Al-Qaeda Terrorists Airlifted From Libya to Aid Syrian Opposition

November 29, 2011

Prison Planet

By Paul Joseph Watson

The same Al-Qaeda terrorists who fought U.S. troops in Iraq and helped NATO overthrow Colonel Gaddafi are now being airlifted into Syria to aid rebels there topple President Bashar al-Assad.

Libya’s transitional ruling authority has agreed to send weapons and fighters over to Syria to help the Free Syrian Army fight government forces.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” a Libyan source told the London Telegraph, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

In a separate piece, the Telegraph also reports that terrorist commander Abdulhakim Belhadj, now head of the Tripoli Military Council, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” after being sent there by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the interim Libyan president.

A rival Libyan rebel brigade detained Belhadj at Tripoli airport for traveling on a fake passport and threatened to jail him before Jalil stepped in to intervene.

“Members of the Free Syrian Army on the borders of Lebanon and Turkey denied rumours circulating in Tripoli that “hundreds” of Libyans had tried to cross into Syria,” states the article, amidst other reports that Libyans have already been detained trying to infiltrate the country from the Turkish border.

As we previously documented, Abdulhakim Belhadj is the former front man for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department. Belhadj was captured by the CIA in Malaysia in 2003 and extradited to Libya where Colonel Gaddafi had him imprisoned. Belhadj is a committed jihadist who fought with the Taliban against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi also admitted that Belhadj’s LIFG fighters were the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, responsible for killing U.S. troops.

Click here for the full report.

Occupy Protester Hands President Obama A Note

November 29, 2011

Yahoo News

By Holly Bailey

“Do you think Obama even read it?  Do you think he even cares?” –KTRN

The Occupy movement trailed President Obama to New Hampshire today, where protestors briefly interrupted his jobs speech at a Manchester high school.

Using the so-called “human microphone” method, protestors shouted Obama down just minutes into his speech, calling attention to the arrest of peaceful protestors at Occupy movements around the country.

They were quickly countered by students, who began chanting, “Obama! Obama!”

But after the speech, a member of the movement got close enough to Obama as the president was shaking hands with members of the audience pass him a note, which was photographed by the Associated Press’ Charles Dharapak:

Mr. President: Over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While bankers continue to destroy the American economy. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.

Click here for the full report and video.

Newt Gingrich Would Give People The Death Penalty For Selling Pot

November 29, 2011

Yahoo News

By Chris Moody

“You heard it right. Newt Gingrich thinks the war on drugs is working. He is so convinced that in a recent interview, he suggested we sentence people to death over selling pot. Death! And this man wants to be president? This is just one more reason that Ron Paul is the answer.”  –KTRN

Have you learned anything about yourself that you didn’t know or that surprised you now that you’re running for president?

I may be more capable of calm discipline than I would have guessed. Watch the way in which I am methodically not getting engaged in a fight with my friends.

Is it hard to resist the temptation?

It’s getting easier. The more often I do it, the easier it gets.

It’s easier to not say anything the next time. I’m a natural debater. I’ve spent my whole career debating.

You’re drawing larger crowds. Any plans to request Secret Service?

We’ve explored it with them, and I think at the moment I would prefer not to do it as long as we could. I prefer as much as possible to remain open to people.

You’ve been in politics for many decades. Is running for president a different experience than anything else you have done in your political career?

No. I’ve been at this for 53 years. The scale of it is bigger. The intensity of media coverage is dramatically bigger, but not radically bigger than I had in ’94 or ’95. The freedom to actually develop policies is much greater. I’m not advising somebody else. I’m not reaching out to figure out how to get 350 candidates to sign on at this stage. I’m trying to outline what I think is best. So in that sense it’s probably more liberating for me then it might have been.

Three Republican presidential candidates have shown an openness to handing over control of drugs and medical marijuana to the states. Would you continue the current federal policy making marijuana illegal in all cases or give the states more control?

I would continue current federal policy, largely because of the confusing signal that steps towards legalization sends to harder drugs.  I think the California experience is that medical marijuana becomes a joke. It becomes marijuana for any use. You find local doctors who will prescribe it for anybody that walks in.

Why shouldn’t the states have control over this? Why should this be a federal issue?

Because I think you guarantee that people will cross state lines if it becomes a state-by-state exemption.  I don’t have a comprehensive view. My general belief is that we ought to be much more aggressive about drug policy. And that we should recognize that the Mexican cartels are funded by Americans.

Expand on what you mean by “aggressive.”

In my mind it means having steeper economic penalties and it means having a willingness to do more drug testing.

In 1996, you introduced a bill that would have given the death penalty to drug smugglers. Do you still stand by that?

I think if you are, for example, the leader of a cartel, sure. Look at the level of violence they’ve done to society. You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say there’s nothing wrong with heroin and cocaine or you can be in the tradition that says, ‘These kind of addictive drugs are terrible, they deprive you of full citizenship and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American.’ If you’re serious about the latter view, then we need to think through a strategy that makes it radically less likely that we’re going to have drugs in this country.  Places like Singapore have been the most successful at doing that. They’ve been very draconian. And they have communicated with great intention that they intend to stop drugs from coming into their country.

Click here for the full article.

Crashed UFOs: The Bolivian Affair

November 28, 2011

Mysterious Universe

By Nick Redfern

“Roswell isn’t the only incident of an alleged UFO that has crashed.  Keep an eye on the sky.  We have never been alone.”  –KTRN

Regardless of whether or not UFOs really have crashed to Earth, there can be no doubt that mentioning the words “crashed” and “UFO” in the same sentence inevitably brings the controversial Roswell, New Mexico affair of July 1947 to mind. But, there are numerous other cases on file that could, perhaps, be termed the “little brothers” of Roswell. And even though, as people may know from my Body Snatchers in the Desert book, I’m not a particularly big fan of crashed UFO cases, there are some that even I still find very intriguing, including the following…

The genesis of the affair in question appeared to come from a U.S. Department of State telegram transmitted from the American Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, to the U.S. Secretary of State, Washington, D.C., on 15 May 1978. Captioned Report of Fallen Space Object, it detailed strange events then afoot in Bolivia.

It began: “The Bolivian newspapers carried this morning an article concerning an unidentified object that apparently recently fell from the sky. The object was discovered near the Bolivian city of Bermejo and was described as egg-shaped, metal and about four meters in diameter. The Bolivian Air Force plans to investigate to determine what the object might be and from where it came. I have expressed our interest and willingness to help. They will advise.”

The author of the report added, with some significance: “Request the department check with appropriate agencies to see if they can shed some light on what this object might be. The general region has had more than its share of reports of UFOs the past week. Request a reply ASAP.”

The Department of State was not the only branch of government that took an interest in the case, as a CIA report – also of 15 May 1978 – makes abundantly clear:

“Many people in this part of the country claim they saw an object which resembled a soccer ball falling behind the mountains on the Argentine-Bolivian border, causing an explosion that shook the earth. This took place on May 6. Around that time some people in San Luis and Mendoza provinces reported seeing a flying saucer squadron flying in formation.”

Click here for the full report.

The Myths and Reality of Gold Confiscation

November 28, 2011

Free Gold Money Report

By James Turk

There are a number of common misconceptions about the gold confiscation foisted on the American people by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Most of these have been offered as justification for FDR’s nefarious deed, and over time have endured to become urban legends.

For example, perhaps the biggest and most enduring myth is that FDR had to confiscate gold because it was needed to back the dollar, which was still defined as 23.22 grains of fine gold, i.e., $20.67 per ounce. What the propagators of this popular myth conveniently ignore is basic math.

In December 1932, the US Gold Reserve equaled 204.5 million ounces. This weight was slightly more than the reserve’s average weight of 202.2 million ounces from the October 1929 stock market crash through December 1932, a period that covers the worst of the depression.

After FDR’s election victory in November 1932, rumors began circulating that once in office, FDR would seize the people’s gold. Because of these rumors, which perhaps originated from tips by White House insiders who knew of the confiscation scheme, dollars were redeemed for gold, as was possible at the time, and much of this gold was exported or simply hidden. This point is explained in detail in Milton Friedman’s The Monetary History of the United States.

As a result of these redemptions of paper dollars for physical gold, the US Gold Reserve dropped to 193.3 million ounces by FDR’s inauguration in March 1933. With the confiscation thereafter in place, the outflows stopped, and the reserve began to grow with the metal collected from the confiscation. The reserve reached 195.1 million ounces in January 1934 when FDR re-defined the dollar as only 13.71 grains. It was a 41% devaluation of the dollar, which meant that it thereafter took $35 to exchange for one ounce of gold. So here is the math.

Click here for the full report.

Why Inflation Is Hitting Baby Boomers Hardest

November 28, 2011

CNBC

By: Antonia van de Velde

UK inflation, currently at 5 percent, is hitting those aged between 45 and 65 known as the baby boomer generation hardest, a new report has found.

If the current level of inflation persists, in 2024 that generation will find that 100 pounds ($156) will lose half its value and will only purchase £49.86 worth of goods and services, M&G Investments economist Anthony Doyle said in a report .

To analyze what the average UK citizen experienced in terms of inflation, Doyle split the population into four categories: student, parent of a young family, baby boomer, and pensioner.

“The basket of goods will differ between a student or a pensioner and hence their respective experience of inflation can be very different,” he said in his report.

His brother’s girlfriend, a university student, his uncle (parent of a young family), his father (baby boomer born in 1956), and his 78-year old grandmother served as examples.

Click here for the full report.

Adventures in Silver and Gold

November 28, 2011

Strike The Root

By Douglas Herman

Metal, heavy metal is much in the news these days. While heavy radioactive metals are melting down in Japan, the twin precious metals of gold and silver are melting upwards. We are always surrounded by precious metal. It is inside us. Sometimes we sacrifice our more precious mettle inside of us to sweat and sacrifice and finally extract the less valuable gold and silver metal outside us. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in nature is ours.” So wrote a man named Wordsworth and he surely knew what words were worth. Precious mettle, rarely radioactive.

I pass precious metal everyday on my walks. Most I pick it up. Aluminum cans, recyclable, required some person to sacrifice a portion of their life to extract that metal from the ground. I pick them up and save them; they’re like free money. And curiously, aluminum serves us far better than gold in our everyday life. But since these discarded cans are considered “trash” by trashy people, lacking in precious mettle, they toss them on the ground.

One day, in the not-too-distant future, ALL landfills will be mined for precious metals. I know for a fact the smallish Kodiak Island landfill contains tens of thousands of dollars worth of easily extracted aluminum, brass, copper, zinc, stainless steel and probably silver and gold. One day this landfill, like thousands of others like it, will be a valuable resource, once we change our way of thinking.

All metals are precious, requiring considerable time and toil to extract. Like the best elements of people, most of their value is overlooked and tossed away casually. Funny, but it has taken me more than 60 years to understand these simple truths. Precious mettle and precious metal share similar qualities that most treasure seekers finally see.

GOLD

Gold will get you killed or make you rich. Mostly gold will make you wiser on the way to getting you killed or getting you rich. In his youth, Mark Twain learned that digging dirt, looking for gold in Aurora Nevada, was much harder work than digging for the right noun or verb. Writing colorful stories paid better than pick and shovel work. Young Sam Clemens, the future Mark Twain, got his writing career started in Aurora by striking a rich vein of nouns and verbs rather than elusive gold nuggets.

America had a golden past once. And a silvery past too. Every ghost town in the American West was once either a gold or silver boom town. Because, once upon a time, all the paper money in America was proudly backed with either gold or silver, and sometimes both. But history, especially the history of empires in decline, are anathema to gold and silver as money. Precious metal is an impertinence, a “barbarous relic” in the memorable words of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. And so empires decline, but gold and silver, as does all precious metal, retains its wealth.

We were on a road trip, not to Aurora Nevada but instead to the Vulture Mine, just north of Phoenix, Arizona. The Vulture Mine ghost town consists of several large old industrial buildings and the ruins of numerous others. More than $200 million in gold was wrenched from the hard rocks of the mine. Eighty years after the discovery in 1863, the Vulture mine closed in 1942, by orders of the US government. Seems gold was less of a strategic mineral than brass and lead at the time.

From the Vulture rose the Phoenix, said a local historian we met there. The boom town of Vulture required supplies shipped from the smaller supply hub of Phoenix. Thus from the Vulture rose the Phoenix.

We stood staring at the remains of the assay office, a two story stone building nearing collapse. According to popular legend, the stone used in the building still contains several million dollars in unrefined gold. I picked up a chunk but didn’t see any indication of wealth, only a sort of ghostly nostalgia.

Behind the building stood the ruins of the mine supervisor’s little office. Shading the walls stood a smallish tree, a hanging tree according to legend. Hard to imagine that 18 men were hung from this little tree for “high-grading,” or pilfering gold from the mine walls. Frontier justice. High grading seems like a far lesser offense than any crime committed by the Masterminds of Wall Street and their willing, wealthy accomplices in D.C. who have high-graded billions from poorer Americans. But then again Joseph Stiglitz said throwing a few Wall Street bankers in jail would serve as a lesson for the rest. “Somebody is caught for a minor drug offense they are sent to prison for a very long time,” said Stiglitz. “And yet, these so-called white-collar crimes, which are not victimless, almost none of these guys, almost none of them, go to prison.” Maybe a hanging tree wouldn’t be such a bad idea, for the crime of epic high-grading, I mean.

Click here for the full report.

Green Tea Supplements Prevent Flu Better Than Vaccination

November 28, 2011

Natural News

By Ethan Evers

“Only people who are misinformed and brainwashed get a flu shot.  Try some green tea – or better yet, how bout some Vitamin D3?”  –KTRN

Flu season is now in full swing and seasonal vaccinations are being pushed from every corner. Nonetheless, a recent clinical trial showed that green tea-based supplements reduced the risk of flu by 75%. This is far better than the 60% risk reduction recently reported in the Lancet for vaccinations. Given that green tea provides a host of other health benefits and none of the risks of injections, it would appear to be a far superior alternative to vaccination.

Green Tea: Natural Antiviral and Immune Enhancer
For many years it has been known that green tea polyphenols actively suppress many bacterial, fungal and viral species. On the virus front, green tea suppresses the adenovirus, Epstein-Barr, herpes simplex, HIV-1 and influenza viruses. EGCG, one of the main polyphenols in green tea, is mainly responsible for this suppression. Specifically, ECGC binds to the hemagglutinin of the influenza virus, which blocks it from attaching to (and infecting) target receptor cells. EGCG also alters the virus cell membrane, which further inhibits its ability to infect other cells. Another important component of green tea is the amino acid L-theanine, which has been shown to activate human gamma-delta-T lymphocytes to proliferate and make interferon-gamma, a potent antimicrobial cytokine. These lymphocytes are considered to be the body’s first line of defence against infection. Green tea therefore offers a two-pronged protection from the flu which vaccination simply cannot match. But for final proof, we need clinical trials.

Green Tea Lowers Flu Risk: Early Clinical Evidence
One early trial using green tea against the flu involved gargling three times daily with a weak solution of green tea (50 mg of catechins per cup, of which 60% was EGCG). The theory was that since the throat was a major infection site of influenza, gargling could stop the flu virus there. The theory was right: 1.3% of garglers contracted the flu vs. 10% of the control group. In another more sophisticated trial on 97 healthy adults, a proprietary blend of theanine and green tea polyphenols (apparently worth about 10 cups of green tea per day, but exact amounts were not disclosed) was used for three months during flu season. This trial was randomized, double-blind and placebo controlled. The supplement takers experienced 32% less illnesses and 35% fewer “symptom days.” However, participants were included in the statistical analysis even if their compliance (actually taking the green tea pills) was only 70%.

Click here for the full report.

U.S. Ranks 28th In Life Expectancy While It Pays The MOST For Health Care

November 28, 2011

The Daily Mail

By Daily Mail Reporter

“If mainstream medical care was effective, than the US should be the healthiest country in the world. Sadly, we are one of the sickest.” –KTRN

A new survey on health care is revealing that you may not be getting what you pay for if you check into a U.S. hospital.

The U.S. healthcare system is more effective at delivering high costs than quality care than other developed nations, according to the study, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.

It found first-rate treatment for cancer but insufficient primary care for other ailments.

The study said Americans pay more than $7,900 per person for healthcare each year – far more than any other OECD country – but still die earlier than their peers in the industrialized world.

The cost of healthcare in the United States is 62 percent higher than that in Switzerland, which has a similar per capita income and also relies substantially on private health insurance.

Meanwhile, Americans receive comparatively little actual care, despite sky-high prices driven by expensive tests and procedures.

They also spend more tax money on healthcare than most other countries, the study showed.

Click here for the full report.

Olympic Canoeists Introduce Honey To Diet To Boost Recovery

November 28, 2011

The Telegraph

By Andy Bloxham

“Someone better call the FDA. Olympic athletes are using honey to help them recover. Quick – honey is now a drug. Let’s get a patent.” –KTRN

Jon Schofield, Liam Heath and Rachel Cawthorn trialling the honey as part of their preparations for the London Games next year.

The idea is that the honey could help fat burning and post-training recuperation as it fuels the body’s nightly repair and recovery processes.

According to researchers, the body burns more fat during the first four hours of sleep than it does during any other activity, including exercise.

But foods rich in fructose, such as honey and dried fruits, may prolong the process if eaten before bed.

However, the manufacturers claim the “Active Chilean Rainforest Honey” is better than normal honey, partly because it is unpasteurised, which helps retain the maximum nutritional benefit.

Click here for the full report.

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