Speaking Ill of ‘the Best and the Brightest’

By Robert Scheer, Truthdig

One of "the best and the brightest" died last week, and in Richard Holbrooke we had a perfect example of the dark mischief to which David Halberstam referred when he authored that ironic label. Holbrooke's life marks the propensity of our elite institutions to turn out alpha leaders with simplistic world-ordering ambitions unrestrained by moral conscience or intellectual humility.

Fresh from Brown University, Holbrooke marched off as a foreign service officer to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, who were not buying it. He quickly became involved with the pacification program that herded peasants off their land into barbed-wire encampments while we bombed the surrounding areas.

Holbrooke was later so successful in the infamous CIA Phoenix program to kill Vietnamese civilians thought to be sympathetic to the Viet Cong that at the age of 24 he was brought back to Washington to work under the head of that program, R.W. Komer, on a top-level White House command to save Vietnam from the Vietnamese.

While in Washington, Holbrooke came to write a chapter of the secret Pentagon Papers study that exposed the falsehoods justifying the war. Shades of the WikiLeaks disclosures—when Daniel Ellsberg, who also worked on that report, revealed it to the world, the lies stood exposed. As Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acknowledged decades after commissioning the study, 3.5 million Indochinese died in a war that had little if anything to do with our national security. He concluded that he could indeed be judged a "war criminal," except that appellation is reserved for leaders of lesser states, like the Serbian and Iraqi leaders whose war crimes Holbrooke would later trumpet as excuses for other U.S. wars.

Holbrooke not only failed to learn from the U.S. mistakes in Vietnam; he repeated them in working for every Democratic president to follow. When Jimmy Carter was elected, there was Holbrooke as an assistant secretary of state supporting the Islamic mujahedeen in Afghanistan, a group fighting the Soviet-backed secular government in Kabul.

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Neotame - Hidden Danger in Holiday Food Supply

By Mary Nash Stoddard of The Aspartame Consumer Safety Network (ACSN).

Everyone wants to indulge a sweet tooth at this festive time of year, without suffering the inevitable consequences of weight gain. But, be aware of the hidden (not listed on ingredient labels) dangers of Neotame sweetener in almost everything consumed by humans, and now even in feed for livestock raised for human consumption.

In 1998, Monsanto applied for FDA approval for a monster molecule, "based on the aspartame formula" with one critical addition: 3-dimethylbutyl [listed on EPA's most hazardous chemical list]. Neotame is touted as being 13,000 times sweeter than sugar.

On July 5, 2002 - Monsanto's Neotame molecule was approved by the USFDA over formally registered objections of the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network and others. (Long term effects on humans are unknown.) Read the full release on The Aspartame Consumer Safety Network.

The food labeling requirements required for aspartame have now been dropped for Neotame, and no one is clear why this was allowed to happen. Neotame has been ruled acceptable, and without being included on the list of ingredients, for:

1. USDA Certified Organic food items.
2. Certified Kosher products with the official letter k inside the circle on labels.

Ever ready to give the public what it craves - guilt-free, low calorie treats that taste as good as sugar, is the multi billion dollar sweetener industry. The sugar industry pales by comparison, in the profit generating arena. Fake sugars, in the form of Aspartame and now the Aspartame super clone, Neotame, give 'foodies' and fitness fanatics false hope and the empty promise that all can 'have our cake and eat it, too.' Not necessarily so.

Controversy has swirled around the artificial sweetener, Aspartame, now also known as AminoSweet, since its FDA approval in 1982. Virtually all corporate sponsored scientific studies show aspartame to be perfectly safe. Virtually all independently done studies show just the opposite. In the lab, Aspartame was shown to cause the following forms of cancers: brain tumors, pancreatic tumors, breast tumors and uterine tumors. Five deaths are registered with FDA. In more recent tests, leukemia, lymphoma and kidney cancers were discovered as well.

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Whistleblower Exposes Attempted ET Manipulation, False Flag at ‘Festival’

By Alfred Lambremont Webre, Examiner

In an exclusive January 2, 2011 50 minute video interview with Alfred Lambremont Webre on ExopoliticsTV, former Project Seagate whistleblower and Project Camelot witness Aaron McCollum has exposed an attempted recruitment by the organizers of the June 13-19, 2011 'Festival of Enlightenment' at Evergreen, CO to enroll him into serving as a manipulator between purported extraterrestrials that would 'decloak' over the Festival and child participants in the Festival.

Mr. McCollum also cautions that the Festival, which is planning to attract 50,000 attendees and is negotiating with Sir Bob Geldof of Live Aid, could present an opportunity for a 'Project Bluebeam'-type psychological warfare attack on participants and on the population at large.

Mr. McCollum points out the isolated location of the Festival venue of Evergreen, CO and its triangulation and close proximity to three areas with U.S military bases: Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, and Denver, CO (with reported deep underground military bases) and render the Festival a fertile venue for a false flag Project Bluebeam type 'ET encounter'.

View ExopoliticsTV interview with Aaron McCollum

Examiner.com readers can view the ExopoliticsTV interview with Aaron McCollum above or by clicking here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtGf7rva-IA

Festival organizers have worked for Halliburton

According to its website, the Festival of Enlightenment organizers Bill and Jan Moore "have more than 80 years of international business experience between them. Through multi-million dollar business ownership, management in Fortune 100 companies and successful solution-oriented and performance-based consulting, they have extensive knowledge spanning business strategy and development, project management, sales and marketing, retail merchandising, customer service, commercial real estate, Internet and social media. U.S. consulting clients have included 3M, Texas Instruments, Halliburton, Johnson & Johnson, Peterbuilt and Rockwell International. UK consulting clients have included Sainsbury's, Tesco, Compass Group, Argos, British Telecom, Bass Brewers, Harvey Nichols, British Council, and Department for International Development."

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Dark Ages: 2010 Uprisings Just a Start, Revolt 2011 Coming?

For Europe, it was a year when the cash ran out in some countries. But one thing that wasn't in short supply was the number of angry protestors. As governments severely cut back on budgets, hundreds of thousands of people lashed out in response. RT's Laura Emmett wraps up what's been a troubled year for Europe - and why people should brace themselves for 2011.

Political Essay By 93-Year-Old Tops Christmas Bestseller List In France

Angelique Chrisafis writes for the Guardian:

Proving that age is no boundary to publishing success, the French book world has been taken by storm by a surprise Christmas bestseller: a political call to arms by Stéphane Hessel, 93.

The unlikely publishing sensation is a former resistance hero whose 30-page essay, Indignez-vous!, calls on readers to get angry about the state of modern society.

[ ... ]

Hessel's book argues that French people should re-embrace the values of the French resistance, which have been lost, which was driven by indignation, and French people need to get outraged again. "This is an appeal to citizens, young and old, to take responsibility for the things in our society that don't work," he said. "I wish every one of you to find your own reason for indignation. It's precious." Hessel's reasons for personal outrage include the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor, France's shocking treatment of its illegal immigrants, the need to re-establish a free press, protecting the environment, the plight of Palestinians and the importance of protecting the French welfare system. He calls for peaceful and non-violent insurrection.

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