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Thursday 18 December 2014

Family of Toddler Injured by SWAT 'Grenade' Faces $1M in Medical Bills

Alecia and Bounkham Phonesavanh

© ABC News

Correspondent via 20/20 Alecia and Bounkham Phonesavanh sat down for an interview with ABC's Matt Gutman for ABC News' "20/20."



Alecia and Bounkham Phonesavanh never imagined their family would be at the center of a controversy over the militarization of police. But that's exactly where they found themselves when their toddler was seriously injured by a SWAT team, also leaving them with a $1 million medical bill they have no hope of paying.

"They messed up," Alecia Phonesavanh told ABC News' . "They had a faulty search warrant. They raided the wrong house."


In the spring of 2014, the Phonesavanh's home in Janesville, Wisconsin, was destroyed by fire. Homeless with four young children, they packed one of their last remaining possessions - their minivan - and drove 850 miles to the home of Bounkham's sister in Cornelia, Georgia.


Bounkham Phonesavanh Jr

© Courtesy Phonesavanh Family

Bounkham Phonesavanh Jr., known as "Bou Bou," is seen here after the incident.



The family crowded into a former garage converted into a bedroom: parents Bounkham and Alecia, 7-year-old Emma, 5-year-old Mali, 3-year-old Charlie and 18-month-old Bounkham Jr., known as "Bou Bou." It was a tight squeeze but only temporary. After two months the family had found a new house in Wisconsin and was planning to return home.

At approximately 2 a.m. May 28, the family awakened to a blinding flash and loud explosion in their bedroom. A Special Response Team (aka SWAT team) from the Habersham County Sheriff's Office burst unannounced into the bedroom where they were sleeping. According to police reports, Habersham Deputy Charles Long threw a "flash-bang" grenade - a diversionary device used by police and military - into the room. It landed in Bou Bou's pack-and-play.


"Bou Bou started screaming," recalls Alecia Phonesavanh. "I immediately went to grab him."


But Alecia says Habersham Deputy Jason Stribling picked up the child before she could reach him. "I kept telling him, 'Just give me my son. He's scared. He needs me. The officer wouldn't. And then he walked out of the room with [Bou Bou] and I didn't see him again."


What they didn't realize at the time was that the blast from the flash-bang grenade severely burned Bou Bou's face and torso and collapsed his left lung. Alecia says the officers wouldn't allow her to see her child before he was whisked away in an ambulance.


"I asked if he got hurt. And they said, 'No, your son is fine. He has not sustained any serious injury," Alecia Phonesavanh remembers. "They ended up telling us that he had lost a tooth."


But her husband became alarmed after seeing a pool of blood and the condition of the crib. "Burnt marks on the bottom of the crib where he sleep[s]," recalls Bounkham Phonesavanh. "And the pillow blown apart."


Bou Bou was rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta where doctors placed him in a medically induced coma. "His chest wall had torn down to muscle," says Dr. Walter Ingram, head of Grady's burn trauma unit. "And it tore his face down to bone, down to his teeth."


Bou Bou's parents say they were detained by the police for nearly two hours. When they arrived at the hospital they were shocked to learn the truth about their son's injuries. "Why couldn't [the police] just be honest with us and tell us what happened?" asked Alecia Phonesavanh.


It all came about because a drug task force had been looking for Bounkham Phonesavanh's nephew, 30-year-old Wanis Thonetheva, who police suspected was selling methamphetamine. Using information from a confidential informant, drug agent Nikki Autry had secured a "no-knock" search warrant that allowed the police to enter his mother's home unannounced.


According to the warrant application, the informant had allegedly purchased drugs from Thonetheva at his mother's house where the Phonesavnah's were staying.


The use of "no knock" warrants has become controversial, according to Atlanta-based community activist Marcus Coleman. "There needs to be a strict criteria before you're able to knock someone's door down in the middle of the night," says Coleman. "We also have to look real hard at how the police force has been militarized and what does that mean for your ordinary citizen."


As Bou Bou lay in the hospital, agent Nikki Autry resigned from her job with the Mountain Judicial Circuit's drug unit. Judge James Butterworth, the chief magistrate of Habersham County, who signed the "no-knock" warrant, announced his retirement within days of the raid.


The search warrant had identified his mother's home as Wanis Thonetheva's "residence." But Alecia Phonesavanh says they never saw Thonetheva while they were staying in Georgia. She says his mother did suspect that her son had stolen valuables from her.


"He had broken into her room and stole some of her jewelry and stuff," recalls Alecia Phonesavanh. "We knew him as a thief."


Wanis Thonetheva was arrested hours after the raid without a "no-knock" warrant and without a SWAT team. He pleaded guilty to selling methamphetamine and is serving a 10-year sentence in a Georgia prison.


After more than five weeks in a coma, Bou Bou left the hospital and the family was relieved that they could finally return to Wisconsin.


In Georgia, Habersham County's District Attorney Brian Rickman convened a grand jury to look into the botched police raid. After six days of testimony, the grand jury found "the drug investigation that led to these events was hurried, sloppy."


They did not recommend criminal charges against any of the officers involved, which deeply upsets Bou Bou's mother. "They made the mistake," claims Alecia Phonesavanh. "And we got the backlash of everything."


"The intelligence on the front end, in this particular situation," says District Attorney Rickman, "is how the tragedy could have been avoided."


The drug task force that gathered that intelligence was disbanded four months after the raid that injured Bou Bou Phonesavanh. It also happened to be the day after arrived in Habersham County to investigate.


Since the incident, the toddler has undergone surgeries to repair his face and torso. The Phonesavanh family says they are facing close to $1 million in debt from hospital costs. Habersham County officials will not pay the medical bills, citing a "gratuity" law in Georgia that prohibits them from compensating the family.


But the Phonesavanh's attorney, Mawuli Davis, believes the SWAT team's actions during and after the raid make it accountable.


"The child was taken into their custody," says Davis. "Taken from his family, as a result of an injury that was caused by the [sheriff's department]. It would be our position that they should have to pay, and it is far from a gratuity."


Under the state's law, the county government has sovereign immunity from negligence claims against it, and thus the payment would be an illegal "gratuity" to the family.


As the holidays approach, the Phonesavanh family is mired in debt with medical bills they have no hope of paying. "Before this we didn't owe anybody anything," says Alecia Phonesavanh. "And now after all this, they have completely financially crippled us."


Who is responsible for Bou Bou Phonesavanh's injuries may still be a question for the courts to decide. The Phonesavanh family still has the option to file a civil lawsuit. And a federal investigation is now underway by the office of Sally Yates, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.


"As a parent, I can't imagine the horrible nightmare that this family is enduring," Yates said in a statement to ABC News. "Now that the state grand jury has declined to return an indictment, we are reviewing the matter and conducting our own investigation."


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Those maniacs! U.S. government is seeking any excuse to go to war with Russia




The probable future of Washington D.C. and home to the most concentrated populations of psychopaths on the planet.



The world is more nervous about the drift toward nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia than at any time since 1962's Cuban Missile Crisis. When French President Francois Hollande urgently side-tracked his return-flight from a diplomatic mission recently, in order to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, at a private room that had been scoured ahead of time to eliminate any possible bugging devices, there was speculation as to what had caused Hollande's sudden detour, and there were even rumors of a possible cause being an American "false-flag" event in the works to be blamed on Russia as a pretext for going to war against Russia, just as Russia had been falsely blamed for the Ukrainian military's downing of Malaysia's airliner MH17 on July 17th. All that was publicly released about the two-hour meeting were platitudes, hardly anything that would have justified side-tracking Hollande's flight so as to surprise intelligence agencies and be able to meet the Russian leader in an untapped room.

The level of fear is certainly rising on both sides. On the U.S. side, the CBS News Poll in summer 2007 found 6% of Americans calling Russia an "enemy"; seven years later, that same figure was 22%. However, what is not rumor nor fear, but proven fact, by Obama's own actions as will be documented here, is that he wants a war against Russia and is trying hard to get Europe (including Hollande) onboard with this goal in order to win it; and that America's Republican Party want this at least as much as he does, though the American public do not.


The Democratic Party (in the House and Senate) are staying as quiet as possible about a 'Democratic' President pushing them toward World War III, which is a goal that Republicans have always been far more eager for than Democrats. (Republicans are famous for "Speak softly but carry a big stick," and for swinging it as hard as they can, especially against Russians.) In fact, one of the reasons why Obama won the Presidency is that he criticized his 2012 Republican opponent Mitt Romney for saying of Russia, "This is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe."


That dissent by Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama appealed to the U.S. public at the time, but not to America's aristocracy, who are a mix of people some of whom hate Russians and others of whom don't care about Russians, but none of whom are passionate opponents of nuclear war (a diverse group that they lump contemptuously with "peaceniks").


