$600 Million Fracking Company Sues Tiny Town For Its Water

Written by: Daniel Jennings Current Events March 26, 2015 0  Print This Article

Image source: Cleveland.com

The residents of a small Ohio town could lose their water supply if a federal lawsuit filed by a fracking company that has made hundreds of millions of dollars succeeds.
Gulfport Energy is trying to force Barnesville, Ohio, (population 4,100) to sell its water even though the village’s reservoir could be running drying.
Gulfport, which uses the water for fracking, sued when village officials shut off the water supply after the Slope Creek Reservoir started to run dry. Gulfport is a publicly traded company that reported revenues of $671.27 million on Dec. 31, 2014.
“We felt like we had to shut everyone off to protect the regular users,” Barnesville village solicitor (attorney) Marlin Harper told Think Progress. “We don’t have unlimited water.”
Harper contends that an agreement with the company gives Barnesville the right to shut Gulfport’s supply off when water levels run too low. Slope Creek Reservoir’s level was three feet below normal last fall when the water was shut off, and village officials wanted to have enough water for residents.
The reservoir supplies around 12,100 people in Southeastern Ohio with water, including 8,000 people outside the town.
Village Sued for Trying to Protect Water
The company says it has the right to the water.
Ultra-Efficient Water Filter Fits In Your Pocket!
“Barnesville has frustrated Gulfport’s right to develop minerals under the mineral rights agreement by refusing to provide Gulfport with water in violation of Gulfport’s water rights,” the company’s attorney, O. Judson Scheaf, said in a federal lawsuit. Scheaf contends that a 2012 agreement gives Gulfport the right to the water.
Gulfport contends that it could lose millions of dollars in revenue if it does not get the water – and the company says the town is not running dangerously low.
The situation is complicated by a 2012 agreement between Barnesville and another fracking company, Antero Resources. Antero did not withdraw any water from the reservoir last year.
The Shale Play Ohio Valley website reported that Antero agreed to pay Barnesville $5,700 an acre for the water and a 20 percent royalty on any natural gas pumped in the area.
Residents Accuse Company of Threatening Water Supply
Many residents of Barnesville are upset with Gulfport also because it started drilling for natural gas close to the reservoir. The residents are concerned because fracking releases large amounts of wastewater — polluted water — that could contaminate the reservoir.
Members of a community group called Concerned Barnesville Area Residents believe the reservoir’s level fell so slow because of the amount of water frackers were pumping out of it. The organization even gave Gulfport a petition demanding that they stop.
“We sent a petition signed by 2,500 people to Gulfport asking them to move their drilling pads farther away from the reservoir,” the group’s spokesman, David Castle, told Shale Play.
“It’s one of the best reservoirs in the area,” John Morgan, another spokesman for the group, told Think Progress. “North of us, everything was strip mined years ago, so having a good water supply is valuable here.”
Many Ohio residents are worried about fracking because there could be up to 3,240 oil and gas wells operating in the state by 2019, Cleveland State University reported. Around 63 permits for horizontal drilling used in fracking were issued in Belmont County, where Barnesville is located, in 2013.
‘No Doubt’ Chemicals Getting in Well
Fracking on one natural gas well near Carrolton, Ohio, used 484.5 million tons of chemicals, 10.5 million gallons of water and 5,066 tons of sand, The Akron Beacon Journal reported.
“There’s no doubt that there are some nasty chemicals going into Ohio wells, and no one disputes that,” Jeffrey C. Dick, the chairman of the geology department at Youngstown State University, told The Beacon Journal.
Said Morgan, “Once it’s been used, it is polluted.”
Do you support or oppose fracking? Do you believe it can contaminate water? Share your thoughts in the section below:  
The Problem Is Not Just Fracking. Read What Else Is Polluting Your Water.

Barnesville Breaking News featured fracking Gulfport ohio pollution water 2015-03-26

Daniel Jennings

© 2008-2014 Off The Grid News

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American Drone Operators Are Quitting In Record Numbers........

American Drone Operators Are Quitting In Record Numbers........

