Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts

Sunday, January 17, 2016

As Goes Syria, So Goes the World

By Janet C. Phelan
Column: Politics
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The US engagement in the Middle East has an unexplored impetus and if allowed to continue unchecked will have unexpected and world-changing consequences.

The world has become inured to war. Since 2000, the US alone has launched over forty military actions,  ranging from deployment of a few military personnel in East Timor, ostensibly to aid in a government transition, to full blown invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Conflict has also broken out in Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon, Ukraine, Pakistan and Chad, to name just a few locations.

Countries known for a generally tranquil and orderly way of life, such as France and Germany, have experienced bloodshed as a result of armed terrorist attacks within their borders. In the US, a recent killing spree in San Bernardino left 14 dead and 22 seriously injured, and was deemed to be an IS related attack.

It does appear that the US has developed a unique signature in repeated events involving reportedly disgruntled or allegedly mentally ill individuals, who have sprayed schools, malls and hospitals with gunfire in dozens of such incidents.

Another War?—Pass me the sixpack

 Altogether, one might say that the entire world has become a battlefield.

Of necessity, one’s visceral reactions to violent events become tempered through repetition.  Dead bodies and burned out buildings do, over time, lose their shock value. And so the prospect of yet another military invasion—this time of Syria—might be met with a tepid response from a public accustomed to over a decade of war.

In a recent Sputnik interview, Paul Craig Roberts declared that “I don’t think the world will stand for another illegal US invasion so for the US to send another army into Syria would be another illegal invasion and I don’t think that it will likely happen.”


However, Roberts’ perceptions are not supported by a recent CNN survey, which found that a majority of the Americans polled stated that they would now support an invasion of Syria.

“Let’s Roll!”—President George W. Bush, November, 2001

As US aggression in the Middle East moves forward with what some believe to be bewildering relentlessness, we may need to take a harder look at US domestic policies in order to better assess her policies abroad.  Clues to America’s ultimate intentionality lie at home.  Through the lens of a frank assessment of her domestic policies, one may come to an enhanced understanding of America’s aggression in the Middle East.

And through this lens, however darkly the image may appear, we can see how the actions of the US, taken in total, may result in a devastation on American soil that has no rival in recent history.

 What we need to look at are the eugenics programs now operational in the US. These programs are largely given wide berth by the mainstream media and it is only through the diligent efforts of alternative media that many of these programs have come to public attention.

Under the ludicrous misnomer of “adult guardianship,” the elderly and disabled are being stripped of their assets and sent to early graves.

The elderly and disabled—the “useless eaters” of society—have been a continuing focus of all eugenics movements. Under Adolph Hitler’s T-4 program—the first forced euthanasia  program launched by the Nazis—over 200,000 ethnic Germans are thought to have been gassed to death, long before Hitler pounced on the Jews.
Hitler was instructed in many of his ideas about eugenics and the “Master Race” by those in the eugenics movement in the United States. The first US state to introduce a compulsory sterilization bill of those deemed “unfit” was Michigan, in 1897. Other states followed suit, including Pennsylvania, Indiana, Washington and California.  In 1927 the infamous Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell legitimized the forced sterilization of residents at a Virginia home for the mentally retarded. While California was known to have conducted the most sterilizations, North Carolina’s program is thought to have been the “most aggressive” of the 32 states with eugenics programs, giving social workers the power to order sterilizations. The North Carolina program was operational up until the 1970’s.

 People as lab rats

The Tuskegee syphilis experiments, conducted in secret between 1932 and 1972 by the US Public Health Service, studied the progression of untreated syphilis in African American males in Alabama, under the pretext of providing free health care, in a shocking violation of medical ethics.

According to reports, sterilizations are still being performed in California jails.

The actions of such health institutions as Phoenix Children’s Hospital and UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute reveal a continuing focus on genetics and experimentation on the mentally ill.  In Arizona, children suffering from certain genetic illnesses are being forcibly taken from their families and put into experimental drug programs, at least some of which are being sponsored by a research facility known as Translational Genomics Research Institute, also known as TGen.

 PCH has an agreement with TGen to refer children ill with NMD (Neuromuscular disease) into TGen research programs. This reporter has acquired documents from the State of Arizona relevant to TGen grants and proposals.  According to a grant proposal from TGen researcher Dr. Justin Hunter, “Dr. Saunder Bernes, senior pediatric neurologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital (PCH), has agreed to refer Arizona residents with NMD for these studies (see attached letter of support).” The grant was awarded to Dr. Hunter on October 23, 2014.

Phoenix Children’s Hospital has hotly denied any such agreements with TGen. In an email dated January 8, 2016, Debra Stevens, Director of Marketing and Communications at PCH, wrote the following:  “Dr. Bernes declined the request for an interview and supports our previous statements as follows: We do not have a patient referral contract with TGen.”

In a recent high-profile court case in Arizona, the parental rights of Melissa Diegel were terminated after she began to question PCH’s referral of her two daughters, both diagnosed with a mitochondrial disease, into an experimental drug program sponsored by TGen. In a court case steeped in judicial misconduct and secrecy, Diegel’s right to even see her daughters was first revoked by Judge Kristin Hoffman after Diegel reportedly discovered her children were wasting away in foster care.  According to Diegel, Kayla had lost 16 pounds and Hannah had lost 14 lbs.  Hannah and Kayla are now up for adoption and Judge Hoffman has sealed the court record.

UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital is a high rise modern building gracing several acres in downtown Westwood, a neighborhood featuring sprawling multi-million dollar mansions and toney shopping. Formerly on the grounds of NPI, in the shadows of the towering hospital, was a detached one-story building housing an adult psychiatric unit referred to as “A-South.”  For at least some period of time, A-South curiously only serviced those on public assistance.  The independent structure known as A-South was razed sometime in the last ten years.

The patients on A-South were provided “treatment” which could be considered in violation of the Nuremberg Code, which mandates informed consent. Some A-South patients were given electroshock therapy far in excess of recommended standards. In at least one case, a patient was given a medication which produced seizure-like activity, resulting in numerous falls. Prior to the hospitalization, the patient did not have seizures or falling episodes.

When she requested that the medication be terminated, she was told that it would not be. When she then demanded release from the hospital, she was also refused this. She then informed staff that she had placed a phone call to an attorney. She was discharged within the hour.

UCLA maintains that no such detached unit ever existed.  In response to a public records act request, UCLA manager Robert Baldridge wrote that: 

“A South was the location (A floor, south wing) in the old NPI of one of the inpatient units.” He goes on to write that “A South” is simply a reference to a particular physical location of the hospital….” He denied that research took place on A-South, stating that “it was not a research unit, but a standard clinical unit.”

He has also refused to supply a list of residents who were assigned to A-South, in a violation of the California Public Records Act.

UCLA Senior Media relations officer Enrique Rivero also promotes the myth of “no detached structure” delineated as A-South. In a recent email, Rivero wrote this reporter in response to an email providing proof of the existence of A-South: “The A-south at both of these links are not a separate building, they are sections within the Neuropsychiatric institute within the ucla center for the health sciences. The A is the floor and the south is the part of the building.”

Dr. Michael Gitlin, whose tenure at UCLA exceeds thirty years, remembers A-South well. In an interview this December, Gitlin stated that  A-South was indeed a detached building and was demolished about ten years ago.

More Eugenics Programs

As recently reported in NEO, yet another covert eugenics mechanism has been uncovered, involving “heart attack” drugs, which are masquerading as normal pharmaceuticals. It is believed that these “impostor  pharmaceuticals” are being dispensed to targeted populations in nursing homes and also to unsuspecting political targets

The shift in policy away from President Lyndon Johnson’s vision of “The Great Society,” to a society which uses human beings as lab rats, subjected to non-consensual experimentation and outright murder speaks to the existence of a cemented and pervasive eugenics policy within the US government.

 This shift in policy, coupled with the layers of protective denial, provides a different lens through which to view the US’s aggression in the Middle East. By insistently stirring the cauldron in that region, the US has put Israel at enhanced risk. The Iran deal is exemplary of this endangerment to the Jewish state.

Most Israelis no longer see the US as the great friend of Israel.  Rather, the US is increasingly viewed as a potential Judas. According to John Loftus, former DOJ prosecutor and author of four intelligence histories, the US has always engaged in a policy of duplicity with Israel. The subtitle to his national bestseller, co-authored with Mark Aarons, entitled “The Secret War Against the Jews,” pithily sums up his central thesis: “How Western Intelligence Betrayed the Jewish People.”  

It would only take one missile launched from Syria to decimate the Jewish state.  President Assad has repeatedly threatened that should the US attack Syria, he would retaliate by bombing Israel.

What Assad may not have realized is that this is exactly what the US intends.

As Goes Syria, So Goes the World

As reported in the Washington Post on October 30, 2015, “President Obama is sending a small number of Special Operations troops to Northern Syrian, marking the first full-time deployment of US forces to the chaotic country.”

 In addition, Obama has requested Congressional approval “in case he wants more.”

If Syria (or failing Syria, Iran) should bomb Israel, a chunk of the covert eugenics program launched by America will have come to fruition. The problem will then remain as to how to deal with those in the diaspora, as well as other “genetically undesirables” residing within the US—most likely people of color and indigenous peoples. The US has in place a nearly undetectable delivery system which could eliminate targeted sectors of her population, while leaving non-targets unscathed.

The use of water as a weapon has historical precedent; however, this may be the first time that a nation has deployed such a massive bio/chem weapon against its own citizens.

As a war-jaded US population appears to have given the green light to a US invasion of Syria—a faraway country, inhabited by people who, on the surface at last, are alien to US culture and customs—the lesson of interconnectedness of all living beings must be attended to. If we fail to do so, devastation and death will visit our own shores, in a pre-planned “plague” which will forever change the face of America from one of diversity to one of homogeneity.  Through telecommunications and travel, the world has become quite small. The once interesting hypothetical that what happens in a distant land may have profound reverberations thousands of miles away is no longer theoretical.

These two threads of American aggression—a caboodle of wars in the Middle East coupled with her own eugenics efforts at home—must be recognized for what they really are: a thrust towards world domination coupled with remaking the face of the world population.

Our ability to recognize this dark union may be our strongest and best hope for a future worth inhabiting.

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook. 

Saturday, December 5, 2015

What in the World has Happened to the American People?

By Janet Phelan

Column: Society

Like others in my generation, I remember proudly the response of the American people to the war in Vietnam. I remember the marches, the sit-ins, the protests. I remember the small Midwestern liberal arts college I first attended deciding to shut itself down as its students readied to pour into the nation’s capital and I remember being tear gassed in Berkeley.

Vietnam pales in magnitude when compared with the military actions launched by the US since the turn of the century.  Since 2000, US troops have fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

War, no longer an anomaly, has become common fare.

The virulence of the US government is increasingly evident towards its own people. In certain  arenas, and against certain kinds of people, the US has become brutally aggressive against its own citizens.

The response by the people of the United States to its continuing incursions abroad has been colorless, to say the least.  No schools shut down, no massive mobilizations on Washington, no general strikes.  As far as the domestic violence goes, the response is equally bland. One might posit that the people of the US have become accustomed to their bellicose government.

In light of the history of protest, how does one account for the muted response of the American people?

The Drugging of America 

For one, Americans are being drugged silly. Per capita, the US population consumes an astounding number of psychiatric medications. A 2011 Medco Health Solutions report stated that one in five Americans takes at least one psychiatric drug.

According to an IMS Health Vector One report, a grand total of 78,694,222 Americans were consuming at least one type of psychiatric medication in 2013

“Over the past decade, there has been a significant uptick in the use of medications to treat a variety of mental health problems; what is not as clear is if more people — especially women, are actually developing psychological disorders that require treatment, or if they are more willing to seek out help and clinicians are better at diagnosing these conditions than they once were,” David Muzina, MD, a psychiatrist and national practice leader of the Medco Neuroscience Therapeutic Resource Center, said in a release.

The drugs being prescribed range from drugs for mood disorders to anti-anxiety drugs to more serious anti-psychotic medications. According to a 2011 Harvard report, the federal government’s health statisticians figure that about one in every 10 Americans takes an antidepressant

According to a Yale study, published in 2013, there are significant geographical clusters of psychiatric medication use. The study reported that in Alexandria, Virginia, “two in five residents received an antidepressant, compared to a mean of 10.4% nationally.”

Quoting the Medco Report, the WHO has stated that in 2010 21% of American women were taking antidepressant drugs.

WHO also reports that the Medco data shows that women have the highest utilization rate of anti-anxietymedications; in fact, 11 percent of middle-aged women (age 45-64) were on an anti-anxiety drug treatment in 2010, nearly twice the rate of their male counterparts.

In addition, Medco reported that the use of anti-psychotic medications has soared and that the usage of these drugs is up over 300% in the last ten years.

Adults are not the only consumers of psychiatric drugs. The 2011 Medco report stated that the number of children receiving atypical antipsychotics doubled from 2001 to 2010.  The CDC reports that over ten percent of children are now diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Approximately 8% of American children are taking Adderall, Ritalin or other stimulant medications.

Many psychiatric medications include the mind-numbing compound, fluoride. Fluoride was used extensively in the concentration camps in Eastern Europe to keep the camp denizens docile.

The Fluoride Toxicity Research Collaborative has launched a project to list which medications contain fluoride. Here’s a partial list of fluoride containing antidepressants.

In addition, many cities fluoridate the public water.

Parenthetically, a recent New Yorker article cites the failure of medicine to find organic causes for depression. The article suggests that placebos are as effective as the prescribed drugs in treating depression.

The “Awry Facto

Life situations seen as overwhelming may produce a depressive response. Equally, the perception that an aggressor is in control may produce a reaction accommodating and enabling the aggressor. This reaction, “identification with the aggressor,” is popularly called The Stockholm Syndrome. It is this psychological reaction to the perception of being held hostage by an aggressor that we turn our attention to now.

Since the events of September 11, 2001, an increasing number of American citizens have become aware that something is going on in the United States that is not normal. The evidence that something is going seriously awry is evidenced in a number of specific situations and is impacting an increasing number of American citizens.

The “awry factor” is evident in adult guardianship proceedings, where elders and the disabled are being ripped from the protective shelter of their families, their estates are being plundered and all too often, the wards are being sent to an early death.

The “awry factor” is evident in what happens to family members and attorneys who attempt to protect these people.  Very often, restraining orders are issued against family and sometimes the family members are jailed. Attorneys who seek to protect their clients are often disbarred.

The “awry factor” is evident in family court proceedings. When there are allegations that one of the parents has abused a minor child, all too often the child is remanded into the custody of the abuser.

The “awry factor” is evident in the alarming numbers of police officers who escape culpability when they murder US citizens, and the “awry factor” is evident in the increasing numbers of whistleblowers being charged under the Espionage Act.

The “awry factor” is evident in the growing numbers of ordinary American citizens who are alleging that they are being placed into covert experimental governmental electronic weapons programs, without their informed consent. 

The “awry factor” is not only evident in what is happening legally or “extra-legally” across America, however. Growing numbers of Americans are becoming aware that the mainstream press is not giving them the  real deal, as far as the news goes. More and more, Americans are turning to internet news sites in order to learn what the mainstream press isn’t telling them.

The “awry factor” is increasingly evident in the US’s foreign policy, where lies are stacked upon lies in order to present overwhelming and utterly false reasons to go to war.

Certain professions  are known to have their fingers on the pulse of the nation. These professions may include those in the legal profession, journalists, police officers and many in government employ. The wave of shock that comes with the realization that your own government has moved out of the position of protector and is now a potential assailant may result in a personal crisis, a coming to a crossroads. 

Some people simply pack up and leave. They quit their jobs, knowing that a once noble profession is now a tool of oppression. They may go so far as to leave the country. The majority, however, appear to make other decisions. They may button their lips and go along with a heinous situation simply because this is how they pay the mortgage.

In some, the decision to “go with the program” results in the psychological syndrome called “identification with the aggressor.” A medical dictionary defines this syndrome thus: “In psychology, an unconscious process in which a person adopts the perspective or behavior patterns of a captor or abuser.”  In other words, the individual is not simply going with the current. He has become the aggressor.

Held Hostage

In a sense, the US populace is now held hostage. We are drugged, lied to and even when we emerge from these experiences with our perceptions intact, we find ourselves tied up in knots. These knots are intrapsychic. They involve the implicit awareness that speaking out, acting in accordance with moral principles, is now a dangerous endeavor.

In every generation, in every totalitarian situation in recorded history, there have been individuals who refused to be intimidated. There are individuals whose moral compass overrides the danger alert. It is well known that if the entire population refused to be intimidated, the problem of aggression, abuse, murder and wars could be resolved very quickly. But first, we need to come to terms with the fact that we are frightened. We may be confused and we are scared. Somewhere within each and every one of us is that small, still voice which can encourage us in this time of great occlusion.

Within each and every one of us resides a hero. We only need to clear away the adulterating effects of mind numbing substances and the hypnotic media propaganda and allow him to emerge.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

US PROXY WARS: YEMEN

April 8, 2015



IMAGE SOURCE: headlinedigest.com
IMAGE SOURCE: headlinedigest.com
By Anita Stewart for Challenging the Rhetoric and Wise Women Media
US arms exports have increased since Obama took office and lately most of them have gone to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf countries. The current arms deals include weapons that have been sold to Saudi Arabia that in turn have been used to bomb targets in Yemen and threatening and killing Americans there in addition to innocent women, children and elderly. Hence, a proxy war and Yemen is now in a “collapse” situation.
Saudi Arabia got 46 million in new weapons agreements from the US. And 500 million dollars worth of weapons have been “lost” or “misplaced” in Yemen and are probably being used by both sides in their civil war. So the reality is this: the US is funding and providing military hardware to all sides of this conflict. This means big profits for the weapons manufacturers.
Let’s Talk About Drones
Drone operations are being conducted in a huge way in Yemen and have been for some time. Other military theatres in the Middle East/Persian Gulf are also being monitored or citizens are being killed in similar operations.
As of yesterday, the US Military announced a new pay scale and bonus structure for drone pilots.
From the site: “…[This] was also established as a temporary fix until the Air Force came up with aviation continuation pay similar to that given pilots of manned aircraft.”
Some of these pay and bonus structures include amounts as high as $225,000.
So this pay structure is based on active duty military members sitting in comfy desk chairs in front of computers queued up in cubicles at bases in Saudi Arabia and other locales while they are killing indiscriminately or conducting reconnaissance by remote control. (Just like in video games). Also, no boots have to be on the ground.
The drone pilots will be getting pay raises at the similar scale as combat pilots who take the life and death risks when flying real missions? Does this in any way seem logical?
Americans Being Left Behind?
The US has three Navy ships in the vicinity of Yemen yet surprisingly has not conducted operations to rescue American citizens of an undetermined number who may be trapped there. Other countries have successfully evacuated their citizens: China, Somalia, India and Pakistan, for example.
The US State Department did not have any employees that would speak on the record and it has evacuated all it’s staff from Yemen after stopping embassy operations on February 11, 2015.  Those that would speak off the record stated that any US citizens still in Yemen were “on their own.” Americans were advised to find overland travel to get out of the country even though that has many risks and roads are impassable in places. The Indian Military has offered to help US citizens to evacuate.
The Stuck in Yemen website was created to force a strong hand on the US State Department so they would start assisting American citizens who may be trapped there.
And On The Ground…
Hooria Mashhour, a Yemeni Human Rights activist and former post-revolution Human Rights Minister was interviewed by MintPress News and stated the following:
“Over the past two weeks an estimated 500 people have died — 60 were children. Some sources have put the number of dead at over 2,000. It is really difficult to tell at this stage, but the death toll is mounting. Hundreds of people have been injured, and schools, universities, hospitals even have had to close their doors. People do not have access to electricity and fuel is no longer available. The situation in Yemen is very bad indeed.”
Just like a video game, the US’s Proxy War for Ultimate Empire continues on. And the US and Al Qaeda are on the same side.

THE DISAPPEARED: DO THESE BODY COUNTS EQUAL GENOCIDE?


April 8, 2015


IMAGE SOURCE: ysamarsinsights.wordpress.com
IMAGE SOURCE: ysamarsinsights.wordpress.com
By Anita Stewart for Challenging the Rhetoric and Wise Women Media
We don’t do body counts,” said General Tommy Franks in 2003, in the early days of Gulf War II, you know, “Shock and Awe.”
What followed that bold statement were countless reports and news stories from corporate and independent media on just how the counts were conducted, but no one knew for sure how this huge endeavor was being carried out.
Franks’ statement was the catalyst for the creation of the website [that is still live] IraqBodyCount.net. The data on the site is full of stats and is rather macabre, but if people reviewed it and saw the casualties for themselves perhaps this data would change the public opinion about wars and occupations? 
Democracy Now had one of the first reports on the General’s statement and the website that was one of the first sites about the Iraq War itself; one that you to share the casualty data by inserting a widget box onto other pages, blogs and websites. It was quite brilliant.
IMAGE SOURCE: hrw.org
IMAGE SOURCE: hrw.org
 The Body Count Report 
Not reported by corporate media and sadly forgotten or under-reported by alternative/independent media, “The Body Count Report: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the “War on Terror” is 101 pages that was released in March of 2015 and included information from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It should have made international news and front pages everywhere.
Data was collected by the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), thePhysicians for Global Survival (PGS) and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and included stats from September 11th, 2001 up until the end of 2013. The report is linked here for download as a PDF file.
Omission Of The Facts Means They Don’t Exist
Officially ignored are casualties, injured or killed, involving enemy combatants and civilians…” wrote Doctor Hans-C. Von Sponeck in his preface to the Body Count Report.
Von Sponeck is a former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq.
“…This, of course, comes as no surprise. It is not an oversight but a deliberate omission. The U.S. authorities have kept no known records of such deaths. This would have destroyed the arguments that freeing Iraq by military force from a dictatorship, removing al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and eliminating safe havens for terrorists in Pakistan’s tribal areas has prevented terrorism from reaching the US homeland, improved global security and advanced human rights, all at ‘defendable costs.’”
IMAGE SOURCE: cursor.org
IMAGE SOURCE: cursor.org
The Report Doesn’t Exist If YOU Can’t Find It
Independent researcher and American, David Peterson — co-author of ‘The Politics of Genocide,’ noted the following a week ago:
 “I just ran a Factiva database search (on MediaLens) for mentions of the (Body Count) report. As best I can tell, within the universe of wire services and newspapers archived by the Factiva database, only four different English-language media have reported the existence of this document, and in these cases, two reports were picked up by twomedia.”
The Real Numbers [Add Up]
Per the report around a million casualties would be considered a conservative estimate. More than two million would be more realistic. Not counted would be numbers of casualties submitted from other Middle East countries and some of those displaced and living in refugee camps. The UN and NGO’s also have provided some of the data.
The real numbers are not provided to the general public because “collateral damage” is not considered technically as bad as a ‘casualty.’ The pogroms, endless wars and occupations must continue in order for corporations to profit. How much are you depositing today?