Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Edible Vaccines and Flying Syringes

When genetically modified foods were first introduced, the biotech industry hailed tomatoes that were frost resistant and round-up ready crops. Now, there is a further development in biotech that has received little attention in the mainstream media. Serious environmental and health concerns still surround GM food safety, but new technologies are being developed to turn foods into vaccine delivery systems. While there may be positive angles to this technology, we must take into account the long term goals of the establishment, which is already invested in the research and development of edible vaccine technology.

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Charles Arntzen, who served as President of the Boyce Thompson Institute, suggested using bananas as edible vaccines in developing countries.


Edible vaccines

In 1996 the Rockefeller Foundation supplied grant money for early research on edible vaccines. The $58,000 grant, given to the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research at Cornell University, was aimed at developing and transferring edible vaccine technology to developing countries. Cornell University reports,

“Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Inc. at Cornell now will begin exchanging new vaccine information with scientists in developing countries, starting with Mexico, thanks to a new Rockefeller Foundation grant.

Gomez-Lim and his American colleagues will try to verify the value of “edible” vaccines and to begin educational efforts in Mexico to facilitate the rapid adoption of these vaccines for safe and effective use.”

Charles Arntzen, who served as President of the Boyce Thompson Institute, can be heard here explaining the use of bananas as edible vaccines in developing countries.

In 1998 the Boyce Thompson Institute became the first to develop genetically modified potatoes which were successfully tested on human subjects. “The potatoes were developed through a process known as transgenic implantation, in which a gene is transferred from one species to another. In this case the gene for a bacterial antigen — the protein that stimulates the production of protective antibodies — was inserted into the potato plant cells,” reports BTI.

The article continues,

“Children of developing countries may not be the only beneficiaries of this new technology. Says Arntzen: ‘American kids will also probably prefer being vaccinated by an edible vaccine rather than by a needle.’”

Edible vaccines - which have been given scant coverage in the mainstream media - received attention in the wake of the recent swine flu outbreak. Iowa State University research “…may someday allow pigs and humans to get a flu vaccination simply by eating corn or corn products,” reports ISU. “The corn vaccine would also work in humans when they eat corn or even corn flakes, corn chips, tortillas or anything that contains corn, said Harris.”

The prospect of delivering vaccines through food inevitably raises the issue of mass medication. Calls for statins and lithium to be placed in tap water have recently been made in the name of promoting “good mental and physical health.” A recent AP report stated that lithium, along with hundreds of other active pharmaceutical ingredients have already been found in drinking water. Mosquitoes are also being turned into mass medication systems. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently gave a $100,000 grant to a Japanese research program aimed at genetically engineering mosquitoes to act as “flying syringes” to deliver vaccines.

The Rockefeller family - and in turn the entire Anglo-American establishment - has a history of consistently supporting population control and reduction. David Rockefeller, Bill Gates, and other billionaire philanthropists met in secret in New York City recently to discuss this very issue. The meeting was secret, according to an attendee, because “…anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government.” Research in the realm of biotech and edible vaccines, as openly stated in prominent medical journals, will aid this long term agenda. This same group, primarily the Rockefeller family and their various foundations, was instrumental in shaping twentieth-century science, from the molecular sciences to social engineering. Dr. Lily E. Kay’s seminal work, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology, documents this fact.

Past incidents

In 1989 research was conducted by the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi India into the use of hCG conjugated Tetanus and Diphtheria vaccines as a method of birth control. The research discussed the use of Tetanus and Diphtheria ‘carriers’ to bypass the immune system and deliver the female hormone called human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG). While hCG is required to maintain pregnancy, the injection of hCG bound to Tetanus Toxoid triggers an auto-immune response against hCG. The Rockefeller Foundation is listed in the document as giving grants for the research.

On November 4, 1996 the publication Vaccine Weekly carried an article titled “Study Suggests Women Were Injected with Contaminated Tetanus Vaccine.” The article details an investigation that was carried out by the Philippine Medical Association into the discovery of hCG in tetanus vaccines. Similar incidents have also occurred in Thailand.

Further evidence is found in a 1995 BBC documentary titled “The Human Laboratory”. The film covered the Philippines Tetanus hCG controversy in depth. The transcript for the program states,

NARRATOR: There are several research programmes around the world testing the contraceptive vaccine linked to tetanus which creates an immune response. The vaccine contains Beta HCG, part of a hormone necessary for pregnancy. This Beta HCG stimulates antibodies so that if a woman’s egg becomes fertilised her own natural HCG will be destroyed and pregnancy will not occur.

MARY PILAR VERZOSA: I began to suspect that here in the Philippines that’s exactly what’s happening. They have laced the tetanus toxoid vials with the Beta HCG. The only way I could make sure that they hadn’t done that was to examine the vials, and how to get a hold of those vials was going to be a problem. Who was I to collect them from the health centres?

NARRATOR: Sister Mary was helped through the Catholic network. A friend who worked in a health clinic removed the vials unnoticed. The nuns packed them with ice and sent them to an independent laboratory.

MARY PILAR VERZOSA: Oh boy that was really something when this came out of my fax machine. Report on HCG concentration in vaccine vials. Three out of those four vials registered positive for HCG, so my suspicions are affirmed that here in our country they are not only giving plain tetanus toxoid vaccination to our women, they are also giving anti-fertility.

“A socioculturally acceptable alternative”

Word has spread in the developing world of these documented cases, but these stories are dismissed as rumor by the United Nations and World Health Organization. Vaccination has been met with increased resistance across many developing countries. UNICEF reports from Ethiopia that, “All sorts of misguided rumours go round that the injections will sterilize them or harm them in some way. But here, the village elders are on board. They are here, encouraging the women to come along.”

Edible vaccines, according to the Indian Journal of Medical Microbiology, will be a more socioculturally acceptable alternative to needles. In other words, people will be less resistant to eating a mundane banana than taking a shot in the arm. The Journal states that new edible vaccine technology may serve a dual purpose of birth control. As stated,

“Edible vaccines hold great promise as a cost-effective, easy-to-administer, easy-to-store, fail-safe and socioculturally readily acceptable vaccine delivery system, especially for the poor developing countries… A variety of delivery systems have been developed. Initially thought to be useful only for preventing infectious diseases, it has also found application in prevention of autoimmune diseases, birth control, cancer therapy, etc.”

The journal points out that, “There is growing acceptance of transgenic crops in both industrial and developing countries,” and that, “Resistance to genetically modified foods may affect the future of edible vaccines.” Indeed, GM foods are increasingly being presented as a solution to world hunger and food crises.

Will edible vaccines be used as a tool for birth control in the developing countries? The ability to do so has been demonstrated, and the agenda for population reduction and control has been admitted by the billionaire philanthropists who’s foundations are involved with developing the technology.

Workers Cut Fed Black Fiber, Black SUVs Arrive Moments Later

This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of Tysons Corner a few years ago hit a fiber optic cable no one knew was there.This part doesn’t: Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, “You just hit our line.”

Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn’t say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center on Spring Hill Road. But Georgelas assumed that he was dealing with the federal government and that the cable in question was “black” wire — a secure communications line used for some of the nation’s most secretive intelligence-gathering operations.

“The construction manager was shocked,” Georgelas recalled. “He had never seen a line get cut and people show up within seconds. Usually you’ve got to figure out whose line it is. To garner that kind of response that quickly was amazing.”

Black wire is one of the looming perils of the massive construction that has come to Tysons, where miles and miles of secure lines are thought to serve such nearby agencies as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center and, a few miles away in McLean, the Central Intelligence Agency. After decades spent cutting through red tape to begin work on a Metrorail extension and the widening of the Capital Beltway, crews are now stirring up tons of dirt where the black lines are located.

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Scientists to simulate supernovas with world’s largest laser

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been opened late last week. The world’s largest laser generation engine includes 192 ultraviolet laser beams that can be combined to an energy level of four million joules – enough to simulate temperatures and pressures that lead to stellar explosions.

Scheduled to go in operation in 2010, the NIF is claimed to enable a wide range of experiments never before possible on earth. The 10-story building houses a massive laser amplification structure that sends laser pulses with a length of 100 trillionths to 25 billionths of a second into a target chamber that scientists believe will offer more insight in the secrets of our universe, nuclear explosions and future energy technology.

