2010-02-04

Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Are Upending Our Democracy

By Janine Wedel

The mover and shaker who serves at one and the same time as business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and government adviser glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services. It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible. Even the short-term consultant doing one project at a time cannot afford to owe too much allegiance to the company or government agency. Such individuals are in these organizations (some of the time anyway), but they are seldom of them.

Being in, but not of, an organization enables these players to pursue a “coincidence of interests,” that is, to interweave and perform overlapping roles that serve their own goals or those of their associates. Because these “nonstate” actors working for companies, quasi-governmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) frequently do work that officials once did, they have privileged access to official information—information that they can deploy to their own ends. And they have more opportunities to use this information for purposes that are neither in the public interest nor easily detected, all the while controlling the message to keep their game going.

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Meanwhile, the official and private organizations in and out of which such movers and shakers glide either just go along to get along or are ill equipped to know what these actors are up to in the various venues in which they operate. In McCaffrey’s case, no institution, from the Pentagon to the defense contractor to NBC, had an incentive to be anything but complicit. Operators like the general have surpassed their hosts, speeding past the reach of effective monitoring by states, boards of directors, and shareholders, not to mention voters. And while the players sometimes cause raised eyebrows, they are highly effective in achieving their goals—and often benefit from wide acceptance. Much more than the influence peddlers of the past, these players forge a new system of power and influence—one that profoundly shapes governing and society.

This new breed of players is the product of an unprecedented confluence of four transformational developments that arose in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the redesign of governing, spawned by the rising tide of government outsourcing and deregulation under a “neoliberal” regime, and the rise of executive power; the end of the Cold War—of relations dominated by two competing alliances—which intensified the first development and created new, sparsely governed, arenas; the advent of evermore complex technologies, especially information and communication technologies; and the embrace of “truthiness,” which allows people to play with how they present themselves to the world, regardless of fact or track record. While it may be jarring to mention such seemingly disparate developments in the same breath—and to name “truthiness” as one of them—the changes unleashed by these developments interact as never before.

The proliferation of roles, and the ability of players to construct coincidences of interest by those who perform them, are the natural outcome of these developments. So, for example, increased authority delegated to private players (facilitated by privatization, the close of the Cold War, and new, complex technologies) has enabled them to become guardians of information once resting in the hands of state and international authorities. While supposedly working on behalf of those authorities, such players (working, say, as consultants for states or as special envoys or intermediaries between them) can guard information and use it for their own purposes, all the while eluding monitoring designed for the past order of states and international bodies.

Mind Control: America's Secret War (43 min)

History Channel video

This powerful History Channel video documents how for decades, top secret government projects worked virtually non-stop to perfect means of controlling the human mind. Though for many years the government denied that these projects even existed, the details have long been preserved in the thousands of pages of now declassified government documents mentioned above, which were reluctantly released through the Freedom of Information Act. LSD and electroshock therapy in huge doses given to unsuspecting citizens are only a part of this unbelievable program.

Mind Control blows the lid off years of chilling experiments, drawing on the declassified documents and interviews with some of the victims and respected experts in the field. Hear from John Marks, the author of In Search of the Manchurian Candidate, who originally broke the story of the CIA's abuses by unraveling the mysteries contained in the declassified documents. Learn how many of the most important records pertaining to the mind control experiments were destroyed by the director of the CIA in an attempt to prevent the details from ever being known.

The projects involved brutal, at times lethal experiments on thousands of unsuspecting citizens in direct defiance of law, all ethical codes, and basic human rights. Interviews with top psychiatrists, lawyers, and victims send chills up the spine. U.S. intelligence agencies spent millions on these mind control projects with a goal of creating programmable human spies.

2010-02-03

Nullification: It’s Official

By Derek Sheriff

While speaking to a large crowd of over a thousand people on the campus of Arizona State University last December, Congressman Ron Paul mentioned one thing that might come about as the result of the federal government habitually ignoring the Constitution: Nullification.

Attempted Terror Attack Likely, Intelligence Chiefs Warn

By Jason Ryan

An attempted al Qaeda attack against the United States is a high possibility in the next 3 to 6 months, the nations' top intelligence chiefs testified today.

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CIA director Leon Panetta and FBI director Robert Mueller both told the committee they agreed with Blair's stark assessment, when asked by committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

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The threat warning comes amid an ongoing debate over how the Obama administration and the Justice Department handled the case of Abdulmutallab, accused of attempting to set off a bomb on Christmas Day on Northwest flight 253, and whether the case should have been handled in the criminal justice system.

Abdulmutallab is still being interrogated by FBI agents and is providing useful information to investigators, even though he was read his Miranda rights the day after the attempted bombing of flight 253, Mueller said.

The issue over providing Abdulmutallab the Miranda rights required in the criminal justice system has become a political issue among some Republican members in Congress, who assert that the Obama administration should have moved the terror suspect into the military tribunal process so he could be interrogated for intelligence.

Justice Department officials have said that Abdulmutallab decided to stop speaking with federal investigators the day after the attempted bombing, even before he was given a Miranda warning by FBI agents.

2010-02-01

'Blocked' jetstream to blame for freak weather in Russia and Pakistan, say scientists

By Niall Firth

Last updated at 11:36 AM on 12th August 2010
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1302225/Blocked-jetstream-blame-freak-weather-Russia-Pakistan.html

A massive heatwave in Russia and the current devastating floods in Pakistan could be linked by the unusual behaviour of the jetstream, scientists believe.

The jetstream is the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain.

But meteorologists who study the phenomenon say that it is producing unusual holding patterns which keep weather systems in one place and produce freak conditions.

Depopulation by Government Edict (2)

By Deanna Spingola

Population control serves the U.S. strategic, economic, and military interests at the expense of the developing Third World or Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs). The plan claims that their population growth is detrimental and a grave threat to U.S. national security in four ways: (1) large nations may gain political power (2) The U.S. and its allies need the strategic materials from those countries. (3) A high birth rate means more young people who are more likely than older people to challenge global power structures (4) Population growth in relatively disadvantaged countries jeopardizes U.S. investments.[27]

NSSM 200 has special implications for thirteen countries – India, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia. NSSM 200 listed Brazil which, at that time, had a population of over 100 million which dominated the continent demographically. By 2000, the population projections totaled about 212 million people.[28] That kind of population growth was unacceptable to the elite.

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Nixon and Kissinger, along with John Negroponte, a Kissinger aide and the officer in charge of Vietnam on the National Security Council, arranged a chaos-creating government coup in Cambodia in March 1970. Negroponte would later act as Ambassador to Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and as director of national intelligence from 2005 to 2007. On March 26, 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported, “While ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85, Negroponte directed the secret arming of Nicaragua’s Contra rebels and is accused by human rights groups of overlooking—if not overseeing—a CIA-backed Honduran death squad during his tenure.” The CIA had unlimited funds to assist the government in its depopulation efforts. In concert with Oliver North, “He also helped orchestrate a secret deal, later known as Iran-Contra, to send arms through Honduras to help the Contras overthrow the Sandinista government.”[29] Negroponte had charge of the US Embassy in Honduras when hundreds of Hondurans labeled as “subversives” were seized, raped, tortured and slaughtered by Battalion 316, a Honduran intelligence unit trained, funded and supported by the Pentagon and the CIA. Battalion 316 also participated in the CIA’s covert operations in Nicaragua. [30] Negroponte was Deputy Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice.

On October 2, 1979, Robert S. McNamara, president of the World Bank and former secretary of defense during the Vietnam War, in speaking to a group of international bankers said, “We can begin with the most critical problem of all, population growth,” concluding that, “Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly, or the death rates must go up...There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, we can accomplish it very quickly and decisively.” It is a surprising statement in view of the crypto-eugenic position taken by the American Eugenics Society, a stand which McNamara, evidently a dedicated eugenicist, would have certainly been aware of. It can only be assumed that he did not agree with the society’s stand, and was arrogant enough to ignore it.” [31] McNamara and Maurice Strong, a Rockefeller operative and ecological agitator, organized the UN Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972.[32] The New York Times claimed that Strong was the “Custodian of the Planet.” Strong is indebted to George H. W. Bush who maneuvered Strong into the position of Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit, convened in Rio de Janeiro, which elevated global economic and environmental regulations.[33] Strong thinks that people should be required to have a license in order to have a baby.

The Population Plan was initially implemented by Brent Scowcroft, a long-time Kissinger colleague and Vice-Chairman of Kissinger Associates and National Security Advisor under Ford from 1974–1977 and George H. W. Bush from 1989–1993. CIA Director George H. W. Bush (November 1975 to January 1977) assisted Scowcroft who co-authored A World Transformed with George H. W. Bush. In addition to the National Security Advisor, the Secretaries of the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, and Agriculture are responsible for executing the population plan. Each administration uses those agencies and determines its own strategy for depopulating the planet. Scowcroft was President George W. Bush’s Chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2005 and also assisted President Barrack Obama in selecting his national security team. Scowcroft apparently facilitated Obama’s efforts to continue Bush’s warfare depopulating strategy in the Middle East.

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The Reagan Administration accommodated Monsanto and other private companies who manufactured questionably safe food products designed for worldwide trade. Genetically modified (GMO) products, with little or no testing, were introduced in the U.S. market. Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, former CIA Director, was the chief proponent within the Reagan Administration for this innovative field of genetically modified products.[35] U.S. citizens were intentionally vulnerable, as GMO labeling had been forbidden by the FDA.[36] Monsanto’s expensive, elite Terminator seeds, fertile only for one planting, “in the hands of one or more governments intent on using food as a weapon, Terminator was a tool of biological warfare almost ‘too good to believe.’” [37] Given that so many third world countries are managed according to Anglo-American eugenics interests, Terminator seeds provide ample opportunity for tyrants to stage famines.

During the 1960s and 1970s the indigenous non-white population of the U.S., through the Indian Health Service of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, operated an methodical lost generation program against Native American women of childbearing age wherein they sterilized about forty-two percent of those living on reservations without informing them. This was accomplished in conjunction with other medical procedures. Allegedly, this program was terminated in 1976 after allegations were made and confirmed. No officials lost their jobs or suffered judicial consequences as a result of implementing of participating in this program. They were, after all, simply following government procedures as it pertained to domestic non-white populations.[38]

More recently, in the 1990s, the World Health Organization dispensed tetanus shots among women between the ages of fifteen and forty-five in Nicaragua, Mexico, the Philippines and some African countries. Unknown to the women, the tetanus shots were laced with Chorionic Gonadotrophin or (hCG), a natural hormone, which, when combined with tetanus toxoid, prevents a women from sustaining a pregnancy. This program, to impose a state of permanent sterilization, was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and began in 1972.

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In 1998, in South Africa at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission the following testimony was given, “The United States encouraged South Africa’s apartheid regime to develop a Chemical Biological Weapons program that was aimed at the country’s black population. Dr. Wouter Basson, the South African general who headed the project from its inception in 1981, testified from notes he made of a meeting with US Major General William Augerson. He (Augerson) feels that chemical warfare is an ideal strategic weapon because infrastructure is preserved together with facilities and only living people are killed. The warm climate of Africa is ideal for this type of weapon because the diffusion of the poison is better and the absorption is increased by perspiration and increased blood flow in the persons who are targets.” [43]

Genocidal war is about body counts – un-armed men, women and children are all total war targets to fulfill the objective of world population reduction. However, war destroys a lot of infrastructure. Accordingly, other methods were developed that are equally effective and might even increase profits in other service industries, also affiliated with the elite who consistently view other humans as sources of profit or commodities, even in death. Genocide, under other pretenses, is regularly practiced to limit “excesses” in order to preserve the earth and its resources for the “fittest.” Elite-controlled governments are indifferent to the slaughter, starvation, slave labor, and suffering of others, as evidenced by a callous response from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when questioned about the 500,000 children who died in Iraq as a result of the U.S.-imposed sanctions. She said, “It was worth it.” [44]

27, National Security Study Memorandum NSSM 200, Implications of Worldwide Population Growth, For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM 200) – December 10, 1974, pp. 57-58

28, National Security Study Memorandum, NSSM 200, Implications of Worldwide Population Growth, For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, (The Kissinger Report), December 10, 1974, p. 31

29, Bush UN Choice Faces a Fight By Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster, Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2001

30, John Negroponte & The Death-Squad Connection, Bush Nominates Terrorist for National Intelligence Director by Frank Morales, World War 4 Report

31, Bush, Eugenics and Population Control by Alf Mendes

32, Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl, Global Research, Montreal, Canada, 2007, p. 127

33, Who is Maurice Strong? by Ronald Bailey, National Review, Sept 1, 1997

34, Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl, Global Research, Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2007, p. 43

35, Ibid, p. 4

36, Ibid, p. 13

37, Ibid, p. 261

38, A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present by Ward Churchill, City Lights Books, San Francisco, p. 249

39, The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance edited by M. Annette Jaimes, South End Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1992, p. 7 Jaimes Notes: Jacobs, Wilbur R., "British Indian Policies to 1783," in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 4: History of Indian-White Relations, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 10). As regards inculcation of smallpox among the Mandans in 1837, see Connell, Evan S., Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1984, pp. 15-6.

40, Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage by Brian W. Dippie, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1990, p. 331

41, Death Stalks the Yakama: Epidemiological Transitions and Mortality on the Yakama Indian Reservation, 1888-1964 by Clifford E. Trafzer, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, Michigan, 1997, p. 151

42, Rotting face : smallpox and the American Indian by R. G. Robertson, Caxton Press, 2001, Introduction, pp. 107-113

43, Rogue State, a Guide to the World's Only Superpower by William Blum, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2005, pp. 120-121

44, "We Think the Price Is Worth It" By Rahul Mahajan

Depopulation by Government Edict

By Deanna Spingola

[T]he concept of ‘eugenics’ ... encourages the reproductive efforts of those deemed to have ‘good’ genes, while discouraging or stopping procreation by undesirables.

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George H. W. Bush of Texas, who served in Congress from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1971, originated a legislative investigation of world overpopulation.[18] Dr. D. M. MacArthur, Deputy Director of Research & Technology for the Pentagon, Department of Defense, requested $10 million from the Congressional House Subcommittee on Appropriations to develop a biological weapon through House Bill 15090. On June 9, 1969, the House Republican research task committee, chaired by George H. W. Bush, heard testimony from General William H. Draper, of the Population Crisis Committee and Dr. William Moran of the Population Reference Bureau. Draper reported that there were three issues relevant to population control – the census of 1970 in the U.S. and of 1971 in Britain should be worldwide and not limited to two countries, accelerating contraception, and the World Health Organization should implement their international programs such as inoculations, etc.[19] Leading World Health Organization scientists, as noted in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, had requested that viruses be created in order to study their affects on humans.

The Department of Defense, now funded with $10 million, intended to conduct studies on immune-system-destroying agents for biological warfare. In 1983 Dr. Robert Strecker, an internist and gastro-enterologist who is also a trained pathologist with a Ph.D. in pharmacology, produced The Strecker Memorandum wherein he claims that the AIDS virus is man-made. Working in conjunction with his brother, attorney Ted Strecker, they discovered thousands of documents verifying the man-made origin of AIDS. Strecker maintains that it was virologically impossible for HIV to have emanated from monkeys; the disease was unknown in Africa before 1975. Strecker claims that the World Health Organization (WHO), funded by the Department of Defense, initiated testing on a lymphotrophic virus, a bovine virus that could also infect humans. In 1977, the WHO instigated a massive campaign in Africa to eradicate smallpox among the urban population. Over 100 million Africans were deliberately inoculated with AIDS-contaminated smallpox vaccine. In 1978, over 2,000 white male homosexuals were inoculated against hepatitis B by the Centers for Disease Control and the New York Blood Center, also with AIDS-contaminated vaccine.[20] Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) funded the hepatitis B vaccine research that Dr. Strecker claimed spread HIV to homosexuals in the U.S.[21] These kinds of weapons were apparently a viable concern immediately after 9/11 as John Bolton gave an address at the Biological Weapons Convention on November 19, 2001 in Geneva, Switzerland, stating our concerns about “terrorists” using biological and chemical weapons.[22] We have trained many foreigners in the use of biological and chemical weapons at Fort McClellan, Alabama.

Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize after he directed the dispersion of tons of Monsanto’s toxic Agent Orange in Vietnam. This chemical, containing dioxin, continues to negatively affect Vietnamese citizens and former U.S. military personnel and their children with horrendous birth defects and neurological disorders. Conversely, Ali Hassan al-Majid, who dispersed chemicals in Halabja, was recently executed for the same activities. Kissinger orchestrated the precedent-setting secret bombing of neutral Cambodia over a four-year period, allegedly to protect Americans in Vietnam.

18, Emerging Viruses, Aids & Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional? By Leonard G. Horowitz, Tetrahedron Publishing, Inc., Rockport, Massachusetts, 1996, p. 521

19, Ibid, pp. 156, 159

20, Ibid, pp. 3-5

21, Ibid, p. 12

22, Biological Weapons Convention