Often, some of the most important news comes from local papers, stories that don't make it up the feeding chain and onto the news wires or major newspapers or nightly network news. It can be news that at first glance wouldn't appear to have a national or international impact. Second glance, and a good memory, can reveal that the impact may well be quite significant.

The other day a reader sent us an article link that he found on another alt.news website: Bad news - we are way past our 'extinct by' date

Since we had run the same story back when it first came out, we thought "yeah! Flashback!" After all, with all the talk about Global Warming, it served to remind readers that human caused CO2 levels are not all there is to what is going on here on the BBM today.

And the Procession of Damned Data continues...

Yesterday, January 4th, RyanX discussed the recent mysterious deaths of blackbirds and fish in Arkansas. As reports about mass deaths of birds and sea creatures continue to pour in from all over the world, perhaps it's time to, how should I put it... "open up the field" ?

January 4th: Canada: Hundreds of Dead Fish 'A Natural Occurrence'

Sarnia, Ontario - Hundreds of dead fish that washed up on shore in the north end of the St. Clair River is a natural occurrence and not the result of a chemical spill, a government officials say.

Only one species was affected, further supporting the idea it was a natural occurrence, she said.

"There was nothing to indicate that it was man-made."

January 4th: US: Thousands Of Fish Dead In Spruce Creek, Florida

Thousands of dead fish are floating in Volusia County Tuesday. They were all in Spruce Creek in Port Orange. The fish kill is unusual, according to people who live along the creek, because it's warm.

It's been a week since there were freezing temperatures, but there are fish lining the banks. Some said it's the worst kill they've ever seen; thousands of fish lined the twists and turns of Spruce Creek.

The sheer number of fish and the smell were both overwhelming.

Most of the fish were mullet, ladyfish and catfish, and not the valuable sporting fish called snook that died in mass during a cold spell last year.

"A procession of the damned.
By the damned, I mean the excluded.
We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.

Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed, will march. You'll read them -- or they'll march. Some of them livid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten..."

- Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned

Yes, and rotten is what Beebe, Arkansas woke up to on the opening day of 2011: A whole lot of rotting red-winged blackbirds. Initial estimates put the number of dead birds littering the yards and streets of Beebe at around 5000. Not only this, but about 125 miles west in Ozark, Arkansas an estimated 100,000 dead drum fish have turned up on the shores of the Arkansas River.

So what gives?

To coincide with the mass of dead birds and fish from Arkansas, Chile also experienced a mass death of sooty shearwater birds along the shoreline between Mela and Colmo Yao counties. This comes on the heels of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in the Santiago Del Estero region. Likewise, on the opposite side of South America, at least one-hundred tons of dead fish -- mostly sardines, croaker and catfish -- have turned up on the shores of Paraná, Brazil since last Thursday. These signs do not bode well for 2011!

Now in a world such as ours, with nearly every square inch of the planet polluted beyond living tolerance, it would seem that mass animal deaths should not be so uncommon. After all, in the past several years we've seen mass die-offs of honeybees, bats, dolphins, pelicans, frogs and likely other species that have gone unnoticed. The cause of these mass animal deaths has often turned out to be specific diseases, pollutants, or some combination of the two. The odd thing about these dead blackbirds in Beebe is that they just dropped dead in mid-flight. As Karen Rowe, an ornithologist for the wildlife commission commented, "it's important to understand that a sick bird can't fly." So what exactly caused over 5,000 blackbirds to take flight in the middle of the night then drop out of the sky? These Blackbirds are normally sleeping at night and they have very poor eyesight in the dark, according to experts.

Jesse Ventura's TV show Conspiracy Theory is turning out to be hard-hitting stuff for the US mainstream media. His latest episode touches on the nuts and bolts of the scale of BP's ecocide in the Gulf of Mexico - the toxicity, the coverup, the questions about deliberate sabotage of the Deepwater rig, comparisons with Katrina, etc. It even brings up Obama's possible background as a CIA asset, interviews Gulf community leader Kindra Arnesen, talks about depopulation/evacuation programs to relocate the entire population of the Gulf Coast. It even brings up the fact that the Gulf Loop current became severed from the Gulf Stream and how this would contribute to a global "mini ice age".

It is perhaps unsurprising then to see "conspiracy insider" Alex Jones being planted next to Jesse because that is a sure sign that his vectoring is planned.

As noted in the recent article Flu Crisis Hits Cancer Surgery: Britain Teeters on the Brink of an Epidemic, the flu seems to be hitting Brits pretty hard this winter. So much so that they are now short on inpatient hospital beds in some facilities. The article states that the British health care system is at near epidemic level with the flu:

So far this winter nine children and 18 adults are confirmed to have died from the virus, although in reality this number is expected to be much higher.

One intensive care doctor described the outbreak as the worst he had seen in two decades. Dr Ian Jenkins, former president of the Paediatric Intensive Care Society, who works at Bristol Children's Hospital, said: 'I've not seen this much flu in more than 20 years.'

In another article, Swine flu kills 10 in Britain; sparks fear of another pandemic in 2011, the ghost of the Swine Flu virus is resurrected as the cause of this recent spike in flu-like illness.

While the article starts out with the words, "It's back!", we have some doubt that this soon-to-be flu epidemic is solely the result of this virus. Let's not forget that virus experts stated from the early days of the so-called global Swine Flu pandemic that the Swine Flu virus went global before health authorities could do anything about it. In other words, everybody has experienced this virus to some extent by now, and the results have been somewhat blasé compared to the dire predictions of dead millions initially made by the WHO.

