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Saturday 7 February 2015

Roswell slides: Coming in May

roswell slide



Kodachrome still.



The Public Reveal of the Roswell Alien Slides

What some say represents stunning visual evidence of a humanoid creature that was found crashed near Roswell, NM in 1947 will soon to be released in an international livestream event. Referred to by some as "the Roswell Slides," the Kodachrome images have now been authenticated by expert scientists and their provenance has been confirmed. During that long process many have speculated about precisely what these pictures show. People will now be able to see for themselves with the public reveal of the slides on May 5th 2015.


National Auditorium, Mexico City


The event will include presenters Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man on the Moon, as well as noted authors and Roswell investigators Tom Carey and Don Schmitt. Transmitted live from the 10,000 seat National Auditorium in Mexico City, the history and background context of the slides (as well as other facets of the case) will be detailed. Tom Carey, who made international news when he announced the discovery of the slides at American University in Washington, DC last month, will be providing more information and logistical details on the event shortly.


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A Short Slides Redux

Some years ago, while an attic was being cleaned out, a chest was found containing many Kodachrome slides. Two Kodachrome slides were later found to have been separately hidden in an envelope within the inner lining of the chest's lid. The chest and its contents were traced and found to have belonged to an intriguing, childless couple that are now deceased.


This author made the discovery that the husband, Bernerd A. Ray, was an Oil Exploration Geologist working the fields in New Mexico and the Permian Basin (which includes the Roswell region) in the 1940s for a company that would later become part of Texaco. In 1947 he was the President of the Texas chapter of the American Institute of Petroleum Geologists, which also at that time 'folded in' the State of New Mexico. After 1947, Bernerd became a 'ghost' in his profession and did not publish nor appear to be active with the Institute ever again.


Bernerd's wife was Hilda Blair Ray. Researchers Tom Carey and Don Schmitt and the current owner of the film learned that Hilda was a highly respected lawyer with a high-end clientele and possible intelligence connections. A private pilot, she maintained favorable relations with well-placed individuals in both the public and private sectors during the 1940s. The other slides in the chest (over 100) are often found depicting accomplished people, including Dwight Eisenhower. This is a couple who were of the highest integrity. And both had contacts and activities that could have fortuitously enabled them to obtain these slides. And neither would have been the type to hide away hoaxed images as part of some sick prank, only to have those images found decades later by happenstance. This busy professional couple was also philanthropic with no propensity to prank.


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Why the Slides Are Genuine

Professionals from a range of disciplines who have seen the slides agree that they depict a small humanoid creature - a formerly living thing- that is not a prop nor a genetically defective human [Blogger's note: Of all the UFO researchers involved here, Carey is the most qualified to make judgements... He has a background in Anthropology and completed the course work for a Ph.D, but didn't complete a dissertation]. And importantly, the being that is shown in the slides does not correlate whatsoever to the depictions of aliens extant in the popular culture of the 1940s (such as those that appeared in pulp magazines like or movies like Buck Rogers). What the slides depict were not even part of the public psyche of that time. This is not how people envisioned things from outer space to look like back then. Instead, these 1947 slides reveal a being that looks like the beings found in the desert in 1947 as described by the witnesses to Roswell.


I was asked by Tom Carey to find the best available talent to test and analyze these Kodak slides. An extensive search was conducted and I found that talent. A Photo Scientist employed by Kodak for decades who will be named at the event, this expert has led engineering, production and product management groups at the company's Rochester, NY headquarters. Now a consultant, he also published the definitive book on Kodak film processes. Highly acknowledged in his field, he conducted extensive testing on the slides and conclusively authenticated the slides of the creature as having been exposed in the year 1947. It was also concluded that the slides had not been tampered with nor manipulated in any way. What is depicted is really there, accurately reflected in the emulsion as an actual moment in time in 1947. Science has weighed in and has determined that these are real slides that are really from 1947.


And Law would agree with Science in this case. In the eyes of the courts, the slides serve as two types of legally admissible evidence. Circumstantial Evidence represents informed and reasonable inferences that can be made about a case given the specific circumstances and history surrounding it. The circumstances and history surrounding the Rays is very telling - from who they were and what they did, to where they were and who they knew. Documentary Evidence is a legal term that relates to evidence that accurately reflects a moment in time. This includes video, sound recordings, x-rays, photographs and slides.


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The Only Conclusion

This humanoid is not a deformed person, mummy, dummy, simian or dead serviceman. It is not a creature that finds its origin on Earth. And given that the slides of this creature were taken the very same year as the Roswell UFO crash; that the appearance of the creature matches the reported appearance of the Roswell crash aliens; and given that the person who was in original possession of the slides was a geologist working the New Mexico desert throughout the 1940's, it is not a jump or stretch to then conclude that these slides indeed show the corpse of one of the creatures found fallen at Roswell.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Rouble good as gold: Is Russia planning a gold-based currency?

Putin holding gold

The "perfect-storm" of geopolitical instability, diplomatic isolation, severe currency depreciation, and economic decline now confronting Russia has profoundly damaged Moscow's international standing, and possibly for the long-term. Yet, it is precisely such conditions that may push the country's leadership into taking the radical step that will secure its world-player status once and for all: the adoption of a gold-exchange standard.

Though a far-fetched idea at first glance, many factors suggest that remonetization in gold may be a logical next step for Moscow.


First, for years Moscow has been expressing its unwillingness to remain at the monetary mercy of the US and its NATO allies and this view has been most vehemently expressed by President Putin's long-time economic advisor, Sergei Glazyev. Russia is prepared to play strategic hardball with the West on the issue: the governor of Russia's central bank took the unusual step last November of presenting to the international media details of the bank's zealous gold-buying spree. The announcement, in sharp contrast to that institution's more taciturn traditions, underscores Moscow's outspoken dismay with dollar hegemony; its timing suggests coordination with the top rungs of government to present gold as a possible currency-war weapon.


Second, despite international pressure, Russia has been very wary of the sell-off policies that led the UK, France, Spain, and Italy to unload gold over the past decade during unsuccessful attempts to prop up their respective ailing economies - in particular, of then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown's sell-off of 400 metric tons of the country's reserves at stunningly low prices. Moscow's surprise decision upon the onset of the ruble's swift decline in early December 2014 to not tap into the country's gold reserves, now the world's sixth largest, highlights the ambitiousness of Russia's stance on the gold issue. By the end of December, Russia added another 20.73 tons, according to the IMF in late January, capping a nine-month buying spree.


Third, while the Russian economy is structurally weak, enough of the country's monetary fundamentals are sound, such that the timing of a move to gold, geopolitically and domestically, may be ideal. Russia is not a debtor nation. At this writing in January, Russia's debt to GDP ratio is low and most of its external debt is private. Physical gold accounts for 10 percent of Russia's foreign currency reserves. The budget deficit, as of a November 2014 projection, is likely to be around $10 billion, much less than 1 percent of GDP. The poverty ratefell from 35 percent in 2001 to 10 percent in 2010, while the middle class was projected in 2013 to reach 86 percent of the population by 2020.


Collapsing oil prices serve only to intensify the monetary attractiveness of gold. Given that oil exports, along with the rest of the energy sector, account for 45 percent of GDP, the depreciation of the ruble will continue; newly unstable fiscal conditions have devastated banks, and higher inflation looms, expected to reach 10 percent by the end of 2015. As Russia remains (for the foreseeable future) mainly a resource-based economy, only a move to gold, arguably, can make the currency stronger, even if it does limit Russia's available currency.


In buying as much gold as it has, the country is, in part, ensuring that it will have enough money in circulation in the event of such fundamental transformation. In terms of re-establishing post-oil shock international prestige, a move to gold will allow the country to be seen as a more reliable and trustworthy trading partner.


The repercussions of Russia on a gold-exchange standard would be immense. Above all, it would mean the first major schism in the world's monetary order. China would quite likely follow suit. It could mean the threat of a severe inflation in the United States should rafts of unwanted dollars make their way back across the Atlantic - the Fed's ultimate nightmare. Above all, the country will avoid the extreme debt leverages which would not have happened had Western capitals remained on gold.


"A gold standard would be politically appealing, transforming the ruble to a formidable currency and reducing outflows significantly," writes Dr. Enrico Colombatto, economics professor at the University of Turin, Italy.


He notes that the only major drawback would be that the imposed discipline of a gold standard would deprive authorities of discretionary political power. The other threat would be that of a new generation of Russian central bankers becoming too heavily influenced by the monetary mindset of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Fed.


As Alisdair MacLeod, a two-decade veteran of off-shore banking consulting based in the UK, recently wrote, Russia (and China) will "hold all the aces" by moving away from any possible currency wars of the future into the physical gold market. In his article, he adds that there is currently a low appetite for physical gold in Western capital markets and longer-term foreign holders of rubles would be unlikely to exchange them for gold, preferring to sell them for other fiat currencies.


Mr. Macleod cites John Butler, CIO at Atom Capital in London, who sees great potential in a gold-exchange standard for Russia. With the establishment of a sound gold-exchange rate, he argues, the Central Bank of Russia would no longer be confined to buying and selling gold to maintain the rate of exchange. The bank could freely manage the liquidity of the ruble and be able to issue coupon-bearing bonds to the Russian public, allowing it a yield linked to gold rates. As the ruble stabilizes, the rate of the cost of living would drop; savings would grow, spurred on by long term stability and lower taxes.


Foreign exchange also would be favorable, Mr. Butler maintains. Owing to the Ukraine crises and commodities crises, rubles have been dumped for dollar/euro currencies. Upon the announcement of a gold-exchange, demand for the ruble would increase. London and New York markets would in turn be countered by provisions restricting gold-to-ruble exchanges of imports and exports.


The geopolitics of gold also figure into Russia's increasingly close relations with China, a country that also has made clear its preference for gold over the dollar. (Russia recently edged out China as the world's top buyer of the metal.) In the aftermath of the $400 billion, 30-year deal signed between Russian gas giant Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Company in November 2014, China turned its focus to the internationalization of its own gold market. On January 15, 2015, the Shanghai Gold Exchange, the largest physical gold exchange worldwide, and the World Gold Council, concluded a strategic cooperation deal to expand the Chinese gold market through the new Shanghai Free Trade Zone.


This is not the first time the gold standard has been seen as the ultimate cure for Russia's economic problems. In September 1998, the noted economist Jude Wanninski predicted in a far-sighted essay for that only a gold ruble would get the the country out of its then-debt crises. It was upon taking office about two years later, in May 2000, that President Putin embarked upon the country's massive gold-buying campaign. At the time, it took twenty-eight barrels of crude just to buy an ounce of gold. The gold-backed ruble policy of those years was adopted to successfully pay down the country's external debt.


As a pro-gold stance is, essentially, anti-dollar, speculation about how the US would react raises the question of whether an all-out currency war would follow. The West would have to keep Russia regionally and militarily marginalized, not to mention kept within the confines of the Fed, the ECB, and the Bank of England (BOE).


Nor is that prospect too far-fetched. As Dutch author Willem Middelkoop has written in his 2014 book ,



A system reset is imminent. Even before 2020 the world's financial system will need to find a different anchor. ... In a desperate attempt to maintain this dollar system, the United States waged a secret war on gold since the 1960s. China and Russia have pierced through the American smokescreen around gold and the dollar and are no longer willing to continue lending to the United States. Both countries have been accumulating enormous amounts of gold, positioning themselves for the next phase of the global financial system.



Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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5 dead among 7 shot in Douglas County, Georgia




Death investigation in Douglas County.



Douglas County investigators say five people are dead after what police call a tragic incident.

Deputies with the Douglas County Sheriff's Office were called out to Willow Tree Court Saturday afternoon.


's Tyisha Fernandes reported that investigators were keeping people far away from the scene because there were still victims in the street.


"We had multiple victims shot in the street," said Chief Deputy Stan Copeland, of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.


Residents told Fernandes they were traumatized by what they saw.


Police say at least seven people were shot in the street and in one of the houses. The seven people range in age from toddlers to adults.


"Some of those are siblings, so some (of) these (people) are related. We just don't know who is who right now," Copeland said.


Police told Fernandes a few of the victims have already died, while others have been transported to the hospital.


We know that the shooter shot himself, but police won't say if he's alive or not.


Residents identified the shooter's sister as she was being escorted by police.


Fernandes said the shooter's sister was frantic and witnesses say she repeatedly yelled, "My brother should have never had a gun."


"As you can imagine we have neighbors that are in shock, neighbors who came to the aid of those victims," Copeland said.


Copeland said the shooting had the most victims the veteran deputy has ever seen.


"I been with the Sheriff's Office 38 years and I've never seen this many victims in one shooting," Copeland said.The Douglas County coroner confirmed to that the shooter was among the five dead. They also said the others killed were two adults and two juveniles.


Investigators remain at the scene. Fernandes is there as well and will have updates on this story tonight on the at 11.


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Saakashvili's bizarro world: U.S.-armed Ukraine could 'capture all of Russia'


Saakashvili

© AP Photo/ Virginia Mayo



Former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili told Ukrainian television on Saturday that a properly armed and prepared Ukrainian army has the "spirit" to capture all of Russia.


In an interview for Ukraine's Channel 24, Saakashvili noted that "our officers, who were trained by the Americans, are now training your military. They say that the spirit of Ukrainian soldiers is the best in the world, and that if they were given the necessary knowledge, skills and weapons, they would be able to capture the whole of Russia."


Saakashvili told the television channel that he believes that "the main problem for Ukraine is its outdated anti-tank weaponry. But newer [weapons systems] exist in the US, and, if they were willing to provide them, Ukraine would smash the first 50 Russian tanks, everything will go completely differently from there."


The former Georgian president noted that the US "saw the feat of the Ukrainian people," and "saw that Ukraine is ready to defend the democratic values, so integral for the United States." He noted that the US is "ready to provide Ukraine with [anti-tank weaponry], ready to give drones and artillery."




Saakashvili, who left Georgia immediately after President Giorgi Margvelashvili's inauguration in November 2013, is facing several charges in his home country over his alleged abuse of power, the use of excessive force against protesters and the carrying out of politically motivated murders. Late last year, Georgian Foreign Affairs Minister David Kereselidze noted that if rumors of Saakashvili's involvement in the post-coup Ukrainian government turned out to be true, they would negatively affect bilateral relations between the two countries.

Ahead of the 2008 war with South Ossetia, Georgia was heavily armed by the US; many Russian analysts have concluded that the US provided Saakashvili with tacit approval for the attack on the breakaway republic of South Ossetia.





Comment: Saakashvili seems to have left objective reality behind for a world more to his liking. Could he possibly be more ? No, apparently Ukraine, whose armed forces currently can't even defeat some local homegrown militias, has what it takes to do what no country has done before: take on Russia, and win. Dream on, Mikhail.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Arizona CPS takes 7 children away from parents after accident


© Facebook

Shoars Family



The unthinkable happened to a family in Arizona. Their three-year-old daughter mysteriously collapsed while her parents were away from home, and she died shortly after. As horrible as that tragedy was, Khloe's death was only the beginning of the devastation to the Shoars family. Child Protective Services immediately came in and took away all seven of their other children, placing them in various foster home settings around the area.

The children now don't have their parents, or even each other, as they try to grasp what has happened to their sister. None of the children, ranging in age from 2 to 9 years old, have been placed with family or friends, and they cry to come home. They don't understand what has happened, and neither do their parents, Jeff and Tabitha Shoars.




"It's like a bad nightmare you can't wake up from," says Jeff.




No charges have been filed against anyone, yet the state of Arizona has already begun the TPR process, Termination of Parental Rights.

Khloe's Story: Beautiful Daughter Born in Troubled Circumstances


Khloe has been described a "bubbly, bouncy, giggly" little girl who was a huge blessing to her family. Jeff says that this is "way too soon for her to be out of our lives."


Khloe's life began under very difficult circumstances. Her mother Tabitha was sexually assaulted by two men when the family lived in Minnesota. The men went to prison, but Tabitha found that she had become pregnant from the attack. She says that abortion was never an option for her, and together she and Jeff made the choice to give life to the baby that had been conceived.


Tiny Khloe only weighed a pound and a half when she was born prematurely, at just 27 1/2 weeks. She had a brain hemorrhage at birth, and she was in very serious condition at the same time that her mother suffered a placental abruption. While the doctors fought to save Tabitha's life, Jeff, who has always been terrified of needles, never hesitated when the baby needed a blood transfusion, promptly volunteering to donate blood for Khloe.


The doctors allegedly told the Shoars that she would grow out of the brain hemorrhage condition, and despite Tabitha's requests, no further testing was ever done on Khloe to monitor the situation. Like the rest of the Shoars children, Khloe was fully vaccinated, and always got the annual flu shot.





Jeff Shoar vowed to always protect Khloe



A Family that Loved Her

Khloe captured the hearts of her family from the very beginning. Even though she was conceived from assault, Jeff says that he "always considered her mine," and he vowed to always protect her. According to Tabitha, "she came from a bad situation, but she is our blessing."


When the Shoars learned Tabitha's attackers were about to be released from prison, they decided to move cross-country in March 2014, settling in Avondale, Arizona, a city just outside of Phoenix. Leaving the fears for their safety behind, they found that life was going well for the big family with lots of kids, until that one horrible night in August.


These are the pieces that Tabitha and Jeff have been able to put together of the events that occurred.


A Terrible Accident





Khloe with parents.



On the afternoon of August 14, Jeff and Tabitha left together at about 3:30 pm, leaving their children in the care of a babysitter whom they trusted. The young man, in his twenties, has been described as being "like a big brother to the kids," and he had a history of playing with and caring for the children, both with and without the parents' supervision.


She didn't have much of an appetite for dinner that night, although her family reports that she usually eats seconds. After dinner the kids were playing outside, and Khloe fell and hit her head on the ground. Her siblings and the babysitter found no mark or bump. She went to bed early, which her mother says is what she would do whenever she had a headache. Tabitha also reports that she had a headache a few days before, but they thought nothing of it, since it went away.


After Khloe went to sleep that night, she woke up with a high-pitched scream, then she was crying. The babysitter ran in to her to see what was wrong. He says that he thought at the time that she must have had a nightmare. He helped her get out the bed where she had been asleep with the younger children, and walked her to the kitchen for a drink of water. He reports that she was wobbly on her feet, but he thought that she was just sleepy. After she sipped some water, she collapsed in the hallway, with her eyes rolling back in her head and gasping. The babysitter called 911. Her lips were turning purple as he was trying to do CPR.


When the police arrived before the paramedics, the first officer on the scene moved him out of the way and squeezed her. She threw up, but remained unresponsive. Later, the medical reports would show kidney damage on the side of Khloe where she was squeezed.


Jeff and Tabitha were about 45 minutes away in a Phoenix suburb when they got word that their baby had collapsed. By the time the frantic parents got home, there was police tape surrounding their house. Tabitha was directed to go to the Phoenix Children's Hospital, and Jeff stayed behind to check on the other kids and talk to the officials at their home.


What this mother found at the hospital was "every single parent's worst nightmare." The doctor told her that Khloe (who had been admitted as a Jane Doe) had bleeding and swelling of the brain and kidney damage, and that she was unresponsive. She was on life support.


Tabitha says she was distraught and tried to get answers, but there were none to be had. She wanted to know what happened, but the doctors reported that nothing showed up in her blood work. "There was no bruises, scars or marks, or signs of anything! She wasn't bitten, she wasn't stung, she wasn't shaken NOTHING."


CPS Removes Remaining Children from Home





The Shoars Children



When Jeff arrived at the hospital, he told his wife that CPS was taking the other kids for 72 hours, because it was "protocol for them to investigate." At the time, they were fine with that because they needed to focus on Khloe. None of their family lived in Arizona, and Tabitha and Jeff didn't question the actions of CPS, which seemed reasonable to them at the time.

As the day progressed, it became clear that it was only the life support machines keeping their little girl alive. Tabitha says that CPS didn't even want to let the other children come to the hospital to say goodbye to their sister, but that the doctor insisted that CPS let them come.


Tabitha tearfully described to me the most heart-rending day of her life, as she had to let go of her baby Khloe. Jeff choked up as he told me, "I adored her and I loved her more than anything." They lay with her in the hospital bed as her heart stopped and she let go of this life.


And yet, they still haven't had a chance to grieve the most difficult thing a parent could go through, because CPS didn't bring their other children back to them. Even now, they only get to visit a few hours a week.


No Charges Filed, but Children Not Returned


Understandably, there was an investigation. The babysitter was originally arrested, then released. The parents have been investigated. The police are allegedly calling this a homicide investigation; however, to date no charges have been filed against anyone. The investigators allegedly do not appear to be looking at the babysitter any more.


Jeff says that they still don't know the answer to the big question: "what happened to Khloe?" It's kind of like Sherlock Holmes trying to put together all the pieces.


Health Impact News spoke with Tabitha's sister-in-law Lisa Shoars R.N., who said, "The symptoms that were described to me definitely seem to be consistent with a brain aneurysm, from what I've learned in nursing school."


An autopsy was performed, but the results have not yet been released. The Shoars are hoping that the autopsy will help to fill in the pieces. The Shoars are concerned about the fact that they were told that the autopsy was completed, but that the medical examiner is waiting for the police report before releasing the autopsy. Supporters have told Tabitha and Jeff that this is not the usual order of things.


They report that all of the doctors say there were no signs of abuse. A rape kit was done, and it came back negative. Tabitha says that she does not believe that the babysitter hurt Khloe, and the family's thinking is that their little girl died from tragic natural causes.


Reasoning Behind Why Children were Removed from Parents is Not Clear





Shoars Family



Family and Child Advocate Steven R. Isham M.A., L.B.S.W., recently met with the Shoars and has reviewed the available records. He expresses concern that there are a number of issues with the state of Arizona's treatment of the Shoars family. Among his findings are the following:

  • The court documents and child protective services documents misrepresent and conflict with the facts. There is documentation that has been added to reports that did not occur. There seems to be documentation of threats made to the children by the Foster Parents, and by CPS workers to elicit certain behaviors and language.

  • I was unable to discover in the records or through conversation exactly what the accusations are that drew the conclusion of imminent harm and immediate removal of the children from the Parents and from the Grandparents.

  • Concerns for the children:

    Medications not provided in state care

    Long absences from school

    Holidays and Family milestones ignored in state care

    Multiple separation anxiety provoking events in state care with no evidence of accompanying support services for those many events

    Separated from original home

    Separated from Parents

    Separated from Grandparents

    Separated from siblings

    Separated from schools

    Children told to address Foster Parents as Mother and Father causing confusion and distrust in these already traumatized children as listed above.

    Placed with Hispanic families with cultural differences causing anxiety with language, foods, clothing, and a variety of other cultural items

  • It is reported that one child was told by Foster Parent that biological Mother was in heaven with deceased sibling. It is reported that child was shocked and confused when he saw the biological Mother at the next visit.

  • It appears that the Parents and Grandparents participation has already been discontinued if it ever was actively sought during the reunification process.

  • It does appear that Parents and Grandparents have actively participated in every condition asked of them. There is nothing that shows they have not fully participated when asked to do so by the court or by Child Protective Services.


Arizona CPS: Presumed Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Despite the fact that there have been no charges filed, and the autopsy has not even been released, Arizona's Child Protective Services appears to have condemned the Shoars without a trial, deeming them guilty until proven innocent. A caseworker allegedly told the family that the accusation is neglect, because the parents allegedly failed to protect the children from abuse by the babysitter.


There is a hearing scheduled for January 16. This hearing is reportedly about three things:



  1. TPR - to determine if the state will terminate parental rights to the Shoars seven living children. The Shoars have been told that at least one of the foster parents wants to adopt some of her kids, the kids who have parents who love them. It is unclear if this is the same foster parent who makes the children call her "mom."

  2. to determine if the grandparents may be awarded custody. Currently, two of the children are in a group home, and two others are in a non-English speaking home (the Shoars report that all of their children speak only English).

  3. a pre-trial conference


Tabitha says that she is worried sick about her children and scared for their safety. She has heard horror stories about what happens to kids in foster care, and wants desperately to protect them from that. The Shoars are concerned because their children have reportedly been sick quite frequently since entering foster care.


"The CPS is traumatizing our kids." They reportedly cry and beg their parents to let them come home, but their parents are powerless to do anything.




The Shoars have named a star after their little girl, who would have turned 4 on December 19. The star "Khloe Madison" is in the Sagittarius constellation. "This star shines for you in your memory." Tabitha hopes that knowing that there is a star in the sky looking down on them in their sister's name will somehow bring comfort to their other children.




Freedom and Justice for the Shoars Family



A Family Torn Apart During Time of Tragedy

Jeff and Tabitha want answers, but more than anything, they want their kids back, these children whom they love "more than anything in the world."


Tabitha says, "I want my kids to know that I will always fight for them." The Shoars have suffered the tragic unexplained death of one of their children. How cruel to have to suffer the loss and separation from the rest of their children.


Mr. Charles Flanagan is the Director of DCS/CPS in Arizona. He may be reached at 1-602-542-5844. Concerned citizens might want to ask him how his agency can think that it is acceptable to attempt to terminate parents' rights when no charges have been filed against them, and there are allegedly no signs of abuse.


Newly elected Governor Doug Ducey can be reached by phone or email here.


For those who want to follow the Shoars family story and support them in their struggle to get their kids back, there is a Facebook page set up:


Freedom and Justice for the Shoars Family. #justice4shoars


The next court hearing is on Friday, January 16, at 9 am at the Family Courthouse at 3131 West Durango, Phoenix. The family welcomes people to come to the courthouse in support.


UPDATE 1/16/2015


The judge issued a gag order on the parents forbidding them to talk about the case. Story here:


Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Putin is not autistic - Putin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov

Putin asperger's

© AFP

Angry ... Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has rejected a report that suggested he has Asperger’s Syndrome.



Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman has angrily dismissed a Pentagon study that claimed the Russian leader had Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.

"That is stupidity not worthy of comment," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Gazeta.ru news website.


His comments came after reported that a 2008 study carried out by an internal Pentagon think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, suggested that Mr Putin has Asperger's syndrome, giving him a need to exert "extreme control" on his surroundings and is uncomfortable with social interaction.


The Pentagon played down the study, saying it apparently never made its way to the desk of the defence secretary or other top decision makers.


Experts studying his movements and facial expressions in video footage theorised that Mr Putin's neurological development was disrupted in infancy, giving him a sense of physical imbalance and a discomfort with social interaction.




"This profound behavioural challenge has been identified by leading neuroscientists as Asperger's syndrome, an autistic disorder which affects all of his decisions," wrote the study's author, Brenda Connors, a senior fellow at the US Naval War College.

"During crisis, to stabilise himself and his perceptions of any evolving context he reverts to imposing extreme control," wrote Ms Connors, who has analysed the body language of other world leaders.


Mr Putin's condition also can prompt him to "withdraw from social stimulation as he did at the time of the Kursk nuclear submarine incident" in 2000, when a Russian sub sank in the Barents Sea, the study claimed.




The theory about Mr Putin's condition could not be definitively confirmed without a brain scan, the report said. But experts cited the Russian president's body movements and "microexpressions" as indicators of Asperger's.

The Pentagon study claimed Mr Putin's unrelenting stare reflected a neurological abnormality and an inability to pick up on social cues.


His condition meant that Mr Putin would display a "hypersensitivity" and "a strong reliance on the fight, flight and freeze responses" instead of a more nuanced social behaviour, it said.




Mr Putin is uncomfortable presenting his ideas to "large audiences" and his neurological "challenge" meant that he "simply lacks trust in human interactions", it said.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Mystery milky rain falls on Washington, Oregon



Spokane - Rainfall described as milky-colored, dusty or dirty fell across parts of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, with its origin is unclear.

The National Weather Service received reports of the dirty rain from more than 15 cities from Hermiston, Ore., to Rathdrum, Idaho, on Friday. The weather service's Spokane office collected water samples that will be sent to a lab for testing.


The light gray dirt in the rainfall coated vehicles and windows across the region as a rainstorm that originated in the Pacific moved in.


Dirty Rain

© Twitter



Experts said they are checking out several possible explanations including a recent volcanic eruption in Mexico and one in Russia. The weather service said the rainstorm may have passed through some dust or volcanic ash as it moved west.

Walla Walla County's emergency management staff posted a statement on its Facebook page that the ash is likely from Volcano Shiveluch in Kamchatka Krai, Russia, some 3,000 miles away. Volcano Shiveluch spewed an ash plume about 22,000 feet high in late January, the statement said.


However, the county cautioned the source of the dirty rain has not been scientifically confirmed and that there are a number of volcanoes currently active.


Dirty Rain_1

© Facebook

We had many reports of a "dirty" or "milky" rain



CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, meanwhile, pointed to an eruption Wednesday of a volcano in southwestern Colima, Mexico, as another potential source of the dirty rain. That volcano is more than 2,000 miles away from the region.

Meteorologists said it may be a while before they figure it out because nothing is showing up on satellite. However, that is not uncommon with these thick clouds and moisture.




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FDA approved additives in our food that are banned in other countries


You have to ask why the United States still allows proven carcinogens to be added to our foods. Why they allow arsenic in chicken feed, and why it allows companies to lure in children with bright attractive packaging when they know those kids are going to be guzzling flame retardants.

Mountain Dew contains a chemical that also is used to prevent carpets from catching on fire



The list of food additives banned in other countries but still in use in the United States is a long one. Here are a few of the worst to whet your appetite...or not.

Azodicarbonamide is known to induce asthma, and has been banned in Australia, the U.K. and most other European countries. If you were to use it as a food ingredient in Singapore, you could face up to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.


According to the FDA, Azodicarbonamide is 'approved to be a bleaching agent in cereal flour' and is 'permitted for direct addition to food for human consumption.'


Banned in most European countries, Australia, the UK...and Singapore.


Nice.


Brominated vegetable oil, which is banned in more than 100 countries because it has been linked to every form of thyroid disease - from cancer to autoimmune diseases - known to man.


Other food products made from brominated vegetable oil include New York brand flatbreads, bagel chips, Baja Burrito wraps and other bread products.


The FDA says it is approved 'for flavoring oils used in fruit-flavored beverages, for which any applicable standards of identity do not preclude such use, in an amount not to exceed 15 parts per million in the finished beverage.'




Synthetic growth hormones rBGH and rBST have been linked to increased tumor risks in humans. They are also linked to infertility and weak musculature. They can be found in most dairy products and are banned in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Japan and the whole of the EU

Arsenic, which we all know is toxic to humans is added to some chicken feeds to make the meat appear pink and fresh looking. Most countries have banned arsenic in animal feed to keep it out of the food chain.The USA has not.




160 countries across the globe have banned the beta antagonist ractopamine from being used on food chain animals due to the effect it can have in humans. Ractopamine promotes meat leanness in food animals, it makes cuts of meat less fatty but at what cost?

It affects the cardiovascular system of humans, is a carcinogen, causes behavioural changes and can cause chromosome mutations.


There are literally dozens of additives that are banned around the world that still find their way legally into the foods eaten in the United States.


It amazes me that a government that considers itself able to police the world, who thinks they have the right to interfere in the lives of millions globally cannot ensure that it's own citizens are able to consume everyday foods in the sure knowledge that they are not being poisoned.




Sources

mercola.com

today.com

forbes.com

bodyunburdened.com


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Untouched Mycenaean tomb found in Central Greece

Ancient Tomb

© Greek Reporter



An ancient Greek Mycenaean tomb was unearthed in Amfissa, central Greece during an irrigation project that required excavation in the area. It is a unique finding, the first of its kind that has ever been found in West Locris and one of the few in central Greece.

The preliminary archaeological study of the findings shows that the tomb was used for more than two centuries, from the 13th to the 11th century B.C..


Within the burial chamber archaeologists found a large amount of skeletal material, which had accumulated near the surrounding walls, while a few better preserved burials were also uncovered.


Furthermore, the excavation revealed forty-four vases with painted decorations, the two bronze fragmented vases, as well as gold rings, brass buttons, fragments of semi precious stones, two bronze daggers, female and animal figurines, and a large number of seals with animal, plant and linear patterns.


The full scientific research regarding the recent finding will be made by a team of archaeologists and it is expected to provide new information about the archaeological and historical development of the region.


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Dr. Chris Shaw: Why Aluminum adjuvants should not be in vaccines


After Thiomersal (mercury) in vaccines was linked to a number of human health ailments, it was removed from most vaccines that are administered today, but still remains a problem. It seems we might be on the same path when it comes to aluminum, as it has also been linked to several human health ailments such as; autism, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and more (as Dr. Shaw notes).

Below is a clip of Dr. Chris Shaw, a Neuroscientist and professor at the University of British Columbiaexplaining the dangers of putting aluminum into vaccines as an adjuvant. Keep that word in mind:


As pointed out in the video, a common argument from the "pro-vaccine" side when it comes to vaccines that contain aluminum is that aluminum is present everywhere, that we ingest it more from our food (and other things) than we do from vaccines. This argument is completely invalid, because when it is in the form of an adjuvant within a vaccine, as Dr. Shaw explains, the aluminum stays in your body. That's exactly what it's designed to do, that's the purpose of an adjuvant.


On the other hand, when you accumulate aluminum in your body from food, industrial practices, or any other source, our bodies usually do a good job flushing it out. Again, when it's in a vaccine the body does not do this, it stays in the body and this is why vaccines that contain aluminum (and other harmful toxins) should be a cause for concern.


The clip below is an excerpt from the documentary that Dr. Shaw made an appearance in, it's a film that raises awareness regarding the HPV (Gardasil) vaccine. For more information on that vaccine, you can click here.


Last month I published an article on the work of Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a Senior Research Scientist at MIT. She also showed what can happen to a child who receives an aluminum containing vaccine (among many other scientists and researchers). You can read that article here.


There is a reason why so many families have been compensated from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. It's a program we don't really hear of, and one that completely protects pharmaceutical companies (vaccine manufacturers) from any liability whatsoever. Billions of dollars have been paid out to families with vaccine injured children.



"Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. Despite almost 90 years of widespread use of aluminum adjuvants, medical science's medical understanding of their mechanisms of action is still remarkably poor. There is also a concerning scarcity of data on toxicology and pharmacokinetics of these compounds. In spite of this, the notion that aluminum in vaccines is safe appears to be widely accepted."- Dr Chris Shaw (source)



[embedded content]



"Aluminum is now being implicated as interfering with a variety of cellular and metabolic processes in the nervous system and in other tissues." (source)


"Experimental research clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences." (source)



If you are interested in furthering your research on this topic, there is a wealth of information available from various sources. I hope these ones are a good kick start.

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Corporate crimes and fines by Big Pharma: How they get away with it


For all those who, in euphemistic terms, "drink the cool aide," there seems to be an indication that either they truly believe what's perpetrated upon them as pharmaceutical medical science or they are downright lost in fear and ignorance. That assessment includes brainwashed medical doctors and healthcare practitioners, who ought to know better, and "cease and desist" from taking Big Pharma's gratuities to push, hawk, or pimp Pharma's products - or else be subject to peer pressure and professional condemnation.

Big Pharma, as an industry, probably is one of the most sinister of criminals! That's quite a statement to make, but legal documents prove it. In 2012, the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark, issued and published the paper "Corporate crime in the pharmaceutical industry is common, serious and repetitive," which was published in the (BMJ 2012;345:e8462 - short version).


That paper was authored by Peter C. Gotzsche, Professor, MD, DrMedSc, MSc.


Professor Gotzsche researched to see if drug companies routinely break the law. Here's what he found:



Results: I found recent examples (2007 to 2012) of serious crimes committed by each company. The crimes included marketing drugs for off-label uses, misrepresentation of research results, hiding data on harms, and Medicaid and Medicare fraud. Doctors were often complicit in the crimes, as kickbacks were common. The crimes were repetitive.


Conclusions: The crimes persist because crime pays. Harder sanctions are therefore needed, including prison sentences for CEOs and other senior executives. Doctors and their organizations should consider carefully whether they find it ethically acceptable to receive money that may have been partly been earned by crimes that are harmful to patients. [1]



This writer thinks that better, independent REAL science should persist with independent data, not Big Pharma's manipulated and controlled information released.

Dr. Gotzsche selected 10 cases from 2007 to 2012, which were all related to the United States of America. In his words,



The most common criminal offenses were illegal marketing recommending drugs for non-approved (off-label) uses, misrepresentation of research results, hiding data on harms, and Medicaid and Medicare fraud.



This writer would be willing to "discount" illegal marketing practices and Medicaid and Medicare fraud as "part of doing business," but to misrepresent research results and hide data on harms - that's truly criminal, immoral, and pseudoscience!

Taking the above findings a step further, why, then, would healthcare consumers and parents, in particular, subject their children to the cult-like propaganda that vaccines are safe? Since drug companies have been found to misrepresent research results and hide data on harms.


Question: Where are the U.S. Congress, the CDC and FDA, and why aren't they doing their jobs to protect public health? Answer: In the back pocket of Big Pharma's lobbyists! Big Pharma has 1,100+ paid lobbyists, and from 1998 to 2013 spent lobbying expenses! [2] In order to keep this article from becoming lengthy, may I suggest you study reference 1 below for particulars. However, I will enumerate the 10 USA Pharma criminals:



  1. Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3 billion in 2009

  2. Novartis agreed to pay $423 million in 2010

  3. Sanofi-Aventis to pay more than $95 million to settle fraud charge in 2009

  4. GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3 billion in 2011

  5. AstraZeneca to pay $520 million in 2010 to settle fraud case15

  6. Roche convinces governments to stockpile Tamiflu

  7. Johnson & Johnson fined more than $1.1 billion in 2012

  8. Merck to pay $670 million over Medicaid fraud in 2007

  9. Eli Lilly to pay more than $1.4 billion for illegal marketing in 2009

  10. Abbott to pay $1.5 billion for Medicaid fraud in 2012


According to the Gotzsche article,

A US poll also ranked the drug industry at the bottom, together with oil and tobacco companies.



And yet, healthcare consumers in the USA are forced under totalitarian-like laws, physician pressures, and media misinformation to submit to fraudulent or criminal science or marketing practices!

Regarding the role that doctors apparently play as co-conspirators in Big Pharma health crimes,


Dr. Gotzsche contends,



Doctors are complicit in the crimes when they accept kickbacks and engage in other types of corruption, often in relation to illegal marketing. When drugs are marketed to non-approved uses, we don't know whether they are effective, and they could also be more harmful, e.g. if used in children. This practice has therefore been described as using the citizens as guinea pigs on a large scale without their informed consent.


Even when doctors use drugs only for approved indications, the crimes have consequences for the patients. Doctors only have access to selected and manipulated information, and they therefore believe drugs are far more effective and safe than they really are. Thus, both legal and illegal marketing leads massive over-treatment of the population and a lot of harm that could have been avoided.


[Vaccine pseudoscience falls into the above belief system for doctors, in this writer's opinion.]


As many of the crimes I identified were related to psychiatry, I shall use this specialty as an example. Psychiatry is a lucrative area for the industry, as most definitions of psychiatric disorders are vague and easy to manipulate. [1]



According to the American Psychological Association,

The use of psychotropic drugs by adult Americans increased 22 percent from 2001 to 2010, with one in five adults now taking at least one psychotropic medication, according to industry data. In 2010, Americans spent more than $16 billion on antipsychotics, $11 billion on antidepressants and $7 billion for drugs to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The rapid growth of all three classes of drugs has alarmed some mental health professionals, who are concerned about the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs by elderly nursing home residents and the prescription of stimulants to children who may have been misdiagnosed with ADHD. [3]



The same cockamamie BS can be applied to vaccines at all levels: federal, state, and local authorities who apparently drink and thrive on the "cool aide" that vaccines are safe, when most have not been proven to not cause cancer, reproductive health problems, etc., and which is stated on all vaccine package inserts!

However, the piece de resistance, in my opinion, are these profound words from Dr. Gotzsche:



Doctors and their organisations should consider carefully whether they find it ethically acceptable to receive money that may have been partly earned by crimes that have harmed those people whose interests doctors are expected to take care of. Many crimes would be impossible to carry out, if doctors weren't willing to participate in them. [1]



The most lucrative part of the 'medical crime syndicate', in my opinion, is vaccines! which every medical professional pushes almost like a crack dealer.

According to Health Impact News, "Doctors Earn $3.5 Billion in Kickbacks from Pharmaceutical Companies." What does that tell you as to why you and parents are being forced by pseudoscience and "cool aide" science drinkers to submit to vaccinations? It's a legal racket condoned by law, the HHS, CDC and FDA. Now you know. So, what will you do?


One study that would prove the controversial science surrounding vaccines is a retrospective study of the health status of vaccinated children of all ages versus non-vaccinated children of all ages. Congress, please commission that.




Why, after all these years of contention about parents not wanting to vaccinate, wouldn't medical science, Big Pharma, and government health agencies want to set the record scientifically straight? Why do they just pontificate, "Vaccines are safe?" That's not been proven, and each vaccine product insert says so! Check it out by asking your medical doctor for that piece of paper and read it thoroughly. I challenge all vaccine apologists to do that.

References


[1] British Medical Journal (BMJ 2012;345:e8462) [PDF]

[2]drugwatch.com

[3]apa.org


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Demobilized in the USA: Why there isn't a massive antiwar movement

protesters march

© kalw.org

1969 Moratorium March on Washington

1969 --- Following a symbolic three-day "March Against Death," the second national "moratorium" opens with mass demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Organized by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam ("New Mobe"), an estimated 500,000 demonstrators rallied in Washington as part of the largest such rally to date. It began with a march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument, where a mass rally and speeches were held. Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and four different touring casts of the musical "Hair" entertained the demonstrators. Later, violence erupted when police used tear gas on radicals who had split off from the main rally to march on the Justice Department. The crowd of about 6,000, led by members of the Youth International Party ("Yippies"), threw rocks and bottles and burned U.S. flags. Almost 100 demonstrators were arrested. The largest protest outside Washington was held in San Francisco, where an estimated 250,000 people demonstrated. Antiwar demonstrations were also held in a number of major European cities, including Frankfurt, Stuttgart, West Berlin, and London. The largest overseas demonstration occurred in Paris, where 2,651 people were arrested.



I.F. Stone, the urge to serve, and remembrance of wars past

Well, it's one, two, three, look at that amputee,

At least it's below the knee,

Could have been worse, you see.

Well, it's true your kids look at you differently,

But you came in an ambulance instead of a hearse,

That's the phrase of the trade,

It could have been worse.


-- First verse of a Vietnam-era song written by U.S. Air Force medic Bob Boardman off Country Joe McDonald's "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag"



There was the old American lefty paper, the Guardian, and the Village Voice, which beat the Sixties into the world, and its later imitators like the Boston Phoenix. There was Liberation News Service, the Rat in New York, the Great Speckled Bird in Atlanta, the Old Mole in Boston, the distinctly psychedelic Chicago Seed, Leviathan, Viet-Report, and the L.A. Free Press, as well as that Texas paper whose name I long ago forgot that was partial to armadillo cartoons. And they existed, in the 1960s and early 1970s, amid a jostling crowd of hundreds of "underground" newspapers -- all quite aboveground but the word sounded so romantic in that political moment. There were G.I. antiwar papers by the score and high school rags by the hundreds in an "alternate" universe of opposition that somehow made the rounds by mail or got passed on hand-to-hand in a now almost unimaginable world of interpersonal social networking that preceded the Internet by decades. And then, of course, there was I.F. Stone's Weekly (1953-1971): one dedicated journalist, 19 years, every word his own (except, of course, for the endless foolishness he mined from the reams of official documentation produced in Washington, Vietnam, and elsewhere).

"What's missing is any sense of connection to the government, any sense that it's 'ours' or that we the people matter."


I can remember the arrival of that newsletter, though I no longer know whether I subscribed myself or simply shared someone else's copy. In a time when being young was supposed to be glorious, Stone was old -- my parents' age -- but still we waited on his words. It helped to have someone from a previous generation confirm in nuts and bolts ways that the issue that swept so many of us away, the Vietnam War, was indeed an American atrocity.


The Call to Service


They say you can't go home again, but recently, almost 44 years after I saw my last issue of the Weekly -- Stone was 64 when he closed up shop; I was 27 -- I found the full archive of them, all 19 years, online, and began reading him all over again. It brought back a dizzying time in which we felt "liberated" from so much that we had been brought up to believe and -- though we wouldn't have understood it that way then -- angered and forlorn by the loss as well. That included the John Wayne version of America in which, at the end of any war film, as the Marine Corps Hymn welled up, American troops advanced to a justified victory that would make the world a better place. It also included a far kinder-hearted but allied vision of a country, a government, that was truly ours, and to which we owed -- and one dreamed of offering -- some form of service. That was deeply engrained in us, which was why when, in his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy so famously called on us to serve, the response was so powerful. ("And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.") Soon after, my future wife went into the Peace Corps like tens of thousands of other young Americans, while I dreamed, as I had from childhood, of becoming a diplomat in order to represent our country abroad.


1963 march



1963 Demands for the affirmation of rights, when stuff mattered.



And that sense of service to country ran so deep that when the first oppositional movements of the era arose, particularly the Civil Rights Movement, the impulse to serve was essential to them, as it clearly was to I.F. Stone. The discovery that under your country's shining veneer lay a series of nightmares might have changed how that sense of obligation was applied, but it didn't change the impulse. Not at all.

In his writing, Stone was calm, civil, thoughtful, fact-based, and still presented an American world that looked shockingly unlike the one you could read about in what wasn't yet called "the mainstream media" or could see on the nightly network news. (Your TV still had only 13 channels, without a zapper in sight.) A researcher par excellence, Stone, like the rest of us, lacked the ability to see into the future, which meant that some of his fears ("World War III") as well as his dreams never came true. But on the American present of that time, he was remarkably on target. Rereading some of his work so many decades later set me thinking about the similarities and differences between that moment of eternal war in Indochina and the present endless war on terror.


Among the eeriest things about reading Stone's Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia coverage, 14 years into the next century, is how resonantly familiar so much of what he wrote still seems, how twenty-first-century it all is. It turns out that the national security state hasn't just been repeating things they've done unsuccessfully for the last 13 years, but for the last 60. Let me offer just a few examples from his newsletter. I think you'll get the idea.


* With last June's collapse of the American-trained and -armed Iraqi army and recent revelations about its 50,000 "ghost soldiers" in mind, here's Stone on the Laotian army in January 1961:



"It is the highest paid army in Asia and variously estimated (the canny Laotians have never let us know the exact numbers, perhaps lest we check on how much the military payroll is diverted into the pockets of a few leaders) at from 23,000 to 30,000. Yet it has never been able to stand up against handfuls of guerrillas and even a few determined battalions like those mustered by Captain Kong Le."



* On ISIS's offensive in Iraq last year, or the 9/11 attacks, or just about any other development you want to mention in our wars since then, our gargantuan bureaucracy of 17 expanding intelligence outfits has repeatedly been caught short, so consider Stone's comments on the Tet Offensive of February 1968. At a time when America's top commander in Vietnam had repeatedly assured Americans that the Vietnamese enemy was losing, the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (the "Vietcong") launched attacks on just about every major town and city in South Vietnam, including the U.S. Embassy in Saigon:

"We still don't know what hit us. The debris is not all in Saigon and Hue. The world's biggest intelligence apparatus was caught by surprise."



* On our drone assassination and other air campaigns as a global war not on, but for -- i.e., to recruit -- terrorists, including our present bombing campaigns in Iraq and Syria, here's Stone in February 1968:

"When the bodies are really counted, it will be seen that one of the major casualties was our delusion about victory by air power: all that boom-boom did not keep the enemy from showing up at Langvei with tanks... The whole country is slowly being burnt down to 'save it.' To apply scorched-earth tactics to one's own country is heroic; to apply it to a country one claims to be saving is brutal and cowardly... It is we who rally the people to the other side." And here he is again in May 1970: "Nowhere has air power, however overwhelming and unchallenged, been able to win a war."



Demobilizing Americans

And so it goes reading Stone today. But if much in the American way of war remains dismally familiar some five decades later, one thing of major significance has changed, something you can see regularly in I.F. Stone's Weekly but not in our present world. Thirteen years after our set of disastrous wars started, where is the massive antiwar movement, including an army in near revolt and a Congress with significant critics in significant positions?


Think of it this way: in 1968, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was J. William Fulbright, a man who came to oppose U.S. policy in Vietnam and wrote a book about this country titled The Arrogance of Power (a phrase no senator who hoped to stay in Washington in 2015 would apply to the U.S.). The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee today: John McCain. 'Nuff said.


In the last six decades, the American national security state has succeeded strikingly at only one thing (other than turning itself into a growth industry): it freed itself of us and of Congress. In the years following the Vietnam War, the American people were effectively demobilized, shorn of that sense of service to country, while war was privatized and the citizen soldier replaced by an "all-volunteer" force and a host of paid contractors working for warrior corporations. Post-9/11, the citizenry was urged to pay as much attention as possible to "our troops," or "warriors," and next to none to the wars they were fighting. Today, the official role of a national security state, bigger and more powerful than in the Vietnam era, is to make Americans "safe" from terror. In a world of war-making that has disappeared into the shadows and a Washington in which just about all information is now classified and shrouded in secrecy, the only way to be "safe" and "secure" as a citizen is, by definition, to be ignorant, to know as little as possible about what "our" government is doing in our name. This helps explain why, in the Obama years, the only crime in official Washington is leaking or whistleblowing; that is, letting the public in on something that we, the people, aren't supposed to know about the workings of "our" government.


In 1973, President Richard Nixon ended the draft, a move meant to bring a rebellious citizen's army under control. Since then, in a host of ways, our leaders have managed to sideline the citizenry, replacing the urge to serve with a sense of cynicism about government (which has morphed into many things, including, on the right, the Tea Party movement). As a result, those leaders have been freed from us and from just about all congressional oversight and so have been able to do what they damn well pleased. In practice, this has meant doing the same dumb, brutal, militarized things over and over again. From the repetitive stupidity of twenty-first-century American foreign -- that is, war -- policy, you might draw the conclusion (though they won't) that the citizenry, even in revolt, has something crucial to teach the state.


Serving the Country in Opposition


Nonetheless, this demobilization of us should be seen for what it is: a remarkable achievement. It means that you have to be of a certain age (call me "I.F. Pebble") even to remember what that urge to serve felt like, especially once it went into opposition on a massive scale. I.F. Stone was an early model for just that. In those years, I was, too, and there was nothing special about me. Untold numbers of Americans like me, military and civilian, engaged in such acts and thought of them as service to country. Though they obviously didn't fit the normal definition of American "patriotism," they came from the same place.


In April 1968, not so many months after the Tet Offensive, I went with two close friends to a rally on Boston Common organized by an anti-draft group called the Resistance. There, the three of us turned in our draft cards. I went in jacket and tie because I wanted to make the point that we weren't hippy radicals. We were serious Americans turning our backs on a war from hell being pursued by a country transforming itself before our eyes into our worst nightmare.


Even all these years later, I can still remember the remarkable sense of exhilaration, even freedom, involved and also the fear. (In those years, being a relatively meek and law-abiding guy, I often found myself beyond my comfort zone, and so a little -- or more than a little -- scared.) Similarly, the next year, a gutsy young woman who was a co-worker and I -- I had, by then, dropped out of graduate school and was working at an "underground" movement print shop -- drove two unnerved and unnerving Green Beret deserters to Canada. Admittedly, when they began pretend-machine-gunning the countryside we were passing through, I was unsettled, and when they pulled out dope (no drugs had been the agreed-upon rule on a trip in which we were to cross the Canadian border), I was ready to be anywhere else but in that car. Still, whatever my anxieties, I had no doubt about why I was doing what I was doing, or about the importance of helping American soldiers who no longer wanted to take part in a terrible war.


Finally, in 1971, an Air Force medic named Bob Boardman, angered by the stream of American war wounded coming home, snuck me into his medical unit at Travis Air Force Base in northern California. There, though without any experience as a reporter, I "interviewed" a bunch of wigged-out, angry guys with stumps for arms or legs, who were "antiwar" in all sorts of complex, unexpected, and outraged ways. It couldn't have been grimmer or more searing or more moving, and I went home, wrote up a three-part series on what I had seen and heard, and sold it to Pacific News Service, a small antiwar outfit in San Francisco (where I would subsequently go to work).


None of this would have been most Americans' idea of service, even then. But it was mine. I felt that my government had betrayed me, and that it was my duty as a citizen to do whatever I could to change its ways (as, in fact, I still do). And so, in some upside-down, inside-out way, I maintained a connection to and a perverse faith in that government, or our ability to force change on it, as the Civil Rights Movement had done.


That, I suspect, is what's gone missing in much of our American world and just bringing back the draft, often suggested as one answer to our war-making problems, would be no ultimate solution. It would undoubtedly change the make-up of the U.S. military somewhat. However, what's missing in action isn't the draft, but a faith in the idea of service to country, the essence of what once would have been defined as patriotism. At an even more basic level, what may be gone is the very idea of the active citizen, not to speak of the democracy that went with such a conception of citizenship, as opposed to our present bizarro world of multi-billion-dollar 1% elections.


If, so many years into the disastrous war on terror, the Afghan War that never ends, and most recently Iraq War 3.0 and Syria War 1.0, there is no significant antiwar movement in this country, you can thank the only fit of brilliance the national security state has displayed. It successfully drummed us out of service. The sole task it left to Americans, 40 years after the Vietnam War ended, was the ludicrous one of repeatedly thanking the troops for their service, something that would have been inconceivable in the 1950s or 1960s because you would, in essence, have been thanking yourself.


Missing in Action


Here are I.F. Stone's last words from the penultimate paragraph of the final issue of his newsletter:




"No one could have been happier than I have been with the Weekly. To give a little comfort to the oppressed, to write the truth exactly as I saw it, to make no compromises other than those of quality imposed by my own inadequacies, to be free to follow no master other than my own compulsions, to live up to my idealized image of what a true newspaperman should be, and still be able to make a living for my family -- what more could a man ask?"




Here is the last verse that medic wrote in 1971 for his angry song (the first of which led off this piece):

But it's seven, eight, nine,

Well, he finally died,

Tried to keep him alive,

but h e lost the will to survive .

The agony that his life would have been,

Well, you say to yourself as you load up the hearse,

At least, it's over this way, it could have been worse.



And here are a few words the extremely solemn 23-year-old Tom Engelhardt wrote to the dean of his school on rejecting a National Defense Fellowship grant to study China in April 1968. (The "General Hershey" I refer to was the director of the Selective Service System which had issued a memo, printed in 1967 by the SDS publication New Left Notes, on "channeling" American manpower where it could best help the state achieve its ends.):

"On the morning of April 3, at the Boston Common, I turned in my draft card. I felt this to be a reply to three different types of 'channeling' which I saw as affecting my own life. First of all, it was a reply to General Hershey's statement that manpower channeling 'is the American or indirect way of achieving what is done by direction in foreign countries where choice is not permitted.' I disassociated myself from the draft system, which was flagrantly attempting to make me live a life without freedom...



"Finally, I entered into
resistance against an American government which was, with the help of the men provided by the draft, attempting the most serious type of 'channeling' outside our own country. This is especially obvious in Vietnam where it denies the people of South Vietnam the opportunity to consider viable alternatives to their present government. Moreover, as that attempt at 'channeling' (or, as it is called, 'Winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people') met opposition, the American government, through its armed forces, committed acts of such unbelievable horror as to be unbearable to a thinking person."



Stone's sign-off, that medic's song, and my letter all are documents from a time when Americans could be in opposition to, while also feeling in service to, their country. In other words, they are documents from a lost world and so would, I suspect, have little meaning to the young of the present moment. Can there be any question that today's young are a volunteering crew, often gripped by the urge to help, to make this world of ours a better place? Can you doubt as well that they are quite capable of rising to resist what's increasingly grim in that terrible world, as the Occupy moment showed in 2011? Nor, I suspect, is the desire for a government that they could serve gone utterly, as indicated by the movement that formed around Barack Obama in his race for the presidency (and that he and his team essentially demobilized on entering the Oval Office).

What's missing is any sense of connection to the government, any sense that it's "ours" or that we the people matter. In its place -- and you can thank successive administrations for this -- is the deepest sort of pessimism and cynicism about a national security state and war-making machine beyond our control. And why protest what you can't change?


[TD Note: Ron Unz of the Unz Review is archiving and posting a range of old publications, including all issues of I.F. Stone's Weekly. This is indeed a remarkable service to the rest of us. To view the Weekly, click here. I.F. Stone's family has also set up a website dedicated to the man and his work. To visit it, click here.]


Tom Engelhardt is the co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World (with an introduction by Glenn Greenwald).


Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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That didn't take long: The first lie about Moscow meeting




Who else?



RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION

Not much has filtered out of the Medusa Merkel/General Hollande/Vlad tense threesome in Moscow. And yet John Kerry, as usual, is already lying through his teeth about their trip to the Kremlin.


He said Putin had sent "a couple of ideas" to France and Germany, and Merkel/Hollande were responding. Nonsense: Merkel/Hollande - in desperation - went to Moscow to talk to Putin because Putin has the ONLY possible plan to stabilize Ukraine - and that has been the case for months now.


Otherwise, there WILL be war, which is exactly what Empire of Chaos masterminds in D.C. want.


Kerry lied the extra mile when he said the US wanted a diplomatic solution. BUT then came the usual talk of "reviewing all options", including "the possibility of providing defensive systems to Ukraine".


Do that - and the Russian response will be devastating.


No wonder the absolute majority of the EU - apart from crackpot Lithuanians - is opposed to weaponizing Kiev's goons.


The Süddeutsche Zeitung - a very decent paper - last Sunday featured Russian military expert Yevgeny Buchinsky warning that if that happens, "Russia will have to intervene, and then, bluntly speaking, to take Kiev. Then NATO would be in a difficult situation. Then you would have to start World War III, which no one wants."


That may be a bit Dr. Strangelovian and over the top - but the Süddeutsche Zeitung was on the money to stress Washington weaponizing Kiev's goons would be interpreted by Russia as a declaration of war.


Medusa Merkel, on the record, is against it. But Chocolateshenko is, what else, hysterical: "I don't have any doubt that the US and other partners will provide help with lethal weapons so that Ukraine will be able to defend itself."


"If that happens, all hell will break loose. Russia will act. And the Empire of Chaos will spin it as "more aggression". Escalation will be inevitable. And then all bets are off.


Predictably, Western corporate media is spinning this whole debacle is now due to FEAR OF THE DEVIL - as in Vlad. The fears apparently rampant in Brussels and assorted European capitals (among pol clowns, for sure; NOT in the streets)


The rhetoric is beyond ominous.


Carl Bildt, former Swedish foreign minister, said war "between Russia and the West" was now CONCEIVABLE.


General Hollande, on the record, talked about the risk of "total war".


General Sir Richard Shirreff, top British banana, sorry, NATO "commander" until last March, said a "strong message" should be sent to Putin if MAINLAND EUROPE (!!!) was to avoid "total war".


Fogh of War Rasmussen - the Return of the Living Dead! - said that Putin could expand "Soviet revisionism" to NATO and the EU. In the Baltics, he said Putin would go for a little exercise in "hybrid warfare".


There will be more (minor) EU sanctions on Monday. The hardcore economic sanctions against Russian banks and companies lapse only in July. Italy and Greece may torpedo them for good when that happens.


Even EU bureaucrats admit - off the record - sanctions are ridiculous, sanctioning in fact the EU for least 15% of exports to Russia. The Brits, predictably - shades of the Great Game never vanish - lead the pro-sanction crowd.


Some idiot in the Grauniad passing as "Europe editor" (where do they find these people? Getting pissed in a pub after an Arsenal match ?) wrote that "Putin is increasingly seen as a reckless gambler who calls bluffs and takes risks, and is inscrutable, paranoid and unpredictable." Looks like this was ghostwritten by a State Department hack.


And other rags go on the same road: the real nightmare for Europe is not Ukraine, bur Evil Vlad. NO ONE dares to criticize the Empire of Chaos.


And now back to...


RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION, RUSSIAN AGGRESSION


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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NATO sending "lethal military aid" to Ukraine is all about them losing the war it launched


© Reuters/Maks Levin



In yet another sleight of hand, Western news media are this week spinning the notion that the US and NATO are «considering sending lethal military aid» in order «to defend» the Kiev regime from «Russian aggression».

That's a pathetic joke. The real explanation is that NATO is losing its war in Ukraine and needs to send more military fuel in order to salvage the mounting losses.


First, the Western media slyly acknowledge that US-led NATO has so far «only dispatched non-lethal military equipment». That rhetorical ruse is used to pretend that non-lethal material is somehow not really military grade. But whether non-lethal or lethal, military equipment is military equipment. So, let's just dispense with that bunch of semantics. The US and its public-relations alter-ego, NATO, are already deeply involved militarily in Ukraine, supporting the Kiev regime whose 10-month offensive on eastern Ukraine has resulted in over 5,300 deaths.


Secondly, the notion that Washington is «reconsidering» whether to send «lethal aid», as reported in the on Monday, is another risible illusion. The US and its NATO allies are already sending lethal military equipment to the Ukraine. US President Obama said this week that «pouring more weapons into Ukraine» will not resolve the conflict. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel also vowed that Germany would not be supplying weapons to the Kiev regime, adding that the conflict cannot be solved by military means. Both Obama and Merkel are either woefully deceptive or living in cloud-cuckoo land. Probably both.


Let's cut to the chase. NATO is at war in Ukraine and has been so for the past year, if not covertly for the past two decades.


Wayne Madsen in his SCF column this week provides detailed evidence that a giant military transport plane, a Ukrainian Antonov AN124, has been tracked while flying weapons from the US and several NATO countries into Kiev for at least the past four months. The transporter plane - the world's biggest such aircraft - has been spotted carrying out cargo runs in the US, Norway, Italy and Romania on a secret mission to funnel heavy weapons to the Kiev regime.


Prior to that, the Russian government has claimed that US mercenaries, possibly belonging to Pentagon security contract firm, Blackwater/Academi, have been recorded operating inside Ukraine alongside Kiev's military units, including the Nazi SS-styled National Guard.


This week, a senior spokesman for the self-declared Lugansk People's Republic, Alexei Karyakin, said that NATO munitions have been recovered from various battle zones. «Fragments recovered from munitions bear NATO marks... Now NATO is killing our countrymen», said Karyakin.


Earlier this month, when pro-Russian self-defence militia retook the Donetsk International Airport from Kiev forces, who had been using the facility to shell Donetsk City for the past several months, it was reported that among the charred remains were NATO manuals in several European languages and other items identified as NATO-standard equipment.


At the end of last year, the US Congress passed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which mandates the supply of $350 million in lethal and non-lethal aid to the Kiev regime. The Obama administration maintains the fiction that it has not yet acted on the «non-lethal» provisions in the Act, but that is stretching credulity to breaking point.


The notion that Washington and its NATO allies, including Britain, the Baltic states and Poland, are now - only now - mulling the possibility of furnishing lethal material to the Kiev regime is simply laughable.


Indeed, according to reliable reports, the neo-Nazi paramilitary Right Sector shock-troops that were used to incite the lethal Maidan protests in November 2013, which eventually led to the coup against the Yanukovych government in February last year, had spent months in preparation at military camps in Poland, learning the techniques of subversion and terrorism. NATO member Poland and the American CIA were thus instrumental in supplying the «dogs of war» that precipitated the regime-change crisis and the ongoing civil war.


We can go further back to the CIA-inspired «colour revolution» of 2004, or even as far back as 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the US began infiltrating Ukraine with $5 billion to foment «civil society groups». That is a euphemism for the USAID, CIA, George Soros umbrella of destabilising agents. We have knowledge of the $5 billion fund courtesy of the clumsy admission from neocon State Department siren Victoria Nuland, who actually bragged about the fact during the Maidan Square protests at the end of 2013. This week, Nuland's minion at the State Department Jan Psaki again disclosed to reporters that the US has long been involved in «working with the Ukrainian opposition» to ensure the country was «on track» for «transition».


The interesting question is the timing of the latest supposed musings about «lethal» support. The , cites top influential present and former officials who are now advocating the sending of such military equipment. They include Secretary of State John Kerry, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, NATO military commander General Philip Breedlove and his predecessor Admiral James Stravidis. Other luminaries are members of the Brookings Institute and the Atlantic Council. These think-tanks recommend the White House supply $3 billion in military aid to the Kiev regime over the next three years - 10 times what the gung-ho Republican-controlled Congress mandates.


The CIA-linked Radio Free Europe news outlet «explains» that the debate on ramping up military aid to the Kiev regime has «intensified» because: «The Ukrainian government [Kiev regime] has suffered significant military setbacks in recent weeks as it has become increasingly clear that the ceasefire is not working».


In other words, the Western-backed junta is losing the war - in spite of already having NATO military support and in spite of the pseudo ceasefire to re-group offensive forces.


Also, the added a further factor for why Washington is now stepping up the military agenda, namely, that US and EU economic sanctions imposed on Russia «have not dissuaded» the government of President Vladimir Putin. Or as US State Department spokeswoman Jan Psaki would say, Russia has «not changed its behaviour» - that is, has not capitulated to Western demands to adopt a servile role to comply with Washington's hegemonic global ambitions.


Washington and its European vassals are thus realising that their nefarious scheme for regime change in Ukraine is in danger of hitting a dead-end crash. Washington is therefore now trying to salvage its disastrous gambit to subjugate Ukraine, and by extension Russia, by escalating the military stakes.


But Washington can't very well escalate its military involvement openly for invidious political reasons, both domestically and internationally. Washington has to be careful not to divulge too openly that it is already militarily involved in Ukraine, along with its NATO gang members.


Therefore, Washington is seeking to portray the situation as one of «defending» an EU-seeking, democracy-loving Kiev that is pitted against superior Russian-backed proxy insurgents. Hence the US officials and their trusty Western media mouthpieces are emphasising a faux ambivalence in «considering» supplying «lethal defensive military aid».


The tortuous language and reasoning reflects the systematic lies that Washington and NATO have been telling for months over the Ukraine conflict.


The plain truth is that US-led NATO is up to its eyes in fuelling the Ukraine war, and it is losing the war it launched in the first place. That's why Washington is now desperately performing all sorts of rhetorical gymnastics to deceive the Western public into acquiescing to a major military escalation of its war under the guise of supplying «defensive lethal weapons».


Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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