Monday, January 7, 2013

The Nazi roots of the European Union

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/01/the-nazi-roots-of-the-european-union-4-2530964.html     ----  C  you guys  think I just make the  NAZI  shit  UP ?----"THEY"  planned "THIS"  shit  before the end of WWII ......with a little "help"   from their friends ???----
The Nazi roots of the European Union
Monday, January 7, 2013 20:41

Exposed: the Nazi roots of the European Union, and mass denial
by Jon Rappoport
January 2, 2013
www.nomorefakenews.com
Once upon a time, there was an industrial combine in Nazi Germany called IG Farben. It was the largest chemical/pharmaceutical octopus in the world. It owned companies, and it had favorable business agreements with companies from England to Central America to Japan.
The author of The Devil’s Chemists, Josiah DuBois, traveled to Guatemala in the early days of World War 2, and returned with the comment that, as far as he could tell, Guatemala was “a wholly owned subsidiary of Farben.”
This article will refer you to two other riveting books, but first I want to make a few comments.
The pharmaceutical empire was and is one of the major forces behind the European Union (EU). It is no accident that these drug corporations wield such power. They aren’t only involved in controlling the medical cartel; they are political planners.
This is how and why Big Pharma fits so closely with what is loosely referred to as the New World Order. The aim of enrolling every human in a cradle-to-grave system of disease diagnosis and toxic drug treatment has a larger purpose: to debilitate, to weaken populations.
This is a political goal. It facilitates control.
IG Farben’s component companies, at the outbreak of World War 2, were Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst. They were chemical and drug companies. Farben put Hitler over the top in Germany, and the war was designed to lead to a united Europe that would be dominated by the Farben nexus.
The loss of the war didn’t derail that plan. It was shifted into an economic blueprint, which became, eventually, the European Union.
The European Commission’s first president was Walter Hallstein, the Nazi lawyer who, during the war, had been in charge of post-war legal planning for the new Europe.
As the Rath Foundation reports: In 1939, on the brink of the war, Hallstein had stated, “The creation of the New Law [of the Nazis] is ONLY the task of the law-makers!”
In 1957, with his reputation sanitized, Hallstein spoke the words in this manner: “The European Commission has full and unlimited power for all decisions related to the architecture of this European community.”
Post-war, IG Farben had been broken up into separate companies, but those companies were following a common agenda. If, for example, you want to know why the endless global debate over labeling GMO food has obscured the real issue—banning GMO crops altogether—you can look to these Farben allies: Bayer, BASF, and Sanofi, among others.
They are among the leaders in GMO research and production. BASF cooperates with Monsanto on research projects. Sanofi is a leader in GM vaccine research.
The original IG Farben had a dream. Its executives and scientists believed they could eventually produce, synthetically, any compound in a laboratory. They could dominate world industry in this fashion.
The dream never died. Today, they see gene-manipulation as the route to that goal.
I refer you to the explosive book, The Nazi Roots of the Brussels EU, by Paul Anthony Taylor, Aleksandra Niedzwiecki, Dr. Matthias Rath, and August Kowalczyk. You can read it at relay-of-life.org. It is a dagger in the heart of the EU.
At the Rath Foundation, you can also read Joseph Borkin’s classic, The Crime and Punishment of IG Farben.
In 1992, I was deeply engaged in researching the specific devastating effects of medical drugs. A comment made by an audience member at a lecture I was giving started me on the road to understanding the influence and history of Farben.
Eventually, I concluded that, at the highest levels of power, these drugs weren’t destructive by accident. They were intended to cause harm. This was covert chemical warfare against the population of the planet. The Rockefeller-Standard Oil-Farben connection was a primary piece of the puzzle.
It was, of course, Rockefeller (and Carnegie) power that forced the birth of pharmaceutical medicine in America, with the publication of the 1910 Flexner Report. The Report was used to excoriate and marginalize Chiropractic, Homeopathy, Osteopathy, and other forms of traditional natural practice, in favor of what would become the modern juggernaut of drug-based treatment.
In a recent article about the FDA, “Medical Murder in the Matrix,” I point out the fact that, if this federal agency has permitted at least 100,000 deaths of Americans, per year, from the direct effects of drugs it, the FDA, has certified as safe, and if the FDA knows these death figures (which it does), then “unintended” and “accidental” can no longer be applied to this ongoing holocaust.
The same can be held true for the pharmaceutical industry itself.
People are exceedingly reluctant to come to this obvious conclusion. They prefer to hem and haw and invent excuses or deny the facts.
To understand the dimensions and history of the ongoing chemical warfare against the population, in the form of medical drugs (and of course pesticides), one must factor in the original octopus, IG Farben.
World War 2 never ended. It simply shifted its strategies.
And just as one can trace extensive collaboration between major American corporations and the Nazi war machine, during the military phase of the war, today you see American corporations wreaking destructive havoc on the American people, as Dow, DuPont, Monsanto and others “work their magic for a better life.”
In any fascist system, the bulk of the people working inside the system, including scientists, refuse to believe the evidence of what is happening before their own eyes. They insist they are doing good. They believe they are on the right side. They see greater top-down control as necessary and correct. They adduce reasonable explanations for inflicted harm and death.
This is how and why conspiracies can exist. Only a few people, at the very top, need to know the true motives.
Everyone else tells themselves fairy tales. This deep-seated obsession is an integral part of mind control, and ultimately it is self-inflicted.
The self-created victim calculates: “I would rather stay in my dream than wake up to a nightmare.”
Yes, but acknowledging the nightmare is a step on the road to liberation from the Matrix.

The Matrix Revealed

In centuries past, empires conquered foreign lands and made colonies out of them. When that era ended, a less overt style of military and economic conquest was initiated. But there is something most people don’t realize.
When richer nations now go into poorer nations, the so-called incidental goal of bringing “life-saving” medical care with them is a front and a pose.
One of the chief goals of the conquerors is, in fact, pharmaceutical. Changing the habits of populations, so they come to rely on these drugs is high on the to-do list. It rings up profit, of course, for the pharmaceutical empire, and it also poisons the poor into even greater desolation than they are already experiencing. They become even easier to control.
On top of that, the actual untreated causes of the routine desolation—starvation, generation-to-generation malnutrition, contaminated water supplies, lack of general sanitation, overcrowding, and previously stolen agricultural land—are shoved on the back burner of the global media.
Suddenly, we learn that various germ-caused diseases are the real scourges of these countries, and help is coming (slowly), in the form of drugs that kill the germs, along with the medical heroes who will deliver these drugs.
This is a cover story. It’s a preposterous lie. In the conditions of desolation mentioned above, it doesn’t matter what germs are present, and trying to attack them is futile and absurd.
The general conditions of desolation weaken and destroy immune systems. At that point, what would normally be completely harmless germs, any germs, can sweep through an area and cause death and severe illness, because the routine processes of the immune system, which would immediately neutralize the germs, are disabled.
The “medical intervention” is meant to defer, for yet another day, the remedying of the actual problems that keep causing disease—and the medical drugs create new and lethal toxicity, leading to more deaths.
This is the standard op of the modern pharmaceutical empire. To know it is proceeding apace, all you have to do is see foreign doctors getting off planes in Third World countries, or read about some drug giant that is undertaking a humanitarian program of supplying medicines and vaccines to “people in desperate need of them.”
Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
Filed under: Corporate Fraud, Government Fraud, Matrix Revealed Jon Rappoport has worked as a free-lance investigative reporter for over 30 years.
http://nomorefakenews.com/

PA St Troopers Visit Thailand, Hire Prostitutes, Prove Invalidity of “Rule of Law”

& than we got these ?                                               http://www.copblock.org/25616/pa-underscore-invalidity-of-law/                                      

PA St Troopers Visit Thailand, Hire Prostitutes, Prove Invalidity of “Rule of Law”

pennsylvania-state-police-copblockAs reported by Mark Scolforo in the AP, three high-ranking employees of the Pennsylvania State Police came under investigation after it was learned that they hired prostitutes when visiting Thailand.
For now, ignoring the issue of the ages of those involved, what is the big deal?
If this was in fact a consensual interaction why does any uninvolved third party think they have the right to possibly subject one of the parties to sanctions (per the “investigation”)? Shouldn’t two (or more) people have the right to enter into whatever voluntary arrangement for goods or services that they desire?
Ideally yes, that would be the norm. But today some folks act as if they have the right to initiate force against others when they engage in certain actions, despite those actions not causing a victim or damaging property. That includes not only those who did the investigation, but the three men – John Kruse, Brad Lawver, and Douglas Martin – being investigated.
That to me is the biggest take-away from this story – the hypocrisy of Krus, Lawver and Martin. They all subsist off others in Pennsylvania. That theft alone is reason enough to view them as ill-led. And if they thought their actions in Thailand not wrong, then why not engage in them in Pennsylvania?
They obviously realized that if caught, they could be caged, perhaps by their own colleagues. If an act is wrong in one place, can it become right in another place? This in and of itself shows the arbitrariness of the “law*” Kruse, Lawver, and Martin claim to uphold.
Charles Skurkis, who headed-up the “investigation” noted in deposition that:
California dispenses marijuana for medical use, Pennsylvania does not allow that. If a trooper goes to California and a doctor prescribes marijuana and he smokes it there, is he in violation of the law? That case has to be looked at, and there’s no immediate right or wrong answer.
Again, such a statement only proves the subjectivity of the “law”. Legislation created by man is not law, as is made clear by the inability to remain consistent on its application based on arbitrary political boundaries.
Moving on to the issue of age, that’s admittedly a sticky one. If the person(s) who reached a consensual arrangement with Krus, Lawver and Martin were 21-years-old would anyone object? What if they were 18? Or 16?
What is clear though, is that the “investigation” done was just a sham, as they merely took the word of those being investigated. From Francis Hacken:
The age of the prostitutes they were with was not a concern to Lt. Martin (because according to him, they all looked old enough)
This lack of a finding is not at all a surprise, seeing that the person conducting, like those who were supposedly “investigated”, operates via stolen coin and proffers that they have a “legitimate” right to initiate force. Those perverse incentives can never bring-about accountability.
Have some thoughts of your own about how this all unfolded? Feel free to share:

Pennsylvania State Police

  • http://www.psp.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/psp/4451
  • (717) 783-5599
  • 1800 Elmerton Ave.
    Harrisburg, Pa  17110
  • John Kruse – executive service section
  • Brad Lawver – legislative affairs
  • Douglas Martin – bureau of liquor control enforcement

*For more on this angle see:
———————————-
Details of Asian prostitution trips by 3 Pa. state police lieutenants surface in fed lawsuit
by Mark Scolforo, Associated Press, December 23rd, 2012

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Three state police lieutenants — including the former head of the elite detail that guards the Pennsylvania governor — were investigated by the FBI and the state police for their involvement with prostitutes during successive personal vacations to Southeast Asia.
Records in a case pending in federal court in Pennsylvania say the lieutenants all admitted hiring the prostitutes on trips between 2002 and 2008.
An Associated Press review of the internal state police records shows the supervisors evaded significant punishment, and a Right-to-Know Law request found no evidence they were discharged or demoted, the state police said Wednesday.
The investigative records were disclosed in an employment discrimination lawsuit filed by retired Cpl. Joe Farthing, a former member of the Executive Service Section, which protects the governor, lieutenant governor and their spouses.
Farthing, an African-American who lives in Lancaster, claims state police brass concocted a racially motivated claim that he had improperly milked overtime while guarding then-Gov. Ed Rendell. He was not implicated in the Asian trips.
Farthing worked closely with one of the three, Lt. John Kruse, as the two top-ranking members of the Executive Service Section.
While it’s not clear what triggered the interest, the FBI by 2007 was investigating sex tourism trips by Kruse and Lt. Brad Lawver, who worked in legislative affairs. Kruse and Lawver told investigators they had been joined by a third member of state police brass, Lt. Douglas Martin of the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, according to state police documents.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Harrisburg said a federal investigation regarding the Asian sex tourism trips was closed without charges being filed, and prosecutors declined further comment.
Rendell told the AP he had heard rumors of the prostitution trips “through the grapevine, stuff about trips to Asia and sexual hijinks, but again, I didn’t know there was anything illegal about them.”
The three men told FBI agents that they hired prostitutes in Thailand and Vietnam, according to a February 2009 general investigative report regarding Martin filed by Sgt. Farzad Sharif with the state police’s Bureau of Integrity and Professional Standards. Kruse and Lawver had just retired at the time.
Court records describe an unspecified number of private trips to Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore that combined tourist outings with hiring prostitutes, in some cases for a week at a time. An FBI agent told a state police supervisor that during one trip the men — it’s unclear which of them — were seen by the FBI drinking heavily and entering what was believed to be a house of prostitution.
Farthing’s lawsuit was filed in February 2011, but the detailed disclosures about the lieutenants’ sex tourism trips, the alleged abuse of overtime by members of the Executive Service Section and evidence the unit was poorly run emerged in court documents this year. The state attorney general’s office sought unsuccessfully to have Farthing’s case thrown out.
As state police leadership and internal affairs looked into the sex trips, questions about the ages of the prostitutes arose repeatedly. The three state policemen have repeatedly insisted that none was underage, records show.
“There was no indication, wherever they went, that there was any children involved, which is what our concern was,” retired state police Maj. Charles J. Skurkis, who headed up internal affairs at the time, said in a deposition.
Child prostitution is a particular problem in Thailand and some other Asian countries.
“The age of the prostitutes they were with was not a concern to Lt. Martin (because according to him, they all looked old enough),” state police disciplinary officer Capt. Francis Hacken wrote. Hacken recommended in January 2011 that Martin be court-martialed, but Martin avoided it by retiring two months later.
Hacken wrote that Martin “indicated that prostitution is a culture that is accepted in Thailand.”
The now-retired state police commissioner, Col. Frank E. Pawlowski, described the lieutenants’ behavior as “sexual misconduct” during a September 2011 deposition.
“People suggested that they (prostitutes) were juveniles, but I was not privy to any of the evidence in the case that I could make my own conclusion,” Pawlowski said.
Doubts about the illegality of prostitution in Thailand arose during the investigation, with Skurkis likening the men’s conduct to someone visiting an area where medical marijuana is legal.
“California dispenses marijuana for medical use,” he said in the deposition. “Pennsylvania does not allow that. If a trooper goes to California and a doctor prescribes marijuana and he smokes it there, is he in violation of the law? That case has to be looked at, and there’s no immediate right or wrong answer.”
Skurkis did not return a phone message seeking comment.
At some point, the department’s own lawyers researched the matter and concluded the men’s actions “arguably” did violate Thai law. Hacken’s court-martial report for Martin said a customer soliciting a prostitute violates Thai law if the solicitation is done openly or shamelessly and causes a public nuisance.
A 1996 Thai law on prostitution prohibits buying minors for prostitution, soliciting prostitution activities in public places, and the buying or selling of sex “where people are available for prostitution,” said Janice Raymond, a board member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.
Those laws in theory would apply to the customers of prostitutes, but Raymond said the reality is that the women are the ones who end up arrested and charged.
As the FBI investigation was getting under way, the state police received a complaint from another trooper on the governor’s detail alleging Kruse and Farthing assigned themselves disproportionate amounts of overtime and accrued it under circumstances where it was not needed, or when they were not performing work for the pay.
The handling of the Asian sex scandal relates to Farthing’s lawsuit because he claims the department was harder on him, a black man, than it was when disciplining white employees, including the three white lieutenants in the unrelated case.
Farthing was pulled from the governor’s detail and assigned to duty at the lieutenant’s governor’s mansion while he was investigated for overtime abuse. He retired about a year later.
Farthing disputes that he abused overtime, and claims he was forced to retire in October 2008, believing he had been singled out for punishment because of the color of his skin.
The state police have denied racial animus was behind any actions taken against Farthing, but said management of the Executive Service Section has been improved, and the overtime issue has been addressed.
Farthing subsequently filed an employment discrimination lawsuit, which is pending before Magistrate Judge Henry S. Perkin in Allentown. His case was recently scheduled to go to trial next summer, with Rendell among the possible witnesses.
Documents filed in Farthing’s lawsuit show that the agency only moved to discipline him and Kruse for overtime misuse after they had both retired, rendering it meaningless.
Reached at his home outside Lewisberry, Kruse at first denied any knowledge of the matter, then declined to comment and referred questions to his lawyer, Jerry Russo, who did not return messages. Martin, who lives in Mechanicsburg, and Lawver, a Lewisberry resident, did not respond to requests for comment.
Farthing’s attorney, Harold Goodman, declined to discuss the case on the record beyond what is in the court file. The attorney general’s office, which represents the state police in the civil case, declined to comment for this story.
The overtime allegations against Kruse and Farthing were reviewed for potential criminal violations, but the local prosecutor took a pass. Kruse and Farthing ranked No. 1 and No. 2 within the detail in total overtime from 2002 to 2007, with each collecting well over $200,000.
In September 2007, Dauphin County Assistant District Attorney Fran Chardo told a state police internal affairs investigator that he believed Farthing had put in for overtime when he was not working, which “would support culpability for the offense of theft by deception.” But, he said, there was a lack of oversight and Kruse allowed it.
Chardo, who recently announced his candidacy for county judge, also declined to prosecute on overtime-related allegations against Kruse in March 2009, saying it was not in the public interest, partly because Kruse had agreed to retire immediately.
Kruse was denied an honorable discharge, and an internal state police report issued a few months later said “sustained overtime misconduct” practices would have justified court-martialing him and Farthing. Troopers who do not get an honorable discharge do not get to keep their badge or service hat, matters of great symbolic importance within the agency.
Kruse had been recommended for a two-rank demotion to trooper, a 25-day suspension and an involuntary transfer; Farthing a one-rank demotion and 20-day suspension, according to a declaration by the then-deputy commissioner, John R. Brown.
The state police found that total overtime in the 20-person Executive Service Section fell from $612,000 in 2006 — a busy election year for Rendell, and the year before the overtime abuse investigation began — to $474,000 in 2007 and $346,000 in 2008, when Kruse no longer ran the detail. It skyrocketed in Rendell’s final year of 2010, however, to $739,000, and reached $533,000 in 2011.
A good overtime year can yield dividends for the rest of a trooper’s life, because pension amounts are based on peak pay years. Farthing retired in October 2008 with a $130,000 lump payment and now has a $72,000 annual pension. Kruse retired in January 2009, collected $84,000 and gets a $45,000 pension.
Lawver and Martin apparently were not investigated for overtime abuse. Lawver retired in January 2009, received a $106,000 payment and collects a $63,000 pension; Martin retired in March 2011 — weeks after Hacken informed him he faced court-martial — collected $131,000, and has a $69,000 pension.

DHS Insider Report: Coming This Spring: “Life for the Average American is Going to Change Significantly”

http://beforeitsnews.com/survival/2013/01/dhs-insider-report-coming-this-spring-life-for-the-average-american-is-going-to-change-significantly-6-2455740.html?currentSplittedPage=0       
DHS Insider Report: Coming This Spring: “Life for the Average American is Going to Change Significantly”
Monday, January 7, 2013 0:50
0
SHTFplan Editor’s Note: The following interview is both informative and terrifying, and essential reading for anyone concerned about what comes next.
What the DHS Insider suggests is about to happen is exactly what many of us fear – a police state takeover of America, with urban centers to be pacified first, all outspoken critics of the government to be silenced, and travel restrictions across the United States to come shortly thereafter.
The dollar collapse, riots, the mobilization of domestic law enforcement, gun control, rationing of food and gas, suspension of the U.S. Constitution and a complete lock-down of America as we know it. According to the report, sinister forces within the U.S. government operating at the highest levels of our country’s political, financial, intelligence and military hierarchies have set into motion a series of events that will leave the populace so desperate for government intervention that they’ll willingly surrender their liberty for the perceived security of a militarized police state.
Interviewer Doug Hagmann cites an anonymous source operating deep inside the Department of Homeland Security, which may leave many skeptical of the accuracy of the reports. But the fact is, were such events being planned behind the scenes we certainly wouldn’t be given official mainstream warning. If real, the report is a game changer, and it makes sense that anyone privy to such information would want to keep their identity hidden. Whistle blowers in America who expose the corruption of officials in our government are treated not as patriots, but as traitors, and are often branded as psychos or terrorists.
What’s most alarming is the speed at which these events may play out.

The latest from “DHS Insider”
(This is the complete interview from The Hagmann and Hagmann Report)
Introduction
23 December 2012: After a lengthy, self-imposed informational black-out, my high-level DHS contact known as “Rosebud” emerged with new, non-public information about plans being discussed and prepared for implementation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the near future. It is important to note that this black-out was directly related to the aggressive federal initiative of identifying and prosecuting “leakers,” at least those leaks and leakers not sanctioned by the executive office – the latter of which there are many.
Due to those circumstances, my source exercised an abundance of caution to avoid compromising a valuable line of communication until he had information he felt was  significant enough to risk external contact. The following information is the result of an in-person contact between this author and “Rosebud” within the last 48 hours. With his permission, the interview was digitally recorded and the relevant portions of the contact are provided in a conversational format for easier reading. The original recording was copied onto multiple discs and are maintained in secure locations for historical and insurance purposes.
Meeting
The following began after an exchange of pleasantries and other unrelated discussion:
DH: Do I have your permission to record this conversation?
RB: You do.
DH: I’ve received a lot of e-mail from people wondering where you went and why you’ve been so quiet.
RB: As I told you earlier, things are very dicey. Weird things began to happen before the election and have continued since. Odd things, a clampdown of sorts. I started looking and I found [REDACTED AT THE REQUEST OF THIS SOURCE], and that shook me up. I’m not the only one, though, that found a [REDACTED], so this means there’s surveillance of people within DHS by DHS. So, that explains this cloak and dagger stuff for this meeting.
DH: I understand. What about the others?
RB: They are handling it the same way.
DH: I’ve received many e-mails asking if you are the same person giving information to Ulsterman. Are you?
RB: No, but I think I know at least one of his insiders.
DH: Care to elaborate?
RB: Sorry, no.
DH: Do you trust him or her. I mean, the Ulsterman source?
RB: Yes.
DH: Okay, so last August, you said things were “going hot.” I printed what you said, and things did not seem to happen as you said.
RB: You’d better recheck your notes and compare [them] with some of the events leading up to the election. I think you’ll find that a full blown campaign of deception took place to make certain Obama got back into office. The polls, the media, and a few incidents that happened in the two months before the election. I guess if people are looking for some big event they can point to and say “aha” for verification, well then I overestimated people’s ability to tell when they are being lied to.
DH: What specific incidents are you referring to?
RB:  Look at the threats to Obama. Start there. The accusations of racism. Then look at the polls, and especially the judicial decisions about voter ID laws. Bought and paid for, or where there was any potential for problems, the judges got the message, loud and clear. Then look at the voter fraud. And not a peep from the Republicans. Nothing. His second term was a done deal in September. This was planned. Frankly, the Obama team knew they had it sewn up long before election day. Benghazi could have derailed them, but the fix was in there, so I never saw anything on my end to suggest a ready-made solution had to be implemented.
DH: What’s going on now?
RB: People better pay close attention over the next few months. First, there won’t be any meaningful deal about the fiscal crisis. This is planned, I mean, the lack of deal is planned. In fact, it’ necessary to pave the way for what is in the short term agenda.
DH: Wait, you’re DHS – not some Wall Street insider.
RB: So you think they are separate agendas? That’s funny. The coming collapse of the U.S. dollar is a done deal. It’s been in the works for years – decades, and this is one of the most important cataclysmic events that DHS is preparing for. I almost think that DHS was created for that purpose alone, to fight Americans, not protect them, right here in America. But that’s not the only reason. There’s the gun issue too.
DH: So, what are you seeing at DHS?
RB: We don’t have a lot of time, tonight – our meeting –  as well as a country. I mean I have heard – with my own ears – plans being made that originate from the White House that involve the hierarchy of DHS. You gotta know how DHS works at the highest of levels. It’s Jarrett and Napolitano, with Jarrett organizing all of the plans and approaches. She’s the one in charge, at least from my point of view, from what I am seeing. Obama knows that’s going on and has say, but it seems that Jarrett has the final say, not the other way around. It’s [screwed] up. This really went into high gear since the election.
But it’s a train wreck at mid management, but is more effective at the lower levels. A lot of police departments are being gifted with federal funds with strings attached. That money is flowing out to municipal police departments faster than it can be counted. They are using this money to buy tanks, well, not real tanks, but you know what I mean. DHS is turning the police into soldiers.
By the way, there has been a lot of communication recently between Napolitano and Pistole [TSA head]. They are planning to use TSA agents in tandem with local police for certain operations that are being planned right now. This is so [deleted] important that you cannot even begin to imagine. If you get nothing else out of this, please, please make sure you tell people to watch the TSA and their increasing involvement against the American public. They are the stooges who will be the ones to carry out certain plans when the dollar collapses and the gun confiscation begins.
DH: Whoa, wait a minute. You just said a mouthful. What’s the agenda here?
RB: Your intelligence insider – he knows that we are facing a planned economic collapse. You wrote about this in your articles about Benghazi, or at least that’s what I got out of the later articles. So why the surprise?
DH: There’s a lot here. Let’s take it step by step if you don’t mind.
RB: Okay, but I’m not going to give it to you in baby steps. Big boy steps. This is what I am hearing. Life for the average American is going to change significantly, and not the change people expect. First, DHS is preparing to work with police departments and the TSA to respond to civil uprisings that will happen when there is a financial panic. And there will be one, maybe as early as this spring, when the dollar won’t get you a gumball. I’m not sure what the catalyst will be, but I’ve heard rumblings about a derivatives crisis as well as an oil embargo. I don’t know, that’s not my department. But something is going to happen to collapse the dollar, which has been in the works since the 1990′s. Now if it does not happen as soon as this, it’s because there are people, real patriots, who are working to prevent this, so it’s a fluid dynamic. But that doesn’t change the preparations.
And the preparations are these: DHS is prepositioning assets in strategic areas near urban centers all across the country. Storage depots. Armories. And even detainment facilities, known as FEMA camps. FEMA does not even know that the facilities are earmarked for detainment by executive orders, at least not in the traditional sense they were intended. By the way, people drive by some of these armories everyday without even giving them a second look. Commercial and business real estate across the country are being bought up or leased for storage purposes. Very low profile.
Anyway, I am hearing that the plan from on high is to let the chaos play out for a while, making ordinary citizens beg for troops to be deployed to restore order. but it’s all organized to make them appear as good guys. That’s when the real head knocking will take place. We’re talking travel restrictions, which should no be a problem because gas will be rationed or unavailable. The TSA will be in charge of travel, or at least be a big part of it. They will be commissioned, upgraded from their current status.
They, I mean Jarrett and Obama as well as a few others in government, are working to create a perfect storm too. This is being timed to coincide with new gun laws.
DH: New federal gun laws?
RB: Yes. Count on the criminalization to possess just about every gun you can think of. Not only restrictions, but actual criminalization of possessing a banned firearm. I heard this directly from the highest of my sources. Plans were made in the 90′s but were withheld. Now, it’s a new day, a new time, and they are riding the wave of emotion from Sandy Hook., which, by the way and as tragic as it was, well, it stinks to high heaven. I mean there are many things wrong there, and first reports are fast disappearing. The narrative is being changed. Look, there is something wrong with Sandy Hook, but if you write it, you’ll be called a kook or worse.
DH: Sure
RB: But Sandy Hook, there’s something very wrong there. But I am hearing that won’t be the final straw. There will be another if they think it’s necessary.
DH: Another shooting?
RB: Yes.
DH: That would mean they are at least complicit.
RB: Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
DH: Are they? Were they?
RB: Do your own research. Nothing I say, short of bringing you photographs and documents will convince anyone, and even then, it’s like [DELETED] in the wind.
DH: So…
RB: So what I’m telling you is that DHS, the TSA and certain, but not all, law enforcement agencies are going to be elbow deep in riot control in response to an economic incident. At the same time or close to it, gun confiscation will start. It will start on a voluntary basis using federal registration forms, then an amnesty, then the kicking-in of doors start.
Before or at the same time, you know all the talk of lists, you know, the red and blue lists that everyone made fun of? Well they exist, although I don’t know about their colors. But there are lists of political dissidents maintained by DHS. Names are coordinated with the executive branch, but you know what? They did not start with Obama. They’ve been around in one form or another for years. The difference though is that today, they are much more organized. And I’ll tell you that the vocal opponents of the politics of the global elite, the bankers, and the opponents of anything standing in their way, well, they are on the top of the list of people to be handled.
DH: Handled?
RB: As the situations worsen, some might be given a chance to stop their vocal opposition. Some will, others won’t. I suppose they are on different lists. Others won’t have that chance. By that time, though, it will be chaos and people will be in full defensive mode. They will be hungry, real hunger like we’ve never experienced before. They will use our hunger as leverage. They will use medical care as leverage.
DH: Will this happen all at once?
RB: They hope to make it happen at the same time. Big cities first, with sections being set apart from the rest of the country. Then the rural areas. There are two different plans for geographical considerations. But it will all come together.
DH: Wait, this sounds way, way over the top. Are you telling me… [Interrupts]
