It appears Europe’s love of cocaine is even expressed around Valentines Day. According to Reuters:
A week before Valentine's Day, a consignment of cocaine was found hidden among 20,000 roses from Latin America at Amsterdam airport, Dutch authorities said Wednesday. The roses, a popular February 14 Valentine's Day gift, arrived last Sunday on a flight from Bogota, Colombia, which stopped over in Puerto Rico, the public prosecutors' office said in a statement. The drug was found in cellophane packets hidden in boxes containing the roses.
In recent years, Europe has been consuming more cocaine than anywhere else in the world. And smugglers are getting more creative to feed the continent’s growing appetite. Last season, I headed to Europe to find out just how all that cocaine was finding its way there. I spoke with mules who had swallowed as much as 11 kilos over several trips and women who’d been trafficked from Africa to help fund the cocaine trade. Its a rabbit hole that goes very very deep to help meet a growing demand.
Vanguard: Cocaine Mafia (Video)
It appears Europe’s love of cocaine is even expressed around... more
“Klik!” is a sexy, bodacious babosity by the Dutch filmmaker rapscallions Bobby de Groot, Sven Neve and Arjan van Meerten from Amsterdam’s House of Secrets. The trippy one-minute stereoscopic 3-D animated short film was created for the opening of the 2009 Klik animation festival in Amsterdam.
This piece includes a number of colorful illustrations, as well as the audaciously cheeky animated short, “Klik!”
Please visit my website to view these illustrations, and to relish this joyfully bodacious animated short:
Please note that in the article that follows, I am not claiming that the U.S. Government knew Mutallab had a bomb or intended to hurt anyone on Flight 253 when the U.S. Government let him board.
Since our flight landed on Christmas Day, Lori and I have been doing everything in our power to uncover the truth about why we were almost blown up in the air over Detroit. The truth is now finally out after the publication of the following Detroit News article:
American law enforcement officials have been told to be on the lookout for female suicide bombers who may attempt to enter the United States, law enforcement authorities tell ABC News.
One official said at least two of them are believed to be connected to al Qaeda in Yemen, and may have a non-Arab appearance and be traveling on Western passports.
The threat was described as "current" but not imminent, said the official.
"They have trained women," said former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant.
Separately, Britain raised its terrorism threat level to "severe," its second-highest level, days before London hosts major international meetings on how to deal with militancy in Afghanistan and Yemen. Britain's threat level had been labeled "severe" for several years before being lowered last summer to "substantial."
American officials say a U.S. air strike on Christmas Eve against suspected al Qaeda training camps is believed to have killed many, but not all, of a group of suicide bombers being trained in Yemen.
The man accused of attempting to explode a bomb on Northwest flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told FBI agents there were a number of other people who trained with him in Yemen.
"There are others who are still out there who have been trained and who are clean skins -- that means people who we do not have a record of, people who may not look like al Qaeda terrorists, who may not be Arabs, and may not be men," said Clarke.
The alert comes during a week in which American law enforcement officials described an "unusually high" number of people on the no-fly list attempting to board flights to or in the United States.
Six on No-Fly List Stopped in 48 Hours
At least six people on the no-fly list were denied boarding in a 48-hour period between Saturday and Monday this week, according to the officials.
Two of the six were stopped at London's Heathrow Airport.
On Saturday, an Egyptian man on the no-fly list was stopped from flying on American Airlines flight 113 from London to Miami.
The next day, Sunday, a Saudi Arabian passenger was stopped from boarding United Airlines flight 929 to Chicago. Officials said the man was sent back to Saudi Arabia by the British.
In two other overseas cases involving people on the no-fly list, a man in Nairobi, Kenya was kept off a flight Sunday that would have connected in Amsterdam to Dallas, and a passenger attempting to fly on American Airlines to Los Angeles was stopped in Saint Maarten before he could board a connecting flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to officials.
American officials say there were two additional incidents, in Minneapolis and in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in which people on the no-fly list were denied boarding, questioned and then allowed to leave the airport without being detained.
"What we don't know is whether this is because everyone is doing a better job of enforcing the no-fly list, or because the list has been expanded, or because the terrorists are attempting to probe our security," said ABC News Clarke.
A senior U.S. official said the most likely explanation involved the recent expansion of the no-fly list to include more possible terror suspects.
At the same time, U.S. law enforcement agencies have quietly begun an intense and widespread effort to investigate any American resident who traveled to Yemen in recent months or who was in contact with the radical cleric Anwar Awlaki, who authorities believe serves as an al Qaeda recruiter.
