02/08/15 ~ The Raw Story

Sunday, 8 February 2015

The dirtiest secret of the War on Terror

Out of the bowels of a US maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaui, currently serving a life sentence, providentially has shed light on what amounts to the dirtiest secret of the "war on terror".

In over 100 pages of testimony, filed in a federal court in New York earlier this week, Moussaui drops several House of Saud-related bombs. Not least that among leading al-Qaeda donors prior to 9/11 we find former Saudi intel chief Prince Turki al-Faisal (also a former great buddy of Osama bin Laden); notorious former ambassador to the US and failed sponsor of hardcore jihadis in Syria, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush; darling of Western markets (and Rupert Murdoch) Prince al-Waleed bin Talal; and a who's who of Saudi Arabia's top Wahhabi clerics.

None of this is any novelty for those among us who since Afghanistan in the 1980s have been following the extraordinarily murky adventures of Wahhabi-sponsored/derived jihadism.

The information is even more relevant when compared to an upcoming book by Michael Springmann - the former head of the US visa section in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. , Springmann essentially details how, "during the 1980s, the CIA recruited and trained Muslim operatives to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Later, the CIA would move those operatives from Afghanistan to the Balkans, and then to Iraq, Libya, and Syria, traveling on illegal US visas. These US-backed and trained fighters would morph into an organization that is synonymous with jihadist terrorism: al-Qaeda."

"The political purpose of these revelations, from Washington's point of view, is to put pressure on the House of Saud to keep pumping their oil surplus. The recent rebound in oil is causing some hysteria in Washington, because it may be linked to the Saudis having second thoughts about their oil price war against, most of all, Russia."

Well, in the beginning there was not even an "organization". By the mid-1980s, "al-Qaeda" was only a database in a computer linked to the communications department of the secretariat of the Islamic Conference. At the time, when Osama bin Laden was nothing but a proxy US agent operating in Peshawar, al-Qaeda's intranet was a good communication system for fighters to exchange code messages. "al-Qaeda" was neither a terrorist organization - an Islamist army - nor personal property of Osama bin Laden.

Later on, in the mid-2000s in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - the Jordanian thug precursor of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh - was recruiting militants/fanatics/angry young men by himself, without any direct input by bin Laden. His set up was al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

So al-Qaeda was and remains a brand, a successful franchising. It is not, and never was, an organization; rather a key operational element of an intel agency. Thus the categorical imperative; al-Qaeda is essentially a derivation of Saudi intel. The best evidence would be the murky role, from the beginning, of wily Prince Turki, the former, long-time director general of the Mukhabarat, the House of Saud intel (but Turki is not talking, and he never will). Turkish intel, for its part, has never bought the myth of an "al-Qaeda" organization.

Al-Qaeda in the House

The Moussaui revelations become really explosive when dots are connected between the political ideology of the House of Saud, al-Qaeda's political platform, and even the warped ideology of the fake Caliphate of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. The matrix for all these is 19th century Wahhabism - and its medieval interpretation/appropriation of Islam.

They are all applying different methods - some much gorier than others - towards essentially the same goal: the proselytizing of Wahhabism. The key difference is that al-Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL/Daesh are Wahhabi renegades, who ultimately would like to replace the House of Saud - a puppet of the West - with an even more intolerant Salafi rule and/or Caliphate.

House of Saud equals al-Qaeda equals the Caliphate. Once this "secret" bombshell is out of its Arabian Pandora's box, the whole US rationale behind that gift that keeps on giving, the "war on terror" - which for the Pentagon equals Infinite War - collapses.

And that brings us to the new head of the House of Saud, Prince Salman, fast on his way to (literal) dementia. During the 1990s, he was a staunch supporter of Salafi-jihadism, and that of course included bin Laden. And later on, as Governor or Riyadh, he excelled on the hatred of Shi'ites department, which expanded to hatred of Iran as a whole - not to mention hatred of any vaguely remote democratic practices inside Saudi Arabia.

It's useless to expect Salman to "reform" - as much as it's useless to expect the Obama administration to let go of Washington's love affair with "our" favorite bastards in the Persian Gulf. But now there's a key new element; House of Saud desperation.

It's no secret in Riyadh and across the Gulf that the new King and his Western-educated advisors are completely freaking out. They see themselves surrounded by Iran - which, to top if off, may finally strike a nuclear deal with the "Great Satan" this summer.

They see the fake Caliphate of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh controlling a great deal of "Syraq" - with their sights set on Mecca and Medina. They see the pro-Iran al Houthi Shi'ites now controlling Yemen. They see the majority Shi'ites in Bahrain barely repressed by mercenary forces. They see substantial Shi'ite unrest in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where the oil is.

They are spread out all over the Middle East still possessed by their "Assad must go" psychosis (he's not going anywhere though). They need to finance the military junta now in power in Egypt to the tune of tens of billions of dollars (Egypt is essentially broke.) To top it off, they foolishly bought Washington's fight against Russia by embarking in an oil price war which is corroding their own budget.

Substantially, what has happened so far in Riyadh is just a palace coup. Salman got rid of everyone associated with late King Abdullah. Notorious Bandar Bush - still fresh from his spectacular Syria fiasco - was fired from his post of Secretary-General for the National Security Council and special envoy of the King. Perhaps Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri could find him a job.

There is no evidence Salman will crack down on a rash of influential, demented clerics - and pious wealthy donors - who export Wahhabism as global jihad. There is no evidence that if the House of Saud is really serious about fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, Salman will make the effort to cooperate with the Shi'ite majority government in Baghdad. Or at least let Iran take care of the problem (and they can, with their military advisors and support for selected militias like the Badr brigade).

There is no evidence the House of Saud will try to reach a compromise with Tehran; instead, paranoia reigns, because not only ideologically but politically they see themselves marginalized once Iran rises as a regional superpower in case a nuclear deal is clinched this summer.

Most of all, there is no evidence the "Don't Do Stupid Stuff" (Obama's own words) administration has the capability to seriously review US-Saudi relations. What is certain is that the dirtiest secret of the war on terror will remain off-limits. All the "terror" we face, real or manufactured, springs out from just one source; not "Islam", but intolerant, demented Wahhabism.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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This is the month when the future of the eurozone will be decided. This week, Greek leaders will meet with European officials to discuss what comes next for Greece. The new prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, has already stated that he will not accept an extension of the current bailout. Officials from other eurozone countries have already said that they expect Greece to fully honor the terms of the current agreement. So basically we are watching a giant game of financial "chicken" play out over in Europe, and a showdown is looming. Adding to the drama is the fact that the Greek government is rapidly running out of money. According to the Wall Street Journal, Greece is "on course to run out of money within weeks if it doesn't gain access to additional funds, effectively daring Germany and its other European creditors to let it fail and stumble out of the euro." We have witnessed other moments of crisis for Greece before, but things are very different this time because the new Greek government is being run by radical leftists that based their entire campaign on ending the austerity that has been imposed on Greece by the rest of Europe. If they buckle under the demands of the European financial lords, their credibility will be gone and Syriza will essentially be finished in Greek politics. But if they don't compromise, Greece could be forced to leave the eurozone and we could potentially be facing the equivalent of "financial armageddon" in Europe. If nobody flinches, the eurozone will fall to pieces, the euro will collapse and trillions upon trillions of dollars in derivatives will be in jeopardy.

According to the Bank for International Settlements, 26.45 trillion dollars in currency derivatives are directly tied to the value of the euro.

Let that number sink in for a moment.

To give you some perspective, keep in mind that the U.S. government spends a total of less than 4 trillion dollars a year.

The entire U.S. national debt is just a bit above 18 trillion dollars.

So 26 trillion dollars is an amount of money that is almost unimaginable. And of course those are just the derivatives that are directly tied to the euro. Overall, the total global derivatives bubble is more than 700 trillion dollars in size.

Over the past couple of decades, the global financial system has been transformed into the biggest casino in the history of the planet. And when things are stable, the computer algorithms used by the big banks work quite well and they make enormous amounts of money. But when unexpected things happen and markets go haywire, the financial institutions that gamble on derivatives can lose massive quantities of money very rapidly. We saw this in 2008, and we could be on the verge of seeing this happen again.

If no agreement can be reached and Greece does leave the eurozone, the euro is going to fall off a cliff.

When that happens, someone out there is going to lose an extraordinary amount of money.

And just like in 2008, when the big financial institutions start to fail that will plunge the entire planet into another major financial crisis.

So at the moment, it is absolutely imperative that Greece and the rest of the eurozone find some common ground.

Unfortunately, that may not happen. The new prime minister of Greece certainly does not sound like he is in a compromising mood...

Greece's new leftist prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, said on Sunday he would not accept an extension to Greece's current bailout, setting up a clash with EU leaders - who want him to do just that - at a summit on Thursday.

Tsipras also pledged his government would heal the "wounds" of austerity, sticking to campaign pledges of giving free food and electricity to those who had suffered, and reinstating civil servants who had been fired as part of bailout austerity conditions.

Prior to the summit on Thursday, eurozone finance ministers are going to get together on Wednesday to discuss what they should do. If these two meetings don't go well this week, we could be looking at big trouble right around the corner. In fact, Greece is being warned that they only have until February 16th to apply for an extension of the current bailout...

Euro zone finance ministers will discuss how to proceed with financial support for Athens at a special session next Wednesday ahead of the first summit of EU leaders with the new Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, the following day.

However, the chairman of the finance ministers said the following meeting of the Eurogroup on Feb. 16 would be Greece's last chance to apply for a bailout extension because some euro zone countries would need to consult their parliaments.

"Time will become very short if they (Greece) don't ask for an extension (by then)," said Jeroen Dijsselbloem.

The current bailout for Greece expires on Feb 28. Without it the country will not get financing or debt relief from its lenders and has little hope of financing itself in the markets.

And as I mentioned above, the Greek government is quickly running out of money.

Most analysts believe that because of the enormous stakes that one side or the other will give in at some point.

But what if that does not happen?

Personally, I believe that the eurozone is doomed in the configuration that we see it today, and that it is just a matter of time before it breaks up.

And I am far from alone. For example, just check out what former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan is saying...

Mr Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, said: "I believe [Greece] will eventually leave. I don't think it helps them or the rest of the eurozone - it is just a matter of time before everyone recognizes that parting is the best strategy.

"The problem is that there there is no way that I can conceive of the euro of continuing, unless and until all of the members of eurozone become politically integrated - actually even just fiscally integrated won't do it."

The Greeks are using all of this to their advantage. They know that if they leave it could break apart the entire monetary union. So this gives them a tremendous amount of leverage. Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has even gone so far as to compare the eurozone to a house of cards...

"The euro is fragile, it's like building a castle of cards, if you take out the Greek card the others will collapse." Varoufakis said according to an Italian transcript of the interview released by RAI ahead of broadcast.

The euro zone faces a risk of fragmentation and "de-construction" unless it faces up to the fact that Greece, and not only Greece, is unable to pay back its debt under the current terms, Varoufakis said.

"I would warn anyone who is considering strategically amputating Greece from Europe because this is very dangerous," he said. "Who will be next after us? Portugal? What will happen when Italy discovers it is impossible to remain inside the straitjacket of austerity?"

After all this time and after so many bailouts, we have finally reached a day of reckoning.

There is a very real possibility that Greece could leave the eurozone in just a matter of months, and the elite know this.

That is why they are getting prepared for that eventuality. The following is from a recent Wall Street Journal report...

The U.K. government is stepping up contingency planning to prepare for a possible Greek exit from the eurozone and the market instability such a move would create, U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne said on Sunday.

A spokeswoman for the Treasury declined comment on the details of the contingency planning.

The U.K. government has said the standoff between Greece's new anti-austerity government and the eurozone is increasing the risks to the global and U.K. economy.

"That's why I'm going tomorrow to the G-20 [Group of 20] to encourage our partners to resolve this crisis. It's why we're stepping up the contingency planning here at home," Mr. Osborne told the BBC in an interview. "We have got to make sure we don't, at this critical time when Britain is also facing a critical choice, add to the instability abroad with instability at home."

And if Greece does leave, it will cause panic throughout global financial markets as everyone wonders who is next.

Italy, Spain and Portugal are all in a similar position. Every one of them could rapidly become "the next Greece".

But of even greater concern is what a "Grexit" would do to the euro. If the euro falls below parity with the U.S. dollar, the derivatives losses are going to be absolutely mind blowing. And coupled with the collapse of the price of oil, we could be looking at some extreme financial instability in the not too distant future.

When big banks collapse, they don't do it overnight. But we often learn about it in a single moment.

Just remember Lehman Brothers. Their problems developed over an extended period of time, but we only learned the full extent of their difficulties on one very disturbing day in 2008, and that day changed the world.

As you read this, big financial troubles are brewing in the background. At some point, they are going to come to the surface. When they do, the entire planet is going to be shocked.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) spent $504,816 on the popular erectile dysfunction drug in 2014, according to government contracts cited by the Washington Free Beacon.

The DoD awarded 60 contracts for the drug to Ohio-based pharmaceutical distribution company Cardinal Health Inc. In 2013, the Pentagon spent some $425,000 to supply the pills to troops, a huge lurch from the previous year, when the Department spent a meager $8,000 on the drug.

In addition to Viagra, the Pentagon also ordered $3,505 worth of Levitra and $14,540 of Cialis, both male enhancement drugs. The contracts are filed under

Viagra, which is covered by the military's health insurance policy, TRICARE, was first supplied to troops in 1998. The drug became an instant hit for Pfizer when it was authorized for sale in the US a year prior.

In 1998 the drug cost from $8-10 a pill, these days however, due to inflation, the pills sell for $25 a pop. The military's policy limits Viagra only to those soldiers in whom erectile dysfunction has been diagnosed by a doctor. Patients are also not allowed more than six pills per month, nor are lost or stolen pills to be replaced.

The Washington Free Beacon estimated that the amount of Viagra bought by the Pentagon last year could have supplied 80,770 hours, 33 minutes, and 36 seconds of sexual enhancement, assuming that erections don't last longer than the 4 hour maximum advised by doctors.

The little blue pills had been stocked by military pharmacies until 2005, when they were temporarily dropped from TRICARE. The drug, however was reinstated in 2012.

When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records - on which the entire panic ultimately rested - were systematically "adjusted" to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified.

Two weeks ago, under the headline "How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming", I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming.

This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world - one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.

Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way "adjustments". First these were made by the US government's Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in "global warming".

Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada (51 degrees W) and the heart of Siberia (87 degrees E). Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded. This has surprised no one more than Traust Jonsson, who was long in charge of climate research for the Iceland met office (and with whom Homewood has been in touch). Jonsson was amazed to see how the new version completely "disappears" Iceland's "sea ice years" around 1970, when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country's economy.

One of the first examples of these "adjustments" was exposed in 2007 by the statistician Steve McIntyre, when he discovered a paper published in 1987 by James Hansen, the scientist (later turned fanatical climate activist) who for many years ran Giss. Hansen's original graph showed temperatures in the Arctic as having been much higher around 1940 than at any time since. But as Homewood reveals in his blog post, "Temperature adjustments transform Arctic history", Giss has turned this upside down. Arctic temperatures from that time have been lowered so much that that they are now dwarfed by those of the past 20 years.

Homewood's interest in the Arctic is partly because the "vanishing" of its polar ice (and the polar bears) has become such a poster-child for those trying to persuade us that we are threatened by runaway warming. But he chose that particular stretch of the Arctic because it is where ice is affected by warmer water brought in by cyclical shifts in a major Atlantic current - this last peaked at just the time 75 years ago when Arctic ice retreated even further than it has done recently. The ice-melt is not caused by rising global temperatures at all.

Of much more serious significance, however, is the way this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record - for reasons GHCN and Giss have never plausibly explained - has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known. This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.

Today I'm chatting with Dr. Rob Silver on the subject of medical marijuana for animal companions. Dr. Silver has been a veterinarian since 1982, and a holistic vet since 1987. He sold his practice in Boulder, Colorado, and is now working full-time educating other veterinarians on the advantages of holistic medicine.

Back in 1982, Dr. Silver was very excited to start using all the conventional medicine tools he'd acquired as a veterinary student, and initially he really enjoyed it. As he explains it, "I'm very scientifically based and I really believe that practicing in conventional medicine is a very important foundation for any kind of medicine you want to practice."

But after he'd been practicing awhile, he began to grow frustrated with the fact that many of his patients had chronic diseases and a variety of difficult-to-treat problems that didn't respond to the treatments and therapies he had learned in school. His frustration drove him to look for other ways to help his patients.

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The Holistic Journey Begins - First Stop: Animal Nutrition

The first stop on Dr. Silver's holistic veterinary medicine journey was pet nutrition. Some of his clients were asking for his help in creating homemade diets for their pets. His initial thought was that according to his vet school training, pets were supposed to eat commercial food and nothing else. But after a bit of research, he found some credible books on the subject of homemade pet food, and began offering suggestions to his clients. And lo and behold, many of the pets belonging to those clients began to get better - he just wasn't sure why. But it made him wonder what other things he'd been taught that might be missing the mark.

Dr. Silver started looking at other alternative healing modalities - things he hadn't been taught in veterinary school. He began applying the modalities that were most accessible to him. At the time, his practice was very busy and he couldn't afford the time required to take courses in holistic practices. In addition, some of the registration fees for the courses were beyond his means at the time. So he went to the library to study, and he also sought out local holistic practitioners to learn from.

The concept of homemade pet nutrition really resonated with Dr. Silver, in part because before becoming a veterinarian, he had been a professional cook. But he also enjoyed walking in the forest and studying plants. He had an affinity for the plant world, so he found himself drawn to herbal therapies as well.

Next Stop: Creating New and Effective Herbal Products for Pets

At that time, Dr. Silver was living in Colorado Springs, and he aligned himself with a number of human medicine herbalists. He began to learn how to identify plants with medicinal properties, harvest them, and make his own herbal medicines. For example, he made an herbal medicine using catnip, and began giving it to some of his animal patients for whom traditional drugs and other treatments weren't working. And their conditions improved.

Dr. Silver's interest in and practice of holistic veterinary medicine continued to expand. Around 1996, he began formulating wonderful herbal products for use by other veterinarians. It happened almost accidentally. He was creating products for use in his own practice, and adding plants he'd read about, such as milk thistle and turmeric. Essentially he was developing combination herbal products for pets, reminiscent in many ways of his career as a professional cook creating new dishes and menu items.

The products he was creating were working for his patients, and he wanted to share what he was learning. He was already a member of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association (AHVMA), where he could be around like-minded vets who enjoyed learning from each other. He began writing and speaking publicly about his clinical successes with the herbal medicines he created. Soon he was contacted by a company called Rx Vitamins for Pets, who invited him to become their chief medical officer, formulate their products for them, and have Dr. Silver's name on the label.

He agreed, and they started with a number of effective clinical protocols he was already using. They began adding products, and today there are 32 available. And I must add that in my experience, those 32 products are fantastic!

An Introduction to Medical Marijuana for Pets

Due to his passion for plants and herbal products, Dr. Silver is also an authority on the medicinal use of cannabis in pets. Lately I've been getting lots of calls and emails from people asking about this, especially people who have older pets with painful conditions. Either the person has already tried marijuana for a pet with some success, or they've read about it and are interested in learning more. It's a big subject, and there's a lot of misinformation and confusion around it, so I asked Dr. Silver to give us some insight.

He explained that in Colorado where he lives, medicinal cannabis for humans has been available since 2000. Back then, when he was still practicing, clients would come to him and say things like, "Doc, my dog's got hip dysplasia. I've got these cookies at home that really help my knee pain. What do you think? Would it be okay to give a cookie to my dog?" He told them he really didn't know whether it was a good idea or not for pets, at which point almost all of them admitted they were already giving it to their pet. And further, the pet was doing well.

Dr. Silver heard those kinds of comments from people with pets with a variety of conditions - cancer, epilepsy, pain. It caught his interest, but he soon learned that while it was legal for human physicians to prescribe medical marijuana, it's not legal for a vet to prescribe it. This is because the THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) in medicinal pot is a DEA Schedule I Controlled Substance, and veterinarians can't typically prescribe that class of drugs. In fact, they risk losing their license if they do.

Dr. Silver began talking to his clients about medicinal marijuana, making suggestions, but he did so using a lot of disclaimers to protect himself legally. He said things like, "I've heard about this but I really can't recommend it to you. If you want to try it, my suggestion would be to do it this way." He would see them after they'd tried the marijuana with their pet, and most of the time, there were positive results. Sometimes, there were no results. And once in a while, an owner eager to help a pet would give more in an initial dose than Dr. Silver recommended, and the dog would have a bad reaction.

Anecdotal Reports Point to the Success of Medicinal Cannabis in Treating a Variety of Pet Health Conditions

After his introduction to using medicinal pot with dogs, Dr. Silver headed back to the library. "I'm kind of a library nerd," he says. "I do a ton of library research."

He went to the world literature section to learn if there'd ever been any studies on cannabis and pets. He found a study from the 1970s involving the use of intravenous THC in dogs, pigeons, monkeys, mice, and rats.The authors of that study labeled the cannabis as radioactive, and sadly, the animals were sacrificed. The researchers autopsied the animals' brains to find out where the THC went. What they found was that of the species involved in the study, the dogs had higher concentrations of endocannabinoid receptors in their hindbrain, medulla, and a couple of other areas of the brain.

The scientists also discovered that the dogs, but not the other animals, had a very unique reaction when they got too much THC. They developed something called static ataxia in which they stood still and rocked back and forth, as if they couldn't move. They drooled, their eyes opened very wide, and they looked as if they were having a bad trip (a drug-induced hallucination).

When Dr. Silver read about the dogs' reaction to the THC, he realized he needed to educate people, because up to that point, everyone believed marijuana was absolutely harmless. People get edible marijuana, or "medibles" like chocolate brownies, for example, and leave them where their dog can eat them. The dog overdoses on marijuana, and of course the chocolate is also toxic. There've been a couple of deaths of pets, so Dr. Silver feels education is the best medicine. He's writing an e-book for people living in states where the drug is legal that will walk them through the whole medicinal marijuana process and provide explanations and answers to a lot of common questions. Of course, if you live in a state where it's not legal, you're not supposed to use it at all.

I don't have any experience using medical marijuana with pets, except for one case in which I used an extract for refractory seizures, with great results. I asked Dr. Silver to talk about the pain management benefits of the drug.

He explained that based on anecdotal reports from veterinarians, it appears that the same applications medical marijuana is used for in humans apply to dogs, and also cats.

But there's no direct research on pets, and Dr. Silver hopes to find funding to conduct studies to determine what conditions medical marijuana can treat in pets, what dosages to administer, etc. Based on lots of research in laboratory animals and test tubes to measure the effects of cannabis extracts on different medical conditions, the drug appears to have a wide range of applications. Industrial Hemp: A Safer,

More Effective Alternative to Pot for Pets?

There are a couple of companies currently marketing cannabis-like products for pets. However, they're illegal in all 50 states in the U.S., because as Dr. Silver mentioned earlier, it's the THC in marijuana that the DEA considers a Schedule I controlled substance, which makes it illegal for use in pets in any state.

In a medicinal state, it's legal for physicians to prescribe to human patients. But within the cannabis plant itself, there are phytocannabinoids and phytochemicals that have biological impact. There are 65 cannabinoids, of which THC is just one. There has been research done on most of the cannabinoids, and they have been found to have application in patients with epilepsy, pain, behavior disorders, neurodegenerative conditions, and perhaps even allergies.

There's also another type of cannabis called hemp. Hemp, or industrial hemp, has a very low amount of THC - so low that it's not psychotropic, meaning it doesn't deliver a high. Industrial hemp can be sold legally from state to state through the mail. A couple of companies are exploring getting extracts from industrial hemp, putting it into capsules, liquids, or other forms depending on the company's product line, and selling it to the public.

The problem is lack of research. There's no research to support that medical marijuana works with pets. The anecdotal reports from veterinarians and pet owners show that the drug does seem to be effective. Dr. Silver is hoping to generate some objective data that can support the use of industrial hemp, because it is safe and doesn't contain THC, so vets can recommend it and even dispense or prescribe it.

I asked Dr. Silver if, since industrial hemp has almost no THC, it also has less of the beneficial phytochemicals marijuana has. He answered that there are actually larger amounts of the other medicinal components in hemp. This seems to be the advantage of using industrial hemp - it's legal, dogs won't go into static ataxia from the THC, and it has higher levels of cannabinoids than regular marijuana.

It's also thought that in ancient times, it was the medicinal properties of hemp that were mentioned in the Bible and other texts. But since people are interested in getting high, hemp has been bred over the centuries to increase the level of THC. Modern day cannabis doesn't bear much resemblance to what grew on the planet before humans started finding uses for the plant. Federal Government Is Easing

Restrictions on Growing Industrial Hemp in the U.S.