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A low-energy pulse is split and carried on optical fibers to 48 preamplifier modules for initial amplification and beam conditioning. In the preamplifiers, the energy is increased by a factor of ten billion to a few joules. The 48 beams from the 48 preamplifiers are then split into four beams each for injection into the 192 main laser amplifier. Through a complex amplification system, and a distance of more than 1000 feet, each of the 192 beams is amplified to more than 20,000 joules.

Mirrors in two ten-story steel structures known as "switchyards" rearrange the parallel, linear array of the beams into a spherical configuration so that the beams can be focused into the center of the target chamber. Targets within the chamber, the NIF said, are located “with a precision that is measured in fractions of the thickness of a sheet of paper.”

“More energy will be produced by this ‘ignition’ process than the amount of laser energy required to start it. This is the long-sought goal of ‘energy gain’ that has been the goal of fusion researchers for more than half a century. NIF’s success will be a scientific breakthrough of historic significance – the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting, duplicating on earth the processes that power the stars,” said NIF director Edward Moses.

Daniel Estulin’s “True Story of the Bilderberg Group” and What They May Be Planning Now

For over 14 years, Daniel Estulin has investigated and researched the Bilderberg Group’s far-reaching influence on business and finance, global politics, war and peace, and control of the world’s resources and its money.

His book, “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group,” was published in 2005 and is now updated in a new 2009 edition. He states that in 1954, “the most powerful men in the world met for the first time” in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, “debated the future of the world,” and decided to meet annually in secret. They called themselves the Bilderberg Group with a membership representing a who’s who of world power elites, mostly from America, Canada, and Western Europe with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others - some quietly by some accounts like Barack Obama and many of his top officials.

Always well represented are top figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet, and Bank of England’s Mervyn King.

For over half a century, no agenda or discussion topics became public nor is any press coverage allowed. The few invited fourth estate attendees and their bosses are sworn to secrecy. Nonetheless, Estulin undertook “an investigative journey” that became his life’s work. He states:

“Slowly, one by one, I have penetrated the layers of secrecy surrounding the Bilderberg Group, but I could not have done this withot help of ‘conscientious objectors’ from inside, as well as outside, the Group’s membership.” As a result, he keeps their names confidential.

Whatever its early mission, the Group is now “a shadow world government….threaten(ing) to take away our right to direct our own destinies (by creating) a disturbing reality” very much harming the public’s welfare. In short, Bilderbergers want to supplant individual nation-state sovereignty with an all-powerful global government, corporate controlled, and check-mated by militarized enforcement.

“Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe (and America) say what they never dare say in public.”

Early in its history, Bilderbergers decided “to create an ‘Aristocracy of purpose’ between Europe and the United States (to reach consensus to rule the world on matters of) policy, economics, and (overall) strategy.” NATO was essential for their plans - to ensure “perpetual war (and) nuclear blackmail” to be used as necessary. Then proceed to loot the planet, achieve fabulous wealth and power, and crush all challengers to keep it.

Along with military dominance, controlling the world’s money is crucial for with it comes absolute control as the powerful 19th century Rothschild family understood. As the patriarch Amschel Rothschild once said: “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.”

Bilderbergers comprise the world’s most exclusive club. No one buys their way in. Only the Group’s Steering Committee decides whom to invite, and in all cases participants are adherents to One World Order governance run by top power elites.

According to Steering Committee rules:

“the invited guests must come alone; no wives, girlfriends, husbands or boyfriends. Personal assistants (meaning security, bodyguards, CIA or other secret service protectors) cannot attend the conference and must eat in a separate hall. (Also) The guests are explicitly forbidden from giving interviews to journalists” or divulge anything that goes on in meetings.

Host governments provide overall security to keep away outsiders. One-third of attendees are political figures. The others are from industry, finance, academia, labor and communications.

Meeting procedure is by Chatham House Rules letting attendees freely express their views in a relaxed atmosphere knowing nothing said will be quoted or revealed to the public. Meetings “are always frank, but do not always conclude with consensus.”

Membership consists of annual attendees (around 80 of the world’s most powerful) and others only invited occasionally because of their knowledge or involvement in relevant topics. Those most valued are asked back, and some first-timers are chosen for their possible later usefulness.

Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, for example, who attended in 1991. “There, David Rockefeller told (him) why the North American Free Trade Agreement….was a Bilderberg priority and that the group needed him to support it. The next year, Clinton was elected president,” and on January 1, 1994 NAFTA took effect. Numerous other examples are similar, including who gets chosen for powerful government, military and other key positions.

Bilderberg Objectives

The Group’s grand design is for “a One World Government (World Company) with a single, global marketplace, policed by one world army, and financially regulated by one ‘World (Central) Bank’ using one global currency.” Their “wish list” includes:

– “one international identify (observing) one set of universal values;”

– centralized control of world populations by “mind control;” in other words, controlling world public opinion;

– a New World Order with no middle class, only “rulers and servants (serfs),” and, of course, no democracy;

– “a zero-growth society” without prosperity or progress, only greater wealth and power for the rulers;

– manufactured crises and perpetual wars;

– absolute control of education to program the public mind and train those chosen for various roles;

– “centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies;” one size fits all globally;

– using the UN as a de facto world government imposing a UN tax on “world citizens;”

– expanding NAFTA and WTO globally;

– making NATO a world military;

– imposing a universal legal system; and
– a global “welfare state where obedient slaves will be rewarded and non-conformists targeted for extermination.”

Secret Bilderberg Partners

In the US, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is dominant. One of its 1921 founders, Edward Mandell House, was Woodrow Wilson’s chief advisor and rumored at the time to be the nation’s real power from 1913 - 1921. On his watch, the Federal Reserve Act passed in December 1913 giving money creation power to bankers, and the 16th Amendment was ratified in February creating the federal income tax to provide a revenue stream to pay for government debt service.

From its beginnings, CFR was committed to “a one-world government based on a centralized global financing system….” Today, CFR has thousands of influential members (including important ones in the corporate media) but keeps a low public profile, especially regarding its real agenda.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called it a “front organization (for) the heart of the American Establishment.” It meets privately and only publishes what it wishes the public to know. Its members are only Americans.

The Trilateral Commission (discussed below) is a similar group that “brings together global power brokers.” Founded by David Rockefeller, he’s also a leading Bilderberger and CFR Chairman Emeritus, organizations he continues to finance and support.

Their past and current members reflect their power:

– nearly all presidential candidates of both parties;

– leading senators and congressmen;

– key members of the fourth estate and their bosses; and
– top officials of the FBI, CIA, NSA, defense establishment, and other leading government agencies, including state, commerce, the judiciary and treasury.

For its part, “CFR has served as a virtual employment agency for the federal government under both Democrats and Republicans.” Whoever occupies the White House, “CFR’s power and agenda” have been unchanged since its 1921 founding.

It advocates a global superstate with America and other nations sacrificing their sovereignty to a central power. CFR founder Paul Warburg was a member of Roosevelt’s “brain trust.” In 1950, his son, James, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We shall have world government whether or not you like it - by conquest or consent.”

Later at the 1992 Bilderberg Group meeting, Henry Kissinger said:

“Today, Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil….individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by their world government.”

CFR planned a New World Order before 1942, and the “UN began with a group of CFR members called the Informal Agenda Group.” They drafted the original UN proposal, presented it to Franklin Roosevelt who announced it publicly the next day. At its 1945 founding, CFR members comprised over 40 of the US delegates.

According to Professor G. William Domhoff, author of Who Rules America, the CFR operates in “small groups of about twenty-five, who bring together leaders from the six conspirator categories (industrialists, financiers, ideologues, military, professional specialists - lawyers, medical doctors, etc. - and organized labor) for detailed discussions of specific topics in the area of foreign affairs.” Domhoff added:

“The Council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council action stimulated by government from autonomous actions. (Its) most important sources of income are leading corporations and major foundations.” The Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations to name three, and they’re directed by key corporate officials.

Dominant Media Partners

Former CBS News president Richard Salant (1961 - 64 and 1966 - 79) explained the major media’s role: “Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”

CBS and other media giants control everything we see, hear and read - through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, films, and large portions of the Internet. Their top officials and some journalists attend Bilderberg meetings - on condition they report nothing.

The Rockefeller family wields enormous power, even though its reigning patriarch, David, will be 94 on June 12 and surely near the end of his dominance. However, for years “the Rockefellers (led by David) gained great influence over the media. (With it) the family gained sway over public opinion. With the pulse of public opinion, they gained deep influence in politics. And with this politics of subtle corruption, they are taking control of the nation” and now aim for total world domination.

