Millions of Sea Creatures are Dying Off the Pacific Coast. Why?

just gonna fucking WAIT till this Planet looks like the fucking Moon ...that the plan ,folks !

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Michael Snyder

Never before have we seen so much death along the west coast of North America.  Massive numbers of sea stars, bluefin tuna, sardines, anchovies, herring, oysters, salmon, marine mammals and marine birds are dying, and experts are puzzled.  We are being told that we could even see “local extinctions” of some of these sea creatures.  So are all of these deaths related?  If so, what in the world could be causing this to happen?  What has changed so dramatically that it would cause massive numbers of sea creatures to die along the west coast?

The following are 15 examples of this phenomenon.  Most scientists do not believe that these incidents are related.  But when you put them all together, it paints quite a disturbing picture…
#1 A “mystery plague” is turning sea stars all along the west coast of the United States and Canada into piles of goo…

Sea stars, commonly referred to as starfish, have been dying off in alarming numbers along the entire West Coast, from Baja, Mexico, to Alaska. According to reports from the Seattle Aquarium, some parts of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands have seen population declines of up to 80 percent.
On the Oregon coast, according to CoastWatch Volunteer Coordinator Fawn Custer, “Last December, we had less than 1 percent of sea star wasting. By May 1, more than 5 percent of sea stars were affected. Now, I would say, in some areas, it is up to 90 percent.”

A marine epidemiologist at Cornell University says that this is “the largest mortality event for marine diseases we’ve seen“.
#2 The population of bluefin tuna in the Pacific Ocean has declined by 95 percent.  Mexico has already banned fishing for bluefin tuna for the rest of the year, and the U.S. government is considering doing the same thing.
#3 Sardine, anchovy and herring populations have dropped dramatically along the west coast in recent years…

Pacific sardine populations have shown an alarming decline in recent years, and some evidence suggests anchovy and herring populations may be dropping as well.
The declines could push fishermen toward other currently unmanaged “forage fish,” such as saury, smelt and sand lance, stealing a critical food source relied on by salmon and other economically important predators.
In response, the Pacific Fishery Management Council is considering an ecosystem-based management approach that recognizes the fundamental role of forage fish in the Pacific marine food web. Tiny, but abundant, these small schooling fish feed on plankton and, in turn, fill the bellies of Oregon’s iconic marine species, including salmon, sharks, whales, sea lions and sea birds.

#4 “Record numbers of distressed sea lions have washed ashore in California” for the second year in a row.  One news report described these distressed sea lions as “malnourished and dehydrated, too weak to find food on their own“.
#5 Marine birds are “disappearing” in the Pacific northwest…

From white-winged scoters and surf scoters to long-tailed ducks, murres, loons and some seagulls, the number of everyday marine birds here has plummeted dramatically in recent decades.
Scoters are down more than 75 percent from what they were in the late 1970s. Murres have dropped even more. Western grebes have mostly vanished, falling from several hundred thousand birds to about 20,000.

#6 Those that work in the seafood industry on the west coast are noticing some very “unusual” mutations.  For example, a red king crab that was recently caught in Alaska was colored bright blue.
#7 Pelicans along the California coastline are “refusing to mate“.  This is being blamed on a lack of fish for the pelicans to eat.  As a result, we are seeing less than one percent of the usual number of baby pelicans.
#8 The oyster population in the Pacific is falling so fast that it is being called “the great American oyster collapse“.
#9 The population of sockeye salmon along the coast of Alaska is at a “historic low“.
#10 Something is causing herring off the coast of British Columbia to bleed from their gills, bellies and eyeballs.
#11 Scientists have discovered very high levels of cesium-137 in plankton living in the waters of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the west coast.
#12 Back in May, more than six tons of anchovies died in Marina Del Ray over a single weekend.
#13 Just a few days ago, thousands of dead fish were found on Capitola Beach.  Authorities are trying to figure out what caused this.
#14 Earlier this month, thousands of dead fish were found on Manresa Beach.
#15 According to a study conducted by researchers at Oregon State University, radiation levels in tuna caught off the coast of Oregon approximately tripled in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Could it be possible that at least some of these deaths are related to what has been happening at Fukushima?
We do know that fish caught just off the shore from Fukushima have been tested to have radioactive cesium that is up to 124 times above the level that is considered to be safe.
And we also know that a study conducted at the University of South Wales concluded that the main radioactive plume of water from Fukushima would reach our shores at some point during 2014.
Is it so unreasonable to think that the greatest nuclear disaster in human history could have something to do with the death of all of these sea creatures?
Just consider what one very experienced Australian boat captain discovered when he crossed the Pacific last year.  According to him, it felt as though “the ocean itself was dead“…

The next leg of the long voyage was from Osaka to San Francisco and for most of that trip the desolation was tinged with nauseous horror and a degree of fear.
“After we left Japan, it felt as if the ocean itself was dead,” Macfadyen said.
“We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.
“I’ve done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I’m used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen.”
In place of the missing life was garbage in astounding volumes.
“Part of it was the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Japan a couple of years ago. The wave came in over the land, picked up an unbelievable load of stuff and carried it out to sea. And it’s still out there, everywhere you look.”

What do you think?
Is Fukushima to blame, or do you think that something else is causing massive numbers of sea creatures to die?

Stem Cell Treatment: Out from the Shadows, Onto the Cutting Edge

The Jets’ Chris Johnson is one of hundreds of NFL players who’ve turned to stem cells to aid in recovery from injury. It may be the next big breakthrough in the treatment of sports ailments, but for now the use of such therapy is strictly limited in the U.S.—and questions about effectiveness outweigh the answers

By

Jenny Vrentas //http://mmqb.si.com/2014/07/30/stem-cell-treatment-nfl-sports-medicine/

· More from Jenny·

New Jet Chris Johnson had stem cells from his bone marrow reinjected into his knee to augment January surgery for a torn meniscus. The hope is that it would boost healing and perhaps rebuild cartilage. (AP)

He’s 28. He has five 1,000-yard NFL rushing seasons to his name, one 2,000-yarder and a burning desire to prove he’s the same speedster he’s always been. So when Chris Johnson visited orthopedic surgeon James Andrews in January to fix his ailing left knee, he liked the sound of two intriguing words: Stem cells.
The veteran running back tore the meniscus in that knee in Week 3 of the 2013 season—his last with the Titans before being cut—but never missed a game. The injury to the knee’s natural shock absorber also caused other damage in the joint, and Andrews presented an option that might augment what surgery alone could do. The plan: Take stem cells, the body’s universal building blocks, and deliver them directly to the construction site.
“When I tore my meniscus and played the season out, through the wear and tear, I lost a lot of cartilage,” says Johnson, who was signed by the Jets to bring explosiveness to their offense. “When you put the stem cells in, it might be able to help rebuild that cartilage in your knee. Hopefully, it makes your knee better for even more years.”
On the day of his surgery at the Andrews Institute in Gulf Breeze, Fla., Johnson had a small amount of his bone marrow—60 milliliters, or the volume of a shot glass—siphoned out of the iliac crest of his pelvis with a long needle pushed through a tiny incision in his skin. Less than an hour later, at the end of the arthroscopic procedure to repair his meniscus, a concentrate of thousands of stem cells from the bone marrow was injected directly into Johnson’s knee joint.
Instead of the usual four-to-six-week recovery time from the scope, Johnson stayed off the practice field for the rest of the offseason, giving the stem-cell treatment maximum time to work. At the least, stem cells are a powerful anti-inflammatory. But the hope is they may also play a role in boosting the healing of injured tissues, including stubborn ones like the meniscus, which lacks a robust blood supply, or cartilage, which has long been irreplaceable.

