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Tuesday 6 January 2015

The history of the U.S. government's attacks, intimidation, and murder of whistleblowers


With 2014 fresh in our rear view mirror, an honest examination of events and developments of what's been happening in America to whistleblowers and journalists since 9/11 under the Bush-Obama regime seems a worthwhile review, however disturbing ands foreboding. By definition a whistleblower is an individual who reports an employer's misconduct. The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (WPA) is a law that protectsfederal government employees in the United States from retaliatory action for voluntarily disclosing information about dishonest or illegal activities occurring within a government organization. Yet despite these supposed legal protections in place, those who have gone public disclosing illicit and immoral behavior by the federal government have been consistently singled out for discrimination and excessive punishment.

In fact, more American citizens have been indicted for allegedly violating the Espionage Act of 1917 under the current president than all other previous presidents combined. Though the law was designed to punish WWI German spies, and rarely used since for indicting those selling secrets to the enemy or efforts to undermine the American way of life, it is completely obsolete. Yet it is being misused by Obama for purely political purposes to shut down the truth. The Obama administration has also turned down more Freedom of Information Act requests than any other prior presidency with each year the denial rate rising. 2013 was 57% more than the year before, with over half the total requests rejected. Of course Obama's mantra excuse is always using the "national security" card. He has also jailed more whistleblowers and journalists than any other president. By his over the top, punitive methods, Obama has declared war on the first amendment right to a free press in America, threatening, harassing, indicting and imprisoning those brave enough to speak the truth, accusing them of treason when the president through his administration has repeatedly violated the very Constitution that he has sworn to protect and uphold as the so called leader of the free world. His malevolent attack on free speech is even more incriminating and inexcusable as a Harvard educated lawyer who once taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.


With their war policies both domestic and abroad one and the same, Obama has carried the totalitarian torch handed him by the Bush-Cheney administration making the United States the world's worst human rights violator. But then they're all cast from the same psychopathic mold as mere public front men simply following orders from their oligarch puppet masters who own and control them along with virtually everything else on this planet.




The man who after the Bush nightmare exploited Americans' desperate need for hope and change campaigned on false promises that his administration would be far more open and transparent than his war criminal predecessor, pledging to be the most open and honest in US history. Instead Obama has only proven to be the most guarded, vindictive and secretive president in US history. With three quarters of Obama's two term reign of terror completed, let's look at the lives of a handful of Americans who have bravely spoken out since 9/11, some known and some lesser known. At great danger to themselves these individuals have exercised their legal rights under the Whistleblower Act and/or First Amendment and paid dearly for only doing the right thing. Their courage to expose government waste, corruption, fraud and its diabolical wrongdoing has been met with blatant retribution and extreme punishment that has systematically resulted in their unlawful firing, false imprisonment, character and career assassination and indeed even their political assassination and murder, all for standing up to injustice and wrongdoing for the greater good of Americans and humanity. These brave and honest individuals working in our government and in journalism should be heralded as our national heroes for their bold truth speaking, not silenced, harmed and/or destroyed by our own criminally treasonous rogue government.

The two biggest whistleblowers deservedly receiving the most national and international attention during the last couple years are ex-NSA analyst Edward Snowden, currently a fugitive forced on the run hiding out in Russia, and ex-US Army private Bradley now Chelsea Manning, currently serving three and a half decades of hard time in federal prison. In June 2013 Snowden released documents proving the government leaders to be liars - from Obama's national security advisor and known perjurer James Clapper to now former National Security Agency (NSA) Director General Alexander (in clear violation of both his sworn oath upholding both the Constitution and his onetime West Point honor code).


Through the Snowden revelations Americans and in fact the entire world have come to realize the US government has been routinely conducting invasive, unlawful surveillance on every single aspect of our not so private lives, brazenly and blatantly violating Fourth Amendment search and seizure laws for decades now. Mr. Snowden pointed out what many of us already suspected, that Big Brother is watching our every move, or minimally has free unlimited access. Despite the reactive government and its controlled Mainstream Media propaganda machine claiming the NSA whistleblower is a traitor as the eighth American charged with violating the Espionage Act who weakened national security and placed Americans in danger, then not delivering a shred of forthcoming evidence, public opinion has neither been swayed nor convinced that he's the villain. Even the New York Times has followed suit with the majority of Americans beginning 2014 with a favorable New Year op-ed article upgrading its view of Edward Snowden:



When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government...


Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight.



Of course Private Manning working as an intelligence specialist in Iraq saw numerous atrocities and crimes against humanity the US Empire was perpetrating in our name in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In good conscience in 2010 he leaked thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks believing like Daniel Ellsberg four decades earlier that it might force the United States to end its war crimes, perhaps the wars themselves because the American people have the right to know what atrocities are being committed in their name. Rather than protection under the Whistleblower's Act, like Snowden he too was slammed with treasonous charges and convicted of violating the Espionage Act with the same bogus worn out cries/lies that he also compromised national security and endangered fellow Americans. And also identical to the Snowden outcries, a Pentagon general who conducted a near yearlong investigation of the effects the leaks maintained that not one single death ever resulted from Manning's releases.

There is something really grotesquely wrong and inverse from the way it naturally should be in America when a whistleblower performing acts of goodwill demonstrating moral conscience to save lives is maltreated with the treasonous tag of traitor and imprisoned for the next thirty five years. Rather than own responsibility for violating international laws and correcting the grave problem as any government operating with any moral compass would do, US government tyranny has it committing yet another grave injustice by in effect destroying the whistleblower's life, confining Manning for what will likely be most of her remaining life. Private Manning should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for his moral courage and been lauded as a national hero and role model to be emulated in history books for generations to come, not cast away to rot for decades in a prison cell.


John Kiriakou was a CIA officer turned whistleblower who busted the Bush-Cheney-Obama torture practice wide open by contacting the New York Times and an ABC reporter. Though the systemic practice of enhanced interrogation torture that includes waterboarding was officially outlawed under Obama, in reality it only went further underground. That's why Obama recently refused to prosecute the guilty members of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Alberto Gonzalez regime including the CIA and Special Ops personnel who actively violated international and national laws. But the good man Kiriakou who called the bad men out was the one who was arrested in early 2012 simply for telling the truth while the government for years persisted in its lying game. That's why Obama throwing the book at John threw him into the slammer where he still remains, not for passing any classified material or even violating the three counts of espionage he initially was charged with that were dropped for lack of evidence. He has been locked up purely for the political purpose to set an example for those honest and courageous enough to tell the nasty heinous truth about what America the rogue state has been propagating with impunity around the world. In his arrogant exceptionalism, Obama continues to operate above the law, defying the Whistleblower Act of 1989 he also promised to uphold. As another heroic patriot, John Kiriakou should be a free man and recognized as the hero he is.


Meanwhile, the US military-national government should be treated as the treasonous killing machine it is and severely punished for its rampant destruction and violation of both international and domestic laws. But unfortunately since 9/11, the oppressors within the militarized Empire apparatus doing the dirty oligarch bidding of the New World Order no longer comply with our nation's rule of law and instead appear engaged in global depopulation through war, growing complicity of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria and Rwanda, widespread global impoverishment, bio-warfare and neurotoxin poisoning. The police state killing increasing numbers of innocent, unarmed, law abiding US citizens reflects the overt war on America itself. With events from Ferguson, New York City and throughout America really, the powers-that-be have long been waging successful divide and conquer campaigns, pitting class against class, religion against religion, race against race, region against region, ideology against ideology, police state against citizen.


Though the FBI fails to even acknowledge much less tally each year's unjustifiable homicides committed by law enforcement agencies across the nation, only "justifiable" ones are counted. From 1992 through 2012 (2012 being the latest account though in 2014 an exponential spike has no doubt occurred), while violent crime in the US has steadily declined, the so called justifiable killings of Americans by police has significantly increased. Plus as law enforcement becomes more militarized with surplus military weapons and equipment from war zones being distributed in recent years to local police departments around the country, the weapon of choice that the militarized police state is currently using to kill US citizens has shifted from officer handguns to automatic rifles. It's getting so one cannot tell the difference between the police and the military as they have emerged in both appearance and function to be one and the same. They both fight wars, domestic and foreign.


Everything happening here in the United States is simultaneously recurring throughout the Western world. It all is going as planned by that one tenth of one percent that holds virtually the entire planet's wealth and power along with its seven billion population hostage. In the US the top 20% of American household incomes own over half the country's wealth (53.5%) and incredibly the top 1% alone more than 40% of all US wealth. With the world's richest nation's form of government no longer a democratic republic but an actual oligarchy serving the interests of the privileged financial elite, draconian laws have sprung up on every continent criminalizing free speech and free press. Each passing year more journalists are being jailed or killed throughout the globe. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) just revealed that 60 journalists were killed in action in 2014 while Reporters Without Borders counted the number at 66. CPJ maintains that 220 were imprisoned last year. It's becoming more dangerous all the time to report the truth.


The Orwellian nightmare of a militarized global security-surveillance-police state means new national security laws are rapidly proliferating all over the world. This last year alone has seen tyrannical parliamentary acts from Australia to Spain being enacted with greater frequency. Clearly the globalists control every war, manufacturing and demonizing enemies at propagandist will. Oligarchs in the form of the international banking cabal have taken over every national government, own and control every transnational corporation, and control every national economy due to increasing dependence on a non-sustainable, bankrupt global economic system dictated and controlled by the cabal. They own and control virtually all global food production, distribution and supply as well as virtually all sources of information through fewer and fewer media outlets, with the agenda to next abolish net neutrality and eliminate the internet as the only viable independent news source for any semblance of truth and accurate information still left available. As highly alarming as this appallingly dark and austere NWO reality fast descending over every corner of the globe appears, unfortunately the worst is yet to come. We citizens of the world must fight back first with the truth by learning and disseminating it, and then with our collective will through nonviolent civil disobedience.


The increasingly probable assassination of investigative journalist Michael Hastings on June 18th, 2013 involved a high speed car crash caused by an incredibly high heat explosion that occurred prior to ending up "leaning" next to a tree in an LA police photo that shows the new model Mercedes Benz with absolutely no frontal collision damage at all, only a badly burned area confined to the driver's seat where Michael was burned alive. Neighborhood witnesses describe what they heard as an enormously loud explosion at 4:30 in the morning sounding like "a bomb going off." The unburned engine was strangely found at a right angle from the car lying 150-180 feet away, consistent with a powerful explosive catapulting it so far a distance from the vehicle. Also consistent with an explosion, there were no skid marks at the accident scene.


Within just a few hours after Hastings' death, LAPD was rushing to make an open and shut case, calling it a simple accident while emphatically claiming no foul play was involved barely even after any investigation had begun. That kind of knee jerk response smacks of cover-up. Also Michael's body went straight from the coroner's office to the local crematory without the family's consent against their wishes. With his body quickly cremated, any possibility of discovering signs of foul play were instantly and conveniently destroyed, raising only more suspicion.


On the very same day just a few hours before his death, the outspoken reporter was in contact with WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson, eager to turn over his latest expose piece on the criminality of US intelligence agencies. Also on that very same day, Michael asked a friend to borrow her car indicating he knew something was not right with his own new model vehicle. Additionally, Hastings was in a rare state of anxiety all day long as he was busily emailing and contacting friends to inform them that the FBI was in fact investigating him and that he may need to lay low for a while. Though the FBI denied that he was ever under investigation, the truth was the FBI lied as he was being investigated right after his most recent Rolling Stone article came out in July 2012 featuring the highly controversial case of the only POW from the Afghanistan War Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. A 22-page secret FBI report was the result.


Even more striking was a post on WikiLeaks of an internal email from the covert CIA contractor company Stratfor's Vice President Fred Burton stating, "[CIA Director] Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources." Then Michael Hastings' wife Elise Jordan confirmed in a CNN interview that former CIA Director Petraeus' successor John Brennan and his efforts to seal off all leaks to the press was the very hot topic of Hastings' next exposé. The biggest articles of Hastings' career in journalism were most unflattering reports about the most powerful military leaders in America - Generals Stanley McCrystal and David Petraeus for Rolling Stone.


In fact, shortly after the McCrystal article was published, the military intelligence commander of Special Operations in Afghanistan's own career was destroyed when Obama fired McCrystal for trash talking his Commander-in-Chief. There's evidence that Hastings' life was threatened while writing that article should his account of McCrystal not be anything more than a fluff n' puff piece. Several years earlier it was General McCrystal who was the primary player (along with his boss my former West Point roommate the then CentCom commander General John Abizaid) in covering up Pat Tillman's suspicious death and probable murder since the famous pro football star turned patriotic Army Ranger was renouncing his role as a Bush-Cheney poster boy unwittingly being misused for recruitment for their illegal wars. Tillman was about to blow the lid off the US government's international drug smuggling operation that had US soldiers guarding the opium fields in Afghanistan. The friendly fire that put three bullet holes in his forehead a la execution style obviously was anything but friendly. Nor was the autopsy doctor who balked for months from acquiescing to the official cover-up version.


Two years later another scathing Hastings article placed General Petraeus in a bad light uncovering the resounding failure of "King David's War" (as Hastings named his Rolling Stone piece) in 2010 Afghanistan, exposing the general's lies touting false progress over his second surge in as many wars after the inflated hype had crowned him the savior in Iraq. Hastings' unfettered truth squarely embarrassed America's most famous general with the rock star status and presidential ambitions to jump at the chance in 2011 of abandoning his own 37-year military career, his failed combat mission and lost cause war to become the next civilian in charge of the CIA. Hastings' no-nonsense brand of truth telling journalism made powerful enemies and tragically he paid for it with his life.


Michael Hastings boldly pissed off the elite, exposing their lies in a nation run no different from the mafia, controlled by murdering thugs within a shadowy rogue government that made Hastings their "fair game" target. Silencing him by their brazen undercover method of remote hacking and exploding his automobile was the not-so-subtle message sent to all muckraking journalists who dare print the dirty lowdown truth about the fascist tyranny state since the 9/11 inside coup unleashing the forever war on terror. Even counterterrorism insider Richard Clarke copped the conclusion that it could well have been a hacking hit job. While a militarized police force operating freely with impunity in a security surveillance state is regularly killing off innocent unarmed Americans, a totalitarian federal government is resorting to assassination of its own targeted citizens deemed a threat to the state just to keep any would-be rabblerousers in line and/or neutralized by elimination.


Just two weeks prior to Hastings' untimely demise, Obama had launched his aggressive assault on America's free press with his shot across the bow confiscating phone records of Associated Press reporters, harassing a Fox journalist as well as internally hacking the computer belonging to former CBS reporter and investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson. In her recent tell-all book Stonewalled, Attkisson chronicles Obama's profound web of deceit and his aggressive, out for blood lust to destroy all truth tellers. Fresh on the heels of these events came Michael Hastings' car blowing up. In today's United States of America, an emboldened, in-our-face pattern of connecting the criminal dots has emerged. Those of us individuals courageous and daring enough to expose the dark ugly truth about what America the no longer free has chillingly degenerated into, are simply being taken out, exterminated by the totalitarian state that hypocritical US leaders like Obama have long accused of Russia and China.


Several months prior to Hastings' death in February 2013, another controversial journalist-author and his family turned up suspiciously dead in northern California. Philip Marshall wrote the book published in 2012 called The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror,dissecting the false flag 9/11 event that launchedthe Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. Speculation abounds over Marshall's affiliation back in the Iran Contra days of the 1980's when controversial CIA pilot Barry Seal was transporting cocaine for the government and later had his pilot license revoked. It was then that fellow pilot Philip Marshall was hired to transport Seal back and forth from Florida to Louisiana. After delving into covert government activities and writing about them for thirty years, Philip Marshall's third book was an expose linking the Saudi government to the 9/11 inside Bush-Cheney job. The former United Airlines captain makes the case that a US military stand down order was in effect on the day the planes flew into the towers after Washington and Saudi Arabia had been in cahoots for that last 18 months to ensure that with CIA assistance the wire-cutting, Saudi foreign nationals were allowed free access in and out of the US while being trained to fly planes at various flight school locations around the country - in Florida, Arizona and California. Two credible sources, former Senators Bob Kerrey and Bob Graham who headed two separate 9/11 investigations also came up with the same conclusion, that intelligence sources from the Saudi government worked hand in hand with the Bush administration in preparation to pull off the 9/11 attack.


An FBI special agent and attorney Coleen Rowley working out of the Minnesota field office had stumbled upon vital information regarding suspicious activity involving Saudi national Zacarias Moussaoui taking flying lessons. After attempting to alert FBI higher-ups in DC to no avail, she soon went public as a whistleblower testifying before a Senate committee over the inexplicable breakdown in intelligence communications that led directly to 9/11. Specifically she realized that FBI headquarters actually hampered the investigation that may have stopped the 9/11 attack. Of course if the reality from top on down was a planned inside attack, then the FBI would have orders to purposely sabotage any real probe exposing the perpetrators. Coleen wrote a scathing letter to the FBI Director Robert Mueller. Ms. Rowley was one of three women selected as 2002's Time Magazine's Persons of the Year for her blowing the whistle on the feds' failure to do its job. Ever since she has been a strong advocate and activist for government oversight especially once she resigned from the FBI in 2004. Coleen Rowley is another unsung American hero.


Still another courageous woman who became an FBI whistleblower involving 9/11 is Sibel Edmonds. Fluent in both Farsi and Turkish languages, Ms. Edmonds was hired right after 9/11 as a translator of sensitive intelligence documents that confirmed the FBI knew prior to 9/11 of the plan to use airplanes to attack buildings on American soil. Sibel like Coleen is a hardworking activist dedicated to exposing the truth about government improprieties. Utilizing her international contacts, she runs the extremely informative alternative news website BoilingFrogs.com.


With FBI Agent Rowley also privy to the same plan to fly planes into New York City's Twin Towers, Rowley informed top FBI officials of this terrorist plot even prior to 9/11. Between both Rowley and Edmonds' testimony, proof exists that the government knew about the attack and chose not to intercept its execution on 9/11. Beyond a question of a doubt, this bit of critical evidence demonstrates at a minimum the federal government's complicity and more than likely its preplanned inside false flag operation to murder thousands of Americans on that fateful September morning. Of course 9/11 became the contrived diabolical excuse used to justify US invasions and decade long occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq under totally fabricated pretense. Of course it also constitutes crimes against humanity on an unprecedented monstrously gargantuan scale - not only crimes against the American people, but especially against the Iraqi and Afghan citizens who have lost millions of their loved ones in their failed state nations, all compliments of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Right up to this very day wars that America egregiously brought to their homelands are still raging with no end in sight.


Returning to the man recognized as "the leading aviation expert on the 9/11 attack," Mr. Philip Marshall's book and his next writing project he had begun must have threatened those high enough in the government who systematically silence anyone bent on uncovering their sinister false flag operations. The neocon administration has too much at stake and too much to lose should the real truth about them be known. What especially makes this story even more tragic is that Marshall's teenage son and daughter were also shot in the head in their "safe" gated community home. Unsurprisingly, the local police and coroner hastily wrote it off as just another family homicide-suicide by another mentally unstable father estranged from his ex-wife.


Meanwhile right after the tragedy, former NSA officer and outspoken investigative journalist Wayne Madsen (WayneMadsenReport.com) spent a week in California talking to Marshall's fellow residents in Murphys. The homes are close enough for the next door neighbor to say she could hear Philip whistling inside his house. Yet the police claimed that the homes in the community are too far apart for any neighbors to hear the four gunshots, quickly denying that a silencer was used. Moreover, none of the Marshall family friends and neighbors believe it was a homicide-suicide. Many believe that Philip's latest work was especially incriminating to the government and that the family was murdered to silence him. Madsen also learned from the local media sources that Calaveras County Sheriff Gary Kuntz is said to be stalling in handing over the critical toxicological report on the family's bodies as well as the Gunshot Residue report from the bullets fired from Marshall's 9mm Glock. After conducting his own investigation, Wayne Madsen concluded that he is "100% certain" that the Marshall family was assassinated by the government.


A piece in the Santa Barbara View mentioned that during the editing and pre-marketing phase of publishing his 9/11 book, Philip Marshall displayed signs of paranoia. When one is actually being targeted for extermination through intimidation and harassment, to fear for your life is clearly not a paranoid delusion. Yet skeptics readily buy in to the official spin that targeted assassination victims are simply unstable and deranged, going off the deep end in this case killing his own family, the family dog and himself. Of course professionals who murder for a living are skilled at setting it up so suicide is always the most plausible explanation. Government thugs who operate like the mafia wouldn't have it any other way. Those who kill for a living and have every possible resource available to enable them to get away with their sins can always make a crime scene appear like a suicide. Criminal rogue elements within the US government have been doing it for a very long time. So another truth teller and his two innocent children must bite the dust so the actual perpetrators can go free, untouched by their own evildoing.


Of course the 33-year old Hastings and 54-year old Marshall are not the only American writers likely murdered for exposing the sinister truth about the US government. In his 1996 Dark Alliance , an expose series for the San Jose Mercury News, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Gary Webb singlehandedly uncovered the Iran Contra scandal during Reagan's 1980's that supplied crack cocaine to South Central Los Angeles, resulting in the crack epidemic still raging in America's urban ghettos. Webb's ongoing investigative work exposed the illicit, morally reprehensible Contra Cocaine scandal that the CIA was running a decade earlier exchanging money and guns for Latin American drugs to finance the Contra insurgency operations fighting against the democratically elected Nicaraguan Sandinista government. Of course the Contras weren't the "freedom fighters" Reagan idolized at all but US funded drug cartel mercenaries consisting of death squad commandos trained and led by CIA and US Special Operations forces that brutally terrorized and massacred thousands of Nicaraguans during the eighties Contra War.


A decade after Webb's tragic death, his harrowing story was cinematically portrayed in the 2014 film "Kill the Messenger ." The Sacramento coroner that performed Webb's autopsy quickly ruled his death a suicide despite a passing reference to the unusual occurrence of a suicide involving two bullets to the head. One shot from behind went out through Webb's jaw so the likely murderer ensured the hit was successfully finalized by sending the second .35 caliber bullet straight into his brain. Prior to his demise, Webb had received a number of death threats and witnessed men in flight leaving his home as he pulled into his driveway. Those who believe Webb did commit suicide cite that he was broke, jobless, down on his luck and soon to be evicted from his apartment. Oh, and his motorcycle was stolen the day before he shot himself twice. Feds once again have ways to arrange circumstances so their official suicide spin gets bought.


Two years after the newspaper articles, Gary Webb published his book Dark Alliance in 1998 and continued working on another book uncovering the CIA and its clandestine operations right up till his execution style murder. Of course the big three mainstream presstitutes, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post thoroughly trashed Webb's controversial findings as unsubstantiated, amateurish journalism, making a mockery of both the veracity of his investigation and his unjustifiably maligned reputation. Eventually his editor at the Mercury succumbed to the national pressure from the oligarch owned and operated Big Media and canned him. Subsequently the San Jose editor was rewarded for discriminately distancing the paper's parent company Knight Ridder from the forsaken media pariah Webb. Similar to Hastings' fate, the CIA is believed responsible for killing the journalist who was bent on exposing the evil that US intelligence forces perpetrate by shooting him twice in the back of his head in December 2004 as fatal retribution.


Gary Webb's unveiling news was predated more than a decade earlier by Senator John Kerry's 1985 investigation uncovering the reality that the US government knew about the drug connection between the CIA and Contra funding. Webb's much criticized accounting was vindicated by the CIA's own Inspector General Frederick Hitz' 1998 reports that clearly confirmed CIA's active involvement. Webb's work also paved the way to learning that President Reagan and top administration officials knew and actively supported the illegal drug for money and weapons starting in the early 1980's, placing the CIA along with National Security Council point man Lt. Colonel Oliver North in charge of the drug smuggling operation headquartered in the White House basement. This sordid covert operation right under Reagan's powdered white nose had CIA fingerprints all over it, led by none other than former CIA chief and then VP turned President George H.W. Bush himself.


The Massachusetts Congressman who appointed me to West Point, Edward Boland, sponsored the Boland Amendment that prohibited military assistance to the Contras until 1986. Yet despite this Congressional restriction, it failed to stop CIA man Bush from secretly and illegally funding the Contra War through the lucrative drug trade. The staging area for resupplying the Contra terrorists during the 1980's became Ilopongo Air Force Base in El Salvador. It was there that many CIA flights picking up large shipments of cocaine were then flown for drop off to America.


Even a 27-year senior special FBI agent who headed the Los Angeles, Memphis and Dallas field offices, the late Ted Gunderson, ruled Gary Webb's death a murder and the possibility of it being a suicide "impossible." During the last several decades of his life, Gunderson's snooping around for the truth exposing the pervasive criminality within his own rogue elements of the FBI and CIA more than likely led to his eventual death in July 2011. During the three decades since retiring from the FBI, Ted Gunderson investigated the JFK assassination, Marilyn Monroe's likely murder, 9/11 as an inside job, chemtrails, the Iran-Conta scandal, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Illuminati and the NWO agenda, the Bush crime family, Satanism, child kidnapping and ritualistic abuse and sacrifice. As a longtime government whistleblower and bestselling author possessing impeccable FBI credentials and decades of expert investigative experience, Gunderson made many enemies within the government. Mr. Gunderson's treating physician of many years, Dr. Edward Lucidi, also examined Ted's body after his July 2011 death, and concluded that Gunderson had been periodically poisoned with arsenic that eventually triggered his bladder cancer that ultimately spread to kill him.


The longtime New World Order advocate and oligarch George Herbert Walker Bush has CIA links dating all the way back to the 1961 Bay of Pigs scandal. Though once a Skull and Bones secret society initiate at Yale like his father before him and his junior namesake after, graduation in 1948 meant moving with his wife and George Jr. to Texas where he became an even richer oil man. In the early 1960's HW worked as a CIA recruiter for the Bay of Pigs operation. It was his involvement in the CIA training of Cuban exiles in guerilla warfare in preparation for the Bay of Pigs that H.W. met anti-Castro Cuban, naturalized American citizen, drug trafficker, career CIA employee and lifelong friend Felix Rodriguez (alias Max Gomez) who was responsible for Che Guevara's capture and killing and would surface decades later in a key role in the Iran Contra affair. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's controversial JFK assassination memo dated November 29th, 1963, a mere seven days after the Kennedy murder, explicitly names the CIA's "George H.W. Bush" for his direct JFK involvement placing him in Dallas at the time the ill-fated president was ambushed at Dealey Plaza. There is even a photo of Bush in front of the same book depository where the "lone gunman" patsy Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired from the second floor.


President Kennedy was indeed the most famous would-be whistleblower in-the-making during the 1000 days of his short-lived presidency. In reaction to the embarrassment of the botched Bay of Pigs scandal he inherited from the Eisenhower administration, Kennedy's bold design included "splintering the CIA," abolishing its covert operations and bringing home all of the US military advisors assigned to Vietnam. Thus, Kennedy intended to avoid further conflict in Southeast Asia that his successor turned into the longest running war in American history, that is, up until this century's George W. Bush-Obama's Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. After the October 1962 Missile Crisis was resolved when Premier Khrushchev dismantled Soviet missiles in Cuba, and then the Soviet construction of the Berlin wall separating Communist East Germany from West Germany, JFK sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union with the ultimate aim of ending the dangerous cold war. Both his stance on Vietnam and the cold war placed him in direct conflict with the shadowy power structure lurking all around him.


At the time of his murder, President John Kennedy was about to break with such powerful Council on Foreign Relations elitist globalists aka "wise men" as Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman (George HW's Nazi financier father Prescott's lifelong business partner) and JFK recently fired (over the Bay of Pigs fiasco) CIA Director Allen Dulles who were all longtime chief presidential advisors and additionally chief Vietnam War proponents/architects. Though surrounded and overwhelmingly outnumbered by his Vice President Johnson, Secretary of State Rusk and Defense Secretary McNamara who all backed the CFR advisors' views along with his ultra-pro-war hawk Chiefs of Staff, against the rising tide Kennedy was determined to withdraw all troops from Southeast Asia.


But perhaps JFK's final blow that determined his tragic fate came when he issued Executive Order 11110 in June 1963 returning the power to create money back over to the US Treasury with instructions "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury." This move would have usurped the power, profit and fraudulent Ponzi scheme that the banking cabal wields through the nonfederal privatized Federal Reserve. The Eastern Establishment of Wall Street Bankers bolstered by the pervasive governmental influence of the CFR would not tolerate such monumental loss of wealth and power from their longtime coffers. Thus, a number of JFK investigators have concluded that the deposed CIA Director Dulles played a leading role in the assassination and cover-up against the one man who perhaps would have been the greatest whistleblower in US history.


Of course once Kennedy was forcibly removed from power, Texan Lyndon Johnson became president, the Federal Reserve continued its theft controlling the flow of paper fiat money and all those CFR "wise guys" continued prodding LBJ into full scale escalation in Vietnam despite knowing in advance that the war was unwinnable per revelations from the Pentagon Papers released later by renowned whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg's biggest regret was waiting until 1971 to go public. The sobering lesson of losing near 60,000 Americans and over three million Southeast Asians estimated dead because the elite wanted a war the US would lose by design was doomed to repeat itself indefinitely with more false flag crimes of the twenty-first century in the 9/11 disgraceful tragedy, then the preplanned Afghanistan and Iraq Wars where millions more continue dying in vain to this day because oligarchs always love profiteering forever from their self-made war on terror. As insiders aware of the demonic destruction and plundering of all earthly life at their hands, we must all become whistleblowers and stand up to this evil tide that has ruled over humanity for far too many centuries by the inhuman psychopaths in megalomaniacal control.


Finally, the legacy of the CFR Skull and Bones assassinations, criminal theft made legal and false flag wars continue to live on even today through the ongoing malevolence perpetrated by the Bush family. Prior to murderously pulling off the coup of the century with stolen fraudulent elections and the demonic 9/11 inside job, the silver spooned Skull and Bones lifer George W. Bush had already proven he was likely a psychopathic rapist. Meet Margie Schoedinger, a 38-year old married African American woman who filed rape charges against President George W. Bush in December 2002. Other than her hometown Fort Bend, Texas newspaper, not one other US media outlet even bothered to cover the plaintiff's criminal lawsuit filed in the Harris County Civil Court against the standing US president. With so much attention focused on Monica Lewinsky's illicit affair with his predecessor Clinton, and then violent acts of rape, torture and harassment allegedly committed on multiple occasions by then Texas Governor George W. Bush, to have a complete media blackout refusing to report such serious criminal offenses indicates the absolute power of the Bush cabal for controlling and completely shutting off the flow of important information in America. Then to ensure the demonic truth about Bush never sees the light of day, nine months later Margie Schoedinger was silenced, found dead from a gunshot wound to the head, her death ruled a suicide. Though women rarely commit suicide with guns, choosing drug overdose as their means, no further follow of either the repeated sexual assaults or the death was ever launched despite records showing that Bush made her life a living hell. Whether she did herself in or not, her killer was most likely the leader of the free world and with that kind of power, hardly anyone dared to notice.


There was no indication that Margie Schoedinger was mentally imbalanced, nor did she ever seek publicity. She had known Bush two decades earlier having dated Bush when still a minor. The peculiar, spectacular and horrifying circumstances of the rape charges and then more strange circumstances surrounding the victim's death again drew virtually no response from the press. Only one single UK paper the New Nation serving the black community of London published an article about her alleged suicide. Back prior to the current cold war with Russia, its foreign news service Pravda also picked up and ran the story as well.


Records on file indicate that allegations that George Bush and FBI agents regularly harassed and threatened both Margie and her husband for months prior to her death. On the night of October 26th, 2000, three of Bush's FBI henchmen apparently arrived at her home. When Margie contacted the Sugar Land police, the police arrived showing deference to the thug henchman and acted accusatory toward Margie and her husband. Then later the Sugar Land police lied, denying they had any record of said incident. Ms. Schoedinger made statements on record that Bush and company did more than just threaten to ruin and destroy her. In addition to allegedly committing sex crimes toward both Margie and her husband, on multiple occasions she allegedly had been drugged and gang raped. Apparently she was even hospitalized for having a miscarriage alleged to be Bush's baby and was met at the hospital by FBI for further intimidation. Bush ensured that her academic degree was denied, her bank account deleted, her husband's employment terminated, ultimately recommending that she was better off committing suicide. That this tragedy never was fully covered by the press, nor allegations ever followed up with any real investigation, nor any justice even remotely served, all this offers true testimony of how privilege, wealth and fame in America grants the diabolical elite the power to literally get away with rape and murder in destroying innocent victims' lives. With his illegal wars based on lies, the untold suffering that the psychopathic Bush crime family has inflicted on this earth goes far beyond any measure in words.


For brevity sake, I presented the stories of just a few whistleblowers and journalists who have come forth with inside knowledge and expertise exposing government corruption, lies, misdeeds and injustice. Hundreds more have also paid the heavy price for speaking the truth. Too many have died, always obscured by more lies portending suicide as the cause of death. Recently an anonymous source volunteered that ex-Navy Seal Michael Calabrese was found floating vertically in the Chesapeake Bay waters, evidence he was a drowning victim whose body was purposely weighed down. The source claimed that Calabrese was his supervisor while they both installed demolition explosives and release switches inside the World Trade Center vending machines in both towers during the weeks leading up to 9/11. Calabrese was said to be writing his version of events as a would-be whistleblower but was silenced before his time like all the rest. Nearly a dozen have died mysteriously that had inside knowledge regarding the BP oil spill. The list goes on and on. Clearly, this government of ours will stop at nothing to ensure the evil truth stays hidden.


Though a number of whistleblowers and truth exposing journalists have made the ultimate sacrifice, it's both fair and important to point out the fact that hundreds of honest and brave individuals have gone public with crucial need-to-know information and are still living amongst us alive and well. Jesselyn Radack is a Yale educated whistleblowing attorney who disclosed injustice when American Taliban John Walker Lindh was denied due process by the FBI during his interrogation. His family had already hired an attorney to represent him. As a young lawyer working in the State Department providing on call legal counsel to federal agencies in December 2001, Jesselyn Radack recommended that the FBI not proceed with questioning Lindh if he had an attorney. However, the overzealous FBI interrogators went ahead anyway without his attorney present. As the case moved forward, Ms. Radack later learned that transcripts of her consultation documents were missing from Lindh's official file. When she inquired and ensured all the documentation was then included, she was suddenly asked to resign her position in the State Department. Ultimately in good conscience, she made the decision to go public contacting a New York Times reporter. With her career being derailed and threatened, she was then abruptly terminated from her next job at a private law firm. In the end through months of anguish and adversity, Jesselyn Radack's ethical principles and resolve triumphed over the petty vengeful federal bureaucrats out to destroy her.


Ms. Radack has come full circle as she is now the National Security and Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP) in Washington DC. As a bestselling author and a regular contributor of op-ed articles to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, Jesselyn is a formidable force for good, representing and protecting the rights of likeminded insiders determined to serve justice by making an honest difference. Seven of the eight national security employee whistleblowers who have been charged under Obama with violating the Espionage Act have been among her clients, including Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou and a former CIA analyst-NSA contractor turned whistleblower and activist colleague with Jesselyn at GAP Sir Thomas Drake.


A 10-year Air Force veteran in intelligence, Thomas Drake began working as a CIA analyst and NSA contractor for 12 years before joining the NSA fulltime. He observed enormous taxpayer dollars being wasted and proceeded to address his concerns through proper channels only to be ignored. Harassment followed as soon as he approached the Department of Defense and NSA Inspector Generals. Falsely accused of leaking classified documents during the NSA's warrantless wiretapping scandal, as a last resort Thomas contacted a Baltimore Sun reporter who wrote a series of award winning articles on the waste no one in the government would do anything about. Drake was then raked over the coals, bogusly charged with breaking espionage laws. His home raided, computers confiscated and held for hours under interrogation, the Justice Department (DOJ) was out for his blood, threatening he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. Drake fought back, refusing "to plea bargain with the truth." By this time Obama was in power. Thomas learned that the new president only paid lip service to vowing to protect whistleblowers when in April 2010 he was indicted on 10 counts, 5 under the Espionage Act. With only three other previous cases in US history, Thomas Drake would be the first of Obama's eight charged with that archaic lynchpin. Despite no evidence of turning over classified documents, he was charged with "retention" of them. As an NSA employee, of course he would hold classified info, but he never leaked any. Again determined to make him an example for others, the government spent years trying to build a case against him but couldn't because he never broke any laws.


After Jesselyn and her colleague at GAP authored an op-ed piece defending Drake, Thomas elected to have the Government Accounting Project formally represent him. With media advocacy pressuring the Justice Department without a valid case to back off, finally defeated by the court of public opinion, the feds tucked their tail between their legs and folded. Thomas Drake beat the rap and was finally a cleared, free man with the highest honor for a whistleblower bestowed upon him - the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling. Four days before scheduled trial, all counts were dropped. The heroic victor walked away copping to a misdemeanor "exceeding authorized use of a computer" and one year on probation. Talk about petty politics. The government was shamed into submission and defeat. Drake is an inspiration to all Americans for standing up to evil and righteously staring it down. In the end, he remains a champion of our Constitution. He and Radack make a great tag team for justice against tyranny.


Over many decades the oligarchs have been engaged in the systematic dumbing down and killing of the global population, utilizing the nonstop barrage of false disinformation and propaganda to induce fear and compliance, of course with Americans always the last to know. Alarms going off in recent years by concerned citizens admonishing their fellow humans to wake up before it's too late have largely fallen on deaf ears. 24/7 state sponsored propaganda inducing a societal stupor and insular ignorance have effectively prevented the masses from heeding any warnings to detox off the modern opiate - diversionary media deception delivered through the likes of Kim Kardashian's latest wardrobe malfunction, upcoming Super Bowl hype, the latest video game or hi-tech toy or big screen blockbuster smash em' up pyrotechnics. These are the fascist state's arsenal of tools being utilized to numb, saturate and desensitize humans to violence, death and suffering, lulling us all into a glazed over sleep while previously invisible shackles and chains one day soon will visually and irreversibly materialize. We suddenly will wake up only to find ourselves bound and gagged in total bondage and enslavement, with whatever illusion of liberty or freedom of choice we thought we had, vanished and stolen in the night while we slept.


It becomes incumbent upon us to realize the danger of passivity, complacency, ignorance and fear is not the answer. The individuals highlighted here have sacrificed their freedom and life to make a difference. Their courage and integrity should be celebrated and honored. Their grossly unjust hardship will not be in vain only if their truth and bravery inspire us to also seek and tell the truth. This presentation calls upon all of us to become whistleblowers fighting all our might for our lost freedoms. 2015 marks a New Year to make a positive difference by spreading the word as truth activists empowered to continue the noble work and accomplishments that these very brave and valiant souls have paved for us. If we all do our part as truth telling whistleblowers, the truth shall set us all free.


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Hawaii breaks 122-year old cold weather record


© W.M. Keck Observatory Webcamera

Icicles covered part of the lens of a webcamear at the W.M. Keck Observatory at Mauna Kea Monday morning as snow remained on the ground from a storm over the weekend.



The unusually cold weather over the last two days continued to break records in Hawaii, including a record for this date that goes back over 122 years in Honolulu.

The National Weather Service said Monday morning's low temperature of 57 degrees beat the low temperature for this date of 60 degrees of temperatures recorded at the Honolulu Airport.


It also beat a older low temperature record for Honolulu set in 1893 of 58 degrees.


On Kauai, the low of 57 degrees at the Lihue Airport beat tied a record of 57 degrees last seen in 1993.


It's the second day of record low temperatures.


Four low temperatures records were tied or broken Sunday morning.


The low of 54 degrees in Lihue and Kahului Sunday broke records for Kauai and Maui. The previous record of 59 degrees in Lihue was set in 2005. The low in Kahului broke a record of 55 set for this date in 1971.


In Hilo, the low temperature of 59 degrees broke the previous record of 60 set in 1999 on Sunday's date.


Honolulu tied a record low of 58 degrees set in 1979.


Temperatures should be a little warmer Monday night, ironically because of a weak cold front moving through the islands.


The cold front, which should only bring a few scattered showers, will strengthen winds, which should keep temperatures in the low- to mid-60s in most areas overnight, forecasters said.


The road to the summit of Mauna Kea remained closed Monday morning because of snow and ice. However, a high wind advisory for the Big Island summits expired at noon.


We may get one more night of unusually cool winter weather on Tuesday as dry and cool air behind the front may drop temperatures back into the 50s Tuesday night.


Temeratures should gradually warm during the rest of the week into the weekend, when high temperatures should return to around 80 degrees, with lows in the upper 60s at night.


Forecasters say tradewinds could weaken and turn southeasterly by the end of the week, bringing a chance of vog this weekend.


Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery



He's pals with a passel of Nobel Prize–winning scientists, CEOs like Leslie Wexner of the Limited, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, even Donald Trump. But it wasn't until he flew Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and Chris Tucker to Africa on his private Boeing 727 that the world began to wonder who he is.









He comes with cash to burn, a fleet of airplanes, and a keen eye for the ladies -- to say nothing of a relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize–winning scientists across the country -- and for financial markets around the world. Ever since the Post's "Page Six" ran an item about the president's late-September visit to Africa with Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker -- on his new benefactor's customized Boeing 727 -- the question of the day has been: Who in the world is Jeffrey Epstein?


It's a life full of question marks. Epstein is said to run $15 billion for wealthy clients, yet aside from Limited founder Leslie Wexner, his client list is a closely held secret. A former Dalton math teacher, he maintains a peripatetic salon of brilliant scientists yet possesses no bachelor's degree. For more than ten years, he's been linked to Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the mysteriously deceased media titan Robert Maxwell, yet he lives the life of a bachelor, logging 600 hours a year in his various planes as he scours the world for investment opportunities. He owns what is said to be Manhattan's largest private house yet runs his business from a 100-acre private island in St. Thomas.


Power on Wall Street has generally accrued to those who have made their open bids for it. Soros. Wasserstein. Kravis. Weill. The Sturm und Drang of their successes and failures has been played out in public. Epstein breaks the mold. Most everyone on the Street has heard of him, but nobody seems to know what the hell he is up to. Which is just the way he likes it.


"My belief is that Jeff maintains some sort of money-management firm, though you won't get a straight answer from him," says one well-known investor. "He once told me he had 300 people working for him, and I've also heard that he manages Rockefeller money. But one never knows. It's like looking at the Wizard of Oz -- there may be less there than meets the eye."


Says another prominent Wall Streeter: "He is this mysterious, Gatsbyesque figure. He likes people to think that he is very rich, and he cultivates this air of aloofness. The whole thing is weird."




T he wizard that meets the eye is spare and fit; with a long jaw and a carefully coiffed head of silver hair, he looks like a taller, younger Ralph Lauren. A raspy Brooklyn accent betrays his Coney Island origins. He spends an hour and fifteen minutes every day doing advanced yoga with his personal instructor, who travels with him wherever he goes. He is an enthusiastic member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.


He dresses casually -- jeans, open-necked shirts, and sneakers -- and is rarely seen in a tie. Indeed, those close to him say the reason he quit his board seat at the Rockefeller Institute was that he hated wearing a suit. "It feels like a dress," he told one friend.


Epstein likes to tell people that he's a loner, a man who's never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. And yet if you talk to Donald Trump, a different Epstein emerges. "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,'' Trump booms from a speakerphone. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it -- Jeffrey enjoys his social life."


But beautiful women are only a part of it. Because here's the thing about Epstein: As some collect butterflies, he collects beautiful minds. "I invest in people -- be it politics or science. It's what I do," he has said to friends. And his latest prize addition is the former president. In his eyes, Clinton as a species represents the highest evolutionary form of the political animal. To be up close to him, as he was during the African journey, is akin to seeing the rarest of beasts on a safari. As he put it to a friend upon his return from Africa, "If you were a boxer at the downtown gymnasium at 14th Street and Mike Tyson walked in, your face would have the same look as these foreign leaders had when Clinton entered the room. He is the world's greatest politician."


"Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science," Clinton says through a spokesman. "I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS."


Before Clinton, Epstein's rare appearances in the gossip columns tended to be speculation as to the true nature of his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. While they are still friends, the English tabloids have postulated that Maxwell has longed for a more permanent pairing and that for undetermined reasons Epstein has not reciprocated in kind. "It's a mysterious relationship that they have," says society journalist David Patrick Columbia. "In one way, they are soul mates, yet they are hardly companions anymore. It's a nice conventional relationship, where they serve each other's purposes."


Friends of the two say that Maxwell, whose social life has always been higher-octane than Epstein's, lent a little pizzazz to the lower-profile Epstein. Indeed, at a party at Maxwell's house, her friends say, one is just as apt to see Russian ladies of the night as one is to see Prince Andrew. The Oxford-educated Maxwell, described by many as a man-eater (she flies her own helicopter and was recently seen dining with Clinton at Nello's on Madison Avenue), lives in her own townhouse a few blocks away. Epstein is frequently seen around town with a bevy of comely young women but there has been no boldfaced name to replace Maxwell. "You may read about Jeffrey in the social columns, but there is much more to him than that," says Jeffrey T. Leeds of the private equity firm Leeds Weld & Co. "He's a talented money manager and an extremely hardworking person with broad interests. Most unusual, though, is that in this media-obsessed age he is not in any sense a self-promoter."




Atlantis' legendary metal found in shipwreck

Divers

© Superintendent of the Sea Office, Sicily

A team of divers recovered nearly 40 ingots off the sea floor near Sicily, from a ship that was lost in the sixth century.



Gleaming cast metal called orichalcum, which was said by Ancient Greeks to be found in Atlantis, have been recovered from a shipwreck that sunk 2,600 years ago off the coast of Sicily.

The lumps of metal were arriving to Gela in southern Sicily, possibly coming from Greece or Asia Minor. The ship that was carrying them was likely caught in a storm and sunk just when it was about to enter the port.


"The wreck dates to the first half of the sixth century," Sebastiano Tusa, Sicily's superintendent of the Sea Office, told Discovery News. "It was found about 1,000 feet from Gela's coast at a depth of 10 feet."


He noted that the 39 ingots found on the sandy sea floor represent a unique finding.


"Nothing similar has ever been found," Tusa said. "We knew orichalcum from ancient texts and a few ornamental objects."


Indeed orichalcum has long been considered a mysterious metal, its composition and origin widely debated.


According to the ancient Greeks, it was invented by Cadmus, a Greek-Phoenician mythological character. The fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher Plato made orichalcum a legendary metal when he mentioned it in the Critias dialogue.


Describing Atlantis as flashing "with the red light of orichalcum," he wrote that the metal, second only in value to gold, was mined in the mythical island and was used to cover Poseidon's temple interior walls, columns and floors.


Today most scholars agree orichalcum is a brass-like alloy, which was made in antiquity by cementation. This process was achieved with the reaction of zinc ore, charcoal and copper metal in a crucible.


Analyzed with X-ray fluorescence by Dario Panetta, of TQ - Tecnologies for Quality, the 39 ingots turned to be an alloy made with 75-80 percent copper, 15-20 percent zinc and small percentages of nickel, lead and iron.


"The finding confirms that about a century after its foundation in 689 B.C., Gela grew to become a wealthy city with artisan workshops specialized in the production of prized artifacts," Tusa said.


The 39 ingots recovered from the wreck were indeed destined to these workshops and were used in high quality decorations.


According to Enrico Mattievich, a retired professor of physics who taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the ingots are not properly made from orichalcum.


"It appears they are lumps of latone metal, an alloy of copper, zinc and lead," he told Discovery News.


Mattievich, who has led a number of studies in physics applied to mineralogy, paleontology and archaeology, is one of the scholars who disagree on the brass-like nature of orichalcum.


While other scholars equated the mysterious metal to amber and to other copper based alloys, Mattievich believes orichalcum has its roots in the Peruvian Andes and in the Chavín civilization that developed there from 1200 B.C. to 200 B.C.


According to the scholar, who claimed in his book that the ancient Greeks had discovered America, a metallic alloy "with fire-Iike reflections" similar to Plato's description was found in a set of metallic jaguars of Chavin style, which turned to be made of 9 percent copper, 76 percent gold and 15 percent silver.


Whatever the origins and nature of orichalcum, Tusa's team plans to excavate the shipwreck and bring to light the entire cargo.


"It will provide us with precious information on Sicily's most ancient economic history," Tusa said.


Snowmobilers rescue moose from avalanche in Alaska

moose_avalanche

© Marty Mobley’s Facebook page

This moose was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Luckily his human friends were in the right place at the right time.



When three snowmobilers were recently cruising through Hatcher Pass, just 55 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska, they were surprised to discover moaning and groaning coming from some avalanche debris as well as the snout of a moose. As the moose was still expelling air, the crew stopped their sleds and began their rescue attempt.


"There was just enough of its snout sticking above the snow that it could breathe," said one of the snowmobilers, Marty Mobley, to the .


Two men dug for about 10 minutes while the other kept an eye out for another avalanche. After clearing snow from about 75 percent of the animal, they men saw what they believed was a young cow that wasn't moving much. They were worried the moose was injured due to the slide that traveled more than 1,500 feet.


So one of the men used his shovel to give the moose's hindquarters a gentle nudge.


"It stood right up and towered over us, because we were in kind of a hole from the digging," Mobley said. "It looked like the abominable snowman because its fur was so packed with snow, and it looked at us, shook the snow off it, and off it went."


As it ran, it appeared to be uninjured, according to Mobley.


This area, known to locals as "God's Country," is notorious for unstable snow. Mobley knew this all too well. His best friend, Aaron Arthur, and five others were killed in this vicinity on March 21, 1999.


Mobley was happy to have been in the right place at the right time to lend a helping hand. "I am an animal lover, and I couldn't leave it there," Mobley said. "Besides, we deal with a lot of avalanches and a lot of snow. That kind of karma is something we don't pass up."


This is the face of the U.S.: Couple facing murder charges in infant's starvation death

A couple is charged with a crime that Lakeland Assistant Police Chief Mike Link said is one of the worst he's seen in his 30-year police career.

[embedded content]




The shocking developments were announced Tuesday at a press conference in Lakeland, where detectives said the duo is charged with murder in the death of an infant child.

The 22-day-old baby, Betsey Kee Stephens, was found dead in the couple's custody after detectives say she starved to death.


Ruby, 23, and Roy Stephens, 48, told police they had just arrived in town from Indiana and checked into their motel when they discovered something was wrong.


They said baby Betsey's feet were cold, so they covered them with a blanket and then got into the car to go to dinner.


After arriving at the Golden Corral restaurant on U.S. Highway 98, they said they noticed Betsey was unresponsive, so they called 911.


The investigation has since revealed that Betsey had been dead for more than three hours before anyone called emergency officials.




Police Tuesday said pictures from the scene are unsettling.

"When I saw the photographs...it shook me to my core because in thirty years, I have never seen anything like that," said Assistant Police Chief Mike Link.



According to the medical examiner, Betsey weighed little more than four pounds, about half of what she should have weighed.

Both Ruby and Roy, who police said is not the biological father, claim to have fed the baby several times over the trip down from Indiana. The medical examiner, however, says that is not possible. There was very little food found in her body.


"It's very apparent -- it would be very apparent to anyone who saw the photographs -- that this did not occur overnight or in days," said Asst. Chief Link. "In my opinion this child suffered from day one of birth, to the time that she passed away."


The baby's death has been ruled a homicide, and both have been charged with first-degree murder.


Betsey had two siblings, a 1-year-old brother and a 2-year-old sister, in the car at the time of the incident. The Lakeland Police Department says they are now with the Department of Children and Families.


"They failed miserably to take care of this child. She suffered tremendously over the 22 days she was alive to meet this kind of demise," Link said.


A letter from America: Living with GMOs


© Liam Wilde via Flickr

With GMO agriculture, a walk in the countryside could be like this in the future.



NGOs, scientists, anti-GM groups, celebrities, food manufacturers, and others representing 57 million Americans today publish an Open Letter to the UK and the entire EU warning of the serious and manifold hazards of GMO crops - and promising their support in our fight against them.

We are writing as concerned American citizens to share with you our experience of genetically modified (GM) crops and the resulting damage to our agricultural system and adulteration of our food supply.


In our country, GM crops account for about half of harvested cropland. Around 94% of the soy, 93% of corn (maize) and 96% of cotton grown is GM. i


The UK and the rest of the EU have yet to adopt GM crops in the way that we have, but you are currently under tremendous pressure from governments, biotech lobbyists, and large corporations to adopt what we now regard as a failing agricultural technology.


Polls consistently show that 72% of Americans do not want to eat GM foods and over 90% of Americans believe GM foods should be labeled.ii




In spite of this massive public mandate, efforts to get our federal iii and state iv governments to better regulate, or simply label, GMOs are being undermined by large biotech and food corporations with unlimited budgets v and undue influence.

As you consider your options, we'd like to share with you what nearly two decades of GM crops in the United States has brought us. We believe our experience serves as a warning for what will happen in your countries should you follow us down this road.


Broken promises


GM crops were released onto the market with a promise that they would consistently increase yields and decrease pesticide use. They have done neither. vi In fact, according to a recent US government report yields from GM crops can be lower than their non-GM equivalents. vii


Farmers were told that GM crops would yield bigger profits too. The reality, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, is different. viii Profitability is highly variable, while the cost of growing these crops has spiraled. ix


GM seeds cannot legally be saved for replanting, which means farmers must buy new seeds each year. Biotech companies control the price of seeds, which cost farmers 3-6 times more than conventional seeds. x This, combined with the huge chemical inputs they require, means GM crops have proved more costly to grow than conventional crops.


Because of the disproportionate emphasis on GM crops, conventional seed varieties are no longer widely available leaving farmers with less choice and control over what they plant.xi


Farmers who have chosen not to grow GM crops can find their fields contaminated with GM crops as a result of cross pollination between related species of plants xii and GM and non-GM seeds being mixed together during storage.


Because of this our farmers are losing export markets. Many countries have restrictions or outright bans on growing or importing GM crops xiii and as a result, these crops have become responsible for a rise in trade disputes when shipments of grain are found to be contaminated with GM organisms (GMOs).xiv


The burgeoning organic market here in the US is also being affected. Many organic farmers have lost contracts for organic seed due to high levels of contamination. This problem is increasing and is expected to get much bigger in the coming years.


Pesticides and superweeds


The most widely grown types of GM crops are known as 'Roundup Ready' crops. These crops, mostly corn and soy, have been genetically engineered so that when they are sprayed with the herbicide Roundup (TM) - the active ingredient of which is glyphosate - the weeds die but the crop continues to grow.


This has created a vicious circle. Weeds have become resistant to the herbicide, causing farmers to spray even more. Heavier use of herbicides creates ever more 'superweeds' and even higher herbicide use.


A recent review found that between 1996 and 2011, farmers who planted Roundup Ready crops used 24% more herbicide than non-GMO farmers planting the same crops. xv


If we remain on this trajectory with Roundup Ready crops we can expect to see herbicide rates increase by 25% each year for the foreseeable future.


This pesticide treadmill means that in the last decade in the US at least 14 new glyphosate-resistant weed species have emerged, xvi and over half of US farms are plagued with herbicide-resistant weeds. xvii


Biotech companies, which sell both the GM seeds and the herbicides, xviii have proposed to address this problem with the creation of new crop varieties that will be able to withstand even stronger and more toxic herbicides such as 2,4-D and dicamba.


However it is estimated that if these new varieties are approved, this could drive herbicide use up by as much as 50%. xix




Environmental harm

Studies have shown that the increased herbicide use on Roundup Ready crops is highly destructive to the natural environment. For example, Roundup kills milkweeds, which are the key food source for the iconic Monarch butterfly xx and poses a threat to other important insects such as bees. xxi


It is also damaging to soil, killing beneficial organisms that keep it healthy and productivexxii and making essential micronutrients unavailable to the plant. xxiii


Other types of GM plants, which have been engineered to produce their own insecticide (e.g. "Bt" cotton plants), have also been shown to harm beneficial insects including green lacewings xxiv, the Daphnia magna waterflea xxv and other aquatic insects, xxvi and ladybugs (ladybirds). xxvii


Resistance to the insecticides in these plants is also growing xxviii, creating new varieties of resistant "superbugs" and requiring more applications of insecticides at different points in the growth cycle, for instance on the seed before it is planted. xxix In spite of this, new Bt varieties of corn and soy have been approved here and will soon be planted.




A threat to human health

GM ingredients are everywhere in our food chain. It is estimated that 70% of processed foods consumed in the US have been produced using GM ingredients. If products from animals fed GM feed are included, the percentage is significantly higher.


Research shows that Roundup Ready crops contain many times more glyphosate, and its toxic breakdown product AMPA, than normal crops. xxx


Traces of glyphosate have been found in the breastmilk and urine of American mothers, as well as in their drinking water. xxxi The levels in breastmilk were worryingly high - around 1,600 times higher than what is allowable in European drinking water.


Passed on to babies through breastmilk, or the water used to make formula, this could represent an unacceptable risk to infant health since glyphosate is a suspected hormone disrupter. xxxii Recent studies suggest that this herbicide is also toxic to sperm. xxxiii


Likewise, traces of the Bt toxin have been found in the blood of mothers and their babies.xxxiv


GM foods were not subjected to human trials before being released into the food chain and the health impacts of having these substances circulating and accumulating in our bodies are not being studied by any government agency, nor by the companies that produce them.


Studies of animals fed GM foods and/or glyphosate, however, show worrying trends including damage to vital organs like the liver and kidneys, damage to gut tissues and gut flora, immune system disruption, reproductive abnormalities, and even tumors. xxxv


These scientific studies point to potentially serious human health problems that could not have been anticipated when our country first embraced GMOs, and yet they continue to be ignored by those who should be protecting us.


Instead our regulators rely on outdated studies and other information funded and supplied by biotech companies that, not surprisingly, dismiss all health concerns.


A denial of science


This spin of corporate science stands in stark contrast to the findings of independent scientists.


In fact, in 2013, nearly 300 independent scientists from around the world issued a public warning that there was no scientific consensus about the safety of eating genetically modified food, and that the risks, as demonstrated in independent research, gave "serious cause for concern." xxxvi


It's not easy for independent scientists like these to speak out. Those who do have faced obstacles in publishing their results, been systematically vilified by pro-GMO scientists, been denied research funding, and in some cases have had their jobs and careers threatened. xxxvii




Control of the food supply

Through our experience we have come to understand that the genetic engineering of food has never really been about public good, or feeding the hungry, or supporting our farmers. Nor is it about consumer choice. Instead it is about private, corporate control of the food system.


This control extends into areas of life that deeply affect our day-to-day well-being, including food security, science, and democracy. It undermines the development of genuinely sustainable, environmentally friendly agriculture and prevents the creation of a transparent, healthy food supply for all.


Today in the US, from seed to plate, the production, distribution, marketing, safety testing, and consumption of food is controlled by a handful of companies, many of which have commercial interests in genetic engineering technology.


They create the problems, and then sell us the so-called solutions in a closed cycle of profit generation that is unequalled in any other type of commerce.




We all need to eat, which is why every citizen should strive to understand these issues.

Time to speak out!


Americans are reaping the detrimental impacts of this risky and unproven agricultural technology. EU countries should take note: there are no benefits from GM crops great enough to offset these impacts. Officials who continue to ignore this fact are guilty of a gross dereliction of duty.


We, the undersigned, are sharing our experience and what we have learned with you so that you don't make our mistakes.


We strongly urge you to resist the approval of genetically modified crops, to refuse to plant those crops that have been approved, to reject the import and/or sale of GM-containing animal feeds and foods intended for human consumption, and to speak out against the corporate influence over politics, regulation and science.


If the UK and the rest of Europe becomes the new market for genetically modified crops and food our own efforts to label and regulate GMOs will be all the more difficult, if not impossible. If our efforts fail, your attempts to keep GMOs out of Europe will also fail.


If we work together, however, we can revitalize our global food system, ensuring healthy soil, healthy fields, healthy food and healthy people.


Add your signature (US only)


Forward the letter to your MP


See below for Signatories - NGOs, academics, scientists, anti-GM groups, celebrities, food manufacturers, and others representing around 57 million Americans.


References


i Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops in the US 1996-2014 - Recent Trends in GE Adoption, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), July 2014,


iiConsumer Support for Standardization and Labeling of Genetically Engineered Food 2014 Nationally‐Representative Phone Survey, Consumer Reports® National Research Center Survey Research Report, [PDF]; see also Brinkerhoff N, Americans overwhelmingly want GMO labelling...until big companies pour money into election campaigns, AllGov News, January 7, 2014


iii GE Food Labelling: States Take Action, Fact Sheet, Center for Food Safety, June 2014,[PDF]


ivibid


v Jargon J and Berry I, Dough Rolls Out to Fight 'Engineered' Label on Food, Wall Street journal, October 25, 2012,

vi Benbrook C. Evidence of the magnitude and consequences of the Roundup Ready soybean yield drag from university-based varietal trials in 1998: Ag BioTech InfoNet Technical Paper Number 1. Sandpoint, Idaho; 1999, ; see also Elmore RW, Roeth FW, Nelson LA, et al. Glyphosate-resistant soyabean cultivar yields compared with sister lines. Agron J, 2001;93:408-412; see also Ma BL, Subedi KD. Development, yield, grain moisture and nitrogen uptake of Bt corn hybrids and their conventional near-isolines. Field Crops Res. 2005; 93: 199-211; see also Bennett H. GM canola trials come a cropper. WA Business News . January 16, 2009; see also Gurian-Sherman D. Failure to yield: Evaluating the performance of genetically engineered crops. Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists; 2009. Available [PDF]


viiGenetically Engineered Crops in the United States, USDA, Economic Research Services, February 2014


viii Fernandez-Cornejo J, Wechsler S, Livingston M, Mitchell L. Genetically engineered crops in the United States. Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture; 2014. Available here


ix Fernandez-Cornejo J, McBride WD. The adoption of bioengineered crops. Agricultural Economic Report No. 810. Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture; 2002, [PDF] ; see also Gómez-Barbero M, Rodríguez-Cerezo E. Economic impact of dominant GM crops worldwide: A review. European Commission Joint Research Centre: Institute for Prospective Technological Studies; 2006, [PDF]; see also Benbrook CM. Impacts of genetically engineered crops on pesticide use in the United States: The first thirteen years. Washington, DC: The Organic Center; 2009. Available at: here; see also Howard P. Visualizing consolidation in the global seed industry: 1996-2008. Sustainability. 2009; 1: 1266-87; see also Neuman W. Rapid rise in seed prices draws US scrutiny, New York Times, March 11, 2010, .


x Benbrook CM. The magnitude and impacts of the biotech and organic seed price premium. Washington, DC: The Organic Center; 2009. [PDF]


xi Roseboro K, The GMO Seed Monopoly: Reducing Farmer's Seed Options, Organic Connections , 16 April 2013


xii D'Hertefeldt T, Jørgensen RB, Pettersson LB. Long-term persistence of GM oilseed rape in the seedbank. Biol Lett. 2008;4:314-317; see also Gilbert N. GM crop escapes into the American wild. Nature . 2010. Available at: ; see also Black R. GM plants "established in the wild", BBC News, August 6, 2010,.


xiii The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity.http://ift.tt/1ErF9XE; see also GMO-Free Europe, http://ift.tt/1kKme2j


xiv Technical consultation on low levels of genetically modified (GM) crops in international food and feed trade, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy March 21-22, 2014 [PDF]


xv Benbrook CM, Impacts of genetically engineered crops on pesticide use in the US - the first sixteen years, Environmental Sciences Europe, 2012; 24: 24 doi:10.1186/2190-4715-24-24


xvi USDA 2014, op cit


xviiThe Rise of Superweeds - and What to Do About It, Union of Concerned Scientists, Policy Brief, December 2013,


xviii Superweeds - How biotech crops bolster the pesticide industry, Food & Water Watch, July 2013


xix Benbrook CM, 2012, ibid


xx Brower LP, Decline of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico: is the migratory phenomenon at risk?, Insect Conservation and Diversity, Volume 5, Issue 2, pages 95-100, March 2012,

xxi Garcia, MA and Altieri M, Transgenic Crops: Implications for Biodiversity and Sustainable Agriculture. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 2005; 25(4) 335-53 DOI: 10.1177/0270467605277293; see also Haughton, A J et al Invertebrate responses to the management of genetically modified herbicide tolerant and conventional spring crops. II.Within-field epigeal and aerial arthropods. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 2003; 358: 1863-77; see also Roy, DB et al Invertebrates and vegetation of field margins adjacent to crops subject to contrasting herbicide regimes in the Farm Scale Evaluations of genetically modified herbicide-tolerant crops, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, 2003; 358: 1879-98.


xxii Glyphosate herbicide affects below ground interactions between earthworms and symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi in a model ecosystem. Nature Scientific Reports, July 9, 2014, 4: 5634, DOI: doi:10.1038/srep05634; Citizens Concerned About GM, Suffocating the soil: An "unanticipated effect" of GM crops, 15 March 2013,


xxiii Tapesser B et al, Agronomic and environmental aspects of the cultivation of genetically modified herbicide-resistant plants A joint paper of BfN (Germany), FOEN (Switzerland) and EAA (Austria), Bonn, Germany 2014, [PDF]


xxiv Tapesser B et al, 2014, op cit


xxv Tapesser B et al, 2014, op cit


xxvi Rossi-Marshall EJ et al, Toxins in transgenic crop byproducts may affect headwater stream ecosystems, PNAS, 2007, 104(41): 16204-16208,


xxvii Tapesser B et al, 2014 op cit; see also Schmidt JEU, Braun CU, Whitehouse LP, Hilbeck A: Effects of activated Bt transgene products (Cry1Ab, Cry3Bb) on immature stages of the ladybird Adalia bipunctata in laboratory ecotoxicity testing, Arch Environ Contam Toxicol 2009, 56:221-228,


xxviii Gassmann AJ et al, Field-evolved resistance by western corn rootworm to multiple Bacillus thuringiensis toxins in transgenic maize, Proc Natl Acad Sci, 2014; 111(14): 5141-46, ; see also Letter from 22 Members and Participants of North Central Coordinating Committee NCCC46 and Other Corn Entomologists to US EPA, March 5, 2012, http://ift.tt/PMlkZf ; see also Huang F et al, Resistance of sugarcane borer to Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ab toxin, Entomol Exp Appl, 2007; 124: 117-23, ; see also Tabashnik BE, et al, Insect resistance to Bt crops: Evidence versus theory, Nat Biotechnol, 2008; 26: 199-202,[PDF].


xxix Leslie TW, Biddinger DJ, Mullin CA, Fleischer SJ. Carabidae population dynamics and temporal partitioning: Response to coupled neonicotinoid-transgenic technologies in maize, Env Entomol, 2009; 38: 935-43; see also Gurian-Sherman D. Genetically engineered crops in the real world - Bt corn, insecticide use, and honey bees. The Cornucopia Institute, January 13, 2012.


xxx Bohn T et al, Compositional differences in soybeans on the market: Glyphosate accumulates in Roundup Ready GM soybeans, Food Chemistry, 2014 ; 153: 207-15;


xxxi Glyphosate testing report: Findings in American mothers' breast milk, urine and water. Mom's Across America, April 7, 2014


xxxii Gasnier C, et al, Glyphosate-based herbicides are toxic and endocrine disruptors in human cell lines, Toxicology, 2009; 262: 184-91. doi:10.1016/j.tox.2009.06.006; see also Hokanson R, et al, Alteration of estrogen-regulated gene expression in human cells induced by the agricultural and horticultural herbicide glyphosate, Hum Exp Toxicol, 2007; 26: 747-52. doi:10.1177/0960327107083453; see also Thongprakaisang S, et al, Glyphosate induces human breast cancer cells growth via estrogen receptors, Food Chem Toxicol, 2013; 59: 129-136. doi:10.1016/j.fct.2013.05.057.


xxxiii Cassault-Meyer E et al, An acute exposure to glyphosate-based herbicide alters aromatase levels in testis and sperm nuclear quality, Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology, 2014; 38(1): 131-40.


xxxiv Aris A and Leblanc S, Maternal and fetal exposure to pesticides associated to genetically modified foods in Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada, Reproductive Toxicology, 2011; 31(4): 528-533.


xxxv Fagan F et al, Chapter 3 - Health Hazards of GM Foods and Chapter 4 - Health Hazards of Roundup and glyphosate, in GMO Myths & Truths: An evidence-based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops and foods, Earth Open Source, 2nd Ed, 2014


xxxviStatement: No scientific consensus on GMO safety, European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility, October 21, 2013,


xxxvii Smith, J, GMO Researchers Attacked, Evidence Denied, and a Population at Risk, Global Research, September 19, 2012 http://ift.tt/1cyK55n; see also Waltz E, GM crops: Battlefield, Nature, 2009; 461, 27-32 doi:10.1038/461027a; see also Woodward L, Muzzled by Monsanto, Citizens Concerned About GM, May 4, 2014,


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