NASA Admits Antarctica Gaining Land Ice (But good news is bad news to climate alarmists)

Corbett • 11/04/2015 •https://www.corbettreport.com/nasa-admits-antarctica-gaining-land-ice-but-good-news-is-bad-news-to-climate-alarmists/

by James Corbett
TheInternationalForecaster.com
November 3, 2015
Do you spend sleepless nights worrying about the sea level rise caused by the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet? Well enjoy your slumbers, my friend, NASA has just given you reason to sleep easier.
A new study–entitled “Mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet exceed losses” and published in the Journal of Glaciology–overturns previous assessments (including that relayed in the latest IPCC report) that Antarctica is losing land ice and thus contributing to sea level rise. As NASA states in a press release, previous assessments had falsely assumed that increasing surface height of the ice sheets was due to snow accumulation, but the new study shows that the rise in elevation is in fact due to ice gain.
The upshot is that previous assessments, including the IPCC’s, got the Antarctic contribution to sea level rise–previously pegged at 0.27 millimeters per year–precisely wrong. “The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away.” Well, they were only off by 185%, I suppose, and got the change in the wrong direction. It could be worse…I mean better.
But don’t worry, things are still bad. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”
You see, the same researchers who can’t even accurately say whether the Antarctic ice sheets are gaining or losing mass (let alone how much mass) are able to determine global sea level rise to within hundredths of a millimeter. No accuracy issues there, of course. So you can continue worrying, I suppose. (Except for that pesky little Stanford study from September showing that previous models vastly overestimated future sea level rise.)
If this seems like deja vu all over again, then congratulations; you’re paying attention.
Remember when “NASA satellites detect[ed] unexpected ice loss in East Antarctica” in 2009? The results were “unexpected” because East Antarctica was previously considered stable, with the continent’s ice loss (well, net gain) supposedly taking place in West Antarctica. It took a science-hating-denier-skeptic-heathenbeast to point out that the numbers were derived from gravity measurements which were picking up on isostatic adjustment, i.e. changes taking place beneath the surface of the ice, not changes in the ice levels themselves. And lo and behold a few months later a team led by another NASA JPL researcher found that the gravity measurements had in fact been measuring…wait for it…isostatic adjustment.
But somehow “Unexpected ice loss in East Antarctica” generated more headlines than “Ooops, Sorry About That, We Were Measuring Something Else Entirely.” Go figure.
This is not an isolated phenomenon, of course.
Do you remember when NASA released this dramatic image of the temperature trends in Antarctica showing a clear positive warming trend of between 0.05C and 0.1C throughout most of the continent?

Did you notice the fine print at the end of the third paragraph where it’s casually admitted that the level of uncertainty in the measurements the map was based on was between 2 and 3 degrees C, or 40-60 times the increment they claimed to be measuring? This type of utterly meaningless exercise in map coloring would get you an “F” in any undergrad science course, but it’s good enough for NASA.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise that the authors of the new paper showing that the Antarctic is in fact detracting from sea level rise, not adding to it, are being treated with derision and hostility by their colleagues. “Please don’t publicize this study” one University of Colorado researcher pleaded with Al Jazeera. After all, it can’t be right; it “contradicts 13 years of satellite measurements of Antarctica’s ice by NASA’s GRACE mission.”
And that’s the point. You would think this would be treated as wonderful news by people who were genuinely concerned about the supposed disastrous effects of climate change. Any sane person would be delighted to find out they were horribly wrong about their dire predictions of doom and gloom. But not the other researchers whose $1.5 trillion climate change gravy train are threatened by a cooling off of global warming hysteria.
Unfortunately, however, the unfalsifiable, goalpost-shifting global warming climate change global weirding pseudoscience is not just about business interests. It’s about a much larger agenda, one first mapped out by the Club of Rome in their 1991 publication The First Global Revolution, which stated:

In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.

Yes, this is the same Club of Rome that predicted the complete exhaustion of over a dozen resources in its 1972 “Limits to Growth” publication, every single one of which failed to come true. And yes, this is the same Club of Rome that then celebrated their “Limits to Growth” fearmongering failure by doubling down with a giant 40th anniversary “celebration” of…40 years of considerable growth?

Failed predictions from “Limits to Growth” (predictions already falsified in red)

And yes, this is the same Club of Rome whose members include the Al Gores and Mikhail Gorbachevs and Tim Wirths and Paul Ehrlichs of the world with the means, motive and opportunity to indeed ‘make humanity the enemy.’
And now we’re on the verge of the latest United Nations climate conference, the COP21 summit scheduled to take place in Paris from November 30 – December 11. Just like in Copenhagen in 2009, this conference is threatening a slate of new global governmental institutions, regulations and mechanisms to combat the (non-existent) climate change threat. On the table in the draft text of the new climate treaty: a new UN Tribunal to adjudicate on non-compliance with climate commitments.
Given the fact that eugenecist Bilderberger Bill Gates is now piling on UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres’ admission earlier this year that the conference will intentionally “change the economic development model” of the world by admitting that only big government can save the world from global warming, coupled with China being drawn into the global warming fold as part of its five year plan bid to become more involved in international institutions and tripled with Obama threatening to do an end run around the Senate to get the treaty passed, I think it’s safe to say that big things are afoot in this global technocratic power grab.
Stay tuned to these pages for ongoing coverage as we approach COP21.

Infographic: Vaccine industry science lies are nothing more than recycled Big Tobacco science lies

by Mike Adams, http://www.naturalnews.com/048847_Big_Tobacco_science_lies_vaccine_propaganda.html
(NaturalNews) You gotta love it when arrogant science devotees defiantly claim they alone have a monopoly on the "settled facts" of our reality. Throughout much of the 20th century, it turns out, these same sort of arrogant scientists claimed smoking was awesome for your health, too.
"More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette" was the headline of a full-page ad carried by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Doctors were paid by Big Tobacco to tout the amazing health benefits of smoking cigarettes, and any doctor who dared point out that smoking might be linked to cancer was subjected to the same industry blackballing, scientific censorship and verbal abuse that's leveled today against honest researchers questioning the safety of GMOs or mercury in vaccines.

The real truth is that science never has a monopoly on facts, and science makes enormous mistakes (such as condoning smoking cigarettes) on a regular basis. Science is also for sale and easy corrupted by corporate interests.

Peer-reviewed science journals, too, are often little more than a collection of corporate-funded make-believe science tabloids. "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines," writes the former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell.

"I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine," she says in Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption.

With that in mind, take a look at the similarities between Big Tobacco science lies and vaccine industry science lies:

GMO Makers, Their Puppets in Academia, and The New York Times

Monsanto et al. Mislead Public Using Every Trick in the Book

GMO scarecrow in cornfield. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Gareth Williams /    Flickr, David Prasad / Flickr    http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/11/02/gmo-makers-their-puppets-in-academia-and-the-new-york-times/

With a debate raging over whether genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are safe, it seems reasonable that people would look toward the media, academia and scientists for answers. But major biotech companies like Monsanto, Bayer and Dow know this, too, and seem to be engaged in an effort to rig the results.
GMOs are produced by recombinant DNA technology. How it works sounds like science fiction, or something out of a horror movie. Imagine: Genes from an insecticide are inserted into the genome of the corn plant, thus producing a crop that resists insects. The insecticide is made from the protein of a bacteria closely related to anthrax, and it works by making the guts of the insect explode.
Critics, such as the Center for Food Safety, say that GMOs are insufficiently tested and may be dangerous. There are high-profile campaigns in three Western states to label GMOs as such, so that consumers can know what they are buying and eating. At the same time, food businesses have been scrambling to ban, or remove, the warning labels.
Are GMOs dangerous? For answers to such questions, we normally turn to reputable scientists associated with reputable universities. Surely we can trust them to give us objective information. Or can we? It turns out that biotech heavyweights like Monsanto, Bayer et al have been paying reputable people from reputable institutions to swing the debate in their favor.
A treasure trove of emails — obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by a US non-profit and acquired by The New York Times — reveals that academia is infested with professors who are paid to vigorously promote GMOs on behalf of the biotech industry, which also includes trade associations such as CropLife America.
And some academics have even sabotaged the efforts of others to publish facts that contradict the claims of these professorial shills for GMOs.

“We are all bad-ass shills for the truth. It’s a pleasure shilling with you.” Or, as Folta himself put it: “I’m glad to sign on to whatever you like, or write whatever you like.”

But to learn how deep the problem goes, you would need to find the links to those emails, and dig through layer upon layer of them.
Of course, if you don’t have time for that, you always can rely on The New York Times to give you the low-down on Big Food’s propaganda efforts. Or can you? The Times — whose motto is “All The News That’s Fit to Print” — has published a curiously tame and seriously incomplete version of what is buried in those emails.

“Fit to Print”

On the front page of the September 6 copy of The New York Times, appears “Food Industry Enlisted Academics in GMO Lobbying War, Emails Show”, by Eric Lipton. The emails themselves are presented in the electronic version of the paper in a sidebar.
At first sight, the Lipton article is impressive. He exposes a number of individuals from various institutions, but focuses mainly on Kevin Folta — Chair of the Department of Horticulture at the University of Florida.
Folta secretly took expenses, and $25,000 of unrestricted money, from Monsanto to promote GMO crops. And Lipton reports a damning quote showing Folta’s close relationship with Monsanto, something he had previously denied:
“I am grateful for this opportunity and promise a solid return on the investment,” Folta wrote after receiving the $25,000 check.
Lipton also mentions Folta’s participation, with other academics, in a website run by the biotech industry, GMO Answers. A PR firm hired by the industry provided questions from the public, such as, “Do GMOs cause cancer?”
But, as Lipton reports, Ketchum, the PR firm, did more than provide the questions — it also provided answers which Folta used nearly verbatim.

No Scientific Misconduct?

In the scientific community, none of this was exactly news. The basic facts had already been revealed in a leading scientific journal, Nature, by Keith Kloor, who also had access to the emails.
It is odd that this was first reported by Kloor, a pro-biotech journalist who works for a pro-biotech publisher. Or perhaps not so odd, given that Kloor went on to state that the emails “do not suggest scientific misconduct or wrongdoing by Folta” — even after Folta was on record as denying he had received any biotech funding.
Not disclosing such funding is definitely considered scientific misconduct. So why did Kloor rush to exonerate him?
Was Kloor’s story a pre-emptive strike to defuse the issue of wider biotech corruption of academia? Was Lipton’s?

Damage Control?

The damning emails originally came to light earlier this year, when a newly-formed activist group called US Right to Know (USRTK) set in motion Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests directed at 14 (now 43) prominent public-university scientists. These academics were suspected of working with (and being paid by) the biotech industry and/or its PR intermediaries. (The emails released via FOIA — reputedly totalling in the tens of thousands — are the source of Kloor’s and Lipton’s highly selective reporting.)
One might think that if these 43 scientists had nothing to hide, such a request would have generated little attention outside academia.
In fact, the FOIA requests from USRTK triggered a huge outcry in various quarters about the “harassment” of public scientists. This led to op-eds in the LA Times, the controversial removal of scientific blog posts defending USRTK, and much else besides.
What would a good PR company recommend to its clients in such a situation? Preempt the upcoming firestorm: Have various media outlets run ahead of USRTK to publish a version in which small-fry like Kevin Folta are the villains. This lets other, more prominent players, off the hook.
So, if that was the strategy of the food industry and its allies, what exactly were they trying to hide?

Not “Fit to Print”

Here are just a few examples of what you would never guess — from reading The New York Times — is going on.

• Gates Foundation Funds Cornell University Training of GMO Spokespersons

Heavily involved in this project are senior members of the university’s administration, such as Ronnie Coffman, Director of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Science, and Sarah Evanega Davidson, now director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, who were funded (to the tune of $5.6 million) by the Gates Foundation.
The Alliance is a PR project and international training center created for the promotion of GMOs with various events, such as their “Ask Me Anything” panels held at universities around the country. This was an idea originally pitched by Kevin Folta to Monsanto over a year earlier. Among the speakers invited by the Alliance to Cornell in September were Tamar Haspel (The Washington Post) and Amy Harmon (The New York Times).

• A Dirty Trick to Destroy an Opponent

A group of pro-GMO scientists colluded with the editor of a prestigious journal in hatching a plot to destroy the credibility of Russian scientist and GMO critic, Irina Ermakova. Her discoveries on the harmful effects of feeding GM soy to rats had caused a great deal of concern to the biotech industry.
First, Andrew Marshall, the editor of the journal, Nature Biotechnology, invited her to answer a set of questions about her work, giving her the impression this would be ”her” article. She was even sent a dummy proof with her name on it. But what he actually published was something else: Her comments, followed by a critique by scientists with no expertise in her specialized field, who tore apart her work using self-serving logic.
They replaced most of her references with those chosen to bolster their own case — falsely creating the impression she had no data to support her claims and no agreement among other specialists. Ermakova was neither told of the critique nor offered a chance to answer it, which would have been standard.
The scientists involved: Bruce Chassy, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois. (As reported by
The New York Times article referenced earlier, he was also heavily involved in an effort to persuade the Environmental Protection Agency to drop its proposal to tighten the regulation of pesticides used on insect-resistant seeds). Vivian Moses (Professor Emeritus, King’s College, UK), Val Giddings (Senior Fellow, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation) and Alan McHughen (Professor, University of California, Riverside).

• Monsanto’s Ventriloquism Through 3000 Non-Existent Scientists

Professor C.S. Prakash (Tuskegee University) is the convener of the influential listserv AgBioWorld — the all-important conduit for a petition signed by 3000 scientists calling for the retraction of a 2001 scientific paper showing GMO contamination of Mexican corn (Quist and Chapela 2001).
As detailed in an article called The Fake Persuaders, the scientists who initiated the petition, and made inaccurate and inflammatory statements about the authors, were not real people. However, their emails could be traced back to servers belonging to Monsanto or Bivings, a PR company that was working with Monsanto at the time.

• Monsanto Manipulates American Association for the Advancement of Science

Nina Fedoroff (Pennsylvania State University) is the most prominent of the scientists referenced in The New York Times story. She was the 2011–2012 President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. During her presidency, Fedoroff, who is also a contributor to the Times, used her position to coordinate and sign a letter on behalf of 60 prominent scientists. This letter — which was based on disinformation about the risks of biotechnology — was sent to the EPA as part of an effort to defeat the expansion of their regulatory powers over the biotech industry.
The real coordinator was Monsanto, but Fedoroff participated in phone conferences and email exchanges with them — and the prominent lobbyist Stanley Abramson — and she gets credit in the emails for “moving the ball far down the field.”

• Money from the Biotech Industry to University of Florida

Kevin Folta’s home base, the University of Florida, received over $10 million from Syngenta; over $10 million from DuPont; over $1 million from BASF, and over $1 million from Monsanto. What did they get in return?

Label GMO Foods, Label GMO Professors

Folta rarely acted alone. Emails reveal that his networks are filled with economists, molecular biologists, plant pathologists, development specialists, and agronomists. Their role was to repel legislative, media, and scientific threats to the GMO and pesticide industries — all the while keeping their industry links hidden.
As one of them wrote, “We are all bad-ass shills for the truth. It’s a pleasure shilling with you.” Or, as Folta himself put it: “I’m glad to sign on to whatever you like, or write whatever you like.”
In view of all of the above, it does not seem unreasonable to want GMO foods to be labeled as such. And perhaps the academics who speak for them should also be labeled.

---

Jonathan R. Latham, PhD is Co-founder and Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project; Editor of the Independent Science News website. He holds a Masters degree in Crop Genetics and a PhD in Virology, and was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published papers in disciplines as diverse as plant ecology, plant virology and genetics. “The Twin Research Debate in American Criminology” (2015); “Transcomplementation and Synergism in Plants: Implications for Viral Transgenes?” (2008); “Transformation-induced Mutations in Transgenic Plants: Analysis and Biosafety Implications” (2006).
Related front page panorama photo credit: Puppets on strings (Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Louish Pixel / Flickr).

Putin Makes Obama an Offer He Can't Refuse

Posted by George Freund on November 2, 2015

& just what EXACTLY did ass~bam~our~ass's win that "dumb~bell prize" 4  ?  oh ah o yea ...peace    ... Obama has condemned tens of thousands of civilians to cholera and other water-born diseases. Apparently, our hospital-nuking president isn’t bothered by such trivial matters as killing women and children. 

By Mike Whitney

Global Research, October 30, 2015

CounterPunch 29 October 2015

Why is John Kerry so eager to convene an emergency summit on Syria now when the war has been dragging on for four and a half years?

Is he worried that Russia’s air campaign is wiping out too many US-backed jihadis and sabotaging Washington’s plan to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad?

You bet, he is. No one who’s been following events in Syria for the last three weeks should have any doubt about what’s really going on.  Russia has been methodically wiping out Washington’s mercenaries on the ground while recapturing large swathes of land that had been lost to the terrorists.  That, in turn, has strengthened Assad’s position in Damascus and left the administration’s policy in tatters.  And that’s why Kerry wants another meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pronto even though the two diplomats met less than a week ago.   The Secretary of State is hoping to cobble together some kind of makeshift deal that will stop the killing and salvage what’s left of Uncle Sam’s threadbare Syrian project.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Iran had been invited to the confab which will be held in Vienna on Thursday.  The announcement is bound to be ferociously criticized on Capital Hill, but it just shows to what extent Russia is currently setting the agenda. It was Lavrov who insisted that Iran be invited, and it was Kerry who reluctantly capitulated. Moscow is now in the drivers seat.

And don’t be surprised if the summit produces some pretty shocking results too, like a dramatic 180 on Washington’s “Assad must go” demand.   As Putin has pointed out many times before, Assad’s not going anywhere. He’s going to be a part of Syria’s “transitional governing body”  when the Obama team finally agrees to the Geneva Communique which is the political track that will eventually end the fighting, restore security, and allow millions of refugees to return to their homes.

The reason the administration is going to agree to allow Assad to stay, is because if they don’t, the Russian Airforce is going to continue to blow US-backed mercenaries to smithereens. So, you see, Obama really has no choice in the matter. Putin has put a gun to his head and made him an offer he can’t refuse.

That doesn’t mean the war is going to be a cakewalk for Russia or its allies. It won’t be. In fact, there have already been some major setbacks, like the fact that ISIS just seized a critical section the Aleppo-Khanasser highway, cutting off  the government’s supply-lines to Aleppo. This is a serious problem, but it is not a problem that can’t be overcome nor is it a problem that will effect the outcome of the war. It’s just one of the obstacles that has to be dealt with and surpassed.  Taking a broader view, the outlook is much more encouraging for the Russian-led coalition which continues to cut off supply-lines,  blow up ammo dumps and fuel depots, and rapidly eviscerate the ability of the enemy to wage war.  So, while the war is certainly not a walk in the park, there’s no doubt about who’s going to win.

And that might explain why the US decided to bomb Aleppo’s main power plant last week plunging the entire city into darkness; because Obama wants to “rubblize” everything on his way out.  Keep in mind, that the local water treatment plants require electrical power, so by blowing up the plant, Obama has condemned tens of thousands of civilians to cholera and other water-born diseases. Apparently, our hospital-nuking president isn’t bothered by such trivial matters as killing women and children. Now check this out from the Daily Star:

U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria carried out a large-scale attack on Syria’s Omar oil field as part of its mission to target ISIS’s ability to generate money, a coalition spokesman said Thursday.

Operations officer Maj. Michael Filanowski told journalists in Baghdad that airstrikes late Wednesday struck ISIS-controlled oil refineries, command and control centers and transportation nodes in the Omar oil field near the town of Deir el-Zour. Coalition spokesman Col. Steven Warren said the attack hit 26 targets, making it one of the largest set of strikes since launching the air campaign last year.

The refinery generates between $1.7 and $5.1 million per month for ISIS.

“It was very specific targets that would result in long-term incapacitation of their ability to sell oil, to get it out of the ground and transport it,” Filanowski said.

ISIS seized a number of oil refineries and other infrastructure in Iraq and Syria as it sought to generate revenue to build a self-sufficient state.  (“US-led forces strike ISIS-controlled oil field in Syria“, Daily Star)

Isn’t it amazing how– after a year of  combing the dessert looking for ISIS  targets– the USAF finally figures out where the goddamn oil refineries are? No wonder the western media chose to ignore this story. One can only conclude that Obama never had any intention of cutting off ISIS’s main funding stream (oil sales). What he really wanted was for the terrorist group to flourish provided it helped Washington achieve its strategic goals. Putin even pointed this out in a recent interview. He said:

The mercenaries occupy the oil fields in Iraq and Syria. They start extracting the oil-and this oil is purchased by somebody. Where are the sanctions on the parties purchasing this oil?

Do you believe the US does not know who is buying it?

Is it not their allies that are buying the oil from ISIS?

Do you not think that US has the power to influence their allies? Or is the point that they don’t  wish to influence them?

Putin was never taken in by the whole ISIS oil charade. He knew it was a farce from the get-go, ever since Financial Times published their thoroughly laughable article on the topic which claimed that ISIS had its own group of “headhunters” offering “competitive salaries” to engineers with the “requisite experience”  and encouraged  “prospective employees to apply to its human resources department.”

The ISIS “human resources department”  Have you ever read anything more ridiculous in your life?  (Read the whole story here.)

In an interview with NPR,  FT fantasist Erika Solomon (who wrote the article) explained why the US could not bomb the oil fields or refineries. Here’s what she said:

What ISIS has done is managed to corner control of the extraction process, which is smart because they can’t get bombed there. It would cause a natural disaster. So they extract the oil, and then they immediately sell it to local traders – any average person who can buy a truck that they can fill with a tank of oil.

Well, that sure didn’t stop Maj. Michael Filanowski, now did it? He seems to have blown up those ISIS refineries without batting an eye, which just proves that Solomon’s “natural disaster” fairytale is pure bunkum.

But if it was all baloney, then why did the USAF decide to hit the targets now? What changed?

Here’s a clue from an article that popped up on RT just one day before the attacks:

“Russia’s airplanes cut off routes used by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) to deliver supplies to Syria from Iraq by bombing a bridge over the Euphrates River, the Russian General Staff said

The bridge over the Euphrates River near [the Syrian city of] Deir ez-Zor was a key point of the logistics chain [of IS]. Today Russian pilots carried out a surgical strike against the object,” the deputy chief of the General Staff of Russia, Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov, said on Thursday during a news briefing, adding that the terrorist group’s armament and ammunition delivery route had been cut off.

(“Russian Air Force cuts off ISIS supply lines by bombing bridge over Euphrates“, RT)

There it is: The Russians blow up a critical bridge over the Euphrates making oil transport impossible, and  the next thing you know, BAM, the US goes into scorched earth-mode leveling everything in sight.  Coincidence?

Not  bloody likely.  The whole incident suggests the mighty CIA is rolling up its pet project in Syria and headed for the exits.  (It’s worth noting that ISIS has never been a self sustaining corporate franchise netting over a million bucks a day on oil receipts as western propaganda would have one believe. That’s all part of the public relations coverup used to conceal the fact that the Gulf allies and probably CIA black ops are funding these homicidal maniacs.)

In any event, the Russian intervention is forcing Washington to rethink its Syria policy. While Kerry is bending over backwards to end the fighting,  Obama is busy tweaking the policy in a way that appeases his critics on the right without provoking a confrontation with Moscow. It’s a real tight-wire act, but the White House PR team thinks they can pull it off. Check this out from NBC News:

“Defense Secretary Ash Carter today revealed that the U.S. will openly begin “direct action on the ground” against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria.

In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee on Tuesday, Carter said “we won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL…or conducting such mission directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground.” (“Sec. Carter: U.S. to Begin ‘Direct Action on the Ground’ in Iraq, Syria“, NBC News)

This sounds a lot worse than it is. The truth is, Obama has no stomach for the type of escalation the hawks (like Hillary Clinton and John McCain ) are demanding. There aren’t going to be any “safe zones” or “no-fly zones” or any other provocations which would risk a bloody conflagration with Moscow. What Obama is looking for is the best face-saving strategy available that will allow him to retreat without incurring the wrath of the  Washington warmongers. It’s a tall order, but Sec-Def Ash Carter has come up with a plan that might just do-the-trick.  This is from The Hill:

Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Tuesday described new ways the U.S. military plans to increase pressure on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, after months of criticism that the administration is not doing enough to defeat the terrorist group.

“The changes we’re pursuing can be described by what I call the ‘three R’s’ — Raqqa, Ramadi and Raids,” Carter testified the Senate Armed Services Committee.

First, Carter said the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS plans to support moderate Syrian forces to go after Raqqa — the terrorist group’s stronghold and administration capital.

The secretary also said he hopes to pursue a new way of equipping the Syrian Arab Coalition, which consists of about a dozen groups.

“While the old approach was to train and equip completely new forces outside of Syria before sending them into the fight, the new approach is to work with vetted leaders of groups that are already fighting ISIL, and provide equipment and some training to them and support their operations with airpower,” he said.

He also said the coalition expects to intensify its air campaign with additional U.S. and coalition aircraft, and to target ISIS with a higher and heavier rate of strikes.

“This will include more strikes against ISIL high-value targets as our intelligence improves, and also its oil enterprise, which is a critical pillar of ISIL’s financial infrastructure,” Carter said, using a different acronym for ISIS.” (“Pentagon chief unveils new plan for ISIS fight“, The Hill)

See anything new here? It’s a big nothingburger, right?

They’re going to kill more “high-value targets”?

Big whoop. That’s always been the gameplan, hasn’t it?  Of course, it has.

What this shows is that Obama is just running out the clock hoping he can keep this mess on the back-burner until he’s out of office and working out the terms of his first big book deal.  The last thing he wants is to get embroiled in a spitting match with the Kremlin his final year in office.

Unfortunately, the problem Obama is going to encounter is that Putin can’t simply turn off the war machine with the flip of a switch. It took Moscow a long time to decide to intervene in Syria, just like it took a long time to marshal the forces that would be deployed, build the coalition and draft the battleplan.  The Russians don’t take war lightly, so now that they’ve put the ball into motion they’re not going to stop until the job is done and the bulk of the terrorists have been exterminated.  That means there’s not going to be a ceasefire in the immediate future. Putin needs to demonstrate that once Moscow commits its forces, it will persevere until it achieves victory. That victory could come in the form of “liberating Aleppo” and a subsequent sealing off of the Turkish-Syria border or he might have some other goal in mind. But it’s a matter of credibility as much as anything. If Putin pulls back, hesitates or shows even the slightest lack of resolve, Washington will see it as a sign of weakness and try to exploit it. So Putin has no choice but to see this thing through to the bitter end.  At the very least, he needs to prove to Washington that when Russia gets involved, Russia wins.

That’s a message Washington needs to hear.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/putin-makes-obama-an-offer-he-cant-refuse/5485513

Vladimir Putin Speaks Honestly. Refreshing Contrast to Western Political Liars Who “Drive the World to War”     ...hehe it couldn't B said any ...better !!! ...
Russia’s president is a refreshing contrast to the liars who inhabit Western governments and Western media.

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, November 02, 2015

Region: Russia and FSU, USA

Theme: Media Disinformation

Russia’s president is a refreshing contrast to the liars who inhabit Western governments and Western media.  The agenda of the Russian government is peace and international cooperation under the rule of law.  Washington’s agenda is hegemony. 

President Putin endeavors to lead the world to peace, while the neoconservatives who control Washington’s foreign policy try to drive the world to war.

Contrast the crazed statements that flow from Washington comparing President Putin to Hitler, suggesting his assassination, and calling for shooting down Russian military aircraft with President Putin’s appeal that Washington abandon its hegemonic agenda and submit to international law and international cooperation. As President Putin has emphasized, for Washington “international cooperation” means submission to Washington’s will.

President Putin repeatedly states that governments must govern in accord with the people and not function as a decree-issuing body in accord with interest groups disrespectful of the people. Throughout the West we see the increasingly unresponsive behavior of government. In the United States careful studies conclude that, despite elections, the American people have essentially zero input into the policies decided in Washington.  In Greece, the government is coerced to impose on the Greek people policies dictated by large German banks supported by the German and EU governments.  In Portugal, the socialists who won the election were told by the conservative president that they would not be permitted to form a government.

In the UK, a senior military official stated that the military would not permit Jeremy Corbyn to form a Labour government should the Labour Party win the election.  The United States government threatens the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina for representing the interests of the voters who put them in office instead of Washington’s interests.  The United States government has destroyed American civil liberty with its unconstitutional mass surveillance,  indefinite detention without charges, and murder of US citizens without due process of law. Dissent itself is in the process of being criminalized.

Just looking at the basic facts makes it impossible to conclude that the West has “freedom and democracy” or that Washington’s bombs and invasions have brought “freedom and democracy” to Africa and the Middle East.

Every American can get a conclusive lesson about where moral leadership resides by becoming familiar with Putin’s speeches.

Here are some examples:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/overcoming-the-logic-of-war-there-are-no-winners-in-a-global-conflict/5484131?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles

http://www.globalresearch.ca/vladimir-putin-on-france-and-europe-nato-member-states-have-renounced-their-sovereignty/5458734

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research, 2015

The Demonic Case of the Pennsylvania Rain Man

The Demonic Case of the Pennsylvania Rain Man   ~ hehe my Home State :(  ...Holy Water ! HOLY WATER !!!    

• http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/11/the-demonic-case-of-the-pennsylvania-rain-man/
•  November 2, 2015
•  Brent Swancer

 

There are some cases of ghostly unexplained phenomena that seem to defy any sort of classification. These are the baffling cases for which we ask ourselves if they are caused by ghosts, demonic possession, strange powers of the mind, or something else entirely. One such case from a small town in Pennsylvania has long eluded any sort of clear answer, and indeed has managed to escape the bounds of any sort of rational explanation. It is at once a tale of paranormal phenomena and perhaps a glimpse into the unknown powers of the human psyche which potentially lurk within every one of us. This is the case of the Stroudsburg Rain Man; a bizarre account mixing equal measures poltergeists, demons, and super powers, and which has gone without a satisfactory explanation to this day.
The whole bizarre tale starts on February 26 of 1983, in the peaceful, quiet town of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, when a young man by the name of Don Decker stood out in the cold winter air looking upon the casket of his dead grandfather, James Kishaugh, as others mourned around him. This was a rare taste of freedom for Decker, as he was in the middle of serving a 4- to 12-month prison sentence at Monroe County Correctional Facility for receiving stolen property, and the only reason he was able to stand here amongst his family members was because he had been granted a furlough for the purpose of attending the funeral. Yet while all of the relatives cried, paid their respects, and made statements expressing their love for the deceased man, Don did not look upon the corpse of his grandfather with love or sadness, but rather a seething hatred that had long roiled within him. He did not mourn the man who had been his grandfather, but was instead happy that he was gone, for unbeknownst to the others, Don had been abused by Kishaugh from the tender age of 7. These tormenting feelings of anguish and fury that churned within him clashed with the outward sense of mourning he tried to convey.

Adding to Don Decker’s problems was the fact that he did not get along with his mother and they barely ever spoke. In fact, she would not even allow him to stay under her roof, and so when the disgusted Don finally decided he’d had enough of pretending to mourn for the demented man who had been his grandfather, he had nowhere to go but the house of some friends of the family by the names of Bob and Jeannie Keiffer. It was here that the case would begin to take a turn for the decidedly bizarre. While he was in the restroom that evening, Don felt a profound chill creep over him and suddenly felt faint. He collapsed to the floor and it was as he laid there on the bathroom tiles that he went into a trance-like state and saw what he would later describe as the apparition of his dead grandfather looming over him, and would claim that scratches appeared on his forearms and wrists.
When the panicked Don snapped out of his trance, he went downstairs, arms bleeding from the gashes he had received, and told Bob Keiffer about what had happened to him. It was as he frantically explained the disturbing incident that there were abrupt loud banging noises that originated somewhere upstairs. Precisely when these inexplicable noises started, water allegedly started to mysteriously drip down the walls and from the ceiling, gradually becoming more intense until it was almost as if it were raining there in the living room upon the horrified Keiffers, who noticed that Don had slipped back into a trance. Not knowing what to do, Bob called his landlord, Ron H. Van Why, and explained the weird situation to him. When Van Why arrived to inspect the house, the dripping started to get even worse, with water bubbling up through the floor right in front of the startled landlord’s eyes. Van Why was not able to figure out what was going on either, since he knew that the pipes for the house were not even located where the water was coming from, but rather all the way on the other side of the house. He would later say of the situation:

We’d decided maybe it was the plumbing, but there were no pipes in the front end of the house to leak. There was basically nothing there that the water could have come from. After watching it for a while, I discovered that it wasn’t only coming from the ceiling down. It could come from the wall over or from the floor up. There was no basic direction that it was coming from. It could come from anywhere.

Baffled and at a loss as to the origins of the mysterious water, the frightened landlord called the police, and not long after, two officers arrived by the names of Richard Wolbert and John Baujan. If the two policemen were expecting just some sort of routine call for malfunctioning water pipes, then they were about to get much more than they’d bargained for. As soon as officers Wolbert and Baujan entered the house they were immediately drenched with the mysterious water, which was still falling and showed no signs of abating. Not only was the water still dripping from the walls and ceiling, but it was also behaving in ways that seemed to defy the laws of physics, with droplets of water travelling horizontally past them to continue on into the next room, hovering in midair, or floating upwards from the floor. The whole scene was incredibly surreal, and the officers immediately knew that this was far from a simple problem of leaky pipes. Officer Baujan would later say of the bizarre events unfolding before their eyes:

I literally had a chill going up my spine, made the hair stand up on your neck. That’s how I felt. This was a situation where things were happening that I never, ever dreamed could possibly happen. And there was no way of explaining what was going on.

Not knowing quite what to do and noticing that Don Decker was still in a trance and looking extremely pale and ill, the two police officers told the Keiffers to take Don to a pizzeria across the street and let him rest there while they went to explain the situation to their superiors, and Van Why remained to continue to try to figure out what was going on. The officers left and the Keiffers went about helping Don to his feet and taking him over the restaurant, which was owned by a Pam Scrofano, who had earlier gone to the house and seen the strange rain phenomenon for herself. Weirdly, as soon as Don was out of the house, the strange deluge of water that had besieged the house abruptly stopped. After a few moments of puzzling over this odd new development, the Keiffers continued on to the restaurant with the entranced Don. When they entered the pizzeria and sat down, the owner, Pam, noticed that Don was in an almost vegetative state and thought the whole thing was a little strange and almost ominous. Things got even stranger when water began to drip down from the ceiling and walls right there in the restaurant, just as it had back at the house. Remembering what she had seen earlier at the house, Pam got it into her head that Don was possessed by an evil spirit and allegedly grabbed a crucifix to press to his flesh, reportedly leaving a burn mark in the process and eliciting a reeling reaction from Don that completely snapped him out of his trance. Pam would later say of the incident:

You looked at Donny and he was like in a trance. He would look at you, but not knowing you were there. I said to Jeannie, ‘He’s got to be possessed.’  We’re sitting there. Couple of seconds later, there’s water all over the pizzeria, too. I’ve never seen anything like that happen. I went in the cash register, I had a crucifix there, I took it out, put it on him. And the minute I put it on him and it touched his skin, he got burned. There’s no way that anybody could have played a joke like that. This was real. Donny was doing it himself. He was doing it without realizing he was doing it.

As water continued to fall in pizzeria and began to spread across the floor, the Keiffers decided to take Don out of there and back to the house. As soon as they left the premises, the water stopped, and when they returned to the house it started once again, further perplexing all of those who were present. Shortly after the water began to flow again, things took a turn for the weirder when pots and pans in the kitchen could be heard rattling even though no one was in there. They all went into the kitchen to investigate, along with Don, who had totally regained lucidity in the aftermath of his trance, and saw various pots and pans rattling about with such force that some were falling off of countertops onto the floor. The landlord and his wife, Romayne, then began to think the whole thing was suspicious and that Don and the Keiffers were somehow playing some sort of practical joke. Ron and Romayne began to accuse the couple of orchestrating some sort of prank and the exchange became more heated. It was at this point, during the confrontation, that Don was suddenly lifted off of the floor and was dramatically thrown back against the wall by some unseen force, stopping everyone in their tracks as they stared at the man who was starting to seem as if he might really be possessed after all. Don himself would later speak of the incident thus:

The pots and pans over the stove started rattling. That’s when I got levitated off the floor. I was just like floating. Then it was like a push. It wasn’t like somebody taking their hand and pushing me. It was like feeling it all over your body at once. I’m a big guy, you know, I’ve always been assertive, and that made me feel like a newborn. You know, I’m scared right now just talking about it, really.

Not long after this strange series of events unfolded, officers Baujan and Wolbert returned to the house, this time with their highly skeptical police chief, Gary Roberts, in tow. With the water still falling profusely from the ceiling and flying about the room at odd angles, the chief too saw first hand what he must have thought was all some sort of joke. After a cursory inspection of the room, all the while being pelted with drops of water that were still seeming to defy gravity, the police chief unbelievably bluntly proclaimed it a water pipe leak. In addition, the two officers were told to not file a report on the matter and just sort of act like nothing had happened. They were also told to not investigate the matter any further, nor were they to ever return to the house. However, Baujan and Wolbert were not convinced by any of this, and felt like it was merely an attempt to cover up and deny a situation which had obviously left the police chief shaken, no matter what he told them.

The following day, officers Baujan and Wolbert defied their orders and returned to the Keiffer residence, this time with two additional policemen, officers Bill Davies and Lt. John Rundle. By this time, the mysterious rain had stopped and things seemed to have returned to some semblance of normal. While they were there, a curious officer Davies, having heard of the crucifix incident the previous day, allegedly gave Don Decker a gold cross to hold and Don immediately complained that it was so hot he had a hard time holding onto it. Although Davies was skeptical, this skepticism faded somewhat when Don once again levitated off of the floor and was thrown across the room right in full view of the four police officers, as well as incur a strange set of wounds that appeared to be from claws. Lt. John Rundle would go onto say of the strange event:

All of a sudden, he lifted up off the ground and he flew across the room with the force as though a bus had hit him. There were three claw marks on the side of his neck, which drew blood. I have no answer for it whatsoever. And, I just draw a blank, even today.

Also dumfounded by the whole affair was the landlord, Ron Van Why, who began to call around to priests and ministers all over the city and implore them to help out with Decker’s plight by performing an exorcism. Since exorcisms aren’t just done on demand without a good deal of evidence, deliberations, and prodding the Catholic Church, he was turned down by practically everyone. However, one local Evangelical preacher decided to come and see what was going on. The priest sat with Don and when they prayed together it was reported that he went into convulsions and rolled into a ball at first, but gradually reached a state of almost meditative calm. By the time they had finished praying, Don reported that he felt much better, as if something had “released its grip” on him. Indeed, this would prove to be the last time that rain would fall within the Keiffer residence. Soon after, Don’s furlough came to an end and he was summoned back to prison to complete his sentence.

In the following days, Don found himself pouring over the inexplicable events that had transpired and at one point began to muse about whether he had the power to actually control the mysterious rainfall on a whim. He reportedly began to concentrate on doing this, not really expecting anything to come of it, but to his surprise the water once again began to seep from the walls right there in his cell. A perplexed prison guard came into to see water all over the place and demanded to know what was going on, to which Don replied by explaining that he had literally made it rain in the cell. The guard perhaps not surprisingly was not convinced, and in fact scoffed at the whole thing. He sarcastically challenged Don to make it rain in the Warden’s office, which Don accepted. The guard then went over to the office of the warden, who was at that time a LT. David Keenhold, who didn’t know anything about Don’s weird experiences or purported rainmaking abilities. When the guard reached the office, he found an unsettled warden examining the front of his shirt, which had suddenly been soaked with water. Keenhold would later say of the baffling occurrence:

I was sitting at the desk, writing a report. I was all by myself in the administration area. Nobody else was around. It was approximately 8:00 in the evening. At the time, I didn’t feel anything, but my shirt was drooping down. And right about the center of my sternum, about four inches long, two inches wide, I was just saturated with water. I was startled. I was scared. The officer was frightened at that particular time, and I just didn’t have an explanation why it happened.

The mystified Keenhold soon learned of everything that had transpired with Decker, and this, along with the odd case of his wetted shirt, convinced him that Don was under the influence of some demonic force. The warden contacted the prison minister, a Reverend William Blackburn, and implored him to come take a look a look at Don as soon as possible. Blackburn for his part was highly skeptical after being briefed on all of the strange phenomena and all of the weird events that had surrounded Don Decker up to that point, and when he entered the cell to see Don he was convinced that the whole thing was some sort of prank and that Don was making the whole thing up. Nevertheless, Blackburn listened to Don’s story of how he could make it rain at will and how crosses burned his flesh, upon which the reverend bluntly replied that it was all in his head. However, as the two talked, odd things began to happen. First, Don seemed to go into one of his trances again, closing his eyes and rubbing his fingers together, then the air was suddenly pervaded by an incredibly foul stench that seemed to come from nowhere and invaded the room like an evil cloud as the rain began to appear again. Not knowing what else to do, the terrified Blackburn took out his bible and began to perform an impromptu exorcism, frantically reading from his bible in an effort to hold back what he now understood were sinister supernatural forces. After a time of intense praying, during which the bible oddly was the only thing in the cell not getting wet, whatever was going on seemed to lift, the rain stopped, and Don Decker returned back to normal. After the harrowing affair was over, Don and Blackburn embraced in relief, a newfound sense of peace coming over them. The reverend would later say of the whole bizarre incident:

All of a sudden his demeanor changed and this smell came into the room. Nurses and doctors, medical people, say when you walk into a room where someone is dying with a cancer or something, usually there’s a smell. You can tell when you walk in the room. I smelled a smell like that multiplied five times at least. Evil, foreboding. He raised his hand and rubbed his fingers together. And all of a sudden, it started to rain. It was like the devil’s rain. It was a mist. I was in the presence of evil. I opened up the Bible and started to read to him. But the pages never got wet. So help me, it was a frightening thing. I think I was praying more for me than him. I prayed, and it was only a brief period, and the rain stopped. He subsided and you could feel a peace. He said thank you. He got tears in his eyes. We hugged and prayed together. He was possessed. There was no doubt in my mind. There’s no way a human could do what he did in that room. There’s no way that he did anything, but what he did was spiritual, and it wasn’t of God. Guaranteed, it was not of God.

This would mark the last time that the mysterious rain would appear, and Don’s life returned to a somewhat normal state, even as the story of what had happened began to become a media sensation. It would go on to be featured in many TV programs, including the show Unsolved Mysteries, on February 10, 1993, in which many of those involved appear to talk about the strange events, and more recently on the program Paranormal Witness in November of 2011. In total, nine witnesses, including the four police officers who witnessed the phenomena first hand and the prison warden, have come forward to go on record to say what they saw, and none of them have any sort of rational explanation for it to this day.

The Don Decker case is interesting in that it was witnessed by so many people, including very reliable witnesses such as police officers, prison guards, and the prison warden, whose stories remain remarkably consistent even after the passage of decades. In some cases, the witnesses had nothing to gain from coming forward with such a strange story, especially the police officers, who risked ridicule and even their jobs by doing so, and they were furthermore not paid for the TV interviews they did. It is a case that has baffled both experts and paranormal investigators alike, and has managed to elude any concrete answers. Two investigators who have spent years analyzing the Decker case, a Chip Decker (no relation to Don) and a Peter Jordan, believe that the case contains some credibility thanks to so many solid testimonies. Jordan said of the case:

I think what makes this case very unique is that all of the witnesses are so credible. We’re dealing with very good, well-seasoned police officers that were obviously rather frightened and shaken by this, but also had the powers of observation. The Donald Decker case is by far the singularly most fascinating and important case I have ever personally been involved in. That does not mean I believe that it necessarily is proof positive to me of demonic infestation. But it is the case, in my own personal experience up to this point, that comes the closest to that hypothesis.

What happened to Don Decker? Is this all a hoax perpetrated by everyone from the Keiffers to law enforcement officials? Or was there perhaps really some supernatural force at work here? Could this have really been some sort of bizarre demonic possession? For his part, Don Decker has always believed that it was the angry spirit of his dead grandfather coming back to further abuse him from the grave, still unwilling to give up the life of evil, abuse and violence he had imposed upon the young Don. Others have speculated that Don’s pent up anger and frustration that he had kept buried over the years during the abuse at the hands of his grandfather suddenly came bursting through upon his tormentor’s death, resulting in an outburst of psychokinetic energy, which in turn was responsible for the poltergeist activity and other phenomena associated with the case. This is an interesting theory in that it has long been speculated that poltergeist activity comes not from ghosts, but from the very person around which the strange phenomena revolves, a sort of uncontrolled deluge of telekinetic energy. Many cases of poltergeist activity indeed seem to be centered on those who have experienced great emotional distress, particularly sexual abuse, as was the case with Don Decker. The weird occurrences started immediately upon the death of Don’s grandfather, so could this stress and bottled up anger have frothed to the surface spurred by the death and somehow accounted for the mysterious phenomena? Another notable correlation to the poltergeist theory is the presence of water in this case, which is a feature of some other poltergeist cases as well, such as “sweating” walls and the unusual case of Jackie Hernandez of San Pedro California, in which a strange substance later found to be human blood plasma was found to be leaking from the walls of the apartment.

Don Decker

Of course for others, the story is simply too strange to be true, and there has been a good amount of skepticism aimed at the Don Decker case in recent years. One particularly vocal skeptic has been New Zealand researcher Robert Bartholomew, who has published several articles trying to debunk the case. According to Bartholomew, most of the events can be explained rationally. The trances experienced by Don, for instance, could have been caused by stress rather than ghostly forces, or even faked. The fact that no one sought medical attention and instead resorted to exorcisms is seen as highly suspicious by the skeptic. As for the rain, Bartholomew pointed out that a report issued by the Manufactured Housing Research Alliance stated that Pennsylvanian homes are particularly at risk for winter moisture problems such as “ice damming,” in which warm air enters the attic of a house and melts snow on the outer surface of the roof, leading to pools of water which can leak into the house. As for the other eyewitnesses who saw the various strange phenomena surrounding Don Decker, Bartholomew believes that it was more or less all in their minds. He says:

Human perception is notoriously unreliable even under ideal conditions. Stress can alter perceptions, and it is difficult to imagine few events more stressful than believing you are in the presence of a man who is possessed by demonic forces.

Perhaps the most damning thing towards the credibility of the case according to Bartholomew is the lack of any photographic evidence provided. If the events were truly so bizarre and so dramatic, then why didn’t anyone take the time to photograph or videotape any of these occurrences, or to call in a news crew to do so? It is a good question to be sure, and one that is repeatedly pointed out by the skeptical researcher. In the end, Bartholomew thinks that this was a perfect storm of weather phenomena, unreliable accounts from unreliable eyewitnesses with inclinations to believe in ghosts or the devil, and perhaps even downright fakery. In the end, Bartholomew says of the whole case:

I want to believe in the paranormal. I would describe myself as an open-minded researcher who follows where the facts lead, and in this instance, it’s an indictment of TV docudramas. I do not think those involved are lying. I think it is a classic case of social delusion. If these events happened the way people claim they did, over several days, it is beyond belief that no one took photos.

In the end, we are left with a rather bizarre case for which we have no concrete answers nor even really a clear classification. Is this all stress, weather, and delusion? Was it all an elaborate hoax? Or is there any possibility that strange powers of the mind or even more sinister forces from beyond our understanding were at work? Since the phenomena have not occurred since, and we have only the testimony of those involved to go on, it is unlikely we will ever know for sure what was behind the case of the “Stroudsburg Rain Man,” and it is likely to remain one of those puzzling cases that will forever be debated by believers and skeptics. It remains one of the weirdest poltergeist/possession cases out there. In an odd turn of events, in recent years Don Decker was arrested for arson for setting fire to a restaurant in the Poconos, a charge he was later released on bail for. Perhaps he thought he could make it rain and put out the fire again. He couldn’t, and it remains unclear if he was ever really able to at all.