Stem cells are far from mainstream—NFL teams will often not pick up the bill, and the overseas market for treatments not approved in the U.S. makes the whole field seem somewhat taboo.

Johnson is one of hundreds—yes, hundreds—of NFL players who have invested in the promise of stem cells in the past few years. Peyton Manning reportedly tried a stem-cell treatment in Europe in 2011, his final year with the Colts, to fast-track his recovery from neck surgery. Giants cornerback Prince Amukamara had a slow-healing broken metatarsal treated with stem cells by a foot specialist in North Carolina after his team’s Super Bowl XLVI run. One NFL linebacker paid $6,000 a pop for a 1-milliliter vial of donated placenta tissue containing stem cells to be injected into each of his beat-up knees this offseason—but asked for his name not to be used in this story because he didn’t tell his team’s medical staff.
Such treatment is more common than you might realize among NFL players (hundreds of players across 32 teams averages to at least six players per team), but it’s also far from mainstream. Stem cells are still somewhat in the shadows—evidence of their usefulness in treating athletes’ injuries is so far largely anecdotal, NFL teams often will not pick up the bill for players, and the overseas market for treatments not approved in the U.S. makes the whole field seem somewhat taboo.
There’s a push to change that, though, and Andrews is an important figure at the forefront. His group is currently building a laboratory at its Florida facility specifically dedicated to biologics—the term refers to substances that are produced in living systems such as humans, animals and microorganisms, rather than manufactured like drugs—to be able to offer their star-studded clientele more of these treatments more effectively in the U.S. The agenda includes a research study with retired NFL players on how well stem cells work in treating arthritis of the knee; a trial of a Malaysian technique for regenerating cartilage by using stem cells from the blood after microfracture surgery; and exploring whether torn ACL tissue can be repurposed to help the new ligament graft heal more quickly.
“We have had one big revelation in sports medicine over the last 50 years, and that was the arthroscope,” Andrews says. “I’ve been looking for the next wave, and I think the biologics, particularly stem-cell therapy and enhancement of the healing properties, will be it.”
But, he adds with frustration, “We’ve been saying that since the new decade of this new millennium, so we’re already behind.”

* * *

Dr. Josh G. Hackel of the Andrews Institute performs a bone marrow aspirate injection to an arthritic knee under ultrasound guidance. (Courtesy of the Andrews Institute)

The stem cells used to treat athletes’ injuries are not the same kind as those steeped in ethical and political debate in the U.S. The latter are the human embryonic stem cells derived from unused embryos at in-vitro fertilization clinics, whose use in research has been contested over the past decade, all the way up to the Oval Office.
Stem-cell treatments for athletes, on the other hand, use the adult stem cells we all have in our own bodies. These are unspecialized cells that have the ability to produce new cells, mature into a variety of different cell types and mobilize in response to an injury. Orthopedists have been particularly interested in mesenchymal stem cells, found in sources such as bone marrow and fat tissue, which can become new bone, cartilage, muscle or connective tissue—the cogs in the machines of athletes’ bodies.
Andrews quietly has been using these stem cells to treat pro athletes for about three years. The count of NFL players he’s treated with stem cells is a couple hundred, he admits, but, wary of sensationalizing, he adds quickly, “that’s not the right question for right now.” Some receive an injection to control swelling in a troublesome knee or shoulder as an alternative to a cortisone shot. A smaller number have had stem cell treatment in tandem with a surgical procedure on harder-to-heal injuries, like Johnson’s. (It’s not routine for ACL surgeries, so no, Adrian Peterson’s warp return wasn’t aided by stem cells). “Most of the athletes know about this, and they are coming in and asking for it,” Andrews says. Some teams send players to him for treatments.
It’s perfectly legal in the NFL and the other major professional sports leagues. The NFL considers stem cells a medical treatment—not a performance-enhancing substance—just as with platelet-rich plasma (PRP), the blood concentrate that advanced the biologics movement when Steelers receiver Hines Ward used a form of PRP treatment to come back from a medial collateral ligament sprain in time for Super Bowl XLIII.
But the kind of stem-cell treatments players are getting varies greatly. Andrews and his team of doctors have been limited in what they can offer by a strict adherence to guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration. So far, that’s meant sticking to one procedure: Harvesting cells from a player’s bone marrow and putting them back into his or her body, unaltered, at the site of injury.

Manning has never acknowledged whether he went overseas for stem cell treatment to address the neck injury that made him an observer for the entire 2011 season. (Andrew Hancock/Sports Illustrated)

In other countries, though, stem cells can be taken out of a player’s body and cultured over a 10-to-14-day period. The benefit? This procedure, illegal in the U.S., grows thousands more of these prized cells, meaning that one draw of bone marrow may yield around two million mesenchymal stem cells, instead of just 10,000. Steelers team orthopedic surgeon Jim Bradley, long a champion of biologics—he injected Ward with the PRP—presents this overseas option to players who ask about stem-cell treatment. He’s gone so far as to visit one particular international lab multiple times to feel comfortable vouching for it.
“This is why people go to the Cayman Islands, to Russia, to North Korea, to Japan, to Germany, because we can’t multiply stem cells here,” Bradley says. “When my NFL guys ask me, ‘Where would I go for this?’ I have a very good answer for them. I’m not going to tell you where I tell them to go, but it is not in the U.S.”
The enticement of next-level healing for million-dollar athletes has also spawned a cottage industry of biologics companies, each advertising products they claim are the best on the market. Here’s one example: Steven Victor, a dermatologist to celebrities, became involved with stem cells while seeking a use for discarded fat tissue from cosmetic procedures. He traveled to Greece for instruction, patented a technology in the U.S. that uses sound waves to isolate stem cells from the fat, and started the Park Avenue-based IntelliCell BioSciences. He’s treated current and former NFL players—Merril Hoge is a spokesperson—and, recently a Dubai businessman called about using the procedure to heal his high-priced thoroughbred racing camels.
The cost of one stem-cell treatment starts at about $5,000 in the U.S., and between $15,000 and $25,000 overseas. Athletes pining for a fix to the ailments threatening their careers are willing to pay that price, even if it’s out of pocket—as was the case for the linebacker who didn’t want his name used. Multiple surgeries left his knees chronically swollen and aching, so he turned to a treatment recommended by his orthopedic therapist and a handful of teammates.
“Body parts in a cryogenically frozen cooler,” he says. That’s not entirely accurate, but the treatment he received, from a Colorado-based biologics company, illustrates the wide spectrum of stem-cell therapies NFL players are using. The product in the vial didn’t contain the player’s own freshly harvested stem cells, but rather liquefied placenta tissue with stem cells and growth factors, donated by a new mom after childbirth and frozen at minus-80 degrees Celsius. (His orthopedic therapist says he has sent 150 NFL players to get this treatment in the past year and a half).
The linebacker didn’t tell his team mainly because he didn’t want to jeopardize his roster spot by arousing concern about the health of his knees. But he’s not alone in wanting to keep his stem-cell use private. Manning has never talked publicly about his reported trip to Europe for stem-cell treatment, and a team spokesman turned down a request for this article.
“It does kind of sound like you’re talking about illegal gambling or a pharmaceutical drug trade or something,” the player says. “You hear about labs being set up in Bermuda to avoid the laws here, and all these small companies claiming to have the best product. Guys are just looking for who is at the tip of the sword, and you don’t want everybody to know your secrets.”

