Who are these men—for they are, without exception, men—in Harper’s backroom brain trust, collectively dubbed the “Calgary School”? : The men behind Stephen Harper

“Well, Dr. Flanagan is the neocon pope no more, having uttered the astonishing opinion at a seminar the previous evening in the deep-south Alberta city of Lethbridge that child pornography is, if not exactly OK, more of a freedom of expression issue than an exploitation of children issue.

Not only that, but in response to a questioner at the University of Lethbridge seminar, Dr. Flanagan informed his audience he’d been on the mailing list of the North American Man-Boy Love Association for two years. One can only hope this is in error, as he seemed to be implying

Aleppo, Syria, is holding the first free election for 25 city council seats and 26 province council seats. This election will be far from perfect. However, those involved say they want to set an example for other revolutionary towns.

This weekend, delegates from across the province are taking part in the first free vote outside of the control of President Bashar Assad's regime. Its location: Gaziantep, Turkey.

 The election moved to southern Turkey because of safety concerns. The voters are limited; only 224 selected delegates will cast ballots.

-But how these councils are elected matters to 26-year-old Maha Grer.
- Grer is part of a workshop on election monitoring.
-The course is sponsored by the National Democratic Institute in Washington, D.C.

Thank you. Well, it’s a great pleasure for me to be here this evening. And I thank my friend and my predecessor, Madeleine Albright, for not only that kind introduction, but for her extraordinary leadership, and in particular of NDI.

 "I think it’s important to recognize that back when the streets of Arab cities were quiet, the National Democratic Institute was already on the ground, building relationships, supporting the voices that would turn a long Arab winter into a new Arab Spring"

And tonight I want particularly to congratulate the winners of NDI’s 2011 Madeleine Albright Award, the women of Appropriate Communication Techniques for Development. Women risked everything to demand their rights for the Egyptian people

 And as he drove into Hama, a city under assault by Assad’s regime, the people of that city covered his car with flowers.(?) Please join me in giving our own warm welcome to Ambassador Robert Ford and his wife and fellow Foreign Service Officer, Alison Barkley. (Applause.) Thanks to you, Robert, and to you, Alison, for your dedicated service (?) to our country.

 Nauseating stuff from Hillary and company-Newspeak to control thoughts

Syrian civil war spills into Iraq as 42 Assad troops killed in ambush

American Marines help to pull the statue of Saddam down in Iraq in a propaganda picture that was staged for the world

Rebel fighters in Syria said on Tuesday that they were still battling for complete control of the north-central city of Raqqa after seizing much of it a day earlier and claiming to have captured two of the most senior government officials seized in the almost two-year-old conflict.

Government forces were also reported to have launched airstrikes on Tuesday to try to blunt the rebel thrust into the city.

It was unclear Tuesday whether the insurgents could retain control of Raqqa.

But government airstrikes and intermittent clashes, particularly around two security buildings, raised doubt about whether the rebels would be able to maintain their hold on Raqqa, about 195 kilometers east of the commercial capital of Aleppo

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group based in Britain, said on Tuesday that parts of Raqqa — a strategic city of some 500,000 people on the Euphrates River, 50 miles south of the border with Turkey — were “still under regime control.”

The well-co-ordinated attack, which Iraqi officials blamed on al-Qaeda's Iraq arm, also suggests possible co-ordination between the militant group and its ideological allies in Syria — some who rank among the Syrian opposition’s most potent fighters. (Al-Nusra fighters)

The American invasion of Iraq and the war to follow caused an estimated four million Iraqis to flee their homes within four years

