fuck the gold bugs folks ...INVEST  in each other !      .... soon very soon , Time is gonna force it   ...each 1 of US  is  unique ,have talents,skills  :)      we got some difficult days ahead   &  either we  ALL  go up together or we go down together  ...6.5 Billions of us pulling together ...what the fuck  CAN'T  we do  :)  

Forget Gold: Only Food, Tools and Resourcefulness Will Matter In a Mad Max Scenario

Mac Slavo
May 8th, 2013
SHTFplan.com

When we talk about Mad Max scenarios, we are talking about events where the world as we know it no longer exists. No banks, no credit cards, no grocery stores, no gas stations, and a landscape devoid of law & order.
It’s an outlier to be sure, but one that has been experienced by millions of people throughout history.
Worst case scenarios do happen. And when they do, the activities associated with the regular flow of commerce as we understand them today cease completely.
Historically, this has happened more often than not as a result of economic calamity stemming from states that take on massive amounts of debt, with the end result being widespread war and total economic destruction.
Should such events come to pass in our modern era, everything we believe to be valuable today will be redefined, and only those assets of real worth will maintain their trading power.
According to cyclical analyst and historian Martin Armstrong, the dominant objects of value during a socio-economic collapse are those goods that can be used immediately for the purposes of survival or barter.

A number of readers have asked ‘doesn’t gold survive a Mad Max event?’
Historically, the answer to that is no. Dark Ages seem to be the total collapse of all economic activity on a collective basis. This is why there are huge gaps in the monetary history in Greece, Western Europe after the fall of Rome, and even in Japan. The duration is rather consistent – 600 years.
What happens is civilization swings to its opposite – no-civilization where just enclaves emerge with little to no interaction with others.
…
The Mad Max outcome is the swing back to barter where the dominant object of value first becomes food, then tools (bronze), and only after all that becomes stable, we see the return to luxury which is when gold and silver come back. You cannot eat them. They are valuable only based upon the demand of others.
If they want food, sorry even gold goes off the map during such periods. It is typically grain or in the case of Japan bags of rice.
…
Historically, society waits until it is too late and then they just massacre the protesters.
Martin Armstrong via Prepper Website

We cannot stress enough that these kinds of events, where civilization has regressed to what essentially amounts to hunting and gathering, has happened repeatedly and on a cyclical basis on numerous occasions over the last 5000 years.
It will happen again. This is inevitable.
We are on the very cusp of such a frightening outcome right now. Perhaps we can avoid the same outcome as Rome,a collapse which led to hundreds of years of war and impoverishment during the Dark Ages. But the reality is that we are well on our way to repeating their mistakes.
Our country has taken on so much debt that it will require the labor of generations in order to pay it back, something that is very rapidly becoming improbable. Half of the households in the United States are dependent on monthly government distributions just to make ends meet. Those who are paying the taxes to cover these expenses are either losing their jobs or experiencing wage reductions, putting further strain on the system as a whole. Trillions of dollars in wealth are being transferred from the poor and working class into the hands of banking cartels, the military industrial complex, and elite members of the global oligarchy.
Confidence by the masses may well be lost in short order. We’re seeing pockets of this all over the world. It’s like a viral contagion. First it starts on a small scale, and then spreads uncontrollably to all corners of the globe.
Gold, while it is certainly a store of value, will often take a backseat in the midst of collapse simply because food, shelter and safety will be the only concerns that matter. This isn’t to say you should not own gold and silver to use as a mechanism of exchange, just that you need to understand  its viability as a barter tool based on the crisis at hand.
Just as it was a thousand years ago during the period following the breakup of Rome, in Argentina today farmers are hoarding  grain while their currency and country’s economy collapses.
Food is a dominant asset. Tools, whether they be firearms or plows, become dominant assets in a world where you have to depend on yourself or a small community to survive. Your resourcefulness, such as an ability to put a roof over your head, grow your own food, purify water or preserve your food for winter, will be dominant assets.
It may take a decade or it may happen overnight. But one thing’s for sure: a pan-global collapse is coming. And when it does, make sure you are in possession of the dominant objects of value. Failure to understand history and prepare for the future will mean certain doom for millions. But Mad Max scenarios are survivable for those with the wherewithal to prepare.

Americans Convinced Gun Homicides Soar Despite Actual Plunge In Gun Crimes

Tyler Durden
May 7th, 2013
Zero Hedge

In yet another example of the massive gap between the American people’s perception of what is going on around them (whether by propaganda channels or simply cognitive bias) and the actual reality, Reuters reports that while gun-related homicides are down 39% from the 1993 peak, only 12% of people believe that gun crimes have fallen. Non-fatal firearm crimes declined by 69% to 467,300 in the same period but 56% of Americans believe that gun crime is higher now than it was 20 years ago, the Pew Research Center said its poll showed. The dichotomy between record food stamp usage (and non-employment) and multi-year highs in consumer sentiment comes to mind – we wonder which is more ‘real’.
Highlights of the report:

• Firearm-related homicides declined 39%, from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011.
• Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69%, from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 victimizations in 2011.
• For both fatal and nonfatal firearm victimizations, the majority of the decline occurred during the 10-year period from 1993 to 2002.
• Firearm violence accounted for about 70% of all homicides and less than 10% of all nonfatal violent crime from 1993 to 2011.
• About 70% to 80% of firearm homicides and 90% of nonfatal firearm victimizations were committed with a handgun from 1993 to 2011.
• From 1993 to 2010, males, blacks, and persons ages 18 to 24 had the highest rates of firearm homicide.
• In 2007-11, about 23% of victims of nonfatal firearm crime were injured.
• About 61% of nonfatal firearm violence was reported to the police in 2007-11.
• In 2007-11, less than 1% of victims in all nonfatal violent crimes reported using a firearm to defend themselves during the incident.
• In 2004, among state prison inmates who possessed a gun at the time of offense, less than 2% bought their firearm at a flea market or gun show and 40% obtained their firearm from an illegal source.
• Males, blacks, and persons ages 18 to 24 were most likely to be victims of firearm violence

Directly from the government:

Breakdown of homicides by age and sex:

Breakdown of violence by region:

And the full data:

The full report can be found here

Chart: H/t @Not_Jim_Cramer
This article was originally published by Zero Hedge

The Mathematical Reality Is We’re Losing Over 600,000 Jobs a Month That Have Been Hidden From View

Mac Slavo
May 7th, 2013
SHTFplan.com

The Dow Jones is soaring. The unemployment rate is stable. People are shopping. America is in recovery.
Or is it?
Despite all of the positive spin being put on the global and domestic economic recovery, the truth is that nothing of the sort is actually happening.
Any observant analyst can deduce that 15,000+ stock market values are a result of easy money being pumped into investment banks, who then slam that money straight into markets. The Fed itself is reportedly providing direct liquidity to the system. They can do this forever, so long as our creditors let them. And, until they’re stopped, they’ll continue to convince most Americans that financial markets and the economy have been stabilized.
Underneath all the hoop-la, however, is the reality of the situation.
The latest employment report from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics is a prime example of the shenanigans being played by government statisticians and their media cohorts behind the scenes.
While the official story is that non farm payrolls rose by 165,000 people last month leaving the unemployment rate at 7.5%, the truth is that the devil is in the details:

Now for the bad news.

