The Raw Story

Saturday, 14 February 2015

U.S. 2015 National Security Strategy: Behind the smokescreen

The National Security Strategy (NSS) has a lot more to it than the media is letting on.

Aside from the rhetoric about American Exceptionalism and the gobbledygook about 'values', the NSS contains some valuable nuggets of information that can provide foresight into the US' upcoming foreign policy moves. While the media has focused on the general Russian, ISIL, and Chinese components of the strategy, there's in fact a lot more to it, and it literally affects the whole world. Some of the measures being proposed are bound to be seen as threatening by other states, and they're expected to surely respond in some way or another.

New Space Race

The document declares that the US "will also develop technologies and tactics to deter and defeat efforts to attack our space systems; enable indications, warning, and attributions of such attacks; and enhance the resiliency of critical U.S. space capabilities." This amounts to the militarization of space, and Russia and China will obviously race to keep up.

More Color Revolutions

Section IV is about "values" and basically outlines the US government's engagement of non-state actors all throughout the world, specifying that "defending democracy and human rights is related to every enduring national interest." Not only will the US "support emerging democracies", but in particular, it will "[provide] direct support for civil society" and "[identify] future leaders in government, business, and civil society and [connect] them to one another." All of this reads like a Color Revolution field guide, and in case there were any doubts about that, another section reminds the world that the US government will "stand by the citizens of countries where the full exercise of democracy is at risk, such as Venezuela."

Global Alliance Systems

They specifically single out the following allies for each region:

Europe:

Current: NATO

Prospective: The US will "steadfastly support the aspirations of countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe toward European and Euro-Atlantic integration" (a euphemism for NATO expansion).

When the US says that it "will support partners such as Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine so they can better work alongside the United States and NATO, as well as provide for their own defense", it's basically talking about NATO interoperability and the expansion of Shadow NATO.

Asia:

Core Members: Japan, South Korea, Australia

Peripheral Members: Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand

Deepening Partnerships: India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia

Middle East:

Israel, Jordan, Gulf Kingdoms

Africa:

African Union

Latin America:

Mainstay: Colombia

New Lynchpins: The NSS says that the US' "opening to Cuba will enhance [its] engagement [its] our own hemisphere" and that it "will advance [its] new opening to Cuba in a way that most effectively promotes the ability of the Cuban people to determine their future freely" (heavy Color Revolution undertones).

It also plans deeper collaboration "in vulnerable countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras" and "remain[s] committed to helping rebuild Haiti and to put it and [its] other Caribbean neighbors on a path to sustainable development."

Essentially, it wants to form a compact triangle of influence between Central America, Colombia, and the Caribbean, likely to use for further projection of influence into the Chinese-friendly areas of Latin America.

All-Out for Africa

The most detailed strategy outlined in the document is for the US' hyper engagement with Africa, which is envisaged as having both economic and military components.

On the economic front, the US wants to use the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), Power Africa, Trade Africa, and Doing Business in Africa campaign initiatives to entrench its influence in the continent.

Should conflicts break out, it wants to "strengthen the operational capacity of regional organizations like the African Union (AU) and broaden the ranks of capable troop-contributing countries, including through the African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership", which is basically a pan-continental version of outsourced military intervention and 'Lead From Behind'.

This strategy comes after the monumental US-Africa Leaders Summit of the past year, where fifty African heads of state gathered in Washington, and amidst increasing rivalry with China over the continent's resources and markets.

Lusting After India

The US has officially set its strategic sights on India, and it's not going to take no for an answer.

"Unlock[ing] the potential of [its] relationship with India" is one of the US' identified "historic opportunities" this century, and it wants to "strengthen [its] strategic and economic partnership with [the country]." In what will obviously be seen as threatening for China, the US "see[s] a strategic convergence with India's Act East policy and [its own] continued implementation of the rebalance to Asia and the Pacific."

The US is clearly lusting for a privileged partnership with India, so the bilateral relationship between the two is definitely something of significance to monitor in the coming years, as any potential Indian pivot to America would endanger the country's historic friendship with Russia and enflame its rivalry with China.