RB: [Over talk/Unintelligible] …know who was selected or elected twice now. You know who his associates are. And you are saying this is way over the top? Don’t forget what Ayers said – you talked to Larry Grathwohl. This guy is a revolutionary. He does not want to transform our country in the traditional sense. He will destroy it. And he’s not working alone. He’s not working for himself, either. He has his handlers. So don’t think this is going to be a walk in the park, with some type of attempt to rescue the country. Cloward-Piven. Alinsky. Marx. All rolled into one. And he won’t need the rest of his four years to do it.
DH: I need you to be clear. Let’s go back again, I mean, to those who speak out about what’s happening.
RB: [Edit note: Obviously irritated] How much clearer do you want it? The Second Amendment will be gone, along with the first, at least practically or operationally. The Constitution will be gone, suspended, at least in an operational sense. Maybe they won’t actually say that they are suspending it, but will do it. Like saying the sky is purple when it’s actually blue. How many people will look a the sky and say yeah, it’s purple? They see what they want to see.
So the DHS, working with other law enforcement organizations, especially the TSA as it stands right now, will oversee the confiscation of assault weapons, which includes all semi-automatic weapons following a period of so-called amnesty. It also includes shotguns that hold multiple rounds, or have pistol grips. They will go after the high capacity magazines, anything over, say 5 rounds.
They will also go after the ammunition, especially at the manufacturer’s level. They will require a special license for certain weapons, and make it impossible to own anything. More draconian than England. This is a global thing too. Want to hunt? What gives you the right to hunt theiranimals? Sound strange? I hope so, but they believe they own the animals. Do you understand now, how sick and twisted this is? Their mentality?
The obvious intent is to disarm American citizens. They will say that we’ll still be able to defend ourselves and go hunting, but even that will be severely regulated. This is the part that they are still working out, though. While the plans were made years ago, there is some argument over the exact details. I know that Napalitano, even with her support of the agenda, would like to see this take place outside of an E.O. [Executive Order] in favor of legislative action and even with UN involvement.
DH: But UN involvement would still require legislative approval.
RB: Yes, but your still thinking normal – in normal terms. Stop thinking about a normal situation. The country is divided, which is exactly where Obama wants us to be. We are as ideologically divided as we were during the Civil War and that rift is growing every day. Add in a crisis – and economic crisis – where ATM and EBT cards will stop working. Where bank accounts will contain nothing but air. They are anticipating a revolution and a civil war rolled into one (emphasis added by this author).
Imagine when talk show hosts or Bloggers or some other malcontent gets on the air or starts writing about the injustice of it all, and about how Obama is the anti-Christ or something. They will outlaw such talk or writing as inciting the situation – they will make it illegal by saying that it is causing people to die. The Republicans will go along with everything as it’s – we have – a one party system. Two parties is an illusion. It’s all so surreal to talk about but you see where this is headed, right?
DH: Well, what about the lists?
RB: Back to that again, okay. Why do you think the NSA has surveillance of all communications? To identify and stop terrorism? Okay, to be fair, that is part of it, but not the main reason. The federal agencies have identified people who present a danger to them and their agendas. I don’t know if they are color coded like you mentioned, red blue purple or peach mango or whatever, but they exist. In fact, each agency has their own. You know, why is it so [deleted] hard for people to get their heads around the existence of lists with names of people who pose a threat to their plans? The media made a big deal about Nixon’s enemies list and everyone nodded and said yeah, that [deleted], but today? They’ve been around for years and years.
DH: I think it’s because of the nature of the lists today. What do they plan to do with their enemies?
RB: Go back to what Ayers said when, in the late 60′s? 70′s? I forget. Anyway, he was serious. But to some extent, the same thing that happened before. They – the people on some of these lists – are under surveillance, or at least some, and when necessary, some are approached and made an offer. Others, well, they can be made to undergo certain training. Let’s call it sensitivity training, except on a much different level. Others, most that are the most visible and mainstream are safe for the most part. And do you want to know why? It’s because they are in the pockets of the very people we are talking about, but they might or might not know it. Corporate sponsorship – follow the money. You know the drill. You saw it happen before, with the birth certificate.
It’s people that are just under the national radar but are effective. They have to worry. Those who have been publicly marginalized already but continue to talk or write or post, they are in trouble. It’s people who won’t sell out, who think that they can make a difference. Those are the people who have to worry.
Think about recent deaths that everybody believes were natural or suicides. Were they? People are too busy working their [butts] off to put food on the table to give a damn about some guy somewhere who vapor locks because of too many doughnuts and coffee and late nights. And it seems plausible enough to happen. This time, when everything collapses, do you think they will care if it is a bullet or a heart attack that takes out the opposition? [Deleted] no.
DH: That’s disturbing. Do you… [interrupts]
RB: Think about the Oklahoma City bombing in ’95. Remember how Clinton blamed that on talk radio, or at least in part. Take what happened then and put it in context of today. Then multiply the damnation by 100, and you will begin to understand where this is going. People like Rush and Hannity have a narrow focus of political theater. They’ll still be up and running during all of this to allow for the appearance of normal. Stay within the script, comrade.
But as far as the others, they have certain plans. And these plans are becoming more transparent. They are getting bolder. They are pushing lies, and the bigger the lie, the easier it is to sell to the people. They will even try to sell a sense of normalcy as things go absolutely crazy and break down. It will be surreal. And some will believe it, think that it’s only happening in certain places, and we can draw everything back once the dust settles. But when it does, this place will not be the same.
DH: Will there be resistance within the ranks of law enforcement? You know, will some say they won’t go along with the plan, like the Oath Keepers?
RB: Absolutely. But they will not only be outnumbered, but outgunned – literally. The whole objective is to bring in outside forces to deal with the civil unrest that will happen in America. And where does their allegiance lie? Certainly not to Sheriff Bob. Or you or me.
During all of this, and you’ve got to remember that the dollar collapse is a big part of this, our country is going to have to be redone. I’ve seen – personally – a map of North America without borders. Done this year. The number 2015 was written across the top, and I believe that was meant as a year. Along with this map – in the same area where this was – was another map showing the United States cut up into sectors. I’m not talking about what people have seen on the internet, but something entirely different. Zones. And a big star on the city of Denver.
Sound like conspiracy stuff on the Internet? Yup. But maybe they were right. It sure looks that way. It will read that way if you decide to write about this. Good luck with that. Anyway, the country seemed to be split into sectors, but not the kind shown on the internet. Different.
DH: What is the context of that?
RB: Across the bottom of this was written economic sectors. It looked like a work in progress, so I can’t tell you any more than that. From the context I think it has to do with the collapse of the dollar.
DH: Why would DHS have this? I mean, it seems almost contrived, doesn’t it?
RB: Not really, when you consider the bigger picture. But wait before we go off into that part. I need to tell you about Obamacare, you know, the new health care coming up. It plays a big part – a huge [deleted] part in the immediate reshaping of things.
DH: How so?
RB: It creates a mechanism of centralized control over people. That’s the intent of this monster of a bill, not affordable health care. And it will be used to identify gun owners. Think your health records are private? Have you been to the doctor lately? Asked about owning a gun? Why do you think they ask, do you think they care about your safety? Say yes to owning a gun and your information is shared with another agency, and ultimately, you will be identified as a security risk. The records will be matched with other agencies.
You think that they are simply relying on gun registration forms? This is part of data collection that people don’t get.  Oh, and don’t even think about getting a script for some mood enhancement drug and being able to own a gun.
Ayers and Dohrn are having the times of their lives seeing things they’ve worked for all of their adult lives actually coming to pass. Oh, before I forget, look at the recent White House visitor logs.
DH: Why? Where did that come from?
RB: Unless they are redacted, you will see the influence of Ayers. Right now. The Weather Underground has been reborn. So has their agenda.
DH: Eugenics? Population control?
RB: Yup. And re-education camps. But trust me, you write about this, you’ll be called a kook. It’s up to you, it’s your reputation, not mine. And speaking about that, you do know that this crew is using the internet to ruin people, right? They are paying people to infiltrate discussion sites and forums to call people like you idiots. Show me the proof they say. Why doesn’t you source come forward? If he knows so much, why not go to Fox or the media? To them, if it’s not broadcast on CNN, it’s not real. Well, they’ve got it backwards. Very little on the news is real. The stock market, the economy, the last presidential polls, very little is real.
But this crew is really internet savvy. They’ve got a lot of people they pay to divert issues on forums, to mock people, to marginalize them. They know what they’re doing. People think they’ll take sites down – hack them. Why do that when they are more effective to infiltrate the discussion? Think about the birth certificate, I mean the eligibility problem of Obama. Perfect example.
DH: How soon do you see things taking place?
RB: They already are in motion. If you’re looking for a date I can’t tell you. Remember, the objectives are the same, but plans, well, they adapt. They exploit. Watch how this fiscal cliff thing plays out. This is the run-up to the next beg economic event.
I can’t give you a date. I can tell you to watch things this spring. Start with the inauguration and go from there. Watch the metals, when they dip. It will be a good indication that things are about to happen. I got that little tidbit from my friend at [REDACTED].
NOTE: At this point, my contact asked me to reserve further disclosures until after the  inauguration.

Copyright Douglas Hagmann.
Via SHTFplan.com.
Douglas J. Hagmann and his son, Joe Hagmann host The Hagmann & Hagmann Report, a live Internet radio program broadcast each weeknight from 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET.
Douglas Hagmann, founder & director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and a multi-state licensed private investigative agency. Doug began using his investigative skills and training to fight terrorism and increase public awareness through his website.
This article has been contributed by SHTF Plan. Visit www.SHTFplan.com for alternative news, commentary and preparedness info.

Sandy Hook Busted Wide Open!

The top ten signs that you might be a zombie

http://www.thedailybell.com/3115/The-top-ten-signs-that-you-might-be-a-zombie     

The top ten signs that you might be a zombie

By Mike Adams


Mike Adams
If you burn your yard rather than mow it, you might be a redneck, says comedian Jeff Foxworthy. But how might you realize you're a zombie? Here are the top ten signs that you just might be a zombie...
Sign #1: If you routinely take flu shot vaccines and then wonder why you still catch the flu every winter, you might be a zombie.
Annual flu shots are "medicines for the mindless." Even according to the medical scientists who are pro-vaccine, flu shots simply don't work on 99 out of 100 people. So if you find yourself standing in line at the pharmacy waiting to get a flu shot, think to yourself, "Whoa! I might be a zombie!"
Sign #2: If you find yourself watching mainstream media news, but still can't make sense of world events, you might be a zombie.
The purpose of the mainstream media is not to keep you informed, but to make you obedient. Mainstream news stories are chosen to promote a corporate agenda, not to bring you accurate information about events that might impact your life in meaningful ways. Those who watch mainstream news television quickly become zombies and then go on to succumb to vaccines and other brain poisons such as fluoride in the water (see below).
Sign #3: If you find yourself mindlessly following your doctor's advice even while your sickness gets increasingly worse, you might be a zombie.
Conscious people realize that if what they are doing isn't working, they need to change what they are doing! But zombies keep doing the same thing over and over again, all while wondering why they keep getting the same results. And doctors promote it with weird zombie logic such as: If that last round of antibiotics was useless, let's try another round of antibiotics and hope for a different outcome!
Sign #4: If you automatically do what you're told by police officers and "authorities," you might be a zombie.
A police officer shows up at your doorstep and politely asks, "May I come in?" A zombie says, "Sure!" and mindlessly opens the door. But an intelligent, conscious person knows this is a zombie mind trick that allows law enforcement officers to testify that you gave them consent to search your entire home. When a police officer asks to enter your home, they are not being polite. They are asking you to surrender your Fourth Amendment rights, and they are using clever social contracts to manipulate you into giving up those rights without you noticing. Don't be a zombie! Know your rights! Learn more at FlexYourRights.com.
Sign #5: If you only read the front of food packagesand not the backyou might be a zombie.
While shopping at the local grocery store, you notice a package of cereal that claims to be "all natural" and says it may "lower cholesterol," too. The back of the cereal box, however, may reveal that the ingredients are not organic, meaning they're made with pesticides and GMOs. Zombies only read the marketing claims on food products. Conscious people read the ingredients and learn how to see beyond the marketing hype of dishonest food companies.
Sign #6: If all your savings are currently held in US dollars, you are almost certainly an economic zombie.
Thanks to the inflationary actions of the Federal Reserve, the US dollar is losing value with each passing day. Before long, it will likely collapse in value. As that happens, all the people left holding useless dollars (both physical ones or electronic ones in your bank account) will discover they have been acting like "economic zombies" because they put all their currency eggs in the same basket. Conscious people diversify their savings into land, real estate, gold, non-US currencies, corporate stocks and even barter items like silver dimes, storable foods, salt, sugar or common ammunition.
Sign #7: If you believe what you were taught in public school, you are definitely a zombie.
American scientists developed the nuclear bombs dropped in World War II, right? Wrong. It was Nazi scientists who processed the nuclear fuel and designed those first two bombs. (Read Rise of the Fourth Reich by Jim Marrs.)
Columbus treated the indigenous Indians with great friendship, right? Not exactly: He and his crews raped the female Indians, then tortured and murdered many of the males. To celebrate "Columbus Day" is to celebrate a mass murderer. (No wonder all the government workers get the day off!)
The federal government exists to protect the rights of the People, right? C'mon – today's government goes out of its way to violate the Bill of Rights, violate federal law and destroy the very Constitution it was sworn to protect. For example, did you know the Obama administration runs a secret "kill list" of Americans to murder without any trial or due process? This has now been openly admitted and confirmed by the White House.
Sign #8: If you drink fluoridated tap water, you are a fluoridated zombie (which is, of course, the whole point of fluoride).
The Nazi war machine used fluoride as a mind-numbing agent to keep its population under control while it committed genocidal murder. Have you ever wondered for what purpose the US, Canada, Australia and other countries are now using the same chemical cocktail in the water supply?
The medical fiction that "fluoride prevents cavities" is a complete quack science hoax. Fluoride is actually a highly corrosive toxic industrial chemical, as revealed in hidden camera footage in the article, "Hidden camera water fluoridation video released by InfoWars" at NaturalNews.com.
Sign #9: If you find yourself rooting for any presidential candidate other than Ron Paul, you're probably a political zombie.
Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate who has offered a genuine balanced budget (all the other candidates want to keep spending us into financial oblivion). Ron Paul is the only Presidential candidate who stands firmly for health freedom, ending prohibition against medical marijuana, legalizing the farming of industrial hemp, and allowing nutritional supplement companies to make accurate, scientifically-validated health claims for their products. All the other candidates are just corporate puppets who have nothing to offer America other than a continuation of the problems that have driven our nation into economic and political turmoil.
To vote for Romney, Perry, Cain or even Obama is to mindlessly vote for continuing the same broken system of puppet presidents who answer to their corporate globalist masters (just like Bush).
Sign #10: If you think that Bigger Government is the way to solve the problems that have already been caused by Big Government, you might be a zombie.
Irrational faith in government is a sure sign of cognitive zombie-ism. As government itself is the cause of most of society's problems – financial bankruptcy, political corruption, the waste of taxpayer money, the promotion of a culture of criminality, deadly health care monopolies and so on – it is completely irrational to think that MORE government can solve the very problems it has created!
• Zombie Obamanomics, for example, is the practice of spending more government money to eliminate government debt – also known as "Zombienomics."
Obamacare, also known as "Zombiecare," is the practice of treating the health of the population with the very same medications and surgery that only "manage" disease symptoms rather than curing disease.
• "Zombocracy" is what I call a government run by zombie politicians who are voted into office by zombie voters.
• "Zombiflation" is the creeping upwards of prices on everyday goods at a pace too slow to be readily noticed by the zombie population. The Federal Reserve is constantly trying to create new money to expand the money supply at precisely the outer limit of Zombiflation.
• "Zombruptcy" is what happens when zombie consumers go bankrupt and can't pay their home mortgages anymore, at which point zombie banks take them over and try to sell them at reduced prices to other zombies.
• "Zombie elections" are contests between two or more globalist zombies who compete to receive the highest number of votes from a mass of zombie voters, none of which have any real knowledge about the character or voting records of the zombie candidates they are electing into office. Zombie voters tend to vote for people based on what they look like. "We need a black president because skin color is what matters!" Or better yet, "We need a fat president, because he looks like the rest of the zombie Americans!"
What about this instead? "We need a president who defends the Constitution and wants to stop the Federal Reserve from stealing more of our money!"
You can be a zombie for Halloween, but don't be one in real life
This Halloween, I was thinking of walking around wearing a mask of Anderson Cooper, because I can't think of a more frightening image of corporate-controlled zombie mindlessness. I could carry a microphone with the letters ZNN – Zombie News Network – and do interviews with "zombies on the street."
Hey there, parents, did you know the high fructose corn syrup in the candies your children are sucking down tonight is made from genetically modified corn? Did you know the chocolate in those name-brand candies was harvested from cacao plantations using child labor? Did you know the artificial food coloring chemicals in the candy promotes symptoms of hyperactivity and ADD?
Ah, but you see, the parents don't want to hear that, because they too are zombies. Who else lets their kids run around and collect bags full of mystery foods from the houses of total strangers?
By the way, it's okay to appear as a zombie for Halloween if you want. Just don't run around acting like a zombie in real life. Use your brain for a change... a global change!
Think about what you're doing, who you're supporting, what you're buying, where you're getting your information and what you choose to believe. Don't be a sucker for mainstream news fictions, pharmaceutical propaganda, medical system quackery and political hucksterism. Always ask skeptical questions, always demand accountability, and if you catch yourself in one of the top ten zombie situations described here, get out and take back your brain as quickly as possible!
A daily dose of NaturalNews will shock your brain back to reality and has been clinically proven in scientific trials to reverse chronic zombie-ism.

Kenyan Filmmaker Who's Planning To Distribute His Documentary Via 'Pirates' Posts First Hour Of New Film On Youtube

What  THE  NEW  World / Internet should be doing ?               

Kenyan Filmmaker Who's Planning To Distribute His Documentary Via 'Pirates' Posts First Hour Of New Film On Youtube

from the staying-connected-and-spreading-the-word dept

A couple months back we covered the story of Patrick Mureithi, a Kenyan filmmaker who was raising money for a documentary on post-election violence in his home country. He was asking for $5,000 to cover travel expenses and some related costs and was hoping that Kenya's thriving "piracy industry" would handle the distribution end of the business, spreading his message of hope throughout his homeland.

The good news is Murethi's Indiegogo campaign met its goal and he is back in Kenya setting up viewings of his documentary and shooting more footage to add to it. It's still in its "first draft" stage according to Murethi, but he sent a message our way informing us that he's uploaded the first hour of the still-unfinished documentary to Youtube.       

"Kenya: Until Hope is Found" first version (60 min)     http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ze6tG5dNIfc



He's also blogging about his experiences returning to Kenya (he currently lives in Missouri), including this "fun" little shakedown at the hands of customs at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport:
Custom's dude @ the airport: Hello? What do you have in those bags?
Me: Some clothes and my camera equipment.
Dude: What are you doing with this equipment?
Me: I'm working on a documentary about healing from trauma after post-election violence.
Dude: Are you a press-man?
Me: No.
Dude: Where is your filming permit?
Me: I don't have one
Dude: Then we have to keep your equipment until you get a permit
Me: I find it hard to leave this equipment here after all the sacrifice it took to get it
Dude: Go talk to that lady (presumably his superior)


- - -

Lady: What are you using this equipment for?
(I explain what I did to dude)
Lady: But this happened five years ago!
Me: Yes, but the trauma has not gone away, and will not go away with time
Lady: How will it go away then?
Me: Through education about trauma and teaching various ways that we can heal
Lady: This is a very controversial film. You need a permit, and you need to leave your equipment with us until you get one.
Me: Please, madam, this is not agreeable with me
Lady: Go see that man in that office


- - -

Man in office: Where is your permit?
(The Dance repeats itself. 45 minutes in total)
Man: We'll let you go with your equipment, but you have to pay 1% of the equipment's cost, non-refundable


I pay, and scurry off to meet my father who has been patiently waiting, sipping coffee through a straw.

Karibu Kenya.
Apparently only non-controversial films are allowed to roam permit-free, unless you're willing to pay a non-refundable "deposit" on equipment you own. A bit of a rough start to be sure, but more recent posts seem a bit more upbeat.

Hopefully, Murethi will keep us posted on any new developments, including the implementation of his scofflaw distribution system once the film is completed.

Unintended Consequences, Lead And Crime

Unintended Consequences, Lead And Crime

from the the-world-works-in-bizarre-ways dept

If you haven't yet, you owe it to yourself to read Kevin Drum's recent article for Mother Jones about the possible link between crime rates and leaded gasoline. The article makes a rather convincing case that the massive growth, and then subsequent decline, in crime over the last six decades or so was influenced quite strongly by the fact that automobile gasoline had lead -- and then went unleaded due to environmental concerns. The article cites numerous studies that all seem to suggest the same thing -- and carefully tries to get past the "correlation is not causation" issue by looking at multiple studies that tackle the same question from different angles (different time periods, locations, population types, etc.) to try to eliminate other possible explanations. One of the parts that struck me as most interesting was the data on big cities as compared to other regions:
Like many good theories, the gasoline lead hypothesis helps explain some things we might not have realized even needed explaining. For example, murder rates have always been higher in big cities than in towns and small cities. We're so used to this that it seems unsurprising, but Nevin points out that it might actually have a surprising explanation—because big cities have lots of cars in a small area, they also had high densities of atmospheric lead during the postwar era. But as lead levels in gasoline decreased, the differences between big and small cities largely went away. And guess what? The difference in murder rates went away too. Today, homicide rates are similar in cities of all sizes. It may be that violent crime isn't an inevitable consequence of being a big city after all.
The article has not gone entirely without criticism. Drum has distanced himself from the claim of the key researcher he relies on in the piece that 90% of the rise and fall of crime (not 90% of crime) is attributable to lead, suggesting that 50% might be a more reasonable number. Separately, Ronald Bailey has reasonably taken Drum to task for blithely making statements about "blindingly obvious" things concerning IQ and ADHD that turn out to be... not true. When you take those things out of the equation, some of the report relies on "aggressiveness" and "impulsivity," but as Bailey notes, there is no national data series on aggressiveness or impulsivity. And, having seen way too many "studies" on video games / violent media causing greater "aggressiveness" and "impulsivity," but always failing to show that those traits actually lead to more crime, it pays to be somewhat skeptical.

That said, the data is very interesting, and certainly worth much more research and better understanding. At the very least, it's a reminder of our complex ecosystem and economy, where understanding cause and effect is often incredibly complicated, and the end results may be quite surprising. It is all too easy to jump to conclusions about cause and effect (and, yes, we are just as guilty of this as others at times) -- but the real world is an impossibly complex mixture of inputs and variables, that rarely succumb to simple explanations that follow the initial "most obvious" rationale.

America's Real Criminal Element: Lead New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic. And fixing the problem is a lot cheaper than doing nothing.

VERY ,VERY    EYE OPENING !                                          http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline             

America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic. And fixing the problem is a lot cheaper than doing nothing.


lead and crime
When Rudy Giuliani ran for mayor of New York City in 1993, he campaigned on a platform of bringing down crime and making the city safe again. It was a comfortable position for a former federal prosecutor with a tough-guy image, but it was more than mere posturing. Since 1960, rape rates had nearly quadrupled, murder had quintupled, and robbery had grown fourteenfold. New Yorkers felt like they lived in a city under siege.
Throughout the campaign, Giuliani embraced a theory of crime fighting called "broken windows," popularized a decade earlier by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in an influential article in The Atlantic. "If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired," they observed, "all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." So too, tolerance of small crimes would create a vicious cycle ending with entire neighborhoods turning into war zones. But if you cracked down on small crimes, bigger crimes would drop as well.Giuliani won the election, and he made good on his crime-fighting promises by selecting Boston police chief Bill Bratton as the NYPD's new commissioner. Bratton had made his reputation as head of the New York City Transit Police, where he aggressively applied broken-windows policing to turnstile jumpers and vagrants in subway stations. With Giuliani's eager support, he began applying the same lessons to the entire city, going after panhandlers, drunks, drug pushers, and the city's hated squeegee men. And more: He decentralized police operations and gave precinct commanders more control, keeping them accountable with a pioneering system called CompStat that tracked crime hot spots in real time.
The results were dramatic. In 1996, the New York Times reported that crime had plunged for the third straight year, the sharpest drop since the end of Prohibition. Since 1993, rape rates had dropped 17 percent, assault 27 percent, robbery 42 percent, and murder an astonishing 49 percent. Giuliani was on his way to becoming America's Mayor and Bratton was on the cover of Time. It was a remarkable public policy victory.
But even more remarkable is what happened next. Shortly after Bratton's star turn, political scientist John DiIulio warned that the echo of the baby boom would soon produce a demographic bulge of millions of young males that he famously dubbed "juvenile super-predators." Other criminologists nodded along. But even though the demographic bulge came right on schedule, crime continued to drop. And drop. And drop. By 2010, violent crime rates in New York City had plunged 75 percent from their peak in the early '90s.
All in all, it seemed to be a story with a happy ending, a triumph for Wilson and Kelling's theory and Giuliani and Bratton's practice. And yet, doubts remained. For one thing, violent crime actually peaked in New York City in 1990, four years before the Giuliani-Bratton era. By the time they took office, it had already dropped 12 percent.

The PB Effect

What happens when you expose a generation of kids to high lead levels? Crime and teen pregnancy data two decades later tell a startling story.

Second, and far more puzzling, it's not just New York that has seen a big drop in crime. In city after city, violent crime peaked in the early '90s and then began a steady and spectacular decline. Washington, DC, didn't have either Giuliani or Bratton, but its violent crime rate has dropped 58 percent since its peak. Dallas' has fallen 70 percent. Newark: 74 percent. Los Angeles: 78 percent.
There must be more going on here than just a change in policing tactics in one city. But what?

There are, it turns out,
plenty of theories. When I started research for this story, I worked my way through a pair of thick criminology tomes. One chapter regaled me with the "exciting possibility" that it's mostly a matter of economics: Crime goes down when the economy is booming and goes up when it's in a slump. Unfortunately, the theory doesn't seem to hold water—for example, crime rates have continued to drop recently despite our prolonged downturn.
Another chapter suggested that crime drops in big cities were mostly a reflection of the crack epidemic of the '80s finally burning itself out. A trio of authors identified three major "drug eras" in New York City, the first dominated by heroin, which produced limited violence, and the second by crack, which generated spectacular levels of it. In the early '90s, these researchers proposed, the children of CrackGen switched to marijuana, choosing a less violent and more law-abiding lifestyle. As they did, crime rates in New York and other cities went down.
Another chapter told a story of demographics: As the number of young men increases, so does crime. Unfortunately for this theory, the number of young men increased during the '90s, but crime dropped anyway.
There were chapters in my tomes on the effect of prison expansion. On guns and gun control. On family. On race. On parole and probation. On the raw number of police officers. It seemed as if everyone had a pet theory. In 1999, economist Steven Levitt, later famous as the coauthor of Freakonomics, teamed up with John Donohue to suggest that crime dropped because of Roe v. Wade; legalized abortion, they argued, led to fewer unwanted babies, which meant fewer maladjusted and violent young men two decades later.
But there's a problem common to all of these theories: It's hard to tease out actual proof. Maybe the end of the crack epidemic contributed to a decline in inner-city crime, but then again, maybe it was really the effect of increased incarceration, more cops on the beat, broken-windows policing, and a rise in abortion rates 20 years earlier. After all, they all happened at the same time.
To address this problem, the field of econometrics gives researchers an enormous toolbox of sophisticated statistical techniques. But, notes statistician and conservative commentator Jim Manzi in his recent book Uncontrolled, econometrics consistently fails to explain most of the variation in crime rates. After reviewing 122 known field tests, Manzi found that only 20 percent demonstrated positive results for specific crime-fighting strategies, and none of those positive results were replicated in follow-up studies.

Did Lead Make You Dumber?

Even low levels have a significant effect.

So we're back to square one. More prisons might help control crime, more cops might help, and better policing might help. But the evidence is thin for any of these as the main cause. What are we missing?
Experts often suggest that crime resembles an epidemic. But what kind? Karl Smith, a professor of public economics and government at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has a good rule of thumb for categorizing epidemics: If it spreads along lines of communication, he says, the cause is information. Think Bieber Fever. If it travels along major transportation routes, the cause is microbial. Think influenza. If it spreads out like a fan, the cause is an insect. Think malaria. But if it's everywhere, all at once—as both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and the fall of crime in the '90s seemed to be—the cause is a molecule.
A molecule? That sounds crazy. What molecule could be responsible for a steep and sudden decline in violent crime?
Well, here's one possibility: Pb(CH2CH3)4.

In 1994, Rick Nevin was a consultant working for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development on the costs and benefits of removing lead paint from old houses. This has been a topic of intense study because of the growing body of research linking lead exposure in small children with a whole raft of complications later in life, including lower IQ, hyperactivity, behavioral problems, and learning disabilities.
But as Nevin was working on that assignment, his client suggested they might be missing something. A recent study had suggested a link between childhood lead exposure and juvenile delinquency later on. Maybe reducing lead exposure had an effect on violent crime too?
That tip took Nevin in a different direction. The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn't paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.
Gasoline lead may explain as much as 90 percent of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.
Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.
So Nevin dove in further, digging up detailed data on lead emissions and crime rates to see if the similarity of the curves was as good as it seemed. It turned out to be even better: In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
And with that we have our molecule: tetraethyl lead, the gasoline additive invented by General Motors in the 1920s to prevent knocking and pinging in high-performance engines. As auto sales boomed after World War II, and drivers in powerful new cars increasingly asked service station attendants to "fill 'er up with ethyl," they were unwittingly creating a crime wave two decades later.
It was an exciting conjecture, and it prompted an immediate wave of…nothing. Nevin's paper was almost completely ignored, and in one sense it's easy to see why—Nevin is an economist, not a criminologist, and his paper was published in Environmental Research, not a journal with a big readership in the criminology community. What's more, a single correlation between two curves isn't all that impressive, econometrically speaking. Sales of vinyl LPs rose in the postwar period too, and then declined in the '80s and '90s. Lots of things follow a pattern like that. So no matter how good the fit, if you only have a single correlation it might just be a coincidence. You need to do something more to establish causality.
As it turns out, however, a few hundred miles north someone was doing just that. In the late '90s, Jessica Wolpaw Reyes was a graduate student at Harvard casting around for a dissertation topic that eventually became a study she published in 2007 as a public health policy professor at Amherst. "I learned about lead because I was pregnant and living in old housing in Harvard Square," she told me, and after attending a talk where future Freakonomics star Levitt outlined his abortion/crime theory, she started thinking about lead and crime. Although the association seemed plausible, she wanted to find out whether increased lead exposure caused increases in crime. But how?
In states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime declined slowly. Where it declined quickly, crime declined quickly.
The answer, it turned out, involved "several months of cold calling" to find lead emissions data at the state level. During the '70s and '80s, the introduction of the catalytic converter, combined with increasingly stringent Environmental Protection Agency rules, steadily reduced the amount of leaded gasoline used in America, but Reyes discovered that this reduction wasn't uniform. In fact, use of leaded gasoline varied widely among states, and this gave Reyes the opening she needed. If childhood lead exposure really did produce criminal behavior in adults, you'd expect that in states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime would decline slowly too. Conversely, in states where it declined quickly, crime would decline quickly. And that's exactly what she found.
Meanwhile, Nevin had kept busy as well, and in 2007 he published a new paper looking at crime trends around the world (PDF). This way, he could make sure the close match he'd found between the lead curve and the crime curve wasn't just a coincidence. Sure, maybe the real culprit in the United States was something else happening at the exact same time, but what are the odds of that same something happening at several different times in several different countries?
Nevin collected lead data and crime data for Australia and found a close match. Ditto for Canada. And Great Britain and Finland and France and Italy and New Zealand and West Germany. Every time, the two curves fit each other astonishingly well. When I spoke to Nevin about this, I asked him if he had ever found a country that didn't fit the theory. "No," he replied. "Not one."
Just this year, Tulane University researcher Howard Mielke published a paper with demographer Sammy Zahran on the correlation of lead and crime at the city level. They studied six US cities that had both good crime data and good lead data going back to the '50s, and they found a good fit in every single one. In fact, Mielke has even studied lead concentrations at the neighborhood level in New Orleans and shared his maps with the local police. "When they overlay them with crime maps," he told me, "they realize they match up."

Location, Location, Location

In New Orleans, lead levels can vary dramatically from one neighborhood to the next—and the poorest neighborhoods tend to be the worst hit.


Maps by Karen Minot
Put all this together and you have an astonishing body of evidence. We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level, and even the individual level. Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes. All of these studies tell the same story: Gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.
When differences of atmospheric lead density between big and small cities largely went away, so did the difference in murder rates.
Like many good theories, the gasoline lead hypothesis helps explain some things we might not have realized even needed explaining. For example, murder rates have always been higher in big cities than in towns and small cities. We're so used to this that it seems unsurprising, but Nevin points out that it might actually have a surprising explanation—because big cities have lots of cars in a small area, they also had high densities of atmospheric lead during the postwar era. But as lead levels in gasoline decreased, the differences between big and small cities largely went away. And guess what? The difference in murder rates went away too. Today, homicide rates are similar in cities of all sizes. It may be that violent crime isn't an inevitable consequence of being a big city after all.
The gasoline lead story has another virtue too: It's the only hypothesis that persuasively explains both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and its fall beginning in the '90s. Two other theories—the baby boom demographic bulge and the drug explosion of the '60s—at least have the potential to explain both, but neither one fully fits the known data. Only gasoline lead, with its dramatic rise and fall following World War II, can explain the equally dramatic rise and fall in violent crime.
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Kevin Drum

Political Blogger
Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. RSS |