Oct 06

Today’s News 6th October 2018

  • Russian Military: US Killed Dozens By Bioweapon Disguised As Drug Research

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    The Russian Defense Ministry is accusing the United States of killing dozens of Georgians with a biological weapon after disguising it as drug research. Documents recorded the deaths of 73 people over a short period of time, indicating a test of “a highly toxic chemical or biological agents with high lethality rate.”

    According to RT, the question of what really might have taken place at the secretive United States-sponsored research facility hosted by Russia’s southern neighbor Georgia was raised by the Russian military on Thursday after they studied files published online by a former Georgian minister. Igor Kirillov, commander of the Russian military branch responsible for defending troops from radiological, chemical and biological weapons said that it was not drug research, but a chemical or biological weapon that killed the 73 Georgians.

    The documents relating to the secret lab were published last month by former Georgian minister for state security Igor Giorgadze, who says he obtained 100,000 pages of data pointing to questionable US practices.

    Kirillov has doubts that the tests, which were carried out by the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research near the Georgian capital Tbilisi and were said to involve clinical trials of a drug called Sovaldi, which is meant for the treatment of Hepatitis C, were actually done on the drug. The producer of the drug is Gilead Sciences, a California-based biomedical firm that recruited former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a board member in 1988, in between his two tenures as head of the Pentagon.

    “The documents showed many lethal outcomes among the patients. Despite the deaths of 24 people in December 2015 alone, the clinical trials were continued in violation of international standards and the wishes of the patients,” Kirillov claimed according to a report by RT. “This led to the deaths of 49 more people.”

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    Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon responded to Russia’s allegations, telling RIA Novosti that the US did not conduct bioweapons research in Georgia and called the Russian ministry’s statements part of “a Russian disinformation campaign directed against the West.”

    Russia will take “diplomatic and military action” in response to a perceived threat from US labs, said Vladimir Shamanov, head of Russian parliament’s Defense Committee. He was commenting on accusations by the Defense Ministry. “We cannot simply turn a blind eye to things happening near our southern borders that directly affect our safety,” he told TASS news agency.

  • Texas Robot Brothel Outlawed By City Council; Houston Men Forced To Masturbate Elsewhere

    A Toronto-based sex doll brothel hoping to slip into Houston had cold water poured over its plans, after the City Council on Wednesday updated a rule on sexually oriented businesses prohibiting the use of the silicone seductresses for masturbatory purposes, reports Chron. 

    At Wednesday’s meeting, the council expanded its definition of an “arcade device” — which is used to view adult content — to include an “anthropomorphic device,” or one with human characteristics.

    The city bars sexually oriented businesses, which include “adult arcades,” from operating within 1,500 feet of churches, schools, day cares, parks and residential neighborhoods. KinkySdollS’ proposed location is located a few hundred feet from the city-owned Anderson Park.

    The council also prohibited customers from using arcade devices on company premises, though it still allows companies to sell them.

    Mayor Sylvester Turner said the amendments are intended to update “loopholes to make the ordinance more current,” specifically in dealing with changing technology. –Chron 

    “I think the change in the ordinance will certainly capture businesses of this kind and would prevent businesses from operating in the way that this one has been described,” said Turner, who added that the updated ordinance isn’t targeting “any one business. It is on any businesses that fall within this category.” 

    Construction had already been halted on the KinkySdollS’ retail storefront after city inspectors reportedly found permitting issues. 

    That said, the new ordinance may not prevent KingySdollS’ from setting up shop, as the updated law would only eliminate the “try-it-before-you-buy-it” option. 

    Lewis assured Laster that the modified ordinance “precludes certain behaviors within the shop” that would “not generally be tolerated within any business in the city of Houston.”

    Travis took a more forceful tack, saying that most people are “appalled and insulted” by the business. –Chron 

    After concerns over sex trafficking were raised recently, Councilmember Greg Travis suggested placing cameras around the business after a religious nonprofit raised the proposition – calling on Travis to install cameras “where these people are going to buy dolls.” 

    “Our biggest concern is that this sex brothel with robots is gonna train men to become rapists,” said Micah Gamboah with the religious anti sex-trafficking group, Elijah Rising. “What’s next? Is it child robots? Where’s the line? Where is the boundary?“

    “We’re not legislating morality here. That’s not what we’re doing,” Travis said. “We don’t care what people do in their bedrooms. If somebody wants to order these dolls and have them in their homes, it’s weird, that’s fine, they can do that.” Travis then said that the KinkiSdollS’ “type of enterprise degrades our city.” 

    Turner’s battle with the doll brothel has drawn applause from the Houston Area Pastor Council, which praised him in a press release for his “rapid response to this threat to the decency of the city.” 

  • Shocking New Studies Find Young Americans Are Overweight, Unhealthy, Suicidal, & Addicted To Alcohol And Drugs

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,

    After reading the information contained in this article, you will probably find yourself questioning if America is going to be able to survive for much longer, because our young people are a complete and total mess.  Yes, all generations of Americans have had their problems, but this generation appears to be particularly screwed up.  Obesity rates are at all-time highs, a third of all American teens have not read a single book within the past year, and the average high school senior spends six hours a day on the Internet.  On top of all that, we are seeing unprecedented levels of suicide, drug overdoses and liver disease (due to heavy drinking) among our young people. 

    Like other empires throughout world history, will we be undone by our own excesses?

    Let’s start by talking about obesity.  At this point, so many of our young people are overweight that military recruiters are having a very difficult time finding enough “suitable candidates for military service”…

    The study, featuring roughly 18,000 randomly selected participants across each of the service branches, showed that almost 66 percent of service members are considered to be either overweight or obese, based on the military’s use of body mass index as a measuring standard.

    While the number of overweight service members is a cause for concern, it correlates with the obesity epidemic plaguing the United States, where, as of 2015, one in three young adults are considered too fat to enlist, creating a difficult environment for recruiters to find suitable candidates for military service.

    Right now, obesity among U.S. adults is at an all-time high, and one of the big reasons for this is because about a third of us are stuffing our faces with fast food on a daily basis.

    The following comes from ABC News…

    A government study has found that 1 in 3 U.S. adults eat fast food on any given day. That’s about 85 million people.

    It’s the first federal study to look at how often adults eat fast food. An earlier study found a similar proportion of children and adolescents ate it on any given day.

    I was absolutely stunned when I saw that.

    85 million people a day are eating fast food?

    No wonder we have such a problem.

    Another brand new study found that one-third of all American teenagers haven’t read a single book in the past year…

    A new study of American teenagers and their reading habits finds that a third haven’t read a book — in hardcopy or on a device like a Kindle — in the past year.

    Researchers from San Diego State University took a look at data from four decades of a “nationally-based lifestyle survey studying teens,” StudyFinds.com reports. In total, more than a million teens provided information.

    To me, this is a tremendous indictment of our system of education.

    Even if these kids are not reading on their own, our schools should be forcing them to read books.

    This really hits home for me, because I love to read.  In fact, I don’t know where I would be today if I had not spent enormous amounts of time reading books on my own while I was growing up.

    Sadly, instead of reading books our high school seniors are spending an average of six hours a day on “social media, texting, gaming and surfing the web”…

    “The meteoric rise of internet-based activities cannot be understated: between social media, texting, gaming, and surfing the web, the average high school senior spent six hours a day online in 2016 — double the time from a decade earlier. Eighth graders (4 hours a day) and tenth graders (5 hours a day) didn’t lag far behind,” the report finds.

    Six hours a day?

    That is almost a full-time job.

    This is one of the reasons why the Internet is the focus of my work.  Yes, I have written a few books, but if we are going to reach the next generation with the truth we have got to reach them where they are.

    And where they are is on the Internet.

    In addition to everything that you have read so far, let me also share with you some numbers from a recent CDC study.

    According to the CDC, drug overdose rates among our young people have been absolutely soaring…

    Among men ages 24 to 35, overdose rates rose by more than 25% each year between 2014 and 2016; nearly 50 out of every 100,000 people in this population died of overdose-related causes by 2016. Women ages 45 to 54 had the most overdoses overall, but those ages 15 to 24 saw the highest rate of increase: about a 19% jump per year between 2014 and 2016.

    And the CDC also found that liver disease (due to heavy drinking) is rapidly rising among young adults…

    Liver disease replaced HIV as the sixth-leading killer of adults ages 25 to 44 in 2016. Among men and women ages 25 to 34, deaths from liver disease and cirrhosis increased by about 11% and 8% per year, respectively, between 2006 and 2016. Older adults, however, still die of liver disease at much higher rates than young adults.

    But the most tragic fact from that entire study is that suicide is now the second leading cause of death for Americans from age 15 to age 24…

    Suicide is now the second-leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 24, increasing by 7% in this group each year between 2014 and 2016. It’s also the third-leading cause of death among people ages 25 to 44, killing almost 17 of every 100,000 people in this population in 2016.

    Whether you like it or not, young people are the future of our country.

    Yes, our country is a huge mess today, but what is it going to look like when they become the “leaders of tomorrow”?

    In order for a nation to be great, it needs to be made up of great people, and at this moment it is very difficult to be optimistic about the future of our nation…

  • Brazil's "Donald Trump" Dominates Key Presidential Debate Despite Absence After Stabbing

    The far-right presidential candidate dubbed as Brazil’s “Donald Trump” – Jair Bolsonaro – is headed for victory Sunday as Brazilians go to the polls to choose among 13 candidates in the October 7 first-round elections, from which two candidates will emerge. This after he was nearly assassinated a mere month ago when a mentally disturbed socialist man stabbed the populist candidate at a campaign rally, puncturing his intestines in three places, sending him to the intensive care unit.

    And incredibly telling was that in spite of being absent from the key most-watched TV Globo presidential debate Thursday night due his continued slow recovery from the severe wounds, his name still managed to dominate the national presidential debate. 

    International media reports widely acknowledged the obvious after the high stakes event — that Bolsonaro was “the main topic — and target” among his fellow contenders — even as a no-show due to doctor’s orders. Though he was merely able to give a televised interview from home, he remains the frontrunner in Sunday’s critical elections. 

    The prospect of a far-right Bolsonaro rapid come-from-behind upset victory has sent a number of media outlets and left-leaning organizations into a frenzied panic, with The Guardian, for example, warning in a Friday headline that the “prospect of Bolsonaro victory stokes fears of return to dictatorship.” And The Intercept lamented that Brazil’s current frontrunner is a “fiery former army captain with a history of homophobic, racist, and misogynistic remarks, including pro-torture statements and support for police killings.” 

    Weeks before the September 6th stabbing incident, The Economist featured a story outlining how the man who reportedly relishes in being compared to Donald Trump is “a threat to democracy” (at the time the publication described him as “a flame-throwing right-winger who is second in the polls”).

    But apparently this deluge of attention — especially after the gruesome stabbing and attempted assassination thrust him into the international media spotlight — has only increased his popularity at the street level even as media elites claim Brazil is on the path of return to dictatorship. 

    Brazilian presidential candidates (left to right): Henrique Meirelles, Alvaro Dias, Ciro Gomes, Guilherme Boulos, Geraldo Alckmin, Marina Silva and Fernando Haddad. Via AFP

    France24 charted the clear focal point of Thursday night’s presidential debate in the following: 

    • Second place candidate Fernando Haddad, who was hand-picked by jailed former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, attacked Bolsonaro’s record as a lawmaker.
    • Third place Ciro Gomes said that electing the far-right hopeful would be like dancing near an abyss.
    • Leftist Guilherme Boulos said he feared a new military dictatorship would begin with a Bolsonaro presidency.

    Currently Fernando Haddad of Lula’s Workers’ Party is a not too distant second behind Bolsonaro in the polls. However, years of corruption scandals and constant media attacks mean Brazilians sitting on the fence, but who by and large reject the Workers’ Party, could turn to Bolsonaro as the most viable alternative. 

    The latest figures have Bolsonaro polling at 35% support, which is a 3 percentage point jump since Tuesday, and Haddad at 22%, and the Datafolha poll has the pair deadlocked in a possible runoff vote. But perhaps most shocking is that support among women has shot up according to reports, with polls finding a 6% rise in support from women, apparently trumping his supposed history of sexism.

    It is not likely that a president will be decided in the first round, something which hasn’t happened since 1998. France24 reports that the latest polls show “Bolsonaro has 39 percent of the valid votes, 11 points short of a majority needed for a first-round victory. Failing that, the two top vote-getters will face off on Oct. 28.”

    Prior to the attack Bolsonaro was losing votes, but the incident brought instant national and international attention, and he’s spent much of September in the hospital.

    The federal congressman has been hospitalized for most of September, and has frequently issued statements while in recovery — all of which appears to have helped him. 

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    “People will start to see Bolsonaro as a victim,” predicted Luiz Roberto Monteiro, an analyst with Renascenca brokerage, in the immediate aftermath of the stabbing. 

    Bolsonaro, once feared by investors because of comments against privatizations and private investments, has become the most viable option against the left. And now he’s dominating even while absent from the campaign trail. 

  • Paul Craig Roberts: The White Heterosexual Male Has Been Renditioned To The Punishment Hole

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    American feminists have finally broken the spirit of the American white heterosexual male. I have been watching for some time the American male, or what little is left of him, meekly accept feminists’ definitions of words and male behavior.

    First the feminists turned the male respect for, and politeness toward, women, respect inculcated into my generation, into “sexism.” Today men no longer stand when a woman enters a room, and they don’t open doors for them unless it is an elderly and feeble relative. Feminists insisted on getting women off the pedestal and into the rough and tumble world of men.

    Feminists also pushed the sexual revolution, especially Cosmopolitan magazine, until women became as sexually promiscuous as men. As sex became casual and as the constraints on male behavior toward women were discredited as “sexist,” boundaries became blurred, and there is plenty of room for confusion. University student sex codes acknowledge the confusion. We see it in the requirements that the male must ask permission for each piece of female clothing he removes from his willing partner.

    All of this was entirely the work of feminists.

    But today it is the feminist redefinition of words and their substitution of feelings for factual evidence that catch men off guard. What convinced me that the era of the male is over is what just happened to University of Massachusetts football coach Mark Whipple. On paper Whipple does not have the profile of a whimp. He was a NFL assistant coach. He led UMass to five winning seasons, elevated the team to the highest level of Division I, and garnered for UMass a Division I-AA national title.

    Last Saturday he unknowingly undid himself when outraged by what he saw as a non-penalty call on pass interference that he thought cost UMass the game, he said:

    “we had a chance and they rape us.”

    All hell broke lose. Whipple was publicly denounced by UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford, a male trained to jump through feminist hoops:

    “On behalf of our department, I deeply apologize for the comments made by head coach Mark Whipple on Saturday after our game at Ohio. His reference to rape was highly inappropriate, insensitive and inexcusable under any circumstance.”

    Whipple groveled:

    “I am deeply sorry for the word I used on Saturday to describe the play in our game. It is unacceptable to make use of the word ‘rape’ in the way I did and I am very sorry for doing so. It represents a lack of responsibility on my part as a leader of the program and a member of this university’s community, and I am disappointed with myself that I made this comparison when commenting after our game.”

    What are we to make of this? Have feminists appropriated the definition of rape to mean only what they say it means: male sexual abuse (undefined) of women? If a male uses the word in any of its other senses, why does he have to grovel and beg forgiveness?

    Whipple is a football coach, not an English professor who could have come up with a word better fitting Whipple’s outrage. Nevertheless, “rape” has meanings other than forced sexual penetration of a female. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary gives this meaning:

    “The wanton destruction or spoiling of a place: the rape of the countryside.”

    There are a number of book titles that use “rape” in the sense of “ruin,” “despoil.” For example:

    The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H. Nicholas

    The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art by Roger Kimball

    Are we now to expect scholars Lynn Nicholas and Roger Kimball to grovel like Whipple in the face of feminist tyranny?

    I suppose so.

    Compare Whipple’s public rebuke by his boss, his abject apology, and his temporary suspension from his job for using correctly a word with no intention of offending anyone with Georgetown University associate professor Christine Fair, who intended to offend the Senate Judiciary Committee with her tweeted outrage about Kavanaugh:

    “Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. 
All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”

    There are a number of sources for this extraordinary quote:

    Did professor Fair get sent to sensitivity training? Of course not. Georgetown University quickly rushed to her defense on freedom of speech grounds. In universities, free speech is only denied to heterosexual males and football coaches.

    Linger a bit with Professor Fair. A professor is supposed to be a scholar with respect for facts and evidence, but all Christine Fair is capable of is an outburst of blind hatred. She has no way of knowing who is telling the truth. Clearly the charge is a political one even if true. The Senate Judiciary Committee permitted Kavanaugh’s accuser to present her case. To protect the female accuser from being questioned by male senators, the committee hired a female attorney to question the accuser. The female attorney concluded that Kavanaugh’s accuser did not have a case that could be prosecuted.

    What does this tell us about Christine Fair. It tells us that the only reason that a person who relies on emotion instead of evidence is a tenured member of the Georgetown University faculty is that she is female and was hired in place of several dozen better qualified males to fill a female quota.

    As I have written so often, the American population is insouciant, and that word is an euphemism. They have no awareness of what is happening in front of their eyes as they are eased into a mindset that accepts as fact that the male/female relationship is one of male abuse of the female. Try to imagine what it is like for a male to have a female boss who has been brainwashed by feminism. Try to imagine what it is like for a male to have female subordinates (or colleagues). His very survival depends on many things, such as having the Human Resource Department evaluate the females’ job performance. Even at this distance, most likely the task would have to be performed by a female.

    Female accusation of male abuse is now a powerful political, social and personal weapon. We currently have a porn star accusing President Trump of having consensual sex with her. Why is she doing this? She has already been paid off. Are her ratings dropping? Is this for notoriety? Is she being paid as part of the military/industrial complex/Democratic Party/feminist attack on Trump?

    Look at what has happened to Judge Kavanaugh once he was nominated to the Supreme Court. A woman appears. She partially remembers an incident of three or four decades ago in an unchaparoned home where teenagers were drinking, what house and where it was she does not remember, but she remembers a drunk Kavanaugh throwing her on a bed and tussling with her fully clothed.

    She wasn’t raped. She wasn’t injured. The question totally uninteresting to feminists is: “What was she, a 15-year old, doing there?”

    By the 1980s teenage females in unchaperoned houses with teenage males with harmones on full boil and alcohol present were assumed to be sexually available. Why else were they there? Were her parents uninterested in her whereabouts? Did she lie to her parents about where she was going?

    But to raise such obvious questions is proof that you are a misogynist. Females bear no fault. Only males.

    The main problem with feminism is that it is so totally unscientific that it must assault science. At the University of Durham in the UK, where I was once in distant times interviewed for an appointment, a male has been punished for re-tweeting an article that states that females do not have a penis.

    Such a factual statement goes against the feminist ideology that there are no differences between women and men—not even physical differences. In Sweden a professor is being investigated for saying in a lecture that there are anatomical and biological differences between men and women. A feminist student objected, and so a professor of neurophysiology is being held accountable for stating a scientific fact.

    Anyone who does not realize that feminists are crazed far beyond the meaning of the word crazy, should read this:

    “A Swedish university is investigating a professor for ‘anti-feminism’ and ‘transphobia’ after he said there are biological differences between men and women. He is being urged to retract his comments.”

    In the assault on Kavanaugh, we are witnessing an Identity Politics assault on the White Heterosexual Male, an assault whose purpose is less to block Kavanaugh than to discourage white heterosexual males from standing for office as it is so easy for feminists to ruin a man’s reputation. The plan is to put the “victim groups” of the white male in office so that retribution can be handed out to white males in keeping with feminist professor Christine Fair’s agenda of killing them, castrating their dead bodies and feeding them to swine.

    Perhaps white males have understood this. You see them increasingly with Asian and Hispanic women, not with white women who are increasingly seen with black men. In another generation or two, perhaps the white ethnicities will have disappeared.

    Then to whom will Identity Politics assign the hated role?

  • A Record 37% Of Small Business Owners Are Raising Wages

    A record net 37% of owners reported they are raising overall compensation in hopes of hiring and retaining employees in what is increasingly cited as the tightest labor market in decades, according to NFIB’s latest monthly jobs report. This surpasses the previous record of a net 35% in May 2018.

    The competition for qualified workers is pushing up compensation as there are currently 660,000 more job openings than job seekers.

    “There is extraordinary competition for workers in this historically tight labor market. Small business owners are investing more in their employees to attract and keep qualified workers,” said NFIB President and CEO Juanita D. Duggan. “Thanks to the recent tax cuts and regulatory reform, owners are able and comfortable investing more in their employees and businesses which further strengthens the economy.”

    Down one point from last month, 61 percent of owners reported hiring or trying to hire, with 87 percent of those reporting few or no qualified workers. A separate survey asked about typical reasons for why an applicant was unqualified and 26 percent owners identified the lack of specific skill and 16 percent identified a poor work history. Owners also cited social skills, attitude, and appearance as disqualifiers.

    Thirty-eight percent of owners reported job openings they could not fill in the current period, unchanged from last month. Reports of job openings were the most frequent in construction (56 percent), manufacturing (54 percent), transportation (51 percent), wholesale trades (44 percent), and retail (43 percent).

    “The lack of qualified workers is having an effect, and owners are raising compensation to attract the right workers.” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg.  “Hopefully this will also induce more individuals to enter or re-enter the labor force and take a job.”

    According to the NFIB, the labor market is tight for both skilled and unskilled workers, with 36% reporting openings for skilled workers and 15% reporting openings for unskilled workers. Down three points from last month, 14% reported using temporary workers.

    A testament to the fiscally-stimulated economy, a seasonally-adjusted net 23% of owners are planning to create new jobs, down three points from last month. Twenty-four percent plan to increase total compensation at their firm and six percent plan reductions. Firms in construction (net 26%), wholesale trades (net 28% ), and manufacturing (net 34%), account for the strength in hiring plans.

    Meanwhile, job creation picked up in September, rising to a net addition of 0.15 workers per firm. A seasonally-adjusted 13 percent reported increasing employment an average of 4.6 workers per firm and 11% reported reducing employment an average of 1.9 workers per firm.

  • Hot Economic Warfare: Scrambling For Rare-Earth Minerals

    Authored by Wayne Madsen via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Just like the gold rushes of California between 1848 and 1855, Canada’s Klonike of 1896 to 1899, and Western Australia’s of the 1890s, the world is experiencing a frenzy to obtain mining rights in pursuit of today’s “gold,” namely rare earth minerals. Used for components of electric vehicle batteries, mobile telephones, flat-screen televisions, flash drives, cameras, precision-guided missiles, industrial magnets, wind turbines, solar panels, and other high-tech items, rare earth minerals have become the type of sought-after commodity that uranium and plutonium were during the onset of the atomic age.

    Rare earth minerals do not easily roll off one’s tongue in the same manner as gold, silver, and platinum. For example, yttrium oxide and europium, while sounding unimportant, are what provide the red hue in color televisions.

    Nations around the world are scrambling to secure reserves containing rare earth minerals. China, where one-third of the planet’s rare earth minerals are currently found, has severely restricted the export of the minerals to friends and competitors. One of the largest known reserves of rare earths is the Bayan Obo deposit in China’s Inner Mongolia.

    China’s export restrictions have sent nations around the world on search missions to secure both known and untapped rare earth deposits. One such mother lode of rare earth minerals has been discovered in the eastern southern Pacific Ocean. The estimates are that the deep ocean region contains twice the amount of rare earths than found in China.

    Some of these deposits are in undersea geologically active zones, where deep sea floor vents spew rare earth minerals from expulsions of lava and hot gases. The discovery that the South Pacific region is rich in rare earths has led European nations, including France and Britain, which maintain colonies in the area, re-staking their colonial footprints.

    France, for example, is reticent to grant further autonomy or independence to New Caledonia, where an independence referendum is scheduled for November 8, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna. Similarly, Britain has showed a renewed interest in the Pitcairn Islands, where a handful of descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers continue to live.

    In 2015, Australia stamped out self-government of Norfolk Island, turning the island into a hybrid municipality of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. New Zealand has vetoed ambitions by two of its elf-governing “associated states” – the Cook Islands and Niue – for full membership in the United Nations. For these colonial powers, it is not what is about what lies above the sea – island resorts – but what lies under the sea within the marine borders of the territories and that is rare earth minerals.

    With the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, rare earth reserves have been discovered in Greenland, a “self-governing” territory of Denmark. Moves by the Greenland government to seek independence from Denmark and permit Chinese companies to mine rare earth minerals have met with stiff opposition from Denmark, the United States, and NATO.

    Other countries possessing significant deposits of rare earths include India, Russia, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and the United States. These nations, as well as China, all have varying degrees of the necessary political, economic, and military might to protect their rare earth resources.

    However, some developing nations, where rare earths have been discovered, are candidates for ruthless exploitation by multinational firms, some under the direction of governments, to secure exclusive mining rights. In fact, Toyota, which has a tight relationship with the Japanese government, bought a rare earth mine in Vietnam to ensure such exclusivity rights.

    Japan may not have to worry about Vietnam as its major source of rare earths. Earlier this year, a deposit of some 16 million tons of rare earth mineral oxides was discovered in deep sea mud located 1150 miles southeast of Tokyo. The deposit contained much of the rare earths upon which Japan’s consumer electronics industry is reliant: yttrium, dysprosium, terbium, and europium.

    In countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, columbite-tantalite, a mineral used in the manufacture of semi-conductor chips, is such a hot commodity that rival warlords, some acting on behalf of outside players, including Rwanda, Uganda, Israel, Japan, China, and the United States battle one another for control of the mineral’s extraction and export.

    The Rwanda Mines, Petroleum, and Gas Board signed a deal in 2017 with a major Japanese rare earth extraction firm for the exploration and mining of rare earths, as well as tungsten, in Rwanda. However, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is known to have backed fellow Tutsi rebels in the DRC, who exploit rare earth mines in South and North Kivu provinces and send the stolen minerals to Rwanda. There have been attempts to curtail the trade in “conflict minerals” in the Great Lakes region of Africa, but they have all come to no avail.

    Currently, US and Chinese firms are waging a political and economic influence “war” for access to lithium, cassiterite, and cobalt reserves in the DRC.

    Next door to the DRC, in civil war-ravaged Burundi, there was a discovery of exceptionally high-grade “main vein” of rare earth minerals in 2017. Burundi, which was once a German colony, saw Germany’s ThyssenKrupp move in to exploit the mineral resources. ThyssenKrupp also began building a processing plant in Burundi. The German government has come under attack from human rights groups that accuse it of backing the German mining venture, known as the Gakara Project, even though Burundi’s president, President Pierre Nkurunziza, was dubiously elected to a third term in office. German business groups have countered with the argument that if Germany was not mining Burundi’s rare earths, China would be doing so.

    The French government is not only concentrating its rare earth mining activities in its traditional Francophone sphere of influence in Africa – Morocco, Burkina Faso, Niger, Madagascar, Guinea – but further afield, including the pursuit of joint venture mining activities in Kazakhstan.

    In the United States, the Pentagon has recognized the military importance of rare earths. The Defense Logistic Agency’s Strategic Materials department is tasked to ensure a continued supply of rare earths to US defense contractors. The US Energy Department tracks rare earth discoveries and mining operations around the world, thanks to a constant infusion of intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. The Trump administration has moved to open US federal wildlife areas, national parks, and other lands to exploration and mining of rare earths to private companies, much to the chagrin of environmentalists and Native American tribal governments.

    In a rush to lessen dependence on Chinese exports of rare earths, which have, in any event, been restricted by Beijing, nations and companies around the world have launched a cut-throat competition to gain leverage over the rare earth market. What peaks the interest of gatherers of economic intelligence are references in email, video conferences, phone calls, faxes, and financial documents to such terms as europium, terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, samarium, and other rare earths.

    As the world becomes more dependent on high-tech and an “Internet of things,” consisting of computers, mobile phones, appliances, televisions, security systems, automobiles, etc., the economic war for control of rare earth minerals will increase. There is the extreme possibility that economic warfare could turn into shooting wars, as has already been the case in the DRC.

  • Bioweapon? Scientists Sound Alarm Over DARPA Plans To Spread Viruses Using Insects 

    A team of scientist sounds the alarm in a new Science Policy Forum report about a mysterious US government program that is developing genetically modified viruses that would be dispersed into the environment using insects. The virus-infected or ‘Frankenstein’ insects are being developed as countermeasures against potential natural and engineered threats to the US food supply. The program is operated by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) could be viewed as an attempt to develop an entirely new class of bioweapons that would prompt other nations to seek similar weapons, they cautioned.

    The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Freiburg both in Germany, and the University of Montpellier in France suggest DARPA’s program could likely breach the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

    Dubbed the “Insect Allies” program, DARPA began modifying insects in 2017, with the plan to produce more resilient crops to help farmers deal with climate change, drought, frost, floods, salinity, and disease, said Gizmodo. The technology at the center of the program is an entirely new method of genetically modifying crops. Instead of modifying seeds in a lab, farmers would send swarms of insects into their crops, where the genetically modified bugs would infect plants with a virus that passes along the new resilience genes, a process known as horizontal genetic alteration. Hence the technology’s name—Horizontal Environmental Genetic Alteration Agents (HEGAA).

    For HEGAA to work, Gizmodo explains that DARPA labs develop a virus that is inserted into the chromosome of a target organism. Scientists would use leafhoppers, whiteflies, and aphids genetically altered in the lab using CRISPR, or a variant of a gene-editing system, to carry the virus into crops. Each plant would then be infected by the insect, triggering the intended effects of protecting crops from natural and or human-made threats.

    However, the lead author of the report, Richard Guy Reeves from the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, says DARPA’s Insect Allies program is disturbing and an example of dual-use research in which the US government, in addition to aiding farmers’ crops, is also developing a biological weapon.

    Insect Allies is reportedly backed by $27 million of funding. According to Gizmodo, there are four academic research teams currently working on the project, including researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute in New York, Pennsylvania State University, Ohio State University and the University of Texas at Austin. DARPA maintains that “all work is conducted inside closed laboratories, greenhouses, or other secured facilities,” and that the insects have built-in lifespans to limit their spread. By 2020 or 2021, DARPA is planning on testing the virus-infected insects on crops inside greenhouses at undisclosed locations.

    Reeves said the use of insects as a vehicle for genetic modification is a horrible idea because they cannot be controlled and indicates that traditional overhead sprays to deliver HEGAAs is the safest bet. DARPA says insects are the only practical solution, as overhead spraying of HEGAAs would require increased farming infrastructure — something that is not available to all farmers.

    The report specifies how there is currently no global regulatory framework to support this new way of transporting HEGAAs to crops, which if not supervised correctly, could lead to potential mishaps.

    The scientists of the report interpret DARPA’s insect program as “an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAs for offensive purposes,” such as conducting biological warfare.

    These genetically modified bugs could be implanted with a dangerous plant-killing disease that the Trump adminstration could unleash over farmland in Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and or even China, that would decimate the countries’ food supply.

    The introduction of this potentially dangerous technology, the scientists argue, would usher in an entirely new class of biological, insect-dispatched weapons that could be considered weapons of mass destruction. Scientists warn that this technology would spur rival nations to develop similar insect programs.

    In response to a Gizmodo question, a spokesperson for DARPA said it welcomes academic dialogue about the Insect Allies program, but criticizes the conclusion of the report, saying it is “misleading and peppered with inaccuracies.”

    Blake Bextine, DARPA Program Manager for Insect Allies, rejects many of the claims made by Reeves.

    “DARPA is not producing biological weapons, and we reject the hypothetical scenario,” Bextine told Gizmodo.

    “We accept and agree with concerns about potential dual use of technology, an issue that comes up with virtually every new powerful technology. Those concerns are precisely why we structured the Insect Allies program the way we did, as a transparent, university-led, fundamental research effort that benefits from the active participation of regulators and ethicists and proactive communication to policymakers,” said Bextine.

    The purpose of Insect Allies program, he states, is to prepare for a new era of emerging threats to US agriculture. Brextine added that DARPA is evaluating the potential environmental impacts of HEGAAs.

    “DARPA is extraordinarily sensitive to environmental risks and off-target effects, and has structured the Insect Allies program to identify and mitigate them,” he said. “DARPA has mandated multiple levels of biosafety and biosecurity at each stage of the program.”

    If DARPA’s program succeeds, they will have developed gain-of-function treatments that can be delivered to the “right plants” and the “right tissue,” he said. In other words, DARPA wants precision guided biological weapon insects.

    Jason Delborne, an Associate Professor at North Carolina State University, an expert in genetic engineering, says the concerns seem “appropriate.”

    “The social, ethical, political, and ecological implications of producing HEGAAs are significant and worthy of the same level of attention as exploring the science underpinning the potential technology,” Delborne told Gizmodo.

    “The authors argue persuasively that specifying insects as the preferred delivery mechanism for HEGAAs is poorly justified by visions of agricultural applications. The infrastructure and expertise required for spraying agricultural fields—at least in the U.S. context—is well established, and this delivery mechanism would offer greater control over the potential spread of a HEGAA.”

    DARPA could be on the cusp of obtaining a new biological weapon that would most certainly be used against Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and or even China, to cripple the countries’ food supply and lead to a regime change without firing a signal shot — this the future of warfare.

  • We've "Ruled Out" Satan: Officials Baffled By Mysterious Flaming Hole In Arkansas

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Experts are still trying to determine the cause of flames that shot out of a hole in the ground in Midway, Arkansas, last month.

    The fire in the hole seemingly erupted spontaneously, shooting out flames of up to 12 feet high.

    Fire chief Donald Tucker responded to the early morning emergency call on September 17.

    He told the Springfield News-Leader what he saw when he got to the scene:

    “When I got there, there were flames 8 or 9 feet high shooting out of a hole about 2 feet in diameter. It burned that way for 30 to 45 minutes before it went out.”

    Tucker told Motherboard that although news reports have said the flames initially reached 12 feet high, he never saw them get to that level. The fire burned red-orange, at about two feet in diameter, Tucker said.

    Why didn’t Tucker take pictures of the fire? “With a fire like that, you don’t know what it is, so you don’t put yourself in danger,” he told Motherboard.

    Apparently, the mysterious fire somehow extinguished itself.

    Before the fire retreated into the hole, it shrunk to a flame about waist high for a few minutes, Tucker said:

    “Then it just went down the hole and went out. For a little bit, there was just a little bit of glow of fire down in the hole.”

    Mickey Pendergrass, the county judge in Baxter County, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that officials are still investigating the mysterious Midway hole, but one possible suspect has been cleared:

    “As far as the spiritual Satan goes, we’ve ruled that out. He didn’t come up and stick his pitchfork in the ground and blow that hole out.”

    Good to know.

    The volleyball-sized hole has been there for at least 10 years, according to a man who used to mow the grass on the private property along Arkansas 5.

    “It’s kind of like an old groundhog hole, burrow, or armadillo’s,” Pendergrass said. “But it’s been there a long time.”

    What caused the fire remains a mystery, however.

    So far, the following possible causes of the fire have been ruled out:

    • Meteorite

    • Lighting strike

    • Natural gas

    • Utility-related problem

    • Leaking gasoline or propane tanks

    • The Devil

    Could someone have started the fire intentionally? It is possible, Pendergrass said:

    “What kind of fuel did they use to make it so clean and no soot and no damage? And what was used to strike the fire to start with? There are just too many questions for it not to have been done on purpose, whether it was for fun or for giggles. Somebody will talk someday and have to brag about it, and then we’ll find out who did it.”

    Soil samples were taken from the hole, and officials hope that analysis will provide clues. If gasoline or anything else was put in the hole, or if groundwater contamination caused the fire, the soil should help experts determine that.

    It is possible, however, that we will never know what caused the hole to burst into flame.

    “I’ve never seen it before. I hope I never see it again,” Tucker said. “What it was, I have no idea.”

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