Former Greek Minister Attacked by Mob as Riots Break Out in Greece

Nick Squires reports for The Telegraph:

Kostis Hatzidakis, who is now an opposition MP, was left with blood pouring from his head after being chased and beaten by dozens of protesters.

He was set upon by up to 100 youths, who shouted "Thieves" and "Shame on you" when he emerged from the Greek parliament building on Constitution Square, in central Athens.

Protesters hurled lumps of concrete and paving stones at riot police, set fire to cars and smashed shop fronts.

The violence in Greece erupted during a general strike called by unions to protest against new labour laws which unions say will give employers too much power and take workers' rights "back to the Middle Ages."

Greece is struggling to reform its economy under conditions set by a 110 billion euro international bail-out package but many Greeks feel that they have ceded away their sovereignty to the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Apocalypse Then, and Now

By Jennifer Klein, Democracy Journal

F ew headlines encapsulate a moment better than the New York Daily News's front-page banner on October 30, 1975: "Ford to City: Drop Dead."

In early 1974, fiscally struggling New York City tried to stay afloat by issuing new bonds. New York's banks refused, demonstrating their power to withhold capital, and thereby setting off a crisis. With the city locked out of the bond market, it unsuccessfully turned to the federal government for help. Under banker supervision, New York then implemented wide-ranging austerity measures, after which President Gerald Ford and Treasury Secretary William Simon agreed to short, very restricted loans, with tight repayment strings. Simon further made clear that if the city gave in to any union demands for wage or benefit increases or failed to extract other savings, any further federal aid would be withheld. While the Daily News headline captured a city's frustration at the Administration, the broader context was also clear: the unquestioned ascendance of finance capitalism over manufacturing and the democratic state.

Fast forward three decades. In early 2008, worried creditors stopped lending to investment house Bear Stearns and pulled their money out, leading to its collapse. The government then helped JPMorgan Chase acquire it on very favorable terms. In September, Lehman Brothers crashed. By October, the stock prices of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan had plummeted, their balance sheets were in tatters, and the entire industry's short-term outlook was grim. Unable to raise money in the private markets, they too went hat in hand to the federal government. But there was no "Bush to Banks: Drop Dead." Quite the opposite. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs, invited them in to collect their cash. As Simon Johnson, a former IMF chief economist, tells us, "Not only did the government choose to rescue the financial system–a decision few would question–but it chose to do so by extending a blank check to the largest, most powerful banks in their moment of greatest need." We had arrived at the total inverse, the culmination of a process begun in the 1970s.

To understand how we got here, we need to take a look again at the 1970s: not the cultural malaise ’70s, or the backlash ’70s, but the economic ’70s. The 1970s have been viewed through the lens of the 1960s, and thereby defined by the reverberations of its culture wars. But as Judith Stein argues, the 1970s can’t just be seen as the result of a shift in national mood or strictly as a cultural phenomenon. At the heart of Pivotal Decade is a question we should be asking now: “Why did the nation replace the assumptions that capital and labor should prosper together with an ethic claiming that the promotion of capital will eventually benefit labor–trading factories for finance–a very different way of running a nation that produced very different results?” The 1970s were the years in which American investment in the productivity of its enterprises dropped and political leaders and their advisers reoriented policies toward wealth rather than capital formation. And as the financial crash of 2008 and persisting Great Recession have made clear, creating wealth is not the same as creating prosperity.

