And in Other Ecocide News ...

Fukushima is still leaking radioactive water into the Pacific.

According to a 2013 study by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway, the first radioactive oceanic plume released by Fukushima is likely to hit the US's West Coast in force in 2017, with levels expected to peak in 2018. According to the report, the majority of the radioactive material from the disaster is expected to stay concentrated along the West Coast through at least 2026. 

Even though that plume hasn't yet hit, the spread of radiation has already been substantial. Professor Michio Aoyama of Japan's Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity believes the amount of radiation that has now reached North America is probably nearly as much as was spread over Japan during the initial disaster. A recent Woods Hole study shows a 50 percent increase in radiation levels 1,600 miles west of San Francisco, but states that the levels are still far below what the US government considers dangerous. 

However, Caldicott takes issue with what the United States considers a "safe" level of radiation exposure. "There are no safe levels of radiation for biological systems," she said. "That terminology is used by the nuclear industry to cover their inevitable radioactive releases." 

Ramana believes it could still take decades before the plant's radiation leaks are even contained. "I think this is going to take a couple of decades," he said. "We are still in the early years; it hasn't even been five years since the disaster started. It has been 30 years since Chernobyl and remediation of that site is still [a] work in progress."

These pictures of the area around Fukushima are pretty interesting.

It is clear that nuclear energy is not safe, and no new nuclear plants should be built. Moreover, existing plants need serious monitoring and safety upgrades.

The Latest Episode in Our Current Campaign of Ecocide

Specifically-- the Porter Ranch methane gas leak in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. A suburban region of Los Angeles.

Horrifying just from what we know for sure, for it's effects on the climate and poisoning nearby residents.

Even more horrifying is that it may be releasing radioactive chemicals.

The GOP Meltdown: a Political China Syndrome

This is very funny, and it's both amusing and scary how deeply fucked up the GOP is in this political cycle.

Northwest Airlines flight 710, Redux

I posted on this flight previously, which has some similarities to flight 93 in the way it crashed. Now, this old documentary about the crash, from the 1960's is on Youtube. It's quite interesting and kind of fun to watch-- it is such a perfect time capsule from that time and place.


So in this crash, both wings broke off from the plane in mid-air, the plane plunged thousands of feet, and went almost straight down into the ground, basically breaking up in the ground and leaving a giant crater with little outside debris (except for the wings that broke off).

Here they say they used a bulldozer to scrape away 8 feet of soil, to get to the wreckage. Most bodies recovered from deeper in the hole, in large pieces-- they show bags of body parts. They show police looking for human remains outside the hole, but don't say anything about finding such pieces. They say one propellor shaft was found at 50 feet down in mud.

There's now a wikipedia page on the crash. The accident report is here.

Overall, the crash scene here makes some sense and is clearly legitimate. The key question is whether it tells us about the flight 93 crash being more real.

Certainly, the NWA710 crash can explain, to a certain extent, how a plan can crash and leave very little external debris.

Still, flight UA93 is very odd in that NO visible plane debris was in the crater, among other problems with the story.

Finally, as a conspiracy theorist, it's hard not to wonder if the NWA710 crash was used as a model for the apparently faked UA93 crash scene.

On Martin Luther King Jr Day

Three key points:

1) he preached the importance of enacting change by non-violent protests

2) he was strongly anti-war and recognized the evil of the US war machine

3) he was assassinated by a complex US government plot, because he was considered too dangerous for the PTB.

This speech is worth a listen. About 35 minutes in, he talks about how non-violence works as a protest.

Owls

This interview with Mike Clelland, about the symbolism of owls and their relationship to ETs and UFOs was quite interesting and worth a listen. Warning, the second hour is only for paid members, but it's like $2  month or something cheap.

There was one idea from the interview that was quite profound.

This is the idea that anyone who is on a spiritual journey is bound to encounter more synchronicities in their life.

The spiritual journey does not have to be religious of course-- it is just something that you become deeply involved in and that transforms you in some way. Becoming aware of the conspiracy world and recognizing deeper truths can be a type of spiritual journey.

