[Editor's Note: A member of our forum was an eyewitness to this event and has submitted the following report. This is an appeal for all Sott readers who are in a position to do so, to do what they can to help. This is an opportunity to show your humanity in the face of what appears to be naked psychopathy in action.]

A Frontier Communications Internet Installation Technician has been charged with "Cruelty to an Animal" after brutally clubbing a leashed, miniature schnauzer in the head with a Heavy Duty Test Phone. The 15 lb dog, "Pepper" is currently in Sylva Animal Hospital in critical condition with a severe head injury. At time of writing, "Pepper" had not yet regained consciousness and was suffering multiple seizures.

Upon arriving at the residence, the Frontier Technician was told by the resident, John Rarick to "Please wait while I put my dogs away" Instead of waiting as requested, "the Frontier Technician walked around the side of the cabin to where Pepper was restrained on her lead, bent over and viciously clubbed the tiny dog with a test phone about the size and weight of a dumbbell," according to a neighbor who was an eye witness to the bludgeoning of the dog, This occurred in full view of the Rarick's 4 year old son, who was raised with the 8 year miniature schnauzer.

"Pepper" is a friendly, family pet who was property leashed and represented no threat to the young, 6ft tall Frontier Technician. According to witnesses, the Frontier Technician was clearly "Looking for a dog" when he disregarded the resident's request that he "wait until I put my dogs up" and went around to the side of the cabin.

"This was not a startle reaction" said a witness to the assault on Pepper. "The Frontier Technician clubbed that little dog as hard as he could like this" stated the witness, making the motion of rising his arm into the air and striking downward in a forceful cross body blow. "The dog was at the end of her lead and the Frontier Technician had to bend over to hit her."

At no time after the incident did the Frontier Technician appear upset, or even concerned about the animal he'd just beaten unconscious. His face showed no visible affect at all, and his voice was flat and unemotional ...until AFTER he found out he would be charged with "Cruelty to an Animal".

The Scientific Establishment recently turned up the heat on scientist Allen West and the rest of the Younger Dryas Impact Event researchers by unleashing their attack dog, Rex Dalton, whose hitpiece is being used to smear West's good name and the Younger Dryas Impact Theory by proxy. While this is an unfortunate turn of events, we are not entirely surprised here given what we've seen of psychopaths in other quarters of society. If there is one overarching point that we wish SOTT readers to understand, it's that psychopaths do control our world - all of it. While this should be plainly obvious when it comes to corrupt governments, corporations and religious institutions, the world of science and academia is no exception to this fact.

The assumption of Uniformitarianism underpins many if not all scientific disciplines. Its proponents argue that the "present is the key to understanding the past," that the slow gradual processes we see in nature today have been constant throughout history. An enormous number of scientists across many fields have staked their careers (whether they're aware of it or not) on this fundamental assumption. This Uniformitarianist, or gradualist, approach is used to explain things like geological features, celestial events, species evolution, civilization advancement, technological progress and so on. When it comes to catastrophic events, the Uniformitarian-dominated sciences permit only consideration of those which may have happened on a timescale of millions of years, like the Cretaceous - Tertiary extinction event 65 million years ago that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs. To admit that catastrophic impact events occur on the timescale of human history would mean surrendering the comfortable notion we live in a safe and stable world that has evolved in splendid isolation, shielded from cosmic intervention. Few people, even scientists, are prepared to examine the overwhelming data indicating the reality of cyclic catastrophism. The elite of our world have gone to enormous lengths to prevent the masses from knowing this, so it's not difficult to see how today's Uniformitarianist approach serves a lot of interests.

Bizarre reports of gaping holes in the ground continue to come in from all over the place - in cities, on the open roads, in the countryside. Many of the 'sinkholes' you'll see below have been individually explained away as happening due to heavy rainfall during storms, old leftover constructions from mining and subsidence caused by some nearby disturbance - either natural or man-made. The cause of others, however, remain mysterious. I think the important thing to consider is why so many of these sinkholes are appearing at once.

If you consider that the universe speaks to us in symbols, then perhaps there may be a deeper meaning behind their appearance at this evolutionary crossroads for humanity? With all the other Earth Changes going on before our very eyes, I think sinkholes provide more evidence that an old stable system -- namely, Earth's surface -- is breaking up. Have a look at this collection of images gathered on SOTT from recent years and months (days even!) and see what you think.

"Control oil, and you control nations. Control food, and you control the people" - Henry Kissinger.

