It is clear something is causing the increasing in volcanic activity, earthquakes in strange places, mass animal deaths puzzling scientists, extreme swings in weather, sinkholes swallowing houses, loud booms, magnetic field compression, record breaking increase in fireball reports, gas explosions, drought, water main breaks, moon displacement, water column displacements, and a wildly moving magnetic pole for planet Earth. One of the strangest indicators is preparation by the ruling class for what seems to be a large scale disaster.

We know the symptoms. Every agency on the planet is working to find out the cause. Is this all leading up to a planet x passage, well, it’s not all that far fetched, as new exo planets are being found all of the time. In fact, most of the planets in the Milky Way galaxy are free floating planets, not orbiting any star. The last bit of evidence that we need to have 100% verification of planet x/nibiru, is to see it. My guest tonight is an amateur astronomer. Aren’t we all? But, most astronomers don’t gather evidence outside their own science. This amateur astronomer looked in places they did not. History. Scripture. Legend. Gill Broussard is my guest tonight, and we are about to explore everywhere in three hours. Get ready to get squared.

[Backup Content is below]

Teens Getting RareBirth rates are dropping in the United States and by the year 2050 teenagers will become just a small percentage of the population if current trends continue to hold true.

Right now, there are fewer teens, as a percentage of the population, than at any point on record, reports The Washington Post, and the numbers will stay low while the population in general gets older.

The news was revealed as a small part of a recent Pew Research Center survey about the changing religious demographics in the world. Data in that survey showed that the numbers of young people ages 13 to 19 over the past 50 years has fluctuated in the U.S., but aside from a few climbs has mostly dropped — from a high of about 15 percent of the population in 1965 down to around 9.5 percent by 2013, with the most recent data coming in a bureau estimate from that year. The higher rates are from "millennials," a word coined to describe people born in around 1980 to the year 2000. However, as the nation's birth rates drop, so do the numbers of teens.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there were 3.93 million births in the United States in 2013, a number down slightly from 3.95 million in 2012 and 9 percent below a high in 2007.

The numbers of babies that are being born to women ages 15 to 44 also dropped to a record low of 1.86 in 2013, a number down from the 2.1 babies per mother that the reports said is needed to stabilize the population. And, the reports show, out of every 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, the average births dropped from 63 in 2012 to 62.5 in 2013.

The previous low for teenagers, The Post reports, was in 1953, as the babies born during the childbirth boom following World War II had not yet become teenagers.

But before 1900, there were more teens per capita, as Americans' life expectancy was not as long, meaning there were lower percentages of older people to skew the results.

But there are still some parts of the United States where there are more teens, such as in the western states where Mormons and Hispanics tend to have more children.

Further, Census Bureau data shows projections that are not quite so dire, as they show the numbers of teens ages 12-17 fluctuating only by a few points. However, when compared to the numbers of people growing older, it brings the overall percentage of teens down in population trends

Tap the TapThe adult human body is about 60 percent water, and every system in the body depends on water to function. Making sure we drink enough every day is essential for good health, and the amount many health experts recommend is eight 8-ounce glasses every day. But if you're drinking the wrong kind of water, you can be increasing your risk of heart disease, cancer, and other conditions.

Have you substituted bottled water for tap water? Or does your drinking water come from a well? If so, you could be at risk.. Read on to discover three ways the water you drink may be wrecking your health.Special: The Real Truth About Iodized Salt the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

• Magnesium deficiency. Magnesium supports more than 300 metabolic processes, including regulating blood pressure and heart rhythm and the proper absorption of calcium. Health experts say as many as 80 percent of us fail to reach the RDA of 360 milligrams daily for women and 420 milligrams for men. Older adults are especially vulnerable. Bottled drinking water is making the situation even worse, since many people have swapped tap water, which is a significant source of magnesium, for bottled water, which contains far less. Typical symptoms of magnesium deficiency include insomnia, anxiety, pain, muscle cramps and weakness, restless leg syndrome, abnormal heart rhythms, and fatigue.

• Arsenic. Arsenic is a deadly poison, and a study at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that even trace amounts that naturally occur in well water double the risk of developing and dying from heart disease, stroke, and atherosclerosis. The Environmental Protection Agency's limit on arsenic in drinking water is 10 parts per billion, but the standards only apply to municipal water utilities. Arsenic levels are much

higher — sometimes as much as 100 times higher — in well water in some areas of the country, particularly in northern New England, the upper Midwest, and in the Southwest. ALERT: Prescription Drugs: Are You Taking Too Many?

Numerous studies have found links between arsenic and poor health. A study at New York University found that smoking intensified the damaging health effects of arsenic, and a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a link between arsenic in drinking water and diabetes. An additional study by the National Academy of Sciences found that drinking water causes skin, bladder, and lung cancer.

• Fluoride. "Fluoride is a very powerful cardiac poison," says Dr. Russell Blaylock, renowned neurosurgeon and editor of the Blaylock Wellness Report. "Fluoride was added to drinking water to reduce cavities, but even the American Dental Association has admitted that fluoridation doesn't reduce the number of cavities," Dr. Blaylock tells Newsmax Health. The U.S. regulatory agencies admitted that 3 parts per million of fluoride in water produces severe fluorosis of the teeth and bones, is neurotoxic, is a cell toxin, and produces organ damage.

"Dentists that I know say they can always tell when a patient has been drinking fluoridated water because the enamel of their teeth is soft," Dr. Blaylock says. "Fluoride destroys the teeth — that's what fluorosis is. It just starts making little pits in the enamel, and the whole idea was that you were supposed to be making your teeth stronger. It doesn't — it destroys them. Special: The Healthy Blood Pressure Nutrient You Aren’t Getting Enough Of

"Fluoride can also injure the nervous system and even cause cancer," says Dr. Blaylock. "Degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's are possibly linked to drinking fluoridated water. Cancer, behavioral problems, thyroid suppression, male infertility and impotence are also some examples of what may happen to the body when too much fluoride is present.

"Once in the body, fluoride is very difficult to remove, but some nutrients, including vitamin C and magnesium, can decrease its toxicity," says Dr. Blaylock.

NORAD: Home of the Brave?

Washington (AFP) - The US military command that scans North America's skies for enemy missiles and aircraft plans to move its communications gear to a Cold War-era mountain bunker, officers said.

The shift to the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado is designed to safeguard the command's sensitive sensors and servers from a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, military officers said.

The Pentagon last week announced a $700 million contract with Raytheon Corporation to oversee the work for North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command.

Admiral William Gortney, head of NORAD and Northern Command, said that "because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain's built, it's EMP-hardened."

"And so, there's a lot of movement to put capability into Cheyenne Mountain and to be able to communicate in there," Gortney told reporters.

"My primary concern was... are we going to have the space inside the mountain for everybody who wants to move in there, and I'm not at liberty to discuss who's moving in there," he said.

The Cheyenne mountain bunker is a half-acre cavern carved into a mountain in the 1960s that was designed to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack. From inside the massive complex, airmen were poised to send warnings that could trigger the launch of nuclear missiles.

But in 2006, officials decided to move the headquarters of NORAD and US Northern Command from Cheyenne to Petersen Air Force base in Colorado Springs. The Cheyenne bunker was designated as an alternative command center if needed.

That move was touted a more efficient use of resources but had followed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of modernization work at Cheyenne carried out after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Now the Pentagon is looking at shifting communications gear to the Cheyenne bunker, officials said.

"A lot of the back office communications is being moved there," said one defense official.

Officials said the military's dependence on computer networks and digital communications makes it much more vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse, which can occur naturally or result from a high-altitude nuclear explosion.

Under the 10-year contract, Raytheon is supposed to deliver "sustainment" services to help the military perform "accurate, timely and unambiguous warning and attack assessment of air, missile and space threats" at the Cheyenne and Petersen bases.

Raytheon's contract also involves unspecified work at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

Harnessing “Black Holes”: The Large Hadron Collider – Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction

What would you have done to stop catastrophic events if you knew in advance what you know now.We have the moral obligation to take action in every way we can. The future is in our hands. The stakes are the highest they have ever been. The Large Hadron Collider developed by the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) is a dangerous instrument. The start-up April 5 has initiated a more reckless use of LHC’s capabilities. 

How do scientists “know” that these black holes would be harmless? That defies logic. Why would these black holes function any differently than black holes in outer space, sucking matter into them? 

The Large Hadron Collider – the rationale

The world’s largest supercollider is located at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in a 17-mile-long tunnel built in a giant circle, buried 330 feet underground. It is beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva. Total cost: over $9 billion (as of January 2010). It’s been funded by European governments and $542 million from the United States. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was restarted April 5, after a two-year shutdown and a $150 million upgrade.

Inside the LHC, two beams of protons are forced to smash into each other at high speed. The initial goal was to create the so-called “God” particle – Higgs boson — achieved in 2012. Now they hope to recreate the Big Bang, discover dark matter, expose other dimensions and more. To do that, scientists are nearly doubling the power level so the two beams of particles will collide much more violently.

“…Over $9 billion cathedral of science that is apparently, in any practical sense, useless… So many years, so much effort, so much money and material, so much energy and cutting-edge ingenuity. And yet the wizards at the controls aren’t really out to produce anything practical, or solve any urgent human problem…”

“…The physicists at cern have their generous patrons in governments all over the world.

… L.H.C. is a 21st-century cathedral of science, where thousands of passionately devoted, hardworking physicists—monks by any other name—have gathered to experience epiphany and revelation, and continue writing Genesis 2.0….”[1]

Genesis 2.0 is true. The rest are whitewash and lies.

This is the largest and most elaborate scientific enterprise ever built. Governments don’t invest billions and tremendous amounts of time and energy in “useless” theoretical projects unless there’s a very practical reason, a very specific useful intention and goal.

“The goal…is to achieve a deeper, better, truer understanding of the fundamental structure and nature of existence.[2]

The project objectives have been clear all along, including calling Higgs boson the “God” particle and calling one experiment Genesis 2.0. The Large Hadron Collider is about creating life and controlling realities.

The Associated Press reported on April 6 that dark matter is being pursued at CERN, at the international space station, and in an undisclosed underground mine. There seems to be a rush to capture dark matter, implying it is very important.

Governments hope to gain

1)              something that can be monetized and sold to us, making money for the already wealthy and powerful

2)              power and control — being able to control primal forces and unleash those forces at will

3)              weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, that can annihilate with precision

4)              assets, resources, property, real estate, land — creating new life, new planets,new universes, with assets and property to strip and plunder, worlds to conquer, own, rule,  enslave, as well as to escape to after Earth’s demise

History shows that this will be for private and government benefit only.

An LHC sponsor, the United States itself is responsible for more death, destruction, and permanent environmental damage than any other country on Earth. Its objectives are “command and control” and “full spectrum dominance”. That’s how the U.S. uses technologies and knowledge gained. What about the other sponsors?

Alarm bells should be going off everywhere.

Can scientists be trusted?

The popular myth is that science and scientists are objective and neutral, but science is fiercely competitive, even cutthroat. “Science” is often not a pursuit of truth, but a pursuit to be first, to win the biggest grants, to get the best speaking invitations and honors.

Many scientists and their professional organizations cling to “consensus” beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. New evidence-based theories are fought off as fiercely as if they were marauding pirates. Jealous of their rank, privileges, lab space, accolades, benefits, and titles, men and women of science can stoop to petty and even criminal acts to retain their power and position. Watching a colleague fail can be a cause for celebration.

Funding usually comes from the federal government or from industry. Rarely is this about “pure” science. There are objectives. The public welfare is far down the list as a consideration. With the government, science becomes an extension, just as with LHC, to advance national military and security objectives. If scientists stray outside accepted study subjects or find information inconvenient to the sponsors, they can be penalized, sometimes severely. “Publish or perish” means going where the funding is, and staying away from controversy. “Let’s leave it to the scientists” is not a good idea.

LHC construction and operating hazards

The reality of life is that the Earth and the universe are nesting, interconnected, intimate ecosystems. What happens in one place effects everything, because everything is unified together.

First, here are some facts and questions about the Large Hadron Collider regarding its construction:

LHC has at least one magnet with a magnetic field 100,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field

What impact does that have on the Earth’s self-protective, life-sustaining magnetic fields?

 “The huge superconducting magnets that line the LHC’s 27km-long tunnel must be warmed up, slowly and gently, from -271 Celsius to room temperature”[3]. A shutdown and restart can apparently take months.[4]

What is the impact of the entire extremely magnetic, super-cooled LHC system on the Earth’s magnetic field?

What happens to the Earth and its magnetic fields every time the LHC is turned on?

o   What happens if the magnets are not “slowly and gently” warmed up?

o   What happens if an accident vents the helium and/or causes fire and explosions that rapidly heat up the magnets?

LHC’s 17 mile long tunnel is super-cooled with helium. It is one degree colder than outer space, making it the coldest place in the universe.Scientists will

smash proton beams together at energies up to 13 trillion electron volts, double the energy used before.

What is the impact of having this ultra-cold 17-mile-long environment buried in the Earth?

There can be 800 million – 1 billion collisions per second

o   If something goes wrong, how many seconds or minutes does it take to react and shut it down? See below about the September 2008 accident.

o   With hundreds of millions of collisions happening per second, how much damage can be cascading out immediately, too late to stop?

The walls of the LHC tunnel are concrete. Inside the LHC tunnel are 1,232 pressurized cylinders (dipoles) positioned end to

end. Each cylinder is 50 feet long, 2 feet thick, and weighing 35 tons. A pipe runs through the center of each cylinder, surrounded by “powerful electromagnets” cooled by helium. These pipes are what the particle beams are fired through.

When the LHC is turned on, the force inside each dipole “is equal to the power of a 747 taking off”. So, inside the entire 17-mile-long tunnel, which contains 1,232 dipoles, is the force of 1,232 747s taking off.

Cables connect these cylinders and carry 11,000 amps of electricity. However, the cables must be super-cooled with helium to give them “super-conductivity” to carry that high amperage. If they aren’t super-cooled, the cables become ordinarily conductive wire, and they cannot handle the 11,000 amps of electricity.

An accident on September 10, 2008 from just one incorrect soldered joint.

“Sparks erupted. An intense electrical arc began burning a hole in the dipole’s steel jacket. Pressurized helium [inside the jacket escaped,] turned from liquid to gas and blasted into the tunnel, creating a huge pressure wave.”[5]

No one in the LHC control room knew there was a problem.

“In a domino-like chain reaction, 35-ton dipoles were jerking and smashing against other 35-ton dipoles, some blown two feet off their moorings… In the vicinity of the accident the air had been instantly supercooled by the tons of escaping helium”.

In less than a minute, $40 million dollars of damage was done. But it could have been worse.

The emergency stop button was literally and “fortuitously” pushed by the pressure wave as it went past, and the system shut down. No human or automatic control shut down the system. Only then did the control room know something had happened. However, all they knew was the beam had shut down.

o   If the pressure wave had not shut down the power, what would have been the result, with this 17 mile long tunnel filled with 1,232 pressurized cylinders weighing 35 tons

each, with 11,000 amps of electricity running through them, super-cooled and incredibly magnetic?

o   What would have happened to the land above?

o   What would have happened to the Earth?

o   What happens when this powerful beam is no longer going through dipoles but through the concrete into the surrounding earth?

o   And what did happen as a result of this accident? Did it cause fractures in the rock, or cause an earthquake?

o   What was the impact to the two villages that sat atop this disaster, a mere 330 feet above?

o   How could a system be built that has no sensors and no warning systems for situations like this, that deals with this level of electricity, coolant, pressure, and force (see below)? Is this an example of how oblivious these physicists are about reality and proper safety procedures, or of how cock-sure they are that nothing will go wrong?

o   Why have the French and Swiss governments exempted this facility from normal safety requirements such as sensors and warning systems, especially when their citizens are most in danger if something goes wrong?

The process of making the proton streams:

“Atom by atom, the electrons will be stripped from each hydrogen nucleus to create free protons, which will then be beamed into a series of four pre-accelerators of increasing size, one after another, in a kind of loop-de-loop, each pre-accelerator powering the beam up by a factor of 10 or 20 or 30, finally up to 3.5 [trillion electron volts] and…7     trillion electron volts . [and now, In 2015, the power will be nearly doubled to 13 trillion electron volts (TeV)] As the energy increases, the beams will narrow, be steered and focused from the main control room, and then be “injected” into the collider.”

The force of the proton stream:

Author Kurt Anderson asked one of the top managers of the accelerator team, Paolo Fessia, if he’d feel a proton beam if it were pointed at him. “’I’ve never thought about that,” he replied. But he said it would bore a quarter-mile-long hole through any material.”[6]

o   Paolo Fessia never thought about the impact of a beam on a human. Yet, he’s building and operating a very powerful machine that could fail. In fact, he’s a top manager at the LHR. He’s a theoretical physicist, maybe sees things as equations, pen

and paper problems, but he doesn’t think of real-world consequences. This is another example of CERN’s lack of safety consciousness.

o   This invisible-to-the-eye, infinitesimally tiny stream of protons can bore a quarter mile long hole through any material.

a-    What if the beam is focused in the wrong direction?

b-    The tunnel is only 330 feet below ground. One-quarter mile is 1320 feet. Towns sit above the collider. The beam can easily penetrate the ground and anything above ground up to 1000 feet above the surface, or below ground (aquifer or lake).

c-     This is a perfect military weapon, partially because it’s invisible.

Ironically, the extensive Vanity Fair article quoted here uses several apocalyptic images to describe the LHC, yet all the while downplays risks.

These were just some of the mechanical issues of the LHC, not the experimental goals themselves. Are you alarmed yet?

LHC experimental goals and primal dangers

Tiny but mighty. Paradoxical. Inverse proportion. Atoms stripped down, then smashed and broken down into components that are never ever built to be split off, components that only function properly as a part of a whole atomic ecosystem. How do they function as separate entities? Are they doomed and are we doomed?

The universe, down to our cells and molecules, functions because these atoms are one –  integrated, whole — not pieces. The answers to what might happen with these fundamental particles may be found in poetry, spirituality, metaphysics, biology, relationship dynamics, and sociology. These particles, this matter, will be unbalanced, unattached, unnourished, and separate. They are not built to be separate; they are built to be in a sustaining relationship.

But no one at CERN seems to be “talking” to atoms or asking these questions. LHR “scientists” smash, blast, separate.

LHC Experimental Goals (sources [7]):

Higgs boson discovered in July 2012– “a keystone of the whole structure: the Higgs field, associated with Higgs bosons, is imagined to be a kind of subatomic “molasses” that imparts mass to other particles passing through it.”

This Higgs boson is part of the primary sustaining and creation-inducing forces of existence and our reality. Could a weapon utilizing the information from Higgs boson

literally be a weapon of mass destruction? Who could withstand it? This is a frightening possibility.

Dark matter comprises most of the universe. “Dark matter has revealed itself so far is through the pull it exerts on galaxies…

they rotate with such speed that  they would tear themselves apart were there not some invisible form of matter holding them together through gravity.”

There is so much dark matter, it outweighs by five times the normal matter in the observable universe.

“The search for dark matter on Earth has failed to reveal what it is made of, but the LHC may be able to make the substance. If the particles that constitute it are light enough, they could be thrown out from the collisions inside the LHC. While they would zip through the collider’s detectors unseen, they would carry energy and momentum with them.”[8]

“Reality on the large scale is dark matter, with visible matter just froth on the substance. So we focus huge efforts on trying to find out if dark matter is a set of many elementary particles, and hope that some of those particles’ properties will also help to explain some other big questions.[9]

These are powerful, powerful substances and forces which are 75% of all matter and hold galaxies together. Scientists are trying to break this open, create it, and claim it.

Weapons that harness dark matter or destroy dark matter would be terrifying. Who could stand against such weapons?

What happens if scientists pull this 75%, much heavier, dark matter into our visible matter existence? Is it really so tiny and light? These scientists are not thinking.

Compared to other forces, Earth’s gravity is “puny”, say LHC scientists. “One explanation…is that we experience only a fraction of the force, with the rest acting through microscopic, curled up extra dimensions of space. “The gravitational field we see is only the bit in our three dimensions, but actually there are lots of gravitational fields in the fourth dimension, the fifth dimension, and however many more you fancy,” says Andy Parker, professor of high energy physics at Cambridge University.[10]

What would happen if this explanation were true and these scientists brought into this dimension the full force of gravity?

  “ Matter has its equal and opposite anti-matter, and they destroy each other on contact…according to the guiding principle of symmetry, at the moment of the big bang, all the matter and anti-matter should have canceled themselves out, leaving nothing behind. Not only did that not happen—we are among the evidence that it didn’t—but 14 billion years later there is a lot more matter than anti-matter in the universe. Something has to explain that mysterious imbalance, and the betting is that it’s supersymmetry, the idea that for every known particle there’s an as-yet-undetected “superpartner”—and that

dark matter consists of those superpartners.  There’s a very good chance that the proton collisions at the L.H.C. will create some of those primordial bits.”[11]

They miss the whole aspect of relationship, of the beginning of the universe resembling the creation of children. Indigenous people could inform them that the universe is alive like we are.

“Turning up the energy of the LHC may just give scientists an answer to the question of why gravity is so weak.”[12]

“The rules of quantum mechanics say that particles behave like waves, and as the LHC ramps up to higher energies, the wavelengths of the particles it collides become ever shorter. When the wavelengths of the particles are small enough to match the size of the extra dimensions, they would suddenly feel gravity much more strongly.”

“What you’d expect is that as you reach the right energy, you suddenly see inside the extra dimensions, and gravity becomes big and strong instead of feeble and weak,” says Parker. The sudden extra pull of gravitywould cause particles to scatter far more inside the machine, giving scientists a clear signal that extra dimensions were real.”[13]

Feel gravity much more strongly? Gravity becomes “big and strong”? The sudden extra pull of gravity? How big and strong could this gravity become? Gravity is a fundamental, foundational force of nature, of unimaginable strength. What happens when and if it is dissected from its ecosystem — its balancing ecosystem — to be unbalanced, to be released, to be in uninhibited form? What then? What could happen? What if LHC allowed this force to be weaponized?

Extra dimensions –”There could be a whole universe full of galaxies and stars and civilisations and newspapers that we didn’t know about,” says [professor of high energy physics at Cambridge University Andy] Parker. “That would be a big deal.”[14]

[British theoretical physicist John]Ellis says, “we can find extra dimensions, black holes, all sorts of weird and wonderful things.”[15]

“The start-up had been preceded by some well-publicized hysteria on the fringes, with alarmists worrying that the L.H.C. would create a black hole that could swallow the earth.”

“The kind of black holes that Ellis has in mind are harmless ones, microscopic and incredibly short-lived,although produced, if they are produced, by the thousands or millions a year. “That will take time,” says cern’s director general, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, and probably only when the L.H.C. is running at maximum power. But if micro black holes do appear, Ellis says, it would be “fantastically exciting,” since they would imply the existence of additional spatial dimensions beyond the three we know.”

One American filed a lawsuit to stop LHC, saying the Earth could be destroyed if black holes were created — a 50% chance. He was slandered as loony. How do scientists

“know” that these black holes would be harmless? That defies logic. Why would these black holes function any differently than black holes in outer space, sucking matter into them? And how would that end for all of us?

Other dimensions are excitedly referred to, but what might exist in these theoretical realms? Forcing open doors into other dimensions without any invitation and without any knowledge of what and who is on the other side is suicidal and potentially omni-cidal.

“Finding new dimensions … may hold the key to creating, at long last, a unified physics that makes sense of both the tiny-scale forces that hold atoms together and the gravity that pulls on everything we can actually see.”[16]

Just because something – an atom — seems tiny to humans is irrelevant. It and the tremendous force that holds it together are tremendously consequential and powerful. Only fools and the arrogant call things “tiny”.

Genesis 2.0 –When author Kurt Anderson told physicist Maria Spiropulu that her experiment at LHC is “simulating the conditions” at the beginning of the universe, “she emphatically corrects me. “No— we’re re-creating those conditions.   We will find out the fundamental nature of how the universe is created.”

So, these physicists are trying to re-create the conditions for the Big Bang, the initial explosion that possibly created the whole universe with such explosive force that it threw out stars and planets and matter that are stillmoving away from that explosive center billions of years later. These people must be blind to miss the insanity of what they’re attempting to do.

LHC is attempting to create life, create new universes, create new sources of matter for governments and private backers — plunderers’ paradise for the taking, all at the flip of a Big Bang switch. If those universes contain life-forms, those also can be plundered, enslaved, put in zoos and private collections, dissected, and experimented on.

What tools and weapons of horror could be created out of the elemental forces LHC is unleashing? Governments that freely use white phosphorus, cluster bombs and munitions, land mines, Agent Orange, napalm, atomic weapons, sonar, depleted uranium, electromagnetic and frequency weapons, chemical and biological agents, and allow devastating destruction to the Earth have shown that there is no limit to what they will use.

“As knowledge has dramatically grown—thanks to particle physicists opening the smaller and smaller dolls, and to astrophysicists measuring the distances and movements and energies of stars—so has our awareness of the vastness of our ignorance.”[17]

But this awareness hasn’t created humility. The knowledge they seek is a mirage, which recedes faster and faster the harder they chase it. Worse than that, this knowledge is also a path to destruction.

These people of LHC and the sponsoring governments are pursuing forces that are the glue of life, through which we exist. Forces to create and forces to annihilate. These barbarians have no idea what they are smashing. The pursuit of ultimate knowledge, ultimate power, to control the destinies and future of everything — that always brings ruin.

Tiny and mighty, atoms stripped down to their primal forces — only the arrogant, the evil, the addicted, or the insane pursue such potentially life-ending folly, flinging open doors to other domains with no care about what might be waiting on the other side, doors that no one invited them to open.

If we ever interact with these dimensions, it will be because we were invited.

You cannot understand life by pulling it apart. You cannot know about life by destroying it. You only know life by relationship – biophilia.[18]

But some at CERN do not think any of this is special.

[Cambridge University PhD student] Thibault Mueller:

“We (have established) that we as a species are not special, the Earth is not special, our Solar System is not special. Now we are saying: ‘Ah! Our Universe is not that special either’.”[19]

That’s how a living universe can be smashed and disassembled. Because, at least for some, it has no special value, it does not create awe, it is not something to be cherished. These are the people that hold our lives and the future in their hands.

The public is strangely silent about the LHC. I have quoted Vanity Fair and the Guardian articles – each has a huge readership. The LHC has been written about for years. Why isn’t the public completely outraged by this project? Are people asleep? The severe and catastrophic problems with this project are easily visible. It doesn’t take an advanced degree or education. It just takes common sense. Have people become so brain-washed that “science knows best” or “scientists would never do wrong” or “governments fund research for the good of the public”?

Those who see must act. Because of these severe issues, the Large Hadron Collider, the CERN complex, and all related ventures and colliders must be shut down now, with all equipment and complexes dismantled completely.

Look at the dangers. Look at what’s at stake. I’ll repeat: we have the moral obligation to takeaction in every way we can, based on the knowledge we have at this point in time. The alternative is looking back from the future, if there is one, and seeing a horrible disaster that we might have prevented if we’d only taken action.

The future is in our hands. The stakes are the highest they have ever been. The Large Hadron Collider is a dangerous instrument wielded by men and women seeking ultimate knowledge and power. The start-up April 5 has initiated a more reckless use of LHC’s capabilities, endangering all life including our universe.

Spouses and family members of the CERN scientists, energy companies supplying electricity to this facility, environmental and spiritual organizations, and citizens in every country – we must shut this project down now.

The Clinton MachineFormer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's lead is wilting against leading Republican presidential candidates in three critical swing states, Colorado, Iowa and Virginia, and she finds herself in a close race with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in each state, according to a Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll released today. In head-to-head matchups, every Republican candidate effectively ties her in Colorado and almost all Republicans effectively tie her in Iowa.

Secretary Clinton has lost ground in almost every matchup in Colorado and Iowa since a February 18 Swing State Poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. The Swing State Poll focuses on key states in the presidential election.

One bright spot for Clinton is Virginia, the largest of the three states, where she leads all Republicans, including 47 - 40 percent over Bush, compared to a 42 - 42 percent tie in February.

Voters in each state say Clinton is not honest and trustworthy. Her overall favorability has dropped significantly in Colorado and Iowa, while Virginia is unchanged. Favorability ratings for the Republicans are lackluster, at best.

"These numbers are a boost for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky as he formally launches his campaign," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"Ominous for Hillary Clinton is the broad scope of the movement today compared to her showing in Quinnipiac University's mid-February survey. It isn't just one or two Republicans who are stepping up; it's virtually the entire GOP field that is running better against her.

"That's why it is difficult to see Secretary Clinton's slippage as anything other than a further toll on her image from the furor over her e-mail."

"In all three of these states, more, and in Colorado many more, registered voters say she is not honest and trustworthy," Brown added. "Voters do think she is a strong leader - a key metric - but unless she can change the honesty perception, running as a competent but dishonest candidate has serious potential problems."

The Secret Republicans of Silicon ValleyThe Secret Political War

Deep in Silicon Valley, where the free market reigns and the exchange of ideas is celebrated, a subset of tech workers are hiding their true selves. Working as programmers and software engineers, they don't want the stigma that comes with revealing who they really are.

They're the tech company employees, startup founders, and CEOs who vote for and donate to Republican candidates, bucking the Bay Area's liberal supremacy. Fearing the repercussions of associating with a much-maligned minority, they keep their political views fiercely hidden.

"It's a liberal echo chamber," Garrett Johnson, a co-founder of Lincoln Labs, which was started in 2013 to connect the right-of-center outsiders in Silicon Valley, told National Journal. "People have been convinced that Silicon Valley is reflexively liberal or progressive. And so their response is to conform."

Silicon Valley has long been a bastion of liberalism. Since George H.W. Bush won Napa County in 1988, Republican presidential nominees have lost every county in the Bay Area. In 2012, President Obama won 84 percent of the vote in San Francisco to Mitt Romney's 13 percent and raised more for his reelection campaign from Bay Area donors than from those in New York or Hollywood. Political donations specifically from tech workers follow that trend: Google employees collectively gave $720,000 to Obama in 2012, versus $25,000 for Romney. Crowdpac, a nonpartisan political analytics firm, found that between 1979 and 2012, tech companies have overwhelmingly favored liberal candidates.

Rather than ruffle feathers—or worse—Republicans who work there often just keep quiet. Rich Tafel, who coaches tech companies in politics and policy, understands the dynamic. The founder of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans, he's had many Republicans in Silicon Valley confide to him their true political views.

"You just learn how to operate, if you will, in the closet as a Republican," Tafel told National Journal. "You keep your viewpoints to yourself."

One startup CEO who has worked in Silicon Valley for more than a decade says that while it's popular to talk politics in the workplace, the underlying assumption is that everyone has similar views.

The CEO, who generally votes Republican and donates to GOP candidates—he spoke on background to conceal his right-leaning views—said that in 2012, "you wouldn't want to say you're voting for Romney in the election." At the same time, openly expressing one's support for Obama was "incredibly common."

His opposition to raising the minimum wage is just one area where he diverges with most of his colleagues. "If you say something like, 'We need a higher minimum wage,' you don't get critiqued," he said. But he would never reveal his more conservative outlook on the matter.

Closeted Republicans aren't just a phenomenon in the tech industry. In Hollywood, where acclaimed movie stars and directors throw lavish fundraisers for Democrats and unabashedly support liberal causes, Republicans are a rare breed. Friends of Abe, a GOP support group of sorts, caters to A-list conservatives in the entertainment industry. Only a handful of its members have made their affiliation known, and its roster is kept secret out of fears of a blacklisting reminiscent of the McCarthy era.

For some right-leaning techies, the GOP brand itself is a liability. The startup CEO stressed that there are "a number of ideas that conservatives have that I totally disagree with," such as opposition to same-sex marriage, and he abhors the thought of being lumped in with Republicans who deny climate change or evolution.

"Republicans are regarded as assholes," he said. "And I wouldn't want to be associated with assholes."

Another Republican who founded a small San Francisco-based startup told National Journal that he's worried potential partners and investors would be turned off by his libertarian views. Recently, it seems like all of his peers in Silicon Valley have been outspoken about their opposition to the thwarted religious liberty law in Indiana, he said. He thinks business owners should be allowed to decide whom they serve, and if they discriminate against gays, people can choose not to patronize their business. He won't discuss that view, though, or debate his left-leaning colleagues on Facebook or Twitter.

"If I were to speak out about something like that, maybe one of these companies wants to buy my company one day and the CEO is like, 'Oh, I remember this guy saying all this stuff about this thing that I really disagree with.' And that obviously could have negative effects," he said. "Getting your point across isn't worth it."

The consequences for being outed for conservative views can be dire. In a highly public controversy last year, newly-hired Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who is registered as an independent in California, stepped down after critics attacked his 2008 donation to support Proposition 8, the anti-same-sex marriage law in California. Eich, who declined

to comment for this story, faced an internal uprising from within the Mozilla community, as well as boycotts from other tech companies, and quit after just two weeks on the job.

Though Eich's was an extreme case, some Republicans in Silicon Valley fear that if they go public, they'll face subtler, less direct repercussions. The CEO who spoke on background keeps his conservative-leaning views to himself, he said, because he doesn't want to risk people not liking him, which could hurt his job in imperceptible ways. As a leader, he needs to be able to inspire people to join and thrive in his company. If he's "contrarian," he said, he can't build the necessary camaraderie to succeed.

Matthew Del Carlo, the former president of the San Francisco Young Republicans and the COO of the California Young Republican Federation, said that transparent Republicans can have a much harder time finding work in the Bay Area. "I've had people tell me, 'If I found out that this person's a Republican, their resume's off the list.'"

Prominent Republicans do openly work in Silicon Valley, and not all of them feel stigmatized for their political views. Billionaire Paypal founder Peter Thiel is a high-profile GOP supporter who has made considerable donations to presidential contender Ted Cruz's 2012 Senate run and former congressman Ron Paul's 2012 presidential super PAC. And Sarah Pompei, who handled Romney's regional press in 2012 and now serves as Hewlett-Packard's director of corporate communications, told National Journal she's never felt denigrated for her conservative views.

Both Pompei and Thiel, who declined to comment for this story, prove success in the tech industry is possible for Republicans who are open about their political leanings. But they wield more power and cachet than the average start-up employee.

"There's fearless people out there that don't care, but those tend to be people that are in a better position financially. They're secure in their job," Del Carlo said. Those with more to lose, he said, often find it easier to keep quiet.

Still, Thiel's attention-getting fundraising for GOP candidates and libertarian causes, along with other high-profile Republicans in the tech sector, show that the climate in Silicon Valley is—albeit incrementally—becoming more politically inclusive. Lincoln Labs, the group dedicated to connecting right-of-center techies in the Bay Area, has been a big part of that effort. Earlier this year, its annual conference, Reboot, brought libertarians and conservatives from Silicon Valley to Washington to hear Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul speak on deregulation, net neutrality, and other tech-industry priorities.

Throughout the year, the organization holds meetups and hackathons to build a "sense of community, so that people don't feel like they are isolated," Johnson said. He and Lincoln Labs' other co-founders, Aaron Ginn and Chris Abrams, want to empower a true exchange of ideas within the tech community, without ostracizing any one view.

"Silicon Valley purports to be a place where the best ideas win," Johnson said. "If we are going to encourage diversity, let's not just stop with gender and ethnicity. How about ideological perspective?"

Conservatives and libertarians in Silicon Valley like Johnson are pioneering a new kind of Republican. With a distinctly libertarian flavor, they align with the party on the principles of liberty and limited government, but don't necessarily lean right on—or care much about—social issues.

The entrepreneurs and techies of the Bay Area, said Tafel, are "very aligned to what could be a Republican party." They just need to come out.

Iraqi Caught Crossing US-Mexico Border was Military Trainer and Spoke Fluent RussianBreitbart Texas exclusively obtained leaked information on the Iraqi man who was apprehended while illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas on February 12, 2015. The Border Patrol agent responsible for interviewing the subject initially expressed concerns that the Iraqi was sent by Russia, largely due to the Iraqi man’s history as a military trainer, his speaking several languages, including Russian, and his having lived in Crimea, according to one of the leaked documents. Breitbart Texas was provided with two documents by a federal agent who works under the umbrella of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The agent insisted on remaining anonymous.

The Iraqi man is named Ahmed Adnan Taha, Al Khafaji. His date of birth is 6-25-84. He has one sister in the U.S., one in Turkey, three brothers in Turkey, one in Ukraine, one in New York State, and three brothers in Iraq, according to the leaked documents.

The Iraqi told U.S. authorities that he spoke fluent Russian and lived in Crimea prior to the Russian invasion. He further stated that a Ukrainian paid $4,000 for him to get to the U.S., however, the Iraqi refused to identify the Ukrainian to U.S. authorities.

The public statement given by Border Patrol at the time of the Iraqi’s apprehension stated, “On Thursday, February 12, 2015, RGV Border Patrol Agents encountered an adult Middle Eastern male south of Pharr, Texas. The subject was taken into custody and transported to the Border Patrol station for further processing. The subject was setup for Expedited Removal back to his country of origin and transferred to the custody of ICE/ERO.”

Breitbart Texas recently asked the Border Patrol agency about the specifics in this report and their spokesman for the Rio Grande Valley Sector (RGV) responded, “All

record checks were conducted, our federal partners did interview the subject with no derogatory information being found.”

It is significant to note that Border Patrol processing an individual does not mean that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actually deported the individual.

Breitbart Texas provides images of both leaked documents below. The second document contains copy-and-pasted information from the official report, according to the federal agent who provided the information. The typos in the report were contained in the original and therefore included. Breitbart Texas redacted the TECS ID number.

Obama’s Secret Invasion: America 2016

With Muslim immigrants streaming into the United States at a rate of 100,000 per year, some of the communities targeted for new arrivals are seeking information on their new neighbors, only to be frustrated by federal bureaucrats and their hired contractors.

How does a city get on the U.S. State Department’s list of 190 communities selected for refugee resettlement? How can cities find out who will be coming and when? What services will they use, and what will be the cost to taxpayers?

And, the granddaddy of all questions: Can the communities be assured that foreign nationals with ties to ISIS, al-Shabab and other Islamic terrorist groups won’t slip through the government’s porous screening process posing as “refugees”?

The answers to these questions are simple. Very little information is available. And there are no guarantees that some very bad apples won’t arrive in your town, says a leading expert on the refugee resettlement program.

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/03/muslim-immigration.jpg

One community that is trying to get information right now is Spartanburg, South Carolina.

On March 16, Ann Corcoran, author of the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog, spoke at a national security summit in Columbia, South Carolina, hosted by former Defense Department analyst Frank Gaffney. A few days before that conference, on March 9, a story broke in the local Spartanburg newspaper that World Relief, one of the nine resettlement agencies that works under contract with the federal government, was planning to open an office in Spartanburg.

When an agency like World Relief opens an office in a city, it means refugees will be arriving soon. There are no public hearings or announcements in local media, Corcoran said. Typically a story will appear in the local newspaper just before or after the first arrivals appear in town.

Corcoran met some activists at Gaffney’s conference who wanted to find out more about the plans for resettling United Nations-certified refugees in their city.

“It is like pulling teeth to get any information,” Corcoran said. “And these are long-term grassroots activists who know how to get information.”

One of the activists is Christina Jeffrey, a political science professor and former U.S. House of Representatives historian who ran against Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in last year’s Republican primary. Gowdy is now chairman of the House subcommittee on immigration and refugees.

“He is chair of this committee, and so they want to set up a refugee office in his home district, and we still can’t get any information,” Corcoran said.

Jeffrey has asked the federal government to prepare a comprehensive impact statement, detailing the impact the refugees will have on Spartanburg’s public services. Schools, health facilities, housing, the job market and public welfare programs will all be affected, but so far nobody is saying to what extent.

The mayor of Athens, Georgia, who asked for the same type of report last year, encountered the same blackout of information.

St. Cloud, Minnesota, residents have also inquired about how many more Somali refugees will be arriving in light of recent problems with Somali student protests at a local community college. Dozens of other Somalis have either left the country to fight for al-Shabab or ISIS while others have been charged and convicted with sending material support to overseas terrorist organizations.

“They’re trying to get information because residents have heard the rumor that there are 1,500 more Somalis getting ready to be resettled there in St. Cloud,” Corcoran said.

The resettlement agencies hold lots of meetings and place lots of phone calls with “stakeholders” in the targeted communities, but these collaborative efforts almost always occur outside of the public spotlight.

“The term ‘stakeholders’ does not apply to you, the taxpayer footing the bill for all of this,” Corcoran said.

According to a March 8 article in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, “a partnership of faith leaders” called Come Closer Spartanburg issued an invitation more than a year ago to World Relief to open a refugee office in Spartanburg. The March 8 article was the first public revelation of this effort even though World Relief had been working behind the scenes with “stakeholders” for a year. An initial group of 65 refugees will arrive this year, starting in April or May, from Congo, Bhutan and Syria.

Jeffrey, in a March 30 op-ed in the local newspaper, shed more light on the group, Come Closer Spartanburg, and its goals:

“On its website, Come Closer Spartanburg describes the city of Spartanburg as ‘home to what has been identified as the fifth most dangerous neighborhood in the United States. We have extremely high rates of unemployment, poverty and domestic violence. Overall, we were recently listed as the fourth most ‘miserable’ city to live in our country. It does not take long to realize that we are a city in need of transformation.”

Jeffrey discovered that the objective is to plant a “seed community” in Spartanburg that will eventually blossom and transform the city. The federal government is creating communities within communities often pitted against each other economically and culturally.

It’s the same tactic that has been used for decades in Europe.

“Looking at other U.S. cities with new refugee communities, it appears that contractors often keep sending refugees to the same place until there is a community within a community. Unassimilated communities have created problems in Europe, and we are beginning to have similar problems here in the United States (witness Milwaukee, Wis., and Lewiston, Maine),” Jeffrey writes.

Corcoran said the word “assimilation” is no longer used by the resettlement agencies and their friends in the federal government. Rather, the new buzzword is “integration.” The goal of integration is to have a multitude of diverse cultures living side by side in “coexistence” but never assimilating.

President Obama issued an executive memorandum dated Nov. 21, 2014, to all federal agencies directing them on “Creating Welcoming Communities and Fully Integrated Immigrants and Refugees.”

This sort of backroom dealing between the federal government, its hired resettlement contractors and local officials is not designed to provide information to the people who live and work in the targeted refugee cities, Corcoran said.

“They don’t like this whole idea that their town is being secretly selected,” she said. “This has been going on for over a year now in Spartanburg, and the refugees are now due to start arriving in a month or so. And these people have no information until it’s actually upon them.”

The mayor of Athens, Nancy Denson, requested a plan. The city of Spartanburg is asking for the same consideration.

“That’s what these people in Spartanburg are asking for, and they are asking that when you have a plan that you present it publicly at a public hearing,” Corcoran said. “They don’t want to have to show any of that to the public. They’re saying it’s only 65; well, it’s

only 65 for the first year. It will continue to be more every year afterward once you become a seed community.”

Of the more than 500 Syrian refugees brought to the U.S. so far this past year, 90 percent of them have been Muslim, Corcoran said.

Corcoran is pushing for reform of the refugee system in America.

She believes communities targeted for resettlement should be entitled to an economic and social impact study.

“And they should put it out for review at multiple public hearings, because once the public hears this, what we find is they don’t want it,” she said. “Because they say, ‘We are struggling with our own homeless, our own mentally ill and poorly educated. Why do we need to take in other countries’ problems?”

Outside of the financial hurdles and the drain on social services, the security issue is perhaps the most troublesome for cities on the receiving end of these seedling communities.

WND reported in February that a senior FBI counter-terrorism official, Michael Steinbach, testified before the House homeland security committee and admitted that the U.S. lacks the capability to properly screen out terrorists and terrorist sympathizers from the ranks of the U.N. refugee program.

Another issue is school overcrowding and the need to pay for interpreters and tutors who can speak obscure tribal languages. A Spartanburg activist was scheduled to meet with Gowdy Wednesday to discuss the impact of refugees on the local education system.

Corcoran said World Relief has been withholding basic information on its resettlement plans, such as how many refugees will be coming from what countries over what time frame and their religious affiliations.

“They’re saying Syrians, Bhutanese and or Congolese. These World Relief lackeys our activists are dealing with on the local level are saying it’s only going to be Syrian Christians, which is BS,” Corcoran said. “Ninety percent of the Syrians coming into the country right now are Muslim. But they lie to them and tell them it’s going to be Christians. That is just not so; they don’t get to pick like that. They’re going to get the whole mix (as assigned by the United Nations), and they’re probably going to get Somalis, too.

“The bottom line here, though, is that they’re trying to get the information pulled out from everyone who is looking into this.”

SNAP Fraud in perhaps 50% of Recipients

A Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) spokesman tells the Associated Press that 12,000 non-disabled adults were in Maine’s SNAP program before Jan. 1 - a number that dropped to 2,680 by the end of March.

More than 9,000 Maine residents have been removed from the state's food stamp program since Republican Gov. Paul LePage's administration began enforcing work and volunteer requirements.

The new rules prevent adults who are not disabled and do not have dependents from receiving food stamps for more than three months - unless they work at least 20 hours a week, participate in a work-training program or meet volunteering requirements.

DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew said the goal of the requirements is to encourage people to find work.

"If you're on these programs it means you are living in poverty and so the more that we can help incentive people on that pathway to employment and self-sufficiency the better off they're going to be," Mayhew told the Associated Press.

In Maine, once someone loses their benefits, they cannot regain assistance for three years.

Maine was one of at least eight states that declined to use the federal waiver this year out of the 37 states that had been eligible, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service.

State Rep. Scott Hamann (D –South Portland) has introduced a bill that would direct the administration to seek a waiver for certain counties with high unemployment or a lack of jobs.

The measure may not gain support from LePage's administration. HHS spokesperson David Sorensen says, recipients only need to volunteer for 24 hours a month to comply with the requirements and the administration believes there are enough opportunities even in the most economically depressed regions.

Jade Helm 15In August of 2014, military helicopters flew low over residential neighborhoods of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, engaged in a series of night-time training exercises.  The exercises involved the Naval Warfare Development Group - a "special forces" component of the U.S. Navy - and were aimed at enhancing urban combat tactics.

Just as they had two years earlier, military personnel had come to the Twin Cities to conduct counter-terrorism training operations in an urban environment.  And just as before, those operations commenced with little advance notice to the public.

Follow-up to 2012 exercise

Records obtained from the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) by Public Record Media (PRM) indicate that, in many ways, the 2014 training was built upon foundations laid two years earlier.  Correspondence between the U.S. Navy and the MPD involved many of the same figures who participated in the 2012 operation - most centrally, those tasked to the Minneapolis SWAT unit.

An April, 2014 e-mail from MPD's Jonathan Kingsbury to SWAT Commander Robert Skoro references the upcoming military exercise, and notes that "it is very similar to the August 2012 event."  Kingsbury also states that the operation "has been briefed and approved by the Mayor's office … and is being hosted by the SWAT officers of the Minneapolis Police Department."

As referenced by Kingsbury, the 2014 exercises had been solicited by the U.S. military via a letter delivered to Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges.  The letter requested the Mayor's support for "low-intensity urban tactical training" by special forces personnel who are "constantly refining tactics to learn how to most effectively engage the enemy while ensuring the safety of non-combatants."

As with the 2012 exercises, it appears that plans were made to provide cross-training exercises for Minneapolis police officers.  "Hopefully," Kingsbury's states in his e-mail, "we will have the opportunity to get some of our folks into the game like we did last time."

Low-profile sought

Throughout the MPD documents, repeated references are made to the Navy's desire to keep the profile of the event as discreet as possible.  A January, 2014 e-mail from MPD Deputy Chief Edie Frizell characterizes the training mission in just those terms.  "This is a highly respected and security sensitive effort," Frizell writes.  "The training was conducted in 2012 in Minneapolis with little or no fanfare - that is the way they want it."

Frizell's message states that strict security protocols extended even to the Navy's initial, written solicitation.  Frizell recounts that the Navy's letter was hand delivered, and that face-to-face planning conversations were required "because of the sensitivity of the training."

The Navy's letter to Mayor Hodges expands on the security concerns surrounding the exercise, and explicitly requests that advance notice of the event be limited.  "Due to the sensitivities of this training," the letter states, "we respectfully request that any information pertaining to this training be excluded from automatic public release."

Documents written seven months later - just prior to the the training itself - indicate that the Navy's wishes appear to have been adhered to by the MPD.  An e-mail from

Jonathan Kingsbury to Robert Skoro notes that a memo on the exercise had been disseminated to precinct commanders, but that it did not contain "much info."

Training schedule

Messages traded among MPD personnel indicate that police were directly involved in portions of the Navy operation, and also provided perimeter security at the various training sites.

The presence of low-flying, black helicopters was the most obvious sign to the public that military training was underway, but records show that Naval exercises had already been occurring a week previous to this.  Naval forces had commenced ground operations on August 11th, independent of aerial support.  Helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft arrived on August 17th, and the "full mission profile" of combined air-ground operations ran from August 18 to 21.

A closing ceremony for the exercises was held at the Air National Guard museum on August 21st, just prior to the commencement of the final exercise.  An unidentified federal official notified MPD personnel that the event was a closed ceremony, but that "DOD specifically invited all of you to attend."  Chief Harteau's administrative assistant replied that her schedule was not open at that time, but that the Chief "sent her best."

Closer military-police collaboration?

While much about the 2014 exercise appears to have paralleled its 2012 predecessor, MPD documents indicate that there were some notable - and perhaps significant - changes to the training regime.

Documents obtained by PRM in 2012 suggested that the Navy's training operation was - at the time - undertaken for the purpose of preparing special operations forces for foreign deployment.  However, records relating to the 2014 exercise include hints that some aspects of that training may have had a domestic focus.

According to an e-mail from an anonymous federal official, "There is a significant change in our ‘template’ since the August 2012 exercise," and as such "we are under new DOD regulatory guidance for this type of training."

The military's solicitation letter to Mayor Hodges included a list of training specifics that mirrored language in its 2012 letter.  Those specifics included training for "low visibility movement, low-altitude precision helicopter operations, surveillance, and counter-surveillance."  However, the Navy's 2014 letter also stated that its exercises would help its personnel in "preserving evidence for criminal prosecution" and that the relationships established with urban law enforcement professionals would be critical to the Navy's "future success."

"Evidence collection" highlighted

Due to the existence of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, federal military personnel have largely been barred from participating in civilian law enforcement in a direct, operational capacity.  While Congress has provided Posse Comitatus exceptions for logistics and counter-narcotics support, federal law still prohibits military personnel from engaging in arrests, evidence collection, and other tasks in support of domestic public safety and criminal prosecution.

Do the references to "evidence collection" by Navy personnel indicate that the military is actively preparing to undertake such operations on the domestic front?  Or do the references point to some other function?

One possibility might be that Navy Special Forces personnel are being trained to preserve material from foreign combat zones in the service of later, federal terrorism prosecutions.  It should be noted that criminal prosecution was a cornerstone of the Clinton administration's approach to counter-terrorism.  During the 1990s, multiple foreign nationals were brought before American courts, including the principals in the bombings of the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.

In more recent years, military personnel have been instrumental in the removal of computers and material from foreign combat zones.  For instance, in May of 2011, Special Forces personnel obtained thousands of pages of documents from the raid of Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan - material that held a high (and ongoing) intelligence value.  The same material might also yield valuable evidence for possible criminal trials of al-Qeada operatives upon their later capture.

At the same time, references to the Navy's increased collaboration with "urban law enforcement professionals" clearly indicates a domestic purpose to some of the training, but the extent is impossible to determine from the MPD documents alone. PRM has two other pending record requests related to the 2014 exercise, and hopes to make available additional details about this matter soon.

MPD inquiry into training event

Despite the Navy's wishes for a low-profile event, the fact that training missions occurred over residential areas spurred more public attention and media coverage than in 2012.  That coverage registered a high level of public concern about the safety and implications of the operation, and also generated a strong response from city officials who had been kept out of the communications loop.

Minneapolis City Council Member Blong Yang was quoted on KSTP TV as saying that the Minneapolis City Council was "not notified of the event."  Likewise, Council Member Cam Gordon told the City Pages newspaper that he felt "like an idiot" for being unable to respond to constituent questions with specific information.  In the aftermath of the event, Council Member Yang called for public hearings.

MPD records indicate that inquiries had also commenced within the police department itself.  An August 29, 2014 e-mail from MPD's Tony Schoenberger to SWAT chief Robert Skoro indicates that Chief Harteau had commissioned a "review" of events surrounding the training exercise.  Schoenberger's message states that the review "is not an investigation  and there is no allegation of misconduct or inappropriate action by anyone involved." Instead, he notes that the intention of the review is for the Chief to "better and more thoroughly understand the role of MPD in this training."

The existence of this inquiry apparently delayed PRM's access to police records for a time.  September, 2014 e-mails from MPD's David Pena to PRM stated that documents related to the training exercise were part of an "internal investigation" and thus could not be disclosed at the time.

PRM will be posting additional training documents as it receives them from the St. Paul Police Department and federal officials.

CDC: U.S. Heroin Deaths Nearly Tripled in 3 Years; WH: Mexico ‘Primary Supplier’The number and rate of deaths in the United States from overdoses involving heroin nearly tripled in the three years from 2010 to 2013, the last year on record, according to a "Data Brief" published in March by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

All of the heroin in the United States is smuggled from abroad and Mexico is the "primary supplier" of that drug to this country, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

“From 2010 through 2013, the age-adjusted rate for heroin-related drug-poisoning deaths nearly tripled from 1.0 per 100,000 in 2010 to 2.7 per 100,000 in 2013,” said the CDC data brief.

The overall number of overdose deaths involving heroin increased from 3,036 in 2010 to 8,257 in 2013, according to the CDC.

“Foreign sources of opium are responsible for the entire supply of heroin consumed in the U.S.,” says the White House webpage on “The International Heroin Market.”

“Poppy cultivation and heroin production have been decreasing steadily in Colombia since 2001, when cultivation reached a peak of 6,540 hectares,” says the White House. “In contrast, opium poppy cultivation in Mexico remains high, and Mexico continues as the primary supplier of heroin to the United States. Estimated cultivation of opium poppy reached 10,500 hectares in 2012, with an estimated pure potential production of 26 metric tons.”

The CDC brief pointed to what it called a “steady increase” in recent years in U.S. “poisoning” deaths involving heroin.

“Drug poisoning (overdose) is the number one cause of injury-related death in the United States, with 43,982 deaths occurring in 2013,” said the report. “While much attention has been given to deaths involving opioid analgesics, in recent years there has been a steady increase in the number of drug-poisoning deaths involving heroin.”

“While the age-adjusted rate for drug-poisoning deaths involving opioid analgesics has leveled in recent years, the rate for deaths involving heroin has almost tripled since 2010,” said the report.

According to the CDC, opioid analgesics include, for example, hydrocodone, morphine, and oxycodone.

“Age-adjusted death rates are constructs that show what the level of mortality would be if no changes occurred in the age composition of the population from year to year,” says the CDC. “Thus, age-adjusted death rates are better indicators than unadjusted (crude) death rates for examining changes in the risk of death over a period of time when the age distribution of the population is changing.”

From 2000 through 2007, the age-adjusted death rate for overdoses involving heroin hovered between 0.6 deaths per 100,000 and 0.8 deaths per 100,000. By 2013, it had climbed to 2.7 per 100,000.

“From 2000 through 2013, the age-adjusted rate for drug-poisoning deaths involving heroin nearly quadrupled from 0.7 deaths per 100,000 in 2000 to 2.7 deaths per 100,000 in 2013,” said the CDC report. “Most of the increase occurred after 2010.”

The Midwest has overtaken the Northeast and West as the region of the country most likely to see heroin overdoses. In 2000, the Northeast and West had the highest age-adjusted heroin overdose death rates, at 0.9 per 100,000. That year the rate was 0.5 per 100,000 in the South and 0.4 per 100,000 in the Midwest.

In 2013, the Midwest had the highest heroin overdose death rate, at 4.3 per 100,000. That year, the Northeast had a heroin overdose death rate of 3.9 per 100,000, the West had a rate of 1.8 per 100,000 and the South had a rate of 1.7 per 100,000.

Although men are more likely than women to die from an overdose involving heroin, the rate of increase in heroin-related deaths among women has been steeper than among men. In 2000, 279 women died from an overdose involving heroin, for a death rate of 0.2 per 100,000. In 2013, 1,732 women died from an overdose involving heroin for a

death rate of 1.2 per 100,000. In thirteen years, the heroin-related deaths and death rate for U.S. women increased six-fold.

Men saw an approximately four-fold increases in their heroin-related deaths and death rates. In 2000, 1,563 men in the United States died from overdoses involving heroin for a rate of 1.1 per 100,000. In 2013, 6,525 men died from overdoses involving heroin for a death rate of 4.2 per 100,000.

“Each year a small subset of drug-poisoning deaths involved both opioid analgesics and heroin,” said the CDC report. “For example, in 2013, 1,342 deaths involved both opioid analgesics and heroin. Deaths involving both opioid analgesics and heroin are included in both the rate of deaths involving opioid analgesics and the rate of deaths involving heroin. Depending on the year, 22 percent to 25 percent of drug-poisoning deaths lack information on the specific drugs involved. Some of these deaths may involve opioid analgesics or heroin.”

Two of the following three growing seasons saw record levels of opium poppy cultivation. Corrupt officials may have undermined the government's enforcement efforts. Afghan farmers claimed that "government officials take bribes for turning a blind eye to the drug trade while punishing poor opium growers".[19]

Another obstacle to getting rid of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is the reluctant collaboration between US forces and Afghan warlords in hunting drug traffickers. In the absence of Taliban, the warlords largely control the opium trade but are also highly useful to the US forces in scouting, providing local intelligence, keeping their own territories clean from Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents, and even taking part in military operations.

While U.S. and allied efforts to combat the drug trade have been stepped up, the effort is hampered by the fact that many suspected drug traffickers are now top officials in the Karzai government.[20] Estimates made in 2006 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimate that 52% of the nation's GDP, amounting to $2.7 billion annually, is generated by the drug trade.[21] The rise in production has been linked to the deteriorating security situation, as production is markedly lower in areas with stable security.[22] By some, the extermination of the poppy crops is not seen as a viable option because the sale of poppies constitutes the livelihood of Afghanistan's rural farmers. Some 3.3 million Afghans are involved in producing opium.[23] Opium is more profitable than wheat and destroying opium fields could possibly lead to discontent or unrest among the indigent population.[24] Some poppy eradication programs have, however, proven effective, especially in the north of Afghanistan. The opium poppy eradication program of Balkh Governor Ustad Atta Mohammad Noor between 2005 and 2007 successfully reduced poppy cultivation in Balkh Province from 7,200 hectares in 2005 to zero by 2007.[25]

Former U.S. State Department Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Thomas Schweich, in a New York Times article dated July 27, 2007, asserts that opium production is protected by the government of Hamid Karzai as well as by the Taliban, as all parties to political conflict in Afghanistan as well as criminals benefit from opium production, and, in Schweich's opinion, the U.S. military turns a blind eye to opium production as not being central to its anti-terrorism mission.[26][27] In March 2010, NATO rejected Russian proposals for Afghan poppy spraying, citing concerns over income of Afghan people.[28] There have also been allegations of American and European involvement in Afghanistan's drug trafficking with links to Taliban.[29]

On October 28, 2010 agents of Russia’s Federal Service for the Control of Narcotics joined Afghan and American antidrug forces in an operation to destroy a major drug production site near Jalalabad. In the operation 932 kg (2,055 lb) of high quality heroin and 156 kg (344 lb) of opium, with a street value of US$250 million, and a large amount of technical equipment was destroyed. This was the first anti-drug operation to include Russian agents. According to Viktor Ivanov, Director of Russia’s Federal Service for the Control of Narcotics, this marks an advance in relations between Moscow and Washington. Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the operation a violation of Afghan sovereignty and international law.[30][31]

As had been the case in Indochina during the Vietnam War[32] the US invasion has in fact been causal in a massive increase in opium production, the aforementioned eradication efforts being largely window dressing. A SIGAR report showed a threefold increase in area under cultivation between 2002 and 2014[33] An December 2014 UNAIDS study[34] showed an increase of 7% in one year alone.

Foreign involvementSee also: CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities § Southwest Asia, CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia § Afghanistan and Allegations of CIA drug trafficking

Approximately 40,000 foreign troops attempted to manage “security” in Afghanistan, principally of 32,000 regular soldiers from 37 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces: the International Security Assistance Force. 8,000 US and other special operations forces, mainly privately contracted soldier of fortune,[33] make up the balance. There is significant resistance, both from the ideological/theocratic Taliban, especially in southern Afghanistan, and also independent local warlords and drug organizations. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), described the situation this way: “There is no rule of law in most of the southern parts of Afghanistan—the bullets rule.”

Despite a $7.5 billion effort on behalf of the United States to stop Afghanistan’s heroin market, a recent US Report indicates that the Islamic nation has risen above American invasions in the name of the war on drugs and increased their opium farm lands by nearly 40 percent.

According to a report financed by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Afghani opium production experienced an increase in 2013, with nearly 806-square-miles of opium poppies sowed throughout the country -- a third more than the year before.

"Poppy is like a virus that is already embedded in a sick body," Ashita Mittal, acting country director for the UN Organization of Drugs and Crime, told the Associated Press. "It is going to impact the whole economy of this country. We do believe that in the absence of the growth of the licit economy, the illicit economy will take over."

It is expected that this year’s harvest will surpass previous record-breaking yields, which were responsible last year for generating nearly $3 billion for Afghanistan’s economy -- a staggering 15 percent of the their gross national product.

The United States military has been on a seek and destroy mission in Afghanistan to shut down the country’s opium production, which has equated nothing but failure as troops prepare to evacuate later this year. Overall, the operation has been no match for the government corruption that seems to have always been several steps ahead of military forces, says Mittal.

While Helmand Governor Mohammad Naeem blames the increase in opium production on the Taliban, UN officials argue that it is corruption inside the government that has enabled the flood.

Afghanistan opium production is responsible for supplying three-quarters of the world’s heroin.

Heroin production in Afghanistan increased 40 times since NATO began its ‘War on Terror’ in 2001, the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service stated, adding that more than 1million people have died from Afghan heroin since then.

“Afghan heroin has killed more than 1 million people worldwide since the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ began and over a trillion dollars has been invested into transnational organized crime from drug sales,” Viktor Ivanov said at the conference on the drug situation in Afghanistan.

Ivanov stressed that the main factor of instability in the war-torn country remains the prosperous heroin industry.

"Any impartial observer must admit the sad fact that the international community has failed to curb heroin production in Afghanistan since the start of NATO’s operation.”

According to his presentation at UN’s 56th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna on March 11, opium growth has increased by 18 per cent from 131,000 hectares to 154,000.

As the situation in Afghanistan changed with NATO withdrawing its troops, Russia along with Afghanistan and the international community must face the new reality and develop an efficient strategy to deal with the heroin problem, explained Ivanov. 

Opium production has been central to Afghanistan’s economy ever since US and NATO forces invaded in October 2001. Just before the invasion Taliban had implemented a ban on poppy growing, declaring it to be anti-Islam, which lowered the overall production. But after the West’s involvement, production resumed and now the country produces some 90 per cent of the world’s opium, the great bulk of which ends up on the streets of Europe and Russia.

US and NATO officials have been stuck in a Catch-22 fight against Afghan opium. At the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna in March, Ivanov stated that on the one hand, they are attempting to win the hearts and minds of the local population, which increasingly depends on the cultivation of opium poppy for their livelihood. On the other, they need to cut off finances to the Taliban insurgency, which is fueled by the sale of opium poppy to foreign markets.

About 15 per cent of Afghanistan’s Gross National Product depends on drug-related exports, which amounts business worth US$2.4 billion a year, according to UN 2012 figures.

Spokesman for Afghanistan's Counternarcotic Ministry Qayum Samir told Radio Free Europe on Monday that 157,000 hectares are being planted with poppies this spring, which is up by an estimated 3,000 hectares since last year. Samir argued that lack of security, lack of governance and widespread poverty are the reasons behind the increase in heroin production.

Moscow believes the simplest solutions are the most effective ones, and eradicating the country’s poppy fields is the key to solving the problem, underlined Viktor Ivanov. 

But there is a big difference between how Russia and the US see the solution to the problem.

However, based on the US and NATO strategy, there seems no intention to get rid of all Afghan poppy fields, which is an inconsistency in the Western approach. 

“The US together with the Colombian government eradicates 200,000 hectares of coca bushes a year. In Afghanistan, only 2,000 hectares of poppy fields are being eradicated – one 100th of that amount,” Ivanov pointed out.

And alongside the refusal to get rid of the poppies, there is the apparent interest of international banks in “dirty” money. Narcotics have nearly as large a share in total world trade as oil and gas, argued Ivanov in his presentation to UN.   

The head of Russia’s drug enforcement suggested US and European banks tacitly welcome and “encourage” the inflow of drug money, he explained.

Gil Kerlikovske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the executive office of the US president, told RT that “We can intercept and seize tons of narcotics, we can make arrests of traffickers, but we really need to choke off the funds that supply this.”

Currently, Russia supports solutions proposing to improve social and institutional development in Afghanistan and discussing the problem at the international level.

For More Than 30 Years, the Big Banks Have Been Key Players In the Drug Trade

It has become mainstream news that at least some of the big banks are  laundering staggering sums of drug money.  See this, this, this, this, this, this and and this.

But you may not know the scope or history of the problem.

Official statistics show that huge sums of drug money are laundered every year:

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) conducted a study to determine the magnitude of illicit funds generated by drug trafficking and organised crimes and to investigate to what extent these funds are laundered.  The report estimates that in 2009, criminal proceeds amounted to 3.6% of global GDP, with 2.7%  (or USD 1.6 trillion) being laundered.

This falls within the widely quoted estimate by the International Monetary Fund, who stated in 1998 that the aggregate size of money laundering in the world could be somewhere between two and five percent of the world’s gross domestic product.  Using 1998 statistics, these percentages would indicate that money laundering ranged between USD 590 billion and USD 1.5 trillion. At the time, the lower figure was roughly equivalent to the value of the total output of an economy the size of Spain.

Indeed, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says that drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.

This started a long time ago. For example, Citibank was caught laundering drug money for Mexican cartels in 2001.

In the 1990s, earlier, Citibank apparently set up special client accounts for a big drug dealer:

One of the more infamous cases involving taxpayer bailed-out Citigroup’s ties to money laundering drug cartels emerged in the late 1990s when Raúl Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas, was arrested after his wife, Paulina

Castañón, attempted to withdraw $84 million from a Swiss account controlled by Raúl under an alias.

***

According to a 1995 Los Angeles Times report, Salinas “amassed at least $100 million in suspected drug money.”

Switzerland’s top prosecutor at the time, Carla del Ponte, “launched the investigation after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supplied information that led Swiss agents to the accounts in Geneva, where they arrested Raúl Salinas’ wife and her brother on Nov. 15 as the pair attempted to withdraw more than $83 million.”

Del Ponte told the Los Angeles Times that after observing Salinas’ interrogation by Mexican federal prosecutors the sums found in those accounts were “suspected to be from the laundering of money related to narcotics trafficking.”

In 1998, when Swiss prosecutors completed their Salinas investigation, The New York Times disclosed that “Swiss police investigators have concluded that a brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari played a central role in Mexico’s cocaine trade, raking in huge bribes to protect the flow of drugs into the United States.”

***

A 1998 report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) pointed a finger directly at Citibank. Investigators revealed that “Mr. Salinas was able to transfer $90 million to $100 million between 1992 and 1994 by using a private banking relationship formed by Citibank New York in 1992. The funds were transferred through Citibank Mexico and Citibank New York to private banking investment accounts in Citibank London and Citibank Switzerland.”

With the connivance of bank officials, in 1992 Salinas was able to “effectively disguise” the source of those funds and their destination.

Indeed, with hefty fees secured from assisting their well-connected client Salinas, Citibank “set up an offshore private investment company named Trocca, to hold Mr. Salinas’s assets, through Cititrust (Cayman) and investment accounts in Citibank London and Citibank Switzerland.”

***

A 1999 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report on “Private Banking and Money Laundering” revealed that “a culture of secrecy pervades the private banking industry.”

“For example,” Senate investigators disclosed, “in the case of Raul Salinas . . . the private bank hid Mr. Salinas’ ownership of Trocca by omitting his name from the Trocca incorporation papers and naming still other shell companies as the shareholders, directors, and officers. Citibank consistently referred to Mr. Salinas in internal bank communications by the code name ‘Confidential Client Number 2′ or ‘CC-2.’ The private bank’s Swiss office opened a special name account for him under the name of ‘Bonaparte’.”

In the 1980s, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) – apparently backed by top CIA officials – laundered drug money.  Time Magazine reported in 1991:

Because the US wanted to supply the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan’, said a US intelligence officer.

As Wikipedia notes, Alfred McCoy (Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and one of the world’s top experts on drug trafficking):

Uncovered money laundering activities by banks controlled by the CIA, first the Castle Bank which was then replaced by the Nugan Hand Bank, which had as legal counsel William Colby, retired head of the CIA.  He also alludes to the BCCI, which seems to have played the same role as the Nugan Hand Bank after its collapse in the early 1980s, claiming that “the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI.

Citibank was still laundering Mexican drug money in 2001.

popular banks are supporting their finances.

Bank of America, Western Union, and JP Morgan, are among the institutions allegedly involved in the drug trade. Meanwhile, HSBC has admitted its laundering role, and evaded criminal prosecution by paying a fine of almost $2 billion. The lack of imprisonment of any bankers involved is indicative of the hypocritical nature of the drug war; an individual selling a few grams of drugs can face decades in prison, while a group of people that tacitly allow -- and profit from -- the trade of tons, escape incarceration.

The hypocrisy of the role that banks play in the drug trade is particularly disgraceful when considering the recent system of marijuana regulation that was introduced in Colorado. The state's legal marijuana business has proven to be highly lucrative, with $5 million made in the first week of 2014. However, at present, marijuana businesses cannot access essential banking services. Despite liberalization of marijuana laws in Colorado and elsewhere, the plant remains illegal at the federal level; this means that banks won't open accounts for marijuana businesses, so the majority of their

transactions are cash-only. The movement of such large amounts of cash can be highly dangerous for business owners, and troublesome for both customers and tax collectors.

Earlier this week, several Colorado legislators made a bipartisan appeal to the federal government, requesting clear guidelines for marijuana businesses' regulation within the banking sector. Banks have avoided allowing these new companies to open accounts, ironically, for the fear of being penalized, or implicated as launderers. Essentially, the current banking system implicitly tolerates the handling of violent cartels' illegal assets, but blocks the legal and legitimate business of the Coloradan marijuana industry.

The role that banks have played in the global drug trade has been partly responsible for widespread carnage and countless civilian deaths, particularly in Mexico. Now, as legal marijuana industries begin to emerge, and the war on drugs seems to slowly decelerate, the banking sector has an opportunity to redeem itself in this respect. Banks cannot undo the wrongs of the past, but they can create a fairer future for regulated trade within this expanding and legal new industry, and without supporting lawlessness.

Haptic Holograms

The system projects 'haptic holograms' into mid-air, allowing passersby to feel what they are seeing using vibrations in sound waves. As well as its use in entertainment, the technology could have more practical applications, such as allowing surgeons to explore a CT scan by enabling them to feel a disease

HOW DOES IT WORK?The method uses ultrasound which is focused on an area immediately above the device.By focusing complex patterns of ultrasound, the air disturbances can be seen as floating 3D shapes. These can be added to 3D displays to create something that can be seen and felt.This means the virtual object projects a direct ultrasound at the correct time so the user feels they are touching an object. British firm Ultrahaptics has developed a unique technology that enables users to receive tactile sensations from invisible three dimension objects floating in mid-air.Professor Sriram Subramanian, who co-developed the haptic technology at the University of Bristol's Computer Science Department, explained that their device applies the principles of acoustic radiation force, whereby sound waves produce forces on the skin which are strong enough to generate tactile sensations.'If you go to a night club or a rock concert, you feel the music in your chest. 

'And it's the same principal - you feel the sound vibrating your chest. 'And instead of using the bass sounds, what we use is low frequency ultrasound - about 40 kHz - and that way we can target it at a precise point on your finger tip or on your palm, and then you feel the palm vibrate and it feel precise as well.'By focusing complex patterns of ultrasound emanating from a specially designed pad, the air disturbances can be manipulated into floating 3D shapes that can be felt.The Bristol-based company recently announced the closing of a £600,000 ($918,000 USD) seed round of investment.The financing allowed the company to accelerate the development of the Ultrahaptic device, including substantially improving the computing power and performance of the technology.

'Typically what we've done is try to create one focal point at a time. 'And that's been computationally quite expensive until now. 'What we've doubled up right now is a way we can speed up this process substantially. 'And that means that, instead of doing one at a time, I can do hundreds at a time. 'And when I do hundreds at a time and put a hundred focal points around your finger tip or around your palm, those hundred feel like a circle. 'And if I track your palm and move them up and down, and if I change the diameter of these focal points, you start feeling like you are going through a sphere. 'And this is how we generate shapes,' said Subramanian.While the team's device is still in the prototype stage, they believe it has a diverse range of potential real world applications; with touchable holograms, immersive virtual reality that you can feel and complex touchable controls in mid-air all possible applications of the system. They say it could even enable surgeons to explore a CT letting them to feel a disease, such as a tumour, using haptic feedback.

'What we're saying is, attach our system to it and then you can start feeling objects as well as seeing them. This gives you better finesse, control,' said Subramanian.He added that as the trend towards touchless technologies continues, there will be a need for some sort of tactile, sensory feedback. For example, if you push a virtual button that can't be felt, how can you be

sure that the button has actually been pushed? Ultrahaptics believe they have the solution.'There is a tendency towards doing things touchless. 'One of the advantages of having a touchless system is that the interaction comes to you; instead of going and touching the light switch, you just wave your hand and the light comes on. 'And this is going to be ubiquitous, and as it becomes ubiquitous people are going to need this kind of tactile feedback.'Ultrahaptics is currently running an evaluation programme to determine applications for its device, with several component manufacturing companies enrolled. The company plans to license the technology to a diverse array of markets including consumer electronics, home appliance and automotive.