A Day In The Life 4/30/2014
. . . Lucy has the potential to be very effective, as it can decompose methane while any resulting nano diamond powder could also reflect sunlight back into space. Project Lucy therefore aims to design, build and test a microwave transmission system targeting low-altitude methane clouds with the aim of breaking the first C-H bond as soon as the methane erupts into the atmosphere from the Arctic Ocean. The transmitters can be mounted on submarines, planes and after 2015 on boats and drilling rigs when the Arctic ice cap has melted. — (Arctic News, 2012).
Date: Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 12:16 AM
Subject: BUSTED Pilot Forgets To Turn Off CHEMTRAILS while landing
This Is The Planetary Wake-up Call You Were Waiting For
Why climate change deniers need to get real
Source: The Unbounded Spirit
In case you missed the biggest news story of the decade this week, we´re all doomed. A long-awaited paper on global warming and its effects was published last Monday by the UN´s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and it makes for very grim reading. The message in the latest report gave humanity its starkest warning yet: we are facing a very dark and terrifying future, and the time for fixing it may have already passed.
Key findings
The report warns that melting sea ice and permafrost threaten to sink entire cities, ocean acidification is killing our precious coral reefs, and extreme weather patterns and mega disasters such as heat waves, droughts, floods, typhoons and wildfires will continue to worsen. When you throw into the mix dangerously high air pollution, the effects of fracking (sinkholes,earthquakes, groundwater contamination and even birth defects), and the ongoing mass extinction of wildlife due to human stupidity, we can conclude that things are not looking good for our grandchildren.
“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” were the dark words of Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC.
Food shortages, riots and rising grocery bills
The report, released every six years since the panel was set up in 1988, was a joint effort by more than 300 scientists. By far the most alarming edition to date, it took three years to compile and runs to 2,600 pages and 32 volumes. It tells us that even if we´re lucky enough to escape death from natural disasters, the future of agriculture is so bleak that millions of people face starvation and displacement. Global wheat and corn stocks are in great danger, and even staple groceries like rice and soy could become expensive luxury items.
Other food sources are also under threat. Fish catches in some areas of the tropics are projected to fall by between 40% and 60%, affecting millions of people for whom seafood is a source of livelihood and survival- and this scarcity of food could also cause widespread political instability and rioting, as well as other related social problems.
In conclusion, the experts say that man-made climate change is no longer up for debate. As Richard Schiffman wrote in the Guardian : “There are few climate-change skeptics amongst those who grow the world’s food. Farmers don’t have to read UN reports to know how radically their weather is changing. And consumers don’t need academic studies or bullet points to know that food prices are steadily rising.”
The case for skepticism
This is true, but of course not everyone agrees with the IPCC´s findings. Skeptics point out that we have not been measuring and recording climate patterns for long enough to know for certain if humans are responsible for the earth changes we are currently experiencing. Others might argue (and rightly so) that we can´t trust the UN, or point to evidence of weather control technology such as HAARP to explain climate change and even natural disasters. These are all valid points, but they ignore one simple, undeniable fact: humanity is raping and murdering this small blue planet at a rate which is unsustainable and psychopathic; to assume there is no price to pay for this ecocidal behavior is ignorant and foolish to say the least.
Consider this: the earth is 4.6 billion years old. Let´s scale that down to 46 years. Using this analogy, humans have been here on this planet just 4 hours. Our industrial revolution began just one minute ago. And in that meager 60 seconds, we have already destroyed more than 50% of the world´s forests. This is akin to ripping out one lung from a living organism and expecting it to be in the same good health it was beforehand.
Just days after the publication of the IPCC paper, Yellowstone Park suffered a 4.8 magnitude earthquake– something which should strike fear into all of us- and Chile was next, with a powerful 8.2 magnitude quake causing landslides and a tsunami.
Also this year, the US was hit by a polar vortex in the east and wildfires in the west, as was Australia, while poor countries like the Philippines (whose low-lying Capital Manila is in a high-risk tropical region) have declared they “expect catastrophe” and called on the global community to help them.
Volcanoes have erupted this year in Hawaii and Indonesia, and England was hit by the worst flooding on record, (followed by an unprecedented ´toxic´smog which is currently causing great concern). These examples are just a few, but they illustrate how climate change is being experienced by all of us around the world.
Energy lobbyists, puppet politicians and corporate media poodles
We can see the devastation, so why do so many of us refuse to wake up to the reality of climate change? Because people are paid good money to lull us back to sleep, that´s why. Here is an enlightening quote taken from a comment thread in the Guardian :“I study energy policy and I’ve more or less given up. The lobby groups working against mitigation are too strong and widespread: the oil and gas industry, the green lobby (who oppose nuclear power), nimbys (who oppose many local renewable projects), politicians who pander to the electorate by telling them we can have low carbon and lower prices, etc”.
A recent Newsweek investigation backed up this point, claiming that scientists were offered financial rewards ($10,000 apparently) from oil company lobbyists in return for smearing the IPCC report and undermining its findings. The magazine highlighted the consequences of this: ´Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was “a lot” of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was “mainly caused by things people do”.´
These figures are shocking because the reality is, an extremely small number of scientists deny human-caused climate change. Meanwhile, another BP oil spill on Lake Michigan is being conveniently censored from our screens, the European Union has ordered Britain to end renewable energy subsidies, and the Spanish government have decided to tax people who use solar panels. But it´s not just dirty energy lobbyists and politicians who are causing, then denying, such blatant ecocide. A fantastic article by Media Lens highlights the role of the British press´s role in smearing the case for man-made climate change- and in the USA, anti-truth propaganda is even more prevalent.
It may be too late to ensure our grandchildren grow up on a planet with fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink. But we have to keep on hoping: Bolivia´s ground-breaking decision to give legal rights to the Earth is something we must demand in our own countries. It´s time to wake up. It´s time to fight for Gaia.
