THIS WEEK IN REVIEW

US: Rand Paul has abandoned his campaign for President due to decline in support from Libertarians who disliked his pandering to neocons and the Israeli lobby. AntiWar 2016 Feb 5 (Story) (Cached)

Tens of thousands of civilians are fleeing from Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, due to the Russian blitz that has dropped 200 bombs per day on the city. Russian and Iranian-backed forces are targeting villages held by rebel forces [that include US-backed ISIS terror groups]. Rebel supply lines have been cut. Assad’s position will grow stronger with rebel forces subdued. Euronews 2016 Feb 5 (Story)

Up to 70,000 Syrian refugees are headed to the Turkish border in the wake of Russian air strikes in Syria. Russia has accused Turkey of preparing to invade Syria. Meanwhile. the Saudis have offered to put troops on the ground in Syria to fight ISIS. Ironically, these are the same terrorists that received massive funding from Saudi donors in the past. More than 250,000 people have died in the Syrian war and eleven million more have fled their homes. BBC News 2016 Feb 5 (Story) (Cached)

Congress has proposed expanding the US Postal Service to act as a commercial bank. Critics believe it is a way to get Americans to unwittingly pay off the USPS debt of $51 billion. The Post Office has operated at a loss for many decades. There is no reason it will not continue to do so as a bank. The only difference is that the losses will be larger and, as usual, passed along to taxpayers. ZeroHedge 2016 Feb 4 (Story) (Cached)

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a secretly negotiated treaty between 12 countries, including the US, Canada and Japan, that now will go directly to legislators for ratification without debate. The TPP establishes a punishing centralized authority that will allow corporations to nullify safety, environmental, and labor laws that limit their profits. It also allows corporations to censor adverse information about themselves on the Internet. Boing Boing 2016 Feb 4 (Story) (Cached)

US: Ten million pages of formerly secret CIA documents have been declassified after 25 years, as required by law, but they can only be accessed in bound books at the CIA archives in Maryland. Activist, Michael Best, has opened a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a scanner and other equipment needed to electronically publish the papers. The information covers such activities as narcotics and arms dealings to paranormal and remote viewing programs. RT 2016 Feb 3 (Story)

A Flint, Michigan, woman testified before Congress about an EPA test of her home’s water that showed lead levels were double that of hazardous waste levels. Then, the report was covered up by the EPA and state regulatory agencies. CNN 2016 Feb 3 (Story)

Ted Cruz won an upset victory in the Iowa Republican caucuses, defeating front-runner Donald Trump by a slim margin. Microsoft provided the technology to count the votes, even though there was a conflict-of-interest, because Microsoft is the second largest campaign donor to Marco Rubio, and his numbers had a surprising boost, which took the winning edge from Trump. Return of Kings 2016 Feb 2 (Story) (Cached)

The Federal Reserve is stress-testing US banks to evaluate the effect of negative interest rates on their operations. Negative interest rates are merely a way for banks to deduct their operating costs and losses from the accounts of their depositors. This already is being done in Europe and seems inevitable in the US, as the economy continues to wither under the burden of taxes, inflation, regulations, fraud, and corruption. Bloomberg 2016 Feb 2 (Story)

The Pentagon has announced a 400% increase in its defense budget for Europe – citing Russian aggression as the main reason. RT 2016 Feb 2 (Story)

Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency when nine cases of the Zika virus were reported in four counties. The media is reporting that a Zika case in Houston was spread, not by a mosquito, but through sexual transmission. WABC News 2016 Feb 2 (Story)

Saudi Arabia has arrested 33 people on suspicion of terrorism, and nine of the detainees are said to be Americans. The arrests were made during “pre-emptive raids” on six terrorist cells. Daily Caller 2016 Feb 1 (Story) (Cached)

The UK has issued a landmark ruling that authorizes researchers to conduct gene-modification experiments on human embryos. The embryos will be donated by patients undergoing In-Vitro-Fertilization treatment and will be destroyed after seven days. Motherboard 2016 Feb 1 (Story) (Cached)

Twenty-one executives from China’s largest peer-to-peer money-lending service have been arrested on suspicion of conducting a Ponzi scheme. $7.6 billion has been fleeced from 900,000 people nationwide. Investor fraud has become a major problem in China where low interest rates, unstable housing prices, and a weak stock market have sent citizens looking for alternate investments. Quartz 2016 Jan 31 (Story) (Cached)

Facebook moves to ban person-to-person gun sales by users of Facebook and Instagram. ITN News 2016 Jan 31 (Story)

Nigeria: Members of the Boko Haram terror group murdered more than 100 victims, including children, who were burned alive. Since 2009, Boko Haram has killed 20,000 people and driven another 2.5 million from their homes. Breitbart 2016 Jan 31 (Story) (Cached)

Researchers report that lauric acid found in coconut oil kills more than 90% of colon cancer cells in vitro within two days. Studies on animals are being planned. My Fit posted 2016 Jan 31 (Story) (Cached)

Anonsec is a hacker group that claims to have broken into NASA’s computers to obtain the agency’s geoengineering data. They say they also hijacked a NASA drone. NASA has denied the charges, but many questions remain. [Anonsec says that cloud-seeding and geoengineering are merely different words for the same thing. They are not. Cloud seeding is the low-altitude dumping of silver-iodide crystals into clouds to cause or divert rain in localized areas. It is a well-known process that has been used openly for many years. Geoengineering involves high-altitude spraying of a wide range of chemicals designed to alter weather patterns on a continental or global scale. Officials say that geoengineering is a theoretical possibility but deny that it currently is being deployed. InfoWars 2016 Jan 31 (Story) (Cached)

Sweden: A gang of men wearing masks rampaged through the streets of Stockholm while handing out leaflets threatening to attack migrant street youths. This was in response to the murder of a 22-year-old aid worker in a house for young refugees. Her killer was reported to be 15-years old. The Australian 2016 Jan 31 (Story) (Cached)

California: Commercial farms that grow nuts, plums, citrus, and grapes in Kern County are buying wastewater from oil wells to grow their produce. Chevron Oil produces 21-million gallons of wastewater per day and sells it to farmers who use it on crops in one of the country’s primary produce-growing areas. Officially, no testing is done to detect toxic chemicals used in oil production. Organic Prepper 2016 Jan 31 (Story) (Cached)

300 scientists want National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to stop hiding its global climate data. NOAA personnel are accused of removing important data from the record in order to create the false claim of global warming. Daily Caller 2016 Jan 30 (Story) (Cached)

California: The largest methane leak in history is now underway in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles. Repair crews have lost control of the operation, and hissing can be heard half a mile away. Toxic benzene also is leaking, and experts are saying that major explosions in the area, not only are possible, they are likely. SOTT posted 2016 Jan 30 (Story) (Cached)