Search Results for: FARM CROPS
Monsanto And The Geoengineers, A Lethal Mix For Humanity
How bad can the insanity get? It’s worse than almost any understand or are willing to face. Finally scientists with honor and moral fortitude are beginning to speak out on the record. Dr. Stephanie Seneff from MIT is one such heroic scientist and researcher. She has documented the inconceivable continued increase in autism that now calculates out to half of all children born having this ailment in the next 10+ years. The all out assault against life on Earth must be halted and it will take all of us working together to get the job done. Much of our food supply is now laden with Monsanto’s toxic brew of “RoundUp”. When combined with the mountain of aluminum and other heavy metals being sprayed on us by the climate engineers, it is a recipe for severe breakdown of the human organism. To put all this into the overall picture, not only is climate engineering completely disabling the planet’s life support systems, the toxic heavy metal fallout is combining with the Monsanto chemical nightmare to completely disable the human health system. We are all in a fight for life, nothing less. We must all examine our priorities, what should our time be spent on. If we do not immediately deal with the challenges just outlined, very soon, nothing else will matter. It’s up to all of us to help in the dire task of sounding the alarm until we reach critical mass awareness. When this happens, the power structure will begin to crumble. The article below should be shocking to any that are even slightly awake.
Dane Wigington
geoengineeringwatch.org
MIT Scientist Exposes Consequence of Monsanto’s Glyphosate & Aluminum Cocktail
Source: Natural Society
By 2025, half the kids born in the U.S. will be diagnosed with autism, according to Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. She, like many others says autism isn’t just genetic – it is almost surely due to environmental factors. Just a couple of those factors are Monsanto’s RoundUp (glyphosate) and heavy exposure to a cocktail of heavy metals, including aluminum.
Dr. Seneff isn’t respected by the ivory towers of the pharmaceutical medicine paradigm or industrial agriculture, but she has something to say about autism. She is a computer scientist who transitioned into biology and toxicology, so people like to attack her credentials, but what Dr. Seneff has to say is key, and many other mainstream researchers have been negligent in reporting these findings.
She has been studying autism for over 7 years, along with the environmental factors that lead to the disease. Decreased exposure to sunlight, poor diet, vaccines (specifically aluminum and mercury), as well as glyphosate toxins from RoundUp are causing skyrocketing rates of autism. She explains this in a two-hour presentation given recently at Autism One.
Aluminum and Glyphosate
Aluminum and glyphosate specifically interrupt the workings of the pineal gland (melatonin sulfate), leading to high rates of autism. She outlines this fact in pinpointing detail in her research, which can be found here.
Furthermore, glyphosate chelates manganese. Dr. Seneff believes that just the absence of appropriate amounts of manganese can help to cause autism. Glyphosate also promotes aluminum uptake into our tissues, and interrupts an important path for amino acid uptake called the shikimate pathway, into our guts.
“The way glyphosate works is that it interrupts the shikimate pathway, a metabolic function in plants that allows them to create essential amino acids. When this path is interrupted, the plants die. Human cells don’t have a shikimate pathway so scientists and researchers believed that exposure to glyphosate would be harmless.”
In fact, industrial claims don’t match the science on RoundUp. It is often used because it is considered one of the ‘safest’ of all herbicides. This claim is touted by Monsanto and other chemical pushers, but it turns out that RoundUp is one of the least safe herbicides on the market.
Incidentally, scientists were mistaken about a human shikimate pathway, and we rely upon it for many important functions in our body, including ridding our body of poisons like RoundUp as well as other herbicides and pesticides.
“The problem is that bacteria DO have a shikimate pathway and we have millions of good bacteria in our guts – our ‘gut flora.’ These bacteria are essential to our health. Our gut isn’t just responsible for digestion, but also for our immune system. When glyphosate gets in our systems, it wrecks our gut and as a result our immune system.”
She says:
“The effects are insidious. You won’t notice when you eat a food that contains glyphosate, but over time you will enter an old-age state before you should.”
It’s Time for Chemical Reform
Though Dr. Seneff’s findings are in the research stages, there are plenty of families that have autistic children who have chosen to drastically change their children’s diets, eliminating all pesticides, herbicides and as many neurotoxins as possible while eating organic food. They often experience some incredible results, seeing improvement in their children’s speech patterns, cognitive abilities, and social skills in weeks, not years. This amounts to circumstantial evidence, but it supports Dr. Seneff’s claims.
The rate at which diseases like autism (along with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and others) are growing would be unheard of just 50 years ago. You can’t simply discount this phenomenon as the result of ‘better screening and diagnosis.’ In the past 5 years alone, autism rates have increased from 1/150 to 1/50. This is an environmental epidemic; it isn’t genetic.
When you factor in the levels of glyphosate being found in women’s breast milk is ten times that which is allowed in European drinking water, and people in 18 different countries were found to have glyphosate in their blood, you have to question the rise in autism from another perspective, aside from the genetic one, and connect the dots. This leads to glyphosate as a synergistic compound that works with other suggested autism causes – like vaccines (controversial, I know).
“Ordinarily the body is quite good about keeping aluminum out. The gut will absorb very little of what’s in the diet…assuming you have a healthy gut. Glyphosate produces a leaky gut, and that’s going to help the aluminum get in. What I believe now is that the aluminum in the vaccine is far more toxic as a consequence of the glyphosate that’s also in the blood. The two of them are synergistic, because the glyphosate forms a cage around the aluminum and keeps it from getting expelled. The aluminum ends up accumulating, getting trapped with the glyphosate, and then the aluminum ends up in the pineal gland, and messes up sleep, and causes a whole cascade of problems in the brain. The glyphosate and aluminum are working together to be much more toxic than they would be, acting alone.”
RoundUp chemicals are the most used chemicals in numerous lived-in cities such as New York City, not just on American farms. In just ten years, the use of RoundUp chemicals on American farms grew more than 89%. More than 80000 tonnes are currently used on GMO corn, soy and other crops. We are being poisoned by the truckload. This isn’t Big Ag against the masses anymore, it looks like pure genocide.
You can watch Dr. Seneff’s speech at Autism One, here.
Additionally, all of Dr. Seneff’s papers can be studied to corroborate her assertions that glyphosate and aluminum, among other environmental toxins, are synergistically causing autism:
- “Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff, “Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases” Entropy 2013, 15(4), 1416-1463; doi:10.3390/e15041416 (Download)
- Robert M. Davidson, Ann Lauritzen and Stephanie Seneff, “Biological Water Dynamics and Entropy: A Biophysical Origin of Cancer and Other Diseases” Entropy 2013, 15, 3822-3876; doi:10.3390/ e15093822 (Download)
- Stephanie Seneff, Ann Lauritzen, Robert Davidson and Laurie Lentz-Marino, “Is Encephalopathy a Mechanism to Renew Sulfate in Autism?” Entropy 2013, 15, 372-406; doi:10.3390/e15010372 (Download)
- Stephanie Seneff, Ann Lauritzen, Robert Davidson and Laurie Lentz-Marino, “Is Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase a Moonlighting Protein Whose Day Job is Cholesterol Sulfate Synthesis? Implications for Cholesterol Transport, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease.” Entropy 2012, 14, 2492-2530; doi:10.3390/e14122492 (Download)
- Stephanie Seneff, Robert M. Davidson and Jingjing Liu, “Is Cholesterol Sulfate Deficiency a Common Factor in Preeclampsia, Autism, and Pernicious Anemia?” Entropy 2012, 14, 2265-2290; doi:10.3390/e14112265 (Download)
- Samantha Hartzell and Stephanie Seneff, “Impaired Sulfate Metabolism and Epigenetics: Is There a Link in Autism?” Entropy 2012, 14, 1953-1977; doi:10.3390/e14101953 (Download)
- Stephanie Seneff, Robert M. Davidson, and Jingjing Liu, “Empirical Data Confirm Autism Symptoms Related to Aluminum and Acetaminophen Exposure,” Entropy 2012, 14, 2227-2253; doi:10.3390/e14112227 (Download)
- Robert M. Davidson, and Stephanie Seneff, “The Initial Common Pathway of Inflammation, Disease, and Sudden Death,” Entropy 2012, 14, 1399-1442; doi:10.3390/e14081399 (Download)
- Stephanie Seneff, Glyn Wainwright, and Luca Mascitelli, “Nutrition and Alzheimer’s Disease: The Detrimental Role of a High Carbohydrate Diet,” European Journal of Internal Medicine 22 (2011) 134-140; doi:10.1016/j.ejim.2010.12.017 (Download)
- Stephanie Seneff, Glyn Wainwright, and Luca Mascitelli, “Is the Metabolic Syndrome Caused by a High Fructose, and Relatively Low Fat, Low Cholesterol Diet?” Archives of Medical Science, 2011; 7, 1: 8-20; doi:10.5114/aoms.2011.20598 (Download)
- Stephanie Seneff, Robert Davidson, and Luca Mascitelli, “Might cholesterol sulfate deficiency contribute to the development of autistic spectrum disorder?” Medical Hypotheses, 8, 213-217, 2012. (Download)“
Source: Natural Society
So, How Do We Stop The Spraying?
By Dane Wigington
geoengineeringwatch.org
All that know about the horrific crime of “stratospheric aerosol geoengineering” (SAG) or “solar radiation management” (SRM) want an answer to the question, how do we stop it? Though there are no easy answers, the most straight forward solution is the most likely to succeed. We must all continue to focus on effectively and credibly raising public awareness until we reach critical mass. We are getting closer to this with each passing day. This battle plan sounds so very generic, but in fact it is the most solid path forward. If all pulled together, the fight to expose the globally decimating aerosol spraying programs could very soon reach the tipping point.
The Desperation of the Human Race
We are all living in a real life science fiction movie. Our skies are sprayed with toxic metals and chemicals for the stated purpose of “controlling the weather”, there are nuclear plant meltdowns, massive fish and animal die offs, etc. The implosion of Earth’s life support systems is confronting us on all sides. Ever more elaborate and colossal efforts are being undertaken as man’s struggle to survive increases in scope, scale, and intensity. The effort to survive itself causes yet more damage to the planet. The reality we have all known is rapidly unraveling, this fact will become clearer by the day to any that are even slightly awake. “The Greenhouses of Almeria” is a glaring example of man’s desperate attempt to cope with an increasingly harsh and inhospitable environment of his own creation. The science fiction movie is now. This is the future for us all as man struggles to feed increasing populations on a dying planet. Climate engineering is the epitome of human insanity. The attempt to mediate the damage done to the planet by a further escalation of the same activities that helped create the damage in the first place is a textbook example of insanity.
Dane Wigington
geoengineeringwatch.org
Racing Toward Total Extinction
While billions around the globe still occupy their time with completely meaningless distractions and entertainments, life on Earth is literally imploding. The level of mainstream media spin and omission in regard to what is unfolding is difficult to comprehend. The general public is all too willing to accept the factless facade that is fed to them day in and day out while life on Earth disintegrates around us all. Our collective future quite literally now rely on those that are awake and willing to help sound the alarm. Standing still and complaining to others about the converging catastrophes will not help our situation. We must all learn to effectively reach out to all the groups, organizations, and individuals that are still oblivious to the immediate peril we face. Every single day matters.
Dane Wigington
geoengineeringwatch.org
If The Bees Die, We Will Follow
Bees are dying as are many species of insects around the globe. In some counties of Northern California, the insect populations have already declined some 90% as measured by a US Forest Service biologist. Aquatic insect life has seen the same level of decline in this region. Reports are coming in to geoengineeringwatch.org of similar insect die-offs from many locations around the globe. Though the scientific community is sounding the alarm about the die-off (at least in the case of the bees), they are even now completely in denial or oblivious to the highly toxic climate engineering and its effects on terrestrial life forms. I spoke to one of the head people at the National Bee Association and very carefully tried to inform her on the issue of global climate engineering and its likely connection to the bee die-off. She did not want to hear any data, and made it clear she had absolutely no intention of investigating. This was fall of 2013, the die off continues, and I have never heard a word back from this person. If the bees are succumbing to farm chemicals, why are they just as dead a thousand miles into the wilderness? If the die-off is from the cold winter in the US East (completely engineered winter storms), why are the bees just as dead in the west where record high temperatures have been the norm for too long to remember? So much of academia does not want to know the truth, but rather wishes to stay in comfort zones of total denial. I don’t say this lightly and I say if from a great deal of first hand experience. I have communicated with numerous individuals in academia from many different specialties and with very few exceptions I have found a near total absence of moral responsibility. Many of the so called “experts” are now in many ways accessories to the climate engineering crimes occurring in skies around the globe. Though there are still those scientists that are truly not aware of what is happening in our skies, for many others, their adamant denial of the climate engineering spraying and its effects is inexcusable.
Dane Wigington
geoengineeringwatch.org
A Day in the Life: 5/6-7/14
A Day in the Life: 5/3-5/14
In the Midst of Human Culling
The entire planet is covered in toxic and poisonous heavy metals, sulfates, and bio-polymers from climate engineering/geoengineering/chemtrails. The entire planet is radiated from 70 years of nuclear weapons testing, leaking nuclear power plants, depleted uranium, and other “accidents” which have exposed every living thing on the earth to constant deadly radiation levels.
A Day in the Life: 5/1-2/14
Just a few brief comments, Keith. The following observations are just from me personally, not to reflect the views of Geoengineering Watch, the radio program, or anyone else.
Dear Richard, Thanks very very much for this. I don’t agree that the planet is ruled by a single cabal. Those you refer to indeed control much of it–but if “we” via small-scale crowd-funded experiments can identify a technique for quickly cooling the Arctic, there’s then some chance that the BRICS nations (now forming their own version of the IMF and World Bank) would provide funding for it to be applied on an adequate scale and some chance also that the gear could be located in the Russian Arctic.
What can I say? This ‘cloud’ doesn’t even look real on the satellite image. It is BIZARRE and MIGHTY STRANGE and seems to be HAARPED into extinction as it tries/ or is pushed towards shore. (animation:http://sat.wrh.noaa.gov/satellite/loopsat.php?wfo=mfr&area=west&type=vis&size=4) Look at all the chem trails all over the image! UNBELIEVABLE! (and it was unnaturally hot again today on the Oregon coast).
EPA Rep Has Loose Lips About Geoengineering
Dane Wigington
geoengineeringwatch.org
Geoengineering Programs Continue to Destroy Ozone Layer
Dane Wigington
GeoengineeringWatch.org
There is in fact now a massive Northern Hemisphere ozone hole that appears to be growing and worsening by the day. So why don’t we hear a thing about this dire issue? Because the science community is being threatened into complete silence and the main stream media is all too effective at sweeping the “lump” under the rug. No matter how big the lump is.
SAG (stratospheric aerosol geoengineering) and SRM (solar radiation management) AKA, “chemtrails”, are virtually shredding the ozone layer day in and day out. The harsh reality of these ongoing atmospheric spraying programs is evident for any that look up and bother to do the slightest bit of objective investigation. In addition to the ongoing ozone decimation the toxic particulates that are literally saturating our atmosphere are completely disrupting global weather and rainfall patterns, causing extreme drought in many places, and deluge in others.
Then of course there is the fact that what goes up must come down. All they spray settles in the air column where each and every one of us then inhales it in with every breath. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adiminstration) recently did a study which admitted to the that the atmosphere was filled with particulates in recent decades and they had no idea where they were all coming from. Really? There are many studies which make clear the ozone destruction that “would” be caused IF geoengineering were to be carried out, but none admit to the ever larger elephant in the room which is the ongoing global geoengineering/chemtrail spraying.
If they continue the spring, the ozone destruction will get worse by the day. No ozone layer, no life on Earth, period.
Dane Wigington
GeoengineeringWatch.org
Ocean Acidification Dissolving Shells of Key Marine Creature
“Research on the progression and impacts of ocean acidification is vital
to understanding the consequences of our burning of fossil fuels.”
Scientists have documented how ocean acidification, sometimes referred to as climate change’s “evil twin,” is already taking a toll on an essential part of the marine food chain in an area off the U.S. northwest coast, and with runaway greenhouse gas emissions continuing, it looks like the problem is only set to worsen.
As oceans have absorbed increasing amounts of CO2, they’ve become more acid, and that means the shells of pteropods, small, free-swimming marine snails, are dissolving — a change the researchers hadn’t expected to see for years.
In samples they took from northern Washington to central California, 53 percent of the pteropods had severely dissolved shells.
“Our findings are the first evidence that a large fraction of the West Coast pteropod population is being affected by ocean acidification,” stated lead author Nina Bednarsek, Ph.D., of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. “Dissolving coastal pteropod shells point to the need to study how acidification may be affecting the larger marine ecosystem.”
The tiny snails, which are about one-eighth to one-half inch in length, are a food source for pink salmon, mackerel and herring, so a plummet in the pteropod population will have far-reaching effects.
The team of NOAA-led researchers warns that
the incidence of severe pteropod shell dissolution owing to anthropogenic OA has doubled in near shore habitats since pre-industrial conditions across this region and is on track to triple by 2050.
Study co-author William Peterson, Ph.D., an oceanographer at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, adds that the effect to the pteropds shells in the coastal region comes “several decades” ahead of when they expected.
Last year scientists presented their findings of the “unprecedented” rate of ocean acidification while at the UN climate talks in Warsaw, noting that pteropods in the Southern Ocean were already corroding, which would have a “cascading impact on the whole food chain.”
“Acidification of our oceans may impact marine ecosystems in a way that threatens the sustainability of the marine resources we depend on,” stated Libby Jewett, Director of the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program. “Research on the progression and impacts of ocean acidification is vital to understanding the consequences of our burning of fossil fuels.”
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Graphic from Australia’s now abolished Climate Commission:
BRICS creating parallel Monetary Fund disillusioned with IMF and World Bank – expert
Frustrated by the IMF and World Bank controversial policy, the BRICS nations go on creating the alternative financial supranational institutions for emerging economies. In recent years the IMF has discredited itself, becoming a completely politicized and “odd” structure, which supports interventionist “super state” ambitions of the EU and the US, stresses Patrick L Young, an expert in global financial markets, referring to the ongoing events in Ukraine.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are fed up with the US failure to ratify a four-year-old agreement aimed at reforming the IMF system. Thus the post war consensus on financing bodies appears to be breaking down, writes the expert in his RT Op-Ed ‘BRICS building parallel IMF.’
“The US and Europe have maintained a stranglehold on the IMF/World Bank C-suite not only in the face of a massive eastern renaissance but also with a certain degree of abject hypocrisy given the abysmal financial management of spendthrift US governments for decades let alone the travesty of recent European economic governance,” he notes.
According to Patrick Young the IMF is gradually losing its significance as an international financial arbiter. First Dominique Strauss-Kahn and then Christine Lagarde have been entrapped by the “flawed policies of big debt and big government,” utterly ruinous for the European economy.
“During recent European bailout negotiations, IMF minutes suggest the political classes managed to ride roughshod over the IMF in order to maintain the flawed (and still crumbling) euro currency at all costs. In that sense, having a weak European with ambitions for higher political office makes a mockery of the idea that the International Monetary Fund is anything more than an overdraft facility to be rigged in favor of perceived western political interests,” Patrick L Young explains, adding, “No wonder the rising East is disillusioned.”
It should be noted that the BRICS bloc of emerging economies is expecting all preparatory work for setting up its Development Bank to be done by July, 2014, according to Reuters. Political neutrality of the BRICS-Monetary Fund appears to become its unquestionable “competitive advantage.” It will help the new structure to operate without fear or favor, deems the expert.
“What the IMF really needs,” he stresses, “are strong technocrats as opposed to the spineless politicians who generally operate with (at the very least!) one eye on their next political position.”
Spies R Us: The “Kidnapping” of Fake OSCE “Humanitarian Monitors” in Ukraine
The western presstitute media are relentlessly reporting about the kidnapped monitors of the
The truth is that the captured monitors are in fact NATO military intelligence officers, sent to the Ukraine under the guise of the OSCE.
Russia was not consulted on these NATO ‘observers’, although Russia is a member of the OSCE. In no case do the media distinguish between the 150 or so legitimate OSCE civilian observers, including Russians, and the illegal NATO spies. Global Research
Among the many reasons for Washington to justify a direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, is that Mr. Putin hasn’t done enough to free the NATO spies.
The ridiculous ‘sanctions’, as Obama knows very well, are of course not enough to keep the US economy (sic) going. On the other hand, a war or armed conflict – or a new Cold War– might sustain the US economy for a while.
Let’s face it, the US economy is as dependent on the military and security industrial complex – the War Machine – as a drug addict is on drugs. Without the drugs the addict collapses. American military expenditures are more than those of the rest of the world together and amount to about 50% of the US budget.
Without war and WMD the United States of America collapses – and along with its sick economy.
Poverty in the US is rampant.
60 million children go to bed hungry every night (Department of Agriculture);
The real level of unemployment is above 20%; people without health insurance and dependent on food stamps or other food assistance amount to about 40 million. The American empire is at a point of no return. Peace is America’s greatest enemy.
Therefore no lie and propaganda is brazen enough to brainwash the western public, especially the Europeans, into believing the only way to save the West, meaning Europe, is to involve Russia in an armed conflict, to basically annihilate their economy, to the level it was at the end of WWII, or even after Cold War I.
Let us not forget, the end game for the American Oligarchs is encircling Russia and China to obtain full control of the world and its resources. A weak Russia and an intimidated China would make the task towards a One World Order easier. As a reminder – today about 50% of the US Navy fleet is already stationed along China’s East and Southern Coast, to be increased to 60% within a year.
Europeans are awaking. If not they should. Germany would have most to lose from a war. They are not only virtually the go-between; they are also geographically and economically caught in the middle. Though when listening to the German Foreign Minister, one could believe that he is oblivious to the gravity of the situation for his country, as he is still aping the emperor about ‘sanctioning’ Russia.
Another argument for US intervention is the ceaselessly repeated lies about Russia’s special forces fighting alongside the pro-Russia Ukrainian faction, occupying public buildings and radio / TV station – conquering entire cities, like the city of Slavyansk. According to western propaganda, the new people’s mayor of Slavyansk, VyacheslavPonomarev,is nothing but a figure head put in place by Moscow; all lies to further denigrate Russia and its leader.
The United States will unlikely risk interfering again (remember the 5 billion dollar investment for obtaining ‘Regime Change’ in Kiev) in the Ukraine. The emerging confrontation with Russia could willy-nilly result in a nuclear war. Obama knows that a first preventive strike by the US would still leave Russia with enough nuclear fire power to hit back and destroy most of what the elite thrives for.
In the meantime, like a dying beast, the US destroys and divides as much as it can, creating chaos and suffering–the old mantra ‘dividing for reigning’. Even knowing that the end is near, the (military) corporate and banking elite behind the Obama Administration is adamant to postpone the demise as long as possible, annihilating what we call civilization and the globe’s resources, according to the motto, ‘after me the deluge’ — nobody should be allowed to live happily and peacefully, once the empire bites the dust.
There is still the possibility that before the last straw breaks, the US viathe IMF, declares a new gold standard. That could take any form possible suiting them most. It could even be a combination of gold and hydrocarbon; the latter based on oil and gas reserves throughout the world, controlled, or quasi-controlled by US hydrocarbon giants.
That’s why the Bricso– a fictitious name for the soon to be issued new currency by the BRICS – is more than welcome.
As the era of the US dollar plunges into its demise, the rest of the world needs an alternative to the dollar to be able to continue life with the least possible disruption, once the dollar is extinct.
Peter Koenig is an economist and former World Bank staff. He worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, the Voice of Russia and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. Peter may be reached at leonis@bluewin.ch .
Wall Street and the Global Laundering of Drug Money
Big Banks Started Laundering Massive Sums of Drug Money in the 1980s… And Are Still Doing It Today
For More Than 30 Years, the Big Banks Have Been Key Players In the Drug Trade
Official statistics show that huge sums of drug money are laundered every year:
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conducted astudy to determine the magnitude of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organised crimes and to investigate to what extent these funds are laundered. The report estimates that in 2009, criminal proceeds amounted to 3.6% of global GDP, with 2.7% (or USD 1.6 trillion) being laundered.
This falls within the widely quoted estimate by the International Monetary Fund, who stated in 1998 that the aggregate size of money laundering in the world could be somewhere between two and five percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Using 1998 statistics, these percentages would indicate that money laundering ranged between USD 590 billion and USD 1.5 trillion. At the time, the lower figure was roughly equivalent to the value of the total output of an economy the size of Spain.
Indeed, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says that drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.
This started a long time ago. For example, Citibank was caught laundering drug money for Mexican cartels in 2001.
In the 1990s, earlier, Citibank apparently set up special client accounts for a big drug dealer:
One of the more infamous cases involving taxpayer bailed-out Citigroup’s ties to money laundering drug cartels emerged in the late 1990s when Raúl Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas, was arrested after his wife, Paulina Castañón, attempted to withdraw $84 million from a Swiss account controlled by Raúl under an alias.
***
According to a 1995 Los Angeles Times report, Salinas “amassed at least $100 million in suspected drug money.”
Switzerland’s top prosecutor at the time, Carla del Ponte, “launched the investigation after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supplied information that led Swiss agents to the accounts in Geneva, where they arrested Raúl Salinas’ wife and her brother on Nov. 15 as the pair attempted to withdraw more than $83 million.”
Del Ponte told the Los Angeles Times that after observing Salinas’ interrogation by Mexican federal prosecutors the sums found in those accounts were “suspected to be from the laundering of money related to narcotics trafficking.”
In 1998, when Swiss prosecutors completed their Salinas investigation, The New York Times disclosed that “Swiss police investigators have concluded that a brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari played a central role in Mexico’s cocaine trade, raking in huge bribes to protect the flow of drugs into the United States.”
***
A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) pointed a finger directly at Citibank. Investigators revealed that “Mr. Salinas was able to transfer $90 million to $100 million between 1992 and 1994 by using a private banking relationship formed by Citibank New York in 1992. The funds were transferred through Citibank Mexico and Citibank New York to private banking investment accounts in Citibank London and Citibank Switzerland.”
With the connivance of bank officials, in 1992 Salinas was able to “effectively disguise” the source of those funds and their destination.
Indeed, with hefty fees secured from assisting their well-connected client Salinas, Citibank “set up an offshore private investment company named Trocca, to hold Mr. Salinas’s assets, through Cititrust (Cayman) and investment accounts in Citibank London and Citibank Switzerland.”
***
A 1999 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report on “Private Banking and Money Laundering” revealed that “a culture of secrecy pervades the private banking industry.”
“For example,” Senate investigators disclosed, “in the case of Raul Salinas . . . the private bank hid Mr. Salinas’ ownership of Trocca by omitting his name from the Trocca incorporation papers and naming still other shell companies as the shareholders, directors, and officers. Citibank consistently referred to Mr. Salinas in internal bank communications by the code name ‘Confidential Client Number 2′ or ‘CC-2.’ The private bank’s Swiss office opened a special name account for him under the name of ‘Bonaparte’.”
In the 1980s, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) – apparently backed by top CIA officials – laundered drug money. Time Magazine reported in 1991:
Because the US wanted to supply the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan’, said a US intelligence officer.
As Wikipedia notes, Alfred McCoy (Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one of the world’s top experts on drug trafficking)
[McCoy] uncovered money laundering activities by banks controlled by the CIA, first the Castle Bank which was then replaced by the Nugan Hand Bank, which had as legal counsel William Colby, retired head of the CIA. He also alludes to the BCCI, which seems to have played the same role as the Nugan Hand Bank after its collapse in the early 1980s, claiming that “the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI.
Citibank was still laundering Mexican drug money in 2001.
And nothing has changed since then.
The big banks are still laundering staggering sums of drug money. See this, this, this, this, this, thisand and this.
An HSBC employee who blew the whistle on that banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says: “America is losing the drug war because our banks are [still] financing the cartels“, and “Banks financing drug cartels … affects every single American“.
(And see this.)
If you can’t believe that the banks would launder drug money, just take a look at their other crimes.
The Feds are a big part of the problem. After all, they support some ruthless, criminal drug cartels, have repeatedly protected drug smugglers, supported drug producers (update).
Obviously the war on drugs is a total boondoggle.
Germany’s Secretive Drone Data Centers Responsible for Killing Thousands of Civilians
Recent revelations over German complicity in US drone strikes will tomorrow cast a shadow over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s talks with President Barack Obama in Washington.
Investigative journalists in Germany recently revealed Ramstein, a US base in the country, to be a major data centre for the secretive strikes, which have killed thousands of civilians in countries such as Yemen and Pakistan. Legal charity Reprieve this week revealed that a strike in Yemen over the Easter weekend killed four builders on their way to work, leaving at least 20 children fatherless.
The Ramstein findings contradict claims made by both leaders at their last meeting in June 2013, when Obama dismissed reports that US bases in Germany had been used for drone attacks. He told journalists:
“We do not use Germany as a launching point for unmanned drones […] as part of our counterterrorism activities. […] I know that there have been some reports here in Germany that that might be the case. That is not.”
During the same visit, Merkel spoke of Ramstein as filling “a very important function”, saying “our work is based […] on shared values.”
Recent questions in the German parliament have increased pressure on Merkel to reveal the true extent of Germany’s involvement in the strikes, but there is little evidence that the government plans to challenge the Obama administration over them.
Kat Craig, Legal Director at Reprieve, said:
“One year on from Chancellor Merkel’s assertions about shared US-German ‘values’, the extent of Washington’s use of German soil to perpetrate illegal killings is clear. Despite Obama’s promises to the German people last year, the number of civilian deaths from these secretive drone strikes is higher than ever, and the response of the German government has been to ignore the issue. It is high time that Merkel raised concerns with Obama about the launching of illegal drone strikes from Germany –
US State-Sponsored Terrorism
Washington notoriously points fingers the wrong way. It whitewashes its own crimes.
Its latest Country Reports on Terrorism 2013 omits the world’s leading sponsor. More on it below.
Terrorism is what they do, not us, it’s claimed. Reasons why imperial wars are waged are suppressed.
Might justifies right. Nations are destroyed to free them. Lives and freedoms lost don’t matter. They’re small prices to pay.
Mind manipulation turns truth on its head. People are convinced wrongs are right. Wars are glorified in the name of peace.
Peaceful countries become cauldrons of violence. Instability rocks them. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and others are US imperial victims.
So is Ukraine. It’s a global flashpoint. Potentially it’s worst of all. It threatens to spin out-of-control. It risks regional conflict. Possible East/West confrontation looms.
Washington bears full responsibility for numerous world hot spots. Imperialism works this way. It instigates violence. It fosters instability.
It promotes state-sponsored terrorism. It’s what we do, not them. More on this below.
On April 30, the State Department issued its “annual assessment of trends and events in international terrorism…” It covers the period January 1 – December 31, 2013.
“It includes a strategic assessment, country-by-country breakdowns of counterterrorism efforts, and sections on state sponsors of terrorism, terrorist safe havens, and foreign terrorist organizations.”
It bears repeating. The world’s top sponsor by far is omitted. None in human history compare.
Washington uses Al Qaeda and similar groups strategically. They’re allies and enemies at the same time. They’re core elements of American imperial wars.
Tina Kaidanow is US ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism. In 2013, terrorism evolved rapidly, she said.
“The international community’s successful efforts to degrade al-Qaida, or AQ, senior leadership in Pakistan, coupled with weak governance and instability in the Middle East and Northwest Africa have accelerated the decentralization of what we refer to as al-Qaida core,” she added.
“This has led to the affiliates in the AQ network becoming more operationally autonomous from AQ core and increasingly focused on local and regional objectives.”
“The past several years have seen the emergence of a more aggressive set of AQ affiliates and likeminded groups, most notably in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Northwest Africa, and Somalia.”
“Iran’s state-sponsorship of terrorism and Hezbollah’s activities are also of significant concern,” she claimed.
“Interdictions in the past year have found Iran attempting to smuggle arms and Iranian explosives to Syria, to Yemen, and also to arm Shia opposition groups in Bahrain.”
“And the IRGC Qods Force, Hezbollah, and Iraqi Shia militant groups have all been providing a broad range of critical support to the Assad regime since the start of the conflict.”
Fake Washington-hyped terror threats persist. It’s done to generate fear. America’s only enemies are ones it invents. Demagogic duplicity claims otherwise. It turns truth on its head.
Inconvenient truths are buried. Michael Parenti exposed the terrorism trap. He did so post-9/11. Wars are waged “to keep the world safe for the Fortune 500,” he said.
“To make sure that the transnational corporations and international global finance capital continues to control the land, labor, resources, and markets of most of the world, and ultimately, all of the world on terms that are extremely favorable to them.”
“The goal is to destroy, to obliterate, to thwart any social movement or national leader who is trying for an alternative way of using the land, the labor, the natural resources, the markets, the capital of his or her country.”
To institute a homeland police state apparatus. To destroy freedom in the name of stability. To lose both at the same time. To continue waging war on humanity.
To claim it’s about spreading democracy. To tolerate it nowhere. To crush it wherever it emerges. To institute Washington rules. To enforce hardline rule.
To demand absolute obedience. To tolerate no outliers. To ravage humanity in the name of saving it. To make planet earth unfit to live on.
State-sponsored terrorism defines US policy. Demagogic duplicity conceals it.
US law calls “international terrorism” activities involving:
(A) “violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;”
(B) are intended to –
(i) “intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States….”
The US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism (TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37, 1984) called it “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature….through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.”
Merriam-Webster calls it “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”
The Oxford Dictionary calls it “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.”
In his book “Terrorism, Theirs and Ours,” the late Eqbal Ahmad called state-sponsored terrorism most important of all.
It includes “torture, burning of villages, destruction of entire peoples, (and) genocide” on a massive scale.
It’s called “self-defense,” protecting “national security,” and/or “promoting democracy.” Doing so conceals America’s dark side. War on humanity follows.
“Who will define the parameters of terrorism, or decide where terrorists lurk,” asked Ahmad?
“Why none other than the United States, which can from the rooftops of the world set out its claim to be sheriff, judge and hangman, all at one and the same time.”
Martin Luther King called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” He did so for good reason.
It’s more menacing than ever. At stake is humanity’s survival. Aggression is called humanitarian intervention. Freedom is crushed for our own good.
Big Lies substitute for truth. They proliferate to advance America’s imperium. Mind manipulation convinces people to go along.
Eastern Ukrainian freedom fighters are called terrorists. US-led NATO takes full advantage.
Eastern European deployments continue. Doing so encroaches provocatively closer to Russia’s borders.
Georgia and Russia share a common one. Its Defense Minister Irakli Alasania wants more NATO troops deployed internally.
He calls them “defensive actions,” saying:
“(T)his is something we need to put in Georgia and Russians will understand that you are serious.”
Americans and Europeans must work together, he stressed. It’s “important for the United States to show leadership…to make sure (NATO’s) next steps will be an adequate response to what’s happening in Ukraine.”
“We are talking about the Membership Action Plan, but we don’t really know how these discussions will end up, while, honestly, in fact after (developments in) Ukraine we should be talking about accession talks of Georgia and other aspirants to NATO.”
According to NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow:
“We need to step up our support for defense reforms and military modernization of Russia’s neighbors, and not just of Ukraine, but also Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.”
On April 27, Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) headlined“Russian and Ukrainian armies shaping up for initial military clash over Slavyansk,” saying:
“The outcome will determine who controls the Donetsk region and possibly all of East of Ukraine…”
“(I)t might be the last straw that undermines (Kiev’s) shaky rule.” Ukraine’s military is no match against Russia’s.
“Its threat to blockade the more than a dozen towns where separatists are entrenched in official buildings is unconvincing.”
DF sees no broad international coalition for a “strong stand” against Russia forthcoming. Obama may be largely on his own.
On April 30, the Wall Street Journal headlined ”Americans Want to Pull Back From World Stage, Poll Finds.”
“Nearly Half Surveyed in WSJ/NBC Poll Back Anti-Interventionist Stance That Sweeps Across Party Lines.”
Only 38% of Americans approve how Obama handles foreign policy. It’s the low water mark of his presidency.
According to Democrat pollster Fred Yang:
“The juxtaposition of an America that wants to turn inward and away from world affairs, and a strong feeling of powerlessness domestically, is a powerful current that so far has eluded the grasp of Democrats and Republicans.”
“The message from the American public to their leaders in this poll seems to be: You need to take care of business here at home.”
Public support for Obama’s handling Ukrainian crisis conditions dropped to 37%. In March it was 43%.
On April 30, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Washington isn’t “concerned (about) the fate of Ukraine…but (has) a strong desire to prove (it) decides how things should be – always and everywhere.”
Lavrov wants US officials to “discipline” putschists it elevated to power. Do it instead of sanctioning Russia, he stressed.
Moscow urges constructive dialogue, he added. “US and EU representatives have blocked this initiative,” he said.
“We’ll continue to call for the full implementation of the Geneva Declaration, which our partners are trying to distance themselves from.”
“But we cannot decide for the self-defense forces. Those people live under a constant threat coming from Kiev that the military and armored vehicles will be used against them; under constant threat from the extremists.”
At the same time, Russia bashing persists. Eight Republican senators introduced hostile legislation.
If enacted, it’ll strengthen NATO, enhance missile defense for offense, provide military aide to Ukraine, and sanction Russia’s banking and energy sectors.
On Wednesday, coup-appointed president Oleksandr Turchynov said Ukraine’s military went on full alert.
“Special tactical exercises” were held. Military forces were deployed on Kiev streets.
On Tuesday, Moscow’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said Kiev, “encouraged by Western ‘friends,’ is persistently pushing the country towards a catastrophe.”
US imperialism bears full responsibility. State terrorism defines it. War on humanity persists.
Ukraine is in the eye of the storm. Flashpoint conditions risk spreading things out-of-control.
Obama’s latest imperial adventurism risks global war. He’s mindless about what’s potentially unfolding.
Agrarian Uprising Against Free Trade and ‘Government Lies’ Sweeps Colombia
Second agrarian uprising in less than a year met with tanks, soldiers, and riot police
Agrarian strikes, protests, and road blockades are sweeping Colombia this week as peasants voice outrage at the “free trade” policies, backed by the Colombian government, that they say are exacerbating the country’s crisis of rural poverty.
“The countryside has been abandoned by the state in favor of big companies,” Jimmy Torres of Conciencia Campesina in Cajamarca told The Guardian. “That’s why we block the roads and protest.”
The second major mobilization of its kind in less than a year, the strike launched Monday and has so far been met with government tanks, troops, and riot police, The Guardianreports. Human rights organizations estimate that 200 participants have been “illegally arrested,” Neil Martin of the Colombia-based labor solidarity organization Paso Internationaltold Common Dreams.
The strikes and protests are organized by dignity movements for potato, rice, and coffee growers and other rural workers, said Martin.
Peasants have levied a range of demands for greater social protections and relief from debt, mining projects, and “free trade” agreements that have bankrupted and displaced Colombia’s peasants, workers, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian communities.
The “U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement,” passed by U.S. Congress in 2011,slashed tariffs on U.S. exports to the country while prohibiting protections for Colombian farmers, forcing peasants and farmers to compete with an influx of subsidized U.S. products.
“The government would have to provide massive subsidies to these farmers for them to make ends meet, but the free trade agreement with the U.S., for example, prohibits this type of policy,” said Martin. “Meanwhile the U.S. government provide massive subsidies to its agricultural industry. The globalization of the agricultural market, in general, also makes for a very volatile situation for small farmers everywhere who fall victim to unpredictable booms and busts.”
In Colombia today, the overall poverty rate hovers at 30.6 percent, and in rural areas this figure runs 11 percentage points higher.
Cesar Pachon, representative for the Potato Farmers Dignity Movement, told newspaper El Colombiano that the protesters “are searching for a price control [or subsidy] because the potato is selling for less than its [production] cost, soft loans, debt refinancing and support for inputs because they are expensive,” according to a translation from Colombia Report.
Colombia’s ongoing mobilization follows a larger rural uprising and strike of hundreds of thousands this August that was met with severe repression from Colombia’s feared police, resulting in approximately 20 deaths. While the mobilization forced President Juan Manuel Santos to promise compliance with the protesters’ key demands, peasants say he has failed to follow through on his commitments.
“We have no faith in the central government,” said Walter Benavides, who is identified as a spokesperson for the striking farmers by the Miami Herald. “They’ve lied to us repeatedly… We don’t want words, we want actions.”
Numerous media reports state that the fresh protests less than a month ahead of the May 25th vote have the potential to upset Santos’ re-election bid.
Meanwhile, the rural protests are expected to spread Thursday, May 1st—recognized around the world as International Workers’ Day—with more organizations and supporters slated to take to the streets.
USA: Bad Jobs Country
Researchers confirm what desperate workers have sensed: most of the good jobs lost in the Great Recession have been replaced with bad jobs. That’s fine with Wall Street, since “capital’s global plan is to reduce all workers to a state of absolute insecurity, so that they will accept those bad jobs without complaint.”
A new study shows that the U.S. economy has finally produced more jobs than there were before the Great Recession of 2008. The problem is, they’re mostly bad jobs in fast-food restaurants and low-wage retail. The National Employment Law Project found that there are almost two million fewer good paying jobs than there were back in 2008, but also close to two million more jobs in the low-wage sector of the economy – meaning, most of the new jobs have been bad jobs.
Actually, the change in the jobs picture during the Great Recession was just a speeded up version of what capitalism has been producing in the United States for more than 30 years. It is by design. Every time employers have turned the screws on labor, in terms of wages, benefits and jobs security, Wall Street has rewarded those companies. The Lords of Capital have also richly rewarded the politicians from both parties for removing the remaining obstacles to the direct rule of the rich.
Capital’s global plan is to reduce all workers to a state of absolute insecurity, so that they will accept those bad jobs without complaint. That requires the destruction of what we used to call the social safety net – a term that sounds increasingly quaint in the dog-eat-dog environment engineered into the system by Wall Street.
Make no mistake about it: austerity is the common program of both the business parties. That’s why you will hear no countervailing vision from the Democrats, whose message differs from Republicans only in tone, not in substance. Both answer to the Lords of Capital.
Barack Obama, the great actor and political chameleon, pretends to commiserate with his Democratic minority and working class constituents. Like his mentor, Bill Clinton, Obama claims to feel their pain. Yet, he is feverishly working to pass trade treaties that will further establish the legal structures of the global race to the bottom – treaties so blatantly biased towards corporations and against every principle of democracy and national sovereignty, that the language must be kept secret.
However, the main problem for American workers isn’t that Wall Street’s economic and social plans are secret – because, for the most part, they’re not. Big Capital’s intentions have been quite clear for decades. The NAFTA trade treaty has been savaging U.S. factory workers and Mexican peasants for 20 years. The Democrats were in power when the banks were set free to loot and plunder 15 years ago. Every employment study has tracked the steady decline of union membership, which the Democrats have done virtually nothing to reverse. That’s quite understandable since finance capital has steadily increased its campaign contributions to Democrats. None of this has been a secret, and no one should be surprised that, as a result, most new jobs are bad jobs. As far as Wall Street is concerned, that’s good news.
What makes the current era different from the past, is that neither of the business parties even bothers to pretend that it has a plan for a good jobs society. That means the people must put forward their own plan, through their own organizations – and learn to avoid the Democrats, whose job is to nip genuine people’s movements in the bud, so as not to disturb the corporate order.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted atGlen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
By justifying and integrating all these potentials into a single scalable, modular approach, various capabilities can emerge naturally in various markets, rather than trying to compete directly in areas that may be highly resistant to change. Portable food production does not appear to pose an immediate threat to the energy or transportation industry for example. Separately justifying and funding dozens of technologies with as many business plans would be complex, both financial and logistically. Since global recovery is synergistic, integration of technologies is as important as individual capabilities.
What You Need to Know About May Day
For more than 100 years, May Day has symbolized the common struggles of workers around the globe. Why is it largely ignored in North America? The answer lies in part in American labour’s long repression of its own radical past, out of which international May Day was actually born a century ago.
The seeds were sown in the campaign for the eight-hour work day. On May 1, 1886, hundreds of thousands of North American workers mobilized to strike. In Chicago, the demonstration spilled over into support for workers at a major farm-implements factory who’d been locked out for union activities. On May 3, during a pitched battle between picketers and scabs, police shot two workers. At a protest rally in Haymarket Square the next day, a bomb was tossed into the police ranks and police directed their fire indiscriminately at the crowd. Eight anarchist leaders were arrested, tried and sentenced to death (three were later pardoned).
These events triggered international protests, and in 1889, the first congress of the new socialist parties associated with the Second International (the successor to the First International organized by Karl Marx in the 1860s) called on workers everywhere to join in an annual one-day strike on May 1 – not so much to demand specific reforms as an annual demonstration of labour solidarity and working-class power. May Day was both a product of, and an element in, the rapid growth of new mass working-class parties of Europe – which soon forced official recognition by employers and governments of this “workers’ holiday.”
But the American Federation of Labor (AFL), chastened by the “red scare” that followed the Haymarket events, went along with those who opposed May Day observances. Instead, in 1894, the AFL embraced president Grover Cleveland’s decree that the first Monday of September would be the annual Labor Day. The Canadian government of Sir Robert Thompson enacted identical Labour Day legislation a month later.
Ever since, May Day and Labour Day have represented in North America the two faces of working-class political tradition, one symbolizing its revolutionary potential, the other its long search for reform and respectability. With the support of the state and business, the latter has predominated – but the more radical tradition has never been entirely suppressed.
This radical May Day tradition is nowhere better captured than in Bryan Palmer’s monumental book, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression [From Medieval to Modern] (Monthly Review Press, 2000). Palmer, one of Canada’s foremost Marxist labour historians, has done more than anyone to recover and analyze the cultures of resistancethat working people developed in practising class struggle from below. He’s strongly critical of labour-movement leaders who’ve appealed to those elements of working-class culture that crave ersatz bourgeois respectability.
Set amid chapters on peasants and witches in late feudalism, on pirates and slaves during the rise of mercantile imperialism, on fraternal lodge members and anarchists in the new cities of industrial capitalism, on lesbians, homosexuals and communists under fascism, and on the mafia, youth gangs and race riots, jazz, beats and bohemians in modern U.S. capitalism, are two chapters that brilliantly tell the story of May Day. One locates Haymarket in the context of the Victorian bourgeoisie’s fears of what they called the “dangerous classes.” This account confirms the central role of the “anarcho-communist movement in Chicago [which] was blessed with talented leaders, dedicated ranks and the most active left-wing press in the country. The dangerous classes were becoming truly dangerous.”
The other chapter, a survey of “Festivals of Revolution,” locates “the celebratory May Day, a festive seizure of working-class initiative that encompassed demands for shorter hours, improvement in conditions, and socialist agitation and organization” against the backdrop of the traditional spring calendar of class confrontation.
Over the past century communist revolutions were made in the name of the working class, and social democratic parties were often elected into government. In their different ways, both turned May Day to the purposes of the state. Before the 20th century was out the communist regimes imploded in internal contradictions between authoritarianism and the democratic purpose of socialism, while most social democratic ones, trapped in the internal contradictions between the welfare state and increasingly powerful capital markets, accommodated to neoliberalism and become openly disdainful of “old labour.”
As for the United States, the tragic legacy of the repression of its radical labour past is an increasingly de-unionized working class mobilized by fundamentalist Christian churches. Canada, with its NDP and 30-per-cent unionized labour force, looks good by comparison.
Working classes have suffered defeat after defeat in this era of capitalist globalization. But they’re also in the process of being transformed: The decimated industrial proletariat of the global North is being replaced by a bigger industrial proletariat in the global South. In both regions, a new working class is still being formed in the new service and communication sectors spawned by global capitalism (where the eight-hour day is often unknown). Union movements and workers’ parties from Poland to Korea to South Africa to Brazil have been spawned in the past 20 years. Two more books out of Monthly Review Press – Ursula Huws’ The Making of a Cybertariat (2003) and the late Daniel Singer’s Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours?(1999) – don’t deal with May Day per se, but capture particularly well this global economic and political transformation. They tell much that is sober yet inspiring about why May Day still symbolizes the struggle for a future beyond capitalism rather than just a homage to the struggles of the past.
Kerry Warns Of “Hot Confrontation” With Russia
By Barry Grey
In an extraordinary interview, US Secretary of State John Kerry made clear that the Obama administration are fully aware that they are risking the outbreak of nuclear war by pursuing a reckless and provocative policy towards Russia. Continue
The Fool, the Demagogue, and the Former KGB Colonel
By Edward S. Herman
John Kerry’s statement that “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext,” has to be regarded as an Orwellian classic and may be his signifier in future history books. Continue
By John V. Whitbeck
Netanyahu’s assertion that Hamas “calls for the destruction of Israel” requires rational analysis.Continue
47% Say U.S. Should Reduce Role in World Affairs
By Carrie Dann
That represents a major flip in how Americans view world affairs since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001. Continue
Left-Right Alliances Can Make Major Changes for the People
By Ralph Nader
Called crony capitalism by the right and corporate welfare by the left, there is a rising tide of revulsion against the rich and powerful freeloading on the backs of ordinary taxpayers.Continue
State-Sanctioned Murder
Prisoner Writhes on Gurney in Botched Execution
By Katie Fretland
Clayton Lockett Death Witness Speaks. Continue
By David Cole
“The Senate has quietly stripped a provision from an intelligence bill that would have required President Obama to make public each year the number of people killed or injured in targeted killing operations.” Continue
US Economy Is A House Of Cards
By Paul Craig Roberts
Americans are an amazingly insouciant people. By now any other people would have burnt Wall Street to the ground. Continue
Some Basics of State Domination and Public Submission
By Robert Higgs
The state has existed as an ever-present predator and all-around abuser of human rights, its power to dominate and plunder propped up by its adroit exploitation of people’s fears.Continue
The Lessons of Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling
By Margaret Kimberley
It is not a coincidence that gun and slavery lovers so often find common cause. Continue
2 Killed – Gunfire and Explosions Outside Pro-federalist Town of Slavyansk:
By AFP
Ukraine has launched a military assault on the flashpoint town of Slavyansk, raising the stakes in the showdown with Russia, which has promised “catastrophic consequences” if Kiev stepped up operations. Continue
===
It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war
By Seumas Milne
The attempt to lever Kiev into the western camp by ousting an elected leader made conflict certain. It could be a threat to us all. Continue
Kerry’s Propaganda War on Russia’s RT
By Ray McGovern
Kerry, decries Russia’s RT network as a “propaganda bullhorn” that Americans should ignore – just trust what the U.S. government tells you. Continue
By Robert Fantina
Mr. Netanyahu refuses to deal with anyone who wishes the destruction of Israel, yet he is actively pursuing the complete annihilation of Palestine. Continue
Israel vs Palestine: Norman Finkelstein
Must Watch Short Video
We investigate the key arguments, counter-arguments and ad-hominems from both sides.Continue
The Coward Rusbridger
The Guardian, Just Another Neo-con Mouthpiece.
By Craig Murray
I was threatened with the Official Secrets Act if I insisted on exposing the use of intelligence from torture. I considered and decided it was worth going to jail for. Continue
“A shocking miscarriage of justice”
Dr. Rafil Dhafir’s Crime Of Compassion
Audio – Steve Lendman
Dr. Rafil Dhafir should be celebrated as the outstanding humanitarian he is, not turned into convenient props in the War on Terror. Continue
By David Swanson
We have to stop trying to defeat the Military Industrial Complex (how’s that been working out?) and start working to replace it and to convert the people who make up its parts to new behaviors. Continue
By Robert Fantina
Loyalty to mankind is superior to loyalty to a nation. Continue
This Land Isn’t Your Land, This Land Is Their Land
An Empire in Decline (City by City, Town by Town)
By Peter Van Buren
What’s happening is both easy enough for a traveler to see and for an economist to measure. Median household income in 2012 was no higher than it had been a quarter-century earlier.Continue
Why the Minimum Wage Vote Failed
By Heather McGhee
Hard-working Americans deserve more than $7.25 worth of influence in Washington. Continue
What About Racism in Government Programs?
By Jacob G. Hornberger
I’m referring in particular to three such programs: the drug war, minimum-wage laws, and occupational-licensure laws. Continue
May 1, 2014
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Psychological Warfare and the “False Flag” Meme
False flag operations and assassinations are a central component of the elaborate psychological warfare campaign waged on the American public to justify the so-called “global war on terrorism,” and the events of September 11, 2001 are this project’s cornerstone.
Major US news outlets turn a blind eye to a wide array of evidence “that Western covert operators were behind” events such as “Bali, Madrid, London 7/7, mosque bombings in Iraq and elsewhere and, of course, 9/11. Because the mainstream media are integral to the Industrial Military Academic Intelligence Media complex,” journalist Barrie Zwicker observes, “the cold-blooded technicians of death face no journalistic scrutiny. Without moral, legal, technical or financial constraints, the black operators range freely, executing the orders of the global oligarchies.”[1]
An undeniable effect of the Boston Marathon bombing was that the term “false flag”—meaning a typically illegal act carried out by a government against itself that is often blamed on another entity to justify its own policies—became a recognizable expression among a broader swath of the American public. For example, web-based searches for the phrase spiked in the wake of the April 15 event after a correspondent for the alternative news site Infowars questioned Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick on the suspicious circumstances surrounding the bombing.[2] Some news outlets predictably moved to condemn any cogitation along these lines as “conspiracy theorizing.”[3]
In the United States the citizenry is especially well-indoctrinated through an overwhelming dependence on such corporate media. Yet for the peoples of many countries “false flag” has become a commonplace term. This is particularly so in the Middle East, where journalists and the broader public routinely witness inexplicable terror attacks on civilian populations. Placed in a broader historical context there is a concurrent understanding of such tactics as emblematic of military and intelligence-related meddling from Western nations.
