Stephen Lendman

Today's nightmare may be expanded beyond remediation, at least in our lifetimes unless public rage stops it. Corrupt politicians won't do it.

Hydraulic fracking involves using pressurized fluids to fracture rock layers to release oil, gas, coal seam gas, or other substances.

Earthworks says the process provides easier access to deposits and lets oil or gas "travel more easily from the rock pores," where it's trapped, "to the production well." Fractures are created by pumping mixtures of water, proppants (sand or ceramic beads) and chemicals into rock or coal formations. Acidizing involves pumping acid (usually hydrochloric acid) into the formation. It dissolves rock so pores open for easier flows. Fracking and acidizing are often done together.

Studies show from 20 - 40% of fracking fluids remain underground. Fracking fluids contain hazardous toxic chemicals, known to cause cancer and other diseases. They include diesel fuel, containing benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene and other chemicals. They also include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, glycol ethers, hydrochloric acid, and sodium hydroxide.

Small amounts of benzene alone can contaminate millions of gallons of groundwater used for human consumption. According to the EPA, 10 of 11 US coalbed methane (CBM) basins are located at least partially in areas of underground sources of drinking water (USDW).

EPA also determined that nine or more harmful to human health fracking chemicals are used in normal operations. "These chemicals may be injected (in) concentrations anywhere from 4 to almost 13,000 times" above acceptable amounts. According to hydrodynamics expert John Bredehoeft:

"At greatest risk of contamination are the coalbed aquifers currently used as sources of drinking water." "(C)ontamination associated with hydrofracturing (can) threaten the usefulness of aquifers for future use."

At issue also is obtaining information on specific fracking chemicals used. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), oil and gas companies won't release what they call "proprietary information."

Current regulations exempt oil and gas drilling from major environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Sirte all but flattened. Thousands killed. - What's so humanitarian
about that? Wasn't the UN Resolution 1973 (2011) about "the
protection of civilians" and the Security Council's "strong commit-
ment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and
national unity of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya"? Did the UN do
anything whatever to stop the vicious US-NATO attack on Libya?

His faults aside, Libyans supported Gaddafi overwhelmingly. They still do. His spirit drives their revolutionary struggle for freedom. They won't quit until it's achieved.

Obama's March 28, 2011 address at the National Defense University was true to form. It reeked of duplicity, hypocrisy, and ball-faced lies, saying:

"For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom." "....(W)e are reluctant to use force to solve the world's many challenges." "But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. That's what happened in Libya...." For decades, Libya was "ruled by a tyrant....He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized people around the world - including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents."

Substitute Washington for Libya and he got it right. America is a rogue terror state, a menacing plague on humanity.

Democratic values, human and civil rights, and rule of law principles are non-starters.

Only corporate and imperial interests matter, not equity, justice, peace on earth, and government of, by and for the people while respecting the sovereign rights of other nations.

NATO's war on Libya was planned many months in advance like all wars. Why is most important, or put another way - cui bono?

Official accounts and media scoundrels never explain. Dozens of previous articles discussed relevant issues and answers, including one summarizing what's most important. More on that below.

More »

Wayne Madsen

Kemal Pasha (Atatürk = Father of Turks) was a crypto-
Jewish Dönmeh / Sabbatian. Dönmeh / Sabbatians
destroyed the Ottoman Empire (as they did with the Ger-
man Reich and the Russian Empire) from the inside, to
create Israel on Palestinian territory. [Like many men who
had a great influence on world history, Kemal Atatürk
was an instrument of the so-called "hidden hand." - Ed.]

“Sabbateanism is the matrix of every significant movement to have emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth entury, from Hasidism, to Reform Judaism, to the earliest Masonic circles and revolutionary idealism. The Sabbatean "believers" felt that they were champions of a new world which was to be established by overthrowing the values of all positive religions.” ~ Gershom Scholem

[PART II] There is a historical “eight hundred pound gorilla” lurking in the background of almost every serious military and diplomatic incident involving Israel, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Greece, Armenia, the Kurds, the Assyrians, and some other players in the Middle East and southeastern Europe. It is a factor that is generally only whispered about at diplomatic receptions, news conferences, and think tank sessions due to the explosiveness and controversial nature of the subject. And it is the secretiveness attached to the subject that has been the reason for so much misunderstanding about the current breakdown in relations between Israel and Turkey, a growing warming of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and increasing enmity between Saudi Arabia and Iran…

Although known to historians and religious experts, the centuries-old political and economic influence of a group known in Turkish as the “Dönmeh” is only beginning to cross the lips of Turks, Arabs, and Israelis who have been reluctant to discuss the presence in Turkey and elsewhere of a sect of Turks descended from a group of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th and 17th centuries. These Jewish refugees from Spain were welcomed to settle in the Ottoman Empire and over the years they converted to a mystical sect of Islam that eventually mixed Jewish Kabbala and Islamic Sufi semi-mystical beliefs into a sect that eventually championed secularism in post-Ottoman Turkey. It is interesting that “Dönmeh” not only refers to the Jewish “untrustworthy converts” to Islam in Turkey but it is also a derogatory Turkish word for a transvestite, or someone who is claiming to be someone they are not.

The Donmeh sect of Judaism was founded in the 17th century by Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi, a Kabbalist who believed he was the Messiah but was forced to convert to Islam by Sultan Mehmet IV, the Ottoman ruler. Many of the rabbi’s followers, known as Sabbateans, but also “crypto-Jews,” publicly proclaimed their Islamic faith but secretly practiced their hybrid form of Judaism, which was unrecognized by mainstream Jewish rabbinical authorities. Because it was against their beliefs to marry outside their sect, the Dönmeh created a rather secretive sub-societal clan.

More »

Charles E. Carlson

Pastor John Hagee at the 'Night to Honor Israel'

Zionists from three or more religious groups converged at John Hagee's Night To Honor Israel in Arvada Colorado, Sunday October 16, 2011. We say "from" because, when one becomes a Zionist, he leaves behind whatever God-driven faith he may have had before. At Faith Bible Chapel, Colorado, we met many "Christian" and "Jewish" Zionists; one man claimed to be a Muslim for Israel and against Palestine. We even met a few Christ followers, whom we tried to convince did not belong there.

This Vigil for Peace With Justice was by far our most broadly supported vigil in over eight years at over 70 American churches. We are grateful for the co-sponsorship of other pro-peace and pro-Palestinian organizations, as well as the continuing support of our friends from past vigils.

This was our second outing at Faith Bible Chapel, a true mega-church in Arvada, Colorado.[1] As always the vigil was quiet and safe, but highly exciting in its conflicts. The churches usually employ private, off-duty police officers, who they can count on to protect Zionist's interests. We make sure there is a city police presence for our protection. We protested for 2 1/2 hours at the open house that preceded the nighttime pep rally for Israel, conducted by John Hagee and a Rabbi from South Africa. We left at dark.

"Angry Evangelicals," as WHTT’s Tom Compton has dubbed churchgoers who become Zionists, were never more hostile. Hostile, we think, because Project Strait Gate correctly labels them a cult. It challenges the scriptural core of their belief system, which has been corrupted by their leaders. We tell them when we have a chance, they are every bit as much a cult as the Jonestown cult, many of whose misled members died in 1978.

The many self-identified Jews in attendance were even more vociferous in their outrage. Perhaps they recognize that we are exposing the unchristian nature of their warmaking for Israel. Where at our previous Hagee vigils, they ignored us, or treated us with confident contempt, this time a number stopped on the way in or out of the Hagee open house to argue, proclaiming how uninformed we were.

More »