When it happened in 1994, researchers were quick to reassure us what a once-in-a-millenia event it was. One paper "estimated that the time interval between impacts of 0.3 km diameter comets on Jupiter is approximately 500 years, whereas the interval between the impact of 1.6 km comets is about 6000 years." How appropriate then that the Universe should mock us wonderfully by arranging for the return of a similar-sized impact event exactly 15 years later!

But why should anyone be surprised? Just how long has NASA known about the high risk of impacts? While the 40 anniversary of the moon landing was being celebrated this month we turned to Victor Clube for long forgotten information about the moon landings:

"The Apollo astronauts planted seismometers on the Moon, primarily to measure Moonquakes. But they got diverted from their business by the discovery that objects, which they didn't expect at least, were hitting the Moon. These seismometers regularly recorded large bodies hitting the Moon like the meteoroids which I've just been describing. And this diagram is an illustration of the record of the incidence of these meteoroids, integrated over a period of about seven years until NASA switched the machine off- in exasperation, apparently, because they didn't think it was telling us anything very interesting.

© UnknownSchumacher-Levy approaching Jupiter 15 years ago

Nevertheless, for seven or eight years they accumulated this data, and what you see here is the integral result of the observations, per day, through the years, throughout the whole of this seven or eight year period. And, of course, it looks a little like the skyline of Oxford, where I come from, but never mind, the prominent thing is that you see one remarkable peak in the middle which is, in fact, centered on about the 30th June. And all that peak, in fact, coincides with the products of one year's observing. So in that one year, 1975, in fact, we had a flood of objects hitting the Moon, which actually were also hitting the Earth, and they all were present, apparently, in the same stream, as was responsible for the Tunguska object in 1908 which, as you recall, also arrived the end of June. In fact, this end of June is an interesting time. It's the time when we pass through the Taurid stream, going in one direction. And the other direction is, in fact, the beginning of November, and you can see some signs of that in this same diagram."

This case, reported in the UK Daily Mail, reminds me of that of Ken McElroy, recounted by Harry N Maclean in his book, 'In Broad Daylight'. Although the boy concerned is only 12 years old, his future 'career', based on his life up to now, will probably be very similar to McElroy's. He lives on a council housing estate in Hull, UK. 'Asbo' is an acronym for 'Anti-social behaviour order'.

The full report can be found here: 'Satan's child? He's just a little devil,' says mother of a one-boy crime wave.

Here's a few excerpts from the article:

Eight o'clock in the evening, and all is surprisingly calm in the home of Sonny Grainger, the 12-year- old who this week was labelled a 'one-boy wave of terror'.

You might expect that as his newly imposed curfew kicks in - the tag on his ankle ensures he is confined to the house until 7am - a child who prefers to spend evenings riding stolen motorbikes, starting fires and throwing stones at passers-by would be climbing the walls.

Instead, he sits quietly on the sofa, eating toast and watching The Bill until, at 8.45pm, with a kiss for his devoted mum, the 'tyrant' of Hull's Boothferry Estate retires to bed.

In the eyes of his neighbours, who have endured the campaign of violence, vandalism, theft and arson that earned him an Asbo and a reputation for excessive thuggery, he is nothing but a little hooligan whose mother has failed in her basic duty.

But to Nadine West - who admits that, prior to the Asbo [Anti-social behaviour order], she often didn't know his whereabouts from the moment he left the house after school until he had been rounded up by the police - he is a seriously misunderstood little boy.

Though even she has referred to her son - with brutal candour - as 'Satan's child', she insists his problem isn't a lack of discipline, but a psychiatric condition called ODD, or oppositional defiant disorder.

'He was diagnosed last October by experts, not by me,' she says. 'So when I hear people saying all these things about him - that he's got no respect for authority, that he's got anger management issues, that he's out of control - they don't make me think he's a bad kid, they just underline the symptoms of his condition.