Canadian authorities are also running down leads of any Canadian citizens who have traveled to Yemen, a senior official there said.
Awlaki, an American citizen who lives in Yemen, has been connected by authorities to the accused Northwest bomber, the accused shooter at Fort Hood and several other men convicted of terrorist activity in the United States and Canada.
More at link they admit to someone helping the underwear bomber to get past security!American law enforcement officials have been told to be on the lookout for female... more
Authorities have quietly reversed the official story behind the Christmas Day underwear bomber attack and acknowledged that an accomplice was involved, despite weeks of denial and derision of eyewitness Kurt Haskell’s description of a sharp-dressed man who helped Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab board Flight 253 in Amsterdam.
Buried in the last two paragraphs of a story about alleged female suicide bombers coming from Yemen, an ABC News report contains the following bombshell.
“Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.”
“Authorities had initially discounted the passenger accounts, but the agents say there is a growing belief the man have played a role to make sure Abdulmutallab “did not get cold feet.”
Detroit lawyer Kurt Haskell maintained from the beginning that he saw a well-dressed Indian man aid the accused bomber to board the plane despite the fact that he had no passport and was on a terror watch list.
“While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time,’” reported the Michigan Live news website.
FBI agents interviewed Haskell and he told them about the sharp-dressed man but officials refused to admit that a wider conspiracy was at hand, stoically maintaining the official story that Abdulmutallab had acted alone. Authorities claimed that videotapes did not show a second man accompanying Abdulmutallab and yet they refused to release any footage of the alleged bomber.
“Why is this not total breaking news?” asks Haskell’s wife on their family blog. “I think we now know WHY the video is not being released. Because IT SHOWS WHAT KURT SAID!!!!!! I mean, where is his apology? Where? They come out in the media, basically calling Kurt a liar, then they take it back, but it is in the bottom of another nonrelated article. Ridiculous. And still, to date, no authorities contacting KURT to ask him to look at the freaking video and help identify the guy. It’s so insane to me. We have an eyewitness to this, and they just don’t care.”
There seems little doubt that Abdulmutallab had at least one accomplice if not more. Authorities have remained silent on other eyewitness reports which described a man intently filming the alleged terrorist throughout the whole flight, a connection that strongly suggests the attempted bomber was involved in some kind of drill and that his strings were being pulled by people in more senior positions.
In addition, Flight 253 passengers reported seeing a third man connected to the incident being handcuffed by FBI agents after sniffer dogs found something suspect in his luggage. After initially denying any knowledge of this individual, authorities were forced to acknowledge his existence but claimed he had nothing to do with the attempted attack, completely contradicting multiple eyewitness accounts that state passengers were moved from a waiting area after it was made clear to them that a bomb had been found.
The fact that Abdulmutallab’s accomplices were all described as being Indian in appearance would contradict the story that has been spun around the issue in an effort to sell the public on naked body scanners in airports as well as deeper U.S. military involvement in Yemen.
The ludicrous spectacle of long-deceased boogeyman Osama bin Laden apparently claiming responsibility for the attempted attack this past weekend only confirmed that a fairytale was being contrived which was totally at odds with what eyewitnesses described.
More at the link:Authorities have quietly reversed the official story behind the Christmas Day... more
The new audio tape from “Osama bin Laden” taking responsibility for the idiotic and childish incident in Detroit where moronic Nigerian armed with a useless “bomb” is simply too much. Now using audio tapes because, supposedly, nobody in Al Qaeda got a flash drive video for Christmas is even more of a joke. Please, with the hundreds of millions our Saudi allies have given to terrorists, a video camera the size of an Ipod might have been a nice touch. Even funnier was releasing the audio, using algorithm software probably illegally downloaded off the internet, and giving it to Al Jazeera, is even funnier.
Pundit Debbie Schussell, former Mark Siljander (VT staff writer) staffer, has bitterly complained about the strong ties between Fox News and Al Jazeera. Fox owner, Rupert Murdoch, is the most powerful “influencer” of the ultra-rightists in Israel. Attempts by the press to present Al Jazeera of today as the “pro-terrorist” media it seemed like many years ago is an epic misrepresentation.
