The solar wind is a blazing 584 km/sec and there are 7 sunspots on the sun today. Growing
sunspot AR2080 has a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar
flares.
Two Whitehall residents say they're finding gold flakes in their tap water and that it's raising
concerns about what else might be in the water.
Whitehall is about 25 miles southeast of Butte in Jefferson County. The town gets its drinking
water from two wells -- one off Division Street and another a half block east of Whitehall Street.
Both wells are right in the middle of town.
NBC Montana was in Whitehall today and saw firsthand gold flakes coming from the faucet.
Mark Brown told us his wife Sharon was finishing up the dishes earlier this week when she
noticed something unusual.
Brown explained, "She had pulled the plug to let the water out and there were glistening,
gleaming little flecks."
They showed us what they found -- small gold-colored flakes, right in the bottom of the sink.
Brown recalled their disbelief, "That couldn't possibly be gold, huh? And I was sure it wasn't."
He showed us how they are finding the flakes in their tap water and also the toilet tank. They ran
multiple tests on the flakes and found one of the most precious metals on earth -- gold -- was
coming out of the tap.
Brown said, "Everything I tried to do to dispel this, I got nothing. And I can't explain it either.
It's bizarre."
Among the tests run on the gold flakes was a chemical test where a solution is used to dissolve
any metal that isn't pure gold.
Paul Harper lives next door to the Browns. He's also seeing gold in his tap water. He deals in
antiques and gold and is the one who conducted the chemical test. He told us, "There was no
dissolving at all of the gold."
Harper ran the test again for us. There was no reaction on the flakes, but when the chemical hit
gold-painted foil, it melted away.
Harper and the Browns are concerned about what their findings mean for the town's water supply
and its filtration.
"If we're seeing heavy metals that you can see with the naked eye," said Brown, "what else might
be in there?"
We spoke to Whitehall Public Works Director Jerry Ward Wednesday afternoon. He tells us
there is nothing to indicate anything harmful in the water.
Gold is no stranger to Whitehall. In 1982, the Golden Sunlight open pit gold mine went into
operation. The mine is located about 5 miles northeast of Whitehall. The pit mine is visible from
Interstate 90.
State water quality officials say there is no reason to suspect whatever the homeowners found in
their water came from that mine.
We dug into Whitehall's periodic water quality reports. The city's water has never tested positive
for contamination from any metal. It's important to note gold is not a regulated contaminate in
drinking water.
An official with the State Department of Environmental Quality told us he suspects the flakes
reported came from pipes or a pump, or some approved equipment tied to the Whitehall water
supply.
We're told a sample has been sent to a lab in Butte. Estimates are it will take at least 24 hours to
find out what's in the water. When they do, we'll let you know.
The Feds are Coming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – You have grown up never seeing tanks in your streets, or war
planes or drones passing overhead. Your kindergartners don’t scream and run for cover when
they hear a plane flying overhead, like they do in Pakistan. Until now. The United States is reestablishing a law enforcement group to fight those it designates as domestic terrorists, with an
announcement expected on Tuesday, Department of Justice officials said.
Following hate-motivated shootings such as the one at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas
City, Missouri in April, federal prosecutors have pressed the need to coordinate intelligence of
such criminals on a national level, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The group will coordinate cases that involve Americans who may be spurred to violence for
political or prejudicial reasons.
It will include representatives of the FBI, the National Security Division of the Justice
Department and the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, which includes representatives of
federal prosecutors.
Then Attorney General Janet Reno first established such a task force following the Oklahoma
City bombing in 1995. She used her power with deadly force. You’ll recall that she ordered
Federal troops to cut off the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas from all water and food in order
to starve them out of their residence. They had created a false charge of child abuse, which
never happened, and then ratcheted up the situation until they finally punched through the walls
of their home with a gas nozzle. Since all their electricity and heat had been cut off, the families
living in the house were using lanterns and cook stoves to keep warm and to be able to live at
night. The gas ignited and burned them all alive on national TV. Janet Reno refused to answer
any Congressional questions and never served a single day in jail for the massacre. Her private
army was dismantled after the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacked-plane attacks as the agencies turned their
attention toward threats from abroad.
Last month, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signed a memorandum reconstituting the federal
army and will announce the details in a few days, one official said.
Events like the April 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon, in which the attackers appeared to
be influenced by extremist groups abroad, would not fall under the committee's jurisdiction.
He is re-establishing a law enforcement group of mercenaries to fight those it designates as
domestic terrorists. Following highly publicized and selected hate-motivated shootings such as
the one at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri in April, federal prosecutors
have pressed the need to coordinate intelligence of such criminals on a national level, said the
officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The group will coordinate cases that involve Americans who may be spurred to violence for
political or prejudicial reasons. That means anyone who uses a weapon of any kind to beat back
the Federal government from reaching into their territory, will be facing highly trained and wellarmed mercenaries who can burn, imprison, or kill civilians with impunity. The task force will
chiefly comprise leaders from the FBI, the Justice Department’s National Security Division and
U.S. Attorneys. The mercenary group is called the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee.
Though the original task force, which was little known, focused mainly on right-wing zealots,
Holder’s version is aimed at U.S. citizens or visitors radicalized via the Internet. Holder said the
government will continue to fight terrorists abroad.
“But we also must concern ourselves with a different type of threat. We face an escalating
danger from self-radicalized individuals within our own borders,” he said.
Horrific terror incidents like the tragic shootings at Fort Hood and last year's Boston Marathon
bombing demonstrate the danger we face from these homegrown threats. - Atty. Gen. Eric H.
Holder, Jr.
“Horrific terror incidents like the tragic shootings at Fort Hood and last year’s Boston Marathon
bombing demonstrate the danger we face from these homegrown threats,” Holder said in the
video posted on the department’s website.
“Now -- as the nature of the threat we face evolves to include the possibility of individual
radicalization via the Internet -- it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here
at home,” Holder said.
Holder is missing the point here. These examples are not radicalized from the internet. These
were radicalized by their Islamic religions of war and hatred. They were not wound up about
some crime gang running a protection racket in Washington. They were not energized to action
about corrupt cops or local politicians embezzling taxpayer funds for a swanky new golf club
lake or a junket to Las Vegas. The Constitution gives us the right, in fact it assigns us with the
duty to rise up and overthrow a government that tyrannizes the citizens.
Shaky LA
No, it's not your imagination: The Los Angeles area is feeling more earthquakes this year.
After a relatively quiet period of seismic activity in the Los Angeles area, the last five months
have been marked by five earthquakes larger than 4.0. That hasn't occurred since 1994, the year
of the destructive Northridge earthquake that produced 53 such temblors.
Over the next two decades, there were some years that passed without a single quake 4.0 or
greater.
Earthquake experts said 2014 is clearly a year of increased seismic activity, but they said it's hard
to know whether the recent string of quakes suggests that a larger one is on the way.
Interactive
Large earthquakes in the Los Angeles area Read the story
"Probably this will be it, and there won't be any more 4s. But the chance we will have a bigger
earthquake this year is more than if we hadn't had this cluster," U.S. Geological Survey
seismologist Lucy Jones said. "Every earthquake makes another earthquake more likely."
Quakes in the magnitude 4 range are large enough to be felt over wide areas but generally too
small to cause much damage. The largest this year was a magnitude 5.1 in La Habra, which
caused several million dollars in damage. Others hit Fontana and Rowland Heights.
But scientists are particularly intrigued by the other two quakes, which were centered along the
405 Freeway under the Santa Monica Mountains.
In addition to a 4.4 quake March 17 in Encino and Sunday's 4.2 temblor a few miles away in
Brentwood, 15 earthquakes between magnitude 1.0 and 2.5 hit between January and March in
the Santa Monica Mountains near Wilacre Park.
The quakes show that seismic activity underneath the Santa Monica Mountains is increasing,
Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson said. The mountains were formed by earthquake activity
over millions of years.
The quakes occurred in an area of relatively steep terrain and within less than three miles of each
other, suggesting that they were related, Hauksson said.
"We don't know if it has ended or if it will keep going," Hauksson said.
Special Report
California earthquake safety Read more stories
After the March 17 quake, the leading theory from seismologists was that it could have been an
aftershock of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which killed 57 people. But on Monday,
Hauksson said it's possible both quakes could be part of a new seismic sequence.
Experts have also been investigating possible causes for the La Habra quake.
The epicenter was in a region that has seen significant oil extraction over the decades. So
Hauksson studied whether oil pumping could have triggered the 5.1 quake as well as the 4.1
aftershock in Rowland Heights.
A review of data found that it was unlikely, Hauksson said. There was a doubling of petroleum
extraction from Santa Fe Springs in the year before the La Habra earthquake, but that was
roughly seven miles from the epicenter — too far for a connection to be made.
There was also "no trail of seismicity from the oil field to the 5.1 earthquake," Hauksson said.
The U.S. Geological Survey has been studying the increase in earthquakes larger than 3.0 in the
central and eastern United States in recent years. There have been more than 100 a year on
average in the last four years, up from 20 a year between 1970 to 2000.
The USGS studies suggest that the increased number of earthquakes coincides with the injection
of wastewater deep underground, a process that occurs after an oil extraction technique called
hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."
We don't know if it has ended or if it will keep going. - Egill Hauksson, Caltech seismolotist
According to the agency, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2011 appeared to be related to
wastewater disposal in rural central Oklahoma, damaging more than a dozen homes and leading
to some injuries.
Three Los Angeles City Council members want city, state and federal groups to determine
whether fracking and other forms of oil and gas "well stimulation" played any role in the March
17 earthquake.
An oil and gas industry association called the effort "appallingly irresponsible," and said it wasn't
surprising that "the handful of extremist environmental organizations ... would attempt to make
an entirely unfounded connection between hydraulic fracturing and the earthquake."
Hauksson said study of whether the injection of wastewater underground after fracking
contributes to earthquakes in California is difficult because there's no publicly available,
comprehensive database about what volumes of fluid oil companies are injecting into the ground
and where it is occurring.
Jones said the number of sizable quakes over a short period is notable, but also important to keep
in perspective.
"That's definitely way more than the long-term average," Jones said. "Is that something to worry
about? If we knew that, we'd be predicting earthquakes.
Steve Forbes says the Fed is Being Negligent
Influential financial publisher and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes is out with a new
warning that the U.S. faces an economic catastrophe due to the Federal Reserve's loose dollar
policy, and returning to a strict “gold standard” is the only way to avoid disaster.
In Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy -- and What We
Can Do About It, Forbes blames President Obama's money team for the stagnant economy, high
prices, declining mobility and big government.
"[The Fed's] vastly misguided monetary policies are now setting the stage for a new economic
and social catastrophe — one that could rival the financial crisis and horrors of the 1930s,” he
wrote in the book co-authored by Elizabeth Ames.
Just like many financial conservatives have advised in the past, notably former Reps. Jack Kemp
and Ron Paul, Forbes said that economic prosperity can come only if the dollar is linked to gold
and not printed willy-nilly at inflated rates.
"The best way to achieve monetary stability: linking the dollar to gold,” he wrote in the book out
today. “The Fed should have only two tasks: keeping the dollar fixed to gold and dealing quickly
and decisively with panics,” he wrote, according to excerpts provided in advance to Secrets.
Forbes has long been a leading conservative voice on the economy, and his latest book is likely
to revive calls for a gold standard.
"The refusal of many in the policy establishment to entertain the idea of a return to a gold
standard is based on astounding ignorance about just what a gold standard would mean and how
it would work,” he wrote.
The book is extremely critical of the Fed, especially former Chairman Ben Bernanke and current
Chairwoman Janet Yellen. "The Federal Reserve must stop trying to run the banking system and
the economy."
Instead, the power of the Fed should be restrained, he said. "In an ideal world the head of the
Federal Reserve would be no more important than the director of the Office of Weights and
Measures inside the Department of Commerce."
Among the economic problems Forbes blames on the Fed’s monetary policies:
— The U.S.'s weak economic recovery.
-- Slower long-term growth and higher unemployment.
— High food and fuel prices.
— Declining mobility, greater inequality and the destruction of personal wealth.
— Increased volatility and currency crises.
— Larger government with higher debt.
— Lower levels of business innovation and entrepreneurship
Coal is the new Enemy of the State
Coal-state lawmakers, accusing President Obama of using a back door to impose strict emissions
limits on power plants, are rallying to slam that door shut -- claiming the plan would cost jobs
and jack up electric bills.
In Kentucky, West Virginia, and other states that rely on coal to fuel their own economies -- and
that help generate power for everybody else -- officials vowed Monday to introduce legislation
halting the newly announced EPA plan.
Under the draft regulation unveiled Monday, carbon emissions at fossil fuel-burning power
plants would be cut 30 percent by 2030.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., calling the move an "assault" on the economy and an "illegal use of
executive power," said he'd "force a vote to repeal it."
On the House side, Democratic West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall announced he would introduce
legislation, along with Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., to stop the EPA plan.
"We will introduce bipartisan legislation that will prevent these disastrous new rules from
wreaking havoc on our economy in West Virginia," Rahall said in a statement.
The 645-page plan, expected to be finalized next year, is a centerpiece of Obama's climate
change agenda, and a step that the administration hopes will get other countries to act when
negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year.
"We have a moral obligation to act," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said, in announcing the
plan Monday morning.
While the proposed regulation drew praise from environmental groups, the coal industry and
coal-state lawmakers were apprehensive.
Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, said he's "certain that it will be very bad
news for states like Kentucky who mine and use coal to create electricity."
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who represents Kentucky, called it a "dagger in the
heart of the American middle class" -- and predicted higher power costs and less reliable energy
as a result. McConnell's general election opponent, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, also
spoke out against the plan.
The draft regulation sidesteps Congress, where Obama's Democratic allies have failed to pass a
so-called "cap-and-trade" plan to limit such emissions.
Under the plan, carbon emissions would be reduced 30 percent by 2030, compared with 2005
levels. The proposal sets off a complex regulatory process in which the 50 states will each
determine how to meet customized targets set by the EPA.
States could have until 2017 to submit a plan to cut power plant pollution, and 2018 if they join
with other states to tackle the problem, according to the EPA's proposal.
EPA data shows that the nation's power plants have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by nearly
13 percent since 2005. But with coal-fired power plants already beleaguered by cheap natural gas
prices and other environmental regulations, experts said reaching the targets won't be easy. The
EPA is expected to offer a range of options to states to meet targets that will be based on where
they get their electricity and how much carbon dioxide they emit in the process.
While some states will be allowed to emit more and others less, overall the reduction will be 30
percent nationwide.
The options include making power plants more efficient, reducing the frequency at which coalfired power plants supply power to the grid, and investing in more renewable, low-carbon
sources of energy. They also can set up pollution-trading markets as some states already have
done to offer more flexibility in how plants cut emissions.
If a state refuses to create a plan, the EPA can make its own.
The Obama administration claimed the changes would produce jobs, cut electricity bills and save
thousands of lives thanks to cleaner air.
But critics disputed the estimates. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argues that the rule will kill
jobs and close power plants across the country.
The group released a study that finds the rule will result in the loss of 224,000 jobs every year
through 2030 and impose $50 billion in annual costs.
On Saturday, Obama tried to bolster public support for the new rule by arguing that carbondioxide emissions are a national health crisis -- beyond hurting the economy and causing global
warming.
"We don't have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children,"
Obama said in his weekly address. "As president and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our
children to a planet that's beyond fixing."
The Law, East of the Pecos
According to WSB-TV 2, the renter "cracked the door to take a look outside and that's when
police say the three tried to push their way inside."
Police say said that "one of the suspects raised a handgun but the woman fired first," grazing one
attacker "on the head and the backside."
The suspects fled, but the wounded one was apprehended.
Neighbors say there have been a lot of break-ins at the apartments recently, and they are glad the
renter had a gun with her with which to protect herself.
Work Force Lows
The percentage of American civilians 16 or older who do not have a job and are not actively
seeking one remained at a 36-year high in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In December, April, and now May, the labor force participation rate has been 62.8 percent. That
means that 37.2 percent were not participating in the labor force during those months.
Before December, the last time the labor force participation rate sunk as low as 62.8 percent was
February 1978, when it was also 62.8 percent. At that time, Jimmy Carter was president.
In April, the number of those not in the labor force hit a record high of 92,018,000. In May, that
number declined by 9,000 to 92,009,000. Yet, the participation rate remained the same from
April to May at 62.8 percent.
The labor force, according to BLS, is that part of the civilian noninstitutional population that
either has a job or has actively sought one in the last four weeks. The civilian noninstitutional
population consists of people 16 or older, who are not on active duty in the military or in an
institution such as a prison, nursing home, or mental hospital.
In May, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all
people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, hit 247,622,000. Of those,
155,613,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.
The 155,613,000 who participated in the labor force equaled only 62.8 percent of the
247,622,000 civilian non-institutional population, matching (along with the 62.8 percent rate in
May) the lowest labor force participation rate in 36 years.
At no time during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton or George
W. Bush, did such a small percentage of the civilian non-institutional population either hold a
job or at least actively seek one.
When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, the labor force participation rate
was 65.7 percent. By the beginning of 2013, the start of Obama’s second term, it had dropped to
63.6 percent. Since January 2014, when the participation rate was 63.0,it has continued to
decline, hitting a 36-year low of 62.8 percent in May.
People in the civilian non-institutional population who did not have a job and did not actively
seek one in the last four weeks are considered “not in the labor force.” The number of Americans
not in the labor force has climbed by 11,480,000 since Obama took office, rising from
80,529,000 in January 2009 to 92,009,000 in May 2014.
If you think of the United States of America as a store, its recent decisions and scandals resemble
a sale, perhaps a fire sale. Or maybe even a “Going Out of Business” sale.
The list of dramatic markdowns is breathtaking. They include trading away five murderous
terrorists for a likely Army deserter, an open invitation to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants
to cross the Mexican border, and a decision to recognize the terrorist group Hamas as part of the
Palestinian government.
On the home front, environmental regulations will cost thousands of coal miners their jobs and
drive up the cost of electricity for millions. The ObamaCare mess is hardly resolved, and the
Veterans Affairs scandal keeps getting worse. The acting agency head reported the deaths of 18
more vets who were kept off the official waiting list in Phoenix.
Ticking quietly in the background is the mother of all threats — an Iranian nuclear bomb. That
ticking grew louder last week as the ayatollah mocked our nation by standing in front of a banner
that proclaimed, “America cannot do a damn thing.”
Technically, he’s wrong. It’s not that we cannot stop the mad mullahs’ march. It’s that President
Obama has taken the military option off the table, and without it, Iran has nothing to fear. Our
impotence was a choice.
Add to the combustible mix the expansionist moods in Russia and China, and the series of events
recalls an observation by the late economist Herb Stein. Speaking in another context, he said
that, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.” That sums up the current sense of the nation as
a whole.
What seemed for years a steady and slow decline increasingly feels like a headlong race to the
bottom. America is careening downhill, and a crack-up appears inevitable.
Modal Trigger
It is no coincidence that the deal with the Taliban to release five terrorist leaders from
Guantanamo brought the first threat of presidential impeachment from a respected member of
Congress. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that if Obama tried to release others
without lawmakers’ approval, it would lead to “people on our side calling for his impeachment.”
That is the nuclear option, and there is good reason why it has been so rarely invoked throughout
history. And yet the intense fever gripping Washington, largely created by Obama’s go-it-alone
approach, needs to be broken. The country simply cannot continue to remain the beacon of the
free world if we are consumed by our own dysfunction and distrust.
Impeachment is one way to try to resolve a political crisis, but as former federal prosecutor
Andrew McCarthy argues in his new book, public opinion is a vital ingredient, and it is missing.
Titled “Faithless Execution,” his book’s subtitle, “Building the Political Case for Obama’s
Impeachment,” is based on McCarthy’s claim that the legal case is solid that Obama has violated
his oath to execute the laws faithfully.
That’s an arguable point, but even to concede it means nothing because the Democratic Party has
been so cowed into supporting Obama, regardless of what he does, that there is no chance to
make the political case.
Indeed, we have reached this crisis largely because centrist Democrats have failed to stand up
against Obama and demand more moderate policies.
Leaving aside occasional grumbling from party elders, he gets almost unanimous support from
every Dem in Congress for every piece of his radical agenda. Evidence shows that one of his
most pernicious practices, using the IRS to punish conservative groups, grew out of
congressional demands from liberals. While that doesn’t excuse Obama’s role, it does
demonstrate that his party has enabled and encouraged his improper conduct.
The result is that the constitutional system of checks and balances has been gutted as Democrats
act as an amen chorus for the executive branch.
The framers put a high bar on impeachment, and merely attempting to draw up the articles is
viable only when there is a bipartisan consensus that the president’s immediate removal is
necessary. We are a long way from that consensus.
Still, something has to give. And unless Democrats begin to put duty to country over loyalty to
Obama, America as we know it is headed to a point of no return.
Pol-pal unions wal the shots
After reading the City Council letter demanding that Walmart stop giving money to city
charities, it’s easy to conclude the council members are misguided, mistaken or just plain nuts.
They may be all of those things, but they are something else, too: They are union puppets who
have sold their souls for votes.
The 26 council members who signed the letter — a majority of the entire body — claim that
Walmart and the Walton Family Foundation are trying to “find a foothold in New York City” by
buying “influence and support.”
Shrinks would call that projection — accusing others of your own sins. Or maybe it just takes a
sellout to know a sellout.
Whatever its motives, Walmart is doing something good with its philanthropy and ought to be
applauded.
It announced that it distributed $3 million last year, including $1 million to the New York
Women’s Foundation, which offers job training, and $30,000 to Bailey House, which provides
support to low-income residents with HIV/AIDS.
Faced with such generosity, council members demanded that it “stop spending your dangerous
dollars in our city” and added: “That’s right: this is a cease-and-desist letter.”
Tsk, tsk. The issue is that unions don’t want Walmart’s non-union competition, and the scandal
is that local pols blocked the company from opening a single store in the five boroughs. Never
mind that New Yorkers would benefit from new jobs and low prices on a wide array of products.
Almost as shameful, Mayor de Blasio voted “present” on the issue. Asked by reporters, he
declined to take a stance on the letter.
Apparently he wants to confront inequality only when it means keeping unions happy.
Otherwise, the poor can take a hike.
Salute to the heroes of D-Day
The importance of the D-Day invasion cannot be overstated, but its meaning becomes more
easily understood during times of global chaos, such as the one we live in now. The 70th
anniversary, then, captured both the magnitude of the unmatched operation and the stakes that
led so many young men to bravely face the German guns.
To fully appreciate their courage, make yourself a promise. Promise that, before you die, you
will go to Normandy. Promise that you will stand on the beach, climb into the bomb craters and
bunkers and that, most of all, you will walk quietly through the cemeteries, which hold the
remains of 9,386 Americans.
My promise is that you will never regret your visit, nor will you ever forget those brave souls
Bad Check Fees are not Enough
In the week that the European Central Bank cut its deposit rate for banks from zero to -0.1%,
economist Martin Armstrong warns that negative interest rates are coming to the United States,
meaning that Americans will be forced to pay just to keep their money in the bank.
In a move described as unprecedented, the ECB became the first central bank in history to cut
any main interest rate to negative yesterday, part of a package of measures designed to encourage
banks to provide more loans to businesses and households. Many view the policy as a desperate
sign of Europe’s faltering economic recovery.
Critics claim that the action will do little to spur growth while threatening to cause inflation and
unemployment. While banks in the EU have not indicated whether or not the costs will be passed
on to consumers, the New York Times’ Neil Irwin asserts that this is inevitable.
“Banks will most likely pass these negative interest rates on to consumers, or at least try to. They
may try to do so not by explicitly charging a negative interest rate, but by paying no interest and
charging a fee for account maintenance,” he writes.
What about Americans? Will they also soon be charged by the bank simply for depositing their
own money? Yes, according to economist Martin Armstrong.
Armstrong, who is noted for calling the 1987 economic crash to the very day, warns that U.S.
banks are preparing a raft of new account fees that will serve as a de facto negative interest rate.
“In the USA, we are more-likely-than-not going to get the negative rates directly passed to
consumers by the banks who will claim it is the Fed who will do so at the requests of the banks.
Larry Summers has set the stage. This is just how it works. He flew the balloon to get everyone
ready. This is likely to be bullish for the stock market,” writes Armstrong, noting that, “The talk
behind the curtain is to impose negative interest rates on the consumer.”
The Organic Revolution
By 9 a.m., Jack Motter had been planting peas for hours.
He pushed a two-wheeled contraption that deposited a seed every few inches along neat rows at
Ellwood Canyon Farms, just outside Santa Barbara. As clouds gathered overhead, he picked up
the pace to avoid losing days of work to the fall rain.
Timing can mean the difference between profit and loss for the 4-year-old farm.
Motter and his business partner, Jeff Kramer, are part of a growing crop of farmers — many of
them young — choosing to produce food without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. As
consumers demand more fresh and local food grown with minimal environmental effects, a new
generation has taken up organic farming.
The two Brawley, Calif., natives, both 30, have learned that small-scale agriculture is neither
easy nor lucrative. Their days on the 15-acre farm start at dawn and end with exhaustion.
"There's nothing romantic about it," Kramer said. "It's hard work and long hours for little pay."
Agriculture officials are hoping more young people heed the call to till the land, whether
organically or conventionally, as the average age of California farmers continues to climb. It hit
58 in 2012, up by nearly two years from 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
most recent census.
In 2012, the number of California farmers 65 and older grew nearly 20% to 39,428 during the
five-year period — nearly three times faster than farmers ages 25 to 34.
Older agricultural operators outnumber their younger counterparts 6 to 1, the data show. There
are fewer than 6,400 farmers ages 25 to 34 in California.
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8
Agriculture trade groups have developed programs, including training and financial incentives,
aimed at attracting young people. The National Young Farmers Coalition through member
surveys has found that the bulk of new operators are going the organic route.
Many new farmers are motivated primarily by the desire to show that mainstream methods aren't
the only way to grow food.
Large conventional farms can churn out commodity crops quickly and economically. The
average American farm, tilled by heavy machinery, is now 434 acres, up from 418 in 2007, the
USDA reported recently.
But changing consumer preferences for locally grown and organic food have paved the way for
young farmers to carve out a niche.
Chris Velez is among them. About 300 miles north of Ellwood Canyon Farms, Velez has spent
nearly 10 years farming five acres in Auberry, Calif. He sees the work as a mission.
"The Earth is in a pretty dramatic state," he said. "It's truly calling for people to come tend to the
land in a healthy way."
Photos
Agriculture officials are hoping more young people heed the call to till the land, whether
organically or conventionally, as the average age of California farmers continues to climb. (Katie
Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)
The 38-year-old has taken on apprentices to learn the trade. Farm interns have spent a couple of
months at Stella Luna Farm, named after Velez's 13-year-old daughter, Stella.
Starting a small farm poses big challenges. Large amounts of capital are needed for land and
equipment, but novice farmers have a tough time securing lines of credit. Banks don't see big
profits.
Velez and others, however, have found creative ways to get their farms going.
Kramer and Motter, for instance, borrow equipment from farmer neighbors and look for deals on
used tractors and attachments on Craigslist. Velez and his wife, Jamie Carr, live frugally and
avoid going into debt. Growing their own food helps.
We "might be poor on paper, but farming allows for spending time with kids," said the father of
two. "My richness is life."
Indeed, in this small community of 2,400 an hour south of Yosemite National Park, the kids,
Stella and Cosmo, 8, ride their bikes up and down the lane near their home and farm. Velez is
often home but usually working.
cComments

@affableman Malaria not a problem??? Do you even have a brain between your ears?
straightspeaking
at 1:46 PM June 08, 2014
Add a comment See all comments
19
Only recently has Velez learned to pace himself. For years, he worked from sunup to sundown.
In 2004, he ran a nursery and simultaneously farmed the five acres before buying the land in
2007.
Now, he said, he will take much-needed breaks. That usually involves having a few beers while
watching either of his two favorite soccer teams, the Mexican national team and Manchester
United.
Carr, who works as an organic farm inspector, pitches in around the farm when not traveling for
her job.
Velez has structured his business around a CSA, or community-supported agriculture operation.
His more than 60 customers pay up to $840 at the beginning of the growing season and receive a
weekly box of produce for 42 weeks. That works out to $20 a box.
He also started selling seed transplants and flowers at a Fresno farmers market recently to
generate more income.
There's nothing romantic about it. It's hard work and long hours for little pay. - Jeff Kramer
Velez, with long, thick dreadlocks and a love for Bob Marley, acknowledges that he doesn't look
like a typical farmer, but get him going on growing food and he can spend hours talking about
vegetables.
He's gained more confidence over the years, but the former city dweller said farming is full of
challenges.
Gophers and other wildlife will snack on his carrots, weeds will crop up in his neat rows of
produce. And, of course, farmers are always at the mercy of the weather. Velez lost a whole crop
of peppers and tomatoes to a late fall frost.
But they are helped by growing demand. Though organic produce sales account for less than 1%
of the total value of food grown in the U.S, the share is increasing. New data show that sales of
organically farmed food jumped nearly 84% in 2012 from 2007, reaching $3.12 billion,
according to the USDA.
Chris and Johanna Finley of Santa Ynez got their start just as the organic food movement gained
traction.
"We already had our foot in the door," Johanna Finley said. "The trend played right into our
favor."
Chris, 36, and Johanna, 35, were students at UC Santa Barbara working part time at a local
farmers market. After a short stint selling homemade salsa, they decided to go into farming in
2002.
They started small, leasing an acre of land on the Gaviota coast just north of Goleta. The land,
however, lacked easy access to water and was on a hillside. The novice farmers found the hill
treacherous to navigate with a tractor.
"We taught ourselves everything we know," Johanna Finley said.
Eventually, the Finleys signed a lease for property in the Santa Ynez Valley, a famed winegrowing region northwest of Santa Barbara. Leasing is typically cheaper than buying farmland,
the price of which has skyrocketed in recent years. Farmland prices in California topped an
average of $7,300 an acre last year, according to the USDA.
As the couple have matured, so has the business. Finley Farms now has sales of about $700,000
annually. They operate two farms on 60 acres: the 10-acre home farm where they live, and 50
acres of leased land about five miles away.
The success has been validating. Starting out, the couple never anticipated farming that much
land and employing 11 people.
Meanwhile, Motter and Kramer have yet to see a profitable year. But sales are steadily growing.
The pair, lifelong friends who grew up in the Imperial Valley, where their families have farmed
conventionally for decades, are determined to make the farm work.
In her Santa Ynez, Calif., farm home, Johanna Finley prepares jars to can and preserve produce
as her daughter, Ashlin, age 6, looks on. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)
"A system has been designed around a certain way of agriculture and a reliance on cheap fossil
fuels and availability of cheap fertilizers, and those things are changing," Kramer said. "We're
the next generation. It's on us."
The FDA is on the Warpath….again
Before you decide this headline is simply propaganda, let me assure that the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration is trying to ban organic farming. How, you might ask? By making it
impossible for farmers to use their own organic compost – a tradition that is older than dirt, and
has been practiced for longer than many countries have been on this planet.
The proposed FDA restrictions would also make burdensome rules for growers, affecting both
the small farmer and larger agriculturalist alike. This is such a big threat to age-old farming
practices, that many organic farmers could be forced out of business. You can guess who
championed this ridiculous new set of rules – none other than the biotech industry who is scared
witless of the growing organic trend.
Let’s start with the restrictions on compost – the very basics of organic farming. The limitations
the FDA proposes are so severe, they are akin to a ban on compost. Not only would farmers that
have livestock have to keep their herds apart from soil used for growing crops, but any farm that
uses surface water would be forced to test their water at great expense and frequent intervals.
This is ridiculous, since manure from livestock has been used for centuries as a form of organic
fertilizer. While it needs to ‘cure’ long enough to get rid of dangerous pathogens, it is an organic
farmers heritage to use animal dung to grow food. In fact, animal manure adds many important
nutrients to the soil, and animals fed organic crops act to close an open-system. What is taken out
of the soil through grazing or feed is put back into the soil by amending it with compost and
manure. Chicken, cow, and horse manure are an essential part of organic farming.
Read: Organic Gardening 101
The FDA did receive some backlash for this original proposal, but they still haven’t changed the
rules sufficiently to allow for age-old composting practices.
“…comments received caused [the] FDA to reevaluate the proposed requirements for biological
soil amendments of animal origin, which propose an increasingly stringent set of application
restrictions based on the likelihood of the soil amendment harboring pathogens. These proposed
requirements, if finalized, are expected to result in changes in current use of treated and
untreated biological soil amendments of animal origin or potentially greater use of synthetic
fertilizers. Changes in the type or handling of soil amendments may significantly affect the
quality of the human environment.”
As FoodSafetyNews points out, “the FDA’s peculiarly schizophrenic views on human pathogens
in manures,” only shows its preference for expensive and energy-intensive chemical fertilizers.
Once again, the biotech giants responsible for poisoning us with pesticides and herbicides want
to get rid of a 15,000 year-old practice of composting manure and replace it with chemicals. How
novel.
While it is a good idea to make sure there are no pathogens in soil used to grow organic fruits
and vegetables, the FDA wants to propose a nine-month waiting period for farmers to have their
soil tested. This would include all “untreated” amendments – which includes not only manure,
but also worm compost and compost teas with any additives that aren’t ‘rubber-stamped’ by the
FDA. Farmers have been amending their soil with manure and making their own compost for
centuries. Why the sudden interest in regulation? Oh yea, the FDA was infiltrated by Monsanto,
Bayer, and Syngenta a long time ago.
What’s more, this is not the only crippling set of rules proposed by the FDA. They also want
organic farmers to extensively test the water they use for their crops during a growing season. In
places like Texas, where the growing season is all year long, that could mean over 52 required
water tests!
Read: The Dirt on Peak Fertilizer – What You Need to Know
The FDA would require farmers to send their water to an approved lab, and they wouldn’t be
able to water their crops with that water until they were ‘allowed.’ The cost of this testing could
cost several thousand dollars annually, and for small farmers – that’s an extra cost they likely
can’t afford. Furthermore, water would have to be treated with ‘antimicrobial’ chemicals if it
does not meet the agency’s standards.
So – while biotech companies are spoiling our soil, air, and water with chemicals, organic
farmers will be disallowed to water their own crops without FDA approval. I swear I’m not
making this up!
If you want to tell the FDA that they are simply insane, and that you won’t stand for this
blasphemy, you can submit comments or contact your Congressmen and women. These rules
are unbelievably dim, and so obviously championed by big chemical companies it’s hard to
believe our government thought they could get this past us.
The FDA has admitted that the proposed rules need some changes, but that is possibly the
biggest understatement I’ve ever read. Don’t let the FDA ban organic farming. Stand up to the
biotech bullies and tell the FDA to change these absurd rules today
And then…follow the money…
Shifting the Regulatory Cost Burden to Industry — New Reinspection and Recall Fees
In August 2012, FDA announced domestic and foreign facility reinspection, as well as recall and
importer reinspection fees, although FDA explicitly indicated that it would not issue invoices for
reinspections or recalls until a guidance document is published, outlining a set of guidelines for
small businesses. Currently, there is no fee for an initial FDA inspection; however, FSMA
authorizes FDA to assess and collect fees related to certain domestic food facility, foreign food
facility and importer reinspections. The fee for reinspection is to cover reinspection-related costs
when an initial inspection has identified certain food safety problems. The rates for reinspection
are $221 an hour per FDA field investigator if no foreign travel is required, and $289 an hour if
foreign travel is required. FDA will not estimate the reinspection cost and simply states that it
would be determined on a case-by-case basis. FDA also has the authority to assess and collect
fees for food recall activities associated with a recall order when a domestic food facility or
importer does not comply with such an order. Even though FDA has indicated that it will not
issue fee invoices until the small business guidance is published, it has incorporated the
following language in numerous warning letters dating back to April 2012, giving notice that it is
only a matter of time before FDA begins collecting fees as authorized by FSMA.
Section 743 of the Act (21 U.S.C. § 379j-31) authorizes FDA to assess and collect fees to cover
FDA’s costs for certain activities, including costs related to reinspection. A reinspection is one
or more inspections conducted subsequent to an inspection that identified non-compliance
materially related to a food safety requirement of the Act, specifically to determine whether
compliance has been achieved. Reinspection-related costs means all expenses, including
administrative expenses, incurred in connection with FDA’s arranging, conducting, and
evaluating the results of the reinspection, and assessing and collecting the reinspection fees, 21
U.S.C. § 379j-31(a)(2)(B). For a domestic facility, FDA will assess and collect fees for
reinspection-related costs from the responsible party for the domestic facility. The inspection
noted in this letter identified non-compliance materially related to a food safety requirement of
the Act. Accordingly, FDA may assess fees to cover any costs related to reinspection.[2]
The Possible Hidden Costs — Facility Registration
In October 2012, FDA tackled another FSMA provision, regarding registration, by issuing an
updated guidance document entitled “Necessity of the Use of Food Product Categories in Food
Facility Registrations and Updates to Food Product Categories.” Under this guidance, a registrant
must submit a registration to FDA containing information necessary to notify the agency of the
general food category of any food manufactured, processed, packed or held at such facility. FDA
also now has the power to suspend a food facility registration, which it recently did to Sunland
Inc., based on the company’s massive peanut butter recall. FSMA does not require registered
facilities to pay a registration fee; however, in its budget request for fiscal year 2013, FDA
incorporated language for a Food Establishment Registration User Fee of approximately $500
per facility, which would generate approximately $220 million in fees. Because FDA does not
have the authority to collect this fee, Congress would need to approve the request and grant FDA
authority to collect the user fees.
Ukraine is Being Played with the Same Old Song
Presidents of Austria, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, and Georgia attended the event. Vice
President Joe Biden was also there to represent the United States. Poroshenko met with President
Barack Obama in Warsaw last Tuesday.
Vice President Biden ditched the motorcade and opted to walk with Senator McCain to an
inaugural reception in Kiev. pic.twitter.com/7sNrRX4WTq
— Colleen Nelson (@ColleenMNelson) June 7, 2014
Crimea is a very sensitive issue since the Black Sea peninsula was annexed by Russia in midMarch. Ukraine and the West do not recognize the annexation. Poroshenko promised Ukraine he
will fight for Crimea.
"Citizens of Ukraine will never enjoy the beauty of peace unless we settle our relations with
Russia. Russia occupied Crimea, which was, is, and will be Ukrainian soil," he said.
Poroshenko told the pro-Russian forces in east Ukraine to put down their weapons and, unless
there is blood on their hands, they will not face charges and will receive immunity. He promised
to visit the east and give them more power over their regions. However, the self-proclaimed
leaders of Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic said Poroshenko is not
welcome in their regions and neither recognize his presidency until he does the same for them.
"What they (Kiev's leaders) really want is one-sided disarmament and for us to surrender. That
will never happen in the Donetsk People's Republic," Fyodor Berezin, an official with the rebels,
told Reuters. "As long as Ukrainian troops are on our soil, I can see that all Poroshenko wants is
subjugation. The fight will continue.”
"I think he won't visit us himself as long as a military operation is under way here. I can't
imagine how he wants to put things in order here other than by military actions," said Valery
Bolotov, the self-proclaimed leader of Luhansk. "As concerns our republic, we don't have
diplomatic relations with Ukraine. Starting today, Ukraine has had its president, and the blood of
both our people and citizens of Ukraine will be on his conscience now.”
Poroshenko told the people he is ready to sign the European Union Association Agreement.
“My pen is in my hands. As soon as the EU takes the decision, a signature of Ukraine’s president
will immediately appear under this fateful agreement,” he announced.
The agreement is the first step to future membership with the EU, which is the goal of Ukraine. It
is also the agreement that started the revolution in Ukraine. Russia-backed President Viktor
Yanukovych chose closer ties to Russia over the EU agreement, which led to a three-month
protest in Kiev’s Independence Square, until he was ousted in February. Poroshenko said the
membership would bring peace and stability to the country. He also said Ukraine will enjoy visafree travel within the EU by 2015.
Poroshenko was a member of parliament and resigned from the post before he took the oath. He
also promised to sell Roshen, his confectionary company that made him a billionaire. He owns
Channel 5, a Ukrainian television channel, but made it known he will not sell the station. Dunja
Mijatovic, top official for media freedom at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE), told TIME the TV station should be the first asset to go.
“If Mr. Poroshenko intends to sell his assets, in my view, his TV station should be the first to
go,” she said. “It is my firm view that elected politicians should not own and control media
outlets in their country, be it Ukraine, Italy or any other, so as not to use and abuse them to serve
their political goal.”
But Western leaders are satisfied with him and, in Warsaw, Obama said Poroshenko is the right
man to lead Ukraine out of this crisis.
“We had the opportunity to discuss President-elect Poroshenko’s plans for bringing peace and
order to the east that is still experiencing conflict. We discussed his economic plans and the
importance of rooting out corruption, increasing transparency, and creating new models of
economic growth,” said Obama. “We discussed issues of energy – making sure that Ukraine
becomes a more energy-efficient economy but also one that is less dependent solely on energy
sources from Russia. And I have been deeply impressed by his vision, in part because of his
experience as a businessman, in understanding what’s required to help Ukraine grow and to be
effective.”
Wars R Us: Then and now
It takes nothing away from the courage and valor of the American troops who landed at
Normandy on D-Day to say that their ultimate victory was a forgone conclusion. Yes, US GI’s
still had to fight it out, all the way from the English Channel to the Elbe River, and they fought
bravely. Yet their triumph had already been guaranteed, thanks to the vast war-production
resources of the United States. Indeed, if we learn all the lessons of D-Day, including the value
of an “Arsenal of Democracy” on the homefront, we will gain greater understanding of what it
takes to win our wars in the future.
Reporting from newly liberated French territory, here’s how the great war correspondent Ernie
Pyle described the fleet that put Allied troops ashore on D-Day:
As far as you can see in every direction the ocean was infested with ships. There must have been
every type of ocean-going vessel in the world...the greatest armada man has ever seen. You
simply could not believe the gigantic collection of ships that lay out there waiting to unload.
There’s an old saying: “Quantity has a quality all its own.” That is, sufficient mass makes all the
difference.
Watching the re-enactment of the D-Day landing at Omaha Beach in the 1998 movie Saving
Private Ryan, one is humbled, and then reminded, of the great bravery and resourcefulness of the
US Army GI. It was at Omaha, and a thousand other battlefields across the world, that
Americans of that era earned their undying honorific:“The Greatest Generation.”
On the 40th anniversary of D-Day, President Ronald Reagan described another heroic battle on
that same day, the storming of Pointe du Hoc by the men of the Second and Fifth Ranger
Battalions:
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- the edge of the cliffs shooting down at
them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb.
They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one
Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another
and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the
Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs,
they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After
two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.
On D-Day alone, the American and Allied forces suffered some 12,000 casualties, including
4,414 confirmed dead. And the outcome of the battle was no certainty; that afternoon, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation in a radio broadcast, reminding his listeners that even
if we fell short in this specific mission, we would fight on and prevail. As FDR put it, “Success
may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy
grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.”
Yet by the end of that Longest Day, the mission had been accomplished: We had our beachhead.
We were ashore in France, less than 300 miles from Germany. On that day, we had landed
160,000 troops; within six weeks we had landed 1.45 million. This was five times the strength of
the defending Germans in France. And at the same time, the Allies were also advancing in Italy;
Rome had already been liberated on June 4. And the Soviets had entered Poland. Meanwhile,
overhead, American and British bombers were flattening Nazi factories.
D-Day was an epic of courage, to be sure, but it was also a triumph of many dimensions. Under
the leadership of SHAEF Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the US had done many things
right; it had maintained operational security, even as sailors and troops trained ceaselessly for the
amphibious assault. Indeed, thanks toOperation Fortitude, we had fooled the Germans into
believing that we might land everywhere but Normandy, thus keeping their forces dispersed.
But perhaps most of all, our victory was forged on the homefront. Back in Pittsburgh and
Burbank, we created a movable storm of aluminum and steel, which we then flew or shipped
over to the battlefront. And so in the skies over France, the US enjoyed near total air
superiority—made in the USA.
It was the P-51 “Mustang” fighter, introduced in late 1943 as a bomber escort, that had turned
the tide in the air. The “fighter sweep,” an operation conceived by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle—the
man who had led the daring B-25 raid over Japan in 1942, for which he was awarded the Medal
of Honor—did its job: The P-51s swept the skies of German planes. Indeed, the US built 15,000
P-51s, part of an American aerial armada that totaled 310,000 airplanes. That was almost triple
the German production. Doolittle summed up the strategic dynamic: “You can’t lose a war if you
have command of the air, and you can’t win a war if you haven’t.”
“One day, I hope, the sacrifice of these lost American men, too, will be recognized by the nation
-- and those responsible for their sacrifice judged by history.” Diana West
On May 12, 1945, five days after V-E Day, the AP filed a startling news report from Supreme
Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF): “Nearly half of the estimated 200,000
British and 76,000 American prisoners of war still in Germany are believed to be within the
Russian zone of occupation and Supreme Headquarters has twice requested a meeting or an
arrangement to arrange their return.”
Not two months earlier, as we’ve seen, Stalin had belligerently insisted to the now-deceased
FDR that there were only seventeen Americans left in the Red zone, and that these last few
American boys were safely en route to Odessa.
Behind the scenes, on May 19, 1945, Supreme Commander Eisenhower himself signed a cable
stating, “Numbers of US prisoners estimated in Russian control 25,000.”
On May 22, 1945, ten days after the AP report, delegations from the Soviet and American armies
met in Halle, France, to settle the POW matter. It was a meeting between a massive, gunsbristling, Soviet delegation and a much smaller and more modest American delegation. The
problem they came together to discuss sounds simple, but the Soviets made it anything but. Maj.
Gen. R. W. Barker documented these meetings in a memo that describes the emergence of
ghastly, heart-stopping complications: Americans in Soviet custody were “in effect being held
hostage”; “we may find a reluctance to return them all”; and they might not come home for an
“appreciable time to come.” The realization that they might never come home at all begins to
break, dimly, like an execution-day dawn.
On May 23, 1945, Harry Hopkins, having been roused from his sickbed (literally) in his natty
Georgetown home a week earlier, took off from Washington for one final mission to Moscow.
Accompanied by Mrs. Hopkins, Harriman, and Charles Bohlen—all Hopkins’s personal picks—
he was sent by President Truman as a matter of some desperation to try to smooth out the
unseemly rupture between the White House and the Kremlin that had broken into the open since
the war’s end. At the same time, Truman dispatched Joseph Davies—that self- aggrandizing
boob (at best)!—to inform Churchill that the United States would continue in the Rooseveltian
tradition of appeasing Stalin. In so many words.
This is the period most historians regard as “the Creation” of the epic hostilities known as the
Cold War, but I see it more as a continuation of hostility suddenly brought to light in part by
President Truman’s awkward, unschooled, and almost bumptious efforts to retrench (good
instinct)—soon to be tamped down by those “better angels” of ours, Hopkins and Davies—in
response to Stalin’s jackbooting through territories and over peoples he now, thanks to us,
possessed (good strategy—for Moscow). Churchill, at this disastrous point, appears to have felt
increasingly used and abused by the bloody, costly charade of the Uncle Joe Alliance, especially
with the Soviets “clamping down” what he was now seeing as a “steel curtain” over Red Army–
captured lands.
In his private meeting with Stalin, which Hopkins himself wrote up as a top secret memorandum,
Hopkins pressed this issue—not as an injustice, not as outrage—as apublic relations problem. He
took great pains to explain to Stalin this incident’s “unfavorable effect in Amer- ica” and the
political danger it posed to Truman’s abilities to continue Rooseveltian policy if, as a result, he
was unable “to carry American public opinion with him.” This is why, Hopkins said, “it was in
the interest of good Russian- American relations . . . to release these prisoners.”56
Not in the interest of right and wrong, fair play, or humanitarianism, mind you, and not because
these men were citizens not of the USSR but of an allegedly sovereign Poland, but in the interest
of how it all played around the American watercooler. Think: If sixteen Polish prisoners of the
USSR threat- ened to wake the sleeping giant (us), just imagine what would have happened if we
had learned about the Soviet imprisonment of tens of thousands of American and British
soldiers.
There is the May 30, 1945, Kenner Memorandum, named for Gen. Albert Kenner, Eisenhower’s
surgeon general at SHAEF headquarters. This memo states that twenty thousand Americans
remained under Red Army control. It also states that twenty thousand British remained under
Red Army control as well, not to mention literally hundreds of thousands of other nationals.58
There is the May 31, 1945, top secret letter from General Deane to a Russian general, General
Slavin, assistant chief of the Red Army in Moscow, the staff officer Deane had been dealing with
on and off for almost a year by this time. This document states that the number of American
prisoners believed to be in Russian custody is 15,597.59
The Senate report continues, logically, noting that it is “therefore difficult to reconcile these
facts” with a third document, a cable signed by Eisenhower on June 1, 1945, which reads,
“It is now estimated that only small numbers of U.S. prisoners of war still remain in
Russian hands.”60
“Now”? Since when? Since the memos written twenty-four and forty-eight hours earlier?
Fifteen, twenty, forty thousand men were now in the West, just like that? No. There is a gaping,
deeply dispiriting chasm between these two conflicting sets of documents. Did Eisenhower
recognize this abyss? We don’t know for sure. The subject isn’t even addressed in biographies
written since the Senate disclosures, up to and including Jean Edward Smith’s 2012 Ike
biography, which weighs in at 950 pages.61 What we do know is this, as the Senate report states
concretely: “Given the contents of Major General Deane’s TOP SECRET letter, and given the
contents of the Kenner memorandum, the Eisenhower cable of June 1 appears to be an attempt to
gloss over a serious problem.”62
A serious problem of exposure, that is.
Americans were never supposed to know. This darkest secret didn’t enter our history books, our
movies, our lore. It remained another unseen void, another intensification of the black hole of
antiknowledge. Such omissions help explain many things, including the riddle of why Soviet
crime never stuck, maybe even why the fall of the Wall rang so few lasting bells of victory.
Uncle Sam has been part of, or was made into part of, the Russian Bear’s cover-up for too long,
all to maintain the fiction, the lie, of relations with the Soviet Union. Sometimes we called it the
anti-Fascist alliance, sometimes we called it peaceful coexistence, sometimes we called it
détente. Whatever name was in vogue, each described a chain of Big Lies that lashed us together.
No wonder Ronald Reagan’s onetime use of that mild, storybook phrase “evil empire” sparked
such outrage. The fortieth president, who came from outside this secret circle, was breaking
omertà, flouting the Washington-Moscow Establishment. This Establishment wears no
clothes. When such a large sector of that Establishment went down at the end of 1991, it wasn’t
just open Leftists and diehard Communists in the West who didn’t feel like throwing a party
because the wicked witch seemed to be dead. The better part of a century of silence had made all
Western democracies complicit in the successive reigns of terror and entrenched regimes of
tyranny. They would have remained complicit in silence, I do believe, forever, if the Soviet
Union hadn’t begun to crack apart, its secrets—our secrets— spilling out at the seams.
And the real revelation is that in the years following 1945, there was not a massive exodus of
Soviets from Washington. On the contrary, they stayed. They stayed and they had children and
they imported thousands more of their kind to fill up the agencies Harry Hopkins designed and
built inside our Republic. All of them, including the FBI, the CIA, the FDA, the EPA, the DOE,
the Dept of Education, the BATF, and let’s not leave out the BLM.
Communists and fascists occupy row after row of desks in Washington, and they have formed a
new government that cannot be impeached. It owns everything. It taxes everything. It can kill
anything and anyone who gets in their way. In fact, they have now the tools and the authority to
tax, to seize, the incarcerate, and now even to kill anyone who threatens their organizations.
I can’t think of anything that puts a more American face on this uniquely twentieth-century
record of perfidy than the betrayal of our own fighting fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons,
Americans of successive generations be- ginning back before the so-called Greatest Generation,
all the way up to the baby boomers. Along with their long-suffering families, they would become
the uniquely American sacrifice to the conspiracy of silence that improbably held the Free World
and the Un-Free World together, partners in crime, over the course of the twentieth century.
Sacrifices, all, to American betrayal.
What men? said Hanoi, Peking, Pyongyang, Moscow.
What men? said London, Washington.
Call and echo.
What kulaks starving by the million? What purges by the ten thousand?
What massacres here, there, and everywhere? What forced repatriation and liquidation of
millions? What slavery of more millions? What Gulag Archipelago? What strategic deception?
What subversion? What Communist conspiracy? What espionage? What Hungary? What tanks?
What Prague? What Red Terror network? What Soviet-inspired Western drug epidemic? What
evil empire?
What men?
The American GI’s and British pilots who made it a little too far…into the lands provided by
Harry Hopkins to the Soviets by design…were all captured and placed in slave gulags to work in
the mines until they died. The soldiers who charged that beach are nearly all dead now. That
generation had an enemy in Washington that sent them to their deaths in the foamy beaches of
Normandy and Omaha. But they did not die. They won the battle, but they lost the war. They
were organized into an unstoppable force, and they pushed through the snow to save the planet.
We are left with the secret now exposed. We now know who ordered our grandfathers to their
deaths. The question is, will he hold those responsible for this accountable, and will we allow
the defeat of America to stand?
So what would happen if someone demanded hearings into the Soviet takeover of Washington?
Some people might go to jail for violating the public trust and their oaths of office. There’s no
statute of limitations on crimes like murder, and most of those abandoned prisoners are probably
no longer alive. Those who began and continued the cover-up silently took the secret to their
deaths.
At the very least, laws affecting the military would be rewritten. And the reputations of the
people who played the largest roles would crumble all over the country—people such as Henry
Kissinger, John McCain, John Kerry, and Dick Cheney, plus many others including Pentagon
chiefs, national security advisers, secretaries of state, intelligence chiefs, and so on.
In reality, I don’t think anything will happen. The federal government is so corrupt and the
corruption is so deep and so wide that it feels unfixable. It makes people feel hopeless. It is like
when Lincoln was standing on his porch one day and saw a squirrel running across his yard. It
leaped the last yard or so into a large oak tree next the president’s house and scrambled to the top
amongst the green nuts coming to bear. Well, that is, almost to the top. In actually dropped into
the hollow trunk of the tree where it no doubt had a great wonderful nest. He later had to cut that
tree down for fear it would fall on the house during a storm. He wished openly that he wished he
had never seen that squirrel.
We have to cut the great tree of Washington down. The nation needs to be saved, and that great
cesspool of graft and greed and death for dollars must be thrown on the fire before it falls and
crushes the nation when it does. This is not a call for revolution. It is a call to cleanse the
temple. It is our duty. In order to honor the greatest generation who were sent to die in front of
guns our own banks and taxpayers bought and paid for, this must be done. In order to recover
the republic from the clutches of the fascists who now control it from top to bottom, this must be
done. It is time for Washington to hang out the sign, “Closed for cleaning.”
Peace, Earth Explorers.