Road Out Of Babylon » General

Eugenicist Peter Singer and Human Extermination in NYT

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:16:39 +0000

Should This Be the Last Generation?

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

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Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.

All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem?

If there were to be no future generations, there would be nothing for us to feel to guilty about. Is there anything wrong with this scenario?

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself.

Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

Erin Schell

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

Here is a thought experiment to test our attitudes to this view. Most thoughtful people are extremely concerned about climate change. Some stop eating meat, or flying abroad on vacation, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. But the people who will be most severely harmed by climate change have not yet been conceived. If there were to be no future generations, there would be much less for us to feel to guilty about.

So why don’t we make ourselves the last generation on earth? If we would all agree to have ourselves sterilized then no sacrifices would be required — we could party our way into extinction!

Of course, it would be impossible to get agreement on universal sterilization, but just imagine that we could. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? Even if we take a less pessimistic view of human existence than Benatar, we could still defend it, because it makes us better off — for one thing, we can get rid of all that guilt about what we are doing to future generations — and it doesn’t make anyone worse off, because there won’t be anyone else to be worse off.

Related More From The Stone

Read previous contributions to this series.

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Is a world with people in it better than one without? Put aside what we do to other species — that’s a different issue. Let’s assume that the choice is between a world like ours and one with no sentient beings in it at all. And assume, too — here we have to get fictitious, as philosophers often do — that if we choose to bring about the world with no sentient beings at all, everyone will agree to do that. No one’s rights will be violated — at least, not the rights of any existing people. Can non-existent people have a right to come into existence?

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

What do you think?

Readers are invited to respond to the following questions in the comment section below:

If a child is likely to have a life full of pain and suffering is that a reason against bringing the child into existence?

If a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life, is that a reason for bringing the child into existence?

Is life worth living, for most people in developed nations today?

Is a world with people in it better than a world with no sentient beings at all?

Would it be wrong for us all to agree not to have children, so that we would be the last generation on Earth?

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His most recent book is “The Life You Can Save.”

If Abdul Mutallab Trained With Al-Qaeda, Why Did The U.S. Government Let Him On A Plane?

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:39:26 +0000

Comic book IntelCenter propaganda video of underwear bomber with an AK-47 and a Qur’an doesn’t answer any of the questions surrounding Delta Flight 253

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Fuming with the evisceration of the ludicrous official story behind the Detroit plane bomber incident, the dubious Pentagon front IntelCenter has released a video tape which allegedly shows Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab training with “Al-Qaeda” in Yemen. Unfortunately, the tape still fails to explain why the U.S. government intentionally let a known terror suspect board a commercial airliner.

“The video, broadcast yesterday by ABC World News, shows Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab firing weapons and speaking in Arabic about his impending attack on the aircraft. He is shown reading from the Qur’an and saying: “God said those who punish you must be punished,” reports the Guardian.

To ramp up the fact that the video is a transparent and contrived dose of comic book war propaganda to bolster support behind the increased bombing of Yemen, we are told that Abdulmutallab was shooting at a Jewish star of David, a Union Jack and a UN flag.

Of course, if it’s another cartoonish propaganda video showing shadowy Muslim terrorists running around with guns issuing threats, it has to be put out by the IntelCenter group, a Pentagon front organization that has been caught red-handed putting out fake Al-Qaeda videos in the past, as well as re-hashed old footage of Bin Laden which the group claims to be new.

But no amount of footage of dangerous Muslims with AK-47’s reading from Qur’ans can answer the central question that dominates the whole plane bomber stunt.

Why did the U.S. State Department allow Abdulmutallab to board the plane, knowing that he was on a terror watchlist and presented a threat to the safety of other passengers?

On January 27, the Detroit News reported how the State Department refused to revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa despite the fact that he was on a terror watch list and allowed him to board the plane, allegedly in order to avoid tipping off a wider investigation.

The video tape also fails to help us understand why, after weeks of stonewalling, authorities quietly reversed the official story behind the aborted attack and acknowledged that an accomplice was involved, despite weeks of denial and derision of eyewitness Kurt Haskell’s description of a sharp-dressed man who helped Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab board Flight 253 in Amsterdam.

