The American Redoubt

The Internet is filled with good and bad. Personally, I believe the Internet (along with a precious few independent newspapers and radio talk shows) is analogous to colonial America’s “Committees of Correspondence”: it is the last resource of uncontrolled, unfiltered information left. I dare say if it wasn’t for the Internet (and the massive private ownership of firearms), it is doubtful that there would be anything left of the once great American republic. There isn’t much left as it is.

To help readers locate a variety of quality web sites, we posted a list of sites that I personally have found helpful. I invite readers to peruse these fine web sites:

http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?page_id=961

Scrolling down the list, one will find James Wesley, Rawles’ web site: “Survival Blog.” This is one of the very best online resources for preparedness that I know of. Furthermore, I recommend that everyone read Rawles’ fantastic book, “Patriots: A Novel Of Survival In The Coming Collapse.” This book should be regarded as must reading for every American who cares about the future of his country and his family.

Order Rawles’ book at Amazon.com:

http://tinyurl.com/d26jvv

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to see that James has recently written a major piece on his web site regarding the Baldwin family move to Montana. On his blog he wrote, “I concur that Pastor Chuck Baldwin was right when he ‘voted with his feet’ and moved his family from Florida to Montana. Like Chuck Baldwin, I believe that it is time for freedom-loving Christians to relocate to something analogous to ‘Galt’s Gulch’ on a grand scale.”

Rawles went on in his column to say, “Giordano Bruno identified a trend that has been developing informally for many years: a conscious retrenchment into safe haven states. I strongly recommend this amalgamation, and that it be formalized. I suggest calling it The American Redoubt. I further recommend Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, eastern Oregon, and eastern Washington for the ‘réduit.’ Some might call it a conglomeration, but I like to call it an amalgamation, since that evokes silver. And it will be a Biblically-sound and Constitutionally-sound silver currency that will give it unity.”

At the conclusion of his column, Rawles gives a succinct checklist for those who decide to take his advice and move to the Mountain States. The list includes:

*Develop a home-based business

*Lighten the load. Keep the practical items, but sell your junk and impractical items at a garage sale.

*Bring your guns.

*Sell your jewelry and fancy wristwatch. Buy a Stihl chainsaw instead.

*Choose your church home wisely, seeking sound doctrine, not “programs.”

*Expect long driving distances for work and shopping.

*Begin homeschooling your children.

*Expect persecution and hardship. You will be despised for being true to your faith.

*Make a clean break by selling your house and any rental properties. You aren’t coming back.

See Rawles’ blog entry at:

http://www.survivalblog.com/2011/03/move_to_the_mountain_states–t.html

After having moved to “The American Redoubt,” I can vouch for the accuracy and sagacity of Rawles’ comments. He is spot-on! Especially for the point: “Expect persecution and hardship. You will be despised for being true to your faith.” I can personally attest to the accuracy of this statement.

I thought I knew what persecution and hardship were, but after my family and I moved to Montana late last year, I found out that I didn’t have a clue what they were. I do now! Furthermore, it was not the “devil’s crowd” that did the persecuting and who created the hardship; it was “God’s people.” In my 50+ years of living, my family and I have never been treated as vilely and as cruelly as we were after we moved to Montana–by so-called “Christian friends.” Maybe one day I will be able to share the story with my readers. It is ghastly!

Since moving to this wonderful State, I have spoken with scores of people who also moved here: many moved before we did, and many came since we did. (And countless others are still on the way!) Amazingly, practically everyone I spoke to recounted the same exact story: persecution (in one way or another) by so-called “friends” and “loved ones,” because of their decision to move here. I mean, just about every one of them said the same thing!

For this reason, and many more, I said in one of my Sunday messages a week or two ago, “All of you Christian renegades and castaways from organized Churchianity out there, come on out to Kalispell, Montana, and join your liberty-loving brethren at Liberty Fellowship.” And guess what? They are coming!

They are coming from Washington State, California, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Texas, Louisiana, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. Just to name a few states that I know about from where people either have already moved, or from where people are in the process of moving.

At the conclusion of our Sunday service each week at Liberty Fellowship, I read the letters and emails from people all over America who feel the divine urge to come to the Mountain States. And many are coming to Kalispell, Montana, specifically to be part of Liberty Fellowship and the band of patriot Christian brothers that are assembled here. By the way, Liberty Fellowship is NOT a 501(c)(3) IRS corporation, which is another reason many are coming! And, again, if you are thinking about relocating here, please re-read Rawles’ words of wisdom. A move such as this is not for the fainthearted or uncommitted!

Wall Street Capitalism: A Love Affair

What once was a mercantile world has become a global playpen for moving hot money to squeeze out the highest return on investment. Replacing nation states with international capital is now sport. Undermining the sovereignty of countries by an elite club of financial manipulators is the purpose for the grand game. Illustrating this fact, David Callaway writes in Market Watch. “The sale of the New York Stock Exchange to Deutsche Boerse this week underscores the lack of historical antipathy for Germany, the world wars not withstanding, but also something more significant. The deal officially slammed the door on the surge of protectionist overreaction that sprang from the global financial crisis”. The conquest of the NYSE by German economic dominance is ironic, since so much of the financial funding of the Third Reich came out of Wall and Broad Street.Money is the ultimate leveler. The dilemma is that capital is not democratic. If you have money, you have options. If you do not, you are at the mercy of the transnational system of financial bondage. All too often people equate capitalism with free enterprise. Nothing could be further from the truth. Crony Capitalism destroys genuine free market competition. Wealth creation is the nature of authentic commerce. Command and control is the objective of cabal moguls. Entrepreneurship is the business plan for prosperity, while systemic usury is the formula used by banksters to enrich favored cohorts in crime.

The current article in Rolling Stone by asks a key question, “Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people”.

Sensible citizens want an answer. Justice demands accountability. Yet, few people fully comprehend that the supra-capitalists of the imperial cult of the money-world, ignore the rules of nation states. Above the fray, these Illuminati live in a sublime existence of self-established privileged. The reason that they can get away with murder is simple. They are the rulers and the designers of the laws. Countries adopt policies, follow instructions and shield the controllers of counterfeit money creation. Jails are for renegades, not for capital deities. Influence routinely bought, prepares the way for more mergers of Wall Street exchanges. The protected few are not subject to the same standards that destroy any ordinary transgressor.

A true hypocrite socialist, who masquerades as a prophetic filmmaker; Michael Moore, brings this lesson home. His latest project, Capitalism: A Love Story is available for viewing. He depicts Wall Street as financial whores effectively. However, his alternative for a paradise on earth reveals the lunacy of this buffoon in all his psycho glory. Two reviews of the movie offer substantial criticism.Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore and in “Capitalism: A Love Story” on FDR’s Second Bill of Rights?

From the Mises Daily, Michael W. Covel in Michael Moore Kills Capitalism with Kool-Aid provides insight and the text for the brave new world of Democratic Socialism.

“What is his solution? Tugging on your idealistic heartstrings of course! Moore ends his film with recently of FDR talking to America on January 11, 1944. Looking into the camera, a weary FDR proposed what he called a second Bill of Rights — an economic Bill of Rights for all — regardless of station, race, or creed — that included”.

the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

the right of every family to a decent home;

the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

and the right to a good education.

The context of this pious pontification of the patrician Franklin Delano Roosevelt needs to be seen for what it is, his true religion – the supremacy of the Federal Government, at the cost of the destruction of free enterprise. Moore, a modern day charlatan is an apt surrogate for the Roosevelt legacy of Totalitarian Collectivism. Wall Street is no friend of ‘Merchant Class’ business. Only the speculator and the monopolist have a love affair with the financial culling that takes place in the rigged markets.Moore’s delusory faith in a communal democracy is a paternal insult to the underclass that follows a pied piper into perpetual servitude that rests upon a one person, one vote equality myth. The film glorifies dysfunctional creatures, who behave as if they are in the formative stages of just learning to walk. Most demonstrate they are better at crawling on all fours. This kind of marginal human society will never rid the world from the scourge of international capitalism.

The inescapable result of herding illiterates into democratic camps of welfare subsistence cannot create actual wealth. The crowd that raves the Michael Moore remedy will be prime targets for extermination, when the inevitable bankruptcies of governments explode. Who or what will fill the void. One person’s white knight is often a demon to another.

The portrait of a triumphant Napoleon Bonaparte by Jacques-Louis David has the General Crossing the Alps at the Saint-Bernard Pass. This famous image symbolizes the historic pattern of a strong leader taking charge during a political debacle. It happens, either by a forceful takeover or by an anointed selection from the ruling class to be the next puppet. Seldom are there successful libertarian revolutions that limit the influence of the banking syndicates.The emperor attempted the enforcement of the Continental System which was a blockade aimed at denying the British any trading access to ports in Europe, theoretically destroying British trade and denying them the money they needed to fund Napoleons enemies on mainland Europe. The United States was able to acquire the Louisiana Purchase because of Napoleon’s need to finance his wars. The House of Rothschildwas the major financier of the British and greatly multiplied their wealth during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte observed, “When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.”

If the full weight of the Old Guard and Napoleon’s Grande Armée was at the mercy of the banking loans, how can usury interests be tamed by a FDR second Bill of Rights? Any rational and moral person cannot believe that this kind of modern social contract can liberate inventive economic wealth creation. The Jacobin Club was the inspiration behind the implementation of the Reign of Terrorduring the French Revolution. The anti-cleric and aristocracy purge by the Committee of Public Safety sounds like a natural fit for the proponents of a FDR/Moore final solution.

The Wall Street elites are the real closet Jacobins of the international capitalist plantation. Their objective is to create a permanent “Sansculottes” underclass. During the late 1790’s they were the ‘shapeless, mostly urban movement of the laboring poor, small craftsmen, shopkeepers, artisans, tiny entrepreneurs and the like’. Today the wretched dispossessed is the middle class. They are hanging on by a thread. Yet, they reject the absurdity that rights come from society and are dispensed by government.The only love affair for Wall Street plutocrats has a populist revolutionary cheer. Not off with their heads, but strip them of all their cash. The French mob, demonstrators, rioters and the constructors of barricades, demanded blood. Now, the working oppressed is in the perplexing position of engaging in a necessary revolt in order to survive.

The financial exploitation today is at such an obscene level, that saneness requires courage and action from citizen heroes. Another famous painting is of the Singer Chenard, as a Sans-Culotte. Waiting and placing your fate in the hands of a Bonaparte has its risks. Rally to the flag of an authentic, Declaration of the Rights of Man. Intrinsic natural rights, not arbitrary state authority, are the only valid standard. The banner of traditional Christian values and sound money practices is the way out of the dead zone. The global Illuminati financial House of Rothschild creates the present ongoing terror. Confiscation of their ill-gotten gains from their universal pillage is far more effective than relying on a socialistic redistribution of wealth to the masses. America needs to rebuild a crippled society.

A successful Thermidorian Reaction that establishes a true accountable Republic, which strives to attain liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression, is the proper goal for all citizens. Scriptural principles of economics and free markets are the foundation of lawful entrepreneurship, which would lead to national prosperity. Wall Street has betrayed those functions and needs a total reorganization before the peasants storming the citadel, becomes unavoidable.

As Bad As Bush

His enemies call him a tyrant and a dictator, but he is neither. Hugo Chavez is a tireless champion of the poor and a committed Christian socialist. The only difference between Chavez’s type of Christianity and Barack Obama’s, is that Chavez walks the walk.

For example, on Tuesday, Chavez used his powers under the new “enabling laws” to enact the “Law for Dignified Refuge” a presidential decree that mandates “dignified and humane” housing for all Venezuelans. The Venezuelan parliament approved the controversial (and temporary) enabling laws because the country faced an unprecedented housing crisis due to the massive floods in December.

More than 125,000 people lost their homes in the disaster requiring a speedy response from the government. Chavez swung into action immediately turning the presidential palace into a homeless shelter and initiating a campaign to construct permanent housing for the victims. Now he has pushed through landmark legislation that will legally require the government to help the homeless.

Contrast Chavez’s response to Obama’s during the BP oil spill. BP was allowed to wreak havoc on the environment and destroy people’s livelihood without any consequences. In fact, Obama even provided cover for the oil giant by appearing in public relations “I feel your pain” photo-ops on a beach in Louisiana that were intended to divert public rage away from BP. So, now the fishing and shrimping industries are devastated, sensitive estuaries and ecosystems have been destroyed, and the level of toxins in the bloodstreams of people living in the region have skyrocketed. And, worst of all, BP has gotten off Scot-free. Thanks, Barack.

Now imagine what would have happened if Chavez had been in charge. BP’s stateside operations would have been shut down, their assets would have been seized, and Tony Hayward and his buddies would have been thrown in the hoosegow. Got a problem with that?

Last week, while Obama was singing the praises of “deregulation” on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal (“.. the rules have gotten out of balance, placing unreasonable burdens on business—burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs.”) and first lady, Michelle Obama was hawking “healthy foods” for food behemoth Walmart in the national media, Chavez was busy transforming shelters into “institutions of the state” to make sure that people had a place to stay while they get back on their feet again.

The new law stipulates that these people be provided with food and medical assistance (Venezuela has universal health care) as well as “scholarships, pensions and special allotments of resources” depending on their needs.

The new state facilities that are being set up by Chavez will focus primarily on “the most vulnerable population; the children, adolescents, seniors, people with disabilities, and pregnant women.”

“It’s not a question of the government wanting to do this or not,” said Chavez. “It is now a legal obligation.” (venezuelanalysis.com)

Right on. And how has Washington reacted to Chavez’s emergency programs and new laws? Here’s an excerpt from a recent article by ex-pat Eva Golinger that sums it up pretty well:

“This week, (Venezuelan) opposition leaders will meet with their counterparts in Washington. They have already said their mission is to seek more aid to help remove President Chavez from power. Unfortunately, their undemocratic actions have already been welcomed in the US Capitol. Representative Connie Mack (R-FL), now head of the House Sub-Committte on Foreign Relations for the Western Hemisphere, announced on the first day of Congress that his one goal this year is to place Venezuela on the list of “state sponsors of terrorism”. And Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), now head of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has backed that objective, even going as far as to publicly state she would welcome the “assassination of Fidel Castro or any other repressive leader” such as Hugo Chavez.” (“Setting the Record Straight on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez”, Eva Golinger, Global Research)

Surprised? Don’t be. Any foreign leader who attempts to control his country’s resources, improve human rights, or distribute the nation’s wealth more equally among its people, is the de facto enemy of the United States. People thought that things might change under Obama, but they were wrong. He’s as bad as Bush.

