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Monday, 22 December 2014

SOTT FOCUS: UK 'Establishment': Unmasking psychopathic faces - Pedophilia and murder in VERY high places

Vishal Mehrotra



8 year old Vishal Mehrotra, who disappeared near the Elm Guest House in West London - alleged haunt of 'pedophiles in power'.



In an article published on RT last month, the father of an eight-year-old boy who died in the UK in the 1980s alleged that his son may have been abducted and murdered by members of a Westminster pedophile ring, and further claims that Scotland Yard were complicit in "covering up" the crime.

Vishambar Mehrotra, a retired magistrate, said he recorded a male prostitute saying in a telephone call that Mehrotra's son Vishal may have been abducted in the notorious Elm Guest House in southwest London in 1981. Mehrotra also said despite playing the recording for police officers, they refused to investigate allegations that high-profile judges and politicians were involved in the kidnapping of his son.



After watching the wedding procession of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in July 1981, Vishal Mehrotra was abducted as he walked home in the Putney area of London. Newspaper reports at the time claim Mehrotra's home was less than a mile from the Elm Guest House, where witnesses said a "kings and queens" party was being hosted. Part of Vishal's skeleton was found in 1982 in woodlands in West Sussex. According to coroners' reports, there was no trace of his legs, spine or clothing.

Elm House was raided in June 1982 and dozens of men with high public profiles were questioned. Although none were implicated, it is believed the raids were connected to the disappearance of Vishal, as well as another boy, 15-year-old Martin Allen.


Mehrotra told theTelegraph:




"I was contacted by a young man who seemed to be in his 20s. He told me he believed Vishal may have been taken by pedophiles in the Elm Guest House near Barnes Common."


"He said there were very highly placed people there. He talked about judges and politicians who were abusing little boys."


"At that time I trusted the police. But when nothing happened, I became confused and concerned. Now it is clear to me that there has been a huge cover-up. There is no doubt in my mind."




Martin Allen's disappearance has also been linked to the notorious Elm Guest House in Barnes, south-west London, and the alleged VIP pedophile brothel. But when the Sunday People reported that when the boy's older brother pushed for more to be done on the case, saying he believed a top level cover-up was hiding the circumstance of the teenager's disappearance, he was told to "stop talking like that, you might get hurt."

Mr Allen, 51, now believes the files relating to Martin have been destroyed or lost to avoid solving the mystery that has haunted his family for 35 years. As reported in the Daily Mail last month, he said:


Martin Allen

© PA

Martin Allen was abducted thirty years ago in London and his disappearance has also been linked to the notorious Elm Guest House in Barnes, south west London, and the alleged VIP pedophile brothel.




"I've no faith in the police. They failed us.


Within a couple of months of Martin disappearing, my father said: 'There's something not right here.'


Police weren't doing enough. They went through the motions.


So it didn't surprise me when a senior officer warned me I could get hurt."



Mr Allen said he always believed there was 'Establishment involvement' in his brother's disappearance.

Jackie Malton, now retired from Scotland Yard, was a detective sergeant when she worked on the case and said the investigation could have been compromised by the "power of politicians" at the time. Regarding the tape recording Mr Mehrotra played for the police, she said, "the culture of policing at the time meant it was possible the recording was ignored and the murder covered up due to the alleged involvement of senior figures at Westminster." Talking to the Telegraph, Mrs Malton added:




"There was also a strong sense of the power of Parliament and of politicians. It was very much a case of 'do as you are told'," she claimed. "There was certainly a culture of disbelief among the officers, and that often didn't help to get to the truth. But the politicians were very much in power, and the police officers' voices could often not be heard. It's very different now. Back then, people were nowhere near as accountable for their actions."




Really!? If there truly is more 'accountability' nowadays - then where is the justice? Why are these sick, psychopathic perverts in positions of power never held accountable for their depraved, vile crimes? Before we look at their Modus Operandi, we first need to understand the environment (social, political, cultural, religious and business) in which these highly placed and influential individuals generally dwell - namely, the 'Establishment'.



Two members of the British 'establishment' - psychopath meets pedophile! Jimmy Savile receiving more money from former British PM Margaret Thatcher, no doubt to 'help all the little children around the UK'.





The Establishment

'The Establishment' is essentially an elite that wields huge power in the UK and abroad (often with overlapping interests with other dominant British-descended groups). The term is most often used in the United Kingdom, in which context it includes:



leading politicians, senior civil servants, senior barristers and judges, aristocrats, senior clergy in the established Church of England, the most important financiers and industrialists, governors of the BBC, and the Monarchy.



So we can reasonably determine that this list encompasses the higher, influential echelons of a pyramid-shaped, hierarchical, control structure - which we see at local, national and international level. Generally these 'establishment' figures all attend public schools, such as Eton College. A cursory glance at lists of attendees to just this one 'public school' - 'Old Etonians' as they are called - reveals why these people, generally speaking (invariably there are some exceptions), are completely incapable of functioning honorably at higher levels of all institutions serving the public interest: they all susceptible to a syndrome called the 'Old Boys Network'. When faced with conflicts of interests - say, exposing and punishing pedophiles in high places - like Jimmy Savile or former MP Cyril Smith - this 'sad affliction' means their sense of duty is NOT to expose sick, depraved and criminal individuals and groups, but instead to cover it all up and protect other members of the 'Establishment'. But just how do they continue to do this so successfully?

An article in the Daily Mail, (Establishment hid monster midst as MP's demand inquiry covering VIP child abuse ring chilling proof depraved diplomat protected good and the great) concerning Sir Peter Hayman gives some important insights into just how the 'Establishment' protects its own kind, and helps us unravel their Modus Operandi.


Dark Arts - The Modus Operandi:


Whether it is covering up VIP pedophile rings, high level corruption or instigating regime change in other countries, there are various historically proven tools at the disposal of these psychopaths in power. For brevity, I will concentrate on those 'Dark Arts' which are applicable to the the 'cover up' of British pedophiles in very high places, namely Perception Management (the Public Inquiry, the Deflection technique and the 'normalization' of pedophilia ), intimidation / death, and cowardly or 'yellow' journalism.


Perception Management: The Public Inquiry


When appointing 'one of your own' to an influential position (say, head of a Public Inquiry) the Establishment is virtually guaranteed a favorable decision. A recent example illustrating how this 'Old Boys Network' works concerns victims' groups coming to the "unanimous" decision that Fiona Woolf, Lord Mayor of London, should be replaced as head of a Public Inquiry into rampant child sex abuse committed by members of the Establishment. A veritable 'Woolf in sheep's clothing'!



Leon Brittan was Home Secretary in 1984 when ministers were handed a dossier on alleged high-profile pedophiles;and nsisted that the proper procedures were followed. Woolf disclosed that she lived in the same street in London as Lord Brittan and had invited the Conservative Peer and his wife to dinner on three occasions. In total, she had dined with Lord Brittan and his family five times since 2008 and had also had a coffee with Lady Brittan on a "small number of occasions". Woolf further disclosed that she had been involved in the past with bodies with which the Brittans had also had involvement.



The victims' groups, like other normal people, could see that this 'conflict of interests' hardly made Mrs Woolf an 'impartial' candidate for that sensitive and responsible position. Some politicians who have some integrity and who campaigned for the inquiry, like Labour MP Simon Danczuk, said he thought Woolf should resign, which she later did following mounting opposition. Yet Downing Street maintained that Prime Minister David Cameron - an 'old Etonian' himself - "is absolutely clear that he thinks she can do this job with integrity and impartiality" (clearly highlighting the severity of his 'affliction').

Why not allow the victims and their families the choice of appointing qualified persons to such hugely important positions? There are plenty of other competent people in the country who have not been tainted by the 'Old Boys Network', and who could responsibly hold these roles - but the problem with that, of course, is the increased likelihood of them finding the truth! That option clearly cannot be allowed to manifest.





MP Simon Danczuk was about to challenge Lord Brittan (centre) about what he knew about child sex abuse. Flanking Leon Brittan are Tory grandees Edward Heath and Willie Whitelaw



As Simon Danczuk said recently in an article in the Mail Online:

Recent events have led me to the inescapable conclusion that in politics, particularly when the focus is on members of parliament guilty of abusing children, it frequently generates indifference. That's not to say all politicians have a blind spot where this terrible crime is concerned. There are some great campaigners across all parties working hard to protect children - as evidenced by the 130 MPs who have signed up to a call for a public inquiry into historic child abuse. But among the higher echelons of party politics, where the real power resides, my impression is that there is little appetite to confront the abusers in their midst. Quite the opposite. The mood is defensive, the approach is dominated by silence. 'Move along, nothing to see here,' or 'what's the point in raking all that up old boy?' is the attitude I have seen time after time.





Perception Management
: The Deflection Technique

Earlier this year, more than 600 suspected pedophiles, including doctors and teachers, were arrested across Britain after a six-month investigation led by the National Crime Agency. The agency, dubbed Britain's FBI, announced on Wednesday it had arrested 660 suspected child abusers and taken more than 400 children into care in the first nationwide investigation of its kind. Of the 660 arrested, 39 were registered sex offenders but the vast majority of suspected paedophiles were off the police's radar. Those arrested include doctors, teachers, scout leaders, care workers and former police officers.


Chief constable Simon Bailey, the national policing lead for child protection and abuse investigations, said the vast majority of forces in England and Wales were dealing with an unprecedented increase in the number of reports of child sexual abuse. He said:



"Sexual abuse is a complex crime taking many forms. Forces are investigating exploitation of children and young people by groups and gangs, non-recent abuse including large-scale investigations into abuse in institutions over many years and sexual abuse by parents and family members.


"During this operation we've targeted offenders accessing child abuse images. Police must continue to use a range of investigative techniques targeting all forms of abuse if we are going to protect children and bring offenders to justice. Chief officers are committed using all the tools available to them because nothing is more important in policing than protecting vulnerable people."



Of course, EVERY case of abuse, particularly to young and vulnerable people should be thoroughly investigated, leading to prosecution of the guilty offenders. But investigations like this, and the on-going one in Rotherham, target specifically those abusers at the lower end of society - to deflect attention from the on-going 'investigations' (for public consumption) into the abuse at higher levels. They actually DO investigate and prosecute the lowly scumbags, but only TALK about doing likewise with their higher level criminal 'establishment' cohorts.
Cyril Smith



the grotesque former MP Cyril Smith - at the pedophile safe haven of Westminster!



Perception Management: 'Normalization' of Pedophilia

To form a basic understanding as to how the perpetrators and apologists for pedophilia can formulate their narratives to justify their depraved deeds, read the words of Ralph Underwager. An 'expert' witness for the defense in scores of child abuse cases and former vocal member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, he gave an interview in Paidika (a pro-pedophilia publication), conducted in June 1991.



"Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose ... I am also a theologian and as a theologian, I believe it is God's will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of flesh, between people ... paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, 'I believe this is in fact part of God's will.'"



Here in the so-called 'civilized' (in reality - 'ponerized') United Kingdom, there has been a concerted effort in parts of the academic establishment to push the boundaries on the acceptability of child sex. Even as recently as last July, the following comments were being delivered at a conference held by the University of Cambridge.

"Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,"


"At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to have sex with children ... Normal males are aroused by children."



Other presentations included "Liberating the paedophile: a discursive analysis," and "Danger and difference: the stakes of hebephilia."(Hebephilia is the sexual preference for children in early puberty, typically 11 to 14-year-olds.)

So, here we have a world-renowned education facility where academics are openly seeking to justify acts which any normal and conscionable person would consider disgusting and reprehensible. It's all part of an insidious attempt to 'normalize' pedophilia. Commenting on the cascade of child sex crime scandals in the UK in the last couple of years, not least the conviction of celebrated children's TV presenter Rolf Harris, the lurid revelations about another BBC children's TV presenter - Jimmy Savile - and solid claims of an establishment cover-up to protect at least one child rapist government minister in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, journalist Andrew Gilligan recently wrote in the Guardian:



A key factor in what happened all those decades ago in the dressing rooms of the BBC, the wards of the NHS and, allegedly, the corridors of power was not just institutional failings or establishment "conspiracies", but a climate of far greater intellectual tolerance of practices that horrify today.



Again, I have to dispute the all-too-common assumption that 'people were less horrified then about such deeds than they are today'. Sex with children - to say nothing of the violent rape and murder of children - has ALWAYS been wrong, and it horrified people yesterday just as much as it does today. The only difference I can think of between then and now is that it has become very difficult for the British Establishment to prevent its inhuman practices from reaching public awareness.

Another attendee and enthusiastic participant at the University of Cambridge conference this past July was one Tom O'Carroll, a multiple child sex offender, long-time campaigner for the legalisation of sex with children and former head of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). Police are now investigating PIE as part of Operation Fernbridge, launched in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. A senior source on the investigation says there is evidence PIE members were abusing children "on an industrial scale ". The Home Office is also probing shocking claims that the Labour government of the 1970s may have helped finance the pedophile group. Don't hold your breath with this 'investigation' either. A Daily Mail investigation has discovered that during the 1970s and 1980s:





Twisted: The Pedophile Information Exchange received state funding for networking pedophiles and preying on thousands of children





  • Former Minister for Health Patricia Hewitt described PIE in glowing terms as 'a campaigning/counselling group for adults attracted to children';

  • The NCCL lobbied Parliament for the age of sexual consent to be cut to ten - if the child consented and 'understood the nature of the act'.

  • It called for incest to be legalised in what one MP dubbed a 'Lolita's charter';

  • The NCCL claimed research shows young paedophile victims are often 'consenting or even the initiators of the sexual acts involved';

  • It filed a submission to Parliament claiming that 'childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult, result in no identifiable damage'.

  • Labour's former deputy leader Harriet Harman, as NCCL legal officer, tried to water down child pornography laws.

  • NCCL lawyers acted for a PIE member who was quizzed by police over appalling behaviour.



So while David Cameron's government looks to 'make good' with the British public by cracking down on online porn (which apparently blocked up to a fifth of the Internet in the UK - how long before alternative media are 'accidentally' blocked too?), we can see that leading figures those in influential positions of power, in academic and political life are complicit in 'normalizing' pedophila.

Intimidation / death


[embedded content]




Conspiracy of Silence, a documentary listed for viewing in the British TV Guide Magazine, was to be aired on the Discovery Channel, on May 3, 1994. This documentary exposed a network of American religious leaders and politicians who flew children to Washington, D.C. for sex orgies. While the video quality is not top grade, the documentary is a blockbuster in terms of what it revealed.

In an interview with American Commentary, Nick Bryant, author of The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse, and Betrayal, highlights how intimidation and death, used by all countries where pedophiles in power operate with impunity, has worked successfully in protecting pedophile rings.


The interstate pedophile network he exposed in the USA, which "pandered children to the rich and powerful, and was ultimately covered up by a corrupt subgenus of federal law enforcement, and state law enforcement," offers important lessons in these Dark Arts.


Although the epicenter of the network was in Omaha, Nebraska, run by Lawrence E. King, the other main camp was operated by Craig Spence of Washington, D.C., a pedophilic pimp and CIA asset. They were both also Republican powerbrokers. According to Nick Byrant:



A lot of these pedophile parties went down in Craig Spence's home. And his home was wired for audiovisual blackmail. Spence was a blackmail specialist.


Spence's guest lists were a veritable who's who of people in congress, people in the upper echelon of the Reagan administration, the upper echelon of what would become the Bush administration, the upper echelon of the judiciary.


Whatever you wanted you would be provided, and then you would subsequently be blackmailed. And this is why it had to be covered up in Nebraska, because if this unfolded in Nebraska, it would have been a domino effect all the way to Washington DC, and it would have shown Americans just how corrupt their political system is.


So if the cover-up was going to continue, both state and federal law enforcement were forced to call grand juries to cover up the child abuse - and that's what happened



franclin scandal headline



A "carefully crafted hoax"! Yet more abuse for the innocent victims. How utterly contemptible!



What makes these cases even more obscene is the fact that those victims who were brave enough to speak out were horrifically abused a second time - by the very authorities that were supposed to be protecting them - through relentless intimidation, with some even being sentenced for perjury when in fact they were telling the truth. As Nick Bryant noted, "the FBI threatened to kill a perpetrator who wanted to come forward and seek immunity. And the FBI also threatened victims with perjury if they kept on with their abuse story."

It doesn't exactly inspire confidence in those alphabet 'intel' agencies, now does it? Whether it is MI6, FBI, CIA, Mossad, whoever - they are merely instruments serving Puppet Masters, not the ordinary man, woman and child in society. Of course, they can always justify their actions in the name of "national security" to maintain the psychopathic status quo. In Franklin Scandal, some 2 or 3 mysterious deaths are described in every chapter.



There were two kids who refused to recant their abuse and they were both indicted on multiple counts of perjury. And one was subjected to a kangaroo court, her name was Alisha Owen, and she was given between 9 and 15 years for perjury - because she wouldn't recant her abuse. And she spent nearly two years in solitary confinement.


All the victims were told that if they went on with this story they would go down for perjury, so it was essential that an example be made of Alisha Owen.


And Alisha's 17 year old brother died under very mysterious circumstances. And another victim who testified with her, his brother also died under mysterious circumstances. The state investigator and his son also died under mysterious circumstances. And there were other people in Nebraska affiliated with the ring who supposedly committed suicide too. And then Craig Spence also committed suicide.





BBC - Cowardly 'Yellow Journalism' in action


When some media insiders actually do try to uncover and expose pedophile activities, as popular TV presenter Jill Dando did within the BBC in the mid-1990s, "no-one wanted to know." She was gunned down just outside her Fulham home on April 26, 1999, in what remains an unsolved murder.

When we look at 'some' of the sick pedophiles who worked at the BBC (Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall, Dave Lee Travis, Chris Denning), using their fame and positions to act with apparent impunity, is it any wonder that "no-one wanted to know." Looking at the backgrounds of the BBC governors and top editors, we can see they are generally members of the Establishment - which is hardly conducive to 'impartial journalism' as advocated by the BBC Charter. The complicity of such influential individuals in 'cover ups' are clearly illustrated by the Newsnight fiasco, where the BBC's top investigative show pulled its own report into the Jimmy Savile scandal - 'Protecting pedophile networks BBC ordered cover up of its own investigation into serial child rapist Jimmy Savile'


The BBC has a history of protecting pedophiles (and war criminals), and this 'news' organisation - which claims to be 'objective' and a 'beacon of the free press', yet issues decrees that inhibit its 'journalists' (functionally no different from psychopathic enablers and apologists for pedophiles and war criminals) from reporting on certain topics - including, but certainly not limited to, the Scottish Referendum, Israeli atrocities, the demonization of Vladimir Putin and Russia, and, of course, the pedophile rings at the BBC itself and in Westminster - really ought to amend its Charter to more accurately reflect its cowardly, biased stance:



New BBC Charter


that the mission of the Corporation is to "dis-inform, un-educate and entertain". It states that the Corporation exists to serve their psychopathic Puppet Masters public interest and to promote its public purposes: sustaining the illusion of citizenship and civil society, promoting a dumber society education and learning, discouraging stimulating creativity and encourage cultural subservience excellence.





Breaking the 'historic' cycle of abuse?

Worldwide, there are probably still hundreds of thousands of innocent children suffering at the hands of these vile, soulless monsters, with the UK's 'VIP' pedophile ring being connected to a larger international web of interlocking, protected pedophile rings. For more on the scope of this dark underworld inhabited by our overlords, read Dave McGowan's expose on the grisly 'Pedophocracy'.


The Metropolitan Police are currently investigating the suspected murder of three boys in relation to the so-called Westminster "VIP" pedophile ring, which allegedly serially abused boys during the 1970s and 80s. Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald, who is leading the investigation, made a public plea for witnesses and deemed one alleged victim, known as Nick, to be a "credible" witness who was telling the truth.


As Nick said in his first public broadcast in November, where he claimed that his abusers would always "do what they wanted":



"Some of them were quite open about who they were. They had no fear at all of being caught, it didn't cross their mind."



Think about that: "no fear at all of being caught". That arrogance, or 'wishful thinking', is very much a characteristic trait of psychopaths in power. Read what Andrew Lobaczewski called the process of 'ponerization' in his book Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes. Psychopaths don't fear being caught because they do not experience fear. They do of course avoid exposure, and will use any and all means to do so.

Will anything change with this latest so-called "investigation" in the UK into pedos-in-power? Based on the historic evidence, briefly highlighted here, the simple, tragic answer is: NO. Nevertheless, all conscionable folk have a duty and responsibility to simply strive to 'do the right thing', to the best of ones ability and circumstances. Are we, though? Time to look in the mirror perhaps, and then into the eyes of our children.


Britain's plague of pederasty and abuse of power will continue unless we attempt to understand our own psychology, and that of those in power, and then make the necessary efforts to drag these terrible, inhumane crimes from the darkness of ignorance into the light of knowing.


Our continued silence and unquestioning acquiescence to 'the authorities' actively assists these 'cover ups' of pedophiles in high places. But if we can individually accept our responsibility - that by our own apathy and ignorance we too are complicit in these heinous crimes - then we can also choose to become more active and knowledgeable and begin to undermine their power structure. Just knowing about it is a great start.


At this 'festive season' particularly, shared with our loved ones, we could spare a thought for those vulnerable children who have been, are, and will continue to be abused, raped and murdered. Perhaps the greatest gift we can bequeath them is to find our own humanity, to make an effort to right a terrible wrong, to get informed and actually care enough to express it, however, wherever and whenever we can.





Our missing children - how many of them end up as victims of the Establishment pedophiles in power?



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Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


Your tax dollars at work: Eight absurd government projects in 2014

It's that time of year again: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) just released Wastebook 2014, his annual list of the most wasteful government projects during 2014. Coburn's wastebook list includes a comprehensive analysis of 100 of the most wasteful government projects funded over the last year. The full report, which includes detailed descriptions and investigations of every wasteful project, spans more than 200 pages.


Here are eight of the most egregious and infuriating wasteful projects listed in Coburn's 2014 Wastebook report, which can be read in full here.


1) $171,000 To Study How Monkeys Gamble


gambling monkey

If scientists wanted to see a bunch of dumb primates gamble with money that wasn't theirs, they could've just gone to a congressional appropriations committee hearing. Instead, they decided to spend a bunch of money to watch monkeys try their luck. From Wastebook's entry on the project:

Humans have long been known to have a "hot-hand bias" in which they believe hot or cold streaks exist where there is actually none. Researchers wanted to know if monkeys had the same problem.



"Luckily, monkeys love to gamble," said Tommy Blanchard, a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester who worked on the study. But scientists "had to create a computerized game that was so captivating monkeys would want to play for hours."

[...]


The researchers contend the study could "provide nuance to our understanding of free will" or even "inform treatment for gambling addiction." But taxpayers are likely to go totally bananas that NSF is monkeying around with federal research dollars.


2) $856,000 To Film Mountain Lions Running On Treadmills


If you liked the National Science Foundation's hit film "Shrimp On A Treadmill" (not joking: that happened), you're going to love its sequel: mountain lions running in treadmills. If spending $560,000 million to film shrimp running on treadmills is the government waste version of Sharknado, then lions on treadmills has to be Treadnado 2: The Second One. It's every bit as dumb as the first installment.


And lest you think I'm exaggerating, here's the video of the experiment:


[embedded content]



What people won't have a hard time believing is the federal government would pay to put the big cats on a treadmill. Not so long ago, after all, the National Science Foundation (NSF) paid $560,000 to run a shrimp on a tiny treadmill. In fact, the federal government has raced animals, large and small on a treadmill from monkeys, to rats, and even cows and goats.



In this study funded with an $856,000 NSF grant, three captive mountain lions were taught to use a treadmill. It took eight months of training before the cats were "comfortable on the treadmill."

"People just didn't believe you could get a mountain lion on a treadmill, and it took me three years to find a facility that was willing to try," said one of the project's key researchers.


Perhaps it will take another $856,000 to study why people don't think it's a great idea to spend six figures to put mountain lions on treadmills.


3) Synchronized Swimming For Sea Monkeys


sea monkeys

It's exactly what it sounds like, unfortunately. The National Science Foundation handed out $50,000 to watch sea monkeys do their thang under water. From Coburn's Wastebook report:

Cartoon-style ads for pet Sea-Monkeys promise that you can learn to "make them appear to obey your commands, follow a beam of light, do loop-the-loops and even seem to dance when you play" music. The New York Times says it is "sort of true" that Sea Monkeys can be trained because they do follow light. With the financial support of three government agencies, researchers put these claims to the test and essentially choreographed a laser guided synchronized swim team of Sea Monkeys as part of a study to measure the swirl created by their collective movements.



"Coaxing Sea-Monkeys to swim when and where you want them to is even more difficult than it sounds," said John Dabiri, a California Institute of Technology professor who worked on the project.

I bet it is, John. I bet it is.


4) Swedish Massages For Bunnies


bugs bunny

© warner brothers



Terrible ideas about how to spend taxpayer money apparently breed like rabbits. You can't make this stuff up:

The real lucky rabbit's foot may be attached to one of the bunnies receiving Swedish massages courtesy of taxpayers.



A group of rabbits received daily rub downs from a "mechanical device that simulates the long, flowing strokes used in Swedish massages." The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health provided $387,000 for the two year project which ended in April 2014.

The massages were given after subjecting the rabbits to exercise to measure its impact on recovery. To conduct the experiment, 18 "New Zealand White rabbits were instrumented" with "nerve cuffs for stimulation of hindlimb" leg muscles. The rabbits were "anesthetized and secured supine with one foot attached to a foot pedal."


5) Free Luxury Gym Memberships For Federal Bureaucrats


vida fitness

© Vida Fitness



The federal government is all about cutting the fat, just as long as 1) the fat comes from their waistlines instead of their budgets, and 2) taxpayers are forced to pay for the whole exercise:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced earlier this year that budget cuts "require[ed] difficult choices to align resources to address the greatest needs of the Department."



Apparently one of those greatest needs is 236 memberships to a "state-of-the-art" gym and spa in downtown Washington, D.C. for some of the headquarters employees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a DHS component.323 The gym, Vida Fitness, describes itself as "more than just a gym," offering an "Aura Spa, Bang Salon, Fuel Bar, Gear Shop, Endless Pools, luxurious locker rooms, and the rooftop Penthouse Pool and Lounge."

6) $331,000 To Study Whether "Hangry" Spouses Are More Likely To Stab Voodoo Dolls


When members of Congress get hungry for pork, they gore taxpayers. When spouses get "hangry," they stab voodoo dolls representing their partners, according to a pricey study from the National Science Foundation. And what does this mean? According to this vital and ground-breaking research, it turns out that people get prickly when they're hungry. From the report:



Over the course of twenty-one consecutive evenings, 107 couples were given a chance to stick up to 51 pins into a voodoo doll representing their spouse.173 The pin-pushing happened in secret, away from the other partner. Participants then recorded the number of pins they poked into the dolls. Those tests revealed what may already be obvious to many couples: a spouse with low blood sugar was an angrier one, and stuck more pins in the doll (on average).



[...]

Not all academics believed the results. Two psychologists who reviewed the work suggested, "[I]t might be a big leap to interpret the results with voodoo dolls

as indicating risk for actual physical aggression against a spouse."


Funding for the voodoo doll project came in part from National Science Foundation grant worth $331,000.


7) $18 Million To Renovate A Low-Traffic Airport That Serves A High-End Ski Resort


arnold schwarzenegger

Hell hath no wrath like a wealthy ski bum wishing to avoid the hoi polloi at a large airport. Thankfully, our betters won't have to face the indignity of regular air travel due to an insanely expensive luxury remodel of a low-traffic local airport near Sun Valley, Idaho:

The airport for "Sun Valley ski resort that is a magnet for the rich and famous" is getting a multi-million dollar facelift courtesy of taxpayers.



The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarded $18 million as part of a series of federal grants to cover the majority of the $34 million construction project for Friedman Memorial Airport.509 The federal requirements that supposedly warrant the project include a waiting lounge for arriving passengers that "will have comfortable chairs and a fireplace."

[...]


Some of the celebrities that frequent or have second homes in Sun Valley include Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Ashton Kutcher and Arnold Schwarzenegger.


In 1936, the Resort was built to mirror the "luxury" of Swiss ski resorts. ... The two main hotels foyers are "jammed with pictures of celebrities spanning three quarters of a century."


8) NIH Spent Over $800,000 To Make A Video Game About Food Fights


Forget AIDS, cancer, and heart disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose director mostly recently blamed the worldwide Ebola outbreak on budget cuts at his agency, has been using its limited resources to focus on the most important aspects of public health in America: vegetable arguments between parents and their kids:



A federally funded video game wants to give parents the edge over their children who continue to wage war over veggies. The app's main character - a fussy eater named Kiddio - will give mom and dad a chance to test out new negotiation styles. "Kiddio: Food Fight" will consist of 24 episodes in which parents will select a vegetable to offer Kiddio and then select a tactic for influencing Kiddio to eat the veggie. Parents can also tailor Kiddio's mood so it mimics that of the parent's child.



"Kiddio's responses to these options - whether to take a bit or say something like 'Yuk!' - are based on what we've learned so far about kids' reactions to these parental tactics," according to one of the creators. The hope for the game is "to give [parents] a safe, low-risk, nonthreatening way to sharpen their parenting skills," according to one of the scientists behind "Kiddio: Food Fight."

Why spend money developing an Ebola vaccine when you can spend it on a stupid video game about vegetables, right? At least NIH has its priorities straight.


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About time: FAA launches safety campaign for drone hobbyists

hobby drone

© usatoday.com



Alarmed by increasing encounters between small drones and manned aircraft, drone industry officials said Monday they are teaming up with the government and model aircraft hobbyists to launch a safety campaign.

The campaign includes a website - http://ift.tt/1AQYam1 - which advises both recreational and commercial drone operators of FAA regulations and how to fly their unmanned aircraft safely. The campaign was announced by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the Small UAV Coalition, both industry trade groups, and the Academy of Model Aeronautics, which represents model aircraft hobbyists, in partnership with the Federal Aviation Administration.


The two industry trade groups also said they plan to distribute safety pamphlets at industry events, and are working with drone manufacturers to see that safety information is enclosed inside the package of new drones.


Retailers say small drones, which are indistinguishable from today's more sophisticated model aircraft, are flying off the shelves this Christmas.


"In just a few days, kids old and young will unwrap presents, and many of them - maybe tens of thousands - will have unmanned aircraft," Michael Toscano, president of the unmanned vehicle association, said in a conference call with reporters. "This technology is very accessible and in very high demand, but information on how to fly safety isn't readily available. That's why we've created this safety campaign."


The FAA is concerned that amateurs are using the drones in a reckless manner, increasing the likelihood of a collision that could bring down a plane or rain debris down on people. The agency has been receiving about 25 reports per month this year of drones sighted flying near manned aircraft or airports, up from just a handful of reports two years ago.


"This is an issue of growing concern," said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. "The price of unmanned aircraft has come down and this newer and more powerful technology is more affordable to more people, yet many are not familiar with the rules of flying."


Small drones are available today for as little as a few hundred dollars. As of the end of 2013, about 1 million small drones had been sold worldwide for recreational and commercial use, according to industry estimates. Sales this year are expected to significantly outdistance previous tallies. Catalogs like Hammacher Schlemmer and Brookstone have prominently featured small drones this Christmas, while online retailer Amazon is offering more than a dozen different models priced from as little as $30 to nearly $3,000.


"Many of these operators have no aviation history, background or knowledge," Margaret Gilligan, FAA's associate administrator for safety, told a recent forum hosted by the Air Line Pilots Association. "They think they just bought something fun that they just want to fly around. They don't for a moment think, 'I'm entering the national airspace system.' "


Such operators don't intend to interfere with manned aircraft, but "they just don't know what they don't know," she said.


In response to safety concerns, Amazon created a special webpage on it's website with safety information for drone customers. Many small drones can only fly as high as a few hundred feet, which keeps them below most manned aircraft. But some drones on the market are capable of reaching altitudes as high as 18,000 feet - the start of "class A" airspace where most passenger and cargo airlines cruise.


Ben Berman, an airline captain who flies Boeing 737s, told the same forum that "the current situation is out of control."


In September, a New York Police Department helicopter had a near-miss with a drone. The pilots of a regional airliner recently reported spotting a drone 500 feet to 1,000 feet off the plane's right side during a landing approach to runway 4 of the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in South Carolina. The drone was described as the size of a large bird. The pilots of another regional airliner flying at about 10,000 feet reported seeing at least one drone pass less than 500 feet above the plane, moving slowly to the south toward Allegheny County Airport near Pittsburgh.


"An education campaign on Amazon.com is not adequate," Berman said. "Yes, if my aircraft goes down and we are mourning something strong will happen, but we can't allow that to happen to me or anybody else."


The near-misses and other close encounters may not be entirely the fault of drone operators. Nicholas Roy, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who has advised Google on drone technology, told a recent House hearing that "the vast majority of small (drones) are basically toy aircraft ... with the same reliability of a toy."


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Artificial light from iPad screens could be spoiling our sleep patterns

Artificial Light

© The Independent, UK

Using iPads at night might suppress the release of the hormone melatonin.



Reading books on an iPad and similar e-readers in the evening may disturb sleep patterns because of the type of light the device emits, scientists said.

The researchers found evidence to suggest that using iPads at night might suppress the release of the hormone melatonin which is involved in inducing sleepiness, resulting in the shifting of the normal circadian rhythm governing the body's 24-hour biological clock.


The study of 12 adults for two weeks involved comparing reading from an iPad or a printed book before bedtime. The melatonin levels of each volunteer were monitored and their sleep patterns and morning alertness were also monitored.


The participants took nearly 10 minutes longer to fall asleep and had a significantly lower amount of dream sleep after reading from a light-emitting e-reader than they did after reading from a printed book, according to the study in the .


"Our most surprising finding was that individuals using the e-reader would be more tired and take longer to become alert the next morning. This has real consequences for daytime functioning, and these effects might be worse in the real world as opposed to the controlled environment we used," said Anne-Marie Chang of Penn State University.


"Electronic devices emit light that is short-wavelength-enriched light, which has a higher concentration of blue light than natural light. This is different from natural light in composition, having a greater impact on sleep and circadian rhythms," Professor Chang said.


"We live in a sleep-restricted society, in general. It is important to further study the effects of using light-emitting devices, especially before bed, as they may have longer term health consequences than we previously considered," she said.


The researchers measured the amount of brightness coming from several devices, including an iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Kindle Fire and Nook Colour. The Kindle e-reader does not emit light, while the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook Colour emit similar amounts of light. However, the iPad is the brightest of the devices measured.


Each participant read from an iPad before bedtime for five nights in a row, and did the same with a printed book. It was randomly determined whether a participant read from a print book or an iPad first - the results showed that the order did not make a difference. Participants were able to choose their own reading material, as long as it could be considered "leisure" reading and did not contain any images or puzzles, only text.


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Ebola outbreak rages on despite little media coverage

ebola

In October and November 2014, it seemed as if Ebola was the biggest threat facing both the United States and the world at large. Stories of Ebola-infected patients filled newspapers and Internet headlines, and social media was abuzz with people talking about the virus. There was even the brief scare of Ebola spreading on American soil, as multiple patients were treated in U.S. hospitals.

Today, the media landscape in the United States is far different. The top stories are focused more on the civil rights protests taking place around the country and the suspected North Korean involvement in the hacks against Sony than the Ebola virus. That's the nature of the 24/7 news cycle - stories dominate the national conversation for a brief period, are consumed rapidly and then quickly forgotten. In West Africa, however, Ebola is still very much on people's minds.


We're currently still in the midst of the largest Ebola outbreak in recorded history. According to the World Health Organization's latest report, more than 7,300 people have died from the virus during this outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Those three countries have been struggling to contain the virus for numerous reasons, including an insufficient health care infrastructure and improper burial procedures. Sierra Leone's health care workers have been particularly affected in recent months, as Dr. Victor Willoboughy recently became the 11th physician to succumb to the virus in the country. He died last Thursday.


graph ebola headlines

Looking at data and analytics from Google and social media sites like Twitter paints an interesting picture of how American interest in Ebola has slowed in recent weeks. The Google Trend report (above) for the search term "Ebola" shows spikes during October and November, with searches reaching their highest points when Ebola was first brought to Texas in late September. The data then trails off, with few searches at all throughout the month of December. This is vastly different compared with the Google search data from Sierra Leone (below), which has maintained relatively steady interest throughout the past 90 days. It makes sense that regional interest in a topic like Ebola would be higher when the virus directly threatens a particular country, but the U.S. had a high rate of searches before the virus ever arrived on American shores. The data suggests, then, that the American public's interest in the outbreak corresponds with media coverage. Social media networks reflect the same trend, with more than 6,000 tweets about Ebola happening in early October but a steady downward trend ever since. In the past month alone, tweets per day about Ebola have dropped by 20,000.

graph social media interest ebola

ebola tweets per day



Although the U.S. media - both traditional and social - has largely moved away from covering and discussing Ebola, the virus has shown little signs of slowing down
. The threat of patients in the United States becoming infected is no larger or smaller than it was in October, but the fear and discussion surrounding the possibility is essentially no longer there. As with every major news story that dominates public conversation, it takes time for people to realize how things fit in the larger context. Ebola is a strange case because it's still very much a real threat, still causing an unprecedented amount of deaths in West Africa, and still without a cure. Yet it's just not being talked about anymore. Perhaps people have realized that the threat of an actual outbreak in the U.S. similar to the one in West Africa is unlikely, but it's unfortunate that our interest in the serious viral outbreak has been dominated by fear-mongering, media coverage, and the ever-shortening attention span of the U.S. public.

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Seal found 20 miles inland near St Helens, UK


© Liverpool Echo



Seal washed up in a field in Newton-le-Willows near Warrington, Cheshire



A seal had to be rescued from a field more than 20 miles inland - after apparently getting "very, very lost".

The seal, which was discovered in Newton-le-Willows, near St Helens in Merseyside on Monday morning, was likely to have swum up to 50 miles away from its home before clambering into the fenced-off field from a nearby brook, experts said.


It was found in a "distressed" state by a dog-walker at about 9.45am, sparking a rescue operation involving the emergency services and the RSPCA as police warned locals to stay away from the "potentially dangerous" animal.


The creature, believed to be a juvenile male grey seal, was eventually coaxed into a trailer using mackerel as bait and taken to a wildlife centre for checks.


Farm owner Gary Watkinson, who owns the field where the seal was found, said: "We woke up this morning and found a seal in our field, which is quite unusual to say the least.


"We usually have a few ponies and a couple of sheep but never any seals. We're about 20 miles away from the coast.


"It's definitely come up from the brook near here. I tracked its movements and you can see the marks in the soil."


Rachael Fraser of the British Divers Marine Life Rescue, told the the seal seemed "very stressed" and "a little dehydrated".


"There's a grey seal colony near Hilbre Island and that's where we think he's come from - but he's got very, very lost," she said.


From Hilbre Island at the mouth of the Dee Estuary the seal would have had to swim an estimated 50 miles, around the Wirral into the Mersey Estuary and then up a series of brooks to reach the field.



© Mercury Press

A seal was spotted by a member of the public in a field outside the Red Bank Farm Shop



Nicola Watkinson, who works at the nearby Red Bank Farm Shop, said: "Someone rang up this morning and said there's a great big sea lion outside our shop.

"We've got traffic piled up with people looking at it, and there's lots of police here.


"They are trying to get near it but it's not very friendly."


A woman who lives nearby said she saw the seal when she opened her curtains - and assumed it was a pony which had collapsed.


She said: "I thought it must have been hurt. It was right up against next door's fence.


"The poor thing must be so scared."


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SOTT EXCLUSIVE: US-EU sanctions all about regime change in Moscow

Hardly a day goes by without 'sanctions' being mentioned in the news. Some sanctions lifted, other sanctions sanctioned, and yet others considered. It's like some political-media circus marketed as a righteous response to some injustice, human rights violations, cruel regime or whatever lobbyists and PR companies come up with. As with most marketing, it bears little-to-no relation to the truth.
US sanctions

© Latuff



It takes only a quick look to see that all those countries the US has unilaterally slapped sanctions on have been countries portrayed as 'enemies' of the US and where regime change has been either attempted or is strongly desired - Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Cuba, Ukraine, Russia, Syria, China, etc. All are countries that the US happens to be losing control over, hence sanctions were put in place. Places such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain etc. are never considered for sanctions. Neither by the US nor by the EU. The EU for the simple reason that it has no voice of its own and just follows the dictates of Uncle Sam.

You might well object and say that Ukraine has no sanctions despite the questionable extent of US control, and you'd be right. But remember back just a couple of years ago and the Empire of Chaos was very much considering regime change sanctions against Ukraine:



The US Senate has threatened to impose political sanctions on Ukraine over the jailing of former Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, urging Kiev to immediately release the opposition leader.


The Senate adopted a resolution on Saturday that stressed that the Tymoshenko trial was "politically motivated" and urged her immediate release citing her poor health condition.



Tymoshenko



The West were ready to slap sanctions on Ukraine in order to get a jail break for a psychopathic thief, but doesn't think war crimes are a cause for sanctions!



Yes, there's no doubt the pitiful 'gas queen' is sick, but that's probably more due to being a pathological deviant. The US Senate was lining up sanctions but this was just foreplay to the regime change that took place a year later with the help of CIA-affiliated 'Non-Governmental Organizations'. Tymoshenko had been committing massive fraud, for which she was imprisoned. She did not become a billionaire through honest work.

Given all the talk that later charges against Tymoshenko were trumped up or falsified in the Ukraine, it's probably important to know that her ally Lazarenko was prosecuted in the United States, where he was convicted and imprisoned for money laundering and other crimes. Tymoshenko was not charged in that case and she has denied wrongdoing, but she was named explicitly as part of the conspiracy detailed in the indictment.



Lazarenko was prime minister at the time and Tymoshenko was energy minister:

She served as energy minister in the government of Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko. During that two-year period, £120 billion, according to the United Nations, was looted from Ukraine. Mr Lazarenko is now serving a nine-year prison sentence in America for money-laundering, wire fraud and extortion.


According to court documents, Mr Lazarenko allocated Mrs Tymoshenko concessions which gave her a third of Ukraine's gas industry - and about a fifth of its GDP.



£120 billion - $188 billion - is an incredible amount of money! With psychopathic leaders like that, no wonder Ukraine is bankrupt. A psychopath's traits - lying, lack of conscience and spellbinding - and everything always only about themselves, take them far in this corrupted world. It's also no wonder that people morally capable of looting hundreds of billions of dollars become darlings of Western vulture capitalists and Washington's "reality-creators."

Ukraine in December 2014 has the full backing of such types: the Ukrainian military is engaging in "a punitive operation" - a war - against its own people, killing thousands of unarmed civilians with such prohibited weapons as cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs, leading to the destruction of key civilian infrastructure. Oh, and torturing people too.


WAR CRIMES have been committed, as defined by the Nuremburg Trials, and as documented by Russia and the UN, so you ask yourself: where are the sanctions against Ukraine?


Sanctions have not even been considered. Instead Ukraine's US-approved "democratically-(s)elected" leaders have been supported 100% by 'righteous' Western leaders. They have been given lethal and non-lethal aid, tactical support and advice, and have even been handed an EU Association agreement and NATO membership in all but name. They have been encouraged to step up the conflict rather than seek a diplomatic solution. Their leaders have been hanging out with Western leaders and CIA chiefs almost continuously since well before the violent protests started in November last year, when the democratically elected president decided that he needed more time before signing an EU Association agreement.


Sanctions in this conflict have instead been slapped on Russia, which, according to the Organization or Security and Cooperation in Europe, and even a Ukrainian general, has no troops in Ukraine. And which, despite the Western media's continued propaganda, didn't annex Crimea nor shoot down Flight MH 17. Various US officials have openly stated that Russia is a target for regime change. Once one understands that sanctions are just part of the Empire of Chaos tool-kit to force such an outcome, the sanctions paradox becomes clear.




Avatar

Aeneas Georg (Profile)


I'm a train manager and ticket inspector on international train routes in Europe. I've been reading SOTT since 2003 and first joined the editorial team in 2007 after realizing I had to do something about the deteriorating state of our world. I'm particularly interested in 'following the money' to track the machinations of the deceptive ones in high places. I suppose you could say I've taken my chosen profession to a new level, and now with SOTT I'm "inspecting the flows" of people and money in more ways than one.



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