1. 1m “The Great Chain of Being and the Organic Unity of the Polis” by Kevin Cole (Winter 2013)
2. 2m “The Trivium Method” by Jan Irvin and Gene Odening @ Gnostic Media dot com
3. 3m “The Trivium Method of Critical Thinking and Creative Problem Solving” vs. the innate method of learning, and comparing it to how the Classical Trivium (as a method of institutionalizing individuals) has historically been used prior to the 21st century.
4. 4m History of the Classical Trivium is the history of the Great Chain of Being, useful in shaping cultures. The Great Chain of Being is defined in classical terms.
5. 5m The concept of “balanced” government and civil society itself, The Ominous Continuity of the “education” system we know as schooling
6. 6m The changing of terms as a means of gaining power over unwitting minds
7. 7m The Occulting of Knowledge to create Power
8. 8m Legacy of 2,500 years of the Noble Lie being used to create Power
9. 9m Romantic Nationalism& Germany vs. Limited Government System, continued definition of the Great Chain of Being (3 estates)
10. 10m Caste System, Divine Right of Kings, and the Classical Trivium; specifically the artificial scarcity of the “7” liberal arts
11. 11m Enkyklios Paideia and the Caste System, Arnold Toynbee“it allows each empire to be immortal”
12. 12m Great Chain of Being and the Classical Trivium in context of Organic Unity
13. 13m United Nations Charter provisions, Positive and Negative Rights, staying knowledgeable about the first principles and jury nullification, Thomas Jefferson and First Principles
    1. Article 29: 1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. 2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
    2. Article 30: Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
14. 14m Logical foundation of Negative Rights, Irrational foundation of Positive Rights
15. 15m Definition of Organic Unity
16. 16m Scott Buchannan quote on the Classical Trivium to create Organic Unity, Cardinal and Ordinal structures of the story (Buchannan was a Rhodes Scholar)
17. 17m Definitions: The Auctors, The Polis, The Polity, Episcopal, hierarchical structures of authorities, Anglicanism (Church of England)
18. 18m Comparison and Contrast the Trivium Method vs. the Classical Trivium, 7 Liberal Arts, Plato, Aristotle, educational philosophy and Isocrates,
19. 19m The “general education” of the inscribed circle of the EnkykliosPaideia, foreshadowing Fichte and Hegel of the Prussian Education System
    1. encyclopedia (n.) 1530s, “course of instruction,” from Modern Latin encyclopaedia (c.1500), literally “training in a circle,” i.e. the “circle” of arts and sciences, the essentials of a liberal education; from enkyklios “circular,” and paideia “education”.
    2. According to some accounts such as the American Heritage Dictionary copyists of Latin manuscripts took this phrase to be a single Greek word, enkuklopaedia.
20. 20m plunder v. production and human livestock, classical Trivium as a system of creating production to be plundered… farming plunder
21. 21m Latin education and the Divine Right of Kings, organic unity and feudalism, legitimizing the great chain of being (methods of authority), using the battlefield and education to subjugate individuals for lack of Knowledge.
22. 22m Legitimizing the storyteller as the authority of the day, group-think, authority to control human resources. Any citizen can become an individual through learning habits of self-reliance
23. 23m “Authorities” (educators, sophists) define the “Grammar” of the Classical Trivium, thus making the “Logic” a belief, not an understanding. No knowledge is necessary for belief, in fact belief is often what fills the void created when Knowledge is absent.
24. 24m Unified systems of knowledge, cybernetics and the ship of state (Plato), first principles and common ground (Logic) necessary for linguistic communication. The use of these ideologies to create state systems.
25. 25m Richard Haklyut and Queen Elizabeth, propagating organic unity as “natural”, even though it depends on people ruling over others. Scott Buchannan papers from Harvard University, “Poetry and Mathematics” (foreshadowing role of Rhodes Scholars)
    1. Richard Hakluyt (c. 1552 or 1553 – 23 November 1616) was an English writer. He is known for promoting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582) and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation (1589–1600).
26. 26m Dorothy Sayers and removing the myths to get to the facts of her claims, Reinhold Niebuhr, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Milner Rhodes Roundtable Group, secularizing values to continue organic unity
27. 27m Dorothy Sayers quotes in favor of British Empire building and Cecil Rhodes / Milner Roundtable Group and Organic Unity
28. 28m Origins of the systems which create and facilitate organic unity, cybernetics, using the knowledge of self-learning to dissect the history and identify the contradictions of our public educations
29. 29m Gnostic Media interview with Gene Odening, how the human being learns, removing the dogma from the process of learning for one’s self
30. 30m Asking substantial questions and using a method to find valid answers consistently vs. the Classical Trivium (prescribed “Grammar”, mandated “Logic”, rhetoric which reinforces servitude)
31. 31m Isocrates and literacy as a form of slavery (i.e. sophism) until the reader learns how to identify reality and remove unreality (i.e. logic).
32. 32m closed systems of learning to maintain the city-states, aristocracy, and ruling class to manage the polity (public); educating the kings, adopting education systems to gain power over the polity, dichotomy of control, creating knowledge gaps to create “power”.
33. 33m focus on significant and substantial, discard the arbitrary, dismiss the irrational. Sayers’ biases and the basis of Christian Homeschooling in America.
34. 34m Sayers’ system as the “closest to the perfection of Plato’s Republic” – Freemasonry
35. 35m Christian Homeschooling and predefined grammar, infecting the logic by not asking preliminary questions to identify that which exists, reality from unreality (Sayers’ seeds of irrationality)
36. 36m History of Ideas in relation to the Trivium Method contrasted to the Classical Trivium and the history of creating organic unity
37. 37m The Classical Trivium, Freemasonry as a feedback mechanism for creating organic unity through empire, “Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism (1717-1927)” by Jessica Harland Jacobs
38. 38m “Origins of Freemasonry” by Thomas Paine,
39. 39m Johann Joachim Christoph “J.C.” Bode, Nicholas Bonneville, Philo’s Reply to Questions Concerning His Association with the Illu… by Jeva Singh-Anand, Illuminati Manifesto of World Revolution (1792) translated by Marco de Luchetti,
40. 40m King Elfwad, Charlemagne, and the origins of the word “Trivium” by Alcuin of York
41. 41m Ancient Greece, systems of preserving itself against surrounding piranha states
42. 42m Enkyklios Paideia created by Isocrates preserves organic unity until Thomas Jefferson recognizes what it is, and what it does
43. 43m Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr (Rhodes Scholars) and Freemasonry, origins of “Classical Trivium” revival veiling the Enkyklios Paideia
44. 44m filling in between Isocrates and the Freemasons, Jesuits and the Ratio Studiorum, which was rejected by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Ratio Studiorum as continuation of organic unity under godhead of theology.
45. 45m Thomas Jefferson (post-revolution) goes to William and Mary and has the Classical Trivium removed from the curriculum, breaking the mechanism of British perpetuation of their organic unity
46. 46m Thomas Jefferson addressing the Educational Perennialists of his day, accepting the theory before inspection, condemnation prior to observation, “putting your logic before your grammar” as Jan Irvin says
47. 47m Education as a tool of creating culture, its how the state reproduces itself, “reality” filtered through he prescribed rhetoric of the state,
48. 48m Ignatius Loyola, Alumbrados, the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola as the origins of the esoteric organic unity progressed by the Jesuits, various flavors of organic unity (various empires through time), sacrifice of the individual to the state
49. 49m Bavarian Illuminati, Thomas Paine, Nicholas Bonneville, and connections to the origins of America, May 1, 1776, Adam Weishaupt (1911 Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Illumati), Baron Adolph ‘Philo’ Knigge as Weishaupt’s #2 in the Bavarian Illuminati
50. 50m Bavarian Illuminati as intellectual group fighting against organic unity and divine right of kings in Europe. “Philo’s Reply to Questions Concerning His Association with the Illuminati” Reply by Jeva Singh Anand reveals the personal conversations between Adam Weishaupt and Baron von Knigge prior to Knigge’s resignation from the Bavarian Illuminati and the promotion of revolutionary publisher J.C. Bode.

