Furious that state involvement in major terror attacks is being exposed to a wider audience than ever before via the Internet, a UK think tank closely affiliated with the Downing Street has called for authorities to infiltrate conspiracy websites in an effort to “increase trust in the government”.
“A Demos report published today, The Power of Unreason, argues that secrecy surrounding the investigation of events such as the 9/11 New York attacks and the 7/7 bombings in London merely adds weight to unsubstantiated claims that they were “inside jobs,” reports the London Independent.
In other words, the fact that the overwhelming amount of evidence indicates that both 7/7 and 9/11 were “inside jobs” of one form or another, and that huge numbers of people are now aware of this via the increasing influence of the Internet, is hampering efforts to commit more acts of terror, therefore the government needs to change its strategy.
In the report, Demos, “Recommends the Government fight back by infiltrating internet sites to dispute these theories.” One of the tools Demos already employs to “fight back” against conspiracy theories is by labeling anyone who challenges the government’s official story as an extremist or a terrorist recruiter.
The strategy mirrors that advocated by White House information czar Cass Sunstein, who in a 2008 white paper similarly called for conspiracy websites to be infiltrated and undermined in order to dilute their influence. In the same report, Sunstein also called for taxing conspiracy theories (any viewpoint that differs with the official version) and outright banning free speech that the authorities disapproved of.
What Demos and Sunstein are essentially calling for is classic “provocateur” style infiltration, updated for the 21st century, that came to the fore during the Cointelpro years, an FBI program from 1956-1971 that was focused around disrupting, marginalizing and neutralizing political dissidents, often using illegal methods.
The fact that governments on both sides of the pond have been caught over and over again habitually lying about everything under the sun, allied to a compliant corporate media that has aided authorities in covering up their misdeeds, has prompted a complete collapse in trust from the people, an effect that is now seriously hampering the state’s efforts to enlist implied consent, with millions of people rebelling against the system through civil disobedience and non-compliance in a myriad of different ways.
That’s why Demos, a mouthpiece for the British authorities, is desperate to infiltrate “conspiracy websites,” ie groups of people who broadcast the truth, in order to “increase trust” in a government that has lost all credibility.
As we have documented, governments all over the world, most notably the U.S. and Israel, already employ teams of agents whose sole job revolves around infiltrating and subverting websites that publish the truth about government corruption and atrocities.
Demos is a front for the insidious Common Purpose network, a group that Lt Cdr Brian Gerrish has exposed as playing a fundamental role in the advancement of Britain’s role in the new world order. Julia Middleton, Chief Executive of Common Purpose, sits on Demos’ advisory council.
Demos was founded in 1993 by marxists Martin Jacques and Geoff Mulgan, and was seen as being closely affiliated with Tony Blair’s Labour government. Mulgan went on to work inside Downing Street in 1997. Current British Prime Minister David Cameron also works closely with Demos and has given speeches at the group’s events.
Demos has routinely acted as a platform for elitists who wish to drastically alter society, eliminate freedoms, and sacrifice British sovereignty in pursuit of global government. On August 9, 2006, British Home Secretary Dr John Reid, another former marxist, gave a speech at a Demos conference stating that Britons “may have to modify their notion of freedom”, claiming that freedom is “misused and abused by terrorists.”
Demos is partnered with numerous other globalist organizations from government and industry, including IBM, The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and Shell International. The organization’s logo includes an all-seeing eye within its design.
Although the group poses as an independent think tank, Demos is little more than a public relations firm for the British government and security services. Its efforts to demonize conspiracy theories in order to “increase trust in the government” is a transparent ploy to do the bidding of its masters, by demonizing anyone who challenges a corrupt, lying state and its nefarious activities as an extremist and a potential domestic terrorist – contributing to the chilling process which seeks to crush free speech on the Internet.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/government-think-tank-calls-for-infiltrating-conspiracy-websites.html
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Vaccine Deaths And Injuries Skyrocket As Cover-Up Implodes
Global revolt against deadly vaccines spreads as cases of debilitating illnesses, soft-kill side-effects and even instant deaths become widespread
Cases of debilitating illnesses, soft-kill side-effects and even instant deaths as a result of vaccinations across the world are skyrocketing as the cover-up of deadly inoculations implodes and more people than ever become suspicious about what they are being injected with by health authorities who have proven they cannot be trusted.
The implosion of the vaccine cover-up is sure to discourage more parents from vaccinating their children in the coming months, with the swine flu shot now being combined with the regular seasonal flu jab. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 52 per cent of Americans were concerned about the safety of vaccines as we approach the start of school and college terms, where many children and teenagers will be “required” to take shots before they can attend.
A global revolt against dangerous vaccines is brewing following a series of cases where children have been killed as a direct result of inoculations.
A measles vaccination program in India was halted after four children died almost immediately after receiving the shot. “Four children died within minutes of receiving a vaccine for measles followed by drops of Vitamin A solution on Saturday,” reports MedGuru.
Indian newspaper reports carried eyewitness accounts of what happened. “The four children were reported to have fainted soon after they were vaccinated and witnesses reported seeing the children’s eyes roll back as they began to have seizures,” reports Blitz.
Furious villagers reacted to the tragedy by going on a rampage, attacking health workers and holding government doctors hostage.
Health professionals and doctors with government ties were also blamed in Finland and Sweden after a H1N1 vaccination program was halted following a 300 per cent increase in cases of the neurological disorder narcolepsy amongst children and young people who had received the shot over the last six months.
According to Kari Lankinen, head physician of the Finnish Medicines Agency, doctors were complicit in hiding the link between the swine flu shot and narcolepsy and did so to advance their careers.
Meanwhile, concerned mothers whose daughters have been injured or killed by the Gardasil vaccine have put together a website that documents the truth about how the vaccine has killed and injured thousands of young girls since it was introduced in 2006. Thousands of teenagers have suffered adverse reactions and at least 71 have died from the vaccine since the HPV program was launched four years ago.
The global vaccine cover-up took a massive blow after it was confirmed that the 2009 swine flu outbreak was, as we predicted from the start, a contrived scam centered around making vast profits for pharmaceutical companies while endangering the health of the public.
As we reported earlier this year, Chair of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health Wolfgang Wodarg’s investigation into the 2009 swine flu outbreak found that the pandemic was a fake hoax manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in league with the WHO.
Wodarg said that governments were “threatened” by special interest groups within the pharmaceutical industry as well as the WHO to buy the vaccines and inject their populations without any reasonable scientific reason for doing so, and yet in countries like Germany and France only around 6 per cent took the vaccine despite enough being available to cover 90 per cent of the population.
Wodarg said there was “no other explanation” for what happened than the fact that the WHO worked in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture the panic in order to generate vast profits, agreeing with host Alex Jones that the entire farce was a hoax.
He also explained how health authorities were “already waiting for something to happen” before the pandemic started and then exploited the virus for their own purposes.
Professor Ulrich Keil, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology, also slammed the swine flu epidemic as an overblown “angst campaign”, devised in conjunction with major drug companies to boost profits for vaccine manufacturers.
As Natural News’ Mike Adams reported, several members of the Emergency Committee expert panel that advised the World Health Organization (WHO) during the swine flu scare were receiving financial support from pharmaceutical manufacturers either during or prior to the epidemic.
Both H1N1 and seasonal flu shots have been linked with a number of different side-effects across the globe, including Guillain-Barré Syndrome as well as dystonia, a paralyzing neurological disorder.
The seasonal flu vaccine has also been linked with convulsions and fits in under-5’s.
Many batches of the swine flu vaccine included squalene and mercury amongst their ingredients, two substances that have been directly connected with the explosion of autism amongst children as well as other diseases. Individuals within government and the military were privileged to receive additive free shots that did not include these substances. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and government ministers, as well as German soldiers, were amongst those who received access to the so-called “friendly” version of the vaccine.
In order to head off legal claims for side-effects caused by the swine flu vaccination program, the U.S. government provided vaccine makers with blanket legal immunity before the shots began to be dispersed.
Citing concerns over safety, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Health Minister Ewa Kopacz, with the broad support of the public, ensured that Poland was the only country in the world to completely reject the H1N1 vaccine.
“We are making this decision only in the interest of the Polish patient and the taxpayer,” Tusk said. “We will not take part because it’s not honest and it’s not safe for the patient.”
In a 2008 trial for a bird flu vaccine, three Polish doctors and six nurses faced criminal charges after the vaccine killed 21 homeless people who were participating in the test.
The Czech Republic rejected a swine flu vaccine produced by pharmaceutical manufacturer Baxter after the company was caught shipping vaccines contaminated with deadly live H5N1 avian flu virus to 18 countries by a lab at an Austrian branch of Baxter.
Given the routinely stated goal on behalf of mega-rich foundations that fund vaccination programs around the world, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, to use vaccines as a way of sterilizing the planet’s population as part of the global eugenics soft-kill assault on humanity, it’s unsurprising that as more people become aware of this agenda, take-up rates of new as well as seasonal vaccines continue to decline.
As Jurriaan Maessen recently documented in his Infowars exclusive, in its 1968 yearly report, the Rockefeller Foundation acknowledged funding the development of so-called “anti-fertility vaccines” and their implementation on a mass-scale.
This program was then launched by a group that was created under auspices of the World Health Organization, World Bank and UN Population Fund entitled “Task Force on Vaccines for Fertility Regulation”. In the 1990’s, the WHO was mired in controversy after it distributed a “tetanus vaccine” to poor girls and women in the third world that was contaminated with human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), a hormone that induces involuntary abortion.
During a TED conference earlier this year, Bill Gates openly stated that vaccines would be used to lower the earth’s population in the name of combating climate change. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the major funders of vaccine research and production in the third world.
Warning that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”
Quite how an improvement in health care and vaccines that supposedly save lives would lead to a lowering in global population is an oxymoron, unless Gates was referring to vaccines that sterilize people, which is precisely the same method advocated in White House science advisor John P. Holdren’s 1977 textbook Ecoscience, which calls for a dictatorial “planetary regime” to enforce draconian measures of population reduction via all manner of oppressive techniques, including sterilization.
With people globally becoming increasingly aware of the role of vaccines in the agenda to reduce world population, the cover-up of debilitating diseases, soft kill side-effects, and instant fatalities as a result of vaccinations will continue to implode, until authorities are forced by law to implement vastly more stringent screening procedures and remove the toxic additives from vaccines that are causing these deaths and diseases.
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Monday, August 30, 2010
GATA figures heavily in Financial Times report on gold
The True Value of Gold
By Ellen Kelleher
Financial Times, London
Saturday, August 28, 2010
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e9378c6c-b0b8-11df-8c04-00144feabdc0.html
The Baird & Co. warehouse sits in a dreary business park, half a mile east of London's City airport. A black Mercedes and a blue Jaguar near the entrance are the sole touch of glamour. Step inside and men in overalls are fashioning medallions, bars, and rings from molten gold, purified in vats next door.
From an office upstairs, Tony Baird, the company's managing director and a former coin dealer, presides over the hubbub. "Gold is stable," he says. "It's the value of money that goes up and down." Baird & Co. sells gold to everyone from pension funds to jewellers, and as the managing director says: "Our machines can't work fast enough these days."
Demand for gold has risen since September 2008, when the financial crisis began roiling the markets, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Investors may have lost faith in paper money, but by June this year, $81.6 billion was stored in gold-backed, exchange-traded funds -- more than eight times the amount invested in March 2006. Meanwhile, the Rand refinery in South Africa, which produces the world's most popular gold coin, the krugerrand, has been forced to increase production to keep up with demand. And in May the Austrian Mint sold 238,000 ounces of its Vienna Philharmonic coin, a six-fold increase in a year.
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All the talk of gold infuriates some investors. They argue that it is too expensive, and its price could drop sharply if the hedge funds and asset managers with the largest positions in the market sell. "There is so much hype attached to gold mainly because it's perceived to be a safe haven," says Patrick Connolly, an adviser with the Bath firm AWD Chase de Vere. "But it doesn't give off income and the price is very high and depends solely on demand and supply. We are nervous of investing in any asset class that has risen so much in value."
But a cadre of loyalists claim that gold offers a hedge against both inflation and deflation and is a store of value when equity and bond markets fall apart. Their enthusiasm ranges from mild appreciation of gold's ability to outperform in a downturn to more zealous admiration.One thing some "gold bugs" do not buy is the idea that gold is too expensive; in fact, they argue that the price would be much higher were it not for the manipulation of the market by central banks and bullion banks, which handle government trades.
"This price suppression is a scandal," says Bill Murphy, founder of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA). "And it's going to be huge when it is exposed."
Since 1999, GATA, one of many gold bug organisations promoting conspiracy theories, has fought to pull back the curtain on the gold market. "Gold is the economy's thermometer," says Murphy, "and every time its price goes up, it's bad for banks, for Wall Street, and politicians. So it's in their interest to keep it down."
Murphy is a rangy man in his mid-60s who enjoyed a short career as a wide-receiver for the Boston Patriots, the American football team now known as the New England Patriots, before he surfaced on Wall Street. Here, his experience was a riches-to-rags story. "I made a fortune in copper, then lost it," he says on the poolside veranda of the Raleigh Hotel in Miami's South Beach. He also runs a Web site aimed at gold bugs, Le Metropole Cafe (www.lemetropolecafe.com), with an annual membership fee of $299. It is from this electronic pulpit that Murphy argues that the cost of gold should rise, due to the instability of the world economy and markets.
"There hasn't been an independent audit of U.S. gold reserves since 1955," he says. "Don't you think that's a bit suspicious?"
Murphy is not alone in calling for a public audit of the gold supplies held by central banks and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Ron Paul, a Republican congressman who ran for president as a Libertarian candidate in 1988, has been calling for an audit of the gold held by the U.S. Federal Reserve since 1982, when he served on the U.S. Gold Commission -- set up to examine the role of gold in the monetary system.
"We were in a financial crisis and inflation was high," Paul recalls. "But the Federal Reserve wasn't interested. I remember Paul Volcker [then chairman of the Federal Reserve] walking into a room in 1980 -- at the height of the financial crisis, when gold went up to more than $800 per ounce -- and saying, 'What's the price of gold?'" According to Paul, "Everyone knows a high gold price is a vote of no confidence in paper. That is why governments will manipulate and try to give you an artificial price for gold."
In his book "Gold, Peace, and Prosperity," Paul decries the end of the gold standard -- the practice of backing currencies with a fixed weighting in the metal, which took many forms through history. President Nixon brought an end to the gold standard in 1971, as part of his attempt to overcome the strain of funding the Vietnam war and the U.S.'s mounting trade deficit. Paul thinks the system of fiat money facilitates "governments' attempts to inflate, control the economy, run up deficits, and fight senseless wars." He worries too that both the supply of paper money and government debt levels are spiralling out of control.
"My beef is with the paper money," he says. "All the problems we're having today were destined to happen. Gold plays an important role in the monetary system because it restrains government spending." Without it, Paul argues, central banks have the power to print money without pausing to consider the consequences, and more impetus to spend it.
While they refuse to rule out the reintroduction of the gold standard if economic Armageddon descends, a clutch of economists contacted by the FT are quick to poke holes in Paul's ideas.
"The basic problem with the gold standard is that fluctuations in the demand and supply of gold destabilise the price of everything else," explains Ken Rogoff, a Harvard professor formerly in charge of research at the International Monetary Fund. "The only countervailing advantage is that gold arguably provides a better anchor for long-term price stability." However, even Rogoff believes we are witnessing an international scramble for gold.
Gold reserves have long been a measure of wealth, and shifts in the location of the world's biggest deposits testify to the fierce economic wars the U.S. and Europe are waging with China and India.
The U.S. still possesses the most gold, according to the World Gold Council, with 8,133.5 tonnes -- about 70 per cent of its foreign currency reserves. Germany is in second place, with 3,407 tonnes. Then comes the IMF (which is selling more than 160 tonnes on the market) with just under 3,000 tonnes; Italy, with 2,451.8 tonnes; and France, with 2,435.4 tonnes. Russia, which went on a buying spree last year, has 668 tonnes. The UK, meanwhile, has just 310 tonnes, and the European Central Bank 501.
And what of China?
It now produces more gold than any other country but ranks only eighth on the list. However, since 2003 it has increased its gold reserves from 400 tonnes to at least 1,054 tonnes by quietly buying from domestic mines and has made moves to liberalise its gold market further. These include increasing the number of banks permitted to trade bullion internationally and announcing measures that will encourage development of gold-linked investment products.
The changes come as the country's investors continue to pour record amounts of money into gold. Last year Chinese investors bought 73 tonnes of bullion, up from 18 tonnes in 2007.
The view on Wall Street and in the City is that China still buys gold from domestic mines as it must bulk up on the metal to diversify its portfolio as the size of its foreign reserves increases. "It would cause quite a stir if China came into the international market and tried to buy big amounts of gold," surmised one strategist. "But we still think they're accumulating gold, just not on the international market."
Other countries are likely to take action as well. According to Rogoff, "Emerging market central banks will probably want to raise the share of gold in their foreign exchange reserves, bringing them closer in line with advanced-country central banks."
In part, Rogoff explains, this is because the shift from an overreliance on the dollar to currencies such as the euro is not "sufficient diversification against the risk -- which is low, but certainly non-trivial -- of a generalised global inflation."
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It's not just central bankers who are looking to acquire gold. Private bankers are on the hunt as well. Take Adam Fleming. The nephew of James Bond's creator Ian Fleming and heir to the Robert Fleming Holdings fortune (the family's merchant bank was sold to Chase Manhattan Bank in 2000 for $7.75 billion), Adam also professes to be a gold bug and an occasional supporter of GATA's causes.
The great-grandson of Robert Fleming, a Dundonian who made his fortune investing in U.S. railroads following the American Civil War, Adam Fleming joined the family business in 1970, honing his interest in mining in Johannesburg. He opened offices for the family business across southern Africa and served as chairman of Harmony Gold Mining after its acquisition of Kalahari Goldridge Mining.
Over tea at the Fleming family's private bank just off Trafalgar Square, he bemoans the opacity of the gold market. "Gold and silver are the DNA of currency," he says. "When the chips are down, precious metals are the only fungible currency."
Fleming believes we are seeing gold begin to reassert itself in real currency terms. "The levels of paper money have reached an extreme never seen before," he says. "I worry about the markets."
Fleming also argues that it's in the interest of governments for gold markets to remain somewhat opaque; that today's system of fiat money rests on keeping much of the inner workings of monetary policy secretive. "Politics and gold are uneasy bedfellows," he says. "And politicians like to control their currency."
Fleming is critical of Gordon Brown's decision as Chancellor, in 1999, to sell more than 400 tonnes -- about half -- of the Bank of England's gold reserves in a series of auctions and buy foreign currencies. The move was controversial, as the gold price hovered around an average of $275 an ounce, and it met with considerable opposition from the Bank of England. "It was an astonishingly imprudent mistake," Fleming says.
According to Fleming, manipulation of the gold market by governments is nothing new. He argues that it occurred as early as the mid-1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt forbade private gold ownership, apart from jewellery. As for GATA's hypothesis that central banks still engage in covert manipulation of the gold market, he feels that all currencies, not just gold, are regularly manipulated by the monetary authorities.
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The recent rumours of manipulation first arose in 1998, following the collapse of the hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). One tale sent into cyberspace by GATA was that LTCM was short of more than 400 tonnes of gold at the time of its implosion. GATA questioned too whether the gold auctions the Bank of England arranged in the wake of that collapse were orchestrated to aid bullion banks' efforts to cover gold short positions. LTCM, however, denied the allegations.
LTCM's former lawyer, James Rickards, later told the Financial Times: "GATA raised this in 1998 out of thin air. It fitted their paradigm that central banks always and everywhere manipulate the gold market. As counsel, I wrote a letter including a sworn affidavit from a principal, rejecting the allegations and demanding a retraction. They printed the letter as 'proof' of the gold conspiracy. I gave up at that point because I realised they were not persuaded by evidence and I did not want to engage further."
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With hindsight, it is clear that Gordon Brown's decision to auction off such a large chunk of the UK's gold reserves at such a low price was ill-advised. But the official aim of the programme was to shift more of the reserves into foreign currencies and other assets that bear interest. A report on the sale of the gold reserves conducted by the National Audit Office in January 2001 concluded that the auctions were "conducted according to current notions of best practice" and emphasised that central banks in Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Malaysia disposed of gold around the same time. "The overall aim was to restructure the UK's reserve holdings to achieve a better balance in the portfolio by increasing the proportion held in currency," the auditors wrote. "The decision was taken against a background of a decreasing market value of gold, which over the last 20 years has fallen from a high of $850 per ounce in January 1980 to an average annual price of under $300 per ounce since the start of 1998."
Many economists are also quick to pick apart GATA's hypothesis that attempts at market manipulation are suppressing the gold price. "Gold is a vast market, and it's not subject to national boundaries," says Jeffrey Nichols of American Precious Metals Advisers. "How it could be manipulated and still have risen so much over the past decade baffles me. The idea strikes me as almost ludicrous."
Martin Murenbeeld of Dundee Wealth Economics is more succinct. "It's bunk," he says. "It's a massive conceit on the part of gold people to think that gold is so important that the Federal Reserve and the president of the United States are out there manipulating the gold price."
They may be bunk, of course, but such conspiracies only add to gold's mystique. And the whisper campaigns attract a sizeable congregation at Bill Murphy's Le Metropole Cafe. "There are still plenty of deluded individuals sufficiently conditioned by governments and the mainstream media that they believe that the gold market is free and fair," wrote GATA supporter Paul Mylchreest in Thunder Road, his Internet newsletter. And even those who take a sceptical view of GATA still appreciate that the law of supply and demand could support the gold price, which hovered around $1,220 this week, for some time to come. The volumes being extracted by miners in South Africa, Australia, China, and the western United States are falling. At the same time, central banks, pension funds, and people on the high street are badgering bullion dealers for more.
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The rising price of gold also coincides with public disaffection with our governments' inability to resolve our difficulties. Poor economic reports keep rolling in. George Osborne has asked UK government departments to outline cuts of up to 40 per cent, in one of the toughest spending squeezes of any advanced economy in recent times. In the U.S., fewer jobs than expected were added to the payrolls in July, while Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, has said he believes the Federal Budget is on an "unsustainable" path. Looking ahead, the world may be entering the second leg of a W-shaped recession, sinking again just as we thought the economy was set to improve.
It is not surprising, then, that people are returning to gold. Arguably, buyers' interest is not so much a vote of confidence in precious metals as a lack of confidence in central banks and governments. We may be witnessing nothing less than a populist uprising against the financial system.
Maybe it just comes down to, as a Financial Times reader pointed out in a letter to the editor last month (July 6), whether you can trust politicians and central bankers. He quoted George Bernard Shaw: "You have to choose between trusting the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the government. And with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you .. to vote for gold."
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Instructions for installing WRH iPhone app (beta)!
The semi-official WRH iPhone app (Beta) does not go through the Apple iPhone App Store, because they require a rather sizeable fee to participate in the program, and I cannot afford that for something I am giving away for free. Also, since this app does not used compiled code (in fact feel free to take it apart for your own use) I don't need to bother with a regular installation. It is really just an HTML5 page saved to the home screen!
Step 1:On your iPhone, open up the Safari Browser Do not use any other iPhone browser for this. |  |
Step 2:Enter the URL http://whatreallyhappened.com/iPhone/index.html exactly. You will see the WTH app as a web page. And you can even use all the links from here if you wish, but please continue to save the app to your desktop. At the very bottom of the Safari window, press the "+" symbol. |  |
Step 3:Press the button that says "Add to Home Screen" |  |
Step 4:You can leave all the settings as they are and just press "Add" at upper right. |  |
Step 5:Safari will exit and the semi-official WRH App (Beta) will be on your home screen |  |
Las Vegas logs 5 murder-suicides since Aug. 7
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Police say murder-suicides are on the rise in the Las Vegas area because of a bad economy.
Las Vegas police say there were five murder-suicides from Aug. 7 to Aug. 20 for a total of 10 victims.
A gun was used in each case. In four of the five cases, the shooter was a man.
In one instance, a housekeeper found Donald and Barbara Romano, both 74, dead at their million-dollar Summerlin home. The couple, heavily involved in the real estate business, had been financially crippled by the recession.
In another case, a bystander was wounded.
The numbers of murder-suicides are apparently up, but no law enforcement agency keeps track of them. The FBI tracks homicides and health agencies track suicides, but nobody puts the numbers together.
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Canada Opens Arctic To NATO, Plans Massive Weapons Buildup
The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently concluded the largest of a series of so-called Canadian sovereignty exercises in the Arctic, Operation Nanook, which ran from August 6-26.
Harper, Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay and Chief of the Defence Staff of the Canadian Forces General Walter Natynczyk visited the nation's 900 troops participating in the "Canadian Forces' largest annual demonstration of Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic" [1] which included "Canada's air force, navy, coast guard...testing their combat capabilities in the frigid cold." [2]
Nanook military exercises were commenced in 2007 when Russia renewed its claims to parts of the Arctic and resumed air patrols in the region after an almost twenty year hiatus. They are complemented by two other Canadian military drills in the region, Operation Nunalivut in the High Arctic and Operation Nunakput in the western Arctic.
Canada is formally involved in territorial disputes with two other Arctic claimants: The United States over the Beaufort Sea lying between Canada's Northwest Territories and Yukon Territory and the American state of Alaska, and Denmark over the Hans Island between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Denmark's Greenland possession on the other end of the Arctic.
Four of the five nations with Arctic claims, all except Russia, are founders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization whose charter commits member states to mutual military assistance.
With the melting of the polar ice cap and the opening of the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans for the first time in recorded history, the scramble for the Arctic - reported to contain 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 13 percent of undiscovered oil according to last year's U.S. Geological Survey - is under way in earnest. The military value of the navigability of the passage is of even greater and more pressing significance.
The George W. Bush administration's National Security Presidential Directive 66 of January 12, 2009 states:
“The United States has broad and fundamental national security interests in the Arctic region and is prepared to operate either independently or in conjunction with other states to safeguard these interests. These interests include such matters as missile defense and early warning; deployment of sea and air systems for strategic sealift, strategic deterrence, maritime presence, and maritime security operations; and ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight.” [3]
The U.S. insists that the Northwest Passage is open to international navigation while Canada claims it as solely its own. Yet Ottawa has accommodated Washington at every turn while persisting in saber-rattling comments and actions alike vis-a-vis Russia.
Sixteen days after the release of the White House's Arctic directive of last year NATO conducted a two-day Seminar on Security Prospects in the High North in Iceland attended by the military bloc's secretary general, its two top military commanders and the chairman of its Military Committee, and stated that “Clearly, the High North is a region that is of strategic interest to the Alliance.” [4]
Although Canada's territorial disputes in the Arctic are with fellow NATO members the U.S. and Denmark, the three nations have recently coordinated their strategies and in this year's Operation Nanook have for the first time collectively participated in military exercises in the Arctic region.
In mid-July NATO's chief European military commanders, Admiral James Stavridis, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and General Sir John McColl, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, arrived in the Canadian capital at the invitation of the nation's military chief, General Walter Natynczyk. The three consulted on "how to take the Alliance forward" and Stavridis "conveyed his latest appraisal of NATO's progress in Afghanistan and commended Canada on its contributions to NATO's efforts around the world." [5]
Canadian Defence Minister MacKay stated almost two years ago: “We are concerned about not just Russia’s claims through the international process, but Russia’s testing of Canadian airspace and other indications...(of) some desire to work outside of the international framework. That is obviously why we are taking a range of measures, including military measures, to strengthen our sovereignty in the North.” [6]
A year ago Canada and the U.S. conducted a 42-day joint Arctic expedition to survey the continental shelf for future bilateral demarcation, following a more modest effort along the same lines in 2008 and followed this year by one with U.S. and Canadian ships from August 7 to September 3. The latter was announced two weeks after a Russian research vessel left St. Petersburg on a mission to delimit the borders of Russia's Arctic continental shelf.
The U.S. State Department described the purpose of this year's expedition: "The mission will help delineate the outer limits of the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean for the U.S. and Canada, and will also include the collection of data in the disputed area where the U.S. and Canada have not agreed to a maritime boundary." [7] It is being held in the Canada Basin, the Beaufort Shelf, and the Alpha Mendeleev Ridge. The last, along with the Lomonosov Ridge, is the basis of Russian Arctic claims.
On May 14 Canada and Denmark signed a military agreement, a memorandum of understanding pledging to collaborate more closely in the Arctic "through enhanced consultation, information exchange, visits, and exercises," according to the Canadian Forces. [8] The preceding month Denmark deployed a unit to participate in the Operation Nunalivut exercise in the High Arctic.
The Royal Danish Navy sent the HDMS Vaedderen ocean patrol vessel and the HDMS Knud Rasmussen offshore patrol vessel to join the recently concluded Nanook 10 exercises, where they were joined by the U.S. Second Fleet's naval destroyer USS Porter and the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Alder "for the purpose of exercising and increasing...interoperability with Arctic allies."
As for the Canadian contribution, "The Air Force [provided] air movement and mission support through the CC-177 Globemaster III, CC-130 Hercules, CP-140 Aurora, CH-146 Griffon, and CC-138 Twin Otter aircraft.
"The maritime component [included] Her Majesty's Canadian Ships (HMCS) Montreal, Glace Bay and Goose Bay; and Canadian Coast Guard Ships CCGS Des Groseilliers and CCGS Henry Larsen." [9]
Military personnel involved included "About 900 Canadian troops [who patrolled] parts of the Eastern and Northern Arctic by air, land and sea." Another "600 military personnel from the Danish Royal Navy, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard are also [took] part in the operation." [10]
In the words of Lieutenant Commander Albert Wong of Canada Command, "They're our allies. Collaboration is part of what Canada does." [11]
This year's exercise was based in Resolute Bay in the Nunavut federal territory where the Harper government is building a new army Arctic warfare training center in Resolute and a deep-sea port for the Nanisivik Naval Facility to be constructed on Baffin Island. Canadian Navy Lieutenant Commander Robert Houle said before the event that "2010's military operation will push further north than in past years." [12] That is, north of the Arctic Circle for the first time.
"The US Navy 2nd Fleet, the US Coast Guard and the Royal Danish Navy...joined in the war games in an effort to enhance the allies' capabilities to cooperate in Arctic waters." [13]
In fact the NATO allies collaborated to an unprecedented degree, as "Danish and American vessels" conducted "ocean exercises throughout eastern Nunavut." [14]
After visits by Canada's defense and military chiefs to inspect the multinational war games, Prime Minister Harper arrived in Resolute on August 25, the penultimate day of the 20-day military maneuvers, to - in the words of one of the nation's main news agencies - rally the 1,500 Canadian, American and Danish troops present. [15]
Harper's visit to inspect the exercise occurred only hours after another - potentially dangerous - publicity stunt by his government: Dispatching CF-18 fighter jets (variants of the American F/A-18 Hornet) to allegedly ward off two Russian Tupolev Tu-95 (Bear) strategic bombers patrolling off Canada's northern border, "something the Russian military does frequently." [16]
Harper's press secretary, Dimitri Soudas, "said the two CF-18 Hornet fighters visually identified the two Russian aircraft approximately 120 nautical miles north of Inuvik in Northwest Territories," [17] over international waters.
The timing of the Canadian action, as that of its announcement, was calculated. As was a comparable incident in February of 2009 when then recently installed U.S. President Barack Obama paid his first visit abroad to Ottawa, to meet with Harper, and his host scrambled warplanes to intercept a Russian Tu-95 bomber - on a routine mission thousands of kilometers from the Canadian capital - in a show of bravado and of loyalty to his ally south of the border.
"The Russians said then the plane never encroached on Canadian airspace and that Canada had been told about the flight beforehand." [18]
Last year Canada's prime minister and defence minister made the following comments:
Harper: “We have scrambled F-18 [CF-18] jets in the past, and they’ll always be there to meet them.”
MacKay: “When we see a Russian Bear [Tu-95] approaching Canadian air space, we meet them with an F-18.” [19]
A few days before Operation Nanook began, July 28, Canada also deployed CF-18 fighters against Russian Tu-95 bombers "as debate rage[d] over whether Canada needs the next generation of fighter jets to replace the nearly 30-year-old CF 18s. The Harper government has committed to buying 65 F-35 stealth fighters at a cost of $9 billion. Critics have said such Cold War-type jets are no longer needed." [20]
The same source provided background information concerning what is being fought over:
"Canada is in a race with Russia and other Arctic nations to lay claim to the frozen territory that may hold untold treasures.
"Geologists believe the Arctic shelf holds vast stores of oil, natural gas, diamonds, gold and minerals. A 2007 Russian intelligence report predicted that conflict with other Arctic nations is a distinct possibility, including military action 'in a competition for resources.'" [21]
Regarding the later occurrence on August 24, "The Prime Minister's Office used the incident to promote Ottawa's plan to buy 65 stealth fighter jets for $16 billion." [22]
The discrepancy in (Canadian) dollar amounts is attributable to Ottawa's attempt in May to underestimate the actual cost of the purchase when Defence Minister MacKay said "There is eye-watering technology now available, and a fifth-generation fighter aircraft will be brought to Canada after the year 2017." [23], but failed to disclose the total cost.
When in-service support and other additional outlays are included, the total package will be $16 billion, according to a major Canadian newspaper "one of the most expensive military equipment purchases ever." [24]
In fact the F-35 Lightning II fifth generation stealth fighter project also has been estimated to be "the Pentagon's most expensive weapons program" at a cost of $323 billion for 2,443 of the warplanes. [25]
Last month Defence Minister MacKay confirmed that Canada will buy 65 of the Joint Strike Fighters. At the same time Ottawa announced that the $3 billion Joint Support Ship project will be restarted, as "the military [wants] Joint Supply Ships to be capable of carrying army vehicles and to provide support to ground forces ashore. The ships would also have an air-force element on board, having helicopters and repair facilities for those aircraft. A hospital would also be included on the vessels." [26]
On August 25 Dmitri Soudas, Harper's director of communications, trumpeted the news of the non-encounter between Canadian and Russian military aircraft and laid the bravado on thickly - and not without a purpose. His comments included:
"Thanks to the rapid response of the Canadian Forces, at no time did the Russian aircraft enter sovereign Canadian airspace.
"The Harper Government has ensured our Forces have the tools, the readiness and the personnel to continue to meet any challenges to Canadian sovereignty with a robust response.
"This is true today, it will be true tomorrow and it will be true well into the future.
"The CF-18 is an incredible aircraft that enables our Forces to meet Russian challenges in our North. That proud tradition will continue after the retirement of the CF-18 fleet as the new, highly capable and technologically-advanced F-35 comes into service. It is the best plane our Government could provide our Forces, and when you are a pilot staring down Russian long range bombers, that's an important fact to remember." [27]
The Associated Press reported on the above statement that "Soudas noted...Canada's recent purchase of 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets from U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp. The $8.5 billion purchase, one of the biggest military equipment purchases in the country's history, was due to be debated at a parliamentary defense committee hearing on Wednesday. [August 25, the date of Soudas' comments]. The jets will replace the Air Force's aging fleet of CF-18s." [28]
According to a Canadian journalist:
"This week...we learned that the Cold War is not, in fact, over and that Russia remains an active threat in the north....Harper's press spokesman, noted Sovietologist Dimitri Soudas, explicitly turned the Russian flyby into an argument for a $16-billion, sole-sourced upgrade of Canada's fighter-plane fleet." [29]
Canada requires an adversary to justify large-scale arms acquisitions. In the past three years it has bought and leased 120 Leopard tanks from Germany and the Netherlands for the war in Afghanistan. It has purchased and used Israeli-made Heron drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) for the same war theater and beyond, one of which crashed near a military base in Alberta last month knocking out power lines.
It has also acquired Chinook, Griffon and Mi-8 helicopters for NATO's war in South Asia, where it has deployed 2,830 troops and where 151 of its soldiers have been killed.
The Polar Epsilon spaced-based satellite project is being developed for the Arctic, and while in Resolute Bay on Wednesday Prime Minister Harper reiterated that the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, a three-spacecraft fleet of satellites that is the centerpiece of Polar Epsilon, "will provide the Canadian military with daily coverage of Canada's land mass and ocean approaches 'from coast-to-coast-to-coast, especially in the Arctic.'" [30]
In June defense chief MacKay disclosed that Canada will spend over $30 billion "to build 28 large vessels for the Canadian Coast Guard and navy, as well as 100 smaller ships." [31]
Canada is, as NATO's top military commander Admiral Stavridis remarked in Ottawa last month, providing the Western military bloc and the Pentagon indispensable services around the world. In the Arctic as much as if not more than anywhere else.
Related articles:
Canada: Battle Line In East-West Conflict Over The Arctic
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/canada-battle-line-in-east-west-conflict-over-the-arctic
Encroachment From All Compass Points: Canada Leads NATO Confrontation With Russia In North
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/encroachment-from-all-compass-points-canada-leads-nato-confrontation-with-russia-in-north
Loose Cannon And Nuclear Submarines: West Prepares For Arctic Warfare
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/loose-cannon-and-nuclear-submarines-west-prepares-for-arctic-warfare
Canada: In Service To The Pentagon And NATO At Home And Abroad
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/canada-in-service-to-the-pentagon-and-nato-at-home-and-abroad
Notes
1) Xinhua News Agency, August 7, 2010
2) Agence France-Presse, August 25, 2010
3) NATO’s, Pentagon’s New Strategic Battleground: The Arctic
Stop NATO, February 2, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/natos-pentagons-new-strategic-battleground-the-arctic
4) Ibid
5) North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe
July 11, 2010
6) Canwest News Service, September 12, 2008
7) Russian Information Agency Novosti, July 27, 2010
8) Nunatsiaq News, May 24, 2010
9) Xinhua News Agency, August 7, 2010
10) CTV, August 25, 2010
11) Nunatsiaq News, June 16, 2010
12) CBC News, August 3, 2010
13) Agence France-Presse, August 25, 2010
14) CBC News, August 18, 2010
15) Canadian Press, August 25, 2010
16) CTV, August 25, 2010
17) Xinhua News Agency, August 25, 2010
18) Associated Press, August 25, 2010
19) Encroachment From All Compass Points: Canada Leads NATO Confrontation With
Russia In North
Stop NATO, August 5, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/encroachment-from-all-compass-points-canada-leads-nato-confrontation-with-russia-in-north
20) Toronto Sun
Quebec Media, Inc. Agency
July 30, 2010
21) Ibid
22) CTV, August 25, 2010
23) Canwest News Service, May 28, 2010
24) Ottawa Citizen, July 12, 2010
25) PBS Newshour, April 21, 2010
26) Ottawa Citizen, July 12, 2010
27) CBC News, August 25, 2010
28) Associated Press, August 25, 2010
29) Susan Riley, The Russians aren't coming
Ottawa Citizen, August 27, 2010
30) Agence France-Presse, August 25, 2010
31) Xinhua News Agency, June 4, 2010
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