A NYTIMES says Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for strategic communication for President Obama:
He saw an Arab guy sobbing on the subway. “That image has always stayed with me,” he says. “Because I think he knew more than we did about what was going to happen.”
So a Deputy National Security Advisor for President Obama believes that an Arab guy knew more than we did about what was going to happen on September 11?
(ANTIMEDIA) As if the futility, destruction, and absurdity of the decades-long war on drugs were not already painfully apparent, a Massachusetts state chemist involved in testing evidence for drug prosecutions was high on a variety of illicit substances, including crack, cocaine, meth, and acid, for most of the nine years she worked for the government, including one year working directly for a police lab.
The chemist was not only high on drugs she stole throughout her tenure — she cooked and consumed crack cocaine at work. Additionally, throughout the years she testified in scores of drug cases, whose verdicts — along with the Drug War itself — have now been called into question.
Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) from 2003 to 2012, switching labs twice throughout the years. She spent most of her time with DPH at a lab in Amherst, but also worked as a chemist for the Massachusetts State Police from 2012 to 2013.
As a Massachusetts Attorney General (AG) investigation released this week summarized, her responsibilities included “testing, for authenticity, various controlled substances submitted by law enforcement agencies throughout the Commonwealth. Additionally, she was required to testify in court as to her test results, which served as evidence in criminal cases.”
The implications of her behavior are nothing short of disturbing. “Anything that went through that lab while she was there is in question,” said Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel of the Committee for Public Counsel Services. “It’s too soon to know how many, but it clearly is in the thousands.”
In at least one case, she appeared to have consumed drugs submitted by police and replaced them with counterfeit substances. Farak was reportedly also overly inquisitive about large arrivals of new drugs at the lab, which tipped off others who worked there when considered along with the absence of other drugs.
According to the AG report:
“Farak began to consume the Amherst Lab’s standards [drugs purchased from drug companies to be used as controls in testing] on a fairly regular basis beginning in late 2004 or early 2005. The first standard she admitted to using was the methamphetamine standard, which was the largest or most voluminous standard at the Amherst Lab. The methamphetamine standard was a base sample, meaning its form was oil base and it was not cut or diluted with any other substance, essentially making the standard the purest form of a controlled substance.”
By 2009, her addiction was so consuming she had “nearly exhausted” the lab’s methamphetamine standard supply. As the report notes, “by 2009, she also began using other standards at the Amherst Lab including ketamine, MDMA, MDEA, and LSD (including police-submitted evidence samples),” as well as cocaine. She eventually took it a step further, ultimately manufacturing crack for her own consumption. By Farak’s own admission:
“During mid to late 2012, she would enter the Lab after hours or when she was working overtime, remove powdered cocaine from samples, and cook it to produce crack. Specifically, Farak would dissolve the powdered cocaine in water, add baking soda, and heat up the mixture so that the moisture would dissipate and form crack,” the AG report says.
Though she only did so three or four times, she said she made large batches to “make a quantity worth [her] time.”
“All told,” she said, according to the AG report, “she estimated that she was smoking crack ten to twelve times a day.” She says her colleagues never suspected anything. One later testified that in 2012, her appearance had begun to deteriorate, as had the quality and volume of her work.
Farak was only caught when it was discovered in 2013 that drug samples were missing from the lab. Farak was arrested and ultimately served 18 months after pleading guilty in 2014. She was convicted of “evidence tampering, theft, and possession charges relating to a handful of criminal cases.” Though she was sentenced to two-and-half years, the rest of her sentence was suspended for five years.
The state is currently reviewing cases from individuals convicted, in part, as a result of Farak’s lab work and testimonies against them. “We are deeply concerned whenever the integrity of the justice system is called into question or compromised,” said Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. “The information we gathered during the course of our investigation is disturbing and will no doubt have implications for many cases.”
