11/22/14 ~ The Raw Story

Saturday, 22 November 2014

Hundreds in Ireland see fireball 'brighter than the full moon'

Astronomy Ireland says its received hundreds of sighting reports since Tuesday night - when what was described as a 'giant fireball' was seen blazing across Ireland's skies.

From Cork and Dublin to Belfast and Donegal - the heavenly object was spotted pretty much everywhere.

TheJournal.ie also had quite a few reports on the subject - as did BBC Northern Ireland and a raft of other media outlets.

"Clearly seen falling right to left over the sea towards Drogheda from Balbriggan at around 5.40pm, like a falling star for about 3-4 seconds before it burned out," was how Dubliner Jim Whelan described it.

The phenomenon is believed to have been a 'fireball' meteor - part of an asteroid burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.

And AI's David Moore, speaking to us on Tuesday, was pretty confident it could mean the start of a meteorite-hunt.

"Some of the reports are saying it was 'brighter than the full moon' and that's positive, because it indicates it may be able to survive the burning-up entry process," Moore said.

However, now that all the data is in, it's believed the space rock overflew the country, and landed somewhere in the sea to the north.

"Even people in Donegal were saying it was in the north and very low down - so it looks like it would have come down in the sea," Moore told us yesterday evening.The last Irish 'space rock' find was in Carlow in 1999. On that occasion, the fragments were sold to a collector for several thousand pounds.

Meanwhile, there's another big night coming up for amateur stargazers - clear-skies permitting, we'll be able to witness a significant display of shooting stars on 13 December.

On the night, there should be "20 times more shooting stars than normal," according to Moore. We might even get a few 'fireballs' too.

A white police officer in Superior, Wisconsin who grabbed a black woman by her hair and slammed her face into the hood of a car and punched her several times has received a single day's suspension from duty.

According to NorthlandNewsCenter.com, Officer George Gothner was not censured for his violent attack on Natasha Lancour, which took place on Jan. 5, but for swearing while he did it.

The decision came at the end of a lengthy internal investigation by the police force. The violent arrest was caught on camera and spawned a significant outcry.

Superior Police Chief Charles LaGesse said that the department has ruled that Gothner's use of force against the unarmed Lancour was consistent with his training and with the policies of the department.

On the night of the assault, Gothner and other officers had approached a group of people in the parking lot of a night club called the Keyport Lounge. In dashboard camera footage of the incident, Gothner can be seen shouting and Lancour and pointing into her face.

Then, Gothner dragged Lancour to the squad car by her hair, bounced her face off the hood, then proceeded to punch her in the face and head.

However, the Wisconsin Department of Justice investigation found, Gothner "failed to utilize proper communication skills and was vulgar and unprofessional in his initial contact with Lancour and his words were a violation of several department policies."

His punishment is to miss a single 10-hour shift without pay.

Gothner arrested Lancour on the night of the incident and charged her with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, although in the video, she is not struggling or resisting. The charges were eventually dropped.

Lancour's attorney, Rick Gondik said, "The system of how we judge officers has to change. We will not see anything come out situations like this as long as the cops are giving 'attaboys' to the abusive cops. We need to have an outside agency look at the use of force incidents and make a finding."

Chief Lagesse said in a statement, "Superior police department places great value on our relationship with the community. This trust has been eroded by the public perception of this incident and we will strive to win that back by living through the tenets of our mission statement."

Gondik said that he is planning a lawsuit against the city and is investigating the possibility of pursuing criminal action against Gothner.

Watch the video about this story, embedded below via NortlandNewsNow.com:

Watch the dashboard camera video of the arrest, embedded below:

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Thanksgiving could be marred by floods as snow-hit areas across the east coast look set for a sharp rise in temperatures, the National Weather Service has warned. The big freeze saw areas such as Buffalo, New York, buried in historic blizzards, reaching a year's snowfall - 88 inches - in just five days. But that could melt in less than 24 hours if temperatures soar from 40F to 70F as predicted.

The heat wave is expected as an intense cyclone sweeps north east from the Midwest, driving warmer climes into West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and New York.

It could spell a moment of relief for Minneapolis after an historic stretch of freezing temperatures that has lasted 12 days - the longest since 1880.

Emergency services are still shoveling snow to clear the area and rescue civilians.

At least 13 have been killed by the extreme weather.

The NWS predicted temperatures would start to climb above freezing by early Sunday, reaching 60F by Monday.

Temperatures in western New York will stay above freezing until at least Tuesday night, with highs of nearly 50F on Sunday and nearly 60F on Monday, the Weather Service said.

"The warming will bring melting. The melting will bring water. Water will bring floods," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference.

"We are preparing now for more flooding than we have seen in a long, long time," he said. "We've never had this much snow and this much melting of this much snow in a short period of time."

Some areas should expect five to six feet of water, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said.

To prepare, area residents said they were moving valuables out of their basements.

Sections of the New York State Thruway will reopen on Friday afternoon to move vehicles and help remove snow, Cuomo said. Some 140 miles of the thruway had been closed.

Experts warn the exact figures are still vague and they are taking samples of the snow to gauge how likely the flood risk is.

Initial research found rising dew points and winds pointing south will 'make for a more efficient melting of the snowpack'.

New Comet: C/2014 W2 (PANSTARRS)

CBET nr. 4019, issued on 2014, November 21, announces the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~18.7) by PANSTARRS survey in four w-band CCD exposures taken with the 1.8-m Pan-STARRS1 telescope at Haleakala on Nov. 17. The new comet has been designated C/2014 W2 (PANSTARRS).

We performed follow-up measurements of this object, while it was still on the neocp. Stacking of 10 unfiltered exposures, 120-sec each, obtained remotely on 2014, November 18.9 from I89 (iTelescope network - Nerpio) through a 0.43-m f/6.8 reflector + CCD, shows that this object is a comet: diffuse coma about 6" in diameter.

Our confirmation image (click on it for a bigger version)

M.P.E.C. 2014-W55 (including pre-discovery Catalina Sky Survey observations, identified by , on Oct. 26.3, when the comet was at mag 17.7-18.0, and on Nov. 16.3 at mag 17.3-17.5) assigns the following elliptical orbital elements to comet C/2014 W2: T 2016 Mar. 19.554; e= 0.95; Peri. = 85.90; q = 2.67; Incl.= 81.04

The news of this winter has not even begun because we are still five weeks away from that equinox. Yet you would never know it watching what is going on in upstate New York and the rest of the United States that recently saw record-breaking cold in all fifty states.

Like all kids, growing up I heard of such things as ice ages and that we were overdo for one. You know once in every 10,000 years kind of trip, and I thought well ok, that is the pattern, but must take a long time to come on so I will never have to worry about it in my lifetime!

But not so, says Professor William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues. Using the most precise record of the climate from paleo history ever generated they tell almost the same story we saw in the movie , when the world went stone cold from one week to another. Buffalo looks like act one on our screens.

Patterson, a world expert, also thought it would take time to come on but lo and behold, the scientific evidence suggests otherwise. Robert Felix, author of , thought that ice ages begin in less than 20 years. His site is the best place to keep up with the cooling news, which is heating up, according to religious disciples of manmade global warming that never was.

I have been writing for 7 years about global cooling, (confronting the most ridiculous fantasies of the global warming crowd), I had no idea whatsoever how fast things would come on and why. There are just some people who would rather freeze to death than admit that there is no global warming. I still get letters from them no matter how much evidence is laid before their eyes.

I think no one really expected such a violent change to the cold so soon. It certainly took farmers by surprise. Professor Patterson published his research saying, "JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age,"

These findings emerged from one of the most painstaking studies of climate changes ever attempted and reinforce the theory that the earth's climate can switch between warm and cold incredibly quickly.

Of course, we know that the head of the Space Research section of the Russian Academy of Science, Professor Khabibullo Abdussamatov, in 2006 issued a press release, warning that the world should prepare for imminent global cooling. He predicted that the next ice age would start in 2012 - 2015, and would likely peak around 2055. He was looking to the most obvious reason global cooling is happening - the sun.

Abdussamatov was seeing far and sensitively enough into the climate's future to see it coming on in just a few years. Upstate New York is just the first inning a taste of things to come. It is not a first taste of how desperate things can get though with heavy snowstorms. However, it is setting records that none could foresee.

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We are seeing the first act of the new ice age and how hard it will be to live in or through one.

The county reports 30 major roof collapses as the region recovers from the historic storm that dumped more than 7 feet (2.13 m) of snow on the area in only three days. Buffalo normally gets around 8 feet of snow during an entire winter season. Emergency workers are also monitoring hundreds of structures at risk for collapse. The thirty major roof collapses were largely farm buildings and those with flat roofs.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is weighing in on this saying, "This is an historic event. When all is said and done, this snowstorm will break all sorts of records. It will get worse before it gets better." Snow-bound residents of western New York awoke to as much as another foot of accumulation on Thursday with possibly another 30 inches expected.

One has to begin to wonder how much an unprepared population stored up on food in their homes. I heard of no last minute panic buying at the supermarket with this storm. Few are getting in and out of their homes and food is not being delivered. Eight dead so far.

Of course, in the news they are more worried about Sunday's football game. Meanwhile global cooling is being felt in other places. The shipping season on the upper Mississippi River ended yesterday as ice surrounding locks and dams near Minnesota's Twin Cities forced the earliest winter closure on records that date back to 1969 , the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. This halts shipments of corn, soybeans, wheat, fertilizer, salt and other goods from the most northern reaches of the nation's busiest waterway.

People seem worried about the football game that might not be played in this stadium any time soon. I am more worried about people running out of food or losing their light and heat and their roofs collapsing on top of them. Global warming believers will be relieved to know warm temperatures and rain are on the way but that will be dangerous because of flooding and even more weight on people's roofs.

Back in 2009 I published:

Dr. Willie Soon, astrophysicist and geoscientist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "Saying the climate system is completely dominated by how much carbon dioxide we have in the system is crazy - completely wrong. Carbon dioxide is not the major driver for the earth/climate system. Temperatures are going down, but CO2 levels are still going up. It's close to being insane to try to keep insisting these changes in carbon dioxide are going to create all of the disasters that politicians and doomsayers are trying to tell us. Climate is totally, completely dependent on what the sun is doing to the system. The sun is the major driver of the earth climate system."

It is Cold Out There

Meanwhile way to the south: 141 year old cold weather record falls in Jacksonville . Thursday morning not only broke an "ancient" record from 1873, but we also dropped to the second coldest temperature ever recorded in the month of November in Jacksonville. According to the National Weather Service, for the second morning in a row, Jacksonville set a new cold weather record. Thursday morning's temperature dropped to a bone chilling 24 degrees F breaking the old record of 30 degrees set in 1873. An astounding 226 million people in all 50 states, which includes the tropical paradise of Hawaii, were below freezing at the same time putting an exclamation point on an already paralyzing winter season - that has not even officially started yet.

About 50% of the United States had snow on the ground Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. There were also forecasts for heavy snow for counties in Michigan and Vermont.

John Casey a former White House space program advisor and consultant to NASA, has been writing about global cooling for as many years as I have and has said, "global warming" is a sham. And perhaps the most expensive - and lethal - sham in American history. A sham that our government spends $22 billion a year financing. Think about that: our government spends $22 billion a year financing "global warming" initiatives." Obama certainly likes things the way they are and will go down with the global warming ship. Yesterday Casey published a press release:

The Earth is about to begin a steep drop in global temperatures off its present global temperature plateau. This plateau has been caused by the absence of growth in global temperatures for 18 years, the start of global cooling in the atmosphere and the oceans, and the end of a short period of moderate solar heating from an unusually active secondary peak in solar cycle #24.

Average global atmospheric and oceanic temperatures will drop significantly beginning between 2015 and 2016 and will continue with only temporary reversals until they stabilize during a long cold temperature base lasting most of the 2030's and 2040's. The bottom of the next global cold climate caused by a "solar hibernation" (a pronounced reduction in warming energy coming from the Sun) is expected to be reached by the year 2031.

The predicted temperature decline will continue for the next fifteen years and will likely be the steepest ever recorded in human history, discounting past short-duration volcanic events.

4. Global average temperatures during the 2030's will reach a level of at least 1.5° C lower than the peak temperature year of the past 100 years established in 1998. The temperatures during the 2030's will correspond roughly to that observed from 1793 to 1830, shortly after the founding of the United States of America. This average lower global temperature of 1.5° C on average, translates to declines in temperatures that will be devastating for crop growing regions in the mid latitudes of the planet.

Special Note: For the cows and sheep and everyone who swallow whatever the corporate controlled press says: Global Temperatures Are the Hottest on Record for a Fifth Month This Year. That's despite the U.S. experiencing a bit of a deep freeze. To read how pathetic is, read today's article. All fifty states below freezing in November and that is a "bit" of a freeze!

With each passing day, the global warming paradigm creeps closer to its deathbed.

There is a saying, that everything new is long forgotten old. But what if it wasn't forgotten, but twisted and purposefully concealed under a pile of lies, personal interests and greed? For over 50 years we've been hammered with lies about saturated fats being bad for us, but now, after countless cases of seemingly healthy and young people dropping like flies due to heart attacks, the tide is slowly changing toward old-time wisdom that there is no better remedy for the body and soul than bacon, fatty broth and home made butter. And scientific research can back it up.

For example, take a look at the recent research done by The Ohio State University:

Doubling or even nearly tripling saturated fat in the diet does not drive up total levels of saturated fat in the blood, according to a controlled diet study.

However, increasing levels of carbohydrates in the diet during the study promoted a steady increase in the blood of a fatty acid linked to an elevated risk for diabetes and heart disease.

The finding "challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn't correlate with disease," said senior author Jeff Volek, a professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University.[...]

When that marker increases, he said, it is a signal that an increasing proportion of carbs are being converted to fat instead of being burned as fuel. Reducing carbs and adding fat to the diet in a well-formulated way, on the other hand, ensures the body will promptly burn the saturated fat as fuel - so it won't be stored.

"When you consume a very low-carb diet your body preferentially burns saturated fat," Volek said. "We had people eat 2 times more saturated fat than they had been eating before entering the study, yet when we measured saturated fat in their blood, it went down in the majority of people. Other traditional risk markers improved, as well."[...]

When looking at palmitoleic acid, however, the scientists found that it consistently decreased on the high-fat/low-carb diet in all participants. The fatty acid then showed a step-wise increase in concentration in the blood as carbs were progressively added to the diet. Elevated levels of palmitoleic acid in the blood have been linked to obesity and higher risk for inflammation, insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, metabolic syndrome, type-2 diabetes, heart disease and prostate cancer.[...]

"There is widespread misunderstanding about saturated fat. In population studies, there's clearly no association of dietary saturated fat and heart disease, yet dietary guidelines continue to advocate restriction of saturated fat. That's not scientific and not smart," Volek said. "But studies measuring saturated fat in the blood and risk for heart disease show there is an association. Having a lot of saturated fat in your body is not a good thing. The question is, what causes people to store more saturated fat in their blood, or membranes, or tissues?

"People believe 'you are what you eat,' but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat," he said. "The point is you don't necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat. And the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet. Since more than half of Americans show some signs of carb intolerance, it makes more sense to focus on carb restriction than fat restriction."

But what better way to test a theory if not on those who are constantly in the spotlight? As it turns out, a famous actress Anne Hathaway decided to give herself a present on her 32 birthday and start following low-carb and high fat diet.

Although Anne and her husband in the past insisted on vegan-only reception food for their wedding, Hathaway recently confessed that eating endless meals of tofu and garbanzo beans seemed to be sapping her energy. Apparently, when she was filming , the action-packed scenes overwhelmed her.

Seeking a solution, Hathaway shifted to a low-carb diet. The decision to push away those plant-based platters and experiment with an animal protein-powered plan came in the middle of filming a water scene, which required that she suit up in a heavy garment.

"I fell off so hard.... So you imagine what that's like - what it's like running through water and then you wear a 40-pound suit on top of it, so for me it was intense. I was facing my life, I don't know how many days in a row of, like, garbanzo beans on a plate."

And now, Hathaway says that she doesn't plan to return to her vegan lifestyle, because the actress saw that the difference between eating a vegan diet and consuming animal protein was notable overnight. "I just didn't feel good or healthy," Hathaway recalled of her vegan days.

But there is yet another showbiz representative, who conducted his own experiment and now have a long list of ailments to tell the world about.

A new documentary that is scheduled for release in 2015 focuses on the impact dietary sugar can have on health. The movie, titled , outlines filmmaker Damon Gameau's 60-day experiment with a high-sugar diet. Gameau did not binge on candy, sodas, or other sugary treats. He consumed low-fat foods that are commonly believed to be "healthful."

"I had no soft drink, chocolate, ice cream, or confectionery. All the sugars that I was eating were found in perceived healthy foods, so low-fat yogurts, and muesli bars, and cereals, and fruit juices, sports drinks ... these kind of things that often parents would give their kids thinking they're doing the right thing."

Within three weeks, the previously healthy Gameau noticed his mental and physical health declining:

During the filming, Gameau found the sugary diet affected his physical and mental health, and doctors called his mental functioning "unstable." He also added nearly four inches of visceral fat around his waist, even though he said the diet left him feeling hungry, no matter how much he ate.

Sugar belly of Damon Gameau

He also received a troubling diagnosis: his doctor told him he was beginning to develop fatty liver disease. Apparently, In the last twenty years, the prevalence of the disease has more than doubled in teenagers and adolescents. Sugar is believed to be the main culprit in the development of fatty liver disease because it is metabolized in the liver and it is known to increase blood levels of triglycerides, a type of fat.

And so it appears, that we have been deceived for a long time, and saturated fat is beneficial for both "mere mortals" and "stars" as well!

Zoya Klebanova

Zoya Klebanova joined SOTT in 2007 as contributing editor while living in Israel for 20 years, and after waking up to her country's destructive and psychopathic nature. Her deep understanding of Israel's pathology provides her with unique perspective regarding world events. Zoya worked in wide variety of computer oriented jobs, and has background in research and investigation. She currently resides in Belarus and attends University studying veterinary medicine. Her research interests include health, politics, spirituality, high-strangeness, and all areas of science.

For example, take a look at the recent research done by The Ohio State University:

Doubling or even nearly tripling saturated fat in the diet does not drive up total levels of saturated fat in the blood, according to a controlled diet study.

However, increasing levels of carbohydrates in the diet during the study promoted a steady increase in the blood of a fatty acid linked to an elevated risk for diabetes and heart disease.

The finding "challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn't correlate with disease," said senior author Jeff Volek, a professor of human sciences at The Ohio State University.[...]

When that marker increases, he said, it is a signal that an increasing proportion of carbs are being converted to fat instead of being burned as fuel. Reducing carbs and adding fat to the diet in a well-formulated way, on the other hand, ensures the body will promptly burn the saturated fat as fuel - so it won't be stored.

"When you consume a very low-carb diet your body preferentially burns saturated fat," Volek said. "We had people eat 2 times more saturated fat than they had been eating before entering the study, yet when we measured saturated fat in their blood, it went down in the majority of people. Other traditional risk markers improved, as well."[...]

When looking at palmitoleic acid, however, the scientists found that it consistently decreased on the high-fat/low-carb diet in all participants. The fatty acid then showed a step-wise increase in concentration in the blood as carbs were progressively added to the diet. Elevated levels of palmitoleic acid in the blood have been linked to obesity and higher risk for inflammation, insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, metabolic syndrome, type-2 diabetes, heart disease and prostate cancer.[...]

"There is widespread misunderstanding about saturated fat. In population studies, there's clearly no association of dietary saturated fat and heart disease, yet dietary guidelines continue to advocate restriction of saturated fat. That's not scientific and not smart," Volek said. "But studies measuring saturated fat in the blood and risk for heart disease show there is an association. Having a lot of saturated fat in your body is not a good thing. The question is, what causes people to store more saturated fat in their blood, or membranes, or tissues?

"People believe 'you are what you eat,' but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat," he said. "The point is you don't necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat. And the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet. Since more than half of Americans show some signs of carb intolerance, it makes more sense to focus on carb restriction than fat restriction."

"I fell off so hard.... So you imagine what that's like - what it's like running through water and then you wear a 40-pound suit on top of it, so for me it was intense. I was facing my life, I don't know how many days in a row of, like, garbanzo beans on a plate."

But there is yet another showbiz representative, who conducted his own experiment and now have a long list of ailments to tell the world about.

"I had no soft drink, chocolate, ice cream, or confectionery. All the sugars that I was eating were found in perceived healthy foods, so low-fat yogurts, and muesli bars, and cereals, and fruit juices, sports drinks ... these kind of things that often parents would give their kids thinking they're doing the right thing."

Within three weeks, the previously healthy Gameau noticed his mental and physical health declining:

During the filming, Gameau found the sugary diet affected his physical and mental health, and doctors called his mental functioning "unstable." He also added nearly four inches of visceral fat around his waist, even though he said the diet left him feeling hungry, no matter how much he ate.

Sugar belly of Damon Gameau

And so it appears, that we have been deceived for a long time, and saturated fat is beneficial for both mere mortals and "stars" as well!

Zoya Klebanova

Two millennia after sword-wielding gladiators fought to the death on the blood-soaked sands of the Colosseum, Italy's culture minister has given the green light to cultural events once again being held within the arena.

Dario Franceschini has thrown his weight behind a proposal to rebuild the wooden floor that once covered the arena and provided the setting for wild animal hunts and gladiatorial combat.

Currently only a small portion of the arena is covered by wooden boards, with the rest exposed to the elements - visitors are able to peer into the labyrinth of narrow tunnels and cramped stone cells that once housed caged animals and gladiators before they emerged into the arena via a network of lifts operated by slaves.

There are no plans to recreate mock gladiatorial battles or fights with lions, leopards and bears.

The minister said that only concerts and other cultural events would be held, insisting that ancient Rome's monuments should not be turned into a cultural Disneyland.

Occasional concerts are held inside the Colosseum but the rebuilding of the arena's wooden flooring would allow more frequent events.

"I'm convinced that with the intelligent reconstruction of the arena in the Colosseum, the monument that is a symbol of Italy could become even more attractive to tourism," Mr Franceschini said at a press conference in Rome on Friday.

He knocked down previous suggestions that football matches could be held in the ancient arena.

Instead there would be classical music concerts and plays. "We're not going to be hosting a match between Roma and Bayern Munich," he said.

It was a project that would require "resources and vision".

"It's not something that you can do in two minutes. But the debate is open and it's going to be very interesting," he said.

Italy could increase tourism by "adding value" to its unparalleled cultural heritage, he said.

Ancient monuments needed to be "brought alive" for visitors from around the world.

The idea of restoring the arena was first mooted during the summer by an archaeologist, Daniele Manacorda, from Roma Tre university.

Some cultural heritage experts have criticised the idea, saying it would cheapen the monument and could damage its stone structure, which has survived earthquakes, pilfering of its stone for other buildings and traffic pollution.

But many of Italy's other ancient monuments are used for concerts and opera performances, including the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and Verona's Roman amphitheatre.

I've long written about how the percentage of sociopaths within a group of humans becomes increasingly concentrated the higher you climb within the positions of power in a society, with it being most chronic amongst those who crave political power (see: Humanity is Rising).

The reason for this is obvious. Those with the sickest minds, and who wish to act upon their destructive fantasies, understand that they can most easily get away with their deeds if they are protected by an aura of power and ostensible respectability.

They believe that as a result of their status, no one would dare accuse them of horrific activities, and if it ever came to that, they could quash any investigation. Unfortunately for us all, this is typically the case. I previously covered the issue of powerful pedophiles in the UK in the piece: Former BBC Host "Sir" Jimmy Savile Exposed as Major Player in Massive Pedophile Ring.

Now we have evidence of yet another case.

The reports that:

The security services are facing questions over the cover-up of a Westminster paedophile ring as it emerged that files relating to official requests for media blackouts in the early 1980s were destroyed.

Two newspaper executives have told the Observer that their publications were issued with D-notices - warnings not to publish intelligence that might damage national security - when they sought to report on allegations of a powerful group of men engaging in child sex abuse in 1984. One executive said he had been accosted in his office by 15 uniformed and two non-uniformed police over a dossier on Westminster paedophiles passed to him by the former Labour cabinet minister Barbara Castle.

Ah, national security. Remember that the next time you are lectured that we need to give up our civil liberties in the name of "national security." Think about what that really means. It really means the security of the status quo to continue to behave like insane criminals with zero accountability.

The other said that his newspaper had received a D-notice when a reporter sought to write about a police investigation into Elm Guest House, in southwest London, where a group of high-profile paedophiles was said to have operated and may have killed a child. Now it has emerged that these claims are impossible to verify or discount because the D-notice archives for that period "are not complete".

"It feels like just another example of key documents from that period going missing. We need to know more about what has happened. The journalists who have said that D-notices were issued are respected people with no reason to lie."

The two journalists, Don Hale, the former editor of the Bury Messenger, and Hilton Tims, news editor of the Surrey Comet between 1980 and 1988, both recall their publications being issued with D-notices around 1984. Tims, a veteran of the Daily Mail and BBC, where he was head of publicity for the launch of colour TV, said that his chief reporter had informed him that a D-notice had been issued to him after he tried to report on a police investigation into events at Elm Guest House, where Smith is said to have been a regular visitor.

"The reporter was told that there were a number of high-profile people involved and they were getting boys from a care home in the Richmond area. So I put someone on to it, the chief reporter I think, to make inquiries. It was the following day that we had a D-notice slapped on us; the reporter came over and told me. It was the only time in my career."

Hale, who was awarded an OBE for his successful campaign to overturn the murder conviction of Stephen Downing, a victim of one of the longest-known miscarriages of justice, said he was issued with a D-notice when editor of the Bury Messenger. He had been given a file by Castle, by then an MEP, which had details of a Home Office investigation into allegations made by the Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens of the existence of a Westminster paedophile ring. The files contained the name of 16 MPs said to be involved and another 40 who were supportive of the goals of the Paedophile Information Exchange, which sought to reduce the age of consent.

The worst part about incidents like these, is that those closest to the situations will often blindly protect the offenders. Such as what is described in the following articles.

From : The Sex-Abuse Scandal Plaguing USA Swimming

From the : Classroom Sex Abuse Case to Cost Nearly $140M

My heart goes out to all these young, helpless victims, and all those others whose stories haven't been told.

In Liberty,

Michael Krieger

Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union, a phrase evolved to describe gullible western intellectuals who came to visit Russia and failed to notice the human and other costs of building a communist utopia. The phrase was "useful idiots" and it applied to a good many people who should have known better. I now propose a new, analogous term more appropriate for the age in which we live: useful hypocrites. That's you and me, folks, and it's how the masters of the digital universe see us.

And they have pretty good reasons for seeing us that way. They hear us whingeing about privacy, security, surveillance, etc., but notice that despite our complaints and suspicions, we appear to do nothing about it. In other words, we say one thing and do another, which is as good a working definition of hypocrisy as one could hope for.

John Naughton,

"Who needs direct repression," asked philosopher Slavoj Zizek, "when one can convince the chicken to walk freely into the slaughterhouse?"

In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, "we the people" have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse, all the while convincing ourselves that the prison walls enclosing us within the American police state are there for our protection.

Call it doublespeak, call it hypocrisy, call it delusion, call it whatever you like, but the fact remains that while we claim to value freedom, privacy, individuality, equality, diversity, accountability, and government transparency, our actions and those of our government overseers contradict these much-vaunted principles at every turn.

For instance, we disdain the jaded mindset of the Washington elite, and yet we continue to re-elect politicians who lie, cheat and steal. We disapprove of the endless wars that drain our resources and spread thin our military, and yet we repeatedly buy into the idea that patriotism equals supporting the military. We chafe at taxpayer-funded pork barrel legislation for roads to nowhere, documentaries on food fights, and studies of mountain lions running on treadmills, and yet we pay our taxes meekly and without raising a fuss of any kind. We object to the militarization of our local police forces and their increasingly battlefield mindset, and yet we do little more than shrug our shoulders over SWAT team raids and police shootings of unarmed citizens.

And then there's our love-hate affair with technology, which sees us bristling at the government's efforts to monitor our internet activities, listen in on our phone calls, read our emails, track our every movement, and punish us for what we say on social media, and yet we keep using these very same technologies all the while doing nothing about the government's encroachments on our rights. This contradiction is backed up by a recent Pew Research Center study, which finds that "Americans say they are deeply concerned about privacy on the web and their cellphones. They say they do not trust Internet companies or the government to protect it. Yet they keep using the services and handing over their personal information."

Let me get this straight: the government continues to betray our trust, invade our privacy, and abuse our rights, and we keep going back for more?

Sure we do. After all, the alternative - taking a stand, raising a ruckus, demanding change, refusing to cooperate, engaging in civil disobedience - is a lot of work. What we fail to realize, however, is that by tacitly allowing these violations to continue, we not only empower the tyrant but we feed the monster. In this way, as I point out in my book , what starts off as small, occasional encroachments on our rights, justified in the name of greater safety, becomes routine, wide-ranging abuses so entrenched as to make reform all but impossible.

We saw this happen with the police and their build-up of military arsenal, ostensibly to fight the war on drugs. The result: a transformation of America's law enforcement agencies into extensions of the military, populated with battle-hardened soldiers who view "we the people" as enemy combatants.

The same thing happened with the government's so-called efforts to get tough on crime by passing endless laws outlawing all manner of activities. The result: an explosion of laws criminalizing everything from parenting decisions and fishing to gardening and living off the grid.

And then there were the private prisons, marketed as a way to lower the government's cost of locking up criminals. Only it turns out that private prisons actually cost the taxpayer money and place profit incentives on jailing more Americans.

Are you starting to notice a pattern yet? The government lures us in with a scheme to make our lives better, our families safer, and our communities more secure, and then once we buy into it, they slam the trap closed. Doesn't matter whether you're talking about red light cameras, DNA databases, surveillance cameras, or zero tolerance policies - they all result in "we the people" being turned into enemy #1.

In this way, the government campaign to spy on our phone calls, letters and emails was sold to the American people as a necessary tool in the war on terror. Instead of targeting terrorists, however, the government has turned into potential terrorists, so that if we dare say the wrong thing in a phone call, letter, email or on the internet, especially social media, we end up investigated, charged and possibly jailed.

This criminalization of free speech, which is exactly what the government's prosecution of those who say the "wrong" thing using an electronic medium amounts to, is at the heart of a case before the U.S. Supreme Court this term.

If you happen to be one of the 1.31 billion individuals who use Facebook or one of the 255 million who tweet their personal and political views on Twitter, you might want to pay close attention, because the case has broad First Amendment implications for where the government can draw the line when it comes to expressive speech that is protected and permissible versus speech that could be interpreted as connoting a criminal intent.

The case arose after Anthony Elonis, an aspiring rap artist, used personal material from his life as source material and inspiration for rap lyrics which he then shared on Facebook. For instance, shortly after Elonis' wife left him and he was fired from his job, his lyrics included references to killing his ex-wife, shooting a classroom of kindergarten children, and blowing up an FBI agent who had opened an investigation into his postings.

Despite the fact that Elonis routinely accompanied his Facebook posts with disclaimers that his lyrics were fictitious, and that he was using such writings as an outlet for his frustrations, he was charged with making unlawful threats (although it was never proven that he intended to threaten anyone) and sentenced to 44 months in jail.

Elonis is not the only Facebook user to be targeted for the content of his posts. In a similar case making its way through the courts, Marine veteran Brandon Raub was arrested by a swarm of FBI, Secret Service agents and local police and forcibly detained in a psychiatric ward because of controversial song lyrics and political views posted on his Facebook page. He was eventually released after a circuit court judge dismissed the charges against him as unfounded.

Earlier this year, rapper Jamal Knox and Rashee Beasley were sentenced to jail terms of up to six years for a YouTube video calling on listeners to "kill these cops 'cause they don't do us no good." Although the rapper contended that he had no intention of bringing harm to the police, he was convicted of making terroristic threats and intimidation of witnesses.

And then there was Franklin Delano Jeffries II, an Iraq war veteran, who, in the midst of a contentious custody battle for his daughter, shared a music video on YouTube and Facebook in which he sings about the judge in his case, "Take my child and I'll take your life." Despite his insistence that the lyrics were just a way for him to vent his frustrations with the legal battle, Jeffries was convicted of communicating threats and sentenced to 18 months in jail.

The common thread running through all of these cases is the use of social media to voice frustration, grievances, and anger, sometimes using language that is overtly violent. The question the U.S. Supreme Court must now decide in is whether this activity, in the absence of any overt intention of committing a crime, rises to the level of a "true threat" or whether it is, as I would contend, protected First Amendment activity. (The Supreme Court has defined a "true threat" as "statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.")

The internet and social media have taken the place of the historic public square, which has slowly been crowded out by shopping malls and parking lots. As such, these cyber "public squares" may be the only forum left for citizens to freely speak their minds and exercise their First Amendment rights, especially in the wake of legislation that limits access to our elected representatives. Unfortunately, the internet has become a tool for the government to monitor, control and punish the populace for behavior and speech that may be controversial but are far from criminal.

Indeed, the government, a master in the art of violence, intrusion, surveillance and criminalizing harmless activities, has repeatedly attempted to clamp down on First Amendment activity on the web and in social media under the various guises of fighting terrorism, discouraging cyberbullying, and combatting violence. Police and prosecutors have also targeted "anonymous" postings and messages on forums and websites, arguing that such anonymity encourages everything from cyber-bullying to terrorism, and have attempted to prosecute those who use anonymity for commercial or personal purposes.

We would do well to tread cautiously in how much authority we give the government to criminalize free speech activities and chill what has become a vital free speech forum. Not only are social media and the Internet critical forums for individuals to freely share information and express their ideas, but they also serve as release valves to those who may be angry, seething, alienated or otherwise discontented. Without an outlet for their pent-up anger and frustration, these thoughts and emotions fester in secret, which is where most violent acts are born.

In the same way, free speech in the public square - whether it's the internet, the plaza in front of the U.S. Supreme Court or a college campus - brings people together to express their grievances and challenge oppressive government regimes. Without it, democracy becomes stagnant and atrophied. Likewise, if free speech is not vigilantly protected, democracy is more likely to drift toward fear, repression, and violence. In such a scenario, we will find ourselves threatened with an even more pernicious injury than violence itself: the loss of liberty. In confronting these evils, more speech, not less, is the remedy.

New Mexico - Just over a week after the City of Albuquerque signed an agreement with the Department of Justice, promising to scale back aggressive police tactics and address police brutality, the Albuquerque Police Department has found themselves in the midst of another scandal.

This week, it was revealed by local KRQE News 13 that a retired Albuquerque Police Officer was teaching a class that was seemingly designed to instruct other cops on how to be more aggressive.

The class is run and operated by retired Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, and is called "killology - the study of killing." The retired officer instructs a number of similar classes, including his most recent, "The Bulletproof Mind: Prevailing in Violent Encounters Before and After."

Grossman Refers to himself as "World's Leading Combat Authority."

In his classes, Grossman instructs the officers to be "warriors", and has even created promotional material for the classes that say "Are you prepared for battle?"

These classes were exposed earlier this month when officer Fernando Aragon promoted for one of Grossman's lessons using a city email account.

Aragon now claims that he was not sending out the email to endorse the program, but to just "make the other officers aware of it."

Police accountability activists have pointed out that these classes are a sign of the aggressive culture that exists at the APD, and police departments across the country.

"The DOJ was quite clear that we need to shift away from a mentality of viewing all citizens as enemy combatants of some sort. I think at this point of time, when reform is at the forefront of everyone's mind, we want to do whatever we can to break down the model that equates police work with war. This training clearly does that," ACLU Director Peter Simonson told KRQE News 13.

The mayor and the police chief have both refused to comment on the issue, stating that it was none of their business.

Interview with Asam Ismi of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

Peter Koenig: Is BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa) a viable alternative to the present U.S.-dominated world economic system and does it have the potential to replace it? Are we witnessing the birth of a new international economic order in BRICS and the Russia-China energy deal?

Asad Ismi: The BRICS have a great potential to become a viable alternative to the dollar dominated economic system. The creation of the BRICS development bank is an indication in this direction. The bank could temporarily even act as a BRICS Central Bank and when the time comes issue a new BRICS currency, for example the Bricso. Together the BRICS account for almost 30% of world GDP and for about 45% of the world population. However, the US is using any means they can to destabilize the BRICS one by one. Take Brazil, though Dilma Rousseff has won easily the first round of elections, but after Washington's slandering her government for corruption and high indebtedness - the usual non-substantiated arguments - her campaign had to work hard until reason prevailed. I'm confident, people's trust will confirm her in the second round.

There is a massive effort of de-dollarization going on by the BRICS, led by Russia and China, the two strongest BRICS members. Since June 2014 regular and sizable ruble - yuan swaps have taken place to free the two countries from the traditional trading currency, the US dollar. In early July this year, after meeting with Vladimir Putin, Elvira Nabiullina, Governor of the Russian Central Bank, declared in an international media event, just before her impending meeting with the Governor of the Central Bank of China in Beijing, "We are discussing with China and our BRICS partners the establishment of a system of multilateral swaps that will allow to transfer resources to one or another country, if needed. A part of the currency reserves can be directed to [the new system]", - thus announcing the emergence of an international anti-dollar alliance.

This signals the beginning of a new monetary system which eventually will issue its own currency, possibly a basket of currency, akin to the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the IMF that could gradually replace the dollar as a reserve currency. This is in fact already happening. Ten years ago, the world's reserves consisted to about 90% of dollar denominated securities. Today that figure has shrunk to 60%.

Indeed it is high time that a new monetary and economic system replaces the current FED-BIS (Bank for International Settlement)-Wall Street dollar denominated predatory casino scheme that has in the last 100 years alone largely contributed to - and benefited from - two world wars, impoverished our planet, socially and environmentally. This system is at the verge of a larger abyss than the depression of the 1930s.

The global amount of outstanding derivatives is estimated way above 700 trillion dollars - global GDP is about US$ 72.6 trillion (est. 2014). Five of the largest US banks alone have each more than 40 trillion in derivative exposure. If they decide to call in their debt at one or in part, it would for sure create a worldwide tsunami with a resulting collapse of our western monetary system. Today 6 US banks control two thirds of all banking assets (in 2008 the figure was just over 40%).

Add to this calamity that in 2008 the too-big-to-fail banks were 'bailed out' by public money, according to the new Todd-Frank banking Act, future insolvent banks have to rescue themselves by 'bail-ins' - confiscating money from depositors and shareholders. A similar law has recently been approved by the European Commission (EC). - The world at large can only hope that a new monetary system will emerge soon to reign in the atrocities of our western greed economy.

PK: How will the BRICS system be better for the Global South than the U.S. one?

AI: A "BRICS system" would offer a healthy alternative to the highly indebted and defunct dollar system, where money is printed at will. It would be detached from the Wall Street - BIS clearing system (SWIFT) and would allow trading in countries' own moneys with currency swap arrangements between respective central banks. Today, though steadily declining, most trading is still denominated in dollars and has to transit through a US bank and the BIS clearing system. Under the FED-BIS-WS banking system currencies - and gold - are subject to exchange rate and interest manipulations.

For example, the ruble has lost 22% of its value since the beginning of 2014 and 15% in the last quarter alone. There is no economic reason for that, other than anti-Russia propaganda and currency manipulation, since the Russian economy is despite the ridiculous 'sanctions' on more solid ground than that of the US. Call it 'sanctions' - if you will - for not bending to the political demands of Washington on Ukraine. The western MSM would like you to believe that this is the result of the Russian caused Ukraine crisis which is driving investors away. Western media continue to ignore that Kiev's gang of thugs, a Nazi government, was created and is supported and funded by Washington and its western puppets.

In the meantime, the BRICS and some other countries, including Argentina, have started denominating their contracts and trading in local currencies already some time ago, thereby considerably circumventing exposure to the fraudulent dollar system. A solid alternative currency may also become an alternative reserve currency - a deed for which countries around the world, especially China, Russia and India, have called for years.

Recently Beijing has offered the EU to deal with China directly through respective central banks' currency swaps, thereby avoiding the oppressive claws of the dollar. Outrageous penalties, like the 9 billion dollar 'fine' to the French BNP-Paribas for dealing with sanctioned Iran might not have happened if the US would not have had a claw on the French bank because of its obligation to transit - and hold accounts - in the US banking system.

PK: What is the potential for a BRICS currency to replace the U.S. dollar?

AI: The chances are good that a BRICS currency, or let's call it a solid alternative currency based on the combined economy of sound nations will eventually displace the dollar as 'world currency' - in other words as currency of reference and major reserve currency. Once the new money is established with a secure exchange and transaction system, replacing SWIFT, it is very likely that many countries that so far do not dare abandoning the dollar - for fear of sanctions - might join the new money pool, thereby strengthening it. As I said before, it is high time that the currency of worldwide theft, abuse and exploitation - the US dollar - financial instrument for endless wars and economic terrorism, be replaced with a currency of peaceful endeavors that respects national sovereignty - a currency that works for the people, not for the elite of a few.

PK: To what extent will the recent Russia-China energy deal undermine the U.S. dollar? Will China pay for Russian gas in Yuan and not the dollar?

AI: The Russia - China US$ 400 billion energy deal, signed in May this year will by 2018 have some 38 billion cubic meters of gas flow through the so-called 'Holy Grail' pipeline from the largest gas producer, Russia, to the largest energy user, China - is many things at once: it is, of course a symbolic step in the process of decoupling hydrocarbon trading from the dollar, as it foresees payments in local currencies, rubles and yuan. It sidesteps the traditional dollar denomination for hydrocarbon trading. It is symbolic, because Russia's total hydrocarbon trading per year alone amounts to about one trillion dollars. But it is a demonstration to the world that Russia and China, at the verge of war in the 1960s, are morphing into a strong alliance in trade, politics and defense. In that sense yes, the gas deal is clearly undermining the dollar.

Prior to the signing of this gas treaty, during a special meeting on 24 April, Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Shuvalov, declared that in the future Russian enterprises will be subject to a "currency switch executive order", under which a certain percentage of contracts will be denominated in rubles. Whether and when the level will reach 100% is largely a question of the partners' willingness to deal in ruble. This directive has been enhanced by Russiya Bank's parallel declaration that the ruble is fully backed by gold.

PK: What is the significance of the $100 billion development bank set up by BRICS? Can it replace the World Bank? How will it be better for the Global South than the World Bank?

AI: For now it is a symbolic step away from the Washington Consensus of the WB and IMF neoliberal approach to development financing - away from privatizing of public goods and services, like water supply and health and education services - I would hope.

The development bank is not yet operational, but from my understanding will likely concentrate on infrastructure development and enhancement (transportation, energy distribution, telecommunication and so on), energy exploration and exploitation, including alternative clean energy - and social services.

The BRICS development bank may initially also serve as a BRICS central bank, especially in case of issuing a combined currency; and perhaps also take over some of the roles pertaining to the IMF, like balance of payment assistance - hopefully with human rather than with the IMFs draconian conditions.

Remember, today China is clearly in the BRICS driver's seat with an interest to harvest the benefits of the group's synergies and comparative advantages, a collection of countries geographically and culturally apart and distributed around the globe. Their relationships and trading among each other may make the benefits for each larger than the sum of its parts.

Whether the new BRICS development bank will eventually replace the WB and maybe the IMF depends largely on the way the new bank sees economic development, whether their policies and fields of action are attractive to borrowers and address their people's demands. - That means that people clearly do not like to see their corrupt leaders becoming richer, while their water and sanitation services are being privatized, their natural resources being exploited by foreign corporations for a pittance and their government operations being 'structurally adjusted', leaving masses of people jobless, their social safety nets being abolished or stolen, with reduced wages and pensions. These neoliberal pro-cyclical policies should definitely not be part of the new BRICS economic development bank.

PK: Please comment on the significance of the recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its expansion to include India, Pakistan and Iran.

AI: The 13^th annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - SCO - held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on 11-12 September, may be a hammer for the west. It was attended by the heads of state of Russia, President Putin, China, President Xi Jingpen and Iran, President Rouhani. The group's membership, currently consisting of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan is poised to be expanded to include India, Pakistan and Iran. Mongolia is another likely candidate.

The Oriental Review, an Open Dialogue Research Journal, reports, "The reasoning behind the need for expansion is obvious. If the SCO is to have real weight on the international arena and become a truly prestigious organization that is able to rival NATO, it requires additional members. If India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia were all to become permanent members, which looks likely, the group would then control 20 percent of the world's oil and half of all global gas reserves. On top of that, the bloc would represent about half of the world's population. This would fortify SCO's reputation as a dominant organization. Additionally, Turkey could become a member as well. Its leadership has long been seeking to join and Turkish-speaking governments are likely to support their petition."

If Turkey, a NATO member, would join the SCO, this would clearly be a conflict and nail in NATO's coffin - a blow to western powers.

The journal goes on - "The aggressive nature of Western actions towards Russia has certainly united the SCO members. What links them all - whether members or observers - is the rejection of Western-dominated institutions, such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, which are all US-based. The SCO, like the BRICS with their Development Bank, sees itself as a forum against the Western dominated global order."

The SCO summit concluded that economic cooperation between members should be enhanced, which includes further economic integration. The concept bodes particularly well for China's idea of a new Silk Road Economic Belt that might expand westwards to include Germany, as per a personal proposal of President Xi to Madame Merkel in March 2014.

Hence, the Oriental Review concludes and I concur, the ambition to create a truly dominant organization free of any Western influence may become a reality in the near future. I would like to add - this cannot happen fast enough in order to stop US-led western aggressions and financial terrorism around the world.

PK: Are the recent U.S. war moves in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine and the U.S. pivot to Asia aimed at preventing the consolidation of alliances such as BRICS?

AI: These moves - or rather military aggressions - have multiple purposes. A primary purpose is 'regime change' of all those governments which do not align with Washington's imperial ideology. In the Middle East, and elsewhere for that purpose, the idea is to sow chaos and strive between different ethnic groups and religions. Make no mistake, the ISIS, the latest so-called 'terror caliphate', and all its predecessors - were and are all created and funded by Washington. Their purpose is to destabilize countries and then to justify US intervention to 'salvage' what's left of the mess.

In other words, to bring about 'regime change' - just see the recent turmoil in Iraq and Syria - and to some extent also Ukraine. In Ukraine the White House literally orchestrated a coup in February this year and installed, financed and armed a regime of Nazi thugs in Kiev which is now committing the most atrocious war crimes in the eastern Ukraine Donbass area, killing thousands of civilians - so far more than 3,700 - mostly women and children and causing a flood of so far more than 1.2 million refugees into Russia. In this latter case the 'pivot' to Asia is expanding NATO basis ever closer to Moscow's doorstep - and to take over - like in looting - an extremely resource rich country that has been the cradle of historic Russia. Obviously, Mr. Putin, the Kremlin and the Russian people do not like to see this vicious take-over of their brothers and sisters and their ancient lands.

But there is more to destabilizing the BRICS and the pivot to Asia - practically maneuvering of Ukraine into civil war, planting chaos in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria - than meets the eye. It is the end game, full spectrum dominance - the full achievement of the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) - meaning complete control of the world's resources, people and economies. Already in the 1970s Henry Kissinger, one of the patriarchs of elitist and neoliberal thinking and perhaps the greatest war criminal still alive, spoke these infamous words, "Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world". These words resonate today stronger than ever.

PK: How fragile is the U.S. economy? ls it in danger of collapsing soon due to its heavy debt load?

AI: The US economy is as fragile as can be. It is basically a balloon of hot air, ready to implode. This is partly due to its enormous debt - 105% of GDP (US$ 17 trillion, est.2014) - and unmet obligations - 127 trillion, about 8 times GDP; no other country in the world has this level of actual debt and foreseen but uncovered obligations.

Today the economy of the United States is a mere house of cards. It consists to more than 50% of the war and security industry and related services and industries. In other words, the US has a GDP of destruction - with the hope that after a country has been destroyed to rubble, its citizens killed or reduced to misery - US corporations will be called to rebuild and rescue what's left. As per Robert Zoellick, former World Bank President ..... "As in Iraq, we hope to be part of rebuilding Libya, when the war ends" - and we all know who controls the World Bank.

As the world at large takes gradually note of the emptiness of the US economy, of the nakedness of the US emperor, so to speak, people and countries are wishing and hoping - some are even calling - for an alternative monetary and economic system, as their reserves and international contracts are in peril.

Adding to the fragility of the US economy is its banking system. As mentioned before, it is again at the verge of a collapse - this time with considerably more serious consequences than in 2008 of which repercussions are still felt today around the globe - 6 years later. - Many 'expert' estimates predict a stock market slump of up to 70% in the very foreseeable future, vs. about 50% in 2008. Consequences of unemployment, housing dispossessions, hunger and disease - sheer misery are unfathomable.

However, there is a strong feeling that these cyclical economic collapses and disasters are not just unpredictable random events inherent in our economic system. They are rather planned events - planned by the masters of the system - the FED, Wall Street, BIS, the financiers of this world - so that the rich can get richer and the poor will get poorer. This phenomenon was already observed during the economic slump of the 1930s. The middle class is diminishing. The abyss between rich and poor grows worldwide - towards a world of a distinct corporate and finance elite and a mass of serfs to scurry about complying with the wishes and desires of the masters.

But it's not too late. We the People can stop it. We must wake up and become conscious.

PK: Is there anything else you consider important and would like to add?

AI: People beware of the Mass Media and their outrageous lies!

The Mainstream Media, or commonly called MSM, is a weapon as criminal and killing as the US / NATO war machine with its European puppets. The MSM are in the hands of 6 giant Judo-Anglo-Saxon media corporations. They literally control 90% of the information officially dished out to the common citizen. Their news are copied and replicated throughout the world, translated into whatever language is suitable and needed.

They work and are paid for the financial and corporate elite, especially the military / security and financial complex. - They dupe people into believing that they are in pursuit of peace, protecting you from terror, preventing villains like Russia and China from taking over the world, when in reality it is thanks to Russian and Chinese diplomacy and economic pressures that the world has so far escaped WWIII.

Already Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister, said - A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.

That's the level of lying we are exposed at today - far surpassing Orwell's 1984 doomsday scenario. Our thinking has been brainwashed and manipulated to the point where a lie is more comfortable and easier to believe than the truth.

There are few media that are worth watching or listening to. One of them is TeleSur of South America, with home in Venezuela. It broadcasts around the world, has top reporters and journalists stationed and reporting directly from the hotspots, with in-depth analyses, connecting the dots and areas of interest - something that is hard to find these days. TeleSur can be seen in most of the Southern Hemisphere, including in parts of the US, and everywhere on internet.

We have to wake up - awaken to a consciousness of peace and solidarity - seeking the truth from uncommon sources, like the present one, TeleSur and others on internet, rather than submitting to the steady drip of indoctrination by the mainstream media.

Becoming conscious of people, societies, the environment - the truth around us - that's my wish for humanity.

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An earthquake with the magnitude of 5.6 degrees on the Richter scale took place in the Vrancea seismic area in Romania on Saturday evening, shortly after 9:00 PM. The depth of the quake was 40 kilometres, which is why it was felt quite strongly around the epicentre.

The earthquake was felt in the capital Bucharest, as well as in other cities in the Muntenia, Moldova, and Dobrogea regions - South, North and East. It was felt for more than 30 seconds, according unofficial estimates. This was one of the strongest earthquakes felt in Romania in recent years and also the strongest this year. The previous stronger earhquake was felt in Romania on October 6, 2013. That one was 5.5 degrees on the Richter scale.

USGS data

Some mobile networks experienced technical problems after the quake, preventing users from making voice calls.

No material damages have been reported by publishing time of this article.

© AP/Justin Newman

The limousine carrying mortally wounded President John F. Kennedy races toward the hospital seconds after he was shot in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963.

Every year, without fail, the president dies all over again. For a few days every autumn, the entire media is overwhelmed by those haunting photos from Dallas. Those cruelly happy and innocent pictures of a young president smiling and waving at bystanders, the first lady clutching a bouquet of roses. With their soft, prelapsarian colors, they seem to hail from another universe - one that has been stolen from us.

Perhaps it is that feeling of loss that explains the lingering sense of grief over John F. Kennedy's assassination year after year, when the anniversaries of other, equally shocking events - from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 - are generally quieter affairs. But there is also something unfinished about Kennedy's death, a lingering suspicion that no one has ever been able to banish.

For the public has never embraced the official verdict, handed down by the Warren Commission in September 1964. After less than a year of hearings and deliberations, the team - led by Chief Justice Earl Warren - concluded that President Kennedy had been shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old ex-Marine portrayed by the Commission as a shiftless loner with communist sympathies. But they could not explain why.

The most obvious question about the murder was also the one that could not be answered. Not only had Oswald been murdered in police custody two days after the assassination, but the Commission had been unable to find a single person who remembered Oswald criticizing Kennedy. On the contrary, Oswald had frequently expressed his admiration for the president. The Commission interviewed at least six witnesses who remembered Oswald praising Kennedy.

Faced with a substantial hole in their case, the Commission tried to plug it by filling the report with airy speculation about Oswald's tormented psyche. Oswald, they insisted, was someone who had been driven by "resentment of all authority," "antagonism toward the United States" and an "urge to try to find a place in history." Perhaps he had shot the president, the Report blandly suggested, because of his "inability to enter into meaningful relationships with people."

But this conclusion was not reached in a vacuum. From the moment it was established, the Warren Commission was under tremendous pressure to calm a hysterical public and quash the widespread rumors of a conspiracy that exploded across the country in the days following the public killing of the president's accused assassin. As Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach put it in a memo written hours after Oswald's death, "We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort."

That "speculation" never went away. In 1966, the first national poll taken on the subject found that 46 percent of Americans believed that JFK had been struck down by a plot. Last year, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 62 percent of the public rejected the idea that a single man had killed the president.

The Post reported this development with a palpable sense of bafflement, for the mainstream media has always treated skeptics of the official account with impatience, even scorn. For them, the Kennedy case was cracked and closed long ago. Last year, Jill Abramson blithely informed readers of The New York Times that "the historical consensus seems to have settled on Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin," dismissing the wealth of information about the assassination that can be found online as "unfiltered and at times unhinged musings."

As far as the vast majority of the American press is concerned, critics of the Warren Commission are in a class with the paranoids who doubt that the moon landing occurred, that President Obama was born in the United States, or that al Qaeda was responsible for the 2001 terrorist attacks. They insist, as Adam Gopnik did in a meandering New Yorker essay last year, "that the evidence that the American security services gathered, within the first hours and weeks and months, to persuade the world of the sole guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald remains formidable," and that anyone who differs with this assessment is an "obsessive" or a "buff" with no life. Some defenders of the Warren verdict sound as passionate as any conspiracy theorists: Chris Matthews, an admirer of Kennedy, once told his audience that assassination skeptics cling to conspiracy theories "because they cannot bear the suffering that truth brings to the heart and to the mind."

It can be shocking, after reading such dismissive remarks, to learn that some of the most powerful people in the United States expressed skepticism about the official account of JFK's death. John Kerry might have startled some people when he admitted last year that he entertained "serious doubts" about the Warren verdict, but he was far from the first member of the political establishment to say so.

President Lyndon Johnson, who commissioned the Warren Report, was never satisfied by its conclusions. "I can't honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections," he told Walter Cronkite in 1969, adding that Oswald was "a mysterious fellow" whose motivations remained uncertain. "I never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger," he told another journalist in 1971. Senator Richard Russell, a member of the Warren Commission, disagreed with the final report, particularly the controversial claim that JFK and Texas Governor John Connally had been struck by the same bullet - a conclusion that Connally himself doubted.

While the Kennedy family has been guarded in its public statements on the subject, they privately expressed doubts that Oswald had acted alone. A week after the assassination, Robert and Jacqueline Kennedy sent a back-channel message to Soviet leaders, telling them that they believed that "the president was felled by domestic opponents." In 2013, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. revealed that his father had dismissed the Warren Report as "a shoddy piece of craftsmanship."

Other Washington bigwigs have given voice to similar suspicions. In his memoirs, former House Speaker Tip O'Neill recalled that JFK aides Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers - both of whom had been riding in JFK's motorcade at the moment of the assassination - once told him that they had heard two shots coming from the grassy knoll, across the street from where Oswald is alleged to have fired all of the shots. CIA Director John McCone told RFK that he believed two gunmen had been present in Dealey Plaza. In 1992, both Al Gore and Bill Clinton expressed guarded doubts that Oswald had acted alone.

In short, even as the media strained to portray the Warren Commission's verdict as unassailable, some of the most powerful figures in Washington, past and present, publicly and privately admitted that they found it hard to swallow. None of these people were flakes, none were easily fooled, and none could be considered "obsessives" or "buffs." Why did they feel, instinctively, that something was wrong in the Kennedy case?

The answer lies not in the much-debated minutiae of the case - in how many shots were fired, the order in which the wounds were inflicted, and the reliability of each witness. The real mystery lies not in the facts that are disputed, but in the facts that are known. There is something profoundly strange about the story of Lee Harvey Oswald as it was presented by the Warren Commission.

In 1956, at the age of 17, Oswald quit high school to join the U.S. Marine Corps. He was no ordinary Marine: From 1957 through 1958, he was assigned to work as a radar operator at Atsugi Naval Air Base in Japan. Atsugi was not only a major CIA station, but also the home base of the top-secret U-2 spy plane, used to conduct reconnaissance missions inside the Soviet Union. While working at Atsugi, Oswald - as his commanding officer told the Warren Commission - "had access to the location of all bases in the West Coast area, all radio frequencies for all squadrons, all tactical call signs, and the relative strength of all squadrons."

In 1959, Oswald abruptly quit the marines and traveled to Russia, where he declared his intention to defect to the Soviet Union. He subsequently turned up at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he dramatically announced that he intended to spill all of the secrets he had learned as a marine to his new country's government. He even bragged that he "might know something of special interest" to the Soviets.

This should have set off alarm bells in every corner of the U.S. intelligence community. Defections to the Soviet Union were rare enough; a former marine who had access to top-secret, highly sensitive information was something else again. When the U-2 plane was shot down by Soviet guns in May 1960, Oswald might well have been considered the most likely culprit. The young defector should have been poised to be condemned as the Edward Snowden of his day.

But he was not. The vast U.S. national-security establishment showed virtually no interest in Oswald. When Oswald decided to return home in 1962 - two years after openly declaring his intent to betray his country to its deadliest enemy - he received a warm welcome. He faced no investigation and had no trouble obtaining a new passport; the U.S. State Department even lent him $435 for his traveling expenses. Upon returning home, Oswald began noisily campaigning in support of Communist Cuba, again without attracting the attention of the intelligence community.

Why was Oswald treated so lightly? As Sylvia Meagher put it in Accessories After the Fact, her groundbreaking 1967 critique of the Warren Report: "There is a consistent pattern of unusual and favorable treatment of Oswald by the State Department. Decision after decision, the Department removed every obstacle before Oswald - a defector and would-be expatriate, self-declared enemy of his native country, self-proclaimed discloser of classified military information, and later self-appointed propagandist for Fidel Castro - on his path from Minsk to Dallas."

At the height of the Cold War, when tensions with the Soviet Union were at an all-time high, this professed traitor was apparently not even debriefed by the CIA upon his return to the U.S. In 1975, the CIA's then-director William Colby insisted that the CIA had never had any contact at all with Oswald, either before or after his defection.

This conspicuous silence is the black hole at the heart of the JFK assassination, a mystery that cannot easily be explained away. There seems to be no rational reason why a prominent defector and outspoken quisling should have been so blithely overlooked by the entire national security establishment, in an era when hysteria over potential Soviet infiltration was so fierce that Hollywood celebrities, civil rights activists and union organizers were all being targeted for their alleged communist connections. It is no accident that the report could not establish a coherent motive for Oswald; the very facts of Oswald's life seem incoherent. Something is missing.

There is one explanation that seems frighteningly plausible. In his 1990 book Spy Saga,"Philip Melanson speculated that Oswald may have been recruited by the U.S. government as a low-level intelligence agent, and that his sojourn in Russia was an undercover mission. The evidence is entirely circumstantial, but former CIA Director Allen Dulles himself pointed out to the Warren Commission that there was no paper trail for many of his agency's men and that many agents would refuse to admit their identity even under oath.

As unlikely as it may sound, this theory would explain why Oswald was not targeted by U.S. intelligence after his defection, and it would explain why he had no trouble returning home. It might also help to explain another Oswald mystery: why an alleged Marxist appears to have had no Marxist friends, spending the majority of his time in the U.S. socializing with right-wing Russian exiles and anti-Castro Cubans - many of whom apparently had CIA connections of their own.

It might explain why Oswald, portrayed by the Warren Report as a fame-seeker who had "sought for himself a place in history," denied to his last breath that he had killed the president. After Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby on Nov. 24, Detective B. H. Combest asked the dying Oswald if there was anything more he wanted to say. "He shook his head," Combest recalled. The Warren Commission heard this testimony but chose to omit it from its final report.

It may also explain why the CIA, to this day, refuses to release more than a thousand documents relating to the JFK assassination for reasons of "national security," a claim that makes no sense if the president was killed by a crank for no reason. For if Oswald was any kind of intelligence agent, the official explanation - relying as it does on the assumption that Oswald was a disgruntled loner - is irreparably shattered, and every single piece of evidence needs to be examined in a new light.

It is highly implausible that the full truth behind John F. Kennedy's assassination lies buried in those unreleased documents. It is more likely that they contain clues that would further weaken the official account, perhaps to the point where many Americans would feel that their instinctive skepticism was justified enough to demand a new investigation into the matter. Fifty years is a long time to wait for a satisfactory answer; we should have not to wait for fifty more.

We cannot tell where that investigation might lead, or how it might change our understanding of the most famous murder case of the last century. But there is only one way to find out.

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