* * *

Andrews, a pioneer in sports medicine, and his team are looking toward clinical trials on retired players to better gauge stem cells’ real effects. (Al Tielemans/Sports Illustrated)

Chris Johnson was ready to return to the football field when the Jets opened training camp in Cortland, N.Y., last week. He aced his conditioning test—“He was flying,” coach Rex Ryan told reporters—but the team will ease its prized free agent into a full workload. The true test will be how Johnson’s knee holds up weeks, months and years down the road.
Andrews speaks carefully about the potential of stem-cell treatments. He’s hyper-aware of the danger of sensationalizing among his clientele of elite athletes, particularly since many questions remain—not the least of which is how well the treatments actually work. But the early returns have motivated him, as has seeing his top patients go abroad for therapy. “They don’t really know what they are getting,” he says. “Are they getting illegal stuff? We don’t have any control over it, so it’s something we needed to bring back and do in a controlled environment here.”
His team of doctors is working on expanding and optimizing their stem-cell treatment options. Adam Anz, an orthopedic surgeon at the Andrews Institute, has traveled to Malaysia four times to learn from Khay Yong Saw, a surgeon who has had success repairing cartilage defects with the aid of stem cells harvested from the bloodstream. Josh Hackel, the primary care sports medicine physician who treats many of Andrews’ patients with stem cells from their bone marrow, has visited IntelliCell to learn more about its fat-derived stem cell technology. When Andrews’ biologics lab opens, clinical trials could begin on some of these new techniques with permission from the FDA—which Anz says he is close to getting for the cartilage innovation.
Andrews’ team is also actively recruiting retired NFL players for a study on the effectiveness of treating arthritis of the knee with stem cells from the bone marrow or with PRP. A longstanding challenge of proving how well stem-cell treatments work in treating athletes’ injuries is that no athlete with his career on the line wants to risk being randomized into receiving a placebo treatment. Retired players, who would receive the treatment at no cost to them, are the next-best patient population.
The end game? A toolbox of proven biologics treatments, each of which are specific to a certain kind of injury based on the source of stem cells, the amount, when they are administered, etc. “We’ve gotten really good at carpentry,” Anz says, referring to advances in arthroscopic surgery. “The thing we haven’t really been working on is the biologics.”
Here’s why the arthroscope analogy is a good one: That instrument, introduced to the U.S. in the 1960s, changed the outcomes and prognoses for a generation of athletes by making surgeries less traumatic and more precise. But recovery times and outcomes have still depended on the body’s own ability to heal itself. Once cartilage is damaged, for instance, it hasn’t been able to self-repair. And while athletes are restoring their muscles faster than ever following ACL surgery, their return to the game is still limited by how fast the new ligament graft heals and matures inside the knee.
“Instead of taking a year, a year and a half in order to get well, maybe we can cut that down in half,” Andrews says. “We have an old saying: ‘You can’t bargain with Mother Nature.’ The biologics, the stem-cell therapy, is the revelation that may change that.”

http://mmqb.si.com/2014/07/30/stem-cell-treatment-nfl-sports-medicine/

THE CORKER-MCCAIN “RUSSIAN AGGRESSION PREVENTION ACT OF 2014″…

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: Other • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/07/corker-mccain-russian-aggression-prevention-act-2014/

The craziness and out-of-control nature of the corruption evident in foreign policy lately has taken yet  another turn for the worse. But this one boggles the mind folks. It seems that the aptly named US Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Bob Corker, with the considerable political weight of US Senator John McCain behind it, has come up with a bill that is…well…a corker:
“Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014″: Another U.S. Style Violent Regime Change?
I hope you caught all of that… but in case you didn’t, here are the highlights:

“Corker and fellow Republican Party senators have shepherded to full U.S. Senate passage the «Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014». The law, if enacted, would subject Russia to the same level of draconian sanctions currently employed by the United States against Iran, Syria, and Sudan. There is no doubt that such sanctions have one intention: U.S.-style violent regime change as previously directed against Libya and Iraq.
“Corker’s Senate co-sponsors include the typical neo-conservative riff-raff associated with other Cold War-era foreign adventures of the United States. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Republican wunderkind who is a right-wing favorite for the presidency in 2016, weighed in with his support for Corker’s bill. Rubio is pushing for similar sanctions against Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“Also supporting the Corker bill is Corker’s Republican colleague from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander.
“The chief supporter of the sanctions bill is Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, a longtime Russophobe who has never passed up a chance to confront Russia militarily, whether it be in Syria, Afghanistan, or Ukraine.
“The Corker bill would impose travel bans and asset freezes on Russian government and Russian corporation officials. Targets include President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and deputy prime ministers and government ministers. Several Russian firms are targeted in the legislation, including Sberbank, VTB Bank, Vnesheconombank, Gazprombank, Gazprom, Novatek, Rosneft, and Rosoboronexport. Corporate targets include «senior executives» of institutions, defined by the law as «a member of the board, chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, secretary, treasurer, general counsel, or chief information officer, or the functional equivalent thereof, of an entity».

OK…we get it: the bill is to make the Ukraine safe for plundering by the West, with the USA being plunderer in chief, but something tells me that the sanctions regime will not put any brakes on the Russian energy companies, the Russian banks, or Mr. Putin’s travel plans, although, if I were him, I’d invest in a stealth aircraft for his presidential airplane, and take along a flight of the latest Russian fighters when traveling. Airplanes seem to be falling out of the sky over there.
But hey, look! there’s more!

“But there may be more than «drugstore cowboy» politics involved with the Republican sanctions bill. Corker, a former mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is known to have engaged in a number of illicit real estate and other financial schemes while serving as mayor. Tennessee political sources report that businessmen associated with Ukrainian steel and pipeline billionaire oligarch Victor Pinchuk had business dealings in the Tennessee city while Corker served as mayor. Pinchuk, the son-in-law of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, is also closely linked to neo-conservative U.S. politicians, including McCain; former George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove; and Rick Davis, McCain’s presidential campaign manager in 2000 and 2008. Pinchuk is also the only Ukrainian member of the powerful New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Pinchuk’s annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference, held in the czarist-era Livadia Palace on the Black Sea, draws various Western politicians, many with political and financial interests in Ukraine. Past attendees have included Rove, Soros, McCain’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, and such corporatist politicians as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair, John Kerry’s 2004 campaign manager Bob Shrum, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Viktor Yushchenko, Mikheil Saakashvili, Newt Gingrich, CFR President Richard Haass, Shimon Peres, and Ukraine’s «acting» Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.”

Ok, like I said, we get it: the bill is to make the Ukraine safe for plunder.
But there’s a catch, and it’s a huge one:

“The Republicans seem intent on punishing former officials of its NATO allies, including Germany and the Netherlands. For example, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder would be subject to a travel ban and asset freeze by the United States because of his chairmanship of the board of Nordstream AG, which is 51 percent owned by Gazprom. Other Germans who face asset freezes and travel bans include Nordstream board members Eggert Voscherau, the deputy board chairman of BASF AG, Reiner Zwitserloot, chairman of the board of the German gas company Wintershall AG, Burckhard Bergmann, chairman of the board of E. ON AG, and Hans-Peter Floren, chairman of the board of E. ON Ruhrgas AG. Dutch chairman of the board of Gasunie of the Netherlands, a member of Gazprom’s Nordstream board and chairman of its Southstream board would also be slapped with American sanctions. Southstream corporate officials who would also be subject to travel bans and asset freezes include corporate officials of Italy, France, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Greece, Germany, Bulgaria, and Hungary, all NATO members, as well as Austria, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

So there you have it: make the Ukraine safe for plunder, by throwing over Germany, Italy, France, and the rest of Europe. Perhaps the Senators in their infinite wisdom might want to consider a rider to the bill, something to the effect of “but this doesn’t apply to our good friends in Europe,” and then go on to list the exempted parties in the paragraph above.
One begins to wonder if there’s LSD in the water supply of Washington, because the only end result of the cumulative policies of Washington’s oligarchs – the punishment of BNP Paribas, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, the spying on European leaders including Chancellorin Merkel, the recruiting of spies within Germany’s intelligence services, the imposition of austerity measures on the Ukraine, and on and on we could go – can only have the long term result in the dissolution of the careful alliances and goodwill built between the USA and western Europe since the end of the last World War, and that, ultimately, cannot be good either for America or Europe.
The last time we saw such incomprehensible and counter-intuitive geopolitical lunacy and war lust was with Sazonov, von Berchthold, Delcasse, Poincare, Grey, and von Bethmann-Hollweg, one hundred years and two days ago, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The Dual-Monarchy, a “multi-cultural” polyglot entity of several ethnic groups held together by the iron hand of the Hapsburg oligarchy, as we all know, dissolved and disappeared into the dustbin of history in 1918.

UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT RESIGNS: JULY 24 2014, AND A BIT OF WAFFLING FROM THE US DEPT OF STATE: PART TWO

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: Other • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/07/ukrainian-government-resigns-july-24-2014-bit-waffling-us-dept-state-part-two/

Yesterday, you’ll recall, I blogged about the resignation of the Ukrainian government after the Ukrainian Rada had refused to pass legislation required by the IMF to free a second level of funding to that beleaguered government, amid accusations from the Pentagon and State Department that the Russian government had sent into the eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region significant military forces. There was, of course, no proof of these allegations, and this raises the specter that we may be looking at that old Iraq-has-weapons-of-mass-destruction-we’ve-got-to-invade meme again.
You will also recall that I mentioned the article of Professor Michael Chossudovsky, in which he indicated that the leader of a group that he refers to as Neo-Nazis would be an influential power broker in forming a new Ukrainian government. And finally, you’ll recall the Russia Today article citing General Martin Dempsey as saying the US was looking at old “contingency plans”:
US pulling out its Cold War-era plans over Ukraine conflict, top commander admits
And of course, we see the old familiar pattern – one very familiar to those who lived through the whole Vietnam quagmire – of sending in US “advisors”:

“Earlier this week, Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, told reporters that the Defense Department was scheduled to send military advisers to Ukraine within weeks to ‘shape and establish an enduring program for future US efforts to support the Ukrainian military through subject-matter expert teams and long-term advisers.’”

But let’s look at what those “contingency plans” might be. In this context, let’s recall the analysis I’ve been making concerning the downing of Malaysia Air Flight 17 in the Donetsk region. I’ve been arguing that, while this does appear to have all the red flag indicators of a deliberate action and even to a certain extent of a “false flag” operation, that none of the major players really has anything to gain by committing such an egregious act of mass murder, Russia certainly doesn’t, in spite of the best efforts of the lamestream western media to fasten the blame on Mr. Putin. America’s puppet government in Kiev certainly doesn’t either; and frankly, in the final analysis, neither does Washington.
Which brings us back to those old Cold War “contingency plans”. What could those be? Readers of my books know that the USA made a “dirty deal” with the Nazi military intelligence organization on the eastern front, a vast network of spies headed by then German general Reinhard Gehlen. This network was allowed to remain entirely intact after World War Two, with Gehlen still heading it, and became, in effect, the CIA’s “boots on the ground” humint (human intelligence) source for Soviet activities and analysis. Part of Gehlen’s organization included a network of “exilee” societies spread throughout eastern and western Europe and even on into the United States, networks of Byelorussian “nationalists”, Ukrainian nationalists, Lthuanian, Lett, and Estonian nationalists, and so on. Indeed, as I suggested in my book LBJ and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy, this network most likely formed the human handlers for Lee Harvey Oswald when he was in the Soviet Union(in Minsk, capital of Byelorussia incidentially), and which, through George De Mohrenschildt, a German-Byelorussian from Moyzyr Byelorussia, continued to handle him in Dallas(and that means, for all you JFK researchers out there, that De Mohrenschild was not CIA, he was part of the Gehlenorg). And it was this old Nazi intelligence network, as the research of Professor Peter Dale Scott and others shows, which was the ultimate source behind the “private” intelligence networks of the Texas oilmen Hunt and Murchison.
Gehlen’s organization formulated a strategy of using these “stay behind” networks of Byelorussians, Balts, and Ukrainians, to become the nucleus of a guerilla war-covert operations network to “roll back” Soviet Russia by paring away these Soviet “republics”. This strategy was ultimately incorporated into the USA’s long term strategy during the Cold War. (And in this context, let’s recall – just for kicks – the German BND, successor organization to the Gehlenorg, recently caught a US spy in its ranks, and has expelled the US’s German CIA station chief.)
Perhaps, then, we are looking at more ongoing legacy and “blowback” of that dirty deal with the (Nazi) devil. Would such an independent extraterritorial rogue entity wish to see an escalation of its two old wartime nemeses, the USA, and Russia? Well, if it remained committed to its twisted ideology, the answer is an obvious yes.
Perhaps, just perhaps, then, one of Mr. Putin’s key advisors, Sergei Glazyev, may not be far off the mark when he made the following rather remarkable statement:

“It is obvious that the United States is fully controlling the Kiev Nazis, Poroshenko personally, and the government, and is pushing them to pursue this war against Donbass to the very end… THIS IS A WAR BY THE UNITED STATES AGAINST US… So we have to understand that the key to resolving the catastrophe of Ukraine is to be found in Washington. That’s where Nazism has to be defeated.” (PUTIN’S ECONOMIC ADVISOR WARNS WW3 HAS BEGUN, STATES RUSSIA MUST DEFEAT US NAZISM TO SOLVE UKRANIAN CRISIS!)

Interesting, too, is the fact that as I write this, I am listening to tv for background noise… TNT is running the movie version of Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears,.. in which, you’ll recall, European Neo-Nazis stage a nuclear terrorism event in the hopes of drawing Russia and the US into a nuclear war…

Sometimes, you just have to wonder.

“Eavesdropping on America”: The NSA’s Orwellian Surveillance State

By Norman Solomon

Global Research, July 30, 2014

Region: USA

Theme: Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights

As a matter of faith, some people believe that God can see and hear everything. But as a matter of fact, the U.S. government now has the kind of surveillance powers formerly attributed only to a supreme being. 
Top “national security” officials in Washington now have the determination and tech prowess to keep tabs on billions of people. No one elected Uncle Sam to play God. But a dire shortage of democratic constraints has enabled the U.S. surveillance state to keep expanding with steely resolve.

By the time Edward Snowden used NSA documents to expose — beyond any doubt — a global surveillance dragnet, the situation had deteriorated so badly because the Bush and Obama administrations were able to dismiss earlier warnings to the public as little more than heresy.

Eight years ago, in the book State of War, New York Times reporter James Risen devoted a chapter to the huge expansion of surveillance. A secret decision by President George W. Bush “has opened up America’s domestic telecommunications network to the NSA in unprecedented and deeply troubling new ways, and represents a radical shift in the accepted policies and practices of the modern U.S. intelligence community,” Risen wrote.
Risen added: “The NSA is now tapping into the heart of the nation’s telephone network through direct access to key telecommunications switches that carry many of America’s daily phone calls and e-mail messages.”

Image: The logo for the Information Awareness Office, which oversaw the Total Information Awareness project.
More details on the surveillance state came in 2008 with James Bamford’s book The Shadow Factory, which illuminated the National Security Agency’s program for “eavesdropping on America.” And in August of 2012 — nearly 10 months before Snowden’s revelations began — filmmaker Laura Poitras released a mini-documentary on the New York Times website about the NSA’s mass surveillance program.
All three journalists relied on whistleblowers who balked at the NSA’s virtual mission to see and hear everything. Both books (especially State of War) depended on information from unnamed sources. The short documentary focused on a public whistleblower — former NSA executive William Binney, who continues to speak out.
Testifying to a committee of the German parliament in Berlin two weeks ago, Binney — whose 30 years at the NSA included work as a high-level intelligence official – said that the NSA has a “totalitarian mentality.”
Days later, speaking at a conference in London, Binney explained:

“At least 80 percent of fiber-optic cables globally go via the U.S. This is no accident and allows the U.S. to view all communication coming in. At least 80 percent of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the U.S. The NSA lies about what it stores.”

Since last summer, a backup source of strength for the voices of Binney, Thomas Drake, Kirk Wiebe and other NSA whistleblowers — the fact that Snowden has provided the public with NSA documents — is exactly what has enraged U.S. officials who want to maintain and escalate their surveillance power. Because of those unveiled documents, clarity about what the NSA is really doing has fueled opposition.
NSA surveillance proliferates in a context that goes well beyond spying. The same mentality that claims the right to cross all borders for surveillance — using the latest technologies to snoop on the most intimate communications and private actions of people across the globe — is also insisting on the prerogative to cross borders with the latest technologies to kill.
When a drone or cruise missile implements an assumed right to snuff out a life, without a semblance of due process, the presidential emulation of divine intervention is implicit.
But, in military terms, dominating the world is a prohibitively expensive goal. In the digital age, surveillance has emerged as a cost-effective way to extend the U.S. government’s global reach and put its intelligence capacities on steroids — while tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in annual revenues go to corporate contractors servicing the NSA, CIA and other agencies of the military-industrial-surveillance complex.
So the trend line continues to move in the wrong direction. Speaking last month at a news conference that launched ExposeFacts.org (part of the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work), Binney said that in recent years the NSA’s surveillance activity has “only gotten worse.” He added: “I mean it’s almost in everything that you do. If you do anything electronically, they’re in it and they’re watching you.”
The information being collected is so vast that NSA operatives face a huge challenge of figuring out how to sift through it on such a large scale — “because they have to manually look at this data,” Binney said. “But the point is, they’re setting the stage for this to continue to the point where everybody could be monitored almost constantly throughout the day. That is an oppressive, suppressive state.”
Since last summer, revelations about NSA programs have been so profuse and complex that it’s difficult to gain an overview, to see the surveillance state’s toxic forest for the digital trees. But the macro picture has to do with a mind-blowing agenda for monitoring the people of the world.
“For me, the most significant revelation is the ambition of the United States government and its four English-speaking allies to literally eliminate privacy worldwide, which is not hyperbole,” journalist Glenn Greenwald said at a news conference three months ago. “The goal of the United States government is to collect and store every single form of electronic communication that human beings have with one another and give themselves the capacity to monitor and analyze those communications.”
Such a goal, formerly reserved for the more fundamentalist versions of God, is now firmly entrenched at the top of the U.S. government — and at the top of corporate America. As Greenwald pointed out, “There almost is no division between the private sector and the NSA, or the private sector and the Pentagon, when it comes to the American ‘national security’ state. They really are essentially one.”
Now that’s the kind of monotheism the world can do without.
Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, which recently launched ExposeFacts.org. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Lucy (2014) – Esoteric Analysis

Film poster. Wikipedia. Lucy in the Sky with Freeman.

By: Jay
Luc Besson has that rare, magical quality where his films teeter on the edge of being extremely mediocre and/or somewhat entertaining.  Similar themes run through his work, from La Femme Nikita to The Professional to The Fifth Element to The Messenger, focusing on the feminized goddess archetype rising above all adversity, in ferocious neo-Darwinian fashion.  Lucy is the climax of this goddess myth, wherein Scarlett Johansson plays an inadvertent drug mule, “Lucy,” roped into an international conspiracy that quickly departs into something resembling The Matrix meets Limitless meets 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I suppose it’s difficult to get away from being influenced by the top science fiction films, but at a certain point, audiences can only see so many Matrix-y bullet stopping scenes, and replacing Keanu with a hot chick doesn’t make it any better.  Regardless, the transhumanist plot is really the focus here, as the premise is basically this: Since humans only use a small portion of their latent brainpower, what would happen if a human could use all 100%?  And what if Morgan Freeman, Hollywood’s imagined, soulful voice of God/science, could help facilitate that ascent of (wo)man to godhood?  As I observed this silly plot, I was reminded of Gravity, where references to Darwinian apotheosis also abound, as woman takes humanity to the next level by a punctuated equilibrium jump in the evolutionary spectrum.  Here, sweet Scarlett will catapult us ahead to the vaginal tech utopia.
Like The Fifth Element, where Milla Jovovich plays a feminine incarnation of the aether, or quintessence, Lucy becomes the feminine incarnation of reason and robotic rationality as she gradually ascends into the adoption of taking on what classical theology has called the incommunicable attributes of God: omniscience and omnipresence.  We never know if Lucy attains to omnibenevolence. The film continually references Darwinian process, highlighting the survival of the fittest, aeons of slow mutation, and Lucy, the laughable supposed first chimp, who was a female.  Sorry, my fellow men, as Besson would have us understand, men are not preeminent in reason, nor are men the real power that propels order and civilization, as that exalted role is reserved for the first Lucy, the imagined female chimp, and the last Lucy, Scarlett Johansson.
Lucy is thus a conglomeration of all the myths of secular thought and for this reason it is highly instructive.  While secularists, atheists, and materialists lambaste those of us with religious presuppositions, they are amazingly oblivious to their own religious assumptions.  Lucy is a great example, where all the myths of modern man are combined into a story line that demonstrates just how preposterous and divorced from reality secular mythology is.   Neo-Darwinian theory, a chaotic, purposeless universe, and an imminent, emergent deity of feminist exemplification through transhumanism all coalesce to give us the future goddess: Lucy.  It is worthwhile to note that Lucy also brings to mind Lucifer, lucid, and LSD, all of which relate to various mind control programs by the intelligence agencies.  Lucifer is the archetypal figure of transhumanist thought, representing the ascent of reason to displace the ancient and medieval superstitions embodied in the patriarchal God of the Bible.  However, I must point out the total contradiction that the hoped-for emergent god/goddess of the technocracy, the great supercomputer, also takes on the very attributes they think are irrational?  The transhumanists firmly believe their merging with hard drives will lead to omniscience.
It is worth mentioning that in La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element and in Lucy, MKULTRA mind control is also an important theme.  In Lucy, Lucy undergoes a kidnapping, drugging and accidental overdose, leading to her higher mental capacities “activating” through an advanced nootropic, wherein she becomes a perfectly cold assassin.  While the focus of the film is chance evolution and technocracy, this element cannot be overlooked.  Besson is clearly conveying to us the real purpose of the supersoldier programming that is now so prevalent in television and film – the perfection of (wo)man through mind control.   The occult message of Lucy is that evolution shows us that whatever testing and experimenting are done on humans is for the greater good.  Human testing is only propelling our evolutionary ascent, as we are merely animals, and only highly rational geniuses are able to understand this.  Since most of humanity cannot grasp these esoteric truths, the continued covert manipulation and bio-engineering must continue unabated.   Lucifer is guiding us to godhood – have faith, dear brothers, er sisters.

H.R. Giger’s “Lilith”

In the end, Lucy downloads herself into a supercomputer and puts all her full-booty goodness into a thumb drive.  Unfortunately, only Morgan Freeman ends up with the Lilith Lucy thumb drive, so sorry fellas, no USB Johansson hotness for you.  Like Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element, the quintessence only unites with a worthy male supplicant, and in Lucy, the only worthy supplicant is the gnostic black neuroscientist.  Lucy is a perfect representation of the combination of the humanist teleology and eschatology.  The film is premised on the crucial occult, alchemical and Marxist belief that “progress” only comes through the inversion of all order and hierarchy.  Women are the ultimate rational beings, chaos produces order, and finitude somehow inherently creates infinity.  While many movie goers scoff at the silly plot based on its reviews, isn’t it interesting that so many people actually believe this secular gnostic mythology in their daily life, yet attack religion? How about a multee-pass to another film?

best of multipass

Mr. President & Congress Do You Think It’s Wise to Take a 5 Week Vacation Right About Now?          look ,looky  ...ass pipes :0

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Richard Anthony

Obama bonds with two of his favorite golf partners… John Boehner and Joe Biden. Courtesy of Pat Dollard.

I’m just stating the obvious here, the country in going down the toilet, our southern border is literally under assault, the Middle East is on fire, the Ukraine is under siege and our President thinks this is a good time to go spend a lavish holiday at Martha’s Vineyard? And just so you don’t think I’m playing favorites; I don’t think Congress has any more right to take a break either!

I’m still waiting for someone, or anyone for that matter, in Washington DC right now to be the grown-up and say “I think we need to stay at our desks, things are out of control and we need to fix this mess.”

I can understand Obama wanting to take a vacation, hell, all those high priced dinners, fundraising activities & parties can wear you out! But I’m thinking at least congress would be responsible and adult enough to stay on the job, or is it wishful thinking that our elected officials would do the right thing and stay on the clock and fix this mess we’re in?

If you’re the boss of an outfit and the company is in a complete state of disarray, you don’t just take off for a month and let the minimum wage employee deal with it!  The boss stays at work and deals with whatever crisis the company is going through and only after the problem has been dealt with can he go on his cruise to the Bahamas. The same principle applies in Washington. The President, Senate and House of Representatives shouldn’t get to go on vacation while the country is in the crapper and let the bureaucrats deal with it while they’re gone. Most of those government employees are border-line idiots and can’t balance their own budgets, let alone deal with a national crisis.

So what makes President Obama think he can just take-off and go golfing, while our southern border is being over-run?  Oh wait, I forgot…he doesn’t have to worry about being re-elected anymore….silly me. But with the mid-term elections only a couple of months away, any member of Congress who thinks he has earned the right to any kind of break right now, must be smoking crack!

I think anyone who reads this article needs to call their elected representatives and tell them to keep their butts firmly planted in their seats and work this thing out. They have absolutely no right to expect any kind of break or vacation. I’d say the same thing about Obama, but he’d just make things worse, so let that moron go do whatever he wants. As long as he’s playing golf he can’t sign any executive orders and gum-up the works any worse than it is now.

I would write a strong emotional letter to my representatives, but they’d only respond with a form letter telling me how much they care about me and my state (I know, I’ve tried and that’s exactly what’s happened in the past). No, I think an angry phone call is in order.

I don’t know about the rest of you folks, but my family can’t afford to take a vacation this year, food prices are at an all-time high, gas is almost $4.00 for a gallon of regular and our medical costs this year alone have almost drained us dry. No, my family isn’t going to the beach or the mountains for a camping trip this year. So where does some politician get-off thinking that they can just take 5 weeks off?

That’s pretty ballsy if you ask me.

If you are just like me, then you know what I’m saying. Here is how you can call your elected officials and give them a piece of your mind.

I think every member of congress needs to get a phone call from every hard working American family! Tell these incompetent morons that they have no business leaving their office while things are the way they are in the country right now! Tell them to secure the border and “if” and only “if,” mind you, they can do that, then we’ll think about letting them come home for a break.

Until then, I say stay at your desk and get something done!

Richard Anthony is a US Army veteran who served from 1975 to 1980. He was stationed in Frankfurt West Germany from 1976 to 1978 with the 3rd Armored Divisions 143rd Signal Battalion as a Tactical Telecommunications Center Specialist and was also with the 1st Cavalry Division 1st/12th Cav as a Combat Medic until discharge in 1980. He has been married for 20 years and has 3 sons. He’s also a very involved Tea Party activist. Be sure to follow Richard on Facebook.

Courtesy of Freedom Outpost.

Alien Artifacts On The Moon?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2014/07/23/crowdsourcing-the-search-for-alien-artifacts/

As nutty as it may seem to the uninitiated, the notion of looking for alien artifacts on our own Moon may finally be gaining mainstream scientific traction.
There are good reasons to seriously consider the possibility that at some point in the Earth-Moon system’s storied 4.5 billion year-old history, an alien intelligence may have passed through our solar system; leaving physical artifacts of their visits.

These artifacts would likely entail more than just alien space trash, and would arguably include evidence of alien scientific or industrial activity, such as extremely advanced lunar mining, energy generation; even technology related to lunar nearside Earth reconnaissance.

Or so says Paul Davies, a longtime SETI (Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence) researcher, physicist, and now Director of the Beyond Center at Arizona State University in Tempe.

The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At least one related paper on the subject is due to presented at the September meeting of the UK SETI Research Network, a group of mainstream British academicians. But even a decade ago, talk of alien lunar artifacts was mostly beyond the ken of anything remotely resembling the mainstream astronomical community.
With the success of crowdsourcing, citizen science initiatives such as SETI@home; Einstein@home; and Cosmology@home however, Davies and a handful of other serious scientific researchers are now advocating marrying crowdsourcing analysis with the images now being catalogued by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Since 2009, LRO has been measuring lunar landforms down to half meter resolution; in the process targeting more than 10,000 lunar sites and covering up to 90 percent of the lunar surface. The mission’s current success has resulted in a treasure trove of thousands of very high resolution images, almost all of which could be searched via an citizen science initiative.
Davies thinks the ideal lunar survey would not only include a search for optical anomalies but would go beyond the breadth of LRO’s own mission to include searches for evidence of alien lunar industrial activity.
“[Evidence of past] mining or quarrying could show up in gravimetry or magnetic surveys, even if an ancient mine was buried under the lunar regolith,” said Davies. “We could detect [alien] nuclear waste perhaps from a lunar satellite by looking for localized gamma ray sources from the lunar surface.”
A crowdsource lunar image analysis initiative might use Tomnod-type search software in the same way that volunteers were recruited to search satellite imaging for the missing Malaysian 777.
Davies says at some stage any search needs to be automated and use state-of-the-art software.
“In searching for artifacts, one is looking for ‘something fishy’,” said Davies. “But ‘fishiness’ requires a human decision in advance about a signature of artificiality. There are some simple examples, like right angle edges. But we have little idea what million year-old technology might look like.”
Yet Andrew Siemion, a research astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley, says citizen science projects involving image analysis are relatively straightforward to set up.
“Professional astronomers sometimes suffer from the tendency to discount anything other than our expected signal as instrumental noise or some kind of interference,” said Siemion. “When identifying the unexpected, the eye of an amateur citizen scientist can be just as effective, if not more so, than that of a conditioned professional.”
Volunteers sifting through images as part of a crowdsourcing effort, could make their efforts dual purpose. That is, they might look for orange pyroclastic rocks or even residual vulcanism at the same time they would look for artificial anomalies.
Davies says a search for lunar artifacts should be combined with a search for unusual geological features. However improbable, Davies says planetary scientists need to keep their eyes open for non-random anomalies; even ones on the moon and scrutinize their respective databases to “keep an eye out” for putative signatures of alien technology.

A 1995 academic paper by Ukrainian radio astronomer Alexey Arkhipov argues that only artifacts larger than one meter in size would be found on the lunar surface; with objects smaller than that buried by meters of regolith due to the lunar surface’s continual bombardment by micrometeorites.
Even so, Davies says, the moon is an attractive environment to search for artifacts because they would be preserved for much longer than on Earth (or Mars ). “On Earth, human artifacts get buried in centuries,” said Davies. “On the Moon it takes millions or tens of millions of years.”
However, Davies thinks the case for jettisoned material or junk is stronger than a gadget deliberately left for what might be an unknown and truly immense duration.
Arkhipov argued that the peak of the southern wall of the moon’s nearside crater “Malapert” would make a logical site for alien reconnaissance of Earth, since our planet can always be seen from there.
“Given that the moon is a big place, it pays to narrow the search by such educated guesses,” said Davies. “Lunar lava tubes would preserve artifacts and also provide an attractive location for equipment to be shielded from ultraviolet radiation and meteorites.”
When would alien probes have first arrived in our solar system?
Because Earth is only about a third of the age of the universe, habitable planets in the galaxy could thus have emerged at least 8 billion years ago, says Davies. So, he notes it’s likely that if alien technology ever entered our solar system, it happened a long time ago. Assuming that the number of technological extraterrestrial civilizations remain uniform over time, then Davies says it’s still arguable that our solar system has been visited at least once during that 8 billion year timeframe.
Thus, Davies reasons that the average expectation for a visit is of the order 4 billion years ago and later. But he says even a 100 million years ago is optimistically the most recent timeframe for their arrival. And to think they’ve been here since the dawn of recorded human civilization, he says, would be pretty much a statistical impossibility.
However you cut the numbers, says Davies, you would not expect “recent” visits.
In any event, Davies doesn’t expect that there have been any visits by flesh and blood entities and if there were, he reckons they would have moved on. In the event biological entities did travel to actually colonize a new planet, Davies says they would likely pick one without burgeoning life forms, due to difficulties co-habitating with any existing biology.
“My position is that biological intelligence is but a transitory phase in the evolution of intelligence in the universe,” said Davies. “Why dispatch fragile biological entities on a hazardous journey across the vastness of space when almost all the intellectual heavy lifting, let alone the physical grunt work, will be done by designed systems?”
And Davies says if such a system happened to enter our solar system, for reasons we cannot even imagine, it may either “stay, go, or multiply.”
Of course, in science fiction, the most famous alien artifact was the enigmatic monolith envisioned in Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In the novel and subsequent film, the monolith appears to reactivate after being found just a few meters under the lunar regolith.
SETI searchers have long considered the possibility that dormant alien probes may have been sent to our solar system to wait as silent sentinels before our own technology wakes up to their possible presence. SETI researchers have even considered the possibility of beaming radio beacons to the Earth-Sun gravitational Lagrange points in hopes of “awakening” such unseen probes. That is, if they are out there.
In the last 40 years, before the advent of digital photon counters on telescopes, there were two relatively cursory searches within both the Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon Lagrange points, using comparatively small aperture optical telescopes at Kitt Peak, Arizona and Leuschner Observatory in California. Both failed to detect any such non-human artificial objects.
John Gertz, president of the California-based FIRSST (Foundation for Investing in Research on SETI Science and Technology) initiative, suggests conducting a radio search for a beacon within our own inner solar system that would have been activated at the probe’s first detection of Earth’s own electromagnetic leakage. He thinks it would now be broadcasting now at very low wattage and would have no message, other than the implied one, “I am here; and I am artificial.”

Likely smaller than a car, but larger than a grapefruit, Gertz says the payload, a virtual Encylopedia Galactica — or their civilization’s complete history and knowledge — could be stored on a thumb drive which we would literally have to physically retrieve.
This, of course, assumes that the designers of such probes would have an innate desire to bare their alien souls to an emerging technology like ours.
“Physical encoding is a very efficient way of transmitting very large amounts of information from point-to-point,” said Siemion. “So, it is entirely possible that an advanced civilization might choose to disseminate large amounts of information via encoded physical artifacts.”
There may even be more than one such probe waiting for us.
“There is no reason to believe that only one civilization has sent a probe; there may be a variety of probes out there,” said Gertz.
So, why not look?
“I advocate searching all free searchable databases just for the hell of it,” said Davies.

The Malaysian Airline MH17 Crash: Sixteen Central Issues Which Cannot be Ignored

By Julie Lévesque

Global Research, July 26, 2014

Region: Russia and FSU

Theme: Media Disinformation, US NATO War Agenda

In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT

In establishing who was behind the shooting down of MH17,  there are a number of central issues as well as factual evidence which cannot be overlooked:
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1. Malaysian Airlines confirmed that the pilot was instructed to fly at a lower altitude by the Kiev air traffic control tower upon its entry into Ukraine airspace. (Malaysian Airlines MH17 Was Ordered to Fly over the East Ukraine Warzone)
2. The flight path was changed. We still don’t know who ordered it, but we know it was not Eurocontrol:

MH17 was diverted from the normal South Easterly route over the sea of Azov to a path over the Donetsk. Oblast. (The Flight Path of MH17 Was Changed. July 17 Plane Route was over the Ukraine Warzone)

According to Malaysian Airlines “The usual flight route [across the sea of Azov] was earlier declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The International Air Transportation Association has stated that the airspace the aircraft was traversing was not subject to restrictions.”
…
The regular flight path of MH17 (and other international flights) over a period of ten days prior to July 17th ( day of the disaster), crossing Eastern Ukraine in a Southeasterly direction is across the Sea of Azov (click on the article link below to see the map). While the audio records of the MH17 flight have been confiscated by the Kiev government, the order to change the flight path did not come from Eurocontrol. Did this order to change the flight path come from the Ukrainian authorities? Was the pilot instructed to change course? (Malaysian Airlines MH17 Was Ordered to Fly over the East Ukraine Warzone)

3.  The presence of the Ukrainian military jet was confirmed by Spanish air traffic controller “Carlos” at Kiev Borispol airport shortly after the plane was shot down, as well as eyewitnesses in Donetsk. (How American Propaganda Works: “Guilt By Insinuation”, Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing MH#17
The Spanish air traffic controller documented the event on Twitter as it happened. He claimed it was not an accident, that the Ukrainian authorities shot down MH17 and were trying to “make it look like an attack by pro-Russians” . His Twitter account was closed down shortly after the tragedy. Although his account has yet to be fully corroborated, some of his claims have been confirmed by Malaysian Airlines and the Russian authorities.

There have been some reports to the effect the Spanish Air controller is fake and that the twitter message were sent out of London. Upon further investigation, the Spanish Air Controller conducted several media interviews in the last 2-3 months, see his interview with RT (Spanish Air Controller @ Kiev Borispol Airport: Ukraine Military Shot Down Boeing MH#17)

4. Russia has made available public radar and satellite imagery as evidence. Its images suggest the following:

a) Kiev’s regime deployed anti-air missile systems in Donetsk in and around the area where flight MH17 crashed.
b) An Ukrainian warplane SU-25 trailing flight MH17
c) the report pointed to the possibility of an air-to-air attack on MH17
d) the report also pointed to inconsistencies pertaining to the reports of the Ukrainian air traffic control

The Russian authorities did not come to any conclusion regarding who was to blame for shooting down the plane. (MH17 Show & Tell: It’s the West’s Turn – Russian Satellites and Radars Contradict West’s Baseless Claims)
5. The U.S., despite its global spying apparatus, has not shown any radar or satellite imagery to back its claim that Russia and the Eastern-Ukrainian opposition are responsible for the downing of MH17. The evidence it has presented so far is weak and based on pro-Kiev documents consisting of YouTube videos and various social media – “all of which are admittedly unverifiable and some of which is veritably fabricated.”:

Is US intelligence simply reading blogs? Or are the blogs somehow a clearinghouse of US intelligence? Or are the blogs fabrications by US intelligence in an attempt to frame Russia? One in particular, “Ukraine at War,” is a definitive collection of fabrications, biased propaganda, and dubious claims that appear to precede “US intelligence” claims. (Assigning Blame to East Ukraine Rebels: US Appeals to “Law of the Jungle” in MH17 Case)

6. “The Russian Defense Ministry pointed out that at the moment of destruction of MH-17 an American satellite was flying over the area”:

The Russian government urges Washington to make available the photos and data captured by the satellite.(How American Propaganda Works: “Guilt By Insinuation”)

7. A U.S. intelligence source claimed the “U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailed satellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms”. These images could confirm the evidence presented by Russia to the effect that Kiev’s regime deployed anti-air missile systems in Donetsk in and around the area where flight MH17 crashed. (Fact number 4, Whistleblower: U.S. Satellite Images Show Ukrainian Troops Shooting Down MH17)
8. Russia called for an expert independent investigation:

President Putin has repeatedly stressed that the investigation of MH-17 requires “a fully representative group of experts to be working at the site under the guidance of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).”  Putin’s call for an independent expert examination by ICAO does not sound like a person with anything to hide. (How American Propaganda Works: “Guilt By Insinuation”)

9. The U.S. claimed, without evidence, but “with confidence” that Russia was involved:

[On  July 20, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry confirmed that pro-Russian separatists were involved in the downing of the Malaysian airliner and said that it was “pretty clear” that Russia was involved. Here are Kerry’s words:  “It’s pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia into the hands of separatists. We know with confidence, with confidence, that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point and time, so it obviously points a very clear finger at the separatists.” (Ibid.)

10. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's statement above regarding Russian involvement is contradicted by the Russian satellite photos and numerous eye witnesses on the ground. (Ibid.)
11. US intelligence officials said there is no evidence of the Russian government’s involvement, also contradicting John Kerry's statement above. (US Intelligence on Malaysian Flight MH17: Russia Didn’t Do It. “US Satellite Photos do not Support Obama’s Lies”, The author refers to this news item by the Associated Press: US INTELLIGENCE: No 'Direct' Russian Involvement In Downing Of MH17)
12. A few hours after the crash, Kiev authorities presented a video in which the opposition admitted shooting down the plane. Experts who studied the video concluded that it was a fabrication:

“The tape’s second fragment consists of three pieces but was presented as a single audio recording. However, a spectral and time analysis has showed that the dialog was cut into pieces and then assembled. Short pauses in the tape are very indicative: the audio file has preserved time marks which show that the dialog was assembled from various episodes.” (Ibid.)

 The encoding of the video file shows it was created on July 16, the day before the plane was shot down. This information remains to be confirmed, but if it is accurate, it would mean that the Ukrainian authorities shot the plane down and fabricated evidence to frame the opposition (Did Ukraine Fabricate Evidence to Frame Russia for MH17 Shoot Down?, How American Propaganda Works: “Guilt By Insinuation”)
13. John Kerry “referred to a video that the Ukrainians have made public showing an SA-11 unit heading back to Russia after the downing of the plane with 'a missing missile or so.'” The video was “posted on the Facebook account of the Ukrainian Interior Minister.”According to numerous sources the video was “taken in or near Krasnoarmeisk”, a town under Kiev's control since May and located “ 120 kilometers from the Russian border and 80 kilometers from where the Malaysian Boeing 777 crashed”:

At least one other clip of the “Russian Buk” that has been made available also suggests that the Ukrainians are showing their own equipment. I’m still working on researching that one for you. (Key Piece of Video “Evidence” for Russian Responsibility for Malaysian Plane Shootdown Debunked)

14. Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Vitaly Yarema said the Ukrainian opposition did not possess a Buk missile system:

“Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said on July 17 that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 airliner had been downed by the Buk missile system...Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Vitaly Yarema told Ukrainian Pravda newspaper on Friday: 'After the passenger airliner was downed, the military reported to the president that terrorists do not have our air defense missile systems Buk and S-300... These weapons were not seized'” (Militias Do Not Have Ukrainian Buk Missile System — Ukraine General Prosecutor)

15. The MH17 incident is used to wage economic war against Russia. Sanctions imposed in the wake of the event, without any evidence of Russian implication, are used to weaken the ruble and destabilize the Russian Monetary system. (The Malaysian Airlines MH17 Crash: Financial Warfare --against Russia, Multibillion Dollar Bonanza for Wall Street)
16. In 1962, the U.S. Joint Chief of Staff planned Operation Northwoods, a secret "false flag operation" (declassified) in which a civilian airliner was to be shot down and blamed on the Cuban government. The objective was to manufacture a pretext to wage war on Cuba. (The Implementation of Operations Northwoods was turned down by President John F. Kennedy).

The downing of MH17 and the reaction of the US authorities and media bear strong similarities with the scenario depicted in Operation Northwoods, according to author R. Teichmann:

"Among other things the document proposed the following. I [Teichman] have inserted in bold (in parenthesis) my comments to illustrate why the MH-17 incident could be a re-run of the proposed Operation Northwoods:

It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft  (a BuK Anti-Aircraft missile system supplied by Russia to the ‘Separatists” in eastern Ukraine) has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner (Malaysian Airlines MH-17) en route from the United States (Amsterdam, Schipol airport) to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama, or Venezuela (Kuala Lumpur) .

It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs (Eastern Ukraine ‘Separatists’) have destroyed a USAF aircraft (Malaysian passenger aircraft) over international waters (their territory) in an unprovoked attack. (Framing Russia? Fabricating a Pretext to Wage War: Flight MH-17 and “Operation Northwoods”)