Monsanto’s Sealed Documents Reveal the Truth behind Roundup’s Toxicological Dangers

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null

Global Research, September 16, 2015

Progressive Radio Network 15 September 2015

Theme: Biotechnology and GMO

The year 2015 hasn’t been kind to Monsanto. In March, the World Health Organization declared that the company’s flagship product, its herbicide glyphosate or Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen. Increasingly, national health ministries are taking a hard second look at glyphosate’s health and environmental dangers and efforts are underway to ban the herbicide.[1] To protect its citizens, last year the Netherlands, Bermuda and Sri Lanka have either banned or imposed strict limits on Roundup. Last June, France banned its use in gardens. Brazil, Germany and Argentina are considering legislative bans. And this month, California’s environmental protection agency launched plans to label Roundup as a carcinogen.[2]

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world today. Over 130 countries currently permit extensive use of the chemical. The US is the largest consumer, using approximately 20% of the world’s Roundup.[3] The latest reliable figures from the US Geological Survey record 280 million pounds of Roundup were used in 2012, nearly a pound for every American.[4] In 2013, gross profit of $371 million on crop chemicals including Roundup climbed 73% due to a 37% increase in sales. That same year Monsanto’s net income rose 22% to $1.48 billion.[5]

Over the years a large body of independent research has accumulated and now collectively provides a sound scientific rationale to confirm that glyphosate is far more toxic and poses more serious health risks to animals and humans than Monsanto and the US government admit. Among the many diseases and health conditions non-industry studies identified Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and autism since Roundup has been shown to instigate aluminum accumulation in the brain. The herbicide has been responsible for reproductive problems such as infertility, miscarriages, and neural tube and birth defects. It is a causal agent for a variety of cancers: brain, breast, prostate, lung and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Other disorders include chronic kidney and liver diseases, diabetes, heart disease, hypothyroidism, and leaky gut syndrome. In addition to lung cancer, glyphosate may be responsible for today’s growing epidemics of chronic respiratory illnesses among farm workers and their families.[6] However, these findings derive from outside the Big Agriculture industry. Private industries routinely defend themselves by positing their own research to refute independent reports. Consequently, for several decades it has been a he-said-she-said stalemate. Monsanto is content with this. It can conduct business as usual, Roundup sales increase, and the debates and media wars continue without government interference. Then who is protecting the public?

Government officials and health regulators more often than not simply ignore these studies even if published in peer-reviewed journals. The bulk are independently funded. Most have been performed in foreign nations and therefore American bias dismisses them outright. Furthermore, Monsanto and other large chemical agricultural companies are quick to counter and discredit adverse scientific findings. The company has the financial means to retain large international PR firms, such as Burson-Marsteller and Fleishman Hillard, consultation firms and think tanks, as well as large armies of hired trolls and academic spokepersons to mobilize damage control upon notice and protect the integrity of Monsanto’s products and public image. It funds and orchestrates self-serving research at universities and research laboratories to increase an arsenal of junk science. And of course it has Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates as its celebrity cheerleaders.

The EPA continues to align itself with Monsanto’s safety claims and limits glyphosate’s risks to kidney, reproductive and carcinogenic damage; and the warning only applies for very long-term exposure to high levels of the toxin. Anything under that is considered harmless. The EPA continues to approve small amounts of glyphosate as safe in drinking water to children. Its safety level is 0.7 ug/L. This was determined back in 1994, and after 20 years of further research into glyphosate’s biomolecular activities and health risks, the level has remained the same.[7,8] A review of existing data sponsored by Moms Across America found that out of 21 drinking water samples analyzed, 13 had glyphosate levels between 0.08 and 0.3 ug/L, well below the EPA’s limit, but significantly above the European Union’s limit of 0.1 ug/L.[9]

While the company manages to successfully dodge scientific research outside its purview, the tables would certainly turn if it could be proven in a court of law that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate is one of the most toxic substances ever launched on the public, which adversely affects almost every tissue and cell in a mammal’s body.

Imagine for a minute that evidence emerged to implicate Monsanto on a massive cover-up and manipulation of scientific data from hundreds of research trials. If it were Monsanto’s data indicting itself about glyphosate’s toxicity, and if it can be shown the company falsified, masked or fudged its data to win regulatory approval, it may likely be the largest corporate scandal in history. The question could Monsanto be charged with crimes of omission and more deservingly crimes against humanity?

This scenario may not be fantasy or the wishful thinking of GMO’s opponents. The case has a precedent and has been played out in the courts before. In November 1998, the US government won a judgment against the four largest US tobacco companies: Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard. The case came to trial after a former vice president of research and development at Brown & Williamson, Jeffrey Wigand, turned whistleblower and revealed that his company concealed the tobacco’s health risks and was making concerted efforts to addict people to smoking. High ranking executives were found to have approved the inclusion of known addictive and carcinogenic chemicals, such as coumarin, in its cigarettes to increase smoking, sales and profits.

Before the trial there had never been a lawsuit lost by a tobacco company because no one could prove with absolute medical certainty that smoking had ever caused lung cancer or emphysema. During Congressional hearings, all seven CEOs representing the four tobacco giants lied under oath stating they had no knowledge about an association between nicotine and brain addiction. Their rationale was that they believed their research data and marketing strategies were protected under propriety secrecy claims and therefore they could avoid conviction. Although FDA scientists possessed all the necessary information that could condemn Big Tobacco’s false claims, the industry relied upon proprietary rules in order to hide behind legal protection. The FDA was silenced and powerless to make the industry’s information public. Consequently it is estimated that millions of people died from a risk that could have been prevented or at least reduced substantially. Instead, the FDA honored the tobacco industry above all human life.

The guilty verdict, which resulted in the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement against the tobacco companies, enforced a minimum $206 billion settlement over a 25 year period. While the majority of payments were to settle 46 states’ Medicaid lawsuits to recover smoking related health costs, the settlement unfortunately exempted the industry from private tort claims. Many critics of the Agreement state that the settlement was too merciful. No tobacco executive went to prison and evidence indicates the industry emerged stronger and consolidated the companies into an ever more powerful cartel.[10]

What busted the tobacco companies was not the scientific evidence piling up outside the industry. Rather it was its crimes of omission about cigarettes’ health risks within the industry. The industry’s own research prosecuted itself. And this is demanded today in order to bring down Monsanto’s chemical regime and to protect populations and children throughout the world.

Perhaps we might want to consider the atmosphere Monsanto faced after it first developed glyphosate in 1973 and prepare for EPA approval for the remainder of the decade.

During the latter half of the 1970s, Monsanto’s leading products were under federal inquiry and public assault regarding safety. Dioxin had been banned. Safety concerns arose over its sweetener saccharin, and cyclamate was removed from the market. The company’s attempts to get it’s new artificial sweetener aspartame confronted obstacles during FDA scientific review. Independent research had shown that aspartame caused brain tumors in mammals. And its best selling herbicide at the time, Lasso, was showing signs of carcinogenicity. Today Lasso is a restricted-use pesticide due to its oncogenicity. With sales falling and future growth under threat, Monsanto faced a desperate need to launch a new and novel flagship product. Monsanto found itself banking its future on its new herbicide glyphosate. As we recently discovered, enormous amounts of research, analysis and hundreds of trials were conducted to learn as much as possible about the compound’s bioactivity in mammals and its potential health risks. All of this research data, studies and reports were subsequently sealed as trade secrets upon submission to the EPA. For over thirty years it has sat in the EPA vaults.

Monsanto has yet to be caught and charged for falsifying scientific data on glyphosate. However on earlier occasions two laboratories Monsanto outsourced research to were caught and indicted. In 1978, the EPA busted Industrial Biotest Laboratories for rigging laboratory results; the company’s executives were found guilty for submitting fabricated data supporting glyphosate positively to the government. In 1991, another firm, Craven Labs, was found guilty on similar charges with 20 felony counts.[11]

To this day, Monsanto continues to assert that Roundup is environmentally friendly. We are told it biodegrades rapidly and therefore poses no long-term risks after repeated usage. We are told that the herbicide is ideal for weed control. Throughout the US, it is liberally sprayed on our public parks, school playgrounds, sporting fields, and throughout our lawns and gardens. We are told it doesn’t bio-accumulate in the body’s cells and tissues and is excreted rapidly. We are also told that glyphosate toxicity is dose specific. Only exceedingly high levels of the pesticide pose any serious health risks.[12]

How factual are these claims or are they mere propaganda to obscure scientific truths far more deceptive and sinister? To answer that we would have to know for certain whether or not Monsanto conducted long-term studies on glyphosate that revealed devastating toxic effects on mammal health. We would need evidence that their own data clearly negates their scientific declarations, and that the company intentionally, and with forethought, either distorted or concealed data from federal regulatory officials and the public.

There is now an enormous cache of evidence on both scientific and legal grounds that Monsanto in fact conducted numerous studies in the 1970s and 1980s on glyphosate’s toxicity and health risks and intentionally sealed this research from independent and public review and scrutiny. As with Big Tobacco’s proprietary claims that prevented the FDA from publicly warning Americans about the dangers of smoking, the EPA has sat on Monsanto’s own deleterious data for decades.

Anthony Samsel is an independent research scientist working internationally in the interest of public health and the environment. He is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and a former scientist and consultant at Arthur D. Little, one of the world’s leading management consulting firms. Now retired, Samsel has devoted much of his independent research on Roundup’s toxicological characteristics and bioactivity. Unable to gain access to research reports and data Monsanto submitted to the EPA through FOIAs, he turned to his senator’s office, who assisted in the procurement of studies and reports he sought. Months later he received a hoard of scientific documents, over 15,000 pages worth, covering Monsanto’s complete glyphosate research.

With his co-investigator Dr. Stephanie Seneff at MIT the two have been reviewing Monsanto’s data. Their conclusion is Monsanto’s claims about glyphosate’s safety are patently false. The company has known for almost four decades that glyphosate is responsible for a large variety of cancers and organ failures. Clearly it was for this reason that Monsanto demanded the data and reports to be sealed and hidden from public scrutiny as proprietary trade secrets.

During an exclusive interview on the Progressive Radio Network on September 4, Samsel stated that Monsanto used an industry trick to dismiss evidence about glyphosate’s risks in its own research. “Monsanto misrepresented the data,” says Samsel, “and deliberately covered up data to bring the product [glyphosate] to market.”[13]

In order to minimize and cancel out its adverse findings, Samsel explained that Monsanto had relied upon earlier historical animal control data, toxicological research with lab animals afflicted with cancer and organ failures, and completely unrelated to glyphosate. In some cases the control animals displayed kidney, liver and pancreatic diseases. Many of Monsanto’s own studies required the inclusion of extraneous studies in order to cancel out damaging results. This is not an uncommon industry habit, particularly in toxicological science. It enables corporations to mask undesirable outcomes and make claims that observable illnesses and disease are spontaneous occurrences without known causal factors. Frequently, Monsanto would have to rely on three external control studies to negate the adverse effects of a single one of its own. Samsel found other incidences in Monsanto’s data where 5, 7 and in one case 11 unrelated studies were necessary to diminish the severity of its own findings. In effect, glyphosate received licensure based upon a platform of junk tobacco science. By ignoring cause and effect relationships behind the onset of multiple cancers and other life-threatening diseases throughout many of its research trials, Monsanto engaged in a radical scientific denialism that has since raked in tens of billions of dollars.

But the cache of Monsanto documents, after Samsel’s and Seneff’s review, reveals much more that we should be worried about.

In addition, Monsanto’s studies included doses from low to high range. Samsel observed that low glyphosate doses were equally if not more toxic than higher doses. The company later discontinued low dose trials, relying only on higher levels because it is customarily assumed to have greater toxicological risks. Samsel’s observation has recently been confirmed by a study published in the August issue of the Environmental Health Journal by scientists at Kings College London and the University of Caen in France. The two year study found that glyphosate administered at an ultra low dose of 0.1 ppb (the EU’s safety limit) in drinking water altered over 4000 gene clusters in the livers and kidneys of rats. These alterations, the study reports, “were consistent with fibrosis, necrosis, phospholipidosis, mitochondria membrane dysfunction and ischemia.”[14] Consequently low doses of Roundup are far more toxic than US EPA limits.

During its years investigating glyphosate’s bioactivity, Monsanto conducted hundreds of trials on mice, rats, beagle dogs, rabbits and other life. Among the many cancers and diseases Monsanto’s own research found associated with glyphosate are:

Adenoma cancer in the pituitary gland
Glioma tumors in the brain
Reticular cell sarcomas in the heart
Malignant tumors in the lungs
Salivary mandibular reticular cell carcinoma
Metastatic sarcomas of the lymph gland
Prostate carcinoma
Cancer of the bladder
Thyroid carcinoma
Adrenal reticulum cell sarcomas
Cortical adenomas
Basal cell squamous skin tumors

In female mammals there were cancers of the lung, liver, thymus, stomach, bladder adrenal glands, ovaries, colon, uterus, parathyroid and mammary glands.

Samsel and Seneff also noticed that Monsanto had conducted many long-term studies, as much as two years, on mice and rats. When Gilles-Eric Seralini and his French team reproduced and extended the length of Monsanto’s 3-month GMO maize rat-fed study for the life of the animals, they observed profuse cancer and tumor development started after the 4th month of the study. Monsanto continues to stand by its 3-month study as sufficient proof of GM maize’s safety. Yet the thoroughness and variety of Monsanto’s research operations should give strong reason to suspect that Monsanto has likewise conducted long term studies and knows all too well the deleterious effects of its pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified crops.

One of Monsanto’s claims is that glyphosate doesn’t bio-accumulate in tissues, rapidly bio-degrades and is excreted from the body readily. Contrary to this claim, Monsanto carried out meticulous studies to determine levels of accumulation and the organs, tissues and cells glyphosate reaches. Glyphosate was radio labeled with carbon 14 and given in 10 mg doses to seven groups of animals, male and female. After only 24 hours, the toxic chemical was found in the lungs and all body fluids: lymph, blood, urine and cerebral spinal fluid. Glyphosate also accumulated in the bone by 30 ppm and in the bone marrow by 4 ppm. Monsanto’s studies were comprehensive. It found an accumulation of the chemical in red cells, thyroid, uterus, colon, testes and ovaries, shoulder muscle, nasal mucosa, heart, lung, small intestine, abdominal muscle and the eyes.

Samsel and Seneff noted that the bioaccumuilation in the pancreas was not reported. Why would such meticulous efforts be made to measure radio labeled carbon 14 laced glyphosate levels in all the other organs, tissues and bodily fluids and then ignore the pancreas? The scientists believe this was deliberate.

Samsel notes that glyphosate does a “particular number on the lungs.” According to a 2014 report by the National Cancer Institute, lung cancer rates have been declining. The decline is largely due to the national decrease in smoking. However, other lung cancers such as adenocarcinomas are on the rise. The NCI is unable to account for this anomaly.[15] Yet the Institute is not considering that Americans are increasingly being exposed to glyphosate in their food, water and environment?

During the PRN interview, Dr. Seneff stated that the pancreas may be driving glyphosate to gather in the lungs. The pancreas is responsible for the release of the enzyme trypsin. which in turn infiltrates the lungs. A study published by Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Santa Maria in the medical journal Ciencia Rural measured glyphosate’s reactivity with digestive enzymes including trypsin. Trypsin activity was found to increase in parallel to higher glyphosate concentrations.[16] Seneff suggests that this may be contributing to the increase of glyphosate in the lungs that is contributing to the dramatic rise in COPD and asthma conditions, as well as lung cancers.

The occurrence of cataracts is rising rapidly, particularly in Mid-Western states such as ND, SD, NB, IA, KS, and MO. According to Prevent Blindness America’s statistics, 17% of adults over 40 years have cataract problems. The NIH projects the rate will reach nearly 40% by 2030.[17] Monsanto’s study showing glyphosate activity in the eye may be contributing to this epidemic. Dr. Seneff stated that the eye’s exposure to sunlight reacts with glyphosate residue thereby potentially making the chemical more toxic. Farmers often apply glyphosate on crops when it is warm, moist and when there is plenty of sunlight in order for the chemical to activate more effectively. These are similar conditions to our eyes during the day.

Monsanto’s research was not limited solely to the Roundup compound. It also performed extensive research on glyphosate’s individual metabolites, the intermediate molecules that result after Roundup’s breakdown through metabolic reactions. Many of these metabolites are every bit as toxic as glyphosate. All the glyphosate metabolites in solutions fed to rats were measured before and after feeding. One of Samsel’s more disturbing discoveries was that levels of the metabolite N-Nitrosoglyphosate (NNG) were found in higher concentrations in the rats’ feces and urine excretions than the original amount in the feeding solutions. NNG is a known carcinogen and endocrine disruptor. Samsel postulates that our own body’s natural nitrous acid reacts immediately with glyphosate, without requiring a catalyst, to produce NNG. Both the EPA and the World Health Organization acknowledge that NNG is present in glyphosate during the manufacturing process. The agencies therefore have established safety limits for NNG. However, for any endocrine disruptor, there is no realistic safety limit because such chemical disruptors destroy cells on a molecule to molecule basis.

Nitrous acid naturally occurs in the colon, urinary tract and skin tissue. According to the CDC, skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the US, and affects more men than women. The Skin Cancer Foundation estimates that “each year there are more new cases of skin cancer than the combined incidence of cancers of the breast, prostate, lung and colon.”[18,19] Basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas are the two most common forms, both which have been identified by Monsanto with glyphosate exposure, particularly in males. When glyphosate reacts in the skin along with nitrous acid the metabolites NNG contributes to skin melanomas. Other chemicals are added to Monsanto’s Roundup to increase its effectiveness such as the surfactant POEA (polyethoxylated tallow amine), which also increases its toxicity.

We don’t pay enough attention to these other ingredients, Samsel states, because the EPA permits Monsanto to add anything it wants to enhance Roundup’s potency while identifying these substances innocuously as “inert.” When Monsanto convinces the public that glyphosate breaks down quickly, we are not told that the compound’s metabolic byproducts are equally toxic.

Therefore Anthony Samsel’s unprecedented discovery and review of Monsanto’s actual scientific and toxicological data of Roundup has provided us with information that warrants a thoughtful pause. Samsel and Seneff cover the subject in more detail in a new peer-reviewed paper titled “Glyphosate Pathways to Modern Diseases IV: Cancer and Related Pathologies.” The paper has been approved for publication in October.

During recent years dozens of states are submitting bills to label GMO foods. These food crops are heavily laced with glyphosate residue. Not only GM crops, but even non-GM produce are sprayed with Roundup. According to the Organic Consumers Association, non-organic and non-GM foods such as wheat, barley, oats, flax, peas, lentils, beans and sugar cane are also being sold to farmers “as a dessicant, to dry out all their crops so they could harvest them faster.”[20] Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Grocery Manufacturers of America and other agro-chemical companies are aggressively combating labeling efforts. The Big Ag lobby is today pushing for a national bill to prevent GMO labeling that would supersede individual state’s rights. We can only wonder what the voting outcome in California, Colorado, Washington and Oregon may have been had Monsanto’s own research been made available to the media and public. Is it therefore not time for full Congressional hearings to learn the truth once for all and make the disclosure of Monsanto’s Roundup research public for all?

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Seeds of Death about GMOs and Poverty Inc. More at the Progressive Radio Network

Notes:

[1] Daniel Cressey. “Widely Used Herbicide Linked to Cancer” Nature. March 25, 2015

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-cancer/

[2] RT (Russian TV). “California EPA mulls labeling Monsanto’s Roundup as being ‘known to cause cancer” September 6, 2015https://www.rt.com/usa/314544-california-epa-glyphosate-carcinogenic/

[3] Alexis Baden-Mayer, “Monsanto’s Roundup. Enough to Make You Sick” Organic Consumers Association. January 21, 2015

https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/monsanto%E2%80%99s-roundup-enough-make-you-sick

[4] Mary Ellen Kustin. “Glyphosate Is Spreading Like a Cancer Across the U.S.” Environmental Working Group. April 7, 2015

http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2015/04/glyphosate-spreading-cancer-across-us

[5] Jack Kaskey, “Monsanto Raises Forecast as Profits Tops Estimates on Corn” Bloomberg Business, April 3, 2013.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-03/monsanto-raises-forecast-as-profit-tops-estimates-on-corn-seed

[6] Alexis Baden-Mayer, op.cit.

[7] Environmental Protection Agency “Glyphosate Fact Sheet”http://www.epa.gov/safewater/pdfs/factsheets/soc/tech/glyphosa.pdf

[8] Environmental Protection Agency. “Basic Information about Glyphosate in Drinking Water”

http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/glyphosate.cfm

[9]Zen Honeycutt, Henry Rowlands, Lori Grace. “Glyphosate Testing Full Report: Findings in American Mothers’ Breast Milk, Urine and Water,” Moms Across America. April 7, 2015 http://www.momsacrossamerica.com/glyphosate_testing_results

[10] “Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement,” Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement

[11] “Monsanto Timeline of Crime 1901-2014” Children of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance. February 16, 2015.http://covvha.net/monsanto-1901-2014-timeline/

[12] EPA, “Glyphosate Fact Sheet” op cit.

[13] Interview with Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff. Gary Null Show, Progressive Radio Network. Broadcast on September 4, 2015. http://prn.fm/the-gary-null-show-09-04-15/

[14] Mesnage R, Arno M, Costanzo M, Seralini G-E, Antoniou M., “Transcriptome profile analysis reflects rat liver and kidney damage following chronic ultra-low dose Roundup exposure” Environmental Health 2015, 14:70 doi:10.1186/s12940-015-0056-1

[15] “Lung Cancer Fact Sheet.” American Lung Association. http://www.lung.org/lung-disease/lung-cancer/resources/facts-figures/lung-cancer-fact-sheet.html

[16] Salbero I, Pretto A, Machado da Silva V, Loro V, Lazzari R, Baldisserotto B. “Glyposate on digestive enzymes activity in piava (Leporinus obtusidens). Cencia Rural Vol. 44 no. 9. September 2014.

[17] “Vision Problems in the US,” Prevent Blindness America. http://www.visionproblemsus.org/cataract/cataract-map.html

[18] Skin Cancer Foundation. “Skin Cancer Facts.” http://www.skincancer.org/skin-cancer-information/skin-cancer-facts

[19] “Skin Cancer Statistics,” Centers for Disease Control. http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/statistics/

[20] Alexis Baden-Mayer, op cit.

Copyright © Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, Progressive Radio Network, 2015

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Esoteric Analysis

jay008 / January 25, 2011

Mirror image film poster showing Nicole’s ‘open’ eye in the midst of sex: the characters’ inner pysches and problems are about to be mirrored in the ‘real’ world, as they realize they have been blind and ‘profane.’

By: Jay Dyer

Eyes Wide Shut is a film that failed to live to the expectations of many. It was supposed to be an edgy thriller that made statements about upper echelon decadence, while also utilizing the real world sex life of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman as a kind of doorway bridging the gap between reality and fantasy – something that does come up in other Kubrick films, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In this Kubrick film, however, we have a statement about who runs the “show.”  The show is both the film itself, as well as reality, and Kubrick wants viewers to realize that reality is run by our present showmasters of the videodrome. The viewer is supposed to reflect upon the decadence of the Eastern elite establishment, but also notice that viewing the film itself is homage to present social hypocrisy, since the film is a wannabe voyeuristic step into the sex lives of others. In this regard, it functions as an initiation. None of the other analysts and commenters have really noticed this. Virtually every review I have read sees it as some elaborate “MKULTRA/Illuminati” mind control thing (as is supposedly everything on those sites), while other reviews from professors and academia see it as a social or psychological commentary.
I think it has elements of all this, but the real goal is, I believe, an initiation process. The viewer is at the film because he or she is curious about Hollywood secrets and elite lives. Think of all the silly gossip magazines we have.  The “average Joe” went to see the film for a glimpse of Nicole Kidman, and Kubrick wants the viewer to see the hypocrisy in such an action, given that most people will “judge” the film’s secret society cult. Eyes Wide Shut, then, is a descriptor of the audience, as well as the characters in the film, who don’t really understand the socio-political power base that runs things. The power base is not, according to Kubrick’s film, the average politician or wealthy doctor or lawyer in New York.  Indeed, this is precisely Kidman and Cruise’s characters’ status: they are unwitting inductees. Thus throughout the film, the viewers eyes are wide shut to the reality of the power structure, just as Kidman and Cruise’s characters are, until the end, when they have their eyes “opened,” as they both say at the end. Let us proceed.
The opening scene shows us Mrs. Harford (Nicole Kidman) between two pillars. This is the doorway to the initiation, in other words. The two pillars figure prominently in Freemasonry as the entranceway to the divine, as borrowed from Solomon’s temple:

Nicole stands between two pillars – Jachin and Boaz, setting the initiatory tone for the film.

The two pillars of Freemasonry borrowed from Solomon’s Temple, indicating the doorway to the “mysteries”

The viewer is being told from the beginning that they are to undergo an initiation into how the “mysteries” and the secret societies work, particularly from a sociological perspective.  The Harfords, we discover, are having marital troubles related to sexual frustrations. It is also significant that it is Christmas time, when the initiatory procedure takes place, as a kind of anti-traditional religious/anti-Christian statement. It is also important to remember that all details in a Kubrick film are significant – the placement of everything is meaningful and deliberate.

As mentioned in the picture above, the film is full of mirrors, which are symbols of the psyche, the inner world as it were, as well as other worlds. This occurs in Alice in Wonderland, for example, and this theme, as well as the Wizard of Oz, both figure prominently, and are theosophical allegories. Most commenters who note this point to it as some kind of MKULTRA control mechanism, but I think that is far-flung – more realistic would be the usage of such stories as allegories or metaphors for transformation – the metamorphosis of initiation into the “mysteries,” if you will. Both stories have theosophic undertones and symbolism, and thus constitute initiatory tales as well. When the Harford’s arrive at the party, we see a clear symbol of what kind of initiation they are going to undergo – a Satanic one, as we see from the inverted pentagram:

The doors of their perception are about to change as they enter the party marked with an inverted pentagram.

Ziegler, Harford’s friend, invites the couple to his parties frequently under the auspices of eventually getting them to participate in the orgies. As it turns out, there are two parties, and Mr. Harford’s old college buddy, Nick Nightingale, plays piano for both. Initially, both Harfords resist the temptation to sleep with other people, yet appear to have the desire given their own marital sexual problems. However, what we continue to suspect is not that the events are randomly occurring, but rather that it has been organized. It is not an accident that Bill Harford’s college buddy has shown up. Alice gets drunk and is then hit on by Sandor Szavost, a wealthy Hungarian.  Szavost is likely a reference to Anton Szandor LaVey, the founder and High Priest of the Church of Satan.  I think this is a symbolic reference, just to let us know the crowd they are being allowed to party with is ultimately an upper echelon Satanic cult. It is also interesting to note that the original story (“Dream Story”) is written about a couple who undergoes the experience in upper class Austria around the turn of the century, since Germany is the origin of the actual members of the Order of Illuminati.
Bill discovers that Ziegler is involved in some shady dealings, and apparently has some connection to drugs and beauty queens. “Mandy,” a beauty queen we later discover, is knocked out from drugs – ‘asleep’ and nude, and we will find Alice experience something similar. Mandy has almost overdosed, and Dr. Harford tells her she cannot keep doing what she is doing: we don’t know if it’s a suicide attempt or not.  It is also interesting that the nude woman in the painting above Mandy is sprawled out in the same position, as if to allude to the film’s thesis of a thin borderline between fantasy or dream, and reality.
Next, we see the Harfords going about daily activities. Notice again the inverted pentagrams in the background:

More inverted pentagrams pop up.

The Harfords then have a big argument over sex and the desire to cheat, and Alice tells Bill she once wanted to have sex with a young man years ago at a hotel. Throughout their condo we see images of gateways in gardens, indicating again that this is a film about initiation. Gardens also bring to mind Eden, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve due to sin, or it could refer to their coming initiation into the “garden of the gods,” so to speak, as they are about to experience the underworld in overworld.

Garden/doorway imagery.

Bill then leaves to visit a patient who has passed away, and begins his languorous escapade for an extra-marital affair.  He finds out his patient’s daughter has a crush on him, but Bill decides to remain faithful and leaves. He begins to suspect marriage is bad for others, too, as Sandor had tried to convince Alice. Bill then roams the streets looking for sexual fulfillment, passing hookers and sex shops. He then gets harassed by a group of guys who (for no reason whatsoever) call him a homosexual, showing society’s obsession with sex.  Bill bumps into a pretty hooker and is invited to her apartment. He concedes, and steps into the world of the lower class, finding that sex is an “issue” everywhere. More symbolic imagery is used, as we see the prominent placement of books on sociology in the whore’s apartment. Kubrick is showing us that he is making a statement on sociology – but not the one most people think. It’s the true sociology of how the world is really run.  Bill is interrupted from his cheating and decides not to. There are also numerous masks inside the hookers apartment, showing you that society wears a mask, has a fake facade of Christianity – since there are Christmas trees everywhere – yet is anything but traditionally religious. Instead, the masks show society as a fraud. But beyond that, Kubrick wants the viewer to see that those who really run things are masked – they constitute a secret team of wealthy, upper class who remain in the shadows. In fact, this is in my estimation, to be another clue that the hooker is also not a real hooker – she is part of the secret society (hence the masks in her apartment), and is being used to reel Bill in, just like Nick Nightingale.  Most hookers don’t study sociology.

The whore is a hired member of the secret society and her apartment has masks as a clue.

Bill leaves and runs across his buddy Nick playing at another club in town. Nick tells him about the after party – the second party that Sandor had mentioned to Alice it turns out, where Nick plays piano blindfolded. Bill is intrigued, and decides to try to sneak in, after tracking down a cheesy mask and costume at the only costume store still open. The password, Nick tells Bill, is “Fidelio,” bringing to mind the theme of marital faithfulness that has been constantly in question in the film so far.  Bill finds the costume shop, named The Rainbow, which is what the two women who propositioned him at the party had already mentioned – that he can find what he is after “at the end of the rainbow.”  This is a Wizard of Oz reference, and the mirrors and “Alice” have already suggested Alice in Wonderland.  Bill is still oblivious, however, to the synchronicity which, in my opinion, has been planned.  The events are Bill’s initiation, and he is being tested to see if he will be faithful either to his wife, his ambiguous sense of moral, or, ultimately, to the cult – hence, “fidelio.”  It should be noted as well that the cult is clearly Satanic, and Lucifer, the fallen angel of Scripture, who sought to dethrone God, is the light-bearer.  And of course light is a prism or rainbow.

Bill finds what he has been led to – the end of the rainbow.

The costume shop is run by a foreigner who pimps out his daughter, we discover, and I suspect this reference to underage sex also implies connection to the Satanic cult, since my analysis is that events are all planned. Tom then takes a cab to the mansion and sneaks in using the password. There we see a kind of initiation ritual where numerous models are inducted into the cult in a kind of mock Catholic mass, with Bill noticing everyone wearing masks.

Eyes Wide Shut Ritual Scene

Masked balls go back to ancient times, but the past few hundred years they have come to mark the party life of certain cadres of the upper echelons of power. Renaissance Britain had many masked balls, as well as France, and according to Vatican insider and exorcist, Malachi Martin in his famous book Hostage to the Devil, such ritual orgies certainly do take place.  Bill is tricked into revealing his identity and we get the impression the cult is going to kill him, until a girl steps forward to “ransom” herself for him. I suspect this is Mandy from earlier in the film, who now wants out of the secret society. Her way out will be death, as Bill will discover her name in the obituary for an overdose.  Here is a great example of a modern masked ball of upper class elites.
Bill takes the cab home and Alice wakes up giggling and laughing, as if she had been drugged. He tells her she was dreaming, and she starts to cry. He asks what the “dream” was and she says it was “so weird” – “we were in a deserted city and our clothes were gone. We were naked and I was terrified and I felt ashamed. And I was angry because you…rushed away to find clothes for us. As soon as you were gone it was completely different. I felt wonderful. Then I was lying in a beautiful garden stretched out naked in the sunlight and a man walked out of the woods. He was the man from the hotel I told you about – the Naval officer. He stared at me and he just laughed. He just laughed at me….He was kissing me and then we were making love, then there were all these other people around us – hundreds of them everywhere – they were all fucking. And then I was fucking other men, so many I don’t know how many I was with. I knew I could see me in the arms of all these men…and I wanted to make fun of you, to laugh in your face. And so I laughed as loud as could. And that must have been when you woke me up.”
This, in my opinion, is a key clue to the fact that they are both being inducted into the cult. Either Alice has been drugged and doesn’t recall being used, thinking it was a dream, or she is a willing part of the initiation process for Bill, insofar as she has already been brought in. Either are possible. Bill is distraught and tries to track down the cult again, but is warned not to inquire any further. Bill decides he still wants to have an affair, and calls up the whore, only to discover she is nowhere to be found and that she has aids.  Bill leaves and wanders the streets again, only to find that he is being followed by shady characters. He finds out in the paper that Mandy has overdosed, and he goes to the morgue to find out that she had most likely been killed.  Bill goes to talk to Ziegler and Ziegler reveals that he is in the cult and was there that night when Bill snuck in. Ziegler warns him to not investigate any further, while Bill is shocked that his good friend is part of a secret society magick sex cult. It is also interesting that Ziegler’s house is decorated with paintings of what appear to be British aristocracy.
Ziegler tells him that he figured out that Nick had mentioned the cult. Ziegler tells Bill he had him followed and found out he had been seeking out why Nick had disappeared. Ziegler then says, “Bill, suppose I tell that everything that happened there, the threats, the girl’s warnings, suppose I said all of that was staged.  That it was a kind of charade. That it was fake?…to scare the shit out of you to keep you quiet about where you’d been and what you’d seen.”  Bill tells Ziegler he saw Mandy’s body, and Ziegler says she was the one at the party. Bill asks what kind of charade ends with someone ending up dead.  In other words, we find out that it was a ritual killing. Bill comes home to find the mask that he had lost on the pillow next to Alice, who is asleep. In other words, we are to suspect either that Alice knows he was there, or she is telling him that she is involved. Bill breaks down and “tells her everything.”  Bill has been initiated into top dog Satanic masonry – not just the local low-level stuff. Significantly, Cruise’s character gives the Masonic sign of Secrecy – the hand on the chest with forefinger extended up, as mentioned in of Richardson’s Monitor of Freemasonry, page 86 .

Oath of Secrecy

Here is Satanist Aleister Crowley giving the sign of secrecy.

Bill confesses to Alice and they both are upset. After the confession the realize they had promised to take their daughter Christmas shopping that morning. In the shopping scene we see another inverted pentagram and a purposefully placed “Magic circle” game, as well as another display labelled “magic.” The couple has now stepped into the magic circle and their eyes are no longer shut. They have been “illuminated.”  We had already seen a “magic circle” of models at the initiation ritual in the mansion. In the toy store, Bill and Alice discuss what they should do, deciding that they should be “grateful.” Alice says “we should be grateful that we have managed to survive through all our adventures, whether they were real or only a dream.”  Bill asks if she is sure, and Alice says she will forgive one night and Bill says “No dream is ever just a dream.” Alice responds that they are “awake now, and hopefully, for a long time to come” “Forever,” they both say. ‘Let’s not say forever,” Alice retorts, “it frightens me. But I do love you, and you know, there is something very important we need to do as soon as possible – fuck.”

Alice and Bill are surrounded by pentagrams and the “Magic Circle.”

So the film is certainly about the different issues of marital problems our society creates, with its decadence and veneer of Christianity, as well as its sexual issues, but that is only half the story. The story is about the couple “waking up” and seeing the social power structure as it really is – rich elites who are into bizarre cults and weird sex magick. If you want your eyes opened, this is the whole point of the film. The power structure is about power and sex, but not just any old thing – particularly ritualized sex and gnostic, masonic, Satanic cult versions. This was the point of the Eden imagery, as well as the Alice and Wonderland and Oz references – the transition both from a fantasy reality of the dreamworld and base sexual desires, into the fake world of the film itself, as well as the transition from eyes shut, to awake. Not only was it supposed to be an initiation for the couple, the viewer is supposed to be initiated to the nature of the underworld, as well. This is what all the other reviewers have missed.

The Black Knight Satellite, Bracewell Probes, and Philip K. Dick

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The Black Knight Satellite, Bracewell Probes, and Philip K. Dick

•  February 21, 2014
•  Martin J. Clemens

 http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/02/the-black-knight-satellite-bracewell-probes-and-phillip-k-dick/

Here follows one of the most interesting and complex stories of Space Conspiracy in existence.  It’s the story of the Black Knight satellite, and so much more.  We’re about to go from a misreported news item from 1960, to theoretical science and radio transmission, to the writings of Philip K. Dick, but there’s much ground to cover in between.
It begins in the beginning, sort of.
In March of 1960, Time Magazine published a story in their hallowed rag, detailing the discovery of what ultimately became known as the Black Knight satellite.  As the story goes, three weeks prior to their publication, analysts working for the US ‘Dark Fence’ radar program detected an object orbiting above the continental United States.  It was labelled a ‘dark satellite’, in that it seemed to be a man-made object in a near-Earth orbit, but wasn’t transmitting any detectable signals.
The Dark Fence program’s purpose was to monitor known satellite objects, whether American or Russian, or otherwise, and to identify new objects, so as to stay abreast of Soviet spy satellites and other space-military operations that might have been undertaken over US airspace.  This, of course, was at the height of the Cold War, and the political climate around the world was focused on military secrecy and keeping up with the Russians.  It was also at the very beginning of the global Space Race.

Mysterious unidentified flying satellite from STS-88. (Image credit: NASA.)

What was strange about this ‘dark satellite’, was that it was neither American nor Russian, or at least it didn’t conform to any known American or Russian satellite at the time.  It was also in a ‘polar’ orbit, meaning that it passed over or near both the north and south poles once per revolution, which was reported to be impossible at the time.
The Time article attributed this ‘dark satellite’ to mismanagement of the Dark Fence program, and it was suggested that the object they detected was actually the Discoverer 1 Corona Reconnaissance satellite that was launched in February of the previous year.  Discover 1 was intended to have a low-Earth geocentric ‘polar’ orbit, but it failed to achieve such an orbital path and is believed to have crashed somewhere near the South Pole in short order.
Right from the start, Black Knight was an enigma, even though many accepted the idea that it was really just a misplaced American science project.  Others, of course, felt there was more to this than was reported.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper Jr.

On September 3, 1960, a camera at the Grumman Aircraft Corp. Long Island factory managed to capture an image of the object.  It was said to be a redish-pink glowing object moving in an east-to-west orbit, which is, apparently, the opposite of most other man-made satellites, and which doesn’t fit the polar orbit reported by Time.  Subsequent to this, astronaut Gordon Cooper Jr. allegedly caught a first-hand glimpse of the object during his 22-orbit Mercury-Atlas 9 flight, which was the final of the Mercury Program missions.  Cooper claimed that it was an object much larger than any other man-made satellite of the time, and that it glowed a neon green.
Cooper, who passed away in 2004, had long been sympathetic to the UFOlogy movement and had been vocal about not only the reality of extraterrestrial life, but also the idea that the US government had been and continues to be complicit in a cover-up of contact with such.
Then in 1998, during NASA mission STS-88 to the ISS, flown by the Space Shuttle Endeavour, images were captured of an unidentified object in orbit; an object that a great many people believe is the ever elusive Black Knight satellite.
Following Time’s publication, John Keel detailed the discovery in his book Disneyland of the Gods (1988), wherein he noted that around the same time that Dark Fence detected this mysterious object, ground based HAM operators were reporting having received strange radio signals.  According to Keel, one such HAM operator received and decoded a signal and claimed that the message corresponded to a star chart, plotted from Earth 13,000 years ago, and focused on a star system called Epsilon Boötis…and this is where things get really interesting.

That HAM operator was Duncan Lunan, a Scottish author of science fiction, with a focus on astronomy and spaceflight.  Lunan claimed, in an article in the British Interplanetary Society’s magazine, Spaceflight, that he had encountered and interpreted a signal from an alien probe somewhere in orbit around the Earth.  He said that the same signal had previously been detected by researchers in the 1920’s who were studying the long delayed echo effect (or LDE), but that they had disregarded the encoded message as having been an echo of an Earth-originating signal bouncing off of either the moon or Earth’s upper atmosphere.  In his article, Lunan relayed the decoded message as follows:

“Start here. Our home is Upsilon Bootes, which is a double star. We live on the sixth planet of seven, coming from the sun, which is the larger of the two. Our sixth planet has one moon. Our fourth planet has three. Our first and third planets each have one. Our probe is in the position of Arcturus, known in our maps.”

Many believe, including Lunan, that this message came from a Bracewell probe in orbit around Earth.  A Bracewell probe is a theoretical autonomous satellite built to remotely explore distant star systems with the expressed purpose of communicating with alien civilizations.  An interesting coincidence in all this, is that the concept of a Bracewell probe was first proposed by telecommunication and radioscience engineer Ronald Bracewell, in a paper published in 1960, the same year Black Knight was discovered.   A notable example of a Bracewell probe is the device that featured in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘The Inner Light’ (season five, episode 25).
It’s also interesting to note that one of the theoretical causes of the mysterious long delay echo effect, which is a strange anomaly experienced by radio operators, wherein transmitted signals echo back to the transceiver several seconds after transmission, is that alien technology is retransmitting those signals back in the direction of the transmitter in an effort to communicate…possibly by a probe located in orbit.

Another image from STS-88

That isn’t the most widely accepted theory used to explain LDE of course, but it is listed as a possible cause for the effect, among electromagnetic interference and EME or Earth-Moon-Earth signal bounce (or even EMEME / double EME).
And now we’re about to dive into the real weirdness.
In 1980 Philip K. Dick published what many believe to be his magnum opus, VALIS.  VALIS is an almost autobiographical novel, wherein he detailed many of the strange and paranormal experiences he had over his lifetime (up to that point, obviously).  In that book he detailed an event that occurred on February 20, 1974 at his home in Chicago, Illinois.  He received a delivery at the hands of a beautiful young woman who wore a gold necklace with an odd fish-shaped pendant.  Dick recounted that the sun glinted off of the pendant, which caused what he called a ‘pink beam’ that penetrated his eye and imparted untold wisdom in the blink of an eye.
Dick claimed that this ‘pink beam’, which he claimed to have experienced on multiple occasions, was a transformative event in his life, and though most saw it as an hallucination, he used the experience, referred to as 2-3-74, as inspiration for the VALIS Trilogy.
There are a great many people who believe that the origin of that ‘pink beam’ was in fact, the Black Knight satellite, associating the ‘pink beam’ with the redish-pink colour of the satellite.  It’s fairly well known that certain academics view VALIS, as a result of comments made by Dick in his exegesis, as a sort of cipher key, needed to decode the true meaning behind Dick’s ten most important works, which are known as the ‘meta-novel’.  Those works are: Eye in the Sky, Time Out of Joint, The Man in the High Castle, The Game Players of Titan, Martian Time Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, UBIK, and A Maze of Death.

The fact that Eye in the Sky was written just three years before Black Knight was discovered, suggests to some that Dick was the recipient of otherworldly communication, possibly from a civilization hailing from the Epsilon Boötis star system.
You might be thinking that it should now be a fairly simple endeavour to confirm the existence of such a thing in orbit around Earth, if it’s still there that is, but consider this…
Right now there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100,000 man-made objects orbiting Earth.  Some are multi-billion dollar uber-sciencey military satellites, or telecomm satellites or even scientific instruments, but most are simple space junk, like parts off of old spacecraft or dead satellites etc.  A good portion of that space junk is ‘dark’, in the same way Black Knight was thought to be, making it very difficult to differentiate between one bit and another.  Black Knight may be lost among a cloud of garbage, which seems par for the course on our planet.

NASA and other space agencies around the world have put a great deal of thought into the issue of space junk, and the Chinese are currently in the process of developing a sort of net that will be used to collect space debris and safely bring it back to Earth for recycling or to otherwise be dealt with.  But what if they bring Black Knight down?
Here’s the thing about all of this.  The above may seem like a lot of conjecture and supposition, and perhaps some of it is – surely it’s a stretch to say that Philip K. Dick was a harbinger of tidings from an alien species using a Bracewell probe – but many of the facts are confirmed.  Black Knight does seem to exist, and while noting that certain governments do have a penchant for secret technology and clandestine operations, its origin and purpose seems to defy explanation.  If we are able to accept the stories and theories held therein, and the, at times tenuous, connections between them, can we accept that there’s a 13,000 year old alien probe orbiting our planet, sending literary inspiration to select people via the gold necklaces of attractive delivery people?

 TAGS: Black Knight, Duncan Lunan, Gordon Cooper, John Keel, nasa, Philip K. Dick, Phillip K. Dick, Space Junk, The Black Knight Satellite, VALIS

EARTHQUAKES IN EUROPE: OPPOSITION TO MERKEL FROM MERKEL’S OWN PARTY

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell •http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/09/earthquakes-in-europe-opposition-to-merkel-from-merkels-own-party/

When I read this one, shared by Mr. A.B., it went immediately into my "wow" box; do not pass go, do not collect 200 euros. The reason: well, the cracks in the Atlantic alliance appear to be growing. We know, as I suggested in yesterday's blog and have suggested previously on this website, that the signals coming out of the United Kingdom lately clearly seem to be aimed at America. The British ruling class is unhappy with the Washington's increasingly looney "leadership" and the policies it wants everyone else to follow (like sanctioning Russia for objecting to America's sponsorship of a coup d'etat in the Ukraine).Mr. Cameron might mouth the right things for Washington's ears and the cameras, but quietly, in the informal meetings of the Tory party itself, I suspect there's a lot of grumbling behind the scenes. The French, you'll recall, are none too happy at having to eat the cost of two amphibious helicopter carriers it had built for Russia. And don't forget, M. Hollande did that little radio interview suggesting that maybe the sanctions weren't such a good idea, alienating Russia was an even worse idea and can't we all just get along and sing Kumbya(in French, of course). Within a very short time, he was hit with the Charlie Hebdo incident.
Then there's Mama Merkel.
So far, her efforts to resolve the situation independently haven't shown much independence, and all that in spite of her best efforts to be a good and compliant lap poodle for Washington. But she did, to her credit, get France and Russia and even the Ukraine to agree to ceasefire terms under the Minsk II talks, terms which the Ukraine seems determined not to observe(doubtless with some strategic prodding from Victoria F*-the-EU fame).
But Frau Merkel, it seems, has not been able to accomplish all this without some growing opposition within her own Christian Democratic Union party, and from one of her own cabinet ministers to boot:
HISTORIC NEWS: Finally, EU Breaks Away from U.S.
Here's the crux:

On Saturday, September 12th, United Kingdom’s Labour Party elected as its leader and their candidate to lead the UK, Jeremy Corbyn, who has been the most vocal British critic of the UK’s serving as the lap-dog of an aggressive imperialistic United States of America.
Simultaneously, the leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own Christian Social Union Party, Horst Seehofer, a man who, prior to his being appointed to be the Party-chief had been Chancellor Merkel’s Agriculture Minister, has now turned against Chancellor Merkel (who until now was the most powerful leader in all of Europe) and denounced her policy on the refugee crisis, and has now stated publicly that Germany should instead ally with Russia and against NATO on the entire Syrian war.
This public statement, which is really a sea-change in history, was reported Friday night, 11 September, in Germany’s leading magazine, The Mirror, Der Spiegel, and it represents the breaking-point in Germany’s foreign policy, finally yielding now to the rapidly rising anti-Americanism within Germany that results from America’s prioritizing America’s war against Russia as being a more important goal than the global war against Islamic jihad, which is clearly the most pressing threat to national security not only within Germany, and not only within all Western countries, but even within Pakistan and many other countries that have majority-Islamic populations, as well as in India, China, and other nations around the world.

The article of course ignores one possible reason for America's sudden turn from the "war on terrorism" to the renewal of the "covert war on Russia," and that is simply the very heavy, and documented, American intelligence community role in the creation or aiding and abetting of many of the terrorist groups themselves. Continued concentration on that only progressively airs American dirty laundry in that respect, and there's a lot of it.
But now, as the article notes, there is a huge sea-change in Merkel's own  party, and it was inevitable: Germany has little to gain, economically, militarily, or culturally, from continued cooperation with Washington's insane anti-Russia policy, and quite a bit to lose.
The real question for Germany, and for that matter, France and the United Kingdom, will be to see if the growing opposition to American policy can be formalized across national boundaries, or, to put it country simple, if it can be forged into a "European Union" issue.  And this brings us to my high octane speculation: I not only suspect that it can be, but that this growing opposition - to American policy, to the growing "refugee" crisis in Europe - is in fact the "issue" being created to forge an "EU identity", and to create the requisite conditions for an integrated EU army. (On that score, recall only a few fews ago the merger of two of Europe's, and the world's, largest armaments firms into a gigantic conglomerate, creating one of the prerequisites for an integrated military). Notably, the way this is being generated is creating backlash against the progressive policies that have prevailed in Europe thus far. If it gells on a European-wide basis, then watch for that integrated European military. Then- in the context of growing opposition to American policy ,which will come inevitably, barring some unforeseen "about face" on Washington's part- after that, we can look for the demands to remove America's bases from those countries.
The game, at least in Britian's Labour Party, and Germany's CDU, would seem to be afoot. France, and Italy are the ones to watch now.