UNITED NATIONS— Syrian rebels on Wednesday abducted more than 20 UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights ceasefire zone pushing back the frontier of their war with President Bashar al-Assad.

The United Nations said it is trying to negotiate the release of the Philippines soldiers. But aspokesman for the rebels said in a video that the UN troops would be held until Assad's forces pull back from a village in the Golan.

About 30 armed fighters stopped a UN Disengagement Force (UNDOF) convoy in the ceasefire zone, where the UN has had peacekeepers monitoring a ceasefire between Syria and Israel since 1974, UN deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey told reporters.
"The UN observers were on a regular supply mission and were stopped near Observation Post 58, which had sustained damage and was evacuated this past weekend following heavy combat in close proximity, at Al Jamlah," he added.

There has been fierce fighting around Jamlah village, which is held by opposition forces.
The UN Security Council released a statement which said "armed elements of the Syrian opposition" had abducted the group of more than 20 peacekeepers and demanded their "unconditional and immediate" release.

"Negotiations are going on and the matter is mobilizing all our teams," UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told reporters after briefing the Security Council on the abduction. "It is a very serious incident."

Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who read the Security Council statement, said the rebels have made demands directed at the Syrian government but did not give details. "We hope they are going be released immediately," Churkin told reporters.

Syrian rebels are also believed to be holding an UNDOF staffer who was seized last month. The staffer is from Canada, according to diplomats.

Related: UN Staff at Golan Missing- The story changes

UN diplomats and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said the peacekeepers were from the Philippines.
Rahman released two videos in which a rebel group, the Yarmuk Martyrs Brigade, set out their demands for the release of the peacekeepers.

In one, a man identified as Abu Kaid al-Faleh, a spokesman for the brigade, said the peacekeepers would not be freed until Syrian government forces pull back from the area.

"For two years, the United States and the European Union have done everything short of sending their own troops and aircraft into battle to evict Bashar al-Assad from power in Syria. Only recently have they begun to realise that they have made a historic mistake: in the euphoria created by the Arab Spring, they are in imminent danger of handing over the entire Arab world to Islamists for whom democracy is anathema.

 In a front page editorial titled ‘The Death of a Country,’ The Economist has warned that if the West now simply draws back and lets the civil war run its course, Syria will become “a new Somalia rotting in the heart of the Levant.”

“Almost everything America wants to achieve in the Middle East will become harder.
Containing terrorism, ensuring the supply of energy and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction … Syria’s disintegration threatens them all.”

Where The Economist goes dangerously wrong is in heaping all the blame for this on Mr. Assad. Had he not “embraced a policy of violence from the start” and “attacked the Arab Spring with tanks and gunships” and turned his Alawite praetorian guard upon Sunnis, he would not have “turned peaceful demonstrators into armed militants” and drawn the jihadi hosts into Syria.

 To prevent Syria from turning into another Mali, therefore, it asks the U.S. and the EU to administer the same medicine it fed to Qadhafi in Libya — impose a no-fly zone, destroy Syria’s air force and missiles, and arm ‘non-Jihadi rebel groups’ with surface-to-air missiles. These prescriptions reveal a profound ignorance of the situation in both Libya and Syria.

What is more immediately relevant is that its view in not shared by any leader of the democracy movement in Syria. On the contrary, in an article in The Guardian on June 22 last year, Haytham Manna, the chairman of the 16-party National Coalition for Transition to Democracy, and Mr. Assad’s most trenchant critic in the early days of the insurgency, placed the blame for the sidelining of the democracy movement squarely upon the West’s complicity in allowing the Istanbul based Free Syrian Army to recruit Islamist foreign fighters for the assault on Syria.

  Six months later, on December 18, he wrote that the Syrian people had come to regard the foreigners not as liberators but as oppressors. “When the Syrian army attacks al-Nusra it is not as the suppressor of the popular movement, but the guarantor of the unity of Syria's diverse society … It is the alliance between foreign jihadists and some Syrians that risks tearing the country apart, leading to religious extremism, long-term sectarian war, and the persecution of minorities and various civilian groups.” 

The Economist correctly perceives that as Syria disintegrates, the jihadis could use “lawless territory as a base for international terror (and) menace Israel across the Goal Heights.” But what it does not perceive is that the collapse of the Assad regime will hasten this process and end by putting Israel in mortal peril. One has only to trace the likely aftermath of its collapse to understand why.

First, the end of Mr. Assad will not necessarily mean the return of peace. As happened in Afghanistan, it will make 5,000 to 6,000 foreign jihadis redundant and turn them into loose cannons in the country. Repatriating them will be far from easy because the ‘Arab Spring’ has shattered their home economies and left millions without work. This is why Libyans make up the largest contingent among the foreign fighters in both Syria and Mali. 

But they cannot stay on indefinitely in Syria either for, with no common purpose left to unite them, the rivalry between the jihadis and more moderate opponents of Mr. Assad will almost certainly erupt into a struggle for power. Unlike the proxy war that it was able to wage upon Mr. Assad, this is a war the West will not be able to stay out of.

The moderates within the newly created Syrian National Coalition of Opposition and Revolutionary forces (SNCORF) already fear this. That is why within three months of being elected, its President Moaz al Khatib, a former Imam of the Omayyad mosque in Damascus, declared himself willing to attend a conference with Bashar al-Assad to chalk out a peaceful transition in Syria. But his weakness was exposed when the diehards in the SNCORF forced him to retract his offer within days. The only remaining option is also the easiest. This is to channel their fervour into a new jihad. The inevitable next target will be Jordan because it lies on the direct route to Al Quds (Jerusalem) and the Al Aqsa mosque, the second holiest shrine in Islam. 

Jordan will either cave in or give them free access to the West Bank. That will leave Israel surrounded, and isolated. Any pre-emptive action it takes to make its borders more secure such as re-occupying the Sinai to block access to Gaza will alienate the Arabs, increase the sway of the jihadis, and blight the prospect for a return to democracy and religious moderation in the foreseeable future. It could also put a question mark over the long-term survival of Israel.

 If Barack Obama wishes to arrest the development of another, infinitely more dangerous, quagmire in Syria and Jordan, he must do the opposite of what The Economist is proposing and heed, however belatedly, the pleas of the original Syrian National Council, and other leading democracy activists like Manna, to stop the inflow of arms and foreign fighters. This will, admittedly meet stiff opposition from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Libya. But Mr. Obama does not have the choice of shirking hard decisions, because he or his successors will face worse ones in the future.

 Second, Mr. Obama needs to recognise that the only way to achieve a peaceful transition to democracy is through the regime, as is happening in Myanmar, and not after its destruction. Creating a power vacuum by destroying the state does not make way for democracy but chaos. The resulting vacuum is always filled by the most organised, ruthless and therefore undemocratic groups in a society.

 In his January 7 speech to his country, Mr. Assad invited all remaining Syrian opposition groups to a second conference on democracy and threw the doors open to a fresh election and the formation of a new government. He should be strongly urged to hold it as soon, and with as few preconditions, as possible. Haytham Manna and his colleagues should be encouraged to attend the conference. Moaz al Khatib also wants to attend it: Mr. Obama should make it possible for him to do so. (The writer is a senior journalist)

 A Syrian rebel group that claimed it had abducted a group of U.N. observers in the Golan Heights announced on Thursday that it had in fact rescued them from fighting in the area, and called on the United Nations to send a security convoy to pick them up.

Kidnapping of UN peacekeepers raises doubts about Syria's opposition

 The kidnapping came as the Syrian opposition was enjoying its highest level of support from the U.S., as Britain said it would increase aid to opposition forces, and as the Arab League signalled that its members should arm the rebels.

The attack on the peacekeepers appeared to take the opposition’s Free Syrian Army by surprise. Its leader, Gen. Salim Idriss, told the BBC that he would “do everything . . . I can to liberate them.” The apparent disconnect between the central command and splinter groups has raised anxiety among the rebels’ allies.

Reaction from the international community was swift — and angry.

The UN Security Council strongly condemned the kidnapping, and this month’s council president, Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin, urged the captors to “stop this very dangerous course of action.” The incident has made it more difficult for the West to convince Russia to take stronger action against Assad.

Video-game image of Syria used in TV news segment

Amos Gilad, a senior official in the Defense Ministry, told Israel Radio that “we can rely on the U.N. to persuade” the insurgent fighters to release the peacekeepers and that “neither the rebels nor anyone else has an interest in clashing with the international community, which it needs for support.”

 Eight UN peacekeepers abandon posts near Syria, retreat to Israeli territory

Filipino soldiers leave demilitarized zone in accordance with UNDOF command, as Syrian rebels refuse to release 21 kidnapped peacekeepers.

Syrian revolutionaries have had access to weapons for almost two years without the approval from the Security Council or the Arab League

Another Setback for Syria Opposition: SNC Delays Meeting to Form Gov’t

In a new setback for the Syrian opposition, the so-called Syrian National Coalition has postponed a meeting to form a “provisional government.”Moaz al-Khatib

Reuters news agency quoted coalition sources as saying on Sunday that a meeting to elect a provisional prime minister, which was due to be held on March 12 after being postponed once already, has been rescheduled for March 20.

However, it was uncertain it would be held even then, the sources added.

Syria on Thursday complained to the UN that Israel intends to carry out an oil drilling project in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, in violation of UN resolutions, and urged the Security Council to take a "genuine action" to deter Israel from committing this "aggression and provocation." 

 In identical letters to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Security Council President Vitaly Churkin of Russia, Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said that according to an article by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week, the Israeli Ministry of Energy has authorized the American company Genie Energy to drill for oil in the area, and that the Energy Minister Uzi Landau had agreed to an application from the company's Chief to begin drilling.

Ja'afari said Syria "deplores Israel's dangerous attempts to exploit the current circumstances in the region to consolidate its occupation of Syrian territory and plunder its resources," and stressed that Israel is "blatantly violating the principle of the permanent sovereignty of peoples under foreign occupation over their natural resources," and that the inalienable rights of peoples under occupation "include sovereignty over their land, water and energy resources, which must not be exploited, depleted or wasted." 

 He said Syria "demands that the Council should go beyond mere formal condemnation of Israel's violation of Syrian territorial integrity, and establish a mechanism compelling Israel to respect and implement relevant Council resolutions.All in all, lots of good reading and thanks to everyone for participating!

The Israelis also appear to be taking advantage of the violence and chaos in Syria.

The timing of the decision "is directly related to the fact that the Syrian government is not free to deal with this problem

Japan has struggled to rebuild communities and to clean up radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, whose reactors melted down after its cooling systems were disabled by the tsunami.

The reactor containment structures which house the nuclear reactors at Fukushima made by GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba, have so many holes in them that they are preventing workers from making any substantial progress on improving conditions inside of the destroyed reactors, and will ultimately delay the removal of melted fuel from the reactor buildings, the question is just how long?

Radiation levels around the site and inside of the reactor buildings are so high that workers main priority is to attempt to manage dose by conducting work from as far of a distance as possible, but TEPCO is working in a confined space, which is becoming ever more restrictive every day.  The utility has been forced to construct temporary storage tanks for over 320,000 metric tons of contaminated water so far, with plans for another 75,000 metric tons to be added, but each tank is filled up every two and a half days at the current rate of contaminated water being generated.

Since no progress can be made in the most critical areas of the reactor buildings, TEPCO has been forced to put most efforts towards removing the 1,533 spent fuel assemblies from the Unit 4 spent fuel pool, but even that requires special construction, unique equipment, and will be a process that takes years to complete.  The next question becomes where to put the spent fuel once it is removed from the spent fuel pool.  There is a common fuel pool building which houses spent fuel from multiple reactors on-site, but it only has a capacity of 6,800 assemblies and already holds 6,300.  TEPCO is hoping to remove some of the oldest spent fuel from the common fuel pool and put it into dry cask storage ahead of its pre-disaster schedule.

“It will take a considerable amount of time before this site will become history, what we need to do is isolate, remove and store the damaged and broken nuclear fuel safely,” said TEPCO plant manager Takeshi Takahashi. “This work will take 30 to 40 years to complete.”

In a best-case scenario, those holes would not be present, (best case scenario being; no meltdowns) and workers would be able to fill up the reactor containments with enough water to provide sufficient cooling for melted fuel that is attacking the concrete liner, reduce radiation exposure, and allow operators to prepare for the investigation and removal of melted fuel debris.  However, this is not the reality of the situation, and every day hundreds of metric tons of groundwater is seeping into the crippled reactor buildings, and mixing with water being pumped in through an ad hoc and wholly inadequate cooling system.

TEPCO is building tanks to hold the water and has capacity for 320,000 metric tons of water but wants to increase that to 400,000 metric tons by June.  The utility is considering several measures to dispose of the water, including treating and releasing it into the sea, which the international public has shown itself firmly against.   Many public figures and organizations have voiced their opposition to this plan, but TEPCO officials said they would go ahead with that plan if given the consent of authorities.

Washington, Mar. 11 (ANI): U.S. Navy veterans are blaming the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown for making them sick.
Immediately after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, the navy diverted their ship from South Korea to Japan to provide aid. It was called Operation Tomodachi, reports CBS News.
For days, The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, told the world the Fukushima plant was under control.(And so did all of the western corporate media, in unison, singing from the same song books) But in reality, three nuclear reactors were melting down, and radioactive gases were being released.

Enis has a lump  between his eyes, another in his jaw, and another lump on his thigh.

Plym reportedly developed gynecological issues.

The duo is joining a federal lawsuit filed in southern California against TEPCO brought by fellow sailors who accuse the Japanese power company of giving out "false and misleading information" about Fukushima while being aware that the potential health risk was greater than its agents were reporting.

More than 115 sailors are signed up to be plaintiffs, seeking compensatory and punitive damages

A nuclear worker has told the ABC how he was ordered inside wearing insufficient protective gear to tackle the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown.

Just a few days before the second anniversary of the crisis, a picture is emerging of what workers endured at the crippled plant.

In an exclusive interview with the ABC, the man also said two of his ill-equipped colleagues suffered beta-ray burns when they had to wade through radioactive water.

The erosion of the Syrian regime’s authority is accelerating, and the “increasingly beleaguered” government, which has been unable to defeat insurgents with conventional weapons, might be prepared to use chemical weapons, the top U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday.

James R. Clapper, director of national intelligence, also noted that elements of Syria’s biological weapons program “may have advanced beyond the research and development stage,” and that Syria possesses conventional and chemical weapons systems that “could be modified for biological agent delivery.”

The prolonged instability is also allowing al-Qaeda’s al-Nusrah Front affiliate to establish itself in Syria, according to Clapper, who described the group as “pretty astute” in its ability to provide municipal services amid the broadening humanitarian crisis.

Officials said al-Qaeda’s core leadership group is so degraded that it is probably unable to carry out large-scale attacks in the West. A serious threat, said Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, emanates from “homegrown extremists who may well be inspired or radicalized by the message that al-Qaeda sends.”

Putting a stop to the killing of innocents, enforcing United Nations control and creating the space for dialogue is critical since those who persist in feeding the conflict with arms know it can last for years.


Hundreds (thousands?) of jihadists have descended on a country — from Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya — whose regular army, like it or not, is still in command.

The core of Damascus is still under the control of the Bashar Al Assad regime. He can easily convince an increasingly tired population how life was better some years ago.

“In no way can the rebels win, write it down in your magazine, they are not going to win!” former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati told Politique Internationale. The Syrian army still has enough materiel; local militias supporting the government are increasing in number and foreign allies – the presence of Iran’s Al Quds units was even confirmed by the Pasedaran Major General Mohammad Ali Ja’afari — will make up for the rest.

                       

The Al Assad regime, on the contrary, seems now to be prepared for talks, but nobody wants to talk with it. Meanwhile, arms are being poured into the country, so that more Syrians can die.

Europeans continue to favour the Syrian National Coalition route. But it is clear that the collection of jihadists, deserters, genuine freedom fighters and exiled, talkative intellectuals would lead nowhere.

The Arab League already demonstrated some months ago its pathetic response. Whatever the reasons, some Arabs thought it judicious to help destroy another Arab state instead of concentrating on other targets.

Secretary of State John Kerry has confirmed the US wants a political settlement and Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t make Al Assad’s fate a key issue: he knows his departure alone would solve nothing.

Following up on this post :Aldous Huxley letter to George Orwell

     Aldous

 "May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution?" 

revolution- a: a sudden, radical, or complete change, c: activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation 

  "the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology"

My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power

Oligarchy : a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.

 Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations.

 The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency.

 Sir Julian Sorell HuxleyFRS^[1] (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and internationalist

 My investigation into Thomas Henry Huxley’s background (grandfather to Aldous and Julian) reveals him as THE KEY promoter of Darwin’s theories, who was his friend and teacher, and through Huxley’s “X Club” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Club) they created academics who would promote Darwin’s ideas (not coincidently, spin offs of this “X-Club” include the X-men comic series (on eugenics and evolution) and Fourth World comics (on mind control) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – the “Forth World” being tied to the UN’s Agenda 21 (See the UN’s website – http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/) and (UNCED) Fourth World Wilderness – “battle for the mind” – conferences (http://youtu.be/JUdgiehz9dU). My feeling is that the word “X” for MDMA is directly related. X-files? Possibly many others.). Later Julian Huxley would take up his grandfather’s stance in promoting Darwin’s theory, eugenics/humanism, etc, publishing nearly a dozen books on these topics. Aldous would follow suit via his novels.

 The Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin of Piltdown Hoax fame, a major influence of hippie story teller Terence McKenna, also created the Habit and Novelty / Time wave zero concept, which he called “The Omega Point” – but without the 2011/2012 end point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point
“Omega Point is a term coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) to describe a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving.”

 http://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Edition-Ancient-Peoples-Places/dp/0500289026/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346174459&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=michael+coe+secrets+maya
And then it can be traced to the In Search of TV program, which we’ll cover in a moment, and then on to Terence McKenna and Jose Arguelles.

Tielhard also influenced Terence’s ideas of the Stoned Ape theory: I suggest that with the many ties to Tielhard’s ideas found in McKenna’s work regarding the end of time and human evolution, and right back to Julian Huxley and Darwin, that we can tie McKenna’s idea of the Stoned Ape theory directly to the Piltdown Hoax and the Huxleys, and their secret agenda at making any and every attempt to prove “Darwin’s” theory of evolution, whom Thomas Huxley was the key promoter, and Julian after him. And not coincidently, both Thomas and Julian Huxley were presidents of the Royal Society, and not coincidently gave themselves and their friends (including Darwin) Copley and Darwin awards.
Not coincidently, Tielhard also wrote a book with Julian Huxley’s introduction:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Phenomenon-Of-Man-ebook/dp/B004HW7BZE

Our studies revealed that most of the resistance-associated genes functioning in diverse mechanisms are expressed in the epidermal layer of the integument, which could prevent or slow down the toxin from reaching the target sites on nerve cells, where an additional layer of resistance (kdr) is possible. This strategy evolved in bed bugs is based on their unique morphological, physiological and behavioral characteristics and has not been reported in any other insect species.

-At their first meeting the Doctor told the writer in close detail about his experiments on bedbugs and smallpox, and then-and-there converted him to a belief in the theory of their connection.
-All that Dr. Campbell then needed for his proposed investigation was the pitifully small sum of twelve thousand dollars. The writer gladly promised his aid in securing that amount from some rich American philanthropist or from some established fund for research; and during several years he did his level best to keep that promise, but all his endeavors were unsuccessful. The fund moneys appeared to be so tied up with red tape that they could not be utilized for outside purposes; and the millionaires did not care to spend their dearly loved dollars for any such philanthropic purpose.

-However, the Doctor was not in the least disheartened—quite the contrary. This failure to procure for him financial aid only sharpened his dogged pertinacity; and, notwithstanding the burden and care of a family to be met by the lucrative (?) occupation of practising medicine for a living, he has never swerved from the goal he had set for himself, viz., aiding humanity by the results of his numerous and varied experiments on insect-borne diseases and how to combat them. This is proved by the success of his monumental work in relation to the prevention of malaria by the extermination of the malaria-bearing mosquito through the propagation of its natural enemy, the bat. This work he accomplished unaided, single-handed, and under most trying conditions; and, in no uncertain terms, it testifies to his great value and places him in the front rank with the world's leading scientists.

    The writer has not yet given up all hope of seeing these bedbug experiments carried out in Mexico, because the conditions there today are just as favorable for the purpose as they ever were. It may be that the publication in book form of the wonderful results of Dr. Campbell's life-work will induce some rich man or woman to offer the necessary money for the prosecution of the good cause.

    Such a person, though, would have to be of a different temperament and caliber from those of one of the directors of the Rockefeller Institute, who, when approached by Dr. Campbell himself with a request for this money, held up his hands in holy horror and exclaimed ''What! Furnish you with money to experiment upon human beings! What do you think the American people would say, were I to do such a thing as that?"

    Some seven years after his first meeting with Dr. Campbell, the writer read in a scientific paper that a Russian scientist, whose name has escaped his memory, had, independently without doubt, made the same discovery as did Dr. Campbell in relation to the connection between bedbugs and smallpox. Curiously enough, although the fact of such a relation has been mentioned several times in the press, very few members of the medical profession appear to have heard anything about it. This has repeatedly been made evident to the writer during conversations with medical men.

    In the writer's opinion, Dr. Campbell has proved beyond the peradventure of a doubt that smallpox is transmitted in one way only—by the bite of an infected bedbug, or possibly in rare cases by that of another blood-sucking insect, the "chinche volante." Such being the case, is it any longer necessary to continue that most objectionable practice, vaccination?While the great mass of humanity may have been benefited by that practice, many individuals have suffered greatly and even died from the poisons vaccine sometimes introduces into the blood. The writer has long felt that he would far rather risk catching the smallpox than undermining his health by taking into his system a poison that might have much worse effects than those of la petite vérole.

People actually smell mystery as the Federal Government is spending almost half a billion dollars and acquiring smallpox antivirus that would allow treatment of up to two million people.

The US government has paid Siga Technologies $463 million for Arestvyr with around $200 per dosage, which is quite high.

So is the government preparing for a biological war?  

Since 1980 when smallpox was eradicated, the remains of the viruses were stored in government laboratories in the United State and Russia. 

Thus, it is a mystery why the government is paying so much in the tune of billions for a disease which does not even exist in the modern world. "Is it appropriate to stockpile it? Absolutely", said Dr. Richard H. Ebright, a bioweapons expert at Rutgers University. "Is it appropriate to stockpile two million doses? Absolutely not. Twenty thousand seems like the right number".

 Warplanes from Syria are reported to have bombed targets on the border it shares with Lebanon

 There were no immediate reports of casualties from the air strikes, which reportedly targeted Syrian rebel positions in eastern Lebanon, specifically a remote area near the town of Arsal, according to security sources cited by news agencies and Lebanon's state-run National News Agency.

 "Syrian planes bombed the border between Lebanon and Syria but I cannot yet say if they hit Lebanese territory or only Syrian territory," a military official told the news agency AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Israeli jets drop flare bombs over s. Lebanon coast and four warplanes violated Lebanon's airspace

 Israeli jets dropped flare bombs along the coast of the southern city of Tyre Monday, security sources told The Daily Star.

The aircraft launched five flares to illuminate the night sky for reconnaissance purposes, the sources said, adding that the devices extinguished five to 10 minutes after they were released.
Earlier Monday, the Lebanese Army said four Israeli warplanes violated Lebanon’s airspace and flew over various areas. 

 Two of the planes entered the country at 6 a.m, the military said in a statement. The jets conducted aerial maneuvers over several regions, leaving the area three hours later, it added.

Immediately following the departure of the planes, two other aircraft entered Lebanese airspace and conducted similar maneuvers, leaving at 12 p.m, the Army said.
Israel violates Lebanon’s airspace on near daily basis, in violation of United NationsSecurity Council Resolution 1701

 Israel will use President Obama's visit which begins on Wednesday to try to persuade the US to carry out air strikes on Syrian missiles if there is evidence that they are being handed over to Hezbollah  in Lebanon, or at least to give full support to Israeli military action to stop the transfer, Britain's The Guardian newspaper reported Sunday.
The Guardian claims that Obama will also come under Israeli pressure to lower the US threshold for military action against Iran, while the US president will try to extract greater Israeli commitment to a peace process with the Palestinians.
Neither side is likely to be successful, leaving Syria as the most promising arena for US-Israeli agreement.

Syria's state media say rebels have fired a chemical weapon in the north of the country, killing 15 people.

The report by the official SANA news agency marks the first time the government has accused fighters seeking to topple President Bashar Assad of using chemical weapons.

It says "terrorists" fired a rocket "containing chemical materials" into the Khan al-Assal area in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday. The regime regularly uses the term terrorists to refer to rebels fighting Assad's forces.

SANA says around 15 people, most of them civilians, were killed and a number of others were wounded.

ALEPPO,(SANA)- Terrorists on Tuesday launched containing chemical materials on Khan Al-Asal in Aleppo Countryside.

Initial information shows that about 15 citizens were killed, and others injured

This is in a rebel held area : Allegations of a 'gas attack'

Poisonous gas' used in a rebel-held neighbourhood in Homs, medics there say: 

 What makes this 'story' appear all the more false is that the alleged casualty count is 7. Yes, allegedly this gas attack resulted in just 7 dead.

 A U.S. official is rejecting the claim of Bashar Assad regime's that Syrian rebels (NATO mercs) used chemical weapons in an attack that allegedly killed 16 people and injured around 100 others. 

 Russia said that the evidence of rebels getting hold of weapons of mass destruction had taken the confrontation to a new stage.

A Syrian victim who suffered an alleged chemical attack at Khan al-Assal village according to SANA, receives treatment by doctors, at a hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Tuesday March 19, 2013. (SANA)

Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told reporters Wednesday morning that he had just requested Ban on behalf of the government "to form a specialized, independent and neutral technical mission to investigate the use by the terrorist groups operating in Syria of chemical weapons yesterday against civilians in the town of Khan al-Assad in Aleppo." The Syrian government refers to the rebels as "terrorists."

Ja'afari said Syria asked the secretary-general for assistance "in a sign of good faith, good will, good intentions" to the international community, international public opinion and the Syrian people.

He recalled that the Syrian government had sent a letter to the secretary-general and the UN Security Council in December warning of the possible use of chemical weapons and chemicals by rebel groups who would then accuse the government of a chemical weapons attack.

"The Syrian government, if it has such weapons, will never use it against its own population," Ja'afari said.

Syria is raising concern in two letters to the United Nations that the United States may be attempting to frame it for the use of chemical weapons, Syrian state-run media reported Monday.

"The U.S. administration has consistently worked over the past year to launch a campaign of allegations on the possibility that Syria could use chemical weapons during the current crisis"

"What raises concerns about this news circulated by the media is our serious fear that some of the countries backing terrorism and terrorists might provide the armed terrorist groups with chemical weapons and claim that it was the Syrian government that used the weapons"

He stressed that Syria a party to most UN conventions on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and had proposed a Security Council resolution in 2003 when it was a council member that would have required the Mideast to be free of all weapons of mass destruction. He said it was blocked by the threatened veto of an "influential member," an apparent reference to the United States, Israel's closest ally.

Russia and Iran have slammed the Syrian opposition fighters of using chemical weapons in Aleppo — drawing attention to the possible elevation of the Syrian crisis to a new level.

Iran strongly condemned the “inhuman action of using chemical weapons in the city of Aleppo by the armed opposition groups”, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast.

Mr. Mehmanparast hit out at countries that have been allegedly supporting and funding the armed groups in Syria, saying these states would be responsible for any repeat of “such atrocities”.

Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said Turkey and Qatar, which support the opposition fighters, bore “legal, moral and political responsibility” for the chemical attack.

The strike was carried out within hours of the elevation of Ghassan Hitto, a former U.S.-based IT executive, to the position of Prime Minister in the so-called Syrian interim government.

 During a Wednesday session at the UN Security Council, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin voiced Moscow’s support for the Syrian government’s call for an independent inquiry into the chemical attack by foreign-backed militants in Aleppo.

However, France and Britain reportedly cited new claims by the Syrian opposition that there had been two chemical weapons attacks, one in Aleppo and another in the capital Damascus, demanding that both be investigated.

The Russian envoy strongly disagreed with the idea of focusing the urgently needed UN probe on the recent claims, which he described as “propaganda balloons.”

The United Nations said on Thursday it will investigate Syria's allegations that rebel forces used chemical weapons in an attack near Aleppo, but Western countries sought a probe of all claims about the use of such banned arms.

"I have decided to conduct a United Nations investigation into the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. He told reporters the investigation will focus on "the specific incident brought to my attention by the Syrian government."

The Syrian opposition reported a second chemical weapons attack on Tuesday near Damascus.

Ban made clear that the focus of the investigation he announced would be the Aleppo attack.

France and Britain wrote to Ban on Thursday to draw his attention to the second alleged attack near Damascus, as well as well as one in Homs in late December. 

The rebels blame Syria's government for all three alleged chemical weapons attacks.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said on Wednesday that the British and French demand for an investigation into other attacks was an attempt to delay the U.N. probe of the Aleppo incident. He praised Ban's decision to begin an investigation.

U.S. and European officials say there is no evidence of a chemical weapons attack. If one is confirmed, it would be the first use of such weapons in the two-year Syrian conflict

Russia has offered to send its chemical weapons experts to Syria if it were to set up a committee to investigate the alleged firing of a rocket loaded with chemical agents.

 Great Scholar, Dr. Mohammad Said Ramadan a-Bouti was martyred on Thursday after a suicide terrorist blew himself up at al-Iman Mosque in Damascus while the late martyr was giving a religious lesson. 

His Grandchild was killed in the attack along with at least 40 others. The terrorist act claimed the lives of scores of prayers, while tens others were injured.

Yossi- "That long-delayed Israeli apology for the unfortunate loss of Turkish lives in the May 2010 Mavi Marmara clash would be helpful."

 My commentary: “Will the apology, so long delayed, be the signal that  an attack from the two caring neighbours is imminent?”

"But wait just one minute. Israel and Turkey would never work together. Why, they are very angry with one another!!!! You know the Mavi Marmara incident?

Well what if Israel apologized?

I had speculated previously that if Israel issues some sort of an apology to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara stage show this would be a signal that an attack on Syria is imminent.
I will reiterate. When Israel apologizes to Turkey. They will jointly attack Syria sometime afterwards
This is theatre for the masses. It will play via the media as a really big deal. A huge rift sealed
Israel and Turkey kiss and make up. Wowee!"

  President Barack Obama arrived in Jordan on Friday after scoring a diplomatic coup just before leaving Israel when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned his Turkish counterpart to apologize for an Israeli commando raid in 2010 that killed eight Turks and an American of Turkish origin in a Gaza-bound flotilla.

Netanyahu phones Erdogan to apologize for deaths of Turkish citizens on Gaza flotilla

The two leaders spoke for first time since 2009, agreeing to normalize relations, and return their ambassadors to Tel Aviv and Ankara; Turkey agreed to cancel all legal proceedings initiated against IDF officers and soldiers over Mavi Marmara incident.

*Israel is a member of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue partnership program 
* Here we reprint the 'Resolution on the accession of Greece and Turkey to the North Atlantic Treaty', signed in 1952.

 Obama says he's long felt it was important the two countries restore good relations so they can pursue common interests. He says Turkey and Israel don't have to agree on everything to be able to work together on regional securityand other issues.