Solidify ASEAN (Against China)

By the US "support[ing] the early conclusion of an effective code of conduct for the South China Sea between China and the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN)", it's saying that it wants ASEAN to group up against China.

Keep in mind that China prefers to deal bilaterally with all Southeast Asian states in resolving the South China Sea issue, and that it already has suspicions that the US is trying to turn the regional grouping into a member of the anti-Chinese 'containment coalition'. The US' insistence that ASEAN unite against China isn't going to be taken well in Beijing.

"Shape The Global Economic Order"

This section makes the case for the TPP and TTIP (the imbalanced trade deals the US is trying to seal with Asia and Europe, respectively), as well as the reform of the World Bank and IMF, which the US plans to use as tools for projecting its economic strength (previously described as "the foundation of [its] national security and a critical source of [its] influence abroad").

It also says that it will'll use the G20 and WTO to aid in this goal, too. The US' emphasis on such institutions is likely motivated by its desire to counter the rise of alternative non-Western-controlled ones such as the BRICS Bank and China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which pose serious challenges to America's economic hegemony.

Bonus: Values Hypocrisy

When the US says that it wants "a lasting political solution" in Syria, it forgets that it's training thousands of individuals dedicated to regime change, and that the Syrian people already voted for their political solution - the re-election of President Bashar Assad.

For as much as the US trumpets its ideals, it admits that "strategic interests require [it] to engage governments that do not share all [its] values" and that it will "speak out clearly for human rights and human dignity in [its] public and private diplomacy".

Ironically, it doesn't seem to have said anything about the fact that Saudi Arabia under King Salman has thus far beheaded more people than ISIL, thus showing that America's pursuit of global power has no moral, ethical, or principled boundaries despite its strong rhetoric.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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BEST OF THE WEB: NATO: Atlantic bridge is falling down... we can only hope

Washington created something called NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 to weld Western Europe firmly to the future foreign policies of Washington, however destructive that might prove to the genuine interests of Germany, France, Italy and the other nations of Europe. In 1986 the twelve nations of the then-European Economic Community modified the 1957 Treaty of Rome and signed the Single European Act. That mandated the creation of a single EEC market by end of 1992, and set forth rules for European Political Cooperation, the forerunner of the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Then on November 9, 1989, an event of historic dimension intervened to disrupt the EEC strategy for a single market. Gorbachev's USSR surrendered the German Democratic Republic to the West. The Cold War was de facto over. Germany would be reunited. The West had apparently won. Most Europeans were jubilant. Many believed the decades of living on the brink of possible nuclear war were over. The emerging Europe seemed proud, confident of the future. NATO was an entity created by Washington, in the words of its first General Secretary, Lord Ismay, to "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."

European Defense Pillar or US NATO?

The Maastricht Treaty, a document with fatal flaws, was introduced at a meeting of the EEC in December 1991. A shocked Helmut Kohl was told by France's Mitterrand and Britain's Margaret Thatcher that Germany must agree to creation of a single currency to control the Bundesbank. That became today's Euro and an independent supranational European Central Bank. It was blackmail as precondition for their accepting German unification. The Germans swallowed hard and signed.

What was little discussed at the time was that the Maastricht Treaty also included a section mandating establishment for the first time of a Common Foreign and Security Policy. The twelve nations signed the treaty and intense discussions were underway of establishing a European defense pillar independent of NATO. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the raison d'être for NATO was gone. The Warsaw Pact had dissolved. Washington had assured Gorbachev that NATO would never extend to the east.

Bush Destroys EU Defense Pillar

US President George H.W. Bush was a man who left a blood-soaked legacy, from his early years in Washington that likely included playing a key role as CIA agent in Dallas Texas in November 22, 1963 in the assassination of JFK. He went on to head the CIA in the 1970's and to lure Saddam Hussein to occupy Kuwait in 1990 to provide the excuse for a bloody war Operation Desert Storm against Iraq.