I asked Dr. Silver if there has been any research done on the benefits of industrial hemp for human health conditions, and he replied that it does exist. In fact, there are companies that sell just the cannabidiol (CBD) extracts from hemp that can be ingested orally. They can even be put in e-cigarettes and smoked for a faster effect.

The CBD is also used in topical applications like salves and transdermals. Because cannabidiol is fat-soluble, it goes into the skin very easily. It also crosses the blood-brain barrier easily as well, which allows it to affect the nervous system. According to Dr. Silver, CBD is very beneficial for the nervous system.

So the obvious question is, if industrial hemp is as beneficial as the prescribed product, why do we even worry about the prescribed product that causes a high, other than the benefit of getting high? Why isn't everyone just using industrial hemp? If it helps with the pain of arthritis, stops seizures, provides other positive medicinal effects, and if we can get it over the counter, why isn't everyone just taking the legal form of the drug?

Dr. Silver responded that there's a great deal of interest by large investors in this very scenario. What's happening in Colorado, for example, where marijuana is relatively legal, is that people are starting to grow industrial hemp. Since the 1930s, it has been illegal to grow it in the U.S., because it is hard to tell the difference between low-THC hemp and high-THC cannabis. The plants are imported from Canada, Europe, and China, and processed in the U.S.

The federal government wants to thwart all production of the illegal high-THC cannabis, so rather than learn the differences between the two, they decided to outlaw all hemp. This approach doesn't make sense, because according to Dr. Silver, although the plants do look similar, experts can usually tell the difference without testing for THC content.

But the government must test in order to verify that something is an illegal vs. a legal substance. They are just now beginning to once again allow the growth of industrial hemp in this country, and experts expect it will become a huge industry for farmers. Kentucky, for example, was once one of the largest growing states for industrial hemp. It's a relatively poor state, and if they can begin growing the plant again, it could really benefit the local economy.

Industrial Hemp Also Has Many Uses Not Related to Its Medicinal Properties

Given all the information Dr. Silver has shared with us, I now suspect there are a lot of potential medicinal benefits of industrial hemp for both humans and animals that we don't know about because we aren't studying it. Dr. Silver agrees, and points out that there are other, entirely different uses for the plant as well.

For years, we used industrial hemp to make paper, fabric, rope, and other items. The seeds of the plant have a high protein content. They make a very good oil. There are many things we can do with industrial hemp aside from its use as a medicine. Dr. Silver is looking forward to seeing other states besides Colorado get involved in growing the plant.

Resources Currently Available for Cannabis for Pets

The use of medical marijuana for pets, whether the extracts that contain THC or the high CBD industrial hemp extracts, is so new that there are very few reliable websites or sources of information to guide the pet guardian in their search for something to help their pets.

Research is just getting started and unfortunately, the results are not yet available. There are only two companies as of this writing that offer hemp-based products for pets. Neither have any published research, nor do they list CBD or other cannabis phytocannabinoid quantities on their product labels. This makes it difficult for Dr. Silver to recommend them 100 percent, until they make that information available. A number of pet guardians have used these products and many have reported a positive response.

Dr. Silver has just completed an eBook on the topic of medical marijuana for pets, and soon he will publish a print version of that book. He also has two websites, one in which he gives advice: Holistic Cancer Vet, and one in which his eBook on Cannabis for Pets is available: Well Pet Dispensary.

Dr. Silver also sends out a digital newsletter that contains up-to-date information about cannabis for pets. You can sign up to receive it at his Holistic Cancer Vet website, or you can go directly to the link here. As more companies and informational websites become available, he will add those links to his websites.

The American Veterinary Medical Association has published a few articles about medical marijuana use for pets in their journal, two of which are here and here. The articles were written for veterinarians, but they contain good information for pet guardians as well. Many Thanks to Dr. Rob Silver!

This was an incredibly informative discussion. I appreciate Dr. Silver sharing his time and expertise with us today, and I look forward to discussing this topic with him again in the future.

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

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"It's a hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it. " (Madeleine Albright, then US Ambassador to the UN, on the "embargo related" deaths of half a million Iraqi children, 12^thMay 1996.)

"The most traumatized child population on earth." (Professor Magne Raundalen, Centre for Crisis Studies, Bergen, Norway, February 1992.)

Tony Blair was, mind-stretchingly, presented with Save the Children's Global Legacy Award, on 19^th November 2014. His acceptance speech included that his: "... sense is that amidst all the challenges, and all the misery and deprivation that we seek to conquer and vanquish, there is something hopeful ... something to be thankful for."

Ironically, just two months earlier (15^th August 2014) Save the Children released a Report (1) on the on the trauma amongst Iraq's children in Northern Iraq alone, after eleven years of a Bush-Blair driven illegal invasion and ongoing resultant conflict. Iraq's children, it was clear, had no hope and nothing "to be thankful for."

Yet Blair was lauded by an organization that claims: "We envision a future in which no child will die from preventable causes and where every child has nutritious food and clean water."

Without Blair's claims of fantasy WMDs with which Iraq could wreak annihilation in "45 minutes", a lie quoted by General Colin Powell at the United Nations exactly twelve years ago, 5^th February 2003, for the children of Iraq a genocidal "preventable cause" might have been avoided.

"Nutritious food and clean water", had, of course, been deliberately destroyed on US Central Command's order to bomb all water facilities in Iraq in 1991. Food was poisoned by the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons, contaminating all fauna and flora. DU's "half-life" is 4.5 Billion years. And it is not "depleted."

The contamination nightmare was compounded in orders of magnitude by the further use of DU weapons in 2003, used again by the UK under Blair's government. (2)

Befoulment of air, water and food for infinity condemns future generations of unborn, newborn and developing children in Iraq and the region to a poisoned legacy of cancers and deformities for generations to come. War crimes unequalled in history.

Moreover: " The special investigator of the UN Sub-Committee on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights has declared DU munitions illegal under existing humanitarian law. DU weapons also produce a toxic metal fume (sic) that violates the Geneva Protocol on the Use of Gas in War, which the US signed in 1975." (3)

Further, after thirteen years of the US-UK driven embargo resulting in the deaths of an average of six thousand children a month from "embargo-related causes", according to the UN, Prime Minister Blair was integral in instigating a war against children:

In 2003 Iraq's population was just twenty four million. Over forty percent were aged 0-14. The median age of the country was nineteen. (4)

By 2010, seven years in to an unending war, over a quarter of Iraqi children suffered from Post Traumatic Stress disorder. (War Child Report, May 2013.) In the five months prior to the Report's publication, 700 children and young people had been killed, a figure, as all on Iraq, almost certainly a significant underestimate. Between financial constraints, fear of authority and the dangers of travel, numerous deaths are unrecorded.

Also in 2010 a study of cancers, leukemia's and birth defects linked to the use of DU proved:"... that there are massive increases in cancer, a 38-fold increase in leukemia, 10-fold increase in breast cancer and infant mortalities are also staggering," stated one of the authors, scientist Malak Hamdan. (5)

"We invest in childhood - every day, in times of crisis & for our future. We give children a healthy start, the opportunity to learn & protection from harm", states Save the Children on Facebook.

They should urgently research what their Global Award winner has unleashed on the child population of Iraq by viewing the eye watering, mind numbing UN Report on total deaths and injuries month by month, November 2012 to date. (6) 2014 was the "deadliest year since 2008", which was the deadliest year since 2005 in Iraq's never ending annual hell. The figures should be engraved on Blair's tombstone.

As Tony Blair and fellow architects of the invasion celebrated Christmas and New Year it was announced, on 1^st January 2015, that: "According to casualty figures released today by UNAMI, a total of 1,101 Iraqis were killed and another 1,868 were wounded in acts of terrorism and violence in December."

January 2015 saw no sign of improvement.

Of course, as recounted before, after the 1991 decimation, US and UK 'planes bombed Iraq illegally, often daily, throughout the grinding deprivation of the embargo years until the 2003 blitzkrieg and invasion. That criminal onslaught intensified under Blair's government.

As ever, children were the paramount victims. After one attack on Baghdad the children in the main orphanage refused to sleep in their beds ever again, huddling under them for pathetic perceived extra safety.

When the flocks of sheep and goats were routinely bombed - Iraqis were convinced they were to be deprived of all food since broadly fifty percent of all livestock were targeted and destroyed, as were precious date palms, in 1991- the child shepherds were blown to bits with their flocks.

In context, but as also recounted before, when I telephoned Blair's Ministry of Defence and asked why they were targeting these flocks, always tended by very young children whose ages were not even in double digits, the spokesman did not miss a beat: "We reserve the right to take robust action when threatened", he replied.

On receiving his Award Blair also said: "What we celebrate is the opposite of cynicism and the reason for optimism ..." Not if you are a child in Iraq or Afghanistan, the latter also decimated and invaded with the help of his forces.

In the UK, Miranda Pinch was outraged enough by the Award to instantly set up a petition condemning this honouring of Blair, which gathered 125,000 signatures. With Robin Priestly of the "38 Degrees" petition organization and writer Miranda Landgraf she delivered it to Save the Children UK's Director of Policy and Advocacy, Brendan Cox on 13th January.

Landgraf, who also crochet's professionally: "handed Brendon Cox three baskets of 490 crocheted flowers with the name and age, where known, of a child victim in Gaza. Countless more flowers could have been produced to represent the innocent children that have died across the Middle East under Blair's watch in his various roles", writes Miranda Pinch, detailing the meeting. (7)

Brendan Cox agreed to make a public statement regarding the Blair debacle, and the "error of judgement" of his colleague Justin Forsyth.

Forsyth is a former special advisor to Blair and is now Chief Executive of Save the Children, UK. He delivered the Award invitation to Blair personally.

After the meeting and some negotiation, Miranda Pinch received a letter (8) from Brendan Cox, it included:

"As you know, this was a decision made by Save the Children US and although we were made aware of the decision, and we passed on the invite to his office at their request, we weren't part of the decision making process. In retrospect we should have foreseen the controversy this might generate." Indeed they should.

"For a number of reasons this is not a decision Save UK would have taken."

The really mind bending bit is: "This isn't because Tony Blair doesn't deserve recognition for the leadership he showed on Africa - he does - but because his other actions, particularly those on Iraq, which Save the Children opposed strongly at the time, overshadow how the public see him in the UK."

Blair of course has made a mint from advising some controversial alleged human rights decimators in Africa. From his Africa Governance Initiative website:

"AGI works in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal at present, with new countries on the horizon. We work at two levels: At the political leadership level, Tony Blair draws on his ten years as Prime Minister to offer leaders the kind of advice on reform that only someone who has stood in a leader's shoes can give."

Apart from jaw dropping arrogance, how his "ten years as Prime Minister" which including erasing children and their families, engaging in mistruths justifying an illegal invasion, and enjoining another (Afghanistan) and the decimation of the former Yugoslavia qualifies him to "offer leaders the kind of advice on reform ...", surely only a psychiatrist could fathom.

His direct involvement in the Iraq embargo as Prime Minister from 1997, and the subsequent illegal invasion are not an "overshadow" but a genocide.

A truly astonishing phrase in Brendan Cox's letter is that: "The intent behind the (Save the Children USA) Award was to incentivize and recognize political leadership on development."

"Leadership on development"? Blair enjoined in destroying the "Cradle of Civilization", outdoing the Mongol Hordes in their 1258 destruction of Baghdad.

Bush and Blair's onslaught obliterated unique archeological gems, ancient libraries, manuscripts, monuments, throughout the country, with infrastructure, social structures, education, health, welfare, all civil records - births, deaths, marriages, land deeds, national archives - environment, normality.

Save the Children's co-founder, Eglantyne Jebb, established the organization in the UK in response to Europe and Russia's tragedies after World War One. She: " ...wanted to make the rights and welfare of children a major issue around the world. Her 'Declaration of the Rights of the Child' was adopted by the forerunner of the UN, The League of Nations and inspired the current UN Convention on the Rights of the Child."

Having established by telephone that Save the Children International is still London based, I emailed: "My main query is fairly kindergarten. If, as I understand it, Orange Street (in central London) is, if you will, the 'head office' for StC International a) why were they not consulted regarding the Award to Tony Blair and b) why have they no say in rescinding it?"

So far, there has been no response.

Notes:

1. Increasing number of Iraqi children displaying signs of trauma after fleeing violence in the North

2. Daily Hansard - Written Answers, 22 July 2010 : Column 459W, Written Answers to Questions: Depleted Uranium (Scroll to last question.)

3. Depleted Uranium: Pernicious Killer Keeps on Killing

4. Iraq Demographics Profile 2003

5. Reports emerge the UK used depleted uranium weapons in Iraq

6. UN - Iraq Civilian Casualties

7. Ask 'Save the Children' to revoke their annual Global Legacy Award given to Tony Blair

8. The Campaign to Revoke War Criminal Tony Blair's 'Global Legacy' Award. Save the Children (STC) Responds and "Apologizes"

9. Our Approach

10. Save the Children - Our History

Kiev has failed to provide Moscow with copies of documents, allegedly belonging to Russian servicemen fighting in Ukraine, a Russian foreign ministry official told RIA Novosti on Sunday.

Addressing the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko showed off covers of Russian passports and military IDs, claiming they prove "Russian presence" in the conflict-torn East Ukraine.

Moscow then asked Kiev to provide copies of the documents on Saturday evening, as "document covers like the ones shown yesterday can easily be bought on the street market," Viktor Sorokin, head of the Second CIS Department at Russia's foreign ministry, said.

"Currently, there is no real evidence, the Ukrainian side failed to provide copies of these documents," Sorokin said.

Kiev has been blaming Moscow of assisting the mostly Russian-speaking independence supporters in eastern Ukraine, where government forces have carried out a military operation since April 2014.

Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is not involved in the Ukrainian conflict in any way, rejecting claims that Russia provides Ukrainian pro-independence militia with military assistance.

Poroshenko wants us to believe, that Russian special-ops carry passports with them while on covert mission... okay.

- Olivier Fehr (@ofehr_en) February 8, 2015

"Если с паспортами не прокатит, то в следующий раз принесу балалайки" - подумал Порошенко. http://bit.ly/1DTyUg9

- 50Megatonn (@50megatonn) February 7, 2015

"If they don't buy the passports, next time I'll bring balalaykas," thought Poroshenko.

I regularly enjoy coffee with two mainstream media editor friends.

Neither will carry my articles because of my 'pro-Russian leanings.' I won't play a part in mainstream media's orchestrated anti-Russian rhetoric. Be proud of me; my candid nature suggests that, in the Euro Weekly News at least, you enjoy a free press.

A fiction usually directed at Russia is that it doesn't have a free Press; rhetoric without substance. Let us instead take a look at the so-called free Press in the West.

William Colby, ex-director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is a man who should know Western media: "The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

Not long after becoming a whistle-blower Colby died in a freak canoeing accident.

There is no disguising the sinister and insidious nature of CIA tentacles: "In the US 90 per cent of all TV, newspapers, radio, magazines are owned and controlled by six mega corporations. You can't get a word in there that connects to the real world." So says American political analyst Mark Mason.

Former BBC Director-General, Greg Dyke, wrote in his autobiography: "When it came to discussing the war in Iraq, staff found it so difficult to find any member of the public prepared to speak in favour that they ended up planting people in the (Question Time) audience."

BBC bias is well documented: Many years ago, Roy Bramwell of Inter-City Research, disclosed: "I have heard MPs and senior political aficionados complain that if they were to say on BBC what they really think, they would never be invited again, and not to be invited again could make a quick end to an aspiring politician's prospects."

Udo Ulfkotte, former editor of caused a sensation when, in his best-seller, , he revealed; "We are taught to lie, to betray and not tell the truth to the public." He went on to describe how the CIA pays German media professionals to spin stories to follow US government goals.

In an interview with a Dutch journalist, Ulfkotte says, "some media are nothing more than propaganda outlets of political parties, secret services, international think tanks, and high finance entities. I've been a journalist for about 25 years, and I've been educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public. The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia.

"We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war. I don't want this any more, I'm fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic, and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom."

This top German journalist challenged his former employers to prove him wrong or sue him. refuses to do so, but banned journalists from mentioning their former editor. A word of advice. Read between the lines and you will be far better informed.

German intelligence estimates that the total number of people who have been killed in Ukraine is almost 50,000, including both civilians and the military, the German media reported on Sunday.

The estimates are ten times higher than the officially released death toll figures. The official data is clearly too low, German intelligence sources told a Frankfurt-based newspaper, .

Speaking at a Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Ukrainian President Poroshenko said that 1,200 combatants and 5,400 civilians have been killed during the conflict.

The September 2014 Minsk agreements envisaged a ceasefire between Kiev and pro-independence fighters in southeastern Ukraine, an all-for-all prisoner exchange and the withdrawal of heavy weaponry along the line of contact.

Despite the professed ceasefire, fighting in southeastern Ukraine's Donbas region intensified during the first weeks of January.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the recent uptick in fighting has seen casualty figures spike, with 224 civilians killed and 545 wounded in the three weeks leading up to February 1.

Several outspoken US Senators have repeatedly called for the provision of lethal assistance to Kiev, while a number of European states, including Finland, France and Italy, have opposed this option.

Speaking in Munich, Russia's Foreign Minister said that the plans of the United States to supply weapons to Kiev may disrupt the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict.

"Plans to supply military equipment and weapons to Kiev, that are being discussed in Washington, are fraught with unpredictable consequences and bear a threat of disrupting the efforts of political settlement of the conflict in the southeast of the country," the Russian foreign minister said.

Meanwhile, US Senator John McCain has criticized German Chancellor Merkel for not agreeing to supply lethal arms to Ukraine.

© Telegraph & Argus, UK

Landlord Barry Gallagher and bar manager Sharon Burton at the Dog & Gun in Wibsey, where mysterious lights have been caught on CCTV.

Staff and customers at a Bradford pub have been left mystified by a series of bright lights captured on CCTV.

Security cameras at the Dog & Gun, St Enoch's Road, Wibsey, have recorded bizarre white lights, dubbed 'bright disks'.

The mysterious lights have been seen almost nightly over the last three weeks, mainly in the pub's cellar and bar area.

Staff are at a loss to work out what is causing the strange after-hours light shows, which have also been spotted on cameras in the snug and near the gentleman's toilets.

Speculation in the pub is rife with everything from orbs, aliens and ghosts discussed as possible reasons.

Orbs are unexpected, typically circular phenomena which occur in flash photography - sometimes with trails indicating motion, which are especially common with modern compact and ultra-compact digital cameras.

The lights have also been spotted on footage taken during the day but staff say they mostly occur at night.

Landlord Barry Gallagher, who played for Bradford City between 1977 and 1983, says he has no idea what is causing the problems but says it has proved to be a talking point in the bar.

He said: "It's weird and unbelievable. I don't understand it. I would love someone to come into the pub who is scientific to explain it to me.

[embedded content]

"We heard when we moved into the pub that it was haunted in the past. It's only by chance that we got to see this.

"People are saying that they are orbs and quite a big one is seen going across. Lights are flashing here, there and everywhere.

"I've heard about these stories before. It is worth seeing the footage. This is always in the dark when everyone is asleep.

"It goes on for quite a while at a time, more than a few minutes.

"It's the talk of the pub. We are getting quite a few people in asking about it. Something is going on but I'm not sure what. It's like a light show."

Bar manager Sharon Burton discovered the bizarre footage in the early hours of Monday, January 26 and says it has been recorded most nights since.

She said: "It's just strange. Everyone is sceptical. I can't explain it.

"I've got it recorded on my phone and have shown a few people at the pub.

"It does not feel frightening in the pub.

"These lights, or orbs, flash across the floor and in the bar. When I first saw it I thought 'what was that?' The lights seem to be more frequent when I lock up at night. They go on in the early hours of the morning as well.

Patrick Howley at The Daily Caller reports that William Thompson, CDC whistleblower, has been given immunity from prosecution, by the federal government, to testify before Congress about vaccine fraud at the CDC.

Cautionary note: so far, The Daily Caller is the sole source on this story.

On August 27, 2014, Thompson, a long-time researcher at the CDC, published a statement through his lawyer, Rick Morgan, admitting that he and colleagues at the CDC violated the protocol in a study on the MMR vaccine's connection to autism.

The study, which was published in the journal in 2004, exonerated the vaccine, when in fact the study omitted vital data on a group of black babies who showed an increased risk for autism after receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine.

Since he released his August 27 statement, whistleblower Thompson has maintained silence and has refused to talk to reporters.

Now it appears he's ready to step into the light - if there is a Congressional hearing. That's a big if.

Thompson is working with Florida Congressman William Posey. Posey serves on the House Science Subcommittee on Oversight.

A Congressional hearing could be explosive, if members of the Committee ask Thompson the right questions, probe deeply, and find out exactly how an arrangement was made, inside the CDC, to cover up the MMR vaccine's connection to autism.

The study in question had several authors, two of whom - Frank Destafano and Coleen Boyle - are now high-ranking CDC executives in the area of vaccine safety.

If Thompson convincingly shows they were in on the fix, the whole business would explode and the CDC would be exposed as rank liars and threats to human health before the public.

On the other hand, if this is a one-day hearing, at which the testimony devolves into a boring he-said she-said proposition, and if the press barely takes notice, the outcome (and the truth) will rest entirely in the hands of alternative media.

No Congressional hearing has thus far been scheduled.

Another major CDC figure in this scandal: Dr. Julie Gerberding, former head of the CDC in 2004. Would she be subpoenaed to testify?

In 2004, whistleblower Thompson wrote her a letter, in which he warned her that he had sensitive and troubling data about the MMR vaccine's connection to autism. He was shortly due to present the data at a major vaccine/autism conference.

Apparently, Gerberding didn't answer the letter, and Thompson's presentation was canceled.

After Gerberding left the CDC in 2009, she ascended to the position of president of Merck Vaccines. Merck manufactures the MMR vaccine. Get the picture?

Interestingly, in December of 2014, Merck removed Gerberding from her august position and placed her in a new role, a role that never existed within the company before: executive vice-president for "strategic communications, global public policy and population health."

Did Merck make this move to shield Gerberding, to protect her from a possible scandal tying her to the 2004 MMR-autism fraud at the CDC? If there is a Congressional hearing, will Gerberding be conveniently unavailable because she is overseas tending to her new international duties at Merck?

Meanwhile, as these developments play out, there is a political battle taking place re mandatory vaccination vs. parents' right to choose whether to vaccinate their children.

Presidential candidates Chris Christie and Rand Paul have made statements supporting, to one degree or another, parents' right to choose. The "medical experts" have invaded television news to slam these statements as grossly irresponsible.

These are the same experts who always answer the call when some element of the medical cartel is under threat of exposure. Their job is to provide cover, sound authoritative, and make medical critics into "dangerous people."

As I've documented over the years, these professional experts are actually sitting on a powder keg that threatens to blow the whole medical system sky-high. The issue, which must never be revealed?

Medically caused death and human destruction.

Here are a few citations and facts which remain state secrets, as far as major news outlets are concerned. Reading them, think about how much credibility the "medical experts" really have whenever they open their mouths about public health in ANY form:

Citation: June 7, 2012 (BMJ 2012:344:e3989). Author, Jeanne Lenzer.

Lenzer refers to a report by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices:

"It calculated that in 2011 prescription drugs were associated with two to four million people in the US experiencing 'serious, disabling, or fatal injuries, including 128,000 deaths.'"

The report called this "one of the most significant perils to humans resulting from human activity."

And here is the final dagger. The report was compiled by outside researchers who went into the FDA's own database of "serious adverse [medical-drug] events."

Therefore, to say the FDA isn't aware of this finding would be absurd. The FDA knows. The FDA knows and it isn't saying anything about it, because the FDA certifies, as safe and effective, all the medical drugs that are routinely maiming and killing Americans.

Previously, I have documented that the FDA knows; because the FDA has a page on its own website that admits - without taking blame - 100,000 people are killed every year by medical drugs, and two million more people are severely injured by the drugs. (Google "FDA Why Learn About Adverse Drug Reactions")

And for the past five years or so, I have been writing about and citing a published report by the late Dr. Barbara Starfield that indicates 106,000 people in the US are killed by medical drugs every year. Until her death in 2011, Dr. Starfield worked at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Her report, "Is US health really the best in the world?", was published in the on July 26, 2000.

Do an extrapolation: 106,000 people killed every year in the US by medical drugs = a MILLION deaths per decade.

Starfield didn't stop there. She also attributed 119,000 deaths per year to mistreatment and medical errors in hospitals - bringing the annual total of US medically caused deaths to 225,000.

Here's another study: April 15, 1998, , "Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients." It, too, is mind-boggling.

The authors, led by Jason Lazarou, culled 39 previous studies on patients in hospitals. These patients, who received drugs in hospitals, or were admitted to hospitals because they were suffering from the drugs doctors had given them, met the following fate:

In a given year, in the US, 106,000 hospitalized patients die as a direct result of the drugs. Beyond that, 2.2 million hospitalized patients experience serious adverse reactions to the drugs.

The authors write:

"...Our study on ADRs [Adverse Drug Reactions], which excludes medication errors, had a different objective: to show that there are a large number of ADRs even when the drugs are properly prescribed and and administered."

Roughly 1.5 million American soldiers have died in all wars in US history.

In any given 10 years of modern medical treatment? 2.25 million deaths (Starfield).

Consider how much suppression is necessary to keep the medical death-numbers under wraps.

Now think about these "medical experts" who appear on television news programs and assure the public that modern medicine is perfectly safe.

When they blithely state that vaccines only rarely cause problems of any kind, and when they state that vaccines have absolutely no connection to neurological damage in children, what is their level of credibility?

It may interest you to know that the US system of reporting severe adverse effects of vaccines is broken. There are no reliable numbers. That's because the reporting is done by patients or doctors.

Barbara Loe Fisher, of the private National Vaccine Information Center, has put together a reasonable estimate:

"But how many children have [adverse] vaccine reactions every year? Is it really only one in 110,000 or one in a million who are left permanently disabled after vaccination? Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler observed in 1993 that less than 1 percent of doctors report adverse events following prescription drug use. [See DA Kessler, 'Introducing MEDWatch,' JAMA, June 2, 1993: 2765-2768]

"There have been estimates that perhaps less than 5 or 10 percent of doctors report hospitalizations, injuries, deaths, or other serious health problems following vaccination. The 1986 Vaccine Injury Act contained no legal sanctions for not reporting; doctors can refuse to report and suffer no consequences.

"Even so, each year about 12,000 reports are made to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System [VAERS]; parents as well as doctors can make those reports. [See RT Chen, B. Hibbs, 'Vaccine safety,' , July 1998: 445-458]

"However, if that number represents only 10 percent of what is actually occurring, then the actual number may be 120,000 vaccine-adverse events. If doctors report vaccine reactions as infrequently as Dr. Kessler said they report prescription-drug reactions, and the number 12,000 is only 1 percent of the actual total, then the real number may be 1.2 million vaccine-adverse events annually."

Now you have the background to assess what CDC whistleblower William Thompson may say if there is a Congressional hearing on CDC vaccine-autism fraud.

Thompson states that he was part of egregious lying in a published study.

Well, how in the world do you suppose the medically caused death-and-damage I've cited in this article is suppressed and covered up and papered over?

Every single medical drug and vaccine that creates the death and damage has been written about AND CALLED SAFE in at least one study published in a "reputable" medical journal.

Get it?

Rank fraud in published medical studies is everywhere. All the time.

Indeed, here is a devastating statement, from a doctor who has examined more published medical studies than any expert who shows up on television and spouts off about our perfectly safe medical system.

For two decades, she was the editor of one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world.

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of ." - Marcia Angell, MD ("Drug Companies and Doctors: A story of Corruption." , Jan. 15, 2009.)

Hello, Brian Williams, Scott Pelley, David Muir, Wolf Blitzer, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart, Rush Limbaugh, and all the so-called medical reporters for mainstream television and print outlets across America. Do you have the courage, brains, and will to cover and hammer on the biggest story of your lives - Medically Caused Death and Destruction?

Crimea cannot be blamed for seceding from Ukraine - a country in turmoil - and choosing to join Russia, said former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. He also added that Ukraine "is not destined to join the EU."

"We are part of a common civilization with Russia," said Sarkozy, speaking on Saturday at the congress of the Union for a Popular Movement Party (UMP), which the former president heads.

"The interests of the Americans with the Russians are not the interests of Europe and Russia," he said adding that "we do not want the revival of a Cold War between Europe and Russia."

Regarding Crimea's choice to secede from Ukraine when the country was in the midst of political turmoil, Sarkozy noted that the residents of the peninsula cannot be accused for doing so.

"Crimea has chosen Russia, and we cannot blame it [for doing so]," he said pointing out that "we must find the means to create a peacekeeping force to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine."

In March 2014 over 96 percent of Crimea's residents - the majority of whom are ethnic Russians - voted to secede from Ukraine to reunify with Russia. The decision was prompted by a massive uprising in Ukraine, that led to the ouster of its democratically elected government, and the fact that the first bills approved by the new Kiev authorities were infringing the rights of ethnic Russians.

Concerning Kiev's hopes of joining the EU in the near future Sarkozy voiced the same position as had been previously expressed by some EU leaders. "It is not destined to join the EU," he said. "Ukraine must preserve its role as a bridge between Europe and Russia."

While the West has been criticizing Russia's stance on Crimea, the Russian Foreign Minister said on Saturday that the peninsula's residents had the right to "self-determination" citing the March referendum. He gave the example of Kosovo, which despite not holding a referendum, was allowed to leave Serbia and create its own state.

"In Crimea what happened complies with the UN Charter on self-determination," Lavrov said during his speech at the Munich security conference. "The UN Charter has several principles, and the right of a nation for self-determination has a key position."

On Saturday, French President Francois Hollande called for broader autonomy for the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. They need "rather strong" autonomy from Kiev, he said speaking on France 2 TV.

The comment comes after Hollande together with German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Kiev and Moscow this week for talks on the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict, that has escalated in January.

Alan Greenspan: "Greece Will Leave The Eurozone; The Eurozone Won't Continue In Its Current Form"

It was another statement by the maestro that has caught the world's attention, this time opining on Greece, when he told BBC Radio's the World This Weekend that "Greece will leave the Eurozone. I don't see that it helps Greece to be in the Euro, and I certainly don't see that it helps the rest of the Eurozone. It's just a matter of time before everyone recognizes that parting is the best strategy.... At this stage I don't see any people who are willing to put up the funds for Greece... All the cards are being held by the members of the Eurozone." Naturally, this is just what anyone with a functioning frontal lobe (which immediatley excludes all tenured economists) would have said 5 years ago.

And it wasn't just Greece that the Maestro decided to throw under the revisionist history bus: he took a stabe at the Eurozone itself. "The problem is that there there is no way that I can conceive of the euro of continuing, unless and until all of the members of eurozone become politically integrated - actually even just fiscally integrated won't do it."

His conclusion: "short of a political Union, I find it very difficult to foresee the Euro holding together in its current form. It probably could get a union of Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Finland for example. But not south Europe."

With anti-Europe, anti-austerity, anti-Merkel political parties storming to the forefront in most peripheral European nations, Greenspan is right for once.

Which is not to say he said anything that these pages haven't covered extensively in the past. Recall this exchange at the April 2013 ECB meeting:

Scott Solano, DPA: Mr Draghi, I've got a couple of question from the viewers at Zero Hedge, and one of them goes like this: say the situation in Greece or Spain deteriorates even further, and they want to or are forced to step out of the Eurozone, is there a plan in place so that the markets don't basically collapse? Is there some kind of structural system, structural safety net, especially in the area of derivatives? And the second questions is: you spoke earlier about the Emergency Liquidity Assistance, and what would have happened to the ELA in Cyprus, the approximately €10 billion, if the country had decided to leave the Eurozone?

Mario Draghi, ECB: Well you really are asking questions that are so hypothetical that I don't have an answer to them. Well, I may have a partial answer. These questions are formulated by people who vastly underestimate what the Euro means for the Europeans, for the Euro area. They vastly underestimate the amount of political capital that has been invested in the Euro. And so they keep on asking questions like: "If the Euro breaks down, and if a country leaves the Euro, it's not like a sliding door. It's a very important thing. It's a project in the European Union. That's why you have a very hard time asking people like me "what would happened if." No Plan B.

So much for the European "Union" then? Worse, it looks like Europe's political capital just ran out and Zero Hedge, even if it is filled with people "vastly underestimate the amount of political capital that has been invested in the Euro," can't wait to ask Mario Draghi the logical follow-up question in an upcoming ECB press conference following the Grexit: "what happened ?"

Full interview with Greenspan below.

Part one (On 6th February 2015)

They have apparently continued for 5 hours and are still not finished though it seems some sort of document is being prepared for tomorrow.

Three comments:

1. If negotiations go on for 5 hours that does not suggest a smooth and conflict free discussion.

2. One of the most interesting things about the Moscow talks is that they mainly happened without the presence of aides and officials i.e. Putin, Hollande and Merkel were by themselves save for interpreters and stenographers. Putin and Merkel are known to be masters of detail and given his background as an enarque I presume Hollande also is. However the German and French officials will be very unhappy about this. The Russians less so because since the meeting is taking place in the Kremlin they are listening in to the discussions via hidden microphones.

One wonders why this is happening? Even if the Russian officials are not listening in Merkel and Hollande will assume they are. The fact that Russian officials were not present is therefore less significant than that German and French officials have been barred from the meeting by their respective chiefs, suggesting that Merkel and Hollande do not entirely trust them.

There has been an extraordinary degree of secrecy about this whole episode and it rather looks as if Merkel and Hollande were anxious to stop leaks and to prevent information about the talks from getting out. Presumably this is why their officials were barred from the meeting. From whom one wonders do Merkel and Hollande want to keep details of the meeting secret? From the media? From other members of their own governments? From the Americans? What do they need to keep so secret? The frustration and worry on the part of all these groups must be intense.

3. The fact that the British are excluded from the talks is going down very badly with many people here in London. It has not escaped people's notice that this is the first major negotiation to settle a big crisis in Europe in which Britain is not involved since the one that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Of course it is largely the fault of the inept diplomacy of Cameron, who has taken such an extreme pro-Ukrainian position that Moscow simply doesn't see him as someone worth talking to. Also one suspects Merkel and Hollande do not trust Cameron not to leak the whole discussion to whomever they want to keep it from. Having said that it is difficult to see this as anything other than further evidence of Britain's decline into complete irrelevance. I cannot imagine Thatcher being excluded in this way. If the United Kingdom is indeed in the process of breaking up (and as I suspected the Scottish referendum settled nothing with polls indicating that the SNP may make an almost clean sweep of all the seats in Scotland in the election in May) then the slide into irrelevance still has a long way to go.

Part two (On 7th February 2015)

I am coming increasingly round to the view of Alastair Newman that Merkel and Hollande came with no plan to Moscow but with the purpose of having what diplomats call "a full and frank discussion" in private with Putin looking at all the issues in the one place in Europe - the Kremlin - where they can be confident the Americans are not spying on them. That must be why they sent their officials away.

It is also clear that Merkel's and Hollande's visit to Kiev before their flight to Moscow was just for show.

Poroshenko's officials are insisting that the question of federalisation was not discussed during Poroshenko's meeting with Hollande and Merkel. Hollande has however now come out publicly to support "autonomy" for the eastern regions i.e. federalisation, which makes it a virtual certainty that in the meeting in Moscow it was discussed. The point is that Merkel and Hollande did not want to discuss federalisation with Poroshenko because they know the junta adamantly opposes the idea and did not want him to veto it before the meeting in Moscow had even begun.

The problem is that since everyone pretends that federalisation is an internal Ukrainian issue to be agreed freely between the two Ukrainian sides, its terms will only be thrashed out once constitutional negotiations between the two Ukrainian sides begin. Since the junta will never willingly agree to federalisation, in reality its form will have to be hammered out in private by Moscow after consultations with the NAF and with Berlin and Paris and then imposed on the junta in the negotiations.

Saying this shows how fraught with difficulty this whole process is going to be.

Not only are there plenty of people in the Donbass who now oppose federalisation (and some in Moscow too I suspect) but this whole process if it is to work would somehow have to get round the roadblock of the Washington hardliners, who will undoubtedly give their full support to the junta as it tries to obstruct a process over which it has a theoretical veto. Frankly, I wonder whether it can be done.

If the process is to have any chance of success then Merkel and Hollande must screw up the courage to do what they failed to do last spring and summer, which is publicly stand up to the hardliners in Washington and Kiev and impose their will upon them. Are they really willing to do that? Given how entrenched attitudes have become over the last few months and given the false position Merkel and Hollande put themselves in by so strongly supporting Kiev, the chances of them pulling this off look much weaker than they did last spring.

I would add a few more points;

1. There is one major difference between the situation now and in the Spring, which might offer some hope of movement.

Anyone reading the Western media now cannot fail but see that there is a growing sense of defeat. Sanctions have failed to work, the Ukrainian economy is disintegrating and the junta's military is being defeated.

That was not the case last spring, when many in the West had convinced themselves that the junta would win the military struggle with the NAF. The confrontation strategy Merkel opted for in July based on that belief has totally and visibly failed. It is not therefore surprising if she is now looking for a way-out by reviving some of the ideas that were being floated by the Russians in the spring. She now has a political imperative to look for a solution in order to avoid the appearance of defeat, which would leave her position both in Germany and Europe badly weakened. That political imperative was not there in the spring. It is now. In a sense the pressure is now on her.

2. I should stress that it is Merkel who is Putin's key interlocutor. The reason Hollande is there and appears to be taking the lead is to provide Merkel with cover. The one thing Merkel cannot afford politically is the appearance of a Moscow-Berlin stitch-up that the hardliners in Washington, Kiev, London, Warsaw and the Baltic States will claim is a new Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to divide Europe into German and Russian spheres of influence. Whether we like it or not in Germany the shadow of Hitler still hangs heavy and exposes Berlin to endless moral blackmail whenever it tries to pursue with Moscow an independent course. That is why Merkel needs Hollande present when she meets Putin for talks of the sort she's just had in Moscow.

3. One other possible sign of hope is that there is some evidence that a sea-change in European and especially German opinion may be underway.

Whatever the purpose of the ongoing debate in Washington about sending weapons to the junta, whether it is a serious proposal or an attempt to secure diplomatic leverage or a combination of the two, it has horrified opinion in Europe, bringing home to many people there how fundamentally nihilistic US policy has become.

All the talk in the Western media yesterday and this morning is of a split between Europe and the US. That is going much too far. However for the first time there is public disagreement in Europe with Washington on the Ukrainian question. Whether that crystallises into an actual break with Washington leading to a serious and sustained European attempt to reach a diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis against Washington's wishes is an altogether different question. I have to say that for the moment I very much doubt it.

4. I remain deeply pessimistic about this whole process. The best opportunity to settle this conflict diplomatically was last spring. I cannot help but feel that as Peter Lavelle said on the Crosstalk in which I appeared yesterday, the train has now left the station.

A peaceful solution to the Ukrainian conflict ultimately depends on European resolve to face down the hardliners in Washington and Kiev. It is going to be much harder to do this now than it was last year.

Moreover, despite the bad news on the economy and on the front line in Debaltsevo, the hardliners in Kiev are bound to have been emboldened by all the talk in Washington about sending them arms, which is going to make the effort to bring them round even harder than it already is.

The besetting problem of this whole crisis is that the Europeans have never shown either the resolve or the realism to face the hardliners down though it is certainly within their power to do so. In Merkel's case one has to wonder whether her heart is in it anyway. My view remains that this situation will only be resolved by war, and that the negotiations in Moscow will prove just another footnote to that.

5. If I am wrong and some autonomy really is granted to the Donbass, then I make one confident prediction. This is that the Ukraine will in that case disintegrate even more rapidly than it would have done if federalisation had been agreed upon last spring or summer.

Following such a terrible war, I cannot see people in the Donbass accepting federalisation as anything other than a stepping stone to eventual secession and union with Russia. If the Donbass secures autonomy, I cannot see people in places like Odessa and Kharkov failing to press for an at least equivalent degree of autonomy to that granted to the Donbass. If the Europeans are prepared to see the Donbass achieve autonomy, by what logic can they deny it to the people of Odessa and Kharkov?

More to the point, the November elections showed the emergence of what looks like an increasingly strong potential autonomy or even independence movement in Galicia.

Given that a terrible war has been fought and lost in the east to defeat "separatism" in the Donbass, and given the widespread disillusion with the junta in Kiev, it is difficult to see how many people in Galicia will not feel betrayed if the grant of federalisation to the Donbass is now imposed on them after so many of their men died to prevent it. If in reaction Galicia presses for the same sort of autonomy as the Donbass - which it could well do - then the Ukraine is finished. I doubt it would hold together for more than a few months. If federalisation had been granted last spring or summer before the war began then it is possible - likely even - that the Ukraine could have been held together in a sort of state of suspended animation at least for a while. I don't think there's much chance of that now.

The Raw Story

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