The Pentagon’s mystery missions in Africa

 

Tom Dispatch
Nick Turse - Dispatches from America

The numbers tell the story: 10 exercises, 55 operations, 481 security cooperation activities.

For years, the US military has publicly insisted that its efforts in Africa are small scale. Its public affairs personnel and commanders have repeatedly claimed no more than a “light footprint” on that continent, including a remarkably modest presence when it comes to military personnel. They have, however, balked at specifying just what that light footprint actually consists of. During an interview, for instance, a US Africa Command (AFRICOM) spokesman once expressed worry that tabulating the command’s deployments would offer a “skewed image” of US efforts there.
 
It turns out that the numbers do just the opposite.

Last year, according to AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez, the US military carried out a total of 546 “activities” on the continent - a catch-all term for everything the military does in Africa.  In other words, it averages about one-and-a-half missions a day.  This represents a 217% increase in operations, programs, and exercises since the command was established in 2008.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, Rodriguez noted that the 10 exercises, 55 operations, and 481 security cooperation activities made AFRICOM “an extremely active geographic command.”  But exactly what the command is “active” in doing is often far from clear.

AFRICOM releases information about only a fraction of its activities.  It offers no breakdown on the nature of its operations.  And it allows only a handful of cherry-picked reporters the chance to observe a few select missions.  The command refuses even to offer a count of the countries in which it is “active,” preferring to keep most information about what it’s doing -- and when and where -- secret.

While Rodriguez’s testimony offers but a glimpse of the scale of AFRICOM’s activities, a cache of previously undisclosed military briefing documents obtained by TomDispatch sheds additional light on the types of missions being carried out and their locations all across the continent.  These briefings prepared for top commanders and civilian officials in 2013 demonstrate a substantial increase in deployments in recent years and reveal U.S. military operations to be more extensive than previously reported.  They also indicate that the pace of operations in Africa will remain robust in 2014, with U.S. forces expected again to average far more than a mission each day on the continent.

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Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author most recently of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books).

Used with permission TomDispatch

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse’s The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare.

IMF to Ukraine: We'll Give You Money If You Give Us Austerity

Comment: More cartel capitalism from the "Structural Adjustment Team"

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Common Dreams

The International Monetary Fund announced on Thursday a $14 to $18 billion "bailout" for Ukraine that is contingent on Kiev's imposition of stringent austerity measures.


The package, which is slated for approval by the IMF's board next month, will unlock credits of up to $27 billion from the United States, European Union, Japan, and other countries over the coming years if Ukraine imposes "economic reforms."

According to Reuters, the IMF's requirements include: "allowing the national currency, the hryvnia, to float more freely against the dollar, increasing the price of gas for the domestic consumer, overhauling finances in the energy sector and following a more stringent fiscal policy."

Ukraine's new government on Wednesday passed a drastic increase in domestic gas prices, to take effect May first, and pledged to gradually reduce energy subsidies — a widely unpopular move that former President Viktor Yanukovych refused to take.

The deal comes amid ongoing anti-austerity protests across Europe, including hundreds of thousands strong protests across Spain over the weekend. Critics charge that austerity measures, by eroding vital public goods and services, deepen crises of poverty and inequality.

Unnatural Death #13: JP Morgan Bankruptcy Lawyer Killed While Cycling

Economic Policy Journal 

Another JPMorgan employee has died an unnatural death. This is unnatural death number 5 at JPMorganChase, since the first of the year, and unnatural death number 13 in the financial industry. I still don't see a close connection to all these deaths, but they keep on coming. (SEE: A Closer Look at Young Worker Deaths at JPMorgan Chase)
NBC4i.com in Columbus, OH reports on death #13:

A 56-year-old Dublin man was killed Saturday morning when he was struck by a car in Miami County.
Joseph Giampapa was riding alone on Troy-Sidney Road when he was struck by a car at about 11:08 a.m. Saturday morning.
The driver of the car called 911 and Miami County Sheriff deputies responded to the scene. Giampapa was found lying in the driveway of a home located in the 6500 block of Troy-Sidney Road in Springcreek Township.
He was pronounced dead at the scene by medic personnel.
Deputies say Giampapa was taking part in a 200 mile bike ride with a bicycle club named Ohio Randonneurs.
Their route started in Springfield and went through Troy, then reversed course.  Deputies believe Giampapa was on his return trip when the crash occurred.
"Joe was an extremely accomplished cyclist a responsible cyclist and that's what makes this tragedy so mind numbing," said Jeff Stephens, a friend of Giampapa. "That road that Joe was on was flat. No trees. It was just wide open visibility."

Giampapa was a vice president and assistant general counsel at JP Morgan Chase & Co.

IntelliHub lists the string of unnatural deaths:

1 – William Broeksmit, 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, was found dead in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London, on January 26th.
2- Karl Slym, 51 year old Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok on January 27th.
3 – Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of the JP Morgan European headquarters in London on January 27th.
4 – Mike Dueker, 50-year-old chief economist of a US investment bank was found dead close to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State.
5 – Richard Talley, the 57 year old founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was found dead earlier this month after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.
6 -Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month, however the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.
7 – Ryan Henry Crane, a 37 year old executive at JP Morgan died in an alleged suicide just a few weeks ago.  No details have been released about his death aside from this small obituary announcement at the Stamford Daily Voice.
8 - Li Junjie, 33-year-old banker in Hong Kong jumped from the JP Morgan HQ in Hong Kong this week.
9 - James Stuart Jr, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO dies suddenly in Arizona with no explanation.
10 – Autumn Radtke, the 28 year old, American chief executive of Singapore-based virtual currency company First Meta, died mysteriously of an apparent suicide.
11 - Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown’s Vertical Group, jumped in front of an LIRR train at 6 a.m. near the Syosset train station.
12 - Kenneth Bellando, 28, a JP Morgan investment banker was found dead on March 12th after reportedly jumping from the roof of his apartment.
13 – Joseph Giampapa, 56, a JP Morgan bankruptcy attorney was killed when his bike was struck by a minivan.  The killer allegedly confessed but no charges were filed.

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson: we should be applauding Russian action in Ukraine and Crimea

So Many Lies, So Few Sentences – Obama’s Iraq Fairy Tale

Sheldon Richman  RINF Alternative News

I promised myself that I would no longer comment on what Barack Obama has to say, because it’s just not worth the time and effort. Obama’s public remarks are comprehensible only if you keep one thing in mind: he, like other politicians, thinks most people are morons.

I am so appalled by what Obama said in Europe the other day, however, that I must break my promise. In his speech he said, regarding events in Crimea, that:

Russia has pointed to America’s decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. Now, it is true that the Iraq War was a subject of vigorous debate not just around the world, but in the United States as well. I participated in that debate and I opposed our military intervention there. But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq’s territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future.

It is hard to believe that a presidential speechwriter could manage to pack so many lies into so few sentences. But the speechwriter could only compose the sentences. Obama chose to deliver them, and for that, he should be indicted for gross deception with malice aforethought. (Need I say this is not unique to Obama? Virtually all politicians are demagogues. Obama’s distinguishing trait is his smoothness.)

Let us count the lies.

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Ukraine: The Danger of False Narrative

Like a decade ago with Iraq, Official Washington’s pundits and pols are locked shoulder-to-shoulder in a phalanx of misguided consensus on Ukraine, presenting a false narrative that is taking U.S. policy into dangerous directions

Robert Parry RINF Alternative News

The American people got a nasty taste of the danger that can come with false narrative when they were suckered into the Iraq War based on bogus claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction that he planned to share with al-Qaeda.

Nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers died in the conflict along with hundreds thousands of Iraqis. The war’s total financial cost probably exceeded $1 trillion, a vast sum that siphoned off America’s economic vitality and forced cutbacks in everything from education to road repair. Plus, the war ended up creating an Iraqi base for al-Qaeda terrorists that had not existed before.

But perhaps an even more dangerous problem coming out of the Iraq War was that almost no one in Official Washington who pushed the false narrative – whether in politics or in the press – was held accountable in any meaningful way. Many of the same pols and pundits remain in place today, pushing similar false narratives on new crises, from Ukraine to Syria to Iran.

Those false narratives – and their cumulative effect on policymaking – now represent a clear and present danger to the Republic and, indeed, to the world. The United States, after all, is the preeminent superpower with unprecedented means for delivering death and destruction. But almost nothing is being done to address this enduring American crisis of deception.

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This Is a Generic Brand Video

Comment: Beautifully done. Great site too.

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IBM: Mass Biometric Surveillance Unstoppable

Wired

It’s already too late to stop the ubiquitous tracking and monitoring of the public through biometrics, says Peter Waggett, Programme Leader at IBM’s Emerging Technology Group. We need to stop worrying about prevention, and start working out how to make the most of data garnered from that kind of surveillance.

“We’re fighting the wrong battle when we ask should we stop people being observed. That is not going to be feasible. We need to understand how to use that data better,” urged Waggett, who was speaking as part of a Nesta panel debate on what biometrics mean for the future of privacy.

“I’ve been working in biometrics for 20 years, and it’s reaching a tipping point where it’s going to be impossible not to understand where people are and what they are doing. Everything will be monitored. It’s part of the reason why when we put together the definition of biometrics it included biological and behavioural characteristics — it can be anything.”

To back up his point, Waggett identified a few of the futures once portrayed in science fiction movies, now a reality. Minority Report is generally the go to film for these kinds of comparisons. But it’s the commercial aspects of the film Waggett flagged up, rather than the gesture technology. In the film, the protagonist walks into a shop where an advert immediately pops up and draws on his past preferences to offer up some suggestions. “The one thing they got wrong is you won’t recognise you’re being scanned — the flashing red light in the film is for effect, but all that’s now feasible.”

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Obama: Putin-Baiter and Preventive Detainer

 

Black Agenda Report 

Glen Ford

“They have undoubtedly already mapped every potentially left-leaning or ethnically suspect (Black) U.S. human network.”

Barack Obama is one smooth operator, relentlessly expanding on the fascist domestic and international infrastructure bequeathed him by George W. Bush, the cartoon cowboy imperialist. As we described him in 2012, Obama is truly the “more effective evil ” – a president who routinely commits the most brazen aggressions under the lawless doctrine of “humanitarian” intervention, and who has utterly trashed due process and the rule of law on the domestic front. If you want to see fascism built right, get a Black Harvard man to do it – and watch the internal resistance crumble.

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn a line against further NATO incursions and coups at his southern border – a move that most of Earth’s inhabitants undoubtedly applaud, given that polls have long confirmed that the U.S. is seen as the number one threat  to peace in the world – U.S. public opinion reverts effortlessly to Cold War mode. Obama will have no problem gaining near-unanimous congressional support for the widest range of escalations against Moscow – from sanctions to natural gas wars to preparations for the shooting kind – while the ridiculous U.S. pseudo-Left, personified by Jon Stewart, of the Daily Show, snarks an historically-reversed narrative of post-1991 history in which Russia is constantly moving westward towards the English Channel.

“If you want to see fascism built right, get a Black Harvard man to do it.”

The president lowered himself to Stewart’s level (or was it the other way around?), baiting the Russians [15] as less than manly. “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness,” said the fracking PR-man-in-chief. Obama issued his juvenile insults against the world’s other paramount nuclear power at, of all places, a summit on nuclear security in The Hague, Netherlands. Tens of millions of eyes must have rolled among the U.S.’s southern neighbors when Obama said, “we generally don't need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them."

Tell that to Haiti (1994, 2004), Cuba (1961), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), Dominican Republic (1965) – neighborly nations directly invaded by U.S. troops; and to the people of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Colombia, who lost tens or hundreds of thousands at the hands of U.S. surrogates; and to the citizens of Chile and the rest of South America, virtually every country of which was taken over by militaries backed by the United States. And, we are only talking about the post-World War Two era! As we write, Obama pursues George Bush’s policy of regime change in Venezuela, while the people still suffer under the heirs to the military coup he backed in Honduras, in 2009.

“U.S. non-recognition of international law has effectively achieved bipartisan acceptance.”

The list gets much, much longer if one includes the rest of the world as “neighbors” of the U.S. Certainly, the Americans behave as if everyone else’s internal affairs are subject to Washington’s approval – a negation of international law and the real meaning of Obama’s humanitarian military intervention doctrine, or R2P, Responsibility to Protect. Under the First Black President, U.S. non-recognition of international law has effectively achieved bipartisan acceptance. Indeed, much of what pretended to be an anti-war movement under Obama’s Republican predecessor is now in thrall of “humanitarian” warfare.

If it were really true that the fate of the world rests with anti-war constituencies and other resisters inside the Belly of the Beast, as many peace activists used to claim, then the world would likely be doomed. The American polity is not effectively defending its own liberties. President Obama has pulled off what George W. Bush did not even attempt: he has established, through the Congress and the courts, preventive detention without trial as the law of the land, effectively nullifying due process. Having stripped citizens of their legal protections, he now bargains with Congress on the uses of the NSA spy machinery that is already capable of monitoring literally every American – plus unknown proportions of the rest of the world.

Obama says he wants to limit telephone monitoring to two “hops” removed from the phone number targeted as suspicious, in order to “minimize” the State’s intrusion on the people’s privacy. In fact, one court order allowing two “hops” would quite easily bring ten thousand telephone numbers under NSA surveillance, as U.S. District Judge Richard Leon figured out before rendering a decision against the NSA. The judge postulated that each of the 100 phone numbers called by the suspect – or “seed” – phone (the first “hop”) had called or gotten calls from at least 100 other numbers over five years (the second “hop”), totaling 10,000. A third “hop” would ensnare a total of one million phones.

“A third hop would round up multiples of millions.”

Judge Leon’s assumptions are very conservative. If the national security state targets any effective political activist, they would reap far more than 100 numbers on both the first and second “hops” – probably enough to effectively map the bulk of the political activity among, say, peace groups. A third hop would round up multiples of millions, including the barely committed and folks with no interest in politics of any kind. One court order + one suspect number + three hops = everybody remotely involved in anti-war activity.

It turns out that the NSA has for years been allowed to search up to three hops away from the suspect phone. They have undoubtedly already mapped every potentially left-leaning or ethnically suspect (Black) U.S. human network, having assembled millions of names and numbers.

If George Bush or any Republican were president, leftists of all stripes would realize the clock is ticking – that they must radically alter the direction of the U.S. state, or be interned by it. However, the smooth fascist, Barak Obama, is in charge, and there is little sense of urgency on the Left.

Which is another reason that we say Obama is the more effective evil .

Flight 370 EVIDENCE IS SEALED and “cannot be made public”- Just Like Sandy Hook…

wkchild

BEIJING – A Malaysian team have told relatives of Chinese passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 that there was sealed evidence that cannot be made public, as they came under fire from the angry relatives at a briefing on Wednesday The sealed evidence included air traffic control radio transcript, radar data and airport security recordings.

The briefing at the Metropark Lido Hotel in Beijing focused on UK satellite analysis which led Malaysia to conclude that flight MH370 ended in south Indian Ocean, off Perth.

The Chinese relatives were told that a five-member high-level team from Malaysia plans to brief them once every five days. The team include MAS pilot Lim Jit Koon and senior civil aviation official Ahmad Nizar Zolfakar.

During the question-and-answer session, a relative said: “Thanks for demonstrating your ability to read every word out of the powerpoint slides.” Another asked: “If the info is from UK satellite firm Inmarsat, does it mean the Malaysia team cannot answer our questions on the MH370 analysis?”

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Eureka! Scientists unveil giant leap towards synthetic life

The Independent

Scientists have made the first artificial chromosome which is both complete and functional in a milestone development in synthetic biology, which promises to revolutionise medical and industrial biotechnology in the coming century.

The researchers built the artificial chromosome from scratch by stitching synthetic strands of DNA together in a sequence based on the known genome of brewer’s yeast. They predict that a completely synthetic yeast genome comprised of its entire complement of 16 chromosomes could be made within four years.

“Our research moves the needle in synthetic biology from theory to reality. This work represents the biggest step yet in an international effort to construct the full genome of synthetic yeast,” said Jef Boeke of the New York University School of Medicine, a lead author of the study published in the journal Science.

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EXPOSED: Death of Fukushima Workers Covered-Up by TEPCO and Government

US Independent

The death of many Fukushima workers who die from radiation exposure is covered-up by Fukushima Daiichi power plant operator TEPCO and the Japanese government, said a Japanese journalist who investigated the unreported deaths, adding that she found a TEPCO memo instructing officials to “cut her questions short appropriately”, and that police is following her around in an intimidating manner.

The alarming disclosure came at an international conference on the “Effects of Nuclear Disasters on Natural Environment and Human Health” outside the German financial capital Frankfurt. The conference was co-organized by the German chapter of International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and the Protestant Church in Hesse Nassau, on March 6, 2014, reports Energy News.
Mako Oshidori, a Japanese freelance journalist who was present at the conference and the subsequent press conference (recorded on video). Mako reported that she discovered a TEPCO memo, in which the Fukushima Daiichi operator TEPCO instructs officials to “cut Mako-chan’s (questions) short, appropriately”. Mako Oshidori was enrolled in the School of Life Sciences at Tottori University Faculty of Medicine for three years.

Mako revealed that TEPCO and the government cover-up the death of Fukusjima workers and that government agents began following her around after she began investigating the cover-up. Mako said:

“I heard about it from researchers who were my friends as well as some government officials. I will show you a photo I secretly took of the agent, so you know what kind of surveillance I mean. When I would talk to someone, a surveillance agent from the central government’s public police force would come very close, trying to eavesdrop on the conversation….
“I would like to talk about my interview of a nurse who used to work at (the) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) after the accident. .. He was a nurse at Fukushima Daiichi NPP in 2012. He quit his job with TEPCO in 2013, and that’s when I interviewed him. …
“As of now of now, there are multiple NPP workers who have died, but only the ones who died on the job are reported publicly. Some of them have died suddenly while off work, for instance, during the weekend or in their sleep, but none of their deaths are reported. …
“Not only that, they are not included in the worker death count. For example, there are some workers who quit the job after a lot of radiation exposure, such as 50, 60 to 70 mili Sieverts, and end up dying a month later, but none of these deaths are either reported, or included in the death toll. This is the reality of the NPP workers”.

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Police seek to maintain legality of their sex with prostitutes

Comment: Essential to undercover operations don't you know....And they may be undercover for sometime...

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Implantable Devices To Be Powered By The Battery You Could Actually Eat

Nature

Eating a battery sounds absolutely insane and I am sure anyone wouldn’t take the risk of having an internal lethal injury. However, when it comes to biodegradable battery that delivers healing from within, which once out of power gets absorbed by the body, maybe it’s worth taking a note.

For years, scientists have been working to develop implantable devices that absolutely requires no major maintenance such as replacing expired battery. Well, this biodegradable, implantable battery which is the brainchild of John Rogers, might be the answer to that.

During an event at Urbana-Champaign in 2012, John Rogers, materials scientist at the University of Illinois and his team unveiled a number of biodegradable silicon chips that could track temperature or mechanical strain and forward the results to external device . Unfortunately, those devices were relatively bulky and serviceably too complex to use that they later had to look for a smart solution – “Biodegradable Battery”.

The devices, entitled Advanced Materials, use magnesium foil, iron, molybdenum, and tungsten. These metals conduct electricity when they come in contact with phosphate-buffered saline solution which is an electrolyte. All these metals including the electrolyte were packed up in a biodegradable polymer known as a polyanhydride.

The metals used in the experiment determined the currents and voltages. Based on the example they assumed and the metals they used, one-square-centimetre cell with a 50-micrometre-thick magnesium anode and an 8-micrometre-thick molybdenum cathode could produce a steady 2.4 milliamps of current. Once they were done with the reaction, the battery dissolved itself leaving nothing behind and released less than 9 milligrams of magnesium, this amount of concentration of magnesium is absolutely harmless for the body. “Almost all of the key building blocks are now available to produce self-powered, biodegradable implants”, John Rogers told Nature.

The device could be helpful for a number of medical and environmental applications and in the development of biomedical devices.

Does Climate Change Play a Role in Putin’s Aggression in the Ukraine?

Ice Age Now

Certainly, it looks as though the primary reason for the Russian action in Ukraine is part of Putin’s long range plan to reconstitute the former Soviet Union. Is climate change on his mind as he executes his militaristic Ukrainian strategy while taking full advantage of the feckless foreign policy of President Obama?

Maybe. Should it be? Absolutely!

Putin, two steps ahead of President Obama on international affairs, is actually years ahead of President Obama on climate change. Our hapless President continues to reinforce the myth of man-made global warming and engaging in active deception of the American people on the subject.  Putin, however, appears to be doing exactly what he needs to do to prepare for the predicted extreme cold climate that my climate research company, the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC,) and Russia’s leading climate scientists have warned about. That’s right, for those who haven’t been informed yet; global warming ended years ago and a potentially dangerous new cold climate has begun!

The next climate change to a predicted long cold epoch which threatens Russia’s control over the vital national resources of wheat and its long standing need for a warm water port, may be among the more important and undiscussed drivers underlying the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Securing these resources may cause him to insure he has complete control over all of the Ukraine beyond the just annexed Crimea and as much of the northern Black Sea as he can take. This bold assertion rightfully demands some explanation.

The new cold climate, a once-every-206-year event, is brought on as a result of the Sun making historic reductions in its energy output, which is leading us inextricably down the path to a much colder Earth. This “solar hibernation” has already brought about a stunning reversal from the past global warming to a new colder climate leaving the ‘warmist’ and environmental communities scrambling for new reasons for existence, e.g. ocean acidification. The widely available real world temperature data shows that not only have we had no global warming for seventeen years, but that oceanic and atmospheric temperatures have been declining for much of the last eleven years. Sea ice extent globally has reached record levels. The brutal record cold winter of 2013-2014 is but one example of many, that a fundamental change in the climate has arrived.

This new cold is like the solar hibernation that has caused it, unstoppable!

The absence of discussion by our media and government, much less action to prepare for the next cold climate epoch in the US, is completely opposite in Russia! It is ironic and deeply saddening that in what was the former communist Soviet Union, scientists are more free to tell the truth about what is really happening with the Earth’s climate, than are their US colleagues. As a result, Russian climate scientists are way ahead of their shackled US counterparts on the status of this next change to a long cold climate. 

Tragically, here in the US, it would be a career ending move if a government scientist or government funded university climate researcher told the truth about this new cold phenomenon. President Obama has made it clear that US scientists are to mislead the people about what is happening with the climate. He has done so via executive order and in public statements where he has made public policy. In June 2013 at Georgetown University, for example,  he made the statement that global warming was “accelerating” – a shockingly false statement!

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Document: JPMorgan Chase Bets $10.4 Billion on the Early Death of Workers

Wall St. On Parade

Families of young JPMorgan Chase workers who have experienced tragic deaths over the past four months, have been kept in the dark on many details, including the fact that the bank most likely held a life insurance policy on their loved one – payable to itself. Banks in the U.S., as well as other corporations, are allowed to make multi-billion dollar wagers that their profits from life insurance policies on employees will outstrip the cost of paying premiums and other fees. Early deaths help those wagers pay off.

According to the December 31, 2013 financial filing known as the Call Report that JPMorgan made with Federal regulators, it has tied up $10.4 billion in illiquid, long term bets on the death of a large segment of its employees.

The program is known among regulators as Bank Owned Life Insurance or BOLI. Federal regulators specifically exempted BOLI in passing the final version of the Volcker Rule in December of last year which disallowed most proprietary trading or betting for the house. Regulators stated in the rule that “Rather, these accounts permit the banking entity to effectively hedge and cover costs of providing benefits to employees through insurance policies related to key employees.” We have italicized the word “key” because regulators know very well from financial filings that the country’s mega banks are not just insuring key employees but a broad-base of their employees.

Just four of the largest U.S. banks, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup hold over $53 billion in investments in BOLI according to 2013 year-end Call Reports. Death benefits from life insurance is purchased at a multiple to the amount of the investments, meaning that $53 billion is easily enough to buy $1 million life insurance policies on 159,000 employees, and potentially a great deal more. Industry experts estimate that the total face amount of life insurance held by all banks in the U.S. on their employees now exceeds half a trillion dollars.

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Secret SECOND Metropolitan Police corruption probe revealed

The Independent

The Metropolitan Police corruption scandal has deepened after The Independent uncovered the existence of a previously secret investigation into criminal officers that went much further than the files destroyed by Scotland Yard.

Operation Zloty, a wide-ranging inquiry spanning at least nine years, found dozens of rogue detectives in the employ of organised crime and operating with “virtual immunity”.

The “long-term intelligence development operation” included information on police corruption originally gathered by 17 other investigations – including Operation Othona, the contents of which were inexplicably shredded sometime around 2003.

Crucially, Zloty included bombshell evidence from Othona about a “persistent network” of corrupt officers that could have been beneficial to a landmark review commissioned by the Home Secretary into how the Stephen Lawrence murder was handled by the Metropolitan Police.

Mark Ellison QC was forced to inform Theresa May earlier this month that he could not finalise conclusions on whether police corruption tainted the Lawrence case because a “lorry-load” of Othona material was mysteriously shredded by the Met more than 10 years ago.

However, the emergence of Zloty means some of the Othona material may still exist – and the network of corrupt officers could still be brought to book.

Mr Ellison names dozens of sensitive investigations into police corruption in his report. But Zloty is not among them. The Independent asked Mr Ellison’s office whether or not Scotland Yard had disclosed Zloty to his team, but a spokesman said he was “not able to comment”.

Earlier this week, the Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe admitted corrupt police officers may escape justice due to the controversial destruction of Operation Othona, which included intelligence on detectives trafficking drugs, fabricating evidence and selling sensitive police information to organised crime syndicates.

READ MORE: Something rotten in the Metropolitan Police: Corrupt officers may escape justice, thanks to mass shredding of evidence

A senior former Scotland Yard source with knowledge of its anti-corruption command said of Zloty: “There is no way the Met would have just stopped its deep-cover inquiries into corruption once Othona had been wound up in 1998.

“It sounds like Zloty may still exist and, if it does, I am surprised there is no reference to it in the Ellison report.”

When Scotland Yard was asked whether Operation Zloty was shared with the Ellison review, a spokesman replied: “This is a report marked ‘secret’ – it is inappropriate to discuss it publicly.”

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: “Anything less than full disclosure on these issues is unnerving.

“The committee will want to hear evidence from Mr Ellison to be satisfied that he was given all of the information he requested during his inquiry. We will also want to be reassured all other relevant inquiries were disclosed to him.”

A leaked police report from 2002, codenamed Operation Tiberius, concluded organised crime syndicates were able to infiltrate Scotland Yard “at will” through the bribing of corrupt police officers.

Buried in the small print of Tiberius is a reference to Othona and Zloty.

“Operation Zloty is a long-term intelligence development operation designed to assess the current threat that organised criminals and their associations with serving and retired police officers pose to the MPS, other law enforcement agencies and the criminal justice system,” the Operation Tiberius file says.

“The analysis of intelligence available indicates that a persistent network continues to thrive within the MPS, particularly the north-east London area.

“These subjects have been undermining the MPS with virtual immunity for the last 10 years and were identified during the course of two previous Directorate of Professional Standards intelligence-gathering operations, ‘Othona’ and ‘Centaur’.”

A spokesperson for the Met said: “We retain a powerful anti-corruption unit and the Met is a hostile environment for corrupt officers. The Met’s Anti-Corruption Command investigates allegations and intelligence relating to corrupt police officers and to those that may seek to corrupt them.”

How To Calculate Your Heart Age? A New Risk Calculator Will Help You

Comment: Looks like I come in at age 79. Well, not bad I suppose. (I'm amazed it could be that long actually..)

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The Almagest

Our lives are hovering around so many parameters that we as human beings can only keep track of a few and let rest of them work their own way. Our daily food habit is probably one of them which take its own course. When we are hungry, we eat pizzas or a burger and if we have loads of work then sometimes we remain hungry for hours without eating anything. Then there are days where the meals are accompanied by a pint of beer or probably a sumptuous dessert. Smoking has become increasingly common more like a style quotient and also perceived as a stress buster. Rarely we tend to see how our daily food habit is altering and denting our internals until we become sick. Modern generation is afflicted with hypertension, increased cardiovascular disorders, and is more prone to strokes and heart attacks at an early age. Our actual age, our true age is determined by how fit we keep our heart.

Scientists from the Joint British Societies’ Consensus and several medical societies have launched an online tool JBS3 risk calculator for healthcare professionals and us to understand the cumulative lifestyle risks to cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and means to reduce it. The latest findings have been published in the journal Heart. This tool considers parameters like lifestyle risk factors, family history of increased blood pressure, cholesterol levels and eating habits before estimating a person’s true heart age. We can better understand by citing an example here. A woman in her late 30’s say 35, who is a regular smoker, with a systolic pressure of 160 mm Hg, a family background of CVD and total cholesterol level 7 mmol /l, would have a true heart age of 47. If she continues to smoke she can only expect to survive till 70’s without a massive heart attack. However if she quits and cuts her total cholesterol to 4 mmol/l with her systolic blood pressure to 130 mm Hg then her heart age would fall to 30. She can expect to live to the age of 85 before having a heart attack or stroke. Her 10 year risk to strokes would be less than 0.25%.

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What Separatism Means

Lew Rockwell

Ivan Daraktchiev sent me several of his papers in appreciation of my work which he views as expressing many ideas similar to his. There’s good thinking and insights in his work. Naturally, one may not agree with all of his ideas. There are ideas of my own that I’ve expressed over the years that I may now disagree with.

The strength of his analysis is to take a broad view across many countries in order to understand events. Having lived through Communism in Bulgaria before leaving for Belgium, he is familiar with the devastation caused by a bureaucratic class of parasites, the nomenklatura, that destroys a society, both morally and economically. This idea aligns with the Austrian analysis. After years in Belgium, he realized that the EU was similar to the Communist system in being taken over by a nomenklatura. In fact, many western democracies are in the same position. He calls this parasitic and destructive political system “nomenklaturocracy” and says Orwell was right about it. So have been Mises and Rothbard and Rockwell and many others in the intellectual movement toward freedom, better societies and better political arrangements.

With this idea in mind, that all governments are controlled by ruling classes that attempt to insulate themselves from their subjects, the differences between communism, fascism, and representative democracy become only matters of degree. Lengthy disputes between democrats and republicans become trivial. Notions that a republic will outdo a democracy become off target since both involve constitutions and representatives, and these lead to party control and nomenklaturae. The key question is always the extent to which a nomenklatura has turned government into a nomenklaturoracy. The key question is the extent to which a government has been captured by those in the government so that the people have lost control of it.

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NATO Intensifies Activities to Counter Russia

Strategic Culture

NATO is calculating the moves to intensify the diplomatic pressure and give teeth to verbal threats as it is preparing to provoke further escalation of relations with Russia. Some aspects get little attention or kept below the public radar screen among the whirlpool of events related to Crimea and Ukraine... According to reports, an unidentified well placed Western official said, «NATO is going to have to do a serious rethink about what Article 5 really means». He added, «Western nations have minimized the prospect of having to reinforce our Eastern allies. At a stroke, all that has changed.

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UK to expand Bahrain military presence

Stratrisks

The UK will expand its military presence in Bahrain with a $9.7m expansion of its maritime command in the capital, Manama, Gulf Daily News has reported.

The expansion includes a new, larger headquarters and facilities to provide engineering and logistics support for the four Royal Navy mine countermeasure vessels based in the kingdom.

The Middle East has the UK’s second largest Royal Navy presence, with 10 of its 32 warships and support vessels in the region.

The Bahraini headquarters leads Britain’s counter piracy and maritime anti-terrorism efforts in the region and has the capacity to oversee the operations of up to a third of all Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessels.

Located next to the US Fifth Fleet Naval base, it is the second largest non-Bahraini military presence in Bahrain.

 

A contract for the expansion works was recently awarded to American International Contractors and construction is due to begin this year, with both buildings due to be completed by early 2015, a statement from the Permanent Joint Headquarters, the London-based organisation that plans and controls UK overseas military operations, said.

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Definitive proof of BBC propaganda which staged Syria chemical attack

Facebook purchases virtual reality company Oculus in latest mega-deal

RT

Facebook executives announced Tuesday that they had purchased Oculus VR, which has developed perhaps the most advanced virtual reality gaming headset on the market, for approximately $2 billion.

The surprise deal includes $400 million in cash, 23.1 million shares of Facebook stock, as well as $300 million in cash and stock contingent on “the achievement of certain milestones,” according to Forbes magazine.

Oculus’ virtual reality headset has set the gaming industry abuzz even before its debut on the mass market. The company’s second development kit, which has been touted as one of the most groundbreaking devices in recent memory, is currently available on presale for $350.

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Consider mass fluoridation of water, says health body

Comment: I can't believe they're wheeling this one out again. "Controversial" is not the word. "Dangerous" is more accurate. The Fluoride Action Network has 50 reasons not to go down that path. You may also like to watch The Fluoride Deception to confirm the lunacy.

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BBC News

Adding fluoride to water should be considered by councils in England to improve dental health, the government's public health advisory body says.

Public Health England urged councils to act after reviewing the impact of water fluoridation on children in areas where it has been introduced.

About 6m people - 10% of the country - currently live in areas with fluoridated water supplies.

PHE said it was a "safe and effective" public health measure.

Its review found it had reduced tooth decay and hospital admissions for dental problems.
In fluoridated areas, there were 45% fewer children aged one to four admitted to hospital. 

Fluoride and water

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral found in water in varying amounts. It is also present in certain foods, such as fish and tea.

In the early 20th century, lower levels of tooth decay were found to be associated with certain fluoride levels in drinking water - it is thought to toughen the surface of the teeth. 

This discovery lead to fluoride being added to toothpastes and the introduction of fluoridation schemes.
The first major scheme was in Birmingham in 1964. Since then parts of the north west, north east and Yorkshire and the Humber have followed suit as have large swathes of the Midlands.

Some areas - mainly the east coast - have naturally occurring high levels of fluoride in water.

Levels of general tooth decay were 15% lower for five-year-olds and 11% lower for 12-year-olds.

In deprived areas the impact for general tooth decay was even greater.

PHE also looked for signs of harms but found none. It has been suggested water fluoridation can increase the risk of some cancers, hip fractures and Downs syndrome.

Controversial
 
Sue Gregory, PHE's director of dental public health, said: "These findings highlight the important contribution that water fluoridation makes."

She said councils would need to consult their local populations on the issue and conceded there were some technical hurdles to overcome.

Water zones tend to span several local authority areas and so fluoridation could require agreement across regions.

England is one of the few countries in Europe that adds fluoride to water. Neither Scotland or Northern Ireland does, while in mainland Europe Spain is the only country with similar levels of fluoridation.
However, it is more popular in places such as Australia and the US.

Birmingham was the first place to fluoridate water in the 1960s and since then other areas across the Midlands and in the north west, north east and Yorkshire and the Humber, have taken the step.
But it has proved controversial.

Attempts to add fluoride to the water supply in Hampshire in recent years have run into stiff opposition and even ended up in court with campaigners saying they were concerned about the health impacts. 

Prof Damien Walmsley, of the British Dental Association, said: "The report is a timely reminder of the significant role that fluoridation plays in reducing tooth decay which remains a significant health problem in England."

But a spokesman for the National Pure Water Association said health chiefs should concentrate on alternatives, such as better dental hygiene, to improve teeth.

The Most Popular Show In America Is Basically NSA Propaganda

Comment: What "24" does for the War on Terror "NCIS" does for the NSA.

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Business Insider

NCIS and its sibling NCIS: Los Angeles are the top-rated dramas on television, a distinction they have held for several years.

Next season there will be a third iteration, which ones hopes will be titled NCIS: Spinoff. As Quartz’s Jason Lynch notes, viewers love these formulaic procedurals—while critics ignore them.

But what exactly are so many Americans watching—and rooting for—when they tune in for these TV shows? A closer look reveals that both series are uncomfortably akin to a cheering section for the NSA: The shows depict a world in which terrorists planning mass slaughter are under every bed, in which viewers root for the good-looking, wisecracking agents to smash down doors without warrants; in which super-advanced electronic surveillance is used exclusively to protect the public. In the NCIS version of reality, we’ll all die unless powerful government agencies treat the United States Constitution like a big joke.

Of course primetime TV is rich in galimatias: Wacky sitcoms are hardly realism, and virtually all action programming overstates the frequency of violent crime. That crime is in steady decline simply isn’t mentioned on procedurals like Hawaii Five-0 and the Law & Order franchise, which depict homicide at runaway levels. Primetime dramas also exaggerate the use of firearms. In the actual NYPD, 1 officer in 800 fired at a suspect in 2012; on TV, the streets of New York City are as bullet-ridden as the Wild West. Procedurals further overstate the chance of criminals being caught: A disturbing number of real crimes never are solved, while in primetime, as the top of the hour approaches, the cell door slams behind the villain. Viewers long have clicked on the tube to entertainment in which crime is rampant, gunfire echoes down the mean streets, and bad guys always get what’s coming to them.

But the subliminals are shifting. A generation ago, network crime dramas featured private detectives who were lone outsiders, like The Rockford Files’ Rockford, or For Hire’s Spenser. Post 9/11, audiences seem to prefer heroes with government authority. Federal agents based in secret facilities, elite crime-fighting units with extralegal powers, fantastical technology, and commando-team backup are everywhere on primetime.

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Prosecutors Clear the FBI Agent Who Shot and Killed Ibragim Todashev

Comment: Oh, imagine the shock...

If you want to understand just how common CIA and FBI false-flag and entrapment nonsense truly is please read this book: Manufactured Terror: The Boston Marathon Bombings, Sandy Hook, Aurora Shooting and Other False Flag Terror Attacks

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The Wire

An unidentified FBI agent who used deadly force against Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen man who had ties to the Tsarnaev brothers, was cleared by a Florida prosecutor, according to the Washington Post.  State prosecutor Jeffrey Ashton announced that he would make his findings public on Tuesday. 

Almost a year after Todashev's death, there are still more questions than answers for the circumstances surrounding the shooting. We know that Todashev was friends with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers accused in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings. And the FBI believed Todashev might have information on a possibly linked triple murder. They went to Florida to interrogate him. The interrogation in his home lasted for several hours, until Todashev was apparently giving signs that he was ready to confess to a role in the 2011 slaying. And that's where things get complicated. Law enforcement officials have given conflicting accounts of what made a peaceful interview end with someone's death. Officially, the FBI has said that the agent shot Todashev several times in self defense. 

The Florida investigation was prompted in part because of those conflicting accounts, which include a dispute over whether the suspect was armed or not at the time of the shooting. The full report will go public about a week after Boston Magazine published a deep dive into the murder FBI agents connected to Todashev and the Boston bombing suspects. Essentially, the piece asks whether a better investigation of the triple murder (assumed to be a drug deal gone wrong at the time) could have stopped the Boston Marathon bombings from happening in the first place. 

The FBI has already cleared the agent of any wrongdoing in its own probe of the incident, the Post adds. That FBI report is still being reviewed by the Department of Justice; it looks like they will also clear the agent of any wrongdoing.

Anti-Science: Those Who Wish to Debate Climate Threatened with Death or Jail

Washington's Blog


Preface: The scientific method requires allowing a free-for-all of hypotheses, which then rise or fall based upon the results of actual experiments.
 
For example, imprisoning Galileo for life because he didn’t agree with the “accepted” consensus that the Sun revolved around the Earth was not a great example of the scientific method. Instead of conducting experiments to see whether the Earth or Sun were the center of the Solar System, those with the prevailing view simply silenced the dissenter.

Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that many theories that were universally accepted and “known” to be true turned out to be false. See these examples from the Houston Chronicle and the Guardian.

Noam Chomsky said years ago that he would submit to fascism if it would help combat global warming:

Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there’s just no other alternatives right now.”

In 2006, Grist called for Nuremberg-style trials for climate skeptics. (The article was later retracted.)
Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at global warming skeptics in 2007, declaring “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.”

In 2007, a UN official – Yvo de Boer – warned that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be“criminally irresponsible.”

The same year, another UN official – UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland – said “it’s completely immoral, even, to question” the UN’s scientific consensus on climate.

In 2008, prominent Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki called for government leaders skeptical of global warming to be “thrown into jail.”

The same year, British journalism professor Alex Lockwood said that writers questioning global warming should be banned.

In 2009, a writer at Talking Points Memo advocated that global warming “deniers” be executed or jailed. (He later retracted the threat.)

James Lovelock – environmentalist and creator of the “Gaia hypothesis” – told the Guardian in 2010:

We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.
But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

Earlier this month, an assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology said he wants to send people who disagree with him about global warming to jail.

And there are many other examples of threats made in regard to the climate debate.

Postscript: If we can’t have free speech and an open scientific debate, then we are no longer living in a democracy or a society which follows the scientific method. Threatening scientific debate is anti-science and anti-liberty.
It is especially troubling given the background of climate discussions. Specifically, in the 1970s, many American scientists were terrified of an imminent ice age. Obama’s top science advisor – John Holdren –was one of them. Holdren and some other scientists proposed pouring soot over the arctic to melt the ice cap and so prevent the dreaded ice age. Holdren warned of dire consequences – including starvation and the largest tidal wave in history – if mankind did not rally on an emergency basis to stop the coming ice age.

Were those who questioned the likelihood of an imminent ice age also threatened with death or imprisonment?

Moreover, it is also concerning that many of the “solutions” proposed to combat a changing climate could do more harm than good (and see this). That’s sort of like invading Iraq after 9/11 because we had to “do” something…

Let’s say that – hypothetically – 100% of all climate scientists reached a consensus that manmade global warming from carbon dioxide was an imminent threat. Shouldn’t we choose approaches that actually work – and which do more good than harm (more) – instead of messing things up even further?