Europeans Pushing to Expose Global Climate Engineering
Civil Society Organizations from 17 EU member states challenge candidates in the upcoming EU Elections to come clean about their stand, on the established facts about clandestine aerial spraying of the European sky within the context of illegal, ongoing, climate manipulation and geoengineering programs before May 25.
8 – 9 April 2013, a conference was held at the European Parliament, under the title “Beyond Theories of Weather Modification – Civil Society against Geoengineering”.
The conference reassessed a 1999 resolution and lack, from both the sides of legislators and military to safeguard transparency and democratic control over classified programs, which affect entire populations without consent, democratic influence, or access to verifiable information and data.
Climate manipulation has become a proven and accomplished fact; that is, despite omissions of the facts in state, and most corporate media; despite systematically disseminated misinformation used to discredit solid science and evidence; and despite the fact that most elected officials in national parliaments and the EU parliament, most probably, wish that someone else would pick up that hot potato.
The organizations behind the 2013 conference, including Skyguards, challenge candidates in the upcoming EU Elections to the European Parliament to come clean about their position on the illegal programs, on transparency, democratic control, and not least, to come clean about their position on how they want to address and remedy institutional indifference and disdain for their electorate. In an open letter, styled to candidates in the upcoming elections, civil society organization stress:
On 8th and 9th April 2013, organizations from 17 countries in the European Union exposed to the European Parliament, in a conference patronized by MEP Mrs. Tatjana Zdanoka, their concerns about clandestine aerial spraying of the European sky in the context of illegal ongoing climate manipulation / geoengineering programs, as a follow up to the Resolution of the European Parliament on “Environment, Security and Foreign Policy”, approved on 14th January 1999, on the basis of Report A4-005/99 by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Security and Defense Policy.
In its point “T ” and paragraph on “HAARP – A military weapon system with devastating effects on climate”, the Report made it explicit that:
Despite the existing conventions, military research is in progress on environmental manipulation as a weapon, as demonstrated for example by the Alaska-based HAARP system. Defined as a weapons system which disrupts the climate, outside of any legal framework, HAARP is a matter of global concern and has to be regarded as a serious threat to the environment, with an incalculable impact on human life’.
The civil society advocates stress that all members of parliament from all political groups were invited to attend the conference. Despite the importance of the subjects, however, not one attended to the conference. Moreover, they stress that none of the state or corporate mainstream media covered the event.
Whether the issue is geoengineering or any other subject matter, the astounding and disturbing fact is that none of the MPs found it necessary to inform him/herself about illegal, clandestine and classified programs which are being carried out without any form of democratic oversight, and which affect entire populations.
On a positive note, a petition that was presented to the Committee of Petitions of the European Parliament has been admitted.
The petition demands an independent investigation of the facts concerning environmental matters and consumer protections, and projects which are taking place without the knowledge and consent of citizens in defiance of the precautionary principle. The petition also stressed that the clandestine projects violate fundamental rights of European citizens as set out in the Treaties, such as the right to health, the right to security, the right to integrity, as well as the right to be informed.
Civil Society Demands that EU Parliamentary Candidates Come Clean about the Clandestine Projects before May 25.
The civil society advocates, representing organizations from 17 EU member States challenge candidates in the upcoming EU Parliamentary Elections to come clean about their position on the subject before May 25. Their open letter states:
In this perspective, and considering that this serious matter also entails an unconstitutional attack on national sovereignty, and in particular on food sovereignty, we would like to know if you, the 2014 candidates, are willing to:
- Support the Committee on Petitions on its decision to investigate the facts that are the subject of our indictment.
- Promote a public debate on the subject.
- Legislate to ban all geoengineering and climate manipulation activity in Europe, implying that each nation must reacquire sovereignty over its sky.
- Legislate the submission of military research programs to democratic and parliamentary control; and..
- Demand full implementation of the above mentioned European Parliament Resolution on “Environment, Security and Foreign Policy”.
Both the 1999 and the 2013 conference condemned the sophisticated military activity which is being carried out in defiance of the most elementary precautionary principles.
The conference also addressed new weapons systems which focus on the military use of the ionosphere, such as the HAARP program, based in Alaska, and its pendant near the Norwegian city of Troms and elsewhere.
Ultimately, the question whether candidates are willing to take action or notcan be viewed as a testing stone that proves, whether a candidate will take action when illegal, clandestine projects are being carried out right above his own roof, or if is a candidate who will look down at his shoelaces and act as if he hadn’t seen or heard a word about it.
The least, that the electorate should be able to expect within a system that calls itself democratic, is that candidates take a stand on the subject and come clean about their position, so citizens can make an informed choice whom to vote and whom not to vote for.
It is worth noting that the European Commission, in 2013, planned to invest about two million euro to limit EU-critical media reports as well as EU critical opinion on social media like Facebook and Twitter up to the elections to the European Parliament in 2014. Part of the planned strategy was to sue news-media and journalists for publishing “false” information, ban EU skeptic journalists from press conferences, and infiltrate social media with “trolls” to bias debates and opinion.
Source: NSMBC International
Seeds of Freedom
If we have to survive as a species, we need to reclaim our commons — of seed,
of climate, of knowledge and resist the privatisation of every aspect of life.
For thousands of years farmers, especially women, have evolved and bred seed freely with the help of nature to increase the diversity of what nature gave us and adopt it to the needs of different cultures. Biodiversity and cultural diversity have mutually shaped one another.
Every seed is an embodiment of millennia of nature’s evolution and centuries of farmers’ breeding. It is the distilled expression of the intelligence of the earth and intelligence of farming communities. Farmers have bred seeds for diversity, resilience, taste, nutrition, health and to adapt it for local agro-ecosystems.
In times of climate change we need the biodiversity of farmers’ varieties to adapt and evolve. Climate extremes are being experienced through more frequent and intense cyclones that bring salt water to the land. To develop resilience against cyclones, we need salt tolerant varieties of seeds, and we need them in the commons. Along coastal areas, farmers have evolved flood tolerant and salt tolerant varieties of rice such as Bhundi, Kalambank, Lunabakada, Sankarchin, Nalidhulia, Ravana, Seulapuni, Dhosarakhuda.
