The Falling Land

Picture not added from original article because I do not feel it is appropriate.

There is, apparently, to be no end to our falling. No bottom to the pit of moral nullity through which we keep plunging, no act of evil which we will not accept, and countenance, and even cheer.

At one time, it required great lies -- elaborate, monstrous deceits, wrapped in myths of goodness and light -- to disguise the brutal machinations of raw power. Otherwise, it was thought, the people might rise up in anger at the crimes being committed in their name, thus threatening the primacy and privilege of the elite.

But this proved to be unnecessary in the end. The foulest deeds could be done in broad daylight, in full view of the world, before the eyes of our children, without the slightest consequence for the perpetrators. The crowd would applaud, or, at worst, simply shrug and move on.

Actions and policies drawn from the horror stories of history -- things which the people had been taught to abominate from the day they were born -- were freely and openly embraced.

The Nazis launched unprovoked wars of aggression and despoiled whole nations. So do we now; who cares? The Gestapo and the KGB snatched people from the street and held them without charges in secret prisons, tortured them with brute force and with exquisitely calibrated techniques approved by the highest authorities. So do we now; who cares? The Soviets spied without qualm or restraint on their own people, no warrants needed, no evidence required, just a nod from some faceless official in the security organs. So do we now; who cares? The Nazis believed that the national leader is beyond the law, that any order he gives is rightful and just and cannot be punished, simply because he has given it. So do we now; who cares? The Soviets and the Nazis treated protests against the established order as security threats and acts of terror, and repressed them with mass arrests and police violence. So do we now; who cares?

All of these things, and many more besides, have been done and are being done by the government of the United States today, with either the full-throated approval or the meek acquiescence of the political opposition and the nation's institutions. The people too seem largely in agreement, or completely indifferent. We have just finished a primary campaign in which tens of millions of people voted for candidates who support the system described above in almost every particular -- quibbling about some of the details and tactics perhaps, but expressing absolutely no dissent from its basic premises.

The two major candidates left standing after this appalling process are as similar in policy and philosophy as it is possible to be and still maintain a semblance of "choice" in the election. Both support the continuance and expansion of the "War on Terror." Both pledge to use massive, lethal, violent force, at any time, anywhere in the world -- with no options, not even the nuclear one, taken "off the table" -- in the service of ever-nebulous and self-defined "national security" interests. Both support the warrantless surveillance of American citizens, and immunity for vast conglomerates that collaborate with the state in blatantly illegal activity. Both believe that even those who have not committed murder can be executed by the state. (And neither has said a single word about the shame of America's prison system: more than 2 million people behind bars, more than any other nation on earth, in both sheer numbers and proportionately, and rivalled historically in those numbers only by Stalin's gulag at the height of the purges.)

Both support a continuing American military presence in Iraq, under one euphemism or another. Both mouth pieties about opposing torture and upholding the rule of law, but neither of them applied their considerable powers as senators -- or their great personal popularity -- to make the slightest move to bring the perpetrators of the White House-approved torture regime to justice. (McCain has even voted explicitly to allow the CIA to torture captives.) Both have just finished conventions at which American citizens seeking to exercise their constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly were herded by armed police into wire pens (dubbed, with sinister irony, "free speech zones"), harassed, arrested, in cases beaten, invaded, and charged with thought crime and terrorism. Both support, and are supported by, the same corporate interests whose predations and corruptions have shredded the social and civic fabric of the nation and are now leading millions into penury.

Where are the hands, as in Rilke's poem, that can hold up all this falling? There are none. And so we keep falling, down and down and still farther down.

Source: uruknet.de

RAF officer breaks 37-year silence on UFO radar mystery

IT IS a close encounter of the official kind. A former RAF officer has claimed that UFOs are real and may have invaded UK airspace, branding official resistance to such theories as "stupid and arrogant".

Wing Commander Alan Turner MBE was sworn to secrecy after he tracked a series of unidentified objects soaring over southern England at incredible speeds.