As President, Bush also set in motion the events that would result in the destruction of Yugoslavia beginning the 1990's, much as Washington is destroying Ukraine today. The central purpose behind that US-incited war that ravaged the Balkans for a decade, was to make clear to the EU nations that NATO, under US Pentagon control, would remain and, in fact, would go east. In effect, he used the Yugoslav war to destroy the emerging threat of an independent EU defense capacity, the EU defense pillar. As US Presidential adviser and Trilateral Commission former founder, Zbigniew Brzezinski openly described Washington's view of Germany, she was a "vassal" of US imperial power, not a sovereign nation.

In 1999 Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic were officially invited in Washington to join NATO as the dismemberment of Yugoslavia was capped by President Bill Clinton's shameful and illegal bombing of Serbia in the so-called Kosovo War that year, with the even more shameful participation of German Foreign Minister, the Hungarian butcher's son, Joschka Fischer.

By 2004 Washington was gleefully bringing NATO to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia. It was also secretly preparing its now infamous Color Revolution coups in Georgia and Ukraine that would being in US-chosen candidates, the corrupt Viktor Yushchenko in Kiev's so-called Orange revolution and Mikhail Saakashvili in the Georgia Rose Revolution. Both presidents pledged to join NATO as part of their campaign. Little wonder that by 2007, as Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld announced the Pentagon would install ballistic missile devices in Poland and the Czech Republic aimed de facto at Russia, Moscow was becoming more than a little uneasy about being choked on its strategic perimeter by NATO and a military alliance that ultimately brought the world's sole superpower to the gates of Moscow.

A German French Ukraine intervention

When the foreign ministers of Germany and France intervened in a desperate last-minute effort to broker a compromise in Kiev on February 21, 2014 to avoid civil war there they explicitly excluded one interested party from the talks—the US Government. They won a compromise that lasted less than 48 hours before CIA-backed snipers in Kiev ignited riot and panic causing the democratically-elected (a forgotten point in the slavish German media version of events) President, Viktor Yanukovich to flee for his life.

The next day, the Obama Administration, led by State Department hawk Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, and legions of CIA operatives inside the Maidan Square protests openly installed their hand-picked puppets, using overt neo-nazis of Pravy Sektor and Svoboda Party to do so. George Friedman, head of Stratfor, a US strategic consultancy whose clients include the Pentagon and CIA, as well as Israeli agencies, told the Russian Kommersant in a December interview, the US-organized coup d'etat in Ukraine was "the most blatant coup in history ."

When Washington spat in the face not only of Germany and France and the EU, but in the face of Russia and of Ukraine itself, by dictating the persons to run the new Kiev coup regime, headed by their choice of Prime Minister, reputed high-ranking Scientologst, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Germany and France swallowed hard. They groveled behind the lead of the Washington warhawks in the Obama Administration. The EU unanimously voted US-dictated sanctions repeatedly against Russia after the March, 2014 referendum on Crimea. German industry protested openly. Merkel's government bowed before NATO and Washington, and the German economy began to go into recession along with the rest of the EU.

Now something highly unusual is taking place. France and Germany are openly again defying Obama's Washington. On the night of February 4, Merkel and French President Hollande quickly decided to fly together to Moscow to meet Russia's Putin. The purpose, as Putin spokesman stated was that the, "leaders of the three states will discuss what specifically the countries can do to contribute to speedy end of the civil war in the southeast of Ukraine, which has escalated in recent days and resulted in many casualties."

The most interesting part of the quick trip is that the "vassal" heads, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande did not ask permission from Washington first according to a French government source. Announcing the spontaneous Moscow trip, Hollande told the press, "Together with Angela Merkel we have decided to take a new initiative ."

More interesting, their "new initiative" comes as US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Kiev meeting President Poroschenko to discuss possible US weapons deliveries to Kiev, Washington's preferred brand of "diplomacy" at the moment. The Moscow talks between Putin, Merkel and Hollande reportedly followed "secret" talks between Paris, Berlin and Moscow.