In 2008, Canadian conservatives introduced a wildly unpopular Bill C-51 - the Food and Drugs Act - legislation regulating foods, therapeutic products and cosmetics. Enraged vendors of herbs, supplements, and other natural remedies fought back hard. Conservatives didn't proceed with the Bill, but instead introduced C-36, the Consumer Product Safety Act, in 2010. C-36 is essentially a revised version of C-51 with the supplements marked as exempt.

Two weeks after the United States passed its most restrictive legislation yet against health freedoms (the Food Safety Modernization Act, S.510), its Canadian counterpart, Bill C-36, was passed into law in December 2010 and will soon go into effect.

Bill C-36 purports to protect the consumer, but what it actually does is abrogate the Rule of Law and grant police forces powers of invasion, arrest and confiscation on the mere suspicion that 'unsafe' consumer products are being sold, without the involvement of the courts. 'Violators' are to be assumed guilty until proven innocent. Additional provisions bypass Parliamentary procedure, thereby giving authority by decree to foreign organizations. Such unconstitutional legislation is no stranger in the Senate. Previous bills C-51, C-52, and C-6 (Anti-Terrorism Act) were all squashed, never reaching final reading status. Bill C-6 effectively died during the prorogation of Parliament early last year and was reincarnated as bill C-36 in the summer of 2010.

The exemption of natural supplements appears to have satisfied the natural health industry as C-36 has slid through with little complaint. According to Shawn Buckley, president of the Natural Health Products Protection Association, C-36 could however be a Trojan horse of sorts. All that needs to happen now is a reintroduction of C-51 and we're right back where we started - health freedoms reduced to zero. From Canada's Preventdisease.com, the salient features of the Bill are as follows:

Even though they'd be a great medium for it, comic books aren't known for tackling sensitive social, religious or cultural topics in an overt way. People who read comic books are looking for fantasy and escapism rather than intellectual stimulation - just like people who read men's magazines. Maybe that's why a new comic produced by Matthew Hess, the president of MGMBill, an organisation that has authored a bill that has been submitted to the US congress to ban Male Genital Mutilation (hence MGMBill), has made the headlines recently.

Unashamedly titled Foreskin man, the comic book series features a blonde superhero doing battle with the evil 'Mohel' (Mohel being the Hebrew word for a Jewish person trained in the practice of Brit milah or Bris (circumcision).

I have to admit that my first reaction on hearing about the comic was 'what a good idea!', but when I saw the comic and the reaction it had received from certain quarters, my reaction was more along the lines of 'this the best idea since anti-Vegetarian man!'

It seems a little weird to me that I would actually have to write this but, I'm not exactly a fan of genital mutilation, regardless of the justification, hence my appreciation of Foreskin Man.

So circumcision, what's it all about?

In the past few years the world and the U.S. in particular has seen no shortage of economic near-collapses, boondoggles, scandals, ponzi schemes, and 'bail outs'. But before we examine the next disaster fast approaching and experience the ensuing nausea that is likely to come from knowing about it, it would help us first to just review what the definition of hyperinflation is so that all else that follows goes down easier - so to speak.

Here's how Wikipedia defines it:

"In economics, hyperinflation is inflation that is very high or "out of control". While the real values of the specific economic items generally stay the same in terms of relatively stable foreign currencies, in hyperinflationary conditions the general price level within a specific economy increases rapidly as the functional or internal currency, as opposed to a foreign currency, loses its real value very quickly, normally at an accelerating rate.[1] Definitions used vary from one provided by the International Accounting Standards Board, which describes it as "a cumulative inflation rate over three years approaching 100% (26% per annum compounded for three years in a row)", to Cagan's (1956) "inflation exceeding 50% a month." [2] As a rule of thumb, normal monthly and annual low inflation and deflation are reported per month, while under hyperinflation the general price level could rise by 5 or 10% or even much more every day.

A vicious circle is created in which more and more inflation is created with each iteration of the ever increasing money printing cycle. Hyperinflation becomes visible when there is an unchecked increase in the money supply (see hyperinflation in Zimbabwe) usually accompanied by a widespread unwillingness on the part of the local population to hold the hyperinflationary money for more than the time needed to trade it for something non-monetary to avoid further loss of real value. Hyperinflation is often associated with wars (or their aftermath), currency meltdowns, political or social upheavals, or aggressive bidding on currency exchanges."