While the spike in flu cases in Britain is very real, the purported Swine Flu virus as the cause is likely another example of medical propaganda run amok. But if this recent epidemic in Britain isn't the result of a measly virus, then what is?

Anyone who doesn't believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic). Instead of informing citizens, Fox News (sic) informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports that Fox News (sic) "no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state," turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making "anti-American comments."

The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker. President George W. Bush set the scene when he declared: "you are with us or against us."

Bush's words demonstrate a frightening decline in our government's respect for dissent since the presidency of John F. Kennedy. In a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said:

"No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary. [...] Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment."

The press is not protected, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers, in order that it can amuse and entertain, emphasize the trivial, or simply tell the public what it wants to hear. The press is protected so that it can find and report facts and, thus, inform, arouse "and sometimes even anger public opinion."

In a statement unlikely to be repeated by an American president, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers: "I'm not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, for I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed."

The spinmeisters are playing the same record over and over, recovery, recovery, scratch, scratch, recovery's in da house! The Associated Press trumpeted, "After two years of recession, Christmas 2010 will go down as the moment when Americans rediscovered how much they like to shop." On December 28th, Yahoo Finance reassured us at 9AM, "The recovery is on track," but an hour later, it featured a new headline, "Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Falls in December."

With its attendant social chaos, crime and despair, the country is sinking into an economic quicksand, yet Americans are injected daily with a massive dose of tranquilizing nonsense. Today's top stories, "Elton John Becomes a Dad," "Air Force Mascot Goes Missing at Game," "10 Best Celebrity Hair Moments" and "Synchronized Walking Routine."

The cheeky and cheery are occasionally contradicted by grimmer admissions, however. Even Voice of America, that Cold War relic and official mouthpiece of Washington, has this exchange:

[VOA]: "How does it feel from the beginning of the Christmas season from your point of view?

[Cashier]: "It's not that good. It's like so-so, you know."

[VOA]: "So business isn't so great right now."

[Cashier]: "No I don't think so. Because people don't have the money to buy, there are lots of people who don't have jobs."

[VOA]: "Is your job in danger?"

[Cashier]: "Yeah."

Weird, such candor from the VOA. Maybe their CIA check bounced?

A reader of SOTT.net sent us these photos of the aftermath of the recent blizzard in New York City. With records being broken all across the northern hemisphere, particularly in Europe and the US, it looks like SOTT's prediction that we are entering an Ice Age is coming true. Of course, the denialists will tell us that we have confused weather for climate, but when these same people confuse the War on Terror for the War Against the People, it is clear just who is really confused.

"Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors."

- Lewis H. Lapham

The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the US government of US law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.

2011 is shaping up as the terminal year for American democracy. The Republican Party has degenerated into a party of Brownshirts, and voter frustrations with the worsening economic crisis and military occupations gone awry are likely to bring Republicans to power in 2012. With them would come their doctrines of executive primacy over Congress, the judiciary, law, and the Constitution and America's rightful hegemony over the world.

If not already obvious, 2010 has made clear that the US government does not care a whit for the opinions of citizens. The TSA is unequivocal that it will reach no accommodation with Americans other than the violations of their persons that it imposes by its unaccountable power. As for public opposition to war, the Associated Press reported on December 16 that "Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the U.S. can't let public opinion sway its commitment to Afghanistan." Gates stated bluntly what has been known for some time: the idea is passe that government in a democracy serves the will of the people. If this quaint notion is still found in civics books, it will soon be edited out.

In Gag Rule, a masterful account of the suppression of dissent and the stifling of democracy, Lewis H. Lapham writes that candor is a necessary virtue if democracies are to survive their follies and crimes. But where in America today can candor be found? Certainly not in the councils of government. Attorney General John Ashcroft complained of candor-mongers to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Americans who insist on speaking their minds, Ashcroft declared, "scare people with phantoms of lost liberty," "aid terrorists," diminish our resolve," and "give ammunition to America's enemies."

Today the British newspaper The Daily Mail ran a 'human interest' story about a British soldier who is planning to run 52 marathons to "raise money to thank the medical staff who helped him".

Private Karl Hinett was involved in an event that took place in Basra, Iraq in 2005 that produced the 'iconic war image' of Hinett's burning Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) and his comrade Sgt Long in flames jumping from the turret. Hinett, who was on fire inside the APC, plans to run the marathons to contribute to a £3million appeal launched by The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity to fund a Home For The Brave, a non-medical centre for injured military ­personnel.

According to The Daily Mail, the back story on the image is:

Pte Hinett was just 18 when the attack took place on September 19, 2005. The Warrior came under attack from a mob throwing bricks, stones and petrol bombs in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.There were four other soldiers on board - Sgt George Long, 2nd Lieutenant John Cliffe, Lance Corporal Jo McCann and Private Ryon Burton - who all escaped serious injury.

It was Sgt Long who was seen in the horrific image relayed around the world, his body in flames as he jumped from the turret. Pte Hinett was on fire inside the tank.Seconds after the picture was taken, he wrestled his way out and on to the ground, where he passed out and was taken to hospital. Doctors feared he would die of his burns.

And that's it folks. There's nothing else of any public interest in this story. It really is just the heart-warming tale of a brave British soldier who wanted to give back to other brave British military personnel who did so much for him and for the Iraqi people....

Well, there is one other little detail, but it's so insignificant I can fully understand why the Daily Mail failed to mention it. Although I seem to remember commenting on it at the time: