muir
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Speaking of the borg...where do you stand on centralised government?
Are we as a society being kept from discussing the big issues?
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Speaking of the borg...where do you stand on centralised government?
muir
Banned
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http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/illuminati-targets-russia/
[h=1]City of London’s Imperialist Designs on Russia[/h] Posted by Dean Henderson ⋅ April 29, 2014 ⋅ 15 Comments
Yesterday the EU and US imposed additional sanctions on Russia, while 150 US troops landed in neighboring Estonia for military exercises. Two months after Ukraine’s democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country amidst the MI6/CIA/Mossad-orchestrated putsch in Kiev(http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/ukraine-falls-under-fascist-bankster-thumb/), the West continues to ramp up its aggression against Russia, despite repeated attempts at diplomacy by Russian President Vladimir Putin. So what else is new?
The Rothschild-led City of London bankers have held grand imperialist designs on Russia’s rich natural resources for two centuries, always to be stymied by the odd nationalist czar or Stalinist. Putin thwarted their latest attempts when he jailed Israeli dual citizen Mikail Khodorkovsky and re-nationalized much of Russia’s energy sector. It is no coincidence that one Russian official sanctioned yesterday was Igor Sechin – president of Russian oil giant Rosneft, of which BP still owns a 20 % share.
(Excerpted from Chapter 17: Caspian Sea Oil Grab: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
Unholy Alliance
While the international banking syndicates had always dealt with the Soviet Union, access to its vast oil resources remained limited until Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1980, determined to splinter the Soviet Union into little pieces and open the country’s oilfields to the Four Horsemen. His point man in doing so was CIA Director Bill Casey, whose Roman Catholic Knights of Malta connections were thoroughly exploited.
The Vatican’s secretive Opus Dei “saintly Mafia” was behind the ascent of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to the Papacy. Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II and launched an Opus Dei/Vatican offensive to roll back Latin American liberation theology movements and East European communism. Fascism came naturally to Karol Wojtyla. During the 1940’s he was a chemical salesman for Nazi combine I. G. Farben. Wojtyla sold the Nazis the cyanide they used at their Auschwitz death camps. One of his best friends was Dr. Wolf Szmuness, mastermind of the 1978 Center for Disease Control Hepatitis B study in the US, through which the AIDS virus was introduced into the gay population. [722]
In 1982 Reagan met with Pope John Paul II. Prior to the meeting Reagan signed NSD-32, authorizing a wide range of economic, diplomatic and covert activities to “neutralize the USSR’s hold on Eastern Europe”. At the meeting the two agreed to launch a clandestine program to tear Eastern Europe away from the Soviets. Poland, the Pope’s country of origin, would be the key. Catholic priests, the AFL-CIO, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Vatican Bank and CIA would all be deployed.
The Vatican is the world’s largest owner of equities, using Swiss affiliate Banco di Roma per la Svizzera to conduct its more discretionary business. Italian fascist Benito Mussolini gave the Vatican generous tax exemptions which it still enjoys. Banco Ambrosiano’s P-2 leader Robert Calvi’s Grand Oriente Freemason’s supported reconciliation with the Vatican. Relations between the Vatican and the Freemasons were strained in the 11th century when the Greek Orthodox split from the Roman Catholics. Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaler of St. John factions emerged. The latter was the Catholic faction. They changed their name to the Knights of Malta, after the island where they found refuge after their Crusades defeat, with help from the Vatican. Malta is a nexus of CIA/MI6/Mossad intrigues.
In the 13th century Pope Clement V, backed by France’s King Philip, charged the Protestant Knights Templars with heresy, citing their penchant for drug running, arms peddling, gambling and prostitution rings. These activities are what made the Templars “filthy rich”. Pope Clement made an example of Templar leader Jaques de Molay, whom he burned at the stake on Friday the 13th. [723] The Templars took their loot and fled to Scotland to found Scottish Rite Freemasonry. They bankrolled the House of Windsor, which controls Britain and presides at the apex of Freemasonry around the world. Masonic Lodge members enroll their children in the de Molay Society, which is named in honor of the toasted Templar pirate.
Calvi’s attempt to reconcile protestant and Catholic secret societies was a success. He became paymaster to the Polish Solidarity movement, while Nixon Treasury Secretary David Kennedy’s dirty Continental Illinois Bank served as conduit for CIA funds sent by Bank of Cicero asset Bishop Paul Marcinkus to fund Solidarity. [724] The Vatican teamed up with Europe’s Black Nobility, the Bilderbergers and CIA to launch the top-secret JASON Society and armed South American dictators to quash liberation theology. In 1978 when Pope John Paul II took power, the Vatican issued a commemorative stamp featuring an Egyptian pyramid and the Roshaniya all-seeing eye. [725] The Vatican and the Illuminati Brotherhood were reunited.
Reagan’s meetings with Pope John Paul II were an affirmation of this powerful new alliance, which would now focus on bringing the Soviet Union to its knees. Even before Reagan met with the Pope the CIA had groomed an informant at the Polish Ministry of Defense- Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski. Kuklinski reported to the Vatican and helped organize the Polish Solidarity Movement, led by the wealthy Radziwill family who had funded JFK assassins via Permindex. Most Solidarity leaders were old-money aristocrats.
The precursor to Solidarity was the National Alliance of Solidarists, a Russian/Eastern European fascist hit squad funded by RD/Shell’s Sir Henry Deterding and German Vickers Arms Corporation President Sir Basil Zacharoff. Sir Auckland Geddes of Rio Tinto Zinc, which bankrolled Francisco Franco’s fascist coup in Spain, also contributed to the Solidarists. Geddes’ nephew- Ford Irvine Geddes- was chairman of the Inchcape’s Peninsular & Orient Navigation Company from 1971-1972. [726]
The Solidarist’s US headquarters was the Tolstoy Foundation, which is housed in the same building as Julius Klein Associates, which ran guns to the murderous Haganah and Stern Gang Zionist death squads who stole Palestinian lands to found Israel. Klein was an M16 Permindex insider who helped plan the JFK hit.
The Solidarists stepchild, the Solidarity Movement, was touted in the Western media as a great Polish liberating force. With boatloads of CIA help, Solidarity toppled the Communist government in Warsaw. Their straw man Lech Walesa became President of Poland. In 1995 Walesa was defeated by former Communist leader Aleksander Kwasniewski. Walesa was rewarded for his boot licking with a job at Pepsico.
CIA Director Casey demanded a constant focus on Eastern Europe at CIA. Casey met often with Philadelphia Roman Catholic Cardinal John Krol to discuss the Solidarity Movement. He utilized his Knights of Malta connections, leaning heavily on Brother Vernon Walters, whose spook resume read like a James Bond novel. Walter’s latest incarnation was Reagan Ambassador at Large to Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli. [727] By 1991 Walters was US Ambassador to the UN, where he successfully beat the drums of war against Iraq. He was in Fiji that same year, just prior to the overthrow of that left-leaning government.
Other Knights of Malta members involved in the Eastern European destabilization effort were Reagan NSA and Robert Vesco lieutenant Richard Allen, Reagan NSA Judge William Clark, Reagan Ambassador to the Vatican William Wilson and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Other prominent Knights of Malta members include Prescott Bush, Nixon Treasury Secretary William Simon, Nixon coup-plotter Alexander Haig, contra supporter J. Peter Grace and Venezuelan Rockefeller lieutenant Gustavo Cisneros.
The Reagan team had a five-part strategy in its efforts to destroy the Soviet Union. First, it would pursue the JASON Society’s Star Wars concept in an attempt to engage the Soviets in a space-based arms race which they knew Moscow could not afford. Second, the CIA would launch covert operations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in attempts to overthrow those Soviet-allied governments. While Walesa emerged in Poland, poet Vaclev Havel became CIA white knight in Czechoslovakia. Like Walesa, Havel became unpopular and was soon tossed out of his puppet presidency.
A component of the CIA destabilization program was to buy weapons from these East European nations to arm CIA-sponsored rebels in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola and Mozambique, using BCCI and later BNL as conduits. The US also wanted to get their hands on the high-tech Soviet arsenal. Poland secretly sold the US an array of advanced Soviet weaponry worth $200 million. Romania did the same. Both countries saw their foreign debts reduced significantly. [728]
The third component of the Reagan strategy was to make financial aid to the Warsaw Pact contingent on economic privatization. Fourth, the US would blanket East European and Soviet airwaves with pro-Western propaganda, using fronts like Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America. The CIA financed local newspapers and magazines.
The Company got help inside the Soviet Union from its Mossad buddies in an effort spearheaded by media mogul and Mossad paymaster Robert Maxwell. When Maxwell threatened to reveal a meeting between KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov and Mossad brass aboard his private yacht at which a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev was discussed, Mossad ordered a hit on Maxwell. On November 4, 1991 as he sailed around the Canary Islands Maxwell was assassinated by Israeli commandos. The mass exodus of Russian Jews to Israeli-occupied settlements in Palestine was part of the secret deal between Mossad and Kryuchkov, who is still serving time in a Moscow prison for his treasonous role in the Gorbachev coup. [729]
But it was the fifth and final component of Reagan’s strategy that had the Four Horsemen salivating. Reagan’s spooks initiated an economic warfare campaign against the Soviet Union, which included a freeze on technology transfers, counterfeiting of the Russian ruble and the sponsoring of separatist Islamist groups in the Soviet Central Asian Caucasus. The jihadis who were instructed to target a key transcontinental natural gas pipeline which the Soviets were building. The Soviets had more natural gas than any country on earth and saw the completion of this pipeline as their cash cow for the 21st century. [730] Big Oil wanted to milk that cow.
It’s the Oil, Stupid
When the Soviet Union’s last President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his perestroika and glasnost campaigns to privatize his country’s economy, he was aiding the Illuminati in destroying his country. Was Gorbachev duped, an unwitting accomplice, a CIA deep-cover agent or a mind-controlled Operation Presidio Temple of Set victim? Whatever the case, he played a key role in dismantling the Soviet Union.
The Soviets controlled not only the vast resources of their own nation, but Third World resources in Soviet-allied Comecon nations. Part of perestroika was to cease Soviet aid to these developing nations to ease the growing Soviet debt burden which, like the US debt, accrued largely from decades of Cold War military spending. The two superpowers’ debt was held by the same international banks, which now used this debt lever to pick a winner and to open Russian and Third World resource pools to their corporate tentacles. [731]
When the Berlin Wall fell and Gorbachev was overthrown in favor of IMF crony Boris Yeltsin, the Four Horsemen rushed to Moscow to begin making oil deals. Oil and natural gas had always been the Soviet’s main export and it remained so for the new Russia. In 1991, the country earned $13 billion in hard currency from oil exports. In 1992 Yeltsin announced that Russia’s world leading 9.2 billion barrel/day oil sector would be privatized.
Sixty percent of Russia’s Siberian reserves had never been tapped. [732] In 1993 the World Bank announced a $610 billion loan to modernize Russia’s oil industry- by far the largest loan in the bank’s history. World Bank subsidiary International Finance Corporation bought stock in several Russian oil companies and made an additional loan to the Bronfman’s Conoco for its purchase of Siberian Polar Lights Company. [733]
The main vehicle for international banker control over Russian oil was Lukoil, initially 20%-owned by BP Amoco and Credit Suisse First Boston, where Clinton Yugoslav envoy and Dayton Peace Accords architect Richard Holbrooke worked. Bush Sr. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who orchestrated the BNL cover-up, was now CS First Boston’s Chief Financial Officer. A handful of Zionist Russian oligarchs, collectively known as the Russian Mafia, owned the rest of Lukoil, which served as the Saudi ARAMCO of Russia for the Four Horsemen, a partner to Big Oil in projects throughout the country which involved truly staggering amounts of capital.
These included Sakhalin Islands projects known as Sakhalin I, a $15 billion Exxon Mobil venture; and Sakhalin II, a $10 billion deal led by Royal Dutch/Shell which included Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Marathon Oil as partners. Siberian developments were even larger. RD/Shell is a 24.5% partner in Uganskneftegasin, which controls a huge Siberian natural gas field. At Priobskoye, BP Amoco operates a $53 billion project. At Timan Pechora on the Arctic Ocean a consortium made up of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Norsk Hydo runs a $48 billion venture.
In November 2001 Exxon Mobil announced plans to invest another $12 billion in an oil and gas project in the Russian Far East. RD/Shell announced a $8.5 billion investment in its Sakhalin Islands concessions. BP Amoco made similar proclamations. [734] In 1994 Lukoil pumped 416 million barrels of oil, making it fourth largest producer in the world after RD/Shell, Exxon Mobil and part-owner BP Amoco. Its fifteen billion barrels in crude reserves rank second in the world to Royal Dutch/ Shell. [735]
The Soviet Caucasus, with encouragement from Langley, soon split from Russia. The map of Central Asia was re-written as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia all declared their independence. The pipeline Reagan ordered targeted carried Soviet natural gas east to the North Pacific port of Vladivostok and west to the Black Sea port of Novorrossiysk from the world’s richest known natural gas fields lying beneath and abutting the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, which lies in the heart of Caucasus.
The Four Horsemen coveted this resource more than any in the world. They wanted to build their own private pipelines once they got their hands on the Caspian Sea natural gas fields, which also contain an estimated 200 billion barrels of crude oil. Oil industry privatizations were quickly announced in the new Central Asian Republics which had, by virtue of their independence, taken control of the vast Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves. By 1991 Chevron was holding talks with Kazakhstan. [736]
The Central Asian Republics became the largest recipients of USAID aid, as well as ExIm Bank, OPIC and CCC loans. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan were especially favored. These countries control the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, along with Russia and Iran. In 1994 Kazakhstan received $311 million in US aid and another $85 million to help dismantle Soviet-era nuclear weapons. President Clinton met with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. They signed an array of agreements ranging from disarmament deals to space research cooperation. Kazakhstan, with an estimated 17.6 billion barrels of oil reserves, had been a strategic part of the Soviet nuclear weapons grid and was home to the Soviet space program.
The two leaders also signed an agreement providing investment protection for US multinationals. The Free Trade Institute and US Chamber of Commerce sent officials to train Kazakhs in the finer arts of global capitalism. The Four Horsemen moved in swiftly. Chevron Texaco laid claim to the biggest prize- the $20 billion Tenghiz oilfield- then grabbed another gusher at Korolev. Exxon Mobil signed a deal to develop an offshore concession in the Caspian. [737] Tengizchevroil is 45%-owned by Chevron Texaco and 25%-owned by Exxon Mobil. [738] President George W. Bush’s NSA and later Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice, an expert on Central Asia, sat on the board at Chevron alongside George Schultz from 1989-1992. She even had an oil tanker named after her.
Across the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan was receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid. BP Amoco led a consortium of seven oil giants who spent an initial $8 billion to develop three concessions off the coast of the capital Baku- historic base camp of Big Oil in the region. [739] BP Amoco and Pennzoil- recently acquired by Royal Dutch/Shell- took control of the Azerbaijan Oil Company, whose board of directors included former Bush Sr. Secretary of State James Baker.
In 1991 Air America super spook Richard Secord showed up in Baku under the cover of MEGA Oil. [740] Secord & Company did military training, sold Israeli arms, passed “brown bags filled with cash” and shipped in over 2,000 Islamist fighters from Afghanistan with help from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Afghan heroin began flooding into Baku. Russian economist Alexandre Datskevitch said of 184 heroin labs that police discovered in Moscow in 1991, “Every one of them was run by Azeris, who use the proceeds to buy arms for Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh”. [741]
A Turkish intelligence source claims that Exxon and Mobil were behind the 1993 coup against elected Armenian President Abulfaz Elchibey. Secord’s Islamists helped. Osama bin Laden set up an NGO in Baku as a base for attacking the Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan. A more pliant President Heidar Aliyev was installed. In 1996, at the behest of Amoco’s president, he was invited to the White House to meet President Clinton- whose NSA Sandy Berger held $90,000 worth of Amoco stock. [742]
Armenian separatists backed by the CIA took over the strategic Armenian regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhnichevan which border Turkey and Iran. When Turkish President Turgut Ozal mentioned intervention in Nakhnichevan to back the Azerbaijani seizure, Turkish Premier Suleyman Demirel quickly played down the statement from the key US ally. These two regions are critical to Big Oil plans to build a pipeline from the Caspian Sea across Turkey to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorrossiysk. The same route is utilized by Turkey’s Gray Wolves mafia in their Central Asia to Europe heroin endeavors. When Gray Wolf Mehmet Ali Agca tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, the CIA used its Gladio strategy, trying to pin it on Bulgaria’s Communist Lukashenko government.
Lukoil owns 26% of the Russian Black Sea port at Novorrossiysk. Its president Vayit Alekperov wanted to build the Caspian pipeline through Grozny in Chechnya, while the Four Horsemen preferred the route through Turkey. CIA support for Armenian separatists and Chechen Islamist rebels ensured chaos in Grozny. Alekperov finally agreed to the Turkish route.
In 2003 the Defense Department proposed a $3.8 million military training grant for Azerbaijan. Later they admitted it was to protect US access to oil. As author Michael Klare put it, “Slowly but surely, the US military is being converted into a global oil-protection service”. [743]
Turkmenistan, which borders the Caspian Sea on the southeast, is a virtual gas republic, containing massive deposits of natural gas. It also has vast reserves of oil, copper, coal, tungsten, zinc, uranium and gold. The biggest gas field is at Dauletabad in the southeast of the country, near the Afghan border. The Unocal-led Centgas set about building a pipeline which would connect the oil fields around Chardzhan to the Siberian oilfields further north. More crucial to Centgas was a gas pipeline from Dauletabad across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. [744] Advisers to the project included Henry Kissinger. Unocal is now part of Chevron.
With the Four Horsemen firmly in charge of Caspian Sea reserves, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium was born. Chevron Texaco took a 15% stake with the other three Horsemen and Lukoil splitting the rest. Pipeline security was provided by the Israeli firm Magal Security Systems, which is connected to Mossad. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have especially cozy relations with Israel via Special Ambassador Yusef Maiman, who is president of the Israeli Mehrav Group. Mehrav is involved in a project in Turkey to divert water from the upper Tigres and Euphrates Rivers to the southeast part of Turkey and away from Iraq. [745] The Caspian pipeline was built by Bechtel in partnership with GE and Wilbros Group. The pipeline quietly began moving oil and gas in November 2001, just two months after 911.
Bechtel also built the oilfield infrastructure at Tengiz for Chevron Texaco. In 1995 Bechtel led a USAID-funded consortium to restructure the energy sectors of eleven Central and Eastern European nations in line with IMF mandates. Bechtel received a massive contract to upgrade Russia’s many ailing aluminum smelters in tandem with Pechiney. Lukoil contracted with New Jersey-based ABB Lummus Crest (formed when engineering giants Asea Braun Boveri and Lummis Crest merged) to build a $1.3 billion refinery at the Novorrossysk port and to do a $700 million upgrade on its refinery at Perm.
The Bush Jr. Administration now planned a series of additional Caspian Sea pipelines to compliment the Tenghiz-Black Sea route. A Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline was built by a Four Horsemen consortium led by BP Amoco. The law firm representing the BP-led consortium is James Baker’s family law firm- Baker Botts. The BP Amoco pipeline runs the length of the country of Georgia through its capital Tblisi.
In February 2002 the US announced plans to send 200 military advisers and attack helicopters to Georgia to “root our terrorism”. [746] The deployment was a smokescreen for pipeline protection. In September 2002 Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivaniov accused Georgia of harboring Chechen rebels. In October 2003 Georgian President Eduard Schevardnadze was forced to step down in a bloodless revolution. According to a December 11, 2003 article on the World Socialist Party website, CIA sponsored the coup.
In September 2004 hundreds of Russian school children were killed when Chechen separatists seized their school building. Russian President Vladimir Putin said of the incident, “Certain political circles in the West want to weaken Russia, just like the Romans wanted to weaken Carthage.” He accused “foreign intelligence services” of complicity in the attacks. His adviser Aslanbek Aslakhanov went further, stating on Russian Channel 2 News, “The men had their conversations not within Russia, but with other countries. They were led on a leash. Our self-styled friends have been working for several decades to dismember Russia… (they are the) puppeteers and are financing terror.” Russia’s KM News ran the headline, “School Seizure was Planned in Washington and London”. [747]
Lukoil epitomizes the corruption so rampant in Russia since the Soviet collapse. Bribery is the norm. Lukoil has given luxury jets to the mayor of Moscow, the head of Gazprom (the state-owned natural gas monopoly) and Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev. In the mid-1990’s Lukoil announced that it would sell another 15 % stake to foreign stockholders through its largest owner and financial adviser CS First Boston and the Bank of New York. [748] In 2002 they announced plans to sell off another big stake.
According to Kurt Wulff of the oil investment firm McDep Associates, the Four Horsemen, romping in their new Far East pastures, saw asset increases from 1988-1994 as follows: Exxon Mobil- 54%, Chevron Texaco- 74%, Royal Dutch/Shell- 52% and BP Amoco- 54%. The Horsemen had more than doubled their collective assets in six short years. This quantum leap in Anglo-American global power had everything to do with the takeover of the old Soviet oil patch and the subsequent impoverishment of its birthright owners.
[722] Behold a Pale Horse. William Cooper. Light Technology Publishing. Sedona, AZ. 1991.
[723] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK. 1994. p.94
[724] Hot Money and the Politics of Debt. R.T. Naylor. The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. New York. 1987. p.78
[725] Ibid. p.165
[726] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992
[727] “The Unholy Alliance”. Carl Bernstein. Time. 2-24-92. p.28
[728] “US Obtained Soviet Arsenal from Poland”. Eugene Register-Guard. 2-13-94
[729] The Other Side Of Deception. Victor Ostravsky. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 1994.
[730] Bernstein. p.28
[731] “The Dismantling of the Soviet Union”. Peter Symon. Philippine Currents. November/December 1991.
[732] “Drilling for a Miracle”. Fred Coleman. US News & World Report. 12-7-92. p.54
[733] Evening Edition. National Public Radio. 6-18-93
[734] “Exxon’s Russian Oil Deal Makes Other Firms Feel Lucky”. Wall Street Journal. 12-13-01
[735] “The Seven Sisters Have a Baby Brother”. Paul Klebnikov. Forbes. 1-22-96. p.70
[736] Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Ahmed Rashid. Yale University Publishing. New Haven, CT. 2001. p.145
[737] “Christopher Promises Aid to Oil-Rich Kazakhstan”. AP. Northwest Arkansas Morning News. 10-24-93
[738] 10K Filings to SEC. Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corporations. 3-28-01
[739] “The Quietly Determined American”. Paul Klebnikov. Forbes. 10-24-94. p.48
[740] Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in a Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post- Soviet Republic. Thomas Goltz. M.E. Sharpe. Armonk, NY. 1999. p.272
[741] “al-Qaeda, US Oil Companies and Central Asia”. Peter Dale Scott. Nexus. May-June, 2006. p.11-15
[742] See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism. Robert Baer. Crown. New York. 2002. p.243-244
[743] Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum. Michael T. Klare. Metropolitan/Henry Holt. 2004. p.6-7
[744] Escobar. Part I
[745] “The Roving Eye: Pipelineistan, Part II: The Games Nations Play”. Pepe Escobar. Asia Times Online. 1-26-02
[746] “Wolf Blitzer Reports”. CNN. 2-27-02
[747] “Paranotes: Russian School Seige Conspiracy”. Al Hidell. Paranoia. Issue 37. Winter 2005.
[748] Klebnikov. 1-22-96. p.72
Dean Henderson is the author of five books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve, Stickin’ it to the Matrix & The Federal Reserve Cartel. You can subscribe free to his weekly Left Hook column @ www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com
[h=1]City of London’s Imperialist Designs on Russia[/h] Posted by Dean Henderson ⋅ April 29, 2014 ⋅ 15 Comments
Yesterday the EU and US imposed additional sanctions on Russia, while 150 US troops landed in neighboring Estonia for military exercises. Two months after Ukraine’s democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country amidst the MI6/CIA/Mossad-orchestrated putsch in Kiev(http://deanhenderson.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/ukraine-falls-under-fascist-bankster-thumb/), the West continues to ramp up its aggression against Russia, despite repeated attempts at diplomacy by Russian President Vladimir Putin. So what else is new?
The Rothschild-led City of London bankers have held grand imperialist designs on Russia’s rich natural resources for two centuries, always to be stymied by the odd nationalist czar or Stalinist. Putin thwarted their latest attempts when he jailed Israeli dual citizen Mikail Khodorkovsky and re-nationalized much of Russia’s energy sector. It is no coincidence that one Russian official sanctioned yesterday was Igor Sechin – president of Russian oil giant Rosneft, of which BP still owns a 20 % share.
(Excerpted from Chapter 17: Caspian Sea Oil Grab: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)
Unholy Alliance
While the international banking syndicates had always dealt with the Soviet Union, access to its vast oil resources remained limited until Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1980, determined to splinter the Soviet Union into little pieces and open the country’s oilfields to the Four Horsemen. His point man in doing so was CIA Director Bill Casey, whose Roman Catholic Knights of Malta connections were thoroughly exploited.
The Vatican’s secretive Opus Dei “saintly Mafia” was behind the ascent of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to the Papacy. Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II and launched an Opus Dei/Vatican offensive to roll back Latin American liberation theology movements and East European communism. Fascism came naturally to Karol Wojtyla. During the 1940’s he was a chemical salesman for Nazi combine I. G. Farben. Wojtyla sold the Nazis the cyanide they used at their Auschwitz death camps. One of his best friends was Dr. Wolf Szmuness, mastermind of the 1978 Center for Disease Control Hepatitis B study in the US, through which the AIDS virus was introduced into the gay population. [722]
In 1982 Reagan met with Pope John Paul II. Prior to the meeting Reagan signed NSD-32, authorizing a wide range of economic, diplomatic and covert activities to “neutralize the USSR’s hold on Eastern Europe”. At the meeting the two agreed to launch a clandestine program to tear Eastern Europe away from the Soviets. Poland, the Pope’s country of origin, would be the key. Catholic priests, the AFL-CIO, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Vatican Bank and CIA would all be deployed.
The Vatican is the world’s largest owner of equities, using Swiss affiliate Banco di Roma per la Svizzera to conduct its more discretionary business. Italian fascist Benito Mussolini gave the Vatican generous tax exemptions which it still enjoys. Banco Ambrosiano’s P-2 leader Robert Calvi’s Grand Oriente Freemason’s supported reconciliation with the Vatican. Relations between the Vatican and the Freemasons were strained in the 11th century when the Greek Orthodox split from the Roman Catholics. Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaler of St. John factions emerged. The latter was the Catholic faction. They changed their name to the Knights of Malta, after the island where they found refuge after their Crusades defeat, with help from the Vatican. Malta is a nexus of CIA/MI6/Mossad intrigues.
In the 13th century Pope Clement V, backed by France’s King Philip, charged the Protestant Knights Templars with heresy, citing their penchant for drug running, arms peddling, gambling and prostitution rings. These activities are what made the Templars “filthy rich”. Pope Clement made an example of Templar leader Jaques de Molay, whom he burned at the stake on Friday the 13th. [723] The Templars took their loot and fled to Scotland to found Scottish Rite Freemasonry. They bankrolled the House of Windsor, which controls Britain and presides at the apex of Freemasonry around the world. Masonic Lodge members enroll their children in the de Molay Society, which is named in honor of the toasted Templar pirate.
Calvi’s attempt to reconcile protestant and Catholic secret societies was a success. He became paymaster to the Polish Solidarity movement, while Nixon Treasury Secretary David Kennedy’s dirty Continental Illinois Bank served as conduit for CIA funds sent by Bank of Cicero asset Bishop Paul Marcinkus to fund Solidarity. [724] The Vatican teamed up with Europe’s Black Nobility, the Bilderbergers and CIA to launch the top-secret JASON Society and armed South American dictators to quash liberation theology. In 1978 when Pope John Paul II took power, the Vatican issued a commemorative stamp featuring an Egyptian pyramid and the Roshaniya all-seeing eye. [725] The Vatican and the Illuminati Brotherhood were reunited.
Reagan’s meetings with Pope John Paul II were an affirmation of this powerful new alliance, which would now focus on bringing the Soviet Union to its knees. Even before Reagan met with the Pope the CIA had groomed an informant at the Polish Ministry of Defense- Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski. Kuklinski reported to the Vatican and helped organize the Polish Solidarity Movement, led by the wealthy Radziwill family who had funded JFK assassins via Permindex. Most Solidarity leaders were old-money aristocrats.
The precursor to Solidarity was the National Alliance of Solidarists, a Russian/Eastern European fascist hit squad funded by RD/Shell’s Sir Henry Deterding and German Vickers Arms Corporation President Sir Basil Zacharoff. Sir Auckland Geddes of Rio Tinto Zinc, which bankrolled Francisco Franco’s fascist coup in Spain, also contributed to the Solidarists. Geddes’ nephew- Ford Irvine Geddes- was chairman of the Inchcape’s Peninsular & Orient Navigation Company from 1971-1972. [726]
The Solidarist’s US headquarters was the Tolstoy Foundation, which is housed in the same building as Julius Klein Associates, which ran guns to the murderous Haganah and Stern Gang Zionist death squads who stole Palestinian lands to found Israel. Klein was an M16 Permindex insider who helped plan the JFK hit.
The Solidarists stepchild, the Solidarity Movement, was touted in the Western media as a great Polish liberating force. With boatloads of CIA help, Solidarity toppled the Communist government in Warsaw. Their straw man Lech Walesa became President of Poland. In 1995 Walesa was defeated by former Communist leader Aleksander Kwasniewski. Walesa was rewarded for his boot licking with a job at Pepsico.
CIA Director Casey demanded a constant focus on Eastern Europe at CIA. Casey met often with Philadelphia Roman Catholic Cardinal John Krol to discuss the Solidarity Movement. He utilized his Knights of Malta connections, leaning heavily on Brother Vernon Walters, whose spook resume read like a James Bond novel. Walter’s latest incarnation was Reagan Ambassador at Large to Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli. [727] By 1991 Walters was US Ambassador to the UN, where he successfully beat the drums of war against Iraq. He was in Fiji that same year, just prior to the overthrow of that left-leaning government.
Other Knights of Malta members involved in the Eastern European destabilization effort were Reagan NSA and Robert Vesco lieutenant Richard Allen, Reagan NSA Judge William Clark, Reagan Ambassador to the Vatican William Wilson and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Other prominent Knights of Malta members include Prescott Bush, Nixon Treasury Secretary William Simon, Nixon coup-plotter Alexander Haig, contra supporter J. Peter Grace and Venezuelan Rockefeller lieutenant Gustavo Cisneros.
The Reagan team had a five-part strategy in its efforts to destroy the Soviet Union. First, it would pursue the JASON Society’s Star Wars concept in an attempt to engage the Soviets in a space-based arms race which they knew Moscow could not afford. Second, the CIA would launch covert operations in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in attempts to overthrow those Soviet-allied governments. While Walesa emerged in Poland, poet Vaclev Havel became CIA white knight in Czechoslovakia. Like Walesa, Havel became unpopular and was soon tossed out of his puppet presidency.
A component of the CIA destabilization program was to buy weapons from these East European nations to arm CIA-sponsored rebels in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola and Mozambique, using BCCI and later BNL as conduits. The US also wanted to get their hands on the high-tech Soviet arsenal. Poland secretly sold the US an array of advanced Soviet weaponry worth $200 million. Romania did the same. Both countries saw their foreign debts reduced significantly. [728]
The third component of the Reagan strategy was to make financial aid to the Warsaw Pact contingent on economic privatization. Fourth, the US would blanket East European and Soviet airwaves with pro-Western propaganda, using fronts like Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America. The CIA financed local newspapers and magazines.
The Company got help inside the Soviet Union from its Mossad buddies in an effort spearheaded by media mogul and Mossad paymaster Robert Maxwell. When Maxwell threatened to reveal a meeting between KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov and Mossad brass aboard his private yacht at which a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev was discussed, Mossad ordered a hit on Maxwell. On November 4, 1991 as he sailed around the Canary Islands Maxwell was assassinated by Israeli commandos. The mass exodus of Russian Jews to Israeli-occupied settlements in Palestine was part of the secret deal between Mossad and Kryuchkov, who is still serving time in a Moscow prison for his treasonous role in the Gorbachev coup. [729]
But it was the fifth and final component of Reagan’s strategy that had the Four Horsemen salivating. Reagan’s spooks initiated an economic warfare campaign against the Soviet Union, which included a freeze on technology transfers, counterfeiting of the Russian ruble and the sponsoring of separatist Islamist groups in the Soviet Central Asian Caucasus. The jihadis who were instructed to target a key transcontinental natural gas pipeline which the Soviets were building. The Soviets had more natural gas than any country on earth and saw the completion of this pipeline as their cash cow for the 21st century. [730] Big Oil wanted to milk that cow.
It’s the Oil, Stupid
When the Soviet Union’s last President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his perestroika and glasnost campaigns to privatize his country’s economy, he was aiding the Illuminati in destroying his country. Was Gorbachev duped, an unwitting accomplice, a CIA deep-cover agent or a mind-controlled Operation Presidio Temple of Set victim? Whatever the case, he played a key role in dismantling the Soviet Union.
The Soviets controlled not only the vast resources of their own nation, but Third World resources in Soviet-allied Comecon nations. Part of perestroika was to cease Soviet aid to these developing nations to ease the growing Soviet debt burden which, like the US debt, accrued largely from decades of Cold War military spending. The two superpowers’ debt was held by the same international banks, which now used this debt lever to pick a winner and to open Russian and Third World resource pools to their corporate tentacles. [731]
When the Berlin Wall fell and Gorbachev was overthrown in favor of IMF crony Boris Yeltsin, the Four Horsemen rushed to Moscow to begin making oil deals. Oil and natural gas had always been the Soviet’s main export and it remained so for the new Russia. In 1991, the country earned $13 billion in hard currency from oil exports. In 1992 Yeltsin announced that Russia’s world leading 9.2 billion barrel/day oil sector would be privatized.
Sixty percent of Russia’s Siberian reserves had never been tapped. [732] In 1993 the World Bank announced a $610 billion loan to modernize Russia’s oil industry- by far the largest loan in the bank’s history. World Bank subsidiary International Finance Corporation bought stock in several Russian oil companies and made an additional loan to the Bronfman’s Conoco for its purchase of Siberian Polar Lights Company. [733]
The main vehicle for international banker control over Russian oil was Lukoil, initially 20%-owned by BP Amoco and Credit Suisse First Boston, where Clinton Yugoslav envoy and Dayton Peace Accords architect Richard Holbrooke worked. Bush Sr. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who orchestrated the BNL cover-up, was now CS First Boston’s Chief Financial Officer. A handful of Zionist Russian oligarchs, collectively known as the Russian Mafia, owned the rest of Lukoil, which served as the Saudi ARAMCO of Russia for the Four Horsemen, a partner to Big Oil in projects throughout the country which involved truly staggering amounts of capital.
These included Sakhalin Islands projects known as Sakhalin I, a $15 billion Exxon Mobil venture; and Sakhalin II, a $10 billion deal led by Royal Dutch/Shell which included Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Marathon Oil as partners. Siberian developments were even larger. RD/Shell is a 24.5% partner in Uganskneftegasin, which controls a huge Siberian natural gas field. At Priobskoye, BP Amoco operates a $53 billion project. At Timan Pechora on the Arctic Ocean a consortium made up of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP Amoco and Norsk Hydo runs a $48 billion venture.
In November 2001 Exxon Mobil announced plans to invest another $12 billion in an oil and gas project in the Russian Far East. RD/Shell announced a $8.5 billion investment in its Sakhalin Islands concessions. BP Amoco made similar proclamations. [734] In 1994 Lukoil pumped 416 million barrels of oil, making it fourth largest producer in the world after RD/Shell, Exxon Mobil and part-owner BP Amoco. Its fifteen billion barrels in crude reserves rank second in the world to Royal Dutch/ Shell. [735]
The Soviet Caucasus, with encouragement from Langley, soon split from Russia. The map of Central Asia was re-written as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Georgia all declared their independence. The pipeline Reagan ordered targeted carried Soviet natural gas east to the North Pacific port of Vladivostok and west to the Black Sea port of Novorrossiysk from the world’s richest known natural gas fields lying beneath and abutting the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, which lies in the heart of Caucasus.
The Four Horsemen coveted this resource more than any in the world. They wanted to build their own private pipelines once they got their hands on the Caspian Sea natural gas fields, which also contain an estimated 200 billion barrels of crude oil. Oil industry privatizations were quickly announced in the new Central Asian Republics which had, by virtue of their independence, taken control of the vast Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves. By 1991 Chevron was holding talks with Kazakhstan. [736]
The Central Asian Republics became the largest recipients of USAID aid, as well as ExIm Bank, OPIC and CCC loans. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan were especially favored. These countries control the shoreline of the Caspian Sea, along with Russia and Iran. In 1994 Kazakhstan received $311 million in US aid and another $85 million to help dismantle Soviet-era nuclear weapons. President Clinton met with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. They signed an array of agreements ranging from disarmament deals to space research cooperation. Kazakhstan, with an estimated 17.6 billion barrels of oil reserves, had been a strategic part of the Soviet nuclear weapons grid and was home to the Soviet space program.
The two leaders also signed an agreement providing investment protection for US multinationals. The Free Trade Institute and US Chamber of Commerce sent officials to train Kazakhs in the finer arts of global capitalism. The Four Horsemen moved in swiftly. Chevron Texaco laid claim to the biggest prize- the $20 billion Tenghiz oilfield- then grabbed another gusher at Korolev. Exxon Mobil signed a deal to develop an offshore concession in the Caspian. [737] Tengizchevroil is 45%-owned by Chevron Texaco and 25%-owned by Exxon Mobil. [738] President George W. Bush’s NSA and later Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice, an expert on Central Asia, sat on the board at Chevron alongside George Schultz from 1989-1992. She even had an oil tanker named after her.
Across the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan was receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid. BP Amoco led a consortium of seven oil giants who spent an initial $8 billion to develop three concessions off the coast of the capital Baku- historic base camp of Big Oil in the region. [739] BP Amoco and Pennzoil- recently acquired by Royal Dutch/Shell- took control of the Azerbaijan Oil Company, whose board of directors included former Bush Sr. Secretary of State James Baker.
In 1991 Air America super spook Richard Secord showed up in Baku under the cover of MEGA Oil. [740] Secord & Company did military training, sold Israeli arms, passed “brown bags filled with cash” and shipped in over 2,000 Islamist fighters from Afghanistan with help from Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Afghan heroin began flooding into Baku. Russian economist Alexandre Datskevitch said of 184 heroin labs that police discovered in Moscow in 1991, “Every one of them was run by Azeris, who use the proceeds to buy arms for Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh”. [741]
A Turkish intelligence source claims that Exxon and Mobil were behind the 1993 coup against elected Armenian President Abulfaz Elchibey. Secord’s Islamists helped. Osama bin Laden set up an NGO in Baku as a base for attacking the Russians in Chechnya and Dagestan. A more pliant President Heidar Aliyev was installed. In 1996, at the behest of Amoco’s president, he was invited to the White House to meet President Clinton- whose NSA Sandy Berger held $90,000 worth of Amoco stock. [742]
Armenian separatists backed by the CIA took over the strategic Armenian regions of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhnichevan which border Turkey and Iran. When Turkish President Turgut Ozal mentioned intervention in Nakhnichevan to back the Azerbaijani seizure, Turkish Premier Suleyman Demirel quickly played down the statement from the key US ally. These two regions are critical to Big Oil plans to build a pipeline from the Caspian Sea across Turkey to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorrossiysk. The same route is utilized by Turkey’s Gray Wolves mafia in their Central Asia to Europe heroin endeavors. When Gray Wolf Mehmet Ali Agca tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981, the CIA used its Gladio strategy, trying to pin it on Bulgaria’s Communist Lukashenko government.
Lukoil owns 26% of the Russian Black Sea port at Novorrossiysk. Its president Vayit Alekperov wanted to build the Caspian pipeline through Grozny in Chechnya, while the Four Horsemen preferred the route through Turkey. CIA support for Armenian separatists and Chechen Islamist rebels ensured chaos in Grozny. Alekperov finally agreed to the Turkish route.
In 2003 the Defense Department proposed a $3.8 million military training grant for Azerbaijan. Later they admitted it was to protect US access to oil. As author Michael Klare put it, “Slowly but surely, the US military is being converted into a global oil-protection service”. [743]
Turkmenistan, which borders the Caspian Sea on the southeast, is a virtual gas republic, containing massive deposits of natural gas. It also has vast reserves of oil, copper, coal, tungsten, zinc, uranium and gold. The biggest gas field is at Dauletabad in the southeast of the country, near the Afghan border. The Unocal-led Centgas set about building a pipeline which would connect the oil fields around Chardzhan to the Siberian oilfields further north. More crucial to Centgas was a gas pipeline from Dauletabad across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. [744] Advisers to the project included Henry Kissinger. Unocal is now part of Chevron.
With the Four Horsemen firmly in charge of Caspian Sea reserves, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium was born. Chevron Texaco took a 15% stake with the other three Horsemen and Lukoil splitting the rest. Pipeline security was provided by the Israeli firm Magal Security Systems, which is connected to Mossad. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have especially cozy relations with Israel via Special Ambassador Yusef Maiman, who is president of the Israeli Mehrav Group. Mehrav is involved in a project in Turkey to divert water from the upper Tigres and Euphrates Rivers to the southeast part of Turkey and away from Iraq. [745] The Caspian pipeline was built by Bechtel in partnership with GE and Wilbros Group. The pipeline quietly began moving oil and gas in November 2001, just two months after 911.
Bechtel also built the oilfield infrastructure at Tengiz for Chevron Texaco. In 1995 Bechtel led a USAID-funded consortium to restructure the energy sectors of eleven Central and Eastern European nations in line with IMF mandates. Bechtel received a massive contract to upgrade Russia’s many ailing aluminum smelters in tandem with Pechiney. Lukoil contracted with New Jersey-based ABB Lummus Crest (formed when engineering giants Asea Braun Boveri and Lummis Crest merged) to build a $1.3 billion refinery at the Novorrossysk port and to do a $700 million upgrade on its refinery at Perm.
The Bush Jr. Administration now planned a series of additional Caspian Sea pipelines to compliment the Tenghiz-Black Sea route. A Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline was built by a Four Horsemen consortium led by BP Amoco. The law firm representing the BP-led consortium is James Baker’s family law firm- Baker Botts. The BP Amoco pipeline runs the length of the country of Georgia through its capital Tblisi.
In February 2002 the US announced plans to send 200 military advisers and attack helicopters to Georgia to “root our terrorism”. [746] The deployment was a smokescreen for pipeline protection. In September 2002 Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivaniov accused Georgia of harboring Chechen rebels. In October 2003 Georgian President Eduard Schevardnadze was forced to step down in a bloodless revolution. According to a December 11, 2003 article on the World Socialist Party website, CIA sponsored the coup.
In September 2004 hundreds of Russian school children were killed when Chechen separatists seized their school building. Russian President Vladimir Putin said of the incident, “Certain political circles in the West want to weaken Russia, just like the Romans wanted to weaken Carthage.” He accused “foreign intelligence services” of complicity in the attacks. His adviser Aslanbek Aslakhanov went further, stating on Russian Channel 2 News, “The men had their conversations not within Russia, but with other countries. They were led on a leash. Our self-styled friends have been working for several decades to dismember Russia… (they are the) puppeteers and are financing terror.” Russia’s KM News ran the headline, “School Seizure was Planned in Washington and London”. [747]
Lukoil epitomizes the corruption so rampant in Russia since the Soviet collapse. Bribery is the norm. Lukoil has given luxury jets to the mayor of Moscow, the head of Gazprom (the state-owned natural gas monopoly) and Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev. In the mid-1990’s Lukoil announced that it would sell another 15 % stake to foreign stockholders through its largest owner and financial adviser CS First Boston and the Bank of New York. [748] In 2002 they announced plans to sell off another big stake.
According to Kurt Wulff of the oil investment firm McDep Associates, the Four Horsemen, romping in their new Far East pastures, saw asset increases from 1988-1994 as follows: Exxon Mobil- 54%, Chevron Texaco- 74%, Royal Dutch/Shell- 52% and BP Amoco- 54%. The Horsemen had more than doubled their collective assets in six short years. This quantum leap in Anglo-American global power had everything to do with the takeover of the old Soviet oil patch and the subsequent impoverishment of its birthright owners.
[722] Behold a Pale Horse. William Cooper. Light Technology Publishing. Sedona, AZ. 1991.
[723] The Robot’s Rebellion: The Story of the Spiritual Renaissance. David Icke. Gateway Books. Bath, UK. 1994. p.94
[724] Hot Money and the Politics of Debt. R.T. Naylor. The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. New York. 1987. p.78
[725] Ibid. p.165
[726] Dope Inc.: The Book that Drove Kissinger Crazy. The Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. Washington, DC. 1992
[727] “The Unholy Alliance”. Carl Bernstein. Time. 2-24-92. p.28
[728] “US Obtained Soviet Arsenal from Poland”. Eugene Register-Guard. 2-13-94
[729] The Other Side Of Deception. Victor Ostravsky. HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 1994.
[730] Bernstein. p.28
[731] “The Dismantling of the Soviet Union”. Peter Symon. Philippine Currents. November/December 1991.
[732] “Drilling for a Miracle”. Fred Coleman. US News & World Report. 12-7-92. p.54
[733] Evening Edition. National Public Radio. 6-18-93
[734] “Exxon’s Russian Oil Deal Makes Other Firms Feel Lucky”. Wall Street Journal. 12-13-01
[735] “The Seven Sisters Have a Baby Brother”. Paul Klebnikov. Forbes. 1-22-96. p.70
[736] Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Ahmed Rashid. Yale University Publishing. New Haven, CT. 2001. p.145
[737] “Christopher Promises Aid to Oil-Rich Kazakhstan”. AP. Northwest Arkansas Morning News. 10-24-93
[738] 10K Filings to SEC. Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corporations. 3-28-01
[739] “The Quietly Determined American”. Paul Klebnikov. Forbes. 10-24-94. p.48
[740] Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in a Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post- Soviet Republic. Thomas Goltz. M.E. Sharpe. Armonk, NY. 1999. p.272
[741] “al-Qaeda, US Oil Companies and Central Asia”. Peter Dale Scott. Nexus. May-June, 2006. p.11-15
[742] See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism. Robert Baer. Crown. New York. 2002. p.243-244
[743] Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum. Michael T. Klare. Metropolitan/Henry Holt. 2004. p.6-7
[744] Escobar. Part I
[745] “The Roving Eye: Pipelineistan, Part II: The Games Nations Play”. Pepe Escobar. Asia Times Online. 1-26-02
[746] “Wolf Blitzer Reports”. CNN. 2-27-02
[747] “Paranotes: Russian School Seige Conspiracy”. Al Hidell. Paranoia. Issue 37. Winter 2005.
[748] Klebnikov. 1-22-96. p.72
Dean Henderson is the author of five books: Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries, Das Kartell der Federal Reserve, Stickin’ it to the Matrix & The Federal Reserve Cartel. You can subscribe free to his weekly Left Hook column @ www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
This ones an interesting one
[MENTION=6281]CrazyBeautiful[/MENTION]
here i am being accused of a: 'logical fallacy', a 'cognitive fail', 'confirmation bias' and a lot of other 'psychological traits', as well as: 'right wing tendancies'
Seen in the context of a discussion on the frankfurt school the idea of discrediting someone you dissagree with by calling into question their mental state is very interesting because that is EXACTLY what the frankfurt school used to do to anyone that disagreed with them....they'd imply they were psychologically off
This video about the frankfurt school and their 'critical theory' approach is worth a watch imo to get some context to this:
[video=youtube;EjaBpVzOohs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaBpVzOohs#t=23[/video]
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/0...shrink-for-fbi-to-be-involuntarily-committed/
In a shocking development, Alen J. Salerian, M.D., the former top psychiatrist for the FBI, is about to be involuntarily committed to a prison psychiatric facility for indefinite detention. The official reason is that he is not currently competent to assist his legal counsel in their defense against charges that he has become a drug distributor through his medical practice.
The real reasons, however, appear to be completely different, including:
(a) that Alan and his colleagues have pioneered the responsible use of narcotics to reduce pain and anguish for their patients, where their efforts have been perceived as undermining the “War on Drugs”;
(b) that two of his closest associates in these efforts, Kevin Byers and Siobhan Reynolds, who, like Alen, were members of the Board of Physicians Against Cruelty to Humans with Imperfect Brains, of which Byers was its legal counsel, died in a mysterious plane crash that may well have been deliberate;
(c) that he has been a persistent critic of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) for distributing misleading statistics and promoting the impression of non-existent epidemics, where their efforts collectively have constituted a serious attack on the War on Drugs, which has many financial and political beneficiaries, including the DEA;
(d) the crack down began on 3 March 2011, when his home in Bethesda, Maryland, was raided by a heavily armed force of DEA agents wearing bullet-proof vests and brandishing automatic weapons, ransacked his home and taking his computers and cars on the fabricated ground that his bank account reflected a $100,000 transaction, which was for medical equipment but which the agents claimed was for dealing drugs; and,
(e) because he has spoken out about the assassination of JFK and published on the possible use of a paralyzing dart to immobilize the President and aspects of the alleged Sandy Hook “child massacre”, including a psychological evaluation of the testimony of Gene Rosen, a key witness, which he has discredited.
We are thoroughly familiar with Alen Salerian and his situation, and, on the basis of our combined personal and professional experience and qualifications, we are convinced that this case is a version of Stalinist “show trial” tactics to punish him for publicly criticizing the War on Drugs and to set an example of what happens to those who transgress the government’s boundaries.
Even if Alen were “incompetent to defend himself at trial”, which neither of us accept, he could instead be evaluated on an out-patient basis. There is no good reason to incarcerate him in a prison psychiatric ward, except that then he can be subjected to invasive drug and perhaps even electro-shock therapy to alter his ability to reason and turn him into an obedient serf of the state. Alen protested his abusive treatment at The National Press Club this past Wednesday at 1 PM/ET (see below). If you think this is wrong, write or call Judge Sargent (below).
[h=3]The Washingtonian’s “Update” of Alen’s Case[/h]
Here is a summary of his plight that has appeared in The Washingtonian, which, as we shall explain, has been running a smear campaign against him by its contributor, Ariel Sabar:
But Ariel Sabar has proven himself to be a past-master at the smear, where he has engaged in elementary fallacies, such as special pleading by citing only evidence favorable to your side and ignoring the rest, as you can judge for yourself by comparing the letter from Harold Takooshain, Ph.D., with the commentry by Sean Dix exposing the corruption of Ariel Sabar’s assault. [h=3]Professor Takooshian’s letter to Attorney General Holder[/h]
Harold Takooshian has been a member of the faculty at Fordham University since 1975, having begun his college teaching career at age 23. He has taught in both the U.S. and in South America. He was named a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to the USSR in 1987-88, and to Russia (fall of 2013) at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Here is what he has written about Alen to Eric Holder, Attorney General:
Dr. Takooshian is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and has served as a national officer or President of Psi Chi (1993-2000), President of APA Divisions of International Psychology (2003) and General Psychology (2007), chair of the New York group of SPSSI, and a representative of APA to the United Nations. In 2010 Psi Chi honored Dr. Takooshian with the Florence L. Denmark National Faculty Advisor Award.
[h=3]Sean Dix response to The Washingtonian[/h]
Sean Dix, inventor of FlossRings, who has himself been the target of character assassination and of (what appears to have been) an actual assassination attempt, responded to Ariel Sabar’s original hit piece in The Washingtonian with an astute summary of the actual situation:
[h=3]Professor Fetzer’s letter to Judge Sargent[/h]
During a hearing on 4 April 2014 before Judge Pamela Meade Sargent, Her Honor invited the submission of letters of support from James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., and Alan Salerian, M.D., on his own behalf. Here is the letter from Dr. Fetzer of 9 April 2014:
Dr. Salerian with patients protesting the sabotaging of the Pain/Brain Festival [h=3]Preston James’ assessment of the situation[/h]
This is nothing less than a Soviet-style show trial, the type for which Stalin was so notorious. And it is now occurring here inside America. It is sub-human and totally disgusting on many different levels. The government appears to be attempting to destroy the doctor-patient relationship, which some discerning physicians, like Alen Salerian, are resisting.
When the FBI needed services from one of the top Psychiatrists in the nation and identified him as such and got what they wanted, everything was just fine. However, as soon as Dr. Salerian’s strong character and total commitment to his patients ran counter the official USG position on several key matters, Dr. Salerian was made a scapegoat. The USG deck was stacked against him. Anyone that does any work for the USG–or one of its key LETTER agencies–who ventures off the USG prescribed reservation quickly becomes a target of full USG retribution.
What was the USG “Big Sin” that Dr. Salerian committed which has brought the full force of the USG down upon his head and attacked him in the basest manner by even questioning his medical expertise and his very sanity? Very simply, Dr. Salerian refused to violate his Hippocratic Oath to place his patient’s welfare first and refused to buckle under to USG manipulations. Rather than just “shut up” and go away, he persisted in telling the truth and exposing the complete hypocrisy of the USG’s policy on drugs.
If you work for the USG in anyway and cross them by refusing to “knuckle-under”, the USG secretly labels you an “Enemy of the State” and brings its full force and all of its resources down upon your head. If they decide not to murder you, they will work harder instead to “murder your reputation” and completely discredit you.
Thanks to the taxpayers, the USG has vast resources and can call upon many of its assets for special favors. These favors might be lying, deceiving, faking evidence, you name it, depends on what is owed in return or how “loyal” the asset that is called upon. The USG can shop around and find someone who is willing to sell out or give them what they want.
Dr. Salerian is an exceedingly well trained, competent Physician specializing in Psychiatry and has provided competent care to his patients for many years. Only when he bucked the official USG Health Care and Drug Policies by criticizing them and the use of misleading statistics by the CDC did he become labeled as an “Enemy of the State” and the full force of the USG and all its assets and favors were brought down upon him.
Dr. Salerian is notably very caring, 100% committed to giving his patients the very best care possible and telling the truth about it, despite enormous pressure from a corrupt, self-serving USG, which has decided to make an example out of him to scare other such Doctors into submission. He took a stand for his patients, put them first and refused to buckle under to totalitarian elements inside the Beltway–and now he is receiving the USG Boot in his face 24/7 in response.
Welcome to the New Soviet Union. They call it “America”!
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and an author and editor for Veterans Today.
Preston James earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from a major Big-Ten university and is a prolific and extremely popular contributor to Veterans Today.
In a shocking development, Alen J. Salerian, M.D., the former top psychiatrist for the FBI, is about to be involuntarily committed to a prison psychiatric facility for indefinite detention. The official reason is that he is not currently competent to assist his legal counsel in their defense against charges that he has become a drug distributor through his medical practice.
The real reasons, however, appear to be completely different, including:
(a) that Alan and his colleagues have pioneered the responsible use of narcotics to reduce pain and anguish for their patients, where their efforts have been perceived as undermining the “War on Drugs”;
(b) that two of his closest associates in these efforts, Kevin Byers and Siobhan Reynolds, who, like Alen, were members of the Board of Physicians Against Cruelty to Humans with Imperfect Brains, of which Byers was its legal counsel, died in a mysterious plane crash that may well have been deliberate;
(c) that he has been a persistent critic of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) for distributing misleading statistics and promoting the impression of non-existent epidemics, where their efforts collectively have constituted a serious attack on the War on Drugs, which has many financial and political beneficiaries, including the DEA;
(d) the crack down began on 3 March 2011, when his home in Bethesda, Maryland, was raided by a heavily armed force of DEA agents wearing bullet-proof vests and brandishing automatic weapons, ransacked his home and taking his computers and cars on the fabricated ground that his bank account reflected a $100,000 transaction, which was for medical equipment but which the agents claimed was for dealing drugs; and,
(e) because he has spoken out about the assassination of JFK and published on the possible use of a paralyzing dart to immobilize the President and aspects of the alleged Sandy Hook “child massacre”, including a psychological evaluation of the testimony of Gene Rosen, a key witness, which he has discredited.
We are thoroughly familiar with Alen Salerian and his situation, and, on the basis of our combined personal and professional experience and qualifications, we are convinced that this case is a version of Stalinist “show trial” tactics to punish him for publicly criticizing the War on Drugs and to set an example of what happens to those who transgress the government’s boundaries.
Even if Alen were “incompetent to defend himself at trial”, which neither of us accept, he could instead be evaluated on an out-patient basis. There is no good reason to incarcerate him in a prison psychiatric ward, except that then he can be subjected to invasive drug and perhaps even electro-shock therapy to alter his ability to reason and turn him into an obedient serf of the state. Alen protested his abusive treatment at The National Press Club this past Wednesday at 1 PM/ET (see below). If you think this is wrong, write or call Judge Sargent (below).
[h=3]The Washingtonian’s “Update” of Alen’s Case[/h]
Here is a summary of his plight that has appeared in The Washingtonian, which, as we shall explain, has been running a smear campaign against him by its contributor, Ariel Sabar:
But Ariel Sabar has proven himself to be a past-master at the smear, where he has engaged in elementary fallacies, such as special pleading by citing only evidence favorable to your side and ignoring the rest, as you can judge for yourself by comparing the letter from Harold Takooshain, Ph.D., with the commentry by Sean Dix exposing the corruption of Ariel Sabar’s assault.Harold Takooshian has been a member of the faculty at Fordham University since 1975, having begun his college teaching career at age 23. He has taught in both the U.S. and in South America. He was named a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to the USSR in 1987-88, and to Russia (fall of 2013) at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Here is what he has written about Alen to Eric Holder, Attorney General:
[h=3]Sean Dix response to The Washingtonian[/h]
Sean Dix, inventor of FlossRings, who has himself been the target of character assassination and of (what appears to have been) an actual assassination attempt, responded to Ariel Sabar’s original hit piece in The Washingtonian with an astute summary of the actual situation:
The Washingtonian’s Character Assassination of Dr. Alen J. Salerian should more properly be viewed as libel. After speaking with Dr. Salerian and listening to his side of the story one would learn some facts that would be impossible to disprove at trial.
First, I understand the DC medical board’s investigation was based on 14 patients none of whom had complained. All claims of ill treatment came from third parties with little contact with those 14 patient’s. It’s impossible in my opinion for any Board of medicine to reach any sound conclusion without firsthand testimony from the patients.
Secondly, attributing the deaths of two patients Patrick and Paul are misleading because Paul died two years after he left Dr. Salerians supervision and the DC board of medicine exonerated Dr. Salerian in Paul’s care and treatment. Given that both the DC Medical Board and the Washingtonian were familiar with the facts before the second investigation began it seems obvious to me that this is either double jeopardy, a malicious prosecution or both.
The evidence shows that Patrick’s death was due to a congenital heart disease, confirmed by two nationally recognized experts, a Board Certified Pathologist, and a Cardiologist. The evidence indicates that the board knew Patrick’s blood level of methadone was in the therapeutic range and that the prescribed dosage was consistent with the recommended guidelines in Goodman and Gilman’s Bible of psychopharmacology.
The board knows that the standard guidelines for documenting narcotic related deaths often leads to an erroneous diagnosis of narcotic related death because any sudden death with narcotics in the system is reported as narcotic induced death. It doesn’t matter whether the amount of narcotic is minute or causative. This is a national problem – troubling and misleading – yet well known by experts in the forensic sciences and needs to be addressed with additional research to prevent the false or misleading cause of death.
How can the DC Medical Board explain the fact that one employee and seven patients committed suicide in one year after Dr Salerian lost his privileges to prescribe controlled substances. Did the benefits of taking Dr. Salerian’s license outweigh the loss of life that resulted. Clearly these were patients in need of help that did not receive it. I have to wonder if members of the DC Medical Board would wish to be treated with such indifference were anyone of them in chronic pain or in any emotional distress requiring psychopharmacology treatment.
How else can it be explained that two of the 14 patients who were the subject of the boards investigation died suddenly after their treatments were interrupted, one by suicide, the other due to complications from an exploratory surgery for pain !!! Given that both deaths occurred months afterwards they were apparently not caused by the treatment prescribed by Dr. Salerian but by the removal of his care.
In my opinion it is beyond criminal to deprive a patient of their doctors care. The evidence I have seen clearly put’s the DC Board of medicine in a position to explain why they would participate in such a biased trial given the abundance of facts that refute their findings. An appeals court would clearly see through this on review. Is that the new measure of justice to have to see an injustice through to an appellate court?
In my opinion it is the members of the DC Board of medicine that should be brought to justice. Society needs fair and impartial members of Government to act in good faith and hold each other accountable when necessary. I understand that Washington DC’s culture encourages cover ups but hopefully the truth is too compelling to ignore for the sake of millions who suffer from chronic emotional and physical pain along with the 2000 plus doctors who have been wrongly punished for practicing medicine.
Except for this article I don’t read the Washingtonian and after reading it I don’t plan to ever again. I’m stunned that the Washingtonian didn’t check the available facts that would exonerate Dr. Salerian from their portrayal of a great doctor with a 40 year practice as reckless and responsible for the deaths of two of his patients when it can be proven otherwise. Given that the FBI sought Dr. Salerian as their Chief Psychiatric Consultant I find it harder still to believe that the FBI would have invested themselves in Dr. Salerian’s opinion without doing their own due diligence.
It is a bad sign of the times when those who most deserve justice are persecuted instead. It would seem that all individuals with a vision are literally ostracized by their peers before the merits of their work is accepted. I find it wholly inconsistent that Dr. Salerian who as a pioneer in his field with scholarly publications in peer-reviewed journals and who testified before the FDA as an expert after his work was published by the oldest medical journal the Lancet would behave in the reckless manner that he is characterized in.
In my opinion Dr. Salerian should be commended for his courage in taking on the task of treating some of the most challenging people with physical or mental pain. Instead the DC Board of medicine effectively pulled the rug out from under thousands of Dr. Salerian’s patients, their families and the center’s employees with an unethical and incompetent investigation.
Sean’s commentary was only one of a large number from those who objected to the smear tactics that Ariel Sabar was deploying against Alen Salerian, including many of his former patients, which expose the fuller dimensions of this hit piece in violation of journalistic ethics.First, I understand the DC medical board’s investigation was based on 14 patients none of whom had complained. All claims of ill treatment came from third parties with little contact with those 14 patient’s. It’s impossible in my opinion for any Board of medicine to reach any sound conclusion without firsthand testimony from the patients.
Secondly, attributing the deaths of two patients Patrick and Paul are misleading because Paul died two years after he left Dr. Salerians supervision and the DC board of medicine exonerated Dr. Salerian in Paul’s care and treatment. Given that both the DC Medical Board and the Washingtonian were familiar with the facts before the second investigation began it seems obvious to me that this is either double jeopardy, a malicious prosecution or both.
The evidence shows that Patrick’s death was due to a congenital heart disease, confirmed by two nationally recognized experts, a Board Certified Pathologist, and a Cardiologist. The evidence indicates that the board knew Patrick’s blood level of methadone was in the therapeutic range and that the prescribed dosage was consistent with the recommended guidelines in Goodman and Gilman’s Bible of psychopharmacology.
The board knows that the standard guidelines for documenting narcotic related deaths often leads to an erroneous diagnosis of narcotic related death because any sudden death with narcotics in the system is reported as narcotic induced death. It doesn’t matter whether the amount of narcotic is minute or causative. This is a national problem – troubling and misleading – yet well known by experts in the forensic sciences and needs to be addressed with additional research to prevent the false or misleading cause of death.
How can the DC Medical Board explain the fact that one employee and seven patients committed suicide in one year after Dr Salerian lost his privileges to prescribe controlled substances. Did the benefits of taking Dr. Salerian’s license outweigh the loss of life that resulted. Clearly these were patients in need of help that did not receive it. I have to wonder if members of the DC Medical Board would wish to be treated with such indifference were anyone of them in chronic pain or in any emotional distress requiring psychopharmacology treatment.
How else can it be explained that two of the 14 patients who were the subject of the boards investigation died suddenly after their treatments were interrupted, one by suicide, the other due to complications from an exploratory surgery for pain !!! Given that both deaths occurred months afterwards they were apparently not caused by the treatment prescribed by Dr. Salerian but by the removal of his care.
In my opinion it is beyond criminal to deprive a patient of their doctors care. The evidence I have seen clearly put’s the DC Board of medicine in a position to explain why they would participate in such a biased trial given the abundance of facts that refute their findings. An appeals court would clearly see through this on review. Is that the new measure of justice to have to see an injustice through to an appellate court?
In my opinion it is the members of the DC Board of medicine that should be brought to justice. Society needs fair and impartial members of Government to act in good faith and hold each other accountable when necessary. I understand that Washington DC’s culture encourages cover ups but hopefully the truth is too compelling to ignore for the sake of millions who suffer from chronic emotional and physical pain along with the 2000 plus doctors who have been wrongly punished for practicing medicine.
Except for this article I don’t read the Washingtonian and after reading it I don’t plan to ever again. I’m stunned that the Washingtonian didn’t check the available facts that would exonerate Dr. Salerian from their portrayal of a great doctor with a 40 year practice as reckless and responsible for the deaths of two of his patients when it can be proven otherwise. Given that the FBI sought Dr. Salerian as their Chief Psychiatric Consultant I find it harder still to believe that the FBI would have invested themselves in Dr. Salerian’s opinion without doing their own due diligence.
It is a bad sign of the times when those who most deserve justice are persecuted instead. It would seem that all individuals with a vision are literally ostracized by their peers before the merits of their work is accepted. I find it wholly inconsistent that Dr. Salerian who as a pioneer in his field with scholarly publications in peer-reviewed journals and who testified before the FDA as an expert after his work was published by the oldest medical journal the Lancet would behave in the reckless manner that he is characterized in.
In my opinion Dr. Salerian should be commended for his courage in taking on the task of treating some of the most challenging people with physical or mental pain. Instead the DC Board of medicine effectively pulled the rug out from under thousands of Dr. Salerian’s patients, their families and the center’s employees with an unethical and incompetent investigation.
During a hearing on 4 April 2014 before Judge Pamela Meade Sargent, Her Honor invited the submission of letters of support from James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., and Alan Salerian, M.D., on his own behalf. Here is the letter from Dr. Fetzer of 9 April 2014:
Pamela Meade Sargent
Magistrate Judge
180 West Main Street
Suite 123
Abingdon, VA 24212
(276) 628-6021
Dear Judge Sargent,
This letter is written in support of Alen J. Salerian, M.D., a personal friend and research associate I have known since 2007. I am a former Marine Corps officer and retired university professor, who has published extensively and engaged in research on a wide range of subjects, including the death of our 35th president. I know Alen very well, where he has stayed in my home near Madison, WI, and I have stayed at his home in Bethesda, MD. The legal assaults on him appear to be unjustified.
From numerous discussions with him about his situation, I believe that Alen is being railroaded by local authorities in Bethesda, MD, who have suspended his license and wrongly deprived him of the right to the practice of medicine. The move for him to be incarcerated in a psychiatric facility would be catastrophic, since he would be labeled “crazy” ever after. I believe this is happening because he has protested the use of misleading statistics by the CDC. I have written about this in an article,
“Is the War on Drugs as Phony as the War on Terror?”
It is an objective fact that Dr. Salerian and many of his close physician associates have been pioneering the responsible use of narcotics to treat patients suffering from pain/brain problems. It is an objective fact that two of them, Kevin Byers and Siobhan Reynolds, were killed in a mysterious plane crash. It is an objective fact that Alen’s home was raided by a heavily-armed force of DEA agents, who not only terrorized his wife and daughter but took his computers, his cars and froze his back accounts.
It is also an objective fact that The Pain/Brain Festival he had planned with others for 4 September 2011 in front of the Lincoln Memorial was sabotaged. It is an objective fact that he has been a critic of the CDC’s use of statistics to create (what appears to be) a false impression of a heroin epidemic and that the CDC has been non-responsive to his efforts to have its methods of data collection and publication corrected to be less misleading impression. In a second article, about his more recent travails,
“Outing the Washingtonian and the Criminalization of Medicine”
I have written about the hit piece on him published in The Washingtonian, where the author, Ariel Sabar, has exaggerated the case against him and omitted important information that exonerates him from the most serious charges against him, including that he was responsible for the death of two of his patients, one of them “Paul”, who turns out to have died from an undiagnosed intestinal ulcer. Not only was Dr. Salerian not responsible, but “Paul” died two years after having left Alen’s care as a patient.
The other, Patrick Kennedy, appears to have died from a rare congenital coronary disease, which was only detected after two nationally recognized medical authorities–a cardiologist and a pathologist–had taken a closer look at the case. But you would not know this from the article authored by Ariel Sabar, who hascommitted the special pleading fallacy by only citing evidence that was unfavorable to Dr. Salerian and which has been exaggerated beyond the boundaries of responsible journalism and reporting.
As I have explained in the comments on the article, I was also interviewed by Ariel Sabar, but apparently my experiences with Dr. Salerian were too positive to merit publication. Having spent 35 years offering courses in logic, critical thinking and scientific reasoning, there are two dimensions to rationality of belief, which are those represented by objective logical relations between evidence and hypothesis and those that reflect subjective degrees of belief. To be rational, they must at least roughly correspond.
In this case, that is not remotely the case, which means that the divergence between the objective evidence and subjective opinions demands an explanation. The diagnosis of the government-appointed psychiatrist, Anita Boss, Ph.D., who has concluded Alen suffers from “delusions”, does not appear to correspond—by any stretch—with the objective evidence. What delusions are those from which he is alleged to suffer? Certainly not any which are rooted in the objective facts that I have described above.
We know that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, which appears to have been the case with “Dr. Gatito”, whose complaints about Alen were based on misunderstandings regarding the treatment of one of his patients. But too much knowledge can also pose hazards. Dr. Salerian has exposed a serious problem with CDC statistics related to purported “deaths from drugs”, because the presence of drugs in any quantity are taken as sufficient to classify a death as “due to drugs”, which is a major blunder.
An historical analogy occurred in the past classification of deaths as due to criminal poisoning for many who died from carbon monoxide poisoning in the early 1900s, where home stove gas and lights were the cause of deaths mistakenly classified as “criminal poisoning”, which had actually been brought about by a light or pilot light having been accidentally extinguished. It was only with the development of methods for measuring CO in the blood that accidental and criminal deaths could be distinguished.
If you could read the comments from Alen’s former patients that I have included in the second of these two articles, I believe you would acquire a more balanced and nuanced impression of what Dr. Salerian means to his (now former) patients, seven or eight of whom have committed suicide since he was forced to end his practice. The situation is as unjust as it could be. I am grateful to have a chance to address the issues with you; and I would be glad to appear in court as a sworn witness about them.
Magistrate Judge
180 West Main Street
Suite 123
Abingdon, VA 24212
(276) 628-6021
Dear Judge Sargent,
This letter is written in support of Alen J. Salerian, M.D., a personal friend and research associate I have known since 2007. I am a former Marine Corps officer and retired university professor, who has published extensively and engaged in research on a wide range of subjects, including the death of our 35th president. I know Alen very well, where he has stayed in my home near Madison, WI, and I have stayed at his home in Bethesda, MD. The legal assaults on him appear to be unjustified.
From numerous discussions with him about his situation, I believe that Alen is being railroaded by local authorities in Bethesda, MD, who have suspended his license and wrongly deprived him of the right to the practice of medicine. The move for him to be incarcerated in a psychiatric facility would be catastrophic, since he would be labeled “crazy” ever after. I believe this is happening because he has protested the use of misleading statistics by the CDC. I have written about this in an article,
“Is the War on Drugs as Phony as the War on Terror?”
It is an objective fact that Dr. Salerian and many of his close physician associates have been pioneering the responsible use of narcotics to treat patients suffering from pain/brain problems. It is an objective fact that two of them, Kevin Byers and Siobhan Reynolds, were killed in a mysterious plane crash. It is an objective fact that Alen’s home was raided by a heavily-armed force of DEA agents, who not only terrorized his wife and daughter but took his computers, his cars and froze his back accounts.
It is also an objective fact that The Pain/Brain Festival he had planned with others for 4 September 2011 in front of the Lincoln Memorial was sabotaged. It is an objective fact that he has been a critic of the CDC’s use of statistics to create (what appears to be) a false impression of a heroin epidemic and that the CDC has been non-responsive to his efforts to have its methods of data collection and publication corrected to be less misleading impression. In a second article, about his more recent travails,
“Outing the Washingtonian and the Criminalization of Medicine”
I have written about the hit piece on him published in The Washingtonian, where the author, Ariel Sabar, has exaggerated the case against him and omitted important information that exonerates him from the most serious charges against him, including that he was responsible for the death of two of his patients, one of them “Paul”, who turns out to have died from an undiagnosed intestinal ulcer. Not only was Dr. Salerian not responsible, but “Paul” died two years after having left Alen’s care as a patient.
The other, Patrick Kennedy, appears to have died from a rare congenital coronary disease, which was only detected after two nationally recognized medical authorities–a cardiologist and a pathologist–had taken a closer look at the case. But you would not know this from the article authored by Ariel Sabar, who hascommitted the special pleading fallacy by only citing evidence that was unfavorable to Dr. Salerian and which has been exaggerated beyond the boundaries of responsible journalism and reporting.
As I have explained in the comments on the article, I was also interviewed by Ariel Sabar, but apparently my experiences with Dr. Salerian were too positive to merit publication. Having spent 35 years offering courses in logic, critical thinking and scientific reasoning, there are two dimensions to rationality of belief, which are those represented by objective logical relations between evidence and hypothesis and those that reflect subjective degrees of belief. To be rational, they must at least roughly correspond.
In this case, that is not remotely the case, which means that the divergence between the objective evidence and subjective opinions demands an explanation. The diagnosis of the government-appointed psychiatrist, Anita Boss, Ph.D., who has concluded Alen suffers from “delusions”, does not appear to correspond—by any stretch—with the objective evidence. What delusions are those from which he is alleged to suffer? Certainly not any which are rooted in the objective facts that I have described above.
We know that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, which appears to have been the case with “Dr. Gatito”, whose complaints about Alen were based on misunderstandings regarding the treatment of one of his patients. But too much knowledge can also pose hazards. Dr. Salerian has exposed a serious problem with CDC statistics related to purported “deaths from drugs”, because the presence of drugs in any quantity are taken as sufficient to classify a death as “due to drugs”, which is a major blunder.
An historical analogy occurred in the past classification of deaths as due to criminal poisoning for many who died from carbon monoxide poisoning in the early 1900s, where home stove gas and lights were the cause of deaths mistakenly classified as “criminal poisoning”, which had actually been brought about by a light or pilot light having been accidentally extinguished. It was only with the development of methods for measuring CO in the blood that accidental and criminal deaths could be distinguished.
If you could read the comments from Alen’s former patients that I have included in the second of these two articles, I believe you would acquire a more balanced and nuanced impression of what Dr. Salerian means to his (now former) patients, seven or eight of whom have committed suicide since he was forced to end his practice. The situation is as unjust as it could be. I am grateful to have a chance to address the issues with you; and I would be glad to appear in court as a sworn witness about them.
Dr. Salerian with patients protesting the sabotaging of the Pain/Brain Festival
This is nothing less than a Soviet-style show trial, the type for which Stalin was so notorious. And it is now occurring here inside America. It is sub-human and totally disgusting on many different levels. The government appears to be attempting to destroy the doctor-patient relationship, which some discerning physicians, like Alen Salerian, are resisting.
When the FBI needed services from one of the top Psychiatrists in the nation and identified him as such and got what they wanted, everything was just fine. However, as soon as Dr. Salerian’s strong character and total commitment to his patients ran counter the official USG position on several key matters, Dr. Salerian was made a scapegoat. The USG deck was stacked against him. Anyone that does any work for the USG–or one of its key LETTER agencies–who ventures off the USG prescribed reservation quickly becomes a target of full USG retribution.
What was the USG “Big Sin” that Dr. Salerian committed which has brought the full force of the USG down upon his head and attacked him in the basest manner by even questioning his medical expertise and his very sanity? Very simply, Dr. Salerian refused to violate his Hippocratic Oath to place his patient’s welfare first and refused to buckle under to USG manipulations. Rather than just “shut up” and go away, he persisted in telling the truth and exposing the complete hypocrisy of the USG’s policy on drugs.
Top retired DEA officials know that the USG brings most of the illegal drugs in and has done so since the Vietnam War to raise “off the books” funding for black ops. They also know that the CIA has a long well established partnership with all the drug cartels and while using them as business partners, raises up competitive ones to fight each other and keep them from becoming too prominent, thus keeping the CIA on top.
The USG does not want drug addictions to be treated like other medical/psychiatric problems by allowing properly trained physicians to prescribe the necessary drugs. Nor do they want marijuana to be legalized, because this would quickly put an end to the success of the Drug Cartels and they would lose a vast source of untraceable funding for black ops. They want illegal drugs to keep ruining inner cities and the youth of America and to continue to generate massive crime problems.
Why you might ask? Because these horrible problems that cause so much degeneration, human suffering and crime justify the continual expansion of the Federal Government and Law Enforcement which, in turn, provides the muscle necessary for the Regime in power inside the Beltway to keep “We the People” oppressed and maintain totalitarian power.The USG does not want drug addictions to be treated like other medical/psychiatric problems by allowing properly trained physicians to prescribe the necessary drugs. Nor do they want marijuana to be legalized, because this would quickly put an end to the success of the Drug Cartels and they would lose a vast source of untraceable funding for black ops. They want illegal drugs to keep ruining inner cities and the youth of America and to continue to generate massive crime problems.
If you work for the USG in anyway and cross them by refusing to “knuckle-under”, the USG secretly labels you an “Enemy of the State” and brings its full force and all of its resources down upon your head. If they decide not to murder you, they will work harder instead to “murder your reputation” and completely discredit you.
Thanks to the taxpayers, the USG has vast resources and can call upon many of its assets for special favors. These favors might be lying, deceiving, faking evidence, you name it, depends on what is owed in return or how “loyal” the asset that is called upon. The USG can shop around and find someone who is willing to sell out or give them what they want.
You see, if you cross a basic USG major policy, like actually providing needed care to those patients with severe 24/7 debilitating chronic pain, as Dr. Salerian has done, and you even write about it and discuss it openly, this runs counter to existing USG drug policy and threatens to undermine it. That is simply not acceptable to the US Government.
But Dr. Salerian did something even worse in the USG eyes. He is a real, old fashioned physician that puts his patients first and takes his Hippocratic Oath 100% seriously to do no harm to patients and advocate on their behalf when necessary. This violates the secret USG Health Policy that the large Health Insurance Companies and US government bureaucrats are the ones that set the standards of care, which medical services are approved, which will paid for and which won’t.
You see, the USG does not want Physicians to be in control and has spent the last 50 years eroding the Doctor/Patient relationship. They have pushed for Insurance and Hospital Protocols and literally taken most of the ability of Doctors to function as Hippocratic Physicians away. Why? Because the USG wants to exercise the power of life and death over “We the People”. That’s why.But Dr. Salerian did something even worse in the USG eyes. He is a real, old fashioned physician that puts his patients first and takes his Hippocratic Oath 100% seriously to do no harm to patients and advocate on their behalf when necessary. This violates the secret USG Health Policy that the large Health Insurance Companies and US government bureaucrats are the ones that set the standards of care, which medical services are approved, which will paid for and which won’t.
Dr. Salerian is an exceedingly well trained, competent Physician specializing in Psychiatry and has provided competent care to his patients for many years. Only when he bucked the official USG Health Care and Drug Policies by criticizing them and the use of misleading statistics by the CDC did he become labeled as an “Enemy of the State” and the full force of the USG and all its assets and favors were brought down upon him.
Dr. Salerian is notably very caring, 100% committed to giving his patients the very best care possible and telling the truth about it, despite enormous pressure from a corrupt, self-serving USG, which has decided to make an example out of him to scare other such Doctors into submission. He took a stand for his patients, put them first and refused to buckle under to totalitarian elements inside the Beltway–and now he is receiving the USG Boot in his face 24/7 in response.
You doubt this is a manifestation of USG hypocrisy at the highest levels inside the Beltway? Then consider this. Why does the USG persist in maintaining and enforcing farcical Federal laws that Marijuana is a Class I narcotic, when it has already been legalized in several individual states? We fill our prisons with non-violent drug users, while the US Goverment, perhaps the biggest drug dealer in the world, goes scot-free. This complete Drug Policy Hypocrisy is reflection of the USG’s powerful need to continue to restrict access to drugs.
That extends even to marijuana as a part of their addiction to off-the-books drug money for black ops, underground bases, and secret military programs, none of which would ever be approved by Congress if “We the People” were publicly informed. As one former high ranking Centac Man observed, if drugs were legalized, it would cut off money laundering from the large Wall Street banks and most would go bankrupt in a month.
The simple fact is that Dr. Salerian’s Soviet Show trial is nothing less than a well coordinated effort for the USG to “geld” Doctors and get total control over them, reducing them to mere order-takers from the Insurance Companies and US Government bureaucrats, while keeping American Intel and the Banks fat with drug money.That extends even to marijuana as a part of their addiction to off-the-books drug money for black ops, underground bases, and secret military programs, none of which would ever be approved by Congress if “We the People” were publicly informed. As one former high ranking Centac Man observed, if drugs were legalized, it would cut off money laundering from the large Wall Street banks and most would go bankrupt in a month.
Welcome to the New Soviet Union. They call it “America”!
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and an author and editor for Veterans Today.
Preston James earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from a major Big-Ten university and is a prolific and extremely popular contributor to Veterans Today.
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.nutritionalanarchy.com/2...tame-distort-brain-function-kill-brain-cells/
[h=2]New Study: FDA-Approved Levels of Aspartame Distort Brain Function, Kill Brain Cells[/h]
As reported before, aspartame has been shown time and again in studies (the ones not commissioned by the industry) to be bad for you.
Now yet another new study, this one published in the journal Redox Biology, has concluded what lots of other research over the past decades has repeatedly shown — aspartame, the popular sweetener in over 6,000 grocery store items, including everything from soup mixes to carbonated beverages to chewing gum — can essentially program your brain cells to kill themselves.
Key study findings include:
So even at the FDA acceptable levels, consuming this chemical is just not good for you, no matter what the mega food corporations and their lobbies say.
Aspartame (otherwise known by its brand names NutraSweet and Equal) is one of the most widely used artificial sweeteners in foods today. It breaks down into three components: 50 percent phenylalanine, 40 percent aspartic acid, and 10 percent methanol (yummy). It comes from genetically modified (GM) E. coli bacteria, and by “comes from”, I mean aspartame is GM bacteria poop (super yummy). Aspartic acid is an excitotoxin, methanol is the wood alcohol used in antifreeze, and too much of the amino acid phenylalanine in the brain can decrease serotonin levels over time, leading to chemical imbalances that can actually induce mood disorders and depression.
Dr. Mercola has noted that aspartame actually accounts for over 75 percent of adverse food additive reactions reported to the FDA, including:
It’s the methanol released during aspartame’s metabolism, in this particular case, which these researchers say is helping to generate free radicals that lead to cell damage and death:
When I typed “FDA Aspartame” into Google’s search engine to get the FDA’s official take on how safe and wonderful this chemical is for everyone to eat all the time, ironically, the first thing that popped up was a file on the FDA.gov website about aspartame’s toxicity that lists off at least 50 horrible side effects people have experienced from eating and drinking this stuff.
The document, Docket # 02P-0317 Recall Aspartame as a Neurotoxic Drug: File #4: Reported Aspartame Toxicity Reactions by Mark Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center, also notes that the FDA admittedly stopped recording aspartame toxicity reactions back in 1995, so its figures on exactly who is being negatively affected by aspartame and how aren’t just sketchy, they’re apparently nonexistent:
That might be a good question for our current FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods, Michael Taylor, who used to be Vice President of Public Policy and a lawyer for Monsanto. He might have some special insight, considering that Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, back in 1985.
[h=2]New Study: FDA-Approved Levels of Aspartame Distort Brain Function, Kill Brain Cells[/h]
As reported before, aspartame has been shown time and again in studies (the ones not commissioned by the industry) to be bad for you.
Now yet another new study, this one published in the journal Redox Biology, has concluded what lots of other research over the past decades has repeatedly shown — aspartame, the popular sweetener in over 6,000 grocery store items, including everything from soup mixes to carbonated beverages to chewing gum — can essentially program your brain cells to kill themselves.
Key study findings include:
- Aspartame administration alters the functional activity in the brain by elevating the antioxidant levels.
- Chronic aspartame consumption altered the neuronal function and neurodegeneration in brain.
- Observed changes may be due to the methanol or its metabolite.
- Long-term FDA approved daily acceptable intake (40 mg/kg bwt) aspartame administration distorted the brain function and generated apoptosis in brain regions.
So even at the FDA acceptable levels, consuming this chemical is just not good for you, no matter what the mega food corporations and their lobbies say.
Aspartame (otherwise known by its brand names NutraSweet and Equal) is one of the most widely used artificial sweeteners in foods today. It breaks down into three components: 50 percent phenylalanine, 40 percent aspartic acid, and 10 percent methanol (yummy). It comes from genetically modified (GM) E. coli bacteria, and by “comes from”, I mean aspartame is GM bacteria poop (super yummy). Aspartic acid is an excitotoxin, methanol is the wood alcohol used in antifreeze, and too much of the amino acid phenylalanine in the brain can decrease serotonin levels over time, leading to chemical imbalances that can actually induce mood disorders and depression.
Dr. Mercola has noted that aspartame actually accounts for over 75 percent of adverse food additive reactions reported to the FDA, including:
“Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.”
In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even lists aspartame as a “chemical with substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity” on its database of developmental neurotoxicants.
It’s the methanol released during aspartame’s metabolism, in this particular case, which these researchers say is helping to generate free radicals that lead to cell damage and death:
This study provides a scientific evidence to conclude that aspartame is toxic to the body system and particularly in brain it increase the free radicals and triggers the apoptosis. Aspartame consumption in a long-term basis may affect the brain. It may be due to its metabolite methanol Aspartame may act as a chemical stressor as indicated by the corticosteroid level. (source)
But I guess we should just keep on consuming it, right?
When I typed “FDA Aspartame” into Google’s search engine to get the FDA’s official take on how safe and wonderful this chemical is for everyone to eat all the time, ironically, the first thing that popped up was a file on the FDA.gov website about aspartame’s toxicity that lists off at least 50 horrible side effects people have experienced from eating and drinking this stuff.
The document, Docket # 02P-0317 Recall Aspartame as a Neurotoxic Drug: File #4: Reported Aspartame Toxicity Reactions by Mark Gold of the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center, also notes that the FDA admittedly stopped recording aspartame toxicity reactions back in 1995, so its figures on exactly who is being negatively affected by aspartame and how aren’t just sketchy, they’re apparently nonexistent:
The FDA and NutraSweet have claimed that the number of reported adverse reactions have declined substantially since the mid-1980s (Pauli 1995, Butchko 1994). In addition, the FDA recently claimed that the number of reported toxicity reactions for 1995 was only 11 (WSJ 1996)! It is important to realize that during the mid-1970s the FDA was investigating wrong-doings of the aspartame manufacturer and stated the facts exactly as they found them:
”[The manufacturer] lied and they didn’t submit the real nature of their observations because had they done that it is more than likely that a great number of these studies would have been rejected simply for adequacy. What Searle did, they took great pains to camouflage these shortcomings of the study. As I say filter and just present to the FDA what they wished the FDA to know and they did other terrible things for instance animals would develop tumors while they were under study. Well they would remove these tumors from the animals.” [FDA Toxicologist and Task Force member, Dr. Andrian Gross (Wilson 1985)]
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of key government and FDA officials left their jobs to work with companies related to the aspartame industry (GAO 1986). This included key FDA officials such as the head of the FDA Bureau of Foods becoming a Vice President of the National Drink Association and the FDA Commissioner becoming a high-paid consultant for the manufacturer’s PR firm, Burston Marsteller (Gordon 1987). After this period of time, there was no scientific evidence and no amount of serious toxicity reports that could get the FDA to seriously consider funding independent, properly-conducted (e.g., chronic exposure) research. That appearance of the FDA being under the total control of the manufacturer, Monsanto, continues to this day.
I include these comments about the FDA to demonstrate why no independent scientist familiar with the aspartame issue takes statements from the FDA such as “11 reported reactions in 1995″ seriously. There are many people, including myself who have received that many toxicity reaction reports in a single day during 1995. The reality is that independent organizations have noted that aspartame toxicity reaction reports given to them have *increased* every year since the late 1980s (Stoddard 1995). It is also important to note that in mid-1995, the FDA admited that it had stopped recording aspartame toxicity reactions (Food 1995). That may have something to do with why the numbers that the FDA reported to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ 1996) were so small! (source)
Why does aspartame continue to be approved and allowed in food after food after drink after gum after food?”[The manufacturer] lied and they didn’t submit the real nature of their observations because had they done that it is more than likely that a great number of these studies would have been rejected simply for adequacy. What Searle did, they took great pains to camouflage these shortcomings of the study. As I say filter and just present to the FDA what they wished the FDA to know and they did other terrible things for instance animals would develop tumors while they were under study. Well they would remove these tumors from the animals.” [FDA Toxicologist and Task Force member, Dr. Andrian Gross (Wilson 1985)]
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of key government and FDA officials left their jobs to work with companies related to the aspartame industry (GAO 1986). This included key FDA officials such as the head of the FDA Bureau of Foods becoming a Vice President of the National Drink Association and the FDA Commissioner becoming a high-paid consultant for the manufacturer’s PR firm, Burston Marsteller (Gordon 1987). After this period of time, there was no scientific evidence and no amount of serious toxicity reports that could get the FDA to seriously consider funding independent, properly-conducted (e.g., chronic exposure) research. That appearance of the FDA being under the total control of the manufacturer, Monsanto, continues to this day.
I include these comments about the FDA to demonstrate why no independent scientist familiar with the aspartame issue takes statements from the FDA such as “11 reported reactions in 1995″ seriously. There are many people, including myself who have received that many toxicity reaction reports in a single day during 1995. The reality is that independent organizations have noted that aspartame toxicity reaction reports given to them have *increased* every year since the late 1980s (Stoddard 1995). It is also important to note that in mid-1995, the FDA admited that it had stopped recording aspartame toxicity reactions (Food 1995). That may have something to do with why the numbers that the FDA reported to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ 1996) were so small! (source)
That might be a good question for our current FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods, Michael Taylor, who used to be Vice President of Public Policy and a lawyer for Monsanto. He might have some special insight, considering that Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, back in 1985.
j654dgj7
Please delete this account.
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/richmondshire-council-dog-poo-calender-3483980
Pensioner kicks up a stink over dog poo on council calendar
Sickened 78-year-old woman says bosses have put their foot in it with foul pictures
A disgusted pensioner has kicked up a stink after finding pictures of dog dirt on a council calendar.
Anne Simpson was sickened by the images of pooch poop on May, June and November pages.
The 78-year-old, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, said: "A colourful picture illustrates each month - January is a Christmas tree, February there are pink hearts, March an old sofa, April has cute bunnies and Easter eggs.
"So far so good, so I thought I would have a peek at May's offering - I was greeted by a large dog turd."
But the council refuses to accept it has put its foot in it by featuring the cartoon images of dogs' mess.
They said it was all part of a campaign to stamp out anti-social dog owners.
Richmondshire District Council director Colin Dales said: "I appreciate that not everyone wants to look at a picture of dog fouling.
"But we need our message and associated campaigns to be hard-hitting in order to get the message across to anti-social residents and visitors that their behaviour will not be tolerated."
Despite her dislike of the calendar, Mrs Simpson didn't let it go to waste.
She cut up her Easter cards and used them to convert the piles of poo into cute bonnets.
Pensioner kicks up a stink over dog poo on council calendar
Sickened 78-year-old woman says bosses have put their foot in it with foul pictures
A disgusted pensioner has kicked up a stink after finding pictures of dog dirt on a council calendar.
Anne Simpson was sickened by the images of pooch poop on May, June and November pages.
The 78-year-old, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, said: "A colourful picture illustrates each month - January is a Christmas tree, February there are pink hearts, March an old sofa, April has cute bunnies and Easter eggs.
"So far so good, so I thought I would have a peek at May's offering - I was greeted by a large dog turd."
But the council refuses to accept it has put its foot in it by featuring the cartoon images of dogs' mess.
They said it was all part of a campaign to stamp out anti-social dog owners.
Richmondshire District Council director Colin Dales said: "I appreciate that not everyone wants to look at a picture of dog fouling.
"But we need our message and associated campaigns to be hard-hitting in order to get the message across to anti-social residents and visitors that their behaviour will not be tolerated."
Despite her dislike of the calendar, Mrs Simpson didn't let it go to waste.
She cut up her Easter cards and used them to convert the piles of poo into cute bonnets.
j654dgj7
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/semen-filled-cupcakes-given-out-3495850
Teenage girl accused of giving 'semen filled' cupcakes out to school bullies
A tenth-grader from California is being investigated after she passed out cupcakes said to be filled with semen to students who were picking on her
Cupcakes: Girl allegedly handed out buns baked with bodily fluids
A teenager is under investigation after handing out cupcakes said to be filled with semen to the school bullies.
A student at Centennial High School in Bakersfield, California reportedly handed out the buns to classmates who were picking on her on Tuesday.
Another student contacted a local TV station and said the girl had put pubic hair, semen, out of date food and pills into the mixture.
When some students asked her why the cakes tasted so bad, she told them they were made with bodily fluids.
But police investigating the incident say it was nothing more than a "high school prank" - and that the cakes were made with mayonnaise, barbecue sauce and soy sauce.
Officers said suspect and witness statements indicated there were no bodily fluids or poisonous substances baked into the cakes.
Most students thought the cakes tasted so bad they didn't eat them, but one classmate ate a full cupcake and stayed home the next day with digestive problems.
Students were notified by school officials that a new policy banning outside food being brought into the school took effect on Friday.
The cupcakes have since been destroyed and no arrests have been made.
Teenage girl accused of giving 'semen filled' cupcakes out to school bullies
A tenth-grader from California is being investigated after she passed out cupcakes said to be filled with semen to students who were picking on her
Cupcakes: Girl allegedly handed out buns baked with bodily fluids
A teenager is under investigation after handing out cupcakes said to be filled with semen to the school bullies.
A student at Centennial High School in Bakersfield, California reportedly handed out the buns to classmates who were picking on her on Tuesday.
Another student contacted a local TV station and said the girl had put pubic hair, semen, out of date food and pills into the mixture.
When some students asked her why the cakes tasted so bad, she told them they were made with bodily fluids.
But police investigating the incident say it was nothing more than a "high school prank" - and that the cakes were made with mayonnaise, barbecue sauce and soy sauce.
Officers said suspect and witness statements indicated there were no bodily fluids or poisonous substances baked into the cakes.
Most students thought the cakes tasted so bad they didn't eat them, but one classmate ate a full cupcake and stayed home the next day with digestive problems.
Students were notified by school officials that a new policy banning outside food being brought into the school took effect on Friday.
The cupcakes have since been destroyed and no arrests have been made.
muir
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Gross!
The articles i posted should really be on other existing threads but I don't want to overload them so i put them here for anyone who's interested eg the thread on psychiatry (see story above about FBI psychiatrist being committed to a mental hospital for disagreeing with the authorities to see how the system can be used to silence dissenters)
The articles i posted should really be on other existing threads but I don't want to overload them so i put them here for anyone who's interested eg the thread on psychiatry (see story above about FBI psychiatrist being committed to a mental hospital for disagreeing with the authorities to see how the system can be used to silence dissenters)
Kanamori
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/richmondshire-council-dog-poo-calender-3483980
Pensioner kicks up a stink over dog poo on council calendar
Sickened 78-year-old woman says bosses have put their foot in it with foul pictures
A disgusted pensioner has kicked up a stink after finding pictures of dog dirt on a council calendar.
Anne Simpson was sickened by the images of pooch poop on May, June and November pages.
The 78-year-old, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, said: "A colourful picture illustrates each month - January is a Christmas tree, February there are pink hearts, March an old sofa, April has cute bunnies and Easter eggs.
"So far so good, so I thought I would have a peek at May's offering - I was greeted by a large dog turd."
But the council refuses to accept it has put its foot in it by featuring the cartoon images of dogs' mess.
They said it was all part of a campaign to stamp out anti-social dog owners.
Richmondshire District Council director Colin Dales said: "I appreciate that not everyone wants to look at a picture of dog fouling.
"But we need our message and associated campaigns to be hard-hitting in order to get the message across to anti-social residents and visitors that their behaviour will not be tolerated."
Despite her dislike of the calendar, Mrs Simpson didn't let it go to waste.
She cut up her Easter cards and used them to convert the piles of poo into cute bonnets.
You don't have to post in the thread if you don't want to read it.
j654dgj7
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I don't feel like people are welcome in this thread. This is an articles thread, man.
muir
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I think kanamori has a point
This thread is for issues that aren't really dealt with in the mainstream corporate news but they're obviously stories people are interested in or the thread wouldn't have had over 17,000 hits
There is a lot of scope in this thread for people to post on a very wide subject area but at the same time the thread is done in a certain rebellious spirit which your articles aren't really in keeping with
Perhaps you could start another thread about human and animal excretions?
If, on the other hand, you could link the dog poo pictures or the semen cakes to a wider agenda being carried out by a shadowy cabal of bankers then the stories might sit more comfortably here
Last edited:
Kanamori
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Sure there is if everything gets taken out in bureaucratic nightmares, by crazed meanies or just doesn't really matter, and every attempt to change it just gets you into trouble.
It's like a giant monstrosity of disincentives to actually care about anything.
muir
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Sure there is if everything gets taken out in bureaucratic nightmares, by crazed meanies or just doesn't really matter, and every attempt to change it just gets you into trouble.
Totally!
As Leary said: people need to feel good to do good
And the problem with our current system is that it is engineered to make people feel BAD; this demotivates people
The guy Michael Tellinger in that other clip has some great ideas about a contributory society. This sounds very much like the things i've discussed on the forum in anarchist terms. if people feel a part of something then they are more motivated then if they feel they are a faceless cog in a machine. Also if people get to try new things and learn new skills it keeps life interesting, challenging and exciting
That is absolutely the direction we need to take to escape the current way of doing things which is hollowing people out from the inside out
muir
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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_post-constitutional_era_20140504#
[h=2]The Post-Constitutional Era[/h]
Activist Lauren DiGioia is arrested Jan. 3, 2012, during a demonstration in New York City’s Grand Central Station held to call attention to the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Barack Obama on the previous New Year’s Eve. (AP/Mary Altaffer)
The U.S. Supreme Court decision to refuse to hear our case concerning Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which permits the military to seize U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process, means that this provision will continue to be law. It means the nation has entered a post-constitutional era. It means that extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by our government is legal. It means that the courts, like the legislative and executive branches of government, exclusively serve corporate power—one of the core definitions of fascism. It means that the internal mechanisms of state are so corrupted and subservient to corporate power that there is no hope of reform or protection for citizens under our most basic constitutional rights. It means that the consent of the governed—a poll by OpenCongress.com showed that this provision had a 98 percent disapproval rating—is a cruel joke. And it means that if we do not rapidly build militant mass movements to overthrow corporate tyranny, including breaking the back of the two-party duopoly that is the mask of corporate power, we will lose our liberty.
“In declining to hear the case Hedges v. Obama and declining to review the NDAA, the Supreme Court has turned its back on precedent dating back to the Civil War era that holds that the military cannot police the streets of America,” said attorney Carl Mayer, who along with Bruce Afran devoted countless unpaid hours to the suit. “This is a major blow to civil liberties. It gives the green light to the military to detain people without trial or counsel in military installations, including secret installations abroad. There is little left of judicial review of presidential action during wartime.”
Afran, Mayer and I brought the case to the U.S. Southern District Court of New York in January 2012. I was later joined by co-plaintiffs Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, journalist Alexa O’Brien, RevolutionTruth founder Tangerine Bolen, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir and Occupy London activist Kai Wargalla.
Later in 2012 U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest declared Section 1021(b)(2) unconstitutional. The Obama administration not only appealed—we expected it to appeal—but demanded that the law be immediately put back into effect until the appeal was heard. Forrest, displaying the same judicial courage she showed with her ruling, refused to do this.
The government swiftly went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. It asked, in the name of national security, that the court stay the district court’s injunction until the government’s appeal could be heard. The 2nd Circuit agreed. The law went back on the books. My lawyers and I surmised that this was because the administration was already using the law to detain U.S. citizens in black sites, most likely dual citizens with roots in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. The administration would have been in contempt of court if Forrest’s ruling was allowed to stand while the federal authorities detained U.S. citizens under the statute. Government attorneys, when asked by Judge Forrest, refused to say whether or not the government was already using the law, buttressing our suspicion that it was in use.
The 2nd Circuit overturned Forrest’s ruling last July in a decision that did not force it to rule on the actual constitutionality of Section 1021(b)(2). It cited the Supreme Court ruling in Clapper v. Amnesty International, another case in which I was one of the plaintiffs, to say that I had no standing, or right, to bring the NDAA case to court. Clapper v. Amnesty International challenged the secret wiretapping of U.S. citizens under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The Supreme Court had ruled in Clapper that our concern about government surveillance was “speculation.” It said we were required to prove to the court that the FISA Act would be used to monitor those we interviewed. The court knew, of course, that the government does not disclose whom it is monitoring. It knew we could never offer proof. The leaks by Edward Snowden, which came out after the Supreme Court ruling, showed that the government was monitoring us all, along with those we interviewed. The 2nd Circuit used the spurious Supreme Court ruling to make its own spurious ruling. It said that because we could not show that the indefinite-detention law was about to be used against us, just as we could not prove government monitoring of our communications, we could not challenge the law. It was a dirty game of judicial avoidance on two egregious violations of the Constitution.
In refusing to hear our lawsuit the courts have overturned nearly 150 years of case law that repeatedly holds that the military has no jurisdiction over civilians. Now, a U.S. citizen charged by the government with “substantially supporting” al-Qaida, the Taliban or those in the nebulous category of “associated forces”—some of the language of Section 1021(b)(2)—is lawfully subject to extraordinary rendition on U.S. soil. And those seized and placed in military jails can be kept there until “the end of hostilities.”
Judge Forrest, in her 112-page ruling against the section, noted that under this provision of the NDAA whole categories of Americans could be subject to seizure by the military. These might include Muslims, activists, Black Bloc members and any other Americans labeled as domestic terrorists by the state. Forrest wrote that Section 1021(b)(2) echoed the 1944 Supreme Court ruling in Korematsu v. United States, which supported the government’s use of the military to detain 110,00 Japanese-Americans in internment camps without due process during World War II.
Of the refusal to hear our lawsuit, Afran said, “The Supreme Court has left in place a statute that furthers erodes basic respect for constitutional liberties, that weakens free speech and will chill the willingness of Americans to exercise their 1st Amendment rights, already in severe decline in this country.”
The goals of corporate capitalism are increasingly indistinguishable from the goals of the state. The political and economic systems are subservient to corporate profit. Debate between conventional liberals and conservatives has been replaced by empty political theater and spectacle. Corporations, no matter which politicians are in office, loot the Treasury, escape taxation, push down wages, break unions, dismantle civil society, gut regulation and legal oversight, control information, prosecute endless war and dismantle public institutions and programs that include schools, welfare and Social Security. And elected officials, enriched through our form of legalized corporate bribery, have no intention of halting the process.
The government, by ignoring the rights and needs of ordinary citizens, is jeopardizing its legitimacy. This is dangerous. When a citizenry no longer feels that it can find justice within the organs of power, when it feels that the organs of power are the enemies of freedom and economic advancement, it makes war on those organs. Those of us who are condemned as radicals, idealists and dreamers call for basic reforms that, if enacted, will make peaceful reform possible. But corporate capitalists, now unchecked by state power and dismissive of the popular will, do not see the fires they are igniting. The Supreme Court ruling on our challenge is one more signpost on the road to dystopia.
It is capitalism, not government, that is the problem. The fusion of corporate and state power means that government is broken. It is little more than a protection racket for Wall Street. And it is our job to wrest government back. This will come only through the building of mass movements.
“It is futile to be ‘anti-Fascist’ while attempting to preserve capitalism,” George Orwell wrote. “Fascism after all is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism.”
Our corporate masters will not of their own volition curb their appetite for profits. Human misery and the deadly assault on the ecosystem are good for business. These masters have set in place laws that, when we rise up—and they expect us to rise up—will permit the state to herd us like sheep into military detention camps. Section 1021(b)(2) is but one piece of the legal tyranny now in place to ensure total corporate control. The corporate state also oversees the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. It can order the assassination of U.S. citizens. It has abolished habeas corpus. It uses secret evidence to imprison dissidents, such as the Palestinian academic Mazen Al-Najjar. It employs the Espionage Act to criminalize those who expose abuses of power. A ruling elite that accrues for itself this kind of total power, history has shown, eventually uses it.
[h=2]The Post-Constitutional Era[/h]
Activist Lauren DiGioia is arrested Jan. 3, 2012, during a demonstration in New York City’s Grand Central Station held to call attention to the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Barack Obama on the previous New Year’s Eve. (AP/Mary Altaffer)
The U.S. Supreme Court decision to refuse to hear our case concerning Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which permits the military to seize U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process, means that this provision will continue to be law. It means the nation has entered a post-constitutional era. It means that extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by our government is legal. It means that the courts, like the legislative and executive branches of government, exclusively serve corporate power—one of the core definitions of fascism. It means that the internal mechanisms of state are so corrupted and subservient to corporate power that there is no hope of reform or protection for citizens under our most basic constitutional rights. It means that the consent of the governed—a poll by OpenCongress.com showed that this provision had a 98 percent disapproval rating—is a cruel joke. And it means that if we do not rapidly build militant mass movements to overthrow corporate tyranny, including breaking the back of the two-party duopoly that is the mask of corporate power, we will lose our liberty.
“In declining to hear the case Hedges v. Obama and declining to review the NDAA, the Supreme Court has turned its back on precedent dating back to the Civil War era that holds that the military cannot police the streets of America,” said attorney Carl Mayer, who along with Bruce Afran devoted countless unpaid hours to the suit. “This is a major blow to civil liberties. It gives the green light to the military to detain people without trial or counsel in military installations, including secret installations abroad. There is little left of judicial review of presidential action during wartime.”
Afran, Mayer and I brought the case to the U.S. Southern District Court of New York in January 2012. I was later joined by co-plaintiffs Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, journalist Alexa O’Brien, RevolutionTruth founder Tangerine Bolen, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir and Occupy London activist Kai Wargalla.
Later in 2012 U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest declared Section 1021(b)(2) unconstitutional. The Obama administration not only appealed—we expected it to appeal—but demanded that the law be immediately put back into effect until the appeal was heard. Forrest, displaying the same judicial courage she showed with her ruling, refused to do this.
The government swiftly went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. It asked, in the name of national security, that the court stay the district court’s injunction until the government’s appeal could be heard. The 2nd Circuit agreed. The law went back on the books. My lawyers and I surmised that this was because the administration was already using the law to detain U.S. citizens in black sites, most likely dual citizens with roots in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. The administration would have been in contempt of court if Forrest’s ruling was allowed to stand while the federal authorities detained U.S. citizens under the statute. Government attorneys, when asked by Judge Forrest, refused to say whether or not the government was already using the law, buttressing our suspicion that it was in use.
The 2nd Circuit overturned Forrest’s ruling last July in a decision that did not force it to rule on the actual constitutionality of Section 1021(b)(2). It cited the Supreme Court ruling in Clapper v. Amnesty International, another case in which I was one of the plaintiffs, to say that I had no standing, or right, to bring the NDAA case to court. Clapper v. Amnesty International challenged the secret wiretapping of U.S. citizens under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The Supreme Court had ruled in Clapper that our concern about government surveillance was “speculation.” It said we were required to prove to the court that the FISA Act would be used to monitor those we interviewed. The court knew, of course, that the government does not disclose whom it is monitoring. It knew we could never offer proof. The leaks by Edward Snowden, which came out after the Supreme Court ruling, showed that the government was monitoring us all, along with those we interviewed. The 2nd Circuit used the spurious Supreme Court ruling to make its own spurious ruling. It said that because we could not show that the indefinite-detention law was about to be used against us, just as we could not prove government monitoring of our communications, we could not challenge the law. It was a dirty game of judicial avoidance on two egregious violations of the Constitution.
In refusing to hear our lawsuit the courts have overturned nearly 150 years of case law that repeatedly holds that the military has no jurisdiction over civilians. Now, a U.S. citizen charged by the government with “substantially supporting” al-Qaida, the Taliban or those in the nebulous category of “associated forces”—some of the language of Section 1021(b)(2)—is lawfully subject to extraordinary rendition on U.S. soil. And those seized and placed in military jails can be kept there until “the end of hostilities.”
Judge Forrest, in her 112-page ruling against the section, noted that under this provision of the NDAA whole categories of Americans could be subject to seizure by the military. These might include Muslims, activists, Black Bloc members and any other Americans labeled as domestic terrorists by the state. Forrest wrote that Section 1021(b)(2) echoed the 1944 Supreme Court ruling in Korematsu v. United States, which supported the government’s use of the military to detain 110,00 Japanese-Americans in internment camps without due process during World War II.
Of the refusal to hear our lawsuit, Afran said, “The Supreme Court has left in place a statute that furthers erodes basic respect for constitutional liberties, that weakens free speech and will chill the willingness of Americans to exercise their 1st Amendment rights, already in severe decline in this country.”
The goals of corporate capitalism are increasingly indistinguishable from the goals of the state. The political and economic systems are subservient to corporate profit. Debate between conventional liberals and conservatives has been replaced by empty political theater and spectacle. Corporations, no matter which politicians are in office, loot the Treasury, escape taxation, push down wages, break unions, dismantle civil society, gut regulation and legal oversight, control information, prosecute endless war and dismantle public institutions and programs that include schools, welfare and Social Security. And elected officials, enriched through our form of legalized corporate bribery, have no intention of halting the process.
The government, by ignoring the rights and needs of ordinary citizens, is jeopardizing its legitimacy. This is dangerous. When a citizenry no longer feels that it can find justice within the organs of power, when it feels that the organs of power are the enemies of freedom and economic advancement, it makes war on those organs. Those of us who are condemned as radicals, idealists and dreamers call for basic reforms that, if enacted, will make peaceful reform possible. But corporate capitalists, now unchecked by state power and dismissive of the popular will, do not see the fires they are igniting. The Supreme Court ruling on our challenge is one more signpost on the road to dystopia.
It is capitalism, not government, that is the problem. The fusion of corporate and state power means that government is broken. It is little more than a protection racket for Wall Street. And it is our job to wrest government back. This will come only through the building of mass movements.
“It is futile to be ‘anti-Fascist’ while attempting to preserve capitalism,” George Orwell wrote. “Fascism after all is only a development of capitalism, and the mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism.”
Our corporate masters will not of their own volition curb their appetite for profits. Human misery and the deadly assault on the ecosystem are good for business. These masters have set in place laws that, when we rise up—and they expect us to rise up—will permit the state to herd us like sheep into military detention camps. Section 1021(b)(2) is but one piece of the legal tyranny now in place to ensure total corporate control. The corporate state also oversees the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. It can order the assassination of U.S. citizens. It has abolished habeas corpus. It uses secret evidence to imprison dissidents, such as the Palestinian academic Mazen Al-Najjar. It employs the Espionage Act to criminalize those who expose abuses of power. A ruling elite that accrues for itself this kind of total power, history has shown, eventually uses it.
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
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A Key Reason Why U.S. Politicians Don't Understand Science
In 1995, Congressional Republicans shut down the Office of Technology Assessment. For 23 years, this agency had published reports that provided legislators with nonpartisan analyses of science and technology issues. Last week, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) tried to reopen the agency with minimal funding.
He failed.
The legislation–a proposed amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act that would have provided $2.5 million for the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) –was defeated in the House by a 248-164 vote, with 217 Republicans opposing and 155 Democrats supporting.
Holt, a former research physicist, has been a longtime advocate of reopening the office. In a recent press release, he noted:
The Rise and Fall of an Agency
Congress created the Office of Technology Assessment in 1972, at a time of mounting public concern over pollution, nuclear energy, pesticides, and other technology-induced hazards. OTA was conceived as an in-house think tank that would help Congress fact-check technical claims made by the various expert agencies of the executive branch (such as the EPA and the Department of Defense), while also forecasting coming technological quandaries. A twelve-member board, comprised of six members of Congress from each party, approved each OTA project, to help ensure the agency's objectivity.
Over the years, OTA produced some 750 reports and assessments on topics ranging from global climate change to the accuracy of polygraphs. The studies were highly regarded for their ability to translate complex science-speak into accessible prose. The reports were made available to the general public as well as Congress, and were often Government Printing Office best sellers. Other countries, including the UK and Germany, copied the U.S. example, establishing their own versions of OTA.
The first rumblings of Congressional discontent emerged in the 1980s, when OTA published reports raising questions about the technological feasibility of the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative. In a 1985 assessment, OTA concluded that SDI's goal of protecting the entire U.S. population from a nuclear attack would be "impossible to achieve if the Soviets are determined to deny it to us." Three years later, another OTA report warned that SDI would stand a significant chance of "catastrophic failure" due to software glitches.
Those reports didn't win friends among conservatives. And, when Newt Gingrich initiated the shutdown of OTA in 1995, some in Washington referred to it as "Reagan's Revenge." A 2001 comment by Gingrich, explaining the reason OTA was killed, pretty much said it all: "We constantly found scientists who thought what they were saying was not correct." Meanwhile, other nations shook their heads in disbelief. "That the leading technological state in the world, a democracy like us, should have abolished its own main means of democratic assessment left us aghast," wrote Lord Kennet, who created the OTA-inspired European Parliamentary Technology Assessment Network.
In an article recounting the history of the agency, science journalist Chris Mooney observed:
A complete archive of OTA's reports are available online at Princeton Universityand at the Federation of American Scientists.
In 1995, Congressional Republicans shut down the Office of Technology Assessment. For 23 years, this agency had published reports that provided legislators with nonpartisan analyses of science and technology issues. Last week, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) tried to reopen the agency with minimal funding.
He failed.
The legislation–a proposed amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act that would have provided $2.5 million for the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) –was defeated in the House by a 248-164 vote, with 217 Republicans opposing and 155 Democrats supporting.
Holt, a former research physicist, has been a longtime advocate of reopening the office. In a recent press release, he noted:
OTA was an agency dedicated to serve Congress. When Newt Gingrich came to power in the 1990s, he eliminated OTA to cut costs. But this turned out to be a foolish move, as OTA had always saved taxpayers far more money than it cost. An OTA study on Agent Orange, for instance, helped save the government $10 million. Another report recommended changes in computer systems at the Social Security Administration that saved more than $350 million. Studies on the Synthetic Fuels Corporation helped save tens of billions of dollars.
Although in ending OTA Gingrich said Congress could get help elsewhere, that hasn't worked. When OTA shut down, technological topics did not become less relevant to the work of Congress. They just became less understood. And scientific thinking lost its toehold on Capitol Hill, with troubling consequences for the ways Congress approaches all issues– not just those that are explicitly scientific.
Although in ending OTA Gingrich said Congress could get help elsewhere, that hasn't worked. When OTA shut down, technological topics did not become less relevant to the work of Congress. They just became less understood. And scientific thinking lost its toehold on Capitol Hill, with troubling consequences for the ways Congress approaches all issues– not just those that are explicitly scientific.
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EXPANDThe Rise and Fall of an Agency
Congress created the Office of Technology Assessment in 1972, at a time of mounting public concern over pollution, nuclear energy, pesticides, and other technology-induced hazards. OTA was conceived as an in-house think tank that would help Congress fact-check technical claims made by the various expert agencies of the executive branch (such as the EPA and the Department of Defense), while also forecasting coming technological quandaries. A twelve-member board, comprised of six members of Congress from each party, approved each OTA project, to help ensure the agency's objectivity.
Over the years, OTA produced some 750 reports and assessments on topics ranging from global climate change to the accuracy of polygraphs. The studies were highly regarded for their ability to translate complex science-speak into accessible prose. The reports were made available to the general public as well as Congress, and were often Government Printing Office best sellers. Other countries, including the UK and Germany, copied the U.S. example, establishing their own versions of OTA.
The first rumblings of Congressional discontent emerged in the 1980s, when OTA published reports raising questions about the technological feasibility of the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative. In a 1985 assessment, OTA concluded that SDI's goal of protecting the entire U.S. population from a nuclear attack would be "impossible to achieve if the Soviets are determined to deny it to us." Three years later, another OTA report warned that SDI would stand a significant chance of "catastrophic failure" due to software glitches.
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EXPANDThose reports didn't win friends among conservatives. And, when Newt Gingrich initiated the shutdown of OTA in 1995, some in Washington referred to it as "Reagan's Revenge." A 2001 comment by Gingrich, explaining the reason OTA was killed, pretty much said it all: "We constantly found scientists who thought what they were saying was not correct." Meanwhile, other nations shook their heads in disbelief. "That the leading technological state in the world, a democracy like us, should have abolished its own main means of democratic assessment left us aghast," wrote Lord Kennet, who created the OTA-inspired European Parliamentary Technology Assessment Network.
In an article recounting the history of the agency, science journalist Chris Mooney observed:
In defending his party's dismantling of OTA, Gingrich has advocated what one might call a "free market" approach to scientific and technical expertise. In the Speaker's view, members of Congress should take the initiative to call individual scientists and inform themselves, much as Gingrich himself did…. "Gingrich's view was always, 'I'll set up one-on-one interactions between members of Congress and key members of the scientific community,'" recalls Bob Palmer, former Democratic staff director of the House Committee on Science. "Which I thought was completely bizarre. I mean, who comes up with these people, and who decides they're experts, and what member of Congress really wants to do that?"
But quality scientific advice needs an institutional structure and consistent procedures and methodologies behind it; it can't simply be privatized….With OTA gone, Gingrich's troops didn't hesitate to invoke their own favored experts to undermine the scientific mainstream in hearings devoted to subjects such as ozone depletion and global warming. The attacks came as the new Republican majority sought to free up the market in another way as well—by ramming through a major "regulatory reform" bill that would have prescribed rigid and inflexible rules governing the use of science to protect public health and the environment.
This is not the first time that Holt has tried to revive the agency, and he says that he'll keep trying this year, working with colleagues in the Senate. "Funding OTA would be a minimal expense that would pay off many times over by averting foolish or wasteful policies," he says. "Decisions made in ignorance are costly."But quality scientific advice needs an institutional structure and consistent procedures and methodologies behind it; it can't simply be privatized….With OTA gone, Gingrich's troops didn't hesitate to invoke their own favored experts to undermine the scientific mainstream in hearings devoted to subjects such as ozone depletion and global warming. The attacks came as the new Republican majority sought to free up the market in another way as well—by ramming through a major "regulatory reform" bill that would have prescribed rigid and inflexible rules governing the use of science to protect public health and the environment.
A complete archive of OTA's reports are available online at Princeton Universityand at the Federation of American Scientists.