, Williams said on the air that “I happen to have the great honor of flying into Baghdad with them at the start of the war.”

A year later, in an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, the Huffington Post noted, Williams elaborated the description. “I flew into Baghdad, invasion plus three days, on a blackout mission at night with elements of Seal Team 6, and I was told not to make any eye contact with them or initiate any conversation,” Williams said. But Navy sources told CNN that Team 6 did not accept passengers and such a trip would have been impossible.

[...]

“I’ve been so fortunate,” Williams said. “I was at the Brandenburg Gate the night the [Berlin] wall came down. I chipped a piece of my own off of that wall, and it’s framed and hanging in my den with the next day’s newspaper headline.”

It was [Tom] Brokaw, however, not Williams, who was the sole American anchor to report live from the scene on 9 November, 1989, the night the wall was opened.

  Guardian

What he's been fortunate about is that no one called him out before now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Operation DeathEaters

Hacktivist group Anonymous will descend upon the houses of “elite” establishment figures whom they claim have been involved in an extensive cover-up of historic child sex abuse and trafficking.

In a video released on YouTube, the group claims to be aware of a document which, if uncovered, would lead to the revelation of numerous establishment figures involved in the cover-up of child abuse spanning decades and continents.

  RT

Should George H.W. Bush be concerned?

One activist told Sky News: “This isn’t a situation where we are looking to create mayhem. It’s about giving the public information so we can confront these problems that go back decades.

“The stories that are coming out are the torture and murder of children with our trusted politicians and that is unacceptable.”

Will it tarnish the halo over St. Ronnie the Reagan’s head?

“If you are thinking ‘Kill the Bad Guys’ is the solution, you have no idea. We need nothing less than a complete examination of who we are,” it adds.

They call those who have abused their positions of power to participate in sexual abuse of children “Death Eaters” and say it is not only a problem in the UK.

[...]

The protest comes weeks after Home Secretary Theresa May announced the latest chairman of the Historic Sex Abuse Inquiry, examining a suspected Westminster pedophile ring which operated during the 1980s.

The inquiry has been plagued with problems since its inception in 2014, with both its previous chairs, Fiona Woolf and Baroness Butler-Sloss, stepping down amid conflicts-of-interest scandals.

Right. It’s not going to lead anywhere if the politicians themselves are “investigating”. Be careful out there Anonymous. You’ll be as wanted and hunted as Ed Snowden for this op.

Former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection center (CEOP), Jim Gamble, told Sky News: “It's fraught with so many difficulties.”

He welcomed any attempts to come forward to police with information targeting pedophiles, but warned that working outside a framework could result in “reckless disclosure” that might “ruin lives.”

Politicians’ lives, he’s talking about. Because children’s don’t matter, of course.

NYT: 1988

Washington Times 1989:

Can You Feel the Love?

Our Petty Tyrants Are Costly

And not just the price of their employment.

Roger Vanderklok was recently held in a Philadelphia prison, charged with making threats to appropriately named petty tyrant TSA supervisor Charles Kieser. Turns out, video shows he did not make any threats. (Future flyers, take note: Vanderklok, a marathon runner, had been detained at the airport because he had power bars packed in a PVC pipe so they didn’t get crushed.) He spent a total of about 20 hours in custody.

Vanderklok has now filed a civil suit against the TSA, the Philadelphia Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security, alleging that he was willfully deprived of his liberty, and his Fifth Amendment rights were violated, by the false statements made against him. Kieser remains employed by the TSA. No charges have been filed against him for what appears to have been outright perjury in his court testimony.

Homeland Security has made no public comment, citing the pending lawsuit. Taxpayers will of course be on the hook for any settlement coming out of the lawsuit.

BONUS: Taxpayers, on behalf of Philadelphia Airport TSA, recently paid out a $25,000 settlement over detaining a college student for possessing Arabic language flashcards.

  Peter VanBuren

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Terrorism

Speaking with Thom Hartmann on “The Big Picture,” [Florida Rep. Alan] Grayson cited House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and cast doubt on the overall strategy against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

[...]

“Of course we have the ability to go ahead and destroy ISIS – we could turn Iraq and Syria into molten glass. But that’s something that’s beneath us. That’s something that shows that the terrorists would have won, because at that point, we would be them.”

  RT

No, it would all be over in Syria and Iraq. They would be a glass-scape, a Chihuly exhibit.  What we are doing NOW is terrorism. Drones in the sky striking in a way that no one on the ground can prepare and be safe. THAT’s terrorism....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Fake Tanks and Passports

MPs in Kiev hoodwinked a US senator [James Inhofe], presenting his office with photos of columns of Russian military hardware allegedly roaming Ukrainian territory. The photos turned out to have been taken during the conflict in South Ossetia back in 2008.

[...]

“I was furious to learn one of the photos provided now appears to be falsified from an AP photo taken in 2008,” the lawmaker wrote.

At the same time the revealed forgery “doesn’t change the fact that there is plenty of evidence Russia has made advances into the country with T-72 tanks and that pro-Russian separatists have been killing Ukrainians in cold blood,” the US senator maintains.

  RT

It's not like the US hasn't done anything like this.  It worked for Chalabi and Powell in Iraq.  Ukraine just watches and copies.  And perhaps was even advised, but when busted, is on its on.  Sort of like a CIA agent.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Could It Be Peace in Ukraine?

An agreement has been brokered in Minsk to stop hostilities in Ukraine from Sunday. The deal was reached after marathon talks between the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, and signed by the Ukrainian rebels.

“I believe we agreed on a big deal. We agreed to a ceasefire starting at 00:00 on February 15,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told the media after the talks were finished.

"The main thing achieved is that from Saturday into Sunday there should be declared - without any conditions at all - a general ceasefire," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told journalists in a separate statement.

  RT

So, they’ve got today and tomorrow to blast the shit out of each other.

Don't they look like action dolls?  Especially Putin.

Potemkin Congress

Well, that was my first thought.  But could it be that is part of the GOP thinking?  How bad would that look to all the millions of voting Democrats who support Israel no matter what?

Jon Stewart, Moving on

Retiring from the Daily Show