Detroit lawyer Kurt Haskell maintained from the beginning that he saw a well-dressed Indian man aid the accused bomber to board the plane despite the fact that he had no passport and was on a terrorist watch list.

“While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time,’” reported the Michigan Live news website.

FBI agents interviewed Haskell and he told them about the sharp-dressed man but officials refused to admit that a wider conspiracy was at hand, stoically maintaining the official story that Abdulmutallab had acted alone. Authorities claimed that videotapes did not show a second man accompanying Abdulmutallab and yet they refused to release any footage of the alleged bomber.

There seems little doubt that Abdulmutallab had at least one accomplice if not more. Authorities have remained silent on other eyewitness reports which described a man intently filming the alleged terrorist throughout the whole flight, a connection that strongly suggests the attempted bomber was involved in some kind of drill and that his strings were being pulled by people in more senior positions.

A key smoking gun which strongly suggests the tape is hokey and the whole background of Abdulmutallab himself is that of a dim-witted patsy, is his connection with Anwar al-Awlaki (alternative spelling “Aulaqi”), a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico, who was also connected to the Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

“The IntelCenter, a Virginia-based company that studies terrorist groups, reported that a video by AQAP aired yesterday on al-Jazeera and al-Jazeera English appeared to show the first official communication from a terrorist organisation by Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico. He has been linked to Abdulmutallab and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in November at Fort Hood, Texas,” states the report.

As Webster Tarpley reported, Aulaqi is “an intelligence agency operative and patsy-minder” and “one of the premier terror impresarios of the age operating under Islamic fundamentalist cover” whose job it is to “motivate and encourage groups of mentally impaired and suggestible young dupes who were entrapped into “terrorist plots” by busy FBI and Canadian RCMP agents during recent years.”

Tarpley points to Aulaqi’s role in the Toronto and Fort Dix, New Jersey, terror plots, which were both contrived by the feds, as proof of Aulaqi’s usefulness to the authorities in radicalizing terrorist patsies.

Lawyers in a case relating to the much vaunted 2007 terror plot to attack Fort Dix and kill “as many soldiers as possible” concluded that FBI informants were the key figures behind the operation and that the accused, six foreign-born Muslims, were merely bungling patsies.

Similarly, the “Toronto 18″ terrorists turned out to be “a bunch of incompetent guys who were primarily misled by a delusional megalomaniac”. The explosive fertilizer material the terrorist cell apparently planned to use was in fact purchased by an informant working for the RCMP who had radicalized the group.

Abdulmutallab apparent relationship with FBI operative and ace patsy-minder Aulaqi strongly indicates that he was under the wing of Aulaqi’s patsy recruitment program.

The video of Abdulmutallab training with “Al-Qaeda” in Yemen only serves to confirm our initial suspicions, borne out by his bizarre behavior in apparently being unaware that there was a bomb in his briefs on Flight 253 on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab was an unwitting patsy under the control of federal government handlers who, despite the botched attack, swiftly exploited the terror scare he created to ram through an intensification of the war in Yemen as well as mandating the lucrative roll out of full naked body scanners in airports which wouldn’t have even stopped the underwear bomber from boarding the plane in the first place.

The Story of Your Enslavement

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:33:59 +0000

India introduces GMO softkills to ‘mitigate the effects of Climate Change’

admin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:45:38 +0000

Debate over GM eggplant consumes India

12:03am EST

(Corrects to say 1.4 million farmers in paragraph 20 and 1.4 billion population in paragraph 24)

By Rina Chandran

MUMBAI, Feb 16 (Reuters) – The purple eggplant that Indian shopper Tanuja Krishnan picks out at a Mumbai market stall every week is an unlikely protagonist in a raging debate about whether genetically modified foods should be introduced into India.

A genetically modified version of eggplant, a staple in fiery curries, was slated to be the first GM food introduced into India in a bid to stabilise food prices and mitigate some of the effects of climate change on Indian food crop yields.

Yet, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh blocked the release of the vegetable until further notice following an outcry by environmentalists and some farmers. The opposition to GM foods was so heated that some protesters burnt effigies.

Ramesh said there was not enough public trust to support the introduction of such crops into India’s food supply until more research was done to remove all doubts that GM foods were safe for consumption.

