Mind The Chemtrails: US Air Force Dispatches Sprayer Aircraft In Response To Harvey

Via StockBoardAsset.com,

The Pentagon has just dispatched C-130H Sprayers from the Air Force Reserve’s 910th Airlift Wing residing in Youngstown, Ohio to Texas in response to Hurricane Harvey.

The aircraft are outfitted with spraying equipment tasked with ‘minimizing the impact of the brutal storm’s aftermath’.

According to the article, the specially outfitted C-130Hs can spray wide areas with various chemicals for ‘multiple applications, including dispersing oil spills, destroying invasive vegetation, and controlling insect populations’. 

Per The Drive,

Because there is so much standing and heavily polluted water around Houston and other areas affected by the storm, insects populations are bound to explode, which poses a major health risk to the population of southeastern Texas and the first responders working to get the area back on its feet.

Mosquitoes that can carry and transmit malaria, west nile virus, zika, and multiple types of encephalitis will be the target of the operation.

Supposedly the C-130s will treat over six million acres of land while dispatched to the region, far more territory than in previous post-hurricane operations. 

Houstonians and other surrounding areas are about to get their daily dose of chemtrails in large amounts. Each aircraft can spray 190,000 acres per day emitting chemicals into the atmosphere and ultimately ending up in living organisms.

Back in the Vietnam War, the Pentagon launched its herbicidal warfare coined Operation Ranch Hand, which sprayed Agent Orange for deforestation purposes.

According to the American Cancer Society, “there is now quite a bit of evidence about the health effects of Agent Orange” on the human body.

Some returning veterans from Vietnam began reporting skin rashes, cancer, psychological symptoms, birth defects in their children, and other health problems in the 1970’s. In 1979, a class action lawsuit was filed against major herbicide manufacturers and was settled in 1984 out of court forming Agent Orange Settlement Fund.

Watch the 910th Aerial Spray C-130H in action spraying insecticides into the atmosphere over Charleston..

The article ends by telling Texans don’t be alarmed if you see or hear a C-130H Sprayer flying at low altitude dumping chemicals behind it.

The lesson above dating back to Vietnam is heed the warning that the Pentagon is still willing to spray chemicals into the atmosphere with disregard to human life.

McCain’s brain cancer draws renewed attention to possible Agent Orange connection

When Amy Jones’ dad, Paul, was diagnosed with glioblastoma last month, she wondered whether it might be tied to his time in Vietnam.

Then, last week, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also a Vietnam veteran, was diagnosed with the same aggressive brain cancer, Jones searched online for glioblastoma and Vietnam vets.

She soon learned the disease is one of a growing list of ailments that some Vietnam veterans and their relatives believe is caused by exposure to Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide sprayed during the war.

“Honestly, it’s not easy to even admit that this is happening, let alone to even talk about it,” said Jones, whose 68-year-old father has had surgery to remove a brain tumor and now is receiving radiation treatments. “It’s only been six weeks. It’s such a devastating diagnosis.”

McCain’s diagnosis comes as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is under increased pressure to broaden who’s eligible for Agent Orange-related compensation. During the war, the military sprayed millions of gallons of the herbicide in Vietnam to kill enemy-covering jungle brush, and in the process, may have exposed as many as 2.6 million U.S. service members — including McCain.

News of his illness has prompted Amy Jones and others to call on the VA to study a possible connection between their loved ones’ Agent Orange exposure and glioblastoma.

Under current policy, the agency makes disability payments to veterans who develop one of 14 health conditions, but only if they can prove they served on the ground in Vietnam, where the chemicals were sprayed. Veterans who served off the coast in the Navy and those with other diseases not on the list — such as brain cancer — are left to fight the agency for compensation on a case-by-case basis.

Those with glioblastoma — or widows seeking survivor benefits — must prove the disease was “at least as likely as not” caused by Agent Orange, a cumbersome process that often takes years and more times than not results in denial.

Although McCain primarily served at sea from the deck of an aircraft carrier — and survived more than five years in a prison camp after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam — the VA would presume he was exposed to Agent Orange because he also spent time on the ground in Saigon.

Still, McCain never has sought to connect any of his health troubles, including prior bouts with skin cancer, with Agent Orange exposure and has a mixed record when it comes to compensating fellow veterans for wartime exposures. His office did not respond to emailed questions about a possible link between glioblastoma and the chemical.

As a senator, McCain voted to approve the original 1991 law that directed the VA to presume every veteran who served in Vietnam was exposed and to begin compensating those with illnesses scientifically linked to it.

In 2011, however, as many Vietnam veterans aged into their 60s and 70s and annual disability payments to them swelled to more than $17 billion, McCain spoke in favor of an amendment that would have required a higher standard of scientific proof before any new illnesses would be covered.

The goal, McCain said in a floor speech, was to ensure that veterans who actually deserved compensation received it, “but at the same time not have a situation where it is an open-ended expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars.” The amendment was defeated — and since then, Vietnam vet disability payments have grown to $24 billion a year — and the episode damaged McCain’s reputation with veterans groups.

In a statement, a VA spokesman said the agency currently does not recognize a connection between Agent Orange exposure and brain cancer but is examining the topic anew in light of the questions that have been raised. In March, the VA asked a National Academy of Medicine panel studying the effects of Agent Orange to focus special attention on glioblastoma. (Previous reports by the group have not found a connection.) The VA also is asking about brain cancer in a sweeping survey of Vietnam veterans now underway.

VA data provided to ProPublica last fall shows that more than 500 Vietnam-era veterans have been diagnosed with glioblastoma at VA health facilities since 2000. That doesn’t include the unknown number diagnosed at private facilities.

ProPublica and The Virginian-Pilot reported last year how widows of Vietnam vets were banding together to push the VA to add glioblastoma to its list of diseases linked to Agent Orange. Through a Facebook group, they support one another and offer advice on navigating the VA’s labyrinthian process for seeking disability and survivor benefits.

Since news of McCain’s illness broke last week, dozens like Jones have joined the group, whose members mostly include widows and surviving relatives, but also some veterans living with the disease. “Every one of us, our phones were blowing up the day it came out” that McCain had glioblastoma, said Kathy Carroll-Josenhans, one of the group’s leaders.

The group now has some 450 members, about double its size in December.

One of their challenges is that the VA’s handling of claims related to glioblastoma has been somewhat inconsistent. Between 2009 and last fall, the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, the VA’s in-house tribunal for adjudicating benefit denials, issued more than 100 decisions in cases in which widows have appealed benefits denials related to their husbands’ brain cancer, according to a ProPublica analysis of board decisions. About two dozen won. (Here are two additional approvals from this year.)

Brad Riddell, a 35-year-old communications specialist living in Austin, Texas, is not a member of the Facebook group but immediately thought of his father when he heard about McCain’s illness. His dad, Jerry Riddell, served in a Navy construction battalion in Da Nang during the war and routinely came in contact with Agent Orange, which was used to clear brush before paving roads and runways.

Riddell was in high school when his father had a seizure while driving from work one day. A brain scan later that day revealed a tumor the size of a grapefruit and a medical term that still makes Riddell shudder: glioblastoma.

His father endured three surgeries — including two at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston — before doctors told him there was nothing more they could do. He entered hospice and died in February 1999, just 14 months after the diagnosis.

“I absolutely thought about dad when I heard about McCain,” Riddell said. “Anytime I hear that diagnosis, it just feels like, ‘Man, that person is a goner.’ It’s terrible.”

After his father’s death, Riddell’s mother gave him a bag of his military records and told him to hold onto them: “She said, ‘You need to have all these records in case there‘s ever a connection made between your dad’s cancer and Agent Orange.’”

In the wake of the McCain news, Riddell wonders if it’s time to pull the records out.

Heidi Spencer had a similar revelation a year ago. Her father, Jack Niedermeyer, died of glioblastoma at age 58 in June 2004. Her mother didn’t think to apply for benefits until last year when someone at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post where she works suggested it. Spencer helped her mom fill out the application and the VA approved it in March.

“He never knew his cancer came from Agent Orange. He never talked about his service,” she said of her dad, who worked in a steel mill in Pittsburgh and had six kids.

Spencer, 42, found her dad’s commanding officer in the Marine Corps, who wrote a letter saying her dad had been sprayed by Agent Orange.

“The more you research it, the more it comes into light,” she said. “The VA needs to look at this, they need to link it and they need to look at his [McCain’s] diagnosis and whether or not the Vietnam War played a role in him getting his disease.”

In approving her mom’s claim, the VA wrote that glioblastoma was not recognized as a disease that automatically warranted benefits linked to Agent Orange but that “current medical research has shown a causal relationship between herbicide exposure and glioblastoma multiforme.” This is contrary to the VA’s official policy.

Regardless of McCain’s position on the matter, advocates hope his diagnosis will spark a conversation.

In a statement last week, John Rowan, the president of Vietnam Veterans of America, said he was saddened to learn “yet another Vietnam veteran” had been diagnosed with glioblastoma.

“Unfortunately, brain cancer is not on the presumptive list for exposure to Agent Orange,” Rowan said in a statement, “despite the efforts of our fellow veterans and their family members.”