The Bilderberger-Rockefeller scheme is to make their views “so appealing (by camouflaging them) that they become public policy (and can) pressure world leaders into submitting to the ‘needs of the Masters of the Universe.’ ” The “free world press” is their instrument to disseminate “agreed-upon propaganda.”

CFR Cabinet Control

“The National Security Act of 1947 established the office of Secretary of Defense.” Since then, 14 DOD secretaries have been CFR members.

Since 1940, every Secretary of State, except James Byrnes, has been a CFR member and/or Trilateral Commission (TC) one.

For the past 80 years, “Virtually every key US National Security and Foreign Policy Advisor has been a CFR member.

Nearly all top generals and admirals have been CFR members.

Many presidential candidates were/are CFR members, including Herbert Hoover, Adlai Stevenson, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter (also a charter TC member), George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and John McCain.

Numerous CIA directors were/are CFR members, including Richard Helmes, James Schlesinger, William Casey, William Webster, Robert Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutsch, George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and Leon Panetta.

Many Treasury Secretaries were/are CFR members, including Douglas Dillon, George Schultz, William Simon, James Baker, Nicholas Brady, Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin, Henry Paulson, and Tim Geithner.

When presidents nominate Supreme Court candidates, the CFR’s “Special Group, Secret Team” or advisors vet them for acceptability. Presidents, in fact, are told who to appoint, including designees to the High Court and most lower ones.

Programming the Public Mind

According to sociologist Hadley Cantril in his 1967 book, The Human Dimension - Experiences in Policy Research:

Government “Psycho-political operations are propaganda campaigns designed to create perpetual tension and to manipulate different groups of people to accept the particular climate of opinion the CFR seeks to achieve in the world.”

Canadian writer Ken Adachi (1929 - 1989) added:

“What most Americans believe to be ‘Public Opinion’ is in reality carefully crafted and scripted propaganda designed to elicit a desired behavioral response from the public.”

And noted Australian academic and activist Alex Carey (1922 - 1988) explained the three most important 20th century developments - “The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

Web of Control

Numerous think tanks, foundations, the major media, and other key organizations are staffed with CFR members. Most of its life-members also belong to the TC and Bilderberg Group, operate secretly, and wield enormous power over US and world affairs.

The Rockefeller-Founded Trilateral Commission (TC)

On page 405 of his Memoirs, David Rockfeller wrote:

“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

In alliance with Bilderbergers, the TC also “plays a vital role in the New World Order’s scheme to use wealth, concentrated in the hands of the few, to exert world control.” TC members share common views and all relate to total unchallengeable global dominance.Founded in 1973 and headquartered in Washington, its powerful US, EU and East Asian members seek its operative founding goal - a “New International Economic Order,” now simply a “New World Order” run by global elites from these three parts of the world with lesser members admitted from other countries.


According to TC’s web site, “each regional group has a chairman and deputy chairman, who all together constitute the leadership of the Committee. The Executive Committee draws together a further 36 individuals from the wider membership,” proportionately representing the US, EU, and East Asia in its early years, now enlarged to be broadly global.

Committee members meet several times annually to discuss and coordinate their work. The Executive Committee chooses members, and at any time around 350 belong for a three-year renewable period. Everyone is a consummate insider with expertise in business, finance, politics, the military, or the media, including past presidents, secretaries of state, international bankers, think tank and foundation executives, university presidents and selected academics, and former senators and congressmen, among others.

Although its annual reports are available for purchase, its inner workings, current goals, and operations are secret - with good reason. Its objectives harm the public so mustn’t be revealed. Trilaterals over Washington author Antony Sutton wrote:

“this group of private citizens is precisely organized in a manner that ensures its collective views have significant impact on public policy.”

In her book, Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, Holly Sklar wrote:

Powerful figures in America, Europe, and East Asia let “the rich….safeguard the interests of Western capitalism in an explosive world - probably by discouraging protectionism, nationalism, or any response that would pit the elites of one against the elites of another,” in their common quest for global dominance.

Trilateralist Zbigniew Brzezinski (TC’s co-founder) wrote in his Between Two Ages - America’s Role in the Technotronic Era:

“people, governments and economies of all nations must serve the needs of multinational banks and corporations. (The Constitution is) inadequate….the old framework of international politics, with their sphere of influence….the fiction of sovereignty….is clearly no longer compatible with reality….”

TC today is now global with members from countries as diverse as Argentina, Ukraine, Israel, Jordan, Brazil, Turkey, China and Russia. In his Trilaterals Over America, Antony Sutton believes that TC’s aim is to collaborate with Bilderbergers and CFR in “establishing public policy objectives to be implemented by governments worldwide.” He added that “Trilateralists have rejected the US Constitution and the democratic political process.” In fact, TC was established to counter a “crisis in democracy” - too much of it that had to be contained.

An official TC report was fearful about “the increased popular participation in and control over established social, political, and economic institutions and especially a reaction against the concentration of power of Congress and of state and local government.”

To address this, media control was essential to exert “restraint on what newspapers may publish (and TV and radio broadcast).” Then according to Richard Gardner in the July 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs (a CFR publication):

CFR’s leadership must make “an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece,” until the very notion disappears from public discourse.

Bilderberg/CFR/Trilateralist success depends on finding “a way to get us to surrender our liberties in the name of some common threat or crisis. The foundations, educational institutions, and research think tanks supported by (these organizations) oblige by financing so-called ’studies’ which are then used to justify their every excess. The excuses vary, but the target is always individual liberty. Our liberty” and much more.

Bilderbergers, Trilateralists and CFR members want “an all-encompassing monopoly” - over government, money, industry, and property that’s “self-perpetuating and eternal.” In Confessions of a Monopolist (1906), Frederick C. Howe explained its workings in practice:

“The rules of big business: Get a monopoly; let Society work for you. So long as we see all international revolutionaries and all international capitalists as implacable enemies of one another, then we miss a crucial point….a partnership between international monopoly capitalism and international revolutionary socialism is for their mutual benefit.”

In the Rockefeller File, Gary Allen wrote:

“By the late nineteenth century, the inner sanctums of Wall Street understood that the most efficient way to gain a monopoly was to say it was for the ‘public good’ and ‘public interest.’ “

David Rockefeller learned the same thing from his father, John D., Jr. who learned it from his father, John D. Sr. They hated competition and relentlessly strove to eliminate it - for David on a global scale through a New World Order.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Trilateralists and CFR members collaborated on the latter’s “1980 Project,” the largest ever CFR initiative to steer world events “toward a particular desirable future outcome (involving) the utter disintegration of the economy.” Why so is the question?

Because by the 1950s and 1960s, worldwide industrial growth meant more competition. It was also a model to be followed, and “had to be strangled in the cradle” or at least greatly contained. In America as well beginning in the 1980s. The result has been a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, shrinkage of the middle class, and plan for its eventual demise.

The North American Union (NAU)

The idea emerged during the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. David Rockefeller, George Schultz and Paul Volker told the president that Canada and America could be politically and economically merged over the next 15 years except for one problem - French-speaking Quebec. Their solution - elect a Bilderberg-friendly prime minister, separate Quebec from the other provinces, then make Canada America’s 51st state. It almost worked, but not quite when a 1995 secession referendum was defeated - 50.56% to 49.44%, but not the idea of merger.

At a March 23, 2005 Waco, Texas meeting, attended by George Bush, Mexico’s Vincente Fox, and Canada’s Paul Martin, the Security and and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) was launched, also known as the North American Union (NAU). It was a secretive Independent Task Force of North America agreement - a group organized by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, and CFR with the following aims:

– circumventing the legislatures of three countries and their constitutions;

– suppressing public knowledge or consideration; and
– proposing greater US, Canadian and Mexican economic, political, social, and security integration with secretive working groups formed to devise non-debatable, not voted on agreements to be binding and unchangeable.
In short - a corporate coup d’etat against the sovereignty of three nations enforced by hard line militarization to suppress opposition.

If enacted, it will create a borderless North America, corporate controlled, without barriers to trade or capital flows for business giants, mainly US ones and much more - America’s access to vital resources, especially oil and Canada’s fresh water.

Secretly, over 300 SPP initiatives were crafted to harmonize the continent’s policies on energy, food, drugs, security, immigration, manufacturing, the environment, and public health along with militarizing three nations for enforcement.

SPP represents another step toward the Bilderberg/Trilateralist/CFR goal for World Government, taking it one step at a time. A “United Europe” was another, the result of various treaties and economic agreements:

– the December 1951 six-nation European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC);

– the March 1957 six-nation Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC);
also the European Atomic Energy Commission (EAEC) by a second Treaty of Rome;

– the October 1957 European Court of Justice to settle regional trade disputes;

– the May 1960 seven-nation European Free Trade Association (EFTA);

– the July 1967 European Economic Community (EEC) merging the ECSC, EAEC and EEC together in one organization;

– the 1968 European Customs Union to abolish duties and establish uniform imports taxing among EEC nations;

– the 1978 European Currency Unit (ECU);

– the February 1986 Single European Act revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome; it established the objective of forming a Common Market by December 31, 1992;

– the February 1992 Maastricht Treaty creating the EU on November 1, 1993; and

– the name euro was adopted in December 1995; it was introduced in January 1999 replacing the European Currency Unit (ECU); euros began circulating on January 2002; they’re now the official currency of 16 of the 27 EU states.

Over half a century, the above steps cost EU members their sovereignty “as some 70 to 80 per cent of the laws passed in Europe involve just rubber stamping of regulations already written by nameless bureaucrats in ‘working groups’ in Brussels or Luxembourg.”

The EU and NAU share common features:

– advocacy from a influential spokesperson;

– an economic and later political union;

– hard line security, and for Europe, ending wars on the continent between EU member states;

– establishment of a collective consciousness in place of nationalism;

– the blurring of borders and creation of a “supra-government,” a superstate;

– secretive arrangements to mask real objectives; and

– the creation of a common currency and eventual global one.

Steps Toward a North American Union

– the October 4, 1988 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the US and Canada, finalized the previous year;

– at the 1991 Bilderberg meeting, David Rockefeller got governor Bill Clinton’s support for NAFTA if he became president;

– on January 1, 1994, with no debate under “fast-track” rules, Congress approved WTO legislation;

– in December 1994 at the first Summit of the Americas, 34 Hemispheric leaders committed their nations to a Free Trade of the Americas agreement (FTAA) by 2005 - so far unachieved;

– on July 4, 2000, Mexican president Vincente Fox called for a North American common market in 20 years;

– on February 2001, the White House published a joint statement from George Bush and Vincente Fox called the “Guanajuato Proposal;” it was for a US-Canada-Mexico prosperity partnership (aka North American Union);

– in September 2001, Bush and Fox agreed to a “Partnership for Prosperity Initiative;”

– the September 11, 2001 attack gave cover to including “security” as part of a future partnership;

– on October 7, 2001, a CFA meeting highlighted “The Future of North American Integration in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks; for the first time, “security” became part of a future “partnership for prosperity;” also, Canada was to be included in a “North American” agreement;

– in 2002, the North American Forum on Integration (NAFI) was established in Montreal “to address the issues raised by North American integration as well as identify new ideas and strategies to reinforce the North American region;”

– in January 2003, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE - composed of 150 top CEOs) launched the “North American Security and Prosperity Initiative” calling for continental integration;

– in April 2004, Canadian prime minister Paul Martin announced the nation’s first ever national security policy called Securing an Open Society;

– on October 15, 2004, CFR established an Independent Task Force on the Future of North America - for a future continental union;
– in March 2005, a CFR report titled Creating a North American Community called for continental integration by 2010 “to enhance, prosperity, and opportunity for all North Americans;” and

– on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas, America, Canada and Mexico leaders launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) - aka North American Union (NAU).

Secretive negotiations continue. Legislative debate is excluded, and public inclusion and debate are off the table. In May 2005, the CFR Independent Task Force on the Future of North America published a follow-up report titled Building a North American Community - proposing a borderless three-nation union by 2010.

In June and July 2005, the Dominican Republic - Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) passed the Senate and House establishing corporate-approved trade rules to further impoverish the region and move a step closer to continental integration.

In March 2006, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was created at the second SPP summit in Cancun, Mexico. Composed of 30 top North American CEOs, it serves as an official trilateral SPP working group.

Secret business and government meetings continue so there’s no way to confirm SPP’s current status or if Barack Obama is seamlessly continuing George Bush’s agenda. In an earlier article, this writer said:

SPP efforts paused during the Bush to Obama transition, but “deep integration” plans remain. Canada’s Fraser Institute proposed renaming the initiative the North American Standards and Regulatory Area (NASRA) to disguise its real purpose. It said the “SPP brand” is tarnished so re-branding is essential - to fool the public until it’s too late to matter.

Bilderbergers, Trilaterists, and CFR leaders back it as another step toward global integration and won’t “stop until the entire world is unified under the auspices and the political umbrella of a One World Company, a nightmarish borderless world run by the world’s most powerful clique” - comprised of key elitist members of these dominant organizations.

In April 2007, the Transatlantic Economic Council was established between America and the EU to:

– create an “official international governmental body - by executive fiat;

– harmonize economic and regulatory objectives;
– move toward a Transatlantic Common Market; and

– a step closer to One World Government run by the world’s most powerful corporate interests.

Insights into the 2009 Bilderberg Group Meeting

From May 14 - 17, Bilderbergers held their annual meeting in Vouliagmeni, Greece, and according to Daniel Estulin have dire plans for global economies.

According to his pre-meeting sources, they’re divided on two alternatives:

“Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty (or) an intense but shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

Other agenda items included:

– “the future of the US dollar and US economy;”

– continued deception about green shoots signaling an end to recession and improving economy later in the year;

– suppressing the fact that bank stress tests were a sham and were designed for deception, not an accurate assessment of major banks’ health;
– projecting headlined US unemployment to hit 14% by year end - way above current forecasts and meaning the true number will be double, at minimum, with all uncounted categories included; and

– a final push to get the Lisbon Treaty passed for pan-European (EU) adoption of neoliberal rules, including greater privatizations, fewer worker rights and social benefits, open border trade favoring developed over emerging states, and greater militarization to suppress civil liberties and human rights.

After the meeting, Estulin got a 73-page report on what was discussed. He noted that “One of Bilderberg’s primary concerns….is the danger that their zeal to reshape the world by engineering chaos (toward) their long term agenda could cause the situation to spiral out of control and eventually lead to a scenario where Bilderberg and the global elite in general are overwhelmed by events and end up losing their control over the planet.”

Estulin also noted some considerable disagreement between “hardliners” wanting a “dramatic decline and a severe, short-term depression (versus others) who think that things have gone too far” so that “the fallout from the global economic cataclysm” can’t be known, may be greater than anticipated, and may harm Bilderberger interests. Also, “some European bankers (expressed great alarm over their own fate and called the current) high wire act ‘unsustainable.’ “

There was a combination of agreement and fear that the situation remains dire and the worst of the crisis lies ahead, mainly because of America’s extreme debt level that must be resolved to produce a healthy, sustainable recovery.

Topics also included:

– establishing a Global Treasury Department and Global Central Bank, possibly partnered with or as part of the IMF;

– a global currency;

– destruction of the dollar through what longtime market analyst Bob Chapman calls “a stealth default on (US) debt by continuing to issue massive amounts of money and credit and in the process devaluing the dollar,” a process he calls “fraud;”

– a global legal system;
– exploiting the Swine Flu scare to create a WHO global department of health; and

– the overall goal of a global government and the end of national sovereignty.

In the past, Estulin’s sources proved accurate. Earlier, he predicted the housing crash and 2007 - 2008 financial market decline, preceded by the kind of financial crisis triggered by the Lehman Brothers collapse. Watch for further updates from him as new information leaks out on what the world’s power elites have planned going forward.

American capitalism gone with a whimper

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

Without Congressional Approval or Legislative Authority, Obama Plans for Government to Take Majority Interest in General Motors

Without the prior approval of Congress or any legislation authorizing the act, President Obama plans to announce on Monday that the federal government will take a 60-percent ownership stake in General Motors as part of a bankruptcy and reorganization plan for the company.


The White House on Sunday night announced that the plan will require the federal government to provide another $30 billion of taxpayer money to General Motors, on top of the $20 billion in aid the federal government already has given the company.

In December, Congress failed to pass legislation authorizing a federal bailout of the auto industry.

Lacking legislative authority—and despite the fact that Congress had specifically declined to approve a bailout of the auto industry—President Bush went ahead and provided General Motors and Chrysler with $17.4 billion in taxpayer money.

Analysts James Gattuso and Andrew Grossman of the Heritage Foundation argued at the time that this was “legally wrong” because Bush took the money from the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that was authorized specifically for purchasing assets from “financial institutions” such as banks, savings and loans, credit unions, brokerages and insurance companies. The Heritage analysts argued that auto manufacturers are not “financial institutions” as envisioned by Congress under the law.

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Gunman Shoots 2 at Arkansas Military Recruitment Center

DEVELOPING: A gunman opened fire Monday at an army recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark., killing one army recruiter and seriously wounding another, FOX16.com reported.

A man in a black SUV drove to the recruitment office and began shooting at around 10:19 a.m., a spokesman with the Little Rock police department told FOX News.

The suspect, who immediately fled the scene, was later apprehended approximately four miles from the center with an assault rifle in his vehicle.

Blogger jailed in Anna Nicole Smith defamation suit

A real estate agent in Houston who blogged about Anna Nicole Smith was jailed for contempt last week in a defamation case brought by the late Playboy model’s mother.

Legal experts said bloggers are increasingly the targets of such litigation, which are testing the bounds of free speech.

Lyndal Harrington, who is accused of helping to spread falsehoods that Virgie Arthur married her stepbrother and abused Smith as a child, spent four nights in jail after she failed to comply with a court order to turn over her computer.

The 53-year-old grandmother claimed her computer was stolen during a burglary less than a week after it was subpoenaed.

A police officer testified that he believed the theft was staged and judge Tony Lindsay ordered Harrington to produce the computer by July 2 or she will again face incarceration.

Harrington says she is shocked that she is being sued for comments posted on someone else’s blog to pass the time.

“I just voiced my opinion,” said Lyndal Harrington of her posts about Smith and Arthur on the website “Rose Speaks.”

Like many bloggers, Harrington doesn’t consider herself a publisher and did not realize she could be held liable for her posts.

“I got into this because my business had fallen apart in this economy and it was something to do,” she told AFP. “I developed a lot of friendships with women who are retired or ill at home.”

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Is Larry Summers Taking Kickbacks From the Banks He’s Bailing Out?

Last month, a little-known company where Summers served on the board of directors received a $42 million investment from a group of investors, including three banks that Summers, Obama’s effective “economy czar,” has been doling out billions in bailout money to: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. The banks invested into the small startup company Revolution Money, right at the time when Summers was administering the “stress test” to these same banks.

A month after they invested in Summers’ former company, all three banks came out of the stress test much better than anyone expected—thanks to the fact that the banks themselves were allowed to help decide how bad their problems were. (Citigroup “negotiated” down its financial hole from $35 billion to $5.5 billion.)

The fact that the banks invested in the company just a few months after Summers resigned suggests the appearance of corruption, because it suggests to other firms that if you hire Summers onto your board, large banks will want to invest as a favor to a politically connected director.

Last month, it was revealed that Summers, whom President Obama appointed to essentially run the economy from his perch in the National Economic Council, earned nearly $8 million in 2008 from Wall Street banks, some of which, like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, were now receiving tens of billions of taxpayer funds from the same Summers. It turns out now that those two banks have continued paying into Summers-related businesses.

According to filings obtained for this story, Summers first joined the board of directors of Revolution Money back in 2006 (when it was called GratisCard), the same year that Summers was forced to resign as president of Harvard after his disastrous tenure. Revolution Money/GratisCard was a startup headed by former AOL chief Steve Case. Revolution Money billed itself as the Next Big Thing in online payment, “PayPal meets MasterCard,” according to their own pitch.

In September 2007, Revolution Money announced that it had raised $50 million from a group of investors including Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. Some found the investment strange even then, because normally big banks don’t get involved in seeding small startups—that’s the domain of venture capitalists, not mega-banks. Especially not in September 2007, when these same megabanks were Chernobyling their way into full-fledged balance-sheet meltdown.

What seems clear is that at least part of Revolution Money’s success in raising funds was due to their star-studded board of directors—which included not only Larry Summers, but also the notorious Frank Raines, the former Fannie Mae chief whom Time Magazine named to its “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis” list. Raines is still a board member.

Over the next year and a half, Revolution Money didn’t quite live up to its promise of competing with PayPal or Visa/MasterCard. At least some of this could be attributed to the difficulty of starting up an online credit card company in the middle of a triple-cluster credit crunch, banking crisis and recession. But there is also evidence that the company wasn’t run well. Another one of Steve Case’s “Revolution” brand startups, Revolution Health (which also features a star-studded board of directors including Carly Fiorina, Colin Powell and several future Obama administration officials), essentially folded when it was sold to Everyday Health last September and merged into that company’s operations.

In spite of all of this, on April 6, 2009, Revolution Money announced the happy news: it had just successfully raised $42 million in the most difficult market since the 1930s. The investors? Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley—bankrupt institutions that Larry Summers was transferring billions in bailout funds to.

At the very same time that these three megabanks were pouring millions into Summers’ former company, Obama’s economic team, starring Summers, was subjecting these same banks to the stress test to decide how deep in shit these same banks really were. The banks wanted the government to fudge the results for obvious reasons—who wants the world to know how deep of a hole you’ve dug for yourself?

When the stress test results were finally released, the banks all came out with glowing reports that beat expectations and caused plenty of skepticism.

In an interview for this article, William Black, a former bank regulator who exposed the $160 billion savings and loan scandal and its ties to powerful U.S. senators, remarked: “Summers wasn’t hired [by Revolution Money] for his expertise, because he doesn’t have relevant expertise in this kind of credit card operation.”

“He’s not a techie. He doesn’t have business expertise,” Black said. “So this is solely someone hired for the name and contacts, because he’s politically active and politically connected. And that’s made all the more clear by the fact that Frank Raines was put on the board at a time when he was pushed out in disgrace from Fannie Mae. Why? Because of his political connections.”

And it worked, as the recent investment shows.

“That’s the pattern of this entity,” said Black, “which hasn’t been doing well financially and desperately needs to get money from others, and has been able to get money from banks at a time when [these same banks] largely stopped lending to productive enterprises. But with this politically connected entity [Revolution Money], they’re happy to dump money.”

According to a company spokesperson, Summers resigned from the board of directors at Revolution Money this past January, just three months before the banks invested. On one of Revolution Money’s main Web sites, Revolution Money Exchange, you could still see Summers’ name still listed as a director when this story was filed.

(Oddly, company filings obtained for this article show that Summers wasn’t even on Revolution Money’s board of directors in 2007-08, even though both he and Revolution Money repeatedly stated that he was on the board, and only served on GratisCard’s board in 2006.)

Whatever the case, Summers was pushing Revolution Money as recently as last September in an interview with Portfolio magazine:

“I’ve enjoyed being involved with a number of smaller companies such as the Revolution Money venture, which has a potentially very exciting credit-card technology, using credit and debit technology, using the Internet that, in a sense, brings together bricks and clicks by providing both a capacity for regular retail transactions and also for online.”

Whether or not Summers has a personal interest in the company, it still stinks that a company where the head of the National Economic Council served on the board until just a few months ago subsequently received millions in investment funds from banks that Summers bailed out. Taxpayer dollars went into these banks, and from the banks into the Summers-connected firm, a firm he was hired onto precisely because his connections could bring in this kind of money.

His involvement wasn’t just incidental. If you look at the press releases, Larry Summers’ name is always touted as part of the selling point. One press release in 2007 refers to Summers as “legendary.”

Moreover, Summers’ longtime chief of staff, Marne Levine, who also served as Summers’ chief of staff when he was in Treasury under Clinton and again at Harvard, joined Summers at Revolution Money, serving as “Director of Product Management.”

Black pointed out another sleazy aspect of Revolution Money’s pitch: it proudly boasted in late 2007 that it would make it easier than ever for people with low credit ratings to find access to lines of credit. In other words, Revolution Money billed itself as the ultimate ghetto loan shark.

That same 2007 press release that boasted of the “legendary” Larry Summers also said: “Unlike most bank credit card issuers who are limited to a narrow scope of credit approval guidelines specific to their bank, RevolutionCard seamlessly utilizes multiple partners to achieve unparalleled consumer approval rates.”

Nineteen months later, Summers, now in control of the economy, appeared on “Meet The Press” and declared: “We need to do things to stop the marketing of credit in ways that addicts people to it and so that our households are again saving, and families are again preparing to send their kids to college, for their retirement and so forth.”

So once again, Summers creates a problem that the rich profit from, then is put in charge of “fixing” it after vulnerable Americans have been picked clean.

Whether or not the three bailed-out banks’ investment in Revolution Money last month represents some kind of bribe or kickback or even the appearance of corruption is almost secondary, because shameless cronyism is the problem, and it’s the reason why America is in such a horrible mess today.

“Polite society was supposed to impose social pressures to make sure this wasn’t tolerated,” Black said. “Like the old phrase about hogs being slaughtered. But now the hogs get even wealthier, even fatter.”

Everything about Summers, from his horrible track record in the developing world in the 1990s to the sleaze and plunder he’s overseeing in the White House should make us terrified. Hell, he even looks like some old Batman villain: Summers, whose trademark bullfrog neck was enough of a distraction before Obama brought him into the White House, has seen his gelatinous layers of neck-fat swell up like an amphibian guarding its eggs ever since he took control of the economy.

Get this monster out of the White House now, before he devours us all.

WeAreChange: New York Senator Gillibrand Supports New 9/11 Investigation

This video was premiered on our new live video show http://www.mogulus.com/wearechangelive its rebroadcasting right now.

Tune in every Sunday 3pm eastern to get the latest CHANGE news from Robert Wanek and Luke Rudkowski live.


The great carbon credit con: Why are we paying the Third World to poison its environment?

In the fields around this giant chemicals factory in Gujarat, the barren soil smells of paint stripper and the water from the well makes you gag. So why has it been given tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer-funded UN ‘green reward points’, which are traded hungrily on the financial markets at huge profit?

Nadene Ghouri
Daily Mail
June 1, 2009

The farmers, faces wizened and browned from hours in the harsh Gujarati sun, lower a bucket into a well. It’s a solid-brick cylinder 100ft deep. The sun is high in the sky, beating down on the scorched earth. In the baked fields, maize and cotton have been planted. But none of the crops look very healthy. Leaves are wilted and tinged brown. Nothing has been watered for months.

Radha, a tough, sinewy widow and the only female farmer here, says that the well, which draws from deep groundwater, used to adequately supply the village and surrounding farms.

‘We have plenty of water – but water is the problem,’ she says.

As the bucket returns to the top, we can make out a white, almost oily-looking film on the surface of the liquid, which has formed little snowflake shapes.

She scoops up some water and asks us to smell it. It has an odour so acrid it catches in the back of our throats, making us cough.

‘We can’t irrigate our crops with it,’ she says. ‘It’s the water of death. It kills most crops we put it on.’ ‘Gone bad,’ says the man who brought up the pail.

  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t
  • efoods
But this is much more than a tale of big business versus poor farmers in the Third World. GFL is part of a worldwide carbon-trading scheme, centred in London, which is supposed to be helping to save the planet from global warming. On paper the scheme, which was ratified under the Kyoto agreement and supervised by the UN, looks like an efficient way to cut global carbon emissions. However, a Live investigation has exposed a series of major failings and loopholes in the scheme.

Four years ago, GFL installed technology to reduce the greenhouse gases it produces and was given a vast financial reward by the UN; a UK company was also given considerable sums for investing in the project. However, far from being a flagship green factory, GFL stands accused of poisoning the local environment.

Our own extensive tests by an independent laboratory showed dangerous contaminants in the land and water around the factory – chemicals that match those pollutants produced by GFL. Interviews with the people living nearby reveal their livelihoods and health have been severely affected. We found that the auditors who were supposed to verify the carbon savings were paid for by GFL, a stipulation of the scheme, and they checked only for greenhouse gases, caring little about other pollution.

Army Starts Testing ‘Judge Dredd’ Weapon

The U.S. Army is set to start testing a computerized, high-tech projectile launcher that can take out bad guys hiding around corners and in caves or trenches, even if they’re out of the soldier’s line of sight.Some experts call it the “Judge Dredd” gun, after the Sylvester Stallone movie. The Pentagon calls it the XM-25 Individual Air Burst Weapon, which uses a laser rangefinder to precisely measure the distance to a target, then primes a fuse on a timed grenade so that the projectile explodes exactly where it should.

“The way a soldier operates this is you basically find your target, then laze to it, which gives the range, then you get an adjusted aim point, adjust fire and pull the trigger,” deputy program manager Richard Audette told Army News Service. “Say you’ve lazed out to 543 meters … when you pull the trigger it arms the round and fires it 543 meters plus or minus a one-, two- or three-meter increment, then it explodes over the target.”

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Austin Grandmother Tasered at Traffic Stop

A 72-year-old woman is pulled over for speeding, then tasered and sent to jail. Kathryn Winkfein says she drives to Austin about twice a month to do her shopping. But on a Monday afternoon, a Travis County Constable deputy pulled her over, on her way back to Granite Schoals.

“Due to being a construction zone, and workers being present,” Pct. 3 Constable Richard McCain said, “it was 45, she was doing 60.”

Winkfein admits she was speeding in the dangerous strip of Highway 71 and Bee Creek.

“He explained to her,” Constable McCain said, “sign the ticket stub, it’s not an admission of guilt. It’s a promise to appear in court. She didn’t want to. She said take me to jail.”

That’s when the officer says Winkfein exited her vehicle and didn’t cooperate.

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9/11 Trauma Defense - It’s a Lie…

Richard Clarke, the former counter-terrorism “czar” under Presidents Clinton and Bush is fed up with Bush administration officials using the attacks of September 11, 2001 as justification for their various policies.

[Editor: From Clarke's Sunday editorial in The Washington Post:]

Top officials from the Bush administration have hit upon a revealing new theme as they retrospectively justify their national security policies. Call it the White House 9/11 trauma defense.

I remember that morning, too. Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, I burst in on Rice (then the president’s national security adviser) and Cheney in the vice president’s office and remember glimpsing horror on his face. Once in the bomb shelter, Cheney assembled his team while the crisis managers on the National Security Council staff coordinated the government response by video conference from the Situation Room. Many of us thought that we might not leave the White House alive. I remember the next day, too, when smoke still rose from the Pentagon as I sat in my office in the White House compound, a gas mask on my desk. The streets of Washington were empty, except for the armored vehicles, and the skies were clear, except for the F-15s on patrol. Every scene from those days is seared into my memory. I understand how it was a defining moment for Cheney, as it was for so many Americans.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Let me also add that I understand the horror Mr. Cheney felt on that tragic morning. I also understand what most Americans felt as their nation was being attacked. But only a few of us can say that we have had the extra horror of having our homes, neighborhoods, and lives destroyed by those attacks. I lived at 25 Broad St., almost at the corner of Wall St. If you look at a map, you will see just how close my home was to that carnage. Yet despite what I saw and continue to see in my dreams, I would never support the kind of crimes carried out by the Bush administration and I will never accept that the 9/11 attacks unhinged them. The fact is that the Bush administration was already planning a way to go to war with Iraq. The attacks of September 11 had nothing to do with that choice and cannot be an excuse for those actions. But I digress as I often do. Here is some more from Clarke’s piece:

“Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. “If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people,” Rice said in her recent comments, “then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again.’

Those Americans who dropped out of eighty-story buildings were smashing into the ground of my neighborhood, into the small park where I played chess. Those American bodies were literally on my doorstep, in front of my grocery and movie theater that I went to every weekend. Those attacks and those dead bodies hit me at home, not on television. So I fully agree with Clarke that these justifications are insincere. I would go further and call them lies. No one I know who was hit in their home or lost a loved one supports what the Bush administration has done. Yet people far away from the dead bodies, and the smoldering furnace of ground zero claim to be the most traumatized. I have noticed also that people in the deep South who were nowhere near the attacks were the most vocal about creating a police state in order to avoid another attack. Cowards die a thousand times, so the saying goes.

In any case, Cheney was so traumatized that he met with his lawyer David Addington that very same day - while the fires raged and while the country was uncertain if the attacks had stopped - to find a way to blame these attacks on Iraq. That is not trauma. That is opportunism of the most cynical kind.

New security restrictions at border

A road trip to Canada got a little more complicated, starting Monday. You’ll need a passport, enhanced license or NEXUS card to make the trip back home. http://www.wivb.com

Carter breaks with Obama: Probe Bush officials

Former president apparently lends support for “Truth Commission” on prisoner abuse, says torture a crime “against our Constitution”

war on terror   Carter breaks with Obama: Probe Bush officialsFormer President Jimmy Carter, speaking to CNN on Monday, said he disagrees with President Barack Obama’s decision to withhold photos of prisoner abuse. He added that Obama appears to be resolved against resurrecting the past by punishing those in the Bush administration guilty of what Carter himself considers “crimes against our Constitution”

“I respect what his decisions are,” he told CNN’s Campbell Brown. “I don’t have the responsibility to deal with the consequences. But I think that most of his supporters were hoping he would be more open in the revelation of what we’ve done in the past.

“But, ah, he’s made a decision with which I really can’t contend, that he doesn’t want to resurrect the past. He doesn’t want to punish those that are guilty of perpetrating what I consider crimes against our own laws and against our constitution.”

Carter added that while releasing the images may cause “further animosity” toward the United States, the public knowledge that the photos simply exist already serves that cause, whereas instead of seeing them for what they are, the imagination can tend to fill in its own details.

And while Carter repeated several times that he will not criticize Obama for his decision, he did seem to lend support for the so-called “Truth Commission” that’s been discussed in the House and Senate.

Saying that “prosecution is too strong a word,” he added that what he would “like to see is a complete examination of what did happen, the identification of any perpetrators of crimes against our own laws or against international law,” said Carter. “And then after all that’s done, decide whether or not there should be any prosecutions.”

Brown’s interview with Carter will air on CNN, Monday night at 8 p.m. EST.

This video is from CNN.com, broadcast June 1, 2009.

Poll finds Irish support for EU’s Lisbon treaty rises

Irish support for the European Union’s Lisbon reform treaty has risen further, continuing this year’s trend of gains for the “Yes” camp and a steady decline in opposition, an opinion poll showed on Monday.

The Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll found 54 percent would back the treaty in a fresh referendum this year, up two percentage points from two weeks ago, with the proportion of those planning to vote “No” dropping one point to 28 percent.

When undecided voters were excluded, 66 percent were in favour and 34 percent against, compared with a referendum result last June of 53.4 percent “No” and 46.6 percent “Yes.” The Irish government has consented to holding a second Lisbon vote this autumn, subject to concessions in areas of concern for Irish voters, such as military neutrality, taxation and the retention of a European commissioner.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)


European leaders are expected to agree on the details of those guarantees later this month.

Many voters now look to the European Union as a haven amid the global financial crisis, in which Ireland has become one of the most vulnerable euro zone members, but the recession has also distracted the government from focussing on Lisbon.

Full article here

Background TV ‘can harm children’s speech’

Parents who leave the TV on for hours - even when no one is watching - can harm their children’s speech development, say researchers."Background TV can harm childrens speech Their study found that both adults and children use significantly fewer words when the TV is competing for their attention.

Researchers studied 329 children aged between two months and four years with the help of digital recorders that captured everything they heard or said.

Children heard an average of 770 fewer words from adults - or 7 per cent - per additional hour of television exposure, according to a report in the the Archives of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Lead researcher Dimitri Christakis, professor of paediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said: ‘We’ve known that television exposure during infancy is associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so far it has remained unclear why.

‘This study is the first to demonstrate that when the television is on, there is reduced speech in the home.

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Florida county mandates fingerprints to sell videogames

For many young Americans, reselling video games to pick up the newest, latest and greatest is simply the only choice to keep up with the fast-paced, high-dollar industry (which is about to kick off a massive annual trade show in Los Angeles as I write this).

GameStop, the largest games retailer on the planet, has made billions from the trade, building an empire off the business model that one Florida county appears to now view as a haven for criminals.

From the Broward-Palm Beach New Times:

I’m in line at Gamestop the other day, breaking down and finally buying the much-hated NCAA Football ‘09, when I hear the clerk ask the guy in front of me for his fingerprints. He’s returning a game, and the clerk breaks out some kind of form. He swipes his thumb across an ink pad stuck to the counter and then puts his mark in the appropriate box.

What the deuce? “The sheriff’s office has been making us do it,” the clerk told me. “People hate it.”

Reporter Eric Barton goes on to say:

Broward County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kayla Concepcion said the new requirement comes straight from the Florida Legislature, which enacted a law on October 1 of last year that treated video games like second-hand goods sold at pawn shops. Now any store buying used video games has to collect the thumb prints, along with a bunch of other personal info about the seller.

Now, I’ve got a little personal insight into this issue. As a teen and young adult, well before I found myself tasked with the journalisms, I was employed by Blockbuster, Movie Trading Company, Borders Books and Books-A-Million. Library science — or, at least inventory management and customer service — was my forte as a student. (We’ve all got to get by somehow.)

At Movie Trading Company, we had tons and tons of DVDs and VHS cassettes for sale, almost all of them brought in by customers looking for cash or store credit. After about six months, it became quite easy to spot the thieves among them.

I’m talking about people who’d walk in 10 minutes before closing with a stack of Simpsons box set DVDs, or five copies of that week’s big, new release. We had one regular customer, Eddy (a sex offender, I later found out), who offered a couple of us, myself included, methamphetamine in exchange for more cash back from his stolen DVDs. The man was obviously desperate. I’d even go so far as to guess that stealing DVDs was essentially his job.

It was policy that we accept what customers bring in unless the condition was beyond repair, so every time he’d show up with a backpack full of DVDs and games, we had to give him cash. But by the same measure, he had to submit some form of identification. We’d record it, pay out and go about our business.

One day a cop walked in with Eddy’s photo and asked if we’d see him and if we had records of what he had sold us. I told the officer yes, but the management stepped in after that and I never found out what happened … And I never saw Eddy again.

Case in point: That happened in Texas, where there is no requirement for fingerprints to sell used media like games or DVDs. Crimes were committed openly and law enforcement (apparently) worked. It wasn’t that difficult.

Surely Florida does not lack basic law enforcement capabilities. Why should such draconian measures be necessary just to trade in a video game?

This is how the patriot act helps us.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Facebook - CIA Profile Database (Video)

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

How to Escape From Plastic Handcuffs

George Carlin On 'Freedom of Choice'

Obama’s Guantánamo dilemma

By giving his most detailed speech so far on terrorist detainees on Thursday, Barack Obama was hoping to persuade others to drop the subject.

Unfortunately for Mr Obama, who wants to direct the conversation to more forward-looking topics, such as healthcare reform and a possible Arab-Israeli peace process, the turmoil surrounding treatment of alleged terrorists is likely to persist.

That is partly because he has adopted a messy position himself. On the one hand Mr Obama has said he will close the Guantánamo detention centre by next January. On the other, his administration continues to use George W. Bush’s definition of the “war on terror” to detain the most dangerous ones indefinitely – just not on Cuban soil, or American, if Congress continues to get its way.

Mr Obama is unlikely to get much help from his Democratic colleagues. From the left, he faces a growing cry of betrayal. His decision to “look forward, not back” means that the Bush lawyers who drafted the memos reclassifying torture as legal are unlikely to be prosecuted.

Nor does Mr Obama want to set up a “truth commission” to investigate post 9/11 torture. Such a move might put the politics on ice for a few months. Then it would return squared. Mr Obama would be faced with a dilemma: choose again to “look forward” and be branded a traitor to the high ideals on which he campaigned; or prosecute those found culpable and risk igniting a real backlash against his presidency.

It is worth remembering that half the American people believe “waterboarding” is justified, according to polls – a far higher number than those who do not. A small majority also believe it is wrong to close Guantánamo. These are not diehard conservatives. Many are Democrats.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Mr Obama is getting little help from centrist colleagues. Last week, almost all Democrats joined their Republican counterparts in the Senate to vote down an $80m (€57m, £50m) appropriation to pay for the closure of Gitmo. They argued that it was wrong to close the facility before a policy had been devised to rehouse its 240 detainees.

This is understandable. Mr Obama made an error in announcing the closure before he had devised a new policy. But their real motive was more prosaic. Democrats don’t want alleged terrorists to set foot on American soil. And they will not permit reason to get in the way of a good argument.

No prisoner has ever escaped a federal “supermax” prison. Even if it were a possibility, it would surely be less frightening to have a terrorist suspect escape into your community than a convicted paedophile or psychopath. The latter two would know how to blend in. More importantly, America will have little chance of persuading other countries to take some of the Gitmo detainees if it refuses to take any itself.

All of which makes Dick Cheney’s increasingly bitter interventions fairly useful for Mr Obama. Leaving aside the suspicion that his real target is Mr Bush, who put an end to most “enhanced interrogation techniques” in 2004, Mr Cheney’s stridency has served to blunt much of the disillusion felt by Mr Obama’s liberal friends.

It also focuses attention on the fact that the shrinking Republican party is letting Mr Cheney stand in as its leader. Since Mr Cheney has had much to do with why it is shrinking, this can hardly be a bad thing for Mr Obama. Mr Cheney has asked for information about the results of the interrogations to be declassified. Mr Obama should comply.

That way we could establish the accuracy of allegations, by two intelligence officers, that Mr Cheney and others pushed for the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah in the forlorn hope of turning up evidence linking al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.

The timing fits the build-up to the Iraq war. The first was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003. The second 83 times in August 2002.

“They were legal, justified, essential and entirely the right thing to do,” Mr Cheney said.

Mr Obama should let the facts speak for themselves. Did these two waterboardees tell interrogators what they wanted to hear? And what was that precisely? If Mr Obama cannot change the conversation, then he should send it back to where it belongs.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Ancient Human Ancestor 'Ida' Discovered

A discovery of a 47-million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced and unveiled today at a press conference in New York City.
Known as "Ida," the nearly complete transitional fossil is 20 times older than most fossils that provide evidence for human evolution

From LiveScience | LiveScience.com




The newly claimed primate genus and species Darwinius masillae, said to be an ancestor of humans. The fossil dates to 47 million years ago. The abdomen contains organic remains of food in the digestive tract. The skeleton was split into two parts before scientists put it all back together, leading to today's announcement.
Credit: PLoS One, Hurum et al.




A discovery of a 47-million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced and unveiled today at a press conference in New York City.

Known as "Ida," the nearly complete transitional fossil is 20 times older than most fossils that provide evidence for human evolution.

It shows characteristics from the very primitive non-human evolutionary line (prosimians, such as lemurs), but is more related to the human evolutionary line (anthropoids, such as monkeys, apes and humans), said Norwegian paleontologist Jørn Hurum of University of Oslo Natural History Museum. However, she is not really an anthropoid either, he said.

The fossil, called Darwinius masillae and said to be a female, provides the most complete understanding of the paleobiology of any primate so far discovered from the Eocene Epoch, Hurum said. An analysis of the fossil mammal is detailed today in the journal PLoS ONE.

"This is the first link to all humans ... truly a fossil that links world heritage," Hurum said.

Here is some context for the age of the new primate fossil: Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) first emerged about 200,000 years ago, but early humans such as Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus anamensis, reach back to 3 million or 4 million years ago, or earlier. Humans are thought to have split off from a group that includes chimpanzees and gorillas about 6 million years ago. And a group that includes all the great apes (including us) and old world monkeys (called simians or anthropoids) diverged from new world monkeys in the Eocene, just after the time of Ida. So our primate roots reach back to this time.


History of discovery

For the past two years, an international team of scientists led by Hurum has conducted a detailed forensic analysis of the fossil.

The fossil was apparently discovered in 1983 by private collectors who split and eventually sold two parts of the skeleton on separate plates: The lesser part was restored and, in the process, partly fabricated to make it look more complete.

This part was eventually purchased for a private museum in Wyoming, and then described by Jens L. Franzen, part of Hurum's team, who recognized the fabrication. The more complete part has just come to light, and it now belongs to the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo.

Ida was preserved in Germany’s Messel Pit, a mile-wide crater containing oil-rich shale that is a significant site for fossils of the Eocene Epoch. Opposable big toes and nail-bearing tips on the fingers and toes confirm the fossil is a primate, and a foot bone called the talus bone links Ida directly to humans, Hurum said.

The fossil also preserved the primate's gut contents, including fruits and leaves. X-rays reveal both baby and adult teeth, plus the lack of a "toothcomb" or a "grooming claw," which is an attribute of lemurs (which are also primates, like us, but are considered more primitive and part of a different family than all the great apes and us).

The scientists estimate Ida was about 9 months at death, and measured about 3 feet in length. Her forward-facing eyes are like ours — which would have enabled her fields of vision to overlap, allowing 3-D vision and an ability to judge distance. She was probably nocturnal, Hurum and his colleagues say.

Ida lived at a time when mammals were evolving quickly on a planet that was basically a vast jungle. Early horses, bats, whales and many other creatures, including the first primates, thrived at this time when the climate was subtropical. The Himalayas were being formed.


Death scenario

X-rays reveal that a broken wrist may have contributed to Ida’s death — her left wrist was healing from a bad fracture, Hurum said.

She could have been overcome by carbon dioxide gas whilst from drinking from the Messel lake: the still waters of the lake were often covered by a low-lying blanket of the gas as a result of the volcanic forces that formed the lake and which were still active.

Hampered by her broken wrist, Ida possibly slipped into unconsciousness, was washed into the lake, and sunk to the bottom, where the unique conditions preserved her for 47 million years, Hurum said.

A replica of Ida will go on display later this week at the American Museum of Natural History's new "Extreme Mammals" exhibition.


35,000-year-old ivory carving found: Busty sculpture could be world's oldest





This figurine, found in 2008 in a cave in Schelklingen, southern Germany is allegedly the world's oldest reproduction of a human with an estimated age of at least 35,000 years. (AP/Daniel Maurer).



A 35,000-year-old ivory carving of a busty woman found in a German cave was unveiled Wednesday by archaeologists who believe it is the oldest known sculpture of the human form.

The carving found in six fragments in Germany’s Hohle Fels cave depicts a woman with a swollen belly, wide-set thighs and large, protruding breasts.

“It’s very sexually charged,” said University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the figure in September.

Carbon dating suggests it was carved at least 35,000 years ago, according to the researchers’ findings, which are being published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.

“It’s the oldest known piece of figurative sculpture in the world,” said Jill Cook, a curator of Paleolithic and Mesolithic material at the British Museum in London.




Maria Malina, scientific employee, presents the photo of a carved ivory female figurine during its presentation in Tuebingen, southern Germany, Wednesday, May 13, 2009.


Stones in Israel and Africa almost twice as old are believed to have been collected by ancient humans because they resembled people, but they were not carved independently.

The Hohle Fels cave discovery suggests the humans, who are believed to have come to Europe around 40,000 years ago, had the intelligence to create symbols and think abstractly in a way that matches the modern human, Conard said.

“It’s 100 percent certain that, by the time we get to 40,000 years ago in Swabia, we’re dealing with people just like you and me,” Conard told The Associated Press, referring to the southern German region where the sculpture was recovered along with other prehistoric artifacts.

Conard believes the 2.4-inch-tall (6-centimeter) figure may have been hung on the end of a string. The left arm is missing, but Conard said he hopes to find it by sifting through material from the cave.



The Hohle Fels sculpture is curvaceous and has neither feet nor a head, like some of the roughly 150 so-called Venus figurines found in a range from the Pyrenees mountains to southern Russia and dating back about 25,000-29,000 years.

But Cook warned against trying to draw any connections between the Venuses and the Hohle Fels figure, saying that would be like comparing Picasso to a classical sculptor — too much time had passed.

“I wonder whether at this point we’re looking at figures which are unique within themselves and unique within the cultures that they’re arising in,” she said.

Archaeologist Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge, suggested a clearer continuum.

“We now have evidence of that sort of artistic tradition of Venus figurines going back 6,000 years earlier than anybody ever guessed,” he said.

Neanderthals also lived in Europe around the time the sculpture was carved, and frequented the Hohle Fels cave. But Mellars said layered deposits left by both species over thousands of years prove the sculpture was crafted by humans.

“Nothing within a million miles of this has ever been found in a Neanderthal layer,” Mellars said.

The archaeologists agreed the sculpture’s age and features invite speculation about its purpose and the preoccupations of the culture that produced it.

Cook suggested it could be symbol of fertility, perhaps even portrayed in the act of giving birth.

Mellars suggested a more basic motivation for the carving: “These people were obsessed with sex.”

Conard said the differing opinions reinforced the connection between the ancient artist and modern viewer.

“How we interpret it tells us just as much about ourselves as about people 40,000 years ago,” he said.