But while those from the camp that opposed GM foods are celebrating, there are concerns that rising food prices will be a major problem for Indian policymakers in the future unless the country starts embracing genetically-modified food crops.

“This is bad for the country’s agricultural and biotechnology future. Our scientists have lost their credibility, companies will be unwilling to invest more money, and it will take us a long time to pick up the pieces again,” said C. Kameshwar Rao, an official at the Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness & Education, a GM advocacy institute.

“Scientists can’t win a shouting match with politicians.”

India’s farm sector has changed very little since the advent of the Green Revolution with crop yields failing to keep up with soaring population growth and rising incomes.

At the same time, damage to crops from pests and disease have worsened due to rising temperatures from climate change.

HYBRIDS

Known as Bt brinjal, the Indian word for aubergine, the GM vegetable is able to resist some pests responsible for devastating crops across India thanks to a gene from soil bacteria called ‘bacillus thuringniensis’ (Bt).

The thought of eating a genetic hybrid has made consumers such as Krishnan wary. “I would try it to see if it tastes any different, if it has fewer pests, but I think I would prefer organic brinjal just to be safe,” she said.

The moratorium against the release of the GM eggplant followed harsh criticism by environmentalists and farmers who demanded rigorous testing and labelling standards before Bt brinjal was cultivated.

“Stringent monitoring measures should be immediately put in place to ensure that no releases of GM crops happens,” said Rajesh Krishnan, a manager for sustainable agriculture at Greenpeace India.

India’s Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) opened the way for the commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal last October, seven years after approving Bt cotton, which is now grown on more than 80 percent of total cotton area.

Thanks to genetically modified cotton, India has become the world’s second largest cotton producer and exporter after China, with about 5 million farmers growing Bt cotton.

“Our experience with Bt cotton has showed the technology has benefited the farmer, the consumer and the states’ economies,” said Bhagirath Choudhary, head of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) in Delhi.

“We have a solid case in Bt cotton, with higher yields, double the output and less use of insecticide. But the technology is so sophisticated, the general public is ignorant about it.” India is among the top biotech crop growing countries, trailing only Argentina, Brazil and the United States.

NO OTHER OPTION

India is the world’s second largest producer of eggplant after China and the vegetable is also used in traditional medicine to treat diabetes and hypertension.

About 1.4 million farmers grow eggplant, which is very susceptible to pest attacks. Farmers tend to spray the crop with pesticides 30-50 times during a crop cycle.

“The brinjal we eat now is more harmful because of the pesticide residue,” said Raju Shetty, a farmer leader in western Maharashtra state and a member of parliament.

He supported Bt brinjal because he said “it will cut the cost of pesticide and boost yields. That’s what farmers are seeking”.

Even though the GM seeds for the vegetable would likely cost three times the price and farmers would need to purchase seeds for every sowing rather than reusing crop seeds, proponents say the extra expenses would be compensated by lower pesticide costs and less devastating crop loses.

Expanding India’s food supply is crucial in a country of one billion people, with predictions the population might reach 1.4 billion by 2025.

The United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation has said food production will need to double by mid-century to meet demand from a growing world population, prompting calls for a second Green Revolution.

But Greenpeace maintains GM crops are a costly distraction from tackling hunger through fighting poverty and helping small holders in developing countries sell their products.

A combination of changing diets, a growing population, demand for farmland for industrialisation and high energy prices have stoked food prices globally, including in India, where the food price index rose 17.56 percent in the 12 months to Jan. 23.

India is also battling with lower crop yields and more pests and plant disease because of higher temperatures, raising concerns that India’s farm output could lag demand and the world’s second most populous country will become a large food importer unless crop yields jump.

Some economists and scientists in India favour a raft of policy initiatives, including genetic engineering, to improve yields and increase resistance to pests, disease and drought.

“You have a large population that’s growing in affluence, but our resources — land, water, cheap labour — are all shrinking, so we have to increase output quickly and efficiently,” said Gyanendra Shukla, director of Monsanto India Ltd.

“I don’t see any other option but GM crops.”

Since Monsanto launched the world’s first GM crop in 1996, more than 25 countries have taken to biotech crops including soybean, corn, tomato, squash, papaya and sugarbeet.

Bt brinjal was developed by Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co (Mahyco) under licence from Monsanto, and estimates show economic benefits from higher yields could top $400 million a year.

GEAC has also approved studies of GM okra, tomato and rice, but opponents say GM should be a last resort.

“You can’t simply abandon all other solutions, including organic farming, to focus just on biotechnology when the testing, labelling and enforcement standards are so inadequate,” said Kushal Yadav, an official at the Centre for Science and Environment.

NO PANACEA

Aside from health and safety concerns, critics worry that the widespread use of GM crops will put India’s food supply largely in the hands of a few giant corporations that make the seeds.

There is also the possibility of genetic contamination if the Bt genes cross pollinate with other varieties.

A recent report by U.S. health and environment protection groups said that rather than reduce the use of pesticides, genetically engineered crops had actually prompted increased use of these chemicals, caused an epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds and resulted in more chemical residues in foods.

A backlash against the technology also appears to be growing globally, with consumer resistance to what British tabloids have dubbed “Frankenfood” taking root.

Even advocates in India admit genetically modified crops are no magic bullet.

“Bt can’t be the panacea for all the problems in Indian agriculture. But if we miss this, we miss the chance to usher in a new technology, see how it can help us,” Choudhary said. (Additional reporting by Rajendra Jadhav and Sujoy Dhar; Editing by Megan Goldin)

The dam is cracking

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Andrew Neil | 09:42 UK time, Tuesday, 26 January 2010

The bloggers are all over the UN IPCC 2007 report, the bible of global warming, which predicted all manner of dire outcomes for our planet unless we got a grip on rising temperatures — and it seems to be crumbling in some pretty significant areas.

The dam began to crack towards the end of last year when leaked e-mails from one of the temples of global warming, the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, suggested that a few sleights of hand were being deployed to hide facts inconvenient to the global warming case. An official investigation into these e-mails is on-going.

But the flood gates really opened after theIPCC had to withdraw its claim that the Himalayan glaciers would likely all have melted by 2035, maybe even sooner.

This turned out to have no basis in scientific fact, even though everything the IPCC produces is meant to be rigorously peer-reviewed, but simply an error recycled by the WWF, which the IPCC swallowed whole.

The truth, as seen by India’s leading expert in glaciers, is that “Himalayan glaciers have not in anyway exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.”

So the 40% of the world’s population that relies on the seven major river systems supplied by these glaciers can sleep a little more soundly in the knowledge that their water won’t run out in 25 years after all.

Then at the weekend another howler was exposed. The IPCC 2007 report claimed that global warming was leading to an increase in extreme weather, such as hurricanes and floods. Like its claims about the glaciers, this was also based on an unpublished report which had not been subject to scientific scrutiny — indeed several experts warned the IPCC not to rely on it.

The author, who didn’t actually finish his work until a year after the IPCC had used his research, has now repudiated what he sees has its misuse of his work.

His conclusion: “There is insufficient evidence to claim a statistical link between global warming and catastrophe loss.”

Yet it was because of this — now unproved — link that the British government signed up to a $100 billion transfer from rich to poor countries to help them cope with a supposed increase in floods and hurricanes.

It was also central to many of the calculations in Britain’s Stern Report, which might now need to be substantially revised.

Now after Climate-gate, Glacier-gate and Hurricane-gate — how many “gates” can one report contain? — comes Amazon-gate. The IPCC claimed that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests were risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by “tropical savannas” if temperatures continued to rise.

This claim is backed up by a scientific-looking reference but on closer investigation turns out to be yet another non-peer reviewed piece of work from the WWF. Indeed the two authors are not even scientists or specialists on the Amazon: one is an Australian policy analyst, the other a freelance journalist for the Guardian and a green activist.

The WWF has yet to provide any scientific evidence that 40% of the Amazon is threatened by climate change — as opposed to the relentless work of loggers and expansion of farms.

Every time I have questioned our politicians about global warming they have fallen back on the mantra that “2,500 scientists can’t be wrong”, referring to the vast numbers supposedly behind the IPCC consensus.

But it is now clear that the majority of those involved in the IPCC process are not scientists at all but politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs and green activists.

They may — or may not — still be right or wrong but what has become clear in the past couple of months is that, contrary to what many leaders have claimed, the science as promulgated by the IPCC is very far from “settled” and that there are important questions still to ask. The mainstream media has been slow to do this.

The bloggers, too easily dismissed in the past, have set the pace with some real scoops — and some of the mainstream media is now rushing to catch up.

Rajendra Pachauri says he will not resign – BBC News (26 January)

The sceptics may be about to get their first scalp. Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairmanoften wrongly described in the media as the world’s leading climate scientist (he’s actually a railway engineer), at first attacked those who questioned the IPCC’s alarming glacier prediction as “arrogant” and believers in “voodoo science”.

He’s since had to retract the prediction but can’t quite manage an apology — and is now under mounting pressure in his Indian homeland to resign.

EPA Suppresses Internal Global Warming Study

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:56:39 +0000

William Yeatman

GlobalWarming.org
January 27, 2010

The Competitive Enterprise Institute today charged that a senior official of the U.S. Environment Protection Agency actively suppressed a scientific analysis of climate change because of political pressure to support the Administration’s policy agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.

As part of a just-ended public comment period, CEI submitted a set of four EPA emails, dated March 12-17, 2009, which indicate that a significant internal critique of the agency’s global warming position was put under wraps and concealed.

The study the emails refer to, which ran counter to the administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change, was kept from circulating within the agency, was never disclosed to the public, and was not added to the body of materials relevant to EPA’s current “endangerment” proceeding. The emails further show that the study was treated in this manner not because of any problem with its quality, but for political reasons.

“This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the President’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’”

CEI’s filing requests that EPA make the suppressed study public, place it into the endangerment docket, and extend the comment period to allow public response to the new information. CEI is also requesting that EPA publicly declare that it will engage in no reprisals against the study’s author, a senior analyst who has worked at EPA for over 35 year

Oscar-winning US filmmaker Oliver Stone says Adolf Hitler was ‘enabled by Western bankers’

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:12:01 +0000

By Michael Casey (CP) – 1 day ago

BANGKOK, Thailand — Adolf Hitler was a psychopath and a monster but rose to power thanks to big business leaders and other supporters who appreciated his vow to destroy communism and control workers, Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone said Monday.

Stone, who is working on a 10-part documentary on the 20th century titled “The Secret History of the United States,” said the German dictator was “enabled by Western bankers” and managed to “seduce” Germany’s military industrial complex.

“Hitler is a monster. There is no question. I have no empathy for Hitler at all. He was a crazy psychopath,” Stone told reporters in the Thai capital. “But like Frankenstein was a monster, there was a Dr. Frankenstein. He is product of his era.”

Stone was in Bangkok to give a lecture to high school students on the role of film in peace-building as part of a visit organized by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation.

He said the aim of his documentary, which two historians are helping him with, was to offer a fuller understanding of the 20th century and how some of those lessons may be relevant to President Barack Obama in 2010.

“What has America become? How can we in America not learn from Germany in the 1930s,” the Oscar-winning director asked.

Earlier in the day, Stone told about 300 students that his 1991 movie “JFK,” was his most controversial to date and that the United States remains in denial over the possibility that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald could have assassinated John F. Kennedy.

Stone said exploring alternative theories over the JFK assassination remains too sensitive for those in the media or academia who “would be endangering their careers and their position.”

“To this day, many key Americans in power are in total denial about this story,” Stone said. “They don’t even want to know about the possibility that he was killed by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald. It is a national fairy tale.”

“JFK” ridicules the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone and suggests a massive conspiracy.

Stone’s film centred on a theory by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that a CIA-led mutiny killed the president and the plotters walked away unscathed. Garrison’s theories went to court in 1967, but Clay Shaw, the alleged “evil genius” behind the assassination, was acquitted.

Stone said Monday he thought it was “a good thing” to revisit the JFK assassination. But he came under fire from the historians and film reviewers who contended Stone had fudged facts, invented characters and elevated speculation to truth to support his burning belief that the killing was a high-level government conspiracy.

“It’s an amazing story and I did it,” Stone said. “I thought I would be respected for it, and I was lambasted in the establishment press. I was called a myth-maker, a propagandist. I didn’t see it coming. I thought the Kennedy murder was safe.”

Stone is famous for several other movies, including the Vietnam War films “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Platoon,” which won four Oscars, including best picture and best director.

Brzezinski questioned on Covert Afghan War

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:02:13 +0000

Shock Chinese Report Claims Bank of England and Fort Knox Rife With Fake Gold

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:45:55 +0000

Fake gold bars in Bank of England and Fort Knox

Written by (Author )WorldJan 11, 2010

It’s one thing to counterfeit a twenty or hundred dollar bill. The amount of financial damage is usually limited to a specific region and only affects dozens of people and thousands of dollars. Secret Service agents quickly notify the banks on how to recognize these phony bills and retail outlets usually have procedures in place (such as special pens to test the paper) to stop their proliferation.

But what about gold? This is the most sacred of all commodities because it is thought to be the most trusted, reliable and valuable means of saving wealth.

A recent discovery — in October of 2009 — has been suppressed by the main stream media but has been circulating among the “big money” brokers and financial kingpins and is just now being revealed to the public. It involves the gold in Fort Knox — the US Treasury gold — that is the equity of our national wealth. In short, millions (with an “m”) of gold bars are fake!

Who did this? Apparently our own government.

Background
In October of 2009 the Chinese received a shipment of gold bars. Gold is regularly exchanges between countries to pay debts and to settle the so-called balance of trade. Most gold is exchanged and stored in vaults under the supervision of a special organization based in London, the London Bullion Market Association (or LBMA). When the shipment was received, the Chinese government asked that special tests be performed to guarantee the purity and weight of the gold bars. In this test, four small holed are drilled into the gold bars and the metal is then analyzed.

Officials were shocked to learn that the bars were fake. They contained cores of tungsten with only a outer coating of real gold. What’s more, these gold bars, containing serial numbers for tracking, originated in the US and had been stored in Fort Knox for years. There were reportedly between 5,600 to 5,700 bars, weighing 400 oz. each, in the shipment!

At first many gold experts assumed the fake gold originated in China, the world’s best knock-off producers. The Chinese were quick to investigate and issued a statement that implicated the US in the scheme.

What the Chinese uncovered:
Roughly 15 years ago — during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] — between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day.

According to the Chinese investigation, the balance of this 1.3 million to 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten cache was also gold plated and then allegedly “sold” into the international market. Apparently, the global market is literally “stuffed full of 400 oz salted bars”. Perhaps as much as 600-billion dollars worth.

An obscure news item originally published in the N.Y. Post [written by Jennifer Anderson] in late Jan. 04 perhaps makes sense now.

DA investigating NYMEX executive ,Manhattan, New York, –Feb. 2, 2004.
A top executive at the New York Mercantile Exchange is being investigated by the Manhattan district attorney. Sources close to the exchange said that Stuart Smith, senior vice president of operations at the exchange, was served with a search warrant by the district attorney’s office last week. Details of the investigation have not been disclosed, but a NYMEX spokeswoman said it was unrelated to any of the exchange’s markets. She declined to comment further other than to say that charges had not been brought. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office also declined comment.”

The offices of the Senior Vice President of Operations — NYMEX — is exactly where you would go to find the records [serial number and smelter of origin] for EVERY GOLD BAR ever PHYSICALLY settled on the exchange. They are required to keep these records. These precise records would show the lineage of all the physical gold settled on the exchange and hence “prove” that the amount of gold in question could not have possibly come from the U.S. mining operations — because the amounts in question coming from U.S. smelters would undoubtedly be vastly bigger than domestic mine production.

No one knows whatever happened to Stuart Smith. After his offices were raided he took “administrative leave” from the NYMEX and he has never been heard from since. Amazingly, there never was any follow up on in the media on the original story as well as ZERO developments ever stemming from D.A. Morgenthau’s office who executed the search warrant.

Are we to believe that NYMEX offices were raided, the Sr. V.P. of operations then takes leave — all for nothing?

The revelations of fake gold bars also explains another highly unusual story that also happened in 2004:
LONDON, April 14, 2004 (Reuters) — NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd., the London-based unit of investment bank Rothschild [ROT.UL], will withdraw from trading commodities, including gold, in London as it reviews its operations, it said on Wednesday.

Interestingly, GATA’s Bill Murphy speculated about this back in 2004;
“Why is Rothschild leaving the gold business at this time my colleagues and I conjectured today? Just a guess on my part, but [I] suspect something is amiss. They know a big scandal is coming and they don’t want to be a part of it… [The] Rothschild wants out before the proverbial “S” hits the fan.” — BILL MURPHY, LEMETROPOLE, 4-18-2004

What is the GATA?
The Gold Antitrust Action Committee (GATA) is an organisation which has been nipping at the heels of the US Treasury Federal Reserve for several years now. The basis of GATA’s accusations is that these institutions, in coordination with other complicit central banks and the large gold-trading investment banks in the US, have been manipulating the price of gold for decades.

What is the GLD?GLD is a short form for Good London Delivery. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has defined “good delivery” as a delivery from an entity which is listed on their delivery list or meets the standards for said list and whose bars have passed testing requirements established by the associatin and updated from time to time. The bars have to be pure for AU in an area of 995.0 to 999.9 per 1000. Weight, Shape, Appearance, Marks and Weight Stamps are regulated as follows:

Weight: minimum 350 fine ounces AU; maximum 430 fine ounces AU, gross weight of a bar is expressed in troy ounces, in multiples of 0.025, rounded down to the nearest 0.025 of an troy ounce.

Dimensions: the recommended dimensions for a Good Delivery gold bar are: Top Surface: 255 x 81 mm; Bottom Surface: 236 x 57 mm; Thickness: 37 mm.

Fineness: the minimum 995.0 parts per thousand fine gold. Marks: Serial number; Assay stamp of refiner; Fineness (to four significant figures); Year of manufacture (expressed in four digits).

After reviewing their prospectus yet again, it becomes pretty clear that GLD was established to purposefully deflect investment dollars away from legitimate gold pursuits and to create a stealth, cesspool / catch-all, slush-fund and a likely destination for many of these fake tungsten bars where they would never see the light of day — hidden behind the following legalese “shield” from the law:

[Excerpt from the GLD prospectus on page 11]
“Gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of a Basket may not meet the London Good Delivery Standards and, if a Basket is issued against such gold, the Trust may suffer a loss. Neither the Trustee nor the Custodian independently confirms the fineness of the gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of a Basket. The gold bars allocated to the Trust by the Custodian may be different from the reported fineness or weight required by the LBMA’s standards for gold bars delivered in settlement of a gold trade, or the London Good Delivery Standards, the standards required by the Trust. If the Trustee nevertheless issues a Basket against such gold, and if the Custodian fails to satisfy its obligation to credit the Trust the amount of any deficiency, the Trust may suffer a loss.”

The Federal Reserve knows but is apparently part of the schemeEarlier this year GATA filed a second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Reserve System for documents from 1990 to date having to do with gold swaps, gold swapped, or proposed gold swaps.

On Aug. 5, The Federal Reserve responded to this FOIA request by adding two more documents to those disclosed to GATA in April 2008 from the earlier FOIA request. These documents totaled 173 pages, many parts of which were redacted (blacked out). The Fed’s response also noted that there were 137 pages of documents not disclosed that were alleged to be exempt from disclosure.

GATA appealed this determination on Aug. 20. The appeal asked for more information to substantiate the legitimacy of the claimed exemptions from disclosure and an explanation on why some documents, such as one posted on the Federal Reserve Web site that discusses gold swaps, were not included in the Aug. 5 document release.

In a Sept. 17, 2009, letter on Federal Reserve System letterhead, Federal Reserve governor Kevin M. Warsh completely denied GATA’s appeal. The entire text of this letter can be examined at http://www.gata. org/files/ GATAFedRespon” onclick=”window. open(this. href);return false;” onclick=”window. open(this. href);return false;” onclick=”window. open(this. href);return false;” onclick=”window. open(this. href);return false;” onclick=”window. open(this. href);return false;” onclick=”window. open(this. href);return false;” onclick=”window. open(this. href);return false; … 7-2009.pdf.

The first paragraph on the third page is the most revealing.”In connection with your appeal, I have confirmed that the information withheld under exemption 4 consists of confidential commercial or financial information relating to the operations of the Federal Reserve Banks that was obtained within the meaning of exemption 4. This includes information relating to swap arrangements with foreign banks on behalf of the Federal Reserve System and is not the type of information that is customarily disclosed to the public. This information was properly withheld from you.”

above statement is an admission that the Federal Reserve has been involved with the fake gold bar swaps and that it refuses to disclose any information about its activities!

The above statement is an admission that the Federal Reserve has been involved with the fake gold bar swaps and that it refuses to disclose any information about its activities!

Why use tungsten?
If you are going to print fake money you need to have the special paper, otherwise the bills don’t feel right and can be easily detected by special pens that most merchants and banks use. Likewise, if you are going to fake gold bars you had better be sure they have the same weight and properties of real gold.

In early 2008 millions of dollars in gold at the central bank of Ethiopia turned out to be fake. What were supposed to be bars of solid gold turned out to be nothing more than gold-plated steel. They tried to sell the stuff to South Africa and it was sent back when the South Africans noticed this little problem. The problem with making good-quality fake gold is that gold is remarkably dense. It’s almost twice the density of lead, and two-and-a-half times more dense than steel. You don’t usually notice this because small gold rings and the like don’t weigh enough to make it obvious, but if you’ve ever held a larger bar of gold, it’s absolutely unmistakable: The stuff is very, very heavy.

The standard gold bar for bank-to-bank trade, known as a “London good delivery bar” weighs 400 troy ounces (over thirty-three pounds), yet is no bigger than a paperback novel. A bar of steel the same size would weigh only thirteen and a half pounds.

According to gold expert, Theo Gray, the problem is that there are very few metals that are as dense as gold, and with only two exceptions they all cost as much or more than gold.

The first exception is depleted uranium, which is cheap if you’re a government, but hard for individuals to get. It’s also radioactive, which could be a bit of an issue.

The second exception is a real winner:
tungsten. Tungsten is vastly cheaper than gold (maybe $30 dollars a pound compared to $12,000 a pound for gold right now). And remarkably, it has exactly the same density as gold, to three decimal places. The main differences are that it’s the wrong color, and that it’s much, much harder than gold. (Very pure gold is quite soft, you can dent it with a fingernail.)

A top-of-the-line fake gold bar should match the color, surface hardness, density, chemical, and nuclear properties of gold perfectly. To do this, you could could start with a tungsten slug about 1/8-inch smaller in each dimension than the gold bar you want, then cast a 1/16-inch layer of real pure gold all around it. This bar would feel right in the hand, it would have a dead ring when knocked as gold should, it would test right chemically, it would weigh *exactly* the right amount, and though I don’t know this for sure, I think it would also pass an x-ray fluorescence scan, the 1/16″ layer of pure gold being enough to stop the x-rays from reaching any tungsten. You’d pretty much have to drill it to find out it’s fake.

Such a top-quality fake London good delivery bar would cost about $50,000 to produce because it’s got a lot of real gold in it, but you’d still make a nice profit considering that a real one is worth closer to $400,000.

What’s going to happen now?
Politicians like Ron Paul have been demanding that the Federal Reserve be more transparent and open up their records for public scrutiny. But the Fed has consistently refused, stating that these disclosures would undermine its operation. Yes, it certainly would!

CIA now in the “Climate Change” Business

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:17:52 +0000

A government espionage organization joins up with climate researchers in a race to figure out what’s happening to our fragile planet. No, it isn’t the plot of a new action flick — it’s part of a new data-sharing initiative between the CIA and top scientists. The program will use spy satellites and other CIA tools to help scientists figure out what climate change is doing to cloud cover, forests, deserts, and more.

The CIA collaboration isn’t entirely new — it was an ongoing project from 1992 until 2001, when the Bush administration shut it down. The original program, known as Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis (Medea), also used CIA tools to observe changes to the environment. Now that the Medea project has been restarted, scientists will try to continue research that has been left unfinished since 2001.

Among the most important unfinished projects: multiple years of ice imagery from sites inside the Arctic Circle. Thanks to recommendations from scientists, the federal government will use reconnaissance satellites to track ice floes moving through the Arctic basin. Eventually, the data could be used for ice forecasts.

Don’t worry — the climate-tracking satellites won’t take away from national security. The CIA is only using satellites that would normally be idle as they move over wilderness areas. Sounds like some great teamwork to us!