3321-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

As the debate over which bathroom an individual should use based on their sexual identity heats up, we are witnessing the ignorant and brash nature of state enforcement of these edicts come to a head.

It is not only a distraction and a means for the state to get involved in your bowel movements, but it paints the trans and gay community in a negative light by asserting there is some sexual stigma involved in relieving one's bladder.

The end result of such obstinate legalese clouding the minds of the public is going to be state violence initiated against individuals who have caused zero harm.

As individuals argue over how much government should be in the bathroom, nuclear environmental disasters are unfolding before our eyes. However, many Americans are too blinded by the blue glow of the television to notice.

According to a Missouri emergency plan recently distributed by St. Louis County officials, in recent months, a fire at the Bridgeton Landfill is closing in on a nuclear waste dump. The landfill fire has been burning for over five years, and they have been unable to contain it thus far.

There are clouds of smoke that have been billowing from the site, making the air in parts of St. Louis heavily polluted. In 2013, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster sued Republic Services, the company responsible for the landfill, charging the company with neglecting the site and harming the local environment.

Last year, city officials became concerned that the fire may reach the nearby West Lake Landfill, which is littered with decades worth of nuclear waste from government projects and weapons manufacturing. Remnants from the Manhattan Project and the cold war have been stuffed there for generations. The site has been under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 1990, but they have not made any significant effort to clean up the waste.

Comment: Silence and inaction: Environmental and health disasters looming at St. Louis, MO radioactive landfills

In December of last year, the EPA announced that it would install a physical barrier in an effort to isolate the nuclear waste. But the timeline given by the EPA said it could take up to a year to complete. Residents aren't comforted by that timetable, and think the government, despite years of warning, has done too little to stave off a possible environmental disaster. They are right.

To add to the legitimacy of the residents' worries were about the government's timeline, the ground has yet to be broken, the fire is still smoldering, and the EPA just finalized, on Thursday, an Administrative Settlement Agreement and Order on Consent(Settlement) requiring Bridgeton Landﬁll, LLC to start work on the isolation barrier system at the West Lake Landﬁll Superfund Site.

Aside from the threat of the U.S. Military's decades-old nuclear waste erupting into flames in the near future, there are also two nuclear reactors inside the United States, which have been leaking for months.

In Florida, a recent study commissioned by Miami-Dade County concluded that the area's four-decades-old nuclear power plants at Turkey Point are leaking polluted water into Biscayne Bay.

This has raised alarm among county officials and environmentalists that the plant, which sits on the coastline, is polluting the bay's surface waters and its fragile ecosystem, reports the NY Times. In the past two years, bay waters near the plant have had a large saltwater plume that is slowly moving toward wells several miles away that supply drinking water to millions of residents in Miami and the Florida Keys.

Samples taken during the study show everything from the deadly radioactive isotope, tritium, to elevated levels of salt, ammonia, and phosphorous. So far, according to the scientists conducting the study, the levels of tritium are too low to harm people. However, in December, and January, the levels were far higher than they should be in nearby ocean water which is a telling sign of a much larger underlying problem.

"We now know exactly where the pollution is coming from, and we have a tracer that shows it's in the national park," said Laura Reynolds, an environmental consultant who is working with the Tropical Audubon Society and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which intend to file the lawsuit, according to the Times. "We are worried about the marine life there and the future of Biscayne Bay."

Fifteen hundred miles north of the leaking reactors in Florida is the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York. Since the beginning of this year, there's been an uncontrollable radioactive flow from the Indian Point nuclear power plant continues leaking into groundwater, which leads to the Hudson River, raising the specter of a Fukushima-like disaster only 25 miles from New York City.

The Indian Point nuclear plant is located on the Hudson River and serves the electrical needs of an estimated 2 million people. In January, while preparing a reactor for refueling, workers accidentally spilled some contaminated water, containing the radioactive hydrogen isotope tritium, causing a massive radiation spike in groundwater monitoring wells, with one well's radioactivity increasing by as much as 65,000 percent.

The tritium leak is the ninth in just the past year, four of which were severe enough to shut down the reactors. But the most recent leak, however, according to an assessment by the New York Department of State as part of its Coastal Zone Management Assessment, contains a variety of radioactive elements such as strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, and nickel-63, and isn't limited to tritium contamination.

As the utility companies and government agencies continue to downplay the severity of these situations, the residents who live the closest to these spots are already feeling the effects.

According to a report by RT, Radiation and Public Health Project researchers compared the state and national cancer data from 1988-92 with three other five-year periods (1993-97, 1998-02, and 2003-07). The results, published in 2009, show the cancer rates going from 11 percent below the national average to 7 percent above in that timespan. Unexpected increases were detected in 19 out of 20 major types of cancer. Thyroid cancer registered the biggest increase, going from 13 percent below the national average to 51 percent above.

Sadly, it seems, government officials care more about locking people in cages for possessing arbitrary substances than they do about the potential for nuclear environmental disasters. As multiple Fukushima-like scenarios continue to unfold across the country, the media, who is largely beholden to the special interests behind these disasters, remain mum.

Ten years ago, a major Hollywood film entitled Idiocracy was released, and it was an excellent metaphor for what would happen to America over the course of the next decade. In the movie, an "average American" wakes up 500 years in the future only to discover that he is the most intelligent person by far in the "dumbed down" society that he suddenly finds himself in. Sadly, I truly believe that if people of average intellect from the 1950s and 1960s were transported to 2016, they would likely be considered mental giants compared to the rest of us. We have a country where criminals are being paid $1000 a month not to shoot people, and the highest paid public employee in more than half the states is a football coach. Hardly anyone takes time to read a book anymore, and yet the average American spends 302 minutes a day watching television. 75 percent of our young adults cannot find Israel on a map of the Middle East, but they sure know how to find smut on the Internet. It may be hard to believe, but there are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet today, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

What in the world has happened to us? How is it possible that we have become so stupid? According to a brand new report that was recently released, almost 10 percent of our college graduates believe that Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court...

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know.

Nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV's "Judge Judy," is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II; one-third did not know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal.

It can be tempting to laugh at numbers like these until you realize that survey after survey has come up with similar results.

Just consider what Newsweek found a few years ago...

When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America's official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn't name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn't correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn't even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

Even worse were the extremely depressing results of a study conducted a few years ago by Common Core...

Only 43 percent of all U.S. high school students knew that the Civil War was fought some time between 1850 and 1900.
More than a quarter of all U.S. high school students thought that Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean after the year 1750.
Approximately a third of all U.S. high school students did not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Only 60 percent of all U.S. students knew that World War I was fought some time between 1900 and 1950.

Of course survey results can be skewed, and much hinges on how the questions are asked.

However, even studies that are scientifically conducted confirm how stupid America has become. In fact, a report from the Educational Testing Service found that Americans are falling way behind much of the rest of the industrialized world. The followingcomes from CBS News...

Americans born after 1980 are lagging their peers in countries ranging from Australia to Estonia, according to a new report from researchers at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The study looked at scores for literacy and numeracy from a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, which tested the abilities of people in 22 countries.

The results are sobering, with dire implications for America. It hints that students may be falling behind not only in their early educational years but at the college level. Even though more Americans between the ages of 20 to 34 are achieving higher levels of education, they're still falling behind their cohorts in other countries. In Japan, Finland and the Netherlands, young adults with only a high school degree scored on par with American Millennials holding four-year college degrees, the report said.

Out of 22 countries that were part of the study, the Educational Testing Service found that Americans were dead last in tech proficiency, dead last in numeracy and only two countries performed worse than us when it came to literacy proficiency...

Half of American Millennials score below the minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for numeracy among the study's 22 developed countries.

So why has this happened?

Why have we become such an extremely stupid nation?

Well, at least a portion of the blame must be directed at our system of education. The following is an excerpt from an article written by reporter Mark Morford. In this article, he shared how one of his friends which had served for a very long time as a high school teacher in Oakland, California was considering moving out of the country when he retired due to the relentless "dumb-ification of the American brain"...

It's gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of yearsdue to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.

Now, you may think he's merely a curmudgeon, a tired old teacher who stopped caring long ago. Not true. Teaching is his life. He says he loves his students, loves education and learning and watching young minds awaken. Problem is, he is seeing much less of it.

And of course things don't get much better when it comes to our college students. In a previous article, I shared some statistics fromUSA Today about the rapidly declining state of college education in the United States...

"After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change."
"Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago"
"35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone."
"50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages"
"32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week."

I spent eight years studying at some of the finest public universities in the country, and I can tell you from personal experience that even our most challenging college courses have been pathetically dumbed down.

And at our "less than finest" public universities, the level of education can be something of a bad joke. In another previous article, I shared some examples of actual courses that have been taught at U.S. universities in recent years...

Could you imagine getting actual college credit for a course entitled "What If Harry Potter Is Real?"

This is why many of our college graduates can barely put two sentences together. They aren't being challenged, and the quality of the education most of them are receiving is incredibly poor.

But even though they aren't being challenged, students are taking longer to get through college than ever. Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of all full-time students receive a bachelor's degree within four years, and only 77 percent of all full-time students have earned a bachelor's degree by the end of six years.

Of course our system of education is not entirely to blame. The truth is that young Americans spend far more time consuming media than they do hitting the books, and what passes for "entertainment" these days is rapidly turning their brains to mush.

According to a report put out by Nielsen, this is how much time the average American spends consuming media on various devices each day...

Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes

Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes

Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes

Using a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes

When you add it all up, the average American spends more than 10 hours a day plugged into some form of media.

And if you allow anyone to pump "programming" into your mind for 10 hours a day, it is going to have a dramatic impact.

In the end, I truly believe that we all greatly underestimate the influence that the mainstream media has on all of us. We willingly plug into "the Matrix" for endless hours, but then somehow we still expect "to think for ourselves".

There are very few of us that can say that we have not been exposed to thousands upon thousands of hours of conditioning. And all of that garbage can make it very, very difficult to think clearly.

It is not because of a lack of input that we have become so stupid as a society. The big problem is what we are putting into our minds.

If we continue to put garbage in, we are going to continue to get garbage out, and that is the cold, hard reality of the matter.

‘Stay away from Russian borders or keep transponders on’: Russian MoD on US spy planes in Baltics

Published time: 30 Apr, 2016 18:50

Russian Defense Ministry suggests US surveillance planes should either keep their distance from Russian borders while performing flights over the Baltic Sea, or at least keep aerial transponders switched on for identification.

“There are two solutions for the US Air Force [operating in the Baltic Sea]: either do not fly near our borders, or turn on transponders for automatic identification by our radars,” Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in an official statement on Saturday.

The statement comes after a Russian fighter jet intercepted a US surveillance plane, which was spotted in international airspace above the Baltic Sea on Friday with the transponder switched off.

“The RC-135U reconnaissance plane is frequently trying to sneak up to the Russian border with the transponder off. Our anti-aircraft defense has to order our fighters off the ground simply to visually identify the type of aircraft and its ID number,” Konashenkov explained.

A Russian Sukhoi Su-27 performed a barrel roll within 25 feet from the US plane, with the Pentagon describing the move as “dangerous” and “unprofessional.”

“We are already starting to get used to insults coming from the Pentagon regarding the alleged “unprofessional” maneuvers when our fighters intercept the US spy planes near Russian borders.

Yet, all flights of Russian aircraft are held in accordance with international regulations on the use of airspace,” Konashenkov states, adding that another reconnaissance aircraft Boeing OC-135B – has landed in Ulan-Ude earlier on Saturday under an international “Treaty on Open Skies,” and “no one raised the fighters to identify it.”

Fifteen days prior to this latest incident, on April 14, another Su-27 fighter jet conducted a barrel roll over another US reconnaissance plane, and between April 11 and 12, the USS Donald Cook ship was flown over by Su-24 fighter jets, with the Pentagon releasing footage.

The deputy head of Russia’s Upper House committee for defense and security Frants Klintsevich commented on the frenzy over the latest incidents in Baltic airspace, saying the fizzbuzz has a clear goal – to put a smokescreen for NATO plans to deploy additional troops in Eastern Europe.

“It is now completely clear why the United States needed a hype around the interception of the US spy plane over the Baltic Sea and the incident with the destroyer Donald Cook.

It was to prepare the information space for deploying four additional NATO battalions to the Baltic region […] On the tip from US, the North Atlantic alliance continues its strategy of encircling Russia,” Klintsevich said, as quoted by his press service. He also noted that the turmoil began immediately after the latest Russia-NATO Council meeting, throwing into question the expediency of such gatherings.

Moscow has been unhappy with the NATO military buildup on Russia’s borders for some time now, with Russia’s envoy to NATO Aleksandr Grushko stating that Moscow would definitely compensate militarily for an “absolutely unjustified military presence.”

According to the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, the permanent presence of large NATO formations at the Russian border is banned. Yet some voices in Brussels are saying that since the NATO troops stationed next to Russia are going to rotate, this kind of military buildup cannot be regarded as a permanent presence.

(RT)

Yemeni ex-leader Saleh to RT: No difference between Saudi regime and ISIS, Al-Qaeda

Published time: 30 Apr, 2016 21:25

Shi'ite Houthi rebels drive a patrol truck in Rada, Yemen. © Mohamed al-Sayaghi / Reuters

In the aftermath of thousands of Yemeni civilians’ deaths at the hands of the Saudi-led coalition, Yemen’s ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh told RT that there is no difference between the "Saudi regime" and terror groups like Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

"A plot has been made against the Yemeni people. An unreasonable aggression against us has been prepared. Strikes at military, economic, cultural and social targets have been conducted, the whole infrastructure [has been targeted]. A total destruction of everything is taking place... I'm talking about Saudi aggression," Ali Abdullah Saleh told RT Arabic in an exclusive interview this week.

The former Yemeni president, who headed the Middle Eastern country for decades until February 2012, said that his nation has no conflict with any country in the world, but Saudi Arabia.

"They attacked us, we didn't attack them. They are killing our women, our elderly and children. Why? We've never had any religious disputes. Why have they appeared now? We have our religious views, you have yours. Why are you [Saudis] killing the Yemeni people, who are your neighbors and brothers?" Saleh said.

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Saudi airstrike on Yemeni market had no apparent military reason – #UN http://on.rt.com/77dc
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Saleh believes that the major terror groups are all derived from the Muslim Brotherhood organization, which itself, according to him, "is an invention of the Saudis."

"Al-Qaeda, ISIL [Islamic State, IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] and Al-Nusra are all derivatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was invented and raised in Saudi Arabia. These organizations also operate in Russia and in Europe. All of them are Saudi Arabia's invention. Later Qatar and Turkey have also started using them, and finance them to achieve their own goals. There were none of them in Yemen for a long while, and everything that then appeared came from Saudi Arabia under different names, [such as] Salafis, Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda."

The politician added that both Russia and Europe have the wrong idea about the essence of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Being the "creation" of Saudi Arabia, "they have no concrete political program, their program is money," Saleh said.

The former president, who has a number of loyal forces allied with the Houthi rebels who control the Yemeni capital of Sana'a, told RT that the damage to his country "amounts to billions" of dollars.

"More than 8,000 people have been killed. There were a lot of children, women and elderly among them. And I'm talking only about the number of casualties among the civilian population. Furthermore, 27,000 people have been injured. All of these people are casualties of the Saudi regime," Saleh said.

The former president said that his country has been devastated, with no income from tax, very little from customs, and no money from oil or gas. The latter is only produced for domestic needs, he said.

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"And if there is some oil, it's being controlled and sold by Al-Qaeda in Hadramaut [a region in Yemen on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula] and Shabwah [a governorate in central Yemen]. They sell it on the market within the country. Al-Qaeda gets all the money from it. And this all happens in full view of the Saudi regime. They tell the world, which doesn't want to understand anything: 'We are against Al-Qaeda.' What Al-Qaeda, what ISIL? They are ISIL. They are Al-Qaeda. Everyone knows what this regime is about. It buys people's conscience by making buy and sell deals on weapons, as well as inking political deals by paying money to influential people in different countries of the world... Saudi Arabia pursues only its own interests."

Yemen's ex-leader also said that while Saudi Arabia uses claims that there are Iran's forces in Yemen "to justify its aggression," no such support is coming from Tehran.

Yemenis hold placards bearing portraits of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh during a protest against the Saudi-led coalition, on March 26, 2016, in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. © Mohammed Huwais

"We would like to receive some military and other aid from Iran. But it's not helping us," Saleh said, calling Iran's presence in his country a "fiction." Saying that the US "has the most powerful intelligence services working in all countries and knowing and seeing everything," not a single Iranian military and no Iranian weapon has been discovered in Yemen. "Should they have found anything, it would long have been put on UN's agenda," the politician told RT.

Saleh believes that the exiled President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, whose forces are based in Aden and who is supported by Saudi Arabia, "has no legitimacy.” He should "render himself to the international tribunal as a war criminal," Saleh said, adding that opposition forces only support dialogue with the people of Yemen.

The future of Yemen "should not be discussed neither in Geneva, nor in Kuwait," the politician said, adding that he and his supporters only recognize the unity of the country in accordance with its constitution and people's referendum on the matter.

"A government of national unity with participation of various political forces should be formed in the first place," Saleh said, adding that new parliamentary and presidential elections should be prepared in Yemen in accordance with its constitution. "But not the constitution of Hadi, which has divided Yemen," he added.

Saying that he now heads an opposition party which is "in opposition to any power in principle," but is in coalition with other forces "to fight the aggressors," the former president told RT that he would never again agree to be in power himself.

"I've been part of the political process for 45 years. Enough for me," he said

(RT)

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/1/2016 5:26:52 PM
	As Americans bicker about gender-neutral toilets, three nuclear disasters are unfolding Matt Agorist The Free Thought Project Sat, 30 Apr 2016 17:18 UTC © someinterestingfacts.net As the debate over which bathroom an individual should use based on their sexual identity heats up, we are witnessing the ignorant and brash nature of state enforcement of these edicts come to a head. It is not only a distraction and a means for the state to get involved in your bowel movements, but it paints the trans and gay community in a negative light by asserting there is some sexual stigma involved in relieving one's bladder. The end result of such obstinate legalese clouding the minds of the public is going to be state violence initiated against individuals who have caused zero harm. As individuals argue over how much government should be in the bathroom, nuclear environmental disasters are unfolding before our eyes. However, many Americans are too blinded by the blue glow of the television to notice. According to a Missouri emergency plan recently distributed by St. Louis County officials, in recent months, a fire at the Bridgeton Landfill is closing in on a nuclear waste dump. The landfill fire has been burning for over five years, and they have been unable to contain it thus far. There are clouds of smoke that have been billowing from the site, making the air in parts of St. Louis heavily polluted. In 2013, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster sued Republic Services, the company responsible for the landfill, charging the company with neglecting the site and harming the local environment. Last year, city officials became concerned that the fire may reach the nearby West Lake Landfill, which is littered with decades worth of nuclear waste from government projects and weapons manufacturing. Remnants from the Manhattan Project and the cold war have been stuffed there for generations. The site has been under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 1990, but they have not made any significant effort to clean up the waste. Comment: Silence and inaction: Environmental and health disasters looming at St. Louis, MO radioactive landfills In December of last year, the EPA announced that it would install a physical barrier in an effort to isolate the nuclear waste. But the timeline given by the EPA said it could take up to a year to complete. Residents aren't comforted by that timetable, and think the government, despite years of warning, has done too little to stave off a possible environmental disaster. They are right. To add to the legitimacy of the residents' worries were about the government's timeline, the ground has yet to be broken, the fire is still smoldering, and the EPA just finalized, on Thursday, an Administrative Settlement Agreement and Order on Consent(Settlement) requiring Bridgeton Landﬁll, LLC to start work on the isolation barrier system at the West Lake Landﬁll Superfund Site. Aside from the threat of the U.S. Military's decades-old nuclear waste erupting into flames in the near future, there are also two nuclear reactors inside the United States, which have been leaking for months. In Florida, a recent study commissioned by Miami-Dade County concluded that the area's four-decades-old nuclear power plants at Turkey Point are leaking polluted water into Biscayne Bay. This has raised alarm among county officials and environmentalists that the plant, which sits on the coastline, is polluting the bay's surface waters and its fragile ecosystem, reports the NY Times. In the past two years, bay waters near the plant have had a large saltwater plume that is slowly moving toward wells several miles away that supply drinking water to millions of residents in Miami and the Florida Keys. Samples taken during the study show everything from the deadly radioactive isotope, tritium, to elevated levels of salt, ammonia, and phosphorous. So far, according to the scientists conducting the study, the levels of tritium are too low to harm people. However, in December, and January, the levels were far higher than they should be in nearby ocean water which is a telling sign of a much larger underlying problem. "We now know exactly where the pollution is coming from, and we have a tracer that shows it's in the national park," said Laura Reynolds, an environmental consultant who is working with the Tropical Audubon Society and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which intend to file the lawsuit, according to the Times. "We are worried about the marine life there and the future of Biscayne Bay." Fifteen hundred miles north of the leaking reactors in Florida is the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York. Since the beginning of this year, there's been an uncontrollable radioactive flow from the Indian Point nuclear power plant continues leaking into groundwater, which leads to the Hudson River, raising the specter of a Fukushima-like disaster only 25 miles from New York City. The Indian Point nuclear plant is located on the Hudson River and serves the electrical needs of an estimated 2 million people. In January, while preparing a reactor for refueling, workers accidentally spilled some contaminated water, containing the radioactive hydrogen isotope tritium, causing a massive radiation spike in groundwater monitoring wells, with one well's radioactivity increasing by as much as 65,000 percent. The tritium leak is the ninth in just the past year, four of which were severe enough to shut down the reactors. But the most recent leak, however, according to an assessment by the New York Department of State as part of its Coastal Zone Management Assessment, contains a variety of radioactive elements such as strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, and nickel-63, and isn't limited to tritium contamination. As the utility companies and government agencies continue to downplay the severity of these situations, the residents who live the closest to these spots are already feeling the effects. According to a report by RT, Radiation and Public Health Project researchers compared the state and national cancer data from 1988-92 with three other five-year periods (1993-97, 1998-02, and 2003-07). The results, published in 2009, show the cancer rates going from 11 percent below the national average to 7 percent above in that timespan. Unexpected increases were detected in 19 out of 20 major types of cancer. Thyroid cancer registered the biggest increase, going from 13 percent below the national average to 51 percent above. Sadly, it seems, government officials care more about locking people in cages for possessing arbitrary substances than they do about the potential for nuclear environmental disasters. As multiple Fukushima-like scenarios continue to unfold across the country, the media, who is largely beholden to the special interests behind these disasters, remain mum. Instead of showing Americans the things that actually affect them, strawmen, red herrings, puppet politicians, and two-party talking points are shoved down our collective throats — and the majority of people are pacified. Until Americans change their preference for being lied to and stolen from, we can only expect more of the same. (Sott.net)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/1/2016 5:38:26 PM
	A sign of the times: Depressing survey results show how extremely stupid America has become Michael Snyder Economic Collapse Blog Tue, 29 Mar 2016 13:07 UTC Ten years ago, a major Hollywood film entitled Idiocracy was released, and it was an excellent metaphor for what would happen to America over the course of the next decade. In the movie, an "average American" wakes up 500 years in the future only to discover that he is the most intelligent person by far in the "dumbed down" society that he suddenly finds himself in. Sadly, I truly believe that if people of average intellect from the 1950s and 1960s were transported to 2016, they would likely be considered mental giants compared to the rest of us. We have a country where criminals are being paid $1000 a month not to shoot people, and the highest paid public employee in more than half the states is a football coach. Hardly anyone takes time to read a book anymore, and yet the average American spends 302 minutes a day watching television. 75 percent of our young adults cannot find Israel on a map of the Middle East, but they sure know how to find smut on the Internet. It may be hard to believe, but there are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet today, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. What in the world has happened to us? How is it possible that we have become so stupid? According to a brand new report that was recently released, almost 10 percent of our college graduates believe that Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court... The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know. Nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV's "Judge Judy," is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during World War II; one-third did not know he was the president who spearheaded the New Deal. It can be tempting to laugh at numbers like these until you realize that survey after survey has come up with similar results. Just consider what Newsweek found a few years ago... When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America's official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn't name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn't correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn't even circle Independence Day on a calendar. Even worse were the extremely depressing results of a study conducted a few years ago by Common Core... Only 43 percent of all U.S. high school students knew that the Civil War was fought some time between 1850 and 1900. More than a quarter of all U.S. high school students thought that Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean after the year 1750. Approximately a third of all U.S. high school students did not know that the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Only 60 percent of all U.S. students knew that World War I was fought some time between 1900 and 1950. Of course survey results can be skewed, and much hinges on how the questions are asked. However, even studies that are scientifically conducted confirm how stupid America has become. In fact, a report from the Educational Testing Service found that Americans are falling way behind much of the rest of the industrialized world. The followingcomes from CBS News... Americans born after 1980 are lagging their peers in countries ranging from Australia to Estonia, according to a new report from researchers at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The study looked at scores for literacy and numeracy from a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, which tested the abilities of people in 22 countries. The results are sobering, with dire implications for America. It hints that students may be falling behind not only in their early educational years but at the college level. Even though more Americans between the ages of 20 to 34 are achieving higher levels of education, they're still falling behind their cohorts in other countries. In Japan, Finland and the Netherlands, young adults with only a high school degree scored on par with American Millennials holding four-year college degrees, the report said. Out of 22 countries that were part of the study, the Educational Testing Service found that Americans were dead last in tech proficiency, dead last in numeracy and only two countries performed worse than us when it came to literacy proficiency... Half of American Millennials score below the minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for numeracy among the study's 22 developed countries. So why has this happened? Why have we become such an extremely stupid nation? Well, at least a portion of the blame must be directed at our system of education. The following is an excerpt from an article written by reporter Mark Morford. In this article, he shared how one of his friends which had served for a very long time as a high school teacher in Oakland, California was considering moving out of the country when he retired due to the relentless "dumb-ification of the American brain"... It's gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of yearsdue to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad. Now, you may think he's merely a curmudgeon, a tired old teacher who stopped caring long ago. Not true. Teaching is his life. He says he loves his students, loves education and learning and watching young minds awaken. Problem is, he is seeing much less of it. And of course things don't get much better when it comes to our college students. In a previous article, I shared some statistics fromUSA Today about the rapidly declining state of college education in the United States... "After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change." "Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago" "35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone." "50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages" "32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week." I spent eight years studying at some of the finest public universities in the country, and I can tell you from personal experience that even our most challenging college courses have been pathetically dumbed down. And at our "less than finest" public universities, the level of education can be something of a bad joke. In another previous article, I shared some examples of actual courses that have been taught at U.S. universities in recent years... "What If Harry Potter Is Real?" "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame" "Philosophy And Star Trek" "Learning From YouTube" "How To Watch Television" Could you imagine getting actual college credit for a course entitled "What If Harry Potter Is Real?" This is why many of our college graduates can barely put two sentences together. They aren't being challenged, and the quality of the education most of them are receiving is incredibly poor. But even though they aren't being challenged, students are taking longer to get through college than ever. Federal statistics reveal that only 36 percent of all full-time students receive a bachelor's degree within four years, and only 77 percent of all full-time students have earned a bachelor's degree by the end of six years. Of course our system of education is not entirely to blame. The truth is that young Americans spend far more time consuming media than they do hitting the books, and what passes for "entertainment" these days is rapidly turning their brains to mush. According to a report put out by Nielsen, this is how much time the average American spends consuming media on various devices each day... Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes Using a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes When you add it all up, the average American spends more than 10 hours a day plugged into some form of media. And if you allow anyone to pump "programming" into your mind for 10 hours a day, it is going to have a dramatic impact. In the end, I truly believe that we all greatly underestimate the influence that the mainstream media has on all of us. We willingly plug into "the Matrix" for endless hours, but then somehow we still expect "to think for ourselves". There are very few of us that can say that we have not been exposed to thousands upon thousands of hours of conditioning. And all of that garbage can make it very, very difficult to think clearly. It is not because of a lack of input that we have become so stupid as a society. The big problem is what we are putting into our minds. If we continue to put garbage in, we are going to continue to get garbage out, and that is the cold, hard reality of the matter. Comment: For more depressing information about how stupid America has become read the following: The cult of ignorance in the United States: Anti-intellectualism and the "dumbing down" of America (Sott.net)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 5/1/2016 5:46:28 PM
	‘Stay away from Russian borders or keep transponders on’: Russian MoD on US spy planes in Baltics Published time: 30 Apr, 2016 18:50 © / Wikipedia Russian Defense Ministry suggests US surveillance planes should either keep their distance from Russian borders while performing flights over the Baltic Sea, or at least keep aerial transponders switched on for identification. “There are two solutions for the US Air Force [operating in the Baltic Sea]: either do not fly near our borders, or turn on transponders for automatic identification by our radars,” Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in an official statement on Saturday. Read more Pentagon claims Russian jet fighter barrel rolled within 25 feet of US reconnaissance plane The statement comes after a Russian fighter jet intercepted a US surveillance plane, which was spotted in international airspace above the Baltic Sea on Friday with the transponder switched off. “The RC-135U reconnaissance plane is frequently trying to sneak up to the Russian border with the transponder off. Our anti-aircraft defense has to order our fighters off the ground simply to visually identify the type of aircraft and its ID number,” Konashenkov explained. Read more ‘Erratic & aggressive’: Pentagon protests Russian interception of US spy plane A Russian Sukhoi Su-27 performed a barrel roll within 25 feet from the US plane, with the Pentagon describing the move as “dangerous” and “unprofessional.” “We are already starting to get used to insults coming from the Pentagon regarding the alleged “unprofessional” maneuvers when our fighters intercept the US spy planes near Russian borders. Yet, all flights of Russian aircraft are held in accordance with international regulations on the use of airspace,” Konashenkov states, adding that another reconnaissance aircraft Boeing OC-135B – has landed in Ulan-Ude earlier on Saturday under an international “Treaty on Open Skies,” and “no one raised the fighters to identify it.” Fifteen days prior to this latest incident, on April 14, another Su-27 fighter jet conducted a barrel roll over another US reconnaissance plane, and between April 11 and 12, the USS Donald Cook ship was flown over by Su-24 fighter jets, with the Pentagon releasing footage. The deputy head of Russia’s Upper House committee for defense and security Frants Klintsevich commented on the frenzy over the latest incidents in Baltic airspace, saying the fizzbuzz has a clear goal – to put a smokescreen for NATO plans to deploy additional troops in Eastern Europe. READ MORE: NATO to send 4,000 troops to border with Russia - report “It is now completely clear why the United States needed a hype around the interception of the US spy plane over the Baltic Sea and the incident with the destroyer Donald Cook. It was to prepare the information space for deploying four additional NATO battalions to the Baltic region […] On the tip from US, the North Atlantic alliance continues its strategy of encircling Russia,” Klintsevich said, as quoted by his press service. He also noted that the turmoil began immediately after the latest Russia-NATO Council meeting, throwing into question the expediency of such gatherings. Moscow has been unhappy with the NATO military buildup on Russia’s borders for some time now, with Russia’s envoy to NATO Aleksandr Grushko stating that Moscow would definitely compensate militarily for an “absolutely unjustified military presence.” According to the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, the permanent presence of large NATO formations at the Russian border is banned. Yet some voices in Brussels are saying that since the NATO troops stationed next to Russia are going to rotate, this kind of military buildup cannot be regarded as a permanent presence. (RT)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

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RED ALERT WARNING: THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE -- Bill Holter SGTreport.com

As Americans bicker about gender-neutral toilets, three nuclear disasters are unfolding

A sign of the times: Depressing survey results show how extremely stupid America has become

‘Stay away from Russian borders or keep transponders on’: Russian MoD on US spy planes in Baltics

Yemeni ex-leader Saleh to RT: No difference between Saudi regime and ISIS, Al-Qaeda

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RED ALERT WARNING: THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE -- Bill Holter

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