Why there is this connection with synchronicities, I cannot say. But I feel like this is true.

One explanation may simply be that someone who is in a spiritual journey is more in tune with the world, and picks up on oddities and coincidences.

The more intriguing explanation is that somehow being on a spiritual path connects you with the universe in such a way that you encounter more connections relevant to your journey-- synchronicities.

One clear example of synchronicity is when I started researching the number 33, and I just found it popping up all over the place-- too many places to be random chance-- and found it even in very intimate places of my life.

I don't want to get too far out there, but since I have had a number of synchronicities recently, as well throughout my life, I thought this idea was interesting.

Poisoning a City: The Case of Flint, Michigan

Simply outrageous and horrifying:

A group of Virginia Tech researchers who sampled the water in 271 Flint homes last summer found some contained lead levels high enough to meet the EPA's definition of "toxic waste." The researchers posted their test results online, which I represent graphically below with other visuals to help understand just how high above normal Flint's lead levels really were. Lead in water is measured in terms of parts per billion (ppb). If a test comes back with lead levels higher than 15 ppb, the EPA recommends that homeowners and municipalities take steps to reduce that level, like updating pipes and putting anti-corrosive elements in the water when appropriate. But 15 ppb is a regulatory measure, not a public health one. Researchers stress that there is no 100 percent "safe" level of lead in drinking water, only acceptable levels. Even levels as low as 5 ppb can be a cause for concern, according to the group studying Flint's water.

So let's start with Flint's neighboring cities. At the city level, public health officials are most concerned with the 90th percentile level of lead exposure in homes they test -- that is, 90 percent of homes will have a lead level below this threshold, while 10 percent will register above it. Forty-five minutes away from Flint in Troy, Mich., the 90th percentile level for lead in 2013 was 1.1 parts per billion. Not too shabby at all.

In the graphics that follow, each splotch represents 1 part per billion. The splotches aren't proportionally scaled to the cups -- 1 part per billion is way too small to be visualized at this level. But all of the following graphics are scaled proportionally to each other, to give an impression of relative lead levels. In Detroit, the water supply Flint had previously been connected to, the 90th percentile reading was 2.3 parts per billion -- still highly acceptable. Here's an illustration of water at the 5 parts per billion level. This is below the borderline for EPA acceptability, but the team of researchers studying Flint's water say that levels this high can be a cause for concern, particularly for young children.

Now things get interesting. Here's a glass illustrating the 90th percentile reading among the 271 Flint homes tested by researchers last summer: At 27 parts per billion, it's five times as high as the level of concern, and nearly twice as high as the EPA's already-generous guidelines. According to the researchers who ran these tests, the health effects of lead levels this high "can include high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, kidney damage and memory and neurological problems." Recall, though, that 10 percent of the homes in the sample had lead levels even higher than this.

Here's the highest lead reading in that sample, from a home in the city's 8th Ward: That's more than 10 times the EPA limit. It's 30 times higher than the 5 ppb reading that can indicate unsafe lead amounts. But that 158 ppb reading is far from the worst one that turned up in Flint, unfortunately.

In the spring of 2015, city officials tested water in the home of LeeAnne Walters, a stay-at-home mother of four and a Navy wife. They got a reading of 397 ppb, an alarmingly high number. But it was even worse than that. Virginia Tech's team went to Walters' house to verify those numbers later in the year. They were concerned that the city tested water in a way that was almost guaranteed to minimize lead readings: They flushed the water for several minutes before taking a sample, which often washes away a percentage of lead contaminants. They also made residents collect water at a very low flow rate, which they knew also tended to be associated with lower readings. So the Virginia Tech researchers took 30 different readings at various flow levels.

What they found shocked them: The lowest reading they obtained was around 200 ppb, already ridiculously high. But more than half of the readings came in at more than 1,000 ppb. Some came in above 5,000 -- the level at which EPA considers the water to be "toxic waste." (original piece has the graphics, which were not copied here)

I'm sure this whole catastrophe and the slow response by the GOP governor has nothing to do with the fact that Flint is 55% African American...

Saudi Arabia Buys Good Press in the US as They Commit Mass Murder in Yemen with US Help

Disgusting:

Saudi Arabia is in the market for a better reputation in Washington, D.C. 

In September alone, foreign lobbying disclosure documents show the Saudi government signing deals with PR powerhouse Edelman and lobbying leviathan the Podesta Group, according to recent disclosures. Edelman, the largest privately owned public relations agency in the world, is known for helping clients win favorable media coverage on mainstream outlets. The Podesta Group is a lobbying firm founded by Tony Podesta, a major fundraiser for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. 

The new signings are the latest in a year-long hiring spree by the Persian Gulf state as it further builds up its already formidable political arsenal inside the Beltway. The Saudi Arabian Royal Embassy did not respond to a request for comment. In March, the Saudi Royal Embassy retained two influential lobbying firms, DLA Piper and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. DLA Piper, for instance, employs a small army of former government officials, including retired U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and George Mitchell. Also in March, the embassy retained two firms that specialize in analyzing big data for political clients, Targeted Victory and Zignal Labs. 

Saudi Arabia’s political operation already includes former Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who chairs one of the largest Republican Super PACs in the country, as well as the public relations firm MSLGROUP/Qorvis, and Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company that funds several influential American political groups, including the American Petroleum Institute. Aramco’s U.S. subsidiary, Saudi Refining, is a registered agent of the Saudi government. The government also finances a number of think tanks and universities, and has made contributions to prominent American nonprofits, including the Clinton Foundation. 

The Podesta Group contract is with the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court. The contract, filed in the Justice Department’s foreign lobbying database, says that the firm will provide “public relations” work for the center.

Yemen is being destroyed by Saudi Arabia and the US: 

MSF hospital bombing amid Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen prompts outrage over ‘worrying pattern of attacks to essential medical services’ The projectile dropped on the Shiara Hospital is thought to be the latest in a series attack on health facilities directly managed or supported by MSF 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/msf-hospital-bombing-saudi-led-airstrikes-yemen-outrage-worrying-pattern-attacks-essential-medical-a6804796.html 

"It is the latest bombing in what is thought to be a series of attacks on a health facility directly managed or supported by MSF in the past three months. In October, Haydan hospital was destroyed in an air-strike by the Saudi-led coalition (SLC). A mobile clinic in Taiz, south west Yemen, was also hit in December, which wounded nine people, where one later died." 

Of course - as awful as it sounds - dying instantly in a bomb attack might be a welcome relief if you've been staving for months on end: 

Yemen conflict has pushed six million people to the brink of starvation, Oxfam warns 

That includes two million children 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-in-yemen-has-pushed-six-million-to-the-brink-of-starvation-oxfam-warns-10420136.html 

And what horrible dictator is staving 2 million children? Why, it's not a dictator at all, it's the US and UK, helping their wonderful ally Saudi Arabia. 

Aid agencies say embargo imposed by US and UK-backed Arab coalition has had dramatic effect, with almost 80% of population in urgent need of food, water and medical supplies "Despite western and UN entreaties, Riyadh has also failed to disburse any of the $274m it promised in funding for humanitarian relief. According to UN estimates due to be released next week 78% of the population is in need of emergency aid, an increase of 4 million over the past three months." 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/05/saudi-led-naval-blockade-worsens-yemen-humanitarian-disaster 

"Fuel and vital medical supplies will run out in a matter of weeks in some of the hardest-hit areas of Yemen, aid agencies have warned, amid a blockade by the Saudi-led coalition that has been conducting bombing raids over the country for months. Since the coalition – which has been conducting airstrikes across the country since March in an attempt to oust Houthi rebel forces – imposed a “de facto” blockade, very few vessels have made their way to the country. Even before the conflict, Yemen depended on imports for 70 per cent of its fuel and 100 per cent of its medicine. “At the moment we only have enough fuel in the north and centre of the country for the next six weeks,” Mark Kaye, the acting director of advocacy for Save the Children in Yemen, told The Independent on Sunday. As well as providing electricity for households and petrol for vehicles, “that means no fuel for hospitals, who rely on generators for their work”. In recent days, the main paediatric hospital in the north was forced to close because of damage from the strikes and a lack of fuel and medical resources. The World Health Organisation warned this week that the country’s biggest blood-transfusion centre in the capital, Sanaa, could also be forced to close in as little as two weeks. Meanwhile, near-daily airstrikes continue to cause injuries among the civilian population." 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-blockade-starves-yemen-of-vital-supplies-as-bombing-raids-continue-10509460.html 

In the middle of all of this, with the coalition bombing civilians and hospitals and starving the population - collective punishment the war crimes prosecutors call it - what has the US done to help stem the violence and help restore peace? 

Sell them another 18B in weapons, that's what. 

U.S. approves $1.29 billion sale of smart bombs to Saudi Arabia.  The proposed sale includes 22,000 smart and general purpose bombs, including 1,000 GBU-10 Paveway II Laser Guided Bombs, and over 5,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits to turn older bombs into precision-guided weapons using GPS signals. The weapons are made by Boeing Co (BA.N) and Raytheon Co (RTN.N), but the agency told lawmakers the prime contractors would be selected in a competition. 

Saudi Arabia, one of the largest buyers of U.S. weapons, was approved in September for a potential second sale of 600 Patriot-PAC-3 air defense missiles made by Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), a deal valued at $5.4 billion. Last month, the U.S. government also approved the sale to Saudi Arabia of up to four Littoral Combat Ships made by Lockheed for $11.25 billion. 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-usa-arms-idUSKCN0T51NC20151116 

So while the US sees SA using US made and provided weapons to attack hospitals and civilians populations, it sells it 18 BILLION more in weapons?

It makes you want to scream.

How Much Does Saudi Arabia Control the US?

There's a great deal of discussion in the conspiracy world about Israel, and how they control things, run things, do evil things.

The one thing about Israel though, is they are a very small country. They don't have oil, they don't manufacture that much. They don't really have that much money.

Apart from the US, you know who does have a shit-load of money and is allied with Israel?

Saudi Arabia.

It's kind of funny how little attention Saudi Arabia gets in the media or in the conspiracy world, despite how obviously evil they are*. Is this because they've controlled the debate so well by their influence and money?

This article says that Saudi Arabia "controls America": 

To boil it all down to the essence: The fundamentalist-Sunni royal family of the Sauds have bought the highest levels of the U.S. government in order to control U.S. foreign policies, especially the ongoing wars to take down the governments of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and ultimately (they hope) of Russia itself, which latter nation has allied itself instead with Shiia countries. The controlling entities behind American foreign policies since at least the late 1970s have been the Saud family and the Sauds’ subordinate Arabic aristocracies...

A little bit more of that control is mentioned here:

AMY GOODMAN: Ali al-Ahmed, what could the U.S. do? And what—how do you assess the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia? 

ALI AL-AHMED: This is a complex relationship that really is led and dominated by the Saudi ability to buy silence and support. If you look at the reaction of presidential candidates, for example, you don’t see any of them speaking out against these executions. It’s odd that, for example, Mr. Ben Carson would say that the Saudi government is an ally of us and we should support it, at the same time that the Saudi monarchy prevents black people from becoming diplomats or judges because they view blacks as slaves. So, really, here you see a contradiction of the—what we know as American values, is that the Saudis have been able to buy their way by giving money to a lot of politicians, to their foundations, like the Clinton Foundation, the Carter foundation, and shaping their opinion. And, unfortunately, because in America politics works on money, the Saudi monarchy has really broken that code and understood how to use it.  

Other facts that indicate Saudi control over the US:
-- George W. Bush kissing, holding hands with the Saudi prince
-- other US presidents kowtowing to Saudi despite their atrocious human rights record
-- the failure to release the 28 pages of the 9/11 report that supposedly discusses Saudi financing of the attacks/hijackers
-- bin Laden family members and other Saudi elites being allowed to leave the US after 9/11 with any questioning
-- Bush not going after the Saudi Osama bin Laden
-- we allow them to fund our "enemy" the Islamic State
-- the absolute demonization of Iran by the US, despite that Saudi is just as bad in every way on human rights, but Iran is a major enemy of the Saudis

----

It's clear that to a large extent, 9/11 and the global war on terror (GWOT) revolves around Saudi-sponsored Islamists. The GWOT is a MASSIVE enterprise that has greatly impacted US politics and the US economy. It has destabilized the Arab world and killed millions of people in the middle east. The GWOT is a great evil that has plagued the world, since 9/11/2001. Thus, this evil can be laid at the doorstep of the Saudis.

Of course the major reason Saudi Arabia is so rich is oil, and oil has driven the world economy for the past 100 years.

Oil companies are major power brokers in this world-- one of the big evil PTB-- and they are in bed with the Saudis.

Certainly, Saudis and Big Oil together have an HUGE influence on the US.  And of course these two must be intimately tied to Wall Street and the intelligence services.

Saudis, Big Oil, Wall St, CIA-- a nasty nexus of evil for the US.

The Saudi national oil company Aramco collaborates with Exxon Mobil, and are not real competitors. The state oil company uses the big companies for production and refining.

So for sure, the Saudis certainly have major influence over the US, with the complicity of Big Oil, Wall St, and the CIA.

US arms and weapons manufacturers get in on the act too, since the US sells the Saudis tens of billions of dollars of weapons, fighter jets, etc.

Weapons manufacturers also benefit massively from the GWOT.

----

One important question is -- how does Saudi Arabia benefit from the GWOT? Don't Islamic terrorists threaten the Saudi government?

To the second question-- to some extent, they do, but that's probably more of a shadow play, and those terrorists have never really threatened the survival of the state of Saudi Arabia.

To the first question--
One way the GWOT benefits the Saudis is by acting as a "release valve" for crazy and poor domestic Islamists.

Another way the GWOT benefits the Saudis is by pressuring/destabilizing governments that threaten Saudi Arabia, and disrupting their production of oil. The GWOT -- via the US military and funded terror groups-- is a way the Saudis can exert regional control and power.

The invasion of Iraq in large part was about oil, disrupting the production of Saddam's oil, and helping install US oil companies in charge of the oil.

---

The age of petroleum will end soon-- it MUST end soon if we are to survive-- and Saudi Arabia will fade as a power broker. 

This cannot happen soon enough.

-----

But to answer the question posed in the title-- it appears Saudi Arabia has a great deal of influence over the US, BUT, the US is a willing partner in crime.... much like with the US and Israel.

But is it all about power and money?

Or something deeper?

-----
*they have a horrible religion and are horrible on human rights. They produce a product -- oil-- that is damaging the planet by climate change. They are 9/11 perps, and they fund Islamists wreaking havoc in the middle east. They have been committing massive human rights violations in their war on Yemen. Saudi Arabia is also the home (i.e. Mecca and Medina) for the toxic religion of Islam.

Bernie Sanders Kicks Ass and Takes Names on Wall Street

This speech freaking rocks:

The Evil PTB of the USA

Big oil companies (ExxonMobil, Chevron)
Wall Street executives/Banking executives
The intelligence services (CIA, NSA, DIA, NI, FBI, etc)
Secret societies (CFR, Trilateral commission, Bilderbergers)
Leaders of the Federal government (POTUS and cabinet, Senate leaders, House speaker)

Billionaires, super rich, hereditary elites
Major foreign influences (British, Israel, Saudi Arabia)
The Pentagon; leaders of the Armed Forces

Weapons manufacturers/Defense contractors
Top corporate CEOs
Media executives
Law enforcement leaders

Aliens?

--- of course, there is overlap in these groups...

Fuck Saudi Arabia

The great investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn, in the January 2016 issue of Harpers Magazine, has come forth with what may be the best public-affairs article I’ve ever seen, because he has interviewed key individuals in the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies, some of whom he even identifies by name (i.e., they’re retired), and all of whom provide different details of the very same stunning huge story, a story that I have been reporting only in bits and pieces over the past year, but for which Cockburn offers an astounding amount of fuller and entirely new documentation — it blows everything else away. 

To boil it all down to the essence: The fundamentalist-Sunni royal family of the Sauds have bought the highest levels of the U.S. government in order to control U.S. foreign policies, especially the ongoing wars to take down the governments of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and ultimately (they hope) of Russia itself, which latter nation has allied itself instead with Shiia countries. 

The controlling entities behind American foreign policies since at least the late 1970s have been the Saud family and the Sauds’ subordinate Arabic aristocracies in Qatar (the al-Thanis), Kuwait (the al-Sabahs), Turkey (the Tuktik Erdoğans, a new royalty), and UAE (its six royal families: the main one, the al-Nahyans in Abu Dhabi; the other five: the al-Maktoums in Dubai, al-Qasimis in Sharjah, al-Nuaimis in Ajman, al-Mualla Ums in Quwain, and al-Sharqis in Fujairah). Other Saudi-dominated nations — though they’re not oil-rich (more like Turkey in this regard) — are Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Happy 2016?

This 21st Century Wire piece on trends to expect for 2016 isn't bad, except for one huge thing it leaves out: climate change as a destructive force on the planet as well as mankind's coming efforts to limit carbon emissions.

As I've posted here many times, climate change due to human activity (specifically due to carbon pollution in the atmosphere)* is no joke, and it's going to get worse this coming year. We've already seen record temperatures being set, record storms, record floods, record droughts, and the criminal corporate-controlled media (CCCM) largely has acted as though nothing is happening. Certainly, the CCCM largely ignored the recent Paris climate accords, and have studiously avoided linking climate change to the multiple extreme weather events we've had of late.  Their avoidance of this topic certainly is CRIMINAL and ultimately destructive for mankind.

The real worry is that the global climate has several amplifying feed-forward loops, so that once the ball starts rolling and ice sheets melt and frozen methane deposits melt, we are truly fucked and there is no putting the cork back in the bottle, as warming will escalate out of control, without mere humans being able to stop it. A worse case scenario will be the oceans warming so much that the algae that produce so much of the planet's oxygen will die-off, leaving us with decreasing oxygen levels in the atmosphere and oceans and simply unfathomably immense damage to planetary animal life.

The ULTIMATE question is whether we have reached the tipping point yet, or whether we still have time to make changes in our activity in order to limit the damage to the atmosphere.

My guess is we are at the tipping point RIGHT NOW and we need to make drastic changes in our energy and economic and agricultural systems. 

But this is probably not going to happen quickly enough, so we are screwed.

We are screwed-- absent some miracle such as UFO/ET disclosure to give us some technology to stabilize the planet and give us free energy (see the post below this one). But I don't think such disclosure, which will bring it's own issues, is going to happen this year.

Thus my prediction for 2016 is more and more abnormal weather, more weather catastrophes, more damage to human structures and increasing costs to human economic activity. 

MAYBE just maybe, this will be enough to wake people up and get them to change our society to a better mode of energy and economic activity in the near future.

And the evil PTB -- still being evil psychopaths -- will take things like climate change, and use it for their own evil ends. Which will likely means lots of people will die unnecessarily if they can't make money off it, and even more people will die if they CAN make money off it.


*a.k.a. CO2-induced global warming, anthropogenic climate change, anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD)

The Importance of UFO/ET Disclosure

Does anyone really doubt that the US govt and other major govts around the world are keeping what they know about UFOs a secret?

Clearly the ETs are not interested in making their presence known on a wide scale. They may even be actively involved in covering up their own tracks, hence the whole weird Men in Black phenomenon.

But it's also clear the USG just doesn't want people to know on a popular scale about what's out there. Likely they justify it out of fears that people will panic, or that it will be too upsetting to our culture and economic order. Although it seems like people are getting closer to handling this than they were years ago, after years of messages about ETs in movies.

In any case, there is one major reason why we need disclosure, and that is we seem to be getting closer to a planetary ecological catastrophe. And humanity is no where close to being able solve this on the scale needed.

What COULD save us, is ET technology: for energy and for anything else that would help us save the planet from drowning in pollution.

The leaders of the world need to come clean about what they know, and what they have, so we can use advanced technology for saving our civilization.