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 0.2 hour in April to 34.4 hours. Within manufacturing, the workweek decreased by 0.1 hour to 40.7 hours, and overtime declined by 0.1 hour to 3.3 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 0.1 hour to 33.7 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)

This is a problem.  If we look at the “employed” figure of 143,724,000 people a drop of 0.2 hours is a full-time-equivalent decrease of 1/2%.  Applied to the employed population this amounts to an imputed economic decrease of 718,620 jobs!
That is, the loss of work-week hours of just 0.2 is the same economic impact as firing 700,000 people!
There is a huge problem coming this year and into next in this regard as the trend of cutting hours back to get under Obamacare limits is picking up steam and will continue.
Do not underestimate the economic impact of those hours-worked changes — you’d have to post up a +700k jobs figure to offset just this one month’s change in hourly workweek!
You’ll be told this is a “good report” and it is, on the surface.  But I bet not one of the talking heads on CNBC runs the math on what the workweek means in terms of economic impact.
You heard it here first, and later this summer and into the fall when the jobs report continues to post up mid-100k numbers but consumer spending collapses into the toilet at a rate that is roughly identical to when we’re losing 600-700,000 jobs a month and people are scratching their heads  trying to figure out why it’s happening as the stock market crashes, you will be one of the few who understands what has happened and why.
Via Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker

We may be creating jobs in America. But not only are we not creating enough jobs to offset the amount of people entering the workforce, those who have jobs are being forced to work fewer hours. Couple that with rising prices for essentials like food and energy being fueled by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury, and you’ve got quite a predicament.
They can show us their charts, make forward looking statements, cite rising stock markets, and try to play with the statistics to give us a perception of growth and improvement, but they cannot rewrite the basic laws of arithmetic.
This is going to end horribly for tens of millions of Americans and none of them see it coming.

Author: Mac Slavo
Date: May 7th, 2013
Website: www.SHTFplan.com
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.

Last Look America: Giving Credence To The Heretic Fringe

• Posted on May 6, 2013
• by Clyde Lewis
• in Articles

LAST LOOK AMERICA:
GIVING CREDENCE TO THE HERETIC FRINGE

Last night as I was perusing the news links and stories, I did something that I haven’t done in a long time. I became self-referential. I was thinking to myself that we have reached a point where much of what is happening I have lived through before. Then I realized it wasn’t that I have lived them. I had written about them and in some wild delusion I predicted them in not so many words.
I realized that I chose an area of reporting than when I began in 1995 was safe because it could all be written off as hypothetical speculation. It was at the time well crafted conspiracy theory that was inspired by the likes of Robert Anton Wilson and conceptually paranormal in the spirit of Charles Fort.
Now that everything paranormal is becoming normal, there is a tendency by some people to deny the existence of the substance of the evolution of the “theory” and that while speculations are useful in trying to find fact, facts then rear their head and people in denial tend to hang on to the idea that they are still speculation.
They look at conspiracy theories and the beliefs surrounding them as comfortable as old sneakers; but there comes a time when the old sneakers need to be thrown out in favor of a new pair that can send you on your way to new journeys and new ideas that need to be presented.
I think it is time to admit that we are now in a moment where we need to not feel so comfortable about our theories or our speculations being taken at face value because there is now a mechanical effort to discredit and to create a highly threatening ‘thought police’ that will try to undermine the spirit of imagination, speculation, and theory for the sake of a well thought out and repetitive agenda that comes complete with a pejorative attack against anyone who questions it.
I am not saying that we should stop with our theories; I am just thinking that perhaps we should focus our passions on what makes a difference in the thought process.
We now see how specious arguments being presented on YouTube, or on Facebook in order to get hits and ‘likes’ and many people are unaware that disinformation lurks on the Internet. This disinformation is well organized and is presented as fact, when any conspiracy theorist that is a real theorist understands that this is all theory and is satisfied with it being theory until the facts prove otherwise.
I am sensing that the person who questions is now under attack, and the thought police will find a way to destroy the person who questions rather than encourage a healthy questioning process and the entertaining of curiosity for the sole purpose of understanding.
Barack Obama spoke to graduates of Ohio State University and told them to ignore anti-government arguments that “gum up the works” and instead aspire to be citizens who value both individual rights and community responsibilities.

“Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems,” Mr. Obama told the crowd at the Ohio State commencement ceremony. “They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”               


When I heard the speech I realized that this says it all. The job of those who say they are awake just got more tough and that it is important to be vigilant in the face of the major thought war campaign. It was a reminder that when the popular ‘speculation” becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that someone has to assure everyone that what appears to be happening is not happening at all.

This is similar to the time when George W. Bush had to do damage control about the attacks of September 11th, 2001 stating that we as a people should not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories about the attacks. Bush called them “malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, shift the blame away from the guilty.”             


The truth seems to be so harmful to those in power, and the questions to get to the truth are as threatening as bullets or bombs. Those who are awake know that there seems to be an obvious bias that is present in information, and that bias is not pro-individual, it is pro government and if people are satisfied with a bias that is anti-citizen then they have to adjust to a press that most certainly not free, and a government that penalizes questioning in favor of just going along with their policies.
If the people cannot question and use the press, the Internet, or even talk radio to do it what are we?
You need to ask yourself if the so-called conspiracy theorizing is healthy for the body politic and if you support it then fight to keep it going.
Because I am sensing that controversy surrounding any speculation is being met with derision and it is going to be lost if the people do not speak up and start taking action to protect the right of expressing doubts about what you are being told by the well-paid naysayers.
In the United States of America, we are taught from birth that our press is free from government meddling. This is why I am seeking an unhealthy belief that whatever authority is saying in a newscast it has to be true. This is a lie about the very nature of the news institution in this country.
The media is now attacking people who are questioning the official story, the President is saying not to listen to those who are saying government policies are tyrannical and there are all kinds of produced media that reinforce government lies and cover ups while denying the very fact of the lies and cover-ups that are business as usual with government today.
We have reached a stalemate between belief and action in the United States.
The majority have allowed themselves to be fearful, self-absorbed cattle that move only when told to by those who claim to be the “cult of personality” that is there to preserve certain belief systems while at the same time employing destructive group dynamics.
The corporate media has decided to report certain stories that feed the fire of dissent and bigotry, while other stories, which confirm that we are in a time of deceit, are ignored in order to benefit corporate interests.
Anyone saying that the perfect government has lost some of its allure is now supposed to be discredited.
The members of the mass media once again think that they are losing their grip on being the primary source for the interpretation of what is truly reality.
They create a stereotype of those who are out there in the Internet world. They accuse bloggers of distorting the truth, and try to discourage anyone from questioning the consensus reality because it is not good for corporate or government interest.
They propose that anyone who searches for information online, or outside of the main branches of the corporate media, must be some sort of conspiracy theorist or kook.
Why is it that the mainstream media has decided that anything outside their precious hold on reality is “conspiracy theory?”
Why is it that there are many people who wish to believe them, when it is obvious that mainstream corporate media has a well entrenched selective mechanism for beaming whatever reality they choose to offer to the masses?
It used to be that the terms “investigative reporting” and “objectivity” were staples in a newsroom. “Objectivity” means that no belief systems will be inserted into the news and no value judgements will be made.
The old mantra of “the public’s right to know” was an important moral code in the newsroom.
Now the moral code for the newsman is “Facts be damned”; we mistrust every story that does not sit well with our precious belief systems. This, of course, is abbreviated to “no spin” or “fair and balanced” journalism.
Investigative journalism exists only in spirit now.
It is only there to compound the endemic paranoia that exists amongst the citizenry and to keep from exposing the criminal element in corporation or in government.
The fear I have that is growing incessantly is that I now live in a country that has become indifferent, and the only time that people will speak out is when someone speaks against the mainstream opinion that has been created using a destructive dynamic.
That is why is see the response to those who question as being malicious and treacherous. It can be heard and seen on every side of the issue. The idea of healthy discourse is being replaced by discussion on how to adjust to the mandate. If you say you refuse to adapt or refuse to believe you are again being fingered as a potential threat.
There is no talk of rebelling or challenging whatever mandate is being issued. There is no tolerating of questioning the so called official story that seems to have all of the same attributes of conspiracy theory, but is considered reality because of how it is presented and the medium in which it is presented.
The media now wants you to believe that nothing is wrong, nothing is out of place, everything is being done for your own good and that we will always prevail.
The President also wants you to believe the same nonsense.
The agendas, the reports, and the mandates from the throne are beginning to look like they are ex cathedra and this is becoming a frightening cult where the new scripture is not to be questioned. Since when is our President infallible and the media is not to be questioned?
They imply that you should forget all about history, because all that is important to them is the clever sound bite or the news broadcast that reinforces their brilliance and prophetic insight.
Take a last look America, the mind is about be centralized into one big information cult that shall not be questioned.
This information cult will extol the virtues of the anonymous source that feeds them with disinformation in order to shape public opinion in the direction that we are told should not be questioned or analyzed.
We will be told that it is un-American to question the men behind the curtain or the men and women who will sanitize information with double speak that safeguards the media buys and the ratings.
If there is a Decalogue to be produced for this Holy See called the media, it would be that “Thou shalt not contradict for fear of being called a heretic.”
We should not and cannot throw the well-groomed consensus into chaos this would be anathema.
We must now abide by the idea that the tyrants are in reality the heroes. President Obama, with a straight face, expects people to ignore those who stand out from the fantasy front he produces?
Of course, he wishes to demonize those who wish to expose the charade.
Someone has a guilty conscience.

If Mars One makes you skeptical, you might be dead inside—like me

Op-ed: Do we scoff at dreamers because we lack imagination, or are they actually crazy?

by Lee Hutchinson - May 8 2013, 1:30pm EDT

• Space

http://arstechnica.com/staff/2013/05/if-mars-one-makes-you-skeptical-you-might-be-dead-insidelike-me/

Touchstone Pictures

Wanted: Applicants for one-way trip to Mars. Will provide training, supplies, spaceship. Must be OK with being on television. No return option. Survival possible, but not guaranteed.

That's an abbreviated version of the pitch Mars One has made, and more than 30,000 people read it and applied for the chance to be permanent Mars residents. It's not my cup of tea—even if the mission were a guaranteed success, I like my comfy life too much to give it up for a chance to live out my days like Dr. Manhattan on the red planet—but the space mission/reality TV show has attracted some passionate followers.
Ars writer Casey Johnston spoke with one of the Mars One applicants, Aaron Hamm (who also is also a member of the Ars OpenForum under the username "Quisquis"), who genuinely believes in the mission of Mars One. Hamm and many other applicants see the chance to live out their lives on Mars as not only a worthwhile step in humankind's exploration of the universe, but also as the fulfillment of a personal dream.

Aaron Hamm, would-be Mars colonist.

However, the Mars One mission has also attracted more than its share of skepticism (and sometimes outright mockery). Those who are doing the mocking seem to think it's self-evident that Mars One will at best fall apart prior to even launching a mission and at worst spectacularly kill four people live on television. The doubters can't comprehend the faithful, and the misunderstanding goes both ways: the faithful seem to be having trouble comprehending the doubters, too.
"I'm kind of curious what the public is expecting to see at this point," wrote Hamm in a comment to the previously linked Ars story. "Everyone panning the program seems to expect that they should be able to see blueprints and budgets or something." He continued:

Even if Mars One executes exactly as they plan to, no one who isn't intimately involved in the project is going to see that level of detail.
And I think everyone should take a moment to remember that 10 years before we landed on the Moon, we couldn't even launch a rocket into space...

I wrote a pretty lengthy response comment, which one of the staff pinned as an editor's choice comment. On reflection, it's worth holding that reaction up to a critical lens: am I just a hopeless doubter, shouting down every non-NASA idea with loud cries of "NO, IT CAN'T BE DONE" without having an appropriately open mind? Or is skepticism at this stage justified?

Ten years before the moon

Ten years prior to Apollo 11's landing, NASA was a fledgling agency, having just barely taken over the United States space launch efforts from its defunct predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. No human being had yet left the Earth, and none would do so for almost two more years. At that point, the idea of putting a human being on another world wasn't really in the national consciousness; the US government was more concerned about the Soviet Union's ability to lob intercontinental ballistic missiles into the middle of the United States—or overfly US territory from orbit with impunity.
Ten years later, in the culmination of the greatest engineering effort in the history of the human race, two humans spent a bit over 21 hours on the lunar surface and actually walked around outside their spacecraft for two hours and thirty-six minutes. The running budget of Project Apollo from 1960 to 1969 was $16,130,420,000, so it could be said that every second of that two hours and thirty-six minutes carried an effective cost of about $1,700,000.