Via ProPublica

Featured Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

The U.S. Has Been At War For Over 220 In 241 Years

Authored by Robert Fantina via AHTribune.com,

The United States presents itself to the world as a beacon of liberty and a proponent of human rights around the world, ready and willing to stand up for and defend the downtrodden. Florida Senator Marco Rubio recently said that the world looks to the U.S. as an example of democracy. This myth is not believed outside of the United States’ borders, and decreasingly within. There is simply too much evidence to the contrary.

The U.S. has been at war for over 220 of its 241 year history. During that time, it has shown a complete lack of respect for the human rights of both the citizens of the nations against which it wages war, and its own soldiers. We’ll take a look at examples from recent history, and see how the U.S. continues these barbaric practices today.

Source: Wikipedia

During the U.S. war against Viet Nam, which lasted for several years, conservative estimates indicate that at least 2,000,000 men, women and children were killed. Entire villages were burned; soldiers were told to assume that anyone, of an age, was the enemy.

U.S. soldiers gave poisoned cookies to children seeking their help. The My Lai massacre, in which between 350 and 500 innocent people were killed, mostly women, children and elderly men, garnered international publicity, but was only one example of U.S. barbarity.

U.S. soldiers returned home from this and later wars with severe physical and emotional problems. Veterans’ organizations worked for years to have the effects of ‘Agent Orange’, a chemical defoliant used in Viet Nam that caused birth defects in the children of soldiers who used it, recognized by the government so they could get government assistance. A generation later, the reality of Gulf War Syndrome was denied for years by the U.S. government.

How does this continue in the current environment? When the U.S. invaded Iraq early in the administration of President George Bush, it bombed residential areas in a country where over half the population was under the age of 15. It destroyed government institutions, even as it protected oil lines, leaving millions of people without essential services.

In Yemen, drones have killed at least 6,000 people. In the first drone attack authorized by then President Barack Obama, 34 people were killed. Of these, two were suspected of having ties to so-called terrorist groups. The other 32 were innocent men, women and children. And these atrocities continue to this day.

In Syria, the U.S. is supporting radical groups that are causing untold suffering. At least one third of the population of Syria has fled their homes; recently, due to the efforts of the Syrian army and its allies, some have begun to return. The death toll, directly attributable to the actions of the U.S., is at least half a million.

When it comes to a nation’s need to defend itself, the U.S. again has no equal when it comes to hypocrisy. Palestinians who defend themselves with rocks against the U.S.-provided weaponry with which Israel kills and oppresses them, are called terrorists. IDF terrorists and settlers, also terrorists, living in the West Bank in violation of international law, kill unarmed Palestinians with impunity.

What does all this mean for the basic human rights of the people whose nations fall victim to U.S. imperialism? Death, disease, homelessness, life in refugee camps, hunger, lack of medical care, lack of education opportunities, and much more.

The United States, despite its own claims to the contrary, has one of the worst records of human rights abuses of all the countries on the planet. They are worsened in war time, and as I mentioned earlier, the U.S. has been at war almost constantly since 1776.

This is the United States, that self-proclaimed beacon of peace and justice. This is international hypocrisy at it most blatant and deadly. People within the U.S. and without are working tirelessly to resolve these issues, but they are opposed by powerful interest groups. Yet such shocking cruelty and violations of international law and the human right of millions of innocent people cannot continue forever. The end of the injustices perpetrated by the United States will be a welcome day around the world.

Enviros Are Ignoring the Elephant In the Room: U.S. Military Is the World’s Largest Polluter

The Military Pumps Out Staggering Quantities of Toxic Waste, Water and Air Pollution and Radiation

Environmentalists are ignoring the elephant in the room … the world’s largest polluter.

Newsweek reported in 2014:

The US Department of Defence is one of the world’s worst polluters. Its footprint dwarfs that of any corporation: 4,127 installations spread across 19 million acres of American soil. Maureen Sullivan, who heads the Pentagon’s environmental programmes, says her office contends with 39,000 contaminated sites.

Camp Lejeune is one of the Department’s 141 Superfund sites, which qualify for special clean up grants from the federal government.

That’s about 10% of all of America’s Superfund sites, easily more than any other polluter. If the definition is broadened beyond Pentagon installations, about 900 of the 1200 or so Superfund sites in America are abandoned military facilities or sites that otherwise support military needs.

“Almost every military site in this country is seriously contaminated,” said John D Dingell, a soon-to-retire Michigan congressman, who served in the Second World War.

The U.S. military is the third-largest polluter of U.S. waterways.

The Washington Post noted Monday:

The U.S. military is the single largest consumer of fuel in the world.

We use a highly-polluting form of nuclear power so the U.S. military can make bombs.  U.S. military considerations also drive nuclear policy in Japan (that didn’t turn out very well) and other countries.

The government has been covering up nuclear accidents for more than 50 years.

Above-ground nuclear tests – which caused numerous cancers to the “downwinders” – were covered up by the American government for decades. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

At least 33,480 U.S. nuclear weapons workers who have received compensation for health damage are now dead.

And the country’s main storage site for nuclear waste from military production may be in real trouble.

The Pentagon is also one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world … and yet has a blanket exemption from all greenhouse gas treaties.

The defense department also uses open-air burn pits which send a parade of horribles into the air.

Sealife is not exempt. Military sonar kills whales and dolphins.

And the military has long been a flagrant user of chemical weapons and depleted uranium … which can trash ecosystems and human health.

Defoliant spray run, part of Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War by UC-123B Provider aircraft.

Things Get Even Worse During Wartime

And then there’s actual war-fighting …

Then UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pointed out in 2014:

The environment has long been a silent casualty of war and armed conflict. From the contamination of land and the destruction of forests to the plunder of natural resources and the collapse of management systems, the environmental consequences of war are often widespread and devastating.

The WorldWatch Institute notes:

An estimated 35 percent of southern Vietnam’s inland hardwood forest was sprayed [by the U.S. military with Agent Orange defoliant] at least once. Some areas-those bordering roads and rivers, around military bases, and along the forested transport route known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail-were hit up to half a dozen times.

***

With each spraying some portion of the trees failed to recover. Estimates ranged from about 10 percent in some forests sprayed only once to 80 percent or even more in those sprayed repeatedly. Denuded areas sometimes became desert-like, with blowing sand dunes.

***

About 14 percent of southern Vietnam’s teeming hardwood forests were destroyed ….

Vietnam’s coastal mangrove forests fared even worse: by a quirk of physiology, a single spraying could wipe out almost the entire plant community. Mangroves can live where other species cannot, at the brackish interface of land and sea, because their roots filter the salt out of seawater so that fresh water is drawn up into the plant’s leaves. The defoliants interfered with this filtering mechanism and allowed lethal doses of salt to accumulate in the plants.

Worse, the vegetation seemed utterly unable to regenerate, leaving bare mudflats even years after spraying.

***

Pfeiffer later recalled “a vast gray landscape, littered with the skeletons of herbicide-killed mangroves.”

***

A mid-1980s study by Vietnamese ecologists documented just 24 species of birds and 5 species of mammals present in sprayed forests and converted areas, compared to 145-170 bird species and 30-55 kinds of mammals in intact forest.

The Guardian notes of the Iraq War:

Sewers flowed into the streets and rivers, and refineries and pipelines leaked oil into the soil. The sanctions that followed meant little was repaired and land and cities have been poisoned. One observer in Basra in 2008 said people “live amid mud and faeces…

Childhood cancer rates are the highest in the country. The city’s salty tap water makes people ill. And there is more garbage on the streets than municipal collectors can make a dent in”.

Lutz says the images of 630 burning oil wells, torched by the retreating Iraqi army in Kuwait in 1991, advertised the inherent ‘ecocide’ of war. But this type of destruction is “the tip of the iceberg”, she says.

***

In all wars, displaced people congregate en masse without infrastructure to support their presence. Refugees turn to the environment in order to fulfil their basic needs. [i.e. they strip the land bare just to survive.]

***

“War is bad for wildlife in as many ways as for people.

***

In Afghanistan too, wildlife and habitats have disappeared. The past 30 years of war has stripped the country of its trees, including precious native pistachio woodlands. The Costs of War Project says illegal logging by US-backed warlords and wood harvesting by refugees caused more than one-third of Afghanistan’s forests to vanish between 1990 and 2007. Drought, desertification and species loss have resulted. The number of migratory birds passing through Afghanistan has fallen by 85%.

Syria and Yemen‘s environments have also been trashed by U.S.-backed wars.

So environmentalists who stay silent about imperial wars of adventure are totally ineffective.

Environmental Issues Cannot Be Separated From Issues of War and Peace

Foreign Policy Journal explains:

No matter what we’re led to believe, the world’s worst polluter is not your cousin who refuses to recycle or that co-worker who drives a gas guzzler or the guy down the block who simply will not try CFL bulbs. “The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined,” explains Lucinda Marshall, founder of the Feminist Peace Network. Pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange, solvents, petroleum, lead, mercury, and depleted uranium are among the many deadly substances used by the military.

***

The U.S. military and its fellow polluters—trans-national corporations—treat the planet like it’s a porta-potty…with little or no opposition from the general population. In fact, the military typically enjoys unconditional support even from those who identify as “anti-war.”Keep this in mind the next time you hear the phrase “war on terror”: Our tax dollars are subsidizing a global eco-terror campaign and all the recycled toilet paper in the world ain’t gonna change that.

Project Censored pointed out in 2010:

The US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations  …. This impact includes uninhibited use of fossil fuels, massive creation of greenhouse gases, and extensive release of radioactive and chemical contaminants into the air, water, and soil.

***

According to Barry Sanders, author of The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, “the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency . . . the Armed Forces of the United States.”

Throughout the long history of military preparations, actions, and wars, the US military has not been held responsible for the effects of its activities upon environments, peoples, or animals.

***

As it stands, the Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined. Depleted uranium, petroleum, oil, pesticides, defoliant agents such as Agent Orange, and lead, along with vast amounts of radiation from weaponry produced, tested, and used, are just some of the pollutants with which the US military is contaminating the environment. Flounders identifies key examples:

– Depleted uranium: Tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste contaminate the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans.

– US-made land mines and cluster bombs spread over wide areas of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East continue to spread death and destruction even after wars have ceased.

– Thirty-five years after the Vietnam War, dioxin contamination is three hundred to four hundred times higher than “safe” levels, resulting in severe birth defects and cancers into the third generation of those affected.

– US military policies and wars in Iraq have created severe desertification of 90 percent of the land, changing Iraq from a food exporter into a country that imports 80 percent of its food.

– In the US, military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as perchlorate and trichloroethylene seep into the drinking water, aquifers, and soil.

– Nuclear weapons testing in the American Southwest and the South Pacific Islands has contaminated millions of acres of land and water with radiation, while uranium tailings defile Navajo reservations.

– Rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon in bases around the world.

***

Between 1946 and 1958, the US dropped more than sixty nuclear weapons on the people of the Marshall Islands. The Chamoru people of Guam, being so close and downwind, still experience an alarmingly high rate of related cancer.

***

Meanwhile, as if the US military has not contaminated enough of the world already, a new five-year strategic plan by the US Navy outlines the militarization of the Arctic to defend national security, potential undersea riches, and other maritime interests, anticipating the frozen Arctic Ocean to be open waters by the year 2030.

***

Linking the antiwar and environmental movements is a much-needed step. As Cindy Sheehan recently told me, “I think one of the best things that we can do is look into economic conversion of the defense industry into green industries, working on sustainable and renewable forms of energy, and/or connect[ing] with indigenous people who are trying to reclaim their lands from the pollution of the military industrial complex. The best thing to do would be to start on a very local level to reclaim a planet healthy for life.”

It comes down to recognizing the connections, recognizing how we are manipulated into supporting wars and how those wars are killing our ecosystem.

Postscript: War is also bad for the economy.

'Holier-Than-Thou' - How America's Mainstream Media Rebuke Foreign Leaders

Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

In the week of World Press Freedom Day the New York Times carried one of its holier-than-thou and unintentionally ironical editorials, this time titled «Donald Trump Embraces Another Despot». Seeing the headline, the world could be forgiven for asking which one it might be, this time, and eventually the Editorial Board revealed the target of their displeasure to be President Duterte of the Philippines, an unpleasant morsel of filth who had just been invited to visit the United States by President Donald Trump, who is also an unpleasant morsel of filth.

In the run-up to identifying Mr Duterte as the object of its disapproval, the Times observed that «for the most part American presidents, Republican and Democratic, have believed that the United States should provide a moral compass to the world».

A moral compass? That rang a bell, because one person who used this phrase recently was the US Ambassador to the United Nations, the egregious Nikki Haley, who declared at her confirmation hearing that she will «speak up against anything that goes against American values», because «we have always been the moral compass of the world». What nonsense.

Many Americans have been horrified at the way in which their leaders have spun America’s moral compass over the years, and it is barely credible that anyone could utter such a phrase with sincerity.

Past presidents may have paid lip-service to such ideals, but few have pursued policies that would in any way indicate that the United States of America was providing a global moral compass. Post World War II, Washington’s ethics were blasted into pieces by the Pentagon’s evil fandangos in Vietnam and surrounding countries, where the effects of its massacres, bombings of cities and towns, and use of the chemical Agent Orange are still being suffered.

Ironically, the New York Times carried a piece in 2014 titled Agent Orange’s Long Legacy, for Vietnam and Veterans, which stated that «the war has not ended for many of the 2.8 million [US] servicemen and women who went to Vietnam. These ailing veterans are convinced that their cancers and nervous disorders and skin diseases — not to mention congenital maladies afflicting some of their children — are a result of their contact with Agent Orange». The writer claimed that «Often enough, that linkage has not been established incontrovertibly», which is a contemptible get-out, but the swinging moral compass went off the wall when he averred that the «Vietnamese accept almost as an article of faith that America’s aerial and ground spraying poisoned their environment, perhaps for decades to come, and is to blame for severe birth defects that afflict hundreds of thousands of their children. Whether that is indeed a reality has not been definitively established».