A further abuse, of course, is not only that we are no longer seeing the easily debunked bin Laden doubles whose video tapes were “mysteriously” released by SITE Intelligence, the Rita Katz/Israeli group that seems to find them in trash bins behind delicatessens. The “new” audio tape itself contains statements claiming credit for 9/11 in direct contradiction to the real bin Laden videos, the only ones authenticated. If you wondered why the FBI doesn’t list Osama bin Laden as a suspect in 9/11, I think you have your answer. If they think the bin Laden “admissions” aren’t credibile, I wonder who the FBI is investigating or if they have simply been told to mind their own business.
The terrorist incident itself is the last thing Al Qaeda would ever take responsibilty for despite the claims by SITE Intelligence that they found an unnamed and unverified internet site that confirmed this. Who in the name of all that is holy would want to take responsibility for an idiot who was led onto an American bound plane by passing around searches, customs and passport control in an airport run by an Israeli security company but who carried a “bomb” designed by a three year old.
Who would be so stupid as to try to pass off this childish tape when reliable witnesses saw the terrorist being led onto the plane in Amsterdam in a manner that required full cooperation from security personnel, passport control and the airline itself. We don’t even have to go into the fact that the “terrorists” in Yemen that supposedly claimed responsibilty were released from Guantanamo under the personal signature of Vice President Cheney in 2007 or that before the incident, the government of Yemen tied these individuals to Israeli controllers thru captured computers.
I am only thankful that the duped terrorist, or as Lee Oswald had said, “patsy”, was the moronic son of a long time Mossad business associate in Nigeria. Mr. Mutallab, banker, but mostly head of Nigeria’s defense industry, DICON, managed almost entirely by Israelis, may have much more story to tell other than the one he told CIA Chief of Station on November 19, 2009. Do we want to follow former Homeland Security director Chertoff, not only a Jewish activist but currently representing companies selling body scanners to airports and the mysterious ability for someone on worldwide terrorist watch lists to be escorted onto a US bound airliner without passport or search?
Billions in profits were realized almost instantly after this incident. Companies tied to Chertoff, Israel and India were on the receiving end.
The only reliable information the world has on Osama bin Laden is that he was killed by American troops on December 13, 2001 and buried outside Tora Bora by his following, 30 Mujahideen.
More at the link above:The new audio tape from “Osama bin Laden” taking responsibility for the... more
ROMULUS, Mich. -- The Transportation Security Administration says unruly passengers on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit were interviewed by Customs and Border Protection officials after the plane landed.
But the TSA says the passengers were released and no arrests were made.
Air Lines spokeswoman Susan Elliott says the crew of Northwest Flight 243 requested that authorities meet the plane Tuesday after it landed because four passengers didn't follow their instructions. She says nobody was injured but wouldn't describe what the passengers were doing.
Tuesday's disturbance comes less than a week after a Nigerian man pleaded not guilty to trying to blow up a Northwest flight from Amsterdam as it was preparing to land in Detroit on Christmas.
Got that? Some people were "unruly" -- didn't jump when the flight attendant told them to? -- and cops asked 'em a couple of questions. Without knowing the details, it'd be a safe bet that this was a case of drunken obnoxiousness, just like the overwhelming majority of passenger disturbances. They weren't arrested, the terminal wasn't locked down, flights weren't backed up -- that's the whole story.
This almost could have been headlined, "BREAKING TERROR NEWS: Amsterdam-Detroit Flight Arrives Without Incident!"
I'm on a deadline and don't have time for more than a quick point here. And that is: people don't evaluate risk in any rational way -- they don't base their sense of danger on the actual statistical likelihood of being harmed by a given activity.
There are 2-pack-a-day smokers who are absolutely terrified of dying in a terror attack, which is less likely than being killed by lightning (for Americans). Many people ignore routine maintenance on their cars and then brave the daily commute to work without a second thought but are scared shitless about super-safe commercial air-travel. That kind of thing.
Risk-perception is influenced by many factors, and one of them is "media amplification."
So those of you who are ready to give up your rights every time someone screams 'bomb' or 'terrorist', slow down, breathe, and think before you act.
More at the link:I'm going to run the risk of a take-down order from an AP lawyer and reprint this... more
Miep Gies, who ensured the diary of Anne Frank did not fall into the hands of Nazis after the young teen's arrest, has died. She was 100.
Gies was among a team of Dutch citizens who hid the Frank family of four and four others in a secret annex in Amsterdam, Netherlands, during World War II, according to her official Web site, which announced her death Monday. She worked as a secretary for Anne Frank's father, Otto, in the front side of the same building.
The family stayed in a secret room from July 1942 until August 1944.
The diary was sheltered in a drawer of Gies' desk -- unread -- and later turned over to Otto Frank when he returned after the war as the only surviving resident of the annex. He published his daughter's diary, later titled "The Secret Annex," in 1947.Miep Gies, who ensured the diary of Anne Frank did not fall into the hands of Nazis... more
There may not be a person in America without a strong opinion about what coulda, shoulda been done to prevent the underwear bomber from boarding that Christmas flight to Detroit. In the years since 9/11, we’ve all become counterterrorists. But in the 16 months since that other calamity in downtown New York — the crash precipitated by the 9/15 failure of Lehman Brothers — most of us are still ignorant about what Warren Buffett called the “financial weapons of mass destruction” that wrecked our economy. Fluent as we are in Al Qaeda and body scanners, when it comes to synthetic C.D.O.’s and credit-default swaps, not so much.
What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.There may not be a person in America without a strong opinion about what coulda,... more
Officials in the Obama White House are considering the possibility that the Christmas day attempt by Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Mutallab to blow up an airliner about to land in Detroit was deliberately and intentionally facilitated by unnamed networks inside the US intelligence community. This was the gist of a report by Richard Wolf delivered in this evening's edition of cable network MSNBC's Countdown program, hosted by Keith Olbermann. This report comes on the eve of a special White House interagency conference convoked by Obama to deal with the massive systemic failure of US intelligence in allowing the Yemen alumnus Mutallab to board the Amsterdam to Detroit flight while allegedly carrying a PETN explosive device on his person.Officials in the Obama White House are considering the possibility that the Christmas... more
COMMENT:As a customs official now confirms the 2nd man detained, confirming the Haskell’s account, the Detroit News points out that the FBI story has changed 4 times, while the Haskell’s has remained unchanged since day one:
“I just want them to look into our claims,” Lori Haskell said. “Our story has been the same since Day One because we are telling the truth. This is the FBI’s fourth story.”
Haskell had two detailed posts in two different stories. Here is Part One, originally posted here (Nothing below in the indent has been changed. Only links have been added.):
Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.
Writing isn't all done at a keyboard. And if your protagonist is a pot grower, well . . . please excuse the cloud of smoke.
Reporting from AMSTERDAM - Franco bullwhips a 25-foot-long plastic bag through the air, snapping it behind him, sending the tail sailing over his head. The bag looks like a balloon-animal anaconda and he's the half-magician / half-matador who makes it dance. He's certainly got the crowd's attention. They watch as the plastic snake grows in length, slowly filling with smoky mist, the freshly vaporized essence of the 2008 and current Cannabis Cup winner, Super Lemon Haze.
Franco is one of the legendary Strain Hunters, an A-team of globe-trotting cannabis breeders who seek out rare landrace strains of marijuana. They've made expeditions to Malawi and India searching for pure plant genetics, marijuana strains unaffected by hybridization or cross-pollination. If it was a tomato, we'd call it heirloom.
When Franco swings the bag in my direction I don't refuse. Smoking a Cup winner with Franco is like playing catch with Manny Ramirez or kicking a soccer ball with David Beckham. It's an experience.
You wouldn't know it to look at me but I'm not just hanging out here in Amsterdam. I'm writing.
It's a common mistake non-writers make, confusing the physical act of typing with writing, and writers do sometimes sit at the keyboard, but that's just a small part of the job. Think about it. An athlete trains and practices before he or she competes, a chef will shop for the freshest items before deciding what to cook, an architect will study building sites before beginning a design. Writers write about people, and to understand what makes people tick, to get inside their emotional lives -- to write, really -- writers need to engage with the world.
Kerouac hit the road, Hemingway hit the bottle and Dorothy Parker hit the mattress. Me? I'm hitting the Super Lemon Haze.
For the last three years, I've wrestled with my fourth novel, a story set in the world of high-grade marijuana cultivation. It's a unique subculture of underground botanists, farmers, ganjaficionados and seed geneticists who endeavor to discover, develop and refine distinctive strains. The gap between excellent and mediocre is wide, and the stakes are high. The very best marijuana gets entered in the Cannabis Cup -- an event that takes place in this city every November. If you are good enough or lucky enough to win, you have the most valuable pot in the world. The seeds of a Cup winner are worth millions, the marijuana is worth even more. It is the Super Bowl of the marijuana world.
I find this culture utterly compelling, not just because of the science but because it is still, for the most part, an illegal pursuit about which people feel passionately engaged. This passion is similar to what you'd find in a vineyard in Napa or in the kitchen of a top restaurant. The Cannabis Cup, though, is more than a competition; it's also a celebration of a mostly underground, counterculture lifestyle.
In my novel "Baked," I tell the story of a young underground botanist from Los Angeles -- a man inspired by Floyd Zaiger, inventor of the pluot -- and what happens when he wins the Cup and returns home to find himself caught in a tug of war between medical marijuana dispensaries who want an exclusive on his strain.
I was able to do a lot of my research in Los Angeles. I spoke to growers, got thrown out of my neighborhood medical marijuana dispensary and watched hours of videos on YouTube of the Cannabis Cup ceremonies. But like Marvin Gaye sang, "Ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby," and for me that's key. I need my readers to trust me. If I can earn their trust, they'll believe the world in the novel is real, and the emotional journey of my character will have a stronger effect.
That means I can't just sit around staring at the blank screen, I have to do a kind of full immersion writing. I want those tiny details, the textures and nuance, that can energize a story and make a novel come alive. It's the unknown unknowns that interest me, the things I don't know I don't know. That means I have to go out into the world with my eyes wide open. Which is why I'm at the Cannabis Cup.
I wheel away from the giant pulsating tube of Super Lemon Haze and take in the expo floor. Despite a large crowd in a relatively small space, the vibe is friendly and easygoing. Everyone is chilled out. Perhaps that's the Haze talking.
The big seed companies have fancy booths where they give away T-shirts and dispense advice to would-be growers. There are some smaller seed dealers, representatives from the Berkeley Patients Group and some guys with a laser bong.
But it's the people who fascinate me; they've come from all over the world. I talk to stoners from Japan, potheads from Germany, folks from Denver, Fresno, Washington D.C., Oklahoma, Sacramento, Oakland and San Diego, and a French man who tells every woman in the hall that she is "very beautiful."
Los Angeles is well represented. I meet Swerve, a lanky strain developer from the Valley whose company, the Cali Connection, is something of an upstart competing against big guns like Greenhouse Seeds and Sensi Seeds.
Still, the big Los Angeles success story has to be Don and Aaron from DNA Genetics, two guys who came to the Cup years ago as fans, then returned to L.A., started experimenting and have ended up developing numerous award-winning strains. They have since relocated to Amsterdam where they are "two stoners living the dream."
Flying While Black: New Face of Terrorism
New America Media, Commentary, Jasmyne A. Cannick, Posted: Dec 30, 2009
As America closes out 2009, we usher in the New Year with a newly refreshed and heightened sense of panic. After last week’s would be attack by 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, whose failed attempt to ignite an incendiary device aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, we are being reminded why we need our government to impede on the last of personal freedoms when traveling by air.
Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport will begin using body scanners on all passengers taking flights to the United States following the attempted terrorist attack on a U.S.-bound flight on Christmas Day, the Dutch interior minister said Wednesday.
The millimeter-wave body scanners will be in place in about three weeks, Dutch Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst told a news conference at The Hague.
"We've escaped a very serious attack with serious consequences, but unfortunately in this world there are individuals who do not shy away from attacks on innocent people," she said.
Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, 23, is accused of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane going from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, with explosives that had been concealed in his underwear. He is charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft.
The militant group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the December 25 plot.
Evan Kopelson reporting from the Amsterdam International Airport on his way to Copenhagen to cover the COP15 climate conferences.Evan Kopelson reporting from the Amsterdam International Airport on his way to... more
What was President Obama's reaction to the recent terrorist attempt to explode an international flight bound for Detroit? Instead of reacting in a thoughtful way, he "did a George W. Bush" by reacting in the same mindless, kneejerk way that Bush was famous for: attacking the civil rights of innocent people by ordering that all air travelers in America undergo yet more invasive and degrading security checks.What was President Obama's reaction to the recent terrorist attempt to explode an... more
A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport.
Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday.
Haskell said he and his wife were sitting on the ground near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with an unidentified man.
Kurt and Lori Haskell are attorneys with Haskell Law Firm in Taylor. Their expertise includes bankruptcy, family law and estate planning.
While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, 'He's from Sudan and we do this all the time.'”
DETROIT (Reuters) – A Nigerian man believed to be linked to al Qaeda militants was in custody on Saturday after he tried to ignite an explosive device on a U.S. passenger plane as it approached Detroit, U.S. officials said.
The suspect, who suffered extensive burns, was overpowered by passengers and crew on the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam. The passengers, two of whom suffered minor injuries, disembarked safely from the Delta Air Lines plane.
“We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism,” a White House official told Reuters.