For example, in the early 2000s waves of car bombings throughout Iraq were rumored to have been carried out by British or US intelligence. “The word on the street in Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that the CIA was behind them,” independent journalist Dahr Jamail wrote in 2004. “Why? Because as one man states, ‘[CIA agents are] too busy fighting now, and the unrest they wanted to cause by the bombings is now upon them.’ True or not, it doesn’t bode well for the occupiers’ image in Iraq.”[4]
Along these lines, in September 2005 Iraqi police arrested two British soldiers disguised in conventional Iraqi jallabahs [loose cloaks] and Arab headscarves after the costumed pair reportedly drove a car equipped with explosives while opening fire on Iraqi police. British armed forces then used several tanks and helicopters to liberate the masquerading combatants from the police barracks where they were detained.[5]
Similar to NATO’s Operation Gladio, or the FBI’s more recent efforts at generating newsworthy terrorist incidents in the US,[6] such black operations designed to cultivate terrorism were in fact authorized by the United States in 2002 to further perpetuate its “war on terror.” At that time military officials established the “Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG).” P2OG’s overall strategy combined “CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception” to execute terrorist acts on civilian populations in order to provoke and respond to such consequent indigenous terrorism.[7] In other words, this was an elaborate and deadly “make work” program by and for the military and intelligence communities.
With the above in mind, it is perhaps little wonder that “false flag” has become a standard term in the discourse of non-Western and especially Middle Eastern news outlets. Conversely, the expression is either absent from US-based news media, or carefully neutralized in editorial commentary and lighter entertainment or lifestyle-related coverage.
LexisNexis news searches for the dates April 15, 2004 to April 15, 2014 yields 1,012 newspaper items and more than 100 broadcast transcripts where “false flag” is used in the headline or text. An overwhelming majority of references appear in Pakistani and Iranian newspaper coverage and commentary, where the term is almost uniformly intended to denote instances of terrorist violence.
BBC Monitoring International Reports–52
Press TV (Iran)–51
Pakistan Observer–42
The Frontier Post (Pakistan)–28
The Nation (Thailand)–24
The Washington Post–20
Mail Online–19
The New York Times–18
McClatchey Tribune Syndicate–17
International New York Times–16
Mehr News Agency (Iran)–15
National Post (Canada)–15
The Washington Times–15
Daily News (Sri Lanka)–14
The Jerusalem Post–14
Daily Times (Pakistan)–13
Gold Coast Publications (Australia)–13
Sunday Times (Islamabad)–13
The Augusta Chronicle–12
FARS News Agency (Iran)–11
The Times (London)–10
The Guardian (London)–10
News Outlets and instances of “false flag” referenced in news and opinion articles or broadcast transcriptions, April 15, 2004 to April 15, 2014
“The Mumbai attacks indeed have been used to scuttle the composite dialogue bringing Pakistan under pressure, accusing it of abetting terror” an opinion piece in Thailand’s Nation reads. “Simultaneously, only days after a warning of an Israeli ‘false flag’ bombing against the US as being ‘in the works’, a car bomb is discovered in Time[s] Square!”[8]
Indeed, the false flag meme is routinely deployed in a wide swath of global news discourse, the top ones of which are listed above. A cross section of contextual usages from Middle Eastern-based publications is presented below.
“The way [Osama bin Laden] was hastily buried under mysterious circumstances gave rise to speculations that it was a false flag operation to undermine Pak[istan’s] Army, Air Force and ISI and to defame Pakistan,” states an analysis in Pakistan’sFrontier Post.[9]
False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public at large. During Algeria[‘s] civil war and struggle for independence [the] French government had resorted to similar tactics to crush the freedom movement. Some investigating journalists and organizations had also described [the] 9/11 attacks as false flag operations conducted by the CIA, Mossad and the RAW to take on the Muslim world … Israel is known for such operations, as it deliberately attacked the USS Liberty with unmarked fighters and torpedo boats causing 174 American casualties in an attempt to blame Egypt and garner American support during [the] 1967 war.–Pakistan Observer[10]
The news claiming that Iran has launched a cyber attack on US banks is a sheer lie and an obvious false flag operation. With US President Barack Obama ready to sign an executive order to control the Internet in the name of cybersecurity, could it be more obvious that this ‘cyber attack’ is a total setup? … US news website Infowars reported.–FARS News Agency (Iran) [11]
Whenever and wherever a blood-dimmed tide is loosened in Pakistan, the government blames Al Qaeda or Taliban for it. What the people have witnessed at Rawalpindi is yet another false flag operation perpetrated by a group that has some ulterior motives for creating such turmoil. For their personal benefits they are sowing the wind without realising that they would ultimately harvest a hurricane.–The Nation (Thailand)[12]
On January 13th 2012, Mark Perry broke a story in Foreign Policy magazine, in which he laid bare a false flag operation that Israel’s Mossad ran for several years. It involved their agents posing as CIA operatives in London and contracting the new infamous Jundullah (Iran), to conduct cross-border terrorism from Pakistan into Iran.–Daily Times (Pakistan)[13]
However, Damascus categorically rejected the baseless claim, and announced later that the chemical attack had actually been carried out by the militants themselves as a false flag operation.–PressTV (Iran)[14]
On the other hand, the degree and nature of the idiom’s usage in US news outlets is telling. Indeed, to forthrightly discuss false flag operations as the above items do is to render them useless as psychological techniques. The term is thus almost entirely absent in US-based broadcast (ABC, CBS NBC, Fox, NPR) and cable news programming transcripts (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News). It is invoked a total five times over the past ten years on Fox News programs–three of which focus on University of Wisconsin Arabic Studies instructor Kevin Barrett, who was subjected to a relentless media frenzy for publicly questioning the US government’s explanation of September 11, 2001.[15]
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow references “false flag,” in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, focusing on Infowars’ coverage of the event.[16] The phrase also appears in an ABC transcript of a 2011 George Stephanopoulos interview featuring former Minnesota Governor and author Jesse Ventura.[17]
As noted, the term’s appearance in major print news media is largely restricted to the editorial, entertainment, and lifestyle sections, with exceptional framing in news coverage generally proving the rule. For example, over the past decade the term appears in 20 items published in theWashington Post, yet only five such usages are in reference to primarily non-Western military or intelligence-related concerns, with the remainder involving editorial comment on politics and entertainment reviews or event listings, a few of which obliquely reference the Boston Marathon bombing aftermath. “But there are a few bold, determined [Republican congresspersons] who may rescue Obamacare,” Michael Gerson writes. “If I were prone to conspiracy theories, I’d suspect a false-flag operation. Since I’m not, there must be explanations that arise from within tea party ideology.”[18]
“[A] top [Iranian] Revolutionary Guard officer named Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari vanished in Istanbul,” the Post reports. “The betting among spy buffs is that Asgari was recruited in what’s known as a “false flag” operation. His handlers may be Israelis posing as officers of another intelligence service, perhaps even during the debriefing.[19]
Another reference to “false flag” is used in describing the untimely demise of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s former associates.
Before he died, [Alexander[ Litvinenko blamed his impending demise on Putin, whose enemies tend to meet untimely deaths. Litvinenko was said to be on the verge of obtaining documents — or maybe they were already in his possession; this part is unclear — proving that Putin had staged attacks on Russian civilians and made it look as if Chechen separatists were responsible so that Putin would then be free to wage a brutal war of suppression against the Chechens. In the secret world, this sort of gambit is called a “false flag” operation.[20]
As noted, only one deployment of the term in the Washington Post since 2004 is in relation to US, British or Israeli covert practices, and here the exception indeed proves the censorial rule, for it is referenced in reportage describing sanctioned interrogation practices for Guantanamo detainees.
“[US Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld then asked a working group of lawyers, intelligence officials and representatives of the Office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict to come up with permanent interrogation guidelines for Guantanamo,” the Post reports.
They looked at 35 techniques, including covering a suspect with wet towels to simulate drowning, and stripping detainees. Only 24 techniques survived, the result of a rancorous debate. Seven of those approved techniques are not included in U.S. military doctrine, and are listed as: “change of scenery up; change of scenery down; dietary manipulation; environmental manipulation; sleep adjustment (reversal) ; isolation for 30 days”; and a technique known as “false flag,” or deceiving a detainee into believing he is being interrogated by someone from another country.[21]
Usage of the term in the even more influential New York Times follows a similar course. Four of the eighteen Times articles referencing “false flag” involve coverage of the episode in early 2010 when cyber-attacks against Google and other US-based corporations were traced to Chinese military and educational institutions. Times reporters cited speculations by western industry and government officials that Chinese “schools were cover for a ‘false flag’ intelligence operation being run by a third country.”[22] “Security experts caution that it is hard to trace online attacks and that the digital footprints may be a ‘false flag,’” the Times instructs in a follow-up story, “a kind of decoy intended to throw investigators off track.”[23]
Seven New York Times articles are found in the editorial, entertainment, or style sections and deal with the term in an expectedly playful and detached manner. For example, one writer addressing the topic of “conspiracy theories” remarks that “in recent years, it seems as if every tragedy comes with a round of yarn-spinning, as the Web fills with stories about ‘false flag’ attacks and crisis actors’ — not mere theorizing but arguments for the existence of a completely alternate version of reality.”[24]
Aside from the episode involving China’s would-be involvement in cyber-terrorism, only once does the Times employ the “false flag” phrase in the context of serious international news coverage—a somewhat depreciative story profiling Mother Agnes Mariam published in the wake of the 2013 chemical attacks on Syrian civilians. “When Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, wanted to bolster his argument that rebels had carried out the poison gas attacks near Damascus on Aug. 21,” the Times reports,
he pointed to the work of a 61-year-old Lebanese-born nun, [Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross,] who had concluded that the horrifying videos showing hundreds of dead and choking victims, including many children, had been fabricated ahead of time to provide a pretext for foreign intervention … Through conversations with Syrians and clergy throughout the country, she said, she uncovered [sic] ”the false flag of the Arab Spring.” Instead of a popular uprising by citizens enraged by economic stagnation and political oppression, she said, she found a conspiracy cooked up by international powers to destroy Syria.[25]
The UK Guardian and Times of London each reference “false flag” ten times over the past decade, with articles equally apportioned between editorials (four), news stories (three), and entertainment or style pieces (three). Only a few of these relate the term to the methods of Anglo-American empire.
For instance, a Guardian article from 2006 sneeringly reviews a lecture on 9/11 by Professor David Ray Griffin who, alongside other “conspiracy theorists,” maintains “[t]he attacks … were not carried out by al-Qaida [sic] but were a ‘false flag’ event used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.”[26]
The Times notably includes a report (buried on page 39 of the print edition) on Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s March 2014 censorship of YouTube after a recorded conversation between the NATO country’s top government officials was posted on the site. In the discussion “a false flag attack on Turkey” was considered as a pretext to move against “an al-Qaeda splinter group that controls sections of northern Syria bordering Turkey.”[27]
The above suggests how, much like the taboo topic of “conspiracy theories,” US news media broadly reject the subject of false flag terror as the stuff delusion or otherwise perceive it as being mainly restricted to fictional narratives. Indeed, within the acceptable parameters of public discourse such things are, quite literally, unspeakable. If one accepts the basis for reality established in corporate media outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, or their broadcast counterparts, the only strategies and policies deemed worthy of notice almost entirely take place in the clear light of day. This is because, the theory goes, we live in a democratic society where the public is adequately represented and its interests genuinely well-articulated.
Yet nations and peoples routinely impacted by false flag terror unequivocally recognize the phenomenon as a legitimate item of public knowledge and discussion. Here western doctrinal institutions entrusted to define acceptable discourse and opinion, not to mention forging the accepted historical record, do so to expressly mislead those who unwittingly pay for false flag terror and military aggression abroad— chiefly the American citizenry.
Despite a series of momentous political assassinations in the 1960s with proven government complicity alongside unmistakable “false flag” events such as the Tonkin Gulf incident, the USS Liberty, the 1995 Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing and the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the above suggests the conscious and now-standard use of psychological warfare methods to contain most Americans’ political horizons and understandings, thereby perpetuating the broader geopolitical status quo.
Notes
[1] Barrie Zwicker, Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2006, 2, 3.
[2] Adan Salazar, “’What’s a “False Flag”?’ Google Trends Show Search Term Spike,” Infowars.com, April 18, 2013.
[3] Meghan Keneally, “Conspiracy Theorists Claim Boston Was ‘False Flag’ Attack Arranged by the Government,” Daily Mail, April 16, 2013; Rachel Maddow, “The Rachel Maddow Show for April 24, 2013,” MSNBC, April 24, 2013; “Infowars Confrontation: Boston Resident Blasts Dan Bidondi Over Marathon Bombing Conspiracy Theories,” Huffington Post, April 30, 2013.
[4] Dahr Jamail, “Dahr Jamail Blog From Baghdad,” The New Standard, April 20, 2004. Retrieved April 23, 2014 from http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail200404.htm
[5] Michel Chossudovsky, “British Undercover Soldiers Caught Driving Booby Trapped Car,” Global Research, September 20, 2005.
[6] Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, London and New York: Frank Cass, 2005; Trevor Aaronson, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, New York: Ig Publishing, 2013. The American press has afforded almost no news coverage or commentary to Gladio, even though the US has figured centrally in subverting the political process in European countries since 1948. See James F. Tracy, “False Flag Terror and Conspiracies of Silence,” Global Research,
August 10, 2012.
[7] David Isenberg, “’P2OG Allows Pentagon to Fight Dirty,” Asia Times, November 5, 2002.
[8] S. M. Hali, “Too Many Coincidences!” The Nation (Thailand), May 11, 2010.
[9] Asif Haroon Raja, “Uproar Over Leaked Abottabad Commission Report,” The Frontier Post, August 7, 2013.
[10] Mohammad Jamil, “False Flag Operation & Subterfuge,” Pakistan Observer, January 12, 2010.
[11] “US Website: Iran’s Cyber Attack on US Banks Obvious False Flag,” FARS News Agency, October 3, 2012.
[12] Ghulam Asghar Khan, “Rendezvous with Death,” The Nation (Thailand), January 1, 2008.
[13] Fundy Kasuri, “How Terrorists Fund Their Activities,” Daily Times, November 21. 2013.
[14] “Iran Warns Against Military Intervention in Syria,” PressTV, August 27, 2013.
[15] See, for example, Bill O’Reilly, “Impact: Update on UW Professor,” Fox News, October 11, 2006.
[16] Maddow, “The Rachel Maddow Show for April 24, 2013.”
[17] George Stephanopoulos, “Secret Government Documents; Former Governor Speaks Out,” ABC News Transcript, April 4, 2011.
[18] Michael Gerson, “A Custer for Our Time,” Washington Post, August 2, 2013, A15.
[19] Michael Ignatius, “15 Britons in a Sea of Intrigue,” Washington Post, March 30, 2007, A17.
[20] Eugene Robinson, “The Case of the Poisoned Spy,” Washington Post, November 28, 2006, A19.
[21] Dana Priest and Bradley Graham, “Guantanamo List Details Approved Interrogation Methods,” Washington Post, June 10, 2004, A13.
[22] John Markoff and David Barboza, “2 China Schools Said to Be Tied to Online Attacks,” New York Times, February 18, 2010.
[23] David Barboza, “Hacking Inquiry Puts China’s Elite in New Light,” New York Times, February 22, 2010, A1.
[24] Maggie Koerth-Baker, “Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories,” New York Times Magazine, May 26, 2013, 15.
[25] Ben Hubbard, “A Nun Lends a Voice of Skepticism on the Use of Poison Gas by Syria,” New York Times, September 22, 2013, A11.
[26] Audrey Gillan, “Full House as Leading 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist Has His Say,” Guardian (London), September 9, 2006.
[27] Alexander Christie-Miller, “Erdogan Blocks YouTube Over Leaked War Plans,” Times (London), March 28, 2014, 39.
Miami Jury: CIA Involved in JFK Assassination
Not a single major newspaper nor any national news broadcast has ever reported that on Feb. 6, 1985, a jury in Miami concluded that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
This is remarkable, if only because the verdict came in a court case featuring two international celebrities: Water gate burglar E. Howard Hunt — perhaps the most infamous CIA operative in history — and his courtroom nemesis — attorney Mark Lane. Lane’s ground-break ing best-seller, Rush to Judgment, had convinced millions of readers there had been a conspiracy in the JFK assassination, the Warren Commission’s claims notwithstanding.
Scattered news reports did mention Hunt had lost a libel case against The SPOTLIGHT. However, no media reported what the jury forewoman had told the press:
Mr. Lane was asking us to do something very difficult. He was asking us to believe John Kennedy had been killed by our own government. Yet when we examined the evidence closely, we were compelled to conclude that the CIA had indeed killed President Kennedy.
Until 1992, when Lane recounted the trial in Plausible Denial and put forth additional compelling evidence of CIA complicity in the crime, the only substantive news reports about the trial appeared in The SPOTLIGHT. In issue No. 7 for 1985 (Feb. 18), The SPOTLIGHT announced its victory, detailing the remarkable events that led to the trial.
The affair was set in motion on Aug. 14, 1978, when The SPOTLIGHT published an article by former CIA official Victor Marchetti who revealed the CIA intended to publicly “admit” Hunt had been involved in the JFK assassination, acting as a “rogue” agent without CIA sanction.
A top CIA liaison to anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the early 1960s, Hunt was unknown to the public until the Watergate scandal that toppled President Nixon in 1974 brought Hunt ill fame. Then, after Watergate, when the Rockefeller Commission investigated CIA misdeeds, two eccentric writers alleged Hunt was one of three “tramps” photographed in Dallas minutes after the JFK assassination.
Subsequent investigation refuted the “Hunt as tramp” theory. However, scandal sheets had hyped the story and many came to believe Hunt had a hand in Dallas.
In 1976, growing skepticism about the Warren Commission’s claim that a “lone assassin” had killed JFK forced the House of Representatives to convene a new assassination inquiry.
In the midst of the House investigation, an unusual development occurred:
As Marchetti’s SPOTLIGHT article reported, an in-house CIA memo, ostensibly written in 1966 — some 12 years previously — was leaked to congressional investigators.
The memo stated Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the JFK assassination, and that CIA officials were concerned the agency would one day have to explain Hunt’s presence there.
The SPOTLIGHT subsequently learned CIA Director Richard Helms and the CIA’s chief of counterintelligence, James Angleton, had signed off on the memo.
Marchetti suggested that because the CIA perceived Hunt to be a villain in the public’s eye as a consequence of Watergate, the CIA had decided to sacrifice Hunt and “admit” he had been involved in the assassination.
The CIA would claim Hunt was acting on his own and that the CIA, as an institution, had no part in the president’s murder. This would satisfy public demand for a resolution of the JFK controversy and the CIA itself would be absolved. Hunt would be left to fend for himself.
The SPOTLIGHT felt the article served as warning to Hunt about CIA intentions and Hunt himself admitted the story seemed plausible. Yet, Hunt still filed suit against The SPOTLIGHT.
When the case went to trial in federal court in Miami, the jury found in Hunt’s favor, ordering The SPOTLIGHT to pay Hunt $650,000 in damages. However, an error in the jury instructions resulted in the verdict being overturned. After the case was ordered for retrial, Lane stepped in for The SPOTLIGHT’s defense.
The highlight of the trial was when Lane presented the jury the testimony of Marita Lorenz, an ex-CIA operative who had worked with Hunt in plots against Fidel Castro.
Miss Lorenz testified that on Nov. 21, 1963 — the day prior to the JFK assassination — she arrived in Dallas in a two-car caravan from Miami. Accompanying her were several CIA operatives, armed with telescopic rifles, including Frank Sturgis who (years later) participated with Hunt in the Watergate burglary.
She didn’t know the purpose of the mission, but upon arrival, the travelers met with Hunt, who acted as their paymaster, and also Jack Ruby who, days later, killed the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Uncomfortable, sensing something “big, very big,” was impending, she left Dallas that same day. Later Sturgis told her how big the mission had been: the assassination of President Kennedy.
The jury listened carefully to her testimony, already suspicious of Hunt after his performance under Lane’s cross-examination. Lane pointed out inconsistencies in conflicting stories by Hunt over the years about where he had been on Nov. 22, 1963. However, Hunt insisted to the jury that he was in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children that day.
Hunt’s case collapsed when he was unable to explain, when questioned by Lane, why his teenage children had asked him if the rumors he was involved in the events in Dallas were true.
Obviously, if Hunt were in Washington on Nov. 22 he couldn’t have been in Dallas.
Not surprisingly, the jury found in favor of The SPOTLIGHT. Yet, the major media said nothing about the stunning, historic revelations of this trial.
It was clearly the CIA’s counterintelligence chief, James Angleton, who leaked the CIA memo placing Hunt in Dallas. In fact, Angleton’s confidant, reporter Joe Trento (deposed by Lane in the Hunt case) has said — based upon what Angleton told him — that Hunt had been in Dallas and that it was Angleton who sent him there (Angleton’s own denials notwithstanding). Three conclusions can be reached:
• The CIA had planned to throw Hunt to the wolves but evidently he and the CIA reached an accord since Angleton’s loyal, longtime deputy, Newton Miler, was dispatched by the CIA to testify against The SPOTLIGHT in Hunt’s defense;
• Because The SPOTLIGHT ex posed the intended CIA scheme to “admit” Hunt’s complicity in the assassination, the operation was shelved; and,
• If there’s anybody who knows what really happened in Dallas, it’s Hunt.
Date: Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 5:20 PM
Subject: Mass Global Arrest Website Now Live; Includes Arrest List
News Links, May 1-2, 2014
Standard & Poors downgrades 15 European banks, cites reforms
U.S. economy grows at a glacial 0.1 percent
The US economy is a house of cards. Every aspect of it is fraudulent, and the illusion of recovery is created with fraudulent statistics. American capitalism itself is an illusion. All financial markets are rigged.
German bank KfW issues first Renminbi bond in Frankfurt
German state-owned development bank KfW issued the first Renminbi bond in Frankfurt on Tuesday, making another important step to promote Frankfurt as a financial center for RMB.
Must read: Airlines Offering Fewer Flights, Fewer Seats
A government watchdog confirmed Wednesday what airline passengers are finding when they try to book a flight: Service to communities of all sizes is declining, but especially to small and medium-size airports. There are fewer flights and fewer airplane seats available than there were seven years ago, the Government Accountability Office said. Smaller destinations were particularly affected, with flights down as much as 24 percent and seats down as much as 18 percent since 2007. Flights have also declined 9 percent and seats 7 percent at large airports.
Russia Strengthening Relationship With Iran
Ukraine’s acting president conceded Wednesday that his police and security forces were “helpless” to stifle unrest in the country’s east, where pro-Russia gunmen seized more buildings, walking into the police station and mayor’s office in this mining hub without resistance.
Angered and frustrated Western leaders want to impose sanctions on Russia in retaliation for President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine. However, the U.S. and its allies should really think this through before taking any action because those most likely to feel the negative impact of the sanctions are not the Russians, but the Europeans countries friendly to the United States.
Putin Parties With German Ex-Chancellor, Sanctions Be Damned
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a master at this game. Even as the sanction spiral concocted by the US and the EU is supposed to strangle his ambitions for the Ukraine, whatever they may be, and as the threat of war or civil war is hovering over the country, he set up a photo op of incomparable ingenuity. And his confidant, ex-Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder stepped in it with gusto, sanctions be damned.
Why The War Party Is Playing With Fire: Much Of Putin’s Military-Industrial Complex Is In Eastern Ukraine!
Video appears to show Mexican mayor taking orders from crime boss
As China boosts its military spending, rattling neighbors over territorial disputes at sea, an AFP investigation shows that European countries have approved billions in transfers of weapons and military-ready technology to the Asian giant.
China said on Wednesday it would conduct joint naval drills with Russia in the East China Sea off Shanghai in late May, in what it called a bid to deepen military cooperation.
Agrarian Uprising Against Free Trade and ‘Government Lies’ Sweeps Colombia
Second agrarian uprising in less than a year met with tanks, soldiers, and riot police
The U.S. drive for energy independence is backed by a surge in junk-rated borrowing that’s been as vital as the technological breakthroughs that enabled the drilling spree. While the high-yield debt market has doubled in size since the end of 2004, the amount issued by exploration and production companies has grown nine-fold, according to Barclays Plc. That’s what keeps the shale revolution going even as companies spend money faster than they make it.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the pitiful truth about the “shale revolution.” If this is what we’re counting on to prop up industrial society, we’re in even worse trouble than I thought. — RF
Saudi Arabia will probably have to sustain production above 10 million barrels a day for the longest period in more than 30 years as it meets the summer surge in domestic demand and compensates for production losses in Libya.
France must decide in the next few years whether it wants to continue its nuclear-driven energy policy at a cost of up to 300 billion euros (246.8 billion pounds) or if it wants to embark on an equally costly route towards using other fuels.
RWE to close oil-fired power plant in southern England next year
Britain is at risk of a power capacity crunch in the 2020s as nuclear stations come to the end of their life and coal and gas plants shut because they cannot afford to add technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to comply with EU laws.
Gazprom ditches plan to build South Stream to Italy
Venezuela to crush cars, bikes to build houses
Drilling and deal activity on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) will remain at a “steady low” for at least the next year, according to a new report from business consultancy Deloitte. Deloitte said that poor weather and high costs already had an impact on the amount of exploration and appraisal work conducted by operators in the region during the first quarter.
Western Canadian farmers still stuck with last year’s harvest are turning to the government for credit help in record numbers, and insiders fear problems could cascade through the agricultural economy as the new planting season gets under way.
Pork giant cancels IPO amid soaring US prices, virus
Across the Midwest, a cold and wet spring has slowed the pace of corn plantings — as of Monday 19 percent was in the ground versus the usual 28 percent for this time of year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The slow start could slash yields. In the future, hotter and drier conditions due to global warming could also put a dent in corn yields, according to a new study.
The slow death of purposeless walking
## Environment/health ##
Study: MERS-CoV from Saudi camels matches human isolates
US Navy attempting to recruit cryptologists through Facebook game
US State Department adopting social media to counter Al-Qaeda propaganda
FBI Releases Heavily Blacked Out Sandy Hook Records
When nations go broke: Mob Justice
## Japan ##
Japanese utilities post losses, seek state support
Japan’s nuclear-reliant utilities reported losses for the third straight year and warned of further electricity rate hikes to pay for surging fuel imports as they face an uncertain outlook for restarting idled reactors.
Sweaty workers ditch ties as Cool Biz enters 10th year
Support sought for N-waste host cities
A task force of the industry ministry broadly approved a plan on Wednesday to compile support measures for municipalities to host final disposal sites for highly radioactive wastes from spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
China plans to get tougher on loans for iron ore imports as concerns grow that steel mills are using import loans to stay afloat in defiance of policies to reduce overcapacity in heavily polluting and lossmaking industries.
## UK ##
Energy bills ‘to rise twice as fast as expected’ due to inefficient products
Office for National Statistics says the trend for hiring staff without guaranteeing a minimum number of hours is more prevalent than previously thought
National Response Center shuts down website, transparency
Media outlets and other curious parties have been in the dark about pipeline leaks and other environmental disturbances since mid-February, and the lights could be kept off for another month. The National Response Center’s website has been under maintenance since February 21st and could remain that way until the end of May.
Cities, states to lose big if highway fund disappears
And finally…
Presenting The White House Decision-Making Machine
!DSPAM:57,5363d8e1205897903377022!
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
===
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!
This is The Planetary Wake-up Call You Were Waiting For
Our planet and its life support systems have been decimated from top to bottom, we are already beginning to pay the price for this and it will get worse fast from here. The single greatest change in direction we could make is to expose and stop climate engineering. Though the human race faces countless daunting challenges, stopping climate engineering would be a giant leap in the right direction. —DW
Chemtrails: An Integral Part Of The Great Starvation
By: horse237
Source: http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2014/04/12/chemtrails-an-integral-part-of-the-great-starvation/
When I was a child, I knew that the elite preferred to use starvation to nuclear weapons because those Hydrogen bombs killed rich people. Starvation was a great weapon in their opinion because it only struck down poor people. I had estimated at that time that at least 2 to 3 million Americans had died from starvation during the Great Depression. I have since learned that between 3 and 7 million Americans actually did starve to death. Of late I have been writing of the Great Starvation which is what I have called the next Great Depression because it will starve at least 10 million Americans to death and kill a billion people overseas.
No Bees, No Food, No People
It has been said after the bees are gone, humans will follow. Bees are dying around the globe. Though the scientific community is grabbing at straws trying to find the reason, the “elephant in the room” that is global climate engineering continues to wreak death and destruction across the planet. Farm pesticides were one scapegoat for the bee die off. Certainly such chemicals are part of the problem, but only a part. If this was the real source of the die off, why are the bees just as dead a thousand miles into the wilderness as they are near the farms? The article below seems to put all the blame on climate change, but this is also a “half truth”. The toxic fall out from geoengineering is blanketing the entire globe with bioavailable nano particles which is radically affecting all life forms. Now lets add the constant bombardment of radio frequency transmissions from too many sources to list, the most powerful of which are directly related to the weather modification. All roads, in one way or another, lead back to the decimation caused by the climate engineering insanity.
Dane Wigington
Thoughts on Nucleated Winter Assault 2013-14
by Nancy Levant
The autumn of 2013 brought an extraordinary, season-long sky show of geoengineering, chemtrailing, blocked sunlight, and deadly particulate rains and flurries. I’m surprised they didn’t sell tickets. Equally extraordinary was sky-witnessing the raining of silvery threads, some in yard-long strands that glistened the grass, trees and bushes….the ones children and animals so enjoy. Following these extravaganzas came the “Polar Vortex” winter storms named for mythological deities and creatures, and mythological they were.
Internationally Recognized Theoretical Physicist Acknowledges Climate Engineering
Supporters of geoengineering have proposed radical ways to alter the planet. But opposition is growing to geoengineering. We interviewed the indian environmentalist, scientist, philosopher Vandana Shiva.
Vandana Shiva, originally a theoretical physicist, she now campaigns the world for heirloom seeds, organic farming and local food systems instead of the chemical- and oil-intensive large scale industrial farms that destroy the environment and wreck local economies. She also supports Hands off Mother Earth, a citizen-based organization that resists geoengineering .
Main Stream Media Still Pretending Climate Engineering Is Just A “Proposal”
Main stream media”s facade of smoke and mirrors continues to hide the ongoing geoengineering programs from the awareness of the public at large. It is astounding how so many people can go along with the “official” narrative on geoengineering, while seemingly not recognizing the all to visible spraying going on above their heads day in and day out. The article below is a case in point. I have already sent a message to the author and the site inquiring as to why they are not acknowledging the well documented climate engineering programs that have been going on for 60 years or more.
Red Alert: Engineered Drought Murdering California
Posted Monday, January 27, 2014 at 11:15am EST
How To Murder A State
A state being murdered? How can that be? It is indeed very hard for most normal people to grasp the evil intent of those at the top levels of the power structure in America, and now in most countries of the world. For those that have overcome the psychological reluctance to look at such a reality, I will explain to you how this particular crime against humanity is being carried out.
The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: “Owning the Weather” for Military Use
Author’s Introductory Note
Environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) for military use constitute, in the present context of global warfare, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
Observations Along the Route to Oudtshoorn
Observations and musings on a trip from Potchefstroom in the NW of South Africa along the N12 Route to Oudtshoorn in the Klein Karoo , Cape Province :