March 13, 2015 | By Guest Post | Drones, Military

A U.S. drone flies over southern Afghanistan during a combat mission. (AP Photo/Lt. Col.. Leslie Pratt, US Air Force)

By: TomDispach -

An internal Air Force memo reveals that the US military’s drone wars are in major trouble.

The US drone war across much of the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa is in crisis, and not because civilians are dying or the target list for that war or the right to wage it just about anywhere on the planet are in question in Washington. Something far more basic is at stake: drone pilots are quitting in record numbers.

There are roughly 1,000 such drone pilots, known in the trade as “18Xs,” working for the US Air Force today. Another 180 pilots graduate annually from a training program that takes about a year to complete at Holloman and Randolph Air Force bases in, respectively, New Mexico and Texas. As it happens, in those same twelve months, about 240 trained pilots quit and the Air Force is at a loss to explain the phenomenon. (The better-known US Central Intelligence Agency drone assassination program is also flown by Air Force pilots loaned out for the covert missions.)

On January 4, 2015, the Daily Beast revealed an undated internal memo to Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh from General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle stating that pilot “outflow increases will damage the readiness and combat capability of the MQ-1/9 [Predator and Reaper] enterprise for years to come” and added that he was “extremely concerned.” Eleven days later, the issue got top billing at a special high-level briefing on the state of the Air Force. Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James joined Welsh to address the matter. “This is a force that is under significant stress—significant stress from what is an unrelenting pace of operations,” she told the media.

In theory, drone pilots have a cushy life. Unlike soldiers on duty in “war zones,” they can continue to live with their families here in the United States. No muddy foxholes or sandstorm-swept desert barracks under threat of enemy attack for them. Instead, these new techno-warriors commute to worklike any office employees and sit in front of computer screens wielding joysticks, playing what most people would consider a glorified video game.

They typically “fly” missions over Afghanistan and Iraq where they are tasked with collecting photos and video feeds, as well as watching over US soldiers on the ground. A select few are deputized to fly CIA assassination missions over Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen where they are ordered to kill “high value targets” from the sky. In recent months, some of these pilots have also taken part in the new war in the Syrian and Iraqi borderlands, conductingdeadly strikes on militants of ISIL.

Each of these combat air patrols involves three to four drones, usually Hellfire-missile-armed Predators and Reapers built by southern California’s General Atomics, and each takes as many as 180 staff members to fly them. In addition to pilots, there are camera operators, intelligence and communications experts and maintenance workers. (The newer Global Hawk surveillance patrols need as many as 400 support staff.)

The Air Force is currently under orders to staff 65 of these regular “combat air patrols” around the clock as well as to support a Global Response Force on call for emergency military and humanitarian missions. For all of this, there should ideally be 1,700 trained pilots. Instead, facing an accelerating dropout rate that recently drove this figure below 1,000, the Air Force has had to press regular cargo and jet pilots as well as reservists into becoming instant drone pilots in order to keep up with the Pentagon’s enormous appetite for real-time video feeds from around the world.

The Air Force explains the departure of these drone pilots in the simplest of terms. They are leaving because they are overworked. The pilots themselves say that it’s humiliating to be scorned by their Air Force colleagues as second-class citizens. Some have also come forward to claim that the horrors of war, seen up close on video screens, day in, day out, are inducing an unprecedented, long-distance version of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).

But is it possible that a brand-new form of war—by remote control—is also spawning a brand-new, as yet unlabeled, form of psychological strain? Some have called drone war a “coward’s war” (an opinion that, according to reports from among the drone-traumatized in places like Yemen and Pakistan, is seconded by its victims). Could it be that the feeling is even shared by drone pilots themselves, that a sense of dishonor in fighting from behind a screen thousands of miles from harm’s way is having an unexpected impact of a kind psychologists have never before witnessed?

Killing Up Close and Personal From Afar

There can be no question that drone pilots resent the way other Air Force pilots see them as second-class citizens. “It’s tough working night shifts watching your buddies do great things in the field while you’re turning circles in the sky,” a drone instructor named Ryan told Mother Jones magazine. His colleagues, he says, call themselves the “lost generation.”

“Everyone else thinks that the whole program or the people behind it are a joke, that we are video-game warriors, that we’re Nintendo warriors,” Brandon Bryant, a former drone camera operator who worked at Nellis Air Force Base, told Democracy Now.

Certainly, there is nothing second-class about the work tempo of drone life. Pilots log 900-1,800 hours a year compared to a maximum of 300 hours annually for regular Air Force pilots. And the pace is unrelenting. “A typical person doing this mission over the last seven or eight years has worked either six or seven days a week, twelve hours a day,” General Welsh told NPR recently. “And that one- or two-day break at the end of it is really not enough time to take care of that family and the rest of your life.”

The pilots wholeheartedly agree. “It’s like when your engine temperature gauge is running just below the red area on your car’s dashboard, but instead of slowing down and relieving the stress on the engine, you put the pedal to the floor,” one drone pilot told Air Force Times. “You are sacrificing the engine to get a short burst of speed with no real consideration to the damage being caused.”

The Air Force has come up with a pallid interim “solution.” It is planning to offer experienced drone pilots a daily raise of about $50. There’s one problem, though: since so many pilots leave the service early, only a handful have enough years of experience to qualify for this bonus. Indeed, the Air Force concedes that just 10 of them will be able to claim the extra bounty this year, striking testimony to the startling levels of job turnover among such pilots.

Most 18Xs say that their jobs are tougher and significantly more upfront and personal than those of the far more glamorous jet pilots. “[A] Predator operator is so much more involved in what is going on than your average fast-moving jetfighter pilot, or your B-52, B-1, B-2 pilots, who will never even see their target,” Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Black, a former Air Force drone pilot says. “A Predator pilot has been watching his target[s], knows them intimately, knows where they are, and knows what’s around them.”

Some say that the drone war has driven them over the edge. “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile? How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Heather Linebaugh, a former drone imagery analyst, wrote in the Guardian. “When you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience.”

“It was horrifying to know how easy it was. I felt like a coward because I was halfway across the world and the guy never even knew I was there,” Bryanttold KNPR Radio in Nevada. “I felt like I was haunted by a legion of the dead. My physical health was gone, my mental health was crumbled. I was in so much pain I was ready to eat a bullet myself.”

Many drone pilots, however, defend their role in targeted killings. “We’re not killing people for the fun of it. It would be the same if we were the guys on the ground,” mission controller Janet Atkins told Chris Woods of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “You have to get to [the enemy] somehow or all of you will die.”

Others like Bruce Black are proud of their work. “I was shooting two weeks after I got there and saved hundreds of people, including Iraqis and Afghanis,” he told his hometown newspaper in New Mexico. “We’d go down to Buffalo Wild Wings, drink beer and debrief. It was surreal. It didn’t take long for you to realize how important the work is. The value that the weapon system brings to the fight is not apparent till you’re there. People have a hard time sometimes seeing that.”

Measuring Pilot Stress

So whom does one believe? Janet Atkins and Bruce Black, who claim that drone pilots are overworked heroes? Or Brandon Bryant and Heather Linebaugh, who claim that remotely directed targeted killings caused them mental health crises?

Military psychologists have been asked to investigate the phenomenon. A team of psychologists at the School of Aerospace Medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio has published a series of studies on drone pilot stress. One 2011 study concluded that nearly half of them had “high operational stress.” A number also exhibited “clinical distress”—that is, anxiety, depression, or stress severe enough to affect them in their personal lives.

Wayne Chappelle, a lead author in a number of these studies, nonetheless concludes that the problem is mostly a matter of overwork caused by the chronic shortage of pilots. His studies appear to show that post-traumatic stress levels are actually lower among drone pilots than in the general population. Others, however, question these numbers. Jean Otto and Bryant Webber of the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, caution that the lack of stress reports may only “reflect artificial underreporting of the concerns of pilots due to the career-threatening effects of [mental health] diagnoses, [which] include removal from flying status, loss of flight pay and diminished competitiveness for promotion.”

Seeing Everything, Missing the Obvious

One thing is clear: the pilots are not just killing “bad guys” and they know it because, as Black points out, they see everything that happens before, during and after a drone strike.

Indeed, the only detailed transcript of an actual Air Force drone surveillance mission and targeted killing to be publicly released illustrates this all too well. The logs recorded idle chatter on February 21, 2010, between drone operators at Creech Air Force base in Nevada coordinating with video analysts at Air Force special operations headquarters in Okaloosa, Florida, and with Air Force pilots in a rural part of Daikondi province in central Afghanistan. On that day, three vehicles were seen traveling in a pre-dawn convoy carrying about a dozen people each. Laboring under the mistaken belief that the group were “insurgents” out to kill some nearby US soldiers on a mission, the drone team decided to attack.

Controller: “We believe we may have a high-level Taliban commander.”

Camera operator: “Yeah, they called a possible weapon on the military-age male mounted in the back of the truck.”

Intelligence coordinator: “Screener said at least one child near SUV.”

Controller: “Bullshit! Where? I don’t think they have kids out this hour. I know they’re shady, but come on!”

Camera operator “A sweet [expletive]! Geez! Lead vehicle on the run and bring the helos in!”

Moments later, Kiowa helicopter pilots descended and fired Hellfire missiles at the vehicle.

Controller: “Take a look at this one. It was hit pretty good. It’s a little toasty! That truck is so dead!”

Within 20 minutes, after the survivors of the attack had surrendered, the transcript recorded the sinking feelings of the drone pilots as they spotted women and children in the convoy and could not find any visual evidence of weapons.

A subsequent on-the-ground investigation established that not one of the people killed was anything other than an ordinary villager. “Technology can occasionally give you a false sense of security that you can see everything, that you can hear everything, that you know everything,” Air Force Major General James Poss, who oversaw an investigation into the incident, later told the Los Angeles Times

Apache Helicopter And Hellfire Missile Blues

March 25, 2015 | By Phillip Farruggio | Military

Op Ed Commentary – 

Investigative reporter Chris Woods wrote that since August of last year there have been over 2900 missile strikes by manned and unmanned aircraft… mostly perpetrated by our country. To those out there who do not do the research, the Hellfire missile systems bought by you and me cost us over $4 billion for the Predator MQ-1C Gray Eagle and $ 11.79 billion for the MQ9 Reaper. Countless unarmed children, women and the elderly have been blown away through the infamous ‘Collateral Damage’ of these attacks. Who  cares? Can that be what helped the crazies running ISIL to recruit more and more fighters? Or can it also be that the fact that one of the world’s most terrorist states (besides us of course) Israel, got around $ 100 billion in military aid from Uncle Sam last year?

Each Hellfire missile that our drones and those of our allies, the Brits, fire down into the Middle East cost you and me $ 60-70K. Multiply that by a few thousand and see the price then. That seems like peanuts when we spend over 50 million for one Boeing Apache helicopter. And the vehicle of choice for our soldiers on the ground occupying Iraq and Afghanistan is the up-armored Humvee. Now, here is the fact on that one: regular Humvees cost we taxpayers $ 65,000 each. However, to protect the personnel better ( like maybe they shouldn’t be in those places in the first place, duh?)  they up-armor the vehicle at a cost of $ 140,000 each.  The conundrum is that the up-armored Humvees only last half as long as the regular ones… that is if they are not destroyed by IEDs or rolled over. Each year over 50 of our soldiers are killed and 100 wounded by these too heavy up-armored Humvees rolling over. Do the math and see how much is spent of our tax dollars for this mess… and tell the families of those dead kids that explanation.

This writer has focused for years on the waste of our needed tax dollars for military spending… regardless of who occupies the White House or controls the Congress. Imagine if we did not spend over 50% of federal taxes collected on our Military Industrial Empire? Imagine if even we cut that figure to 25%… translated into $160+ billion per year for repairing our nation’s infrastructure, health care mess, transportation systems, school and library budgets, first provider budgets etc? How about this: what if we used some of that money to buy up most of the bad mortgage paper and help the homeowners under water to stay in those homes with restructured mortgages? Or, how about if Uncle Sam used a couple of tens of billions of dollars to help local communities own and operate their own mortgage banks, charging only a half a point above the overhead costs? We’d have many more owners and fewer renters to those predator rental housing megaliths. If only…

This writer loves that opening to that stupid commercial ‘Wake up America!’. You think many out there would finally ‘wake up’ and see the light and demand the needed cuts in our empire’s obscene military spending and foreign policies?

The White House - Office of the Press Secretary....

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary 

For Immediate Release

March 25, 2015                                                         Presidential Memorandum -- Delegation of Authority Pursuant to Section 1236(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE

SUBJECT:      Delegation of Authority Pursuant to Section 1236(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I hereby order as follows:

I hereby delegate the functions and authorities vested in the President by section 1236(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (Public Law 113-291) (the "Act") to the Secretary of State.

Any reference in this memorandum to the Act shall be deemed to be a reference to any future act that is the same or substantially the same as such provision.

You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

I'm off to see the Wizard the wonderful Wizard of Oz..... bye, bye  boys and girls......

De-Dollarization Accelerates As More Of Washington’s “Allies” Defect To China-Led Bank

European countries on the bandwagon

by Zero Hedge

---

The global de-dollarization trend continues as it appears the UK’s move to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Development Bank has indeed shown other US “allies” that spurning Washington’s advice is actually acceptable and concerns about the institution’s “standards” may simply be a diversion aimed at undermining China’s attempt to exercise more influence in its own backyard. Here’s more from the NY Times:

Ignoring direct pleas from the Obama administration, Europe’s biggest economies have declared their desire to become founding members of a new Chinese-led Asian investment bank that the United States views as a rival to the World Bank and other institutions set up at the height of American power after World War II.

The announcement on Tuesday by Germany, France and Italy that they would follow Britain and join the Chinese-led venture delivered a stinging rebuke to Washington from some of its closest allies. It also called into question whether the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which grew out of a multination conference in Bretton Woods, N.H., in 1944 and established an economic pecking order that lasted 70 years, will find their influence diminished.

The announcement by Germany, Europe’s largest economy, came only six days after Secretary of State John Kerry asked his German counterpart, Frank Walter-Steinmeier, to resist the Chinese overtures until the Chinese agreed to a number of conditions about transparency and governing of the new entity. But Germany came to the same conclusion that Britain did: China is such a large export and investment market for it that it cannot afford to stay on the sidelines.

South Korea, another US ally that the Obama administration has not-so-subtly lobbied to stay out of the AIIB for the time being, is reportedly reconsidering a bid to join and although reports that Seoul had already committed to the venture appear to have been a bit premature, the country will make a decision this month and is expected to discuss specifics this weekend at a meeting with Chinese and Japanese officials. Here’s FT:

The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea will meet in Seoul this weekend for the first time in three years, in an effort to calm tensions in the region.

The trio have strong economic ties but frosty relations. International angst about this state of affairs among the regional superpowers has been further piqued by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a Chinese-led initiative sparking alarm in Washington and proving divisive elsewhere.

Meanwhile, even Europe’s own “magical fairyland” is taking the plunge. Via Bloomberg:

China welcomes Luxembourg’s application to be a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, China’s finance ministry says in a statement on website.

And so, with the most European of European countries on the bandwagon, and with South Korea leaning unmistakably towards joining up, we say again:

Bottom line: this isn’t theory or conjecture anymore. Every shred of objective evidence suggests that the dollar’s dominance is coming to an end.

33 Strange Facts About America That Most Americans Would Be Shocked To Learn

Did you know that about one-fourth of the entire global prison population is in the United States?  Did you know that Apple has more money than the U.S. Treasury?  Did you know that if you have no debt and also have 10 dollars in your wallet that you are wealthier than 25 percent of all Americans?  Did you know that by the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television?  There are some things that are great about the United States, and there are definitely some things that are not so great.  Once upon a time we were the most loved and most respected nation on the entire planet, but those days are long gone.  We have wrecked our economy, we have lost our values and we have fumbled away our future.  But if you look close enough, you can still see many of the things that once made this country a shining beacon to the rest of the world.  This article includes some weird facts, some fun facts, but also some very troubling facts.  It has been said that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and hopefully as people enjoy reading the fun facts in this article they will also take note of the more serious facts.  If we are ever going to change course as a nation, we need to come to grips with just how far we have fallen.  The following are 33 strange facts about America that most Americans would be shocked to learn…
#1 The amount of cement that China used from 2011 to 2013 was greater than the total amount of cement that the United States used during the entire 20th century.
#2 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.
#3 It costs the U.S. government 1.8 cents to mint a penny and 9.4 cents to mint a nickel.
#4 Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) do not put a single penny out of their paychecks into savings.
#5 In 2014, police in the United States killed 1,100 people.  During that same year, police in Canada killed 14 people, police in China killed12 people and police in Germany didn’t kill anyone at all.
#6 The state of Alaska is 429 times larger than the state of Rhode Island is.  But Rhode Island has a significantly larger populationthan Alaska does.
#7 Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 U.S. states put together.
#8 The city of Juneau, Alaska is about 3,000 square miles in size.  It is actually larger than the entire state of Delaware.
#9 When LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began, less than 10 percent of all U.S. children were growing up in single parent households.  Today, that number has skyrocketed to 33 percent.
#10 In 1950, less than 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents.  Today, that number is over 40 percent.
#11 The poverty rate for households that are led by a married couple is6.8 percent.  For households that are led by a female single parent, the poverty rate is 37.1 percent.
#12 In 2013, women earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.
#13 According to the CDC, 34.6 percent of all men in the U.S. are obese at this point.
#14 The average supermarket in the United States wastes about 3,000 pounds of food each year.
#15 Right now, more than 200 million people around the planet are officially considered to be unemployed.  Meanwhile, approximately 20 percent of the garbage that goes into our landfills is food.
#16 There is a city in Bangladesh called Dhaka where workers are paidjust one dollar for every 1,000 bricks that they carry.  Meanwhile, the “inactivity rate” for men in their prime working years in the United States is hovering near record high levels.
#17 According to one recent survey, 81 percent of Russians now have a negative view of the United States.  That is much higher than at the end of the Cold War era.
#18 Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.
#19 The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California.  But no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.
#20 One recent survey discovered that “a steady job” is the number one thing that American women are looking for in a husband, and another survey discovered that 75 percent of women would have a serious problem dating an unemployed man.
#21 According to a study conducted by economist Carl Benedikt Frey and engineer Michael Osborne, 47 percent of the jobs in the United States could soon be lost to computers, robots and other forms of technology.
#22 The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.
#23 The original name of the city of Atlanta was “Terminus“.
#24 The state with the most millionaires per capita is Maryland.
#25 There are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.
#26 86 percent of men include “having children” in their definition of success.  For women, that number is only 73 percent.
#27 One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.
#28 The United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people.  Japan only has 593 for every 1,000 people, and Germany only has 540 for every 1,000 people.
#29 The average American spends more than 10 hours a day using an electronic device.
#30 48 percent of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies in their homes whatsoever.
#31 There are three towns in the United States that have the name “Santa Claus“.
#32 There is actually a town in Michigan called “Hell“.
#33 There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body.  If they were stretched out in a single line, they could go around the planet more than twice.
For specific links to each item, please visit the source article at >>>  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/33-strange-facts-about-america-that-most-americans-would-be-shocked-to-learn

Benjamin Fulford Update – US Laser Test Destroys Germanwings Airliner Killing 150 Innocent Civilians

March 25, 2015

US Laser Test Destroys Germanwings Airliner Killing 150 Innocent Civilians
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
The Ministry of Defense (MoD) is reporting today that dispatches from the Northern Fleet (NF) appear to show that yesterdays downing of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 in southern France yesterday was the “direct result” of a failed US Air Force test of its High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS) attempting to shoot down an ICBM reentry vehicle, but which, instead, destroyed this civilian airliner killing all 150 aboard.

According to this MoD report, the Northern Fleet, which is already on full combat alert, was alerted to this incident yesterday by the Severomorsk submarine chaser, currently operating in the Mediterranean, who reported that widespread atmospheric electrical anomalies over southern France, western Italy and southwestern Switzerland were being detected.  The area where these detections were made by the Severomorsk, this report notes, also happens to be the combat operational area of the US Air Forces 510th Fighter Squadron operating out of the Aviano Air Base in Italy.
Curiously, this MoD further notes, these anomalies occurring in the 510^th Fighter Squadron’s combat operating area of southern France yesterday came within the same time frame that British civilian radar systems went black; which was further confirmed by a Flight Emergencies posting stating: “Doing a bit of spotting at MAN, I look up and see an A380 passing overhead just past the BA, but nothing on radar? Hm”

This MoD report clarifies that US-UK-EU radar systems frequently go black upon the takeoff/landings of B1 bombers, and which in yesterday’s case, where this incident was reported in Manchester (MAN), it likely coincided with the deployment of a British B-1 Lancer Bomber, some of which are able to utilize the US Air Forces High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System too.
The MoD further notes that the US-UK-EU military structure frequently endangers civilian flights with their war games over the continent, such as last year when about 50 planes temporarily disappeared from radars in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia between 5 June and 10 June. Slovak air traffic services in their statement about this radar blackout admitted at the time: “The disappearance of objects on radar screens was connected with a planned military exercise which took place in various parts of Europe…whose goal was the interruption of radio communication frequencies. This activity also caused the temporary disappearance of several targets on the radar display, while in the meantime the planes were in radio contact with air traffic controllers and continued in their flight normally.”
And to how dangerous these Western war games can be to civilian airliners, this report continues, was evidenced on 3 March when, in an eerie pre-simulation to the demise yesterday of Germanwings Flight 9525, the US Air Force, while preparing for yesterday’s failed test over southern France, Lufthansa Flight LH1172, an Airbus A321 operating at a normal flight altitude, plummeted out of the sky in minutes, and as evidenced by its radar charts.

To the explanation of Lufthansa Flight LH1172 plummeting towards earth in southern France barely a fortnight ago, we can further read from the Airliner Reporter article titled Catching a Lufthansa Airbus A321’s Rapid Descent Live which, in part, says:
“There were a few moments where I thought I may have been watching a crash of some sort occur in real-time, from thousands of miles away. But thankfully, the pilots were just quick acting, and diverted to a nearby airport.
Lufthansa confirmed to AirlineReporter.com that LH1172 had 151 passengers on board and the captain decided to stopover in Nantes (NTE), France, “due to a medical case (sick passenger).” They confirmed that there was no emergency requested and that the aircraft landed safely.”
Unlike Lufthansa Flight LH1172 before it, however, this MoD report continues, Germanwings Flight 9525, yesterday, wasn’t able to recover from its rapid descent…instead it was obliterated in tens-of-thousands of pieces of metal and human flesh upon the side of a mountain in southern France.

To what caused Germanwings Flight 9525 to be so thoroughly destroyed, this report says, was first evidenced on 3 February when a US Air Force test of their High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System targeting one of their older weather system satellites completed obliterated it by heating it from within causing to it explode while in orbit.
However, MoD experts in this report say, chemical laser systems, such as the US Air Forces High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System which brought down Germanwings Flight 9525, and nearly crashed Lufthansa Flight LH1172, are notoriously known for being extremely difficult to aim at long range targets as their “effects” tend to spread throughout the atmosphere affecting anything and everything in their path.
And to the exact scenario causing the destruction of Germanwings Flight 9525 yesterday, these MoD experts continue, was a combined Western alliance attempt to target a “test re-entry vehicle” simulating a Federation nuclear warhead attack upon them yesterday.
The specific “test re-entry vehicle” used in this failed US missile test, this report says, was launched the day before on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired early Monday from a US Air Force facility in California, and which the Obama regime stated was a “message to the world about Washington’s nuclear capabilities”.
This “message to the world”, however, the MoD in their report state, was, instead, aimed directly at the Federation for their crippling of the USS Theodore Roosevelt using the superior “magrav” technology, and that aside from previously destroying this aircraft carrier in a war game a few weeks ago, likewise disabled the USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea last year.
Sadly, this report grimly states, of the nearly 37 NATO aircraft taking part in this US missile test yesterday, just a single Italian military jet switched its transponder to the emergency code of #7700 upon seeing Germanwings Flight 9525 plummet towards the ground.
And as many German pilots are refusing to fly today because of these US war game actions against the Federation, this report concludes, the likelihood of the Western people being told the truth about what happened to Germanwings Flight 9525 is about the same as their being told the truth about Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was proved by satellite photos to have been shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet, is about the same…Zero.

And to if the Western peoples even want to know the truth of the countless lives being destroyed on their military leaders alter of war?  No one really knows the answer anymore.
Other Reports In This Series To Read For Context:  Russian “Shock Of March” Battle Plan Targets Norway, Saudi Arabia, “Cheney Gives The Orders, Not Obama!” US Official Rages At Kremlin, Russia Warns “State Of War” Exists As UK Nukes Prepare First Strike, Obama Meets With Top Russian Spy, Warns He Can’t Stop War, Moscow Bomb Shelters Begin To Fill As Russia Prepares For War, Top US Commander Under Arrest For Refusing To Fire Nukes At Russia, “Prepare For Nuclear War” Russia Warns Citizens As US Tanks Flood Into Europe,Terrified US Aircraft Carrier Flees From Russian Subs To UK Safety
March 25, 2015 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
[Ed. Note: Western governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagrees with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth.  Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ against us has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit and which is addressed in the report “Who Is Sorcha Faal?”.]
Just Hours Away From Nuclear War, America Remains Asleep
They Are Going To Come For You…Why Are You Helping Them?
Source:  http://benjaminfulfordupdate.blogspot.com/2015/03/us-laser-test-destroys-germanwings.html?spref=tw

Signs Of Change The Past Few Weeks Or So March 2015 (1)

EXPLOSIVE Breaking News : The Fiasco is Now at the End

TOM HENEGHAN INTELLIGENCE BRIEFINGS
ALL Patriot Americans MUST know with sources inside
American/European intelligence agencies and INTERPOL
reporting what is really going on behind the scenes of the
corporate-controlled, fascist, extortion-friendly
propaganda U.S. media's massive deceptions

Protect and defend   YOUR   Constitution Bill of Rights,
the Supreme Law of the United States
http://www.tomheneghanbriefings.com/
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Wednesday   March 25, 2015

The Fiasco is Now at the End

by Tom Heneghan, International Intelligence Expert

UNITED States of America  - 

It IS the Constitution, stupid!

NOT the Old Testament

US House Votes 348-48 To Arm Ukraine, Russia Warns Lethal Aid Will “Explode The Whole Situation”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-24/us-house-votes-348-48-arm-ukraine-russia-warns-lethal-aid-will-explode-whole-situati

Bill’s libido threatens to derail Hillary - again
http://nypost.com/2015/02/14/bill-clintons-libido-threatens-to-derail-hillary-again/

Mossad, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Sarah Kellen
http://aanirfan.blogspot.com/2015/01/mossad-hilary-clinton-jeb-bush-sarah.html?m=1

Durable Goods Orders Drop and Miss In Worst Run Since Lehman
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-25/durable-goods-orders-drop-and-miss-worst-run-lehman

Fed Now Sees Only 0.2% GDP Growth In Q1
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-25/fed-now-sees-only-02-gdp-growth-q1

Don’t Show Janet Yellen These 3 Charts
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-25/dont-show-janet-yellen-these-3-charts

Brazil Confidence Plummets To Record Low As Central Bank Admits Currency War Defeat
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-25/brazil-confidence-plummets-record-low-central-bank-admits-currency-war-defeat

Biotech Bloodbath Sparks Selling Scramble In Stocks
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-25/biotech-bloodbath-sparks-selling-scramble-stocks

US Manufacturing PMI ‘Survey’ Defies Every Hard Data Print In Last 7 Weeks, Jumps To 5-Month Highs
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-24/us-manufacturing-pmi-survey-defies-every-hard-data-print-last-7-weeks-jumps-5-month-

The New London Gold Fix And China's Gold Strategy
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-12/new-london-gold-fix-and-chinas-gold-strategy

http://www.tomheneghanbriefings.com/The-Fiasco-is-Now-at-the-End__03-25-2015.html