Considering another former lab employee was found, also in 2013, to “have fabricated evidence in thousands of samples she tested at a second state lab in Jamaica Plain, possibly tainting as many as 40,000 cases,” the underlying moral of Farak’s story is perhaps best illustrated by Matthew Segal, the legal director for the ACLU’s Massachusetts branch.
“It’s easy to get caught up in these scandals, zooming in on the specific misconduct because it’s so salacious,” he said.
“But it’s also important to zoom out, and take a look at what the drug war in Massachusetts has wrought. It hasn’t cured us of an addiction problem. It has obliterated the integrity that is supposed to be the foundation of the criminal justice system.”
No doubt, his observations can apply to the United States as a whole, where corruption and drug addiction plague the very individuals and institutions tasked with the fantastical — and futile — obsession with eliminating drug use.
This article (Government Chemist Was Making Crack in the Lab, Stealing Meth and Cocaine) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Elizabeth Montag and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.
From theantimedia.org Team
May 5, 2016
(ANTIMEDIA) Amid mass speculation that a shock leak of documents could spell the end of the road for the toxic Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP/TTP), even European leaders have begun distancing themselves from the much-hated deal. Angela Merkel has voiced strong opposition to the state of the negotiations, given that only a minority of Germans agree the E.U. should negotiate trade agreements on Germany’s behalf. At the same time, French president Francois Hollande has stated France will reject the partnership at this stage because the country is opposed to “unregulated” free trade.
According to campaign group, War on Want, the European Commission slapped a 30-year ban on public access to the negotiation texts back in 2013 — knowing they would not survive the outcry once the public glimpsed the extent of the deal. The group noted that in the past, campaigners called for a ‘Dracula strategy’ against the highly secretive trade agreement, knowing it would die when dragged into the light.
Seemingly, that is exactly what is happening. Responding to the leak earlier this week, Executive Director of War on Want, John Hilary wrote: “Today the door has been flung open and the first rays of sunlight shone on TTIP. The EU negotiators will never be able to crawl back into the shadows again.”
The huge leak of TTIP documents orchestrated by Greenpeace Netherlands spans 13 of the 17 chapters of the proposals. Greenpeace trade expert Jergen Knirsch told a Berlin news conference that the talks were made public to ignite a debate. Claiming the leak shows negotiations should be halted, Knirsch added, “The best thing the E.U. Commission can do is to say ‘Sorry, we’ve made a mistake’.”
Launched by Barack Obama in 2013, the first round of secret negotiations between the European Commission and U.S. officials took place in the same year. The most recent negotiations were held last week and it was reiterated that both sides hoped to reach a deal in the second half of the year.
In the past, officials have acknowledged the purpose of the treaty is not to stimulate trade by removing tariffs between the E.U. and the U.S., but to remove regulatory ‘barriers’ restricting the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of these ‘barriers’ are in fact, standards and environmental regulations including labour rights, food safety rules — including restrictions on GMOs — as well as regulations on the use of toxic chemicals, digital privacy laws, and banking safeguards.
As War on Want has said, the stakes could not be higher.
Subjects covered in the leaked 248 pages include E.U. food safety standards and include details of more specific threats, such as the United States’ plan to end Europe’s ban on genetically modified foods. The documents also reveal that U.S. corporations will be granted unprecedented powers over any public health or safety regulations introduced in the future.
More chillingly, if European governments do bring in laws to raise standards, TTIP grants U.S. investors the right to sue for loss of profits in corporate court systems — which will be unavailable to domestic firms or governments.
Essentially, companies can sue governments but governments cannot sue companies.
The texts also uncover how the European Commission is paving the way to open up the economy to competition from giant U.S. corporations. Official statistics suggest at least a million jobs will be lost as a direct result of TTIP — and you can double that if the full deal goes through.
“Yet we can now see that EU negotiators are preparing to trade away whole sectors of our economies in TTIP, with no care for the human consequences,” Hilary wrote.
Adamant that the contempt shown by TTIP negotiators to Europeans is a potent reminder of the democratic deficit at the heart of E.U. institutions — particularly for those of in the thick of the E.U referendum — Hilary added:
“Today’s leak of the TTIP text leaves the leaders of the European Union with a choice. Either they abandon the TTIP negotiations immediately or they risk seeing the entire European project come crashing down about their ears. They have until 23 June to decide.”
This article (Leaked Documents Could Spell End of the Road for TTIP) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.
From theantimedia.org Team
(ANTIMEDIA) United States — While tumultuous, chaotic, contentious, outrageous, erratic, fraudulent, random, disheartening, and certainly unpredictable, could simultaneously describe this presidential election cycle, perhaps the most unanticipated development surrounds the categorical shunning of the soured, traditional duopoly — despite its previously adamantine grip on American politics.
This year, constant evidence substantiates the people’s collective scream: Enough!
In particular, once Ted Cruz and John Kasich abruptly halted their bids for the nomination this week — sending shockwaves across the already tempestuous election climate — the country’s umbrage against the establishment gained momentum. Again. Third parties and alternative candidates — and not just anti-establishment candidates conniving the system by running on one of the duopoly’s tickets — began blowing up the previously gaining trend in popularity.
In just one example following the sudden void in options for GOP voters, the Libertarian Party experienced massive and atypical interest in their platform — a doubling of applications for new members. More to the point, LP Executive Director Wes Benedict told the Washington Examiner in an email there hadn’t been a recent recruitment push for new members on social media — and surmised the sudden interest must be due to Trump’s unofficial clinching of the Republican nomination.
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson noted the surge of interest yesterday on Facebook:
“Of course they are scared of Trump,” Benedict penned. “Trump sounds like an authoritarian. We don’t need a deal-maker. We need more transparency, and a smaller, less intrusive government that provides a level playing field for all and has fewer deals for special interests.”
In the last few months, in fact, once the primary season began in earnest, new donor contributions to the LP skyrocketed — even more so once Trump became the all-but-presumptive GOP nominee.
April 2015, simply for reference, saw 106 new donors to the Libertarian Party; but, as the Examiner noted of statistics Benedict provided, “in February 2016, after Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina held their caucuses and primaries, the LP saw 323 new donors. In March, they had 546 new donors, and in April, after everyone but Trump, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich had dropped out, the LP signed up 706 new donors.”
Benedict’s conclusion that the LP’s spike in popularity came from, essentially, fear of a Trump presidency, further illustrates the abysmal sentiment regarding establishment politics in the U.S. However polarizing Trump might be, an astonishing approval rate has helped slingshot what many originally wrote off as a publicity stunt into a direct counter-establishment torpedo with the potential to win the White House.
On the flip side, Bernie Sanders similarly continues to garner fanatical support — while his campaign’s very foundation took root by countering establishment rhetoric. Sanders, an Independent running on the Democratic ballot, remains wildly popular despite media suppression of his success and continued election fraud almost certainly employed to obstruct his possible nomination.
Disillusionment and voter disenfranchisement collided in a mid-April Gallup poll, perhaps revealing another underlying motivation in the mass exodus from the traditional political duopoly — just a hair over one-quarter of the U.S., 27 percent, believe the election process currently functions as it should.
Sick of politics-as-usual, the American populace appears to have cleaved chasms in both the traditional Republican and Democratic Parties. Whether more interest in third parties comes now or after November’s election results are final, it’s clear the political climate in this country will never be exactly as it was before 2016.
This article (The Disastrous 2016 Election Has Triggered a Third Party Revolution) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please edits@theantimedia.org.
From theantimedia.org Team
Editor: Germany has no first Amendment protecting free speech so it is unsurprising that unpopular speech will be punished in Germany.
(ANTIMEDIA) Dresden, Germany — The founder of German anti-Islam movement, Pegida, has been hit with a €9,600 ($11,000) fine for inciting racial hatred. Lutz Bachmann narrowly escaped jail but was ordered to pay the sum after he made a Facebook post branding refugees “cattle,” “scum,” and “trash.” A Dresden court ruled Bachmann’s posts constituted racial incitement and stoked hatred against refugees on a public forum.
Bachmann’s comments were posted in September, a couple of months before the first Pegida march in Dresden. The movement leader later stepped down after a picture of himself as Hitler with the caption, “He’s Back” went viral. In response to the photo, which he claimed was taken at the hairdresser’s for the publication of the satirical audiobook, He’s Back, he said, “You need to be able to joke about yourself now and then.”
Far-right group, Pegida, which stands for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West,” has been organising regular protests against the German government’s refugee policy since 2014. At one point, their rallies drew thousands in cities across Europe, but numbers have since dwindled and tend to be outnumbered by counter-protesters. In January, Bachmann, a 43-year-old trained chef, posted a picture of himself wearing a t-shirt saying “Rapefugees not welcome” — the slogan used at Pegida’s January protest in Cologne.
Without a doubt, the global migration crisis has fuelled a surge in support for far-right groups across the continent. That said, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racist rhetoric is no longer confined to white supremacist thugs on the march — and far-right parties have gained ground in local elections. From Greece to Austria and France to Switzerland, the far-right has sneaked into the mainstream in jackets and ties.
At the same time, members of the far-right bloc within the European parliament formed a coalition last year called the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF). Under the leadership of France’s National Front and the Dutch PVV party, the party’s interests are sovereignty, democracy, freedom, and ending mass immigration.
In Germany, the terrifying swing to the extreme right has so far prompted 1,000 attacks on accommodation for asylum seekers. The country has also been accused of having a ‘Donald Trump moment’ after the chairwoman of the Alternative for Germany party (AfP) called for the use of firearms to stem the influx of immigrants.
Considering the current climate, it’s little surprise this fertile ground is propagating hate groups like Pegida. Although the German group claims it is not a racist organisation, many see support for the movement as a dangerous blast from the country’s troubled past. Even the country’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has condemned it as xenophobic and racist, urging people not to join as members have “coldness, prejudice and hatred in their hearts.”
This article (Far-Right Leader Found Guilty of Inciting Racial Hatred on Facebook) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.
From theantimedia.org Team
(ANTIMEDIA) — It sounds like the logline from the recent sci-fi horror movie, The Lazarus Effect. But the story coming out of Bioquark Inc. is real. The biotechnology company is moving ahead with a groundbreaking experiment to reanimate the nervous systems of 20 clinically brain-dead patients.
With approval from the Institutional Review Board at the United States National Institutes of Health in the U.S., the ReAnima Project will begin recruiting patients who are all but clinically dead due to traumatic brain injury. With cooperation from their families, these patients will be kept alive by machines and administered a series of procedures meant to kickstart cellular regeneration.
CEO, Dr. Ira Pastor, hopes to prove the cells of human brains are as adaptable as those of salamanders, which can regrow limbs.
“This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime,” Pastor said. “To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness.”
Phase 1 of the project is a proof-of-concept study called “First In Human Neuro-Regeneration & Neuro-Reanimation.” For a six-week period in Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand India, scientists will administer peptides into the patients’ spinal cords. The next treatment will involve injecting stem cells into the brain. Then Bioquark will use transcranial laser therapy and nerve stimulation.
Researchers hope this combination of treatments will trigger cell regeneration in brains that have otherwise shut down all functioning.
But not everyone is convinced the treatment will work — or that it is even possible to regenerate dead brains. Dr. Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist at Cardiff University’s Centre for Medical Education, made the following comment:
“While there have been numerous demonstrations in recent years that the human brain and nervous system may not be as fixed and irreparable as is typically assumed, the idea that brain death could be easily reversed seems very far-fetched, given our current abilities and understanding of neuroscience. Saving individual parts might be helpful but it’s a long way from resurrecting a whole working brain, in a functional, undamaged state.”
However, even if the treatment fails, researchers believe their findings will provide valuable knowledge. According to Dr. Sergei Paylian, founder, president, and Chief Science Officer of Bioquark Inc.:
“Through our study, we will gain unique insights into the state of human brain death, which will have important connections to future therapeutic development for other severe disorders of consciousness, such as coma, and the vegetative and minimally conscious states, as well as a range of degenerative CNS conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.”
This article (US Government Green Lights Experiments to Reanimate the Brain Dead) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Jake Anderson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.
From theantimedia.org Team
Any number of disaster scenarios would seemingly bring the U.S. to a grinding halt, and wreak untold havoc upon the vulnerable population.
Worse, there seems to be an uncomfortable sense that a major event like that is long overdue.
Surely one of the most devastating would be a major earthquake along the San Andreas fault line. For several years now, experts have warned that the stress levels have reached a dangerous threshold and that the “big one” could be coming to Southern California… any time now.
Scientists have issued a dire warning that Southern California and the Los Angeles area could be in the path of a major earthquake of 7.0 magnitude or greater.
In the worst case scenario, it could destroy the Los Angeles metro area and rupture hundreds of miles of land in Southern California. A 7.9 earthquake took place back in 1857.
The Los Angeles Times is now reporting that the San Andreas fault is “locked, loaded and ready to roll” – there is a clear and present danger:
Southern California’s section of the San Andreas fault is “locked, loaded and ready to roll,” a leading earthquake scientist said Wednesday at the National Earthquake Conference in Long Beach.
The San Andreas fault is one of California’s most dangerous, and is the state’s longest fault. Yet for Southern California, the last big earthquake to strike the southern San Andreas was in 1857, when a magnitude 7.9 earthquake ruptured an astonishing 185 miles between Monterey County and the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles.
[…] “The springs on the San Andreas system have been wound very, very tight. And the southern San Andreas fault, in particular, looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go,” Jordan said in the opening keynote talk.
[…]
The devastating potential of the fault became clear with a 1857 temblor, which had an estimated magnitude of 7.9… The quake was so powerful that the soil liquefied, causing trees as far away as Stockton to sink. Trees were also uprooted west of Fort Tejon. The shaking lasted 1 to 3 minutes.
According to the leading scientists in the study of tectonic plates and movements, earthquakes must periodically relieve plate pressure (about 16 feet worth of movement every century), but that has not happened on the San Andreas fault during that time period – in fact, the event is overdue.
If they’re right, that makes disaster all but imminent in one of the most heavily populated areas in North America.
Here is a simulation of what could occur:
The L.A. Times also noted:
A 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report warned that a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault would cause more than 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries, $200 billion in damage and severe, long-lasting disruptions. Among the predicted problems: The sewer system could be out of commission for six months.
Additionally, a major, devastating quake would almost certainly interrupt transportation, shipments and commerce, perhaps for months on end. The lack of vital services (such as the sewer system, as noted above) could pose major issues to survival and the resumption of everyday life.
If you are unfortunate enough to live in Los Angeles, you may have some life issues to work out anyway, but… it would be wise to heed these warnings.
If you are caught in a major quake, it is important to avoid being trapped by collapsing buildings or flying debris. Here are some thoughts on surviving the aftermath.
The San Andreas fault is not the only troubling hotspot in the country – Old Faithful has been causing recent worry from Yellowstone, and the New Madrid fault line has DHS/FEMA concerned enough to run multi-agency nationwide drills simulating a major earthquake disaster. Meanwhile, the Ring of Fire has been causing devastation at flashpoints throughout the Pacific ring in many nations.
Read more:
San Andreas for Preppers: 12 Essential Survival Lessons from the Movie
Simulation: New Madrid Quake Would Kill 100,000 Instantly; Displace 7 Million
Yellowstone Eruption in 2016? Shocking New Video Shows What Is Really Going on at Yellowstone
SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com