These seeds have been evolved by farmers and need to stay in the commons to gain resilience against climate change.
After the Orissa Supercyclone, Navdanya could distribute salt tolerant rice to farmers because we had conserved them as a commons in our community seed bank run by Kusum Mishra and Dr Ashok Panigrahi in Balasore, Orissa. Hence we were about to donate two truckloads of salt tolerant seeds to the farmers, who could not grow rice because of the sea salt deposited on their farms. As I have written in my book—Soil, Not Oil—40 per cent of the greenhouse gases come from an industrialised and globalised model of agriculture. Having created the crisis, corporations, who made profits from industrial agriculture, now want to turn the climate crisis they have contributed to into an opportunity to control climate resilient seeds and climate data. Corporations like Monsanto have taken 1,500 patents on climate resilient crops. With these very broad patents, Monsanto and other corporations can prevent access to climate resilient seeds after climate disasters since a patent is an exclusive right to produce, distribute and sell the patented product. This implies that the farmers’ right to save and share seed is now defined as “theft,” an “intellectual property crime”.
While nature and farmers have evolved the traits of climate resilience in seeds, corporations claim their role of creator; they declare that seeds are their “invention,” hence their patented property.
In times of climate change, such monopolies aggravate the disaster by blocking farmers’ rights to seeds they have evolved.
Hence, seed as a common good became a commodity of private seed companies, traded on the open market.
For example, on July 5, 2013, Justice Prabha Sridevi, chair of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board of India and D.P.S. Parmar, technical member, dismissed Monsanto’s appeal against the rejection of their patent application to the patent office for “Methods of enhancing stress tolerance in plants and methods thereof.” The title of the patent was later amended to “A method of producing a transgenic plant, with increasing heat tolerance, salt tolerance or drought tolerance”.
Industrial breeding and intellectual property rights including patents on seed fail to recognise nature’s contributions and farmers’ contribution in giving us climate resilient crops. Just as the jurisprudence of Terre Nullius defined the land as empty, and allowed the takeover of territories by the European colonies, the jurisprudence of intellectual property rights related to life forms is, in fact, a jurisprudence of “Bio Nullius” — life empty of intelligence. The Earth is defined as dead matter, so it cannot create. And the farmers have empty heads so they cannot breed seeds.
The door to patents on seed and patents on life was opened by genetic engineering. By adding one new gene to the cell of a plant, corporations claimed they had invented and created the seed, the plant, and all future seeds that were now their property. In other words GMO meant “God Move Over.”
Section 3(j) of the Patents Act, 1970, recognises that life forms are not an invention and hence biological processes cannot be treated as inventions.
Today, this freedom of nature and culture to evolve is under violent and direct threat. The threat to seed freedom impacts the very fabric of human life and the life of the planet. Not only are corporations like Monsanto claiming patent monopolies on climate resilient seeds, they are also claiming monopoly on climate and weather data. Monsanto has bought the Climate Corporation, which controls vast data on climate for $1 billion.
Not only will Monsanto sell the chemicals and seeds adapted to their chemicals to farmers, they will also sell climate data. This is a strategy for total control of agriculture in times of climate change.
The National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 was a legislative proposal forwarded in April 2005 by United States Senator Rick Santorum to bar the national weather service from issuing forecasts so that climate and weather services can be privatised. In effect, the knowledge of a cyclone or flood would only be provided to those who could pay.
The vision of the corporations and sadly the US government is to privatise every aspect of life — our seeds and biodiversity, the atmospheric commons, and the knowledge of the climate and weather as a public good.
At a time when the world needs to recognise that life forms, including seeds, are not an invention and the US should correct its laws to be more in alignment with the Rights of the Earth and with human rights, the US government is threatening India with trade retaliation to force us to change our patent laws yet again and introduce the unethical, unscientific and anti-human laws of patent monopolies on seed and medicine.
America’s National Association of Manufacturers — which represents about 50 US business groups — gave the suggestion to the US Trade Representatives’ office to designate India a “Priority Foreign Country”, a tag it gives to worst offenders of intellectual property rights. This is not just a US-India dispute. It is a fight against corporate enclosures of the commons. If we have to survive as a species, we need to reclaim our commons — of seed, of climate, of knowledge and resist the privatisation of every aspect of life.
We need to create the commons of the seed and cultivate seed freedom through seed saving, seed exchange and participatory breeding.
This ‘covert nuclear war’ on humanity
Activist PostThree incidents this year at the Carlsbad, New Mexico nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant resulted from “a number of serious safety concerns” that led to a fire and radiation leaks, contaminating workers and nearby residents, the NRC reported to the LA Times.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s findings detail ongoing complaints about WIPP’s ongoing failures to meet basic safety standards, let alone nuclear safety.
But Hanford, the 10th most radioactive region on the planet, also made the news in March when fumes sickened at least 11 workers who were taken to various medical facilities.
All this transpired while Japan attempts to safely remove the spent fuel rods from Fukushima’s destroyed nuclear plants, an operation that Dr Helen Caldicott has characterized as “incredibly dangerous” and which “will take months to complete.”
Dr Caldicott is a pediatrician deeply involved in the effort to end humanity’s most ecocidal form of developed energy. Many of the fuel rod workers, she reports in this March interview, are prisoners and indigents.
Aside from using unskilled labor, another type of danger involved in this operation was caught on a video witnessed and described by geoscientist Dr. Leuren Moret. While workers stood around watching a crane remove a spent fuel rod, another crane collapsed behind them in slow motion, which none of them noticed. She asks, “What if that crane that they were using to remove the fuel rods had collapsed?”
Epidemiologist Dr Rosalie Bertell explains the significance of these ‘spent’ fuel rods, which the US stores at four times the pool capacity:
Today, the powers-that-be knowingly operate leaking nuclear plants that are 30 and 40 years old, though they were to be decommissioned after 25 years. It bears repeating Dr Bertell’s warning that “the nuclear plant itself becomes unusable with time and must eventually be dismantled and isolated as radioactive waste.”
