Thursday, June 30, 2011

Mark Cuban: Coolest Owner in Sports


The victory of the Dallas Mavericks over the Miami Heat in the NBA finals has largely been portrayed as a deserved vindication of Dirk Nowitzki, and rightly so. But the one guy besides Dirk who probably deserves applaud is owner Mark Cuban, who has confirmed he is the coolest owner in sports since Eddie DeBartolo ruled San Francisco.

The Konformist isn't big on gushing over billionaires, and our position still is even the best owner is basically deadweight. But as far as deadweight billionaires go, Cuban is definitely a king of kings.

Haters say Cuban is obnoxious and arrogant. This is true. But he's the one owner who clearly is in sports not for the money but the love of sports. And two post-victory actions tell you what he is made of. One, he decided to cover the costs of the Maverick's victory parade rather than pawn it off to the cash-strapped metropolis. Two, perhaps more telling but less noticed, he left a $20K tip for the staff on a $90K bar tab on victory night. This was at a club in Miami, BTW, and not in Dallas.

Hopefully he will soon join the fraternities of owners in the NFL, MLB and NHL. Sports needs guys like him...

Mark Cuban will pay for your $110,000 bar tab. And your parade
Kelly Dwyer
Tue Jun 14, 2011
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/Mark-Cuban-will-pay-for-your-110-000-bar-tab-A?urn=nba-wp4996

Whitesnake Zinfadel


White Zinfadel has the rep of being a chick wine, but that may change thanks to David Coverdale and his leather-clad band. Their concoction, cleverly named Whitesnake Zinfadel, is as sweet going down as an 80s era heavy metal ballad, but like any Whitesnake ballad, the makers justify by being too badass to dismiss as pussies. So drink up, and if anybody mocks you, revenge will come when you're banging Tawny Kitaen.

http://dlmwine.com/Whitesnake/whitesnake_08Zin.html

Featured Product:
2008 Zinfandel,
Russian River Valley

"It's a bodacious, cheeky little wine, filled to the brim with the spicy essence of sexy, slippery Snakeyness... I recommend it to complement any & all grown up friskiness & hot tub jollies...

Is this love? I believe it is..."

David Coverdale, Whitesnake


$32.00 /bottle, 12 btl maximum per customer*
Save on shipping within the U.S.: Order 3 bottles, only pay shipping for 1.
*Due to prohibitive shipping costs, international orders are not available.

The Book of Mormon Dominates Tonys

Congrats to Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park for sweeping the Tony Awards with nine awards, including best musical. It almost makes up for the Oscar snubs for music for both the South Park movie and Team America...

Tom Selleck and Sean Young’s screen test for ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’


06.09.2011
Tara McGinley
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/tom_selleck_screen_test_for_raiders_of_the_lost_ark

Here’s a screen test shot back in 1980 of Tom Selleck and Sean Young performing “the bar scene” for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Apparently Tom Selleck was the first choice for the role of Indiana Jones, but CBS would not let him out of his Magnum PI contract to film the movie. And yeah, the audio is a bit out of sync.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSyHSgEbNng

Not too shabby. I think Tom Selleck would have made a convincing Indiana Jones. I’m not so sure Jones would sport a pornstache, though.

Farewell Clarence Clemons


The Big Man of the E Street Band...

All the crimes Richard Nixon committed against me are now legal

Answering today's OFF-SET questions is Daniel Ellsberg, author, defense analyst and prominent whistleblower.
Jay Kernis - Senior Producer
June 7th, 2011
http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/07/daniel-ellsberg-all-the-crimes-richard-nixon-committed-against-me-are-now-legal

He is the subject of a documentary about his life, "The Most Dangerous Man in America," nominated for a 2010 Academy Award, which took its title from the words former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used to describe Ellsberg in 1971.

In the 1960s, Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon official, a former Marine commander who believed the American government was always on the right side. But while working for the administration of Lyndon Johnson, Ellsberg had access to a top-secret document that revealed senior American leaders, including several presidents, knew that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire.

Officially titled "United States-Viet Nam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense,"–the Pentagon Papers, as they became known–also showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In, 1971, Ellsberg leaked all 7,000 pages to The Washington Post, and 18 other newspapers, including The New York Times, which published them.

Not long after, he surrendered to authorities and confessed to being the leaker. Ellsberg was charged as a spy. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed on grounds of governmental misconduct against him. In April 1973, the court learned that Nixon had ordered his so-called "Plumbers Unit" to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to steal documents they hoped might make the whistle-blower appear crazy. In May, more evidence of government illegal wiretapping was revealed. The charges against Ellsberg were dropped. This led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.

The federal government has now declassified the Pentagon Papers. The Nixon Presidential Library & Museum will release the documents on June 13, forty years to the day that leaked portions of the report were published on the front page of The New York Times.

In this interview, Ellsberg says, "Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, would feel vindicated that all the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal. " (Thanks to the Patriot Act and other laws passed in recent years.) And he says all presidents since Nixon have violated the constitution, most recently President Obama, with the bombing of Libya.


Until now, the public has been able to read only the small portions of the report that you leaked. What do you think the impact of releasing all 7,000 pages might be?

The "declassification" of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event. The notion that "only small portions" of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library. Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971, between the redacted (censored) Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press.

It would be helpful if the publishers indicated, by brackets or different type, what was withheld earlier. But that would be very embarrassing to the Library and the government; I'll be surprised if they do it. Most of the omissions in the GPO edition "for security"–a ridiculous claim, since their substance was nearly all available to the world in the simultaneous Gravel/Beacon Press edition–will appear arbitrary and unjustified.

I'd really like to see someone–a journalist or an anti-secrecy NGO– compare this version in detail with the redacted white space in the 1971 GPO edition, for a measure of what the government has regarded as necessarily classified for the last forty years. And then ask: just why was most of what was released by the GPO, covering 1945 to1968, kept secret as late as 1971? Hint: it wasn't for "national security."

What that comparison would newly reveal is the blatant violation of the spirit and letter of the FOIA declassification process by successive administrations (including the present one), in rejecting frequent requests by historians and journalists for complete declassification of the Papers over the years.

But if the hype around this belated release got a new generation to read the Pentagon Papers or at least the summaries to the various volumes (my highest hope, pretty unlikely), they'd get from them as good an understanding as they could find anywhere today of our war in Afghanistan.


The Pentagon Papers didn't explicitly present that last alternative, but their release contributed to that result, eventually. Is it too much to hope that their re-release could do the same?

Yes, it is. But fortunately there are a few Congresspersons, like Dennis Kucinich and Barbara Lee, Walter Jones and Ron Paul who got that message the first time, even if the Republican and Democratic leadership hasn't, yet.


On June 23, 1971, in an interview with CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, you said, "I think the lesson is that the people of this country can’t afford to let the President run the country by himself, even foreign affairs, without the help of Congress, without the help of the public. I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions." How concerned are you that elected officials haven't learned those lessons?

I still stand by my cited conclusions, both for 1971 and for every single year since, including this one. But I never expected elected officials in the Executive branch (of which there are exactly two in each administration) or their myriad subordinates to "learn those lessons" or to accept them as warnings.

Leaders in the Executive branch–in every country– know what they're doing, and why they're doing it, and they always want to stay in office and keep on running things with as little interference from Congress, the public and the courts as possible: which means, with as much secrecy as they can manage. So I'm not exactly concerned that they're still at it (which is why I'm still at what I do), since that is so predictable, in every government, tyrannical or "democratic."

Our Founders sought to prevent this. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, for the first time in constitutional history,put the decision to go to war (beyond repelling sudden attacks) exclusively in the hands of Congress, not the president. But every president since Harry Truman in Korea–as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated up through LBJ, but beyond them to George W. Bush and Barack Obama–has violated the spirit and even the letter of that section of the Constitution (along with some others) they each swore to preserve, protect and defend.

However, as has been pointed out repeatedly by Glenn Greenwald, and Bruce Ackerman , David Swanson and others, no president has so blatantly violated the constitutional division of war powers as President Obama in his ongoing attack on Libya, without a nod even to the statutory War Powers Act, that post-Pentagon Papers effort by Congress to recapture something of the role assigned exclusively to it by the Constitution.

This open disregard of a ruling statute (regardless of his supposed feelings about its constitutionality, which Obama has not even bothered to express) is clearly an impeachable offense, though it will certainly not lead to impeachment–given the current complicity of the leaders of both parties–any more than President George W. Bush's misleading Congress into his crime against the peace, aggression, in Iraq, or President Johnson's lies to obtain the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

Yet the most important point, as I see it, is not the secrecy and the lying, or even the blatant disregard of the Constitution, the Presidential oath and the rule of law.

As the Pentagon Papers documented for the much of the Vietnam era (we still lack, and we still need, the corresponding Papers for the Nixon policy-making, that added over twenty thousand names unnecessarily to the Vietnam Memorial and over a million deaths in Vietnam) and the last decade confirms: the point is that the Founders had it right the first time.

As Abraham Lincoln explained their intention (in defending to his former law partner William Herndon his opposition to President Polk's deliberately provoked Mexican War): "The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."

As Lincoln put it, the alternative approach (which we have actually followed in the last sixty years) "places our President where kings have always stood." And the upshot of that undue, unquestioning trust in the president and his Executive branch is: smart people get us into stupid (and wrongful) wars, and their equally smart successors won't get us out of them.

Either we the people will press elected officials in Congress–on pain of losing their jobs–to take up their Constitutional responsibilities once again and to end by defunding our illegal, unjustifiable (and now, financially insupportable) military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and air attacks on Pakistan, Libya and Yemen: or those bloody stalemates will continue indefinitely.


In March–at the age of 79–you were arrested in front of the White House–and then again outside of Quantico military prison–while protesting in support of Army private Bradley Manning, accused of being the Wikileaks leaker. Manning, charged with 34 counts including "aiding the enemy," faces life in prison and possibly, execution. Have you been able to communicate with Bradley?

It was then almost impossible to communicate with Bradley Manning, and I have so far done so only through his few visitors. In front of the White House and at Quantico, I was attempting to communicate with those holding him prisoner, to protest the abusive and illegal conditions of his detention, amounting not only to punishment of someone not tried, convicted or sentenced but to torture forbidden by domestic and international law and the Constitution even as punishment.


Do you believe what Bradley did was necessary and heroic?

Yes.


Do you still have all 7000 pages of the Pentagon Papers?

I don't really know. Hundreds of boxes of files have gone from storage into my basement, and my old copies of the Papers may or may not be somewhere in there. I'm not going to go searching among them for the still-classified eleven words.


These days, when you find yourself thinking about Richard Nixon, what comes to mind?

Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)

He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.

That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to "incapacitate me totally" (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama's executive orders. they have all become legal.

There is no further need for present or future presidents to commit obstructions of justice (like Nixon's bribes to potential witnesses) to conceal such acts. Under the new laws, Nixon would have stayed in office, and the Vietnam War would have continued at least several more years.

Likewise, where Nixon was the first president in history to use the 54-year-old Espionage Act to indict an American (me) for unauthorized disclosures to the American people (it had previously been used, as intended, exclusively against spies), he would be impressed to see that President Obama has now brought five such indictments against leaks, almost twice as many as all previous presidents put together (three).

He could only admire Obama's boldness in using the same Espionage Act provisions used against me–almost surely unconstitutional used against disclosures to the American press and public in my day, less surely under the current Supreme Court–to indict Thomas Drake, a classic whistleblower who exposed illegality and waste in the NSA.

Drake's trial begins on June 13, the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers. If Nixon were alive, he might well choose to attend.

* * *

*MORE BIO: After graduating from Harvard in 1952 with a B.A. summa cum laude in Economics, he studied for a year at King’s College, Cambridge University, on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Between 1954 and 1957, Ellsberg spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander.

From 1957-59 he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1962 with his thesis, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision. His research leading up to this dissertation—in particular his work on what has become known as the “Ellsberg Paradox,” first published in an article entitled "Risk, Ambiguity and the Savage Axioms"—is widely considered a landmark in decision theory and behavioral economics.

In 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation, and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. In 1961 he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war. He was a member of two of the three working groups reporting to the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Ellsberg joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification in the field.

On his return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.

Ellsberg is the author of three books: Papers on the War (1971), Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (2002), and Risk, Ambiguity and Decision (2001). In December 2006 he was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” in Stockholm, Sweden, “. . for putting peace and truth first, at considerable personal risk, and dedicating his life to inspiring others to follow his example.”

Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S. interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing.

He is a Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

The CIA’s Fake “Arab Spring” Becoming A Long, Hot Summer Of War

Obama Regime Courts World Conflagration: Imperial Overstretch Threatens as US, NATO Wage Five Wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen – Are Syria, Iran, Lebanon Next?
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
June 20, 2011
http://tarpley.net/2011/06/20/cia-fake-arab-spring-becoming-summer-of-war

Washington DC, June 20 - With the previously covert US bombing of Yemen out in the open, the Obama administration is now waging illegal wars against at least five countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen. Given Obama’s absurd and Orwellian theory that acts of war from the air in the sea do not constitute hostilities under the terms of the War Powers Act, this list may be incomplete, and stealth US attacks may be going on elsewhere as well. As spring turns into summer along the banks of the Potomac, there are signs that Obama’s next move may be a trifecta of aggression – an attack on Syria which would also embroil the US in war with Iran and with the Hezbollah forces of Lebanon. Or, the Obama rampage may strike Pakistan. The “Arab Spring” of color revolutions, military coups, and destabilizations is moving inexorably towards a possible world conflagration whose outlines are already visible.

According to military sources speaking on the Alex Jones radio program on June 15, US Special Forces units based at Fort Hood, Texas, have been told to prepare for deployment to Libya no later than July. Also on alert, reportedly for September or October, are the heavy armored units of the First Cavalry Division, currently located in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other components of the US III Corps at various US bases. Observers point out that US Special Forces have been in Libya since February at the latest. They also note that, while the Libyan destination is highly plausible, some of these units may also find themselves on the way to Yemen, Syria, Iran, or beyond. At the same time, the Russian Foreign Ministry was denouncing the presence of the US Aegis cruiser Monterrey in the Black Sea. The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and its task force are presently off the coast of Syria. One very plausible explanation for these deployments might be that a US attack on Syria, under the pretext of protecting civilians, is imminent.

On June 19, CNN reported1 a large-scale US Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps military drill, the biggest of its type in history, along much of the American Atlantic coast under the code name of Exercise Mailed Fist, to be conducted from June 19-24. “The exercise is designed to test the capability of every type of Marine Corps aircraft, including MV-22 Ospreys and F/A 18 Hornets, as well as some Navy ships and Air Force planes,” CNN reported. This drill appears designed to train for amphibious landings on the coast of the Mediterranean, as in Libya or Syria.

June-July Turning Point, as in 1848

The US-UK putsch wave of 2011 continues to exhibit similarities to an earlier historical model, the insurrections of 1848 in Europe. The 1848 events started with a revolt in Sicily (not far from Tunisia), and forced the ouster of King Louis Philippe of France in February and of the powerful Austrian Chancellor, Prince Metternich, in March. These insurrections drew on the pent-up tensions accumulated over decades under the post-1815 Holy Alliance system, but they were by and large detonated by the networks of Italian ultra-nationalist firebrand Giuseppe Mazzini, an agent of the British Admiralty. Tides of unrest swept through central Europe.

The turning point came in June-July 1848. When a Czech nationalist insurrection broke out in Prague, it was crushed by the Austrian army of Gen. Windischgrätz after June 12. An attempted coup by the radical working class and city mob of Paris, organized in Louis Blanc’s National Workshops, was defeated by the reactionary Gen. Cavaignac in the June Days – June 24-26, 1848. In northern Italy, the army of the Italian Kingdom of Sardinia – which had declared war2 on Vienna in support of a rebellion in Milan and with the hope of using the upheaval to drive the Austrians out of Italy and thus achieve national unity – was defeated on July 25 by Marshal Radetsky at Custozza. In September and October, Hungarian nationalist radicals under the Mazzini disciple Kossuth set off a civil war with the Croatians, leading to social chaos and (as R. R. Palmer put it), “the war of all against all.” Somewhat later, Russian troops were invited in to put down the Hungarian rebellion. There was a renewed flare-up of insurrectionary activity in the spring of 1849, notably with the creation of Mazzini’s Roman Republic, before the insurrectionary movements subsided during the late summer of 1849, and gave way to a phase of oppression, cynicism, and reaction. It may be useful to keep this time frame in mind as a rough guide to evaluating events today, while of course bearing in mind no mechanistic or cyclical repetition should be anticipated.

Ahmadinejad of Iran to Obama: Only the US Mask Has Changed, Hands Off Syria

On June 8, President Ahmadinejad of Iran warned the US-NATO bloc not to assail Syria: “Syria is a pioneer of resistance. The Syrian government and nation can settle their issues and there is no need for the interference of others,” Ahmadinejad said. He cautioned certain US-led countries in the region to “stop interfering in Syria’s affairs,” and added that Washington will turn against these states immediately after it achieves its objectives in Syria.3 These warnings may be addressed to Jordan, the Iraqi Kurds, or Turkey, whose territories may have been used by CIA/MI-6 networks to smuggle weapons and commandos into Syria to help constitute the armed gangs of the Moslem Brotherhood which have killed 400 Syrian military and security forces so far. “The Americans want to gain popularity among the regional nations through the implementation of this plan and portray themselves as the upholder of people’s rights,” Ahmadinejad went on, and noted that while a new regime took power in the U.S. in 2009, the nature of the ruling system has not changed: “Only the masks have changed. Campaign against terrorism was the mask of the previous U.S. administration, but the mask of the current administration is supporting human rights.”4 More recently, the Iranian Foreign Ministry and leading Iranian generals have issued stern warnings against any aggression at the expense of Syria, which they evidently would regard as casus belli. Increased attacks on US forces by Shiite militias in Iraq in recent weeks may be a token of Tehran’s alarm over the possible loss of its main ally.

“Gay Girl in Damascus” a US Hoax – Like So Many Reports on Syria and Libya?

On June 14, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued an unusual dual condemnation of both Damascus and Tehran, repeating the US line that Iran is assisting in the repression of Syrian protests. “Today in Syria, Iran is supporting the Assad regime’s vicious assaults on peaceful protesters and military actions against its own cities,” said Clinton. Back in the real world, suspicions were growing up that much media reporting concerning events in Syria represented pure fiction in the tradition of the Kuwait incubator babies and Jessica Lynch: the much-touted “Gay Girl in Damascus” blog, which had been cited as a primary source of information about Syria by mainstream news media across the western world, was exposed as a total hoax. This hoax was the handiwork of Tom McMaster, a 40-year-old American man, and his wife Britta Froelicher, an activist with the American Friends Service Committee, an organization linked to the US intelligence community since the Cold War. How many of the films, photos, and interviews broadcast and posted about supposed war crimes in Libya, Syria, and other countries have also been invented out of whole cloth by this CIA cottage industry of disinformation and black propaganda? How much of the social media hype associated with the “Arab Spring” derives from the trolls at US Cyber Command?

Egypt’s Asterisk Revolution: Run by Samantha Power and McFaul From the White House

The “Gay Girl in Damascus” stunt may be seen in retrospect as a microcosm of the entire “Arab Spring”: a cynical manipulation of idealistic (or nihilistic) young dupes under the aegis of US-designed color revolutions and people power coups, playing these affluent computer-oriented young people against the fragile structures of the modern state under conditions of world economic depression. But even so, the activities of the golden youth in the public squares have been largely a media spectacle, a diversion, a smokescreen. Street demonstrations do not amount to a struggle for power. The overthrow of governments has been accomplished behind the scenes by generals and government officials who have been bribed, blackmailed, and otherwise subverted into mounting putsches sponsored by CIA/MI-6/DGSE. In Tunisia this worked well, with Ben Ali fleeing the country when the general staff made clear that they had turned against him. In Egypt, the procedure finally ousted Mubarak, but with much greater difficulty. US assets like Tantawi and Enan proved unable to drive out the Rais until the Obama White House made some heavy-duty threats of direct US action, the exact nature of which has yet to be determined, but which may have involved the menace of US action against the Suez Canal.

As US Egyptian asset Saad Eddin Ibrahim told Lally Weymoth of the Washington Post: “The Egyptian chief of staff [Tantawi] on orders from the White House was escalating the pressure. President Obama’s advisers, who are good friends — Samantha Power and Michael McFaul — asked me to come [to Washington]. They relied on me as a source. .?.?. After Mubarak’s second speech, Obama became convinced [that Mubarak had to go].”5 Nationalist colonels in the Egyptian Army may be interested to know that their supreme commander, now the virtual dictator of Egypt, acted on orders from the likes of McFaul and Power, who control the “democratic” opposition as well.

In Libya, the color revolution has worked far less well, as armed al Qaeda gangs have been unable to conquer the loyalist stronghold of Tripoli, and are also having trouble subduing loyalists in the Benghazi-Darna-Tobruk corridor. In Syria, the color revolution model has not worked at all, since the middle class is not interested in undergoing a total Iraq-style bloodbath and Moslem Brotherhood reign of terror for the sake of some vapid slogans about democracy. In Algeria, where the population has immediate experience of the nightmarish slaughter wrought by the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) a few years back, no appetite whatever for new adventures has been observed. Al Jazeera has now shifted target to destabilize Morocco, and we will see how that turns out. The destabilization of Jordan has gone nowhere.

An attack on Syria could come soon. “It has gotten to the point where Qaddafi’s behavior and Assad’s behavior are indistinguishable,” commented warmonger GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who noted “You need to put on the table all options, including a model like we have in Libya.”6 This meant a much wider war.

Yemen: Government of Wounded President Saleh Crumbles, US Drone Strikes Begin

Yemen’s President Saleh was seriously wounded on June 3 when rockets allegedly fired by insurgent tribesmen struck his palace. Saleh was flown to Saudi Arabia the next day for emergency treatment. While Saleh’s relatives and allies tried to hold onto power, the Pentagon exploited the resulting power vacuum to begin large-scale Predator drone attacks in the country. It was revealed that the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the CIA were operating out of a headquarters in Sanaa, and that the CIA would soon begin a wide-ranging program of Predator drone assassinations outside of any rules of military engagement. There were also reports that the US was building a large Predator drone base for operations in Yemen. In the meantime, Islamic militants of the Ansar al-Sharia group, equated by the US media to “al Qaeda,” seized parts of a provincial capital in southern Yemen. It should be remembered that the two leading spokesman for “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” (“AQAP”) are US citizen Anwar Awlaki and Guantanamo alumnus al-Shiri, both obvious US double agents. The purpose of the entire Yemen destabilization is to open an avenue of attack against Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s immediate neighbor.

US Strike Against Pakistan Nukes On Front Burner

On June 17, Pakistan said “NATO aircraft attacked one of its military posts in the northwest near the Afghan border and it had expressed its serious concern to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad…. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said NATO aircraft intruded around 2.5 km (1.5 miles) inside Pakistani territory” to make the attack.7 These probes by NATO aggressors along Pakistan’s border are now a frequent occurrence, and threaten to break out in an open, shooting war – all the more so since any one of these raids could represent a US attempt to cripple Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent with a conventional first strike below the nuclear threshold. Afghanistan President Karzai has officially announced that peace talks with State Department participation are now going on with Mullah Omar and others leaders of the Afghan Taliban. These talks have nothing to do with peace; they rather represent a US attempt to recruit the Afghan and other Taliban and Pushtuns generally as kamikaze puppets to be launched against Pakistan in military attacks.

Certain parts of the US media – particularly the ones addressed to policy elites — have mounted a sustained campaign of demonization against Pakistan. Here are some recent samples of top front-page headlines from the Washington Post:

May 28: “Infiltrators worry Pakistani military; ‘We are under attack’; US unsure of army’s commitment to purging ranks”
May 30: “In Afghan war, Haqqani group is ‘resilient’ foe; Operations based in Pakistan; Network is seen as least reconcilable insurgent faction”
June 11: “Thwarted raids add to tension with Pakistan; US shared intelligence; Bomb-making sites were later found vacant”
June 16: “Pakistan Relations Reach a new low; security ties fraying; Anti-US sentiment in Pakistani army on rise”

Iran’s Ahmadinejad was also taking seriously the spate of media reports about a coming US attack on Pakistan’s nuclear forces. “We have precise information that America wants to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear facilities in order to control Pakistan and to weaken the government and the people of Pakistan,” he said on June 6. The U.S. is also seeking to “use the United Nations Security Council and some other international organizations as a lever to pave the way for its increased presence in Pakistan with the aim of undermining Pakistan’s national sovereignty,” said the Iranian President.8 The Pakistani government has requested that Iran share with them the detailed intelligence that was the basis for this report.

The Pakistan nukes scenario was the centerpiece of a widely noticed study entitled “Terrorist Tactics in Pakistan Threaten Nuclear Weapons Safety,” by British academic Shaun Gregory, published on June 1 in the CTC Sentinel, the house organ of the Combating Terrorism Center of the US Military Academy at West Point, NY. Gregory’s thesis is that Pakistan, now equipped with over 100 nuclear weapons, will not be able to defend all of them against a determined terrorist attack. He estimates that some 70,000 Pakistanis are now involved in the nation’s nuclear program, and that terrorists would inevitably be able to infiltrate and subvert some of this personnel, including by recruiting rogue commanders of the tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons which Pakistan is currently deploying to guard against an attack by India. Gregory also asserts that it would be enough for terrorists to get possession of fissile materials that would allow the construction of a dirty bomb. Even a failed attack on a nuclear site would cause world hysteria: “The successful location and penetration of such a site by terrorists, even if they were ultimately unsuccessful in accessing nuclear assets, would itself be a transformative event both in terms of the U.S.-Pakistani nuclear relationship and in terms of international anxiety about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,” writes Gregory.9

Reuters commented: “It’s a nightmare scenario: al Qaeda militants gain control of a Pakistani nuclear weapon, either through a base assault, theft or a rogue commander’s cooperation, possibly in the event of hostilities with nuclear-armed neighbor India.10 The Pakistanis were on full alert: “We know that the ultimate objective of the United States here is not to get a piece of land but to target our nuclear facilities….” said a Pakistani source quoted by Ansar Abbasi in News International on June 9.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff head Admiral Mike Mullen confirmed that this is indeed what the Pentagon has in mind, saying of Pakistan: “It’s a country with an awful lot of terrorists on that border… Things that I fear in the future, it’s the proliferation of that [nuclear] technology, and it’s the opportunity and the potential that it could fall into the hands of terrorists, many of whom are alive and well and seek that in that region.”

As if to provide a suitable pretext for such an attack, the US media has been trumpeting the alleged selection of notorious MI-6 asset Ayman al-Zawahiri as Bin Laden’s successor as top dog of “al Qaeda.” Zawahiri has allegedly sworn to avenge the death of Bin Laden, meaning that the door to new false flag terror events is wide open. This coverage was accompanied by the assurance that Zawahiri’s home base was nowhere else but Pakistan. Mullen immediately proclaimed that Zawahiri would soon meet the same fate as his predecessor, meaning that the US is determined to carry out more unilateral attacks on Pakistani territory, despite the virtual certainty that these will meet with Pakistani countermeasures. Pakistan’s Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik “has said that a foreign hand is involved in terror incidents in Pakistan,” and called for national unity against terrorists in “the fight for our survival.”11

The other main US goal is to block the creation of the Pakistan energy corridor, the fabled Pipelinestan. These projects involve oil and gas pipelines from Iran to China and India, all crossing through Pakistan. The US and UK are determined to block such peaceful infrastructure development, which would give all these countries a rational common economic interest. One key part of the Pakistan energy corridor has been halted; on June, IANS reported that “the proposed Pakistan-Iran gas pipeline has run into delays as Islamabad has failed to raise the necessary funds…. Pakistani officials have told their Iranian counterparts that the pipeline was unlikely to be completed by the scheduled deadline of December 2014, the Urdu daily Jang reported. According to reliable sources, Pakistan has neither been able to raise the necessary $1.24 billion funding nor plan out the proposed route for the pipeline within its territory.”12

An Anti-US Coup d’État by Nationalist Colonels in Islamabad?

On June 15, the New York Times and Washington Post both published front-page articles highlighting the rapid growth of anti-American resentment in the Pakistani officer corps. The New York Times wrote that many military officers were so disgusted by the servility of army chief Kayani towards Washington that “a colonels’ coup, while unlikely, was not out of the question,” according to “a well-informed Pakistani who has seen the general in recent weeks, as well as an American military official involved with Pakistan for many years.”13

The neocon National Review, genuinely alarmed by the prospect of a new generation of modernizing military officers in the great tradition of Colonel Nasser of Egypt, spun out some grim scenarios and asked, “would the outcome of a break between America and Pakistan be war–whether low-level or outright?”14 In reality, a regime of progressive colonels might provide a better outcome than Islamic fundamentalists not just for Pakistan, but also for Egypt.

Panetta’s New Pearl Harbor of Virtual Flag Cyber-Attacks

Islamabad continues to enjoy support from China, which pledged a month ago to regard any attack on Pakistan as an attack on the Middle Kingdom itself. China has military options for retaliation, ranging from ICBMs to sensitive points like the Taiwan Straits, but these are less likely. China could also express displeasure by divesting some U.S. Treasury bonds. More likely might be operations in the cyber-realm. US sources allege that Lockheed Martin, the CIA, and other websites are under cyber assault, and some commentators have tried to pin this on China. CIA Director Panetta, now moving over to the Pentagon, told a Senate Committee, “The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems.”15 Since no known cyber-attack has thus far been able to create such devastating effects, we may assume that Panetta is preparing the way for virtual flag terrorism, in which the US government would simply assert that some catastrophic event had been caused by a country it wishes to target. In a possibly related development, German attorney Thorsten van Geest is in court seeking a temporary restraining order against the Merkel government to shut down all anti-terror drills around at the June 26 opening of the World the Women’s Soccer Championship in Berlin, citing the danger that these exercises might be flipped live.

Saudi Arabia Signals Break from Washington

Saudi Arabia is known to be seeking cooperation with Pakistan and with other countries as part of its attempted exit from the collapsing US empire. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a leading figure of the royal family, signaled Riyadh’s broad-based rage against Washington with a June 7 op-ed warning Obama that “there will be disastrous consequences for U.S.-Saudi relations if the United States vetoes UN recognition of a Palestinian state.” Turki concluded with a threat: “We Arabs used to say no to peace, and we got our comeuppance in 1967 [with a crushing military defeat] …. Now, it is the Israelis who are saying no. I’d hate to be around when they face their comeuppance.”16 These blunt words, which reflect a Saudi hostility to the Obama regime that goes beyond the Palestinian issue to include the whole range of national strategy, has caused shock behind closed doors in official Washington.

The March visit of Saudi Prince Bandar to Pakistan is widely regarded as having sealed a defensive alliance between these two powers, which may be regarded (along with Egypt) as regional pillars of the US empire. Both are seeking to exit the empire. Pakistan is thought to have guaranteed the Saudis protection under Islamabad’s nuclear umbrella, as well as a division or more of Pakistani troops to quell any color revolution or other destabilization the CIA might attempt. A possible signal of US rage over this cooperation came on May 16, when “motorcycle-riding assassins gunned down a Saudi diplomat in the Pakistani city of Karachi, four days after a grenade attack on the Saudi consulate there.”17

NATO Facing Logistical Overstretch in Libya

Resistance by Colonel Qaddafi of Libya against the attacking US-NATO forces has exposed the grave logistical and political weakness of the supposedly omnipotent Western alliance. A US military source speaking on the Alex Jones broadcast reported that US stocks of depleted uranium (DU) munitions are currently very low. This may be the reality behind outgoing Defense Secretary Gates’ complaint last week that NATO is running out of bombs in Libya, and similar remarks by French NATO General Stephane Abrial in Belgrade. The US still has some stocks, but how long would these last against Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran?

Obama is Impeachment Bait for Violating the War Powers Act

At a recent Republican presidential debate, candidates Bachman, Gingrich, and Cain hinted that the Libyan rebels include al Qaeda terrorists. Obama’s arrogant and cynical management of the attack on Libya has raised the possibility of congressional action to cut off funds for the war. The Republican fanatics of the Tea Party are seeking to force the US government to default on Treasury securities payments as a way of destroying Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, and other economic rights of the American people recognized under the New Deal. However, it is possible that the zombie bankers and hedge fund hyenas of Wall Street who fund and generally own the Republican Party will use threats and bribes to force these Tea Party extremists to knuckle under and increase the debt ceiling over the next month. That will leave the Tea Party fanatics in desperate need of an issue they can use to make a loud show of hostility to Obama to placate their extremist supporters, and that issue may be the aggression against Libya, which has become thoroughly unpopular despite Obama’s attempts to conceal that it is going on.

Libya: A War Too Far, even for GOP

The House of Representatives has voted to demand that Obama seek congressional approval for his stealth Libya war. Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich and others are suing Obama in federal court to force him to get such approval. Speaker of the House John Boehner has warned Obama that, if he does not come to Congress for approval by June 20, he will be in violation of the War Powers Act. Senators like Lugar, Corker, and Webb have also called on Obama to get a congressional resolution to prosecute hostilities. It has also been revealed that Obama was told by lawyers from the Department of Justice and the Pentagon that the Libyan war was indeed covered by the War Powers Act, but that Obama chose to endorse legal opinions from White House and State Department lawyers telling him he did not need to get any go-ahead from Congress. Naturally, Obama’s flagrant violation of the War Powers Act in Libya would make him subject to impeachment, and this possibility might become more likely if the US economy continues to deteriorate. Another approach would be for Congress to cut off the money for the Libyan aggression. Usually, such a move would be blocked with the argument that US troops would be left stranded in harm’s way. But in this case, by Obama’s own assurances, no US ground troops are officially involved (although they are already there nonetheless). Since Obama claims that only air and naval attacks are being mounted, it may prove easier to cut off the funding and end the illegal attacks on Libya.

As Chinese political scientist Kiyul Chung told RT on June 16, the world was at an historic crossroads, on the brink of deciding whether US and NATO military interventions on the Libyan model would subdue the entire world, or whether Russia, China, and other participants in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization would be able to create a worldwide movement to counterbalance the “unilateral, aggressive, and colonial” methods of the NATO bloc.

