Felicity Arbuthnot: The Age of the Siege: Nazi

Military Tactics Revisited: Disengage, avoid, and withhold support from whatever abuses, degrades and humiliates humanity. (Alice Walker, born 1944). Former Danish PM and Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, "Du har blod pa dine haender" ("You have blood on your hands"), Danish protester, 2003. The siege of Leningrad is still considered the most lethal siege in world history, a shocking racially motivated starvation policy, described as an integral part of Nazi policy in the Soviet Union during World War II. The 872 day siege began on 8th September 1941 and was finally broken on 27th January 1944. It is described as one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and overwhelmingly the most costly in casualties. Some historians cite it as a genocide. Due to record keeping complexities, the exact number of deaths resultant from the blockades deprivations are uncertain. Figures range from 632,000 to 1.5 million. Sieges now extend to entire countries, they have become the torture before the destruction. They are not counted in long days, but in long years. Ironically the disparity in the deaths in Iraq resultant from that siege, mirror near exactly what was considered genocide in Leningrad. Syria has been subject to EU restrictions since 2011, ever more strangulating, with near every kind of financial transaction made impossible by May 2011, when restrictions were also placed on President Assad himself, all senior government officials, senior security and armed forces Heads. The list of that denied is dizzying. By February 2012, assets of individuals were frozen, as those of the Central Bank of Syria. Cargo flights by Syrian carriers to the EU were also barred, as was trade in gold, precious metals and diamonds. Anything which might translate into hard cash, without which neither individuals or countries can purchase the most basic essentials. By July 2012, Syrian Arab Airlines and even Syria's Cotton Marketing Organization had joined the EU's victims.   

Colin Todhunter: The Cancer Cash Cycle. The Causes of Cancer

and ill health. Cancer is big business. Despite massive public screening campaigns and talk of cures, cancer rates continue to soar, and certain companies not only profit from making the chemicals that cause cancer, but also from selling the drugs that treat it. The 2010 documentary 'Cut, Poison, Burn' provides revealing insight into the medical monopoly of cancer treatment, as a four year old boy who was diagnosed with brain cancer was compelled to undergo a system of chemo, surgery and radiation, against his parent's wishes. He was not allowed access to a proven method of alternative treatment. The medical system's response was callous. The authorities threatened to take the boy into custody, and charged his parents with child abuse, if the medical option was not opted for. The boy's death certificate states his cause of death as: "respiratory failure due to chronic toxicity of chemotherapy". It is easy to conclude after watching the film, that what we have here is some kind of corrupt racket. Indeed, the 2009 documentary 'The Idiot Cycle' alleges that some of the world's top cancer causing culprits (including, it is claimed in the film, Bayer, BASF, Dow, Dupont, Monsanto, Syngenta, Novartis, Pfizer, among others), are allegedly profiting from the production of cancer causing products, and then some of the same companies are investing in profitable cancer 'treatments'. These claims outlined in the movie remain to be fully verified. On top of this, some of these companies are now developing genetically modified crops, which have never been adequately tested for long term health impacts like cancer. The onset of the disease is frequently 15 to 20 years down the road for victims. Prior to undertaking his recent study into the health impacts of GMOs, and incurring the wrath of the GMO sector for his findings, Gilles Eric Seralini, professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, said it was absurd that only three months of testing allowed GM corn to be approved in over a dozen nations. Upon reviewing Monsanto's raw data, he and his team found, among other problems, liver damage and physiological changes into a pre-diabetic condition among the rats which had eaten Monsanto's GM corn, and that is just from three months of eating such food.  

Dr. Kevin Barrett: Conspiracy theories: A modest proposal

by Sass Cuntstein, Information Czar and Constitutional Scholar Extraordinaire. In my previous article "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures," I argued that conspiracies, especially the ones that are not true, pose a growing threat to Western civilization in general, and to people like me in particular. I pointed out that since  9/11, a veritable tsunami of conspiracy theories has been racing toward the American shore, threatening to wash away everything we have accomplished. Clearly, something must be done. My earlier article, published in the Journal of Political Philosophy, proposed a number of remedies for the conspiracy disease. I argued that some day, the government might have to ban conspiracy theories. Yes, I now realize I may have overlooked a minor matter called the "First Amendment", but we Constitutional scholars cannot be expected to remember every little detail we learned in k law school, can we? I also recommended that the government should immediately begin to "cognitively infiltrate" conspiracy groups, in order to disrupt them with "beneficial cognitive diversity." But wouldn't you know it, those paranoid conspiracy theorists imagined that I was proposing that the government conspire against them! What is it about "cognitive infiltration" and "beneficial cognitive diversity" that these people don't understand? The conspiracy theorists also had a field day with my assertion that the government ought to "disable the purveyors of conspiracy theories." In their paranoid fantasies, they imagined that I somehow meant them harm. Nothing could be further from the truth! I most certainly do not want to harm the purveyors of conspiracy theories. I want to kill them! Bwa-ha-ha-ha ha! The critics of my earlier article were right about one thing: I did not always make my meaning clear in simple, plain English. I wrote that way for a couple of reasons. First, I chose to publish it in a prestigious law review, and we all know that the only way to get published in academic journals is to dilute your prose with a lot of indecipherable gobbledegook. But more important, I chose to write it in code, as my mentor Leo Strauss always insisted. Since the truth is too dangerous for the masses, one should always write at two levels.

Dr. Kevin Barrett: Is Obama killing "kill list" critics?

Aaron Swartz, a prominent info warrior and critic of Obama's "kill list," was found dead in New York Friday. As with so many free-masonic associations, including that of "DC Madam" Deborah Jean Palfrey, Swartz was hanged. Naturally the police are calling it suicide. Swartz' death raises the obvious question: Can you criticize Obama's barbarian, unconstitutional "kill list" without ending up on it yourself? My earlier article "Disable the purveyors": Is US secretly liquidating dissidents? suggested that the US government "kill list" may include domestic dissidents, as well as foreign opponents of US policy. But hey, I'm a reasonable, moderate guy. I'm not necessarily against all "kill lists." In fact, I would love to see someone compile a list of everyone involved in the "kill list" program, from the top of the command chain, down to the lowliest drone operator, and (remainder of sentence deleted for reasons of National Security). But the problem with Obama's kill list is that it is targeting good people like Aaron Swartz, not bad people. The bad people are the ones running the kill list. They are the ones who should be (remainder of sentence deleted for reasons of National Security). So let me hereby state that I am not only an inveterate opponent of Obama's kill list, I am so angry about it that I would support putting an end to it by any means, including (remainder of sentence deleted for reasons of National Security). So shoot me. Please note that I'm a practicing Muslim, so suicide is out of the question. Anyone who participates or co operates in any way with Obama's "kill list" is a traitor to the Constitution of the United States, which states that no one may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Therefore, anyone who participates or co operates in any way with Obama's "kill list" ought to be (remainder of sentence deleted for reasons of National Security). Maybe if we just put all kill lists on a kill list, and killed them all off, we would finally have a world where good people could just mind their own business in peace.  

Mike Stobbe: Flu Season Strikes Early, and in some places hard.

AP Medical Writer (New York AP) From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers are turning away visitors, or making them wear face masks, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to deal with the feverish patients. Flu season in the US has struck early and, in many places, hard. While flu normally doesn't blanket the country until late January or February, it is already widespread in more than 40 states, with about 30 of them reporting some major hot spots. On Thursday, health blamed the flu for the deaths of 20 children so far. Whether this will be considered a bad season by the time it has run its course in the spring remains to be seen. "Those of us with gray hair have seen worse," said Dr William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The evidence so far points to a moderate season, Schaffner and others say. It looks bad in part because last year was unusually mild, and because the main strain of influenza circulating this year tends to make people sicker and really lay them low. David Smythe of New York City saw it happen to his 50 year old girlfriend, who has been knocked out for about two weeks. "She's been in bed. She can't even get up," he said. Also, the flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in a variety of other viruses, including a childhood malady that mimics flu, and a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." So what people are calling the flu may, in fact, be something else. "There may be more of an overlap than we normally see," said Dr Joseph Bresee, who tracks the flu for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people don't undergo lab tests to confirm flu, and the symptoms are so similar that it can be hard to distinguish flu from other viruses, or even a cold. Over the holidays, 250 people were sickened at a Mormon missionary training center in Utah, but the culprit turned out to be a noro-virus, not the flu.    

Marjorie Cohn: "Zero Dark Thirty" Torturing the Facts!

On January 11, eleven years to the day after George W. Bush sent the first detainees to Guantanamo, the Oscar nominated film Zero Dark Thirty is making its national debut. Zero Dark Thirty is disturbing for two reasons: First and foremost, it leaves the viewer with the erroneous impression that torture helped the CIA find bin "Ladens" hiding place in Pakistan. Second, it ignores both the illegality and immorality of using torture as an interrogation tool. The thriller opens with the words "based on fist hand accounts of actual events. After showing footage of the horrific 9/11 attacks, it moves into a graphic and lengthy depiction of torture. The detained Ammar is subjected to water-boarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and confined in a small box. Responding to the torture, he divulges the name of the courier, who ultimately leads the CIA to bin Ladens location and assassination. It may be good theater, but it is inaccurate and misleading. The statement based on first hand accounts of actual events is deceptive, because it causes the viewer think the story is accurate. All it really means, however, is that the CIA provided Hollywood with information about events depicted in the movie. Acting CIA Director Michael Morrell wrote a letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in which he admitted the CIA engaged extensively with the filmmakers. After receiving his letter, Senators John McCain, Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin requested information and documents related to the CIA's cooperation. The senators sent a letter to Morrell, saying they were concerned by the film's clear implication, that information obtained during or after the use of the CIA's coercive interrogation techniques, played a critical role in locating Usama Bin Laden (UBL). They noted the film depicts CIA officers repeatedly torturing detainees. The film then credits CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques, as providing critical lead information on the courier that led to the UBL compound. They state categorically: This information is incorrect.     

Bob Johnson: Applying Philosophy to Hagel's Comments

on Israel. Obama's nominee to be the new Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, is causing a lot of politicians and Israel firsters to be upset. Two comments Hagel made, seem to focus the most hatred on him. One statement was,"I'm not an Israeli senator. I'm a United States senator. I support Israel, but my first interest is, I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States, not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel." The second statement the Israel firster's find offensive is,"The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people. I've always argued against some of the dumb things they do, because I don't think it's in the interest of Israel."The first rule of philosophy is to see things as they really are, so we can arrive at the truth. Objectively and honestly looking at Hagel's first statement above, shows Hagel to be 100% correct. He was at the time of the statement (2006) a senator, and not an Israeli senator. His statement that he supports Israel seems to be true, in that he voted for a war in which thousands of Americans and over a hundred of thousand of Iraqis were wounded and killed, and which cost American tax payers to date well over $810 Billion. The only beneficiary of the Iraq war is the Jewish state of Israel. His oath of office is to the Constitution of the United States, and not to a president, a party or to Israel. However, if he really truly did take his oath seriously, he never would have voted to start an unnecessary war against Iraq. His second statement is factually wrong, in that it is not "the Jewish lobby" but it is "the Israel lobby" that has US politicians from both parties running scared. Not all Jews promote US politicians blindly supporting Israel in its bloody aggression against its neighbors at the expense of Americans. His motivation for arguing against "the dumb things" the Israel lobby does is not because he cares about America and Americans, but because the dumb things the Israel lobby promotes, he does not think are in the best interests of Israel. The world jewish daily.com seems to think that Hagel's chances of winning approval from the Senate rests with the Jewish senator Chuck Schumer. Schumer is a rabid war monger and Israel firster, who actually said he wants to "strangle" them for voting the way they did, when they voted overwhelmingly in elections with international observers for Hamas in Gaza.