Mystery of Mass Animal Death Epidemic Deepens after 8,000 Turtle Doves Fall Dead in Italy

From: Daily Mail Online…

• Blue stain believed to be sign of poisoning or hypoxia – lack of oxygen that is precursor to altitude sickness
• Cold weather and overbreeding blamed for deaths of two 2million fish in Chesapeake Bay
• Disease behind deaths of 100,000 fish in Arkansas River
• At least nine incidents of mass animal deaths across the globe
• Hundreds of confused birds plummeted to their deaths in multiple locations in the U.S.
• Rapid movement of Magnetic North Pole towards Russia may have caused bird deaths
  

Thousands of dead turtle doves rained down on roofs and cars in an Italian town in the latest in a growing spate of mass animal deaths across the globe.

Residents in Faenza described the birds falling to the ground like ‘little Christmas balls’ with strange blue stains on their beaks.

Initial tests on up to 8,000 of the doves indicated that the blue stain could have been caused by poisoning or hypoxia.

A witness told www.examiner.com: ‘We have no idea why this happened all of a sudden.

‘The doves just started falling one-by-one then in groups of 10s and 20s.’

Hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, is known to cause confusion and illness in animals. It is also a common precursor to altitude sickness.

Experts said results from tests on the doves will not be available for at least a week.

They said that cold weather could have caused the birds’ deaths as the flock was swept into a high-altitude wind storm before falling to the earth.

It comes after two million dead fish were found to have washed up on shores in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.

The alarming find is being blamed by authorities in Maryland on the stress caused by unusually cold water and overbreeding among spot fish.

That investigation comes just days after the deaths of an estimated 100,000 fish in northwest Arkansas, which is being blamed on disease.

A statement by the Maryland Department of the Environment said: ‘Natural causes appear to be the reason.

‘Cold water stress exacerbated by a large population of the affected species (juvenile spot fish) appears to be the cause of the kill.’

Preliminary tests of the water in Chesapeake Bay have showed the quality was acceptable, officials said.

The statement added: ‘The affected fish are almost exclusively juvenile spot fish, three to six inches in length.

‘A recent survey showed a very strong population of spot in the bay this year. An increased juvenile population and limited deep water habitat would likely compound the effects of cold water stress.’

Mass winter deaths among spot fish have occurred twice before in the Maryland area – in 1976 and 1980.

The incident is the latest mass animal death to hit the headlines in the last two weeks.

These include:

• 450 red-winged blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, grackles and starlings found littering a highway in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• 3,000 blackbirds on roofs and roads in the small town of Beebe, Arkansas
  
• Thousands of ‘devil crabs’ washed up along the Kent coast near Thanet
• Thousands of drum fish washed along a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River
• Two million small fish in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland
• Thousands of dead fish found floating in warm Florida creek
• Hundreds of snapper fish found dead in New Zealand
• Scores of American Coots found dead on Texas highway bridge

Experts have speculated that New Year fireworks, thunderstorms, cold weather, parasites and even poisoning may be behind the deaths.

But conspiracy theorists have also speculated on the internet that secret government experiments could be behind them, with some even claiming it was a sign of a looming Armageddon at the end of the Mayan calendar next year.

Another theory is that the rapid movement of the Magnetic North Pole towards Russia may have affected the birds’ innate navigation systems.

Inbuilt navigation systems in birds and fish is believed to be affected by magnetism.

Scientists have said the Magnetic North Pole is shifting at an average of around 25 miles a year.

With birds and fish relying on it to travel to breeding grounds and warmed climes, there are fears that the shifting pole could be confusing the animals which means they do not migrate in time to avoid cold weather.

Tests are being carried out on the dead birds and fish, but results are not expected for several weeks.

Scientists have been baffled by the sudden deaths of hundreds of birds which have plummeted to the ground seemingly simultaneously in several locations.

Two hundred American Coots were found dead on a highway bridge crossing Lake O’ the Pines in Big Cypress Creek, Texas.

They are believed to have been hit by passing vehicles while walking or apparently trying to roost on the bridge.

Swedish experts blamed the shock of New Year fireworks for the unexplained deaths of 50 jackdaws found on a street in Falkoping, Sweden.

Many of the birds are believed to have died from stress or as a result of being run over while disoriented.

The largest incident took place in Beebe, Arkansas, were horrified revellers witnessed around 3,000 blackbirds crashing to their deaths into homes, cars and each other as they celebrated New Year.

Another 450 birds were found strewn along a highway in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after apparently hitting overhead power lines.

In both cases, the birds are believed to have become confused and were flying at a lower height than usual.

The deaths of tons of fish across the globe is being attributed to unusually cold water.

Thousands of Brazilian fishermen have been left struggling to make ends meet after the sale of seafood was temporarily suspended when masses of fish were discovered in Paranaguá, Antonina and Guaraqueçaba Pontal do Paraná.

Fish were also discovered rotting and floating in Spruce Creek, Florida, after another period of cold weather.

100,000 drum fish were found strewn along the shore of the Arkansas River.

And the cold snap has been blamed for the deaths of 40,000 Velvet swimming crabs – known as ‘devil crabs – found littering beaches in Thanet, Kent.

Fracking the life out of Arkansas and beyond

The last four months of 2010, nearly 500 earthquakes rattled Guy, Arkansas. [1]  The entire state experienced 38 quakes in 2009. [2]  The spike in quake frequency precedes and coincides with the 100,000 dead fish on a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River that included Roseville Township on December 30. The next night, 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings dropped dead out of the sky in Beebe. [3]  Hydraulic fracturing is the most likely culprit for all three events, as it causes earthquakes with a resultant release of toxins into the environment. [4]

A close look at Arkansas’ history of earthquakes and drilling reveals a shocking surge in quake frequency following advanced drilling. The number of quakes in 2010 nearly equals all of Arkansas’ quakes for the entire 20th century. The oil and gas industry denies any correlation, but the advent of hydrofracking followed by earthquakes is a story repeated across the nation.  It isn’t going to stop any time soon, either.  Fracking has gone global.

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) pumps water and chemicals into the ground at a pressurized rate exceeding what the bedrock can withstand, resulting in a microquake that produces rock fractures. Though initiated in 1947, technological advances now allow horizontal fracturing, vastly increasing oil and gas collection. [5] In 1996, shale-gas production in the U.S. accounted for 2 percent of all domestic natural gas production, reports Christopher Bateman in Vanity Fair. “Some industry analysts predict shale gas will represent a full half of total domestic gas production within 10 years.” [6] In 2000, U.S. gas reserve estimates stood at 177 trillion cubic feet, but ramped up to 245 tcf in 2008. These new technologies prompt experts to increase global gas reserve estimates ninefold. [7]

The grid below shows a section of the Arkansas River, with Roseville Township at bottom, where the first reports of the fish kill originated. The green lines surrounding and crossing the river indicate gas pipes, ranging from 8-20” in diameter. Any number of leaks in the pipes can explain the fish kill. Gas wells are shown by yellow ‘suns’ (see red arrows) and range from 1,500 to 6,500 feet deep. (Disposal wells, where drilling waste products are injected at high pressures, go as deep as 12,000 feet.) The red numbers next to the ‘suns’ give the number of gas wells in that spot, numbering close to 50 in this small area. [8]

(The gray numbers relate to the Township Numbering System. Each square equals one square mile. Click map for larger image.)

In December alone, over 150 earthquakes rocked Arkansas. [1] The swarm of quakes in Guy likely results from six years of intense drilling. Guy sits within the Fayetteville Shale Formation which, according to the Arkansas Geological Survey (AGS), is “the current focus of a regional shale-gas exploration and development program.”  A billion cubic feet of gas has been produced from this area since 2004. [9]

Thousands of wells are in operation in North-Central Arkansas (blue section of the following map). [10] Beebe, where the bird kill occurred, is in White County and Guy is at the northern end of Faulkner Co., where the anomalous earthquakes continue.

Red-winged blackbirds roost in clusters up to a million or more birds, often with other species like starlings and cowbirds. (In the 1950s and ’60s, roosts could number 20 million birds.)  Blackbirds prefer low, dense vegetative cover in wetlands or near streams. Though some may perch 30 feet above the water, most perch within one to two feet of it, and some will roost with their feet resting in water. Blackbirds can range up to 50 miles a day from roost to feeding sites, but they all settle in for the night before sunset. [11]

An earthquake of whatever scale can release a stream or cloud of gas and fracking chemicals which could easily explain why sleeping birds would suddenly take flight, and then quickly die as they succumbed to the toxic fumes. Of note, eight measured quakes within 40 miles of Beebe, and within 75 miles of Roseville, hit the area on December 30 thru several minutes past midnight on January 1st. [12]  This excludes any micro- or miniquakes which can have the same effect.  Significantly, the area is known for its prolific microquakes — numbering 40,000 since 1982. [1]

Canadian Geologist Jack Century crusades against induced seismicity from irresponsible drilling. In a 2009 speech before the Peace River Environmental Society, he provided a brief explanation of how fracking induces earthquakes, completely refuting industry denial that fracking causes quakes. Fracking induces not only micro- and mini-seismic actions that can compromise the integrity of well casings, but also large earthquakes registering on the order of 5 to 7 on the Richter Scale, resulting in human deaths. [13]

Scott Ausbrooks, geohazards supervisor for AGS, told CNN in December that while earthquakes aren’t unusual in Arkansas, the frequency is. [14]  Indeed, they’ve had a 1,200 percent increase in earthquakes over 2009 data just in the last four months of 2010. All of the quakes registered less than 3 on the Richter Scale; over 98% of them occurred near Guy, where we find the largest concentration of gas wells; and 99% occurred outside the New Madrid Fault zone (circled in red below) where seismic activity is expected, implying they are human induced [1]:

Though AGS publicly claims no earthquake relation to drilling, in early December, Arkansas banned new drilling permits until further notice.

CNN reported that “According to the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, there are at least a half dozen ‘disposal wells’ within a 500-square-mile zone around Guy.” Ausbrooks noted similar “incidents in Colorado in the 1960s at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where deep water injection was tied to earthquakes.” [14]

Arkansas Earthquake and Drilling History

When comparing Arkansas’ earthquake history with its drilling history, a causative correlation becomes obvious.

The entire 19th century saw 15 recorded earthquakes and none in the first decade of the new century.  A total of 694 quakes rocked Arkansas in the 20th century.  That number was surpassed in 2009-2010, with the bulk (483) occurring the last three months of 2010. Table 1 was prepared using complete quake data thru 2009 [15], complete data from August thru December, 2010 [1], and just North Central Arkansas quake data from January thru July, 2010. [16]

Arkla, Inc., through its many morphs, mergers and acquisitions,  is and has been a key gas driller in Arkansas.  Between 1975 and the early 1980s, the company found more gas than it produced. By 1982, Arkla was able to sell Central Louisiana Electric Company more than 100 million cubic feet of gas daily. By the early 1990s, it operated the sixth-largest pipeline system in the United States and was among the ten largest operators of natural gas reserves. [17] Its production timeline coincides with the massive jump in earthquakes in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, 37 companies drill for gas and oil in Arkansas. [18]

Unregulated Fracking on a Global March

The U.S. and Canada are not alone in exploiting this highly destructive technology. Poland also embraces fracking. Several energy companies are currently exploring Poland’s reserves, including Conoco-Phillips, ExxonMobil, Marathon, Chevron, Talisman, Lane Energy, BNK Petroleum, Emfesz, EurEnergy Resources, RAG, San Leon Energy and Sorgenia E&P. [19]  These new technologies will significantly impact the global trade in natural gas, according to Forbes [20]:

“Poland consumes 14 billion cubic meters of gas a year and imports more than 70% of it from Russia. It is easy to see how the country could benefit from starting shale gas drilling as soon as possible. Not only could it decrease its dependency on Russia, it might even turn into a gas exporter.”

Bateman noted that Western and Central Europe have leased their lands to frackers. Australians are suffering from the same frack contaminations as Americans, and China is also exploiting the new technology. [6]

Josh Fox’s 2010 film, Gasland, documents a multitude of harmful consequences on animal and human life, as well as property values. The most infamous scene shows people able to ignite their contaminated tap water [21]:

Fox makes the point that Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, lobbied for and won exemptions from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, Superfund, and the Safe Drinking Water Act, thanks to our corporate-owned Congress.

Nor do drillers have to disclose the toxic chemicals used, contrary to the 1986 Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. [22]  Though it did not hesitate to pass on Wall Street’s gambling debts to the public (twice), Congress has not found the will to pass the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act.

In 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency determined that fracking poses no threat to water supplies and that no further studies were needed. [23]  From some Orwellian nightmare, however, at least 65 of the chemicals used in fracking are considered hazardous by the EPA. They have been linked to “cancer; liver, kidney, brain, respiratory and skin disorders; birth defects; and other health problems,” according to a 2005 report by the Oil and Gas Accountability Project. Of primary concern to citizens, OGAP notes that “Approximately half of the water that Americans rely on for drinking comes from underground sources.” [24]

Wyoming took a proactive stance on full disclosure of fracking chemicals when it passed new rules in September. Loopholes, however, still allow companies to claim proprietary ownership of such information, restricting it from public view. [25]

Given the EPA’s position that fracking is safe, it’s not likely that Arkansas citizens will get much help from the federal government. Nor will they find a friend at the state level. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has so far been unwilling or unable to stop UMETCO Minerals Corporation from illegally dumping toxic chemicals into streams. [26]

The same situation applies across the nation where state governments protect industry over environmental and human health.  Recently, outgoing Governor David Paterson vetoed legislation that would have put a moratorium on vertical and horizontal hydraulic drilling in New York. [27]  Already, Pennsylvania leases a third of its public lands to private energy drillers. [21]

Given government bias toward energy giants, and BP’s destruction of the Gulf of Mexico is a case in point, more direct action may be required by citizens, if environmental and human health are to be saved from the fossil fuel industry.

Notes:

1. Arkansas Geological Survey, “Arkansas Earthquake Updates.” http://www.geology.ar.gov/geohazards/earthquakes.htm

2. Arkansas Geological Survey, “2009 Earthquakes.” http://www.geology.ar.gov/xl/2009_Earthquakes.xls

3. Food Freedom, “Massive fish kill and 1000s of birds fall from the sky in Arkansas,” 2 Jan. 2010. http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/massive-fish-kill-and-1000s-of-birds-fall-from-the-sky-in-arkansas/

4. Earthworks, “Hydraulic Fracturing and Earthquakes.”  http://www.earthworksaction.org/fracturingearthquakes.cfm

Also see:

Ben Cassleman, “Temblors Rattle Texas Town: Residents Suspect a Drilling Boom Is Triggering Small Quakes, but Scientists Lack Proof,” Wall Street Journal, 12 June 2009. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476331270108225.html

James Glanz, “Deep in Bedrock, Clean Energy and Quake Fears,” New York Times, 23 June 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/energy-environment/24geotherm.html

James Glanz, Video: “The Danger of Digging Deeper,” New York Times, 23 June 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/06/23/us/Geothermal.html

5. U.S. Department of Energy, “Hydraulic Fracturing White Paper,” June 2004.  http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/uic/pdfs/cbmstudy_attach_uic_append_a_doe_whitepaper.pdf

6. Christopher Bateman, “A Colossal Fracking Mess,” Vanity Fair, 16 June 2010. http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/06/fracking-in-pennsylvania-201006?currentPage=all

7. Martin Walker, “Russia’s Fracked Future,” UPI, 1 Feb. 2010. http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2010/02/01/Walkers-World-Russias-fracked-future/UPI-21421265042152/

8. Arkansas Geological Survey, “Fayetteville Shale Gas Play West Map,” Last updated 2 March 2010. http://www.geology.ar.gov/maps_pdf/fossilfuels/Fay%20West%20Map%2042×44.pdf

9. Arkansas Geological Survey, “Gas.” http://www.geology.ar.gov/fossil_fuels/gas.htm

10. Arkansas Geological Survey, “Fayetteville Shale Gas Play.” http://www.geology.ar.gov/home/fayetteville_play.htm

11. Brooke Meanley, “The Roosting Behavior of the Red-Winged Blackbird in the Southern United States,” Wilson Bulletin, Vol. 77 No.3, pp 217-228, Sept. 1965. http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Wilson/v077n03/p0217-p0228.pdf

12. U.S. Geological Survey, “Map Centered at 35°N, 93°W” Accessed Jan. 5, 2010: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/34.36.-94.-92.php

13. Jack Century, “Earthquake Risks: Building a Nuclear Power Plant near Peace River, Alberta,” Peace River Environmental Society, May 2009 (71 mins.) http://peaceriverenvironmentalsociety.org/; 8-part video at

14. CNN, “Arkansas Earthquakes,” 13 Dec. 2010. http://www.wibw.com/nationalnews/headlines/Arkansas_Earthquakes_111815534.html

15. Arkansas Geological Survey, “Earthquake Archive,” 2009. http://www.geology.ar.gov/xl/Earthquake_Archive.xls

16. Arkansas Geological Survey, “Recent and Historical Earthquakes in North-Central Arkansas,” October 2010 http://www.geology.arkansas.gov/maps_pdf/geohazards/CentralArkansasMediaMap.pdf

17. Funding Universe, “Arkla Inc.” n.d. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/ARKLA-INC-Company-History.html

18. Manta.com, “37 Drilling Oil and Gas Wells Companies in Arkansas,” n.d.

http://www.manta.com/mb_44_E317D_04/drilling_oil_and_gas_wells/arkansas

19. STRATFOR, “Poland: Fracing On The Rise?” Forbes Magazine, 1 June 2010. http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/06/16/poland-fracing-on-the-rise/

20. TREFIS Team, “ConocoPhillips Has Big Fracking Plans For Poland, Stock Has Upside,” Forbes Magazine, 14 Dec. 2010. http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2010/12/14/conocophillips-has-big-fracking-plans-for-poland-stock-has-upside/

21. Josh Fox, Gasland, 2010. http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/. See trailer showing ignited tap water at .

22. Sarah Collins and Tom Kenworthy, “Energy Industry Fights Chemical Disclosure: Natural gas companies want to prevent oversight of fracking,” Center for American Progress, April 2010. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/fracking.html

23. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Evaluation of Impacts to Underground Sources of Drinking Water by Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Reservoirs Study,” June 2004. http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/wells_coalbedmethanestudy.cfm

24. Lisa Sumi, “Our Drinking Water at Risk: What EPA and the Oil and Gas Industry Don’t Want Us to Know about Hydraulic Fracturing,” Oil and Gas Accountability Project, April 2005. http://www.earthworksaction.org/pubs/DrinkingWaterAtRisk.pdf

25. Earthworks, Powder River Basin Resources Council, “Wyoming Requires Disclosure of Chemicals in Natural Gas Drilling,” 16 Sep 2010. http://earthworksaction.org/PR_WYdisclosure.cfm

26. Karoline Wightman, “UMETCO Minerals Corp not yet fined for releasing chemicals,” Fox News, 16 Nov. 2010. http://www.fox16.com/news/local/story/UMETCO-Minerals-Corp-not-yet-fined-for-releasing/cOwdIEMf-kugosx8EWbrQQ.cspx?rss=315

27. Tom Zeller, “New York Governor Vetoes Fracking Bill,” New York Times, 11 Dec. 2010. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/new-york-governor-vetoes-fracking-bill/

Low Dose Arsenic for a Cyanide Society

Many believe that an 81 mg aspirin a day will help prevent a heart attack. Yet even greater numbers voluntarily absorb regular doses of poison with their daily diet. Start with the mass media. If you watch network programming, you are being programmed. Doubt this conclusion and you prove just how well the brainwashing has taken hold. The nightly news is a prime example of shaping a view of the world according to the script that keeps you dumb and stupid.

To prove this point, just watch any news broadcast from an international newscast source. The difference from NBC, CBS or ABC is stark. Now read a newspaper from overseas and compare the editorial selection from the New York Times, Washington Post or USA Today. The lack of professional journalistic standards is obvious in the fish wrapper version from establishment publications. The theme in both broadcast and print media is the same. View the world with blinders, from a superficial microcosm.

When the New York Times claims the motto: “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, they are boldly telling you that you do not need to think for yourself or search out alternative information. The NYT is the paper of record. Take your dose of ratsbane from the snobs that deem you a dullard, who needs to be browbeaten into accepting your inferiority.

Now go to a movie multiplex and subjugate yourself to a sophisticated mind warp of cultural delusion. The film experience dispenses with entertainment and concentrates its artistic techniques upon molding Frankenstein monsters for assimilation into a slasher society. Flicks for Andy Hardy offspring’s are not made; since modern moralism is so advanced from, the 30’s to the 50’s, that family values are no longer relevant, according to the new MGM movie moguls.

Government schools teach this enlightened, non judgmental value, ethic for it is their mission to educate the next generation to use people as Twi’lek slave Oola was treated, for the amusement of Jabba the Hutt. In order to become a star in Hollywood and win the war of survival any means necessary, especially the dark side, is the lesson to learn.

Public official propaganda becomes the playbook to follow for gaining the easy life. A drop of daily toxicant is the formula for garnering you a badge of dishonor as a servant of the state. The reward for blind obedience is a life of anxious desperation. A lust for a pension becomes the substitute when retiring from active duty and the loss of bulling authority over government subjects.

These mind bending pressures could blow any mind. To the rescue comes Big Pharma. Drop a pill and all is well. A little help from your friends is the way to get through the day. If the pressures of listening to managed news and the escapism of dark movies cannot snap you back to reality, try the medication of Merck and Pfizer. Zoloft, Selectra, and Eleva are household drugs for the mentally-ill adjusted or the emotionally challenged. Of course, you are immunized from such a fate with your own balanced lifestyle. Or are you?

CNBC (if you can trust the coverage of an establishment media) reports that, “More than 45 million Americans, or 20 percent of U.S. adults, had some form of mental illness last year, and 11 million had a serious illness . . . Young adults aged 18 to 25 had the highest level of mental illness at 30 percent”. Could General Electric’s medical division see an opportunity by jumping into the drug business? Or is CNBC just looking for additional medical coverage in their employment coverage when Obamacare hits home? Surely, the on air talent at the business channel qualify as maladjusted scherzos’ trained as word prompter readers!

Who is more disturbed, the person listening to the news report or the individual reading the lies? At least the TV personality is being paid, while the viewer has to pay a cable or satellite bill.

The arsenic treatment might seem humorous if done by Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha in a Frank Capra movie, but the way it is applied today, the outcome will not have a happy ending. Each small drop of a poisonous substance just adds to the aggregate lunacy of the society. Cyanide ingestion guarantees immediate termination. But when the process is incremental, the danger seems less acute.

Government hates to be outdone. The well-published latest outrage is with the TSA Gestapo “just following orders” tactics. TSA Stasi stooges are the real terrorists. The illicit Security Complex has the mentality that demeaning every innocent citizen is the true motive for each escalated level of personal assaults. Acting as profaned individuals and enjoying their violations of civil liberties, these disturbed thugs are prime mental patients for insane asylums. Do you have doubts that government TSA lackeys come from the same genetic strain as those who dropped Zyklon B in the defense of the homeland?

If you think this assessment goes too far, than face the facts about the radiation danger from airport body scanners. Becky Akers writes,

“Perhaps the TSA’s biggest whoppers whitewash the hazards to our health from the two technologies with which it strips us. Experts in medicine, biochemistry, and biophysics warn that one, backscatter X-ray, concentrates in the skin rather than diffusing through the body as medical radiation does; therefore, the dose you receive is shockingly high — far higher than the government admits. Dr. Jeff Zervas, a surgeon in Montevideo, Minnesota, told me, “As far as living tissue is concerned, the less exposure to ionizing radiation, the better. Zero is best.” Dr. Zervas also worried about the TSA’s legendary incompetence: “What happens, for example, if some clown leaves the machine on, and a passenger’s standing in the field? And who calibrates these things? I wouldn’t trust a bureaucrat or anyone else without a stake in its safety to do it properly.

Dr. David Caskey, a cardiologist who was also teaching at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans when we spoke, seconded that: “In the medical industry we try as hard as possible to avoid even the smallest dose of radiation. Here you will be subjected to a rather significant amount. The result can and will be an increase in cataract formation, thyroid cancer, bone marrow suppression, etc.” He was especially concerned for female passengers. “Even low level radiation can adversely affect a woman’s ovaries. There’s the potential for later birth defects. That risk increases if the woman is pregnant in the first trimester when she would likely be unaware of the pregnancy.”

Millimeter waves may be even worse. No one knows their exact effects on human flesh, but one study concludes that they “unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. … a new generation of cameras are set to appear that not only record [millimeter] waves but also bombard us with them…”

This TSA dose of arsenic inevitably produces the cyanide society. For those who say; NO, this cannot be true! Just review the CBS poll – 4 in 5 Support Full-Body Airport Scanners “Americans overwhelmingly approve of the use of full-body digital x-ray machines – a new technology in use at some airports in the U.S.” Whom will you believe? CBS that famous network of the most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite or your own common sense . . .

Now you say there is a difference in wanting to be safe, but approving the use of full-body scanners and accepting the radiation risk of going through one yourself, does not fulfill that objective. Nevertheless, the notion that people are willingly to accept forced irradiation as part of the conditions in buying a ticket to ride the friendly skies of Amerika is a sign that the slow poison has already diminished the mental capacity of the branded cattle that stand in a queue.

Quick, take an additional dose of feel good drugs from Big Pharma. They will soon have a medicine to save your life from frequent trips through the airport scanners.

Where are the heroes that will storm the citadel and fight off the government child molesters? Is there a contemporary Leonidas that will lead 300 Spartans against the threat of total annihilation at the hands of government shock troops? Do you have the independence to refuse the hemlock? Or do you have the genius to engineer a total resistance to the cyanide society?

Socrates was dangerous because he exhorted defiance to oppression and maintained fidelity to the search for the truth. The extermination of dissonant individuals is the objective of nitrile order. Combat these government goons on every level and stratum of resistance. Tune out the mainstream media, boycott the dream works machine of disturbed fantasy, take your children out of government schools, and deprogram the mass onslaught from destructive socialization.

A quick demise is preferable to a slow torment. The point of the Strappado Wrack is to keep you off the torture rack. If that is not possible, die at your own Thermopylae, as a hero and a defender of Western Civilization.

‘Troubled Waters’ overcomes censor troubles; more must-see Ag films

After controversy erupted when the University of Minnesota yanked the opening of Larkin McPhee’s new film, Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story, U of M officials gave the go-ahead for the October 3rd screening. The film explores agrochemical runoff and growing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

Molly Priesmeyer of the Twin Cities Daily Planet exposed a conflict of interest between U of Minn. and Big Ag:

“Karen Himle is Vice President of University Relations, which is the office that determined the film needed ‘scientific review.’ She is married to John Himle, president of Himle Horner, a public relations firm that represents the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council. The Council is a strong proponent of ethanol and industrial farming, both of which are critiqued in the film. John Himle was also president of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council from 1978 to 1982 and his organization currently serves as a ‘member’ of the Council.

“The University’s ‘conflict of interest’ policy was called into question last year by the Minnesota Daily, which also cited Karen Himle’s summary of her outside sources of income as including Himle Horner and Nebraska farmland crops.

“While Himle Horner’s client records are not public (something that has drawn the ire of some in the community as former co-owner Tom Horner is running for governor), Himle Horner was still representing the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council as recently as this summer.

“I believe this was an important issue to note since it could present a serious conflict of interest and raises further questions about whether Big Ag is mounting pressure on the U to halt the film’s release for ‘scientific review.’”

McPhee points out that the film underwent extensive scientific scrutiny. Every fact was verified by “at least three independent sources.” Assistant producer Shanai Matteson told Daily Planet that:

“[T]he film was also reviewed by as many as 12 prominent university scientists, including Jon Foley and David Tilman (both from the of U of M’s Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior department); Robert Diaz, a professor of marine science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and an expert on ‘dead zone’ issues in the Gulf of Mexico; Eugene Turner, a zoologist at Louisiana State University who has done extensive research on wetland pollution and coastal erosion; and Nancy Rabalias, another LSU professor whose research has dealt extensively with pollution issues in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Several local publications and radio shows covered the censorship, but it was after Tara Lohan at AlterNet exposed all this yesterday morning that the university reversed itself.

Information suppression is a key strategy of chemical polluters.  Recently, California Watch reported that the Alliance for Food and Farming received $180,000 from the state to “correct the public’s misconceptions about pesticide residues.” Last month in Argentina, 100 thugs attacked local farmers who gathered to hear a scientific presentation on the toxicity of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup. (See this interview of Andrés Carrasco, Argentina’s chief scientist at the National Council for Science and Technology.)

In the Gulf of Mexico, numerous independent scientists warn that despite safety assurances by government officials, seafood is not being tested for heavy metals or for toxic oil dispersants. News crews were ordered to stop digging in the sand, for which officials later apologized.

One hundred years of toxic chemical use is having deleterious effects on humans and the environment. People know this. Attempts at censoring the information only serve to highlight the issue. More than likely, attendance at Troubled Waters next Sunday will spike because of the controversy. One hopes.

Other Ag films being recommended are Rory Owen Delaney’s 2010 film, Toxic Soup:

Ryder Seeler’s 2010 film, Percy Schmeiser: David versus Monsanto:

Catherine Gund’s 2009 film, What’s on Your Plate?

And Kevin O’Keefe’s Milk War, which explores the Michael Schmidt case, a biodynamic farmer who legally challenged Ontario’s ban on raw milk.

Alien Forest, Alien Ocean, Alien Sky

What is the endgame of chemically altered skies and waters and genetically altered plants and animals?

Imagine our declining pollinators – bees, moths, butterflies and bats – coming upon thousands of acres of toxic trees, genetically engineered so that every cell in the tree exudes pesticide, from crown to root. Imagine a world without pollinators. Without seed dispersers. Without soil microbes.

It would be a silent forest, a killing forest, an alien forest. No wonder Vandana Shiva scoffs at the moniker, biotechnology. “This is not a life technology. It’s a death science.”

Genetically engineered forests are a holocaust on nature. An award-winning documentary, (2005, 46 mins) details the appalling effects. (You can buy the full length film at )

Global Justice Ecology Project director, Ann Petermann defines the issue: “Genetically engineered trees are the greatest threat to the world’s remaining forests since the invention of the chainsaw.”

Jim Hightower calls them, “wildly invasive, explosively flammable, and insatiably thirsty for ground water.”

If planting a sterile, killer forest isn’t freaky enough, some GM trees will be viable and can and will contaminate natural species. Tree pollen can travel over 600 miles, according to a model created by Duke University, reported Petermann in 2006. Another study found pine pollen 400 miles from the nearest pines. This year, a scientist was surprised to find viable seeds 25 miles offshore.

“Sterile trees would also be able to spread their transgenes through vegetative propagation,” notes Petermann. Unlike with animals, being sexually sterile does not preclude reproduction when it comes to plants.

GM contamination occurs around the globe, as documented by GM Watch and the GM Contamination Register (among others). The technology cannot be contained. Genetically modified organisms are dominant over natural species and will forever alter Earth’s natural plants.

By the way, the latest batch of approved GM trees – 200,000 eucalyptus for seven southern states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina) – are engineered to be cold tolerant. A lawsuit has been filed to overturn their approval.

Chemically altering the atmosphere to be cooler

Not only are the powers-that-be genetically altering trees, food crops and animals, they’re also chemically altering the atmosphere. In 1976, the United Nations banned hostile environmental modification, after investigative reporter Jack Anderson uncovered its use in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Next month, October 2010, the UN will vote on a resolution to stop all EnMod activities.

While the thought police label chemtrails a “conspiracy theory,” it’s unlikely that the UN scientific body calling for their termination would base such a recommendation on fiction. Those interested in scientific and legal proof can review the sources in my piece on atmospheric geoengineering.

Climate change is still being debated, especially after the University of East Anglia was caught publishing false data showing temperature increases. Significant errors in a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where it also falsely asserted as fact that Himilaya glaciers would melt by 2035, also fuel the debate.

Recently, an independent investigative body told the IPCC to stop lobbying on behalf of global warming programs. Members of the IPCC were also ordered to reveal their financial connections to such programs.

The temperature of the planet is characterized as too warm, and so the wealthy and powerful want to cool down the planet. If they do, those cold-tolerant GM trees will survive.

Altering the chemistry of the hydrosphere

Governments also support altering the chemistry of the hydrosphere. There is still much debate as to whether iron-seeding the oceans can remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to actually cool the planet. But, like the Cap and Trade scam, profit can be made so policy makers still support the idea.

Beyond deliberate attempts at geoengineering, we also have industry to blame for doing so. For over a century, humanity has been conned into poisoning the environment with toxic chemicals that end up in our streams, lakes and oceans. “Conventional” agriculture and industrial pollution is killing us.

Corporations profit by this, of course, enabled and protected by governments. The most recent example, allowing BP to spray at least two million gallons of toxic oil dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico, is a case in point. This is after the Earth Day Blowout that released up to 350 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. Those dispersants enable oil to more readily penetrate the bodies of sea life, and they interfere with oil-eating microbes.

They’re destroying an ocean and the US Senate is giving BP a pass. It to grant subpoena power to investigate, let alone criminally prosecute. Forget partisanship, says Dateline Zero, “they are the same party, and they get their money from the same people, they get their orders from the same people — and that includes big oil.”

The actions of the corporations involved and the governmental agencies charged with regulating them have caused an ongoing Extinction Level Event.

This is happening all over the world. Corporations are destroying the planet under the guise of seeking profit. But their ecocidal activities are so horrendous and so ubiquitous that profits seem hardly plausible as authentic motive.

When taken together – chemically altered skies and waters and genetically altered plants and animals – reasonable minds cannot but wonder at the alien transformation of Planet Earth that we are witnessing.

Holding onto eroding Houma bayous: Harder than holding greased pigs?

In March of 2006, my son Joe participated in the American Indian Movement’s Sacred Run, traveling from San Francisco to Washington DC on foot — and I joined him for the New Orleans leg of the journey. He ran. I drove.

Joe ran through the Ninth Ward and he ran through the bayous. I drove behind him through both, getting a windshield tour of Katrina’s incredible destruction. Following along behind Joe in my car, I saw the Katrina damage up close. “You think the outsides of the houses look bad?” someone in the Ninth Ward told me. “You should see the insides.”

For several nights, the runners and the rest of us camped out in the back yard of the chief of the United Houma Nation, an organization formed by a Native American tribe that has lived in Louisiana’s southern bayous for possibly a thousand years. Houmas were definitely living in these bayous back in 1682, when French explorer Rene-Robert de La Salle passed through. Plus I got a “United Houma Nation” T-shirt from the chief herself and now I wear it every single time that I fly in an airplane. Call me superstitious, but it has definitely brought me good luck — I’ve never crashed yet. Just as long as I keep wearing my United Houma Nation T-shirt, I’ll be safe!

Anyway, after we ran/drove through the Ninth Ward, we then ran/drove through various bayous south of New Orleans and we ended up at the very tip of the bayous, in a small town on Isle de Jean Charles. This town’s major occupation in 2006 seemed to be trying to think up ways to prevent the Gulf of Mexico from drowning the town. The main road past the fire station was at sea level already. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like here during Katrina. All the houses were already built on stilts, ten feet off the ground. What could they do next? Build their homes 20 feet off the ground and swim to the store when they needed supplies? Things didn’t look hopeful for Isle de Jean Charles. Not at all.

“People don’t realize,” said one of the tribal elders I talked with there, “that we are losing more and more of these outer islands every single year. When I was a child we used to go fishing and crabbing over there, where there used to land. If I had a nickel for every crab we caught, I’d be rich! We ate better than any rich man. Fresh crab for dinner every day. We were poor but we lived well. A lot of that land is now under water. I miss those days.”

As of March 2006, this town at the end of the bayou was just barely holding on. “During a hurricane, this road is under four or five feet of water. If you don’t get out before it starts to blow, you just don’t get out. And being in one of these homes on stilts during a hurricane is like being in a washing machine during the spin cycle. Levees are being built to protect the nicer homes further inland, but nothing is being done to protect these outer areas — where we were born and raised.”

“Are the people living out here mainly Houmas?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Then we passed by a straw man hanging from a tree. Someone had put it up in the aftermath of Katrina. The sign around its neck read, “Help me!”

I asked the tribal elder about how he saw the future unfolding for Isle de Jean Charles. “We have several seers in our tribe,” he replied.

“And what do they say?”

“They just tell us to pray.”

The Houmas of Isle de Jean Charles were just barely holding on to their homes four years ago. I wonder how hard it is for them to hold onto their homes today, after the huge BP oil spill disaster. I bet that it’s like holding onto a greased pig.

And the eroding lives of the Houmas in the bayous of Louisiana could also be an analogy for the eroding lives of all Americans today — as inch by inch, town by town, the corporatists and militarists who own my country take over more and more of our land, our wealth and our rights. Soon we too will be lamenting the loss of our native lands and our traditional lifestyles.

But the Houmas are doing things and organizing and campaigning to try to save what is left of their beloved bayous. And what are most Americans doing? They are happily gulping down anti-depressants, watching Fox News and blaming all our troubles on welfare recipients and immigrants — NOT on the corporatists and militarists who are the ones who are actually eroding our lands — and greasing our pigs.

Bicycling Coast to Coast Across America 2010

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe said, “Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.”

“Bicycle adventure: if the roar of a wave crashes beyond your campsite, you might call that adventure.  When coyotes howl outside your tent–that may be adventure.   When the wind rips at your tent pegs—that too, may be called adventure.  While you’re sweating like a horse in a climb over a 12,000 foot pass, that’s adventure.  When a howling headwind  presses your lips against your teeth, you’re facing a mighty adventure.  If you’re drenched from head to toe in sweat as you pedal across a desert, that’s adventure.  If you’re pressing through a howling rainstorm, you’re soaked in adventure.   But that’s not what makes an adventure. It’s your willingness to struggle through it, to present yourself at the doorstep of Nature.  That creates the experience. No more greater joy can come from life than to live inside the “moment” of an adventure. It may be a momentary ‘high’, a stranger that changes your life, an animal that delights you or frightens you, a struggle where you triumphed, or even failed, yet you braved the challenge.   Those moments present you uncommon experiences that give your life eternal expectation.  That’s adventure!”  FW

On June 3, 2010 at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, Bob Johannes, Denis Lemay, Scott Poindexter and Frosty Wooldridge lined their bicycles up at the viewing area on the north side of the legendary span.  Ahead of them, Pacific to Atlantic, 3,300 miles, 50 miles a day in mountains, 80 to 110 miles per day on flats.  Temperatures in the 80s and in the south heat indexes 110 degrees for 20 days.  We anticipated being drenched in sweat from eight in the morning to six at night while pedaling through the heat and 95 percent humidity.  We carried shower bags for our own hygiene and comfort after a long day’s pedaling.  Adventure is not always comfortable but it is still adventure.  San Francisco, CA to Savannah Beach, GA.

“By now, a million pedal strokes have etched the muscles in my legs with a single purpose: to power the crank and move the bicycle forward. Movement is the lifeblood of bicycling.  Food flows into my body, bringing it power and energy.  It is no longer a question of struggle.  Now the journey evolves into a spiritual realm—where the pedaling becomes incidental. Nothing I do on the bike encumbers my mind. It’s a free-flow energy that comes through my body and expresses itself in the flight of the pedals.”  Frosty Wooldridge, on the road.

“Let’s stop gabbing and get this show on the road,” said Scott, clicking his brake pedals.   “We’ve only got a whole continent ahead of us.”

“Ready to ride,” said Frosty

“Keep it vertical,” said Bob.

“Let’s go climb Lombard Street, the curviest road in the world,”  Denis said.  “And, and ride down it.”

“Yippee ki yo ki yea,” said Frosty

Starting at the Golden Gate Bridge, we crossed in front of Alcatraz, then on to the curviest road in the world, Lombard Street, but we had to climb 27 percent grades to reach the top.  Later Pier 39, Chocolate Factory, artists and jugglers, street cars, Tony Bennett singing, “I left my heart in San Francisco….”

San Francisco proved crazy and loaded with gridlocked traffic and extreme people:  one car driver on purpose ran down four cyclist the day we started our ride in the streets of San Francisco. I think one of the four he ran down died. All suffered severe injuries.

Californian John Muir the great original ecologist said, “Tell me what you will of the benefactions of city civilization, of the sweet security of streets—all as part of the natural up-growth of man towards the high destiny we hear so much about. I know that our bodies were made  to thrive only in pure air, and the scenes in which pure air is found.  If death exhalations that brood the broad towns in which we so fondly compact ourselves were made visible, we should flee as from a plague.  All are more or less sick; there is not a perfectly sane man in all of San Francisco.”

We rolled south along the great Pacific Ocean to Santa Cruz.  Beautiful sunsets, eternal waves, dolphins in the surf, craggy cliffs, rocky islands, sea birds, graceful pelicans and flowers.  We met other touring cyclists at campgrounds and on the road. I dipped my small glass vile into the Pacific Ocean for a sample.  That evening at sunset with mist rolling in from the ocean, we cruised along a bike pathway filled with flowers five feet high—like pedaling through a mystical dream.

From Santa Cruz, we cut across the crop-filled fields of the Central Valley as we headed toward Yosemite and climbed to 4,000 feet along the Merced River at full blast from spring runoff.  Energy shook the road and carried us upward in wonder and awe and inspiration.

Denis said, “I have never ridden a road that gave me so much energy!”

Bob said, “For what it’s worth, it exhausted me!”

We visited all the great waterfalls blasting massive amounts of water to the valley floor.  Half –mile high Yosemite Falls, romantic Bridal Veil , raging Nevada Falls,  soothing Vernal falls, Mirror Lake, Merced River at full blast, Half Dome, John Muir Trail and Trail of Mist where everyone suffers a mini-rain storm.  We saw a bear jump into the Merced and swim across.  One night, two bears frolicked through our campsite while they non-cha-lantly played the mating game.   We climbed for hours to Nevada Falls for a spectacular sight!  We listened to Lee Stetson perform his rendition of John Muir, the first environmentalist and world traveler who lived in Yosemite and created the National Park Systems along with Teddy Roosevelt.

We rolled out of Yosemite four days later to climb to 10,000 feet at Tioga Pass with a great deal of snow and passed the majestic Tenaya Lake.  We saw a mama bear and two cubs too close for comfort.  We camped in the snow.  We enjoyed a backdrop of white-capped mountains and crystal clear waters. Amazing!   As we reached Tioga Pass, snow and frozen lakes greeted us as well as astounding beauty.

Down, down, down to the flats at 7,000 feet  and a California band playing to a fun crowd at an outdoor restaurant.  We sat around listening to the band and talking with people.   We camped on a hill overlooking Mono Lake and with a backdrop of snow-capped Sierra Mountains.

I wrote in my journal, “From amazing Pacific surf to astounding Yosemite Valley and a long hard climb to Tioga Pass…filled with bears, majestic Sequoia trees, towering mountains and green valleys blanketed with Ponderosa pines.  My legs feel stronger each day with nine hours of sleep at night.   We enjoyed a very wealthy couple entertain us for an evening at their home with pool, waterfall, 40 fish pond, elegant grounds, opulent home and a delightful brunch at dusk.  Very kind, very real and very delightful folks.  Can’t help but feel the wonder of Yosemite still prevalent 150 years after John Muir first arrived.   The only difference—a horde of people tramps all over the wilderness ‘quiet’, so much so, it feels like hiking through a ‘city’ wilderness instead of true wilderness.  The crush of  people worsens annually in all our national parks.  As we pedaled our way toward Tioga Pass, we climbed into the high country replete with snow.  We saw a bear and her cubs!  Later, we pedaled through hundreds of curves, valleys, pine forests, canyons and superb scenery.  At the top, we took pictures and car drivers marveled at our journey as I featured a “Coast to Coast” sign on the back of my bike.  A quick descent brought us to a famous California restaurant and a two man band playing a lot of  ‘oldies but goodies’.  Dozens of people asked us questions and seemed to enjoy our monumental voyage.  Later, we camped on a small hill overlooking Mono Lake with a backdrop of the Sierras.  I’m feeling strong and this ride exceeds all my expectations.”

Later the next day, we pushed to 8,000 feet and then on toward Death Valley.  But first, head winds bashed us all day as we headed into Panamint Valley filled with sand, rocks and desolation.  We camped in a washout that night with a million stars twinkling in the sky.

In my journal that night, “God, I hate headwinds!  The grind into my soul and make my legs feel like putty!  They bash at my mind and wither my resolve!  They make me work my butt off, but won’t let me get very far or very fast down the road.  Headwinds sucke!”

Next day, we stopped to see a German couple in bathing suits sitting at a breakfast table overflowing with goodies alongside their motor-home watching the desert scene before them.  We stopped and all celebrated with wine glasses filled with orange juice and feasted with Frank and Casteen on bread, cheese, chocolate and strawberries.   Later, we overlooked the moonscape of Panamint Valley 7,000 feet below us.  We dropped 7,000 feet to sea level and 110 degrees with heat waves rippling across the bottom of the valley.  Later, we cranked and sweated up an 18 mile, 9 percent grade “mother of a climb” out of Panamint to 5,000 feet and then, camped out under a fabulous moon and a zillion stars.

In my journal entry, “It’s a funny feeling riding to the edge of an ominous valley such as Panamint, with its utter desolation, sand dunes, heat, rocks and raw-edged “taunting” us to live through its debilitating heat, dryness and steep grades.  We sank down into its depths along a snaking road that weaved through astounding scenery that could only be described as if we “landed on the moon.”  Nonetheless, I took more than a few swigs on my bottle and pointed my bike to follow Denis, Scott and Bob into the depths of what can only be described as Dante’s Inferno…hours later with heat waves rippling of the valley floor, Bob and I opted to take an early out to find a campsite at 5,000 feet and cool night’s sleep.   We busted our tail feathers for 100 yards at a time, sweating like pigs, then stopped for a drink and a bite of food.  We continued that routine for five hours!  Near sunset, the sky glowed with yellow-gold light.  As we pedaled higher, cool winds and air refreshed our spirits until finally, we reached the top at 5,000 feet.  I turned to Bob with a “high five” and said, “We did it.”   “You got that right baby,” Bob said as we clasped hands in mutual joy.  Another couple stopped in their car, “Do you two need a couple of beers?”  “Does a baby cry?  Does a mule kick?  Does a bee sting?” Bob said.  She handed us two beers and said, “Good luck!”  Later we camped in a washout, fixed dinner and laughed at our good fortune and the two beers.  Beyond us, the last rays of the sun sprayed over Death Valley.  Above, planets, shooting stars, the Milky Way and a symphony of silence played across the ink black of space.  We decided our lives enjoyed great blessings.  Sleep came swiftly.”

The next day, we descended into the ominous heat of Death Valley. More desolation.  Stove Pipe Wells featured history, water fill up, store for food and visitor center.  We stopped at the sand dunes and talked with people from all over the world.   We cranked for 40 miles to Furnace Creek and the famed Twenty mule Borax Teams, miners that sweltered in that heat and hard living even today.

In my journal, “How in the daylights did they do it?  How could anybody withstand this unbearable heat at 120 degrees F? Why?  Even the plants hug together where a few of them survive, but everywhere, this desert punishes and punishes without mercy.  The only ‘things’ not affected by this heat down here must be the rocks because they do not possess life!  Yet, life persists in the form of birds, lizards, snakes, insects, cactus and other hard souls.  Why they choose to live here remains a mystery to me!”

Two days later, out of Death Valley across more desert and headwinds, to Las Vegas.  You know, cities do not provide too much fun when you’ve enjoyed the freedom, clear skies, wilderness and peaceful joy of the back roads.

John Muir said, “If in after years, I should do better in the way of exact research, then these lawless wanderings will not be without value as suggestive beginnings.  But if I should be fated to walk no more in Nature, be compelled to leave all I most devoutly love in the wilderness, return to civilization and be twisted into the characterless cable of society, then these sweet, free, cumberless rovings will be as chinks and slits on life’s horizon, through which I may obtain glimpses of the treasures that life in God’s wilds beyond my reach.”

In my journal,  “Having walked along Muir’s Trail, and having read everything he wrote, and having explored six continents like he did, I feel a brotherhood with him and a spiritual connection.  I wish all humans in cities could wander through the trees instead of the sky scrapers and cement of cities.  Our civilization would be less prone to drunkenness, drugs and mental disorders—and more prone to useful, fruitful and fulfilling lives.  Good for us to regain the life rhythms offered via wilderness.  I count my blessings.”

We pedaled on to Kingman, Arizona.  In the middle of the desert, as we sweated our butts off, a man stopped Bob and me and said, “What would be your highest wish out here in this blistering heat?”

“I could use a gallon of lemonade,” Bob said.

“Me too,” I said.

The fellow, an Austrian visitor to the USA, walked over to his trunk, cracked a cooler and brought back two, ice-cold cans of  exquisite lemonade.

“God bless you!” I said.  “You’re an angel!”

“Enjoy boys,” he said as he jumped back into the car and sped off.

“I swear the world is full of angels,” Bob said.

“Man, humans make the most intriguing creatures,” I said.

Upon reaching Kingman, Bob, always the intrepid traveler,  parted with us as he needed to take care of other commitments back home.  Then, on to Route 66 for a trip through memory lane and what a few memories that route provided!   Old ‘57 Chevies, old gas stations with .19 cents for a gallon of gas,  with pictures of John Wayne, Jane Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe alias Norma Jean,  the Beatles, Dale and Roy Rogers, Everly Brothers, Clint Eastwood and so many more!  Amazingly, in 1958, my mom and our family drove an old ’53 Chevy from Chicago to Pier 59 in Santa Monica on our way to meet our dad in Hawaii!  At the time, this 11 year old did not have any idea that he would be also traveling this same road on a bicycle over 50 years later! Who woulda’ thunk it!

In my journal, “Often, as I see this country spinning ever faster, ever more frenetic, I wonder where our ‘high speed’ lives, work and living will lead us.  How can we continue on such a pace as to race through our existence?  To what end?  Makes me wonder.”

Thoreau said, “We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.”

On to Grand Canyon,  Painted Desert, Petrified Forest, Antelope Canyon.  On to New Mexico through her majestic mountains to Ft. Sumner and Billy the Kid Museum.  Sandi drove down from Denver and we shared dinner, conversation, and the museum.  Nice to rest for a day and talk about the ride and all the exciting things Sandi enjoyed back in Denver.

After Sandi returned home, I faced three days of 30 mph headwinds.   Horrible, miserable, mind numbing pedaling and not too many miles.  Yet, I continued with tenacity because that’s what bicycle touring requires.  Climbing, dropping, climbing, dropping.  Hard play!  Up that mountain!  Down that other side!  Legs churning the wheels as if flying.  Finally, over the last set of mountains, the wind died.

In my journal, “I stopped by a guard rail and sat down with great consternation.  All around me, wind raged from the east.  I had been battling that wind for five hours.  How can a man yell at Nature?  How can I beg for a tail wind?  How can I scream that I’m sick of these head winds?  Okay boy, calm down!  True grit! Either you got it or you can break down and cry.  Who me?  Cry?  Man, I would hate to have someone stop along the road to see a grown man crying.   But just then, a pickup stopped and an old man stepped out with a 10 gallon hat.  He drawled, “You look like you’re about to cry?”  I said, “These head winds won’t let me ride my bike with any kind of a break.  They punish me!  They beat me unmercifully and they won’t stop.   I’m crying because I’m a baby in adult clothing.”  The cowboy scratched his head, pulled down his hat, “Listen son, quit feeling sorry for yourself.  Ain’t nobody cares about your iddy-bitty feelings.  If’n you ain’t tough enough for life’s hardships, then find yourself  a mule and ride him and let him suffer, or git yourself a good pickup truck and let the engine do the work…but don’t sit out here in the middle of nowhere crying.  Did Genghis Kahn cry?  Did Napolean cry?  Did Audie Murphy cry?  Do you think John Wayne cried?  Hell no!  Quit feelin’ sorry for yourself.  I don’t feel sorry for you!  You got to ‘cowboy up’ ya hear me?”  I looked up to the old cowboy, “Yes sir, I’m gonna’ cowboy up and get down the road.”   And, so I slipped my feet back into the toe clips and headed into that nasty headwind.  It still sucks, but I won’t let that old cowboy see me cry! Besides, if John Wayne didn’t cry, I better ‘cowboy up’!  As I would find out later that day, the old cowboy gave me much wisdom and an even greater gift.”

That evening at dusk, I followed a dirt road to camp in a quiet area among a jumble of gray rocks.  The wind died.  The sky slowly turned to strawberry hues and streaks of clouds resembling horse tails ‘whisked’ across the gathering eastern sky.  The sun, just beginning to dip below the horizon burned with a pink intensity too hard to describe.   I had faced a hard day in the saddle.  I pitched my tent.  But before I set up to cook my dinner, I saw a large hawk ‘fluttering’ quietly above a spot not 50 yards away.  I decided to investigate.

Suddenly, he lowered his wings and dove straight down toward the ground. I hurried to where he aimed his body.  I stealth-fully crept up on where I  figured he might have landed.  When I pulled myself just over a large rock about six feet above a small clearing before me, I saw the hawk confronting a three foot long rattle snake.  The snake, coiled as tight as springs on a 1954 Ford Pickup, unleashed a strike at the hawk, but the hawk stepped back in a blink.  The rattler recoiled.  Kicking up a little dust, the hawk flew up a foot and dared the snake to strike, which it did!  But the hawk dodged the strike with ease!   This dance of “air predator” versus “ground predator” continued for ten thrilling if not magical minutes.

Each time, the hawk dared the snake to strike.  And, the snake complied as was its nature.  By now, the last rays of the day limped across the heavens. The strawberry sky turned pale  pink while clouds turned gray, but just enough light kept the drama before me incredibly clear.  I watched in amazed, but quiet excitement.  In the last few strikes, the rattler clearly lost his ‘zip’.  But the hawk appeared fresh as Muhammad Ali dancing around the ring.

After another ten strikes, the rattler failed to recoil quickly.  The bird hopped and flew over his head. The rattler made two more strikes, but on the third strike, the hawk snatched the snake right behind his head.  He pecked the snake on the head as he held the snake securely within his talons.  Almost without effort, he lifted into the sky with a limp rattler dangling beneath him.  Within seconds, he flew into the sunset and vanished into the night.

“My God,” I muttered to myself.  “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

“How many hearts with warm red blood in them are beating under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining!  A multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but whose lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about their own affairs as we are about ours.”  John Muir, 1869

I returned to my campsite.  I pulled out my tripod seat and planted myself upon it.   I lit my one burner cooking stove and threw on a pack of rice and pilaf.  As it cooked over the heat, I dipped a slice of my new loaf of bread down into the broth.  I looked up at the stars. I gazed at the gray rock all around me.  I watched the very last ‘tone’ of the western sky surrender to the onslaught of the darkness.   The tasty scent of my dinner wafted toward my nostrils.  Soon, the rice/pilaf dinner and my loaf of bread made their way into my hungry mouth.

How can a man be so lucky as to see a sight like I had just witnessed?  What grace of the Great Spirit brought me to that moment?  While adventure is not always comfortable, it allows for pure moments of untainted amazement unavailable to city dwellers.

“Time means nothing now. It slips away as easily as grains of sand on a beach.  But those grains only trade places. On my bike, I change the same way—new locations in the passage of time.  The pedaling becomes incidental now—like breathing.   No conscious effort—only flow.  The hills and mountains come and go—my legs powering over them in a kind of winsome trance.  Grappling with headwinds only brings determination, while riding a tail wind brings ecstasy.   I transform into a state of bliss, much like a seagull gliding over the waves or floating on updrafts.  I see them standing on the beaches or soaring over the surf. Just living. Just being. Me too!”  Frosty Wooldridge, on the road.

At Clovis, New Mexico, the road flattened!  No more hard ‘play’!  Never hit my granny gear for the rest of the ride.   But a new challenge awaited: heat and humidity.

We pedaled into Texas for seven days crossing the Old Chisholm Trail, other cattle trails, Pecos River, Rio Grande.  Nothing too much exciting about Texas!  Lots of working oil wells and thousands of abandoned wells dotted and blighted the landscape.  Additionally, I witnessed thousands of abandoned cars, trucks, tractors, trailer homes and junk of all descriptions along the roads I traveled.  Really ugly! Sweat soaked my jersey and shorts every day from ten minutes into the ride until stopping around 7:00 p.m. at night.  Shower!  Yes, a Godsend, but only three minutes worth from my shower bag!  Still, clean, dinner, sleep!

In my journal:  in 150 short years—the new citizens of this continent that the Indians had kept pristine for a thousand years—have trashed North America.  I witnessed hundreds of thousands of junked cars, trailers, tractors, metal, plastic bags, bottles, cans, glass and abandoned buildings thus far.  We Americans have turned America into a giant junk yard.  No personal responsibility, no personal accountability,  no one cares enough to lift a finger! Our rivers run with chemicals and floating bottles and plastic.  I’ve canoed the Mississippi and it’s a junk yard replete with unending chemicals.  At its mouth, it features a 10,000 square mile ‘dead zone’ where vertebrate marine creatures cannot survive.   I saw junk cars, junk trailer homes, junk of all kinds on the main streets of many little towns across the south.   It’s almost like the residents ‘can’t see’ the ugliness and therefore, ignore it and do nothing to change their environment.  Even in Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Death Valley, people throw their crap out the windows of their cars.  I swear that plastic proves the worst invention of humanity.  It spreads like a plague across the planet, killing and destroying the natural world.   While I have picked up over a half million pieces of trash in my life, humans continue to trash the planet faster than those of us who care about our surroundings.  In a word, it makes me sick to my stomach. We humans prove to be God’s highest expression and worst mistake!”

On to Louisiana with trees, old homes and poor folks dominating.   Every town featured more house trailers than homes.   Sometimes, a nice brick home would see its opposite across the street or next door in a broken down, gutted trailer home.  Most disturbing to see.   Folks quite nice and friendly, however.   Mississippi pretty much the same with small towns along the road with poverty and broken down trailers and junk everywhere.

One fellow drove up to me in a nice van: “Hey, can I trouble you by buying you a nice pizza for lunch?”

“Sure, but why do you want to buy me lunch?” I asked.

“Because you’re living my dream,” he said.  “And, I’d like to find out how you do it.”

From there, he shared with me  his life story for 1.5 hours!  He said, “When I ride my bicycle, the whole world becomes perfect.  I want to ride the entire peninsula of Florida on my bike.  Can I do it?”

“You certainly can!” I said.

I traveled into Alabama on the Selma to Montgomery freedom march route with Martin Luther King in 1965.  I lived in the south at that time and knew about segregation, separate but equal and discrimination. Further along, I visited Tuskegee Airmen Museum in that legendary town. Again slow and poverty.    I sweated from the moment I got up with 110 heat indexes to the moment I crawled into the tent at night.  I drenched my jersey and sweated as I fell asleep.   Essentially for 21 days, I lived in sweat in the South.   Finally, I pedaled through Georgia with the same topography and poverty to the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah.

However, remembering the old cowboy that told me to ‘cowboy up’, I didn’t cry. I laughed hysterically!  I may have whimpered a few times!  I stopped at Subway Sandwich shops and order a six inch veggie sub and add an ‘free fillups’ lemonade. I drank 20 glasses of ice cold pink lemonade before stepping back out into the killer heat.

Upon reaching Tybee Island and the white sands of the ocean, I dipped my small glass vile into the Atlantic Ocean  at Tybee Island for a sample to place on my memory shelf to remember my coast to coast across America in 2010. Many people congratulated me and shook my hand.  They exclaimed the feat in surprise and excitement.

In my journal, “Oh, what a joy for two months to float away from the problems of humanity!  We awoke with the sun.  We utilized our bodies via pedaling. We talked to many strangers.  We shared our energies.  We laughed.  We took pictures.  Travel becomes the great teacher and the great humbler!  I feel gratitude and humility at the beautiful human parade for which I am a part for a short time in the life of this planet.  I feel tremendous appreciation for my ‘luck of the lottery’ numbers to enjoy this life on my bicycle, with my zest for living and my enthusiasm for pushing myself through the tough times.  And, on this trip too, I learned a few new lessons from Bob, Denis and Scott.  For certain, we finished this grand adventure with a sailboat full of memories, cargo ship full of laughs and a battleship full of photographs.  In the summer of 2010, four men enjoyed  amazing moments as they bicycled across North America.”

In Travels with Charlie, Steinbeck said, “When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don’t improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.
“When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay.

“Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has a personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.”

Life: the great learning experience!

“Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey.  It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again.  What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.”  Captain Jean Luc Picard, Starship Enterprise.

Forthcoming book:  Bicycling Across America: Travels with Condor.  In Steinbeck’s book, he portrayed America 60 years ago.  He referenced his dog “Charlie”. I will write about America in 2010, the changes, the mood, the complications and the differences.”  By the way, my bike’s name: Condor!

Obama’s Jobs Program

One – Two – Three More Free Trade Agreements!

On July 7, 2010, President Obama made the following remarks:

We’re also reforming our own restrictions on exports, consistent with our national security interests. And we hope to move forward on new agreements with some of our key partners. I’ve instructed U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to begin discussions to help resolve outstanding issues with the pending Korean Free Trade Agreement before my visit to Korea in November. It’s an agreement that will create new jobs and opportunity for people in both of our countries.

We also want to deepen and broaden our relations with Panama and Colombia. So we’re working to resolve outstanding issues with the free trade agreements with those key partners, and we’re focused on submitting them as soon as possible for congressional consideration.

If President Obama’s promise that these Free Trade Agreements (FTA) will create new jobs conjures up a sense of deja vu to those hearing these words, this is entirely explainable. In 1993 President Bill Clinton said of the signing of NAFTA:

We will make our case as hard and as well as we can. And, though the fight will be difficult, I deeply believe we will win. And I’d like to tell you why. First of all, because NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement.

North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) Results

President Clinton could not have gotten it more wrong. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the number of U.S. jobs created by export expansion in relation to the number of U.S. jobs lost to the growth of foreign imports because of NAFTA in its first ten years resulted in a net loss of 879,280 jobs. (See “NAFTA – Related Job Losses Have Piled Up Since 1993” by Robert E. Scott.) This is not to mention the downward pressure on U.S. workers’ wages NAFTA created, which contributed to their relative stagnation since the mid 70s.

NAFTA allowed U.S. corporations to more easily move their investment funds across the Mexican/U.S. border to set up new production facilities, while closing down similar factories in the U.S. They were happy to do this because of Mexico’s cheap wages and less regulated labor and environmental standards. This created huge profits for the business elite but resulted in deteriorating conditions for workers on both sides of the border. U.S. workers were forced to face wage cuts or unemployment, and Mexican workers lost their traditional jobs, and farms and were forced to work in near slave labor conditions in U.S. corporate facilities within the economic zones called maquiladoras.

NAFTA’s free trade was a boon for Wall Street, but a bust for Main Street. President Obama is resurrecting President Clinton’s failed promise of NAFTA’s jobs creation in hopes of selling the public on the Korea, Colombia, and Panama FTAs. With nearly half of U.S. workers having lost a job or experienced a cut in wages since the recession started in 2007/2008, combined with a jobless “recovery,” the need for jobs is first and foremost on U.S. workers’ minds. However, this time around, after the experience of NAFTA, the promise of jobs creation comes off like a cheap gimmick used too many times, as if to sell a shoddy “lemon” used car as good coin. All three of the trade agreements Obama is pushing are modeled after NAFTA. There is absolutely no reason to expect different results when it comes to jobs creation.

New FTA Consequences

For instance, when it comes to the Korean Free Trade Agreement, another study by the EPI estimates that it would likely displace 888,000 existing or potential U.S. jobs. This would include many union jobs in heavily organized sectors of the U.S. economy such as auto. The Korean Free Trade Agreement would make it easier for corporations involved in automobile production to outsource U.S. jobs to Korea in search of cheaper wages and bigger profits, further decimating the ranks of the United Auto Workers. While there would be some job creation in industries related to exports, according to the EPI study, U.S. workers would still be faced with a net loss of 322,000 jobs by 2015. (See “Economic Impacts of Korus-FTA” page 6, by Robert E. Scott.)

In addition to threatening U.S. jobs and wages, by promoting FTAs with nations such as Panama and Colombia, the administration is further exposing its lack of concern when it comes to corruption and workers’ rights abroad. Panama was identified by the Government Accountability Office as one of eight countries listed on all the major tax haven watchdog lists. An FTA with Panama would increase its ability to act as a money-laundering center. Colombia is the most dangerous nation in the world to be a union member, with 2,300 labor advocates assassinated since 1991. An FTA with Colombia would give its government further strength and motivation to trample on workers’ basic rights.

The fact that these trade deals are being pushed during hard times for U.S. workers is another example of how the U.S. political establishment is captive to corporate and Wall Street big money interests as opposed to the aspirations of the majority who voted for Obama in hopes of change. What U.S. workers need is a serious, massive jobs-creation program now, not dressed up policies that result in job losses.

The Same Goal?

Towards the conclusion of his recent remarks President Obama said:

For a long time we were trapped in, I think, a false political debate in this country where business was on one side, labor was on the other. There were partisan divides. The argument was either you were pro-trade or you were anti-trade. What we now have an opportunity to do is to refocus our attention where we’re all in it together. Businesses, workers, government – everybody is focused on the same goal.

Unfortunately, as the FTA policies he is promoting attest to, Obama’s notion of “we’re all in it together” is that workers do all the sacrificing while big business reaps all the profitable benefits. This is not a partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans. While holding the presidency, the Democrats have proven themselves to be the most effective party for passing FTAs with Republican support. Rather, it is a class divide. While Wall Street is hoarding taxpayer paid-for bail outs and high unemployment continues, it could not be clearer that it is impossible for the corporate owners and working people to be focused on the same goal. What is good for one class of people comes at the expense of the other. The FTA policies that President Obama is advocating, with Wall Street’s support, will hurt U.S. workers. No amount of labor friendly amendments to these FTAs can fundamentally change this.

Labor’s Chance to Lead

Labor needs to take the lead in opposing the FTA’s that Obama is pushing and struggle for the creation of 15 million jobs along the lines that AFL-CIO President Donald Trumka has spoken of recently. It is not enough to pay visits to Congressional representatives and Senators in lobbying campaigns. Such an approach failed to defeat NAFTA, pass Single Payer Health Reform, or pass the Employee Free Choice Act, etc. A bold unambiguous show of unity and strength is required to win jobs at Wall Street’s expense and defeat FTAs that hurt workers. Labor needs to galvanize its tens of millions of supporters, as well as all of its allies and hit the streets in a massive way.

The recent news of the AFL-CIO’s Executive Boards support for building demonstrations on October 2nd in D.C., Louisiana, Arizona, and San Francisco is of historic importance. (See AFL-CIO Backs October 2nd March in Washington DC for Jobs, Justice and Peace.) Should these demonstrations be actively built nationwide, they could play a role on par with Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963 in mobilizing the vast majority of working families into the streets for jobs as an unambiguous expression of what is most important in their minds. That is, this outpouring of popular sentiment for jobs at the expense of Wall Street could prove to be pivotal for putting workers’ rights on the political front burner as the March on Washington was for Civil Rights. If so, it is all the more likely that the Korea, Panama, and Colombia FTAs will be left to wither on the vine.

Has BP Triggered A World-Killing Event?

By Terrence Aym…

Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions.

251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. [1] Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world. [2]

55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM).

The LPTM lasted 100,000 years. [3]

Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.

The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.

The oil giant drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble.

Ryskin’s methane extinction theory

Northwestern University‘s Gregory Ryskin, a bio-chemical engineer, has a theory: The oceans periodically produce massive eruptions of explosive methane gas. He has documented the scientific evidence that such an event was directly responsible for the mass extinctions that occurred 55 million years ago. [4]

Many geologists concur: “The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region “boils over,” ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO2, H2S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide…” [5]

The warning signs of an impending planetary catastrophe—of such great magnitude that the human mind has difficulty grasping it-would be the appearance of large fissures or rifts splitting open the ocean floor, a rise in the elevation of the seabed, and the massive venting of methane and other gases into the surrounding water.

Such occurrences can lead to the rupture of the methane bubble containment—it can then permit the methane to breach the subterranean depths and undergo an explosive decompression as it catapults into the Gulf waters.  [6]

All three warning signs are documented to be occurring in the Gulf.

Ground zero: The Gulf Coast

The people and property located on the greater expanse of the Gulf Coast are sitting at Ground Zero. They will be the first exposed to poisonous, cancer causing chemical gases. They will be the ones that initially experience the full fury of a methane bubble exploding from the ruptured seabed.

The media has been kept away from the emergency salvage measures being taken to forestall the biggest catastrophe in human history. The federal government has warned them away from the epicenter of operations with the threat of a $40,000 fine for each infraction and the possibility of felony arrests.

Why is the press being kept away? Word is that the disaster is escalating.

Cracks and bulges

Methane is now streaming through the porous, rocky seabed at an accelerated rate and gushing from the borehole of the first relief well. The EPA is on record that Rig #1 is releasing methane, benzene, hydrogen sulfide and other toxic gases. Workers there now wear advanced protection including state-of-the-art, military-issued gas masks.

Reports, filtering through from oceanologists and salvage workers in the region, state that the upper level strata of the ocean floor is succumbing to greater and greater pressure. That pressure is causing a huge expanse of the seabed-estimated by some as spreading over thousands of square miles surrounding the BP wellhead-to bulge. Some claim the seabed in the region has risen an astounding 30 feet.

The fractured BP wellhead, site of the former Deepwater Horizon, has become the epicenter of frenetic attempts to quell the monstrous flow of methane.

The subterranean methane is pressurized at 100,000 pounds psi. According to Matt Simmons, an oil industry expert, the methane pressure at the wellhead has now skyrocketed to a terrifying 40,000 pounds psi.

Another well-respected expert, Dr. John Kessler of Texas A&M University has calculated that the ruptured well is spewing 60 percent oil and 40 percent methane. The normal methane amount that escapes from a compromised well is about 5 percent.

More evidence? A huge gash on the ocean floor—like a ragged wound hundreds of feet long—has been reported by the NOAA research ship, Thomas Jefferson. Before the curtain of the government enforced news blackout again descended abruptly, scientists aboard the ship voiced their concerns that the widening rift may go down miles into the earth.

That gash too is hemorrhaging oil and methane. It’s 10 miles away from the BP epicenter. Other, new fissures, have been spotted as far as 30 miles distant.

Measurements of the multiple oil plumes now appearing miles from the wellhead indicate that as much as a total  of 124,000 barrels of oil are erupting into the Gulf waters daily-that’s about 5,208,000 gallons of oil per day.

Most disturbing of all: Methane levels in the water are now calculated as being almost one million times higher than normal. [7]

Mass death on the water

If the methane bubble—a bubble that could be as big as 20 miles wide—erupts with titanic force from the seabed into the Gulf, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will immediately sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists participating in the salvage operation will die instantly.

Next, the ocean bottom will collapse, instantaneously displacing up to a trillion cubic feet of water or more and creating a towering supersonic tsunami annihilating everything along the coast and well inland. Like a thermonuclear blast, a high pressure atmospheric wave could precede the tidal wave flattening everything in its path before the water arrives.

When the roaring tsunami does arrive it will scrub away all that is left.

A chemical cocktail of poisons

Some environmentalist experts are calling what’s pouring into the land, sea and air from the seabed breach ’a chemical cocktail of poisons.’

Areas of dead zones devoid of oxygen are driving species of fish into foreign waters, killing plankton and other tiny sea life that are the foundation for the entire food chain, and polluting the air with cancer-causing chemicals and poisonous rainfalls.

A report from one observer in South Carolina documents oily residue left behind after a recent thunderstorm. And before the news blackout fully descended the EPA released data that benzene levels in New Orleans had rocketed to 3,000 parts per billion.

Benzene is extremely toxic and even short term exposure can cause agonizing death from cancerous lesions years later.

The people of Louisiana have been exposed for more than two months—and the benzene levels may be much higher now. The EPA measurement was taken in early May. [8]

Doomsday

While some say it can’t happen because the bulk of the methane is frozen into crystalline form, others point out that the underground methane sea is gradually melting from the nearby surging oil that’s estimated to be as hot as 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Most experts in the know, however, agree that if the world-changing event does occur it will happen suddenly and within the next 6 months.

So, if events go against  Mankind and the bubble bursts in the coming months, Gregory Ryskin may become one of the most famous people in the world. Of course, he won’t have long to enjoy his new found fame because very shortly after the methane eruption civilization will collapse.

Perhaps if humanity is very, very lucky, some may find a way to avoid the mass extinction that follows and carry on the human race.

Perhaps.
…………

Sources

[1] The Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species became extinct 251 million years ago.

[2] “The Day The Earth Nearly Died,” BBC Horizon, 2002

[3] Report about the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM), which occurred around 55 million years ago and lasted about 100,000 years. Large undersea methane caused explosions and mass extinctions.

[4] Ryskin Theory
Huge combustible clouds produced by methane gas trapped under the seas and explosively released could have killed off the majority of marine life, land animals, and plants at the end of the Permian era—long before the dinosaurs arrived.

[5] James P. Kennett, Kevin G. Cannariato, Ingrid L. Hendy, Richard J. Behl (2000), “Carbon Isotopic Evidence for Methane Hydrate Instability During Quaternary Interstadials,” Science 288.

[6] “An awesome mix of fire and water may lie behind mass extinctions”

[7] “Methane in Gulf ‘astonishingly high’-US scientist”

[8] Report: “” TV 4WWL video

Links

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“BP Official Admits to Damage Beneath the Sea Floor“

Bibi Back at the White House

The Consistency of Israeli Duplicity Comes Ever More Clearly into Focus…

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the White House July 6^th, it’s time to recall how Tel Aviv deceived Washington throughout the entirety of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

U.S. military leaders will be watching this meeting very closely, as will the veterans community.

For me, confirmation of Israel’s strategic duplicity came in a meeting with Harry McPherson who served as counsel and speechwriter for Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ entered the Senate in 1948 with Louisiana Senator Russell Long for whom I served as counsel and speechwriter.

At his law offices in Washington, Harry described his arrival in Tel Aviv the night that the 1967 War began. That war typifies the consistency of this ongoing deceit.

He flew in the night before from Vietnam through Hong Kong. He knew on arrival that something was amiss because the airport lights were off. He checked into his hotel and was awakened early on June 5th by Wally Barbour, the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

A pear-shaped diplomat with a penchant for yellowing Palm Beach suits, Barbour called to tell Harry that the war had just broken out—to which he replied, “But I just come from the war.”

Barbour picked him up at the hotel and they hurried to the foreign ministry for a brief meeting before conferring with the Israeli chief of military intelligence. In response to their repeated question, “Did the Egyptians attack?” McPherson and Barbour received only evasive answers. As air raid sirens wailed, McPherson recalls in A Political Education:

Barbour suggested that we might continue the discussion in the underground bunker. The general studied his watch. “No, that won’t be necessary. We can stay here.” Barbour and I looked at each other. If it wasn’t necessary, the Egyptian air force had been destroyed. That could only have happened so quickly if it had been surprised on the ground. We did not need to ask for confirmation, but left at once to cable the news to Washington.

Israel was neither under attack nor under threat of attack as its leadership has since conceded. Air raid sirens were just props in the stagecraft of waging war by way of deception.

The Israel-as-victim storyline was stage-managed by Zionist extremists to make both Israeli citizens and foreign observers believe that the Jewish state was endangered. As with the phony intelligence that induced the U.S. to war in Iraq in March 2003, the facts in June 1967 differed dramatically from the geopolitical narrative.

Under cover of that false attack, Tel Aviv occupied land belonging to its neighbors. The bulk of that property is still held by force 43 years later with the support of the U.S. as its oft-duped ally.

Servicing the Commander-in-Chief

In the lead-up to Israel’s Six-Day Land Grab, Johnson was lobbied by U.N. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg. LBJ had moved Goldberg from the Supreme Court to the U.N. so he could be replaced with Abe Fortas, Johnson’s personal lawyer. Fortas was a senior operative in a network of Zionists who helped produce the Johnson presidency and shaped its policies.

When Goldberg used heart-rending rhetoric to weave for Johnson a storyline about Israeli vulnerability and the pending victimization of hapless Jews at the hostile hands of an Arab “ring of steel,” LBJ waved a Central Intelligence Agency report predicting that Israel could win any war in the region in two weeks.

When Goldberg persisted, Johnson ordered the CIA to revisit their analysis. The agency returned with a revised report concluding that Israel could win any war in the region in one week.

On June 4^th, at a Fortas-hosted dinner for Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and New York investment banker John Loeb, Fortas cautioned Johnson that war might soon erupt in the Middle East.

When the president turned to McNamara for his opinion, the Pentagon chief agreed with Johnson that there would be no war. Johnson then confirmed that U.S. intelligence agencies agreed with McNamara’s assessment. Johnson left for the White House at 10:58 p.m.

Less than six hours later, at 4:30 a.m. on June 5^th, National Security Adviser Walt Rostow called LBJ to announce that Israel had attacked Egypt. Mathilde Krim, a former Irgun operative, was Johnson’s guest at the White House that night. Before informing anyone else, LBJ stopped by the blonde beauty’s bedroom to tell her, “The war has started.”

Not until 7:45 a.m. did Johnson speak with Soviet Premier Aleksi Kosygin who expressed his hope and expectation that the U.S., as Israel’s closest ally, would restrain Tel Aviv.

Mathilde Krim was the wife of Arthur Krim, chairman of the Finance Committee for the Democratic Party and president of United Artists. While Johnson was in the Senate, Krim bought land near the LBJ Ranch in Texas where he built “Mathilde’s House.” When Arthur was away on business, Johnson routinely took Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to visit Mathilde.

An Inside Job

In the war’s first few hours, the “victimized” Israelis destroyed the Egyptian Air Force while its aircraft were still on the ground. Walt Rostow sent Johnson a memo describing the success of Tel Aviv’s “vulnerable” military as “the first day’s turkey shoot.” By evening, the Jordanian air force was also largely destroyed.

Johnson also received a memo from Arthur Krim that read, “Many arms shipments are packed and ready to go to Israel, but are being held up. It would be helpful if these could be released.” Johnson ordered them released.

By evening of the second day, two-thirds of the Syrian air force had been destroyed. The glee in the State Department Operations Room was palpable, leading Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow to caution, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, do not forget that we are neutral in word, thought and deed.”

At the State Department’s mid-day press briefing, spokesman Robert McCloskey repeated Rostow’s official “neutrality” lie. Zionist advisers surrounded Johnson in the decision-making that lent U.S. support to the 1967 war. “Everyone around me, without exception was pro-Israel,” recalls Johnson speechwriter Grace Halsell. She identified more than a dozen close advisers to Johnson, including Walt Rostow, his brother Eugene and Arthur Goldberg.

White House counsels Leo White and Jake Jacobsen were likewise pro-Israel as were two key speechwriters: Richard Goodwin, husband of biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Ben Wattenberg whose parents moved to the U.S. from Palestine. Likewise domestic affairs adviser Larry Levinson and John Roche, an avid Zionist and Johnson’s intellectual-in-residence.

The Non-Separation of Powers

In the lead-up to this Israeli aggression, Fortas served as an enabling back channel between the Israeli embassy and the White House. Fortas had known Israeli Ambassador Avraham Harman since the ambassador’s arrival in Washington in 1959. During the March 1960 visit to Washngton of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Fortas sponsored a breakfast at his home attended by Harman and Johnson who was then Senate Majority Leader.

Fortas’ biographer conceded: “For several weeks before the crisis erupted into war, the Israeli ambassador was ‘in very frequent contact’ with Fortas and regularly visited the justice at his chambers or his house.” An outspoken Zionist, Fortas also attended a critical White House strategy meeting on the Middle East on May 26^th, ten days before the land grab began.

When it came to Israel, Fortas was never neutral. “When they get back from Egypt,” a law clerk in his Supreme Court chambers overheard Justice Fortas say, “I’m going to decorate my office with Arab foreskins.”

Throughout the six days of carnage that Israel inflicted on its neighbors, Near East experts met daily with Johnson in the Cabinet Room. Fortas attended each meeting. Reflecting on comments by Fortas to Johnson at their June 4^th dinner party, John Loeb wrote to Fortas on June 6^th: “You were prophetic about the Middle East. Thank the Lord the President has you as a friend and counselor.”

In 1968, Johnson failed in his attempt to elevate Fortas to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Fortas resigned in May 1969 in the wake of a series of scandals. In the summer of 1970, The New York Times reported his registration as a lobbyist for Kuhn, Loeb & Company.

Fortas cemented his relationship with Johnson in 1948 when, in LBJ’s first Senate race in Texas, the Washington lawyer finessed the extensive vote fraud apparent in the Democratic primary in which Johnson claimed an 87-vote victory, including 200 votes tallied in alphabetical order.

A Fortas-devised legal strategy led to Johnson’s name appearing on the November ballot as the Democratic Party nominee. In a strongly Democratic state, that primary victory assured the ambitious Texan a victory in the general election and a seat in the U.S. Senate. Decades later, those familiar with this political history continued to refer to him as “Landslide Lyndon.”

A Strategic Provocation

The Six-Day Slaughter of 1967 pre-staged the geopolitical dynamics for all that has followed—not only in the Middle East but also in the U.S. as Israel’s violent taking of land outraged everyone in the region and set American foreign policy on today’s ruinous course.

The periodic carnage visited on Palestinians ensures that this strategic provocation remains fresh in the minds of Muslims worldwide. Reactions to these serial provocations, in turn, fuel the plausibility of the latest storyline, The Clash of Civilizations and its corrosive counterpart: the Global War on Terrorism with “Islamo fascism” the essential Evil Doer branding.

Israel has performed with reliable consistency every act required to provoke and sustain extremism in the Muslim world. Only by duplicity has the Zionist state sustained a U.S. alliance whose main effect has been to make America appear guilty by association.

On August 9, 2000 in a White House ceremony, President Bill Clinton presented Johnson paramour Mathilde Krim with the Medal of Freedom. By then this former Irgun terrorist had been rebranded as a high-profile medical researcher and AIDS activist adored and promoted to political prominence by her pro-Israeli supporters in Hollywood.

It’s not expected that Israeli-American Rahm Israel Emanuel, White House Chief of Staff to Barack Obama, will urge that Monica Lewinsky receive the nation’s highest civilian honor. It’s not yet known what role Emanuel and White House political strategist David Axelrod have played in sustaining our costly “special relationship” with the Jewish state.

As yet another Israeli Prime Minister arrives in Washington with yet another rationalization for continuing this entangled alliance, a nomination is pending for the appointment to our highest court of a third Jewish Zionist for a court with just nine jurists. In time, historians will identify the role played by the Israel lobby (and Emanuel/Axelrod) in the nomination of Elena Kagan.

Based on the consistency of “Bibi” Netanyahu’s duplicitous conduct over decades, Barack Obama needs to know when an Israeli Prime Minister is once again deceiving a U.S. president. History suggests a reliable test: are his lips moving?

The End of History

Though the U.S. has been deceived with stunning consistency for more than six decades, a mid-course correction remains possible. If this latest president can concede to himself that his political career is a product of those complicit at this deceit, he may yet emerge as the transformative leader that his supporters once hoped he could be.

If Barack Obama can be honest with himself, he will speak candidly to the American people and explain why this long-running deceit must be brought to a speedy close. If on July 6^th he announces support for a one state solution, that will start to unwind this perilous alliance.

Senior military leaders have confirmed the common source undermining U.S. national security. Should the current commander-in-chief fail to act consistent with the known facts, this latest political product of the Chicago Outfit may risk their continued allegiance.

To advance peace, he needs only declare U.S. support for the designation of Jerusalem as an international cultural site under the protection of U.N. troops. To end the multi-decade cycle of provocation/reaction, he needs only reassign 30,000 U.S. troops to Palestine to rebuild a destroyed society, resettle its ousted people on occupied land and secure Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

The Zionist experiment was a failure before it began. An overdue end to this apartheid regime can begin July 6^th. Or this perilous alliance can continue—at untold cost in blood and treasure.

July 6^th could be a defining moment for a president in need of such a moment. That date could also mark the restoration of American values to U.S. foreign policy and grant solace to those moderate and secular Jews long appalled at the conduct of Zionists who in 1948 deceived a U.S. president to recognize as a legitimate state their extremist enclave in the Middle East.

Turtle Soup for Tony Hayward

Endangered Species of Turtles being burned alive (Well, perhaps not all of them.)

If Tony Hayward really said what he and his ‘peers’ thought:

Americans are so unsophisticated, they fail to see the big picture, becoming obsessed with minor issues. For instance, Kindra Arnesen, of Podunk Venice, Louisiana. Oh My Gosh, has she ever had to grapple with the complexities of multiple divisions, plunging stock prices, minor technical problems? No, all she thinks about is, “the people she cares about.” Really, as if a motley collection of fishermen and their ratty children and wives matter in the larger scheme of things. It was in very poor form for this wretch to speak of matters, such as the carefully crafted public relations work intended simply to assuage public fears. While we may, jokingly of course, refer to these as Balloon and Pony Shows, really, no intention to deceive is present, you have my word as a gentleman on that.

And finally, Kindra, this world was intended for us, the elite, not for such as you. This, my dear, is real natural selection. Get used to it.

(To be included in The Pillsbury Justice Cookbook – Cooking Up Justice for America)

British Prerogative Turtle Soup au Sherry

Turtle soup is a great delicacy everywhere, but especially today in Louisiana, at least for the select few. Rumor has it that Tony Hayward has a tureen especially made for him as often as possible, wanting nothing to go to waste. The flavor of the turtle meat is both delicate and intense, savory and piquant. Perhaps the touch of petroleum adds to the savor for Tony. Experts say there are supposedly seven distinct flavors of meat within the turtle which give this soup its evocative pungency, making it linger on the tongue and in the mind, as only the elite can appreciate fully.

But this special recipe you will not find in any of the famous eateries in New Orleans since turtle, and so many other things, are now off the menu. This is a very special preparation, its main ingredients not usually available. Dark, rich, thick, a stew-type dish, the barest whiff is redolent with all the things nature so generously provides. It can be a meal in itself for a busy executive like Tony Hayward, who, of course, has it specially made for his private delight.

British Prerogative Turtle Soup au Sherry

Designed for soon to be Knighted, Sir Anthony Hayward

• 10 ounces (2-1/2 sticks) unsalted Plugra butter
• 3/4 cup all-purpose Glad flour
• 1 pound turtle meat, fresh or slightly singed, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, from our private little supply
• 1 cup minced celery, add more if you like, it attracts women (4 stalks)
• 2 medium shallots, minced (2 medium)
• 1-1/2 teaspoons Allium sativum garlic, minced, the commonest variety, but best for taste and healing properties.
• 3 (Laurus Nobilis) bay leaves, I love the name!
• 1 teaspoon Spice Hunter Highland from Saigon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme, acquire it whole, assign a clean up worker to mince it.
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground Lampong black pepper,
• 1-1/2 cups tomato purée, start with a heritage variety, naturally, have one of those trusty clean up workers carefully prepare the puree.
• 6 cups veal stock from preborn calf, acquired from unsuspecting 4H member.

NOTE: If turtle bones are available, add them to the veal bones when making the stock for this dish

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, as needed
• 1/2 cup lemon juice, squeezed fresh by a convenient clean-up worker, tell him it is for the respirators.
• 5 hard-boiled eggs, finely chopped, boiled using the French technique from fertilized chickens
• 1 tablespoon minced Neapolitanum Danert parsley, remember, same technique for your fresh minced sprigs!
• 6 teaspoons Massandra Sherry, never skimp when it really matters!

Melt the 8 ounces (2 sticks) butter in a heavy saucepan. Add the flour and cook, stirring frequently, over medium heat until the roux is light brown. Set aside while you check on the present balloon and pony show being presented to credulous politicians and regulators.

In a 5-quart saucepan, melt the remaining butter and add turtle meat, even if the little bugger is still twitching, the recipe called for FRESH, remember. Cook over high heat until the meat is brown. Add celery, onions, garlic and seasonings, and cook until the vegetables are transparent, though we all know how much you dislike the word.

Add tomato purée, lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes as you, now annoyed, again tell you coterie of spin specialists BP CANNOT afford respirators for clean up crews. Add the stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the roux and cook over low heat, stirring, until the soup is smooth and thickened. Correct seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Add lemon juice, eggs and parsley.

Remove from heat and serve. At the table, add 1 teaspoon sherry to each soup plate.

Remember as you take that first sip, you are rich, and getting richer. You deserve anything and everything you can get as you suffer through this ugly fiasco, which is just another normal cost of business to be borne by those who have so benefited by your past largess. What are a few small towns filled with bumpkins, anyway? Not even one of them is a stock holder.

Life is sooo unfair. You have put up with so much! Cherish this moment because sometimes we just need a tiny little thing to remind us how really special we are, right?

How The BP Disaster Could Kill Millions

By Terrence Aym 

Disturbing evidence is mounting that something frightening is happening deep under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico – something far worse than the BP oil gusher.

Warnings were raised as long as a year before the Deepwater Horizon disaster that the area of seabed chosen by the BP geologists might be unstable, or worse, inherently dangerous.

What makes the location that Transocean chose potentially far riskier than other potential oil deposits located at other regions of the Gulf? It can be summed up with two words: methane gas.

The same methane that makes coal mining operations hazardous and leads to horrendous mining accidents deep under the earth also can present a high level of danger to certain oil exploration ventures.

Location of Deepwater Horizon oil rig was criticized

More than 12 months ago some geologists rang the warning bell that the Deepwater Horizon exploratory rig might have been erected directly over a huge underground reservoir of methane.

Documents from several years ago indicate that the subterranean geologic formation may contain the presence of a huge methane deposit.

None other than the engineer who helped lead the team to snuff the Gulf oilfires set by Saddam Hussein to slow the advance of American troops has stated that a huge underground lake of methane gas-compressed by a pressure of 100,000 pounds per square inch (psi)-could be released by BP’s drilling effort to obtain the oil deposit.

Current engineering technology cannot contain gas that is pressurized to 100,000 psi.

By some geologists’ estimates the methane could be a massive 15 to 20 mile toxic and explosive bubble trapped for eons under the Gulf sea floor. In their opinion, the explosive destruction of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead was an accident just waiting to happen.

Yet the disaster that followed the loss of the rig pales by comparison to the apocalyptic disaster that may come.

A cascading catastrophe

According to worried geologists, the first signs that the methane may burst its way through the bottom of the ocean would be fissures or cracks appearing on the ocean floor near the damaged well head.

Evidence of fissures opening up on the seabed have been captured by the robotic submersibles working to repair and contain the ruptured well. Smaller, independent plumes have also appeared outside the nearby radius of the bore hole itself.

According to some geological experts, BP’s operations set into motion a series of events that may be irreversible. Step-by-step the drilling team committed one error after another.

Congressmen Henry Waxman, D-CA, and Bart Stupak, D-MI, in a letter sent to BP CEO Tony Hayward, identified 5 missteps made by BP during the period culminating with the explosion.

Waxman, chair of the Congressional energy panel and Stupak, the head of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said, “The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety.”

The two Representatives also stated in the 14-page letter to Hayward that “Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense.”

Called by some insiders investigating the ongoing disaster a “perfect storm of catastrophe,” the wellhead blew on the sea floor catapulting a stream of mud, oil and gas upwards at the speed of sound.

In describing the events-that transpired in a matter of seconds-they note that immediately following the rupture the borehole pipe’s casing blew away exposing a straight line 8 miles deep for the pressurized gas to escape. The result was cavitation, an irregular pressure variance sometimes experience by deep diving vessels such as nuclear submarines. This cavitation created a supersonic bubble of explosive methane gas that resulted in a supersonic explosion killing 11 men and completely annihilating the drilling platform.

Death from the depths

With the emerging evidence of fissures, the quiet fear now is the methane bubble rupturing the seabed and exploding into the Gulf waters. If the bubble escapes, every ship, drilling rig and structure within the region of the bubble will instantaneously sink. All the workers, engineers, Coast Guard personnel and marine biologists measuring the oil plumes’ advance will instantly perish.

As horrible as that is, what would follow is an event so potentially horrific that it equals in its fury the Indonesian tsunami that killed more than 600,000, or the destruction of Pompeii by Mt. Vesuvius.

The ultimate Gulf disaster, however, would make even those historical horrors pale by comparison. If the huge methane bubble breaches the seabed, it will erupt with an explosive fury similar to that experienced during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in the Pacific Northwest. A gas gusher will surge upwards through miles of ancient sedimentary rock-layer after layer-past the oil reservoir. It will explode upwards propelled by 50 tons psi, burst through the cracks and fissures of the compromised sea floor, and rupture miles of ocean bottom with one titanic explosion.

The burgeoning methane gas cloud will surface, killing everything it touches, and set off a supersonic tsunami with the wave traveling somewhere between 400 to 600 miles per hour.

While the entire Gulf coastline is vulnerable, the state most exposed to the fury of a supersonic wave towering 100 feet or more is Florida. The Sunshine State only averages about 6 inches above sea level. A supersonic tsunami would literally sweep away everything from Miami to the panhandle in a matter of minutes. Loss of human life would be virtually instantaneous and measured in the millions. Of course the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and southern region of Georgia-a state with no Gulf coastline-would also experience tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Loss of property is virtually incalculable and the days of the US position as the world’s superpower would be literally gone in a flash…of detonating methane.

Source: rense.com

Freedom’s Real Enemies

Politicians in Washington, D.C., love to manufacture a crisis. The crisis generates fear within the citizenry, thereby allowing the federal government to centralize more and more power. During a crisis, the citizenry becomes much more forgiving of federal abuses and accommodating of federal encroachments than it otherwise would be without a crisis. Hence, we have a federal “war on drugs,” and a “war on poverty,” and a “war on terror,” and an “oil crisis,” and an “energy crisis,” and a “domestic terrorism crisis,” and an “education crisis,” and a “border crisis,” and an “economic crisis”–Blah! Blah! Blah!

You can mark it down: every major crisis that America has faced over the last several decades has been either manufactured or facilitated by policies and activities originating in Washington, D.C. But at the same time that DC is creating these crises, it categorizes any ideological group it finds distasteful as a convenient scapegoat. These convenient scapegoats can include “angry white guys,” “tea party extremists,” “a vast right-wing conspiracy,” Constitution Party or Libertarian Party “extremists,” “Second Amendment extremists” (gun owners), “pro-life extremists,” ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Yet, while DC’s elitists are plotting America’s next crisis and figuring out whom to categorize as America’s next “extremist,” some real enemies are waging war against the freedoms and liberties of our once-great republic. And, ladies and gentlemen, these enemies are much more subtle, a lot closer, and much more dangerous than almost anything you are being told about.

Here are some of freedom’s real enemies:

Big Cities

When the United States was a much smaller–much more agricultural–nation, our freedoms were mostly intact. The mass exodus out of rural America into urban America has been a bane of freedom–and it will continue to be so.

Thomas Jefferson addressed this issue astutely when he wrote in a letter to James Madison, “When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe.” (Source: The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, A Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson)

Jefferson spoke again of this danger in a letter to Benjamin Rush. He wrote, “I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts, but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere, and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.” (Source: Ibid.)

Big cities are most always more liberal, more socialistic, more utopian, and more centralist. Citizens living in big cities readily submit to the machinations and designs of Big Government with much greater regularity than do their rural counterparts. In states where a handful of big cities dominate State politics, Big-Government policies almost always take over the politics of the entire State. If you doubt that, just speak with freedom-loving citizens in New York, Illinois, or Maryland.

Consider, specifically, the freedom most necessary to preserve our liberties: the right of the people to keep and bear arms. People in states that are less populated enjoy much greater liberty than do people in heavily populated states. For example, Boston’s Gun Bible (BGB) ranks the states according to the degree of gun ownership (and possession) protection in each State. It is no coincidence that the states with sparser populations are much freer than states with denser populations.

Here is BGB’s breakdown of the most and least free gun ownership states:

Most Free States:

1. Vermont
2. Idaho and Kentucky (tie)
3. Louisiana and Alaska (tie)
4. Wyoming
5. Montana

Least Free States:

1. New Jersey
2. Illinois
3. Hawaii
4. Massachusetts
5. New York

Population density in the “most free” states is less than 50 persons per square mile, while in the “least free” states it is more than 460 persons per square mile. Case closed!

While big cities will typically tolerate much more in the way of licentiousness and sexual perversion, they are also the first to tolerate Big-Government socialism. Without a doubt, Thomas Jefferson was right: big cities are “pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man.”

If you want to live free in the future, you will probably need to leave the big city–and perhaps the states that are dominated by big cities.

The National News Media

For the most part, the national news media is no friend of freedom. About all most of them know of the US Constitution is the part about the “freedom of the press” (from the First Amendment, of course). Watch any of the Big Three television network newscasts on any weekday evening, and what will you see? You will see the exact same stories regurgitated over and over again–even with the exact same spin! And that spin is most always tilted toward bigger and bigger government. This goes on night after night, week after week, month after month, and year after year. But this is all just coincidental, right? Get real!

The cable news networks are not much better. About the only difference between cable networks is that CNN will provide cover for Big Government Democrats while viciously attacking all things Republican, and FOX NEWS will provide cover for Big Government Republicans while viciously attacking all things Democrat.

Face it: the national news media is intoxicated with Two Party Politics. They really don’t care nearly as much about the fundamental tenets and principles of liberty as they do about whether a Democrat or Republican wins office. Washington’s media elite are wined and dined by the same party politicians that they cover on television or in the newspaper. (What a racket!) Do you really think any major media news personality is going to risk losing his or her job (which is exactly what would happen) by asking too many questions, or boring too deeply, or straying too far off the reservation? Once again, get real! All of these guys and gals know exactly where the line–and the “third rail”–is located. And they all will stay clear of both! It’s not about reporting the news, or defending liberty, or anything of the sort. It is about pleasing their big corporate sponsors–corporate sponsors who are in bed with the elites from both major political parties, by the way!

As long as the American people continue to allow the national news media to manipulate and spin the news, our liberties will continue to erode.

Big Business

In fact, Big Anything can be freedom’s enemy: Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media, Big Cities, and Big Religion. Big Anything!

However, the rate and degree to which Big Business has been able to advance during the last half of the twentieth century–and now into the twenty-first century–is especially problematic for the survival of liberty. Dear friend, it is a mistake to equate Big Business with freedom. Big Business has little to do with capitalism and free enterprise and much to do with monopolism and globalism. Big Business does not want to compete with private enterprise; it wants to crush it! Big Business sees Big Government as a friend and partner. In fact, Big Business and Big Government are conjoined twins. They grow and live as one.

Accordingly, it is no accident that when the Bilderbergers got together a few days ago at the Hotel Dolce in Sitges, Spain, for their super-secret meeting, the list of attendees included the cabal of super-elites from Big Government, Big Business, Big Academia, and Big Media. People such as Bill Gates (Microsoft), Roger Altman (former Deputy Secretary of the US Treasury), Martin Feldstein (Harvard University), Niall Ferguson (Harvard University), Philip Gordon (Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs), Donald Graham (The Washington Post), Richard Holbrooke (Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan), Robert Hormats (Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs), Henry Kissinger (former Secretary of State), Klaus Kleinfeld (Chairman and CEO, Alcoa), Craig Mundie (Microsoft), Peter Orszag (Director, Office of Management and Budget), Charlie Rose (Producer, Rose Communications), Robert Rubin (Co-Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations; former Secretary of the Treasury), Eric Schmidt (CEO and Chairman of the Board, Google), James Steinberg (Deputy Secretary of State), Lawrence Summers (Director, National Economic Council), Christine Varney (Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust), and Paul Volcker (Chairman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board). And please remember that these are only the names of those that were published. The complete list of attendees is top secret and never released. For example, was Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner there? He is a Bilderberg (and CFR) member.

But of course, this meeting–complete with the tightest security and secrecy possible–is only for the purpose of social fellowship and clubmanship, right? That the world’s most interconnected business, governmental, and media elites would meet outside the viewing and listening of everyone is supposed to be dismissed as irrelevant and insignificant, right? Well, if you get your news from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, or FOX NEWS, that is exactly what you are being led to believe.

Yet, Big Business has been conspiring with Big Government for the purpose of personal aggrandizement (at the cost of liberty, of course) for decades–probably centuries. Remember, it took an act of Congress to stop old Prescott Bush (George H.W. Bush’s father and G.W. Bush’s grandfather) from sending financial assistance to Nazi Germany. Know, too, that international bankers today are supporting governments (some that are openly hostile to the United States) in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Again, Big Business and Big Government are conjoined twins–an interconnected body that grows in unison at the expense of our liberties.

Freedom has many more real enemies that could be added to this list, of course; and maybe in the future we can talk more about them. For now, recognize that our liberties are hanging by a thread in this country. And the next time you hear someone in Washington, D.C., or the national news media railing against the latest “crisis” that requires Big Government to fix, please remember who the real enemy is.

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