In early December, Hollande made a surprise visit to Moscow to meet with Putin on Ukraine. At that time the French President declared, "I believe that we have to avoid having more 'walls' that separate us. At this moment we have to be able to overpass the obstacles and find solutions ." Washington was not at all happy with that. There is strong suspicion in certain circles that the January 7 false flag attack on the Paris Satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo was the reply of the Washington-Tel Aviv war faction to the Hollande diplomacy.

The latest joint German-French diplomatic moves as John Kerry was in Kiev discussing US weapons for Ukraine. Le Nouvel Observateur journalist Vincent Jauvert says Hollande and Merkel's suddent decision to talk with Putin in Moscow came as an attempt "to get ahead of the Americans who are trying to impose their solution to the problem on Westerners: a transfer of weapons to Ukraine." He said the two leaders went to Kiev straight after Kerry, as they "distrust the American administration," and want to "present their diplomatic solutions just before US Vice President Joe Biden presents the US plan of sending lethal weapons to Kiev at the Munich security conference on Saturday."

The coming weeks will clearly be decisive for world peace. To parody an old children's song I sang as a kid, Atlantic Bridge is Falling Down, Falling Down, Falling Down...(To be sung to the melody of London Bridge is falling down). It is time for a new, stable bridge in its place, but that won't come from the Munich Security Conference message of Joe Biden.

"New Eastern Outlook".

First appeared:http://bit.ly/1F8xrq4

Public health scientists and a government committee working on nutritional advice receive funding from the very companies whose products are widely held to be responsible for the obesity crisis, an investigation by reveals today.

Findings from the special report raise important questions about the potential for bias and conflict of interest among public health experts as the UK faces a growing obesity epidemic.

Recipients of research funding from sugar and other related industries include members of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), which is currently updating official advice on carbohydrates consumption, and researchers working for the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition Research unit (HNR).

HNR scientists have received research funding and funding in kinds from companies including Coca-Cola, Mars, Nestlé, Sainsbury's, the Institute of Brewing and Distilling, Weight Watchers International and others.

As a former HNR researcher, Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at the University of Oxford and chair of the government's Responsibility Deal Food Network, received support for her work from Coca-Cola, Sainsbury's, Cereal Partners and Rank Hovis McDougal, among others. Between 2008 and 2010, Coca-Cola donated £194,000 to one research study on which she was the principal investigator.

Listed as sole or co-principal investigator on 10 industry supported research projects between 2004 and 2015, Jebb attracted funding worth £1.37 million to the HNR unit. Some of the companies that supported her work at HNR, including Unilever and Coca-Cola, are now members of the Responsibility Deal, which Jebb chairs.

Jebb told that all of her research was analysed and reported independently of industry, and added: "Everything I do, whether in my research or as chair of the responsibility deal, is to try to improve public health."

Similarly, research carried out by members of the SACN has been supported by companies including PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Mars and Nestlé.

An analysis of the annual declarations of interest by SACN members shows that between 2001 and 2012 there was an average of 45 declarations each year involving companies from the food, drinks and pharmaceutical industries.

Of the 40 scientists affiliated with SACN between 2001 and 2012, only 13 have had no interests to declare.

David Stuckler, professor of political economy and sociology at Oxford University, says the engagement of companies such as Coca-Cola with the work of public health organisations "falls into the category of efforts to crowd out public regulation, to try to weaken public health by working with it."

The BMJ also reports evidence that the Responsibility Deal is not working. Not only do industry's pledges made under the deal not add up to the government's target of a 5% reduction in calorie consumption, but the UK's most comprehensive survey of shopping habits shows that between 2006 and 2014 the number of calories in the national weekly shop has increased by almost 12 %.