But now the airman, who was honoured by the Queen for his years of distinguished service, has broken his silence and spoken publicly for the first time about his extraordinary experience.

Turner, 64, a former head of air traffic control at RAF Lossiemouth, insists it is "stupid and arrogant" to rule out the existence of extra-terrestrials and is open to the suggestion that he witnessed craft from another world.

But the Ministry of Defence stressed last night there were "realistic explanations" for such reports.

The incident, which has baffled and haunted Turner for decades, took place at RAF Sopley on the south-west coast of England in the summer of 1971.

At the time he was Duty Military Supervisor and had the responsibility of monitoring the skies on radar screens for potential Soviet incursions.

On the day in question, Turner and his 13 colleagues were alarmed by a sudden and unexpected development.

He said: "I can clearly remember people shouting: 'What the hell is that?' I got to a console and people were loudly telling me to look to the east of Salisbury Plain.

"Twenty miles east of the eastern extremity was a series of returns, or radar blips, which were appearing in that position. There were five of them initially. Then six and then seven all following the same track.

"They were tracking south-east, each exactly six to seven miles apart and moving at exactly the same speed. At about 40 miles from the point they appeared on radar, they disappeared, to be followed almost immediately by a replacement at the point of origin.

"The objects were about 3,000ft above ground level when they first appeared and climbed so rapidly that, by the time they disappeared from radar they were in excess of 60,000ft.

"To climb to such a height in only 40 miles was beyond the ability of almost any fighter aircraft at that time."

In a bid to solve the mystery Turner diverted an RAF Canberra jet, which was returning from West Germany, to intercept the intruders.

"When the pilot got within a mile or so of one particular blip, he reported, in a very agitated voice, that his radar had picked up something on his port side that was 'climbing like the clappers'. Neither the pilot nor his navigator made any visual contact with whatever it was."

Within days, Turner was summoned into the Squadron Leader's office and questioned by two men, who wore civilian clothes and were not identified, about the incident.

"I, along with all the others who were in the room on that day, were told in no uncertain terms not to relate what we had seen until cleared to do so."

Turner, who was awarded the MBE in 1984 and retired from the force in 1995, has been assured that there were no training operations, classified or otherwise, going on at the time and there were no weather balloons or probes in the area.

"I have no idea what they were, but I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility that they were UFOs. There is certainly a chance that we have been visited by extra-terrestrials," he said. "It is terribly arrogant and silly to think that we are alone in the universe."

He feels the time is right to end his silence and has accepted an invitation to be the keynote speaker at an international UFO conference in Pontefract, Yorkshire, next month.

"I have spoken to three ex-Air Force mates, who held senior positions, and they have seen similar things, but did not report them as they felt their personal integrity would be questioned. That is why I kept quiet for so long, but I know what I saw."

Source: Scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com

9/11's Potemkin Village

As the nation pauses for 9/11, let us also remember that, despite billions of dollars invested in a new security bureaucracy, American airspace is no more secure today than it was seven years ago.

Federal Aviation Administration radar records indicate that the U.S. Air Force was powerless to stop a mysterious aerial incursion from surging toward President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex., in January. The 77-page analysis posted by the Mutual UFO Network in July has been neither challenged nor rebutted by military officials. Nor have any scientists emerged to take issue with any of the technical points raised by the MUFON study.

Nor have government authorities bothered to refute last year’s study assembled by the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena. That 155-page report described how a UFO parked itself over the United Airlines terminal at Chicago’s busy O’Hare International for 18 minutes while ground crews watched the object burn a circular hole in the cloud cover upon its departure.

Our government’s refusal to acknowledge these meticulously detailed reconstructions, along with the media’s failure to press for answers, creates a vacuum that can only be filled by vigilant taxpayers demanding accountability from this Potemkin Village. Maybe the citizens of Arizona are best positioned to elevate this conundrum into what it’s been all along — a political issue.

Long before the “Phoenix Lights” incident drew international attention in 1997, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater made repeated and now well-publicized attempts to flesh out the UFO mystery. But not even the lion of modern conservatism could get past the locked doors of Gen. Curtis LeMay, the former Air Force Chief of Staff.

Several months after countless Arizonans were startled by the massive UFO cruising their skies 11 years ago, Goldwater’s successor, John McCain, defended the military cover story that warplanes were conducting routine maneuvers that night in a letter to a constituent.

“I believe that these exercises, culminating in the release of many flares simultaneously, provide a reasonable explanation for the appearance of the peculiar lights that evening.”

Several years later, however, when asked at a press conference about UFOs, McCain wasn’t laughing “I think it’s of great interest. I would point out to you that there was a case a couple of years ago in Arizona of some lights that were seen over Arizona and that has never been fully explained.”

So which is it? What does McCain know?

In 2007, fellow Republican Fife Symington, the former Arizona governor who initially ridiculed the Phoenix Lights, admitted he’d seen the damned thing himself. He called it “enormous. It just felt otherworldly. In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly."

It’s time for the “maverick” presidential candidate to figure out what’s going down in his own back yard. There’s never been a better moment for the folks who put McCain in office to demand a little more straight talk at the next town hall forum.

Source: Heraldtribune.com

Bailouts Will Push US into Depression

The end result of the global economic slowdown may be the U.S. announcing national bankruptcy as the government cannot afford the bailouts that it promised and the market will not bail out the government, Martin Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche, told CNBC on Thursday.

"We expect a depression in the United States. We expect a depression, very possibly, also in Europe," Hennecke said on "Worldwide Exchange."

The estimated $300 billion cost of the Fannie/Freddie bailout will probably be considered as a loss that the government will have to take, therefore passing it on to taxpayers, he explained.

"We already have $3 trillion of debt, as far as the U.S. government is concerned. These debt figures across the U.S. economy are rising very sharply."

When the government can no longer pass the United States' "immense debt" on to taxpayers, it will turn to the holders of U.S. dollars, leading to the eventual downfall of the currency, Hennecke said. Hence the introduction of the Amero!

"Definitely, it (the dollar) is not a safe place to be invested in, as real inflation is closer to 10 or 11 percent than the actual inflation numbers given by the U.S. government," Hennecke said on "Worldwide Exchange".

Investors should avoid exposure to debt and stay away from leveraging on any investment or asset, including property, Hennecke advised, adding that "banks have been too highly leveraged in the past, private households, everybody."

Hennecke's stock allocations are mainly Asian-based, especially in the Chinese market as the country's government has a large amount of cash and the macroeconomics are fundamentally strong.

He also suggested investing in gold, despite the recent fall in price.

Source: cnbc.com

French President Nicolas Sarkozy friend says 9/11 was a lie

One of France's most successful stand-up comedians and a close friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked outrage by becoming the latest French star to question the official account of the September 11 attacks.

In an embarrassment to the French President, and with just two days to go before the seventh anniversary of the deadly terrorist strikes, Jean-Marie Bigard - a member of Mr Sarkozy's inner circle of showbiz friends - said the official version was a "lie".

"We are now absolutely certain that these two planes - the one that supposedly fell into a forest (flight 93 in Pennsylvania) and onto the Pentagon don't exist... those planes are still flying.

"It's an enormous lie," he told Europe 1 radio.

"It's an American missile that hit the Pentagon, they provoked it themselves, they killed fellow Americans.

"Usually one learns of these things 30 years afterwards. We know it now," he went on.

Mr Bigard, who has staged shows to a full house in Paris' football stadium, le Stade de France, added: "We are beginning to seriously consider that neither Ben Laden nor al Qaeda were responsible for September 11."

He cited the controversial 2002 bestseller L'Effroyable Imposture (The Big Lie) by Frenchman Thierry Meyssan, which claimed the Pentagon crash was a "fake", as well as the hit internet conspiracy film Loose Change.

His comments were condemned as "grotesque" by former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine. "There will always be people who believe that things are being hidden from them, that everything is being hidden from them," he said.