'I think: "Yeah, he's got ODD. Now give us the help that we need." '

Among psychiatrists, ODD is a recognised condition, thought to affect between one and 16 per cent of school-age children, and Sonny seems to fit the profile.

Those affected are consistently surly, uncooperative, defiant and hostile towards authority figures.

They throw tantrums, they argue, they do the opposite of whatever is asked of them, they have an explosive temper and an inclination to seek revenge whenever they feel slighted.

If you are looking for some good bedtime reading full of juicy tales of crime and corruption, cliff-hanging episodes, fiendish villains, damsels in distress, besieged heroes, complex threads of action and more, you don't have to look any farther than the recently published Conyers Report: Reining In the Imperial Presidency - Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush. It took me a few days (what with doing other things) to get through its over 400 pages (including appendices, references and notes), and I can tell you that it is some seriously page-turning stuff. This is especially interesting considering that it could have been a very dry document, being put together by the House Committee on the Judiciary.

But it isn't dry. Just reciting the plain facts (with notes and references) of the presidency of George W. Bush lays bare the pathology of American politics in a way that no amount of dramatic writing could improve upon. I highly recommend reading it in full!

Actually, I was going to try to condense it for the site here but there was just SO much great, turgid prose that could NOT be left out that, by the time I was done "condensing," I still had over 200 pages of the main text! I kid you not, you will NOT believe some of the stuff that is in this document!

Of course, it's not like we didn't know this stuff already - it's sure been gone over thoroughly on the alternative press (and somewhat, in the mainstream press) for the past 8 years - but the fact that it now exists as an official document produced by the U.S. House of Representatives turns all that "alternative news" into a different kind of data. It's official now. I mean, really REAL.

Reading this report does give one a bit of hope that there ARE individuals in the murky halls of government who can actually see what is going on, have normal human reactions to it (like being appalled, disgusted, shocked, etc) and declare that such behavior is absolutely unacceptable in any way, shape, form or fashion. The problem is, as I mused while reading it, exactly what effect can it possibly have in a conclave of pathological types where the inmates have taken over the asylum? Probably not much.

Robert S. McNamara, U.S. Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, died July 6, 2009 at the age of 93. He was involved in the shocking firebombing of Japanese cities at the end of World War II while still in his twenties. He was a central figure in the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the transition between Kennedy and Johnson, and the Vietnam War. He even testified to Congress about the incredible UFO sightings all around the country in 1966. You might say he was the Donald Rumsfeld of the 1960s, albeit without the abrasive personality (similar glasses and hairstyle, though).

But who was he really? Was he a psychopath? Did he have a conscience? If so, a look at his life might help us learn how people born with the possibility of developing conscience can match the most ruthless psychopath in death and destruction. Like Rumsfeld, he became identified with a disastrous quagmire of a war. Unlike Rumsfeld, he seems to have been tortured by it.

Independence Day weekend in the US started with fireworks. Political fireworks. Former Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was not content to see Michael Jackson's death nor the infidelities of fellow conservative hypocri..er...politicians get all the media attention. On Friday she had to go drop a bombshell about her resignation. Both naysayers and rabid Palin supporters were surprised to hear that she was stepping down as governor of Alaska.

The conservative supporters seem to have been caught unaware, so much so, that they did not have an immediate talking point at hand, to explain it all away. Initial reactions to her announcement ranged from puzzlement to dismay to applause. The Sarah Palin blog lists a few. However, in the space of a few hours, the usual conservative pundits managed to come up with those handy talking points.

As the trumped up Swine Flu Threat™ is spun into the sinister scenario of mass compulsory vaccinations and the hidden hand of western intelligence agencies becomes increasingly obvious in colorful "revolutions", perhaps a quote from one of our favorite psychologists would be an appropriate introduction to this installment of Connecting the Dots:

The biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority of normal people is a "biological" necessity to the pathocrats. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule.

- Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes

An almost-but-not-quite CIA coup in Iran, the spread of the Franken-flu, the US Empire's continued military agression in the Middle East and the courting of trouble with North Korea all should be enough to remind us that suffering is the daily bread of millions of people on our planet.

As often happens in life, when it rains - it pours. The month of June was a smashing one indeed; the mysterious loss of an Air France transcontinental flight provides a clue about the stage of the cycle of history that we are in. This detail is important enough to occupy the first place in our monthly analysis.

Having won the presidential election by a landslide, Ahmadinejad and his backers within the Iranian regime should be basking in the glory of an overwhelming mandate from the Iranian people. Instead they face unrelenting pressure from within and without as they confront their deadliest crisis yet. The US and British media is presently falling over itself to broadcast images of an Iranian protestor shot dead in broad daylight, while repeatedly decrying "election fraud" in Iran.

Here's the BBC's coverage of the event. Note the well-placed image and caption (as appears in original article) of "grave spaces." The implication is left unsaid, but the suggestion is tantalising bait for readers by now emotionally charged from accounts of the martyred symbol of Iranian Freedom™: the Iranian regime is quietly burying evidence of its crimes in 'mass graves'...

Death video woman 'targeted by militia'

She was near the area, a few streets away, from where the main protests were taking place, near the Amir-Abad area. She was with her music teacher, sitting in a car and stuck in traffic.

© BBCGrave spaces have reportedly been set aside for those killed in Tehran clashes

She was feeling very tired and very hot. She got out of the car for just for a few minutes.

And that's when it all happened.

That's when she was shot dead. Eyewitnesses and video footage of the shooting clearly show that probably Basij paramilitaries in civilian clothing deliberately targeted her. Eyewitnesses said they clearly targeted her and she was shot in the chest.

©Unknown

Kurt Sonnenfeld (right) at Ground Zero

As a contract employee for FEMA's Colorado regional branch, 35 year old Kurt Sonnenfeld was dispatched to videotape and photograph the rescue and recovery effort at ground zero in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. There was no restriction on what Sonnenfeld could film and no documents were signed by him that passed ownership of the footage to FEMA. According to the TVtechnology website, Sonnenfeld was FEMA's Denver-based Region 8 Public Affairs Officer and he worked the site as one of only four FEMA photographers along with FEMA's Denver-based Region 8 Deputy Public Affairs officer Jim Chestnutt.

As reported on the SOTT blog earlier today, SOTT.net was shut down due to a legal demand by a gang called "Associated Content". It was sent to the Hotmail account of one of the editors on June 20, which obviously we didn't get since SOTT email is received at sott(at)sott.net. Anyway, this morning we received the following from our server people:

Due to the below email, their is an abuse issue with your server. You have 24hrs to respond on how you will correct this issue before we null route the ip. Further complaints, without action may result in deactivation of your server.

Thanks for your cooperation.

An "abuse issue" in respect of a site that tracks socio-cultural energy and memes? A non-profit organization that disseminates information for research and discussion? Obviously, there is more here than meets the eye! So, let's have a look at the DMCA notice from Associated Content that followed:

With so much debate going on over what really happened at the Pentagon on 9/11, and the obvious dire lack of coherent commentators to put and end to it once and for all, I decided that it was high time that I added my own reality-based voice to the debate and, in doing so, allow common sense to finally prevail over the ranting of wild-eyed, missing link type conspiracy theorists and liberals alike.

Despite the countless reams of electronic paper that have been wasted on the inane back and forward over what did or did not happen, the task of showing just what hit the Pentagon could not be easier, which makes it difficult to understand why the debate has lasted so long. If I didn't know better, I might almost think that there was some kind of conspiracy going on. Of course, I DO know better. Conspiracies simply do not exist - except for the small ones, they exist, but the big, scary ones do not, and never have. Everyone knows that.

Anyway, to get to the point. I will present conclusive evidence that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon by way of 10 carefully selected photos that, while they speak for themselves, will be accompanied by some incisive commentary by yours truly.

Let's get started: