Nuclear energy is clearest example we have of profit for the few trumping the wellbeing of the many. There is no need for this technology. When its true costs are calculated it is absurdly expensive and, nothing about it is unique except its exceptional danger and toxicity. Logically this technology should have been abandoned with the end of the cold war. But ! zombie-like it endures.
According to reports from plane-spotters, Israel has an identical Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 in storage in Tel Aviv since November 2013. The only visible difference between the missing plane and the one in Tel Aviv would be its serial number. What do the Israelis have planned with the twin Malaysia Airlines plane?
A little publicity might stop any nefarious plans they may have.
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Are the Israelis Planning Another 9-11 Using the Missing Boeing 777?
Why would Israel have a plane identical to the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in storage in Tel Aviv? The plane in this photo is Boeing 777 2H6(ER) – 28416/155, an identical twin of the missing plane, which has been in Israel since November 2013. What are the Israelis doing with this plane in a hanger in Tel Aviv? Could it be part of a false-flag terror plot in the making? Where is this plane today?
Between 1964 and 1973, the United States dropped around 2.5 million tons of bombs on Laos. While the American public was focused on the war in neighboring Vietnam, the US military was waging a devastating covert campaign to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines through the small Southeast Asian country.
The nearly 600,000 bombing runs delivered a staggering amount of explosives: The equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years, or a ton of bombs for every personin the country—more than what American planes unloaded on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth.
The map above, created by photographer Jerry Redfern, provides another view of the massive scale of the bombing. Each point on the map corresponds to one US bombing mission starting in October 1965; multiple planes often flew on missions.
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The unfinished aftermath of the air campaign is the subject of Redfern and Karen Coates' new book, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos. This stunning book, seven years in the making, documents how the secret air war is still claiming lives more than four decades after it ended.
More than 100 Laotians fall victim to unexploded cluster bombs annually, delayed casualties of Operation Barrel Roll and Operation Steel Tiger, which dropped 270 million cluster bomblets. Packed by the dozens or hundreds in canisters, cluster bombs are designed to open in midair, scattering small explosives across a wide radius. Yet not all of them detonated, and today, 80 million live bomblets lurk under Laos' soil.
Cleaning up the unexploded ordnance (UXO) has been agonizingly slow. In January, Congress approved $12 million for UXO clearance and related aid in Laos. In comparison, the bombing cost the United States spent $17 milliona day in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Below, a selection of Redfern's photographs from Eternal Harvest. Learn more about his and Coates' work at their website.
Bottom Line: Peter Dale Scott gets it right. The “deep state” consists of individuals across all elements within and external to the government, who in the aggregate are able to leverage government capabilities while violating, with impunity, all Constitutional checks and balances. Related to this is the matter of funding and reach — if you follow the money, where do you end up? From New York banks to Texas energy to global drugs, there is a criminal network that is above the law and above the state.
Several members of the august “US Journalists Against Transparency” club are outraged by revelations in yesterday’s New York Times (jointly published by der Spiegel) that the NSA has been hacking the products of the Chinese tech company Huawei as well as Huawei itself at exactly the same time (and in exactly the same way) as the US Government has been claiming the Chinese government hacks. Echoing the script of national security state officials, these journalists argue that these revelations are unjustified, even treasonous, because this is the type of spying the NSA should be doing, and disclosure serves no public interest while harming American national security, etc. etc.
True to form, however, these beacons of courage refuse to malign the parties that actually made the choice to publish these revelations – namely, the reporters and editors of the New York Times – and instead use it to advance their relentless attack on Edward Snowden. To these journalists, there are few worse sins than “stealing” the secrets of the US government and leaking them to the press (just as was true in the WikiLeaks case, one must congratulate the US Government on its outstanding propaganda feat of getting its journalists to lead the war on those who bring transparency to the nation’s most powerful factions). But beyond the abject spectacle of anti-transparency journalists, these claims are often based on factually false assumptions about how these stories are reported, making it worthwhile once again to underscore some of the key facts governing this process:
We have an ongoing trial of a very high justice ministry official who has been protected by three succeeding Ministers of Justice. Every week there are new testimonies of witnesses and officials now telling stories to the media.
As the United States imposes sanctions on Russia and moves to do likewise to Venezuela, it’s essential to keep in mind which country it is that’s the most destructive and dangerous in the world today. When such questions have been posed in international polls in recent decades, the answer overwhelmingly is the United States. Not Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia or any of the many other nations the ruling class and corporate media here regularly demonize, but the United States.