Journal Reference:

J. Gornall. Sugar: spinning a web of influence. , 2015; 350 (feb11 20): h231 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.h231

Drawing inspiration from the early 1900's comic of the same name, a recent research article entitled "Dreams of the rarebit fiend: Food and diet as instigators of bizarre and disturbing dreams" investigates the common belief that foods can influence our nightly dreams (Nielsen & Powell, 2015). The comic was known for its depiction of a particular spicy cheese dish, Welsh rarebit, as the continual culprit to the nocturnal misadventures of its protagonist. Thus begging the question, could cheese really be to blame for disturbing dreams? Apparently, this belief is so wide-held that in 2005 the British Cheese Board conducted one of the only studies to date attempting to empirically assess the effects of food on dreams, in an effort to absolve cheese from its nightmarish image. That this singular report was both unpublished and biased is reason enough for further inquiry. Hence, the above-mentioned study is a long-awaited scientific foray into the realm of food and dreams.

The study itself used a variety of questionnaires aimed at assessing food-dependent dreaming, along with general sleeping, eating, and dreaming experiences in 396 first year Canadian University students averaging 21.5 years of age. A 3-item open-ended questionnaire was used to specifically probe participants' beliefs of whether certain foods influence dreaming. The first question asked whether participants had ever noticed food leading to disturbing dreams, and if so to identify which foods, while the second question asked about bizarre dreams. The third question asked participants whether eating late at night had ever affected their dreams, and if so, how.

The authors found that 68 of 382 (17.8%) participants claimed that either particular foods or eating late at night influenced their dreams. Of those who believed food could influence dreams, the most frequent food mentioned as causing both disturbing (44%) and bizarre (39%) dreams was, in fact, dairy, including cheese, milk, and ice cream. Spicy foods were the next most common food mentioned as causing disturbing dreams (19%), though sweet foods were associated more with bizarre (27%) than disturbing dreams (13%). Further, 26 subjects reported that eating late affected dreaming; eating late was most commonly associated with disturbing or nightmarish dreams (47.2%), but was also associated with bizarre dreams (22.2%).

What this all boils down to, it would seem, is that a spicy cheese dish before bedtime could be the perfect recipe for a nightmare, just as illustrated by the comic. Could Welsh rarebit be the fiend after all?

Nonetheless, the authors are more cautious in interpreting their results. In lieu of over-speculation, they provide several possible explanations for their findings and encourage future lab-based research to more stringently assess causal links between food consumption and dream content.

The most tempting interpretation, of course, is that food really does impact dreaming. This is perfectly reasonable when you consider that the nutrients in food can affect many things such as mood or alertness during the day, or even sleep quality at night. In this case, the changes would most likely be of a general nature, perhaps increases in dream affect or vividness, due to general effects of food on mood and cognition. If a dash of cayenne pepper can perk you up after a meal, why shouldn't it also affect your dreams?

A related possibility is that food influences dreams indirectly due to poor metabolism or digestive intolerances. For instance, eating too late at night could negatively affect metabolism and sleep quality, thence seeping into your dreams. And of course dairy, most often cited as altering dreams, is a very common dietary sensitivity. Perhaps that bad dream is really just an upset stomach yelling at you to wake up!

On the other hand, the perceived link between food and dreams may actually be a false belief held by people, perhaps due to long standing cultural folklore. These beliefs could then be reinforced by individuals misattributing their own bizarre and disturbing dreams to food. For example, if local folklore says that pizza will give me nightmares, and one morning after having eaten pizza I awaken with a nightmare, I will more likely attribute that nightmare to having eaten pizza. Further, people are more likely to remember what they ate if it was close to bedtime, so eating late may increase chances of misattributing dream experiences to food.

Thus, while the authors did find evidence that people believe food can instigate bizarre or disturbing dreams, most commonly accusing dairy, whether these dreams are indeed caused by "the power of cheese," or simply based in misheld beliefs, remains to be seen.

Reference:

Nielsen, Tore & Powell, Russell A. (2015). Dreams of the rarebit fiend: Food and diet as instigators of bizarre and disturbing dreams. .

There is nothing trendy about not vaccinating your child...

Not vaccinating your child is not something you take lightly as a parent. The bombardment of vaccine propaganda is in your face everywhere you look and some are scared to even let others know that they don't vaccinate because they don't want their children to face the stigma of going against the crowd. Going to the doctors can be a battleground where you are berated and belittled for not conforming to the status quo. The simple act of going to the emergency room because your child broke their arm always starts with the question "Is your child up to date on their immunisations?" and you think to yourself - here we go again!

So there really is nothing trendy about not vaccinating your child...

But do you want to know what IS really trendy right now? It is the demonising and current witch-hunt against parents who choose not to vaccinate their children.

The world has become a bully's wonderland right now. You can harass and be hateful towards 'anti vax' parents and no one will even consider it to be bullying.

You can tell them how crap they are as parents!

You can tell them to go and take their disease-ridden brats away from your [fully-vaccinated] children!

You can tell them how they are stupid, selfish, moronic, irresponsible, tin foil hat wearing, rabid 'anti vaxxers' who are child abusers and whose children should be taken away from them!

You can even tell them that you hope that they and their children die to clean out the stupid from the gene pool!

No one will even pull you up for those cruel and despicable comments because 'anti vaxxers' deserve it, right?

WRONG!

No loving parent and especially their children, deserves to be treated like lepers and outcasts. Whether they vaccinate or not is irrelevant, and frankly I am astounded at the hate speech that has been allowed to flow freely since the Disneyland measles outbreak. (for example, Jail 'anti-vax' parents and Measles Can Kill, And It's Spreading. Sue Parents Who Didn't Vaccinate? Absolutely

You cannot shame a parent in to harming their child and yet, that is what you are asking us (especially the parents of vaccine injured children) to do.

All the bullying, vilifying, suing, incarcerating or (completely illegally) making their names and addresses publicly available to the world, will not change a thing. By the way Joe Matthews (the author of the afore-mentioned article), the whole sticker idea to show who the outcasts of society are? That's already been done before. The last time, they were made to wear yellow stars. I guess tyrannical minds think alike.

It also shows how very little you know about parents who choose not to vaccinate. Let's get one thing straight. I do not choose to inject pharmaceutical products in to my children's bodies anymore because vaccines hurt them and caused not just "a week of hell", but a lifetime of hellish challenges.

I don't blame others for my children's health issues, I realise that we are all just trying to do the best we can for our children. Anyway I am too busy trying to heal my children's bodies to run around pointing fingers.

My choice to not be informed about what I was injecting in to my babies caused them numerous health issues and robbed three of my children of ever being able to live an independent life, of being able to fall in love or able to have a family of their own and those facts will haunt me for the rest of my days.

There is nothing in this world you could do to me to make me forget this no matter how much I want to, because you cannot the damage done to your child.

I cannot unsee having to search for my child when she absconded from my parent's back yard and then find her running down the middle of a busy street surrounded by cars beeping their horns and yelling at her to get off the road, because she has no sense of danger.

I cannot unsee waking up in the early hours of the morning to see my other daughter covered head to toe in her own faeces that she ate while smearing it all over the walls.

I cannot unsee my son trying so hard to speak so that he could play with the other children in the playground but all he could do was scream, till they ran away.

I cannot unsee the vast difference in health between my vaccinated and unvaccinated children and not know that it is my fault.

There is nothing you could do that would ever make me vaccinate them again. I would rather die than see them be hurt. Luckily I have found that there is a better way to raise healthy children and my children have thrived because of it. It is called taking responsibility for the health of your own children. Learning how to naturally support and boost their immune systems and not expect other parents to put their healthy children at risk of injury or death just because you believe that that will protect yours.

You want to know the most important reason why I and many other parents don't vaccinate their child? We do it because we love them, just like you love your child and no amount of legislation or shaming tactics will ever overcome that.

Vaccine Liberation Army reports:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D) and Representative Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), have proposed federal legislation that would for the first time impose Federal, as opposed to State, vaccine mandates to attend an educational program. The legislators' bill entitled A Head Start on Vaccinations Act would require all children enrolled in Head Start to get all of the vaccinations recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) according to the CDC's timetable. There would be no exemptions for religious or personnel beliefs. Read More...and Take A ction

Indeed, reports the ladies' plan to introduce the federal bill next week. Alto tried to exercise her comedic abilities when she said, "This bill is a 'booster shot' for our nation's vaccine policies and will mitigate the spread of deadly disease." Get it?

They swooned "the genius" of American scientists for creating vaccines to eradicate polio and emphasize that this bill is necessary making sure over a million "of our children" are protected from deadly disease. But repeating the term "deadly disease" does not wipe out the fact that zero people have died from measles since the early 2000s, that many of the people who got measles from California were vaccinated, and that 108 people that we know of have died after getting measles vaccines. And the tragic results of the polio vaccine are a whole other story. And another.

Medical exemptions would still be allowed under the federal bill, but those are extremely rare and difficult to obtain.

Since writing about California's proposal to eliminate any school children vaccine waivers for personal beliefs - it turns out, multiple states have either passed, or are in the process of moving similar bills through. Many of them surround tightening exemptions by requiring the parents to submit to a medical consult (intimidation, warning) before being allowed to opt their children out. Again, this is setting the stage for things to come. Exemptions were always viewed as "loopholes" from the start, with time limits set to "close the loop."

And while New York has taken steps to expand exemptions, a federal bill can easily undo all of that.

Isn't it interesting how an outbreak of measles, now on its way out in California, could have so many lawmakers at the helm ready to "take swift (permanent) action"? The infamous historical battle cry that precedes the complete loss of human rights and gains of abuse: We have to do something NOW! Because of A we must do B - it's for the children! They sure do write quickly when they need to accomplish something.

One woman writing for Thinking Mom's Revolution summarized some reasons why proposals for such new mandates are unsurprising, and why so many people never get to hear important medical information - my emphasis added:

One word: Profit. As of 1988, vaccine makers and the doctors who administer vaccines bear no liability for vaccine injury ⁽²³⁾ . They cannot be held accountable by law for adverse events from vaccination. In fact, the entire adverse event reporting system (VAERS) is voluntary! This means that the more aggressive our vaccine schedule, the more profitable it is for vaccine makers. But what about the Centers for Disease Control, don't they direct the vaccines our children Please note that the CDC uses worldwide disease data to formulate our policies, which makes no sense at all. How could one possibly compare a malnourished child living in unsanitary conditions and subsequently exposed to illness to a child exposed to that same illness in a first-world country? I invite parents to take a look at the resumes of some of the heads of pharmaceutical companies and members of the CDC like this one ⁽²⁴⁾ . One can very clearly see those in charge of vaccine policy have a dangerous conflict of interest with those who profit from that policy. Remember, pharmaceutical companies contributed $34 million dollars in campaign funds in 2014 ⁽²⁵⁾ . It would behoove anyone attempting office these days to err on the side of 'big pharma.'

What a sweet gig! As Vaccine Liberation Army points out, there are over 200 new vaccines in the pipeline - do parents really want to risk losing the ability to refuse future potentially mandated vaccines? By corralling the public, and closing all exits, the government in tandem with pharmaceutical corps and their medical community underlings would have carte blanche over your body.

Add to that, the fact that nearly all media - currently spewing forceful vaccine tripe - in the U.S. is owned by "The Big Six" corporations. Who are some of their sponsors? And if Comcast finally succeeds in the planned merger with Time Warner, wouldn't that take our big six down to "The Big Five"?

Media outlets have thrown any thin veil of credibility out the window. For instance, USA Today introducing the idea of jailing or suing parents for not vaccinating their children by posing it as a question in a headline. Before, no one would have thought to ask that. Even doctors with all of their prestige, cannot "opt-out" of playing ball. "Revoke the license of any doctor who opposes vaccination" says a widely-circulated op-ed. Those media polls are to gauge YOU - and your reactions. So, it should come as no surprise that people who were merely in the thinking, searching, and health conscious kind of way, suddenly find themselves painted as a fabricated neo-conspiracy theorist.

Marxists like to comment on "the tyranny of choice" for consumers. Don't you mean the illusion of choice? An American can barely choose what information they are allowed to hear, let alone a medical procedure they want - or don't want.

About the author

Heather Callaghan is a natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work at NaturalBlaze.com and ActivistPost.com.

Conceding to a federal lawsuit, the US government agreed to release a 1987 Defense Department report detailing US assistance to Israel in its development of a hydrogen bomb, which skirted international standards.

The 386-page report, "Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations," likens top Israeli nuclear facilities to the Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories that were key in the development of US nuclear weaponry.

Israelis are "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level," said the report, the release of which comes before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's March 3 speech in front of the US Congress in which he will oppose any deal that allows Iran's legal nuclear program to persist.

"I am struck by the degree of cooperation on specialized war making devices between Israel and the US," Roger Mattson, a formerly of the Atomic Energy Commission's technical staff, said of the report, according to Courthouse News.

The report's release earlier this week was initiated by a Freedom of Information Act request made three years ago by Grant Smith, director of the Washington think tank Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy. Smith filed a lawsuit in September in order to compel the Pentagon to substantially address the request.

"It's our basic position that in 1987 the Department of Defense discovered that Israel had a nuclear weapons program, detailed it and then has covered it up for 25 years in violation of the Symington and Glenn amendments, costing taxpayers $86 billion," Smith said during a hearing in late 2014 before Judge Tanya Chutkan in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Smith described in his federal court complaint how those federal laws were violated by the US in the midst of Israel's budding nuclear program.

"The Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits most U.S. foreign aid to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards," Smith wrote.

"The Glenn Amendment of 1977 calls for an end to U.S. foreign aid to countries that import nuclear reprocessing technology."

In November, Judge Chutkan asked government lawyers resistant to the report's release why it had taken years for the government to prepare the report for public consumption.

"I'd like to know what is taking so long for a 386-page document. The document was located some time ago," Chutkan said, according to Courthouse News Service.

"I've reviewed my share of documents in my career. It should not take that long to review that document and decide what needs to be redacted."

image from the report “Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations"

The government's representatives in the case -- Special Assistant US Attorney Laura Jennings and Defense Department counsel Mark Herrington -- initially said confidentiality agreements required a "line by line" review of the Defense Department's report. They later shifted, arguing that its release is optional and not mandatory, as "diplomatic relations dictate that DoD seeks Israel's review."

Smith and the US agreed that the government would redact sections of the report on NATO countries, though the passages on Israel remain intact.

"The capability of SOREQ [Soreq Nuclear Research Center] to support SDIO [Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, or "Star Wars"] and nuclear technologies is almost an exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories," said the report, written by the Institute for Defense Analysis for the Department of Defense.

"SOREQ and Dimona/Beer Sheva facilities are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories...[and have] the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication."

The report's authors Edwin Townsley and Clarence Robinson found that Israel to had Category 1 capability regarding its anti-tactical ballistic missile and "Star Wars" weapons programs.

"As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. [w]as in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960," the report said. "It should be noted that the Israelis are developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs."

In a statement on the report's release, Smith said Thursday, "Informal and Freedom of Information Act release of such information is rare. Under two known gag orders -- punishable by imprisonment -- U.S. security-cleared government agency employees and contractors may not disclose that Israel has a nuclear weapons program."

Hamas rockets target #Israel Dimona nuclear reactor#IsraelUnderFire http://bit.ly/1D6l0dU @http://bit.ly/1Cqyqfx http://bit.ly/1CqyqvN

— Hotpage (@HotpageInfo) July 10, 2014

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's planned address before the US Congress was controversially arranged by Republican leadership without consultation of congressional Democrats or the White House.

The speech will occur weeks before Netanyahu will seek reelection, and is to center around his opposition to any agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, a deal the US -- while levying heavy sanctions on Tehran -- has pursued despite protests from its preeminent ally in the Middle East, Israel.

Tehran's nuclear program is legal under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty , to which Israel is one of the few United Nations members that is not a signatory.

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