Was Lindsey Graham Assassinated?

Fauci vs Fauci | "From Virus to Vaccine"

Vatican Priest ADMITS: “We Couldn’t Let Pope Francis Talk”

Trump's hot mic moment with Chief Justice John Roberts sparks conspiracy...

 

--------------------------------------------------------

Did CBS News Just Confirm Everything We Feared About Obama’s Movie Leave the World Behind?

FBI release ‘remarkable statement’ on Elon Musk’s Twitter files

Angry Fauci calls out Conspiracy Theorists and "Those who should know be...

DHS Issues National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin

DHS Issues National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin

Release Date: February 7, 2022

WASHINGTON – Today, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin regarding the continued heightened threat environment across the United States. This is the fifth NTAS Bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security since January 2021 and it replaces the current Bulletin that was set to expire tomorrow.

“DHS remains committed to proactively sharing timely information and intelligence about the evolving threat environment with the American public,” said Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “We also remain committed to working with our partners across every level of government and in the private sector to prevent all forms of terrorism and targeted violence, and to support law enforcement efforts to keep our communities safe. This NTAS Bulletin outlines the key factors that have increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the current threat environment, and highlights resources for individuals and communities to stay safe.”


The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation.

While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions; (2) continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure; soft targets and mass gatherings; faith-based institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and mosques; institutions of higher education; racial and religious minorities; government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement and the military; the media; and perceived ideological opponents; and (3) calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on the United States based on recent events.

DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) continue to share timely and actionable information and intelligence with the broadest audience possible. This includes sharing information and intelligence with our partners across every level of government and in the private sector. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, DHS is prioritizing combating all forms of terrorism and targeted violence, including through its efforts to support the first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. Since January 2021, DHS has taken several steps in this regard, including:

 

• established a new domestic terrorism branch within DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis dedicated to producing sound, timely intelligence needed to counter domestic terrorism-related threats;
• launched the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to provide communities with resources and tools to help prevent individuals from radicalizing to violence;
• designated domestic violent extremism as a “National Priority Area” within DHS’s Homeland Security Grant Program for the first time, resulting in at least $77 million being spent on preventing, preparing for, protecting against, and responding to related threats nationwide;
• provided $180 million in funding to support target hardening and other physical security enhancements to non-profit organizations at high risk of terrorist attack through DHS’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP);
• increased efforts to identify and evaluate MDM, including false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms, that endorse violence; and,
• enhanced collaboration with public and private sector partners – including U.S. critical infrastructure owners and operators – to better protect our cyber and physical infrastructure and increase the Nation’s cybersecurity through the Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

DHS also has renewed its commitment to ensure that all efforts to combat domestic violent extremism are conducted in ways consistent with privacy protections, civil rights and civil liberties, and all applicable laws.

This NTAS Bulletin will expire on June 7, 2022. This NTAS Bulletin provides the public with information about the threat landscape facing the United States, how to stay safe, and resources and tools to help prevent an individual’s radicalization to violence. The public should report any suspicious activity or threats of violence to local law enforcement, FBI Field Offices, or a local Fusion Center. Read the current NTAS Bulletin here.

Source

‘Conspiracy Theorist’ Max Spiers Found Dead Days After Texting His Mother to Investigate if Anything ‘Happened to Him’

October 20, 2016






British conspiracy theorist and UFO expert Max Spiers was found dead on a sofa after vomiting ‘black liquid’. This happened only days after texting his mother about investigating if something happened to him.

Max Spiers, a 39-year-old father of two was found dead on a sofa in Poland, where he was invited to speak on conspiracy theories and UFOs. This happened in July and, since then, no post-mortem examination were carried out on his body. The death was ruled to be from ‘natural causes’.

Days before his death, Spiers texted his mom:


“Your boy’s in trouble. If something happens to me, investigate”.


Spiers, who claimed to be a survivor of a secret government ‘super soldier’ program, died suddenly after vomiting ‘black liquid’. His mother Vanessa Bates, an English teacher, told journalists:

“He was making a name for himself in the world of conspiracy theorists and had been invited to speak at a conference in Poland in July. He was staying with a woman who he had not known for long and she told me how she found him dead on the sofa. But I think Max had been digging in some dark places and I fear that somebody wanted him dead.”

– The Telegraph, UFO expert Max Spiers’ death prompts conspiracy theories

Bates believes that Spiers might have been poisoned.


“Max was a very fit man who was in good health. All I have is a death certificate from the Polish authorities that it was from natural causes, but no post-mortem was done so how can they tell that?

They are also refusing to release any paperwork about it to me because, absurdly, I don’t have his written permission.

He has a brother, Josh, and sister, Becky, who are both devastated, as are his two boys. We all want answers to this and I will continue to fight to get to the truth.”
– Ibid.

Spiers’ financé Sarah Adams told Yahoo! News that he was about to expose ‘black magic’ and well known politicians and celebrities.


“We were used to getting death threats or stuff like that from people but I think this time it seemed rather real. He’d been sent threats saying that him and me were going to die.

He was going to expose black magic. He was going to expose some of the stuff that he was working on involving political leaders and celebrities.

He planned on coming back here seeing his family and I was going to have his child. He had messaged me hours before.

It definitely couldn’t have been anything like suicide or something like that.”
– Yahoo! News, Here’s what conspiracy theorist Max Spiers was about to reveal before his death

North East Kent coroner’s office said that an investigation into Mr Spiers’ death was in its “very early” stages.

Was Spiers’ poisoned because he knew too much? Was he about to say too much? One thing is for sure, this death cannot be more suspicious.

Source

Are Theresa May and Angela Merkel in the ILLUMINATI?

Conspiracy theorists are convinced the leaders are in secretive sect because of similar hand gestures

By Patrick Lion For Mailonline

12:12 EST 23 Jul 2016, updated 16:37 EST 23 Jul 2016

Theresa May dragged into conspiracy theory about a 'secret EU society'
The 'secret sign' is a hand signal used by German leader Angela Merkel
Jean-Claude Juncker also used the sign meeting Belgian royalty this week

Prime Minister Theresa May has found herself in the middle of a bizarre internet conspiracy theory involving claims of a secret EU Illuminati society.

Mrs May used the hand signal - already frequently used by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker - on July 11 when speaking at Westminster before her elevation to 10 Downing Street.

The hand signal is listed on the illuminati hand signs conspiracy theory website illuminatiRex and described as a 'Merkel-Raute'.

Prime Minister Theresa May used the hang signal after Andrea Leadsom pulled out of the Tory leadership contest outside the Houses of Parliament on July 11

The 'Merkel-Raute' is a reverse variation of the first illuminati 'Roc Sign' - roughly in the shape of a diamond or pyramid - used by celebrities such as actors, Denzel Washington, Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise

Users of the 'Merkel-Raute', as it has become known due to the German's frequent use, have also included other European historical figures including Pope John Paul II and Adolf Hitler.

'The pyramid is an important Illuminati symbol showing their few ruling the many on the bottom type power structure,' the illuminatiRex website states.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel used the signal in Hamburg on February 12 when meeting with David Cameron when he was prime minister

'The symbol becomes more powerful when the sign is done over an eye, representing the All-Seeing eye in a capstone floating over an unfinished pyramid.'

'The pyramid sign is seen by many researchers to be THE sign of the Illuminati.'

Mr Juncker was captured using the 'Merkel-Raute' signal this week when he met Belgium royalty on Friday.

But he had also used it on July 7 in Strasbourg, France.

German politician Memet Kilic had noticed the similarities between Mrs May and Mrs Merkel, describing the new PM as a 'competitor' in hand gestures against the German.


Source

"Addressed to everyone", not just the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

Pope demands climate change action

By PRESS ASSOCIATION

PUBLISHED: 09:30 EST, 18 June 2015 | UPDATED: 09:30 EST, 18 June 2015

The pope has issued a stark warning over the urgent need to tackle "extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems" in an eagerly-awaited message on the environment.

In the first papal encyclical Pope Francis has written, he said climate change was mostly down to human activity and policies were urgently needed to cut carbon emissions, such as by reducing fossil fuels and developing renewables.

People in wealthy countries need to change their unsustainable lifestyles, as exploitation of the planet has already exceeded acceptable limits and millions of tonnes of waste are being generated, making the Earth look more and more "like an immense pile of filth".




Pope Francis said his encyclical was 'addressed to everyone', not just the world's 1.2 billion Catholics
In a hard-hitting message on environmental degradation and poverty, the pontiff warned that "doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain", and that resource shortages could lead to new wars.

Setting out the moral case for action on the environment, the pope said climate change represented "one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day", and warned its worst impact would be felt in poorer countries.

"We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental," he warned.

The papal encyclical, a letter sent to 5,000 Catholic bishops worldwide, is published in five languages and the pontiff has said the document is "addressed to everyone", not just the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3129276/Pope-issues-climate-change-warning.html#ixzz3dQWCbY70 

.

THE TWO KINGDOMS: THE STRUGGLE FOR TRUTH

EvenAtTheDoors

Published on May 28, 2014

No description available.
.
.

Grassy Knolls - Conspiracy Thinking in American History

... ...

President John F. Kennedy greets the crowd in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963, shortly before his assassination (Library of Congress).



Published: November 22, 2013

On November 22nd, 1963, 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy was killed while riding in a motorcade in Dallas – a tragedy that inspired conspiracy theories that persist to this day. Why have alternative assassination theories proven so resilient over the years? And why do other conspiracy theories persist in public memory? This episode takes a look at conspiracy thinking throughout American history, and finds a long tradition stretching all the way back to the Founding.

From a political party formed to combat the secretive power of Freemasons, to whispers of a “slave power” conspiracy in the 19th Century, to an outcry over a criminal network fostering “white slavery” in the early 20th Century, and, of course, an abundance of Communist conspiracies during the Cold War – the Guys and their guests discover that while conspiracy theorists might sometimes be on the fringes of American society, conspiracy thinking has always been mainstream.


Source
.

Did Kenyan Soldiers Loot Mall During Fight With Terrorists?

by Gregory Warner
October 02, 2013 3:27 AM

Listen to Story

7 min 48 sec

Bullet holes in the glass door of a shop in the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Rukmini Callimachi/AP

More than a week after Islamic militants stormed an upscale mall in Nairobi, Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta has vowed to set up a commission to look into lapses in intelligence and security. At least , which ended with dozens still unaccounted for.

Days after the attack, a man who manages a clothing store in the Westgate Mall sorts through damaged shoes, shirts and ties. He's visibly shaken from his trip back into the place he escaped under gunfire. Much of the damaged clothing is from bullet holes.

"These are all waste now," he says. "Even it if it is small hole, it is waste." He says there's no insurance for a terrorist attack, and some of the most expensive suits and shoes are missing.

Other shop owners reported Rolex watches, diamond jewelry and mobile phones looted, allegedly by Kenyan soldiers during the fight against the terrorists. The allegations have shaken people in Nairobi, who just a week ago were hailing the soldiers as heroes.

"We wish to affirm that government takes very seriously these allegations of looting," Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said at a press conference.

Lenku was on the defensive, and not just about what his soldiers allegedly did during those four days in the mall, but what they did not do. A leaked intelligence report indicates that security chiefs and Cabinet ministers were warned about Westgate as an al-Shabab target. They were even warned of one likely mode of attack, where operatives "storm the buildings with guns and grenades."

Lenku's response: "With regard to the issue of our information or our intelligence, that is our business."

Probably the most sensitive questions still lingering in this shaken city are about how the fight was waged. Why did it take the Kenyan army four days to kill five militants? And what happened to the other five to 10 terrorists?

Kweya Obedi is the Nairobi county director of the Red Cross. He was leading a team of volunteers who rushed in on the afternoon of Sept. 21 to rescue people from where they hid inside shops. Even by that point, he says, some hours after the initial assault, the terrorists had been mostly pushed back by the special Israeli-trained unit of the police called the Recce group, experienced in hostage rescue.

"The police had better control of the situation," Obedi says.

But then a commander of the special unit was killed, reportedly by friendly fire, and the special police were sent out to guard the perimeter while the soldiers took over the operation. That, business owners say, is when they believe the looting took place.

It's still unclear why Kenya's poorly paid military took over the situation while the special police were sent outside, but several people familiar with the operation say that's when the pace of attack slowed. By 10:30 that night, the situation had gone from a full-court press on the gunmen to a siege or standoff that would stretch on for another three days.

"When the military came in there was no proper plan for takeover. That allowed the terrorists to regroup," says George Musamali, a retired officer who now runs a Kenyan security company.

Musamali criticized the military for allowing terrorists to regroup and rearm. He and others said the military declined to fight at night, which may have allowed the terrorists to hunt and kill more people in their hiding places.

Now, Kenya's president has declared a commission of inquiry to investigate the security lapses, but Musamali says that in Kenya, commissions are seen as ways to evade the problem.

"In Kenya we are used to these kind of inquiries," he says. "We never see the results."

The challenge for Kenya's controversial president, who next month goes on trial in The Hague for allegedly instigating tribal violence in the last election, is not to be seen to favor a military elite dominated by his own tribe.

Source

.

Michael Hastings, the FBI, and WikiLeaks: Death of Journalist Sparks Conspiracy Theories

Today at 9:47 AM


By Joe Coscarelli




The death of reporter Michael Hastings, best remembered for taking on General Stanley McChrystal and other powerful people, has been met with shock and grief in the journalistic community, especially from those fortunate enough to work alongside him. But one layer below the fond remembrances are a host of vague questions and inferences about the circumstances surrounding the 33-year-old BuzzFeed reporter's fiery solo car crash early Tuesday in Los Angeles. Bringing those suspicions to the forefront last night was WikiLeaks, never reticent to insert itself into a story, which teased, "Michael Hastings death has a very serious non-public complication. We will have more details later." And after three hours tweeted: "Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him."

"Yeah," BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith confirmed to Daily Intelligencer. "Before his death, Michael told a number of his friends and colleagues that he was concerned that he was under investigation."


But other, less reputable sources have taken the speculation much further. "Vince Foster-like murder plot emerging in Los Angeles? Did the Obama administration knock off a star reporter?" asked one blog early on Wednesday, adding to existing conspiratorial Twitter chatter. Another wrote, "Admit it, Michael Hastings’ Death is Weird and Scary." Hours before revelations about a potential FBI investigation, InfoWars, the Alex Jones website that serves as a catch-all conspiracy-theory clearing house, mentioned Hastings's death with an editor's note: "Journalists who mess with government and military power often die under mysterious circumstances." None had more than conjecture.


The circumstances are these: "Police said a vehicle was southbound on Highland about 4:20 a.m. when it lost control south of Melrose and smashed into a tree," the L.A. Times reported. Video purports to show Hastings's Mercedes-Benz running a red light at a high speed minutes before the crash. "It sounded like a bomb went off in the middle of the night," a witness told the local news. "I couldn't have written a scene like this for a movie, where the engine flies from the car." Photos and video from the aftermath show extreme wreckage, and as of yesterday, the coroner had not officially identified the body because it was too badly burned.


But an automotive writer also fed the doubters:

I’m here to state that I’ve seen dozens of cars hit walls and stuff at high speeds and the number of them that I have observed to eject their powertrains and immediately catch massive fire is, um, ah, zero. Modern cars are very good at not catching fire in accidents. The Mercedes-Benz C-Class, which is an evolutionary design from a company known for sweating the safety details over and above the Euro NCAP requirements, should be leading the pack in the not-catching-on-fire category. Nor is the C-Class known for sudden veering out of control into trees and whatnot.


The crash is under investigation and there will be an official accident report (a toxicology report could take weeks). Whatever its findings, they can likely coexist with Hastings's mind-set at the time and a potential government investigation without representing something more sinister.


"He was incredibly tense and very worried and was concerned that the government was looking in on his material," said Hastings's friend and Current TV host Cenk Uygur. "I don't know what his state of mind was at 4:30 in the morning, but I do know what his state of mind was in general, and it was a nervous wreck." But Mother Jones editor Clara Jeffery put it plainly: "Ugh, the people posting Vince Foster style comments  do a disservice to his no BS truth telling." Let's wait for the facts.


Update: The L.A. Times reports that Hastings, prior to his death, "was researching a story about a privacy lawsuit brought by the Florida socialite Jill Kelley against the Department of Defense and the FBI." The paper also notes, "Since Hastings's death early Tuesday, wild conspiracy theories have bloomed on the Internet implying that he was murdered by powerful forces wanting to silence him."


Update II: The LAPD tells the Times "there appears to be no foul play in the one-vehicle accident that killed journalist Michael Hastings ... Officials are trying to determine whether there was a mechanical problem with the car." His body has been positively identified by the L.A. coroner.

Source

/

They're watching: why city-wide surveillance failed to stop the Boston bombing

"If everyone becomes a suspect, then nobody is a suspect."

By Matt Stroud on April 24, 2013 01:25 pm

All day Sunday, police directed traffic around a blocked-off section of Boylston Street in downtown Boston where bombs had gone off nearly a week earlier, killing three and wounding hundreds. A makeshift memorial had been set up to honor the dead with personal messages and flowers, and old running shoes hung from metal barricades. Similar makeshift memorials were set up in suburbs outside the city proper, at least one designed in the dried blood of a dead suspect.


About a mile northwest from Boston’s ground zero, across the Charles River in Cambridge, a small but notable memorial had been set up. This one lay on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s campus, on a concrete walkway beside MIT’s Ray and Maria Stata Center. Famous for its Frank Gehry-designed architecture, Stata is all kitty-cornered frames and weirdly metallic boxes, like something out of a futuristic claymation video or Pee-wee’s Playhouse. This memorial seemed out of place. It was set up to honor an MIT police officer, Sean Collier, who had been shot and killed here while on duty, allegedly by the brothers suspected of carrying out the bombings downtown days earlier.

Read more

.

SPLC warns Homeland Security of 'conspiracy-minded groups'

HOMELAND SECURITY

MARCH 5, 2013

BY: DAVID GARRETT JR.

Southern Poverty Law Center logo.
Credits:
Southern Poverty Law Center




The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary (DHS) Janet Napolitano today that warned of "patriot groups" and domestic terrorism.

"The number of conspiracy-minded antigovernment 'Patriot' groups on the American radical right reached an all-time high in 2012, the fourth consecutive year of powerful growth by a movement that is becoming increasingly militant as President Obama enters his second term and Congress debates gun control measures," the SPLC said in a press release today.

In the letter, the SPLC asked the department to "establish an interagency task force to assess the adequacy of the resources devoted to responding to the growing threat of non-Islamic domestic terrorism."

The SPLC said that there were 149 militias and "radical antigovernment groups" in 2008, but that the number increased to 1,360 in 2012. The SPLC said that the increased numbers are tied to the gun control debate. It also cited the case of a Tennessee man who threatened to "start killing people" if President Obama signed any executive orders to take weapons away from law abiding citizens. The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security suspended James Yeager's handgun carry permit after the department watched his video on YouTube.

"In the last four years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of conspiracy-minded, antigovernment groups as well as in the number of domestic terrorist plots," SPLC President and CEO J. Richard Cohen wrote."As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now also are seeing ominous threats from those who believe the government is poised to take their guns."

The letter goes on to say that there is also a "high level" of "neo-Nazi and racist skinhead groups" that may be a result of "comprehensive immigration reform."

In an article on the SPLC website, the center attempted to tie groups wanting to preserve the second amendment with racism. Mark Potok wrote, "Anger over the idea of four more years under a black, Democratic president — and, even more explosively, the same kinds of gun control efforts that fueled the militia movement of the 1990s — seems already to be fomenting another Patriot spurt."

"In light of these questions and the disturbing trends we have described in this letter, we believe it is time to take a fresh look at the issue," Cohen wrote.

Source

l

The character assassination of Hillary Clinton

Kathleen ParkerOpinion Writer


By Kathleen Parker, Published: January 1


The new year began not with a cannonball off the “fiscal cliff” but with an outbreak of conspiratorial cynicism.

This time it’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose fall and concussion, followed by a blood clot between her brain and skull, has prompted an embarrassment of theories. The gist: That woman will do anything to avoid testifying about Benghazi.

Several commentators on the right opined via Twitter and TV, those most deadly hosts for the parasites of rumor and innuendo, that Clinton was faking her concussion to duck out on her appearance before congressional committees investigating the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

An independent report published last monthplaced substantial responsibility for the deaths on the State Department. Not only was security at the Benghazi compound weak, relying heavily on local forces with conflicting loyalties, but requests for additional security apparently were ignored or denied.

The sentiment that Clinton might not wish to testify on the matter is not without reason. It is hard to imagine the agony of knowing that one’s lack of vigilance may have contributed to four deaths. But the attacks on Clinton during her illness, essentially attacks on her character, have been cruel and unfair. What must the world think of us?

Clinton, who fainted as a result of dehydration after a bout of flu, hit her head and suffered a concussion, after which a blood clot was discovered. She had to be hospitalized while blood-thinning medications were administered and monitored.

Although her critics backed off once the clot was reported, initial responses ranged from “She’s faking” to demands for proof of her concussion.

One writer demanded her medical records. John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, called Clinton’s affliction a “diplomatic illness” to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Later he suggested that details were skimpy in an effort to protect her potential 2016 presidential run.

“I think it’s the too-cute-by-half approach that’s reflected in the absence of transparency that’s going to end up damaging her and damaging her credibility,” he said on Fox News.

Again, Clinton may well prefer to miss her day before the firing squad, but it is unlikely that doctors or a hospital would assist a secretary of state — or anyone — in concocting a fake affliction.

Besides, you can’t have it every which way. Immediately after the Benghazi attacks, Clinton took full responsibility for the events and was accused by Republicans of falling on her sword to protect President Obama. Now that she’s temporarily indisposed and unable to elaborate on her admitted responsibility, those same critics insist she’s trying to avoid taking personal responsibility.

The viciousness of the pundit class is disheartening and disgusting. And these days everyone’s a pundit. Got an opinion? Why, step right up to the microphone. If you’re “good TV,” you too can be a “contributor.”

Out in the hinterlands, where Americans consume “news” that suits their political proclivities, opinions are formed on the basis of what-he-said. Reputations and lives are ruined on the tines of pitchforks glimmering in the light of torch-bearing mobs. And those are just the “news” shows.

One doesn’t have to be a fan of Hillary Clinton, though a Bloomberg poll says that two-thirds of Americans are, to feel tainted by the relish with which she and many others have been attacked — unfairly and disproportionately. Susan Rice, who was Obama’s favorite to replace Clinton as secretary of state, comes to mind.

But this isn’t a problem only for women or Democrats. The rush to character assassination seems to be our only bipartisan imperative and is a blight on our political system. In this brooding age of superstition and portent, every misspoken word is a lie, every human error a hanging offense.

This is to suggest not that we be naive or credulous but that we seek some balance in our approach to discovery. At the moment, we seem to be ricocheting between hysteria and delusion.

Eventually, Clinton will have to step forward and take her medicine. She is slated to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in mid-January, though the date hasn’t been set. The nation clearly needs answers on what happened in Benghazi, and no doubt Clinton will provide them.

This is not blind faith in a favored politician but respect for a process that relies on accepted rules of order. We owe our representative to the world — which is to say, ourselves — at least this much.

kathleenparker@washpost.com

Source

.

THERE ARE NO CONSPIRACIES

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2012

According to several nationwide polls, 96 percent of Americans do NOT VISIT conspiracy web sites (4 per cent of Americans believe the polls are a conspiracy).

However, a little research revealed that of the 1,200 conspiracy web sites, a hundred and twelve percent of them think the majority of Americans are so brain-dead that if a micro-drone flew up their noses it would meet no resistence coming out of their ears, but, it would never come out their rectums.

Is it any wonder that it’s difficult to convince family, friends, co-workers and total strangers at Star bucks that you’re NOT crazy, when all the polls say YOU ARE.

I know personally that there are conspiracies. Right now the Weather Channel says it’s NOT raining, but it is. What’s that if not a conspiracy to get me wet.

Actually, every one knows that no - ONE - CONSPIRES to commit a crime because it takes more than - ONE - to commit a conspiracy, plus there are laws against it, which is why our government doesn’t do it.

And if you don’t believe me ask the 4 per cent of Americans who think they are informed (if you can find one).

Ooooh....there is one.

Source

.

China: Google Earth spots huge, unidentified structures in Gobi desert

Vast, unidentified, structures have been spotted by satellites in the barren Gobi desert, raising questions about what China might be building in a region it uses for its military, space and nuclear programmes.

All of the sites are on the borders of Gansu province and Xinjiang... some less than 100 miles from Jiuquan, the headquarters of China's space programme and the location of its launch pads
Photo: GOOGLE EARTH

By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai and Thomas Harding, Defence correspondent
1:50PM GMT 14 Nov 2011

In two images, available on Google Earth, reflective rectangles up to a mile long can be seen, a tangle of bright white intersecting lines that are clearly visible from space.

Other pictures show enormous concentric circles radiating on the ground, with three jets parked at their centre.

In one picture from 2007, a mass of orange blocks have been carefully arranged in a circle. In a more recent image, however, the blocks, each one the size of a shipping container, appear to have been scattered as far as three miles from the original site.

Another image shows an array of metallic squares littered with what appears to be the debris of exploded vehicles while another shows an intricate grid that is some 18 miles long.

All of the sites are on the borders of Gansu province and Xinjiang, some less than 100 miles from Jiuquan, the headquarters of China's space programme and the location of its launch pads.

The two reflective rectangles lie 70 miles from the nearest main road and there is no sign of any surrounding activity. However, Ding Xin military airbase, where China carries out its secret aircraft testing programme, is relatively nearby, at a distance of some 400 miles.

400 miles in the other direction is Lop Nur, the salt lakes where China tested 45 nuclear bombs between 1967 and 1995.

The purpose of the structures is unknown, but some experts suggested that they might be optical test ranges for Chinese missiles, to simulate the street grids of cities.

Tim Ripley, a defence expert from Jane's Defence Weekly, compared the structures to similar grids in Area 51, the secret United States military test base in Nevada. "The picture of the circle looks very like a missile test range, with target and instrumentation set out to record weapon effects. The Americans have lots of these in Nevada – Area 51!" he said.

Conspiracy theorists believe that Area 51 is home to the remains of an alien spacecraft found at Roswell, and there was no shortage on Monday of similar hypotheses about the Chinese sites.

"It looks like our own Area 51," said one commenter on Baidu, a Chinese website. "Can it be an alien base," asked another. "It looks like solar energy facilities, with a walkway along the side," said a third.

Source

.