Enlarge / Buzz Aldrin's bootprint during Apollo 11 (NASA image AS11-40-5878).

NASA - Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

Some of the skepticism about Mars One is going to be good old-fashioned Internet truculence, no matter what. Mars One could announce that its plan is to confirm the existence of Mars by pointing a telescope at it and taking pictures and there would still be some number of Internet commenters who would say "THIS IS SO FAKE." However, our perception of space travel has been colored by past successes. At its height, Project Apollo and its associated programs directly or indirectly employed about 400,000 people and consumed 2.2 percent of the total federal budget. If it took that many billions to get twelve people to the moon, how many more will it take to get to Mars?

Artist's conception of the 1969 Von Braun Mars Expedition.

NASA via Astronautix

Mars One's estimate of a $6 billion price tag seems ludicrously low in light of what other government-funded space agencies across the world have spent to accomplish far smaller goals. Mars One's costs will be lower than a government-run mission for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the notoriously porky nature of manned space flight (that army of 400,000 civil servants and contractors spread across North America didn't come cheap). Hamm points out that Buzz Aldrin himself favors a Mars mission and that the aging moonwalker notes that "very little new science" would be required to make the trip (this is demonstrably true, since NASA has been planning a Mars mission with various types of technology, including Apollo-era rockets and spacecraft, for decades).
But $6 billion still seems a little light.

The right stuff?

The Mars One technology page lays out in broad strokes the vehicles and technology organizers plan to use to reach and explore Mars. The group anticipates saving huge amounts of money by getting spacecraft, people, and supplies up to space as payload on the SpaceX-built Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, which should, if all goes according to plan, be built to NASA's human-rating guidelines and should therefore be "safe" for transporting people in addition to cargo. These plans are obviously predicated on Falcon Heavy being brought into operation on time.
By using Dragon capsule variants in a variety of roles, Mars One also removes the need to design a spacecraft or a Mars landing vehicle, saving tremendous amounts of money... possibly. One issue is that there's no acceptable method yet to actually land people on Mars. Parachutes simply don't work—Mars' atmosphere is too thin. The bouncy-ball airbag method used for Mars Pathfinder and the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers doesn't scale well to living creatures. Curiosity's famous powered skycrane isn't a much of a candidate, either, because every ounce of fuel and skycrane mechanical bits added to the lander is an ounce that cannot be used instead for post-landing supplies for the four Mars One colonists.
A viable option would likely look something like the Apollo-era Lunar Module's powered descent, wherein the LM balanced itself atop its descent engine and decelerated its way down to the surface in a mostly automated fashion. Drastically more sophisticated computers and software would obviate many of the deadly challenges of the Apollo-style powered descent, but it's not nearly as simple as popping a parachute and drifting gently down to the ground.

A graphical depiction of the Apollo Lunar Module's powered descent to the lunar surface. A manned martian lander will almost certainly have to perform a similar landing.

NASA / Apollo Flight Journal

Altogether, Mars One's $6 billion will need to cover multiple Falcon Heavy launches, multiple Dragon vehicles, and at least one Mars Transit vehicle to ferry the crew from Earth to Mars (which, at least so far, sounds like it will have to be designed from scratch). Also, Mars One will need to design and manufacture environmental suits (nothing in any existing space agency's inventory will work for them, as every "production" spacesuit in the world is currently geared for short-term microgravity extravehicular activity, not long-term planetary exploration), rovers, and all the other things listed on the its site. The company will be contracting out a lot of labor: "All equipment will be developed by third party suppliers and integrated in established facilities."
There's another factor that incites skepticism: with one exception, every human being who has walked on another world has been an extremely skilled test pilot or naval aviator (and the one exception, Dr. Harrison Schmidt, was trained and rated on supersonic jets after his acceptance to the astronaut corps). This kind of background made the astronauts not just adept at flying planes and lunar landers, but also powerfully sharp observers and communicators, able to process lots and lots of inputs simultaneously and make extremely quick and informed decisions in response to rapidly changing situations. Beyond being incredible pilots, most were also brilliant—Buzz Aldrin, for example, holds a PhD from MIT in astronautics and his thesis, "Line of Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous," formed the groundwork for much of NASA's rendezvous procedures during Project Gemini.

Enlarge / This is Buzz Aldrin, aka "Dr. Rendezvous." He basically figured out a bunch of stuff about how orbits work that NASA still uses to this day. Also, he will literally punch you in the face if you anger him. (NASA photo AS11-36-5390).

NASA / Apollo Lunar Surface Journal

Every person NASA sent to plant those flags and make those footprints on the moon has been ridiculously qualified to do so, trained by the absolute best methods that could be devised by a battery of brilliant scientists and experts who had the use of effectively unlimited funds to research and conduct that training.
In contrast, Mars One is holding a popularity contest for random Internet applicants, and it wants to sell the TV rights to the training and mission. It doesn't conjure up images of bold exploration so much as it does broken dreams and farce.

The final countdown

Organizers' plans for mission sustainability—and, I'll of course grant that I don't know anything other than what has been publicly released, so maybe they've got a workaround for this—are contingent on other suppliers to provide almost everything material to the mission. Assuming they can vault the initial hurdle and actually set four souls down on Mars, those folks' survival depends on the very, very nascent commercial space industry to keep them from dying a slow death. Maybe that's what it will take to make commercial space travel viable, but I think it's going to come back to that oldest, truest adage of space flight: no bucks, no Buck Rogers.
Maybe I'm having such a hard time with it because it seems fantastic and silly, and in real life, fantastic and silly plans usually meet with harsh and unfunny ends; maybe the mention of "reality TV" automatically poisons my entire picture of the project. Maybe I'm just a pessimistic person with a dried-up soul and a hopelessly atrophied sense of wonder. I don't know. I do know that I can't help but see Mars One in comparison to the space race; by the time everything was said and done, the US spent more than $100 billion in 1960s dollars to send the very best people it could find to the moon... and now we're going to canvas the Internet for folks who want to go die on Mars and make a TV show out of it.
It just seems like a ludicrous, impossible project. And not the good kind of impossible project that ends in the triumph of the human spirit overcoming the whatever blah, blah, blah—this seems like the bad kind of impossible project where people wind up dead. I wish Mars One and its applicants luck, but if they pull off even a single launch, I'll eat my hat.