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of The Dot Connector Magazine]
As a species, you'd think we'd be able to tell the difference by now between image and reality. And yet, with all our acquired scientific knowledge, the gist of which is dutifully drilled into our minds during twelve to twenty years of public and 'higher' education, we still can't get it right. Well, perhaps that isn't fair. I know a few individuals who can sniff out a pair of imitation Nikes or a Britney Spears lip-synch in a heartbeat. So we're experts when it comes to the trivial, but with anything a tad meatier, where our very livelihoods may depend on it, our discernment in separating fact from fiction is deplorable. Why is that?

Growing up, I had the opportunity to sit in on more than a few 'polite' dinner conversations among adults. Not having much to say, I tended to listen. And, more often than not, as one topic led to another, as the pace of speech quickened and voices became slightly higher in pitch, that inevitable conversation stopper reared its head. "No religion or politics!" Such things are off limits, you see, and when discussed in 'polite' company, all rationality seems to fly out the window and a battle of wills ensues.

As I sit here now, I'm looking at this Ephemeris software showing the orbital positions of the planets. This has actually been a daily activity for me over the past several weeks, kind of like checking the weather in the morning. I can see that Jupiter and Saturn have just passed opposition (the actual date was April 28th). Speaking of planetary alignments, there's been a lot of talk of these in the news as of late. SOTT carried an article earlier this month describing an unusual planetary alignment that happened on May 11th. On this day Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter all lined up neatly in the sky. Interestingly, an earthquake was felt in Spain that same day. Just for clarification, this alignment in early May was actually a geocentric alignment, meaning that the Earth was lined up with these planets, or the Earth was the frame of reference as opposed to the Sun, for instance.

Astrologers typically speak of planetary positions from the geocentric perspective too. There may be some significance to these geocentric alignments (as the Spanish earthquake may indicate), but in this article I'm going to focus on heliocentric, or Sun centered, alignments. Now why are any of these planetary alignments important, you ask? Are we going to start giving astrology reports on SOTT? Well, no, but for this article it might seem like it. The thing is, these planetary alignments do cast light upon the changes taking place on the Big Blue Marble. Hopefully this article will elucidate some of how this process works; there's obviously a lot that we still don't understand.

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of Sott.net's The Dot Connector Magazine]

While examining the available literature on health and nutrition from an evolutionary standpoint, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that, as far as diet is concerned, human beings entered a blind alley thousands of years ago. Even if by some miracle humanity as whole was to completely reorganize its diet overnight, an important question remains - have we engineered our environment beyond the point of no return?

Contrary to the popular belief held by many anthropologists that agriculture is one of man's greatest achievements, there is an increasing body of evidence which suggests that the human race actually set out on the path of self-destruction when it embraced agrarian societies.

The picture now emerging is that the switch from hunting and gathering occurred suddenly and was followed by a sharp drop in life expectancy. Ancient human bones found in archaeological layers dated since the adoption of agriculture reveal increased prevalence of disease and lesser numbers of aged people. For centuries after the adoption of agriculture, these bones also tell the stories of greater numbers of violent deaths when compared with bone remains from pre-agrarian hunter-gatherer societies. There is an undeniable echo of the Garden of Eden story here. This is, in fact, one of the greatest puzzles of prehistory. Why did agriculture catch on so fast?

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of Sott.net's The Dot Connector Magazine]

"If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?" - Charles Fort

On the fateful evening of December 15th, 1967, the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia collapsed from structural failures during full rush hour traffic. The incident killed 46 people, many of whom were holiday shoppers; most of these people died trapped in their cars under the weight of the iron bridge beams, submerged in the icy December waters. The tragedy made national headlines and put the little town of Point Pleasant on the map and in the minds of many that holiday season.

While the collapsed bridge was certainly the climactic event for the residents of Point Pleasant that year, there were many preternatural events leading up to this. UFO sightings and other high strangeness were endemic across the Ohio River region that year. These sightings and stories were later documented by John Keel in his book The Mothman Prophecies.

1967 was a pivotal year for UFOs and related phenomena. Reports of UFO sightings poured in from all across the United States; others were reported as far away as South America and Russia (adding a new dimension to those who believed that UFOs were of Communist origins). The very first publication of an alien abduction case (the infamous Hill abduction) was presented in the book Interrupted Journey by John Fuller just a year prior to this. Men-In-Black (MIB) reports came into focus for the first time, along with cases of animal mutilation. Sightings of humanoid-type beings associated with UFOs were popping up all over the world.