James Holmes: Yearbook Photo vs Arrest Photo DOESN’T MATCH – Not The Same Person
Anyone who looks closely at these photos can see there is a completely different individual being promoted as James Holmes, the Batman Joker Colorado Shooter.
Peter Kirby: Enron, Bush, Chemtrails, & a History of Weather Derivatives
A History of Weather Derivatives
Facts lead me to sp
eculate that the chemtrails so often seen in our skies are sprayed for financial gain. Chemtrails are admittedly sprayed as part of weather modification programs. There are two large financial markets that rise and fall with the weather; the weather derivatives market and the catastrophe reinsurance market. Chemtrails may be sprayed as part of a plan to manipulate the weather derivative and catastrophe reinsurance markets.
Even though the catastrophe reinsurance market is much larger, the focus of this paper is the history of the weather derivatives market because, while the history of the catastrophe reinsurance market is murky (I may uncover more in time), lots of information about the history of the weather derivatives market is available. It is this way because Enron originated the weather derivatives market. The fall of Enron was one of the greatest corporate scandals in American history, so there has been much already investigated and exposed.
Enron
When you’re talking about the history of weather derivatives, you’re talking about Enron. They developed the most widely used early trading platforms, they were founding members of the leading industry association and were counterparties in the first known domestic and international transactions.
In their heyday, Enron received Fortune Magazine’s award for ‘Most Innovative Company’ six years in a row. They gave their Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service to people like Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev. Henry Kissinger and James Baker worked as Enron consultants; traveling to such far-flung destinations as Kuwait and China preaching the Enron gospel. Stock analysts gushed over everything Enron did. Enron could seemingly do no wrong.
The only problem was, Enron was cooking the books seven ways to Sunday. When the S.H.T.F., Enron’s stock tanked like World Trade Center building 7 and eventually brought down one of the nation’s oldest and largest accounting firms, Arthur Andersen.
Although the company itself has long since been chopped up and sold off, former Enron employees now populate many other financial market trading establishments.
Enron Weather
The particular division known to buy and sell weather derivatives was called ‘Enron Weather.’ Enron Weather started as a small, but promising bit of the company. By the time of Enron’s demise in 2001, Enron Weather had grown to a significant part of their business.
It is suggested that Enron CEO Jeff Skilling’s brother, Tom Skilling originally had the idea for weather derivatives. Peter Fusaro and Ross Miller write in their book ‘What Went Wrong at Enron’:
“As temperatures spike upward in summer and fall in winter, utilities also potentially needed a hedge against the weather. Or so Enron thought – thanks to an idea that some Enron sources say Jeff Skilling’s brother Thomas, a weatherman in Chicago, suggested.”
Tom Skilling is the chief meteorologist at WGN-TV in Chicago, Illinois.
Loren Fox, the author of ‘Enron: The Rise and Fall’ tells the story of Enron Weather like this:
“…weather derivatives came to be championed by an employee working at the grassroots level and seeing customers’ daily needs. John Sherriff, who at the time managed gas trading for the western United States, began looking at derivatives linked to the weather in late 1995, and Vincent Kaminski’s research group worked on the idea in 1996. A gas trader named Lynda Clemmons was very interested in the idea, based on her conversations with executives at electric utilities that used coal-fired power plants…. In 1997, Enron handed off its weather derivatives effort to Clemmons, who was only 27. She began a one-person weather-hedging department within ECT…”
Fox continues:
“…Clemmons built up Enron’s weather business so that it did 350 transactions (hedging up to $400 million in potential revenues) in 1998, turning its first profit that year.”
Enron initiated the weather derivatives market in Europe as well. According to scholar Samuel Randalls, “In the UK, the first weather derivative deal was sold by Enron to Scottish Hydropower who, at that time, 1998, were taking part in a government pilot scheme for the privatization and deregulation of energy markets.”
Enron’s Oslo office became the base of their European weather derivatives business.
In 2000, Enron also introduced weather derivatives in Australia; offering temperature-based products for Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Osaka.
In 2002, after the bankruptcy, the Enron trading desk (including Enron Weather) was bought by UBS Warburg.
John Sherriff is now the owner of Lake Tahoe Financial and other Sherriff family businesses.
Mrs. Clemmons left Enron in 2000. She took a number of her colleagues from Enron’s weather team and set up weather derivatives company Element Reinsurance. After Enron, Lynda Clemmons also worked at XL Weather & Energy, The Storm Exchange Inc. and Vyapar Capital Market Partners. According to her Linkedin profile, Mrs. Clemmons is now an independent consultant.
a history of corruption
The Enron financial market trading desk, just like the company itself, had a history of corruption. Back in 1987, the Enron trading operations were called ‘Enron Oil.’ When questions about an Enron account at New York’s Apple Bank began surfacing, Enron management turned a blind eye. Money was pouring into this questionable account from a bank in the Channel Islands and flowing out to the account of a man named Tom Mastroeni; the treasurer of Enron Oil.
Enron management explained away these money flows and this questionable account as completely legal profit shifting. Although Mastroeni produced doctored bank statements and admitted a cover-up, Enron management didn’t pursue the issue. Nobody involved was even reprimanded. Revelations continued to come out, but Enron management did nothing. Enron’s accounting firm Arthur Andersen exhibited a similar disinterest.
After management confirmed an official lack of responsible oversight, Enron Oil traders ignored position limits and got themselves in big trouble. Only then did Enron executives show interest.
The authors of ‘The Smartest Guys in the Room’ tell the story like this:
“For months, Borget [the CEO of Enron Oil] had been betting that the price of oil was headed down, and for months, the market had stubbornly gone against him. As his losses had mounted, he had continually doubled down, ratcheting up the bet in the hope of recouping everything when prices ultimately turned in his direction. Finally, Borget had dug a hole so deep – and so potentially catastrophic – that there was virtually no hope of ever recovering.”
Enron brass was in a panic. Enron was looking at a $1 billion loss; enough to bankrupt the company. Management sent in some expert traders who, over the course of a few weeks, managed to clear out these positions with only a $140 million hit.
Enron had to tell people about this $140 million trading loss, though. Enron’s stock slid 30%. The blame game began. Ken Lay, the affable Enron founder and CEO, denied any responsibility. News of the scandal conveniently came out right after a big bank loan approval.
The U.S. attorney’s office charged Borget and Mastroeni with fraud and personal income tax violations. In 1990, Borget pled guilty to three felonies and was sentenced to a year in jail and and five years’ probation. Mastroeni pled guilty to two felonies. He got a suspended sentence and two years probation.
deregulation
Ken Lay helped his company make more money and created new financial markets (such as the weather derivatives market) through energy sector deregulation. Deregulation created a situation where Enron and others could more effectively manipulate and arbitrage (specifically regulatory arbitrage) markets.
Let us refer to a feature article published by industry publication Risk.net:
“‘Enron was the focal point of the deregulation agenda,’ says Jonathan Whitehead, who started with Enron Europe in 1996 and was heading the liquefied natural gas (LNG) business in Houston at the time of Enron’s demise. ‘It was the most vocal when explaining to regulators and governments and customers the benefits of deregulated markets. I don’t think deregulation in power and gas in Europe or the US would have come as far as it has without Enron,’ he says.
“Pushing for deregulation was very much a part of the company’s strategy from the start. ‘Ken Lay [chairman and chief executive of Enron] was the visionary at the time as far as seeing where deregulation could go and actually driving deregulation,’ says Mark Frevert, who worked at one of Enron’s predecessor companies, Houston Natural Gas, from 1984 and stayed at Enron until it’s demise.”
the right connections
Deregulation necessarily required help from the federal government. To make it happen, Enron and Ken Lay (who died in 2006) had the right federal connections in spades.
Ken Lay enlisted in the navy in 1968. His friend pulled some strings and had him transfered to the Pentagon. According to the authors of The Smartest Guys in the Room, Lay spent his time at the Pentagon, “…conducting studies on the military-procurement process. The work provided the basis for his doctoral thesis on how defense spending affects the economy.”
As I have explained in earlier writings, there is reason to believe that domestic chemtrail spraying operations and weather modification activities are carried out by our military. Ken Lay had many high level military connections.
Mr. Lay had the right political and specifically energy related political connections as well. He worked in the Nixon administration as a Federal Power Commission aide, then as deputy undersecretary of energy in the Interior Department. As chairman and CEO of Enron, he sat on the boards of Washington think tanks and often travelled to Washington.
A revolving door existed between Enron and the federal government. Enron executive Tom White left the company to join the Bush Jr. administration as secretary of the army. Enron executive Herbert ‘Pug’ Winokur was Lay’s old Pentagon friend. Robert Zoellick (now head of the World Bank) represented Enron, then the United States as Trade Representative and later as Deputy Secretary of State.
According to the authors of ‘The Smartest Guys in the Room’:
“In 1993, Lay added Wendy Gramm [to the Enron board], who had just finished a stint as chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and was married to Texas Senator Phil Gramm.”
It goes on:
“Just after Wendy Gramm stepped down from the CFTC, that agency approved an exemption that limited the regulatory scrutiny of Enron’s energy-derivatives trading business, a process she had set in motion.”
When Enron galloped into Europe, they had an influential lord on their side. Greg Palast covers it like this:
“The fact that a truly free market [in electricity] didn’t exist and cannot possibly work did not stop Britain’s woman in authority, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, from adopting it. It was more than free market theories that convinced her. Whispering in her ear was one Lord Wakeham, then merely ‘John’ Wakeham, Thatcher’s energy minister. Wakeham approved the first ‘merchant’ power station. It was owned by a company created only in 1985 – Enron. Lord Wakeham’s decision meant that, for the first time in any nation, an electricity plant owner, namely Enron, could charge whatever the market could bear… or, more accurately, could not bear.
“It was this act in 1990 that launched Enron as the deregulated international power trader. Shortly thereafter, Enron named Wakeham to its board of directors and placed him on Enron’s audit and compliance committee.”
As I speculate, a scheme to manipulate financial markets by modifying the weather would necessarily involve intelligence agencies. According to the authors of ‘The Smartest Guys in the Room,’ Enron had intelligence agency connections:
“One of Enron’s key advantages over its competitors was information: it simply had more of it than its competitors. It’s physical assets provided information, of course. And Enron didn’t stop there. It employed CIA agents who could find out anything about anyone. In stead of tracking the weather on the Weather Channel, the company had a meteorologist on staff. He’d arrive at the office at 4:30 A.M., download data from a satellite, and meet with the traders at 7:00 A.M. to share his insights.”
It continues:
“By the late 1990’s, these research efforts were herded together into something called the fundamentals group – fundies in trader parlance. The fundies group produced intelligence reports and held morning briefings…”
the Bush family
Mr. Lay and Enron had many connections to the Bush family and their cohorts. President George W. Bush (Bush Jr.) lovingly called Ken Lay ‘Kenny Boy.’ Mr. Lay was also close to his father, fellow Houstonian, George H.W. Bush (Bush Sr.). For example, in 1991, Bush Sr. offered Mr. Lay the position of commerce secretary. Mr. Lay turned him down. He wanted to be treasury secretary.
Greg Palast, in his book ‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,’ characterizes the Bush/Enron relationship like this:
“But what about Pioneer Lay of Enron Corp? His company, America’s number one power speculator, was also Dubya’s number-one political career donor ($1.8 million to Republicans during the 2000 presidential campaign). Lay was personal advisor to Bush during the postelection ‘transition.’ And his company held secret meetings with the energy plan’s drafters. Bush’s protecting electricity deregulation meant a big payday for Enron – subsequent bankruptcy not withstanding – sending profits up $87 million in the first quarter of Bush’s reign.”
Other Bushes were getting some, too. Greg Palast writes:
“Two months after the bankruptcy, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida traveled to the Texas home of Enron’s ex-president, Rich Kinder, to collect a stack of checks totaling $2 million at the power pillager’s $500-per-plate fund-raising dinner. There are a lot of workers in Florida who will wish they had a chance to lick those plates, because that’s all that’s left of the one-third of a billion dollars Florida’s state pension fund invested in Enron – three times as much as any other of the fifty states.”
Mr. Palast continues:
“Governor Bush encouraged a scheme by a company called Azurix to repipe the entire Southern Florida water system with new reservoirs that would pump fresh water into the swamps. From the view of expert hydrologists, such a mega-project is a crackbrained and useless waste of gobs of money. As part of the deal, Azurix would be handed the right to sell the reservoir’s water to six million Florida customers. Azurix was the wholly owned subsidiary of Enron that had recently been kicked out of Buenos Aires.”
Specializing in private equity buyouts, The Carlyle Group is one of their two main family businesses and one of the nation’s largest defense contractors. Chemtrail spraying is a military operation. The Carlyle Group could help geoengineering programs happen.
Participation in a scheme to defraud the population while murdering them at the same time would probably be A-o.k. with the Bush family. Bush family members exhibit recurring criminal behavior. Forget about the Enron connections. Do you know about the Nazi connections? Are you aware of the numerous links to 9/11? Have you heard of the connections to the attempted Reagan assassination or the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II? Don’t forget that little Iran-Contra fiasco and the drug dealing, gun running and money laundering. Yup, they’re connected to that dirty, dirty BCCI thing, too. Folks, these are just some of the things we know about. When you see a few cockroaches, you can bet there are hundreds more in the wall.
So, who funds the Bush family? The answer is a little investment bank called Brown Brothers Harriman. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin in their book ‘George Bush: the Unauthorized Biography’ describe the situation like this:
“For George Bush, Brown Brothers Harriman was and remains the family firm in the deepest sense. The formidable power of this bank and its ubiquitous network, wielded by Senator Prescott Bush up through the time of his death in 1972, and still active on George’s behalf down to the present day, is the single most important key to every step of George’s business, covert operations and political career.”
And I’ll go you one better. Who owns Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH)? That’s a good question because they are a private company. You cannot buy shares of BBH on any stock exchange. But, in fact, it really doesn’t matter who owns BBH because BBH (like all other big banks) suckles at the teet of the United States Federal Reserve Bank.
In order to get that fresh, uncirculated capital (which has more value than the money which is already in circulation), Brown Brothers Harriman acts upon the orders of the United States Federal Reserve Bank. Sure, BBH has businesses that make money, but when they start a new business such as weather derivatives, they act with the approval of the Fed. I understand this may be a lot to swallow for the uninitiated, but this is the way it works. Read ‘The Creature from Jekyll Island’ by G. Edward Griffin.
Who owns the Fed? Well, that’s the power behind the throne. It is an official secret, but I dare write the name of N.M. Rothschild as represented by the Bank of England.
In short, the Bush family, Enron and Ken Lay had the right political, business, intelligence and military connections necessary to facilitate the scheme I outline.
conclusions
Enron was a business laboratory directed by big banks. In the new world of deregulation created by the Bushes, Enron and others, the purpose of the company was to throw things against the wall and see what stuck. Enron employees were merely minions of those who controlled the purse strings. Enron was the perfect environment in which to try something new like weather derivatives. In light of the histories of corruption exhibited by those involved, it is understandable that the weather derivatives market they created may have been part of yet another murderous rip-off.
While most financial market trading operations are seen as unreliable, Enron’s trading desk was often regarded as their most productive and stable business. Could this have been because they were getting inside information about weather produced by geoengineering activities? I don’t know. I do know they had the ways and means necessary. Enron had motive and opportunity. Enron benefitted from weather derivatives.
notes
-‘The Smartest Guys in the Room’ book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, Penguin Books 2004
-‘Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather 2025’ report by the United States Air Force 1996
-‘The BCCI Affair’ report by Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown, 1992
-‘George Bush: the Unauthorized Biography’ book by Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, Progressive Press 2004
-‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy’ book by Greg Palast, Penguin Books 2003
-‘Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler’ book by Antony Sutton, Buccaneer Books 1976
-‘Conspiracy of Fools’ by Kurt Eichenwald, Broadway Books 2005
-‘Enron: Charting the Legacy 10 Years on’ article by Risk.net 2011
-Enron annual report, 2000
-‘The Secrets of the Federal Reserve’ book by Eustace Mullins, Bridger House Publishers, Inc. 2009
-‘The Creature from Jekyll Island’ book by G. Edward Griffin, American Media 2010
-‘Enron: The Rise and Fall’ book by Loren Fox, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2003
-‘What Went Wrong at Enron: Everyone’s Guide to the Largest Bankruptcy in U.S. History’ book by Peter C. Fusaro and Ross M. Miller, John Wiley & Sons 2002
-‘Weather, Finance and Meteorology – forecasting and derivatives’ by Samuel Randalls School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham
websites
wrma.org
risk.net
linkedin.com
xlgroup.com
vcmpartners.com
-Peter A. Kirby is a San Rafael, CA author and activist. Check out his ebook ‘Chemtrails Exposed:’
http://www.amazon.com/Chemtrails-Exposed-ebook/dp/B007JDN7EM/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1331588967&sr=1-4
Raw Milk Advocate James Stewart Arrested & Assaulted by Government Impersonator Bounty Hunters
James Stewart, the 65-year-old raw “milk man” and founder of Rawesome Foods, was assaulted near his home today by three armed men driving unmarked luxury vehicles with no license plates. Carrying firearms on their hips and dressed in gangster-style street clothes, Satanic T-shirt imagery and tattoos, they claimed to be making an “arrest” and verbally assaulted James, sprayed pepper spray in his face, then forced his head against a car and screamed, according to witnesses, “You better listen to me or you’re gonna have a bad f*ckin’ day!”
James Stewart’s cell phone was on the entire time, and a phone witness told NaturalNews the arrest was conducted “Nazi style.” Meanwhile, James was screaming to anyone who would listen, “HELP ME! HELP ME! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”
A partial video of the incident was captured by a witness. The redness in the face of James Stewart is due to the pepper spray assault. That video link is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYTP9C7jtrI
James was wanted on $130,000 in bail by Ventura County, which had originally put him on $1 million bail — an amount usually reserved for murderers, rapists or serial killers. James, accused of selling “unpasteurized milk” through Rawesome Foods, was made the target of an FDA-funded and politically motivated attempt to destroy the raw milk industry in California. He has been charged with financial crimes by Ventura County even though there is literally no legitimate evidence whatsoever linking James to any such crimes, and the entire case is already in the process of being unraveled.
In the Ventura case, there is no crime, no evidence, and not even any justifiable reason to arrest James and put him on bail in the first place! The entire thing was utterly fabricated as a publicity stunt to attempt to intimidate would-be raw milk producers.
Bounty hunters drive cars with no plates, carry weapons, intimidate witnesses
In the arrest video, James clearly says, “Sir I was trying to give you the information that I thought Mr. McAfee was giving to me.” James is referring to Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures, California’s largest organic milk producer. NaturalNews has confirmed that Mark McAfee, among several other people, had helped fund James Stewart’s bail bond. According to James Stewart, who phoned from Ventura county jail, Mark McAfee was present at the “arrest” and watched the bounty hunters take James away.
UPDATE: Readers of this story were asking for more details and comments on Mark McAfee. As this story is moving quickly, some of the relevant details haven’t yet been reported. Mark had really gone out on a limb to help bail out James Stewart, even putting up his own house as collateral. When James failed to make a recent court appearance in Ventura — because he had decided to fight the malicious charges against him from outside the system — this put McAfee and other people at financial risk. McAfee, in particular, had mortgaged his house to raise some of this bail money, which I believe came to $100,000 on McAfee’s part. This money would have been forfeited had James not been taken into custody by the bounty hunters.
It’s not yet clear whether McAfee had anything to do with leading the bounty hunters to James. Many people suspect so, and opinion is currently divided over whether this was a reluctant but important act of financial preservation or a betrayal of a key figure in the raw food community. I intend to reach out to McAfee to ask for his accounting of events, if he is willing to go on the record with comments. My history with McAfee has so far been a positive one, and I have known him to be a strong advocate of raw food freedom and someone who clearly went out of his way to help James Stewart make his bail.
Bounty hunters verbally intimidate witnesses
During the so-called “arrest,” one of the bounty hunters attempts to verbally intimidate the person filming the video, threatening them by saying, “You’re interfering with an arrest, you’re blocking traffic.” In reality, the bounty hunter never identified himself, never read James any rights and was not involved in any legal arrest whatsoever. The whole thing was a charade carried out by what might appear to a rational person to be armed thugs driving stolen vehicles while impersonating undercover police officers.
In the video, what appears to be a firearm can be seen on the hip of one of the men wearing a pink shirt. At no point during the assault did these men show any badges or identification of any kind. According to California law, “All bounty hunters must carry with them a certification of completion of required courses and training programs.”
According to witnesses, these armed men did not produce any certificates at all. Instead, they verbally intimidated the people filming the incident. One of the bounty hunters called the camera person a “retard” for daring to film him.
We can hear on the video another bounty hunter saying, “You’re in a lot of trouble, you better get an attorney!” During all this, they are rifling through James’ pockets and apparently stealing all his personal belongings. “You are in a lot more trouble than anybody up here,” one of them says to James. “You are in a lot of trouble.”
Over raw milk? Really? Is this what California has come to now? If you sell unpasteurized milk, you get accosted by three armed men driving unlicensed (stolen?) vehicles, working for the state?
“We are not the police…”
When the witnesses filming the incident asked for the badge numbers of the individuals who claimed to be making an “arrest,” they were told, “We’re not the police so we’re not gonna give you badge numbers.”
Later in the video, a close-up image appears for one of the license plates of the luxury vehicles used by the armed assailants. It is clearly an Infinity car dealership plate number KMA-367. The vehicle is a white Infinity luxury sedan.
The other vehicle, which also has no California license plate, is a black sports car. While James is being stuffed into one of the vehicles, one of the bounty hunters calls him a “scumbag.”
Public vigil needed
James is currently residing in the Ventura county jail. As NaturalNews previously reported, James was tortured in the Los Angeles jail system for a period of eight days (http://www.naturalnews.com/035208_James_Stewart_torture_county_jail.h…).
James has privately told me, the editor of NaturalNews, that he fears if he is taken back to jail, he will be tortured, subjected to starvation or even murdered by the authorities there. This may be more likely than you think, because the outright criminality of California officials who persecuted James Stewart is now being exposed.
For example, NaturalNews has already exposed Michelle LeCavalier and L.A. district attorney prosecutors for illegally signing search warrants and conducting armed raids on Rawesome Foods even though they had never taken an oath of office as required by California law (http://www.naturalnews.com/036523_Rawesome_District_Attorney_imperson…).
This means the armed raid against Rawesome Foods, the arrest of James Stewart and all the actions taken against him were illegal. Furthermore, James now has a potential multi-million-dollar civil case against Los Angeles County — and possibly individuals in Ventura County — for false arrest, kidnapping and violating his civil rights while they were “impersonating” officials.
Given these circumstances, James has legitimate reason to fear that county authorities there — who almost certainly staged the armed bounty hunter interception of James last night — may quite literally be trying to kill him.
James told me on the phone many times, “I love live, I will not give up. If they say I committed suicide, it means they killed me, Mike. They’re gonna try to kill me.”
That James was stuffed into unmarked, unlicensed cars driven by intimidating-looking men carrying weapons and verbally threatening witnesses at the scene only further supports the legitimacy of James’ fear.
Let Ventura County know we are watching and that we demand the charges against James be dropped
Here, I ask for your support to let the Ventura County DA’s office know we are watching them, and we hold them responsible for the treatment of James.
Call the main DA’s office at 805-654-2500 and let them know that you are joining tens of thousands of other people who are watching this and carefully scrutinizing their behavior. The Ventura County case against James Stewart is, I can assure you, utterly fabricated and completely without merit. It should be immediately dropped and James set free.
Here’s the full contact information for the Ventura County DA’s office:
http://da.countyofventura.org/contact_information.htm
Ventura County has been waging a “war of personal vengeance” against Stewart (http://www.naturalnews.com/035197_James_Stewart_Sharon_Palmer_Ventura…). Both Ventura and L.A. counties have spent millions of dollars in taxpayer money in an attempt to incarcerate a raw milk man! A senior citizen! The man is 65 years old, utterly non-violent in every way, and yet has been targeted in the most vicious manner by district attorneys who apparently don’t have any real criminals to go after.
Questions remain about the “arrest” of James Stewart
Some serious questions emerge tonight from the “hunting down” of James Stewart by Ventura county:
• What crime has James allegedly committed that is so serious it justifies $130,000 in bail bonds?
• Where is the evidence of such crimes? (It doesn’t exist!)
• Why are armed individuals who claim to be working for the county running around Ventura with unlicensed vehicles that appear to be stolen off the new car lot of an Infinity dealership?
• Why were these “bounty hunters” dressed in Satanic imagery and sporting gang-style facial hair and tattoos while driving high-dollar luxury cars?
• Why were they so verbally abusive to James Stewart, calling him a “scumbag” if they were just bounty hunters looking to earn a paycheck?
• How were these bounty hunters able to locate James Stewart in the first place? Were they tipped off by someone?
• What will happen to James Stewart in Ventura county jail? Will they torture him? Will they silence him? Will they drop the charges and apologize?
This story is developing here on NaturalNews.com. We will continue to bring you details as we speak with witnesses and investigate more deeply. Share this story. Spread the word: No one who sells real food in California is safe from the “authorities” there. You can and will be targeted, kidnapped, robbed at gunpoint by the police, then tortured in the jail system.
Watch the bounty hunter “arrest” video here:
Learn more: NaturalNews.com
UN Gun Ban Treaty Leaked – The Elite Are Gunning for your Guns!
Treacherous wording upholds “States” gun rights but not individuals
The text of the anticipated and hotly-contested United Nations Arms Trade Treaty has been leaked, with the treaty itself set to be adopted and signed by member States as early as tomorrow, July 27. President Obama, today joining the chorus for gun control inside the United States in the wake of the Batman massacre, has previously indicated that he would sign the treaty, which would then have to be ratified by the Senate.
Masked behind the language of promoting peace in an international world by preventing genocide, the UN has unleashed a great Trojan Horse that calls upon States to enact national legislation sufficient to meet the minimum goals outlined in this treaty– including gun registries, background checks, import/export controls and more for arms of all types, including small & conventional weapons. “Each State Party shall adopt national legislation or other appropriate national measures regulations and policies as may be necessary to implement the obligations of this Treaty,” the treaty text states in part.
It makes specific note that the treaty places no limit upon greater gun control efforts within individual nations, and additionally places no expiration on the agreement. The scope of this language proves the analysis by Infowars (1, 2, 3, 4), writers at Forbes and many other publications that have been warning about this deceptive encroachment to be correct– there is an effort to disarm America underway.
The devil, as usual, is in the details.
Repeatedly, the treaty obligates States to establish “national control systems” to meet the particulars of the treaty. While the phrase “within national laws and regulations” appears to suggest that the 2nd Amendment would limit the implementation, properly read in the context of the wording and history itself, it really only invites new “regulations” where no “law” can be established.
These international goals will undoubtedly pressure changes in the executive branches’ many policies, as we have already seen with the ATF, who are trying to outlaw most types of shotguns, and who separately placed greater reporting burdens on gun shops in the Southwest border states as a response to the Fast & Furious set-up by Eric Holder & co. to demonize and destroy gun ownership.
The first “principle” outlined in the preamble reads: “1. The inherent rights of all States to individual or collective self-defense.” While the language of the treaty appears to recognize the legal right to keep such arms, the text actually recognizes the “inherent right of States” to “individual and collective” self-defense.
This is NOT the same as individual persons’ inherent right to keep and bear arms as recognized and enumerated in the United States’ Bill of Rights. Instead, it puts the collectivist unit known as the State above the individual, in complete defiance of the system set-up in the United States. Individual defense for a State, for instance, refers to what is known on the international scene as “unilateral war,” while collective defense is recognize in such actions as that of NATO or other allied bodies. The States’ right to maintain internal order has also been recognized by the UN, but all other purposes for arms ownership are seen as illegitimate.
It specifically recognizes [only] the “lawful private ownership and use of conventional arms exclusively for, inter alia, recreational, cultural, historical and sporting activities for States where such ownership and use are permitted or protected by law.” There’s been a great deal of rhetoric from gun grabbers over the years attempting to emphasize gun ownership for legitimate sporting uses, but the real purpose of arms ownership is a balance of power at the individual level in order to discourage tyranny at the State level. THAT is what the founding fathers intended, and that is the historical legacy Americans cherish.
NO SPECIFIC PROTECTION for individual persons is contained in this dangerous treaty, though the same media who’ve been demonizing critics of the UN’s effort as delusional and paranoid will attempt to argue otherwise, clinging to deliberately inserted clauses herein that look like stop-guards and protections for gun rights, but properly read, do no such thing.
While the UN advises States to keep within the scope of their own laws, the end-run assault against American’s 2nd Amendment is unmistakeable.
The text was released two days ago, but has received almost no attention in the press. The International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights and The Examiner have analyzed the treaty, while pointing out that member states like France have “let slip that their ultimate goal is to regulate legitimately-owned ‘weapons.’”
The United Nations has a sordid history of pursuing “general and complete disarmament,” and individual arms including legally owned arms have always been part of that focus. The United Nations treaty from 2001, known as the “SADC Protocol: Southern African Development Community” is, according to the UN’s own disarmament website, a “regional instrument that aims to curtail small arms ownership and illicit trafficking in Southern Africa along with the destruction of surplus state weapons. It is a far-reaching instrument, which goes beyond that of a politically binding declaration, providing the region with a legal basis upon which to deal with both the legal and the illicit trade in firearms.”
As we have previously noted, U.S. troops have been trained to confiscate American guns, while the confiscation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has already set the precedent. The deception over aiming for legal guns while pretending to target “illicit” weapons is continued here in this 2012 monster treaty.
Below is the text in full, as it has been proposed and released. Any changes in the signed version will be noted when that time comes:
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UNITED NATIONS ARMS TRADE TREATY TEXT
PREAMBLE
The States Parties to this Treaty.
Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
Recalling that the charter of the UN promotes the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources;
Reaffirming the obligation of all State Parties to settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered, in accordance with the Charter of the UN;
Underlining the need to prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade of conventional arms and to prevent their diversion to illegal and unauthorized end use, such as terrorism and organized crime;
Recognizing the legitimate political, security, economic and commercial rights and interests of States in the international trade of conventional arms;
Reaffirming the sovereign right and responsibility of any State to regulate and control transfers of conventional arms that take place exclusively within its territory pursuant to its own legal or constitutional systems;
Recognizing that development, human rights and peace and security, which are three pillars of the United Nations, are interlinked and mutually reinforcing.
Recalling the United Nations Disarmament Commission guidelines on international arms transfers adopted by the General Assembly;
Noting the contribution made by the 2001 UN Programme of Action to preventing combating and eradicating the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects, as well as the 2001 Protocol against the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in Firearms, their parts and components and ammunition, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime;
Recognizing the security, social, economic and humanitarian consequences of the illicit trade in and unregulated trade of conventional arms;
Recognizing the challenges faced by victims of armed conflict and their need for adequate care, rehabilitation and social and economic inclusion;
Bearing in mind that the women and children are particularly affected in situations of conflict and armed violence;
Emphasizing that nothing in this treaty prevents States from exercising their right to adopt additional more rigorous measures consistent with the purpose of this Treaty;
Recognizing the legitimate international trade and lawful private ownership and use of conventional arms exclusively for, inter alia, recreational, cultural, historical and sporting activities for States where such ownership and use are permitted or protected by law;
Recognizing the active role that non-governmental organizations and civil society can play in furthering the goals and objectives of this Treaty; and
16. Emphasizing that regulation of the international trade in conventional arms should not hamper international cooperation and legitimate trade in material, equipment and technology for peaceful purposes;
Have agreed as follows:
Principles
Guided by the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations, States Parties, In promoting the goals and objectives of this Treaty and implementing its provisions, shall act in accordance with the following principles:
The inherent rights of all States to individual or collective self-defense;
2. Settlement of individual disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered;
3. The rights and obligations of States under applicable international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law;
4. The responsibility of all States, in accordance with their respective international obligations, to effectively regulate and control international transfer of conventional arms as well as the primary responsibility of all States to in establishing and implementing their respective national export control systems; and
5. The necessity to implement this Treaty consistently and effectively and in a universal, objective and non-discriminatory manner.
Article 1
Goals and Objectives
Cognizant of the need to prevent and combat the diversion of conventional arms into the illicit market or to unauthorized end users through the improvement of regulation on the international trade in conventional arms,
The goals and objectives of this Treaty are:
– For States Parties to establish the highest possible common standards for regulating or improving regulation of the international trade in conventional arms;
– To prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade in conventional arms and their diversion to illegal and unauthorized end use;
In order to:
– Contribute to international and regional peace, security and stability;
– Avoid that the international trade in conventional arms contributes to human suffering;
– Promote cooperation, transparency and responsibility of States Parties in the trade in conventional arms, thus building confidence among States Parties,
Article 2
– A. Covered Items
– 1. This Treaty shall apply to all conventional arms within the following categories:
– a. Battle Tanks
– b. Armored combat vehicles
– c. Large-caliber Artillery systems
– d. Combat aircraft
– e. Attack helicopters
– f. Warships
– g. Missiles and missile launchers
– h. Small Arms and Light Weapons
– 2. Each State Party Shall establish and Maintain a national control system to regulate the export of munitions to the extent necessary to ensure that national controls on the export of the conventional arms covered by Paragraph a1 (a)-(h) are not circumvented by the export of munitions for those conventional arms.
– 3. Each State Party shall establish and maintain a national control system to regulate the export of parts and components to the extent necessary to ensure that national controls on the export of the conventional arms covered by Paragraph A1 are not circumvented by the export of parts and components of those items.
– 4. Each State Party shall establish or update, as appropriate, and maintain a national control list that shall include the items that fall within Paragraph 1 above, as defined on a national basis, based on relevant UN instruments at a minimum. Each State Party shall publish its control list to the extent permitted by national law.
– B. Covered Activities
– 1. This Treaty shall apply to those activities of the international trade in conventional arms covered in paragraph a1 above, and set out in Articles 6-10, hereafter referred to as “transfer.”
– 2. This Treaty shall not apply to the international movement of conventional arms by a State Party or its agents for its armed forces or law enforcement authorities operating outside its national territories, provided they remain under the State Party’s ownership.
Article 3
Prohibited Transfers
A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty if the transfer would violate any obligation under any measure adopted by the United Nations Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, in particular arms embargoes.
A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty if the transfer would violate its relevant international obligations, under international agreements, to which it is a Party, in particular those relating to the international transfer of, or illicit trafficking in, conventional arms.
A State Party shall not authorize a transfer of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty for the purpose of facilitating the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes constituting grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, or serious violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention of 1949.
Article 4
National Assessment
Each State Party, in considering whether to authorize an export of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty, shall, prior to authorization and through national control systems, make an assessment specific to the circumstances of the transfer based on the following criteria:
Whether the proposed export of conventional arms would:
Be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law;
Be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights law;
Contribute to peace and security;
Be used to commit or facilitate an act constituting an offense under international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism or transnational organized crime, to which the transferring State is a Party;
In making the assessment, the transferring State Party shall apply the criteria set out in Paragraph 2 consistently and in an objective and non-discriminatory manner and in accordance with the principles set out in this Treaty, taking into account relevant factors, including information provided by the importing State.
4. In assessing the risk pursuant to Paragraph 2, the transferring State Party may also take into consideration the establishment of risk mitigation measures including confidence-building measures and jointly developed programs by the exporting and importing State.
5. If in the view of the authorizing State Party, this assessment, which would include any actions that may be taken in accordance with Paragraph 4, constitutes a substantial risk, the State Party shall not authorize the transfer.
Article 5
Additional Obligations
Each State Party, when authorizing an export, shall consider taking feasible measures, including joint actions with other States involved in the transfer, to avoid the transferred arms:
being diverted to the illicit market;
be used to commit or facilitate gender-based violence or violence against children;
become subject to corrupt practices; or
adversely impact the development of the recipient State.
Article 6
General Implementation
Each State Party shall implement this Treaty in a consistent, objective and non-discriminatory manner in accordance with the goals and objectives of this Treaty;
The implementation of this Treaty shall not prejudice previous or future obligations undertaken with regards to international instruments, provided that those obligations are consistent with the goals and objectives of this Treaty. This Treaty shall not be cited as grounds for voiding contractual obligations under defense cooperation agreements concluded by States Parties to this Treaty.
Each State Party shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures necessary to implement the provisions of this Treaty and designate competent national authorities in order to have an effective, transparent and predictable national control system regulating the transfer of conventional arms;
Each State Party shall establish one or more national contact points to exchange information on matters related to the implementation of this Treaty. A State Party shall notify the Implementation Support Unit (See Article 13) of its national contact point(s) and keep the information updated.
State Parties involved in a transfer of conventional arms shall, in a manner consistent with the principles of this Treaty, take appropriate measures to prevent diversion to the illicit market or to unauthorized end-users. All State Parties shall cooperate, as appropriate, with the exporting State to that end.
If a diversion is detected the State or States Parties that made the decision shall verify the State or States Parties that could be affected by such diversion, in particulate those State Parties that are involved in the transfer, without delay.
Each State Party shall take the appropriate measures, within national laws and regulations, to regulate transfers of conventional arms within the scope of the Treaty.
Article 7
Export
Each State Party shall conduct risk assessments, as detailed in Articles 4 and 5, whether to grant authorizations for the transfer of conventional arms under the scope of this Treaty. State Parties shall apply Articles 3-5 consistently, taking into account all relevant information, including the nature and potential use of the items to be transferred and the verified end-user in the country of final destination.
Each State Party shall take measures to ensure all authorizations for the export of conventional arms under the scope of the Treaty are detailed and issued prior to the export. Appropriate and relevant details of the authorization shall be made available to the importing, transit and transshipment State Parties, upon request.
Article 8
Import
Importing State Parties shall take measures to ensure that appropriate and relevant information is provided, upon request, to the exporting State Party to assist the exporting State in its criteria assessment and to assist in verifying end users.
State Parties shall put in place adequate measures that will allow them, where necessary, to monitor and control imports of items covered by the scope of the Treaty. State Parties shall also adopt appropriate measures to prevent the diversion of imported items to unauthorized end users or to the illicit market.
Importing State Parties may request, where necessary, information from the exporting State Party concerning potential authorizations.
Article 9
Brokering
Each State Party shall take the appropriate measures, within national laws and regulations, to control brokering taking place under its jurisdiction for conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty.
Article 10
Transit and Transshipment
Each State Party shall adopt appropriate legislative, administrative or other measures to monitor and control, where necessary and feasible, conventional arms covered by this Treaty that transit or transship through territory under its jurisdiction, consistent with international law with due regard for innocent passage and transit passage;
Importing and exporting States Parties shall cooperate and exchange information, where feasible and upon request, to transit and transshipment States Parties, in order to mitigate the risk of discretion;
Article 11
Reporting, Record Keeping and Transparency
Each State Party shall maintain records in accordance with its national laws and regardless of the items referred to in Article 2, Paragraph A, with regards to conventional arms authorization or exports, and where feasible of those items transferred to their territory as the final destination, or that are authorized to transit or transship their territory, respectively.
Such records may contain: quantity, value, model/type, authorized arms transfers, arms actually transferred, details of exporting State(s), recipient State(s), and end users as appropriate. Records shall be kept for a minimum of ten years, or consistent with other international commitments applicable to the State Party.
States Parties may report to the Implementation Support Unit on an annual basis any actions taken to address the diversion of conventional arms to the illicit market.
Each State Party shall, within the first year after entry into force of this Treaty for that State Party, provide an initial report to States Parties of relevant activities undertaken in order to implement this Treaty; including inter alia, domestic laws, regulations and administrative measures. States Parties shall report any new activities undertaken in order to implement this Treaty, when appropriate. Reports shall be distributed and made public by the Implementation Support Unit.
Each State Party shall submit annually to the Implementation Support Unit by 31 May a report for the preceding calendar year concerning the authorization or actual transfer of items included in Article 2, Paragraph A1. Reports shall be distributed and made public by the Implementation Support Unit. The report submitted to the Implementation Support Unit may contain the same type of information submitted by the State Party to other relevant UN bodies, including the UN Register of Conventional Arms. Reports will be consistent with national security sensitivities or be commercially sensitive.
ARTICLE 12
ENFORCEMENT
Each State Party shall adopt national legislation or other appropriate national measures regulations and policies as may be necessary to implement the obligations of this Treaty.
ARTICLE 13
IMPLEMENTATION SUPPORT UNIT
This Treaty hereby establishes an Implementation Support Unit to assist States Parties in its implementation.
The ISU shall consist of adequate staff, with necessary expertise to ensure the mandate entrusted to it can be effectively undertaken, with the core costs funded by States Parties.
The implementation Support Unit, within a minimized structure and responsible to States Parties, shall undertake the responsibilities assigned to it in this Treaty, inter alia:
Receive distribute reports, on behalf of the Depository, and make them publicly available;
Maintain and Distribute regularly to States Parties the up-to-date list of national contact points;
Facilitate the matching of offers and requests of assistance for Treaty implementation and promote international cooperation as requested;
Facilitate the work of the Conference of States Parties, including making arrangements and providing the necessary service es for meetings under this Treaty; and
Perform other duties as mandated by the Conference of States Parties.
ARTICLE 14
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
States Parties shall designate national points of contact to act as a liaison on matters relating to the implementation of this Treaty.
States Parties shall cooperate closely with one another, as appropriate, to enhance the implementation of this Treaty consistent with their respective security interests and legal and administrative systems.
States Parties are encouraged to facilitate international cooperation, including the exchange of information on matters of mutual interest regarding the implementation and application of this Treaty in accordance with their national legal system. Such voluntary exchange of information may include, inter alia, information on national implementation measures as well as information on specific exporters, importers and brokers and on any prosecutions brought domestically, consistent with commercial and proprietary protections and domestic laws, regulations and respective legal and administrative systems.
4. Each State Party is encouraged to maintain consultations and to share information, as appropriate, to support the implementation of this Treaty, including through their national contact points.
5. States Parties shall cooperate to enforce the provisions of this Treaty and combat breaches of this Treaty, including sharing information regarding illicit activities and actors to assist national enforcement and to counter and prevent diversion. States Parties may also exchange information on lessons learned in relation to any aspect of this Treaty, to develop best practices to assist national implementation.
Article 15
International Assistance
In fulfilling the obligation of this Treaty, States Parties may seek, inter alia, legal assistance, legislative assistance, technical assistance, institutional capacity building, material assistance or financial assistance. States, in a position to do so, shall provide such assistance. States Parties may contribute resources to a voluntary trust fund to assist requesting States Parties requiring such assistance to implement the Treaty.
States Parties shall afford one another the widest measure of assistance, consistent with their respective legal and administrative systems, in investigations, prosecutions and judicial proceedings in relation to the violations of the national measures implemented to comply with obligations under of the provisions of this Treaty.
Each State Party may offer or receive assistance, inter alia, through the United Nations international, regional, subregional or national organizations, non-governmental organizations or on a bi-lateral basis. Such assistance may include technical, financial, material and other forms of assistance as needed, upon request.
Article 16
Signature, Ratification, Acceptance, Approval or Accession
This Treaty shall be open for signature on [date] at the United Nations Headquarters in New York by all States and regional integration organizations.
This Treaty is subject to ratification, acceptance or approval of the Signatories.
This Treaty shall be open for accession by any state and regional integration organization that has not signed the Treaty.
4. The instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession shall be deposited with the Depositary.
5. The Depositary shall promptly inform all signatory and acceding States and regional integration organizations of the date of each signature, the date of deposit of each instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession and the date of the entry into force of this Treaty, and of the receipt of notices.
6. “Regional integration organization” shall mean an organization constituted by sovereign States of a given region, to which its Member States have transferred competence in respect of matters governed by this Treaty and which has been duly authorized, in accordance with its internal procedures, to sign, ratify, accept, approve or accede to it.
7. At the time of its ratification, acceptance, approval or accession, a regional integration organization shall declare the extent of its competence with respect to matters governed by this Treaty. Such organizations shall also inform the Depositary of any relevant modifications in the extent of it competence.
8. References to “State Parties” in the present Treaty shall apply to such organizations within the limits of their competence.
Article 17
Entry into Force
This Treaty shall enter into force thirty days following the date of the deposit of the sixty-fifth instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval with the Depositary.
For any State or regional integration organization that deposits its instruments of accession subsequent to the entry into force of the Treaty, the Treaty shall enter into force thirty days following the date of deposit of its instruments of accession.
For the purpose of Paragraph 1 and 2 above, any instrument deposited by a regional integration organization shall not be counted as additional to those deposited by Member States of that organization.
Article 18
Withdrawal and Duration
This Treaty shall be of unlimited duration.
Each State Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Convention. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other States Parties from this Convention. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other States Parties and to the Depositary. The instrument of withdrawal shall include a full explanation of the reasons motivating this withdrawal.
A state shall not be discharged, by reason of its withdrawal, from the obligations arising from this treaty while it was a party to the Treaty, including any financial obligations, which may have accrued.
Article 19
Reservations
Each State party, in exercising its national sovereignty, may formulate reservations unless the reservation is incompatible with the object and purpose of this Treaty.
Article 20
Amendments
At any time after the Treaty’s entry into force, a State Party may propose an amendment to this Treaty.
Any proposed amendment shall be submitted in writing to the Depository, which will then circulate the proposal to all States Parties, not less than 180 days before next meeting of the Conference of States Parties. The amendment shall be considered at the next Conference of States Parties if a majority of States Parties notify the Implementation Support Unit that they support further consideration of the proposal no later than 180 days after its circulation by the Depositary.
Any amendment to this Treaty shall be adopted by consensus, or if consensus is not achieved, by two-thirds of the States Parties present and voting at the Conference of States Parties. The Depositary shall communicate any amendment to all States Parties.
A proposed amendment adopted in accordance with Paragraph 3 of this Article shall enter into force for all States Parties to the Treaty that have accepted it, upon deposit with the Depositary. Thereafter, it shall enter into force for any remaining State Party on the date of deposit of its instrument of accession.
Article 21
Conference of States Parties
The Conference of States Parties shall be convened not later than once a year following the entry into force of this Treaty. The Conference of States Parties shall adopt rules of procedure and rules governing its activities, including the frequency of meetings and rules concerning payment of expenses incurred in carrying out those activities.
The Conference of States Parties shall:
a. Consider and adopt recommendations regarding the implementation of this Treaty, in particular the promotion of its universality; TR
b. Consider amendments to this Treaty;
c. Consider and decide the work and budget of the Implementation Support Unit;
d. Consider the establishment of any subsidiary bodies as may be necessary to improve the functioning of the Treaty;
e. Perform any other function consistent with this Treaty.
3. If circumstances merit, an exceptional meeting of the State Parties may be convened if required and resources allow.
Article 22
Dispute Settlement
States Parties shall consult and cooperate with each other to settle any dispute that may arise with regard to the interpretation or application of this Treaty.
States Parties shall settle any dispute between them concerning the interpretation or application of this Treat though negotiations or other peaceful means of the Parties mutual choice.
States Parties may pursue, by mutual consent, third party arbitration to settle any dispute between them, regarding issues concerning the implementation of this Treaty.
Article 23
Relations with States not party to this Treaty
States Parties shall apply Articles 3-5 to all transfers of conventional arms within the scope of this Treaty to those not party to this Treaty.
Article 24
Relationship with other instruments
States Parties shall have the right to enter into agreements on the trade in conventional arms with regards to the international trade in conventional arms, provided that those agreements are compatible with their obligations under this Treaty and do not undermine the objects and purposes of this Treaty.
Article 25
Depositary and Authentic Texts
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the Depositary of this Treaty.
The original text of this Treaty, of which the Arabic, Chinese, English, Russian and Spanish texts are equally authentic.
(Emphasis in bold added by this author for help in analysis)
Aaron Dykes
July 26, 2012
SOURCE: InfoWars.com
Aurora Massacre: Several Links Between James Holmes and US Gov’t Research
WASHINGTON — James Holmes, the 24-year old suspect in the mass shooting of Batman “The Dark Knight Rises” movie goers in Aurora, Colorado that left 12 people dead and 58 injured, has had a number of links to U.S. government-funded research centers. Holmes’s past association with government research projects has prompted police and federal law enforcement officials to order laboratories and schools with which Holmes has had a past association not to talk to the press about Holmes.
Holmes was one of six recipients of a National Institutes of Health Neuroscience Training Grant at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Denver. Holmes is a graduate of the University of California at Riverside with a Bachelor of Science degree in neuroscience. Although Holmes dropped out of the PhD neuroscience program at Anschutz in June, police evacuated two buildings at the Anschutz center after the massacre at the Aurora movie theater. Holmes reportedly gave a presentation at the Anschutz campus in May on Micro DNA Biomarkers in a class titled “Biological Basis of Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders.”
Initial reports of Holmes having an accomplice in the theater shooting have been discounted by the Aurora police. However, no explanation has been given by police why the Anschutz campus buildings were evacuated after Holmes was already in custody in the Arapahoe County jail.
The Anschutz Medical Campus is on the recently de-commissioned site of the U.S. Army’s Fitzsimons Army Medical Center and is named after Philip Anschutz, the billionaire Christian fundamentalist oil and railroad tycoon who also owns The Examiner newspaper chain and website and the neo-conservative Weekly Standard. The Anschutz Medical Campus was built by a $91 million grant from the Anschutz Foundation.
In 2006, at the age of 18, Holmes served as a research intern at the Salk Institute at the University of California at San Diego in La Jolla. It is noteworthy that for the previous two years before Holmes worked at the Salk Institute, the research center was partnered with the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Columbia University, University of California at San Francisco, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wake Forest University, and the Mars Company (the manufacturers of Milky Way and Snickers bars) to prevent fatigue in combat troops through the enhanced use of epicatechina, a blood flow-increasing and blood vessel-dilating anti-oxidant flavanol found in cocoa and, particularly, in dark chocolate.
The research was part of a larger DARPA program known as the “Peak Soldier Performance Program,” which involved creating brain-machine interfaces for battlefield use, including human-robotic bionics for legs, arms, and eyes. DARPA works closely with the Defense Science Office on projects that include the medical research community. Fitzsimons was at the forefront of DARPA research on the use of brain-connected “neuroprosthetic” limbs forsoldiers amputated or paralyzed in combat.
According to his LinkedIn profile, James Holmes’s father, Dr. Robert Holmes, who received a PhD in Statistics in 1981 from the University of California at Berkeley, worked for San Diego-based HNC Software, Inc. from 2000 to 2002. HNC, known as a “neural network” company, and DARPA, beginning in 1998, have worked on developing “cortronic neural networks,” which would allow machines to interpret aural and visual stimuli to think like humans. The cortronic concept was developed by HNC Software’s chief scientist and co-founder, Robert Hecht-Nielsen. HNC merged with the Minneapolis-based Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), a computer analysis and decision-making company. Robert Holmes continues to work at FICO.
It has also emerged that Holmes, when he was 20, worked as a camp counselor at Camp Max Straus of the Jewish Big Brothers and Sister of Los Angeles. According to the Jewish Journal, among other tasks, Holmes helped to teach boys between the ages of 7 to 10 archery. In another unusual detail, the car Holmes used to drive to the Aurora movie theater had Tennessee plates. Holmes is originally from San Diego.
James Holmes is the grandson of Lt. Col. Robert Holmes, one of the first Turkish language graduates of the Army Language School, later the Defense Language Institute, in Monterey, California. Graduating from the Turkish language class in 1948, Holmes spent a career in the Army, which likely included more than a few intelligence-related assignments. Typically, U.S. military officers conversant in Turkish served with either the Defense Intelligence Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency at either the U.S. embassy in Ankara or the Consulate General in Istanbul, or both.
Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the director of the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, in an interview with Cognitive Science Online in 2008, had the following comment about recent studies of the human brain: “Alan Newell [cognitive psychology researcher at the intelligence community-linked RAND Corporation] once said that when AI [artificial intelligence] was founded not enough was known about the brain to be of any help and in the early 1980s, symbol processing was the only game in town. That has changed and we now know a lot about the brain, perhaps more than we need to know [emphasis added].”
More than we need to know!
The links between the younger and elder Holmes and U.S. government research on creating super-soldiers, human brain-machine interfaces, and human-like robots beg the question: “Was James Holmes engaged in a real-life Jason Bourne TREADSTONE project that broke down and resulted in deadly consequences in Aurora, Colorado?” In any event, if the Batman movies are now serving as a newer version of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye subliminal messaging triggering mechanism, — Salinger’s novel was of interest to a number of American political assassins — keep in mind that August 10 is the opening date of The Bourne Legacy. It may be wise to skip that film in the theater for a while.
Copyright 2012 Wayne Madsen Report
SOURCE: RedDirtReport.com
Mexican Official: CIA ‘Manages’ Drug Trade
| Juarez, Mexico– The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces “don’t fight drug traffickers”, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told Al Jazeera, instead “they try to manage the drug trade”.Allegations about official complicity in the drug business are nothing new when they come from activists, professors, campaigners or even former officials. However, an official spokesman for the authorities in one of Mexico’s most violent states – one which directly borders Texas – going on the record with such accusations is unique.
“It’s like pest control companies, they only control,” Guillermo Terrazas Villanueva, the Chihuahua spokesman, told Al Jazeera last month at his office in Juarez. “If you finish off the pests, you are out of a job. If they finish the drug business, they finish their jobs.”
A spokesman for the CIA in Washington wouldn’t comment on the accusations directly, instead he referred Al Jazeera to an official website. Accusations are ‘baloney’ Villanueva is not a high ranking official and his views do not represent Mexico’s foreign policy establishment. Other more senior officials in Chihuahua State, including the mayor of Juarez, dismissed the claims as “baloney”. “I think the CIA and DEA [US Drug Enforcement Agency] are on the same side as us in fighting drug gangs,” Hector Murguia, the mayor of Juarez, told Al Jazeera during an interview inside his SUV. “We have excellent collaboration with the US.” Under the Merida Initiative, the US Congress has approved more than $1.4bn in drug war aid for Mexico, providing attack helicopters, weapons and training for police and judges. More than 55,000 people have died in drug related violence in Mexico since December 2006. Privately, residents and officials across Mexico’s political spectrum often blame the lethal cocktail of US drug consumption and the flow of high-powered weapons smuggled south of the border for causing much of the carnage. Drug war ‘illusions’ “The war on drugs is an illusion,” Hugo Almada Mireles, professor at the Autonomous University of Juarez and author of several books, told Al Jazeera. “It’s a reason to intervene in Latin America.” “The CIA wants to control the population; they don’t want to stop arms trafficking to Mexico, look at [Operation] Fast and Furious,” he said, referencing a botched US exercise where automatic weapons were sold to criminals in the hope that security forces could trace where the guns ended up. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms lost track of 1,700 guns as part of the operation, including an AK-47 used in 2010 the murder of Brian Terry, a Customs and Border Protection Agent. Blaming the gringos for Mexico’s problems has been a popular sport south of the Rio Grande ever since the Mexican-American war of the 1840s, when the US conquered most of present day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico from its southern neighbour. But operations such as Fast and Furious show that reality can be stranger than fiction when it comes to the drug war and relations between the US and Mexico. If the case hadn’t been proven, the idea that US agents were actively putting weapons into the hands of Mexican gangsters would sound absurd to many. ‘Conspiracy theories’ “I think it’s easy to become cynical about American and other countries’ involvement in Latin America around drugs,” Kevin Sabet, a former senior adviser to the White House on drug control policy, told Al Jazeera. “Statements [accusing the CIA of managing the drug trade] should be backed up with evidence… I don’t put much stake in it.” Villanueva’s accusations “might be a way to get some attention to his region, which is understandable but not productive or grounded in reality”, Sabet said. “We have sort of ‘been there done that’ with CIA conspiracy theories.” In 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published Dark Alliance, a series of investigative reports linking CIA missions in Nicaragua with the explosion of crack cocaine consumption in America’s ghettos. In order to fund Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua’s socialist government, the CIA partnered with Colombian cartels to move drugs into Los Angeles, sending profits back to Central America, the series alleged. “There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, or on the payroll of, the CIA were involved in drug trafficking,” US Senator John Kerry said at the time, in response to the series. Other newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, slammed Dark Alliance, and the editor of the Mercury News eventually wrote that the paper had over-stated some elements in the story and made mistakes in the journalistic process, but that he stood by many of the key conclusions. Widespread rumours US government has neglected border corruption |
“It’s true, they want to control it,” a mid-level official with the Secretariat Gobernacion in Juarez, Mexico’s equivalent to the US Department of Homeland Security, told Al Jazeera of the CIA and DEA’s policing of the drug trade. The officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he knew the allegations to be correct, based on discussions he had with US officials working in Juarez.
Acceptance of these claims within some elements of Mexico’s government and security services shows the difficulty in pursuing effective international action against the drug trade.
Jesús Zambada Niebla, a leading trafficker from the Sinaloa cartel currently awaiting trial in Chicago, has said he was working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency during his days as a trafficker, and was promised immunity from prosecution.
“Under that agreement, the Sinaloa Cartel under the leadership of [Jesus Zambada’s] father, Ismael Zambada and ‘Chapo’ Guzmán were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tonnes of illicit drugs… into… the United States, and were protected by the United States government from arrest and prosecution in return for providing information against rival cartels,” Zambada’s lawyers wrote as part of his defence. “Indeed, the Unites States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.”
The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest and most powerful trafficking organisation, and some analysts believe security forces in the US and Mexico favour the group over its rivals.
Joaquin “El Chapo”, the cartel’s billionaire leader and one of the world’s most wanted men, escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 by sneaking into a laundry truck – likely with collaboration from guards – further stoking rumours that leading traffickers have complicit friends in high places.
“It would be easy for the Mexican army to capture El Chapo,” Mireles said. “But this is not the objective.” He thinks the authorities on both sides of the border are happy to have El Chapo on the loose, as his cartel is easier to manage and his drug money is recycled back into the broader economy. Other analysts consider this viewpoint a conspiracy theory and blame ineptitude and low level corruption for El Chapo’s escape, rather than a broader plan from government agencies.
Political changes
After an election hit by reported irregularities, Enrique Pena Nieto from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is set to be sworn in as Mexico’s president on December 1.
He wants to open a high-level dialogue with the US about the drug war, but has said legalisation of some drugs is not an option. Some hardliners in the US worry that Nieto will make a deal with some cartels, in order to reduce violence.
“I am hopeful that he will not return to the PRI party of the past which was corrupt and had a history of turning a blind eye to the drug cartels,” said Michael McCaul, a Republican Congressman from Texas.
Regardless of what position a new administration takes in order to calm the violence and restore order, it is likely many Mexicans – including government officials such as Chihuahua spokesman Guillermo Villanueva – will believe outside forces want the drug trade to continue.
The widespread view linking the CIA to the drug trade – whether or not the allegations are true – speaks volumes about officials’ mutual mistrust amid ongoing killings and the destruction of civic life in Mexico.
“We have good soldiers and policemen,” Villanueva said. “But you won’t resolve this problem with bullets. We need education and jobs.”
Follow Chris Arsenault on Twitter: @AJEchris
Source:
Why Didn’t Anyone Fight Back? Questions Linger Over James Holmes Batman Movie Theater Shooting
One of the most shocking realization emerging from the James Holmes Batman movie shooting rampage in Aurora, Colorado is the fact that nobody apparently tried to stop the shooter. This is absolutely baffling. Out of at least 70 moviegoers (and maybe more, as numbers remain sketchy at the moment), it appears that nobody tried to tackle him to the ground, shoot back with their own gun, or even fight back in any way whatsoever. The accounts of witnesses are those of people fleeing, ducking and screaming… but not fighting for their lives.
This story is in no way intended to blame those present at the theater for what was obviously a horrifying, shocking and probably very confusing event, but at the same time we must ask the question: Why did no one fight back?
See my previous story, by the way, which asks other questions about this shooting, such as where did Holmes get the training and the funds to build a complex maze of flammable booby-traps? That story is available at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/036536_James_Holmes_shooting_false_flag.ht…
“There were bullet [casings] just falling on my head. They were burning my forehead,” Jennifer Seeger told reporters in an LA Times article (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/07/colorado-shooting-suspe…). “Every few seconds it was just: Boom, boom, boom,” she said. “He would reload and shoot and anyone who would try to leave would just get killed.”
Another bizarre quote appears in the Daily Mail: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2176450/The-Dark-Knight-Rises…)
A baby was shot at point blank range, the family were gathered around screaming.
Huh?
If the baby was shot at point blank range, that means the shooter was right there beside them. Instead of gathering around and screaming, why didn’t the family tackle the shooter?
This is not any sort of insensitive attempt at satire or blaming anyone, by the way. This is purely an effort to ask a deeply disturbing question that has been bothering me ever since this whole thing went down:
How can a lone gunman fire off at least 100 rounds in a crowded theater full of people and have NOBODY fight back, shoot back or attempt to tackle him?
The guy literally walked in, tossed a couple of smoke bombs, started shooting everybody in sight, and for some reason that remains entire unexplained, they let him do it. When he finished, he walked out the door and calmly surrendered to police, mission accomplished. He was never shot at, stabbed, kicked, punched, tripped or attacked in any way whatsoever, apparently.
It would have taken at least two full minutes to carry out the attack
Importantly, this shooting had to have taken several minutes to carry out. To fire 100+ rounds of ammunition from any weapon requires multiple reloads, each of which takes several seconds to carry out. There would have been long pauses in the shooting. There has even been a report that the AR-15 rifle used by the shooter jammed, which would have created an even longer pause.
These pauses are opportunities to bum rush the guy, or shoot back, or throw something at him, or just punch him right in the jaw with everything you’ve got. Holding a gun does not make you invincible. If anything, it makes you very, very vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. As I learned in my own defensive training, often alongside peace officers:
• Nobody has eyes in the back of their head. Attacks from behind are very, very effective.
• A gun only points in one direction at a time. It cannot shoot backwards, behind the person holding it.
• A gas mask SEVERELY limits angle of perception of vision. Someone wearing a gas mask, as is reported in this incident, is ridiculously vulnerable to attacks from behind, from above, from the sides and from below.
• No man can ignore a deliberate knee to the groin (from the front), or a “kickball” kick to the groin from behind. Such moves are taught in martial arts such as Krav Maga, and they are very, very effective at bringing any man to his knees, either screaming or even vomiting in pain.
• At close range, guns are LESS dangerous than knives. A knife can cut along an entire geometric plane, but a gun can only fire at a single point in space. Guns jam, guns run out of ammo, guns need to be reloaded. A knife, on the other hand, has none of these limitations. Disarming someone with a gun is MUCH easier than disarming someone with a knife.
Something doesn’t add up
It is bewildering that during the several minutes it would have taken for Holmes to fire 100+ rounds into the crowd, nobody fought back.
Again, I’m not blaming the people there, I’m just bewildered that nobody fought back. It doesn’t make sense. Unless, of course, the very fabric of American culture is now so passive and afraid that people have forgotten how to take action in the face of fear.
I think I speak for a great many concealed carry permit holders when I say that if I had been in that theater, I would have been emptying magazines in the direction of the threat (i.e. putting sights on target and repeatedly pulling the trigger). Like many concealed carry weapon holders, I would have turned that scene into what we sometimes jokingly call a “two-way range.”
Like all other concealed carry holders, I am reluctant to ever draw a weapon on anyone, but I’m absolutely willing to do so in order to try to stop a massacre from taking place.
What I can’t understand is how apparently NOBODY in the entire theater had the training or the presence of mind to fight back. This is truly astonishing at every level. In America today, do people just lay down to die when there’s a gunman in the room? I’m not asking this to be insulting in any way, I’m simply bewildered by the lack of action. This is an honest question: WHY did no one act?
Shattering myths: Guys with guns can be physically assaulted, even if you’re unarmed
Here’s a news flash for those who have never trained in these scenarios: Guys wielding guns are very, very easy to disarm during reloads — far easier than trying to disarm someone with a knife, as mentioned earlier. “Weapon takeaways” are routinely taught in Krav Maga, for example, and they are fast and effect, usually breaking the bad guy’s trigger finger in the process.
Taking away a weapon from a gunman is surprisingly easy. Forcing him to the ground takes almost no effort at all. This shooter could have been easily disarmed and pummeled to the ground by a single person, not to mention two or three working together.
Instead, the only reports we get from this incident are those of people screaming and hiding, or sometimes fleeing. To my knowledge, there are no eyewitness accounts of anyone rushing the gunman, shooting back, or trying to even trip him to fall on the floor. And yet empty shell casings were literally falling right onto people within arms’ reach of the guy.
As the Daily Mail reports: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2176450/The-Dark-Knight-Rises…)
Twenty-five-year-old Jennifer Seeger, of Aurora, says she was in the second row, about four feet from the gunman. She says she ‘was just a deer in headlights’ and ducked to the ground.
Tactically speaking, there is absolutely no way that one person can shoot 70 people unless those 70 people just lay there and let it happen. To shoot 70 people, the guy must have pulled the trigger at least 100 times, probably a lot more, as accuracy in these situations is usually quite poor. Most likely we’re going to find up to 200 rounds expended, once a final forensic count is completed.
News reports say he used as 90-round ammo “drum” for the AR-15. These drums are notoriously bad at feeding ammo, making them useless on the battlefield, which is why soldiers never use them on their personal AR-15s (they use 30-round mags). According to reports, Holmes’ AR-15 drum jammed during the shooting (no surprise) and he had to abandon that weapon and start using something else. All this would have taken time for him to sort out, during which the shooter is completely vulnerable to all sorts of grappling attacks, punches, kicks to the groin, eye gouges, weapon takeaways, etc.
Yet, strangely, nobody rushed the guy. Nobody shot back. Nobody tried to punch him. I honestly don’t understand this.
A culture of passive victims
It occurs to me that maybe I’m different from most Americans today in the fact that I am willing to fight back. For some reason, that seems to be a rarity these days. Too many people have bought into learned helplessness, where they depend on the government to take care of them, keep them safe and solve all their problems.
Once you outsource your personal security to the government — usually by having no defense skills and hoping 911 will respond quickly — you make yourself an easy victim for violent criminals.
The true path to personal safety and security is to learn how to protect yourself and your loved ones. There are many ways to do that, from basic hand-to-hand combat and martial arts skills to learning proficiency in the “American martial art” of hand-gunning. I’ve personally trained with numerous instructors who could have taken Holmes out from 20 – 30 meters away with a single shot to the head, with about 90% accuracy even under pressure. There are lots of proficient firearms owners across America, and a great many of them are carrying those weapons into movie theaters, shopping malls, retail stores and even at the airport. Why was no one carrying a concealed weapon at the Batman movie theater in Aurora? I have no idea.
Again, it’s difficult to second guess what really went down there with all the confusion, the screaming, the smoke and so on. Maybe there were concealed carry weapon holders in the room but they couldn’t get a clear shot. One thing concealed carry holders are always taught is to never shoot at a bad guy if there are innocent civilians behind him. (You’re always trained to know what’s BEHIND your target.) This might have made target acquisition difficult, but given the reality of what was unfolding, it would seem logical to pull the trigger anyway, as allowing the shooter to stand would clearly result in a great number of additional deaths.
Also, there is the distinct possibility that perhaps someone did pull a gun on Holmes, but they got shot by him first. We don’t know the real story on this until more information is released by investigators. So perhaps there was someone who had the courage to fight back and we just haven’t learned about them yet.
What we do know, so far at least, is that no stories of attempted heroism have emerged. Not a single account that I’m aware of, and I’ve been scanning the stories. This is very, very strange. Something doesn’t add up yet again.
Is American culture now one of total surrender?
What I’m starting to think really happened is that the American culture is becoming one of total surrender to criminals. Why do people line up at the airports and allow the TSA go grope their genitals? Because they’re passive and they’ve surrendered instead of fighting back. Why do stay silent when runaway criminality is happening all around them in the form of armed raids on raw milk farmers (http://www.naturalnews.com/033220_Rawesome_Foods_armed_raids.html) and government hit squads trying to kill farmers’ ranch pigs in Michigan? (http://www.naturalnews.com/035585_Michigan_farms_raids.html) Because people are scared into silence.
Americans, it turns out, are easy to terrorize. They’re easy to freeze into a state of fear-based non-action. That fear can and will be used against them, again and again. Look at the post 9/11 effort to crush freedom and destroy the Bill of Rights. It succeeded because Americans were terrorized and willing to give up all their liberties for the false promise of a little security.
The police cannot protect you
This is concerning for lots of reasons beyond the Batman shooting. It means the population is just cannon fodder for armed gangs of looters when the next collapse comes, and the debt spending of the U.S. government absolutely guarantees a financial collapse is just around the corner. (It’s only a matter of time.)
It’s beginning to look more and more like only those of us who have the natural instinct to fight back — and who are willing to acquire fundamental skills of personal defense — will be left standing in the long run. Even those of us who have such skills will need to be both well practiced and, to some extent, lucky. But luck has a way of bending your way when you’re prepared, I’ve noticed.
I hope YOU, the readers, are among those of us who are survivors. We need more good people to survive and help lead our nation into a future of liberty, abundance and lasting health. We need more good people to survive social unrest, the aftermath of natural disasters, the coming economic collapse, food shortages, roving bands of armed gangs and so on. If anything, right now is a time for more people to go out and get trained on personal defense, whether that’s with martial arts, rape prevention classes, or even quality firearms training.
It should hopefully be obvious at this point that the police cannot protect you. Calling 911 is about as useless as crossing your fingers and hoping you won’t die. And that’s even if 911 answers, because 911 services are easily taken offline even by wind storms (as we saw recently in Washington D.C.). If you cannot protect yourself and your family, you’re not ready for what’s coming, I believe. Get prepared. Get some skills. Practice to the point of proficiency. Decide to survive rather than surrendering to violence.
Much of this, after all, is simply a mental decision. I have no idea why that mental decision did not take place inside the Batman movie theater, but I know that you and I can make that decision right now — the decision to SURVIVE — and we can move forward in life with the strength and power of sticking with that decision.
SOURCE: NaturalNews.com
Hate Drones, Love Privacy? Manufacturer Douglas McDonalad Says You’re A Criminal
“If you’re concerned about it, maybe there’s a reason we should be flying over you, right?” said Douglas McDonald, the company’s director of special operations and president of a local chapter of the unmanned vehicle trade group.
LAKOTA, N.D. – The use of unmanned aerial drones, whose deadly accuracy helped revolutionize modern warfare high above the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, is now spreading intrigue and worry across the plains of North Dakota.
Amid 3,000 acres of corn and soybeans and miles from the closest town, a Predator drone led to the arrests of farmer Rodney Brossart and five members of his family last year after a dispute over a neighbor’s six lost cows on his property escalated into a 16-hour standoff with police.
It is one of the first reported cases in the nation where an unmanned drone was used to assist in the arrest of a U.S. citizen on his own property; and a controversial sign of how drones, in all shapes, sizes and missions, are beginning to hover over American skies.
Far from just the menacing aircraft bearing Hellfire Missiles and infrared cameras from combat, Unmanned Aerial Systems, the preferred term in the industry, now include products so small they fit in the palm of your hand and can look as innocent as remote-controlled hobby airplanes.
They can quickly scout rural areas for lost children, identify hot spots in forest fires before they get out of control, monitor field crops before they wither or allow paparazzi new ways to target celebrities. The government has predicted that as many as 30,000 drones will be flying over U.S. skies by the end of the decade.
But can drones fly in domestic airspace without crashing into an airplane? Can they be used in a way that doesn’t invade privacy? Who’s watching the drone operators — and how closely?
“All the pieces appear to be lining up for the eventual introduction of routine aerial surveillance in American life — a development that would profoundly change the character of public life in the United States,” the American Civil Liberties Union warned in a policy paper on drones last year titled, “Protecting Privacy From Aerial Surveillance.”
In the North Dakota case, fearing that the Brossarts had armed themselves, local law enforcement asked for the assist from the Predator — unarmed but otherwise identical to the ones used in combat — that’s stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base as a SWAT team converged on the property.
It put Rodney Brossart front and center in the debate over the burgeoning use of domestic drones, and the threat they may represent when authorities are given the ability to watch everything from above.
“I’m not going to sit back and do nothing,” Brossart said recently, sitting in the shade outside his small house where farm equipment, trailers and the top half of a school bus sit in the yard in various states of disrepair. As drone use expands nationwide, he’s worried. “I don’t know what to expect because of what we’ve seen.”
Groups from the Electronic Privacy Information Center to the American Library Association have joined to raise concerns with the Federal Aviation Administration about the implications of opening up U.S. air space to drones, as have Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Barton, co-chairs of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus.
But the federal government already has been quietly expanding their use in U.S. air space. Even as the wars abroad wind to an end, the military has been pleading for funding for more pilots. Drones cannot be flown now in the United States without FAA approval. But with little public scrutiny, the FAA already has issued at least 266 active testing permits for domestic drone operations, amid safety concerns. Statistics show unmanned aircraft have an accident rate seven times higher than general aviation and 353 times higher than commercial aviation.
Under political and commercial pressure, the Obama administration has ordered the FAA to develop new rules for expanding the use of small drones domestically. By 2015, drones will have access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for piloted aircraft.
“Think about it; they are inscrutable, flying, intelligent,” said Ryan Calo, the director of privacy and robotics for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “They are really very difficult for the human mind to cleanly characterize.”
While drone use in the rest of the country has been largely theoretical, here in eastern North Dakota it is becoming a way of life.
Drivers on Hwy. 2 near the Grand Forks base say they often see the U.S. Customs Predator B (the B indicates it is unarmed) practicing “touch and go” landings in the morning. A local sheriff’s deputy talked of looking up from writing reports in his patrol car one night to see a drone quietly hovering over him. Don “Bama” Nance, who spent 20 years in the Air Force before retiring to Emerado, now cuts the grass on the base golf course.
“They’re always overhead on the third hole,” he said.
The Grand Forks base has been flying drones sine 2005, when it switched missions from flying tankers to unmanned aerial systems. So, too, have the storied Happy Hooligans of the North Dakota Air National Guard, which has flown drone missions in Iraq and Afghanistan from its base in Fargo.
And use is growing. Predators operated by Customs and Border Patrol completed more than 30 hours of flight in 2009 and more than 55 hours in 2010, mapping the flooded Red River Valley areas of North Dakota and Minnesota. In 2011, the Predator B flew close to 250 hours in disaster relief support along the northern border.
The Grand Forks base, which now has two Predators flying, expects to have as many as 15 Northrop Grumman Global Hawks and six to eight General Atomics Predators/Reapers. That will add an additional 907 Air Force personnel to the base.
For this wide swath of eastern North Dakota, that is part of the appeal: jobs. The University of North Dakota has eagerly partnered with the military and defense contractors, and often operating behind locked doors and secrecy, university officials are working to make the area a hub of unmanned aircraft activity. The state has invested an estimated $12.5 million to make it happen. The local Economic Development Corporation has added a drone coordinator in charge of recruiting more companies to join the 16 drone-related ones that have already set up shop.
“Where aviation was in 1925, that’s where we are today with unmanned aerial vehicles,” said Al Palmer, director of UND’s Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research, Education and Training. “The possibilities are endless.”
A new major
The University of North Dakota operates a fleet of seven different types of unmanned aircraft. In 2009, it became the first college in the country to offer a four-year degree in unmanned aircraft piloting. It now has 23 graduates and 84 students majoring in the program, which is open only to U.S. citizens.
It works with Northland Community College in Thief River Falls, Minn., which developed the first drone maintenance training center in the country and proudly shows off its own full-size Global Hawk.
The university also serves as an incubator for companies that might want to expand the industry. In five days, Unmanned Applications Institute International, which provides training in operating drones, can teach a cop how to use a drone the size of a bathtub toy.
“If you’re concerned about it, maybe there’s a reason we should be flying over you, right?” said Douglas McDonald, the company’s director of special operations and president of a local chapter of the unmanned vehicle trade group. “But as soon as you lose your kid, get your car stolen or have marijuana growing out at your lake place that’s not yours, you’d probably want one of those flying overhead.”
Earlier this year, the Grand Forks Sheriff’s Department was provided its own drone by the university for $1 as part of a project to develop policies and procedures for law enforcement.
“We are not out there to abuse people’s rights, but at the same time we’re out there to protect public safety,” said Grand Forks Sheriff Robert Rost. “The public perception is that Big Brother is going to be snooping on them and that is not the case at all. It will not be misused.”
Still, not everyone is enthusiastic about drones. The Air Force has proposed expanding seven additional nautical miles of restricted air space near Devils Lake to conduct laser training with drones. Of the 43 public comments on the proposal, 42 opposed it, largely out of safety concerns and fears that it would interfere with commercial and general aviation. Nevertheless, the FAA approved the airspace expansion late last month.
Between the base and Grand Forks, Arnie Sevigny flies his own silent drone protest: a raggedy kite shaped like a jet fighter whipping in the wind 100 feet in the air and tied down with a stake on his property a few miles from the base. “No camera. No invasion of privacy,” Sevigny joked. “What do you need a drone for anyhow? They use the satellites they already have to see the head of a dime in your hand.”
And for all the assurances, there is much that isn’t said or revealed. Some of the equipment used by the university can’t be seen by the public because of federal privacy rules. Although legal, anyone photographing outside the base can find themselves being questioned by county, state and Air Force law enforcement. When asked how many times U.S. Border Protection has dispatched drones at the request of local police, a spokeswoman for the agency said it does not keep those figures.
Even Brossart doesn’t know what the drone that led to his family’s arrests saw. Despite demands made in court, the Predator’s footage has not been produced to his attorneys. “They don’t want to show what happened,” he said, “because it will show exactly what they did.”
A judge is expected to rule within days on whether the charges against Brossart, who has had a number of run-ins with authorities over the years, should be dismissed, in part, because the warrantless use of the “spy plane” was part of a pattern of outrageous government conduct that violated Brossart’s Fourth Amendment rights.
With case law murky on the domestic use of drones, Brossart’s attorney, Bruce Quick, said the courts, Congress and state legislatures will likely have to address the issue. “It’s not just criminal defense attorneys. It’s just people concerned about civil liberties in general,” he said. “I don’t think a lot of us like the idea of our privacy being given away.”
Mark Brunswick • 612-673-4434
Batman Shooting Foretold In 1986 “Dark Knight” Comic
Here we go again. There’s going to be a lot of speculation regarding this Batman movie shooting. It fits too perfectly into their gun control agenda build up of late for it not to be staged but we’ll have to see. But already we’re seeing the same pattern of foreshadowing and predictive programming.
If you want a real hint, this report just showed up in the Washington Times of all things. They’re of course insinuating it was possibly the inspiration for the shooter. We’ll be learning more about him quickly but from his disturbed profile he sure seems to fit the usual mind control pattern.
What is strange is how prevalent this comic-type illustration predictive propaganda is with these false flag events.
Here’s the newspaper story:
The horrific shooting at the screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado late last night bears eerie similarities to a scene in the 1986 comic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. In the comic, a crazed, gun-toting loner walks into a movie theater and begins shooting it up, killing three in the process. The passage concludes with the media blaming Batman for inspiring the shooting, though he is not involved in the incident at all.
The 1986 comic, written and drawn by Frank Miller, was a key inspiration for the Chris Nolan Batman films. It helped to reimagine the character away from his Saturday morning cartoon image and into a dark, grim avenger. The point of this particular scene in the comic was to show just how far Gotham has fallen since Batman had retired. Source
Predictive Programming
The Illuminati card game was invented way before any of the above depicted events. A strange phenomenon indeed. We don’t know what is behind these incredibly prescient depictions but it isn’t the only instance of these kinds of illustrations, apparently done or or inspired by insiders. (This is just a sampling, there are many more cards, a very interesting study.)
In 1990 an Illuminati Card Game was invented by Steven Jackson. The ’game’ he had created ruffled quite a few feathers as he was promptly visited by the Secret Service who tried to shut him down and prevent the cards from being released. You can read Jacksons own account of the raid Here.
Apparently Jackson must have either had some type of insider knowledge or the foresight of Nostrodumus because the game he created has turned out to be very close to the real thing. Several of the cards depict events in modern history that either have, or soon will occur, including the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Source
Colorado Batman Incident Facts: Lone Gunman or False Flag?
James Holmes, the Aurora, Colorado shooter who reportedly opened fire at a Batman movie premiere, was a medical student at the University of Colorado, pursuing a PhD in neuroscience, reports ABC News. (http://abcnews.go.com/US/mass-shooting-colorado-movie-theater-14-peop…)
As part of the attack, Holmes painted his hair red and referred to himself as “The Joker,” one of the arch enemies in the DC Comics-inspired Batman movie series. (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/07/20/police-14-dead-in-colorado-the…)
According to news reports, this sudden violent rampage was completely out of character for James Holmes, who was described as “shy.”
The New York Times is now reporting:
Billy Kromka, a pre-med student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, worked with Mr. Holmes for three months last summer as a research assistant in a lab of at the Anschutz Medical Campus. Mr. Kromka said he was surprised to learn Mr. Holmes was the shooting suspect. “It was just shocking, because there was no way I thought he could have the capacity to do commit an atrocity like this,” he said. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/colorado-mall-shooting.html?page…)
“He spent much of his time immersed in the computer, often participating in role-playing online games…”
There is already conjecture that James Holmes may have been involved in mind-altering neuroscience research and ended up becoming involved at a depth he never anticipated. His actions clearly show a strange detachment from reality, indicating he was not in his right mind. That can only typically be accomplished through drugs, hypnosis or trauma (and sometimes all three).
His behavior doesn’t add up
His behavior already reveals stark inconsistencies that question the mainstream explanation of events. For example, he opened fire on innocent people but then calmly surrendered to police without resistance. This is not consistent with the idea of “killing everyone.”
Furthermore, he then admitted to police that his apartment was booby-trapped with explosives. If you were really an evil-minded Joker trying to kill people (including cops), why would you warn them about the booby trap in advance? It doesn’t add up.
“Holmes was taken into custody shortly after the shooting, police said, adding he didn’t resist when he was arrested,” reports a local CBS news affiliate (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/07/20/police-14-dead-in-colorado-the…).
“After his arrest, Holmes told police about ‘possible explosives in his residence,’ Oates said. When police searched his apartment, they discovered it was booby-trapped and evacuated surrounding buildings, police said. Oates said bomb technicians are determining how to disarm flammable or explosive material in the third-floor apartment. He said police could be there some time.”
None of this checks out. If you’re a killer bent on causing mayhem, why tell the police about your surprise bomb waiting for them back at your apartment?
Holmes was clearly provided with exotic gear
Continuing from CBS:
“He said pictures from inside the apartment are fairly disturbing and the devices look to be sophisticated, adding the booby-traps were ‘something I’ve never seen.’ One rifle, two handguns, a knife, a bullet proof vest, a ballistic helmet, a gas device, a gas mask, military SWAT clothing and unidentified explosives were also found in Holmes’ car, a law enforcement source told CBS News. Oates said Holmes wore a gas mask, a ballistic helmet and vest as well as leg, groin and throat protectors during the shooting.”
In other words, this guy was equipped with exotic gear by someone with connections to military equipment. SWAT clothing, explosives, complex booby-traps… c’mon, this isn’t a “lone gunman.” This is somebody who was selected for a mission, given equipment to carry it out, then somehow brainwashed into getting it done.
“Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said Holmes’ apartment is booby-trapped with a ‘sophisticated’ maze of flammable devices. It could take hours or days for authorities to disarm it,” reports Yahoo News (http://sg.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/suspect-neuroscience-phd-stu…).
UPDATE: (This section added to the story Saturday at 2:30 pm central, July 21, 2012). It is now being reported that exotic, advanced booby-traps have been disarmed at the apartment of James Holmes. The Denver affiliate of CBS News is now reporting: (http://denver.cbslocal.com/2012/07/21/officials-expect-explosions-as-…)
Officials say they have removed all major threats at the booby-trapped apartment of the Aurora movie theater shooting suspect on Saturday. They have used a robot to go inside James Holmes’ apartment. …They were able to disable a trip wire that was set to go off when the apartment door was opened. “This is some serious stuff that our team is dealing with…”
Shortly before noon crews were successful performing a controlled detonation… More controlled detonations were possible.
…there were multiple trip wires throughout the apartment. Investigators have also seen what appear to be mortars planted in the apartment — sort of the kind of mortars that might be seen in a commercial fireworks show. Up to a half dozen of them are scattered around.
…they have seen a number of inflated balloons in the apartment… with many appearing to be filled with a powder. Also linked together are bottles of liquid. …a strong smell of gasoline emanating from the apartment.
…several boxes on top of the refrigerator and there are lights flashing on the boxes.
…30 aerial shells (fireworks) commercially legally available for purchase. …the suspect may have filled them with smokeless powder. …entering the apartment would have caused a trip wire to trigger one liquid container to pour/mix with another. When the two mix together, they set off the main charge of the device which may be additional flammable liquids.
…an enormously dangerous mission. About 100 personnel are on scene.
And the BBC is now reporting: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18937726)
Technicians made a first attempt on Friday to disarm the traps, believed to include explosives, but withdrew when it became clear the property was too dangerous to enter. Sgt Carlson said the device was set up to detonate when the first person entered the flat. “We’ve defeated first threat. It was set up to kill, and that could have been police officers or anything,” she said.
FBI has a track record of staging similar assaults, then stopping them at the last minute
This is not your run-of-the-mill crime of passion. It was a carefully planned, heavily funded and technically advanced attack. Who might be behind all this? The FBI, of course, which has a long history of setting up and staging similar attacks, then stopping them right before they happen. See four documented stories on these facts:
http://www.naturalnews.com/035849_domestic_terror_plots_FBI.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/034325_FBI_entrapment_terror_plots.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/033751_FBI_terrorism.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/035757_FBI_terror_plots_false_flag.html
As you soak all this in, remember that the FBI had admitted to setting up terror plots, providing the weapons and gear, staging the location of the bombings and even driving the vehicles to pull it off! This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s been admitted by the FBI right out in the open. Even the New York Times openly reports all this in stories like this one:
NYT: Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terrorist-plots-help…)
THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts. But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. …the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving…
Mystery man Holmes has no background
On top of all this, Holmes apparently has no background. “He’s not on anybody’s radar screen — nothing,” said a peace officer in a NYT article. “This guy is somewhat of an enigma. Nobody knows anything about him.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/us/colorado-mall-shooting.html)
Mr. Holmes’s only criminal history is a traffic summons, the authorities said. He earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in neuroscience in 2010 from the University of California, Riverside, and was a graduate student in neurosciences at the University of Colorado at Denver’s Anschutz Medical Campus… He was currently collecting unemployment…
Question: How does an unemployed medical student afford $20,000 in weapons gear?
If you start to look at the really big picture here, the obvious question arises: How does an unemployed medical student afford all the complex weapons gear, bomb-making gear, “flammable” booby trap devices, ammunition, multiple magazines, bullet-proof vest, groin protection, ballistic helmet, SWAT uniform and all the rest of it?
A decent AR-15 rifle costs $1,000 or more all by itself. The shotgun and handgun might run another $800 total. Spare mags, sights, slings, and so on will run you at least another $1,000 across three firearms. The bullet-proof vest is easily another $800, and the cost of the bomb-making gear is anybody’s guess. With all the specialty body gear, ammunition, booby-trap devices and more, I’m guessing this is at least $20,000 in weapons and tactical gear, much of which is very difficult for civilians to get in the first place.
The mere manufacture of an explosive booby-trap device is, all by itself, a felony crime by the way. And remember: “Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said Holmes’ apartment is booby-trapped with a ‘sophisticated’ maze of flammable devices. It could take hours or days for authorities to disarm it,” reported Yahoo News (http://sg.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/suspect-neuroscience-phd-stu…).
Question: Where does an unemployed, introverted medical school student get the training to deploy sophisticated booby traps, tactical body armor, weapons systems and more? Certainly not in graduate school!
All this leads to an obvious third party influence over all this. Someone else taught this guy these skills and funded the acquisition of the equipment.
Note: Some readers have questioned the $20,000 figure estimated here, saying this gear could have been acquired for only $10,000 or so. I doubt that, as all the extras that you need to effectively run these guns cost a lot of money: training courses, spare magazines, etc. Just a decent AR-15 battle sight (a holographic red dot sight) can run $1,000 – $2,000. Search “ACOG” if you don’t believe me. It is also reported that Holmes bought 6,000 rounds of ammo, which definitely isn’t cheap either. It’s clear this guy was spending big bucks. Whether it’s $10k or $20k isn’t really that much of a point.
Staged just in time for a vote on the UN small arms treaty?
More and more, this shooting is looking like a deliberate plot staged by the government itself much like Operation Fast and Furious pulled off by the ATF (http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html) which helped smuggle tens of thousands of guns into Mexico for the purpose of causing “gun violence” in the USA, then blaming the Second Amendment for it.
All this looks like James Holmes completed a “mission” and then calmly ended that mission by surrendering to police and admitting everything. The mission, as we are now learning, was to cause as much terror and mayhem as possible, then to have that multiplied by the national media at exactly the right time leading up the UN vote next week on a global small arms treaty that could result in gun confiscation across America. (http://lewrockwell.com/eddlem/eddlem61.1.html)
Even Forbes.com wrote about this quite extensively, warning readers about the coming gun confiscation effort related to the UN treaty. The story was authored by Larry Bell (http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/06/07/u-n-agreement-should…) and says the UN treaty could “override our national sovereignty, and in the process, provide license for the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights.”
In other words, this has all the signs of Fast & Furious, Episode II. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover someone in Washington was behind it all. After all, there’s no quicker way to disarm a nation and take total control over the population than to stage violence, blame it on firearms, then call for leaders to “do something!” Such calls inevitably end up resulting in gun confiscation, and it’s never too long after that before government genocide really kicks in like we saw with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and other tyrants.
Governments routinely murder millions
Here’s a short list of government mass murder carried out throughout history, almost always immediately following the disarmament of the public (and usually involving staged false flag events to justify the disarmament):
50+ million dead: Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50)
12+ million dead: Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) – concentration camps, civilian deaths and dead Russian POWs
8+ million dead: Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908)
6+ million dead: Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39)
5+ million dead: Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44)
2+ million dead: Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-22)
1.7 million dead: Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)
1.6 million dead: Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94)
1.5 million dead: Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78)
1 million dead: Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970)
900,000 dead: Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982)
800,000 dead: Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994)
See more at:
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html
Death by government:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP1.HTM
http://www.infowars.com/democide-government-killed-over-260-million-i…
A “monopoly of force” in government is far more dangerous than a crazed lone shooter
So yes, James Holmes and other crazed shooters kill a number of people each year in random acts of violence. It’s horrifying and wrong, but it’s nothing compared to the millions of lives that governments tend to destroy when they gain total power over the populace.
The most dangerous thing in the world, it turns out, is not a crazy person with a rifle; it’s a government with a “monopoly of force” over the entire population. And that’s exactly what the UN spells out as its goal for the world: Stripping all power from individual citizens and handing “monopolies of force” to the governments of the world, shoring up their positions as the only “legitimate” power on the planet.
See this document entitled, “Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF)” policy paper No. 24:
http://www.naturalnews.com/files/Revisiting-the-State-Monopoly-on-the…
As this document reveals, a table entitled “Governance solutions for reasserting the state monopoly on the use of force” lists the options available to governments to re-establish “monopolies of force” against their own people:
• (Re-)establish state monopoly
– Ownership of WMDs
– Safety Inspectorates
• Prohibit business activity
– Justice and Execution
– Deadly Force?
• Regulate/limit activities
– Private defense/security services
– Control of financial transfers
– Export controls
– Transport and infrastructure safety
– Environmental impact
Interestingly, that document also describes “terrorism” in a way that perfectly matches the Aurora, Colorado “Batman” movie theater shooter:
Terrorists aim to spread panic and fear in societies in order to achieve political goals, be they based on left- or right-wing, social-revolutionary, nationalistic or religious ideologies. They are organized in a clandestine way, most often in small groups and cells… Typical tactical means include kidnapping, hostage-taking, sabotage, murder, suicide attacks, vehicle bombs and improvised explosive devices.
A global monopoly of force
This document is a goldmine of information about the globalist agenda to disarm and enslave the population. Check out page 28, which reads:
The legitimate monopoly of force should not be limited to the nation-state but should be based on the local, national, regional and the global levels.
Global Security Governance and the Monopoly of Force
At the global level no monopoly of violence exists. The UN Security Council already has a monopoly power to authorize the use of force at the global level, although the UN was never given the necessary means to exercise this authority, such as the capacity to implement sanctions, a police force and armed forces…
This deficiency in global governance acts as a bottleneck and a barrier to the creation of the democratically legitimized monopoly of violence that is globally required.
This story gets deep, doesn’t it? Watch for more analysis here at NaturalNews.com, where we still fight for liberty and justice in a world that’s increasingly becoming enslaved.
UPDATE: Follow-up story now posted that asks the question: Why did not one fight back?
That story is available now at NaturalNews.com:
http://www.naturalnews.com/036537_James_Holmes_Batman_shooting.html
Video added: Answers to many questions raised by readers of this story
View it on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUCsNzzwCeY
SOURCE: NaturalNews.com
Undercover Reporter Infiltrates Security Firm to Expose London Olympics
Highlights: Foreign troops drafted in; drug deals in training classroom; ineffective screening processes and detection technology; photographs of sensitive mock-up screening areas taken by un-screened trainees; 200k ‘casket linings’ delivered; uniforms being stolen; plan for an evacuation of London; drones on-line (incl. armed); poor standard of security recruits — cant speak English.
Exclusive interview with investigative journalist Lee Hazledean who is training undercover as a security guard for the London olympics with private security firm G4S. Lee is a filmmaker and investigative TV journalist. He has also been involved in major stories on the IRA and how British Army infiltrated the organisation and carried out false flag operations. He has managed to get undercover as part of the security team at the 2012 Olympics with G4S. He has found there is a media black out on all major news outlets to do with the Olympics unless the story is broken in a news paper or foreign news agency it’s unlikely to see the light of day. Security training and officers are so appaling that the safety and security of the London 2012 Olympics are in jeopardy.
A few example’s: During an exercise he was asked to pose as a would-be terrorist and managed to get knives, guns and IED’s through security screening on every occasion and every exercise. The X-Ray operators have only two days of training, they aren’t trained properly and miss the most obvious prohibited items gun’s, knives, IED’s, ammunition etc. Bag and physical searchers again are missing dangerous weapons, trainees can’t use vital security equipment like the HHMD (Hand Held Metal detectors) they can’t even communicate properly with the public on a basic level. Worryingly the ‘Rapiscan’ walk through metal detectors don’t work properly and aren’t sensitive enough to pick up large knives, ammunition and other metallic threats. He was told that they would be set to go off only after 50 people have walked through to limit queuing time and to get spectators into the venue. So a Terrorist if they basically queued up would probably get through wearing a suicide vest. In classes there are drug deals going down, people can’t speak any English. People who haven’t even completed their SIA licenses yet are being picked to be Team Leaders over highly trained security officers, ex soldiers and ex police. Lee is concerned that weapons or worse will be getting into the games. However, what’s more disturbing is that uniforms are already going missing or being stolen. The training facility is an accurate mock-up of the actual security measures at the Olympic venues. Lee has witnessed several people taking photos on their mobile phones in the training facility and whilst they have been a few people caught by trainers most aren’t noticed. We know that terrorists take surveillance photos to gain intelligence. Contemporary International claim that they have mobile phone ‘jammers’ in the facility, however trainers admitted to Lee that there were no ‘jammers’ at all, it was a verbal deterrent.
Also there are plans for the evacuation of London, G4S are going to be at the forefront, as well as 100,000 troops coming in via Woolwich barracks made up of regular British Forces, American regular army and European troops. Lee was not told why there would be any need for an evacuation of the whole of London, they just said it was to be a “defining moment in the history of London”. This could just be a precaution but the public should be made aware of the foreign invasion which is taking place right now. The troops are being held across London in various barracks once they’ve been through Woolwich. Lee also had this information confirmed by an army doctor who was shocked at all the foreign troops coming into London. There is also a shipment of what are being described as casket linings, each casket can hold four or five people and 200,000 casket linings have been delivered we believe from America. Also we were shown videos of drones attacking targets in Afghanistan and were told that drones will be patrolling the sky’s over London during the Olympics carrying out surveillance and search and destroy missions if necessary.
London 2012 Olympics: ‘Missiles Left Unguarded’ Outside East London Flats:-
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9243658/London-201…
London 2012 Olympics: Public Given Access to Blackheath Anti-aircraft Missile Launcher:-
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9254072/London-2012-Olympics-p…
The Link Between Olympics’ Security and FEMA Concentration Camps:-
www.luikkerland.com/the-cockaigne-times/2012/06/07/the-link-between-ol…
Source:-
bcfm.org.uk/2012/06/22/17/friday-drivetime-76/18658
Monsanto Thugs Likely Behind Bee Poisonings In Australia
Beehives poisoned
Beekeepers on the south coast have lost up to a thousand hives in a series of poison attacks.
South coast beekeepers are reeling from the senseless destruction of hundreds of hives across the region yesterday.
A toxic poison was sprayed into over 740 honey producing hives in the Batemans Bay area, decimating the local industry.
Police say the attacks on the region’s biggest producers caused an estimated $150,000 damage, but local producers say the poison will continue to destroy hives over coming weeks.
Beekeepers on the NSW south coast lost about 750 hives after bees were poisoned. Owner of Australian Rainforest Honey, Steve Roberts, lost about 230 hives, south of Pebbly Beach. Photo: Graham TidyOne of the hardest hit was south coast producer Australian Rainforest Honey.
The company had 240 hives poisoned at its two sites on the south coast, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage.
One of the company’s directors, Stephen Roberts, was at his site just south of Pebbly Beach today, sifting through piles of dead bees and attempting to save those that hadn’t been lost.
Owner of Australian Rainforest Honey, Steve Roberts, at left, with employee, Adlei Baldo, south of Pebbly Beach.Mr Roberts says the poisoning was a senseless, inexplicable act, and is working with rural police and the NSW Department of Primary Industries to catch those responsible.
Mr Roberts bees are also used to pollinate almonds, and the attacks may have a secondary impact on that industry.
The attacks appear targeted, with the offenders poisoning a series of hidden, remote bushland sites, some up to 40km apart.
“It’s not right, it’s just not right,” Mr Roberts said.
“We’ll have to start up the hives from scratch again, and it’ll be well over $100,000,” he said.
Investigators from the Department of Primary Industries were at the hives today taking samples of the poison, but a spokeswoman said it would take a number of days to determine an exact cause of death.
The beekeeping business is highly competitive and has been described as cutthroat, but there is no indication that any rival honey producer was responsible.
But while authorities try and track down the culprits, there’s little left for Australian Rainforest Honey to do but mop up and start all over again.
“We’re just lucky that we’ve got a few more loads of bees than others have,” Mr Roberts said.
“We’ll feel it, we’ll definitely feel it, but what can you do?”
Anyone with information should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Read more: CanberraTimes.com
See Also:
Vanishing of the Bees – Beekeeper Leaks EPA Document
Sex, Technology, and its Harm To Children
Information technology, among all that it does, brings together two things which are wonderful when apart, and frightening when combined: children, and sex. For the past couple decades, this has, understandably, freaked us all out. We need to calm down and have a talk about it.
In his defense of freedom of “icky speech”, Neil Gaiman observed, “The Law is a blunt instrument. It’s not a scalpel. It’s a club.” This exemplifies how much of the world has reacted to the intersection of technology, sex, and children: by wildly flailing around with a gigantic legal club, more often smashing itself in the head than solving any problems. Let’s explore how:
Kids Looking At Pornography
The Internet is really, really great for porn. Porn is so easy to find online that even a child could do it. The problem, so it would seem, is that this is exactly what children end up doing. And as they approach and go through puberty, boy oh boy do they find porn.
Such porn-finding is unstoppable. Nobody ever clicks “No, I am not 18 years of age or older” when visiting a porn site. No web filtering software can stand up to the resourcefulness of a curious and hormonal teenager. No law will convince a maturing human being not to seek out sexually explicit material. The underage psyche interprets barriers to pornography as damage, and routes around it.
For some reason, this is seen as a bad thing. Exposure to graphic depictions of sex are considered somehow harmful to children, teenagers, and anyone below the arbitrary age of 18, 21, or whatever. But as generations of kids raised on surreptitiously-accessed Internet porn grow older, little evidence of harm shows itself. Rampant porn-viewing hasn’t been shown to increase rates of sexual assault or sexual violence; in fact increasing availability of porn has correlated with a decline in rape. On that note, what pornography may also do is aid in young people’s exploration and discovery of their own sexualities as they mature — a hypothesis which, if true, isn’t particularly malignant.
Yet, we insist on criminalizing this perfectly normal behavior by sexually developing human beings. In many cases, this illegality concerns the willful distribution of pornography to a minor — giving the pornographer, not the minor, the blame. But here’s the thing: nobody has to distribute or market pornography to a minor. They’ll find it all by themselves.
Kids Willfully Creating “Pornography”
It starts to get a bit more problematic when that exploration goes beyond passive viewing; apparently, kids these days are into something called “sexting”. At its most innocuous, a child or teenager snaps a nude or sexually explicit photo of themselves, and sends it (often via MMS) to a friend, crush, or significant other. All of a sudden, through their own free will, the kid’s become a child pornographer.
Of course, this behavior is far from unique to minors. Information technology has enabled consenting adults from all walks of life to share sexually explicit imagery of themselves with one another. MMSes and emails between friends aren’t even the half of it. Webcams and video chat software weren’t on the scene for five minutes before somebody realized that they could be used to transmit their genitalia. There are sexually explicit social networks and YouTube-clones where people can expose themselves to millions of anonymous viewers. There’s even a fusion of these two in live video broadcasting websites which permit people to stream real-time images of themselves doing scandalous things without very much clothing on. As with all sexually-charged things that consenting adults do, sometimes minors decide to give it a try themselves.
Child pornography laws are meant to prevent the abuse of minors. When minors decide, by their own volition, to take nude or sexually explicit images of themselves and share them with loved ones, friends, or even anonymous acquaintances, it’s hard to describe how that could possibly constitute abuse. Sadly, because of the law, all parties involved end up liable for the heinous crime of child pornography: both the recipient, regardless of age, and the exhibiting minor.
Laws intended to protect children from sexual abuse now have the effect of criminalizing behavior that — in the context of our contemporary world — is perfectly reasonable for a pubescent minor to engage in. It’s not really that weird, strange, or appalling that sexually-developing young people might want to show off their bodies to their fellow sexually-developing young people; the only weird part is this new medium of exhibition they’re using. Before the Internet and cellphones, kids just took off their clothes for each other in person.
Much like with physical, flesh-and-blood sexual intimacy, educating children about why they shouldn’t make themselves into porn stars isn’t going to work; they’ll still desire to, and they’ll still do it. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. The sanest course of action is to educate them about responsibility: “use a condom” is to real sex as “don’t send pictures of your boyfriend’s dick to all of your other friends” is to explicit image sharing. But the reason for that advice should be basic common sense and human decency, not because doing so will force you to register as a sex offender at age 14.
Actual Child Pornography and Pedophilia
What about the actual abuse from which children need to be protected? The sexual abuse of children — or anyone, for that matter — is rightfully illegal, and absolutely reprehensible. But in our zeal to destroy reprehensible things, most societies have gone further, and made it illegal to access or possess images of this abhorrent abuse. Unfortunately, the uncomfortable truth is that banning the possession of child pornography doesn’t do any good.
First of all, child pornography is a wonderful scapegoat. Copyright lobbyists regularly use child porn to incite moral panic, and make their proposals to censor the Internet more palatable. And much like these “piracy-stopping” censorship schemes, child pornography bans don’t stop the sexual abuse of children involved.
Before the Internet, child pornography was distributed secretly among close-knit networks of pedophiles. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the recipient of child porn might be no more than two or three degrees of separation from its creator — the actual person who had committed the sexual abuse. Today, a single child rapist can anonymously distribute their “work” to thousands of people with a single click of a mouse. The downloaders often have absolutely no idea who the perpetrator was; their arrests solve nothing.
Furthermore, there is no conclusive evidence that viewers of child pornography are more likely to act on their fetishes and commit sexual abuse of a child. In fact, based on the aforementioned “porn lowers rape rates” study, one could reasonably hypothesize that the exact opposite is true.
The criminalization of viewing or possessing child pornography only serves to get “revenge” on people who are interested in it. It does not lead to the imprisonment of child rapists, it does not give justice to the victims, and it does not stop potential pedophiles from acting on their urges.
What would, in fact, stop potential pedophiles from acting on their urges is mental health treatment. If at all possible, societies should not view sexual diversity or fetishism as a mental illness; it’s not a particularly harmful thing if somebody is sexually aroused by, oh, let’s say, being hit in the face with a pie. Sexual attraction to children, on the other hand, isn’t something that can be reasonably accommodated — hence, a mental health problem.
But much as the criminalization (and resulting stigmatization) of drug use makes addicts afraid to seek treatment, people suffering with pedophilia fear the consequences of getting help. In researching this article, I got an anonymous source to put it in his own words for me:
When I was 17 I looked at a lot of porn, just like anyone my age. I was curious about it all. I didn’t even know I was gay until I got curious about gay porn. So I looked at all the varieties, twinks, jocks, black guys, Asian guys, groups, all of it. Weirder stuff too like bondage, BDSM, some of it I liked for a while, some of it I never went back to. Then I started looking at kids. I was curious, and a horny teenager, so it wasn’t like it was that creepy. But every time after, I felt horrible. I could see how scared those kids were in the pics but I didn’t stop. I told myself, it’s just because I’m young, I’ll grow out of it, but I’m 20 now and still can’t stop myself sometimes. I wouldn’t ever go and do it for real, I know that. I like guys my own age and older, so it’s not like I can only get off to kids. But I still hate myself for it. But if I go out and tell someone I need help, the feds might come and knock down my door. So I don’t know what to do.
This is the sort of person who needs a therapist’s couch, not a prison cell. But our irrational rage at all things pedophilic deny this man his health, his sanity, and his right to be a productive member of society. He’s not alone, he’s just the one brave enough to break the silence.
Conclusion
The intersection of sexuality and children is understandably frightening. It’s a very primal instinct to want to protect children, and sex — as something that many full-grown adults still haven’t fully come to terms with — seems threatening with its emotional complexity, and its potential for abuse. The Internet and other information technology make it easier for everyone to encounter all types of information, and consequently, for children to encounter sex. But there are two things we must remember:
- Sex is perfectly fine, and something that children need education of, not protection from.
- Sexual abuse is not perfectly fine, and is its own distinct concern.
If we truly care about protecting children from sexual abuse, then it behooves us to do it effectively. Knee-jerk reactions, moral panics, and emotion-based policymaking do not protect our children. Ineffective laws only serve to make politicians and civil servants look like they’re doing something, in a ploy to win public support. And that is almost as disgusting as abusing a child.
14 Incredibly Creepy Surveillance Technologies That Big Brother Will Be Using To Spy On You
Most of us don’t think much about it, but the truth is that people are being watched, tracked and monitored more today than at any other time in human history. The explosive growth of technology in recent years has given governments, spy agencies and big corporations monitoring tools that the despots and dictators of the past could only dream of.
Previous generations never had to deal with “pre-crime” surveillance cameras that use body language to spot criminals or unmanned drones watching them from far above. Previous generations would have never even dreamed that street lights and refrigerators might be spying on them. Many of the incredibly creepy surveillance technologies that you are about to read about are likely to absolutely astound you. We are rapidly heading toward a world where there will be no such thing as privacy anymore. Big Brother is becoming all-pervasive, and thousands of new technologies are currently being developed that will make it even easier to spy on you. The world is changing at a breathtaking pace, and a lot of the changes are definitely not for the better.
The following are 14 incredibly creepy surveillance technologies that Big Brother will be using to watch you….
#1 “Pre-Crime” Surveillance Cameras
A company known as BRS Labs has developed “pre-crime” surveillance cameras that can supposedly determine if you are a terrorist or a criminal even before you commit a crime.
Does that sound insane?
Well, authorities are taking this technology quite seriously. In fact, dozens of these cameras are being installed at major transportation hubs in San Francisco….
In its latest project BRS Labs is to install its devices on the transport system in San Francisco, which includes buses, trams and subways.
The company says will put them in 12 stations with up to 22 cameras in each, bringing the total number to 288.
The cameras will be able to track up to 150 people at a time in real time and will gradually build up a ‘memory’ of suspicious behaviour to work out what is suspicious.
#2 Capturing Fingerprints From 20 Feet Away
Can you imagine someone reading your fingerprints from 20 feet away without you ever knowing it?
This kind of technology is actually already here according to POPSCI….
Gaining access to your gym or office building could soon be as simple as waving a hand at the front door. A Hunsville, Ala.-based company called IDair is developing a system that can scan and identify a fingerprint from nearly 20 feet away. Coupled with other biometrics, it could soon allow security systems to grant or deny access from a distance, without requiring users to stop and scan a fingerprint, swipe an ID card, or otherwise lose a moment dealing with technology.
Currently IDair’s primary customer is the military, but the startup wants to open up commercially to any business or enterprise that wants to put a layer of security between its facilities and the larger world. A gym chain is already beta testing the system (no more using your roommate’s gym ID to get in a free workout), and IDair’s founder says that at some point his technology could enable purchases to be made biometrically, using fingerprints and irises as unique identifiers rather than credit card numbers and data embedded in magnetic strips or RFID chips.
#3 Mobile Backscatter Vans
Police all over America will soon be driving around in unmarked vans looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same “pornoscanner” technology currently being utilized by the TSA at U.S. airports….
American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering’s Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call “the amazing radioactive genital viewer,” now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).
These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America’s streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don’t worry, it’s not a violation of privacy. As AS&E’s vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be.”
You can see a YouTube video presentation about this new technology right here.
#4 Hijacking Your Mind
The U.S. military literally wants to be able to hijack your mind. The theory is that this would enable U.S. forces to non-violently convince terrorists not to be terrorists anymore. But obviously the potential for abuse with this kind of technology is extraordinary. The following is from a recent article by Dick Pelletier….
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to understand the science behind what makes people violent, and then find ways to hijack their minds by implanting false, but believable stories in their brains, with hopes of evoking peaceful thoughts: We’re friends, not enemies.
Critics say this raises ethical issues such as those addressed in the 1971 sci-fi movie, A Clockwork Orange, which attempted to change people’s minds so that they didn’t want to kill anymore.
Advocates, however, believe that placing new plausible narratives directly into the minds of radicals, insurgents, and terrorists, could transform enemies into kinder, gentler citizens, craving friendship.
Scientists have known for some time that narratives; an account of a sequence of events that are usually in chronological order; hold powerful sway over the human mind, shaping a person’s notion of groups and identities; even inspiring them to commit violence. See DARPA proposal request HERE.
#5 Unmanned Drones In U.S. Airspace
Law enforcement agencies all over the United States are starting to use unmanned drones to spy on us, and the Department of Homeland Security is aggressively seeking to expand the use of such drones by local authorities….
The Department of Homeland Security has launched a program to “facilitate and accelerate the adoption” of small, unmanned drones by police and other public safety agencies, an effort that an agency official admitted faces “a very big hurdle having to do with privacy.”
The $4 million Air-based Technologies Program, which will test and evaluate small, unmanned aircraft systems, is designed to be a “middleman” between drone manufacturers and first-responder agencies “before they jump into the pool,” said John Appleby, a manager in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s division of borders and maritime security.
The fact that very few Americans seem concerned about this development says a lot about where we are as a nation. The EPA is already using drones to spy on cattle ranchers in Nebraska and Iowa. Will we eventually get to a point where we all just consider it to be “normal” to have surveillance drones flying above our heads constantly?
#6 Law Enforcement Using Your Own Cell Phone To Spy On You
Although this is not new technology, law enforcement authorities are using our own cell phones to spy on us more extensively than ever before as a recent Wired article described….
Mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data, according to data provided to Congress.
A single “request” can involve information about hundreds of customers. So ultimately the number of Americans affected by this could reach into “the tens of millions” each year….
The number of Americans affected each year by the growing use of mobile phone data by law enforcement could reach into the tens of millions, as a single request could ensnare dozens or even hundreds of people. Law enforcement has been asking for so-called “cell tower dumps” in which carriers disclose all phone numbers that connected to a given tower during a certain period of time.
So, for instance, if police wanted to try to find a person who broke a store window at an Occupy protest, it could get the phone numbers and identifying data of all protestors with mobile phones in the vicinity at the time — and use that data for other purposes.
Perhaps you should not be using your cell phone so much anyway. After all, there are more than 500 studies that show that cell phone radiation is harmful to humans.
#7 Biometric Databases
All over the globe, governments are developing massive biometric databases of their citizens. Just check out what is going on in India….
In the last two years, over 200 million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should identify them everywhere and to everyone.
This is only the beginning, and the goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and opening bank and other accounts.
This immense task needs a database that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an extremely short time.
#8 RFID Microchips
In a previous article, I detailed how the U.S. military is seeking to develop technology that would enable it to monitor the health of our soldiers and improve their performance in battle using RFID microchips.
Most Americans don’t realize this, but RFID microchips are steadily becoming part of the very fabric of our lives. Many of your credit cards and debit cards contain them. Many Americans use security cards that contain RFID microchips at work. In some parts of the country it is now mandatory to inject an RFID microchip into your pet.
Now, one school system down in Texas actually plans to start using RFID microchips to track the movements of their students….
Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.
District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.
#9 Automated License Plate Readers
In a previous article, I quoted a Washington Post piece that talked about how automated license plate readers are being used to track the movements of a vehicle from the time that it enters Washington D.C. to the time that it leaves….
More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.
With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.
#10 Face Reading Software
Can computers tell what you are thinking just by looking at your face?
Don’t laugh.
Such technology is actually being actively developed. The following is from a recent NewScientist article….
IF THE computers we stare at all day could read our faces, they would probably know us better than anyone.
That vision may not be so far off. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab are developing software that can read the feelings behind facial expressions. In some cases, the computers outperform people. The software could lead to empathetic devices and is being used to evaluate and develop better adverts.
#11 Data Mining
The government is not the only one that is spying on you. The truth is that a whole host of very large corporations are gathering every shred of information about you that they possibly can and selling that information for profit. It is called “data mining“, and it is an industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years.
One very large corporation known as Acxiom actually compiles information on more than 190 million people in the U.S. alone….
The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data ‘transactions’ a year.
#12 Street Lights Spying On Us?
Did you ever consider that street lights could be spying on you?
Well, it is actually happening. New high tech street lights that can actually watch what you do and listen to what you are saying are being installed in some major U.S. cities. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com….
Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.
#13 Automated ISP Monitoring Of Your Internet Activity
As I have written about before, nothing you do on the Internet is private. However, Internet Service Providers and the entertainment industry are now taking Internet monitoring to a whole new level….
If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.
Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.
That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.
Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration.
Spying On Us Through Our Appliances
Could the government one day use your refrigerator to spy on you?
Don’t laugh.
That is exactly what CIA Director David Petraeus says is coming….
Petraeus says that web-connected gadgets will ‘transform’ the art of spying – allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party.
‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,’ said Petraeus.
‘Particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.’
Petraeus was speaking to a venture capital firm about new technologies which aim to add processors and web connections to previously ‘dumb’ home appliances such as fridges, ovens and lighting systems.
For many more ways that Big Brother is spying on you, please see these articles….
“Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make – 14 New Ways That The Government Is Watching You”
“30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison”
The things that I have written about above are just the things that they admit to.
There are also many “black box technologies” being developed out there that the public does not even know about yet.
So how far will all of this go?
Has Big Brother already gone way too far?
Please feel free to post a comment with your opinion below….
Source: The American Dream
Inside Israel’s Secret Wars: Mossad’s Elite “Kidon Killers”
A new book reveals that a department known as Kidon within the Mossad has dispatched assassins into Iran in order to murder the nuclear scientists, thereby stunting the country’s nuclear energy program.
Authors Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman in their book Spies against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars state that the notorious spy agency has killed at least four Iranian nuclear scientists, including targeting them with operatives on motorcycles, an assassination technique used by the elite killers at Kidon.
The Kidon killers “excel at accurate shooting at any speed and staying steady to shoot and to place exquisitely shaped sticky bombs” and consider it their hallmark.
Kidon, known to be one of the world’s most efficient killing machines, is technically described as a little Mossad within Mossad.
Tasked with carrying out covert ops across the world, Kidon has embarked on a number of black ops and assassinations in different countries.
Those who kill for Kidon are selected either from within the Mossad spy agency or from among the natives of the countries where they plan to carry out assassinations.
For instance, in case of the nuclear assassinations conducted in Iran by Kidon, they basically hired people with Iranian or dual nationalities. One of the Mossad assassins was Majid Jamali Fashi who confessed he had cooperated with Mossad for financial reasons only.
Majid Jamali Fashi assassinated Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, a professor at Tehran University in January 2011 by blowing an explosive-laden motorbike via a remote-controlled device. He reportedly received training from Mossad inside Israel as well as $120,000 to assassinate the Iranian scientist. According to his confession, Jamali Fashi received forged documents in Azerbaijan’s Heydar Aliyev Airport to travel to Tel Aviv.
He confessed, “I woke up early in the morning and as we were trained I went to the warehouse. I had to prepare the box which contained the bomb. I took the motorbike out of the house and reached a location that I had to contact them. I went to the alley [where the professor resided]. It was vacant. No one was there. I brought the bike to the sidewalk and parked it in front of the house. They told me that the mission had been accomplished and that I had to discard my stuff.”
Jamali Fashi was executed under the Iranian judicial system on 15 May, 2012. Parenthetically, Azerbaijan has in recent years become an apparent haven for Mossad spies and assassins.
Another Mossad operative of Iranian nationality has been identified as Ja’far Khoshzaban, alias Javidan, who has been working under the auspices of Azeri security forces and who has been involved in nuclear assassinations. Iranian intelligence ministry has demanded the extradition of Mossad’s Iranian spy from Azerbaijan. Iran has reportedly obtained documents, suggesting that Azeri officials have aided and abetted Mossad and CIA agents in their targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists, namely Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. As a matter of fact, CIA is constantly mentioned along with Mossad as the main elements in the nuclear assassinations.
Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated on January 11, 2012 when an unknown motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car near a college building of Allameh Tabatabaei University in northern Tehran.
Using the same ‘sticking bomb technique’, the Kidon assassins attached bombs to the vehicles of Iranian university professors Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi and detonated the explosives on November 29, 2010. Professor Shahriari was killed immediately, but Dr. Abbasi and his wife only sustained minor injuries.
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men: 1. Tracer 2. Transporter 3. Helper 4. Killer. The tracer spots the target. The transporter guides the assassination team to the target. The helper basically serves as the motorcycle driver who helps the killer and the killer is tasked with shooting the target or attaching magnetic bomb to the car of the victim.
According to the book Spies against Armageddon, the Kidon agents are well-trained in shooting and placing “exquisitely shaped sticky bombs” and consider it their hallmark.
These facts aside, it rather seems sort of naïve to disregard the role of the CIA-backed MKO terrorists in the nuclear assassinations and give all the credit to the Kidon agents. There is solid evidence which evinces the MKO role in the assassination of the Iranian scientists.
American commentator Richard Silverstein believes that the primary source of income for the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) comes from the assassinations the group conducts within the Iranian soil at the behest of the Mossad. He argues that “If you’re a terrorist on behalf of Israel, as MKO is, then you’re kosher as far as (US-based Israeli publicist) Dershowitz is concerned. And your money is golden. Where does the money come from? Possibly from the Iran assassinations the MKO performs on Mossad’s behalf, which undoubtedly pay well. Then there’s the possibility that the USD 400-million Bush allocated for destabilizing Iran in 2007 has found its way either to the MKO or Mossad (or both)”
More to the point, the CIA works in the same satanic league with the Mossad and MKO. Time and again, the officials in Washington have encouraged and even confessed to the killings of the Iranian nuclear scientists.
Former US senator Rick Santorum callously described the assassination of Iranian scientists as “wonderful,” threatening that those who work for Iran’s nuclear program “are not safe.”
“On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that’s a wonderful thing, candidly.”
He also said, “I think we should send a very clear message that if you are a scientist from Russia, North Korea, or from Iran and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a bomb for Iran, you are not safe.”
Also, former Bush administration ambassador to the UN John Bolton said on Fox News that the killing of an Iranian scientist and sanctions against Iran constitute only “half-measures in the quest to stunt Iran’s nuclear ambitions”.
Former White House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called for covert action, including “taking out their scientists” and cyberwarfare.
Quotations of this nature are legion and all these facts reinforce the idea that Washington has been making clandestine efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear energy program in cahoots with Tel Aviv and their lackey, i.e the MKO.
Ismail Salami is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ismail Salami
Encryption Becomes Illegal In the UK: Jail Time For Failure To Provide Keys
There was some surprise in the comments of yesterday’s post over the fact that the United Kingdom has effectively outlawed encryption: the UK will send its citizens to jail for up to five years if they cannot produce the key to an encrypted data set.
First of all, references – the law is here. You will be sent to jail for refusing to give up encryption keys, regardless of whether you have them or not. Five years of jail if it’s a terrorism investigation (or child porn, apparently), two years otherwise. It’s fascinating – there are four excuses that keep coming back for every single dismantling of democracy. It’s terrorism, child porn, file sharing, and organized crime. You cannot fight these by dismantling civil liberties – they’re just used as convenient excuses.
We knew that this was the next step in the cat-and-mouse game over privacy, right? It starts with the government believing they have a right to interfere into any one of your seven privacies if they want to and find it practical. The next step, of course, is that the citizens protect themselves from snooping – at which point some bureaucrat will confuse the government’s ability to snoop on citizen’s lives for a right to snoop on citizen’s lives at any time, and create harsh punishments for any citizens who try to keep a shred of their privacy. This is not a remotely dystopic scenario; as we see, it has already happened in the UK.
But it’s worse than that. Much worse. You’re not going to be sent to jail for refusal to give up encryption keys. You’re going to be sent to jail for an inability to unlock something that the police think is encrypted. Yes, this is where the hairs rise on our arms: if you have a recorded file with radio noise from the local telescope that you use for generation of random numbers, and the police asks you to produce the decryption key to show them the three documents inside the encrypted container that your radio noise looks like, you will be sent to jail for up to five years for your inability to produce the imagined documents.
But wait – it gets worse still.
The next step in the cat-and-mouse game over privacy is to use steganographic methods to hide the fact that something is encrypted at all. You can easily hide long messages in high-resolution photos today, just to take one example: they will not appear to contain an encrypted message in the first place, but will just look like a regular photo until decoded and decrypted with the proper key. But of course, the government and police are aware of steganographic methods, and know that pretty much any innocent-looking dataset can be used as a container for encrypted data.
So imagine your reaction when the police confiscate your entire collection of vacation photos, claim that your vacation photos contain hidden encrypted messages (which they don’t), and sends you off to jail for five years for being unable to supply the decryption key?
This is not some dystopic pipe dream: this law already exists in the United Kingdom.
Soul Rape: New Scanners Will Instantly Know Everything About You From 50m Away
Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.
And without you knowing it.
The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded “in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress.” According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.
Their plan is to install this molecular-level scanning in airports and border crossings all across the United States. The official, stated goal of this arrangement is to be able to quickly identify explosives, dangerous chemicals, or bioweapons at a distance.
The machine is ten million times faster—and one million times more sensitive—than any currently available system. That means that it can be used systematically on everyone passing through airport security, not just suspect or randomly sampled people.
Analyzing everything in real time
But the machine can sniff out a lot more than just explosives, chemicals and bioweapons. The company that invented it, Genia Photonics, says that its laser scanner technology is able to “penetrate clothing and many other organic materials and offers spectroscopic information, especially for materials that impact safety such as explosives and pharmacological substances.” [PDF]
Formed in Montreal in 2009 by PhDs with specialties in lasers and fiber optics, Genia Photonics has 30 patents on this technology, claiming incredible biomedical and industrial applications—from identifying individual cancer cells in a real-time scan of a patient, to detecting trace amounts of harmful chemicals in sensitive manufacturing processes.
Above: The Genia Photonics’ Picosecond Programmable Laser scanner is capable of detecting every tiny trace of any substance on your body, from specks of gunpowder to your adrenaline levels to a sugar-sized grain of cannabis to what you had for breakfast.
Meanwhile, In-Q-Tel states that “an important benefit of Genia Photonics’ implementation as compared to existing solutions is that the entire synchronized laser system is comprised in a single, robust and alignment-free unit that may be easily transported for use in many environments… This compact and robust laser has the ability to rapidly sweep wavelengths in any pattern and sequence.” [PDF]
So not only can they scan everyone. They would be able to do it everywhere: the subway, a traffic light, sports events… everywhere.
How does it work?
The machine is a mobile, rack-mountable system. It fires a laser to provide molecular-level feedback at distances of up to 50 meters in just picoseconds. For all intents and purposes, that means instantly.
The small, inconspicuous machine is attached to a computer running a program that will show the information in real time, from trace amounts of cocaine on your dollar bills to gunpowder residue on your shoes. Forget trying to sneak a bottle of water past security—they will be able to tell what you had for breakfast in an instant while you’re walking down the hallway.
The technology is not new, it’s just millions times faster and more convenient than ever before. Back in 2008, a team at George Washington University developed a similar laser spectrometer using a different process. It could sense drug metabolites in urine in less than a second, trace amounts of explosive residue on a dollar bill, and even certain chemical changes happening in a plant leaf.
And the Russians also have a similar technology: announced last April, their “laser sensor can pick up on a single molecule in a million from up to 50 meters away.”
So if Genia Photonics’ claims pan out, this will be an incredible leap forward in terms of speed, portability, and convenience. One with staggering implications.
Observation without limits
There has so far been no discussion about the personal rights and privacy issues involved. Which “molecular tags” will they be scanning for? Who determines them? What are the threshold levels of this scanning? If you unknowingly stepped on the butt of someone’s joint and are carrying a sugar-sized grain of cannabis like that unfortunate traveler currently in jail in Dubai, will you be arrested?
And, since it’s extremely portable, will this technology extend beyone the airport or border crossings and into police cars, with officers looking for people on the street with increased levels of adrenaline in their system to detain in order to prevent potential violent outbursts? And will your car be scanned at stoplights for any trace amounts of suspicious substances? Would all this information be recorded anywhere?
Above: A page from a Genia Photonics paper describing its ability to even penetrate through clothing.
There are a lot of questions with no answer yet, but it’s obvious that the potential level of personal invasion of this technology goes far beyond that of body scans, wiretaps, and GPS tracking.
The end of privacy coming soon
According to the undersecretary for science and technology of the Department of Homeland Security, this scanning technology will be ready within one to two years, which means you might start seeing them in airports as soon as 2013.
In other words, these portable, incredibly precise molecular-level scanning devices will be cascading lasers across your body as you walk from the bathroom to the soda machine at the airport and instantly reporting and storing a detailed breakdown of your person, in search of certain “molecular tags”.
Going well beyond eavesdropping, it seems quite possible that U.S. government plans on recording molecular data on travelers without their consent, or even knowledge that it’s possible—a scary thought. While the medical uses could revolutionize the way doctors diagnose illness, and any technology that could replace an aggressive pat-down is tempting, there’s a potential dark side to this implementation, and we need to shine some light on it before it’s implemented.
The author of this story is currently completing his PhD in renewable energy solutions, focusing on converting waste to energy in the urban environment. Even while most of this information is publicly available, he wanted to remain anonymous.
Americans Are Being Prepared For Full Spectrum Tyranny
Totalitarian governments, like persistent forms of cancer, have latched onto the long history of man, falling and then reemerging from the deep recesses of our cultural biology to wreak havoc upon one unlucky generation to the next. The assumption by most is that these unfortunate empires are the product of bureaucracies gone awry; overtaken by the chaotic maddening hunger for wealth and power, and usually manipulated by the singular ambitions of a mesmerizing dictator. For those of us in the Liberty Movement who are actually educated on the less acknowledged details of history, oligarchy and globalized centralism is much less random than this, and a far more deliberate and devious process than the general unaware public is willing consider.
Unfortunately, the final truth is very complex, even for us…
One cannot place the blame of despotism entirely on the shoulders of globalists. Sadly, the crimes of elites are only possible with a certain amount of complicity from subsections of the populace. Without our penchant for apathy and fear, there can be no control. That is to say, there is no power over us but that which we give away. We pave the road to our own catastrophes.
In the end, a tyrant’s primary job is not to crush the masses and rule out of malevolence, but to obtain the voluntary consent of the citizenry, usually through trickery and deceit. Without the permission of the people, subconscious or otherwise, no tyranny can survive.
As with the oppressive regimes of the past, America has undergone a dramatic transformation, heavy with fear and ignorance. Our tradition of elections has been corrupted and negated by the false left/right paradigm, and the leaderships of both defunct parties now seek only to elevate a select minority of men bent on globalization. Our Constitutional liberties have been dismantled by legal chicanery. Our principles have been diluted by intellectual games of rationalism and moral relativism. Our country is ripe for conquest.
Americans battle over whose side is most to blame; Democrat or Republican, while ironically being disenchanted with both entities. For some people, the thought of holding each party equally accountable, or accepting that they are essentially the same animal, never crosses their minds.
While this irrelevant farce of a debate rages on, the true culprits plotting the demise of our Republic gain momentum, and implement policy initiatives that the public should and must take note of. In the past year alone, many blatant steps towards the Orwellian gulag have been openly administered. A carnival of peddlers and freaks and greasy popcorn overwhelms our senses, but the stench of this cheap circus still tickles our noses, and if we use our eyes for even a moment, certain dangerous trends reveal themselves. Here are just a few recent events that bear a dire warning; the ultimate assault on freedom in this nation grows near…
Acclimation To Subservience
Every totalitarian state worth its salt has its own goon squad. The Nazi’s had the “Brownshirts”, the Soviets had the “Militsiya” and the “Voluntary People’s Brigade”, the Communist Chinese have the “Chengguan”, etc. In America, however, all tyrannical measures are given innocuous bureaucratic labels to mislead and distract the masses. In this country, we have the Transportation Security Administration…
The TSA has become the most hated alphabet agency in the U.S. in perhaps the fastest time on record. It has violated the personal rights of more people on a daily basis in my view than the IRS, DEA, and the ATF combined. Clearly, this slobbering demon child of the Department of Homeland Security is being molded for something quite terrible and grand.
When confronted by the public on the use of irradiating and intrusive naked body scanner technology, the agency responded by allowing their blue handed ghoul army with to molest our nether-regions. When confronted by state and local governments on their absurd tactics, the TSA threatened economic blockades and airport shutdowns. The organization then began expanding its jurisdiction to bus and train stations and even our highways when it introduced the VIPR program and implemented random roadside checkpoints in Tennessee last year. But, this behavior is nothing compared to what is next on the horizon: a compromise…
Beware of government agencies bearing gifts. The TSA along with the International Air Transport Association has announced a new methodology of “less intrusive” passenger screening measures, in order to address the concerns of the public over pat downs and irradiating naked body scanners. This SOUNDS like a step in the right direction, and a proper response to the grievances of the citizenry. Instead, it turns out to be a refined example of totalitarianism in motion, and a perfect lesson in how the masses can be duped into handing over their inherent freedoms.
Revamped security protocols call for biometric data collection, including fingerprint and retina scans, and a tunnel which combines multiple detection systems into one area (who knows how radioactive this will end up being):
The mainstream article above makes this development sound like a win/win scenario for everyone, painting biometric data collection as a matter of convenience, but it also reveals the true design of the system; to illicit voluntary subservience:
“The key to speeding up checkpoints and making security less intrusive will be to identify and assess travelers according to the risks they pose to safety in the skies. The so-called riskiest or unknown passengers would face the toughest scrutiny, including questioning and more sensitive electronic screening. Those who voluntarily provide more information about themselves to the government would be rewarded with faster passage…”
They enforce destructive anti-personal rights policies then pretend to acquiesce by replacing them with a technocratic nightmare grid which requires the cataloging of our very genetic essence in order to function. The only remaining injustice left would be to apply this grid to the rest of the country outside of the airports and train stations, which I assure you, they plan to do.
Militarization
Last week, I covered the disturbing use of armored vehicles (APC’s or urban tanks) in open training regiments on the streets of St. Louis by the U.S Army, despite the fact that all of their exercises could have easily been accomplished on any number of military bases across the country. The action is an obvious attempt to condition the American populace to the sight of military units operating in a policing capacity:
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/866-military-tanks-on-st-louis-streetsbut-why
I received multiple letters from current serving military who stated that in all their years in the armed forces they had never seen such a brash mishandling of public relations or an overstepping of bounds when it came to the restrictions of Posse Comitatus. It was encouraging to hear from military men and women who did not agree with or condone this kind of psyop activity on the part of our government.
Though the St. Louis event is not isolated, I believe it does represent an escalation.
Remember the controversy over the Mayor of Toledo and his refusal to allow 200 Marines to conduct urban combat drills on the public streets of his city in 2008? The media clamored to crucify this public official; one of the few who had any sense whatsoever in his head:
http://voices.yahoo.com/toledo-mayor-faces-backlash-ousting-marines-896105.html
Or the tactical exercises using helicopters and combat troops over LA and Chicago early this year?
http://www.lapdonline.org/newsroom/news_view/50045
During each one of these events, city officials and local media attempted to inoculate the public with claims that they were “simply exercises”. This argument misses the point entirely. Whether or not these are “exercises” is not the issue. The issue is that this training could be done ON BASE. Using public streets and running drills within cities is absolutely unnecessary given the vast resources already available to the military, unless, of course, the goal is to BE SEEN by the public and to influence them to view the sight of armed troops around them as “normal”.
Add to this the fact that many of these military training exercises are being conducted in tandem with local police department, and you have a recipe for the utter militarization of our society, turning peace officers into combat soldiers, and combat soldiers into law enforcement mechanisms; a juxtaposition that will soon lead to unmitigated disaster.
Arms Race Against the People?
When a country is quietly preparing for war, the first signs are usually revealed by a disclosure of armaments. If stockpiling is taking place without a warranted threat present from a legitimate enemy, there is a considerable likelihood of aggression on the part of that nation. America has gone well beyond the psychological process of militarization and has begun the extensive arming of particular agencies whose primary purpose revolves around the domestic.
The DHS, for instance, placed an order for over 450 million rounds of hollowpoint .40 cal ammunition in April of this year:
http://rt.com/usa/news/dhs-million-point-government-179/
And it placed an order for over 7000 new semi-automatic combat rifles chambered in .223 (5.56 by 45mm NATO) immediately after:
While local police through federal programs (like the 1033 Program) are being given millions of dollars in free military equipment, including body armor, night vision equipment, APC’s, aircraft, first aid supplies, weapons, surveillance equipment, Kevlar helmets, gas masks and filters, vehicles, etc.:
http://www.ogs.state.sc.us/surplus/SP-1033-index.phtm
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cops-military-gear/all/
All of this equipment, though issued to state agencies, is still heavily tracked and regulated by the federal government, making it clear that these “gifts” come with strings attached:
http://www.newsherald.com/articles/program-103291-state-law.html
And finally, new FAA regulations will soon allow the dispersion of tens of thousands of predator drones with armament capability in the skies of the U.S. over the course of the next few years:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/7/coming-to-a-sky-near-you/
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/10/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211
Now, anyone with any logic would ask who it is that the government is arming itself and local police to fight against? Al Qaeda? Let’s not be naïve…
The passage of the NDAA and its provisions for the indefinite detainment of ANY person, even an American citizen, under the laws of war has ended the debate over government intent in terms of domestic action. FBI Director Robert Mueller’s admission that he “did not know” if assassination programs would be used against American citizens also heaped evidence on the matter. The bottom line? Our government wishes to label and treat citizens as enemy combatants. Of course they would then organize armaments to follow through on their policy.
Pulling The Trigger
All despotic systems have another distinct similarity; they each began with a series of trigger events which opened the door to tighter controls over the population. The most immediate trigger event for the U.S. is the looming peril of a collapsing economy followed by inevitable civil unrest. With the EU currently in debt shambles, global markets are on the verge of a considerable breakdown. The Federal Reserve response will be predictable; QE3 and massive stimulus all around to mitigate the crisis. This time, though, the go-to Keynesian quick fix will not work in the slightest. In fact, it will make matters more untenable by placing the world reserve status of the dollar at risk.
Everything that has happened so far in the markets this year has been easy to foresee. Alt-Market predicted the economic slowdown around the world and the collapse of overall demand using the Baltic Dry Index as a gauge back in January:
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/540-baltic-dry-index-signals-renewed-market-collapse
We also predicted the accelerated turmoil in the EU in light of the recent election results in France and Greece:
http://www.alt-market.com/articles/765-economic-alert-if-youre-not-worried-yetyou-should-be
If alternative economic analysts can predict these developments despite the manipulated statistics spewed out by the government every month, then I think the government and our central bank has a tremendously transparent view of what is coming down the road in terms of financial distress. I believe the establishment is very well aware of a potential crisis event, economic or otherwise, that is barreling down upon the U.S. I believe the evidence shows that they are preparing for this eventuality in a command and control fashion, without alerting the public to the coming implosion. I believe they will use the despair that flows forth from the fiscal wreckage as an excuse to institute martial law.
Call it “crazy”. Call it “conspiracy theory”. Call it “coincidence”. Call it “fear mongering”. Whatever you like. I find it far more insane to shrug off the strange and twisted behavior of our power structure, and simply hope that it’s all irrelevant to the future. Whenever I run into starry eyed historical romanticists who look back in astonishment at the tyrannies of the past and wonder out loud, “How could those people have not known where their country was headed?!!”, I think of where we are today…
Brandon Smith is the founder of Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense. Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better or contribute to their Safe Haven Project. You can contact Brandon Smith at: [email protected]
The Truth Behind the Bath Salts “Epidemic”
After the explosion in use comes the demonization. Then the press, despite a total lack of causal evidence, parrots the outlandish accusations.
Drug scares, like the seasons, are cyclical. Here in the US, we had media firestorms over crack in the 80’s, meth in the 90’s, and prescription painkillers in the 00’s. Right on schedule, the latest demon drug that is supposedly tearing our society apart has entered stage left: bath salts.
Bath salts really just means a drug that is a combination of two stimulants—MDPV and mephedrone. Sold online and via headshops as a cheap, legal alternative to cocaine and ecstasy, mephedrone was first synthesized in 1929 while MDPV came along in 1969. Both were rediscovered in 2003 and they were perfect drugs for the Internet age—an ideal alternative to pricy illegal drugs that could be obtained legally with nothing more than a credit card and the click of a mouse.
The exact pharmacology of bath salts can vary, as compounds are constantly tweaked by chemists to stay one step ahead of the law. “Most of these substances seem to be cathinone derivatives, and as such are central nervous system stimulants that act through interruptions of dopamine, norepinephrine and—to a more limited extent—serotonin function,” explains Dr. Adi Jaffe, an addiction specialist at UCLA. While noting that actual research on these substances is in its early stages and reports are limited, Jaffe says that “at low to moderate doses the most common effects for MDPV can be thought of as meth-like: stimulation, euphoria and alertness. Mephedrone seems to act more like MDMA than meth.”
While the chemistry may change, one thing that has remained consistent is the ballooning popularity of this sector of the drug market.
After the explosion in use, the next phase of the drug scare comes in the form of demonization, and the authorities have certainly wasted no time in making some pretty wild allegations about the supposed effects of bath salts; recently we’ve heard that these drugs can causes cannibalism, a la the infamous Miami face-eater, pedophilia and evencross-dressing goat abuse.
The third part of any good drug scare happens when the press, despite a total lack of causal evidence, parrots these outlandish accusations. In the Miami cannibal case, the link between bath salts originated from a statement made by someone with no direct involvement with the case—the president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, Armando Aguilar—despite the fact that an autopsy and toxicology had yet to be performed on attacker Rudy Eugene.
In the case of Shane Shuyler, the Miami man accused of exposing himself to children while “allegedly” under the influence of bath salts, the evidence was no less hazy. The police said they found something that “appeared” to be bath salts in his wallet (i.e. an unidentified white powder). And then there was this strange quote from a detective giving evidence against Shuyler: “Upon talking to him, he made some statements to me which led me to believe that he was cooling off in a fountain by the tot-lot, because he was hot, which was consistent with ingesting bath salts.” The logic being that since bath salts cause users body temperatures to rise, then cooling off by a water fountain is evidence of bath salts use. Never mind the fact that the incident took place in June, in Miami, where the average temperature is 88.1 degrees.
After the hype comes the crackdown, which means that high-profile cases like these have created a push from both the media and law enforcement for a federal ban on the sale of bath salts.
Florida Republican Rep. Sandy Adams is one of the politicians who helped push the Combating Dangerous Synthetic Stimulants Act of 2011 through the House last December. The bill would federally ban MDPV and mephedrone, the two chemicals found in bath salts, as well as outlawing dozens of other chemicals found in synthetic drugs. The reasoning? “Looking at the Miami incident, we’ve seen people do some very bizarre acts on bath salts,” Adams told the U.S. News and World Report. If he gets his way, bath salts would be categorized alongside heroin and LSD.
So can bath salts really cause ordinary normal people to cannibalize strangers, expose themselves to children, or murder goats? And if they can, why on earth would anybody take them? A drug that has been described variously as “super powered LSD” and “PCP on crack” seems like a confusing proposition. So which is it?
“The reason for the contrasting descriptions is most likely the small but very significant difference in the specific chemicals involved,” says Dr. Jaffe. “Meth and ecstasy are very close chemical cousins but obviously cause very different effects for the user; the same is true here.”
To better get a handle of what is happening here in the US, I looked toward the United Kingdom, which has recently been through a similar cycle of shock horror media coverage of the “bath salt epidemic,” followed by a rush to ban. Bath salts were known under various aliases in the UK, including M-Kat, Meow-Meow and Bubbles, so for the sake of clarity, I’m going to use their chemical name of the most common compound: mephedrone.
“The issues in the US and UK are very similar, except that, as in many things, the US hype is even more over the top than that in the UK,” says Danny Kushlick, founder of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a charitable think tank that attempts to draw public attention to the fact that drug prohibition is the major cause of drug-related harm. “I mean, we never got so far as cannibalism.”
Yet at its height, the mephedrone scare in the UK was still pretty lurid; according to some of the coverage, it was linked to overdose, patricide and at least one case of self scrotum tearing. Many of these stories would later be disproved (the scrotum story, unsurprisingly was revealed as a hoax) and the two deaths that started the whole media scare—that of Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19—turned out to be totally unrelated to the use of the drug. By the time the toxicology report on Wainwright and Smith had been published, however, it was too late: the drug had been banned a month earlier by the UK parliament, after a one-hour debate and no vote on the matter.
Kushlick, who is on the council of the International Harm Reduction Association, and is a member of the British Society of Criminology’s Advisory Council, was a vocal opponent of the rush to ban mephedrone in the UK. In the months following the ban, he saw harm actually increase and not reduce because, he said, “when mephedrone was banned, the price increased and it was sold not by legitimate retailers but by non-tax paying unregulated dealers. It was also immediately replaced by a more potent compound and traded as Ivory Wave, which users had little experience with so they were more likely to get into trouble.”
These sentiments are echoed by Dr. Fiona Measham, a senior lecturer on Criminology at Lancaster University and the author of several books on drug use in young people. Her groundbreaking research into the use of mephedrone in the UK has provided some of the only hysteria-free data into mephedrone and the people who use it. Her paper, “Tweaking, Bombing, Dabbing and Stockpiling; the emergence of mephedrone and the Perversity of prohibition” (2010 Measham, et al), is the definitive account of the UK’s experience with the drug from the perspective of the people who actually use it.
“The government might claim that the ban was successful because mephedrone use and deaths have fallen,” says Measham, “but for me the question to ask is: what are users taking instead? In the UK, the rise and fall of mephedrone in 2009 and 2010 tracked the fall and now rise in the purity of cocaine, ecstasy pills and MDMA powder. [Since the ban], pills are back, big time, and the legal highs—whether now banned or not—just don’t compete for most recreational users.”
Despite the hazy evidence that it would have any effect at all on the level of drug use among young people, a federal ban is something that many in politics and law enforcement are in favor of here in the States. All it really seems guaranteed to do is drive up prices, lower purity and criminalize young people who continue to use the drug. At best, the use of the drug might be reduced as users switch over wholesale to different drugs. But in the politics of the drug war, no one ever let the truth get in the way of an expansion of hostilities. The police, Drug Enforcement Agency and court system will always welcome a new front in the war.
The big motivation, as always, is money. Local authorities want more money to “fight the war on drugs” even if they are fighting against a phantom menace. Already there are dark rumblings from the cops about needing more resources to fight against this army of bath salts crazed cannibals who are seemingly about to smash down your door and devour your children.
“The cities are deeply involved [in banning synthetic drugs] because the state can’t seem to get on top of it,” Pembroke Pines Commissioner Angelo Castillo said in an illuminating interview with Inquisitir.com. “We see cities jumping in to handle it because the state isn’t. Otherwise people die and people’s faces get chewed off.” Castillo added, “This is the next horizon in the war on drugs and we need to gear up and deal with it.”
Kushlick, who has seen firsthand the lack of effect that “gearing up to deal with it” has had on levels of use, suggests a more pragmatic approach. “The wiser move would have been to leave meph on the market and monitor its effect in order to ascertain its costs and benefits,” he tells me. “We know from experience that the Iron Law of Prohibition means that milder drugs will be replaced by more potent ones. That’s what happened under alcohol prohibition in the US as bootlegged spirits replaced beer. Conducting research on its effects and how people were using it could have been used to provide information to current and potential new users.”
The bottom line is this: more and more new users are trying bath salts, at least in part because of the attention thrust on the drug by the hysterical press coverage. When they discover that it doesn’t cause them to chew off peoples’ faces or tear off their own genitals, then they are more inclined to ignore all warnings about these drugs’ potential dangers. Kushlick’s advice to users is less likely to get the press excited but more likely to reduce harm. “As with any drug, if you are not used to using meph, you should take a small amount to assess its effects on you as an individual,” he says. “Always take new drugs with someone who is an experienced and trusted friend. Just because you have a good effect from the dose you’ve taken, do not assume that you can double the fun by doubling the dose.”
Tony O’Neill is the author of several novels, including Digging the Vein and Down and Out on Murder Mile and Sick City. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Hero of the Underground (with Jason Peter) and the Los Angeles Times bestseller Neon Angel (with Cherie Currie). O’Neill has also covered Jerry Stahl and abstinence, among many other topics, for The Fix.
SOURCE: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/155995/the_truth_behind_the_bath_salts_%22epidemic%22/
Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes released into the wild
Australian research scientists have developed a strategy for fighting Dengue fever, a viral disease spread by mosquitoes that affects more than 50 million people annually and causes fever and crippling joint and muscle pain—and in some cases even death.
Dengue kills FAR more people worldwide than influenza, yet it is rarely even mentioned by Western media.
A bacterium named Wolbachiapipientis naturally infects many insect species and has the ability to interfere with its host’s reproductive ability in such a way that entire populations become infected within just a few generationsi. When Wolbachia infects mosquitoes, the mosquitoes’ ability to transmit Dengue virus is almost completely blocked.
Researchers are encouraged that these bacterially infected mosquitoes are safe to humans and, once set loose, are capable of spreading on their own and overtaking the wild mosquito populations that transmit disease to humans.
In two northern Australian towns, between 10,000 and 20,000 of these infected mozzies were released (“mozzie” is Australian for mosquito), and wild mosquito infection rates neared 100 percent—meaning, mosquitoes that can infect humans were almost completely replaced by the ones that can’t.
This approach is a change from the swarms of genetically engineered mosquitoes being bred by companies like Oxitec, a British biotechnology company that has released millions of mutant mosquitoes into the fields of unsuspecting Australians.
Oxitec has found a way to genetically manipulate Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species mainly responsible for transmitting Dengue and yellow fever viruses to humans. These “frankenskeeters” represent a new and terrifying twist in potential GMO (genetically modified organisms) dangers—another product of modern science outpacing common sense when big money is thrown into the equation.
Dengue is a Far Worse Problem than Influenza
Dengue fever is on the rise worldwide and spreading faster than any other insect-borne viral disease. It is a threat to people in more than 100 countries, potentially affecting 2.5 billion people worldwide. Dengue infection typically causes high fever, crushing headache, severe pain behind your eyes, rash, and excruciating pain in your joints and spine, which is why it’s sometimes called “break bone fever.” Dr. Renu Daval-Drager of the World Health Organization says some cases of Dengue can be fatal, particularly the more serious Dengue hemorrhagic fever.
This under-recognized infectious disease used to be restricted to tropical areas; however, it has recently made its way into Texas, Florida and other southern states and is endemic in 125 countries. And Dengue has reached epidemic levels in Central America.
Outbreaks of Dengue virus occur primarily in areas where Aedes aegypti and sometimes Aedes albopictus mosquitoes live and breed. This includes most tropical areas of the world—the same places where malaria is found. Dengue is also spread by travelers who become infected while visiting Dengue-infested regions.
In the Americas, all four Dengue virus types are now present. Worldwide, there are about three to five million cases of influenza annually. However, there are about 100 million cases of Dengue fever annually, worldwide—20 times more cases than influenza!
In the past, the best means for preventing the spread of Dengue involved sustainable, community-based, integrated mosquito control, with limited reliance on chemical insecticides. However, new high-tech strategies are being developed to further combat the spread of this deadly virus. Some of these strategies involve genetically manipulating mosquitoes and then releasing them back into the wild, which can have any number of unforeseen consequences.
No Biotechnology is Without Some Risk
The scientific community has expressed concern about introducing a new type of mosquito that is infected with a bacterium that could be transmitted to humans. However, researchers claim Wolbachia bacterium is completely benign to humans.
According a report by Institute of Science in Society (ISIS)ii:
“In our research Wolbachia-infected insects are feeding on our researchers all the time and there is no sign of any human illness associated with insect Wolbachia. Wolbachia is an insect bacterium that has not been detected living inside humans or any other vertebrates. It can be made to infect human tissue culture cells in the laboratory but these laboratory systems are very artificial and do not predict the actual ability of Wolbachia to infect an actual human being.”
However, Daniel Strickman, national program leader for veterinary and medical entomology at the US Department of Agriculture, remains unconvinced. Strickman expresses some discomfort with releasing an agent that could spread out of control, in a way that does not occur in nature. He states there is a risk that, by making the mosquitoes less susceptible to dengue infection, they may become more susceptible to other viruses such as Japanese encephalitis.
Lead Australian Wolbachia researcher Scott O’Neill claims this problem is “extremely unlikely” as mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia are actually less susceptible to a wide range of pathogens they would normally transmit.iii
One thing can be said for certain—this approach to combating Dengue fever renders all attempts at genetically engineered (transgenic) mosquitoes obsolete. Transgenic mosquitoes are less effective, less efficient, more costly and far more risky.iv Unfortunately, GE “mutant mosquitoes” have already been released into the environment, without public consent, in several countries.
How all these changes affect other species consuming these altered insects remains to be seen.
Genetically Modified “Suicide Mosquitoes” Secretly Released in Grand Cayman Island
Can scientists simply release flying, human-biting genetically modified creatures into the air anytime they wish? Apparently, the answer to this question is “yes.” And they have.
Oxitec has created male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that live long enough in the wild to mate, but their offspring die before reaching adulthood, reducing the rates at which they can transmit Dengue virus to humans. The genetically engineered bugs contain a gene that kills them unless they are given tetracycline, a common antibiotic. In the lab, with tetracycline provided, multiple generations of the mosquitoes can be bred. Males are then released into the wild, where tetracycline is not available, and their offspring die without it.
The company claims the technique is safe because only the males are released into the environment—it’s only female mosquitoes that bite and spread diseases.
The problem is, millions of these GE bugs have been released into the open air by Oxitec as a means of field-testing their new “Dengue-proof” mosquitoes, without sufficient review and public consultation. They have conveniently chosen several countries with weak regulations. In 2009, Oxitec released their designer insects onto Grand Cayman Island, an island in the Caribbeanv.
The experiment will go down in scientific history as the first release of GM insects that could bite humans. Not surprisingly, it was conducted in secret.
Once the locals got wind of this, they responded with a fair amount of public outrage—and rightly so! But it didn’t stop there. Oxitec subsequently released their frankenskeeters in Malaysia, Brazilvi, Panama, India, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. And they are seeking approval from the US Agriculture Department to perform similar open-air testing in the Florida Keys.
Even supporters of this technology worry that public reaction will be similar to the one that has stalled acceptance of genetically engineered crops. Regulation has not caught up with science, and GE insects are a brand new adversary in this brave new world of genetic modification. Many companies are “making hay” while regulations are lacking.
Oxitec reports the results of their open-air testing exceeded expectations. The genetically engineered males were found to be only half as successful in mating as the wild ones, which is a rate sufficient to repress the population. Oxitec also reports that a 2010 trial on Cayman Island reduced the population of the targeted mosquitoes by 80 percent for three months. But what is the price of this progress? What will be the cost to humans and to the environment?
Just as with genetically engineered (GE) foods, the long-term effects of GE insects are completely unknown—the Earth and its inhabitants are being used as a laboratory for grand scale genetic experiments. It’s a blatant violation of human rights with regard to human experimentation.
Antibiotic-Dependent, Blood-Sucking Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes… What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Unfortunately, like so many other things, neither the government nor the biotech companies can offer peer-reviewed scientific proof of the safety of their biotechnology—they have blithely rushed ahead without any concern about the long-term effects. Once released, these insects cannot be “recalled.” There are several problemsvii with the assumption that these genetically engineered bugs are safe for the human population. For starters:
- The potential exists for these genes, which hop from one place to another, to infect human blood by finding entry through skin lesions or inhaled dust. Such transmission could potentially wreak havoc with the human genome by creating “insertion mutations” and other unpredictable types of DNA damage.viii
- According to Alfred Handler, a geneticist at the Agriculture Department in Hawaii, mosquitoes can develop resistance to the lethal gene and might then be released inadvertently. Todd Shelly, an entomologist for the Agriculture Department in Hawaii, said 3.5 percent of the insects in a laboratory test survived to adulthood, despite presumably carrying the lethal gene.
- The sorting of male and female mosquitoes is done by hand. As a result, up to 0.5 percent of the released insects are female. Even that small of a percentage could lead to a temporary increase in the spread of Dengue—not to mention potentially transmitting the altered gene to humans.
- Tetracycline and other antibiotics are now showing up in the environment, in soil and surface water samples. These genetically engineered mosquitoes were designed to die in the absence of tetracycline, assuming they would NOT have access to that drug in the wild. With tetracycline exposure (for example, in a lake) these mutant insects would actually thrive in the wild, potentially creating a nightmarish scenario.
The problem is that genetically modified female mosquitoes can still bite humans. This means the protein, which kills their own larvae, might be injected into humans when the mosquitoes suck their blood, with unknown and potentially ghoulish consequences.
And those are just the mosquitoes…
Moths, Too
Oxitec is also the creator of genetically engineered pink bollworm moths, and swarms of this creature have already been unleashed over the fields of Arizona in an effort to overtake natural bollworm populations, which are a pest.5 The company appears to be edging its way toward becoming the next “Monsanto,” already having a monopoly on genetically modified insects. Their next frankenbug is a genetically engineered diamond-back or cabbage moth, slated for release over England.
Other groups are also developing genetically modified insects. One group has created Anopheles mosquitoes that are immune to the malaria parasite they normally carry, and also manufacturing male Anopheles that lack sperm.9
Realizing genetic engineering is risky technology, the World Health Organization is finalizing new guidelines about how GE insects must be deployed in developing countries, which it expects to release by the end of 2012ix.
Your Best Defense Against Dengue
Building a strong immune system is your best defense against this nasty virus. Your immune health depends on the lifestyle choices you make every day. By supporting your body’s own natural ability to defend itself against pathogens, you will not only have resistance to Dengue fever but to every other infectious illness that comes your way. Make sure you address each of the following:
- Consume a diet rich in fresh, whole foods with abundant organic vegetables, pasture-raised meats, organic eggs and raw dairy; avoid sugar, chemicals and processed foods; be sure to get plenty of omega-3 fats; refer to my nutrition plan for more dietary information
- Optimize your vitamin D level
- Exercise regularly
- Address your stress, and make sure to get plenty of sleep
- Practice good hand washing technique
(Dr. Marcola)
SOURCE: http://updatednews.ca/2012/06/24/genetically-engineered-mosquitoes-released-into-the-wild/
Iceland Dismantles Corrupt Gov’t Then Arrests All Rothschild Bankers
Since the 1900′s the vast majority of the American population has dreamed about saying “NO” to the Unconstitutional, corrupt, Rothschild/Rockefeller banking criminals, but no one has dared to do so. Why? If just half of our Nation, and the “1%”, who pay the majority of the taxes, just said NO MORE! Our Gov’t would literally change over night.
Why is it so hard, for some people to understand, that by simply NOT giving your money, to large Corporations, who then send jobs, Intellectual Property, etc. offshore and promote anti-Constitutional rights… You will accomplish more, than if you used violence. In other words… RESEARCH WHERE YOU ARE SENDING EVERY SINGLE PENNY!!! Is that so hard? The truth of the matter is… No other modern Nation on earth, except the Icelanders, have carried this out successfully. Not only have they been successful, at overthrowing the corrupt Gov’t, they’ve drafted a Constitution, that will stop this from happening ever again. That’s not the best part… The best part, is that they have arrested ALL Rothschild/Rockefeller banking puppets, responsible for the Country’s economic Chaos and meltdown. What does all this have to do with? The answer… AGENDA 21. If you’re not educated, about Agenda 21, please watch these short videos now: http://www.freedumbnation.com/?p=1130
Last week 9 people were arrested in London and Reykjavik for their possible responsibility for Iceland’s financial collapse in 2008, a deep crisis which developed into an unprecedented public reaction that is changing the country’s direction.
It has been a revolution without weapons in Iceland, the country that hosts the world’s oldest democracy (since 930), and whose citizens have managed to effect change by going on demonstrations and banging pots and pans. Why have the rest of the Western countries not even heard about it?
Pressure from Icelandic citizens’ has managed not only to bring down a government, but also begin the drafting of a new constitution (in process) and is seeking to put in jail those bankers responsible for the financial crisis in the country. As the saying goes, if you ask for things politely it is much easier to get them.
This quiet revolutionary process has its origins in 2008 when the Icelandic government decided to nationalise the three largest banks, Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir, whose clients were mainly British, and North and South American.
After the State took over, the official currency (krona) plummeted and the stock market suspended its activity after a 76% collapse. Iceland was becoming bankrupt and to save the situation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) injected U.S. $ 2,100 million and the Nordic countries helped with another 2,500 million.
Great little victories of ordinary people
While banks and local and foreign authorities were desperately seeking economic solutions, the Icelandic people took to the streets and their persistent daily demonstrations outside parliament in Reykjavik prompted the resignation of the conservative Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde and his entire government.
Citizens demanded, in addition, to convene early elections, and they succeeded. In April a coalition government was elected, formed by the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left Green Movement, headed by a new Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir.
Throughout 2009 the Icelandic economy continued to be in a precarious situation (at the end of the year the GDP had dropped by 7%) but, despite this, the Parliament proposed to repay the debt to Britain and the Netherlands with a payment of 3,500 million Euros, a sum to be paid every month by Icelandic families for 15 years at 5.5% interest.
The move sparked anger again in the Icelanders, who returned to the streets demanding that, at least, that decision was put to a referendum. Another big small victory for the street protests: in March 2010 that vote was held and an overwhelming 93% of the population refused to repay the debt, at least with those conditions.
This forced the creditors to rethink the deal and improve it, offering 3% interest and payment over 37 years. Not even that was enough. The current president, on seeing that Parliament approved the agreement by a narrow margin, decided last month not to approve it and to call on the Icelandic people to vote in a referendum so that they would have the last word.
The bankers are fleeing in fear
Returning to the tense situation in 2010, while the Icelanders were refusing to pay a debt incurred by financial sharks without consultation, the coalition government had launched an investigation to determine legal responsibilities for the fatal economic crisis and had already arrested several bankers and top executives closely linked to high risk operations.
Interpol, meanwhile, had issued an international arrest warrant against Sigurdur Einarsson, former president of one of the banks. This situation led scared bankers and executives to leave the country en masse.
In this context of crisis, an assembly was elected to draft a new constitution that would reflect the lessons learned and replace the current one, inspired by the Danish constitution.
To do this, instead of calling experts and politicians, Iceland decided to appeal directly to the people, after all they have sovereign power over the law. More than 500 Icelanders presented themselves as candidates to participate in this exercise in direct democracy and write a new constitution. 25 of them, without party affiliations, including lawyers, students, journalists, farmers and trade union representatives were elected.
Among other developments, this constitution will call for the protection, like no other, of freedom of information and expression in the so-called Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, in a bill that aims to make the country a safe haven for investigative journalism and freedom of information, where sources, journalists and Internet providers that host news reporting are protected.
The people, for once, will decide the future of the country while bankers and politicians witness the transformation of a nation from the sidelines.
SOURCE: http://www.freedumbnation.com/?p=2369
Poisoned: Who Killed Former Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat?
Now we know he was poisoned – but by whom?
Yasser Arafat died on November 11, 2004, of a mysterious ailment. His enemies spread the rumor he had AIDS: David Frum, with typical classiness, claimed he had contracted AIDS as a consequence of having sex with his bodyguards. Now, however, it has been revealed Arafat was poisoned: the cause of his death was exposure to very high levels of polonium-210 [pdf], a rare radioactive substance. An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera showed Arafat’s personal items, released to the media organization by his widow, contained several times the normal level of polonium that would normally be detected on such items. The Palestinian leader’s terminal symptoms were similar to those experienced by victims of polonium poisoning: the substance targets the gastrointestinal tract and the subject wastes away.
Arafat’s Ramallah compound had been bombed several times by the Israelis, and they had the place surrounded – yet still he persisted. They couldn’t get him out. Worse, his plight was becoming a metaphor for the condition of his people, who were – and still are – prisoners in their own land. A former adviser claimed he was poisoned by the Israelis, who detained the Palestinian ambulance used to deliver Arafat’s medications to the Ramallah compound. At the time, one tended to write this off as a purely polemical exercise: in light of the new evidence, however, the question has to be asked.
Simply by continuing to exist in the face of such a sustained assault, Arafat was defeating the Israelis every day. They had to get rid of him. Did they? We’ll never know for sure, but it is worth noting that Israeli threats to kill him preceded his untimely death by less than a year. As is well-known, Israeli intelligence has carried out numerous assassinations: it is simply another tool in their international operations, one they have never hesitated to utilize. A passport-falsification scheme involving New Zealand, Britain, France, Spain, and a number of other countries was widely believed to have been meant to equip the Mossad’s crack team of assassins, who could slip into – and out of – target areas at will.
The Israelis hated Arafat with a particular passion, for two reasons:
1) His longevity – The Palestinian movement is thick [pdf] with factions, but thin when it comes to recognizable leaders. Arafat was the principal leader, and no one since his death has achieved his stature. He was a political survivor, having lived through numerous assassination attempts, and deflected the schemes of internal enemies to displace him. Simply by sticking around for so long, he became a living symbol of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination – and that is one big reason why the Israelis got rid of him.
2) His secularism – The Israelis encouraged the growth of groups such as Hamas in the beginning, in order to split away the more religious elements from the decidedly secular Palestine Liberation Organization/Fatah, which Arafat headed. It is easy to sell the Palestinians as crazed jihadists when a group like Hamas or Islamic Jihad is the most visible champion of their cause: the secular PLO presented the Israelis with a public relations problem. There’s another reason for the Israelis to have knocked him off.
One aspect of this case is extremely odd: polonium-210 is the same poison Alexander Litvinenko was dosed with. Litvinenko, a former KGB official, converted to Islam, joined the Chechen rebels, and became an associate of Boris Berezovsky, the notorious Russian oligarch wanted on charges of embezzlement in his home country. Litvinenko and Berezovsky are the Russian version of 9/11 Truthers: they believe practically every terrorist attack on Russian cities has been “staged” by Vladimir Putin in order to keep him in power. When he became ill, Litvinenko charged the Russian spy agency with poisoning him – although that seems highly unlikely.
Polonium-210 isn’t something you can buy off the shelf at your local Walmart. It isn’t even something a mad scientist might cook up in his home lab. About 100 grams are produced each year for specialized technical uses. The only entities with access to this sort of thing are state actors, or, at least, a private organization with very substantial resources at its disposal.
What’s interesting is that a diplomatic cable, dated Dec. 26, 2006 and published by WikiLeaks, details the conversation of a US diplomat with Russian spook Anatoly Safonov in which Safonov claims the Russians told the British about the importation of “nuclear materials” into London during the Litvinenko affair – and were told that the whole thing was “under control before the poisoning took place.” In the course of the same conversation, Safonov – Putin’s chief representative on terrorism-related matters – went on to describe a number of threats and their possible sources:
“Safonov noted the daunting number of countries that posed particular terrorism threats, mentioning North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, Libya, Iran, India, and Israel (sic?). He described a range of dangers, stressing the more immediate threats posed by nuclear and biological terrorism, but also acknowledging the risks of chemical terrorism.”
While the use of “sic” is meant to indicate our diplomat’s incredulity at the inclusion of Israel in this list, what we now know about how Arafat died should tear away the blinders from several sets of eyes – yes, even at the US State Department.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I note with sadness and a real sense of loss the departure of Scott Horton, the host of Antiwar.com Radio, from our staff. We wanted to keep him on, but we just couldn’t afford him anymore. Times are tough, but this is a big blow: Scott’s interviews with the Big Names in the foreign policy universe are always informed, and in his inimitable style he always laced his programs with humor and a keen intelligence. I can’t even begin to tell you how much he will be missed, but that’s life these days, unfortunately.
The Multiple Ways Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach
People say if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, just don’t buy their GMO seeds.
Not so simple. Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days? How are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops? How are they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from using helicopters to fly over spying on them?
Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, saying they own the crop. It’s a way to make money since farmers can’t fight back and court and they settle because they have no choice.
And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.
1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.
2. They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS approach to wiping out normal seeds). Does your state have such a seed law? Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends and neighbors, selling some if they wanted. That’s been killed.
In Illinois, which has such a seed law, Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his staff is Monsanto lobbyists.
3. Monsanto is pushing anti-democracy laws (Vilsack’s brainchild, actually) that remove community’ control over their own counties so farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops. So if you don’t want a GM-crop that grows industrial chemicals or drugs or a rice growing with human DNA in it, in your area and mixing with your crops, tough luck.
Check the map of just where the Monsanto/Vilsack laws are and see if your state is still a democracy or is Monsanto’s. A farmer in Illinois told me he heard that Bush had pushed through some regulation that made this true in every state. People need to check on that.
4. For sure there are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA right now that make a farmer’s seed cleaning equipment illegal (another way to leave nothing but GM-seeds) because it’s now considered a “source of seed contamination.” Farmer can still seed clean but the equipment now has to be certified and a farmer said it would require a million to a million and half dollar building and equipment … for EACH line of seed. Seed storage facilities are also listed (another million?) and harvesting and transport equipment. And manure. Something that can contaminate seed. Notice that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not mentioned.
You could eat manure and be okay (a little grossed out but okay). Try that with pesticides and fertilizers. Indian farmers have. Their top choice for how to commit suicide to escape the debt they have been left in is to drink Monsanto pesticides.
5. Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest. In Pilot Grove, Missouri, in Indiana (Maurice Parr), and now in southern Illinois (Steve Hixon). And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police to show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto sowed. Hixon’s office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking device on his equipment and that’s how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his business within 2 days.
So, after demanding that seed cleaners somehow be able to tell one seed from another (or be sued to kingdom come) or corrupting legislatures to put in laws about labeling of seeds that are so onerous no one can cope with them, what is Monsanto’s attitude about labeling their own stuff? You guessed it – they’re out there pushing laws against ANY labeling of their own GM-food and animals and of any exports to other countries. Why?
We know and they know why.
As Norman Braksick, the president of Asgrow Seed Co. (now owned by Monsanto) predicted in the Kansas City Star (3/7/94) seven years ago, “If you put a label on a genetically engineered food, you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.”
And they’ve sued dairy farmers for telling the truth about their milk being rBGH-free, though rBGH is associated with an increased risk of breast, colon and prostate cancers.
I just heard that some seed dealers urge farmers to buy the seed under the seed dealer’s name, telling the farmers it helps the dealer get a discount on seed to buy a lot under their own name. Then Monsanto sues the poor farmer for buying their seed without a contract and extorts huge sums from them.
Here’s a youtube video that is worth your time. Vandana Shiva is one of the leading anti-Monsanto people in the world. In this video, she says (and this video is old), Monsanto had sued 1500 farmers whose fields had simply been contaminated by GM-crops. Listen to all the ways Monsanto goes after farmers.
Do you know the story of Gandhi in India and how the British had salt laws that taxed salt? The British claimed it as theirs. Gandhi had what was called a Salt Satyagraha, in which people were asked to break the laws and march to the sea and collect the salt without paying the British. A kind of Boston tea party, I guess.
Thousands of people marched 240 miles to the ocean where the British were waiting. As people moved forward to collect the salt, the British soldiers clubbed them but the people kept coming. The non-violent protest exposed the British behavior, which was so revolting to the world that it helped end British control in India.
Vandana Shiva has started a Seed Satyagraha – nonviolent non-cooperation around seed laws – has gotten millions of farmers to sign a pledge to break those laws.
American farmers and cattlemen might appreciate what Gandhi fought for and what Shiva is bringing back and how much it is about what we are all so angry about – loss of basic freedoms. [The highlighting is mine.]
The Seed Satyagraha is the name for the nonviolent, noncooperative movement that Dr. Shiva has organized to stand against seed monopolies. According to Dr. Shiva, the name was inspired by Gandhi’s famous walk to the Dandi Beach, where he picked up salt and said, “You can’t monopolize this which we need for life.” But it’s not just the noncooperation aspect of the movement that is influenced by Gandhi. The creative side saving seeds, trading seeds, farming without corporate dependence–without their chemicals, without their seed.
” All this is talked about in the language that Gandhi left us as a legacy. We work with three key concepts.”
” (One) Swadeshi…which means the capacity to do your own thing–produce your own food, produce your own goods….”
“(Two) Swaraj–to govern yourself. And we fight on three fronts–water, food, and seed. JalSwaraj is water independence–water freedom and water sovereignty. Anna Swaraj is food freedom, food sovereignty. And Bija Swaraj is seed freedom and seed sovereignty. Swa means self–that which rises from the self and is very, very much a deep notion of freedom.
“I believe that these concepts, which are deep, deep, deep in Indian civilization, Gandhi resurrected them to fight for freedom. They are very important for today’s world because so far what we’ve had is centralized state rule, giving way now to centralized corporate control, and we need a third alternate. That third alternate is, in part, citizens being able to tell their state, ‘This is what your function is. This is what your obligations are,’ and being able to have their states act on corporations to say, ‘This is something you cannot do.’”
” (Three) Satyagraha, non-cooperation, basically saying, ‘We will do our thing and any law that tries to say that (our freedom) is illegal… we will have to not cooperate with it. We will defend our freedoms to have access to water, access to seed, access to food, access to medicine.’”
NZ Judge: Raid on Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom Illegal, Search Warrants Unlawful
Published: 28 June, 2012, 10:15
The High Court of New Zealand has ruled that the police raid on Kim Dotcom’s mansion was unlawful along with seizure of the hard drives that were later cloned and illegally taken from New Zealand to the US by the FBI.
The warrants issued to search Dotcom’s mansion were general and did not clearly describe the offences they stipulated, ruled Justice Helen Winkelmann.
“They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid,” she explained.
The New Zealand police force is currently holding talks with the Crown Law on the next course of action and has refrained from commenting on the judgment.
The ruling released on Thursday by Justice Helen Winkelmann insists the warrants were too vague concerning the scope of the search and the items authorized to be seized by police.
Quantum Researchers Able to Stop and Restart Light
In two independent experiments that defy the notions of Einstein, researchers have been able to stop, then restart a beam of light.
Ordinarily, light travels at the speed of 186,282 miles per second, but the research team of Lene Hau, a professor of physics at Harvard, who in 1999 was able to slow light down to 38 miles per hour, has been able to trap light in a cloud of sodium atoms super-cooled to near ‘absolute zero.’
“It’s nifty to look into the chamber and see a clump of ultracold atoms floating there,” Hau says. “In this odd state, light takes on a more human dimension; you can almost touch it.” [1]
In an independent experiment, an easier approache was tried by the team of Ronald Walsworth and Mikhail Lukin at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
They shot laser beams through a dense cloud of rubidium and helium gas. (Rubidium, in its solid or natural form, is a soft, silver-white metal.) The light bounced from atom to atom, gradually slowing down until it stopped. No supervacuum or ultra-cold was needed. In fact, the chamber where the light stopped was at a temperature of 176 degrees F. [1]
Both experiments accomplish almost the same thing, however, in the CfA experiment researchers were only able to store about half of the incoming light, and the storage time was about half that of Hau’s experiment.
Think of both contraptions as sophisticated light switches that control not just light but information. Incoming light can carry information expressed by changes or modulations of its frequency, amplitude, and phase. When the light stops, that information is stored just like information is stored in the electronic memory of a computer. To access the information, you turn on a control laser, and out it comes. [1]
Remarkably, scientists are somewhat uncertain about the implications and practicality of this research.
“We hope for wonderful things,” says David Phillips, who worked on the CfA “stop light” project. “Our imagination hasn’t figured out what the possibilities are yet.” [1]
However, there appear to be clear implications for using experiments like this to ultimately improve the speed of computers, potentially creating the possibility to shift from binary computing to quantum encoding of data.
Computers operating by these so-called quantum effects are much more efficient that those available today, or even on the drawing board. (“Quantum” refers to changes in the energy levels of the atoms.) Today’s machines represent information in bits, electronic combinations of zeros and ones. Bits represented by quantum states of atoms could carry much, much more information. Cubic inch for cubic inch, quantum computers could tackle problems that would stymie the most super of conventional computers. For example, they could perform many calculations simultaneously. [1]
The eminent physicist Albert Einstein theorized that it was impossible for light to travel at a speed faster than 186,282 miles per second, and in this case he has not yet been proven wrong.
Watch the following video for amazing footage of Hau’s research:
Sources for this article include:
[1] www.news.harvard.edu
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