Coming up Tuesday at 9am Pacific – 12 Noon Eastern – 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Tuesday evening.

“THE KEVIN BARRETT SHOW”

EXCLUSIVE –Tuesday on KB Show:
Ellen Brown: “Don’t Settle! Robo-signed mortgages = FRAUD”

Guest, Ellen Brown, author, Web of Debt, whose new article “Why the AGs Must Not Settle: Robo-signing Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg” calls on states’ Attorneys General not to sign the proposed settlement agreement with banks that committed mortgage fraud. Why not? Because “the evidence to date suggests that ‘robo-signing’ was not a mere technical default or sloppy business practice but was part and parcel of a much larger fraud, the fraud that brought down the whole economy in 2008.”

The Kevin Barrett Show is independently produced and hosted by Kevin Barrett and these shows are externally produced content. All externally produced content broadcast on No Lies Radio is the sole responsibility of the program-content producer and is not the responsibility of NoLiesRadio.org. Any questions or concerns should be directed to the content producer.

Coming up today and every Monday at 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 pm Eastern – 03:00 GMT

GUNS AND BUTTER with Bonnie Faulkner
The View From Europe– Dr. Michael Hudson
Interview with financial economist and historian, Dr. Michael Hudson. Financial and fiscal austerity policies; the appeal of economic austerity to bankers; economic depression and war; post-WWII vs. post-cold war economic policy; government to government grants vs. commercial lending; the euro and dollar; privatization in New Zealand and elsewhere; social unrest; speculation and prices; criminalization of the economy; impoverishment of the US. Visit his website at www.michael-hudson.com.

On Friday, the entire financial world celebrated when it was announced that the unemployment rate in the United States had fallen to 8.3 percent. That is the lowest it has been since February 2009, and it came as an unexpected surprise for financial markets that are hungry for some good news.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payrolls jumped by 243,000 during the month of January.  You can read the full employment report right here.  Based on this news, pundits all over the world were declaring that the U.S. economy is back.  Stocks continued to rise on Friday and the Dow is hovering near a 4 year high.  So does this mean that our economic problems are over?  Of course not.  A closer look at the numbers reveals just how fraudulent these employment statistics really are.  Between December 2011 and January 2012, the number of Americans “not in the labor force” increased by a whopping 1.2 million.  That was the largest increase ever in that category for a single month.  That is how the federal government is getting the unemployment rate to go down.  The government is simply pretending that huge numbers of unemployed Americans don’t want to be part of the labor force anymore.  As you will see below, the employment situation in America is not improving.  Yet everyone in the mainstream media is dancing around as if the economic crisis has been cancelled.  I can’t take it anymore!  It is beyond ridiculous that so many intelligent people continue to buy in to such fraudulent numbers.

The truth is that the labor force participation rate declined dramatically in January.  For those unfamiliar with this statistic, the labor force participation rate is the percentage of working age Americans that are either employed or that are unemployed and considered to be looking for a job.

As you can see from the chart posted below, the labor force participation rate rose steadily between 1970 and 2000.  That happened because large numbers of women were entering the labor force for the first time.

The labor force participation rate peaked at a little more then 67 percent in the late 90s.  Between 2000 and the start of the recent recession, it declined slightly to about 66 percent.

Since then, it has been dropping like a rock.  The chart below does not even include the latest data.  In January, the labor force participation rate was only 63.7 percent.  That is the lowest that is has been since May 1983.  So keep that in mind as you view the chart.

In reality, the percentage of men and women in the United States that would like to have jobs is almost certainly about the same as it was back in 2007 or 2008.  There has been no major social change that would cause large numbers of men or women to want to give up their careers.  So there is something very, very fishy with this chart….

The federal government has been pretending that millions of unemployed Americans have decided that they simply do not want jobs anymore.

This does not make sense at all.

The truth is that unemployment is not really declining at all.  The percentage of Americans that are working is not increasing.  The civilian employment-population ratio dropped like a rock during 2008 and 2009 and it has held very steady since that time.

In January, the civilian employment-population ratio once again held steady at 58.5 percent.  This is about where it has been for most of the last two years….

Does that chart look like an “economic recovery” to you?

Of course not.

If the percentage of people that are employed is about the same as it was two years ago, does that represent an improvement?

Of course not.

If the employment situation in America was getting better, the civilian employment-population ratio would be bouncing back.

READ FULL STORY HERE

washingtonsblog.com 1-14-2012
RT notes:

The escalating conflict around Iran should be contained by common effort, otherwise the promising Arab Spring will grow into a “scorching Arab Summer,” says Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister and former envoy to NATO.

“Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security,” stressed Rogozin.

Here’s what Rogozin is talking about (notice how close the Southern tip of Russia is to Northern Iran):

A Chinese general has also allegedly said that China would launch World War III if Iran is attacked. And see this.

While many Americans still believe that our government would not be crazy enough to attack Iran,economic – not national security – considerations may be driving the warmongers.

In addition, Iran and Syria have had a mutual defense pact for years. And China and Russia might also defend Syria if it is attacked. So an attack on Syria could draw Iran into the war … followed by China and Russia.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Don’t Miss our Saturday – Economic Collapse Truth Teach-in Marathon
11am Pacific – 2pm Eastern – 18:00 GMT – Saturday
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Coming up Saturday –
ONE KEY ECONOMIC COLLAPSE TRUTH Revelation
Key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Economic collapse in the Western nations-On the Edge with Max Keiser

In this edition of the show Max interviews the author Michael Hudson from Michael-Hudson.com. In this episode Max talks to Michael about the economic collapse in the Western nations and how this collapse gap thesis applies to the European economies currently experiencing a huge crisis. From A PressTVGlobalNews on Jan 28, 2012 Youtube upload.


Uploaded by PressTVGlobalNews on Jan 28, 2012

The Economic Collapse Teach-in encompasses upon some of the most highly controversial an crucial subjects of our day—the collapsing economy, the Federal Reserve, the Banks, Wall Street, financial fraud, foreclosures, homelessness, unemployment, workers rights, unions, trade agreements, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Every Saturday – Anti-War – Progressive Truth Teach-in
Coming up at 9:00am Pacific * 12 noon Eastern * 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Military Industrial Complex at 50, David Swanson
As he discusses co-authoring his new book MIC50, David Swanson provides context with recent US Military and foreign policy history in wars abroad. Iran, Congress, Corporate Power, and new energy to OWS movement, with dates for general strikes and protests. From a Talk Nation Radio Presentation.

The Anti-war Progressive Teach-in broaches upon some of the most highly charged subjects of our day—War & Peace, national healthcare, women’s rights, human rights, civil rights, torture, vets against the war, freedom, democracy, protest, demonstrations, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Coming up every Saturday at 1:00 pm Pacific – 04:00 pm Eastern – 20:00 GMT

Rosanne Barr and Cindy Hickey
Cindy presents two guests: 1) up is actress, comedian and political commentator Rosanne Barr, and then on to 2) Cindy Hickey, mother of incarcerated hiker (in Iran?) Shane Bauer. Roseanne presents her own web site, roseanneworld.com, and then moves on to discusses her new book: Roseannearchy, also known as “Dispatches from the Nut Farm.” It’s really her personal Journal on leaving ‘Babylon’ (Hollywood), for a real life in Hawaii. Golly gee, she sounds like “gasp” a real person here, boyz and grrls! Awesome, indeed – especially in this day and age! What I expected was a semi-comedic tour of “Roseanne’s World,” perhaps a distant cousin to “Wayne’s World.” What I got was a carefully reasoned and well thought-out semi-comedic presentation of a serious plan to save the world we already have. She’s done a marvelous job analyzing/structuring her “Roseanearchy” here, folks! Next up is Cindy Hiickey for her son, Shane Bauer. In July 2009, Josh Fatal and Shane Bauer, along with his fiancée Sarah Shourd were detained by Iranian forces while they were were enjoying a recreational hike in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. There are conflicting news reports about whether Iranian forces entered Iraq to arrest the three young Americans or they strayed across the poorly marked border by mistake. Supposedly, these three crossed the border into Iran illegally. Even Sarah says there were absolutely no border markings anywhere. Sarah, 32, was released on September 14, 2010, on humanitarian grounds after spending 410 days in solitary confinement and immediately vowed to work for the freedom of Shane and Josh, both 28. All three were charged shortly before Sarah’s release with illegal entry and espionage at a hearing in Evin Prison in Tehran where they were finally allowed to meet their lawyer for only the first time. Shane, Sarah and Josh are innocent of any crime. You can sign the International petition to free them at Freethehikers.org.This interview is from June 5, 2011.
Cindy’s website is here.

Coming up today and every Friday at 7:00pm Pacific * 10:00pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT

ECOSHOCK — OIL TO OCCUPY: The Restless West Coast

With the Keystone Pipeline denied by U.S., Canada looks to sell dirty Tar Sands oil to China. “Oil Free Coast” features 3 speakers against a new northern pipeline & making Vancouver into an oil port. Art Sterritt (Coastal First Nations), Rex Weyler (tankerfreebc.org), & MP Nathan Cullen. Then on-scene audio from Occupy Wall St West in San Francisco Jan 20th, including author Ted Nace & activist Ananda Tan (awaiting arrest). Visit Ecoshock here.

This is a transition show from Earthbeat to Radio Ecoshock. It explains the change to regular listeners. Earthbeat host Daphne Wysham is off the air, while she reorganizes for a possible return. By agreement, Alex Smith is providing environment news and analysis via the Radio Ecoshock show. You can help Earthbeat to return by visiting their website here.

Coming up every Thursday at 7:00 pm Pacific * 10:00 pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast.

ALEC and the 1% Censoring Journalists and Occupying Student Debt

Today’s show is about ALEC and the 1% Censoring Journalists and Occupying Student Debt. We’ll hear about the Against Cuts Conference happening tomorrow at Berkeley City College, student organizer Dielly Diaz joins us from UC Berkeley; Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy returns to the program to discuss the American Legislative Exchange Council- and ALEC’s recent censoring of the press in AZ; at the bottom of the hour we hear from Steve Zeltzer of Work Week Radio with the labor calendar; and we conclude the show we talk to attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute Ellen Brown about a Jubilee on Student Loan Debt, which is one of the many concerns of the Occupy Wall St. movement. Show Hosts: Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips, with Abby Martin of Media Roots.

Coming up Tuesday at 9am Pacific – 12 Noon Eastern – 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Tuesday evening.

“THE KEVIN BARRETT SHOW”

EXCLUSIVE –Tuesday on KB Show:
Meet election integrity expert John Washburn!

Guest: John Washburn, Wisconsin-based software engineer and election integrity activist. (Check out his blog and website.)

The Kevin Barrett Show is independently produced and hosted by Kevin Barrett and these shows are externally produced content. All externally produced content broadcast on No Lies Radio is the sole responsibility of the program-content producer and is not the responsibility of NoLiesRadio.org. Any questions or concerns should be directed to the content producer.

Coming up today and every Monday at 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 pm Eastern – 02:00 GMT

GUNS AND BUTTER with Bonnie Faulkner
The Bilderberg Group: Rulers of the World — Daniel Estulin
Interview with investigator and author, Daniel Estulin, on his book, “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group“, which describes an annual gathering where the European and American political elite, and the wealthiest CEOs of the world, all come together to discuss the economic and political future of humanity. Highly secretive, the press has never been allowed to attend, nor have statements ever been released on the group’s conclusions or discussions, which have great ramifications for all the citizens of the world. The book also includes sections on the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.

Top Military Man Invokes the Occupy Movement in 1933

Smedley Butler was one of the most highly-decorated military men of all time. He is also the guy who – literally – stopped a coup against FDR. See this, this and this.

General Butler addressed the Bonus Army in Washington D.C. in 1933, as they “occupied” D.C. to demand compensation for their service to the country:

Smedley Butler from Louis Proyect on Vimeo.

General Butler invoked the 99% movement, telling the veterans:
We are divided, in America, into two classes: The Tories on one side, a class of citizens who were raised to believe that the whole of this country was created for their sole benefit, and on the other side, the other 99 per cent of us, the soldier class, the class from which all of you soldiers came. That class hasn’t any privileges except to die when the Tories tell them. Every war that we have ever had was gotten, up by that class. They do all the beating of the drums. Away the rest of us go. When we leave, you know what happens. We march down the street with all the Sears-Roebuck soldiers standing on the sidewalk, all the dollar-a-year men with spurs, all the patriots who call themselves patriots, square-legged women in uniforms making Liberty Loan speeches. They promise you. You go down the street and they ring all the church bells. Promise you the sun, the moon, the stars and the earth,–anything to save them. Off you go. Then the looting commences while you are doing the fighting. This last war made over 6,000 millionaires. Today those fellows won’t help pay the bill.
Indeed, veterans today support the 99% movement. They understand … just as General Butler understood.

As Butler wrote:

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [i.e. WWI] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few — the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
(Watch an actor read Butler’s dramatic speech.)

No wonder the 1% persecute pacifists: they threaten the world’s most profitable game.

No wonder – as Nazi leader Hermann Goering noted – the war profiteers are always trying to trick the people into supporting war:
>Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

READ FULL STORY HERE

In this edition of the show Max interviews the author Michael Hudson from Michael-Hudson.com

In this episode Max talks to Michael about the economic collapse in the Western nations and how this collapse gap thesis applies to the European economies currently experiencing a huge crisis.

Don’t Miss our Saturday – Economic Collapse Truth Teach-in Marathon
11am Pacific – 2pm Eastern – 18:00 GMT – Saturday
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Coming up Saturday –
ONE KEY ECONOMIC COLLAPSE TRUTH Revelation
Key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Michael Parenti: The Pathology of Wealth

The first talk of 2012 by the social critic and noted author Michael Parenti fits perfectly into the debates of the time, that of the 1% versus the 99% and the finally no longer taboo question: What exactly is CAPITALISM? Parenti is debunking some of the myths of capitalism: That it creates jobs, peace, democracy and wealth. After debunking some of the myths of capitalism, that it creates jobs, peace, democracy and wealth for all, Parenti describes the pathologies of the system by its inability to respond to climate change. Quoting a businessman in a New Yorker cartoon he reads: “While the end of the world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, ..the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities.” Also in this segment arguments for the benefits of socialism in areas of our lives that should not be managed under the profit system. He lists health care, energy, and transportation.

The Economic Collapse Teach-in encompasses upon some of the most highly controversial an crucial subjects of our day—the collapsing economy, the Federal Reserve, the Banks, Wall Street, financial fraud, foreclosures, homelessness, unemployment, workers rights, unions, trade agreements, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Every Saturday – Anti-War – Progressive Truth Teach-in
Coming up at 9:00am Pacific * 12 noon Eastern * 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Iran and the Globalization of War — Michel Chossudovsky
Recent developments in the Middle East including the wider implications of the destabilization of the entire area; the current global war as a different kind of conquest than that of World War I and II; US military deployment in the area; the role of Israel; Iranian Defenses; US war planning and war scenarios since 2003 concerning the nation of Iran, including Austere Challenge 12, Theatre Iran Near Term, Global Strike 2003, Concept Plan 8022, and Vigilant Shield; the effect of sanctions; and The Responsibility To Protect. From a Guns & Butter Presentation.

The Anti-war Progressive Teach-in broaches upon some of the most highly charged subjects of our day—War & Peace, national healthcare, women’s rights, human rights, civil rights, torture, vets against the war, freedom, democracy, protest, demonstrations, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Jan 26, 2012

Over Monsanto’s 110-year history (1901-2011), Monsanto Co (MON.N), the world’s largest seed company, has evolved from primarily an industrial chemical concern into a pure agricultural products company. MON profited $2 billion dollars in 2009, but their record profits fell to only $1 billion in 2010 after activists exposed Monsanto for doing terribly evil acts like suing good farmers and feeding uranium to pregnant women. Below is a timeline of Monsanto’s dark history.

Monsanto, best know today for its agricultural biotechnology GMO products, has a long and dirty history of polluting this country and others with some of the most toxic compounds known to humankind. From PCBs to Agent Orange to Roundup, we have many reasons to question the motives of this evil corporation that claims to be working to reduce environmental destruction and feed the world with its genetically engineered GMO food crops. Monsanto has been repeatedly fined and ruled against for, among many things: mislabeling containers of Roundup, failing to report health data to EPA, plus chemical spills and improper chemical deposition.

The name Monsanto has since, for many around the world, come to symbolize the greed, arrogance, scandal and hardball business practices of many multinational corporations. A couple of historical factoids not generally known: Monsanto was heavily involved during WWII in the creation of the first nuclear bomb for the Manhattan Project via its facilities in Dayton Ohio and called the Dayton Project headed by Charlie Thomas, Director of Monsanto’s Central Research Department (and later Monsanto President) and it operated a nuclear facility for the federal government in Miamisburg, also in Ohio, called the Mound Project until the 80s.

Monsanto Company History Overview

Monsanto is a US based agricultural and pharmaceutical monopoly, Monsanto Company is a producer of herbicides, prescription pharmaceutical drugs, and genetically engineered (GMO) seeds. The global Monsanto corporation has operated sales offices, manufacturing plants, and research facilities in more than 100 countries. Monsanto has the largest share of the global GMO crops market. In 2001 its crops accounted for 91% of the total area of GMO crops planted worldwide. Based on 2001 figures Monsanto was the second biggest seed company in the world, and the third biggest agrochemical company.

Historically Monsanto has been involved with the production of PCBs, DDT, dioxins and the defoliant / chemical weapon ‘Agent Orange’ (sprayed on American troops and Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War). Originally a chemical company, Until the late 1990s Monsanto was a much larger ‘lifesciences’ company whose business covered chemicals, polymers, food additives and pharmaceuticals, as well as agricultural products.

All of these other chemical business areas have now been demerged or sold off. Monsanto sold its chemical business in 1997 to build a presence in biotechnology, developing NON-ORGANIC GMO soybeans and corn (classified as a pesticide and banned in the EU) to resist the poisonous affects of its Roundup herbicide. Monsanto’s key business areas are now agrochemicals, seeds and traits (including GMO crops), Monsanto also produced NutraSweet, a GMO sugar substitute. Monsanto recently sold it’s GMO bovine growth hormones monopoly to Eli Lilly, and sold it’s aspartame business to Pfizer.

Monsanto’s business is currently run in two parts: Agricultural Productivity, and Seeds and Genomics. The Agricultural Productivity segment includes Roundup herbicide and other agri-chemicals, and the Animal Agriculture business. The Seeds and Genomics segment consists of seed companies and related biotechnology traits, and a technology platform based on plant genomics. In reality of course these two segments are inseparable, since the agri-chemicals are becoming increasingly dependent on the seeds segment for sales.

Timeline of Monsanto’s Dark History

1901: Monsanto was founded in St. Louis, Missouri by John Francis Queeny, a 30-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry. Queeny funded the start-up with capital from Coca-Cola (saccharin). Founder John Francis Queeny named Monsanto Chemical Works after his wife, Olga Mendez Monsanto. Queeny’s father in law was Emmanuel Mendes de Monsanto, wealthy financier of a sugar company active in Vieques, Puerto Rico and based in St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies.

1902: Monsanto manufactures its first product, the artificial sweetener Saccharin, which Monsanto sold to the Coca-Cola Company. The U.S.