For example, one major mouthpiece of Democratic Party aristocrats has always been The New Republic, and on 17 September 2014 they headlined "Obama Can't Admit That Romney Was Right: Russia Is Our 'Top Geopolitical Threat'." Another one is the National Journal, the aristocracy's version of its companion propaganda-operation (owned by the same aristocrat as) The Atlantic. On 7 May 2014 (just five days after Obama's people had massacred pro-Russians in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa and thereby started the extermination-campaign against them, or "civil war" that's still raging), the National Journal headlined "Mitt Romney Was Right: Russia Is Our Biggest Geopolitical Foe." Conservative 'Democrats' are just Republicans spelled with a "D"; but, when it's an aristocrat, they know how to spell, and are just trying to deceive the ones who don't. This is why 'liberal' magazines are prized possessions of the aristocracy - to deceive the ones who don't know the difference and who think that it's fine in a democracy for politics to be merely a choice between two conservative parties, one of which is called by a meaningless adjective 'liberal.'


The people who fund both political Parties are virtually united in that fascist belief: they don't even mind backing racist facists or "nazis" ; many of them are precisely that themselves.



Obama is with them (and with Wall Street, and with Big Ag, and Big Oil, and Big Military), against the public. But he's smart enough a politician to pretend otherwise, and his aristocratic funders respect this. (There were no hard feelings for his exploiting Romney's politically stupid public assertion; they knew that it was an Obama pose: he's a 'Democrat,' after all.)

For America's elite, the Cold War never ended, because it was never really about communism versus capitalism - not for them. They are fascists, and they want global dominance. Capitalism, shmapitalism; all they really care about is dominating the world, destroying enemies, which means anyone who refuses to be controlled by them.


Aristocracy hasn't changed since, well, long before the Bible began. Domination is the big thing, for the aristocracy. Russia threatens the vaunted global control by America's aristocracy, their dominance over all other aristocracies, because Russia is the second-most-powerful military nation. Russia is the only nation that can say no to U.S. aristocrats and (maybe) get away with it. That's what this conflict is all about. It's why they ratcheted up the "enemy" figure for Russia from 6% to 22% in just the past seven years.


As President Obama's speech at West Point, on 28 May 2014, propagandized for (i.e., rationalized) this conquer-Russia view on the part of America's aristocracy: "Russia's aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China's economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us." So, Obama made clear to the graduating West Point cadets that the BRIC countries are the enemy (Russia and its leading supporters of international independence, the enemies against a mono-polar or "hegemonic" world), from the standpoint of America's aristocracy, whom the U.S. military now serves to the exclusion of any public interest. Ours want to crush the aristocrats in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Though it's alright for those other countries to produce more, that's true only if American aristocrats control the local ones there, like in any other international empire - not if the local nation's aristocrats control the country. That's not the way aristocrats in banana republics are supposed to behave. They're not supposed to be independent countries. Not really.


The President who had invaded Libya and Syria, and re-invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and who perpetrated a violent overthrow and installed racist fascists (nazis ) in control of Ukraine, is lecturing the world against "Russia's aggression," for its having accepted back into Russia's traditional fold little Crimea, which craved to return to Russia.


He's got some gall to do that, but in order to be a cadet at West Point (and thus be there hearing his speech) one needed to be either a sucker or else a cravenous tool of the aristocracy, as the military has traditionally served; so, Obama played them for being both, and they evidently liked it.


Obama knows how to speak down to an audience and fool them into thinking he respects them. But, to aristocrats, his respect is no mere act at all; he not only respects them, he lies for them, and he protects them, because he self-identifies with them, and not with the public (who just provide his voters, the people that are forced to choose between him versus Romney, or else to go for a mere token protest-vote or non-vote, such as American 'democracy' has degenerated into being).


Obama was enemy-izing (turning into enemies) nations that don't want to serve as America's banana republics. Similarly, for example, the British Empire didn't wish for local aristocrats in India to be in control, but only for those client aristocrats to be of use. That's what it means to be a client nation (or, in the American case, a banana republic).



Obama, in his speech, added, placing a clear hyper-nationalistic coloration on his promotion of America's empire: "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation." (Hitler thought the same thing of Germany.) He promised to keep it that way: "That has been true for the century passed [sp.: past [[somebody at the White House didn't know the difference between 'past' and 'passed']] and it will be true for the century to come." (At least he wasn't predicting there a Thousand-Year Reich.)

So: that's historical background to Obama's plan for using Ukraine as a stepping-stone toward conquering Russia - one of the few favors he hasn't yet achieved for his sponsors, after having protected them from what he contemptuously calls (in private) the "pitchforks"; a.k.a., the public. (And he really did call us "pitchforks" there, in private. To him, the public were like the KKK; and the mega-bank CEOs whom he was confiding to were like the people KKKers lynched. That's the type of 'Black' he actually is. Blacks should loathe him, but most people, black and white, can't see beyond his skin-color and liberal platitudes. They've got their categories wrong, and the aristocracy-controlled media like that just fine. Stereotypes help aristocrats control political outcomes. It's button-pushing for them.)


On December 11th, the U.S. Senate voted 100% (unanimously) to donate U.S. weapons to the Ukrainian Government in its war against Russia. On December 4th, 98% of the U.S. House had done likewise. Both bills also accuse Russia of having invaded Ukraine, and this accusation of an aggressive Russia provides a pretext for the U.S. to attack Russia, now that the Ukrainian Government has flipped from neutral (according to some estimations) or pro-Russian (according to others) to being clearly and publicly anti-Russian, by means of their U.S.-engineered coup that occurred in February of this year, when masked gunmen, who were actually hired mercenaries, dressed themselves as if they were instead Ukrainian security forces, and fired into a crowd of "Maidan" anti-corruption protesters and police, and the U.S. Government immediately blamed Ukraine's then-President for doing that, and Ukraine's parliament or "Rada," who weren't in on the scheme and didn't know about it, promptly elected "Yats" Yatsenyuk, who had secretly been appointed 18 days prior to lead the country, by Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department. "Yats" immediately installed a far-right Government, filled with people who had already committed themselves to a Ukrainian war against Russia. They then promptly set about terminating Russia's 42-year Crimean lease for Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is key to Russia's security. Crimeans, who had always overwhelmingly considered themselves to be Russians and not Ukrainians, demonstrated against that Ukrainian move against them and against Russia, and Russian troops came into Crimea, to local applause, but to the condemnation from Washington and its allies.


Russia's taking back Crimea was not aggression at all, though America's noise-media say it was; it was instead protection of Crimeans against the CIA's American invasion of Ukraine. When the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev donated Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, it was much to the consternation of Crimeans at the time, and ever since. Yet, one of the explicit alleged 'justifications' for war against Russia, that are listed in the Republican House's bill ("Whereas the Russian Federation's forcible occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea. ...") is a blatant lie, because Crimeans overwhelmingly wanted Russia's protection against the new, Obama-imposed, Ukrainian regime, which Obama's State Department and CIA had just installed when overthrowing the President for whom nearly 80% of Crimeans had voted. In fact, a poll that was issued by Gallup in June 2014 showed then that 71.3% of Crimeans viewed as "Mostly positive" the role of Russia there, and 4.0% viewed it as "Mostly negative"; by contrast, only 2.8% viewed the role of the United States there as "Mostly positive," and a whopping 76.2% viewed it as "Mostly negative." This wasn't much changed from a year-earlier Gallup poll. The Republican Party (and thus the Republican-controlled House) is willing to lie blatantly (about this and other crucial matters) in order to justify invading Russia, as it did in invading Iraq in 2003 (and even in 1991); and Barack Obama is willing to lie blatantly too for the same reasons - such as about the source of the sarin gas attack in Libya, etc. - but there were enough Democrats in the U.S. Senate to block Obama's getting such blatant lies into the Senate's bill on Ukraine, so it's much milder, even though it does give the Ukrainian Government $450 million of U.S. taxpayers' money. However, when Republicans take over the Senate in January, their bill will match the House's in its warmongering lies, and Obama will get all he wants for his planned war against Russia (not just the $450 million that the Democratic-controlled Senate bill has provided).


So, now, both the Senate and the House, plus the U.S. President (via his State Department, CIA, FBI, and entire Administration), are actually at war, a hot war not a cold war, against Russia, through their proxy, their made-in-Washington , racist-fascist or nazi , Government of Ukraine, which currently is doing the fighting and the killing and the dying, but which couldn't do it but for that Western backing.



© AP/Wide World Photo/U.S. Department of State

It was actually with a great deal of back-door diplomacy that Kennedy and Khrushchev communicated and helped to diffuse the Cuban missile crises. Something that the current US administration has no natural ability, aptitude, or even a desire for. They have been, and continue to work very very hard to foment war.



This should be analogized to Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba and his and Soviet leader Khrushchev's attempt to base near the U.S., Soviet nuclear missiles aimed against America. At that time, in 1962, U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy said that we'd go to war against the USSR if necessary to prevent this; and today Russia's President Vladimir Putin has implied, but not yet said, that his country will likewise go to war against the United States if necessary to stop its attempt to do against Russia what Khrushchev had been stopped from doing against the U.S. in 1962.

However, the U.S. is now already farther along the warpath than the USSR had been in 1962. Already, many thousands of deaths have resulted from Ukraine's war against Russia and against its supporters inside what had previously been parts of Ukraine. In 1962, Cuba was at peace, except for a few bands of U.S.-backed Cubans, who were trying to overthrow Fidel Castro. Ukraine is today's Cuba, but even more of a danger. And, this time, the United States Government is trying to impose nuclear supremacy; the Soviet Union and its communism no longer even exist, and Russia is up against the mortal threat that is being wrongfully perpetrated by the U.S. against them.


Clearly, U.S. President Obama was serious when he tossed out Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych; and clearly he has the full backing of the U.S. Congress (though with some hesitation on the part of Democrats) to go to war against Russia and finish the job that he has begun.


If it weren't for the ongoing donations - officially loans, but 'loans' to an already-bankrupt Government are donations - by both U.S. taxpayers and EU taxpayers, that are channeled mainly through the U.S. and EU and IMF, Ukraine would simply stop its hot war against Russia and against its own ethnic Russians; and the Ukrainian Government that we installed in February would just collapse. The IMF and EU seem likely now to have ended their donations, but U.S. taxpayers certainly haven't ended ours.We've barely even started, though, ever since 1991, U.S. taxpayers have already invested "over five billion dollars" in this scheme to bring 'democracy' to Ukraine, even before Obama's successful February coup provided the capstone to that entire Orwellian effort: America's aristocracy and its hired hands call this 'democracy.'


The investigative journalist Wayne Madsen has published his analysis of the American aristocrats, ranging from the Kochs on the right to the Soroses on the left, who are lobbying for this campaign to get taxpayers to fund the American aristocracy's military take-over of other nations' aristocracies and resources. Madsen sees as being the few politicians in Washington who are resisting that, both Ron Paul (and definitely not his son Rand Paul) libertarians, and Dennis Kucinich progressives.


Madsen doesn't note, however, that both of those men are now retired; so, they can afford to speak the truth without losing their jobs, since they've already lost them. Among the U.S. aristocracy that finances politicians into federal offices, there is no visible support whatsoever for such dissidents challenging the aristocracy: when one of them somehow manages to get into the political system, they're removed from it, in one way or another, before they can do any damage to the U.S. aristocracy.


This is how it came to be that 98% of the House and 100% of the Senate voted for war against Russia, even though at least 67% of the American public who expressed an opinion about that in a Pew poll were opposed (and this 67% figure might have been far higher if the question had been more directly asked, such as: "Should the U.S. go to war against Russia in order to enable Ukraine to get back Crimea and conquer the rebelling regions in Ukraine's own former southeast?").



This America is supposed to be a 'democracy,' in which 99% of Congress and the President want taxpayers to be required to donate to the Ukrainian military, but less than one-third of the American public want to make those donations. Is it instead actually taxation without representation - a modern fascist form of the very oligarchy that America's Founders went to war against and defeated in order to create America? How much more of a demonstration needs to be made that today's America is a dictatorship, not a representative democracy or republic? Only media pretend it's not a dictatorship, because they're part of it, owned by the same people who heisted our Government and who trade favors with one-another against us. Clearly, this is an us-versus-them situation in which oligarchs are the aggressors, who destroyed American democracy, and from which a democracy now must again be seized, because it has been stolen from us and will not be retaken without a fight.

Madsen also has an interesting explanation as to why Israel is so passionately supportive of the racist-fascist, or nazi, Ukrainian political parties that the Obama Administration has placed in control of Ukraine.


Regardless of such speculations and evidence, however, there is nothing speculative about the American Government's drive to nuclear war.


It's part and parcel of the same deal that just passed in the U.S. Congress and was signed by the President, that in the event of any future U.S. financial crash, FDIC-insured bank accounts won't be paid until and unless the mega-banks that hold derivatives contracts get full payment on all of those gambling policies they had bought - i.e, never. Granny's savings account will get emptied out to pay Wall Street's gambling-debts. (Not that the U.S. 'news' media ever made such things clear to the public. But how do you think we had managed to obtain a Congress and a President like these are? The public had to be fooled by the aristocrats' propaganda, and the 'news' media had to help aristocrats fool them about it, because the 'news' media receive their funding from aristocrats, both as their owners and as their advertisers. The public are just pawns on their chessboard. This is what became of democracy: it's merely the residual verbal shell - 'democracy' - an Orwellian opposite of the original meaning.)


As Obama told the mega-bank chiefs on 27 March 2009 in private, "I'm protecting you ... My Administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."


He's going to teach those granny-bank-account "pitchforks," and such, a thing or two about "the one indispensable nation." Namely: those people in it, the public, are dispensable, even if not quite as much so as are the people his forces are slaughtering (ethnically cleansing) in southeast Ukraine and other such places, where the 'real riffraff' live. The people in those areas are punished and killed for the crime of living where "the right people" want them simply to be gone (preferably dead, but otherwise refugees in Russia, until the ICBMs kill them).


"Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing." But it's long since gone, and is now aiming to clear out land elsewhere, especially southeast Ukraine, to place nuclear missiles there.


America's 'entrepreneurs' have work to do, across the globe; and all the charred remains of the nuclear 'victory' will be passed on to their proud heirs.


It's the new American way, the way of 'entrepreneurs' - a.k.a. "the aristocracy" - but actually only the 'entrepreneurs' who have been able to grab the most, who are billionaires. Only insiders can apply for admission. Outsiders can apply for a job, nothing more.


Obama had it all figured out. Everything else from him was just an act. He is the personification of cynicism, and of lies.





Just imagine what it must be like for Russian President Vladimir Putin to have to work at diplomacy with a duplicitous slug like Petro Poroshenko knowing full well that he cannot, and never will, be able to trust him on any level.



If you don't think so, then how do you explain this, and this, and this, and this? Are those just innocent tragedies; and, if not, then who was the most indispensable person toward causing them to happen - causing them to be imposed by the Ukrainian Government that Obama's coup imposed upon Ukraine? Obama's decisions were essential in order to empower the people who are perpetrating this extermination-campaign, which is the bait intended to draw Vladimir Putin into a Ukrainian conflict so as to provide a pretext for an American nuclear attack against Russia - as if Russia doesn't have even more of a legitimate national-security interest in its Ukrainian neighbor than the U.S. had in its Cuban neighbor in 1962, when we rightly threatened nuclear war over that type of provocation.

If the next U.S. President protects Obama from criminal prosecution for Ukraine like Obama protected Bush from criminal prosecution for Iraq, then the U.S. is hopelessly a lawless nation, no democracy at all.


Unfortunately, the nuclear bombs in the war that Obama and the other stooges of America's aristocracy are building up to, will not be targeted against themselves and their psychopathic (often billionaire) sponsors. Those people will instead have their bomb-shelters, and their corporate jets.


Oligarchs are foreign to a democracy. Consequently, their servants in government, especially America's current and former President, are foreign to the U.S. Constitution, and to their Oath of Office, and thus to this country, irrespective of their technical citizenship as 'American.' They should both be brought up on charges of treason against the United States of America; for, if they are not, then truly democracy is ended in this country, with no hope of restoration, and America's Presidents are not subject to American Law, but instead stand above it, beyond it, and immune from it. That makes them dictators, but for whom, and against whom? The record speaks for itself.


Reader-comments to this commentary, pro-and-con, are invited regarding this conclusion, especially because a public forum to discuss this severe matter is needed now - a turning-point in American, and (sad to say), perhaps also (if a nuclear attack occurs) a turning-point in global history. That's the case regardless of which side of this debate one is on. The fundamental character of this country is at stake now. The public should have a say in it (if that's still even possible, given that 99% of the media are in the hands of oligarchs - the very same aristocrats who benefit from the status-quo).


Nuclear war is a serious matter, and the American Government must immediately halt their plan to provoke it. The time to force a halt to that is now, or else it will be never. Every step we get closer to nuclear war makes reversing the direction, which is toward war, even more difficult, and less likely, and makes nuclear war even likelier than it was before.


If the public is to take charge (assuming that doing so is still possible), it will happen sooner rather than later.


The public discussion will begin now, if it begins at all.


We're close to the precipice. Will the public remain quiet?


Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.


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UK: Metro police investigate murder of three boys in Westminster pedophile ring


© Wikipedia.org

Dolphin Square from Grosvenor Road



The Metropolitan Police are investigating the suspected murder of three boys in relation to the so-called Westminster pedophile ring, which allegedly serially abused boys during the 1970s and 80s.

Officers taking part in the investigation of the so-called "VIP" abuse ring have appealed for victims to come forward with information relating to the inquiry.


Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald, who is leading the investigation, made a public plea for witnesses on Thursday.


"I appeal to men who were subjected to abuse 30 years ago to come forward. We are also investigating the murder of three young boys - we are determined to find answers."




Much of the information currently available was given by one alleged victim, known as Nick.

Nick claimed he was abused at high-profile parties and events between the ages of seven and 16 at various London locations, including a flat in Dolphin Square, Pimlico, which is currently being investigated.


McDonald said Nick was a "credible" witness who was telling the truth, and urged residents of Dolphin Square from the 1970s to come forward, as they may have "seen or heard something that they only understand the significance of now."


No details of the murder inquiries were released, but this is the first time the police have confirmed the number of possible murders they are investigating. Officers are also exploring the possibility that boys were abused at other locations in London, including military establishments.


The latest investigations, which also include allegations that a child was run over, come after Nick gave his first public broadcast in November, where he claimed that his abusers would always "do what they wanted."


"Some of them were quite open about who they were. They had no fear at all of being caught, it didn't cross their mind," he said.


Nick further said they "created fear that penetrated every part of me - day in, day out. You didn't question what they wanted, you did as they asked without question and the punishments were very severe."


"They were very powerful people and they controlled my life for the next nine years," he added.




The father of an eight-year-old boy killed in 1985 came forward in November, claiming his son Vishal could have been murdered by the Westminster pedophile ring.

Retired magistrate Vishambar Mehrotra recorded a male prostitute who telephoned him claiming his son may have been abducted and taken a local west London hotel. He also allegedly claimed there were "very highly placed people" there.


When Mehrotra initially reported the telephone call, the police refused to investigate a case involving "judges and politicians."


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New study shows 2,000-year downward trend of Northern European summer temperatures

In a paper published in the , Esper . (2014) write that tree-ring chronologies of maximum latewood density (MXD) "are most suitable to reconstruct annually resolved summer temperature variations of the late Holocene." And working with what they call "the world's two longest MXD-based climate reconstructions" - those of Melvin . (2013) and Esper . (2012) - they combined portions of each to produce a new-and-improved summer temperature history for northern Europe that stretches all the way "from 17 BC to the present." And what did they thereby learn?

As the international team of researchers from the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Sweden and Switzerland describes it, this history depicts "a long-term cooling trend of -0.30°C per 1,000 years over the Common Era in northern Europe" (see figure below). Most important of all, however, they note that their temperature reconstruction "has centennial-scale variations superimposed on this trend," which indicate that "conditions during Medieval and Roman times were probably warmer than in the late 20th century," when the previously-rising post-Little Ice Age mean global air temperature hit a ceiling of sorts above which it has yet to penetrate.



© Adapted from Esper et al. (2014).

Northern Europe summer (June, July, August) temperature reconstruction. Data shown in°C with respect to the 1961-1990 mean





And so we continue to collect ever more real-world evidence for the fact that there is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the Earth's current level of warmth.

Paper Reviewed

Esper, J., Duthorn, E., Krusic, P.J., Timonen, M. and Buntgen, U. 2014. Northern European summer temperature variations over the Common Era from integrated tree-ring density records. Journal of Quaternary Science 29: 487-494.


Full paper PDF


References:

Esper, J., Frank, D.C., Timonen, M., Zorita, E., Wilson, R.J.S., Luterbacher, J., Holzkamper, S., Fischer, N., Wagner, S., Nievergelt, D., Verstege, A. and Buntgen, U. 2012. Orbital forcing of tree-ring data. 2: 862-866.


Melvin, T.M., Grudd, H. and Briffa, K.R. 2013. Potential bias in 'updating' tree-ring chronologies using Regional Curve Standardization: reprocessing the Tornetrask maximum-latewood-density data. 23: 364-373.


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As the U.S. pivots to Asia, China does the Eurasian pirouette


November 18, 2014: it's a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China's Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th.

Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain.


You may not have the faintest idea where Yiwu is, but businessmen plying their trades across Eurasia, especially from the Arab world, are already hooked on the city "where amazing happens!" We're talking about the largest wholesale center for small-sized consumer goods -- from clothes to toys -- possibly anywhere on Earth.


The Yiwu-Madrid route across Eurasia represents the beginning of a set of game-changing developments. It will be an efficient logistics channel of incredible length. It will represent geopolitics with a human touch, knitting together small traders and huge markets across a vast landmass. It's already a graphic example of Eurasian integration on the go. And most of all, it's the first building block on China's "New Silk Road," conceivably the project of the new century and undoubtedly the greatest trade story in the world for the next decade.


Go west, young Han. One day, if everything happens according to plan (and according to the dreams of China's leaders), all this will be yours -- via high-speed rail, no less. The trip from China to Europe will be a two-day affair, not the 21 days of the present moment. In fact, as that freight train left Yiwu, the D8602 bullet train was leaving Urumqi in Xinjiang Province, heading for Hami in China's far west. That's the first high-speed railway built in Xinjiang, and more like it will be coming soon across China at what is likely to prove dizzying speed.


Today, 90% of the global container trade still travels by ocean, and that's what Beijing plans to change. Its embryonic, still relatively slow New Silk Road represents its first breakthrough in what is bound to be an overland trans-continental container trade revolution.


And with it will go a basket of future "win-win" deals, including lower transportation costs, the expansion of Chinese construction companies ever further into the Central Asian "stans," as well as into Europe, an easier and faster way to move uranium and rare metals from Central Asia elsewhere, and the opening of myriad new markets harboring hundreds of millions of people.


So if Washington is intent on "pivoting to Asia," China has its own plan in mind. Think of it as a pirouette to Europe across Eurasia.


Defecting to the East?


The speed with which all of this is happening is staggering. Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the New Silk Road Economic Belt in Astana, Kazakhstan, in September 2013. One month later, while in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, he announced a twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road. Beijing defines the overall concept behind its planning as "one road and one belt," when what it's actually thinking about is a boggling maze of prospective roads, rail lines, sea lanes, and belts.


We're talking about a national strategy that aims to draw on the historical aura of the ancient Silk Road, which bridged and connected civilizations, east and west, while creating the basis for a vast set of interlocked pan-Eurasian economic cooperation zones. Already the Chinese leadership has green-lighted a $40 billion infrastructure fund, overseen by the China Development Bank, to build roads, high-speed rail lines, and energy pipelines in assorted Chinese provinces. The fund will sooner or later expand to cover projects in South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. But Central Asia is the key immediate target.


Chinese companies will be investing in, and bidding for contracts in, dozens of countries along those planned silk roads. After three decades of development while sucking up foreign investment at breakneck speed, China's strategy is now to let its own capital flow to its neighbors. It's already clinched $30 billion in contracts with Kazakhstan and $15 billion with Uzbekistan. It has provided Turkmenistan with $8 billion in loans and a billion more has gone to Tajikistan.


In 2013, relations with Kyrgyzstan were upgraded to what the Chinese term "strategic level." China is already the largest trading partner for all of them except Uzbekistan and, though the former Central Asian socialist republics of the Soviet Union are still tied to Russia's network of energy pipelines, China is at work there, too, creating its own version of Pipelineistan, including a new gas pipeline to Turkmenistan, with more to come.


The competition among Chinese provinces for much of this business and the infrastructure that goes with it will be fierce. Xinjiang is already being reconfigured by Beijing as a key hub in its new Eurasian network. In early November 2014, Guangdong -- the "factory of the world" -- hosted the first international expo for the country's Maritime Silk Road and representatives of no less than 42 countries attended the party.


President Xi himself is now enthusiastically selling his home province, Shaanxi, which once harbored the start of the historic Silk Road in Xian, as a twenty-first-century transportation hub. He's made his New Silk Road pitch for it to, among others, Tajikistan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, India, and Afghanistan.


The Maritime Silk Road will start in Guangdong province en route to the Malacca Strait, the Indian Ocean, the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, ending essentially in Venice, which would be poetic justice indeed. Think of it as Marco Polo in reverse.


All of this is slated to be completed by 2025, providing China with the kind of future "soft power" that it now sorely lacks. When President Xi hails the push to "break the connectivity bottleneck" across Asia, he's also promising Chinese credit to a wide range of countries.


Now, mix the Silk Road strategy with heightened cooperation among the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), with accelerated cooperation among the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), with a more influential Chinese role over the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) -- no wonder there's the perception across the Global South that, while the U.S. remains embroiled in its endless wars, the world is defecting to the East .


New Banks and New Dreams


The recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing was certainly a Chinese success story, but the bigger APEC story went virtually unreported in the United States. Twenty-two Asian countries approved the creation of an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) only one year after Xi initially proposed it. This is to be yet another bank, like the BRICS Development Bank , that will help finance projects in energy, telecommunications, and transportation. Its initial capital will be $50 billion and China and India will be its main shareholders.


Consider its establishment a Sino-Indian response to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), founded in 1966 under the aegis of the World Bank and considered by most of the world as a stalking horse for the Washington consensus. When China and India insist that the new bank's loans will be made on the basis of "justice, equity, and transparency," they mean that to be in stark contrast to the ADB (which remains a U.S.-Japan affair with those two countries contributing 31% of its capital and holding 25% of its voting power) -- and a sign of a coming new order in Asia. In addition, at a purely practical level, the ADB won't finance the real needs of the Asian infrastructure push that the Chinese leadership is dreaming about, which is why the AIIB is going to come in so handy.


Keep in mind that China is already the top trading partner for India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It's in second place when it comes to Sri Lanka and Nepal. It's number one again when it comes to virtually all the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), despite China's recent well-publicized conflicts over who controls waters rich in energy deposits in the region. We're talking here about the compelling dream of a convergence of 600 million people in Southeast Asia, 1.3 billion in China, and 1.5 billion on the Indian subcontinent.


Only three APEC members -- apart from the U.S. -- did not vote to approve the new bank: Japan, South Korea, and Australia, all under immense pressure from the Obama administration. (Indonesia signed on a few days late.) And Australia is finding it increasingly difficult to resist the lure of what, these days, is being called "yuan diplomacy."


In fact, whatever the overwhelming majority of Asian nations may think about China's self-described "peaceful rise," most are already shying away from or turning their backs on a Washington-and-NATO-dominated trade and commercial world and the set of pacts -- from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) for Europe to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) for Asia -- that would go with it.


When Dragon Embraces Bear


Russian President Vladimir Putin had a fabulous APEC. After his country and China clinched a massive $400 billion natural gas deal in May -- around the Power of Siberia pipeline, whose construction began this year -- they added a second agreement worth $325 billion around the Altai pipeline originating in western Siberia.


These two mega-energy deals don't mean that Beijing will become Moscow-dependent when it comes to energy, though it's estimated that they will provide 17% of China's natural gas needs by 2020. (Gas, however, makes up only 10% per cent of China's energy mix at present.) But these deals signal where the wind is blowing in the heart of Eurasia. Though Chinese banks can't replace those affected by Washington and EU sanctions against Russia, they are offering a Moscow battered by recent plummeting oil prices some relief in the form of access to Chinese credit.


On the military front, Russia and China are now committed to large-scale joint military exercises, while Russia's advanced S-400 air defense missile system will soon enough be heading for Beijing. In addition, for the first time in the post-Cold War era, Putin recently raised the old Soviet-era doctrine of "collective security" in Asia as a possible pillar for a new Sino-Russian strategic partnership.


Chinese President Xi has taken to calling all this the "evergreen tree of Chinese-Russian friendship" -- or you could think of it as Putin's strategic "pivot" to China. In either case, Washington is not exactly thrilled to see Russia and China beginning to mesh their strengths: Russian excellence in aerospace, defense technology, and heavy equipment manufacturing matching Chinese excellence in agriculture, light industry, and information technology.


It's also been clear for years that, across Eurasia, Russian, not Western, pipelines are likely to prevail. The latest spectacular Pipelineistan opera -- Gazprom's cancellation of the prospective South Stream pipeline that was to bring yet more Russian natural gas to Europe -- will, in the end, only guarantee an even greater energy integration of both Turkey and Russia into the new Eurasia.


So Long to the Unipolar Moment


All these interlocked developments suggest a geopolitical tectonic shift in Eurasia that the American media simply hasn't begun to grasp. Which doesn't mean that no one notices anything. You can smell the incipient panic in the air in the Washington establishment. The Council on Foreign Relations is already publishing laments about the possibility that the former sole superpower's exceptionalist moment is "unraveling." The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission can only blame the Chinese leadership for being "disloyal," adverse to "reform," and an enemy of the "liberalization" of their own economy.


The usual suspects carp that upstart China is upsetting the "international order," will doom "peace and prosperity" in Asia for all eternity, and may be creating a "new kind of Cold War" in the region. From Washington's perspective, a rising China, of course, remains the major "threat" in Asia, if not the world, even as the Pentagon spends gigantic sums to keep its sprawling global empire of bases intact. Those Washington-based stories about the new China threat in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, however, never mention that China remains encircled by U.S. bases, while lacking a base of its own outside its territory.




Of course, China does face titanic problems, including the pressures being applied by the globe's "sole superpower." Among other things, Beijing fears threats to the security of its sea-borne energy supply from abroad, which helps explain its massive investment in helping create a welcoming Eurasian Pipelineistan from Central Asia to Siberia. Fears for its energy future also explain its urge to "escape from Malacca" by reaching for energy supplies in Africa and South America, and its much-discussed offensive to claim energy-rich areas of the East and South China seas, which Beijing is betting could become a "second Persian Gulf," ultimately yielding 130 billion barrels of oil.

On the internal front, President Xi has outlined in detail his vision of a "results-oriented" path for his country over the next decade. As road maps go, China's "must-do" list of reforms is nothing short of impressive. And worrying about keeping China's economy, already the world's number one by size, rolling along at a feverish pitch, Xi is also turbo-charging the fight against corruption, graft, and waste, especially within the Communist Party itself.


Economic efficiency is another crucial problem. Chinese state-owned enterprises are now investing a staggering $2.3 trillion a year -- 43% of the country's total investment -- in infrastructure. Yet studies at Tsinghua University's School of Management have shown that an array of investments in facilities ranging from steel mills to cement factories have only added to overcapacity and so actually undercut China's productivity.


Xiaolu Wang and Yixiao Zhou, authors of the academic paper "Deepening Reform for China's Long-term Growth and Development," contend that it will be difficult for China to jump from middle-income to high-income status -- a key requirement for a truly global power. For this, an avalanche of extra government funds would have to go into areas like social security/unemployment benefits and healthcare, which take up at present 9.8% and 15.1% of the 2014 budget -- high for some Western countries but not high enough for China's needs.


Still, anyone who has closely followed what China has accomplished over these past three decades knows that, whatever its problems, whatever the threats, it won't fall apart. As a measure of the country's ambitions for economically reconfiguring the commercial and power maps of the world, China's leaders are also thinking about how, in the near future, relations with Europe, too, could be reshaped in ways that would be historic.


What About That "Harmonious Community"?


At the same moment that China is proposing a new Eurasian integration, Washington has opted for an "empire of chaos ," a dysfunctional global system now breeding mayhem and blowback across the Greater Middle East into Africa and even to the peripheries of Europe.


In this context, a "new Cold War" paranoia is on the rise in the U.S., Europe, and Russia. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who knows a thing or two about Cold Wars (having ended one), couldn't be more alarmed. Washington's agenda of "isolating" and arguably crippling Russia is ultimately dangerous, even if in the long run it may also be doomed to failure.


At the moment, whatever its weaknesses, Moscow remains the only power capable of negotiating a global strategic balance with Washington and putting some limits on its empire of chaos. NATO nations still follow meekly in Washington's wake and China as yet lacks the strategic clout.


Russia, like China, is betting on Eurasian integration. No one, of course, knows how all this will end. Only four years ago, Vladimir Putin was proposing "a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," involving a trans-Eurasian free trade agreement. Yet today, with the U.S., NATO, and Russia locked in a Cold War-like battle in the shadows over Ukraine, and with the European Union incapable of disentangling itself from NATO, the most immediate new paradigm seems to be less total integration than war hysteria and fear of future chaos spreading to other parts of Eurasia.


Don't rule out a change in the dynamics of the situation, however. In the long run, it seems to be in the cards. One day, Germany may lead parts of Europe away from NATO's "logic," since German business leaders and industrialists have an eye on their potentially lucrative commercial future in a new Eurasia. Strange as it might seem amid today's war of words over Ukraine, the endgame could still prove to involve a Berlin-Moscow-Beijing alliance.


At present, the choice between the two available models on the planet seems stark indeed: Eurasian integration or a spreading empire of chaos. China and Russia know what they want, and so, it seems, does Washington. The question is: What will the other moving parts of Eurasia choose to do?


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Sucker-punching cop shamed by judge for breaking 'Good Samaritan' woman's leg


© Tracy McLaughlin photo

Maria (Tony) Farrell leaves Orillia court house



A judge in Canada this week lashed out an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer for causing "catastrophic injuries" to a 49-year-old woman who he said was acting as a "Good Samaritan."

During the trial that lasted longer than a year, the court heard how Maria "Tonie" Farrell responded to a woman screaming behind a convenience store in 2013, according to QMI Agency reporter Tracy McLaughlin.


When OPP Sgt. Russ Watson arrived on the scene, Farrell attempted to point the officer in the direction of the man who had been attacking the woman, but he refused to listen.


"Shut the f*ck up," Watson warned.


"Mrs. Farrell was acting as Good Samaritan who went to the assistance of a woman who was being assaulted," Justice George Beatty said this week. "She had no criminal record and wanted to assist Sgt. Watson."


"Watson kicked her to the side, a karate-kick that snapped her leg," the judge explained, adding that "Watson then jumped on her and punched her on the left side of her face. She turned face-down and Sgt. Watson kept kneeing her in the back."


With her leg dangling, and screaming from the pain, Farrell was handcuffed and placed in the police cruiser. She was later charged with assaulting a police officer.


Watson testified that he suspected that Farrell was under the influence of alcohol, and that she "took a poke" at him.


"Sgt. Watson provided no explanation as to how Ms. Farrell's tibia was broken, or indeed, the reasons for the bruises on her legs and arms and the loss of a tooth," Justice Beatty noted. "His notes did not record the hammer strike to her left eye, which was basically a sucker punch ... he suffered no injury and her injuries were catastrophic."


"Police officers are trained and experienced in handling people who may be intoxicated, drug addicted, mentally ill, armed or violent. They apply their psychological skills and use the minimum of force in maintaining the peace and protecting the public," Beatty said. "That did not happen in this case."


In the end, the judge exonerated Farrell.


"This is the best Christmas present ever," Farrell, who is still forced to walk on crutches, said outside the court. "I've been going through hell ... but I knew the truth would prevail."


Watson refused to produce his notes from the case to the Special Investigation Unit, which declined to press charges against him.


"Our records show he came in for an interview but he would not provide his notes," SIU spokesperson Jasbir Brar told the QMI Agency. "That is within his legal rights."


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Some people really do 'feel your pain'

Pain

© iStockphoto

Some people looking at this image will feel pain in their leg too.



Vicarious pain is real and heart-felt, say Australian researchers, who have revealed the physiological changes that occur when a person literally feels someone else's pain.

The findings shed light on this extreme version of empathy, which is experienced by about 20 to 30 per cent of people, says pain researcher Dr Melita Giummarra of Monash University's school of psychological science and Caulfield Hospital in Melbourne.


"This is the first time physiological changes associated with vicarious pain have been measured," says Giummarra.


She was among the first researchers to demonstrate the proportion of healthy people who feel pain when they see another person in pain.


"People who are naturally prone to this will usually say they experience pain in the same body part the other person is experiencing it," says Giummarra.


While vicarious pain might seem to be a burden for those experiencing it, Giummarra says this is not necessarily the case.


"Most people who have this (and) are otherwise healthy say it's just a part of their normal experience, just like synaesthesia is just part of how some people interact with the world," she says.


In research presented at the recent 15th World Congress on Pain in Argentina, Giummarra and colleagues investigated nearly 20 women, around half of whom experienced vicarious pain.


The researchers used ECG to measure the participants' heart rates as they watched short video clips from football matches.


"Some of the clips had happy guys running around hi-fiving and kicking goals and some of them had players on the ground with quite painful injuries," says Giummarra.


Participants who were prone to vicarious pain reported feeling shooting sensations or dull aches when they saw footballers being injured.


"We had a range of injuries including those involving the head, ankles, knees and legs and most of the participants felt vicarious pain in the same body part."


Those prone to vicarious pain also demonstrated a sustained rise in heart rate while observing a footballer in pain.


Those who did not experience vicarious pain had an initial rise in heart rate but then the rate dropped to below normal.


The vicarious pain group's reaction was more akin to what happens when we experience our own pain, says Giummarra.


She says most people think vicarious pain is all in the mind but the findings show it is a real sensation.


Heart rate variability


Giummarra's preliminary work, incorporating research done since the conference presentation, has also found people experiencing vicarious pain have lower than usual heart rate variability when under stress.


This suggests that their parasympathetic nervous system is working differently.


One of the functions of the parasympathetic nervous system is to inhibit the arousal produced by our sympathetic nervous system when we see something threatening or unpleasant, such as the sight of someone in pain.


"When we watch someone in pain we are aroused and you might feel some sort of non-painful sensation," says Giummarra. "And that usually disappears quite quickly because we have this inhibition of our arousal."


"People prone to vicarious pain possibly don't have that inhibitory response. Their arousal is sustained and possibly gives rise to some sort of painful perception."


Giummarra says the physiological differences she has measured in people with vicarious pain are also consistent with patterns seen in those with anxiety-related disorders.


In the future Giummarra hopes to look at the role of vicarious pain in creating greater empathy among healthcare workers.


But she is also interested in studying the flip side of this.


"Although empathy is important in the interaction between clinicians and patients, we know that clinicians who are more empathetic are more prone to compassion fatigue or burn out," says Giummarra.


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Is U.S. planning anti-Russian false flag in Ukraine?


previous article discussed Russian economist/political analyst Mikhail Delyagin expecting a possible anti-Russian nuclear false flag.

Fort Russ now cites intelligence "about impending terrorist attacks on Ukrainian strategic objects, which will justify an attack on Donbass."


Foreign nationals and relatives of senior Ukrainian officials were evacuated from border areas, it says.


Armored vehicles with Russian and Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) symbols and flags were seen in Donbas territory controlled by Ukraine's military.


Suggesting a planned provocation. Other intelligence "confirmed the arrival of large numbers of mercenaries, equipment and machinery from NATO countries."


Ukraine's general staff press service head, Vladislav Seleznev, announced possible resumed hostilities in so-called ATO (anti-terrorist operations) areas.


As well as "possible terrorist attacks by the militia on the objects of strategic importance." Because socio/political/humanitarian conditions remain tense, he said. In ATO and bordering areas.


"There is also the risk of a resumption of active hostilities," Seleznev added. "However, we do not eliminate the risk of terrorist and sabotage acts in these areas, at government and military facilities, as well as mass protests and civil disobedience."


Earlier, illegitimate oligarch president Petro Poroshenko vowed to return Crimea to Ukraine. "Crimea will be back together with us," he said.


US-installed NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg discussed Ukraine-supportive Alliance efforts with Kiev's illegitimate putschist prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. On Monday. In Brussels.


Pledging "NATO stands with you." Praising "Ukraine's commitment to its partnership with NATO despite challenging circumstances, and pledged ongoing political and practical support."



"Your visit just underlines the strong partnership between NATO and Ukraine. We also very much appreciate that we are able to develop our partnership. And especially because the people of Ukraine have chosen the path of democracy and closer cooperation with Europe. And we welcome that. We underline that the decision by the people of Ukraine has to be respected."



Some cold hard facts. US-installed fascist putschists run Ukraine. With no legitimacy whatever.

Governing lawlessly. Enforcing hardline rule. Committing egregious civil and human rights violations. Waging naked aggression on its own people.


So-called Poroshenko's silence regime reflects head-fake deception. According to the Voice of Sevastopol (accessed earlier, not now except in Ukrainian):


On Monday, artillery fire was heard. In Donetsk's western outskirts. Ukrainian drones overflew the area. During December 14 and 15 evening hours, "Ukrainian law enforcers attacked the airport of Donetsk..." DPR freedom fighters didn't respond in kind.


Ukrainian forces attacked their Yasnoye positions. Northwest of Dokuchayevsk. In Beryozovoye municipality. Artillery fire was heard in Lugansk. Fighting reported at Schastye. Self-defense force Prishib village positions were attacked. Artillery fire was reported coming from Ukrainian army controlled Chernukhino, Gorodische and Zorinsk.


An Odessa explosion was reported. In the vicinity of its refinery. At the same time, Russian humanitarian aid keeps coming. A 10th convey is imminent. With vital supplies an Christmas gifts.


US-supported Kiev fascists threaten regional security. Perhaps world peace. The respected Colonel Cassad site quoted what it called Georgi Diimitrov's "classic definition of fascism."



Calling it "an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, the most chauvinistic, the most imperialistic elements of the financial capital..."


"Fascism is neither the government beyond classes nor the government of the petty bourgeois or the lumpen-proletariat over the financial capital."


"Fascism is the government of the financial capital itself. It is an organized massacre of the working class and the revolutionary slice of peasantry and intelligentsia."


"Fascism in its foreign policy is the most brutal kind of chauvinism, which cultivates zoological hatred against other peoples."



Kiev terrorizes opponents. Wants them eliminated altogether. Tactics include "physical extermination, intimidation, hostage-taking, warrantless arrests, abductions, torture, and other elements of terror." Kiev putschists represent "the most radical forms of the Ukrainian integral nationalism and fascism..."

Monied interests run things. Billionaires contest with millionaires for power. Monied interests and "fascist squads (are) its instruments for building the fascist system of government, which is built on a terrorist dictatorship."


Russophobia is Kiev's ideological cornerstone. "(O)penly advocat(ing) oppressing and exterminating people based on their ethnicity, culture, and language."


Colonel Cassad site saying Ukrainian conditions are "a 100% match for Dimitrov's classical definition. (F)ascism in its most classical and pure form."


Threatening regional peace, stability and security. Pentagon sources confirmed military buildup along Russia's borders. To ensure regional "peace and stability." NATO's "collective security commitment." In light of Russian "interference" in Ukraine.


Moscow accused NATO of significant air activity and intelligence flights over border areas. Unjustifiable provocations. As well as NATO's nearby land and sea presence.


In Poland and Baltic countries. Black Sea naval exercises. The equivalent of Russia conducting its own in Mexican Gulf waters. Or off America's east or west coasts.


Imagine Washington's response. Screaming scoundrel media headlines.


Lt. General Mikhail Mizintsev heads Russia's Defense Ministry joint military command. He expressed concerns "over the significant increase of NATO military activity near the Russian borders." Including doubled flight activity. To about 3,000 missions this year. Flying in "dangerous proximity" to long-range Russian military aircraft.


At least 55 times in 2013 and 2014. At a distance of less than 100 meters. Lack of "any mutual exchange of information" ruined chances for trust.


"All achievements in the field of trust-building and voluntary transparency that NATO and Russia have formed over the years have ceased," said Mizintsev. All Russian missions were "in strict compliance with international rules."


On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained how NATO policy affects Russia.


Saying its military doctrine "says...the security risks for Russia, among other things, are NATO expansion to the East and the movement of military infrastructure of NATO closer to the Russian borders..."



"(N)ot NATO itself, but its militarized movement to the East is considered by the Russian military doctrine as a security risk and threat for Russia."



Lavrov cited "serious reasons to believe" sanctions and other Western policies aim for regime change in Russia.

Including US-instigated oil wars. Taking advantage of weakening economic conditions. Hammering Russia's ruble. Making its economy scream.


Wanting Putin supporters turned against him. Perhaps color revolution turbulence underway. A US specialty. Wanting Russia looking like Ukraine.


Risking open confrontation to achieve aims. Anything ahead is possible. Lavrov remains firm saying:



"I can assure you that Russia will not only survive, but will come out stronger out of this."


"We have been in much worse situations in our history, and every time we were getting out of these fixes much stronger."



America represents its most serious challenge. Much greater than during Cold War years. Mutually assured destruction (MAD) reasoning seems forgotten.

Lunatics making policy in Washington risk the unthinkable. Cooler heads so far unable to contain them.


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Cruel science: The CIA didn't just torture, it experimented on human beings

torture

© AP/Maya Alleruzzo, File



Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA's torture program. The experimental nature of the interrogation and detention techniques is clearly evident in the Senate Intelligence Committee's executive summary of its investigative report, despite redactions (insisted upon by the CIA) to obfuscate the locations of these laboratories of cruel science and the identities of perpetrators.


At the helm of this human experimentation project were two psychologists hired by the CIA, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. They designed interrogation and detention protocols that they and others applied to people imprisoned in the agency's secret "black sites."


In its response to the Senate report, the CIA justified its decision to hire the duo: "We believe their expertise was so unique that we would have been derelict had we not sought them out when it became clear that CIA would be heading into the uncharted territory of the program." Mitchell and Jessen's qualifications did not include interrogation experience, specialized knowledge about Al Qaeda or relevant cultural or linguistic knowledge. What they had was Air Force experience in studying the effects of torture on American prisoners of war, as well as a curiosity about whether theories of "learned helplessness" derived from experiments on dogs might work on human enemies.


To implement those theories, Mitchell and Jessen oversaw or personally engaged in techniques intended to produce "debility, disorientation and dread." Their "theory" had a particular means-ends relationship that is not well understood, as Mitchell testily explained in an interview on Vice News: "The point of the bad cop is to get the bad guy to talk to the good cop." In other words, "enhanced interrogation techniques" (the Bush administration's euphemism for torture) do not themselves produce useful information; rather, they produce the condition of total submission that will facilitate extraction of actionable intelligence.


Mitchell, like former CIA Director Michael Hayden and others who have defended the torture program, argues that a fundamental error in the Senate report is the elision of (waterboarding, "rectal rehydration," weeks or months of nakedness in total darkness and isolation, and other techniques intended to break prisoners) and - manufactured compliance, which, the defenders claim, enabled the collection of abundant intelligence that kept Americans safe. (That claim is amply and authoritatively contradicted in the report.)


As Americans from the Beltway to the heartland debate - again - the legality and efficacy of "enhanced interrogation," we are reminded that "torture" has lost its stigma as morally reprehensible and criminal behavior. That was evident in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, when more than half of the candidates vowed to bring back waterboarding, and it is on full display now. On , for example, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who functionally topped the national security decision-making hierarchy during the Bush years, announced that he "would do it again in a minute."


No one has been held accountable for torture, beyond a handful of prosecutions of low-level troops and contractors. Indeed, impunity has been virtually guaranteed as a result of various Faustian bargains, which include "golden shield" legal memos written by government lawyers for the CIA; ex post facto immunity for war crimes that Congress inserted in the 2006 Military Commissions Act; classification and secrecy that still shrouds the torture program, as is apparent in the Senate report's redactions; and the "look forward, not backward" position that President Obama has maintained through every wave of public revelations since 2009. An American majority, it seems, has come to accept the legacy of torture.


Human experimentation, in contrast, has not been politically refashioned into a legitimate or justifiable enterprise. Therefore, it would behoove us to appreciate the fact that the architects and implementers of black-site torments were authorized at the highest levels of the White House and CIA to experiment on human beings. Reading the report through this lens casts a different light on questions of accountability and impunity.


The "war on terror" is not the CIA's first venture into human experimentation. At the dawn of the Cold War, German scientists and doctors with Nazi records of human experimentation were given new identities and brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip. During the Korean War, alarmed by the shocking rapidity of American POWs' breakdowns and indoctrination by their communist captors, the CIA began investing in mind-control research. In 1953, the CIA established the MK-ULTRA program, whose earliest phase involved hypnosis, electroshock and hallucinogenic drugs. The program evolved into experiments in psychological torture that adapted elements of Soviet and Chinese models, including longtime standing, protracted isolation, sleep deprivation and humiliation. Those lessons soon became an applied "science" in the Cold War.


During the Vietnam War, the CIA developed the Phoenix program, which combined psychological torture with brutal interrogations, human experimentation and extrajudicial executions. In 1963, the CIA produced a manual titled to guide agents in the art of extracting information from "resistant" sources by combining techniques to produce "debility, disorientation and dread." Like the communists, the CIA largely eschewed tactics that violently target the body in favor of those that target the mind by systematically attacking all human senses in order to produce the desired state of compliance. The Phoenix program model was incorporated into the curriculum of the School of the Americas, and an updated version of the Kubark guide, produced in 1983 and titled , was disseminated to the intelligence services of right-wing regimes in Latin America and Southeast Asia during the global "war on communism."


In the mid-1980s, CIA practices became the subject of congressional investigations into US-supported atrocities in Central America. Both manuals became public in 1997 as a result of Freedom of Information Act litigation by . That would have seemed like a "never again" moment.


But here we are again. This brings us back to Mitchell and Jessen. Because of their experience as trainers in the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program, after 9/11 they were contacted by high-ranking Pentagon officials and, later, by lawyers who wanted to know whether some of those SERE techniques could be reverse-engineered to get terrorism suspects to talk.


The road from abstract hypotheticals (can SERE be reverse-engineered?) to the authorized use of waterboarding and confinement boxes runs straight into the terrain of human experimentation. On April 15, 2002, Mitchell and Jessen arrived at a black site in Thailand to supervise the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the first "high-value detainee" captured by the CIA. By July, Mitchell proposed more coercive techniques to CIA headquarters, and many of these were approved in late July. From then until the program was dry-docked in 2008, at least thirty-eight people were subjected to psychological and physical torments, and the results were methodically documented and analyzed. That is the textbook definition of human experimentation.


My point is not to minimize the illegality of torture or the legal imperatives to pursue accountability for perpetrators. Rather, because the concept of torture has been so muddled and disputed, I suggest that accountability would be more publicly palatable if we reframed the CIA's program as one of human experimentation. If we did so, it would be more difficult to laud or excuse perpetrators as "patriots" who "acted in good faith." Although torture has become a Rorschach test among political elites playing to public opinion on the Sunday morning talk shows, human experimentation has no such community of advocates and apologists.


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John Tefft, the US "Special Ambassador" appointed to Russia


For diplomats of any country, Moscow represents a plum posting. If you are selected to serve there it implies your government has great trust in your abilities and you have had a previous career of meritorious service. Or it means you are John Tefft.

Controversy follows John Tefft wherever he goes. This diplomatic pit bull has a disturbing talent for stirring up trouble - exactly the opposite of what diplomats are supposed to do. Whenever he leaves a posting local commentators assume his career is finished. Yet he keeps showing up wherever the US wants to foment trouble - pretending he is a simple functionary, out of his depth, when in fact there are few depths he will not sink to.


It is therefore strange, on the surface, that Moscow has confirmed his appointment as US Ambassador. However, as with all official actions, there is something said, something else implied and a real reason it is happening. Washington and Moscow may be trying to achieve different things through this appointment, but ultimately they both have a vested interest in it.


The devil you know


Tefft has been in Russia before. Between 1996 and 1999 he was deputy chargé d'affaires to the US Ambassador in Moscow. This was the period when the former Communists, in alliance with other parties, came perilously close to gaining a majority in the Duma but mysteriously chose to continue with the power-sharing practices they had campaigned on abolishing. It is widely believed that US Embassy blackmail played a considerable part in this process, and it is no coincidence that Russia received a massive IMF loan, seemingly as a reward, once this about-face had occurred.


Between 2000 and 2003 he was US Ambassador to Lithuania, an obvious promotion. At this period a wave of rabid Russophobia developed, despite the fact Russia wasn't threatening Lithuania in any way and ordinary Lithuanians have no history of hostility to ordinary Russians, even though the country's nationality policy could be seen as discriminatory towards them.


We subsequently discovered that NATO wanted to install attack missiles and bases in countries bordering Russia. Ambassadors are routinely removed from countries because they might start adopting the local point of view if they stay too long. As Lithuanian commentators pointed out at the time, Tefft left when the distance between US ambitions in the country and the Lithuanian idea of nationalism and statehood became too obvious.


From 2005 to 2009 Tefft was Ambassador to Georgia. During this period the US supported state- sponsored terrorism in Georgia, by recruiting, training and equipping the terrorists under an "assistance programme" costing several billion dollars which the actual Georgian Armed Forces never saw, as the 2008 war with Russia made painfully obvious. This terrorism was conducted against the Georgian people themselves, as in the case of the notorious Khurcha Incident.


Tefft was of course the ambassador during the 2008 Georgia-Russia war. The imminence of this was known to everyone who had been in an English-speaking bar in Tbilisi and listened to drunken American soldiers individually trying to demonstrate their manhood by blurting out dates and places where Uncle Sam was going to invade, alongside Georgian forces, and heard the same details from all these different people. The US only failed to support the subsequent action because Saakashvili invaded on a different date, to claim all the glory for himself, not because it didn't agree with an action Georgia could not sensibly undertake without US involvement.


After Georgia, Tefft moved on to Ukraine. It is at this point that the agitators who had failed once to get rid of supposedly pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, because the people inconveniently voted him back in after a supposed "popular revolution" had deposed him, decided to enlist neo-Nazi elements with little popular support to encourage, and then hijack, a new wave of unrest.


We have all seen the bloody consequences of this policy, and the active US support for this blatant attempt at regime change, in which "peace brokers" and open supporters of the protestors traveled there on the same planes to deliver ostensibly contradictory messages. We have also seen the same terrorists inserted in Georgia during Tefft's time suddenly appear in Maidan Square, shoot at people indiscriminately, then disappear to Georgia, traveling on Georgian passports regardless of their nationality.


Russians have long expressed alarm at Tefft's track record. Washington knows this, and is playing on it by appointing him. Boys at Roman Catholic schools who don't like the discipline are routinely told that if they misbehave they will be sent to a Christian Brothers boarding school, and live in an even more repressive environment. For public consumption, it is being implied that Tefft has been sent to Moscow for the same reason: the Russians won't stop complaining about him, so now they get him themselves.


Logical conclusions


Seth Ferris has written in this journal that, "Tefft represents America's friends always being right, and acting with impunity, simply because they are America's friends. We are left to wonder what sort of countries seek such a friend, and why." More pertinently however his career has had two common features. Firstly, his actions have been progressively more anti-Russian in each country he has been appointed to. Secondly, the consequences of this have been progressively more serious, as Ukrainians now know, and Georgians and Lithuanians could have told them.


Moscow is well aware of all this. Even the mouthpiece of US and European Policy, Radio Free Europe, has published an article on its website entitled A Bogeyman in Russia, U.S. Envoy Appears Poised for Moscow Job, which credits Moscow with describing him as a regime-change expert, or "diplomatic diversionist" - a hit man dispatched by Washington to foment unrest in Russia's neighbouring states.


The Russian media is openly speculating that Tefft has been sent to Russia to arrange yet another revolution. A recent ITAR-TASS article pointed out that when The Kremlin confirmed Tefft's appointment as US Ambassador to Russia Presidential Aide for Foreign Policy Issues Yuri Ushakov refused to comment on Tefft's behaviour during his tenure in Georgia and Ukraine. He would only say that Tefft is "a professional diplomat" and "the fact that he used to work in Russia and that he knows our country and speaks Russian is also worth mentioning".


Moscow is trying to tell the public that it is better to "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." It is trying to show the concerned public that it can control him if he is actually living there. Maybe it has forgotten that when the Obama administration presented its "reset button" to start new relations with Moscow it actually put "overcharge" on the button rather than "reset", despite the large number of Russian speakers, such as John Tefft, in the US. This wasn't an accident, as Tefft's appointment and career have confirmed, but Russia went ahead and pressed it anyway.


Chalk, cheese and Tefft


A former trainer of diplomats from Damascus once said:


"There are many kinds of diplomats. There are professionals, who are sent to important countries (China, India, UK etc) after faultless advancement in their careers. Then there are the former somethings: ex-generals, ex-spies, ex-lovers of someone etc., who are sent abroad at the end of their service to gain prestige, money and posts for their relatives and servants. Then there are people who are always "deployed" to dirty places. They are not real diplomats, since they are nominated by agencies, not the White House, and their credentials are generally miserable. Having lost their virginity many times, they will never be sent to first-class countries and are often laughed at by their own colleagues for the dirty deeds, or "misdoings" they have committed."


Despite being now sent to Russia, John F. Tefft has put himself firmly in this final category. He seems to think that his affable style, genuine Mormon faith and willingness to make himself look stupid in public will save him from close scrutiny over his track record in Georgia and other former Soviet states. But his track record is what it is - and has a disturbing aspect to it which reveals the real, unspoken reason why he has been appointed to Moscow.


There remain serious questions as to who Tefft is really working for. On the one hand, his anti-Russian conduct is an extension of US policy, which would be the same without his involvement. On the other, although the US has achieved its objectives in these countries, its reputation has been fundamentally damaged.


As has been pointed out elsewhere, although most people in Lithuania, Georgia and Ukraine are generally pro-American they have an increasing problem with official America. For example, everyone knows that the US celebrates its Independence Day on 4th July, and in every country the US has an embassy there is some sort of public celebration of this. But although individuals may wish the USA well, those who attend these celebrations are always asked why they are doing so, what they want, who they think they are, and what their attitude towards their own country is.


So has Ambassador Tefft decided that showing us US policy in all its gory detail is the best way to harm America? He would not be the first ambassador to become increasingly disenchanted with his own country the more he represents it - Colin Malan, the former South African Ambassador, left the diplomatic service to found an opposition party, as did Georgia's current Defence Minister, Irakli Alasania. But those individuals left. Is Tefft actually trying to destroy the US from within?


The task in hand


John Tefft does make a positive impression on those he meets. He has a homespun charm and seems to like meeting people, as long as he doesn't have to say anything controversial. He doesn't go out of his way to pick fights with his statements, like former US envoy to the region Matthew Bryza. He presents himself as an ordinary man just doing his job, who feels somewhat uneasy at being so important.


This may be largely disingenuous, but it is the sort of thing people want to hear. If the man representing the most powerful nation on earth is humble, he is likely give your country the respect you feel it deserves, so the thinking goes.


Tefft will have to deal with many issues in Moscow. Energy policy is taking a new turn, with countries which sought to build pipelines to bypass Russia now wanting to invest in Russian pipelines for the sake of greater returns and long-term energy security. Though the US claims to support Georgia and Ukraine's integration with NATO the French Defence Minister, a loyal US ally, has spoken out against this. US relations with China are largely conducted through Moscow, and this will involve greater engagement with the Russian Far East, a notoriously impenetrable region for Russians themselves, let alone foreign interests.


But given his track record, either Russia or John Tefft will crash and burn. Washington knows this and Moscow knows this. Causing trouble, with the surface intent of damaging Russia, is what Tefft has always done, and his other "achievements" in the countries he has worked in are so small as to be invisible to the naked eye.


One way or another, this appointment is designed to be the end of the line. The US government is challenging Tefft to prove he is really working for them. Moscow has accepted him so he can prove he is really working against the US.


Whatever the outcome, he will then retire. How many Russians and others have to die while the great powers argue over this one man remains to be seen, but they are not part of any official calculations.


"New Eastern Outlook".


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