As the corporate media desperately attempts to dupe as many people as possible into getting MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccines for the protection of "the children," uncovered court documents revealing major vaccine fraud at Merck & Co., the multinational drug company that produces MMR vaccines for the U.S. market, are only getting the attention they deserve from the alternative media.

Back in 2010, two former Merck scientists, repulsed by what they saw taking place at the highest levels of the company, filed a False Claims Act in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The filing accuses Merck of lying about the safety and effectiveness of MMR vaccines, tampering with study data, defrauding the U.S. government and various other high-level crimes.

Claims by Merck that the mumps component of the MMR vaccine is "95 percent effective" are also questioned in the filing. Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski say Merck senior management falsified data specifically on the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine, intentionally spiking blood samples with animal antibodies in order to trick the public into thinking that the vaccine is effective.

"Merck... added animal antibodies to blood samples to achieve more favorable test results, though it knew that the human immune system would never produce such antibodies, and that the antibodies created a laboratory testing scenario that 'did not in any way correspond to, correlate with, or represent real life... virus neutralization in vaccinated people,'" explains CourthouseNews.com.

Other alleged transgressions include Merck swindling the U.S. government out of "hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization," as well as promoting the spread of mumps with its fraudulent vaccine. This elaborate scam, which the duo says has been taking place since the late 1990s, has allowed Merck to monopolize the vaccine market, specifically with regard to MMR vaccines.

The leader of France's rightwing Front National (FN), Marine Le Pen, has called Brussels "American lackeys" over the EU's Ukraine policy. She further accused Washington of attempting to start a "war in Europe" and expand NATO towards Russia's borders.

"European capitals do not have the wisdom to refuse to be dependent on US positions on Ukraine," Le Pen told French journalists on Sunday.

"Regarding Ukraine, we behave like American lackeys," she said, before warning that "the aim of the Americans is to start a war in Europe to push NATO to the Russian border."

She went on to accuse European leaders of turning a blind eye to the Ukrainian government's "bombing of civilians," adding that both those in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine believed the country should be federalized.

The following script is from "The Swiss Leaks" which aired on Feb. 8, 2015. Bill Whitaker is the correspondent. Ira Rosen and Habiba Nosheen, producers.

This story was reported in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The largest and most damaging Swiss bank heist in history doesn't involve stolen money but stolen computer files with more than 100,000 names tied to Swiss bank accounts at HSBC, the second largest commercial bank in the world.

A 37-year-old computer security specialist named Hervé Falciani stole the huge cache of data in 2007 and gave it to the French government. It's now being used to go after tax cheats all over the world. 60 Minutes, working with a group called the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, obtained the leaked files. They show the bank did business with a collection of international outlaws: tax dodgers, arms dealers and drug smugglers -- offering a rare glimpse into the highly secretive world of Swiss banking.

1) The explosion in Donetsk

Russian TV has just shown footage of the crater left by the explosion and it is absolutely huge. See for yourself:


The crater is about 10m (30 ft) deep. It is located on the territory of a chemical factory, but it did not hit any of the main buildings. Whether there was any building at the actual location of the explosion is impossible to tell: the earth is black, all the trees scorched and there is nothing left at all. DNR experts estimate the blast as being the equivalent of 1 ton of TNT. The sound of the explosion was heard 50km away. From the shape of the crater, it does not appear to be a fuel-air explosive (FAE), but 1 ton of equivalent TNT is way bigger than the 500kg HE warhead the Tochka-U can carry. This leads me to believe that the Ukrainians might have used a new weapon or, at least, a modified one. All we know for sure is that it was not a nuclear device. Also, it makes me wonder what in the world they were trying to hit - maybe the chemicals factory, but if that it the case, then they missed by 1000m or so. At this point, I honestly don't know. I also want to remind everybody that the junta has used White Phosphorus again against its own population:

Obama is on a hot war footing. Western civilization is allegedly "threatened by the Islamic State".

The "Global War on Terrorism" is heralded as a humanitarian endeavor.

We have a "Responsibility to Protect". Humanitarian warfare is the solution.

Evil folks are lurking. 'Take 'em out", said George W. Bush.

The Western media is beating the drums of war. Obama's military agenda is supported by a vast propaganda apparatus.

One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to "fabricate an enemy". As the political legitimacy of the Obama Administration falters, doubts regarding the existence of this "outside enemy", namely Al Qaeda and its network of (CIA sponsored) affiliates must be dispelled.

The purpose is to tacitly instill, through repeated media reports, ad nauseam, within people's inner consciousness, the notion that Muslims constitute a threat to the security of the Western World.

President Barack Obama raised hackles on the Christian right this week during his address to the 2015 National Prayer Breakfast.

In the wake of the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris by Islamic extremists and the atrocities committed on video by ISIS, Obama urged Christians not to get too complacent in their view of Islam as a violent religion and Christianity as a peaceful one.

"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," said the president. "Slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ."

Conservatives greeted this assertion with their usual unflappable calm and equanimity, which is to say, of course, that they pretty much all started screaming and soiling themselves at once.

But because we're so nice here at the Raw Story Historic Corrections Desk, we thought we'd share some examples of Christian extremist violence for the edification of our right-leaning friends who seem to believe that it's nothing but Christmas trees and Easter lilies on their side of the church as opposed to IEDs and lynching ropes.

Let's begin, shall we?

Pro-independence fighters say there might be some foreign mercenaries among the pro-Ukrainian combatants who have been encircled near the city of Debaltseve between Donetsk and Luhansk.

"We have intercepted the talks in four different languages," Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) deputy of defense Edward Basurin told the journalists on Monday. "Those are English, Polish, French and some Flemish."

"At the same time, we do not have in [our] possession any personal belongings which could serve as proof," he added. "As soon as we get any we will show them to you."

Edward Basurin has previously said that the Ukrainian forces try to destroy any proof that there are international mercenaries fighting for the Ukrainian troops. However the DPR fighters have already got some indirect confirmation of the involvement of foreign fighters. On January 23, a representative of the pro-independence commanders said that they have discovered communication equipment and phonecards which are not being used in Ukraine.

International scientific conference "Yalta-1945. Past, Present, Future" takes place in the Livadia Palace in the Crimea. Seventy years ago, the palace was the venue for the meeting of the leaders of the USSR, the US and the UK, during which the foundations for the postwar world order were laid. Now experts gathered in the palace to discuss the need for "a new Yalta."

The conference was organized by the Civil Society Development Foundation, the Historical Perspective Foundation and the International Association of Peace Foundations. Politicians and scientists from Russia, European countries and Ukraine take part in the conference.

Russian President Putin did not take a direct part in the work of the conference. However, Putin prepared a special address to conference participants, in which he stressed out the inadmissibility of the dissemination of ideas of Nazism. Presidential envoy in the Crimean Federal District, Oleg Belavintsev, read Putin's message to the participants of the Yalta Conference.

Out of the bowels of a US maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaui, currently serving a life sentence, providentially has shed light on what amounts to the dirtiest secret of the "war on terror".

In over 100 pages of testimony, filed in a federal court in New York earlier this week, Moussaui drops several House of Saud-related bombs. Not least that among leading al-Qaeda donors prior to 9/11 we find former Saudi intel chief Prince Turki al-Faisal (also a former great buddy of Osama bin Laden); notorious former ambassador to the US and failed sponsor of hardcore jihadis in Syria, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush; darling of Western markets (and Rupert Murdoch) Prince al-Waleed bin Talal; and a who's who of Saudi Arabia's top Wahhabi clerics.

None of this is any novelty for those among us who since Afghanistan in the 1980s have been following the extraordinarily murky adventures of Wahhabi-sponsored/derived jihadism.

The information is even more relevant when compared to an upcoming book by Michael Springmann - the former head of the US visa section in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts that Rocked the World, Springmann essentially details how, "during the 1980s, the CIA recruited and trained Muslim operatives to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Later, the CIA would move those operatives from Afghanistan to the Balkans, and then to Iraq, Libya, and Syria, traveling on illegal US visas. These US-backed and trained fighters would morph into an organization that is synonymous with jihadist terrorism: al-Qaeda."

"The political purpose of these revelations, from Washington's point of view, is to put pressure on the House of Saud to keep pumping their oil surplus. The recent rebound in oil is causing some hysteria in Washington, because it may be linked to the Saudis having second thoughts about their oil price war against, most of all, Russia."

Well, in the beginning there was not even an "organization". By the mid-1980s, "al-Qaeda" was only a database in a computer linked to the communications department of the secretariat of the Islamic Conference. At the time, when Osama bin Laden was nothing but a proxy US agent operating in Peshawar, al-Qaeda's intranet was a good communication system for fighters to exchange code messages. "al-Qaeda" was neither a terrorist organization - an Islamist army - nor personal property of Osama bin Laden.

This is the month when the future of the eurozone will be decided. This week, Greek leaders will meet with European officials to discuss what comes next for Greece. The new prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, has already stated that he will not accept an extension of the current bailout. Officials from other eurozone countries have already said that they expect Greece to fully honor the terms of the current agreement. So basically we are watching a giant game of financial "chicken" play out over in Europe, and a showdown is looming. Adding to the drama is the fact that the Greek government is rapidly running out of money. According to the Wall Street Journal, Greece is "on course to run out of money within weeks if it doesn't gain access to additional funds, effectively daring Germany and its other European creditors to let it fail and stumble out of the euro." We have witnessed other moments of crisis for Greece before, but things are very different this time because the new Greek government is being run by radical leftists that based their entire campaign on ending the austerity that has been imposed on Greece by the rest of Europe. If they buckle under the demands of the European financial lords, their credibility will be gone and Syriza will essentially be finished in Greek politics. But if they don't compromise, Greece could be forced to leave the eurozone and we could potentially be facing the equivalent of "financial armageddon" in Europe. If nobody flinches, the eurozone will fall to pieces, the euro will collapse and trillions upon trillions of dollars in derivatives will be in jeopardy.

According to the Bank for International Settlements, 26.45 trillion dollars in currency derivatives are directly tied to the value of the euro.

Let that number sink in for a moment.

To give you some perspective, keep in mind that the U.S. government spends a total of less than 4 trillion dollars a year.

The entire U.S. national debt is just a bit above 18 trillion dollars.

So 26 trillion dollars is an amount of money that is almost unimaginable. And of course those are just the derivatives that are directly tied to the euro. Overall, the total global derivatives bubble is more than 700 trillion dollars in size.