1904: Queeny persuaded family and friends to invest $15000, Monsanto has strong ties to The Walt Disney Company, it having financial backing from the Order’s Bank of America founded in Jesuit-ruled San Francisco by Italian-American Roman-Catholic Knight of Malta Amadeo Giannini.

1905: Monsanto company was also producing caffeine and vanillin and was beginning to turn a profit.

1906: The government’s monopoly on meat regulation began, when in response to public panic resulting from the publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Teddy Roosevelt signed legislation mandating federal meat inspections. Today, Salatin claims that agricultural regulation favors multinational corporations such as ConAgra and Monsanto because the treasonous science that supports the USDA regulatory framework is paid for by these corporations, which continue to give large grants to leading schools and research facilities.

1908: John Francis Queeny leaves his part-time job as the new branch manager of another drug house the Powers-Weightman-Rosegarten Company to become Monsanto’s full-time president.

1912: Agriculture again came to the forefront with the creation of the DeKalb County Farm Bureau, one of the first organizations of its kind. In the 1930s the DeKalb AgResearch Corporation (today MONSANTO) marketed its first hybrid seed corn.

1914–1918: During WWI, cut off from imported European chemicals, Monsanto was forced to manufacture it’s own, and it’s position as a leading force in the chemical industry was assured. Unable to import foreign supplies from Europe during World War I, Queeny turned to manufacturing his own raw materials. It was then his scientists discovered that the Germans, in anticipation of the war, had ripped out vital pages from their research books which explained various chemical processes.

1915: Business expanded rapidly. Monsanto sales surpass the $1,000,000 mark for the first time.

1917: U.S. government sues Monsanto over the safety of Monsanto’s original product, saccharin. Monsanto eventually won, after several years in court.

1917: Monsanto added more and more products: vanillin, caffeine, and drugs used as sedatives and laxatives.

1917: Bayer, The German competition cut prices in an effort to drive Monsanto out of business, but failed. Soon, Monsanto diversified into phenol (a World War I -era antiseptic), and aspirin when Bayer’s German patent expired in 1917. Monsanto began making aspirin, and soon became the largest manufacturer world-wide.

1918: With the purchase of an Illinois acid company, Monsanto began to widen the scope of its factory operations.

Mar 15, 1918: More than 500 of the 750 employees of the Monsanto Chemical Works, which has big contracts for the Government, went on strike, forcing the plant to dose down.

Aug 15, 1919: Thereafter much of it was declared surplus, and a contract was entered into with the Monsanto Chemical Co., of St. Louis, Mo., by which contract the Director of Sales authorized the Monsanto Co. to sell for the United States its surplus phenol, estimated at 27521242 pounds, for a market price to be fixed from time to time by the representative of the contracting officer of the United States, but with a minimum price of 9 cents a pound.

1919: Monsanto established its presence in Europe by entering into a partnership with Graesser’s Chemical Works at Cefn Mawr near Ruabon, Wales to produce vanillin, salicylic acid, aspirin and later rubber.

1920s: In its third decade, Monsanto expanded into basic industrial chemicals like sulfuric acid and other chemicals.

Jan 5, 1920: The petitioner was authorized to sell two tracts of land in the Common Fields of Cahokia, St. Clair County, containing 2.403 acres and 3.46 acres respectively, to the Monsanto Chemical Works for the sum of $1500.

1920-1921: A postwar depression during the early 1920s affected profits, but by the time John Queeny turned over Monsanto to Edgar in 1928 the financial situation was much brighter.

1926: Environmental policy was generally governed by local governments, Monsanto Chemical Company founded and incorporated the town of Monsanto, later renamed Sauget, Illinois, to provide a more business friendly environment for one of its chemical plants. For years, the Monsanto plant in Sauget was the nation’s largest producer of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And although polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were banned in the 1970s, they remain in the water along Dead Creek in Sauget.

1927: Monsanto had over 2,000 employees, with offices across the country and in England.

1927: Shortly after its initial listing on the New York Stock Exchange, Monsanto moved to acquire 2 chemical companies that specialized in rubber. Other chemicals were added in later years, including detergents.

1928: John Queeny’s son Edgar Monsanto Queeny takes over the Monsanto company. Monsanto had gone public, a move that paved the way for future expansion. At this time, Monsanto had 55 shareholders, 1,000 employees, and owned a small company in Britain.

1929: Monsanto acquires Rubber Services Laboratories. Charlie Sommer joined Monsanto, and later became president of Monsanto in 1960.

October 1929: The folks at Monsanto Co. fished through their records, but they couldn’t find out why the company’s symbol is MTC. Monsanto went public in October 1929, just a few days before the great stock market crash. Some symbols are holdovers from the 19th century, when telegraph operators used single-letter symbols for the most active stocks to conserve wire space, says the New York Stock Exchange. Mergers, acquisitions and failure have caused many single-letter symbols to change

1929: Monsanto began production of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in the United States. PCBs were considered an industrial wonder chemical – an oil that would not burn, was impervious to degradation and had almost limitless applications. Today PCBs are considered one of the gravest chemical threats on the planet. PCBs, widely used as lubricants, hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, waterproof coatings and liquid sealants, are potent carcinogens and have been implicated in reproductive, developmental and immune system disorders. The world’s center of PCB manufacturing was Monsanto’s plant on the outskirts of East St. Louis, Illinois, which has the highest rate of fetal death and immature births in the state.

Monsanto documents : many emblazoned with warnings such as ‘CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy’ : show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.”

Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group says that based on the Monsanto documents made public, Monsanto “knew the truth from the very beginning. They lied about it. They hid the truth from their neighbors.” One Monsanto memo explains their justification: “We can’t afford to lose one dollar of business.” Eventually Monsanto was found guilty of conduct “so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society”.

1930s: DeKalb AgResearch Corporation (today MONSANTO) marketed its first **HYBRID** seed corn (maize).

1933: Incorporated as Monsanto Chemical Company

1934: “I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle” – Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63, “The Spirit of Enterprise”

1935: Edward O’Neal (who became chairperson in 1964) came to Monsanto with the acquisition of the Swann Corporation. Monsanto goes into the soap and detergents industry, starts producing phosphorus.

1938: Monsanto goes into the plastic business (the year after DuPont helped ban hemp because it was superior to their new NYLON product made from Rockefeller OIL). Monsanto became involved in plastics when it completely took over Fiberloid, one of the oldest nitrocellulose production companies, which had a 50% stake in Shawinigan Resins.

1939: Monsanto purchased Resinox, a subsidiary of Corn Products, and Commercial Solvents, which specialized in phenolic resins. Thus, just before the war, Monsanto’s plastics interests included phenol-formaldehyde thermosetting resins, cellulose and vinyl plastics.

1939-1945: Monsanto conducts research on uranium for the Manhattan Project in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Charles Thomas, who later served as Monsanto’s chairman of the board, was present at the first test explosion of the atomic bomb. During World War II, Monsanto played a significant role in the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb. Monsanto operated the Dayton Project, and later Mound Laboratories in Miamisburg, Ohio, for the Manhattan Project, the development of the first nuclear weapons and, after 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission.

1940s: Monsanto had begun focusing on plastics and synthetic fabrics like polystyrene (still widely used in food packaging and other consumer products), which is ranked 5th in the EPA’s 1980s listing of chemicals whose production generates the most total hazardous waste. From the 1940s onwards Monsanto was one of the top 10 US chemical companies.

1941: By the time the United States entered World War II, the domestic chemical industry had attained far greater independence from Europe. Monsanto, strengthened by its several acquisitions, was also prepared to produce such strategic materials as phosphates and inorganic chemicals. Most important was Monsanto’s acquisition of a research and development laboratory called Thomas and Hochwalt. The well-known Dayton, Ohio, firm strengthened Monsanto at the time and provided the basis for some of its future achievements in chemical technology. One of its most important discoveries was styrene monomer, a key ingredient in synthetic rubber and a crucial product for the armed forces during the war. Edward J. Bock joined Monsanto in 1941 as an engineer – he rose through the ranks to become a member of the board of directors in 1965 and president in 1968.

1943: Massive Texas City plant starts producing synthetic rubber for the Allies in World War II.

1944: Monsanto began manufacturing DDT, along with some 15 other companies. The use of DDT in the U.S. was banned by Congress in 1972.

1945: Following WW2, Monsanto championed the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture, and began manufacturing the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which contains dioxin. Monsanto has been accused of covering up or failing to report dioxin contamination in a wide range of its products.

1949: Monsanto acquired American Viscose from England’s Courtauld family.

1950: Monsanto began to produce urethane foam – which was flexible, easy to use, and later became crucial in making automobile interiors.

1953: Toxicity tests on the effects of 2 PCBs showed that more than 50% of the rats subjected to them DIED, and ALL of them showed damage.

1954: Monsanto partnered with German chemical giant Bayer to form Mobay and market polyurethanes in the USA.

1955: Monsanto acquired Lion Oil refinery, increasing its assets by more than 50%. Stockholders during this time numbered 43,000. Monsanto starts producing petroleum-based fertilizer.

1957: Monsanto moved to the suburban community of Creve Coeur, having finally outgrown its headquarters in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.

1957-1967: Monsanto was the creator of several attractions in Disney’s Tommorrowland. Often they revolved around the the virtues of chemicals and plastics. Their “House of the Future” was constructed entirely of plastic, but it was NOT biodegradable. “After attracting a total of 20 million visitors from 1957 to 1967, Disney finally tore the house down, but discovered it would not go down without a fight. According to Monsanto Magazine, wrecking balls literally bounced off the glass-fiber, reinforced polyester material. Torches, jackhammers, chain saws and shovels did not work. Finally, choker cables were used to squeeze off parts of the house bit by bit to be trucked away.”

1959: Monsanto sets up Monsanto Electronics Co. in Palo Alto, begins producing ultra-pure silicon for the high-tech industry, in an area which would later become a Superfund site.

1960: Edgar Queeny turned over the chair of Monsanto to Charles Thomas, one of the founders of the research and development laboratory so important to Monsanto. Charlie Sommer, who had joined Monsanto in 1929, became president. According to Monsanto historian Dan Forrestal, “Leadership during the 1960s and early 1970s came principally from … executives whose Monsanto roots ran deep.” Under their combined leadership Monsanto saw several important developments, including the establishment of the Agricultural Chemicals division with focus on herbicides, created to consolidate Monsanto’s diverse agrichemical product lines.

a host of debilitating symptoms attributable to Agent Orange exposure. Agent Orange contaminated more than 3,000,000 civilians and servicemen. According to Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, plus 500,000 children born with birth defects, leading to calls for Monsanto to be prosecuted for war crimes. Internal Monsanto memos show that Monsanto knew of the problems of dioxin contamination of Agent Orange when it sold it to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam. Look at what the “EFFECTS” of agent orange look like… keep in mind it was used to remove leaves from the trees where AMERICAN SOLDIERS were breathing, eating, sleeping.

1962: Public concern over the environment began to escalate. Ralph Nader’s activities and Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring had been influential in increasing the U.S. public’s awareness of activities within the chemical industry in the 1960s, and Monsanto responded in several ways to the pressure.

1962: Monsanto’s European expansion continued, with Brussels becoming the permanent overseas headquarters.

1964: Monsanto changed its name to Monsanto Company in acknowledgment of its diverse product line. The company consisted of 8 divisions, including petroleum, fibers, building materials, and packaging. Edward O’Neal became chairperson (came to Monsanto in 1935 with the acquisition of the Swann Corporation) was the first chair in Monsanto history who had not first held the post of president.

1964: Monsanto introduced “biodegradable” detergents.

1965: While working on an ulcer drug in December, James M. Schlatter, a chemist at G.D. Searle & Company, accidentally discovers aspartame, a substance that is 180x sweeter than sugar yet has no calories.

regime, and was the main supplier of Zyklon-B gas to the German government during the extermination phase of the Holocaust; IG Farben was not dissolved until 2003.

1967: Searle began the safety tests on aspartame that were necessary for applying for FDA approval of food additives. Dr. Harold Waisman, a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin, conducts aspartame safety tests on infant monkeys on behalf of the Searle Company. Of the 7 monkeys that were being fed aspartame mixed with milk, 1 monkey DIED and 5 other monkeys had grand mal seizures.

1968: Edgar Queeny dies, leaving no heirs. Edward J. Bock (who had joined Monsanto in 1941 as an engineer) become a member of the board of directors in 1965, and became president of Monsanto in 1968.

1968: With experts at Monsanto in no doubt that Monsanto’s PCBs were responsible for contamination, Monsanto set up a committee to assess its options. In a paper distributed to only 12 people but which surfaced at the trial in 2002, Monsanto admitted “that the evidence proving the persistence of these compounds and their universal presence as residues in the environment is beyond question … the public and legal pressures to eliminate them to prevent global contamination are inevitable”. Monsanto papers seen by The Guardian newspaper reveal near panic. “The subject is snowballing. Where do we go from here? The alternatives: go out of business; sell the hell out of them as long as we can and do nothing else; try to stay in business; have alternative products”, wrote the recipient of one paper.

1968: Monsanto became the first organization to mass-produce visible LEDs, using gallium arsenide phosphide to produce red LEDs suitable for indicators. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) ushered in the era of solid-state lights. From 1968 to 1970, sales doubled every few months. Their products (discrete LEDs and seven-segment numeric displays) became the standards of industry. The primary markets then were electronic calculators, digital watches, and digital clocks.

1969: High overhead costs and a sluggish national economy led to a dramatic 29% decrease in earnings.

1969: Monsanto wrote a confidential Pollution Abatement Plan which admitted that “the problem involves the entire United States, Canada and sections of Europe, especially the UK and Sweden”.

1969: Monsanto produces Lasso herbicide, better known as Agent Orange, which was used as defoliant by the U.S. Government during the Vietnam War. “[Lasso's] success turns around the struggling Agriculture Division,” Monsanto’s web page reads.

1970s: Monsanto was a pioneer of optoelectronics in the 1970s. Although Bock had a reputation for being a committed Monsanto executive, several factors contributed to his volatile term as president. Sales were up in 1970, but Bock’s implementation of the 1971 reorganization caused a significant amount of friction among members of the board and senior management. In spite of the fact that this move, in which Monsanto separated the management of raw materials from Monsanto’s subsidiaries, was widely praised by security analysts, Bock resigned from the presidency in February 1972.

1970: Cyclamate (the reigning low-calorie artificial sweetener) is pulled off the market in November after some scientists associate it with cancer. Questions are also raised about safety of saccharin, the only other artificial sweetener on the market, leaving the field wide open for aspartame.

December 18, 1970: Searle Company executives lay out a “Food and Drug Sweetener Strategy” that they feel will put the FDA into a positive frame of mind about aspartame. An internal policy memo describes psychological tactics Monsanto should use to bring the FDA into a subconscious spirit of participation” with them on aspartame and get FDA regulators into the “habit of saying Yes.”

1971: Neuroscientist Dr. John Olney (whose pioneering work with monosodium glutamate MSG was responsible for having it removed from baby foods) informs Searle that his studies show that aspartic acid (one of the ingredients of aspartame) caused holes in the brains of infant mice. One of Searle’s own researchers confirmed Dr. Olney’s findings in a similar study.

1972: The use of DDT was banned by U.S. Congress, due in large part to efforts by environmentalists, who persisted in the challenge put forth by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962, which sought to inform the public of the side effects associated with the insecticide, which had been much-welcomed in the fight against malaria-transmitting mosquitoes.

1973: Monsanto developed and patented the glyphosate molecule in the 1970s. Monsanto began manufacturing the herbicide Roundup, which has been marketed as a “safe”, general-purpose herbicide for widespread commercial and consumer use, even though its key ingredient, glyphosate, is a highly toxic poison for animals and humans.

1973: After spending tens of millions of dollars conducting safety tests, the G.D. Searle Company applies for FDA approval and submits over 100 studies they claim support aspartame’s safety. One of the first FDA scientists to review the aspartame safety data states that “the information provided (by Searle) is inadequate to permit an evaluation of the potential toxicity of aspartame”. She says in her report that in order to be certain that aspartame is safe, further clinical tests are needed.

1974: Attorney Jim Turner (consumer advocate who was instrumental in getting cyclamate taken off the market) meets with Searle representatives in May to discuss Dr. Olney’s 1971 study which showed that aspartic acid caused holes in the brains of infant mice.

1974: The FDA grants aspartame its first approval for restricted use in dry foods on July 26.

1974: Jim Turner and Dr. John Olney file the first objections against aspartame’s approval in August.

1975: After a 9-month search, John W. Hanley, a former executive with Procter & Gamble, was chosen as president. Hanley also took over as chairperson.

1976: The success of the herbicide Lasso had turned around Monsanto’s struggling Agriculture Division, and by the time Agent Orange was banned in the U.S. and Lasso was facing increasing criticism, Monsanto had developed the weedkiller “Roundup” (active ingredient: glyphosate) as a replacement. Launched in 1976, Roundup helped make Monsanto the world’s largest producer of herbicides. RoundUp was commercialized, and became the world’s top-selling herbicide. Within a few years of its 1976 launch, Roundup was being marketed in 115 countries.

The success of Roundup coincided with the recognition by Monsanto executives that they needed to radically transform a company increasingly under threat. According to a recent paper by Dominic Glover, “Monsanto had acquired a particularly unenviable reputation in this regard, as a major producer of both dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – both persistent environmental pollutants posing serious risks to the environment and human health. Law suits and environmental clean-up costs began to cut into Monsanto’s bottom line, but more seriously there was a real fear that a serious lapse could potentially bankrupt the company.” According to Glover, Roundup “Sales grew by 20% in 1981 and as the company increased production it was soon Monsanto’s most profitable product (Monsanto 1981, 1983)… It soon became the single most important product of Monsanto’s agriculture division, which contributed about 20% of sales and around 45% of operating income to the company’s balance sheet each year during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, glyphosate remains the world’s biggest herbicide by volume of sales.”

1976: Monsanto produces Cycle-Safe, the world’s first plastic soft-drink bottle. The bottle, suspected of posing a cancer risk, is banned the following year by the Food and Drug Administration.

1976: Turner & Olney’s petition on March 24 triggers an FDA investigation of the laboratory practices of aspartame’s manufacturer, G.D. Searle. The investigation finds Searle’s testing procedures shoddy, full of inaccuracies and “manipulated” test data. The investigators report they “had never seen anything as bad as Searle’s testing.”

January 10, 1977: The FDA formally requests the U.S. Attorney’s office to begin grand jury proceedings to investigate whether indictments should be filed against Searle for knowingly misrepresenting findings and “concealing material facts and making false statements” in aspartame safety tests. This is the first time in the FDA’s history that they request a criminal investigation of a manufacturer.

January 26, 1977: While the grand jury probe is underway, Sidley & Austin, the law firm representing Searle, begins job negotiations with the U.S. Attorney in charge of the investigation, Samuel Skinner.

March 8, 1977: G. D. Searle hires prominent Washington insider Donald Rumsfeld as the new CEO to try to turn the beleaguered company around. A former Member of Congress and Secretary of Defense in the Ford Administration, Rumsfeld brings in several of his Washington cronies as top management. Donald Rumsfeld followed Searle as CEO, and then as President of Searle from 1977-1985.