References

1 http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/17/marine.corps.exercise/index.html?&hpt=hp_c2

2 King Carlo Alberto of Sardinia declared war on Austria on March 23, 1848. He was joined by a coalition which included the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States under Pope Pius IX, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This marked the first transformation of the domestic insurrections of 1848 into cross-border wars. There is an eerie congruence between this event and the initiation of the NATO bombing of Libya on March 19, 2011.

3 Iran censures US interference in Syria, Press TV, June 8, 2011, at http://www.presstv.ir/detail/183696.html

4 http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=242059

5 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-egypt-a-revolution-with-an-asterisk/2011/05/20/AF0W3M9G_print.html, emphasis added.

6 http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/165943-graham-military-intervention-in-syria-should-be-on-the-table

7 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110617/wl_nm/us_pakistan_nato/print

8 http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=242059

9 Shaun Gregory, “Terrorist Tactics in Pakistan Threaten Nuclear Weapons Safety,” West Point CTC Sentinel, June 1, 2011, at http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/terrorist-tactics-in-pakistan-threaten-nuclear-weapons-safety; see also http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20110614_5737.php; Professor Shaun Gregory is Director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford, UK.

10 Reuters, June 1, 2011, at http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/01/how-pakistans-nuclear-weapons-could-be-jeopardised.html

11 http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=98524

12 http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/Pakistan-Iran-gas-pipeline-ians-490610859.html?x=0

13 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/world/asia/16pakistan.html?_r=1

14 Stanley Kurtz, “Anti-American Coup in Pakistan?,” National Review, June 16, 2011, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/269822/anti-american-coup-pakistan-stanley-kurtz

15 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/13/panetta-cyberattack-next-pearl-harbor_n_875889.html

16 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/palestinian-rights-wont-be-denied-by-the-united-states-and-israel/2011/06/07/AGmnK2OH_story_1.html

17 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/16/saudi-diplomat-killed-pakistan

10 Most Influential People in the Alternative Media (2011)

Monday, June 13, 2011
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/06/10-most-influential-people-in.html

Many readers will expect to see Matt Drudge or Arianna Huffington on this list. Although they both indeed have leading Internet news websites that cover some fringe stories and report on systematic injustices more so than the mainstream media, they primarily aggregate mainline news. Therefore, they are excluded from our "alternative media" label.

The criteria we've chosen to base these rankings of the most influential alternative media figures are the following;

people that have the courage to seek the truth no matter where the information leads them;
those with the courage to question 9/11;
those who don't buy into the false left-right political paradigm;
those who are grounded in peace and liberty;
those with the communication skills and platform to affect real change.

Significantly, each of the people who made our list is clearly driven by unyielding passion. Despite some natural disagreements, they each provide a unique bridge to forbidden knowledge and they all deserve high praise for their efforts and commitment to inform the public. Sincerely, it is very encouraging to have so many talented voices leading the stampede for truth, liberty, justice, and peace.

With so many people doing great work in the real alternative media, we are sure that some deserving reporters will be left off the list. Although Activist Post has forged relationships with some of the people on this list, we've tried to remain as non-biased as possible in our observations. At the end, we've also included a list of those who deserve honorable mention for their tireless work and talent providing the truth.

10. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: Paul Craig Roberts is one of the most respected columnists in the alternative media. His syndicated articles can be seen on many leading alternative news websites including Lew Rockwell, Infowars, Counterpunch, InformationClearingHouse and countless others. Roberts scores huge points in the credibility department having been the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury under Reagan, and the editor of the Wall Street Journal -- among a long list of other accolades. His research is impeccable and his vision of how the world really operates is second to none. He knows why and when the global chess pieces are moving, and has the incredible talent to communicate difficult concepts to the general public. He has written several books including The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and How the Economy was Lost. His many interviews can be seen on Russia Today and Prison Planet TV. Roberts is also a recent contributor to Gerald Celente's esteemed Trends Journal. There is no one better at reporting the reality of geo-political events and the workings of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

9. Gary Franchi: Franchi is a longtime researcher and liberty activist. His essays and reports have been published all over the Internet and in the book Songs of Freedom: Tales From the Revolution. He also the producer of several documentaries like Camp FEMA and Don't Tread on Me. Because of his tenacious work, he now has one of the best alternative media platforms on the Internet. His liberty social network, RTR.org (Restore the Republic) has over 32,000 members and is growing quickly. The quality of his Reality Report newscasts rival the multi-million dollar productions at any cable news outfit -- except he reports TRUTH news. Franchi does an excellent job aggregating the most important stories in the alternative news and presenting them in a concise and visually appealing newscast. We've found each of Franchi's recent Reality Reports to be must-see TV, and only expect this up-and-comer's influence to continue to grow.

8. Adam Kokesh: Kokesh is a former Iraq war veteran turned peace activist, a former Libertarian congressional candidate, and the current host of Russia Today's Adam Vs. The Man nightly cable TV show. He recently gained recognition when he was brutality arrested for silently dancing at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial with other activists. The video of the alarming arrest went absolutely viral and surely brought many new viewers to his TV show and to the truth movement. Kokesh is well-informed, well-spoken, committed to individual liberty and peace, and has the legitimacy of having served his country in combat. Kokesh recently received high praise from a fellow journalist who details his appeal here. Watch for Kokesh's influence to grow as more people become aware that a genuine truther has an entertaining and informative TV show. The establishment is in big trouble with the likes of Kokesh on the airwaves.

7. Stefan Molyneux: Stefan Molyneux may be perhaps the most eloquent "red pill" in the alternative media. A self-described philosopher, Molyneux has a strong knowledge of history and a core compass reading of freedom and non-violence. He hosts a popular radio broadcast on his FreedomainRadio; his Youtube uploads have been viewed over 6 million times on his channel alone, and his site claims over 25 million downloads making his ideas the "largest and most popular philosophical conversation in the world." His articles can be seen on mega-sites like Lew Rockwell and others; he has published several books on the philosophy of liberty and non-violence (many of which are offered FREE from his site) and how they apply in today's world, and he is a frequent guest on RT's Adam Vs. The Man and the Keiser Report. Despite his overwhelming knowledge of the corrupt system, Molyneux always remains optimistic in his presentation, which is quite refreshing among all the doom-and-gloom. Molyneux remains authentic in that he survives solely from donations and book sales --so please support his efforts. We expect Molyneux to end up as one of the most important voices of our time.

6. Max Keiser: Max Keiser is perhaps the fastest rising star in the alternative media. He is a literal boy genius having invented the virtual specialist technology / prediction markets, Hollywood Stock Exchange, Karmabanque, and PirateMyFilm. His economic and geo-political analysis has appeared on the BBC, in documentary movies, and on sites like Huffington Post and Zero Hedge. Traffic on his personal website, MaxKeiser.com, has nearly doubled since April according to Alexa. He is currently the host of the must-see Keiser Report on Russia Today in addition to several other projects. He is arguably the most powerful anti-bankster voice in the world, openly and relentlessly referring to them appropriately as "terrorists and rapists" and having helped drive silver purchases to new heights with his viral "Crash the Bankers" campaign. He is also emerging as a leading anti-austerity voice for global citizens, having visited and spoken to growing protest groups in Ireland, Egypt, and soon Greece. He has an uncanny ability to boil down complicated economic "problems" for easy consumption by the general public. In short, Max Keiser has deservedly become the most influential voice of the "Resistance" to bankster tyranny.

5. David Icke: David Icke is most appropriately called a researcher and presenter of knowledge. In addition to his voluminous writing of in-depth books, his main platform is his all-day stage performance that still leave audiences wanting more. These performances are regularly sold out in large venues across the planet. Significantly, he is the only presenter in the alternative media arena to consistently draw crowds in the thousands to hear him speak. His research goes "beyond the cutting edge" of the alternative news and his popular website has become a valuable news aggregator. Besides brilliantly dissecting the "5 sense reality", as he calls it, Icke also dives head first down the rabbit hole and provides historical evidence of some very bizarre and thought-provoking phenomena. In turn, this makes him one of the most courageous and interesting figures of our time. David Icke may be one of the most dangerous people to the establishment, because he has the ability to convince regular people of their immense power to affect positive change.

4. Jeff Rense: Jeff Rense has built a massive audience of those seeking the truth inside and outside of the Matrix. His website, Rense.com, has been by far the best news aggregator covering the Gulf oil disaster and the current Fukushima nuclear meltdown. His website is the 2101st most-viewed in the United States on Alexa -- a powerful ranking indeed. Agree with him or not, Rense deserves credit for venturing down the rabbit hole of reality which brings a unique perspective to alternative news. He is one of the only sources attempting to responsibly cover the metaphysical and extra-planetary nature of the Matrix. He is quietly building a strong radio presence with talented voices like Mike Rivero and Charlie McGrath being added to his network. Look for Rense's influence to continue to escalate as we have not heard the end of the Fukushima nuclear holocaust of the Northern Hemisphere which he's so brilliantly covering.