Dr Moret explains that radioactive particles released in nuclear explosions also weaken metals, leading to metal fatigue known as the Wigner Effect, which attorney Alfred Weber describes as follows: “The Wigner effect (named for its discoverer, E. P. Wigner), also known as the discomposition effect, is the displacement of atoms in a solid caused by neutron radiation.
Here’s a handy conversion chart when officials use different radiation measurement standards, from Ecology News.
“That Fukushima disaster is thousands, or possibly millions of Chernobyls,” Moret warns. “It has poisoned the entire Pacific Ocean and that poison is carried into the Atlantic circulation.”
Dr Caldicott concurs. “Every day since March 11, 2011, between 300 and 400 tons of radioactive water have been pouring into the Pacific Ocean.” At the top end, that’s almost a half million tons. Is there any wonder we see starfish turning to goo and sealife collapsing?
When the transhumanists decided to massively reduce global population, all they had to do was split the atom. To decide to develop nuclear power, whose byproducts are used for nuclear weapons, Ike and Oppenheimer signed our death sentence. (“I am become death,” he accurately quoted Lord Krishna from the Bhagavad Gita.)
Dr Bertell has written extensively about the genocidal implications of nuclear power, and calls the development and use of nuclear energy “omnicide”. Radiation is going to kill everything but the most obscure life forms for millennia. In No Immediate Danger, she explains:
Dr Moret believes this is a deliberate and “covert nuclear war on humanity.” Any reasonable mind would have to wonder why Japan built 55 nuclear power plants on active faults, where four tectonic plates are colliding – especially after suffering Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Since the development of nuclear power, not only have we had three nuclear accidents of catastrophic scale, but militaries have:
- intentionally exploded over 2,000 nuclear bombs since 1945,
- intentionally bombed nuclear reactors in Iraq; and
- accidentally or intentionally detonated nine nuclear-powered rockets headed to outer space.
All that radiation rains down on us. It’s ubiquitous in the food chain, the atmosphere, our waters, and in our bodies.
And it’s gotten oh-so-much worse these past several decades with the Nuclear Regulatory Agency created by and for the industry. It would be inaccurate to call the NRC a captive agency; it never was free, it’s always been run by the industry it was created to regulate.
In Nuclear Roulette, Gar Smith notes in the chapter, The Regulatory-Industrial Complex:
Whatever they’re telling us about the Hanford, WA and Carlsbad, NM leaks, or the removal of the spent fuel rods at Fukushima, we can be sure it is not the truth. As Smith notes:
But hope springs eternal. Dr Moret and others speculate that Tesla technology like HAARP, which manipulates the ionosphere, can also be used to mitigate ionizing radiation.
Studies have also shown that certain whole foods (non GMO) can repair or mitigate DNA damage, a known effect of encountering radiation. Other whole foods actually protect organs and organ systems from radiation damage (providing a host of other benefits as well), and for this reason I take Juice Plus, a capsule of dried, high-quality superfoods and grains.
Over at Food Freedom News, we’ve also produced a list from various reputable sources of recommended foods to protect you from radiation, or mitigate its damage.
It’s long past time to completely halt the use of nuclear energy and to “terminate the military” as Dr Bertell prescribes in her book, Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War. Humans can and must figure out how to resolve our differences without planet-killing wars and technologies.
Recently by Rady Ananda:
Israeli troops destroy mosque in Palestinian village
Israeli bulldozers have demolished a mosque and several homes in a Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, leaving up to 30 people homeless on the deadline of the peace talks between Palestine and Israel.
Eighteen Israeli military jeeps and two bulldozers stormed the village of Kherbt al-Taweel near Nablus, to the north of the West Bank early on Tuesday morning and declared the village a closed military zone, Ghassan Douglas, the Palestinian Authority official in charge of monitoring settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told the Anadolu Agency (AA).
He added that before demolishing the buildings “the forces prevented residents from entering or leaving the village and students from going to their school.”
“I went to make my dawn prayers at the mosque and found the army surrounding it,” resident Abdel Fattah Maarouf, 63, told Reuters, “Then they tore it down. They want this area so they can build settlements on it.”
A Reuters correspondent said several hundred soldiers were deployed in Khirbet al-Taweel around daybreak.
Other buildings that were wiped out by Israeli troops included three family houses, animal shelters and a communal well.
According to another village resident Anwar Sidki whose home was destroyed, the Israelis did not give him any prior warning.
“They just demolished the house,” he told AA.“I have five children and a wife. I have to either re-build the house, or they will remain in the streets.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli troops left the village, although they left security at its entrances.
According to Douglas, the Israelis destroyed the mosque and the houses “under the pretext of being built without a permit.”
“Israel has long sought to control the village because of its strategic location, which overlooks the Jordan Valley,” added Jawdat Bani Jabr, head of the village council.
A top Palestinian official, Yasser Abed Rabbo told local radio that “unless acts like this cease completely,” Palestine won’t return to peace talks with Israel. The April-29 deadline has now been missed.
According to Douglas, Israeli army forces are targeting the village to displace its residents and annex its land to attach it to nearby settlements, or use them for army training.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank have long been a stumbling block in peace negotiations, as Tel Aviv has refused to freeze the construction of new settlements.
On Tuesday, Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now reported that Israeli authorities approved about 14,000 settlements during the nine-months peace talks with Palestine.
“This is an unprecedented number representing an average of 50 housing units per day or 1,540 per month,” Peace Now added.
Relations between Israel and Palestine have worsened over the past month, culminating in the imposition of sanctions on Palestine by Israel, which included freezing the transfer of taxes. Israel monthly collects some $110 million in taxes on goods bound for the Palestinian territory, which roughly amounts to around two-thirds of the income received by the Palestinian Authority.
On April 23, Israel suspended peace talks with Palestine over the unity deal signed in Gaza between the Hamas group (considered terrorist in Israel) and Abbas’s Fatah faction.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said that Palestine must choose either peace with Israel or an alliance with Hamas, but it cannot have both.
Explosion Rocks Ship Set to Sail Against Gaza Blockade
‘You can sink a boat but you can’t sink a movement’
Gaza’s Ark—a freedom flotilla aimed at breaking the Israeli blocked from within this besieged strip—was rocked by an explosion early Tuesday, partially sinking the vessel weeks before it was to set sail from the Gaza Port.
According to a statement from Gaza’s Ark, no one was injured in the blast, but the night guard “was taken to the hospital for tests.”
Ehab Lotayef, member of Gaza’s Ark steering committee, told Common Dreams, “We don’t have solid proof of who carried out the attack, but it is very clear there is one specific entity interested in the boat not sailing and in continuing the blockade of Gaza.”
This is the first physical attack against Gaza’s Ark, which has been under construction for nearly a year. Jointly organized by Palestinians in Gaza—including the Palestine Sailing Federation and the Fishermen’s Solidarity Campaign—and international solidarity organizations, the vessel was constructed by Palestinians and slated to embark in June on a voyage through international waters carrying Palestinian goods and people from Gaza and around the world.
“The goal is to challenge the ongoing, illegal Israeli blockade and focus worldwide attention on the situation in Gaza and the complicity of the governments that support it or look the other way,” according to the organization’s website.
The Ark is affiliated with the Freedom Flotilla coalition, whose vessels have attempted to deliver humanitarian aid and other materials to Gaza. According to Lotayef, by starting from within Palestine, and employing only Palestinian labor, Gaza’s Ark organizers hope to “empower people in Gaza and help elevate the lack of jobs.”
The explosion Tuesday follows numerous attacks on vessels attempting to break the siege, including a 2010 Israeli assault on the Mavi Marmara ship sailing from Turkey that killed nine people and injured dozens, sparking global condemnation.
Since 2007, Israel—with U.S. backing—has intensified its blockade of Gaza, trapping and isolating its population of 1.7 million people. The siege has strangled the local economy, forcing 80 percent of all people in Gaza to rely on humanitarian aid, and has cut residents off from essential goods, including clean water and medical supplies.
While Palestinian fishing vessels are ostensibly allowed to travel six nautical miles from the Gaza shore, they have reported coming under Israeli fire just two nautical miles out.
Yet organizers say they are determined to continue the plan to sail from Gaza’s waters and are currently assessing the condition of the boat and charting out next steps.
“Neither this nor any other attack will stop our efforts to challenge the blockade of Gaza until it ends,” adds David Heap of Gaza’s Ark Steering Committee.
Said Lotayef, “You can sink a boat but you can’t sink a movement.”
‘Obama and Kerry fail to show leadership qualities required to settle Ukrainian issue’
Patrick L Young is expert in global financial markets working in multiple disciplines, ranging from trading independently to running exchanges.
The US had set their eyes on the idea to make Ukraine the 29th EU state or perhaps even the 52nd US state, though it doesn’t have any clear scenario and simply continues “blamestorming” Russia, global financial markets expert Patrick Young told RT.
RT: President Obama says Russia’s done nothing to meet its Geneva pledges. However, it’s likely to be more applicable to the US itself. Why is Washington acting like this?
Patrick Young: I think the State Department is probably under great stress at the moment. Of course we’ve seen President Obama, in the course of the last three or four days, doing shuttle diplomacy through South-East Asia. This was supposed to be an incredible ceremonial tour where he would sign multiple free trade agreements, including with Japan. Instead he ended up to play football with robots in Tokyo instead. Why? Because ultimately his trade agenda is failing as it goes along. Therefore, given the pureness of the overall quality of the negotiation of the US, it’s hardly surprising that they are trying to do anything to take away the news. And therefore, we see Mr. Obama once again being a puppet ministered by the neo-cons that are still behind him, as an administration who simply see everything as being bad in Russia. It’s quite clear from what Mr. Lavrov has said, and has been saying, that he is trying everything to encourage people to disarm and therefore, active attempts to try to diffuse the Ukrainian situation.
RT: What is the American policy aimed at? Does the United States actually want the two sides in Ukraine to reach a deal?
PY: I think it’s very worrying because certainly the US seems to have had a remarkable transition in Ukraine. It seemed to be absolutely fine when you wanted to mount barricades in Maidan and they were the people who got the likes of John McCain to speak to them. Not only we’ve got this very fractured situation in Eastern Ukraine about which the Russians had previously warned us. Ultimately we have got a singular failure of diplomacy but particularly from the Western side at the moment. And of course what is happening, President Obama is rushing off to this mantra of claiming that he wants even greater sanctions.
RT: What does the United States expect of Russia, then? It can’t send in its military to disarm the pro-Russian protesters in Ukraine. It’s asked them to disarm, what more can it do?
PY: Personally I’m confused because let’s put it another way. If Russia sent in troops to forcibly disarm the people who are holding the buildings, then America would claim they are invading. I really don’t know. The American picture is not clear. The Foreign Secretary Mr. Kerry perennially, as we know from his election campaign for president, has always worn a peppermint T-shirt and a full bag of coffee when he is at the diner. Ultimately it’s a huge problem in this environment at the moment. I don’t think America knows what it wants because ultimately America had set their eyes on the idea Ukraine is going to be something like the 29th state of the EU or perhaps even the 52nd state of the US. None of those were ever going to come to pass, the money is not there from the US and Europe to support whether it’s the rump Ukraine or whichever part of Ukraine it is. It’s confusing. America is not clear and simply “blamestorming” Russia is not going to help the situation.
RT: Neither Kiev nor the protesters seem to have stuck to the Geneva accord. Are they each waiting for the other side to act first?