July 1, 1977: Samuel Skinner leaves the U.S. Attorney’s office on July 1st and takes a job with Searle’s law firm. (see Jan. 26th)

August 1, 1977: The Bressler Report, compiled by FDA investigators and headed by Jerome Bressler, is released. The report finds that 98 of the 196 animals died during one of Searle’s studies and weren’t autopsied until later dates, in some cases over one year after death. Many other errors and inconsistencies are noted. For example, a rat was reported alive, then dead, then alive, then dead again; a mass, a uterine polyp, and ovarian neoplasms were found in animals but not reported or diagnosed in Searle’s reports.

December 8, 1977: U.S. Attorney Skinner’s withdrawal and resignation stalls the Searle grand jury investigation for so long that the statue of limitations on the aspartame charges runs out. The grand jury investigation is dropped. (borderline treason)

1979: The FDA established a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) in June to rule on safety issues surrounding NutraSweet.

1980: September 30, FDA Board of Inquiry comprised of 3 independent scientists, confirmed that aspartame “might induce brain tumors”. The Public Board of Inquiry concludes NutraSweet should not be approved pending further investigations of brain tumors in animals. The board states it “has NOT been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive.” The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (Ford’s Secretary of Defense 1975-1977, Bush’s Secretary of Defense 2001-2006) vow to “call in his markers,” to get it approved in 1981.

1980: Monsanto established the Edgar Monsanto Queeny safety award in honor of its former CEO (1928–1960), to encourage accident prevention.

January 1981: Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of Searle, states in a sales meeting that he is going to make a big push to get aspartame approved within the year. Rumsfeld says he will use his political pull in Washington, rather than scientific means, to make sure it gets approved.

May 19, 1981: 3 of 6 in-house FDA scientists who were responsible for reviewing the brain tumor issues, Dr. Robert Condon, Dr. Satya Dubey, and Dr. Douglas Park, advise against approval of NutraSweet, stating on the record that the Searle tests are unreliable and not adequate to determine the safety of aspartame.

1981: Ronald Reagan is sworn in as President of the United States. Reagan’s transition team, which includes Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of G. D. Searle, hand picks Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. to be the new FDA Commissioner. On January 21, the day after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, GD Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener, and Reagan’s new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry’s decision. It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a 6th member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame’s favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time Hull has never spoken publicly about aspartame.

July 15, 1981: In one of his first official acts, Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., the new FDA commissioner, overrules the Public Board of Inquiry, ignores the recommendations of his own internal FDA team and approves NutraSweet for dry products. Hayes says that aspartame has been shown to be safe for its’ proposed uses and says few compounds have withstood such detailed testing and repeated close scrutiny. G.D. Searle gets FDA approval for aspartame (NutraSweet). Monsanto completes its acquisition of Searle in 1985.

1982: Monsanto GMO scientists genetically modify a plant cell for the first time!

1982: Some 2,000 people are relocated from Times Beach, Missouri, which was found to be so thoroughly contaminated with dioxin, a by-product of PCB manufacturing, that the government ordered it evacuated. Dioxins are endocrine and immune system disruptors, cause congenital birth defects, reproductive and developmental problems, and increase the incidence of cancer, heart disease and diabetes in laboratory animals. Critics say a St. Louis-area Monsanto chemical plant was a source but Monsanto denies any connection.

October 15, 1982: The FDA announces that GD Searle has filed a petition that aspartame be approved as a sweetener in carbonated beverages and other liquids.

July 1, 1983: The National Soft Drink Association (NSDA) urges the FDA to delay approval of aspartame for carbonated beverages pending further testing because aspartame is very unstable in liquid form. When liquid aspartame is stored in temperatures above 85°F degrees Fahrenheit, aspartame breaks down into known toxins Diketopiperazines (DKP), methyl (wood) alcohol, and formaldehyde.

July 8, 1983: The National Soft Drink Association drafts an objection to the final ruling which permits the use of aspartame in carbonated beverages and syrup bases and requests a hearing on the objections. The association says that Searle has not provided responsible certainty that aspartame and its’ degradation products are safe for use in soft drinks.

August 8, 1983: Consumer Attorney, Jim Turner of the Community Nutrition Institute and Dr. Woodrow Monte, Arizona State University’s Director of Food Science and Nutritional Laboratories, file suit with the FDA objecting to aspartame approval based on unresolved safety issues.

September, 1983: FDA Commissioner Hayes resigns under a cloud of controversy about his taking unauthorized rides aboard a General Foods jet. (General foods is a major customer of NutraSweet) Burson-Marsteller, Searle’s public relation firm (which also represented several of NutraSweet’s major users), immediately hires Hayes as senior scientific consultant.

Fall 1983: The first carbonated beverages containing aspartame are sold for public consumption.

1983: Diet Coke was sweetened with aspartame after the sweetener became available in the United States.

November 1984: Center for Disease Control (CDC) “Evaluation of consumer complaints related to aspartame use.” (summary by B. Mullarkey)

1985: Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame’s clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it “might induce brain tumors”. The aspartame business became a separate Monsanto subsidiary, the NutraSweet Company.

1986: Monsanto found guilty of negligently exposing a worker to benzene at its Chocolate Bayou Plant in Texas. It is forced to pay $100 million to the family of Wilbur Jack Skeen, a worker who died of leukemia after repeated exposures.

1986: At a congressional hearing, medical specialists denounce a National Cancer Institute study disputing that formaldehyde causes cancer. Monsanto and DuPont scientists helped with the study, whose author provided results to the Formaldehyde Institute industry representatives nearly six months before releasing the study to the EPA, labor unions, and the public.

1986: Monsanto spends $50,000 against California’s anti-toxics initiative, Proposition 65. The initiative prohibits the discharge of chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects into drinking water supplies.

1987: Monsanto conducted the first field tests of genetically engineered (GMO) crops.

1987: Monsanto is one of the companies named in an $180 million settlement for Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

1987: Monsanto consolidated its AstroTurf management, marketing, and technical activities in Dalton, Georgia, as AstroTurf Industries, Inc.

November 3, 1987: U.S. hearing, “NutraSweet: Health and Safety Concerns,” Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Senator Howard Metzenbaum, chairman.

1988: A federal jury finds Monsanto Co.’s subsidiary, G.D. Searle & Co., negligent in testing and marketing of its Copper 7 intrauterine birth control device (IUD). The verdict followed the unsealing of internal documents regarding safety concerns about the IUD, which was used by nearly 10 million women between 1974 and 1986.

1990: EPA chemists allege fraud in Monsanto’s 1979 dioxin study, which found exposure to the chemical doesn’t increase cancer risks.

1990: Monsanto spends more than $405,000 to defeat California’s pesticide regulation Proposition 128, known as the “Big Green” initiative. The initiative is aimed at phasing out the use of pesticides, including Monsanto’s product alachlor, linked to cancer and global warming.

1990: With the help of Roundup, the agriculture division of Monsanto was significantly outperforming Monsanto’s chemicals division in terms of operating income, and the gap was increasing. But as Glover notes, while “such a blockbuster product uncorks a fountain of revenue”, it “also creates an uncomfortable dependency on the commercial fortunes of a single brand. Monsanto’s management knew that the last of the patents protecting Roundup in the United States, its biggest market, would expire in the year 2000, opening the field to potential competitors. The company urgently needed a strategy to negotiate this hurdle and prolong the useful life of its ‘cash cow’.”

1991: Monsanto is fined $1.2 million for trying to conceal discharge of contaminated waste water into the Mystic River in Connecticut.

1993: By April, the Department of Veterans Affairs had only compensated 486 victims, although it had received disability **CLAIMS** from 39,419 veteran soldiers who had been exposed to monsanto’s Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam. No compensation has been paid to Vietnamese civilians and though some compensation was paid to U.S. veterans, according to William Sanjour, who led the Toxic Waste Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “thousands of veterans were disallowed benefits” because “Monsanto studies showed that dioxin [as found in Agent Orange] was not a human carcinogen.” An EPA colleague discovered that Monsanto had apparently falsified the data in their studies. Sanjour says, “If [the studies] were done correctly, they would have reached just the opposite result.”

1994: the first of Monsanto’s biotech products to make it to market was not a GMO crop but Monsanto’s controversial GMO cattle drug, bovine growth hormone – called rBGH or rBST, Monsanto granted regulatory approval for its first biotech product, a dairy cow hormone. Monsanto developed a recombinant version of BST, brand-named Posilac bovine somatropin (rBST/rBGH), which is produced through a genetically engineered GMO E. coli bacteria. Synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), approved by the FDA for commercial sale in 1994, despite strong concerns about its safety. Since then, Monsanto has sued small dairy companies that advertised their products as free of the artificial hormone, including Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and most recently bringing a lawsuit against Oakhurst Dairy in Maine.

1995: Genetically engineered canola (rapeseed) which is tolerant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide was first introduced to Canada. Today 80% of the acres sown are genetically modified canola.

1995: Monsanto is sued after allegedly supplying radioactive material for a controversial study which involved feeding radioactive iron to 829 pregnant women.

1995: Monsanto ranked 5th among U.S. corporations in EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory, having discharged 37 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land, water and underground. Monsanto was ordered to pay $41.1 million to a waste management company in Texas due to concerns over hazardous waste dumping.

995: The Safe Shoppers Bible says that Monsanto’s Ortho Weed-B-Gon Lawn Weed Killer contains a known carcinogen, 2,4 D. Monsanto officials argue that ‘numerous studies have found no link to cancer’.

1996: Monsanto introduces its first biotech crop, Roundup Ready soybeans, which tolerate spraying of Roundup herbicide, and biotech BT cotton engineered to resist insect damage.

As Monsanto had moved into biotechnology, its executives had the opportunity to create a new narrative for Monsanto. They begun to portray genetic engineering as a ground-breaking technology that could contribute to feeding a hungry world. Monsanto executive Robb Fraley, who was head of the plant molecular biology research team, is also said to have hyped the potential of GMO crops within the company, as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Monsanto to dominate a whole new industry, invoking the monopoly success of Microsoft as a powerful analogy. But, according to Glover, the more down-to-earth pitch to fellow executives was that “genetic engineering offered the best prospect of preserving the commercial life of Monsanto’s most important product, Roundup in the face of the challenges Monsanto would face once the patent expired.”

Monsanto eventually achieved this by introducing into crop plants genes that give resistance to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup). This meant farmers could spray Roundup onto their fields as a weedkiller even during the growing season without harming the crop. This allowed Monsanto to “significantly expand the market for Roundup and, more importantly, help Monsanto to negotiate the expiry of its glyphosate patents, on which such a large slice of Monsanto’s income depended.” With glyphosate-tolerant GMO crops, Monsanto was able ìto preserve its dominant share of the glyphosate market through a marketing strategy that would couple proprietary “Roundup Ready” seeds with continued sales of Roundup.

1996-1999: Monsanto sold off its plastics business to Bayer in 1996, and its phenylalanine facilities to Great Lakes Chemical Corporation (GLC) in 1999. Much of the rest of its chemicals division was spun off in late 1997 as Solutia. This helped Monsanto distance itself to some extent not only from direct financial liability for the historical core of its business but also from its controversial production and contamination legacy.

1997: Monsanto introduces new GMO canola (rapeseed), GMO cotton and GMO corn (maize), and buys foundation seed companies.

1997: Monsanto spins off its industrial chemical and fibers business into Solutia Inc. amid complaints and legal claims about pollution from its plants. Solutia was spun off from Monsanto as a way for Monsanto to divest itself of billions of dollars in environmental cleanup costs and other liabilities for its past actions – liabilities

that eventually forced Solutia to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to a spokesman for Solutia, “(Monsanto) sort of cherry-picked what they wanted and threw in all kinds of cats and dogs as part of a going-away present,” including $1 billion in debt and environmental and litigation costs. Some pre-bankruptcy Solutia equity holders allege Solutia was set up fraudulently as it was always doomed to fail under the financial weight of Monsanto’s liabilities.

1997: The New York State Attorney General took Monsanto to court and Monsanto was subsequently forced to stop claiming that Roundup is “biodegradable” and “environmentally friendly”.

1997: The Seattle Times reports that Monsanto sold 6,000 tons of contaminated waste to Idaho fertilizer companies, which contained the carcinogenic heavy metal cadmium, believed to cause cancer, kidney disease, neurological dysfunction and birth defects.

1997: Through a process of mergers and spin-offs between 1997 and 2002, Monsanto made a transition from chemical giant to biotech giant. Monsanto’s corporate strategy led them for the first time to acquire seed companies. During the 1990s Monsanto spent $10 billion globally buying up seed companies – a push that continues to this day. It has purchased, for example, Holden’s Foundations Seeds, Seminis - the largest seed company not producing corn or soybeans in the world, the Dutch seed company De Ruiter Seeds, and the big cotton seed firm Delta & Pine. As a result, Monsanto is now the world’s largest seed company, accounting for almost a quarter of the global proprietary seed market.

1998: Monsanto introduces Roundup Ready corn (maize).

1998: In the UK, Monsanto purchased the seed company Plant Breeding International (PBI) Cambridge, a major UK based cereals and potato breeder, which Monsanto then merged with its existing UK agri-chemicals and GMO research businesses to form Monsanto UK Ltd. Monsanto UK has carried out field trials of glyphosate-tolerant sugar / fodder beet, glyphosate-tolerant oilseed rape, and glyphosate-tolerant and male sterility / fertility restorer oilseed rape.

1998: “Survey of aspartame studies: correlation of outcome and funding sources,” unpublished: Ralph G. Walton found 166 separate published studies in the peer reviewed medical literature, which had relevance for questions of human safety. The 74 studies funded by industry all (100%) attested to aspartame’s safety, whereas of the 92 non-industry funded studies, 84 (91%) identified a problem. 6 of the 7 non-industry funded studies that were favorable to aspartame safety were from the FDA, which has a public record that shows a strong pro-industry bias.

1999: After international criticism, Monsanto agrees not to [PUBLICLY] commercialize “Terminator” seeds.

1999: Monsanto opens its Beautiful Sciences exhibit at Disneyland.

1999: Monsanto sells their phenylalanine facilities to Great Lakes Chemical Corporation (GLC) for $125 million. In 2000, GLC sued Monsanto because of a $71 million dollar shortfall in expected sales.

2000: 5 pesticide companies, including Monsanto, controlled over 70% of all patents on agricultural biotechnology. Monsanto had the largest share of the global GMO crops market.

2000: Since the inception of Plan Colombia, the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in funding aerial sprayings of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicides in Colombia. The Roundup is often applied in concentrations 26x higher than what is recommended for agricultural use. Additionally, it contains at least one surfactant, Cosmo-Flux 411f, whose ingredients are a trade secret, has never been approved for use in the US, and which quadruples the biological action of the herbicide. Not surprisingly, numerous human health impacts have been recorded in the areas affected by the sprayings, including respiratory, gastrointestinal and skin problems, and even death, especially in children. Additionally, fish and animals will show up dead in the hours and days subsequent to the herbicide sprayings.

2000-2002: Monsanto merges with Pharmacia & Upjohn, and changes its name to Pharmacia Corporation. Monsanto Company restructures in deal with Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc; separates agricultural and chemicals businesses and becomes stand-alone agricultural company. By 2000 the current Monsanto had emerged from various transactions, including a merger for a time with Pharmacia, as a legally different corporation from the Monsanto that had existed from 1901-2000. This was despite the fact that both Monsantos shared not just the same name, but the same corporate headquarters near St. Louis, Missouri, and many of the same executives and other employees, not to mention much of the responsibility for liabilities arising out of its former activities.

2001: Retired Monsanto chemist William S. Knowles was named a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation, which was carried out at Monsanto beginning in the 1960s until his 1986 retirement.

2001: Monsanto GMO crops accounted for 91% of the total area of GMO crops planted worldwide.

2002: Monsanto entered into an important agreement with DuPont. As a result of this “agreement” both companies agreed to drop a raft of outstanding patent lawsuits against one another and to share their patented GMO crops technologies. Some commentators see this ‘agreement’ as constituting a pseudo-merger by stealth of the two companies’ GMO crops monopolies which are too large to be permitted to merge.

August 13, 2002: Monsanto had sales of $4,673,000,000. Based on 2001 figures Monsanto was the second biggest seed company in the world, and the third biggest agrochemical company. The infamous agrochemical and biotechnology division, still known as Monsanto, was spun off as a nominally separate company with Pharmacia originally retaining an 85% share. Monsanto Company became completely separate and independent from Pharmacia on August 13, 2002, when Pharmacia distributed its remaining Monsanto shares to Pharmacia’s stockholders.

2002: Events in Argentina also affected the company in other ways: Monsanto’s Argentine unit lost $154 million in the 2002 fiscal year, due to the collapse of the Argentine economy and a deepening recession which forced the government to default on most of its public debt, and devalue the peso in January 2002. The government also converted what was a dollar economy into a peso economy and, as a result, Monsanto received devalued pesos for products it had sold in dollars, slashing its sales income.

2002: The Washington Post ran an article entitled, “Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution, PCBs Drenched Alabama Town, But No One Was Ever Told” about PCBs. Monsanto share price plummeted in the second half of 2002 following its sell off by former parent company Pharmacia and this was compounded by the departure of Monsanto’s CEO at the end of 2002.

December 2002: CEO Hendrik Verfaillie resigned after he and the board agreed that his performance had been disappointing and the company had faced extensive criticism for failing to deal more honestly and effectively with its difficulties. “This is a company that has been optimistic on the borderline of LYING,” said Sergey Vasnetsov, senior analyst with Lehman Brothers in New York. “Monsanto has been feeding us these FANTASIES for two years, and when we saw they weren’t real, its stock price fell.”

2003: Jury fines Monsanto and its former chemical subsidiary, Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.), agreed to pay $600 million in August to settle claims brought by more than 20,000+ residents of Anniston, Alabama – over the severe contamination of ground and water by tons of PCBs dumped in the area from the 1930s until the 1970s. Court documents revealed that Monsanto was aware of the contamination decades earlier.

2003: Solutia, Inc. (now owned by Pharmacia Corp.) files Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

2004: Monsanto forms American Seeds Inc holding company for corn and soybean seed deals and begins brand acquisitions.

2004-2005: Monsanto filed lawsuits against many farmers in Canada and the U.S. on the grounds of patent infringement, specifically the farmers’ sale of seed containing Monsanto’s patented genes. In some cases, farmers claimed the seed was unknowingly sown by wind carrying the seeds from neighboring crops, a claim rejected in Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser. These instances began in the mid to late 1990s, with one of the most significant cases being decided in Monsanto’s favor by the Canadian Supreme Court. By a 5-4 vote in late May 2004, that court ruled that “by cultivating a plant containing the patented gene and composed of the patented cells without license, the appellants (canola farmer Percy Schmeiser) deprived the respondents of the full enjoyment of the patent.” With this ruling, the Canadian courts followed the U.S. Supreme Court in its decision on patent issues involving plants and genes.

2005: Monsanto has patent claims on breeding techniques for pigs which would grant them ownership of any pigs born of such techniques and their related herds. Greenpeace claims Monsanto is trying to claim ownership on ordinary breeding techniques. Monsanto claims that the patent is a defensive measure to track animals from its system. They furthermore claim their patented method uses a specialized insemination device that requires less sperm than is typically needed.

2005: Environmental, consumer groups question safety of Roundup Ready crops, say they create “super weeds,” among other problems.

Read entire article here

Coming up today and every Friday at 7:00pm Pacific * 10:00pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT

ECOSHOCK — THE BRUTAL LOGIC OF CLIMATE CHANGE

THE BRUTAL LOGIC OF CLIMATE CHANGE — “The future is impossible” says Dr. Kevin Anderson, former Director of UK’s top climate research institute, the Tyndall Centre. Speech in London lays out our awful tilt toward an unlivable climate. Followed by discussion with Washington’s Dr. William Calvin. Visit Ecoshock here.

This is a transition show from Earthbeat to Radio Ecoshock. It explains the change to regular listeners. Earthbeat host Daphne Wysham is off the air, while she reorganizes for a possible return. By agreement, Alex Smith is providing environment news and analysis via the Radio Ecoshock show. You can help Earthbeat to return by visiting their website here.

Mike Barrett

A recent study conducted by a German university found very high concentrations of glyphosate, a carcinogenic chemical found in herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup, in all urine samples tested.

The amount of glyphosate found in the urine was staggering, with each sample containing concentrations at 5- to 20-fold the limit established for drinking water.

This is just one more piece of evidence that herbicides are, at the very least, being sprayed out of control.

Glyphosate in Monsanto’s Roundup Impacting Global Health

This news comes only one month after it was found that glyphosate, contained in Monsanto’s Roundup, is contaminating the groundwater in the areas in which it is used. What does this mean?

It means that toxic glyphosate is now polluting the world’s drinking water through the widespread contamination of aquifers, wells and springs. The recent reports of glyphosate showing up in all urine samples only enhances these past findings.

Monsanto continues to make the claim that their Roundup products are completely safe for both animals and humans. However, many environmentalists, scientists , activists, and even doctors say otherwise.

A formula seems to have been made to not only ruin the agricultural system, but also compromise the health of millions of people worldwide. With the invention of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops, resistant superweeds are taking over farmland, and public health is being attacked.

As it turns out, glyphosate is also leaving behind its residue on Roundup Ready crops, causing further potential concern for public health. Glyphosate is even contributing to escalating rates of mental illness and obesity through the depletion of beneficial gut flora that directly regulates these functions.

But it certainly doesn’t stop there.

Researchers tested roundup on mature male rats at a concentration range between 1 and 10,000 parts per million (ppm), and found that within 1 to 48 hours of exposure, testicular cells of the mature rats were either damaged or killed. Even at a concentration of 1 ppm, the Roundup was able to affect the test subjects by decreasing their testosterone concentrations by as much as 35%.

Read entire article here

Coming up every Thursday at 7:00 pm Pacific * 10:00 pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast.

Occupy Wall St. West Coast and Reclaiming Public Education

On today’s program we are joined by Abby Martin of Media Roots as she covers the actions of Occupy Wall St. West in SF. We’ll hear from Carl Patrick of Occupy Santa Rosa in northern CA, and Ken Sutherland on Wall St. firms’ tax evasion. In the second half of the show we hear from Steve Zeltzer of Work Week Radio and talk to attorney and whistleblower Kathleen Carrol about the upcoming conference at Laney College in Oakland, CA on the attacks on public education and privitization and their connection to the Occupy movement. Show Hosts: Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips, with Abby Martin of Media Roots.

Expert Commentary Here

Coming Today at 6:00 pm Pacific – 9:00 pm Eastern – 01:00 GMT (Thur)
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Wednesday.

The State Of The Union Speech

LIVE FROM CAPITOL HILL — President Barack Obama

The 2012 State of the Union Address will be given by United States President Barack Obama to a joint session of Congress. It will be Obama’s third State of the Union Address. The speech will be delivered on the floor of the United States House of Representatives in the United States Capitol.

A Pacifica Radio Network Live Broadcast brought to you by No Lies Radio News.

Coming up today and every Monday at 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 pm Eastern – 02:00 GMT

GUNS AND BUTTER with Bonnie Faulkner
Iran and the Globalization of War — Michel Chossudovsky
Recent developments in the Middle East including the wider implications of the destabilization of the entire area; the current global war as a different kind of conquest than that of World War I and II; US military deployment in the area; the role of Israel; Iranian Defenses; US war planning and war scenarios since 2003 concerning the nation of Iran, including Austere Challenge 12, Theatre Iran Near Term, Global Strike 2003, Concept Plan 8022, and Vigilant Shield; the effect of sanctions; and The Responsibility To Protect.

Don’t Miss our Saturday – Economic Collapse Truth Teach-in Marathon
11am Pacific – 2pm Eastern – 18:00 GMT – Saturday
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Coming up Saturday –
ONE KEY ECONOMIC COLLAPSE TRUTH Revelation
Key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

WHAT THE ABOLITIONISTS TEACH US ABOUT CHALLENGING CORPORATE RULE — Richard Grossman

This program is in remembrance of Richard Grossman, who died of cancer in November 2011. He was one of the great uncompromising, courageous thinkers and activists in the unfolding project to define, limit and abolish corporate power. Grossman was one of the first historians who called attention to the fact that corporations have become persons under the 14th amendment. He said: “If we are going to have pretense to a democracy, we cannot give political rights and powers to a private entity. We cannot let that private entity get so strong that it rewrites the laws, that it shapes the culture, that it shapes the education. It may be difficult to imagine a country that’s not dominated by giant corporations, but other people before us have imagined that … (and) left us many important mechanisms that we can use.”

The Economic Collapse Teach-in encompasses upon some of the most highly controversial an crucial subjects of our day—the collapsing economy, the Federal Reserve, the Banks, Wall Street, financial fraud, foreclosures, homelessness, unemployment, workers rights, unions, trade agreements, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Coming up today and every Friday at 7:00pm Pacific * 10:00pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT

ECOSHOCK — OIL SHOCK – THE NO-GROWTH WORLD

High oil prices lead to no-growth global economy. If China grows, the West must shrink, meaning unemployment, disappointment, insolvent governments. Two speeches from ASPO 2011 in Washington: Jeff Rubin, former CIBC investment guru & Charles Maxwell of Weeden Co. Neither Peak Oil speaker mentions climate change. Why not? We interview Italian ASPO founder, author of “Limits to Growth Revisited” and climate watcher Ugo Bardi. ASPO USA recordings by Gerri Williams. End music “Change Change” by Thistle. Visit Ecoshock here.

This is a transition show from Earthbeat to Radio Ecoshock. It explains the change to regular listeners. Earthbeat host Daphne Wysham is off the air, while she reorganizes for a possible return. By agreement, Alex Smith is providing environment news and analysis via the Radio Ecoshock show. You can help Earthbeat to return by visiting their website here.

Coming up every Saturday at 1:00 pm Pacific – 04:00 pm Eastern – 20:00 GMT

Cindy interviews Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.

TODOS SOMOS AMERICANOS - – Those words mean “We are ALL Americans.” Today is the day! Cindy says a warm “hello” to Pacifica Radio, starting with this interview with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, in honor of exactly that sentiment! Cindy’s request to interview President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela was finally granted on March 2nd, when Cindy and two photographers were down in Montevideo, Uruguay with President Chavez for the inauguration of the new left-ish president and freedom fighter, Jose Mujica. Eva Golinger (Venezuelan-American attorney and author) was the translator.

Cindy Sheehan: Muchas Gracias!

Coming up today and every Monday at 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 pm Eastern – 02:00 GMT

BEST OF FLASHPOINTS
Martin Luther King Jr. Special Broadcast
MLK Flashpoints special..this broadcast is based on original speeches recorded by an amateur recordist, (never aired anywhere before i found them) who ended up at the poor people march, as a body guard for King, who was under threat of death….the story of how these recording were made is amazing….after i nearthed them, and initially broadcast some of them, i contributed them to the King Archive at Stanford, where the were grateful, gobbled them up and made them apart of their special MLK sound archive. From a Flashpoints Presentation.

UPDATED Jan. 17, 2012 2:30 p.m. ET — Opponents of controversial federal anti-piracy legislation known as SOPA seem to be picking up steam.  Supporters of the legislation in both houses of Congress appear to have backed off, the Obama administration has expressed concerns with the legislation, and an Internet blackout slated for Wednesday is picking up supporters.

A House subcommittee was slated to prepare the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, for a vote later this month; the Senate had planned a vote on the companion bill, PIPA (The Protect IP Act,) even sooner. Now, it appears both votes will be delayed.

SOPA opponents are rallying around an effort to call attention to the legislation by convincing Web sites to “go dark” on Jan. 18, and display only a simple message of protest on a black background.  On Monday, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced that his website will go dark for 24 hours starting at midnight ET Tuesday, following the lead of other high-profile promised blackouts.  Reddit.com will go black from 8 a.m.- 8 p.m. on Wednesday. The hacker group Anonymous also encouraged others to join in the 12-hour blackout, and garnered a lot of attention with its Twitter post using the hashtag #BlackoutSOPA.

On Tuesday, CNET.com reported that Google will participate by adding a link to its homepage with information about SOPA, but it will not blackout its page or change its prominent logo.

Meanwhile, several signs point to SOPA legislation hitting some serious speedbumps.  On Saturday, a statement issued by White House cyberczar Howard Schmidt, and other administration technology officials, threw cold water on SOPA’s anti-piracy efforts.

“Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online,” says the response, referring to SOPA’s proposal to allow law enforcement officials to blacklist Web sites — cut them off from U.S. users — that allegedly encourage piracy. The response, posted at WhiteHouse.gov on Saturday, does not take a position on SOPA, but it cautioned lawmakers that the administration will oppose anti-piracy efforts that might increase censorship.

“Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small,” the memo reads.

In Congress, supporters of the legislation have recently indicated they are open to changing their proposals.

Late Friday afternoon, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), said he planned to tone down the enforcement powers that would be granted by the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  A new version would not include the most controversial provision, which would have enabled federal authorities to “blacklist” domains that were alleged to be involved in distribution of pirated content, effectively cutting portions of the Web off from all U.S. users.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Former CIA counter-terrorism specialist Philip Giraldi gives a picture of “What War With Iran Might Look Like,” concluding that, “A minor engagement between American and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf,” will ignite World War III.

We must ask ourselves: how did we get here? Is World War III a product of destiny, or is it by design? Establishing the truth of history is essential if we want to avert World War III that could be triggered at any moment in the Persian Gulf if Iran is attacked.

The history of the U.S.-Iranian crisis seems complicated and challenging, but it is really easy to understand. It is a relationship based on secret power and conspiracy, not truth and transparency. There are treacherous and fascist elements in the American and Iranian governments who desire mass ignorance and war as opposed to friendship and peace.

They do not want America and Iran to restore diplomatic and trade ties because peace and friendship harms a variety of private interests in both countries. Peace is a threat to the military-industrial complexes and the anti-democratic ruling elites in both America and Iran.

In the alternative media community, we all agree with the basic premise that modern wars are politically constructed by a few men and that false flag terrorism are at the heart of them because they generate immediate public support for what otherwise would be unpopular wars.

The war between America and Iran is no different. Two false flag operations have been engineered to bring about this war of Armageddon: the October crisis (November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981) and the September 11 state terror attacks.

Both events created a false narrative of a clash of civilizations – the West vs. Islam – the resolution of which is a world war that will ultimately end with the use of nuclear weapons by the United States against Iran to force it into submission.

The first event was conceived from inside the dark heart of the CIA and shadow U.S. intelligence community in 1976. For the second event the services of the Israeli state were used, as indicated by the numerous eyewitness accounts of dancing Israeli spies on the streets of New York City on 9/11.

II. The False Flag Origins of The U.S.-Iranian Conflict

The false flag operation that is the Iran-U.S. hostage crisis was overseen by the George H. W. Bush faction in the CIA and the Ronald Reagan campaign in collaboration with elements in Iran’s SAVAK and top Iranian Islamic fundamentalists, who were, and still are, CIA assets.

Bush and Reagan, who represented the interests of the private banksters and new world order, and Khomeini, who represented the same interests, propped up each other into the seat of power at the expense of the security, liberty, and prosperity of their countries.

Thus, the Reagan revolution and the Khomeini revolution were revolutions that attacked the basic laws, freedoms, and traditions of their countries. The Bush-Reagan coup and the Khomeini revolution were evil and totalitarian in nature. And these evil twins came into being through the same political birth canal: the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis.

The private cliques who hijacked America and Iran for the past 30+ years have created a nonsensical political and diplomatic separation between the two governments, which benefits their private interests but harms the national security interests of both countries.

According to Iranian researcher Fara Mansoor, the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis was not a spontaneous act by Iranian mobs or a senseless act devised solely by the Khomeini regime. Rather, it was a politically manufactured event by the Bush-led CIA and top Iranian Islamic fundamentalists that was intended to promote the political goals of the Bush-Reagan coalition and Khomeini’s regime simultaneously.

List of the three political goals:

1. Sabotage and destabilize the Carter administration, and get Bush-Reagan into the White House.

2. Prop up the Khomeini regime and destroy all political opposition to the Islamic Republic.

3. Establish Iran as a permanent enemy of the United States and vice versa, in order to bring about a future conflict and justify the existence of anti-democratic political and legal structures within the two nations. There were definitely other motives for keeping Iran and America isolated from each other, but those are two big ones.

Clearly, the plan worked. Carter’s presidency was weakened by the hostage crisis and allowed Bush and Reagan to seize the White House in a dishonest and undemocratic fashion. And Khomeini’s loyalists consolidated power by dominating the narrative in Iran and violently exterminating opposition voices in Iranian society.

The left in Iran and America was basically destroyed by Bush and Khomeini. The Iranian left was impotent in the face of the regime’s propaganda line: “If you are not for the Islamic Republic, then you are for the Great Satan and against Iran.”

In essence, the American Deep State gave birth to the Iranian Deep State by instigating the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis for selfish private interests and domestic political reasons. And the repercussions of this politically manufactured crisis are felt to this day, with the United States and Iran on the verge of war in the Persian Gulf.

The fake U.S.-Iran hostage crisis is one of the best historical examples of what former Canadian diplomat, and professor Peter Dale Scott calls “deep events,” which he says are used by the secret National Security State to “build up repressive power in America at the expense of democracy.” (Scott, ‘The Doomsday Project and Deep Events: JFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11,‘ Global Research, November 22, 2011).

Mansoor discussed his groundbreaking and penetrating research into this deep event and the secret relationship between the U.S. intelligence community and Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist regime on January 24, 1993, on the radio show of American talk show host Dave Emory. The YouTube channel “johndcqr”has archived Emory’s interview with Mansoor. Type in the search box “An Interview With Fara Mansoor.” Also, you can download the historic interview as a MP3 file on Emory’s website.

Regarding his interview with Mansoor and his research into the connections between the Bush-led CIA and the Khomeini regime, Emory wrote:
Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the land­mark research of Fara Man­soor, a mem­ber of the Iran­ian resis­tance whose his­toric research on the rise of the Khome­ini regime doc­u­ments the deci­sive role of the United States in devel­op­ing Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ist forces in that coun­try as the anti-communist suc­ces­sors to the Shah’s gov­ern­ment. Fara has doc­u­mented that U.S. Ambas­sador to Iran, Richard Helms, learned that the Shah had can­cer in 1974. For­mer Direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Helms promptly informed the CIA and Depart­ment of State with the result that, by 1976, George Bush’s CIA was actively sup­port­ing and groom­ing the Khome­ini forces.The sub­se­quent takeover of the U.S. embassy in Teheran, the with­hold­ing of the U.S. hostages until after Pres­i­dent Carter’s defeat was assured, the Khome­ini gov­ern­ment itself and the Iran-Contra scan­dal proper were all out­growths of this pro­found and long-standing relationship.

It should be noted that parts of this rela­tion­ship have been mis­un­der­stood as what has become known as “the Octo­ber Sur­prise.” Although there was, mas­sive col­lu­sion between the Reagan-Bush cam­paign and the Khome­ini forces dur­ing the 1980 elec­tion cam­paign, there was no “deal” cut dur­ing the cam­paign. Rather, the “deal” was part of a covert oper­a­tion begun years before and the col­lu­sion dur­ing the cam­paign was an out­growth of it.”
Here are the key quotes by Mansoor in his interview with Emory:
“In 1975, Richard Helms learned of the Shah’s cancer, contrary to what generally is believed, that the Carter administration did not know about the Shah’s cancer until very late in 1978, 79′. George Bush, through Richard Helms, learned of the cancer at least by 1976, when he was a Director of the CIA.

And this knowledge was used by the pro-Bush loyalists at the CIA and intelligence community in the United States to quietly prepare for the Shah’s departure. And Carter actually did not know this and blindly was following his policy of respect for human rights, and while that policy was going on, the pro-Bush faction of the intelligence community were pursuing their own private foreign policy to keep Iran intact and Communist-free. And to that end we have talked that they privately allied themselves with Islamic fundamentalists of Khomeini. And that alliance promoted the Islamic Republic of Iran and engineered the hostage crisis.

The hostage crisis was used as a political management tool to achieve their objectives. So that so-called crisis was a created crisis by them to consolidate Khomeini’s control of Iran and that paved the way for George Bush and Ronald Reagan to get into the White House by destabilizing President Carter.”
The research by Mansoor into the roots of the Iran-U.S. hostage crisis is significant because it helps to discredit the current historical narrative of the U.S.-Iranian conflict which is contributing to massive misunderstanding and resentment on both sides.

It appears that both the American people and the Iranian people are victims of a long political charade that is being coordinated from the very top by treacherous elements in the deep states of America and Iran who care only about money and power.

Mansoor’s research suggests that the death of freedom and democracy in Iran is deeply connected to the death of freedom and democracy in America and the West. What has taken the place of national democratic systems is a global military-industrial complex that has links to the deep states in America, Iran, Israel, England, Pakistan, Turkey, and other nations.

Under the secret reign of the global military-industrial complex, war and profits come before the security of states and the prosperity of the people. Crooked thieves run the show in Tehran, Washington, London, and Tel Aviv, who target political dissent by labeling it treason and terrorism.

There are rats and snakes in charge in Tehran, Washington, and Tel Aviv. They have tried to kill the lion spirit of man and the lion spirit of their nations. The rat-like ruling elites of America, Israel, and Iran hate the noble and compassionate qualities of civilization. Such qualities create peace and friendship between nations, and this is against their interests.

What threatens the universal rights of man and life on earth in this century is not a fake and manufactured clash of civilizations between the West and radical Islam, but a very real destruction of all civilizations by an international banking elite who are fascists at the core.

Through acts of false flag terrorism and manufactured global crises, they are cold-bloodedly murdering humanity and democracy in order to establish a despotic and anti-human world civilization upon the ruins of this demonic and dead age.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Editor’s note: Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist.

Back in September 2007 I wrote an article for Antiwar.com called “What World War III May Look Like.” The article, which presumed that an incident involving U.S. troops on the border between Iraq and Iran could easily escalate into what would eventually become a global conflict, was widely replayed in the alternative media and even in the mainstream. Well, I am pleased to report that no such war has yet started, though there has been a disturbing expansion of U.S. military activity through the deployment of drones to hit targets in assorted countries without having to worry about American casualties or niceties like declarations of war. Other geopolitical elements that figured in my 2007 analysis have also changed, so I believe that the time has come for an update.

Iran is clearly the target of choice, just as it was in 2007. Despite President Barack Obama’s assertion that he would open up avenues to talk to the Iranians, he has failed to do so, he has rejected Iranian initiatives to start a dialogue, and he is showing every sign of unwillingness to negotiate on any level. Congress has even moved to block any contactbetween American and Iranian diplomats. The sanctions that recently took effect against the Iranian banking system can be construed as an act of war, particularly as Iran has not provided any casus belli. Further sanctions that will restrict energy imports are impending and will bring the country’s economy to a halt. There are already signs that the Iranian government feels itself compelled to demonstrate to its people that it is doing something about the situation. That “something” might well be a confrontation with the U.S. Navy that will have unfortunate results. In light of all that, it might be useful to imagine just how war with Iran could play out if the Iranians don’t roll over and surrender at the first whiff of grapeshot.

It might start with a minor incident, possibly involving an Iranian armed small craft manned by the Revolutionary Guard. Though the Strait of Hormuz is generally considered an international waterway, the Iranians claim that half of the strait is within their territorial waters. Tehran, in response to intensified sanctions, declares that it can determine who can use the strait and says that it will take steps to keep American warships from entering. The frigate USS Ingraham, patrolling off of Bushehr, is confronted by the small craft and ordered to heave to, an order it rejects. The Iranian commander, ignoring instructions to back off when confronted directly by the U.S. Navy, opens fire with rocket-propelled grenades. The frigate’s Phalanx rapid-fire battery immediately responds by blasting the Iranian boat, killing the entire Revolutionary Guard crew, but two American sailors are also killed in the exchange and four are wounded.

Fighters from the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis are immediately launched under standing orders, and they devastate the naval base that the Iranian boat departed from. President Obama holds a press conference and calls the incident an act of war and vows to do everything necessary to support U.S. forces in the region, but he stops short of a commitment to stage a full-scale attack on Iran. A hastily called meeting of the U.N. Security Council results in a 17–1 vote urging the United States to exercise restraint, with only Washington voting “no.” In the General Assembly, only the United States, Israel, Micronesia, and Costa Rica support possible military action.

The United States is effectively alone, but Israel takes advantage of the growing war fervor in the United States to launch an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities. The recently completed nuclear reactor at Bushehr is destroyed, killing 13 Russian technicians working on the site, and the aboveground buildings at the Natanz nuclear research facility are leveled. Russian-supplied Iranian air defenses shoot down six Israeli aircraft. Washington receives no prior warning of the Israeli attack, though it does pick up the signal traffic that precedes it and knows something is coming. It makes no effort to stop the Israelis as they fly over undefended Iraqi airspace.

Congress and the media rally behind the Israelis and demand war. A bill in the House of Representatives calling on the White House to take military action in support of Israel passes 431–4. A similar bill in the Senate receives only two nays. President Obama hesitates but then approves a limited offensive, directed against Iran’s military, its nuclear sites, and, most particularly, its Revolutionary Guard installations. In the first few days, overwhelming American air and naval superiority destroys Iran’s principal air, naval, and army bases. Iranian Revolutionary Guard facilities are obliterated, as are the known Iranian nuclear research and development sites. The limited offensive soon becomes anything but that, with strategic bombers dropping 30,000-pound Big BLU bunker-buster bombs to strike underground labs and processing centers. Population centers are avoided, though smart weapons are used to destroy communications centers and command and control facilities. There are nevertheless large numbers of civilian casualties as many of the targeted nuclear sites are close to or within cities and large towns. Infrastructure is also hit, particularly bridges, roads, and power-generation stations close to known nuclear research centers and military sites.

There is a pause in the attacks, and Iran strikes back. With nearly 10 years to prepare, Tehran has successfully hidden and hardened many of its military and nuclear facilities, a large percentage of which are undamaged. The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennisoperating in the Gulf of Oman is hit by a lucky strike by a Chinese Silkworm cruise missile that comes in low and successfully evades countermeasures. The Stennis retires to port in Bahrain. Three other support vessels are also hit and severely damaged when they are attacked by waves of small craft manned by suicidal Revolutionary Guards, not unlike the kamikaze attacks in the Second World War. The Iranian attackers are annihilated, but the Pentagon refuses to say how many American sailors have been killed in the exchange.

Pro-Iranian riots break out in Beirut. In the south of Lebanon, Hezbollah fires salvos of rockets into Israel, striking Tel Aviv and killing several hundred Israelis. Israel responds by bombing Lebanon and Syria, which it blames for supporting the attacks. Upgraded Iranian Shahab-3 missiles also strike Israel, killing more civilians. The Israeli Defense Forces are fully mobilized, and troops are sent to the northern border. Syria and Lebanon also mobilize their forces. Rioters in Baghdad attack the American embassy, which demands that the Iraqi government “do something” to protect it, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugs and says that the situation is out of his control. Large public demonstrations demand that Iraq support Iran in a fraternal struggle against the United States.

Shi’ites sympathetic to Iran sabotage Saudi Arabian eastern oil fields. Hundreds of alleged saboteurs are shot dead by Saudi security forces. An oil tanker out of Kuwait is hit by a Silkworm and runs aground to keep from sinking. Another hits a mine. Insurers at Lloyd’s of London refuse to cover any tankers transiting the Persian Gulf, claiming that damage incurred during a state of war is not covered by the policies. Oil shipments from the region, one quarter of the world’s supply, stop completely, and oil goes up to $300 a barrel. Wall Street suffers its biggest loss in 20 years, with the Dow Jones index plummeting more than 900 points.

The United States offers Iran a cease-fire, which Tehran rejects. Two days later, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is assassinated by a Shi’ite bodyguard under orders from Tehran. Pakistan declares that it is neutral in the conflict and orders the U.S. embassy to reduce its staff by 50%, including the CIA station chief and his deputy. Order breaks down in both countries, and the Pakistani army declares a state of emergency, closing the border with Afghanistan. NATO calls an emergency meeting and decides to begin the evacuation by air of the multinational force trapped in Afghanistan, leaving many weapons and heavy equipment behind.

In the power vacuum, NATO troops withdraw to their bases while Taliban-backed militias take over much of Kabul and Kandahar. Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif, which is largely Shi’ite, declares itself a part of Iran. The government resigns in Beirut, and Hezbollah forms a new one. A salvo of Iranian Silkworm missiles sets the Saudi Arabian eastern oil fields ablaze. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates send an urgent diplomatic message to Tehran declaring that they will be “neutral” in the fighting and will not assist the United States in any way. Kuwait sends the same message, while Egyptian volunteers gather along the border with Israel in Sinai, demanding that Cairo take steps in support of their Arab brothers in Lebanon. Kuwait refuses to allow the United States to use its men and supplies at Camp Doha against Iran. In Bahrain, rampaging Shi’ite crowds depose Sheikh Khalifa al-Khalifa and set up an Islamic Republic, forcing the U.S. Fifth Fleet to abandon its only secure base in the region. The Dow Jones index loses another 1,000 points.

The United States attempts to get China and Russia to mediate with Iran to end the fighting, but they refuse to do Washington any favors, noting that they had opposed the attack in the first place and also citing their countrymen killed in the U.S. attacks. Suicide bombers attack in London, Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. The attacks are poorly planned and inflict only a few casualties, but panic sets in and the public demands that the respective governments do something. The United States tells the Iranian government that unless resistance ceases, nuclear weapons will be used on select targets. India and Pakistan are alarmed by the U.S. threat and put their own nuclear forces on high alert, as does Israel. Russia and China also increase their readiness levels to respond to the crisis.

Iran refuses to concede defeat, and the Iranian people rally around the government. The U.S. public is clamoring for action. Oil prices continue to surge, and the long-term viability of petroleum supplies is in question as the Strait of Hormuz continues to be closed. Another U.S. ship is badly damaged by suicide attackers in the Persian Gulf. American embassies throughout the region are attacked. Anti-American rioting takes place in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Mindanao, and in Dhaka. The United States consulate general in Karachi, Pakistan, is sacked and burned. Forty Americans die along with scores of Pakistanis when the Marine guards open fire.

There are frequent terrorism scares in a number of American cities, which are under red-alert security lockdown, though there are no new attacks. Domestic air travel declines by more than 50%. As a preventive measure, there are mass arrests of American Muslim leaders. Some antiwar activists are detained at military prisons, including Guantanamo, under the provisions of the Military Commissions Act and the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Israel continues to be bombarded from inside Lebanon. Its air attacks inflict massive damage on civilians but are unsuccessful in stopping the rockets. Its government falls and is replaced by a hard-right regime headed by former Foreign Secretary Avigdor Lieberman. Rioting rocks the West Bank and Gaza, forcing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resign and flee to Paris. Hamas forms a provisional government. India threatens to attack Pakistan if there is any question about the security of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal.

The United States uses a neutron-type bomb against the main Iranian nuclear research center at Natanz, which both Washington and Israel had already bombed conventionally and destroyed. It vows to bomb again if Iran continues to resist. Iran is defiant and fires another wave of Silkworms at U.S. ships, hitting one. Russia and China place their nuclear forces on high alert. Pakistani militants assume control of the government, aided by radical elements in the army and the intelligence service. India launches a preemptive strike against the main Pakistani nuclear centers at Wah and Multan, where the country’s arsenal is believed to be concentrated. Pakistan has some of its nukes moving around on trucks to avoid such a scenario, however, and is able to strike back by bombing New Delhi.

A minor engagement between American and Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf has ignited World War III.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Don’t Miss our Saturday – Economic Collapse Truth Teach-in Marathon
11am Pacific – 2pm Eastern – 18:00 GMT – Saturday
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Coming up Saturday –
ONE KEY ECONOMIC COLLAPSE TRUTH Revelation
Key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

HOW DO WE RESTORE PROSPERITY IN AMERICA? Tavis Smiley’s Panel

Record unemployment, corporate avarice, empty houses but homeless families, dwindling opportunities in a politically paralyzed nation. These are the realities of America, land of the free and home of the perennially poor and the new poor – the former middle class.
On January 12, 2012 broadcaster Tavis Smiley convened a panel of leading analysts and advocates, before a live audience, to explore how to restore prosperity in America.
Panelists discussed solutions for restoring America’s prosperity. Additionally, the participants discussed a forthcoming White Paper from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), to be released in January, which reveals the “new poor” and how the face of poverty in America has changed. This live panel discussion was moderated by Tavis Smiley.
The panelists included:

The Economic Collapse Teach-in encompasses upon some of the most highly controversial an crucial subjects of our day—the collapsing economy, the Federal Reserve, the Banks, Wall Street, financial fraud, foreclosures, homelessness, unemployment, workers rights, unions, trade agreements, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Over the past several months we have seen quite a few credit downgrades all over Europe, but we have never seen anything quite like what S&P just did.  Standard & Poor’s unleashed a barrage of credit downgrades on Friday….

-France was downgraded from AAA to AA+

-Austria was downgraded from AAA to AA+

-Italy was downgraded two more levels from A to BBB+

-Spain was downgraded two more levels

-Portugal was downgraded two more levels

-Cyprus was downgraded two more levels

-Malta was downgraded one level

-Slovakia was downgraded one level

-Slovenia was downgraded one level

This is really bad news for anyone that was hoping that things in Europe would start to get better.  Borrowing costs for many of these financially troubled nations are going to go even higher.

In addition, there was another really, really troubling piece of news that came out of Europe on Friday.

It was announced that negotiations between the Greek government and private holders of Greek debt have broken down.

The Institute of International Finance has been representing private bondholders in negotiations with the Greek government about the terms of a “voluntary haircut” that is supposed to be a key component of the “rescue plan” for Greece.

Greece desperately needs private bondholders to agree to accept a “voluntary haircut” of 50% or more.  Without some sort of an agreement, the finances of the Greek government will collapse very quickly.

For now, negotiations have failed.  There is hope that negotiations will resume soon, but Greece is rapidly running out of time.

The Institute of International Finance issued a statement on Friday which said the following….
“Unfortunately, despite the efforts of Greece’s leadership, the proposal put forward … which involves an unprecedented 50% nominal reduction of Greece’s sovereign bonds in private investors’ hands and up to €100 billion of debt forgiveness — has not produced a constructive consolidated response by all parties, consistent with a voluntary exchange of Greek sovereign debt”
The IIF says that negotiations are “paused for reflection” right now, but they are hoping that they will be able to resume before too long….
“Under the circumstances, discussions with Greece and the official sector are paused for reflection on the benefits of a voluntary approach”
Something needs to be done, because Greece is experiencing a complete and total financial meltdown.

Back at the end of July, the yield on one year Greek bonds was sitting at about 40 percent.  Today, the yield on one year Greek bonds is up to an astounding396 percent.

That is how fast these things can move when confidence disappears.

Those living in the United States should keep that in mind.

Unfortunately, Greece is not the only European nation that is completely falling apart financially.

We aren’t hearing much about it in the U.S. media, but Hungary is a total basket case right now.  The credit rating of Hungary was reduced to junk status some time ago, and now the IMF and the EU are threatening to withhold financial aid from Hungary if the Hungarians do not run their country exactly as they are being told to do.

In particular, the IMF and the EU are absolutely furious that Hungary is trying to take more political control over the central bank in Hungary.  The following is from an article in the Daily Mail….
The European Union has stepped up pressure on Hungary over the country’s refusal to implement austerity policies and threatened legal action over its new constitution.

The warnings escalated the standoff between Budapest and the EU, as Hungary negotiates fresh financial aid from Europe and the International Monetary Fund.

Over the past months, the country’s credit rating has been cut to junk by all three major rating agencies, unemployment is 10.6 percent and the country may be facing a recession.

But bailout negotiations broke down after Budapest refused to cut public spending and implemented a new constitution reasserting political control over its central bank.
Slovenia is a total mess right now as well.  The following comes from a recent article posted on EUObserver.com….
Slovenia’s borrowing costs have reached ‘bail-out territory’ after lawmakers rejected the premier-designate, putting the euro-country on the line for further downgrades by ratings agencies.

Zoran Jankovic, the mayor of Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana, fell four votes short of the 46 needed to be approved as prime minister by the parliament, with the country’s president set to re-cast his name or propose someone new within two weeks.
Some time ago, I warned that 2012 was going to be a more difficult year for the global economy than 2011 was.

Well, things are certainly starting to shape up that way.

Europe is heading for some really hard times.  What is about to happen in Europe is going to shake the entire global financial system.

Those that live in the United States should take notice, because the U.S. financial system is far more fragile than most people believe.

Our banking system is a gigantic mountain of debt, leverage and risk and it could fall again at any time.

In addition, the U.S. debt problem is bigger than it has ever been before.

For example, did you know that the federal government is on a pace to borrow6.2 trillion dollars by the end of Obama’s first term in office?

That is more debt than the U.S. government accumulated from the time that George Washington became president to the time that George W. Bush became president.

For now the U.S. government is still able to borrow giant piles of super cheap money, but such a situation does not last forever.

Just ask Greece.

Already there are indications that foreigners are starting to dump large amounts of U.S. debt.  If this trickle becomes a flood things could become very bad for the United States very quickly.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Washington D.C. by Prabirghose at Allvoices and also (Reuters)

Jan 11, 2012 at 11:23 PM PST

The USS Carl Vinson has arrived in Haiti

The US naval strike group is strengthening its presence in the Arabian Sea in the wake of escalating tensions between Iran and the US. The USS Carl Vinson has arrived even as Iran plans to carry out its military exercises in the Persian Gulf with threats of blocking the Strait of Hormuz which is a major transit route for oil from Iran.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military said on Wednesday that a new aircraft carrier strike group had arrived in the Arabian Sea and that another was on its way to the region, but denied any link to recent tensions with Iran and portrayed the movements as routine.

The shift in the powerful U.S. naval assets comes at a moment of heightened tensions with Iran, which has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz – the world’s most important oil shipping lane – if U.S. and EU sanctions over its nuclear program cut off its oil exports.

The U.S. military has said it will halt any blockade of the strategic strait and the top U.S. naval officer acknowledged on Tuesday that preparing for a potential conflict there was something that “keeps me awake at night.”

Still, the Pentagon denied any direct link between recent tensions and the movement of aircraft carriers.

“I don’t want to leave anybody with the impression that we’re somehow (speeding) two carriers over there because we’re concerned about what happened, you know, today in Iran. It’s just not the case,” said Captain John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

Military officials said the USS Carl Vinson arrived in the Arabian Sea on Monday to replace the outgoing USS John C. Stennis carrier strike group, which Iran last week warned not to return to the Gulf after departing in late December.

The Stennis was due to return to its home port in San Diego but the Pentagon did not say when that would happen.

Another carrier strike group, led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, concluded a port visit to Thailand on Tuesday and was now in the Indian Ocean. It is on track to join the Vinson in the Central Command area of operations, which begins in the neighboring Arabian Sea.

It is “not unusual to have two carriers in the CENTCOM theater at the same time,” a second U.S. military official said.

Another official said there had been two carriers in the Gulf region at least twice in the past 18 months.

Tensions between Iran and the United States ratcheted up again in the past week. Iran started an underground uranium enrichment plant and sentenced an American to death for spying. Washington and Europe have stepped up efforts to cripple Iran’s oil exports, and Tehran on Wednesday blamed U.S. and Israeli agents for killing an Iranian nuclear scientist.

Israel declined to comment on the killing and the United States denied any U.S. role and condemned the attack, in which the scientist was blown up by a bomb attached to his car by a motorbike hitman.

Iran had warned the Stennis not to re-enter the Gulf and it is unclear when another U.S. carrier will enter Gulf waters. The Pentagon has suggested only that, sooner or later, a carrier will pass through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf.

Read entire articles here and here.

Coming up Tuesday at 9am Pacific – 12 Noon Eastern – 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Tuesday evening.

“THE KEVIN BARRETT SHOW”
EXCLUSIVE –Tuesday on KB Show:
William Engdahl: WARNING: Nuclear war coming soon (if we let it)

Guest: William Engdahl, who warns in a new article:
“Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it’s not at all about Iran and Israel. It’s about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD).”

The Kevin Barrett Show is independently produced and hosted by Kevin Barrett and these shows are externally produced content. All externally produced content broadcast on No Lies Radio is the sole responsibility of the program-content producer and is not the responsibility of NoLiesRadio.org. Any questions or concerns should be directed to the content producer.

Coming up today and every Monday at 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 pm Eastern – 02:00 GMT

GUNS AND BUTTER with Bonnie Faulkner
Evidence of Insider Trading Before 9/11 — Paul Zarembka
Informed Trading; Insider Trading; Put Options; The Journal of Business; The 9/11 Commission Report; three scientific studies on insider trading; Professor Potasman Study from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Open Interest; Exercising Put Options; Quintile; Hedging; University of Wisconsin, Madison Study; Chesney Study; Conclusion.

by Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, January 8, 2012 paulcraigroberts.org – 2012-01-06

The following report is based on the work of statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com.

Today’s (Friday, January 6) payroll jobs report of 200,000 new jobs in December is overstated by at least 82,000 jobs. As approximately 130,000 new jobs are needed each month to stay even with population growth, the December job figures actually indicate that the US economy fell another 12,000 jobs behind.

Forty-two thousand of the reported jobs are the result of a glitch in the BLS seasonal adjustment model that produces a false jump in December “couriers and messengers” jobs.

Forty thousand of the jobs result from the “birth/death” model that BLS uses to estimate the net effect of unreported jobs lost from business closures and jobs gained from new start-ups. The model is structured to represent normal times. During the bottom bouncing of this protracted downturn, the model over-estimates new jobs from start-ups and under-estimates job losses from business failures.

The official unemployment rates (U3 and U6) no longer measure all of the unemployed. The Clinton administration ceased counting as unemployed workers who had given up looking for a job for one year or longer. No discouraged workers are included in the widely reported U3 measure. The U6 measure includes workers who have been discouraged for less than one year.

In other words, the longer an economy is in the doldrums, the less the official unemployment rates are reliable measures of the extent of unemployment. The unemployment rate in December as measured by U3 is 8.5%; as measured by U6 which includes short-term discouraged workers (less than one year) is 15.2%. John Williams’ measure which includes the long-term unemployed is 22.4%.

In other words, the real unemployment rate is 2.6 times the widely reported U3 rate, which is the rate emphasized by policymakers and the financial press.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Don’t Miss our Saturday – Economic Collapse Truth Teach-in Marathon
11am Pacific – 2pm Eastern – 18:00 GMT – Saturday
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Coming up Saturday –
ONE KEY ECONOMIC COLLAPSE TRUTH Revelation
Key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Evidence of Insider Trading Before 9/11 — Paul Zarembka

Informed Trading; Insider Trading; Put Options; The Journal of Business; The 9/11 Commission Report; three scientific studies on insider trading; Professor Potasman Study from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Open Interest; Exercising Put Options; Quintile; Hedging; University of Wisconsin, Madison Study; Chesney Study; Conclusion. From a Guns & Butter Presentation.

The Economic Collapse Teach-in encompasses upon some of the most highly controversial an crucial subjects of our day—the collapsing economy, the Federal Reserve, the Banks, Wall Street, financial fraud, foreclosures, homelessness, unemployment, workers rights, unions, trade agreements, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Every Saturday – Anti-War – Progressive Truth Teach-in
Coming up at 9:00am Pacific * 12 noon Eastern * 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Year of Global Uprisings, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street: A Special Look Back at 2011
Today we look back at 2011, a year that saw the U.S. killing of Osama Bin Laden, the ouster of a dictator in Egypt and the death of one in Libya, the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, and the expansion of the secret U.S. drone war in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula. As U.S. troops leave Iraq, thousands of private security contractors remain to guard the U.S. embassy—the largest in the world. The Horn of Africa was hit by the region’s worst drought in decades as the devastating impact of extreme weather was felt across the globe, while the world’s most powerful countries continue to refuse to join in a pact to address climate change. However, 2011 may be most remembered as a year of global uprisings. From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, millions of people took to the streets to oppose repressive regimes and an unjust economic system. We spend the hour today looking back at the protest movements that shaped 2011.From a Democracy Now Presentation. See transcript here.

The Anti-war Progressive Teach-in broaches upon some of the most highly charged subjects of our day—War & Peace, national healthcare, women’s rights, human rights, civil rights, torture, vets against the war, freedom, democracy, protest, demonstrations, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Coming up every Thursday at 7:00 pm Pacific * 10:00 pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast.

Occupy 2012-Wall Street-War on Iran

Today’s show we speak with Code Pink’s Dana Balicki and Media Roots’ Abby Martin about the Occupy Movement for 2012; we hear from Steve Zeltzer of Work Week Radio; for the last part of this week’s program we are joined by independent journalist and analyst Stephen Lendman, author of How Wall St. Fleeces America, on how we might stop the march to war on Iran. Show Hosts: Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips, with Abby Martin of Media Roots.

Coming up today and every Monday at 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 pm Eastern – 02:00 GMT

BEST OF FLASHPOINTS
Cover ups and Scams–Greg Palast speaks in Berkeley
Greg Palast speaks in Berkeley, CA, about his new book Vulture’s Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Predators. In this rousing talk, Palast exposes corporate malfeasance and names names. From Wall Street to Fukushima, Palast takes the “one percent” to task. As he shares his stories of cover-ups and scams, he reminds the audience, “this is why we occupy!”

Coming up Tuesday at 9am Pacific – 12 Noon Eastern – 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Tuesday evening.

“THE KEVIN BARRETT SHOW”
EXCLUSIVE –Tuesday on KB Show:
Greg Felton explodes “Middle East Myths” !

Greg Felton, a mainstream journalist from Vancouver, was forced to nibble at the red pill when asked to cover Middle East issues. As he began to realize that the pro-Zionist propaganda churned out by the mainstream media is a tissue of lies, he dove deeper and deeper into skepticism. The result is his new book Exploding Middle East Myths.

The Kevin Barrett Show is independently produced and hosted by Kevin Barrett and these shows are externally produced content. All externally produced content broadcast on No Lies Radio is the sole responsibility of the program-content producer and is not the responsibility of NoLiesRadio.org. Any questions or concerns should be directed to the content producer.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 19 DECEMBER 2011

FRANÇAIS ESPAÑOL ITALIANO DEUTSCH

Aldel Hakim Belhaj, historic leader of Al Qaeda in Libya, Military Governor of Tripoli, chief of the Free Syrian Army.

The UN Security Council members are at loggerheads over the interpretation of the events that are rocking Syria. On one hand, France, the United Kingdom and the United States claim that a revolution has swept the country, in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring”, and suffering a bloody crackdown. On the other hand, Russia’s and China’s take is that Syria is having to cope with armed gangs from abroad, which it is fighting awkwardly thereby causing collateral victims among the civilian population it seeks to protect.

The on-the-spot investigation undertaken by Voltaire Network validated the latter interpretation [1]. We have collected eyewitness testimonies from those who survived an armed attack by a foreign gangs. They describe them as being Iraqis, Jordanians or Libyans, recognizable by their accent, as well as Pashtun.

In recent months, a certain number of Arab newspapers, favorable to the Al-Assad administration, discussed the infiltration into Syria of 600 to 1,500 fighters from the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya (IFGL), rebranded Al Qaeda in Libyasince November 2007. In late November 2011, the Libyan press reported the attempt by the Zintan militia to detain Abdel Hakim Belhaj, companion of Osama Bin Laden [2] and historic leader of Al Qaeda in Libya, who became military governor of Tripoli by the grace of NATO [3]. The scene took place at Tripoli airport, as he was leaving for Turkey. Finally, Turkish newspapers mentioned Mr. Belhaj’s presence at the Turkish-Syrian.

Such reports have been met with disbelief on the part of all those who regard Al Qaeda and NATO are irreconcilable enemies between whom no cooperation is possible. Instead, they reinforce the thesis which I have defended since the attacks of September 11, 2001, that Al Qaeda fighters are mercenaries of the service of the CIA [4].

Who is telling the truth?

For the past week, the Spanish royalist newspaper ABC has published a daily report by photographer Daniel Iriarte. This journalist is with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the north of the country, right on the Turkish border. Iriarte champions the cause of the “revolution” and can never find words harsh enough against “Al-Assad regime.”

The Free Syrian Army is made up of more than 20 00 people, according to its political chief Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad, but of only a few hundred when listening to the Syrian authorities [5].

However, in the Saturday edition dated 17 December 2011, Daniel Iriarte describes an encounter that shocked him. While his FSA friends were taking him to a new hideout, he came across some foreign insurgents: three Libyans [6].

Mahdi al-Harati, commander of the Tripoli Brigade, resigned from his functions as deputy chief of the Military Council in Tripoli to oversee the Free Syrian Army.

The first one among them was al-Mahdi Hatari, a Libyan who lived in Ireland before joining Al Qaeda. At the end of the Libyan war, he was named commander of the Tripoli Brigade, then number 2 of the Tripoli Military Council headed by Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He resigned from this function, according to some because of a dispute with the Transitional National Council, according to others because he wanted to go back to Ireland to join his Irish wife [7] The truth is that he headed for Syria.

Even stranger: a member of Al Qaeda was among the pro-Palestinian activists, in June of last year, on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara. Numerous secret service agents, especially US, had infiltrated the “Freedom Flotilla“ [8]. He was wounded and held prisoner for nine days in Israel.

Finally, during the Battle of Tripoli, al-Mahdi Harati commanded the Al Qaeda group that besieged and attacked the Rixos hotel, where I was staying with my Voltaire Networkcompanions and the international press, and whose basement served as a shelter for the leaders of the Jamahiriya under the protection of the custody of Khamis Gaddafi [9]. According to the latter, Mahdi al-Harati was being briefed by the French officers on the ground.

The second Libyan that the Spanish photographer in the Syrian army is none other than Kikli Adem, a lieutenant of Abdel Hakim Belhaj. As for the third Libyan, nicknamed Fouad, Daniel Iriarte was not in a position to identify him.

Iriarte’s testimony dovetails with what the Arab anti-Syrian press has been claiming for weeks: the Free Syrian Army is overseen by at least 600 “volunteers” from Al Qaeda in Libya [10]. The entire operation is run by Abdel Hakim Belhaj in person with the help of the Erdogan government.

How can it be explained that a daily newspaper as anti-Assad as ABC has decided to publish the testimony of its special envoy, who sheds light on the nauseating methods employed by NATO and confirms the Syrian government’s thesis of armed destabilization? The fact is that for a week, certain advocates of the clash of civilizations have been riling against a set-up which includes Islamic extremists in a “free world” strategy.

Writing on CNBC Guest Blog [11], former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar revealed on 9 December 2011 that Abdel Hakim Belhaj was suspected of complicity in the attacks of 11 March 2004 in Madrid [12], an event that put an end to Aznar’s political career.

Sheik Ali Salabi, spiritual guide of Al Qaeda in Lybia, Abdel Hakim Belhaj’s mentor, and strong man of the “new Libya.”

Mr. Aznar’s outing goes hand in hand with the intervention made by his friends from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the think tank headed by former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold [13]. They publicly voice their doubts about the validity of the current CIA strategy to place Islamists in power throughout North Africa. Their criticism is aimed against the secret society of the Muslim Brotherhood, but also against two Libyan figures: Abel Hakim Belhadj and his friend Sheikh Ali Al-Salibi. The latter is regarded as the new leader of Libya [14]. The two men are deemed to be the pawns of Qatar in the new Libya [15]. It was also Sheikh Salabi who distributed $ 2 billion of Qatari funds to help Al-Qaeda in Libya [16].

Thus the contradiction that was desperately kept hidden for the past decade returns to the surface: the mercenaries, formerly paid by Osama Bin Laden, have never stopped working in the service of US strategic interests since the first war in Afghanistan, including the period of the September 11 attacks. Yet they are portrayed ??by Western leaders as implacable enemies.

It is likely that the objections of Mr. Aznar and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs will be overridden by NATO, as were those raised by AFRICOM commander General Carter Ham. At the beginning of the war Libya, he was incensed at having to protect jihadists who had gone to slaughter GIs in Iraq.

Detached from reality, the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee (aka “Committee pursuant to resolution 1267″) and the US Department of State still have on their black list the organization of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sheik Salabi under its former label of Islamic Fighting Group in Libya. It would appear that is it the duty of every State to arrest these individuals if they enter their territory.

Thierry Meyssan

[1] “Lies and truths about Syria”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 28 November 2011.

[2] “Libya’s Powerful Islamist Leader,” by Babak Dehghanpisheh, The Daily Beast, 2 September 2011.

[3] “How Al Qaeda men came to power in Libya”, by Thierry Meyssan,Voltaire Network, 7 September 2011.

[4] “Once NATO enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan, now NATO allies in Libya,” by Webster G. Tarpley, Voltaire Network, 24 May 2011.

[5] “Syria’s opposition, rebels hold talks in Turkey,” by Safak Timur, AFP, 1 December 2011.

[6] “Islamistas libios se desplazan a Siria para “ayudar” a la revolución,” by Daniel Iriarte, ABC (Spain), 17 December 2011. English translation: “Libyan Islamists go to Syria to “help” the revolution,” by Daniel Iriarte,Voltaire Network, 22 December 2011.

[7] “Libyan-Irish commander resigns as deputy head of Tripoli military council,” by Mary Fitzgerald, The Irish Times, 11 October 2011.

[8] “Freedom Flotilla: The detail that escaped Netanyahu”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 8 June 2010.

[9] “Thierry Meyssan and Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya under death threat in Tripoli”, Voltaire Network, 22 August 2011.

[10] “Libyan fighters join “free Syrian army” forces,” Al Bawaba, 29 November 2011.

[11] “Spain’s Former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar on the Arab Awakening and How the West Should React,” CNBC.com., 9 December 2011.

[12] “March 11, 2004 in Madrid: Was it really an Islamist attack?”, by Mathieu Miquel, Voltaire Network, 28 November 2009.

[13] “Diplomacy after the Arab uprisings,” by Dore Gold, The Jerusalem Post, 15 December 2011.

[14] “Meet the likely architect of the new Libya,” by Marc Fisher, The Washington Post, 9 December 2011.

[15] “Libyans wary over support from Qatar,” by John Thorne, The National (United Arab Emirates), 13 December 2011.

[16] John Thorne, op. cit.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Coming up today and every Monday at 7:00 pm Pacific – 10:00 pm Eastern – 02:00 GMT

GUNS AND BUTTER with Bonnie Faulkner
Critique of Ron Paul’s Austerity Plan — Webster Griffin Tarpley
Ron Paul’s “Plan to Restore America” includes $1 trillion in cuts to the federal budget in one year. We take a look at what this would mean for the American people. Ron Paul is the republican front runner to win the Iowa Caucus on January 3rd, 2012.

Alex Jones breaks down the controllers that supposedly run the planet..later he covers the staged earthquake in Haiti.

Some of the 13 families that run/have run the Council of 13 according to Alex Jones: Rockerfellers, Rothschilds, Henry Kissinger, Gordon Brown, George Shultz, Richard Nixon, LBJ, Tony Blair, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel…later he covers the staged earthquake in Haiti.

Source www.youtube.com

Don’t Miss our Saturday – Economic Collapse Truth Teach-in Marathon
11am Pacific – 2pm Eastern – 18:00 GMT – Saturday
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Coming up Saturday –
ONE KEY ECONOMIC COLLAPSE TRUTH Revelation
Key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

Critique of Ron Paul’s Austerity Plan — Webster Griffin Tarpley

Ron Paul’s “Plan to Restore America” includes $1 trillion in cuts to the federal budget in one year. We take a look at what this would mean for the American people. Ron Paul is the republican front runner to win the Iowa Caucus on January 3rd, 2012. From a Guns & Butter Presentation.

The Economic Collapse Teach-in encompasses upon some of the most highly controversial an crucial subjects of our day—the collapsing economy, the Federal Reserve, the Banks, Wall Street, financial fraud, foreclosures, homelessness, unemployment, workers rights, unions, trade agreements, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

READ FULL STORY HERE

By a media trick, Tehran proved its claim that closing the Strait of Hormuz is as “easy as drinking water,” DEBKAfile reports.  First thing Saturday morning, Saturday, Dec. 31, Iran’s state agencies “reported” long-range and other missiles had been test-fired as part of its ongoing naval drill around the Strait of Hormuz. Ahead of the test, Tehran closed its territorial waters. For five hours Saturday, not a single warship, merchant vessel or oil tanker ventured into the 30-mile wide Hormuz strait, waiting to hear from Tehran’ that the test was over.

Instead, around 0900 local time, a senior Iranian navy commander Mahmoud Moussavi informed Iran’s English language Press TV that no missiles had been fired after all. “The exercise of launching missiles will be carried out in the coming days,” he said.
For five hours therefore, world shipping obeyed Tehran’s warning and gave the narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, a wide berth. They stayed out of range of a test which, DEBKAfile’s military sources report, aimed to demonstrate for the first time that Shahab-3 ballistic missiles which have a range of 1,600 kilometers and other missiles, such as the Nasr1cruise marine missile, are capable of reaching Hormuz from central Iran.

The Moussavi statement was not aired on Iran’s Farsi-language media. It was not necessary; Tehran had demonstrated by this ruse that it could close the vital waterway for hours or days at any moment.

Friday night, shortly after Tehran reported the missile-firing test was to take place the next morning, Washington announced the $3.48 billion sale to the United Arab Emirates of 94 advanced THAAD missiles with supporting technology.

Like the $30 billion sale of 84 F-15 fighter jets to the Saudi Arabia announced this week, delivery dates were not specified.  The first F-15s for Saudi Arabia are due some time in 2015. It must therefore be said that the announced sophisticated US arms sales to the Persian Gulf nations bear only tangentially on the current state of tension in the region around Iranian threats.
The Hormuz missile stratagem has given Tehran three advantages in its face-off with Washington and the Gulf Arab governments:
1.  It gave credibility to the threats issued by Iranian military chiefs last week regarding free passage in the Strait of Hormuz and Western sanctions:
On Dec. 29, Navy commander Adm. Habibollah Sayari said it was “really easy” for Iran’s armed forces to shut the strait, adding “But today, we don’t need [to shut] the strait because we have the Sea of Oman under control and can control the transit.”

The next day, Deputy Commander of the Revolutionary Guards Gen. Hossein Salami said the United States was not in a position to tell Tehran “what to do in the Strait of Hormuz. Any threat will be responded to by threat… We will not relinquish our strategic moves if Iran’s vital interests are undermined by any means.”

2. For Tehran, closing the vital waterway to international traffic without firing a shot – even for a few hours – served to rebut the warning given by US Fifth Fleet spokeswoman Lt. Rebecca Rebarich on Dec. 29. She said: “Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations: any disruption will not be tolerated.”

READ FULL STORY HERE

Every Saturday – Anti-War – Progressive Truth Teach-in
Coming up at 9:00am Pacific * 12 noon Eastern * 16:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast by Monday.


Earth at Risk Conference — Arundhati Roy
Presentation from the Earth-At-Risk Conference, recently held at the University of California, Berkeley on November 13, 2011 with Featured Speaker Arundhati Roy. From a Flashpoints Presentation.

The Anti-war Progressive Teach-in broaches upon some of the most highly charged subjects of our day—War & Peace, national healthcare, women’s rights, human rights, civil rights, torture, vets against the war, freedom, democracy, protest, demonstrations, etc. We scour the world to find and gather debates and presentations that are extremely informative and educational. Related subjects are also discussed. It provides key information for the uninitiated and the initiated alike.

politico.com

READ FULL STORY HERE

by Peter Lindemann
Global Research, December 27, 2011
Rense

photo above: Nikola Tesla

In the late 1880′s, trade journals in the electrical sciences were predicting free electricity and free energy in the near future. Incredible discoveries about the nature of electricity were becoming common place. Nikola Tesla was demonstrating “wireless lighting” and other wonders associated with high frequency currents. There was an excitement about the future like never before.

Within 20 years, there would be automobiles, airplanes, movies, recorded music, telephones, radio, and practical cameras. The Victorian Age was giving way to something totally new. For the first time in history, common people were encouraged to envision a utopian future filled with abundant modern transportation and communication, as well as jobs, housing and food for everyone. Disease would be conquered, and so would poverty. Life was getting better, and this time, everyone was going to get a piece of the pie. So, what happened? In the midst of this technological explosion, where did the energy breakthroughs go? Was all of this excitement about free energy, which happened just before the beginning of the last century, just wishful thinking that “real science” eventually disproved?

Current State of Technology

Actually, the answer to that question is no. In fact, the opposite is true. Spectacular energy technologies were developed right along with the other breakthroughs. Since that time, multiple methods for producing vast amounts of energy at extremely low cost have been developed. None of these technologies have made it to the consumer market as an article of commerce, however. Exactly why this is true will be discussed shortly.

But first, I would like to describe to you a short list of free energy technologies that I am currently aware of, and that are proven beyond all reasonable doubt. The common feature connecting all of these discoveries, is that they use a small amount of one form of energy to control or release a large amount of a different kind of energy. Many of them tap the underlying Æther field in some way; a source of energy conveniently ignored by modern science.

1) Radiant Energy. Nikola Tesla’s magnifying transmitter, T. Henry Moray’s radiant energy device, Edwin Gray’s EMA motor, and Paul Baumann’s Testatika machine all run on radiant energy. This natural energy form can be gathered directly from the environment (mistakenly called “static” electricity) or extracted from ordinary electricity by the method called fractionation. Radiant energy can perform the same wonders as ordinary electricity, at less than 1% of the cost. It does not behave exactly like electricity, however, which has contributed to the scientific community’s misunderstanding of it. The Methernitha Community in Switzerland currently has 5 or 6 working models of fuelless, self-running devices that tap this energy.

2) Permanent Magnets. Dr. Robert Adams (NZ) has developed astounding designs of electric motors, generators and heaters that run on permanent magnets. One such device draws 100 watts of electricity from the source, generates 100 watts to recharge the source, and produces over 140 BTU’s of heat in two minutes! Dr. Tom Bearden (USA) has two working models of a permanent magnet powered electrical transformer. It uses a 6-watt electrical input to control the path of a magnetic field coming out of a permanent magnet. By channeling the magnetic field, first to one output coil and then a second output coil, and by doing this repeatedly and rapidly in a “ping-pong” fashion, the device can produce a 96-watt electrical output with no moving parts. Bearden calls his device a Motionless Electromagnetic Generator, or MEG. Jean-Louis Naudin has duplicated Bearden’s device in France. The principles for this type of device were first disclosed by Frank Richardson (USA) in 1978. Troy Reed (USA) has working models of a special magnetized fan that heats up as it spins. It takes exactly the same amount of energy to spin the fan whether it is generating heat or not. Beyond these developments, multiple inventors have identified working mechanisms that produce motor torque from permanent magnets alone.

3) Mechanical Heaters. There are two classes of machines that transform a small amount of mechanical energy into a large amount of heat. The best of these purely mechanical designs are the rotating cylinder systems designed by Frenette (USA) and Perkins (USA). In these machines, one cylinder is rotated within another cylinder with about an eighth of an inch of clearance between them. The space between the cylinders is filled with a liquid such as water or oil, and it is this “working fluid” that heats up as the inner cylinder spins. Another method uses magnets mounted on a wheel to produce large eddy currents in a plate of aluminum, causing the aluminum to heat up rapidly. These magnetic heaters have been demonstrated by Muller (Canada), Adams (NZ) and Reed (USA). All of these systems can produce ten times more heat than standard methods using the same energy input.

4) Super-Efficient Electrolysis. Water can be broken into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. Standard chemistry books claim that this process requires more energy than can be recovered when the gases are recombined. This is true only under the worst case scenario. When water is hit with its own molecular resonant frequency, using a system developed by Stan Meyers (USA) and again recently by Xogen Power, Inc., it collapses into hydrogen and oxygen gas with very little electrical input. Also, using different electrolytes (additives that make the water conduct electricity better) changes the efficiency of the process dramatically. It is also known that certain geometric structures and surface textures work better than others do. The implication is that unlimited amounts of hydrogen fuel can be made to drive engines (like in your car) for the cost of water. Even more amazing is the fact that a special metal alloy was patented by Freedman (USA) in 1957 that spontaneously breaks water into hydrogen and oxygen with no outside electrical input and without causing any chemical changes in the metal itself. This means that this special metal alloy can make hydrogen from water for free, forever.

5) Implosion/Vortex. All major industrial engines use the release of heat to cause expansion and pressure to produce work, like in your car engine. Nature uses the opposite process of cooling to cause suction and vacuum to produce work, like in a tornado. Viktor Schauberger (Austria) was the first to build working models of implosion engines in the 1930′s and 1940′s. Since that time, Callum Coats has published extensively on Schauberger’s work in his book Living Energies and subsequently, a number of researchers have built working models of implosion turbine engines. These are fuelless engines that produce mechanical work from energy accessed from a vacuum. There are also much simpler designs that use vortex motions to tap a combination of gravity and centrifugal force to produce a continuous motion in fluids.

6) Cold Fusion. In March 1989, two chemists from the University of Utah (USA) announced that they had produced atomic fusion reactions in a simple tabletop device. The claims were “debunked” within six months and the public lost interest. Nevertheless, cold fusion is very real. Not only has excess heat production been repeatedly documented, but also low energy atomic element transmutation has been catalogued, involving dozens of different reactions! This technology definitely can produce low cost energy and scores of other important industrial processes.

7) Solar Assisted Heat Pumps. The refrigerator in your kitchen is the only free energy machine you currently own. It’s an electrically operated heat pump. It uses one amount of energy (electricity) to move three amounts of energy (heat). This gives it a co-efficient of performance (COP) of about 3. Your refrigerator uses one amount of electricity to pump three amounts of heat from the inside of the refrigerator to the outside of the refrigerator. This is its typical use, but it is the worst possible way to use the technology. Here’s why. A heat pump pumps heat from the source of heat to the “sink” or place that absorbs the heat. The source of heat should obviously be hot and the sink for heat should obviously be cold for this process to work the best. In your refrigerator, it’s exactly the opposite. The source of heat is inside the box, which is cold, and the sink for heat is the room temperature air of your kitchen, which is warmer than the source. This is why the COP remains low for your kitchen refrigerator. But this is not true for all heat pumps. COP’s of 8 to 10 are easily attained with solar assisted heat pumps. In such a device, a heat pump draws heat from a solar collector and dumps the heat into a large underground absorber, which remains at 55° F, and mechanical energy is extracted in the transfer. This process is equivalent to a steam engine that extracts mechanical energy between the boiler and the condenser, except that it uses a fluid that boils at a much lower temperature than water. One such system that was tested in the 1970′s produced 350 hp, measured on a Dynamometer, in a specially designed engine from just 100-sq. ft. of solar collector. (This is not the system promoted by Dennis Lee.) The amount of energy it took to run the compressor (input) was less than 20 hp, so this system produced more than 17 times more energy than it took to keep it going! It could power a small neighborhood from the roof of a hot tub gazebo, using exactly the same technology that keeps the food cold in your kitchen. Currently, there is an industrial scale heat pump system just north of Kona, Hawaii that generates electricity from temperature differences in ocean water.

There are dozens of other systems that I have not mentioned, many of them are as viable and well tested as the ones I have just recounted. But this short list is sufficient to make my point: free energy technology is here, now. It offers the world pollution-free, energy abundance for everyone, everywhere.

It is now possible to stop the production of greenhouse gases and shut down all of the nuclear power plants. We can now desalinate unlimited amounts of seawater at an affordable price, and bring adequate fresh water to even the most remote habitats. Transportation costs and the production costs for just about everything can drop dramatically. Food can even be grown in heated greenhouses in the winter, anywhere. All of these wonderful benefits that can make life on this planet so much easier and better for everyone have been postponed for decades. Why? Whose purposes are served by this postponement?

Four Invisible Forces

There are four gigantic forces that have worked together to create this situation. To say that there is and has been a conspiracy to suppress this technology only leads to a superficial understanding of the world, and it places the blame for this completely outside of ourselves. Our willingness to remain ignorant and actionless in the face of this situation has always been interpreted by two of these forces as implied consent. So, besides a non-demanding public, what are the other forces that are impeding the availability of free energy technology?

In the United States, and in most other countries around the world, there is a money monopoly in place. I am free to earn as much money as I want, but I will only be paid in Federal Reserve Notes. There is nothing I can do to be paid in Gold Certificates, or some other form of money. This money monopoly is solely in the hands of a small number of private stock banks, and these banks are owned by the wealthiest families in the world. Their plan is to eventually control 100% of all of the capital resources of the world, and thereby control everyone’s life through the availability (or non-availability) of all goods and services.

An independent source of wealth (free energy device) in the hands of each and every person in the world, ruins the plans of the wealthiest families for world domination, permanently. Why this is true is easy to see. Currently, a nation’s economy can be either slowed down or sped up by the raising or lowering of interest rates. But if an independent source of capital (energy) were present in the economy, and any business or person could raise more capital without borrowing it from a bank, this centralized throttling action on interest rates would simply not have the same effect.

Free energy technology changes the value of money. The wealthiest families and the issuers of credit do not want any competition. It’s that simple. They want to maintain their current monopoly control of the money supply. For them, free energy technology is not just something to suppress, it must be permanently forbidden!

So, the wealthiest families and their central banking institutions are the first force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology. Their motivations are the imagined divine right to rule, greed, and their insatiable need to control almost everything except themselves. The weapons they have used to enforce this postponement include intimidation, “expert” debunkers, buying and shelving of technology, murder and attempted murder of the inventors, character assassination, arson, and a wide variety of financial incentives and disincentives to manipulate possible supporters. They have also promoted the general acceptance of a scientific theory that states that free energy is impossible (laws of thermodynamics).

The second force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology is national governments. The problem here is not so much related to competition in the printing of currency, but in the maintenance of national security. The fact is, the world out there is a jungle, and humans can be counted upon to be very cruel, dishonest, and sneaky. It is government’s job to provide for the common defense. For this, police powers are delegated by the executive branch of government to enforce “the rule of law.” Most of us who consent to the rule of law do so because we believe it is the right thing to do, for our own benefit. There are always a few individuals, however, that believe that their own benefit is best served by behavior that does not voluntarily conform to the generally agreed upon social order. These people choose to operate outside of the rule of law and are considered outlaws, criminals, subversives, traitors, revolutionaries, or terrorists.

Most national governments have discovered, by trial and error, that the only foreign policy that really works, over time, is a policy called “tit for tat.” What this means to you and me is, that governments treat each other the way they are being treated. There is a constant jockeying for position and influence in world affairs, and the strongest party wins! In economics, it’s the Golden Rule, which states: “The one with the gold makes the rules.”

So it is with politics also, but its appearance is more Darwinian. It’s simply survival of the fittest. In politics, however, the fittest has come to mean the strongest party who is also willing to fight the dirtiest. Absolutely every means available is used to maintain an advantage over the adversary, and everyone else is the adversary regardless of whether they are considered friend or foe. This includes outrageous psychological posturing, lying, cheating, spying, stealing, assassination of world leaders, proxy wars, alliances and shifting alliances, treaties, foreign aid, and the presence of military forces wherever possible.

Like it or not, this is the psychological and actual arena national governments operate in. No national government will do anything that simply gives an adversary an advantage for free. It’s national suicide. An activity by any individual, inside or outside the country, that is interpreted as giving an adversary an edge or advantage will be deemed a threat to “national security.”

Free energy technology is a national government’s worst nightmare! Openly acknowledged, free energy technology sparks an unlimited arms race by all governments in a final attempt to gain absolute advantage and domination. Think about it. Do you think Japan will not feel intimidated if China gets free energy? Do you think Israel will sit by quietly as Iraq acquires free energy? Do you think India will allow Pakistan to develop free energy? Do you think the USA would not try to stop Osama bin Laden from getting free energy?

Unlimited energy available to the current state of affairs on this planet leads to an inevitable reshuffling of the balance of power. This could become an all-out war to prevent “the other” from having the advantage of unlimited wealth and power. Everybody will want it, and at the same time, want to prevent everyone else from getting it.

So, national governments are the second force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology. Their motivations are “self-preservation.” This self-preservation operates on three levels. First, by not giving undue advantage to an external enemy. Second, by preventing individualized action capable of effectively challenging official police powers (anarchy) within the country. And third, by preserving income streams derived from taxing energy sources currently in use. Their weapons include the preventing of the issuance of patents based on national security grounds, the legal and illegal harassment of inventors with criminal charges, tax audits, threats, phone taps, arrest, arson, theft of property during shipment, and a host of other intimidations which make the business of building and marketing a free energy machine practically impossible.

The third force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology consists of the group of deluded inventors and out right charlatans and con men. On the periphery of the extraordinary scientific breakthroughs that constitute the real free energy technologies, lies a shadow world of unexplained anomalies, marginal inventions and unscrupulous promoters. The first two forces have constantly used the media to promote the worst examples of this group, to distract the public’s attention and to discredit the real breakthroughs by associating them with the obvious frauds.

Over the last hundred years, dozens of stories have surfaced about unusual inventions. Some of these ideas have so captivated the public’s imagination that a mythology about these systems continues to this day. Names like Keely, Hubbard, Coler, and Henderschott immediately come to mind. There may be real technologies behind these names, but there simply isn’t enough technical data available in the public domain to make a determination. These names remain associated with a free energy mythology, however, and are sited by debunkers as examples of fraud.

The idea of free energy taps very deeply into the human subconscious mind. A few inventors with marginal technologies that demonstrate useful anomalies have mistakenly exaggerated the importance of their inventions. Some of these inventors also have mistakenly exaggerated the importance of themselves for having invented it. A combination of “gold fever” and/or a messiah complex appears, wholly distorting any future contribution they may make.

While the research thread they are following may hold great promise, these deluded inventors begin to trade enthusiasm for facts, and the value of the scientific work from that point on suffers greatly. There is a powerful, yet subtle seduction that can warp a personality if they believe that the world rests on their shoulders or that they are the world’s savior. Strange things also happen to people when they think they are about to become extremely rich. It takes a tremendous spiritual discipline to remain objective and humble in the presence of a working free energy machine.

Many inventors’ psyches become unstable just believing they have a free energy machine. As the quality of the science deteriorates, some inventors also develop a persecution complex that makes them very defensive and unapproachable. This process precludes them from ever really developing a free energy machine, and fuels the fraud mythologies tremendously.

Then there are the out right con men. In the last 15 years, there is one person in the USA who has raised the free energy con to a professional art. He has raised more than $100,000,000, has been barred from doing business in the state of Washington, has been jailed in California, and he’s still at it. He always talks about a variation of one of the real free energy systems, sells people on the idea that they will get one of these systems soon, but ultimately sells them only promotional information which gives no real data about the energy system itself. He has mercilessly preyed upon the Christian community and the patriot community in the USA, and is still going strong.

This man’s current scam involves signing up hundreds of thousands of people as locations where he will install a free energy machine. In exchange for letting him put the free energy generator in their home, they will get free electricity for life, and his company will sell the excess energy back to the local utility company. After becoming convinced that they will receive free electricity for life, with no out-front expenses, they gladly buy a video that helps draw their friends into the scam as well. Once you understand the power and motivations of the first two forces I have discussed, its obvious that this person’s current business plan cannot be implemented. This one person has probably done more harm to the free energy movement in the USA than any other force, by destroying people’s trust in the technology.

So, the third force postponing the public availability of free energy technology is delusion and dishonesty within the movement itself. The motivations are self-aggrandizement, greed, want of power over others, and a false sense of self-importance. The weapons used are lying, cheating, the “bait and switch” con, self-delusion and arrogance combined with lousy science.

The fourth force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology is all of the rest of us. It may be easy to see how narrow and selfish the motivations of the other forces are, but actually, these motivations are still very much alive in each of us as well. Like the Wealthiest Families, don’t we each secretly harbor illusions of false superiority, and the want to control others instead of ourselves? Also, wouldn’t you “sell out” if the price were high enough, say, take a million dollars, cash, today? Or like the governments, don’t we each want to ensure our own survival? If caught in the middle of a full, burning theater, do you panic and push all of the weaker people out of the way in a mad, scramble for the door? Or like the deluded inventor, don’t we trade a comfortable illusion once in a while for an uncomfortable fact? And don’t we like to think more of ourselves than others give us credit for? Or don’t we still fear the unknown, even if it promises a great reward?

You see, really, all four forces are just different aspects of the same process, operating at different levels in the society. There is really only one force preventing the public availability of free energy technology, and that is the unspiritually motivated behavior of the humans. In the last analysis, free energy technology is an outward manifestation of divine abundance. It is the engine of the economy of an enlightened society, where people voluntarily behave in a respectful and civil manner toward each other, where each member of the society has everything they need, and does not covet what their neighbor has, where war and physical violence has become socially unacceptable behavior and people’s differences are at least tolerated, if not enjoyed.

The appearance of free energy technology in the public domain is the dawning of a truly civilized age. It is an epochal event in human history. Nobody can take credit for it. Nobody can get rich on it. Nobody can rule the world with it. It is simply, a gift from God. It forces us all to take responsibility for our own actions and for our own self-disciplined self-restraint when needed. The world as it is currently ordered, cannot have free energy technology without being totally transformed by it into something else. This civilization has reached the pinnacle of its development, because it has birthed the seeds of its own transformation. Unspiritualized humans cannot be trusted with free energy. They will only do what they have always done, which is take merciless advantage of each other, or kill each other and themselves in the process.

If you go back and read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged or the Club of Rome Report, it becomes obvious that the wealthiest families have understood this for decades. Their plan is to live in the world of free energy, but permanently freeze the rest of us out. But this is not new. Royalty has always considered the general population (us) to be their subjects. What is new, is that you and I can communicate with each other now better than at anytime in the past. The Internet offers us, the fourth force, an opportunity to overcome the combined efforts of the other forces preventing free energy technology from spreading.

The Opportunity

What is starting to happen is that inventors are publishing their work, instead of patenting it and keeping it secret. More and more, people are giving away information on these technologies in books, videos and websites. While there is still a great deal of useless information about free energy on the Internet, the availability of good information is rising rapidly. Check out the list of websites and other resources at the end of this article.

It is imperative that you begin to gather all of the information you can on real free energy systems. The reason for this is simple. The first two forces will never allow an inventor or a company to build and sell a free energy machine to you! The only way you will ever get one is if you, or a friend, build it yourself. This is exactly what thousands of people are already quietly starting to do. You may feel wholly inadequate to the task, but start gathering information now. You may be just a link in the chain of events for the benefit of others. Focus on what you can do now, not on how much there still is to be done. Small, private research groups are working out the details as you read this. Many are committed to publishing their results on the Internet.

All of us constitute the fourth force. If we stand up and refuse to remain ignorant and actionless, we can change the course of history. It is the aggregate of our combined action that can make a difference. Only the mass action that represents our consensus can create the world we want. The other three forces will not help us put a fuelless power plant in our basements. They will not help us be free from their manipulations. Nevertheless, free energy technology is here. It is real, and it will change everything about the way we live, work and relate to each other. In the last analysis, free energy technology obsoletes greed and the fear for survival. But like all exercises of spiritual faith, we must first manifest the generosity and trust in our own lives.

The source of free energy is inside of us. It is that excitement of expressing ourselves freely. It is our spiritually guided intuition expressing itself without distraction, intimidation or manipulation. It is our open-heartedness. Ideally, the free energy technologies underpin a just society where everyone has enough food, clothing, shelter, self-worth, and the leisure time to contemplate the higher spiritual meanings of life. Do we not owe it to each other to face down our fears and take action to create this future for our children’s children?

Free energy technology is here. It has been here for decades. Communications technology and the Internet have torn the veil of secrecy off of this remarkable fact. People all over the world are starting to build free energy devices for their own use. The bankers and the governments do not want this to happen, but cannot stop it. There will be essentially no major media coverage of what is going on. Tremendous economic instabilities and wars will be used in the near future to distract people from joining the free energy movement.

Western society is in many ways spiraling down toward self-destruction due to the accumulated effects of long-term greed and corruption. The general availability of free energy technology cannot stop this trend. It can only reinforce it. If, however, you have a free energy device, you may be better positioned to support the political/social/economic transition that is underway. The question is, who will ultimately control the emerging world government-the first force or the fourth force?

The last great war is almost upon us. The seeds are planted. After this will come the beginning of a real civilization. Some of us who refuse to fight will survive to see the dawn of the world of free energy. I challenge you to be among the ones who try.

LIST OF RESOURCES:

Books:

Living Energies by Callum Coats The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity by Peter Lindemann, D.Sc. Applied Modern 20th Century Aether Science by Dr. Robert Adams Physics Without Einstein by Dr. Harold Aspden Secrets of Cold War Technology by Gerry Vassilatos The Coming Energy Revolution by Jeane Manning Websites:

http://www.free-energy.cc/ developed by Clear Tech, Inc. and Dr. Peter Lindemann http://jnaudin.free.fr/ developed by JLN Labs in France http://www.keelynet.com/ developed by Jerry Decker in the USA http://www.xogen.ca/ site for super electrolysis technology http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/bp/16/content1.htm excellent site by Geoff Egel, Australia For links to other excellent resources: http://www.WantToKnow.info/resources#newenergy

Free Energy News Articles Breakthroughs in major media that should have been headline news:

Below are verbatim quotes taken from articles at links provided dealing with free energy

Kids Build Soybean-Fueled Car February 17, 2006, CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/17/eveningnews/main1329941.shtml

The star at last week’s Philadelphia Auto Show wasn’t a sports car or an economy car. It was a sports-economy car-one that combines performance and practicality under one hood. The car that buyers have been waiting decades [for] comes from an unexpected source and runs on soybean bio-diesel fuel to boot. A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver’s interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No-just…five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School.

Iceland the First Country to Try Abandoning Gasoline January 18, 2006, ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1518556

Iceland has already started…turning water into fuel – hydrogen fuel. Here’s how it works: Electrodes split the water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Hydrogen electrons pass through a conductor that creates the current to power an electric engine. Hydrogen fuel now costs two to three times as much as gasoline, but gets up to three times the mileage of gas, making the overall cost about the same. As an added benefit, there are no carbon emissions – only water vapor.

Fuel’s paradise? Power source that turns physics on its head November 4, 2005, The Guardian (one of the UK’s leading newspapers) http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1627424,00.html

It seems too good to be true: a new source of near-limitless power that costs virtually nothing, uses tiny amounts of water as its fuel and produces next to no waste. Randell Mills, a Harvard University medic who also studied electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel. “We’ve got 50 independent validation reports, we’ve got 65 peer-reviewed journal articles,” he said. “We ran into this theoretical resistance and there are some vested interests here.

Magnetic energy? Perhaps, September 7, 2005, San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/07/BUG9NEJD3L1.DTL

“All we know is that we’re seeing more energy output than input. Does Goldes realize what’s he’s saying — that he’s perhaps discovered a clean, inexhaustible energy source? “That’s exactly what it appears to be,” he answered. A handful of other companies worldwide are believed also to be pursuing zero-point energy via magnetic systems. One of them…is run by a former scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. According to Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, the Pentagon and at least two large aerospace companies are actively researching zero-point energy as a means of propulsion.

Solar Challenge Finishes in Calgary July 28, 2005, Open Source Energy Network/Detroit News
http://pesn.com/2005/07/28/9600141_Solar_Challenge_results
http://www.detnews.com/2005/schools/0507/28/01-262474.htm
Detroit News http://wwmt.com/engine.pl?station=wwmt&id=18269&template=breakout_local.html – CBS affiliate

The ten-day solar car race from Austin to Calgary came to a successful finish yesterday. U of Michigan takes prize, finishing the 2500-mile course in 54 hours. They also set a record by averaging 46.2 mph in this, the world’s longest solar car race.
Eco-car more efficient than light bulb July 5, 2005, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/07/04/eco.car

The hydrogen-powered Ech2o needs just 25 Watts — the equivalent of less than two gallons of petrol — to complete the 25,000-mile global trip, while emitting nothing more hazardous than water. But with a top speed of 30mph, the journey would take more than a month to complete. Ech2o, built by British gas firm BOC, will bid to smash the world fuel efficiency record of over 10,000 miles per gallon at the Shell Eco Marathon. The record is currently….5,385 km/per liter [over 12,000 mpg!].

Advanced vehicles demonstrate zero oil-consumption, reduced emissions May 18, 2005, Boston Globe
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=8474 (article removed from Globe website)

Top prize for the Monte-Carlo Rally went to a modified Honda Insight [which] broke the 100-mile-per-gallon barrier over a 150-mile range. The car actually got 107 miles-per gallon. St. Mark’s High School in Southboro, and North Haven Community School, North Haven, ME, demonstrated true zero-oil consumption and true zero climate-change emissions with their modified electric Ford pick-up and Volkswagen bus.

Fans of GM Electric Car Fight the Crusher Washington Post, March 10, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21991-2005Mar9

GM agrees that the car in question, called the EV1, was a rousing feat of engineering that could go from zero to 60 miles per hour in under eight seconds with no harmful emissions. The market just wasn’t big enough, the company says, for a car that traveled 140 miles or less on a charge before you had to plug it in like a toaster. Ted Flittner, a…Costa Mesa industrial engineer…said, “they have such a brilliant solution they’ve developed. They’ve put it on the market and proved it works. People still want it and they’re taking it away and destroying it.”

100 MPG Car Heralded by London Times in 2002 – Where is it now? December 2 , 2004, WantToKnow.info/LondonTimes
http://www.WantToKnow.info/carmileage -
WantToKnow.info (includes text of London Times article)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,588-451038,00.html – London Times

The Toyota Eco Spirit was the talk of the fuel economy car industry in 2002. At over 100 MPG and with the lowest exhaust emissions and a very reasonable sticker price, the Eco Spirit’s debut was widely anticipated. (see London Times article). What happened to it? 1908 Ford Model T: 25 MPG, 2004 EPA Average All Cars: 21 MPG Detroit News/WantToKnow.info, June 4, 2004
http://www.WantToKnow.info/050711carmileageaveragempg

Ford’s Model T, which went 25 miles on a gallon of gasoline, was more fuel efficient than the current Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicle — which manages just 16 miles per gallon.

Note: This last article is an excellent summary of eye-opening contradictions which have received very little media coverage, including links to major media articles to back up the facts presented.

Patents: This list is a sample of inventions that produce free energy.

The links provided will take you directly to the patent on the website of the U.S. Patent Office.

To search for patents by number on the US Patent Office website:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm

Tesla USP # 685,957
Freedman USP # 2,796,345
Richardson USP # 4,077,001
Frenette USP # 4,143,639
Perkins USP # 4,424,797

READ FULL STORY HERE

Ever since the US-supported coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela failed in April 2002, Washington has been pursuing a variety of strategies to remove the overwhelmingly popular South American head of state from power. Multimillion-dollar funding to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela through US government agencies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has increased exponentially over the past ten years, as has direct political support through advisors, strategists and consultants- all aiming to help an unpopular and outdated opposition rise to power.

US government agencies, including the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, National Directorate of Intelligence and the Pentagon, have pumped up their hostile language towards the Venezuelan government in recent years. The major oil-producing nation has been placed on the countless, and baseless “lists” produced annually by Washington, including “failure to cooperate with counter-narcotics efforts”, “failure to aid in the war on terror”, “trafficking in persons”, and others, that are based on political decisions instead of concrete, substantial evidence to support their accusations. These classifications have enabled Washington to justify not only the millions of US taxpayer dollars channeled to anti-Chavez groups fronting as NGOs, but also to increase military presence in the region and convince public opinion that Hugo Chavez is an enemy.

Despite “promises” of respectful relations and non-intervention, the Obama government’s hostile language and actions towards Venezuela have led to a freezing of diplomatic relations between both nations coupled with expanding plans within Washington to include the South American nation in the “terrorist axis of evil”. The build-up against Venezuela that began during the George W. Bush administration has been rapidly excelerated by Obama. With the House Foreign Relations Committee in the hands of Florida Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Connie Mack – both rabid Chavez-haters – Congress has been pushing hard for direct actions against Venezuela to provoke Chavez’s ouster and place a “US-friendly” government in power.

Not only does Venezuela have the largest oil reserves on the planet, with possibly over 500 billion barrels, about 300 certifiable, but the country’s geopolitical position as the port of South America, with borders on the Caribbean, Andean and Amazon, make it one of the most strategically important nations in the world. In addition to oil, Venezuela has vast mineral reserves, heavy metals, uranium and water.

President Chavez’s growing leadership and influence in the region has angered Washington for some time. Efforts to demonize, ridicule and even ignore the Venezuelan head of state have been employed by the US government and mass media over the past several years, creating a distorted perception amongst public opinion of Venezuela’s reality. Despite numerous elections, all overseen by international observers and in which Chavez has won with around 60% of the vote, international media portray the Venezuelan President as a “dictator” and the nation as a “failing state”. But Venezuela’s growing, vibrant democracy, in which a majority previously excluded and silenced by prior US-supported governments today participate freely and widely, has achieved extraordinary changes in the nation, including a 50% reduction in poverty, a guarantee of free, universal healthcare and education, a 6% unemployment rate (down from 15%) and major infrastructure development.

While President Obama has largely refrained from personally commenting on Venezuela, as did his predecessor Bush, a recent interview provided to an anti-Chavez national daily newspaper, El Universal, evidences a shift in policy. The interview, given on the heels of an alarming broadcast of an uncorroborated “report” attempting to link Venezuela, Cuba and Iran to a terrorist plot against the US, which aired on the largest Spanish-language station in the United States, Univision, reads like a page right out of the thick book of false accusations made against Venezuela since Chavez came to power in 1999.

In written responses to the Venezuelan newspaper, Obama (or his team of advisors) insinuated Venezuela was a dictatorship and expressed his “concern about the government’s actions, which have restricted the universal rights of the Venezuelan people, threatened basic democratic values, and failed to contribute to security in the region”. Obama, of course, fails to cite any real examples to substantiate his “concerns”. These are merely the types of statements that have been regurgitated by Washington’s spokespeople over the past decade, never with a shred of viable evidence to back their damning claims.

No rights have been restricted in Venezuela by the government. In fact, rights have been amplified under the new constitution that was written and ratified by the people of Venezuela in national referendum in 1999. Venezuelans have the basic rights to healthcare, education, food, housing, dignified work, a living wage, participation, expression, recreation and culture that the 300 million citizens of the United States don’t have. And it’s cynical to say that Venezuela, a country with minimal military power that has never attacked another nation, threatened or invaded a neighbor, is a “regional security threat”. The US government’s 200-year history of invasions, massacres, coups, interventions and other aggressions against almost every Latin American and Caribbean nation cannot be left “in the past” as Obama would prefer.

Obama didn’t fail to mention his “concern” about Venezuela’s relationship with Iran, regarding which he stated, “We take Iranian activities, including in Venezuela, very seriously and we will continue to monitor them closely”. It’s no coincidence that these statements follow the airing of the Hollywood-esque Univision documentary, “The Iranian Threat”, which makes dangerous defamatory claims against the Chavez administration in an attempt to include Venezuela in a bogus terrorist plot.

Despite the ridiculousness of the Univision claims, members of Congress are bantering Obama to take preemptive action against both Iran and Venezuela. Other “commentators” and “analysts” are busy writing blogs and columns warning of the growing terrorist threat south of the US border. These dangerous, unfounded accusations could easily be used to justify an attack against Venezuela, as weapons of mass destruction was used against Iraq and “protecting the population” was used against Libya.

Iran and Venezuela have a normal commercial relationship. The two countries share technology and resources to make automobiles and bicycles, build housing construction and run milk factories. Surely cars, homes and milk don’t equate to a terrorist threat. Time again, Venezuela has shown there are no “terrorist training camps” on its soil. Nor is it secretly building a bomb to attack the US. Venezuela is a nation of peace. It does not invade, attack or threaten other countries.

Obama’s reckless bandwagoning of aggression against Venezuela could lead to an unnecessary atrocity. As President Chavez said, Obama would be better off focusing on the troubles at home, rather than trying to create new ones abroad.
Eva Golinger is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Eva Golinger
READ FULL STORY HERE

Thursday afternoon, Dec. 29, Tehran raised the pitch of its threats to the United States when Dep. Chief of the Revolutionary Guards Gen. Hossein Salami declared: “The United States is in no position to tell Tehran what to do in the Strait of Hormuz,” adding, “Any threat will be responded [to] by threat… We will not relinquish our strategic moves in Iran’s vital interests are undermined by any means.”

The Iranian general spoke after the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier and its strike group passed through the Strait of Hormuz to the Sea of Oman and into the area where the big Iranian naval war game Veleyati 90 is taking place.
At around the same time, Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz spoke of “the rising potential for a multi-arena event,” i.e. a comprehensive armed conflict. Facing in several directions as we are “between terrorist organizations and Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon… we can’t afford to stay on the defensive and must come up with offensive measures,” he said.

Earlier Thursday, Dec. 29, DEBKAfile reported that an Iranian plan to mine the Strait of Hormuz had put US and NATO forces in the Persian Gulf on the alert.

US and NATO task forces in the Persian Gulf have been placed on alert after US intelligence warned that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are preparing Iranian marine commandos to sow mines in the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The new deployment, DEBKAfile’s military sources report, consists of USS Combined Task Force 52 (CTF 52), which is trained and equipped for dismantling marine mines and NATO Maritime Mine Counter measures Group 2 (SNMCMG2). The American group is led by the USS Arden mine countermeasures ship; NATO’s by the British HMS Pembroke minesweeper. Other vessels in the task forces are the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Middleton and the French mine warfare ships FS Croix du Sud and FS Var.
Also on the ready are several US Expeditionary Combat Readiness units of the US Fifth Fleet Bahrain command. Seventeen of these special marine units are attached to the Fifth Fleet as America’s answer to the Iranian Navy’s fast assault boats and marine units.

US military sources told DEBKAfile Wednesday, Dec. 28, that United States has the countermeasures for sweeping the waterway of mines and making it safe for marine passage after no more than a 24-48 hour interruption.

At the same time, leading military and naval officials in Washington take Tehran’s threats seriously. They don’t buy the proposition advanced by various American pundits and analysts that Iran would never close the Strait of Hormuz, though which one third of the world’s oil passes, because it would then bottle up its own energy exports. Those officials, according to our sources, believe that Tehran hopes the mines in the waterway will blow up passing oil tankers and other shipping. It doesn’t have to be sealed hermetically to endanger international shipping; just a few mines here and there and an explosion would be enough to deter shippers and crews from risking their vessels.

As Adm. Habibollah Sayari commander of the Iranian Navy put it Wednesday, Dec. 28: “Shutting the strait for Iran’s armed forces is really easy – or as we say in Iran, easier than drinking a glass of water.” He went on to say: “But today, we don’t need [to shut] the strait because we have the Sea of Oman under control and can control transit.”

DEBKAfile’s Middle East marine sources said the Iranian admiral’s boast about the Sea of Oman was just hot air.  For the big Iranian Velayati 90 sea exercise which began Saturday, America has deployed in that sea two large air and sea strike groups led by the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier and the USS Bataan aircraft amphibious ship.

And they are highly visible: Thursday morning, Dec. 29, Iranian Navy’s Deputy Commander Rear Adm. Mahmoud Mousavi reported an Iranian Navy aircraft had shot footage and images of a US carrier spotted in an area where the Velayat 90 war games were being conducted – most probably the Stennis. Its presence, he said, demonstrated that Iran’s naval forces were “precisely monitoring all moves by extra-regional powers” in the region.

Clearly, the US navy is very much on the spot in the Sea of Oman and other areas of the Iranian war game.

Middle East sources warn however that the repeated threats to close the Strait of Hormuz coming from Tehran this week and the framework of its naval exercise clearly point to the manner in which Iran intends to hit back for the tough new sanctions which the West plans to approve next month. The new round is expected to shear off 80 percent of the Islamic Republic’s revenues.
The European Union’s 27 member-states meet in January to approve an embargo on Iranian oil, with effect on 25 percent of Iran’s energy exports. Next month, too, President Barack Obama plans to sign into law an amendment authorizing severe penalties for foreign banks trading with Iran’s central bank, CBI, including the loss of links with American banks and financial institutions.

Tehran is expected to strike back hard by sowing mines in Hormuz and in the waters opposite the oil fields and terminals of fellow Persian Gulf oil producers, including Saudi Arabia.

It would not be the first time. In 1987 and 1988, sea mines were sown in the Persian Gulf for which Iran never took responsibility.

READ FULL STORY HERE

by Washington’s Blog Global Research, December 29, 2011 Washiington’s Blog

Former High-Level Federal Reserve Official: Fed Secretly Bailing Out Europe

Yes, We Are Bailing Out Europe

Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke told Congress that the Fed would not bail out Europe.

But he might have been less than forthcoming.

Former Vice President of the Federal Reserve bank of Dallas, Gerald ODriscoll, says that the Fed is secretly bailing out Europe:

O’Driscoll wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial:
America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, is engaged in a bailout of European banks. Surprisingly, its operation is largely unnoticed here.

The Fed is using what is termed a “temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement” with the European Central Bank (ECB). There are similar arrangements with the central banks of Canada, England, Switzerland and Japan. Simply put, the Fed trades or “swaps” dollars for euros. The Fed is compensated by payment of an interest rate (currently 50 basis points, or one-half of 1%) above the overnight index swap rate. The ECB, which guarantees to return the dollars at an exchange rate fixed at the time the original swap is made, then lends the dollars to European banks of its choosing.

***

The two central banks are engaging in this roundabout procedure because each needs a fig leaf. The Fed was embarrassed by the revelations of its prior largess with foreign banks. It does not want the debt of foreign banks on its books. A currency swap with the ECB is not technically a loan.

READ FULL STORY HERE

Coming up every Thursday at 7:00 pm Pacific * 10:00 pm Eastern * 02:00 GMT
Will be archived here after the broadcast.

Occupying Free Speech Radio!

Occupying Free Speech Radio- Our One-Year Anniversary Show covering major news stories that were under reported or ignored by the corporate media. Today’s show we celebrate one year on the air at KPFA Pacifica Free Speech Radio as part of the Morning Mix; we’ll hear an interview with Prof. Robert McChesney, a leading scholar and activist for media reform, on the state of the media in the US; we’ll hear from Steve Zeltzer of Work Week Radio; film producer Cindy Piester joins us to talk about the new film “On the Dark Side in Al Doura, A Soldier in the Shadows” that Addresses Soldier’s War Crimes Allegations & Iraq Atrocity Photos and we’ll also speak with the father of US Army Ranger John Needham (Michael Needham) to tell his son’s story; and we round out our one year anniversary show on Pacifica with a few words from interim GM at KPFA Andrew Phillips and a short conversation with Media Roots founder and PC contributor Abby Martin. Show Hosts: Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips, with Abby Martin of Media Roots.

By Michael Hudson