The poison of Agent Orange has indeed continued, as evidenced by many reports, one of the latest being on 4 April 2017 that «on a hill above his home, former soldier Do Duc Diu showed me the cemetery he built for his twelve children, who all died soon after being born disabled. There are a few extra plots next to the existing graves for where his daughters, who are still alive but very sick, will be buried». And it was Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon who bore responsibility for the vile despoliation of a region and the deaths of so many of its innocent citizens.

Moral compass? You’ve got to be joking.

Then the Editorial Board excelled itself by pronouncing that the Presidents of the United States have been «encouraging people to pursue their right to self-government and human dignity and rebuking foreign leaders who fall short».

The list of countries whose people have been actively discouraged by US Administrations from «pursuing their right to self-government» is long and depressing, and when there was movement to support people who want democracy the usual result was catastrophe. That this statement was made during Press Freedom Week was indeed ironic, because it was also reported that «Washington is working to push through contracts for tens of billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, some new, others in the pipeline, ahead of President Donald Trump"s trip to the kingdom this month». He is visiting a dictatorship where, as his own State Department acknowledges, «civil law does not protect human rights, including freedoms of speech and of the press». Moral compass, anyone?

President Duterte is a gross violator of human rights and entirely without any moral sense. As noted on CNN, he is «the thug President of the Philippines — our ally. Here’s a man who has bragged about committing murder . . . and who just happens to be presiding over an anti-drug operation that by some estimates has involved the extrajudicial killing of some 7,000 people».

But there have been and continue to be many similar despots around the world whom the United States and the New York Times have supported for years. Take the truly evil Park Chung-Hee of South Korea with whom President Kennedy «reaffirmed the strong bonds of friendship traditionally existing between the two countries» and who lasted through Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and even the faintly morally-conscious Carter, until Park’s assassination in 1979. Where was the moral compass in these hideous years in which Park was a valued ally of the United States?

Then there was the brutal Suharto of Indonesia (1967 to 1998; Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the First, Clinton) about whom in 2015, fifty years after Suharto’s most appalling massacres, the New York Times carried a piece acknowledging that «with American support, more than 500,000 people were murdered by the Indonesian Army and its civilian death squads. At least 750,000 more were tortured and sent to concentration camps, many for decades». Reagan liked Suharto and in a speech went so far as to spin his moral compass back-to-front and say that «tonight we welcome good friends back to the White House» because he considered his dictator guest to have «clear-sighted recognition of where the interests of both our nations lie».

Of course Suharto recognised American interests — just as present-day dictators recognise them and know that although Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the Tweeter-in Chief, Donald Trump, should, as Haley proudly announced, «speak up against anything that goes against American values», they’ll do that selectively. They adopt this approach because although US values are Constitutionally and morally at variance with those of all the Gulf dictatorships, for example, they are subject to modification in interpretation as they go up the gently-sloped moral ladders of the Congress and the Administration.

There are never any public rebukes for the Gulf dictators, in spite of the State Department recording that they are intolerant bigots with no regard for human rights.

Washington declares Saudi Arabia to be «a strong partner» in spite of it being noted in the report on human rights that its citizens have no «ability and legal means to choose their government» while there are «restrictions on universal rights, such as freedom of expression, including on the internet, and the freedoms of assembly, association, movement, and religion; and pervasive gender discrimination and lack of equal rights that affected most aspects of women’s lives».

It would be refreshing if the New York Times Editorial Board were to get hold of America’s moral compass and encourage the President to rebuke the monarchy of Saudi Arabia for its long-standing, embedded and comprehensive contempt for the rights of Saudi citizens.

By all means criticize Trump for cosying up to the savage Duterte - but spare us the claptrap about moral compasses.

"What The F**k Is Wrong With You America" - Moby Claims Trump Dossier 100% Real, War With Iran Looms

After last night"s "Agent Orange" debacle at The Grammy"s, it appears the music-erati are jealous of their Hollywood peers and ratched amplifier on hysteria up to "11" today. Having asked America "what the fuck is wrong with you" shortly after electing President Trump, veteran electronic music star Moby shared a Facebook post where he claims his "D.C. friends" confirmed the Trump dossier is "100% real"

By way of background, here is Moby expressing his dis-satisfaction at the deplorables" voting in November...

"As a life-long progressive i"m supposed to be diplomatic and understanding, but America, what the fuck is wrong with you?" he wrote in the open letter shared with Billboard. "But then I ask myself, very sadly, why am I surprised?"

Moby continued: "This is the America who has now elected a dim-witted, racist, misogynist. A dim-witted, racist, misogynist who has ruined businesses and has no policy proposals other than "build a wall." I guess there will be some cold, bitter schadenfreude in spending the next 4 years watching middle america wake up to the fact that donald trump is an incompetent con-man.