UFOs, ETs, SECRET DEALS, REVERSE ENGINEERING: THOUGHTS ON THE STORY OF PAUL HELLYER

May 8, 2013 By Joseph P. Farrell 

Every now and then you have to have some fun, even in a blog, and this one I simply couldn’t resist, because it’s….well…fun, and because there is as one might guess, a bit of history and truth behind it:
Canada to Expose Alien Collaboration With U.S.
Now, there’s a serious aspect to this, as anyone will appreciate. This is the former Defense Minister of Canada, Paul Hellyer, not just an average conspiracy-theory-Joe (or perhaps I should say, conspiracy-theory-bloke) spinning tails and stories. And the story, according to Hellier, is a grim one:

“There has been collaboration between one or more of them with the U.S. government and the U.S. defense department. They’ve been sharing technology, some of which they wouldn’t want the public to know about. Not only anti-gravity machines, but also diabolical weapons — so many things that will affect the future of humankind.”

Asked why he didn’t inquire about all this when he was Canada’s Minister of Defense, Hellyer responded he didn’t know about it at the time. And there’s a whole extraterrestrial taxonomy too:

“Alien intelligence, Hellyer says, ‘is like a scroll that opens up in both directions; it has no end, it goes on and on. There are people from other dimensions, too, and a lot of them have visited Earth and they still do. Some of them look very much like us. The species we call the Tall Whites have been seen shopping in Las Vegas.’”

Shopping? They don’t have malls and casinos in the Pleiades system? Personally, at this point, I begin to question the story, not so much for its goofier details, but for the fact that someone of Hellyer’s stature is promoting it.
Don’t get me wrong; there are serious and sober speakers at this event, Richard M. Dolan among them. And like him, I too think there is too much to the UFO phenomenon to write it all off as being merely the product of hidden human technologies. This is the frustrating thing about the ambiguity of the phenomenon: individual cases might be rationalized on the basis of putative hidden human technologies, but the totality of the phenomenon argues something else.
But why promote a meme of occulted US collaboration with ETs for hidden technologies and diabolical weapons? I suspect that one part of the answer to this question lies in the subtly-promoted idea that if such “diabolical weapons technologies” and “antigravity” are the product of super-secret treaties between the Pentagon and Aldebaran, then one won’t be inclined to go off on “fruitless goosechases” trying to track down the possible terrestrial scientific papers that might account for such things. It’s a tactic I’ve run into often, and it frustrates the daylights out of me: “Don’t you think it all came from reverse engineering?” With that question – and with Hellyer’s assertions – the inclination to try to “reverse engineer” a possible human hidden history of such technology inclines towards the vanishing point. Why look for a perspective on a history that isn’t there?
There’s more here, of course, including the implicit suggestion that ETs explain the advanced years for people recorded in the Bible and other human mythologies. They get no quarrel from me, for indeed, they might. It’s that nagging, persistent suggestion within the ufology community that virtually every technological advance since WW2 has been the result of “reverse engineering,” a meme popularized by Lt. Col. Philip Corso in The Day After Roswell.
However, I suspect  that the real history of black projects, ETs, and UFOs, is going to be revealed as far more complicated than the idea of reverse engineering, crash and retrieval, or even hidden treaties and technology exchanges, may suggest.
We may credit Mr. Hellyer for suggesting that there is a hidden political history… and it is this, I strongly suspect, may be the core of the cover-up. Deals with ET might, in fact, be the highly entertaining and diverting story.

Read more: UFOs, ETs, SECRET DEALS, REVERSE ENGINEERING: THOUGHTS ON THE STORY OF PAUL HELLYER

Canada to Expose Alien Collaboration With U.S.

Apr. 28 Conspiracy, Featured, Government, MUFON NJ, UFO http://globalparanormal.com/canada-to-expose-alien-collaboration-with-u-s/

4-27-13 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

WASHINGTON — Why is Lester Pearson’s 89-year-old former minister of defense coming to Washington next week to testify as to the existence — and multiple visits to Earth — of little green men (not to mention tall white dudes) from outer space?

“Because this is the third most important issue facing humankind after global warming and changing the monetary system,” Paul Hellyer says.

It is the eve of what is being billed as “the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure of an Extraterrestrial Presence Engaging the Human Race.”

Hellyer, the former Liberal, Tory and independent MP who first sat in Parliament in 1949, will be arguing — hardly for the first time — that, as he tells me by phone from his home in Toronto, not only has ET been here, “there are more than one species, in fact there are several species.

“There has been collaboration between one or more of them with the U.S. government and the U.S. defense department. They’ve been sharing technology, some of which they wouldn’t want the public to know about. Not only anti-gravity machines, but also diabolical weapons — so many things that will affect the future of humankind.”

Why didn’t you ask them about this when you were minister of national defense? I ask.

“I’d never heard about this at that time,” he answers.

Alien intelligence, Hellyer says, “is like a scroll that opens up in both directions; it has no end, it goes on and on. There are people from other dimensions, too, and a lot of them have visited Earth and they still do. Some of them look very much like us. The species we call the Tall Whites have been seen shopping in Las Vegas.”

Hellyer is not alone in his certainty that we are not alone. Last month, a polling firm in North Carolina sampled 1,000 Americans and discovered 21 per cent agree a UFO crash at Roswell, N.M., in 1947 was covered up by the U. S. government, and 29 per cent concur with the proposition that “aliens exist.”

(When asked, “Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, or not?” only 88 per cent said they do not.)

The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure etc., is going to occupy five full days at the National Press Club.

Hellyer and dozens of other witnesses will present their opinions and their evidence to five former members of the House of Representatives plus ex-senator Mike Gravel of Alaska, the iconoclast Democrat who made a bid for the White House in 2008 but whose support never exceeded what the experts call “statistical zero.”

Gravel, who is 83 and the son of emigrant Quebecers — “I have more relatives in Canada than in the United States, but they’re dying”– promises his role in the hearing will be that of an impartial auditor.

“From my point of view,” he reasons from his home in California, “the number of UFO sightings would indicate that, even if the numbers are exaggerated, they should be examined and reported to the public. France, Canada and a few of the others have revealed all the information that they have — the exception to this rule is the U.S. government. This canard that the American public would panic if there was anything proven is ridiculous. The people are mature, they understand that there are many facets of life that are explainable.”

“Are there little green men? We’ll see what the testimony is.”

What would change in our lives if they really do exist? I ask Gravel.

“Nothing,” he replies. “Nothing. People would be satisfied that there are unexplained events, but that’s not unusual. The whole belief in God is empirically unproven, yet we accept that.”

Both Gravel and Hellyer agree the United Nations should be involved in any further venture into intergalactic affairs. This path has been trodden before. In 1978, prime minister Eric Gairy of Grenada beseeched the UN General Assembly, “Why should man be precluded from information on UFOs, a matter of great interest and importance to man?”

While Gairy was meeting with secretary general Kurt Waldheim in New York, he was overthrown by a leftist coup at home.

Hellyer does not believe that proof of extraterrestrial visitation would provoke, as Gravel says, “nothing.”

“The ramifications are just enormous,” Hellyer affirms. “The question is, what’s the end game as far as the people are concerned who have the knowledge and are doing the engineering and building the machines that the aliens showed them that will blow your mind away? If the United States is doing these things, then Russia and China know about it and are doing the same thing. These are big issues, especially when people are starving.”

Have the aliens conquered death? I wonder.

“Some of the species live 900 years,” Hellyer replies. “If you read about Methuselah in the Bible, there might have been some around then. Personally, I have no desire to live 900 years. I have no desire to even live one hundred.”

If you do make it to 100, will you run for your old seat in Parliament? I ask the seeker of truths.

“Funny you should ask,” Hellyer says. “In one of my dreams recently, I saw myself dabbling in politics again. When I woke up, I realized that I’m really too old for that kind of strenuous living.”

Allen Abel is a Brooklyn-born Canadian journalist based in Washington, D.C.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 27, 2013.

NOTE: The above image is a rendering.

KEN PFEIFER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS

WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOSANDNEWS.ORG

Special thanks to Billy Booth, www.ufocasebook.com and Allen Abel

WWW.WORLDUFOPHOTOS.ORG

wonder what other "toys"  Our Gov is playing with ? ...that We The People ...are/have BEEN paying  4 !!! ~transparency~   don't u C ?         hows that make u feel America ...  :o              

The US government has been running a quantum Internet for over two years

Get short URL

Published time: May 06, 2013 21:04
Edited time: May 08, 2013 09:58

Reuters / Stephen Lam

It’s a perfectly secure Internet that by definition cannot be penetrated by wiretaps and eavesdropping — and the US government has been sitting on it for the last two-and-a-half years.
A longtime goal among cryptologists has been to perfect the “quantum Internet” — which, in the most basic way possible, uses the main principle of quantum mechanics to transfer communications from one point to another.
Still confused? Technology Review explained it as easily as possible:
“The basic idea here is that the act of measuring a quantum object, such as a photon, always changes it. So any attempt to eavesdrop on a quantum message cannot fail to leave telltale signs of snooping that the receiver can detect.”
Makes sense, right? Well it’s much easier said than done and has been a desire of computer scientists and cryptologists since the early days of the Internet. A quantum Internet connection cannot be even remotely disturbed without raising a red flag, so data sent over such a network would be transmitted in the most secure form the digital age has ever seen.
“And these are literally completely secure,” wrote Dan Nosowitz for PopSci this week. “Any attempt to eavesdrop is necessarily obvious, because the mere act of eavesdropping physically changes the transmission.”
According to a revelation made by two scientists this week, the era of quantum Internet may finally be upon us.
The Tech Review blog announced on Monday that Richard Hughes and a team of researchers at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico have been running an “alternative quantum Internet,” and have been doing so for roughly two-and-a-half years. In a blog post the website broke down the basics of how Hughes and company created a system that works like a hub-and-spoke network in which all messages anywhere in the network get routed from a main node — a central hub.
“The idea is that messages to the hub rely on the usual level of quantum security. However, once at the hub, they are converted to conventional classical bits and then reconverted into quantum bits to be sent on the second leg of their journey,” announced the blog. “So as long as the hub is secure, then the network should also be secure.”
The government’s labs at Los Alamos have previously been used for nuclear research and were instrumental in the Manhattan Project — the Allied forces program that evoked the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Tech Review, though, the goal of having a commercially viable quantum Internet is one much less intense. The website reported that a quantum connection could be used to establish 100 percent secure connections using fiber cables between home computers, televisions and other objects as seemingly everything can be wired these days to the Internet.
Given recent attempts out of Washington to essentially eliminate encryption, though, selling a super secure connection to the American public is likely a long way coming.

naw our "media" aren't playing U.S.   LMFAO  

CNN Anchors Pretend They’re Having A “Satellite Interview” Even Though They’re In The Same Parking Lot.

truther May 8, 2013 8

Mort Amsel

“Sorry, we’re experiencing a delay in the broadcast while we both wait for this bus to go by.”

Yes, those are all the same cars. Apparently they thought we wouldn’t notice because Nancy is on the right side of the screen, when in reality she is to Asleigh Banfield’s left. See The Atlantic Wire’s excellent breakdown of the shots to see exactly what happened. Tricky, CNN, very tricky. We understand, though. When a major crime story like the Cleveland Kidnapping breaks, you have to send in Nancy Grace. However, since Nancy Grace is a poorly-medicated vengeance demon who’s always just a bad morning away from ending up on her own show, you also send in a real anchor with whom she can “correspond.” Unfortunately, it’s hard to get shooting permits in Cleveland on short notice, so you set up in the same parking lot. Do us a favor, CNN, just put them next to each other and have them talk into each other’s faces instead of relaying their words through satellites to come back down 30 feet away like we’re idiots.

Fantastic.  This is one of funniest things i’ve seen today. CNN is a joke, a circus.  Im beginning to see them as bad as FOX as far as the circus antics go. -Mort

Osama Bin Laden Died of Natural Causes According to Former CIA Agent

truther May 8, 2013 6

A former agent of the CIA has revealed that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has died of natural causes five years before the US announced his death.

In an interview with Russia’s Channel One, Berkan Yashar, who is also a Turkish politician, said the US has not killed the al-Qaeda leader.

“In September of 1992, I was in Chechnya, that’s when I first met the man whose name was Bin Laden. This meeting took place in a two-story house in the city of Grozny; on the top floor was a family of Gamsakhurdia, the Georgian president, who then was kicked out of his country. We met on the bottom floor; Osama lived in the same building,” Yashar said.

According to the former CIA agent, he personally knew Bin Laden’s three Chechen bodyguards, who had protected him until his death and witnessed his death on June 26, 2006.

“Even if the entire world believed, I could not possibly believe it,” Yashar said. “I personally know the Chechens who protected him, they are Sami, Mahmood, and Ayub, and they were with him until the very end.”

“Only three Chechens buried him, according to his will” in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghan border, he said.

Yashar added that the CIA abducted one of the bodyguards, Sami, before the announced killing of Bin Laden last year.

He says the bodyguard disclosed to the US the exact place of burial in the mountains.

“There was no assault. I know the American operations from the inside: they find the grave, dig out bin Laden and tell everyone about this. They need to show how technologically the security services worked, how each step was controlled, and then present it as a great victory to show that taxpayers are not paying taxes for nothing,” he said.

Washington announced on May 2, 2011 that Bin Laden was killed by US forces in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The lack of transparency over bin Laden’s death has cast further doubt over the announcement.

This article first appeard at intellihub

More Photographic Evidence Suggests Boston Bombing Was Training Exercise 

Guest Posts • Tags: Boston bombing, police state, propaganda

By Andrew Whooley*         http://memoryholeblog.com/2013/05/08/more-photographic-evidence-suggests-boston-bombing-was-training-exercise/
The Boston Marathon bombings have a lot of features that can only be reconciled as being a mock training exercise, and the recent history of using the Boston Marathon for bomb training exercises makes that comparison even more compelling. The Boston Herald reports that emergency drills were conducted at the 2012 Boston Marathon in which maneuvers included training for “bombs at the finish line”(1). Further, an experienced athlete and eyewitnesses at this year’s Boston Marathon, Alastair Stevenson, also testifies “there were dogs with their handlers going around sniffing for explosives and, and, we were told on a loud announcement that we shouldn’t be concerned, it was just a drill”(2).

Also worth noting is that the use of existing amputees to play the role of bomb victims is an established practice in military training(3). Therefore, the horrendous injuries seen at the Boston bombing are not a deterrent to establishing that the bombing was a training exercise and that the victims, and their rescuers, are mere actors.
THE SHRAPNEL LACED BOMB


If the bombing were a hoax the bomb would have to be benign rather than shrapnel-laced. The above photo shows no shrapnel tearing at the banner or flags, nobody on the road was hit by shrapnel, the smoke does not show any signs of being pierced by, or trailing, high speed projectiles. There also appears to be a dearth of spectators in the immediate area of the blast.
THE VICTIMS AND THEIR RESCUERS
In a real bombing common EMT protocols dictate that victims, by and large, get treated according to their needs. A person with life threatening injuries would be attended to with more urgency and receive more attention than those with lesser injuries. The same approaches may not hold for a mock bombing where roles may be assigned to rescuers, and a rescuer who was assigned to one victim would not depart from that role for fear of upsetting the entire role playing exercise.

The above photo shows Jeff Bauman lying on the ground, conscious, missing both legs, yet unattended even while others around him with lesser injuries get attended to. There was even one female victim who was beside Jeff who has been removed on a gurney while his life threatening injuries are ignored. It takes at least 2.23 minutes for Carlos the cowboy hat hero to arrive at Jeff’s side, belying media reports he jumped the fence and rushed to Jeff Bauman’s aid.(4) It would appear as though the script calls for Jeff to be rescued by Carlos the cowboy hat hero and nobody else. (See photo essay [5] for evidence of timing.)

The above photo shows a blonde EMT taking Krystle Campbell’s pulse (in blue), Krystle is reported to have died and in this photo Krystle’s legs appear to be either severed or badly mangled beneath her. This EMT also took at least 2.23 minutes to make it to Krystle’s side. As if that is not bad enough the photographic evidence also shows that the EMT stays with Krystle for less than 48 seconds before walking away (See photo essay [6]).
A trained EMT staying with a dying patient for less than 48 seconds before she is photographed departing with her back to all of the injured is very difficult to reconcile with a real EMT in a real life and death situation, but could be reconciled with a mock drill where she need not be a real EMT and her sole role may be just to pose for a quick photo shoot.

Above the two rescuers are seen standing over their respective wards, neither are focused on the injured in spite of the supposedly serious nature of their injuries. The blonde EMT takes time to have an intercourse  with some man on the sidelines (which is most likely the man hidden in front of the policeman), and Carlos has taken his card off from around his neck and is seen here reading it.
The focus away from the victims while standing over them could be more indicative of poor actors stumbling with their roles, rather than genuine rescuers in a serious life and death situation. (See photo essay [7] for Carlos Arredondo’s card reading, and video [8] for the EMT’s actions.)
THE WAR-LIKE RESCUES
The rescues of the victims that occurred at the Boston Marathon bombing were not what would be expected in a civilian setting, but much more fitting for a war zone, or a military bomb training drill. In a civilian setting normal procedure would necessitate treating the injured where they lay until ambulances arrive, whereas in a war setting responders get the injured out of the immediate danger zone by whatever means necessary.

What was seen at Boston closely resembled a military training exercise; one where people were picked up and run down the road–sometimes carried, sometimes in a wheelchair. While a medical tent in fact lay some distance up the road, why were victims sped away with such makeshift transport and why didn’t ambulances attend the bombing scene for at least 6 minutes? Was this rushing-of-victims to the medical tent and ambulances, as opposed to taking ambulances to the victims, deliberately staged for dramatic, war-like effect?
Note that police vehicles, as seen in the picture above, come and go from the scene during this crucial 6 minute period where ambulances do not attend. The man in the above photo is a uniformed officer. Why in the world does he pick up a victim and run down the road against all protocol?

Here is the now-famous mad rush to the ambulance for the two worst injured at his bomb site. At least 5 minutes has passed since the bombing and Jeff Bauman’s life is still in the hands of Carlos the cowboy. Bauman is sitting upright, which is inappropriate for his injuries, and he has been seated in a wheelchair, which is also entirely inappropriate for his injuries as apparently loose skin or something synthetic is seen getting caught in the chair’s mechanisms. Underscoring how ridiculous a wheelchair is for his injuries, Jeff has to hold his own leg up.
The photo of Krystle has a number of anomalies also. For example, her legs have a marked structural soundness in contrast to earlier photos where they appeared to be either severed or severely distorted beneath her, and in this photo the EMTs are supposed to be doing CPR while running her to an ambulance(8).
Anyone who has ever participated in a rudimentary CPR course knows that one is supposed to use two hands to do CPR, be directly over the patient, and both elbows should be locked straight to ensure transmission of the maximum force to the victim’s chest. It takes considerable pressure to perform CPR yet with Krystle we see them attempting to conduct CPR while running, standing off to one side, and with a bent elbow. Is this just a sham CPR for the cameras? If Krystle genuinely needed CPR why would EMTs have not properly administered CPR where she lay and proceed to bring the ambulance to her?
SUMMARY
These and other Boston bombing anomalies cannot be dismissed as myriad results of “chaos” following the blast. For instance, any immediate chaos can not explain how a double amputee, in an area swarming with uniformed personnel, is left rolling around on the ground unattended for well over 2 minutes. Chaos can not explain why an EMT would leave a dying patient after spending less than 48 seconds with her for a quick photo shoot, and chaos can not explain why victims were rushed out of the area as though they were under fire in a war zone, against all normal civilian procedures.
Chaos can not explain how the media portrayal of Carlos the “cowboy hat hero” rushing to the aid of Jeff Bauman is both demonstrably false, yet also furnished with dramatic photos of Carlos running Bauman down the road supposedly proving the story true. Every story needs a hero, especially scripted ones.
The medical response to this event demonstrates both the injured and the respondents were mere actors in an elaborate stage show, manufactured to suit political agendas both domestic and foreign, a day of false victims and fake heroes to usher in a new chapter in the so-called “war on terror.”
Notes
(1) http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/04/2012_drill_braced_for_bombs_at_finish_line
(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcxmAunB4Ck
(3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSLm_yWqADc
(4) http://www.smh.com.au/world/into-the-smoke-cowboy-hero-raced-to-save-lives-20130417-2hzby.html
(5) http://anywho.simplesite.com/201858942
(6) http://anywho.simplesite.com/201858941
(7) http://anywho.simplesite.com/201858945
(8) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O79M-Ej8CjA  (Blonde EMT seen at approx 30s, and CPR on Krystle at approx 1:14)
*Andrew Whooley is an independent researcher originally from New Zealand who resides in Perth, WA, Australia.

See for Yourself: Syrian Government Likely Did Not Use Chemical Weapons

Posted on May 8, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Who Should You Believe …  The UN Investigator or the U.S.?

Haaretz reported on March 24th, “Jihadists, not Assad, apparently behind reported chemical attack in Syria“.
UN investigator Carla Del Ponte said that there is strong evidence that the rebels used chemical weapons, but that there is not evidence that the government used such weapons:
But the U.S. is blaming the Syrian government for the attacks in Syria.
So who’s right?
The Global Post reported on April 30th:

A closer analysis, however, raises doubts and highlights the challenge of confirming whether the Syrian government–or anyone else–is using chemical weapons…. Looking at video and photos obtained by GlobalPost at the scene, experts say the spent canister found in Younes’ [a victim's] house and the symptoms displayed by the victims are inconsistent with a chemical weapon such as sarin gas, which is known to be in Syria’s arsenal.

Here’s a picture of the spent canister:

Kurdish police and members of a Kurdish militia gather the remains of a device witnesses say was dropped by a helicopter onto the courtyard staircase of a family home in Sheikh Maqsoud, a neighborhood in Aleppo, Syria. Syrians suspect the device is some kind of chemical weapon. But experts have their doubts. – [Rojhat Azad/Courtesy]

The GlobalPost continues:

Looking at video and photos obtained by GlobalPost at the scene, experts say the spent canister found in Younes’ house and the symptoms displayed by the victims are inconsistent with a chemical weapon such as sarin gas, which is known to be in Syria’s arsenal. Sarin is typically delivered using artillery shells or spray tanks, not in the grenade-like device found in this Aleppo attack and in other similar attacks reported in recent days.
***
Watch the full, unedited video here
While analysts have not been able to identify the canister, they said tear gas, some kind of generated smoke, as well as any number of chemicals found in military munitions and devices, could also have been responsible. Chemicals used for riot control are not prohibited by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
***
Experts say an attack by sarin gas would cause virtually anyone who had come into contact with the toxin to immediately feel its effects. Exposure to even a very small amount of sarin could be lethal. While there were casualities in the Aleppo attack, most of the victims survived, which would not likely be the outcome of a sarin attack in a confined environment.

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Adding to the doubts, some analysts are now wondering if the attack might have actually involved chlorine, which is also a chemical weapon but can be bought over-the-counter. A March Reuters story described a possible chemical attack in the northern town of Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo, after which residents said they could smell chlorine. The Telegraph reported at the time that Syrian regime forces accused rebels of using a homemade chlorine solution in the attack.

***

Perhaps adding some credibility to fears that Syrian rebels could potentially use chlorine, militants in neighboring Iraq used chlorine bombs several times in 2007. Some Syrian fighters with the Islamist rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra are believed to have ties to Iraqi extremists.

CNN notes:

Al Qaeda in Iraq detonated a series of crude chlorine bombs in Iraq from late 2006 through mid-2007.
***
Charles Faddis, who headed the CIA’s operations against al Qaeda in Iraq’s chlorine bomb network, told me in 2010: “[T]he attacks are not being particularly successful. The people are dying in the blast, but fortunately nobody is dying from chlorine.”

The GlobalPost reported on May 5th:

Doctors in Turkey say initial tests of blood samples from victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria last month are negative for sarin gas.

***

It could have been tear gas or some other kind of generated smoke, normally used for riot control, some weapons experts said.

In other words, those who question the claim that it was the Syrian government which used chemical weapons have photographic and other evidence on their side.

Rebels Have More Motive than Government …

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

As Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell points out, Khan al-Assal was a regime-controlled area at the time, which suggests that if anyone were to attack it, it would probably be rebels. (Hat tip to Hounshell for resurfacing these March articles.)

Similarly, Tony Cartalucci points out that the Syrian government has no motivation to use chemical weapons.  And Lew Rockwell argues:

Of course anyone whose brain fired on more than one cylinder should have questioned why in the hell the Syrian government would use in such a limited and militarily insignificant way the one weapon it knew would likely bring on a US and NATO Libya-style intervention. It made no sense at all for the Syrian government to use “just a little” sarin — not enough to do more than kill a few people, nothing to alter the course of the war — knowing about “red lines” and a US/Saudi/Qatari/Israeli/Turk bloodlust to invade.
On the other hand, it made all the sense in the world for the insurgents to release some sarin here and there, make some videos of the victims, and email the links to some very willing Israeli generals and McCainian rabid warhawks in the US and their absurd poodles in the UK and France.

CNN points out that the Syrian rebels have had chemical weapons training.
Neoconservatives planned regime change in Syria – and throughout the Middle East and North Africa – 20 years ago.   And carrying out acts of violence and blaming it on the Syrian government as an excuse for regime change – i.e. false flag terror – was discussed over 50 years ago by British and American leaders.
A top Bush administration official says it’s hard to say who used chemical weapons – if anyone – and that the chemical weapons attack may have been an Israeli false flag attack.
And the American government has previously falsely blamed its enemies for chemical weapons attacks.  For example, the American government gave chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein … which he then used on Iran and on his own Kurdish population.  The American government attempted to blame Iran for the chemical weapons attack on Iraq’s Kurds … just as the U.S. is trying to blame the Syrian government for the attacks in Syria.
And see this.
And the “rebels” in Syria that the U.S. has been arming and otherwise supporting are Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood.  Indeed, the New York Times reported last week that virtually all of the rebel fighters are Al Qaeda terrorist.
But the war-hungry mainstream media – just as in Iraq – is pushing half-truths and bogus claims.