PY: The problem we have here is a huge loss of faith on all parts. America clearly doesn’t trust Russia, at the same time there is a huge number of people on the ground in Ukraine who’ve been simply left behind. We are not talking about particularly the Eastern Ukrainians who have actually invaded these buildings, those occupying groups are one thing. But actually let’s face it: Ukraine is being run by a non-democratically appointed government that seems to have the blessing of the US. It’s not democratic, there are democratic elections supposedly taking place at the moment but as we can see, all the great powers are in there trying to shuffle things for their influence. It looks very 19th century in the way the things are going on at the moment.
RT: Why can’t the sides of the conflict reach any compromise? Or why the US doesn’t want to negotiate with Russia at least?
PY: Unfortunately, it is very difficult and this is a situation because after all as we know President Yanukovich, who was deeply flawed in his ability to govern, but was nonetheless the democratically elected president, ultimately had to flee the day after we had a group of Western politicians telling us that they had come to a wondrous solution in Kiev. Therefore, when there are challenges over the whole issue, it really requires leadership and statesmanship. The terrible problem is that Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry repeatedly fail to have those abilities that they demonstrate. Let’s put it another way. Today we are celebrating in Poland the canonization of Pope John Paul II, there is leader and he stood on the world stage at the time we had Mrs. Thatcher, Ronald Reagan – they may have been the absolute enemies of the old Soviet system but they were people who could do business with and did business with Mr. Gorbachev at the time. That’s the total change that we have in this situation, we have a series of political pygmies throughout the West, none of whom really realize that their word must be their bond.
Report: Pesticide Pushers Spin Bee Crisis to Protect Profits
As bee collapse threatens global food supply, report says chemical industry
employing Big Tobacco-style PR blitz to deflect blame
Worldwide bee deaths have now entered a crisis state threatening the global food supply and, according to a new report out Monday by Friends of the Earth, the human-made epidemic has been worsened by an industry-funded disinformation campaign.
The report, Follow the Honey: 7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits (pdf),details how the leading pesticide corporations—Bayer, Syngenta, and Monsanto—are taking a page from the playbook of Big Tobacco companies to stall any potential legislation from protecting bee colonies.
According to report author and noted food industry critic Michele Simon, these corporations are engaging in a full-throttled public relations blitz, which includes funding industry-friendly research, targeting children, attacking regulators, blaming farmers and “pretending to care” by creating their own greenwashed “save the bees” campaigns.
These efforts are meant to distract policy makers and the general population from identifying the cause of bee decline, which—according to “a strong and growing body of evidence”—is linked to a widely-used class of neurotoxic pesticides called neonicotinoids, or neonics.
Following a 2013 review by the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission implemented a continent-wide two-year suspension of the three
most-used neonics— imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam.
U.S. efforts to enact similar legislation have floundered due to “sophisticated, multi-pronged public relation campaigns” by the leading chemical companies, intent on “manufactur[ing] doubt about their products’ contribution to the bee crisis,” the report charges.
Neonics are used on more than 140 crop seeds and virtually all corn and a large percentage of soy, wheat and canola seeds planted in the U.S. are pretreated with neonics. According to the report, the pesticide makers would have much to lose if neonics were universally banned. In 2009, the neonicotinoid global market was worth roughly $2.6 billion.
“Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto make billions from bee-killing pesticide products while masquerading as champions of bee health,” said Lisa Archer, food and technology program director at Friends of the Earth. Asking if industry profits are “more important than our food supply,” Archer says that Congress must act now to ban these pesticides that threaten our food security.
“Bees are essential to one out of three bites of the food we eat, and two thirds of global food crops, from almonds to strawberries,” the report states. “While industry attempts at spin, distraction, and the manufacture of doubt may be effective political tools in the U.S. for causing delay and inaction, they will only cause more harm in the long run.”
US Senate Can’t Muster Even Modest Minimum Wage Increase
The effort to bring national low-wage to $10.10 is on verge of defeat
Proving once again that popular economic policies—even modest ones—that would improve the lives of millions of low-wage workers cannot possibly pass in a Congress dominated by the interests of the corporate class, reporting from Capitol Hill on Wednesday reveals that the effort in the U.S. Senate to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016 is about to die on the vine.
According to Gallup, the historic approval rating of raising the minimum wage is close to 75%. Despite that consistent public support, however, even soft-ball efforts to increase the stagnant level of low-wage pay have faced constant opposition in Congress. The minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has been flat-lined for nearly forty years and that widespread income and wealth inequality has been shown to harm the overall economy, but neither of those facts have been enough to overcome the opposition of the powerful interests that maintain their grip on both political parties in Washington.
An admittedly weak bill by progressive standards, the bill now in the Senate, introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), is expected to be defeated in a procedural vote on Wednesday according to numerous reports.
According to The Hill:
Despite an intense push by President Obama and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans haven’t budged and will reject the measure that would increase the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. The procedural roll call to advance the bill is expected to fail on a party-line vote, short of the 60 votes needed.
The legislation is coming up for a vote after weeks of delay, but a multipronged pressure campaign against Republicans has failed to fracture the GOP — in sharp contrast to prior election years.
Though supported by a majority of Americans in poll after poll (after poll), an increase to the federal minimum wage has faced continued opposition by armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington.
The Associated Press reports:
[Harkin’s] legislation is opposed by business groups including the National Council of Chain Restaurants and the International Franchise Association. The National Restaurant Association has hundreds of members at the Capitol this week lobbying lawmakers on several issues, including opposition to a higher minimum wage.
Also opposed were conservative organizations including Heritage Action and Americans for Prosperity, which is backed by Charles and David Koch. The billionaire brothers are spending millions this year to unseat congressional Democrats, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his allies are casting them as unfettered villains.
Wednesday’s vote seemed sure to add minimum wage to a scrap heap of Democratic bills that had a shared theme of economic fairness.
Others that have splattered against GOP roadblocks would restore expired benefits for the long-term unemployed and pressure employers to pay men and women equally. Democrats plan future votes on bills easing the costs of college and child care.
“War Is Peace, It Makes Us Rich and Safe”… or So Says the Mainstream Media
War is Peace. What was known as a famous quote from George Orwell’s fiction 1984 has become a reality. Or maybe it is still fiction if you consider that the mainstream media is making up reality on a daily basis.
On April 28, 2014, the homepage of The Washington Post web site featured the picture of a nuclear explosion with the following title: “War is brutal. The alternative is worse.”
Peace is worse than war? Diplomacy worse than a nuclear explosion? I wonder if people in war torn Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and the likes agree.
The subtitle is probably the apex of nonsense: “War may be the worst way imaginable to create peaceful societies, but this professor argues that it’s the only way.” Professor? How can you be a professor and say something so illogical? And how can a newspaper be taken seriously when it publishes such absurdities?
But it gets worse, if that’s even possible. Clicking on the article, you get this:
“Wars make us safer and richer”. Wow. Really?
Who’s “us”? Certainly not the American people:
The decade-long American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would end up costing as much as $6 trillion, the equivalent of $75,000 for every American household, calculates the prestigious Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government…
It is also imperative to recall that the Bush administration had claimed at the very outset that the Iraq war would finance itself out of Iraqi oil revenues, but Washington DC had instead ended up borrowing some $2 trillion to finance the two wars, the bulk of it from foreign lenders.
According to the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government 2013 report, this accounted for roughly 20 per cent of the total amount added to the US national debt between 2001 and 2012.
According to the report, the US “has already paid $260 billion in interest on the war debt,” and future interest payments would amount to trillions of dollars. (Sabir Shah, US Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq to Cost $6 trillion)
So, who’s “us” getting richer? The bankers maybe? Because if war makes some people rich, it’s the bankers:
Bankers are often the driving force behind war.
After all, the banking system is founded upon the counter-intuitive but indisputable fact that banks create loans first, and then create deposits later.
In other words, virtually all money is actually created as debt…
Debt (from the borrower’s perspective) owed to banks is profit and income from the bank’s perspective. In other words, banks are in the business of creating more debt … i.e. finding more people who want to borrow larger sums…
What does this have to do with war?
War is the most efficient debt-creation machine…
War is also good for banks because a lot of material, equipment, buildings and infrastructure get destroyed in war. So countries go into massive debt to finance war, and then borrow a ton more to rebuild. (Washington’s Blog, War Creates Massive Debt and Makes the Banks Rich)
“Us” is probably also the military industrial complex, for which peace is enemy number one:
The fact that military activities may become a profitable enterprise leads to the realization that peace is the main enemy of the military-industrial complex. A simple metaphor can illustrate this problem. Grape growers, the wine industry and wine marketers would be completely out of business if people stopped drinking wine. In a similar way, the military-industrial complex would be put out of business by lasting peaceful conditions because the development, production, marketing and use of military equipment would be not needed.
To stay in business, this complex needed the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the “cold war” with the Soviet Union, war on terrorism and various other wars. And it needs to be involved in new conflicts, such as in Ukraine at this time. (Vashek Cervinka, Peace is the Enemy of the US Military Industrial Complex)
WE, the people of the world, don’t want wars and WE are not getting “richer” and “safer” with wars. It’s actually quite the contrary. Wars ruin economies and guess what? Wars kill people! How are mass killings and massive debts making “us safer and richer”?
Even though he received the Stanford University Dean’s Award, which “recognizes the efforts of exceptional teachers in the School of Humanities and Sciences” and is “given for excellence in graduate education” and “achievements in teaching”, Professor Morris seems to ignore the existence of what is probably the most important judgement in the history of mankind, The Nuremberg Judgement, which says:
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
We live in a world where award-winning Humanities and Science teachers promote war, the supreme international crime. It cannot get more Orwellian than that.
State-Sanctioned Murder
Prisoner Writhes on Gurney in Botched Execution
By Katie Fretland
Clayton Lockett Death Witness Speaks. Continue
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Why is Putin in Washington’s Crosshairs?
By Mike Whitney
Washington wants a weak Russia that won’t challenge US presence in Central Asia or its plan to control vital energy resources. Continue
Obama’s ‘Strategy’ Against ‘Pariah’ Russia
By Pepe Escobar
The sanctions hysteria is designed to force President Putin to bow to the hegemon’s whims, as part of the overall “strategy”; forging an “international consensus” to “isolate” Russia and turn it into a “pariah state”. ” Continue
Obama, McCain, and the NATO/EU Gang:
Better War than Saying: “It’s our Fault”?
By Michael Scheuer
The democracy mongers operate on the assumption that only the United States and Europe have legitimate national interests. Continue
Why Not Fire Kerry?
Killing the Putin-Obama ‘Trust’
By Ray McGovern
The still-influential neoconservatives, and the “tough” White House women and men, all lusting for a U.S. attack on Syria. Continue
Kerry Grovels Over Israeli ‘Apartheid’
By Robert Parry
Secretary of State Kerry gets to say whatever half-truth or fiction comes into his head about Syria, Russia or other “designated villains,” but when he cites the inconvenient truth of Israeli “apartheid,” he must scramble as fast as he can to retract and apologize. Continue
‘Last Thing US Wants in the World is Democracy. It Wants Control’
By Chris Hedges
Using fake evidence is usual Washington tactic. Continue
Holding The Silent Killers Of Environmental Destruction Accountable
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers
The findings of the most recent IPCC report are sobering. We have 15 years to mitigate climate disaster. Continue
Multiple Ways Kleptocrats and Militarists Fleece Americans
By James Petras
American living standards are plunging and it’s not simply because they are paid less, work longer (or shorter hours) under highly stressful workplace conditions and pay a higher percentage of their income for health and pension coverage. Continue
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Chris Hedges’ Indefinite Detention Case
By Alexander Reed Kelly
The decision leaves the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) intact. Continue
April 30, 2014
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April 29, 2014
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April 28, 2014
- Power Supply Arrived for H-Cat Testing – We got the power supply and KOH today in the mail. I plan on doing some set-up and preliminary testing tomorrow at Darrell’s place; then doing the second calorimetric water bath test Wednesday. (Free Energy Blog; April 28, 2014)
Warmongers Become Desperate as the American Public Turns Anti-War
War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength
The American people are now overwhelmingly opposed to more war in Ukraine, Syria, Iran and elsewhere.
Those who get rich from war (the military-industrial complexers and big banks) and their lackeys are desperate to reverse this trend.
As such, they are resorting to more and more outlandish justifications for war.
For example, Ian Morris has written an entire book arguing that war is the best thing ever, the only thing which has lifted us out of poverty and barbarianism. And – yes – he even says that war brings peace.
David Swanson provides a must-read dismantling of Morris’ book.
Morris writes this week in the Washington Post:
War has not only made us safer, but richer, too.
In reality, security experts – conservative hawks and liberal doves alike – agree that waging war in the Middle East weakens national security and increases terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this. So it doesn’t make us safer.
And there is now overwhelming evidence that war is horrible for the economy, and makes us poorer
Morris continues:
Thinkers have long grappled with the relationships among peace, war and strength. Thomas Hobbes wrote his case for strong government, “Leviathan,” as the English Civil War raged around him in the 1640s.
In reality, Hobbes was an authoritarian who argued – just like (1) the leading Nazi legal scholar and philosopher who created the justification for “total war” to destroy those labeled an “enemy” of the Nazi state (Carl Schmitt), (2) Machiavelli, and (3) the father of the Neoconservatives (Leo Strauss) – that the public should be intentionally whipped into a frenzy of fear so that they would be willing to give up their rights and cede their freedoms to the sovereign.
Indeed, Morris accidentally reveals that he is cut from the exact same cloth when he states:
People almost never give up their freedoms — including, at times, the right to kill and impoverish one another — unless forced to do so.
In other words, freedom bad … authoritarian leader good.
Morris writes:
Since 1914, we have endured world wars, genocides and government-sponsored famines, not to mention civil strife, riots and murders. Altogether, we have killed a staggering 100 million to 200 million of our own kind. But over the century, about 10 billion lives were lived — which means that just 1 to 2 percent of the world’s population died violently. Those lucky enough to be born in the 20th century were on average 10 times less likely to come to a grisly end than those born in the Stone Age.
In other words, War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength. I’ve seen this movie before.
Morris cheerfully notes:
And since 2000, the United Nations tells us, the risk of violent death has fallen even further, to 0.7 percent.
Unless, of course, you live in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria or one of the other countries targeted for regime change … in which case your risk of violent death is very high.
Morris argues:
Washington [must] embrace [] its role as the only possible globocop in an increasingly unstable world — a world with far deadlier weapons than Britain could have imagined a century ago.
In other words, Morris is an unrepentant apologist for American empire.
Amusingly, the vast majority of comments to Morris’ Washington post essay attack him for being a desperate shill and a fool.
But endless war is a feature – not a bug – of U.S. policy, and the American media (including the big “alternative” sites) are always pro-war.
So expect to hear crazier and crazier “justifications” for war.
Date: Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 12:26 PM
Subject: Open Source Overunity Quantum Energy Generator (QEG) Goes Live in Morocco-April 28, 2014
News Links, April 29-30, 2014
Siemens to cut thousands of jobs as part of new strategy: report
Time to Act: Pension Funds are Drying Up
The Global Boom Falters: Asia’s Big Four Exporters—China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea—Hit Skids In Q1
Berthing pains for Asia’s rich put wind in the sails of marina developers
Marina developers in Southeast Asia are racing to build berths to address the latest problem vexing Asia’s rapidly growing ranks of ultra-rich: insufficient parking lots for their superyachts.
A Critique of Piketty’s Solution to Widening Wealth Inequality
A slump in the number of Indonesian workers applying for jobs in Malaysia’s palm oil sector is worsening a labour crunch that industry players say is taking a heavy toll on the export earnings of the world’s second-largest grower of the edible oil.
## Airline Death Spiral ##
Norwegian Air halts talks to buy Dreamliners, may quit Ireland
Mass death sentences and criminalization of opposition groups marks path back towards military dictatorship
US and Gulf states plan missile defence system to counter Iran
Demanding ‘Just and Sustainable’ Economy For All, Thousands March on Congress
Asian coal miners pursuing self-defeating output gains
Output at Kazakhstan’s huge Kashagan oilfield is not expected to restart this year after an investigation revealed that long stretches of oil and gas pipelines may need to be fully replaced, the project consortium said on Monday.
Large part of Kenya hit by power grid failure
Pakistan cuts prime minister’s electricity for not paying bills
Epidemic Of Hunger: New Report Says 49 Million Americans Are Dealing With Food Insecurity
Possible Food Poisoning Sickens 100 at Food Safety Summit
Exclusive: War-ravaged Syria may face worst wheat harvest in 40 years
Saudi Arabia: eight more deaths due to MERS
Hacker “Weev” is Released from Prison, Starts Hedge Fund Called TRO LLC, Appears on CNBC
Detroit Homeowners Gun Down Burglars as Police Wait for Cars
Nearly half of households that evacuated following the Fukushima nuclear disaster have been split up while close to 70 percent have family members suffering from physical and mental distress, a survey showed.
Report from Fukushima: lots of cleanup to do, not enough workers to do it
The Finance Ministry will launch a division in July dedicated to promoting sales of Japanese government bonds overseas because the amount of outstanding bonds is building, ministry officials said Tuesday.
Long-term jobless to have to scrub war memorials and historic monuments
Long-term unemployed people will have to clean war memorials, restore historic monuments and look after animals at city farms to keep their benefits from today.
About that recovery: Low-Wage Jobs Crowding Out Fatter Paychecks
America’s Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy
Fed fueling century’s ‘greatest bubble’: Stockman
In NYC, a $185M tunnel that leads nowhere, for now
Report: 4 in 5 US high school students graduate
!DSPAM:57,53613b25205892291516412!
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