3. Lew Rockwell: Lew Rockwell is a liberty icon. Rockwell has immense credibility having served as Ron Paul's chief of staff and his presidential campaign manager, as a scholar of Austrian School of economics, and as the chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It's telling how powerful Rockwell's platform is when others on this list include being published at LewRockwell.com as a benchmark of their success. His website is visited by millions each month, his radio show contains high-brow intellectual discussions with other great minds, and his books The Left, The Right and The State and Speaking of Liberty are worth their weight in gold. As the 2012 presidential race approaches, look for Rockwell's loud megaphone to propel Ron Paul's message of peace, liberty and economic sanity to the masses. Rockwell brings much-needed legitimacy to controversial issues like ending the Fed, ending the wars, and bringing about a system of non-coercive Anarchy. He has indeed paved the way for many others, while also remaining a growing influence.

2. Mike Adams: Mike Adams, known as the "Health Ranger", is a consumer health advocate and independent journalist. Mike Adams is young, authentic, well-spoken, and a savvy businessman. He is the founder and editor of the very popular website NaturalNews.com (ranked 1,184 overall in the U.S.) and NaturalNews.TV. His articles have been republished all over the Internet, and his radio show and short films are viewed by millions. Through his unyielding passion, he has built a team of respected contributors to his flagship news site which offer some of the best natural health and freedom news on the Web. He never ceases to improve his platform for his expanding audience and knows how to monetize his business with products he genuinely believes in. The sky is the limit for the Health Ranger's influence in the alternative media.

1. Alex Jones: Love or hate his style, Alex Jones is the King of alternative news. His radio show reaches millions per day; his movies like Fall of the Republic and The Obama Deception have been seen by tens of millions the world over on Youtube and elsewhere; his website rankings for Infowars and PrisonPlanet are off the charts with many investigative articles frequently supported by Drudge, and many on his staff are nearly deserving of being in the top-10 in their own right. The quality of his production has improved every year and is easily the best in the alternative media. Jones gets the most informative expert guests who expose a wide variety of inconvenient truths. He is a pioneer in encouraging fans to make copies of his material and give them away for free to help awaken more minds. Anyone who follows Alex Jones knows that he is driven by intense passion for humanity and never stops working. It's hard to believe that Jones is still only in his thirties, given his 15 years of dedicated reporting.


There is one person that is not on this list, but should be a major footnote on all of the above media figures, as his work has pioneered much of what is discussed in today's alternative media: G. Edward Griffin. Griffin is widely considered one of the most brilliant researchers and writers of actual history. He exemplifies the notion of following the evidence no matter where it leads him. But he is so much more than that to the group above in terms of his philosophy of individual liberty and non-aggression. His book, The Creature From Jekyll Island is one of the most powerful indictments of the Federal Reserve and is still a bestseller. His many other books, websites at RealityZone.com and his foundation Freedom-Force.org, with movies like his recent documentary What in the World Are They Spraying are all ground-breaking in their own right. This is not meant to be a runner-up award, but more of a lifetime influence shout out to a true pioneer. We're all indebted to Griffin's hard work.

Honorable Mention

Many in this group are deserving of far more praise than this format allows, but we'd be remiss not to mention the following names. Here are some of the rising stars and the unsung heroes of the alternative media in no particular order:

Shepard Ambellas, Alex Thomas: True investigative reporters who share their knowledge at TheIntelHub.com They are fearless journalists who utilize the full range of the Internet to release their intel.

Cassandra Anderson: Writer and editor for MorphCity.com, as well as G. Edward Griffin's news editor and research assistant. She is one of the leading experts on Agenda 21 and the globalist plan of collectivization.

James Corbett: Terrific analyst, researcher, writer, web TV presenter and founder of CorbettReport.com

Rady Ananda: Brilliant investigative journalist and editor for blogs Food Freedom and COTO Report whose work has been published across the Internet on all major alternative media news sites.

Doug Owen: Oracle Radio personality and producer and operator of BlacklistedNews.com

Global Research: Michel Chossudovsky, Andrew Gavin Marshall and staff brilliantly report on global events and have a fast-growing Internet presence.

Bob Tuskin: Terrific interviewer and fearless investigator who has worked extensively with The Intel Hub, and has his own radio show and website at BobTuskin.com

Bill Ryan: His website and forum at Project Avalon are terrific resources, as well as his interviews with alternative media personalities and government insiders.

George Noory: Huge Internet presence and the most-listened-to overnight radio show in America at Coast to Coast AM.

Alan Watt: Consummate researcher into the history of elite control, and frequent guest on the Alex Jones Show. His website and his own radio show can be found at Cutting Through The Matrix.

Jim Marrs: Author of many books on conspiracy truth, and one of the foremost experts on the JFK assassination. His work can be found at JimMarrs.com and has influenced many of the above.

Gay Marriage: Obama Wimp Words "Nuanced" & "Evolving" in Action

From the NYTimes:
In 1996, as a candidate for the State Senate in Illinois, Mr. Obama responded to a questionnaire from a gay newspaper. “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,” Mr. Obama wrote, “and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”

White House officials have said Mr. Obama was really referring to civil unions, which he does support. (On Friday, Mr. Obama’s communications director, Dan Pfieffer, caused a brief kerfuffle by telling a conference of bloggers that Mr. Obama had not filled out the forms himself; the White House later said he was mistaken.)

By the time Mr. Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004, his position had become more nuanced.

Jackie Kaplan, a Chicago Democrat who was co-chairwoman of a committee of gays and lesbians supporting Mr. Obama, said he raised practical objections and made the case this way: “Why spend a lot of time on an issue that is not going to happen? The Defense of Marriage law is on the books, we’re not going to overturn that, let’s talk about how we can build more equality.”

Tracy Baim, a gay journalist in Chicago who interviewed Mr. Obama in 2004, remembers the candidate asking her to turn off her tape recorder so they could have a candid conversation on same-sex marriage. She said his objections were based on what he saw as realistic considerations: “I know what you want, I know what you can get.”

But when his Senate campaign moved into the general election against Alan Keyes, Mr. Obama told an interviewer for a black-owned radio station that religion was a factor.

Ms. Kaplan said she felt that Mr. Obama was either “pandering to Alan Keyes” or setting himself up to run for higher office; Ms. Baim, who said Mr. Obama had not cited his religious beliefs to her, viewed it as “a political maneuver.”

The black church has historically taken a dim view of same-sex marriage; the church Mr. Obama attended in Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ, takes no official stance. Yet Trinity’s parent church is progressive; in 2005, its general synod passed a resolution supporting marriage equality for gay couples.

Once in the Senate, Mr. Obama maintained the position that his opposition was based on his religious views. Jimmy Creech, a former Methodist minister who advocates for same-sex marriage, recalls meeting with Mr. Obama’s top Senate aides in 2005. He thought Mr. Obama, the son of an interracial couple whose marriage would have been illegal in some states, would be sympathetic.

But he said the conversation turned frosty when same-sex marriage came up. “We talked about this as an expression of bigotry, using religion to justify discrimination,” Mr. Creech said. “They did not like that; the word ‘bigotry’ was inflammatory to them.”

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama’s position hardened. In 2008, he visited the Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., where the pastor Rick Warren asked him to define marriage. “I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman,” Mr. Obama said. “For me, as a Christian, it is also a sacred union.”

Three years later, Mr. Obama has said his views are evolving, in part because he has “very close friends who are married gay and lesbian couples...”

Obama’s Views on Gay Marriage ‘Evolving’
SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
June 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/us/politics/19marriage.html

New York Public Library buys Timothy Leary papers

KAREN MATTHEWS
Thursday, Jun. 16, 2011
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/16/3705544/new-york-public-library-buys-timothy.html

NEW YORK -- The New York Public Library has acquired the papers of LSD guru Timothy Leary, who coined the phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out."

The library announced Thursday that it purchased 335 boxes of papers, videotapes, photographs and other items from the estate of Leary, who died in 1996.

Leary was a Harvard professor who became notorious for advocating the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. President Richard Nixon called Leary "the most dangerous man in America."

A trustee of Leary's estate tells The New York Times that the library paid $900,000 for the collection. Some of the money will be donated back to pay for the processing of the materials.

The collection includes letters from figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, G. Gordon Liddy and Cary Grant.