Europe 1 has issued an apology but Mr Bigard said he stood by his words. The crude and scatological comic, whose humour travels poorly, was one of several celebrity friends Mr Sarkozy took with him to meet the Pope late last year, as he is a devout Catholic.

He is the second French star to accuse America of fabricating the 9/11 attacks.

In March, the Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard angered Americans with a similar conspiracy theory on a chat show.

The 32-year-old, who won a BAFTA award for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, had said that the US regularly lied about major events, up to and including the terrorist attacks on New York.

"I think we're lied to about a number of things," he said, even claiming the Americans had destroyed the Twin Towers themselves because they were an outdated "money sucker".

Expanding her conspiracy theory, Miss Cotillard said it would be "a lot more expensive" to rebuild the towers "which is why they were destroyed," with the loss of thousands of American lives.

She later was forced into an embarrassing climb-down, with her lawyer saying she "never intended to contest nor question the attacks of September 11, 2001," and that her remarks were taken out of context.

"It is almost impossible to fight against this phenomenon," conspiracy theory specialist Pascal Froissart told Le Parisien. "Because the fact of denying it spreads the rumour even further."

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

High-Level Assassination–The Staged Event To Bring About War With Iran?

With attention being drawn to the contradictions and outright lies by the US government surrounding the events of 9/11 (as well as renewed interest in previous false flag events such as the attack on the USS Liberty meant to draw the US into Israel’s dirty wars) it may very well be that the powers-that-be have decided the event ushering in the next phase of war against Israel’s enemies will come from be a high-level assassination involving democratic candidate for president Barack Obama.

As FDR himself once quipped, “If something happens in politics, you can be rest assured it was no accident”. Therefore, persons wise to the ways of the world can assume the recent spate of news stories pairing the idea of “assassination” with the name ‘”Barack Obama” cannot be mere coincidence. Nor should the fact that out of all the individuals the powers-that-be could have chosen as a candidate for President that the one they settled on was a black man with a distinctly Muslim name.

The outcome of such an event is as obvious as it is frightening. The first black candidate for president from one of America’s two major parties being gunned down by “Islamic terrorists” tied to Iran (who will no doubt be aligned with “white nationalist/neo-Nazi types“) would result in an American public howling for war against Iran, to say nothing of the civil unrest that would erupt in America’s cities as well as a virtual police state being inaugurated.

As far as the evidence itself indicating that such plans are afoot, one need look no further than some of the stories coming out of the mainstream news these days. Beginning with Hillary Clinton herself who, when asked why she was not dropping out of the race for the democratic nomination remarked on the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian ‘terrorist’ said to be angry with RFK because of his support for Israel. What she was intimating in her comments was that an Obama assassination was enough of a possibility that she still had a chance of winning and had decided therefore to stay put.

Next there are certain carefully-placed news stories and Op-Ed columns to consider. In a New York Times piece arch-Neocon and slavish, slobbering supporter for Israel Edward Luttwak directs the collective American attention towards a future Obama assassination in a piece entitled “President Apostate” where he points out that under Islamic law, Obama’s Muslim father means that Obama himself is also a Muslim, and that willful conversion to Christianity would be deemed apostasy, the penalty for which is death, usually by beheading. Of the dozens of Islamic countries Luttwak could have mentioned, he lists only two where such a death sentence might be issued–Saudi Arabia and Iran. Given the fact that Saudi Arabia is a puppet of the US and Israel and is not on the ‘axis-of-evil’ list like Iran, any ‘lone nut’ assassin would therefore by implication come from Iran, the same nation from which the infamous death sentence against anti-Islamic writer Salman Rushdie was proclaimed for his book ‘The Satanic Verses’.

More recently there is the spate of stage-prop news stories portending the presidential candidate’s possible upcoming date with the grim reaper. In early June, a story detailing the arrest of a man outside Obama’s hotel entitled ‘Fear for Obama’s Safety After Knife Arrest’ features one Davit Zakaryan arrested by Secret Service agents when found with an 8-inch knife in his possession. Of particular interest is the man’s name (and more importantly the last part of it ‘Aryan’) as Zionist groups such as the ADL and their tentacles throughout the mainstream news media are now trying (as they did with the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma city) to establish a link between ‘Muslim Extremists’ and right wing/white nationalist/domestic terrorist types. Relevant to this are the stories appearing in mainstream news recently detailing the testimony of Mike McConnell, director of National Intelligence claiming Al Qaeda is busy ‘recruiting white Europeans into its ranks’ for attacks on the US, and more importantly–‘just prior to the elections’.

The possibility of collusion at the highest levels with such a conspiracy is not helped out by other events taking place recently. A story appearing in the Dallas Star Telegram entitled “Police concerned about order to stop weapons screening at Obama rally” reveals that Obama’s Secret Service detail decided to stop screening people for weapons an hour before he was to appear at a large rally in Dallas and how that city’s police chief questioned the wisdom of such a decision. The obvious relevance of the word assassination being paired with the city of Dallas and John F Kennedy obviously adds even more intrigue to the issue.

And, last but not least, there is the most recent event taking place at the time of the Democratic convention in Colorado, where 3 men were arrested with high-power rifles and other pieces of equipment in what police said was a plot to kill Obama. The men, one whose last name was–surprise, surprise–‘Adolph’ admitted to planning to kill Obama at his acceptance speech and were tied with–surprise surprise again–white nationalist/neo-Nazi groups.

The other obvious advantage to such a scenario taking place for the Neocons is that it would allow them to clean house’ within the US defense/intelligence establishments. Intimating (or outright stating) that the assassination was ‘helped along’ by elements within the highest echelons of America’s defense and intelligence establishments would give JINSA the pretext for the witch hunt she has wanted to conduct for some time now. With this in hand, those persons, and particularly those of considerable influence who have up to this point hindered the attack on Iran, would be removed, giving Israel a clear, open road to do whatever she wants.

Those who doubt that Israel and her traitorous dual-loyalty surrogates working at the highest levels of the US government would be willing to carry out such an act need to think twice, and particularly against the backdrop of history. As investigative reporter Michael Collins Piper aptly proved in his book Final Judgment, it was Israel’s Mossad who had the greatest reason, motive and opportunity to kill not only John F Kennedy, but also his brother Robert and his son JFK junior. Besides this there is the testimony of Margaret Truman, daughter of president Harry S. Truman who wrote that Zionist assassins tried to kill her father through the US postal service. As recent as 2003, Israel announced officially that she would ‘resume’ (as if she ever truly refrained from) assassinations on the soil of ‘allies’ (which includes the US) in the interest of ‘fighting ‘terror’, and given the fact that the Jewish state sees the US being involved in fighting her wars, this obviously means anything done on the furtherance of this policy is justifiable. More important though are the words coming right out of the horse’s mouth, in this case ex-Israeli intelligence officer Victor Ostrovsky in his book ‘The Other Side of Deception’ who had the following to say concerning Israel’s planned assassination of George H.W. Bush at the Madrid Peace Talks in 1991–

“Since the Mossad had all the security arrangements in hand, it would notbe a problem bringing the killers as close as they wanted to President Bush and then staging his assassination. In the ensuing confusion, the Mossad people would kill the ‘perpetrators,’ scoring yet another victory for the Mossad. With the assassins dead, it would be difficult to discover where the ‘security breach’ had been, except that several countries involved in the conference, such as Syria, were regarded as countries that assisted terrorists.”

To think the day would come in America when rational persons were justified in considering the possibility that their own government–working in collusion with agents of another power–would be willing to assassinate one of the frontrunners for the office of president in order to start a war that could destroy the nation seems surreal. However, the sad fact is this–Such questions being asked is not only justified, but warranted. After all, lest it be forgotten, it was the US government–and in particular one Michael Chertoff, current head of Homeland Security–that after 9/11 sent back to the Jewish state hundreds of Israeli spies, some caught red-handed in circumstances as incriminating as filming the towers coming down and cheering.

And given these events, concerned Americans should keep a watchful eye on what takes place in the coming weeks and months with respect to the health and welfare of one Barack Hussein Obama, calling to mind the motto of Israel’s Mossad “By way of deception, thou shalt do war”.

Source: Theuglytruth.wordpress.com

My own personal view is, I do not believe they will kill Obama. It may be made to look just like an assassination and then just like Sadam Hussein and Adolph Hitler, Obama will disappear to live a very comfortable life somewhere else on the planet.

CERN fires up new atom smasher to near Big Bang

GENEVA -It has been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe — or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.

Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.

The multibillion-dollar Large Hadron Collider will explore the tiniest particles and come ever closer to re-enacting the big bang, the theory that a colossal explosion created the universe.

The machine at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, promises scientists a closer look at the makeup of matter, filling in gaps in knowledge or possibly reshaping theories.

The first beams of protons will be fired around the 17-mile tunnel to test the controlling strength of the world's largest superconducting magnets. It will still be about a month before beams traveling in opposite directions are brought together in collisions that some skeptics fear could create micro "black holes" and endanger the planet.

The project has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities, some 1,200 of them from the United States, which contributed $531 million of the project's price tag of nearly $4 billion.

"This only happens once a generation," said Katie Yurkewicz, spokeswoman for the U.S. contingent at the CERN project. "People are certainly very excited."

The collider at Fermilab outside Chicago could beat CERN to some discoveries, but the Geneva equipment, generating seven times more energy than Fermilab, will give it big advantages.

The CERN collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel 150 to 500 feet under the bucolic countryside on the French-Swiss border.

Once the beam is successfully fired counterclockwise, a clockwise test will follow. Then the scientists will aim the beams at each other so that protons collide, shattering into fragments and releasing energy under the gaze of detectors filling cathedral-sized caverns at points along the tunnel.

CERN dismisses the risk of micro black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

But the skeptics have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Hawaii and in the European Court of Human Rights to stop the project. They unsuccessfully mounted a similar action in 1999 to block the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state.

CERN's collider has been under construction since 2003, financed mostly by its 20 European member states. The United States and Japan are major contributors with observer status in CERN.

Scientists started colliding subatomic particles decades ago. As the machines grew more powerful, the experiments revealed that protons and neutrons — previously thought to be the smallest components of an atom — were made of still smaller quarks and gluons.

CERN hopes to recreate conditions in the laboratory a split-second after the big bang, teaching them more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time.

Meanwhile, scientists have found innovative ways to explain the concept in layman's terms.

The team working on one of the four major installations in the tunnel — the ALICE, or "A Large Ion Collider Experiment" — produced a comic book featuring Carlo the physicist and a girl called Alice to explain the machine's investigation of matter a split second after the Big Bang.

"We create mini Big Bangs by bumping two nuclei into each other," Carlo explains to Alice, who has just followed a rabbit down one of the hole-like shafts at CERN.

"This releases an enormous amount of energy that liberates thousands of quarks and gluons normally imprisoned inside the nucleus. Quarks and gluons then form a kind of thick soup that we call the quark-gluon plasma."

The soup cools quickly and the quarks and gluons stick together to form protons and neutrons, the building blocks of matter.

That will enable scientists to look for still missing pieces to the puzzle — or lead to the formulation of a new theory on the makeup of matter.

Kate McAlpine, 23, a Michigan State University graduate at CERN, has produced the Large Hadron Rap, a video clip that has attracted more than a million views on YouTube.

"The things that it discovers will rock you in the head," McAlpine raps as she dances in the tunnel and caverns.

CERN spokesman James Gillies said the lyrics are "absolutely scientifically spot on."

"It's quite brilliant," Gillies said.

Source: News.aol.com

CERN: http://www.cern.ch/

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory: http://www.fnal.gov/

The U.S. at the LHC: http://www.uslhc.us/

Large Hadron Rap: Youtube.com