Stein, a professor of history at City University of New York, offers a story of structural economic change, chronicling a shift in the balance of power that led Democrats as much as Republicans to displace employment-focused New Deal policy with a politics of fighting inflation focused on maximizing investment returns. The inflation and unemployment that began climbing in the early 1970s were not the result of mere cyclical downturns. Manufacturers like General Instrument, Bendix, Caterpillar Tractor, and RCA disinvested from factory towns in the United States and turned to Europe, Mexico, and East Asia; banks invested in shipyards, steel mills, and chemical plants from Brazil to Korea. While American productivity sank, Europe and Japan dramatically increased manufacturing, productivity, and exports. Keeping its market closed and charging high domestic prices, Japan began to sell goods to the American market below their domestic price. For geostrategic reasons, Presidents Nixon and Ford were willing to allow the United States to be the market of first and last resort for the rest of the world, propping up an overvalued dollar to make sure Americans would buy imports. Consequently, American exports became harder to sell, producing the country’s first trade deficit since the 1890s. Yet few seemed concerned about what these policies meant for those who produced goods in the United States–that is, for American workers.

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How Can Anyone Defend Kissinger Now?

From Christopher Hitchens' article in Slate

... Here's what should now happen, and let's see if it does. Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized, and excluded. No more dinners in his honor; no more respectful audiences for his absurdly overpriced public appearances; no more smirking photographs with hostesses and celebrities; no more soliciting of his worthless opinions by sycophantic editors and producers. One could have demanded this at almost any time during the years since his role as the only unindicted conspirator in the Nixon/Watergate gang, and since the exposure of his war crimes and crimes against humanity in Indochina, Chile, Argentina, Cyprus, East Timor, and several other places. But the latest revelations from the Nixon Library might perhaps turn the scale at last. (Clickhere to listen to the conversation; the offending section begins at 13:56.)

Chatting eagerly with his famously racist and foul-mouthed boss in March 1973, following an appeal from Golda Meir to press Moscow to allow the emigration of Soviet Jewry, Kissinger is heard on the tapes to say:

The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

(One has to love that uneasy afterthought …)

In the past, Kissinger has defended his role as enabler to Nixon's psychopathic bigotry, saying that he acted as a restraining influence on his boss by playing along and making soothing remarks. This can now go straight into the lavatory pan, along with his other hysterical lies. Obsessed as he was with the Jews, Nixon never came close to saying that he'd be indifferent to a replay of Auschwitz. For this, Kissinger deserves sole recognition. ...

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War? No Worries! US Media 'Fluff' Focus Blamed for Numbing Nation

Americans consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan among the less important problems facing their country - according to a recent opinion poll. That's despite thousands of U.S. soldiers killed in action and more than one trillion dollars spent. But as RT's Lauren Lyster reports it may be the mainstream media that decides what really matters for the public...

Graffiti Riot: Paint Bombs Fly at Cops as Students Rage in London

Mass demonstrations by thousands of students and trade unionists in central London against an increase in tuition fees, are growing more violent. It's the latest and the largest in a string of rallies against sweeping austerity measures and budget cuts across Europe. What started as a relatively peaceful march later turned into violent clashes with the police, which is largerly outnumbered by the demonstrators.

WikiLeaks and the Conspiracy Problem (1 of 2)

From the Flip the Media Blog:

Writing in 2006 as the president of a then unnamed NGO and Australia’s “most infamous former hacker,” Julian Assange noted that “foresight requires trustworthy information about the current state of the world, cognitive ability to draw predictive inferences and economic stability to give them a meaningful home… secrecy, malfeasance and unequal access have eaten into the first requirement of foresight (‘truth and lots of it’).”

He then noted that “foresight can produce outcomes that leave all major interests groups better off. Likewise the lack of it, or doing the dumb thing, can harm almost everyone. Computer scientists have long had a great phrase for the dependency of foresight on trustworthy information; ‘garbage in, garbage out.”

That phrase would recur in Assange’s writings later that year. On December 6th, he published on his personal website an essay on state conspiracies in which he wrote “Since a conspiracy is a type of cognitive device that acts on information acquired from its environment, distorting or restricting these inputs means acts based on them are likely to be misplaced. Programmers call this effect garbage in, garbage out. Usually the effect runs the other way; it is conspiracy that is the agent of deception and information restriction. In the US, the programmer’s aphorism is sometimes called ‘the Fox News effect.’”

Wherever on the political spectrum Assange situates his more anarchist tendencies, his reference to Fox News is confusing. On the one hand, he is obviously linking Fox News’ rather tendentious relationship to political reality to pejorative terms like distortion and disinformation.

On the other hand, there must be something about the functional consequences of this practice that appealed to Assange, because he goes on to adopt the same language to describe positively a potential set of responses to state conspiracy:

To deal with powerful conspiratorial actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them since the actions themselves can not be dealt with. We can deceive or blind a conspiracy by distorting or restricting the information available to it. We can reduce total conspiratorial power via unstructured attacks on links or through throttling and separating. A conspiracy sufficiently engaged in this manner is no longer able to comprehend its environment and plan robust action.”

Wikileaks was launched in December of 2006 as well, and it is within this context that we should consider Assange’s concerns about state conspiracies. For Assange, conspiracies are terribly banal. In effect, any sufficiently developed governing agency conspires as part of its nature. Authority breeds authoritarian impulses which are necessarily predicated upon conspiracy, whether the conspiracy involves fabricated evidence of weapons of mass destruction or simple backroom dealing between politically connected agents. Wikileaks is, in effect, the actualization of the solution – distorting, throttling, separating – that Assange had previously hypothesized in the above essay.

Indeed, on December 31st, in his last personal post of 2006, Assange suggested that reading his essay on state conspiracy “while thinking about how different structures of power are differentially affected by leaks” will help its “motivations…become clearer.” The goal of his writing and ostensibly of Wikileaks is to crush conspiracy by making it paranoid of itself:

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive ‘secrecy tax’) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power…

It is really only in this context that we can begin to understand the problems posed by the recent #wikileaks story. It is increasingly common to hear that #wikileaks is a watershed moment in Internet history, that it comprises the frontline battle in the first global information war, all because of the unparalleled response to WikiLeaks on the part of the world’s governments.

But this response, this overreaction, this sense of responding to a threat was, if we believe its founder, the core motivation for the site’s development in the first place. It was a site designed to provoke, to impose a “secrecy tax” and produce “system decline” in governments that were, by definition, conspiracies. As such, we might do better to be shocked not by the outrage expressed by various governments, politicians and pundits, but instead to be shocked by how long it took them to take the bait.

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Ritual Killing And Human Sacrifice in Africa - IHEU Representative Leo Igwe

From FOROYAA Online:

The International Humanist and Ethical Union made the following presentation at the 48 th session of the African Commission On Human and Peoples Rights

The practice of ritual killing (1) and human sacrifice (2) continues to take place in several African countries in contravention of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and other human rights instruments. In this 21st century, human beings are still being hunted down, mutilated, murdered or sacrificed for ritual purposes across the region. Several cases of kidnapping and disappearance of persons (3) are traced to the vicious schemes and activities of ritualists. In most cases, those targeted for ritual sacrifice are vulnerable members of the population-the poor, women, children (4), the aged and people with disabilities.(5)

Ritualists hunt for and harvest human body parts to prepare charms and magical concoctions. In some cases desperate ritualists invade cemeteries and exhume dead bodies (6) to extract body parts.

Ritual killing and related human rights abuses take place on the continent because many people still believe that the use of charms and the performance of ritual sacrifice can fortify them spiritually, enhance their fortunes in business and during elections, or protect them from harm, disease, poverty, accident, death or destruction.

Madam Chairperson, many cases of ritual sacrifice take place in secret locations. They are largely unreported, uninvestigated and unpunished. The perpetrators and their collaborators capitalize on the prevalent irrational fear of the supernatural among Africans, and the poor and corrupt policing and justice system, to get away with these egregious violations.

Victims of ritual sacrifice are mostly minors or vulnerable individuals who do not live to seek justice or redress or who lack the resources to seek redress if ever they survive the ordeal. The families of victims fear spiritual or supernatural backlash and therefore do not hold their states accountable. And local authorities lack the political will to uphold the rule of law and protect human rights.

There have been reports of ritual murder and human sacrifice in countries across the continent: in Nigeria (7), Uganda (8), Swaziland (9), Liberia (l0), Tanzania (11), Namibia (l2), and Zimbabwe (13)

Madam Chairperson,

The continued occurrence of ritual killing and related abuses in these countries are clear indications that these states are in breach of their human rights obligations under the African Charter. These atrocious acts are often defended and justified as part of African culture, religion or tradition and it is claimed that they should therefore be upheld without any objection despite their grave implications for human and people’s rights.

IHEU calls upon the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to pay critical attention to ritual killing, human sacrifice and other human rights violations that are committed in the name of religion, culture or tradition. The African Commission should hold states where human sacrifice is still going on accountable and responsible.

IHEU calls upon the African Commission to raise issues concerning ritual killing and sacrifice during their official visits and when examining the periodic reports of states.

IHEU urges the governments of Nigeria, Uganda, Swaziland, Tanzania, Liberia to improve law enforcement, the quality of education, the mechanisms for the promotion and protection of human rights and to take other legislative and administrative measures to combat ritual murder and human sacrifice.

Thank you

Cult of Virginity Fades Slowly in Albania

By Ervin Qafmolla, Balkan Insight

...Like her ancient, dignified dwelling, Shuke herself is a museum piece, a relic of a disappearing world. Today, even in remote parts of Albania, where customary taboos have held sway for centuries, the sexual dynamics are changing.

Histories of Albania have long dwelled on the importance of virginity in society. From the 19th century onwards, foreign writers in particular put Albanian marriage codes, blood feuds, religion, hospitality, as well as such phenomena as “sworn virgins” - women who obtained male status by pledging eternal virginity - under a spotlight.

They portrayed the “Land of Eagles” as an untamed and archaic society, cut off from the modern world.

Albania has changed a lot since then and today it aims to join the European Union. But fragments of the old cultural codes have survived.

Ancient code of conduct

In mountainous rural Albania, the loss of a woman’s virginity to anyone other than her husband remains a taboo, thanks in large part to the continuing influence of the Canon of Leke Dukagjini.

Nebi Bardhoshi,an expert in Albanian customary law and professor at the European University of Tirana, explains that what is conventionally known as ‘the canon’ represents an evolved set of rules and values updated over centuries by several authors, lawmakers and local or national leaders.

“Although this set of rules, commonly referred to as the ‘canon’, exists mostly in northern Albania, identical or similar values still exist in other parts of the country, bearing the same origin and legacy,” Bardhoshi notes.

The canon comprises a complex framework of regulations, ranging from matters of communal concern to sentences for certain offences – for some of which the canon demands the death penalty.

Referring to demands for the death penalty in the event of breaches to the sexual code, Bardhoshi clarifies that such severe punishments were mostly confined to cases of sexual relations between blood relatives. The death penalty did not necessarily apply to cases of lost virginity.

“If a bride was found to have been deflowered on her marriage night, she would normally be taken back to her family and confined to the house for life, or remarried to a lower-status husband,” he says. ...

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Killing the Killers

By Ronen Bergman, Newsweek

During his years as Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion was haunted by a recurring nightmare. In it, the Holocaust’s survivors had taken refuge in Israel only to become the targets of another Holocaust. The nightmare seemed to be coming true in July 1962, when Egypt’s then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced four successful tests of missiles capable of striking anywhere “south of Beirut”—that is, anywhere in Israel.

Israeli officials panicked. The Mossad had never guessed that Nasser was developing the means to destroy “the Zionist entity,” as he had repeatedly promised. Israel’s military intelligence quickly learned that Egypt had built a secret facility in the desert, known as Factory 333 and staffed by German scientists, builders of the V1 and V2 rockets that had devastated London. Even the project’s security chief was a veteran of Hitler’s SS. The Egyptians’ plan was to build some 900 missiles, all of them presumably to be aimed at Israel.

But the program had a weakness, and the Mossad found it: the Egyptians still needed the German scientists’ help to start mass production of the missiles. At that moment Israel began a decades-long campaign to eliminate scientists working for its enemies on missiles and weapons of mass destruction. The Mossad called that first operation Damocles, invoking an image of impending doom from Greek myth.

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Omar Khadr's Lawyer Building Home on Anarchist Mountain

By Paul Everest, Osoyoos Times

With more than 5,000 kilometres separating them, Anarchist Mountain and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are two places that are unlikely to share a connection.

But with the lawyer of Omar Khadr building a house on the mountain, a new link between the mountain and the bay has been established.

Dennis Edney bought property in the Falcon Place area of the mountain’s Regal Ridge development four years ago and is currently building a home there.

The Scottish-born lawyer lives in Edmonton and for seven years has represented Khadr, a 24-year-old Canadian who pleaded guilty in October to the murder of an American soldier as well as four other terrorism-related charges.
Edney plans to move here once the home is completed by the end of next year.

“Our intention is to have this as essentially a full-time home but we’ll always have a home in Edmonton because that’s where our children are,” he said. “We love the area and we’re excited about moving there.”

Edney said he bought the property “by chance” while vacationing in the area four years ago.

“I had come down to Osoyoos with my wife and my youngest boy because we decided to take some time out. I’d been away from home for a number of months at trial,” he said.

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Museum of Contemporary Art Commissions, Then Paints Over, Artwork

By Jori Finkel, Los Angeles Times

Street art is fugitive by nature — and vulnerable to being destroyed by angry shopkeepers who just don't appreciate the creativity. But in the strange case of a massive antiwar mural that made a brief appearance downtown last week, it was the Museum of Contemporary Art that both commissioned and removed the work.

The mural, by the Italian street artist known as Blu, had a strong antiwar and anti-capitalist bent. It featured a field of military-style coffins draped by large dollar bills instead of flags.

The museum originally commissioned the piece for the north wall of the Geffen Contemporary as part of its "Art in the Streets" exhibition, set to open in April. Last week, upon the mural's completion, the museum had a crew whitewash it.

Several art bloggers denounced the museum's act as censorship, comparing it to the recent removal of David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire in My Belly" video from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Daniel Lahoda, founder of LA Freewalls Project downtown and one of the few people to photograph the work as it was being removed, said that the street art community is "really upset by this — everyone is talking about it."

"If you're planning on mounting the largest graffiti show in a major institution, you've got to give the artists the freedom to do the movement justice — so there's a big failure in what just happened," he says. "The last thing we want is an art institution, someone supposed to support creativity, to destroy it."

MOCA's official statement on the issue explains that the mural was removed because it was "inappropriate."

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Global Elites Push to Starve the World and Control the Food

By Dr. Laurie Roth, NewsWithViews

The push by global elitists to control the world’s food supply is collecting dangerous and globalist bed buddies. Monsanto, the globalist Agribusiness giant has now bought Blackwater, a huge, well funded and controversial, mercenary group. Blackwater has recently changed its name to Xe to help alleviate some of the heat it has received over the years. You may recall their major mess up in Iraq back on Sept. 16, 2007, when Blackwater contractors were reported to have shot and killed 17 civilians in a crowded area in Baghdad. Food manipulation with gun control. Isn’t that pretty?

Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, a former Navy seal who inherited a huge fortune and started to grow his well funded, mercenary company for hire largely made up of law enforcement who were contracted for large money as security in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now, Monsanto who does research world wide into altering crops and seeds, now has mercenary, armed and dangerous protection that can kill. One of the many ‘food controlling’ efforts Monsanto is involved with is the creation of what is called a ‘terminator’ seed. This is where they plant genetically modified crops that will not produce seeds to grow other plants and food. This would force all farmers to contact Monsanto or other globally controlled ‘seed controllers’ to grow more crops.

Monsanto admits researching these ‘terminator seeds’ but not following through with it. Funny how numerous other investigative sources say they are already well into this agenda worldwide. Can you imagine the twisted vision of an Agribusiness company of any kind creating ‘suicide seeds’ known after a first year planting to self destruct and be sterile? How would doing research on a large scale to destroy the viability of seeds do anything to help humanity and stop starvation? It doesn’t. In fact, it does the exact opposite.

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NASA's Project Blue Beam

By Serge Monast (1994)

The infamous NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] Blue Beam Project has four different steps in order to implement the new age religion with the Antichrist at its head. We must remember that the new age religion is the very foundation for the new world government, without which religion the dictatorship of the new world order is completely impossible. I'll repeat that: Without a universal belief in the new age religion, the success of the new world order will be impossible! That is why the Blue Beam Project is so important to them, but has been so well hidden until now.

Engineered Earthquakes & Hoaxed 'Discoveries'
The first step in the NASA Blue Beam Project concerns the breakdown [re-evaluation] of all archaeological knowledge. It deals with the set-up, with artificially created earthquakes at certain precise locations on the planet, of supposedly new discoveries which will finally explain to all people the "error" of all fundamental religious doctrines. The falsification of this information will be used to make all nations believe that their religious doctrines have been misunderstood for centuries and misinterpreted. Psychological preparations for that first step have already been implemented with the film, '2001: A Space Odyssey;' the StarTrek series, and 'Independence Day;' all of which deal with invasions from space and the coming together of all nations to repel the invaders. The last films, 'Jurrassic Park,' deals with the theories of evolution, and claim God's words are lies. http://i.am/jah/evolut.htm

Hoaxed "Discoveries'
What is important to understand in the first step is that those earthquakes will hit at different parts of the world where scientific and archaeological teachings have indicated that arcane mysteries have been buried. By those types of earthquakes, it will be possible for scientists to rediscover those arcane mysteries which will be used to discredit all fundamental religious doctrines. This is the first preparation for the plan for humanity because what they want to do is destroy the beliefs of all Christians and Muslims on the planet. To do that, they need some false 'proof' from the far past that will prove to all nations that their religions have all been misinterpreted and misunderstood.

The Big Space Show in the Sky
The second step in the NASA Blue Beam Project involves a gigantic 'space show' with three-dimensional optical holograms and sounds, laser projection of multiple holographic images to different parts of the world, each receiving a different image according to predominating regional national religious faith. This new 'god's' voice will be speaking in all languages. In order to understand that, we must study various secret services' research done in the last 25 years. The Soviet's have perfected an advanced computer, even exported them, and fed them with the minute physio-psychological particulars based on their studies of the anatomy and electromechanical composition of the human body, and the studies of the electrical, chemical and biological properties of the human brain. These computers were fed, as well, with the languages of all human cultures and their meanings. The dialects of all cultures have been fed into the computers from satellite transmissions. The Soviets began to feed the computers with objective programs like the ones of the new messiah. It also seems that the Soviets - the new world order people - have resorted to suicidal methods with the human society by allocating electronic wavelengths for every person and every society and culture to induce suicidal thoughts if the person doesn't comply with the dictates of the new world order.

There are two different aspects of step two.

The first is the 'space show.' Where does the space show come from? The space show, the holographic images will be used in a simulation of the ending during which all nations will be shown scenes that will be the fulfillment of that which they desire to verify the prophecies and adversary events.

These will be projected from satellites onto the sodium layer about 60 miles above the earth. We see tests every once in a while, but they are called UFOs and "flying saucers" sightings.

The result of these deliberately staged events will be to show the world the new 'christ,' the new messiah, Matraia (Maitreya), for the immediate implementation of the new world religion. Enough truth will be foisted upon an unsuspecting world to hook them into the lie. "Even the most learned will be deceived."

The project has perfected the ability for some device [referred to as "tractor beams" by ufologists].to lift up an enormous number of people, as in a Rapture, and whisk the entire group into a never-never land We see tests of this device in the abduction of humans by those mysterious little alien greys who snatch people out of their beds and through windows into waiting "mother ships." The calculated resistance to the universal religion and the new messiah and the ensuing holy wars will result in the loss of human life on a scale never imagined before in all of human history.

The Blue Beam Project will pretend to be the universal fulfillment of the prophecies of old, as major an event as that which occurred 2,000 years ago. In principle, it will make use of the skies as a movie screen (on the sodium layer at about 60 miles) as space-based laser-generating satellites project simultaneous images to the four corners of the planet in every language and dialect according to the region. It deals with the religious aspect of the new world order and is deception and seduction on a massive scale.

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The Hunt For Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology

By Nick Cook, Broadway Books

Review by Kathy Kasten, Paranoia Magazine

One just never knows what can happen when you step away from your office desk to trot down the hallway to get a cup of coffee. Nick Cook, investigative reporter for Jane's Defense, returned to his desk one day, coffee cup filled, to find a package. Picking up the package, Cook scanned the open office area searching for who may have put the package on his desk. Not seeing anything suspicious, he opened the package. After reading a bit of the contents, he made a decision. We all know that it is never about who you are, but the decisions you make. So thanks to Nick Cook's decision, the reader is taken on the equivalent of a magical mystery tour, in the finest sense of that term.

For the next three years of his life, Cook spends his spare time hunting down the source and reality of zero energy. All because of a copy of an article he found in the package on his desk. The article was titled "The G-Engines Are Coming" by Michael Gladych. Here's the kicker, the article was published in 1956 and talked about anti-gravity engines as if they were a very near future reality. The article named Martin Aircraft Company, Bell Aircraft, Lear and "several other American manufacturers" who would not spend millions of dollars on science fiction. Lawrence Bell, maker of the planes first to break the sound barrier, was quoted sounding as if his company was in the middle of developing equipment to cancel gravity. William Lear, long before he designed business jets, was thinking of how an anti-gravitational system would affect the pilot.

You want adventure? You want secret meetings with insiders? You want late night/early morning telephone conversations with knowledgeable sources unwilling to allow Cook to give their real identity? Journeys between England, United States and Eastern and Western Europe? Long bumpy rides to visit the ruins of Nazi/SS research facilities in Poland, Austria and the Fatherland? Cook has written a first rate true life detective novel. He knows very well how to report the story, even if it is his own story. It is apparent that Cook loved immersing himself in this tale of a real life adventure.

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Watergate Exposed: Set-up of President Nixon, Assassinations, Cover-ups, and Grand Jury Corruption

By Stephanie Sledge, TheGovernmentRag

Douglas Caddy, the original attorney for the Watergate burglars, and Earl Robert Merritt Jr. aka Butch Merritt, a confidential informant for the Washington Metropolitan Police Department Intelligence Division, came together to expose the hard realities of corruption beyond comprehension in a manuscript called, Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars were Set up As Told to Douglas Caddy, original Attorney for the Watergate Seven, appeared as guests on The Power Hour with Joyce Riley on the GCN Network in an attempt to disclose new factual material about the Watergate scandal and how historical consciousness have been altered to obscure the truth about a set-up so organized and manipulated uncovering new players and puppet masters behind the event that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. As new details exposed by Caddy and Merritt emerge, America wakes up to more governmental agency corruption, agency set-ups, lies, cover ups, and assassinations.

Douglas Caddy, LLD, is an attorney, the cofounder of Young Americans for Freedom, and served as the criminal lawyer for the burglars in the Watergate break-in. He is also admittedly homosexual and was targeted to be assassinated by the CIA using recruited confidential informant Robert Merritt (Butch Merritt) because of the CIA believed he knew too much about the agency. He claims we need to revisit Watergate because the outcome of the Vietnam War, all the people killed, and the (CIA) Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement and role setting up President Nixon and the burglars resulting in Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

Robert Merritt (Butch Merritt), was a man who became a confidential informant or tool for the CIA, was an admitted assassin and had association with Cointelpro. He came from an alcoholic family with a background of being sexually molested by a deranged Catholic Church priest at the age of 17. He was also a petty criminal offender that had a few run-ins with the police in his hometown in West Virginia. Merritt became a top figure on the totem pole in the Watergate scandal when he was targeted and recruited to be a confidential informant in 1970. After being fired from his job, he was approached by Detective Carl Shoffler at his apartment at 2121 Pace Street in Washington, D.C. and given $1000 in cash to compensate him. Merritt says that he feels the sexual abuse from the Catholic Church priest when he was 17 might have been a planned preparation for his future assignments as a confidential informant and assassin because he fit the description of a gay molested boy with a low self-esteem and nobody to talk to.

Detective Carl Shoffler was a hard-wired officer who was assigned to the Washington Metropolitan Police Department’s Intelligence Division by the Military Intelligence Agency. He also worked for the CIA and Interpol. Shoffler recruited Merritt as a confidential informant to spy on activists, blacks, the gay community, straights, the jews, anti-war activists, or anyone who the government thought was a potential threat or enemy. Merritt was to gather intelligence on people that fit the description of the enemy. Officer Shoffler began a sexual relationship with Merritt and moved himself, his wife, and kids into Merritt’s home which later became a central gathering station for the police department. Merritt and Shoffler continued a sexual relationship for two years. It ended just shortly after the Watergate break-in when Shoffler moved out of his apartment.

Two weeks prior to the Watergate break-in on June 1, 1972, Merritt was given confidential information by James Reed aka Rita, a drag queen friend of Merritt and operator for a telephone switchboard, who listened in on telephone calls and overheard people who identified themselves as “The Crimson Rose.” These conversations revealed that Watergate was going to take place. Merritt then tipped off Detective Shoffler with the information. Instead of preventing the break in, Shoffler decided to bring in Intelligence and set-up the burglars by sending them in a second time to get an envelope with a key to a safe deposit box that contained confidential information. Shoffler’s intention was to gain fame as the “officer that arrested the burglars” and get rid of President Nixon using a method of wiretap triangulation that he had learned from his prior training at the National Security Agency’s Vint Hill Farm Station in Virginia. Originally the break-in was planned for June 18th but Shoffler sent a message across to the Watergate burglars who were tapping the DNC’s phones that led the burglars to believe that there was something in there so important that it could not be left behind. The date was changed from the 18th to the 17th – which was also Shoffler’s birthday. He wasn’t scheduled to work that shift but he took on another shift and was parked a block away in a police car when the call came in reporting the burglary resulting in the immediate arrests.

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CIA Tries Again to Duck Responsibility for Doing Drug Experiments on Veterans

Maria Dinzeo reports for Courthouse News:

The Central Intelligence Agency in January will argue for dismissal of Vietnam veterans' claims that the CIA must provide them with information about the health effects of chemicals used on them during Cold War-era human experiments. The CIA also claims it is not obligated to provide the veterans with medical care for side effects of the drugs. It's the CIA's third attempt to get the case dismissed.

In a 2009 federal lawsuit, Vietnam Veterans of America claimed that the Army and CIA had used at least 7,800 soldiers as guinea pigs in "Project Paperclip." They were given at least 250 and as many as 400 types of drugs, among them sarin, one of the most deadly drugs known to man, amphetamines, barbiturates, mustard gas, phosgene gas and LSD.

Among the project's goals were to control human behavior, develop drugs that would cause confusion, promote weakness or temporarily cause loss of hearing or vision, create a drug to induce hypnosis and identify drugs that could enhance a person's ability to withstand torture.

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