Jimmy Henchman Associate Admits to Role in Robbery/Shooting of Tupac

Apologizes To Pac & B.I.G.'s Mothers
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
By Grandmaster Grouchy Greg and Nolan Strong
http://www.allhiphop.com/stories/news/archive/2011/06/15/22790289.aspx

(AllHipHop News) A man has admitted to being involved in the attack on rap star Tupac Shakur in 1994, inside Manhattan's Quad Studios in November of 1994, after allegedly being paid $2,500 dollars by James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond.

Dexter Isaac, a former friend of Rosemond, is an inmate currently serving life in prison for murder, robbery and other offenses.

Isaac came forward Wednesday (June 15th) with the information on the eve of what would be Tupac's 40th birthday.

He confessed to his involvement in the November 30th, 1994 robbery of Tupac Shakur to AllHipHop.com, after Jimmy Henchman identified him in a statement, relating to Henchman's indictment for dealing numerous kilos of cocaine.

"I want to apologize to his family [Tupac Shakur] and for the mistake I did for that sucker [Jimmy Henchman]," Dexter Isaac told AllHipHop.com from prison. "I am trying to clean it up to give [Tupac and Biggie's] mothers some closure."

Henchman, who is currently on the run from Federal officials, claimed that Dexter Isaac, along with other incarcerated inmates were cooperating with the government in an investigation of his alleged drug dealing activities.

"If the government is relying on informants like Winston “Winnie” Harris, a convicted drug dealer and Jamaican deportee, who came to me and motioned via hand signal that he was forced to wear a wire and begged me to skip town or Dexter Isaac who is serving life in prison plus 30 years, then I’m sure I will not be offered a fair trial," Henchman said in a statement released to AllHipHop.com in May of 2011.

Dexter Isaac told AllHipHop.com that he decided to confess to the robbery to prove Jimmy Henchman's involvement, in addition to clearing his conscience for his role in the robbery.

Isaac said he was comfortable going on record relating to the robbery and shooting which resulted in Pac being reportedly shot, five times.

Since the statute of limitations had expired, legally, no one can be prosecuted for the assault at this time.

Isaac was a lifelong friend of Jimmy Henchman, who helped the former mogul set up his first company, Henchman Entertainment, in 1989.

Isaac claims he never cooperated with the government in any investigation, and Jimmy Henchman's allegations infuriated him.

Isaac, who is also from Brooklyn, has long been suspected of being involved in the Quad shooting of Tupac Shakur, along with an associate name Spencer "Scooter" Bowens, who is also serving a life sentence and another man named George Roland Campbell.
According to the confession below, Dexter Isaac not only knows what happened to Tupac Shakur's jewelry, but he claims he is also in possession of the Hip-Hop star's chain that was taken during the altercation on that infamous night in November of 1994.

The shooting on November 30th, was the start of a deadly feud that resulted in the murders of both Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.

Their murders have never been solved.

Isaac was indicted by the government in 1998 and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison for murder, robbery, fraud and witness intimidation charges.

Target forces employees to watch this anti-union propaganda video

06.13.11
David Edwards
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/06/target-forces-employees-to-watch-this-anti-union-propaganda-video

Gawker obtained a training video that Target uses to warn its employees about the danger of joining a union.

The 13-milute video titled “Think Hard Before You Sign” is hosted by Doug and Maria, two actors posing as Target employees.

“We’re a target because we’re a threat to unions,” Doug claims. “The unions that represent grocery store workers.”

“When we take business away from unionized grocery stores that means they need fewer employees,” Maria continues.

“And fewer grocery store employees means fewer union members. And fewer members? Well that’s a problem for the union business. That’s right, I said business. Union business,” Doug adds.

“With a union you no longer have your own voice. Have a great suggestion? You can’t take it directly to your manager. You have to go through the union layers. Need help with a problem? Same thing. Someone else will do the talking for you. And there’s no guarantee you’ll like what they have to say. Guarantees. Guarantees and promises. That’s something else you might hear from a union. Unions often make big promises about wages and benefit increases if the team member will only sign their card. Those are promises they can’t keep,” Maria insists.

“The risk of getting a union with out a vote, big promises that can’t be kept, pressure on guests not to shop at our stores, for all those reasons and a whole lot more please think hard before you sign any card or petition,” Maria concludes.

The Man Gets His Man

Less than two months after the US military allegedly killed Osama, the nailing of bad guys continues. The FBI captured mobster Whitey Bulger after nearly 16 years on the most wanted list, and Mexican federal agents have captured to drug kingpins, Juarez crime boss Marco Guzman aka "El Brad Pitt" and Jose de Jesus Mendez aka "The Monkey of La Familia...
Whitey Bulger Is Arrested in California
ADAM NAGOURNEY and IAN LOVETT
June 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/us/23bulger.html

Mexican police arrest drug boss "El Brad Pitt"
Jun 16, 2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110616/wl_nm/us_mexico_drugs

Jose de Jesus Mendez: 'The Monkey' drug boss who ran Mexico's cult cartel
Guy Adams
Thursday, 23 June 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/jose-de-jesus-mendez-the-monkey-drug-boss-who-ran-mexicos-cult-cartel-2301370.html

Kool Websites: Largetail

Thanks to DangerousMinds.net for the following
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+1.212.616.7550
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Bankers and Fools

Robert Bonomo, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/06/bankers-and-fools.html

After a tense week with world markets teetering on the edge of collapse Angela Merkel finally met with her French counterpart Nicholas Sarkozy and they ended the seven-month chill in their once cozy relationship. According to The Independent, they faced a serious impasse regarding bank haircuts in the "déjà vu all over again" Greek financial crisis. Sarkozy fought tooth and nail to guarantee that the largest holders of Greek debt, the French banks, wouldn’t get a clipping. Merkel made a valiant effort to demand accountability from the banks but she finally caved in, giving great comfort to the second largest holders of Greek debt: the German banks.

According to the Financial Times, French banks are holding $53 billion in Greek debt, Credit Agricole alone is $30 billion invested, while German banks are holding $34 billion. Colloquially speaking, Frau Merkel and Monsieur Sarkozy know who their daddy is.

Follow the Money

One key question is missing from the discussion of the Greek sovereign debt crisis. Imagine a close friend is moaning non-stop about a debt owed to them that looks like it won’t be paid. Worst of all they borrowed the money from someone else in order to lend it! Most attentive and caring friends would make that most indelicate but necessary of inquiries. Who did you borrow the money from?

We are blessed to have a corporate media so polite that they don’t burden us with these embarrassing questions. Where did the French and German banks get the $87 billion to lend the Greeks? They would have you think that these are the deposits of hard working Europeans, small businesses, corporations and maybe even tax revenue from governments. This is not the case. Banks use their assets as reserves against which they either “create” money to lend or borrow "created" money from central banks, in this case, the European Central Bank. When buying government bonds, which supposedly have no risk, they use maximum leverage and actually have no reserve requirements.

As John Maudlin put it:

“Why is Greece important? Because so much of their debt is on the books of European banks. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth. And just a few years ago this seemed like a good thing. The rating agencies made Greek debt AAA, and banks could use massive leverage (almost 40 times in some European banks) and buy these bonds and make good money in the process.”

This means that $1 million in assets for a French bank could have been used as colleteral to borrow up to $40 million from the European Central Bank to buy Greek bonds. And where does the European Centeral Bank get the money? They use a designer mouse from Apple and make a few clicks on a very hip computer. The bank does not lend any of its own money or that of its depositors, though they would certainly have you believe they did.

And What if?

So what happens in the case of default? In the case of default, banking regulations demand that the bank place in reserve the amount of money it loaned out. This maintains the integrity of the money and deters the moral hazard of “printing money”.

Greece has a GDP of around $300 billion and its federal budget deficit is close to $425 billion. How will they ever pay this back if this year alone they will add another $30 billion in debt? This money will never be paid back, but, then again, no one ever worked to earn it. Since it was made out of thin air why not just write it off?

This is the key question that Europe will ask as the austerity measures begin to fail. The problem isn’t that the banks would collapse. It could be arranged so the banks don’t take such a big hit to their reserve requirements. As the Financial Times notes, the examiners can look the other way, as if the loans were not defaulting. The real hit to the banks are the huge profits they will forgo for their shareholders. No one’s money is lost, but the integrity of the banking system would be questioned and the curtain would be pulled on the great banking/political/corporate ponzi scheme. The alternative is a generation of austerity to continue to maintain the extravagant lifestyle of the richest 1% who own most of the equity in the banks. No one will be dying of hunger or begging in the streets if the banks have a few bad years.

A Wise Man

William Lyon Mackenzie King was not only the longest serving prime minister of Canada, but also the longest in the history of the Commonwealth; having been Prime Minister of Canada for 22 years. Mackenzie King had four university degrees and never married.

Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.
William Lyon Mackenzie King

His mother, Isabella Grace Mackenzie, didn’t raise no fool.

Read more from Robert Bonomo at his blog, Cactus Land, which continues to explore the ideas of his novel, Cactus Land available at Amazon.

Squatter Nation: 5 years with no mortgage payment

Millions are staying in their homes without paying their mortgages
Les Christie
June 9, 2011
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/09/real_estate/foreclosure_squatter/index.htm

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Charles and Jill Segal have not made a mortgage payment in nearly five years -- but they continue to live in their five-bedroom West Palm Beach, Fla. home.

Lynn, from St. Petersburg, Fla., has been living without paying for three years.

In Thousand Oaks, Calif., an actor has missed 30 payments, and still, he has not lost his home.

They're not alone.

Some 4.2 million mortgage borrowers are either seriously delinquent or have had their cases referred to lawyers to pursue foreclosure auctions, according to LPS Applied Analytics. Of those, two-thirds have made no payments at all for at least a year, and nearly one-third have gone more than two years.

These cases can go on and on. Nationwide, it takes an average of 565 days to foreclose on borrowers in default from their first missed payments to the final auction. In New York, the average is 800 days and in Florida, where the "robo-signing" issue is particularly combative, it's 807.

If they want to fight evictions hard, borrowers can remain in their homes even longer while their cases are being worked through.

The Segals have been doing that -- in court. They bought their home in 2003 with an adjustable rate mortgage. After a few years, their monthly payments tripled to $3,000, just as their home-inspection business was cratering.

The Segals want the bank to modify the mortgage so payments are affordable, and they think the court will agree that their lender put them into a toxic loan.

"The evidence will show that we were defrauded," said Jill Segal.

Walk away from your mortgage? Time to get ruthless

If they lose, of course, they'll finally have to leave. And, unfortunately, more than 50 months of missed mortgage payments hasn't translated into big savings.

"It's very hard to save," said Jill Segal. "Our company's billing is 90% off and my husband is only working about four days a week."

Lynn, who didn't want her last name used, purchased a two-bedroom on Tampa Bay in 1998 for $135,000.

As the waterfront property's value skyrocketed, eventually reaching $750,000, she refinanced twice (once to expand a business), and took out a second mortgage. She now owes more than $600,000 on the home, which is worth only $235,000.

Living in this foreclosure limbo is "Hell," Lynn said. "I feel like I'm locked in a box. I work for a financial organization and if this came out, it could cost me my job."

Able to pay, but walking away

She's still hoping to negotiate the loan. In the meantime, small things bother her. "A couple years ago, I lost my dog and I can't decide on getting a new one," she said. If she has to move, she can't be sure she'll go somewhere that allows pets.

The actor from Thousand Oaks, Calif. began having problems during the screenwriters' strike in late 2007, followed by a threat of a strike by the Screen Actors Guild.

He's working with his lender toward a mortgage modification, submitting page after page of documents, which the bank has often misplaced or waited so long to examine them that they had grown too old to use.

His ideal outcome is get the loan modified and get all his late fees waived. He feels entitled to that because the bank advised him to stopped paying in the first place to qualify for one of the government's foreclosure programs. Before that, he had missed only one payment.

Meanwhile, he has cobbled together some income streams -- small acting parts, teaching acting classes and even handyman work.

"In a way, I feel like I'm lucky because I haven't had to pay any 'rent' for 30 months," he said.

But he feels like he's always under a cloud. "I haven't slept in three years," he said. "It's terrifying. I have to have the ultimate poker face in front of my kids."

Ruben Martinez, a Staten Island, N.Y., man trapped in a particularly bad adjustable rate mortgage, stopped paying more than three years ago. His attorney, Robert Brown, has managed to stave off one foreclosure.

Martinez, still struggling to find work, has little in savings despite the missed payments. He's earning some income as a pastor and consulting for a non-profit family counseling organization.

"There's pressure on me every day," he said. "I have a wife, three daughters and two grandchildren. Where are we going to live?"

Homeowners Bring Sheriff's Deputies To BofA To Collect Unpaid Debt

Homeowners Bring Sheriff's Deputies To Bank Of America Branch To Collect Unpaid Debt

Chris Morran on June 3, 2011
http://consumerist.com/2011/06/bank-of-america-customers-show-up-with-sheriff-to-collect-debt-from-bank.html

Earlier today, in a move not terribly dissimilar to the Philadelphia homeowner who attempted to "foreclose" on Wells Fargo, a Florida couple showed up at a Bank of America branch with two sheriff's deputies, ready to claim office assets to satisfy an unpaid debt.

The couple had been the defendants in a foreclosure lawsuit filed by BofA, at least until the bank realized it had made a mistake and dropped the suit. That's when the couple began the Sisyphean ordeal of trying to recoup the $2,534 in legal fees they were owed by the bank.

They tell News-Press.com that they made numerous attempts to contact the bank, even sending a registered letter to BofA's general counsel. When all that failed, it was time to bring in the sheriff.

"I don't know of any other way way we could have done it," their lawyer says.

Before the deputies could get around to claiming the bank's furniture for the couple, the branch manager interceded and claims to have cut a check that satisfies the debt.

Separated at Birth: Weiner & Weasel



Not to kick a guy while he's down, but did anyone else notice how much Anthony Wiener looks like Pauly Shore?

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The Brooklyn Bridge Sea Monster


Here's some pictures of a creature that washed up beneath the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan, the first picture on May 21, the second five days later. Notes Maureen O'Connor on Gawker.com: "It had the scales of a fish, body of a serpent, head of a pit bull and was the size of a large alligator." According to FoxNews.com, theories on what it is range from "horse to alligator to Loch Ness beast -- or even a relative of the Montauk Monster." Killjoy marine biologists claim it is merely a rotted-out Atlantic sturgeon. Yeah, right. And if you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you...

'Sea Monster' Discovered Beneath Brooklyn Bridge
May 26, 2011
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/26/sea-monster-discovered-beneath-brooklyn-bridge

FINAL EVENTS


FINAL EVENTS and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife
Nick Redfern

Kindle Edition $9.99
Paperback $15.95

"If you're inclined to dismiss the demonic UFO hypothesis and Mr. Redfern's book, you'd be missing out on what Mr. Redfern does best, and that's present peripheral information and material that enlightens those who have limited knowledge about things germane to UFOs and human existence itself...The Collins Elite scenario...is an idea that Mr. Redfern presents thoroughly and objectively, as usual. Get the book... and give yourself a treat, one that will be intellectually stimulating in many, many ways." -- Rich Reynolds, The UFO Iconoclast(s)

"Disturbing stuff. If I were a more cynical kind of guy, I might almost think that [the Collins Elite] was all just another psyops group assigned to create pretexts for overthrowing the Republic. But it certainly fits into the overall secret war against the New Age meme as well...I think Final Events is a book all of us need to read." -- Christopher Knowles, The Secret Sun

For decades, stories of alien abductions, UFO encounters, flying saucer sightings, and Area 51 have led millions of people to believe that extraterrestrials are secretly among us. But what if those millions of people are all wrong? What if the UFO phenomenon has much darker and far more ominous origins? For four years, UFO authority Nick Redfern has been investigating the strange and terrifying world of a secret group within the U.S. Government known as the Collins Elite. The group believes that our purported alien visitors are, in reality, deceptive demons and fallen angels. They are the minions of Satan, who are reaping and enslaving our very souls, and paving the way for Armageddon and Judgment Day. In FINAL EVENTS you'll learn about the secret government files on occultists Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons, and their connections to the UFO mystery; revelations of the demonic link to the famous "UFO crash" at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947; the disclosure of government investigations into life-after-death and out-of-body experiences; and an examination of the satanic agenda behind alien abductions. FINAL EVENTS reveals the stark and horrific truths about UFOs that some in the government would rather keep secret.

About the Author

NICK REDFERN works full-time as an author, lecturer, and journalist. He writes regularly for UFO Magazine, Fate, Fortean Times, and Paranormal Magazine. His previous books include There's Something in the Woods, On the Trail of the Saucer Spies, and Science Fiction Secrets. Nick has appeared on numerous television shows, including the BBC's Out of this World; the History Channel's Monster Quest and UFO Hunters; the National Geographic Channel's Paranatural; and the SyFy Channel's Proof Positive. Nick Redfern lives in Arlington,Texas, and can be contacted at nickredfern.com.

Product Details
Paperback: 266 pages
Publisher: Anomalist Books (August 25, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1933665483
ISBN-13: 978-1933665481

Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/EVENTS-Secret-Government-Demonic-Afterlife/dp/1933665483/thekonformist

Kindle Edition: http://www.amazon.com/EVENTS-Government-Demonic-Afterlife-ebook/dp/B004URRYPS/thekonformist