"The rust belt jobs won"t come back. the wall won"t get built. and Hillary won"t get locked up. Donald Trump will be impeached, or end his presidency with single digit approval ratings; and hopefully, somehow, america will finally wake up the fact that republicans are, simply, terrible."

And today as Moby explains (seemingly incapable of using Capital letters)... (bolding added)

after spending the weekend talking to friends who work in dc i can safely(well, "accurately"...) post the following things:

1-the russian dossier on trump is real. 100% real. he"s being blackmailed by the russian government, not just for being peed on by russian hookers, but for much more nefarious things.

2-the trump administration is in collusion with the russian government, and has been since day one.

3-the trump administration needs a war, most likely with iran. at present they are putting u.s warships off the coast of iran in the hope that iran will attack one of the ships and give the u.s a pretense for invasion.

4-there are right wing plans to get rid of trump. he"s a drain on their fundraising and their approval ratings, and the gop and koch brothers and other u.s right wing groups are planning to get rid of trump.

5-intelligence agencies around the world, and here in the u.s, are horrified by the incompetence of the trump administration, and are working to present information that will lead to high level firings and, ultimately, impeachment.

i"m writing these things so that when/if these things happen there will be a public record beforehand.

these are truly baffling and horrifying times, as we have an incompetent president who is essentially owned by a foreign power.

-moby

"Baffling" indeed Mr. Moby (or is it just Moby?)

As you can imagine, Facebook "friends" who followed Mody were a little quizzicial of his evidence...

Carlos Godinez - "Your friends who work in D.C." Let me guess, Starbucks?

Soren Le Goff - Moby your so ignorant it hurts, stop posting propaganda.

Frankie Lenaghan - You have lost the plot mate.

Eddy G. Munoz - Moby, please get back to the lab and get to work. You are losing your mind. Now you are having delusions of being privy to information that would be considers confidential.

Brady Spenrath - I know you mean well, and I agree with your intent, but just posting unverified rumors with no sources or evidence to back that up is as harmful as the White House staff making stuff up. What happened to "When they go low, we go high"?

The question we have for Mark Zuckerberg - is this "fake news"? Should this kind of information be shared on your social network? What if a so-called self-identified, non-progressive celebrity allegedly claimed to have alleged proof that Nancy Pelosi was in fact the alleged Russian hooker pissing all over Trump in an alleged Moscow hotel? (Could be? We have alleged friends in D.C. who said it"s possible).

Martin Armstrong Warns "This Will Only End In Bloodshed..."

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

The rage among the left continues to build and it is being supported in earnest by mainstream personalities in Hollywood and the music industry. As Martin Armstrong points out, the constant protests by the Entertainment industry against Trump will not subside.

The Grammy show was reduced to hurried political statements, A Tribe Called Quest delivered a vigorous rebuke of Trump during a tribute to Phife Dawg, who died in March 2016. The group said the performance of We the People was also in honor of protesters.

The hip-hop group was joined by Rhymes who thanked “President Agent Orange”  the new name they gave to Trump for “perpetuating evil in the United States”. The tribute ended with people of different races gathered on stage as Q-Tip repeatedly shouted: “Resist” as the camera faded to commercial.

According to cyclical analyst Martin Armstrong, things are only going to get worse as protests spread and soon turn to large-scale riots.

Via Armstrong Economics:

All of this is building to violence. Then the police will respond and then the outcries will be see – Trump is running a police state. This will only tear the country apart. Many of these protesters are not old enough to even vote. Their teachers allow them to cut class to protest against Trump.

When asked what they are protesting about, they do not even understand the issues.

This is like a rumor mill. By the time it gets to the 5th person, it is nothing like what was said. You have black students in high school repeating Trump said all blacks are ignorant. Others saying Iraq is not a terrorist nation because they never heard of that. Still others said people should come in and not even be checked. This is the mindset that is sweeping the nation and it is really scary. This is part of the cycle of civil unrest and indeed it looks like the computer is going to be right once again.

This will be the BIGGEST spike in civil unrest in American history, It is already the biggest with regard to trying to block and overthrow the Trump Administration and Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schummer are all encouraging this violence.  Nancy Pelosi says she cannot work with Trump at all and she is the head of the Democrats.

This will ONLY end in bloodshed.

Armstrong’s economic confidence model has been highly accurate for over thirty years, having predicted, among other things, the Savings and Loan crash of the late 1980’s to the very day, the collapse of Japanese stocks, and the destruction of the Russian economy. Several years ago Armstrong’s political forecasts specifically noted that periods of civil unrest were coming. As Armstrong concludes rather ominously - and looking increasingly likely to be correct...

There is only one way this is going to end and that is blood in the streets. The riots will only escalate and the left ALWAYS becomes violent.

Review: Agent Orange Linked to Bladder Cancer, Hypothyroidism, Parkinson’s

Monsanto and Dow were 2 of the 9 wartime contractors hired by the US government to create Agent Orange, a combination of the toxic chemicals 2,4-D, and 2,4,5-T, just over 40 years ago. The damage these chemicals have perpetrated on our health and environment did not end with the Vietnam War though.

Aside from the long-term poisoning of soil and crops, a new review of Agent Orange research has found evidence that bladder cancer and hypothyroidism are more strongly linked to exposure to Agent Orange than was previously assumed.

Although the new information does not support a previously-held belief that spina bifida, a birth defect, occurs more often in the offspring of exposed veterans, a report released by the Institute of Medicine on the health effects of Agent Orange recommended the Veterans Affairs Department grant service-connected presumption to veterans with “Parkinson’s-like symptoms,” not just those diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease related to Agent Orange exposure. In addition cancer, endocrine disease, and neurological impairment still loom large in the shadow of Agent Orange’s use.

Government agencies and their contractors who made these chemicals claim they dissipated shortly after being sprayed in the air, but two-thirds of these herbicides were contaminated with TCDD, a form of dioxin, a highly toxic substance linked to at least 15 classes of cancer and other medical conditions, as well as several birth defects.

The toxic legacy on the Vietnamese will remain for generations, even though the dioxin contaminant may eventually be cleansed from the “hot spots” remaining in parts of southern Vietnam to this day. (Agent Orange Record has a repository of information to corroborate these claims.)

The 1,115-page review is the last of a series conducted by the IOM (part of the National Academies) on health problems related to Agent Orange and other herbicide use during the Vietnam War.

The panel responsible for writing the report reviewed scientific literature released between October 2012 and September 2014, chaired by Kenneth Ramos, professor of medicine at the Arizona Health Sciences Center, University of Arizona.

The pronouncement that Agent Orange caused bladder cancer and hypothyroidism was tied to results of a large study of Korean War veterans who served in the Vietnam War.

The upgrade for bladder cancer and hypothyroidism from the category “inadequate or insufficient evidence” to “limited or suggestive evidence,” of a link as well as the recommendation to include Parkinson’s-like symptoms to the service-connected list could pave the way for thousands of veterans to receive health care and disability compensation where they have been neglected before.

This review also shows quite clearly that for either political reasons or scientific ones, or both, we often do not understand the complete ramifications of using pesticides and herbicides until decades after they have been released into the environment, and by this time the damage is far-reaching in multiple layers of society.

Source: The Institute for Southern Studies

Roughly 2.6 million U.S. veterans served in Vietnam, many of whom may have been exposed to Agent Orange. Many more Vietnamese people, including innocent women and children were exposed to these chemicals as well. The land in Vietnam is still an Agent Orange scourge, with about 12 million gallons of this supercharged weed killer, enough to douse 18,000 square miles, being sprayed on the 66,000 square miles of South Vietnam during the War. That’s enough to cover a fourth of the country.

Agent Orange was supposedly put out of commission in the 1970’s, but the ecological damage the spraying of these chemicals caused is still evident throughout Vietnam.

Chilling: How Monsanto’s Agent Orange is Still Used Today

Attorneys for Military Veterans Advocacy and the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Association recently presented oral arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking it to decide whether the VA should have included these veterans in their presumption.

Retired Navy Cmdr. John Wells, executive director of Military-Veterans Advocacy, said the sailors who served on ships should be included because the vessels’ distillation systems used water contaminated with Agent Orange to produce drinking water as well as water used for their boilers.

“There was no magic, invisible Agent Orange filter at the mouth of the rivers,” Wells said. “We have documented proof of its presence in Nha Trang Harbor, 20 years after the war. That evidence has been presented to the VA. The distillation system which produced drinking water and water for the boilers did not remove the dioxin — it enriched it.”

Dioxin is a member of the class of persistent organic pollutants which resulted from the deliberately accelerated production of 2,4,5-T, one of the components of Agent Orange.  Dioxin can shorten the life of humans exposed to it and is associated with severe degradation of health in this and, potentially, future generations.

Monsanto was recently held accountable for polluting the environment in non-war time with dioxins. The company had to pay $93 million to citizens of a small town in West Virginia as part of compensation in a settlement for manufacturing dioxins. A factory was opened in Nitro in 1948 for this purpose.

While this case did not involve glyphosate, another deadly toxin used in Monsanto herbicides such as Roundup, its time will come soon.

Source: Military.com

This report makes it clear that further study on the health consequences of dioxin exposure on humans is necessary. Agent Orange is just one of the many deadly chemicals that Monsanto, Dow and other chemical companies manufacture.

Sources:

MilitaryTimes

The Institute for Southern Studies

Military.com

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About Christina Sarich:
	Christina Sarich is a humanitarian and freelance writer helping you to Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga.