In The 1950s The CIA Sprayed A French Town With LSD, Here’s What Happened

Source: In The 1950s The CIA Sprayed A French Town With LSD, Here’s What Happened – Counter Current News

With permission from

countercurrentnews.com

May 6, 2017

Source: Awareness Act

In 1951, a French village suddenly became plagued with hallucinations and mass insanity. For decades, it was assumed that local bread had been poisoned with psychedelic mold, however, it has recently been discovered that instead, the CIA had contaminated the village’s food with LSD.

The discovery was found by writer H.P Albarelli Jr., who published a book on the incident. According to him, the incident was a part of the CIA’s secret mind-control experiments that were conducted by use of drug-grade LSD. The village had long referred to the incident as the mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) and it has continued to haunt the village for quite some time.

 Beginning on August 16, 1951, villagers suddenly began to have strange and horrific hallucinations of snakes, dragons, and fire. Dozens were placed in asylums and hundreds of others were left with various signs and symptoms of madness.

One man, Leon Armunier, who was working that day explained that,
“It was terrible. I had the sensation of shrinking and shrinking, and the fire and the serpents coiling around my arms,” he remembers.

It was then that he fell off of his bike and was escorted quickly to a hospital in Avignon. Once he arrived, they placed him in a straight jacket and put him into a room with teenagers that were chained down to their beds.

“Some of my friends tried to get out of the window. They were thrashing wildly… screaming, and the sound of the metal beds and the jumping up and down… the noise was terrible.

“I’d prefer to die rather than go through that again.”

Another man attempted to drown himself, due to his beliefs that he was being eaten by snakes. A young adolescent boy tried to murder his grandmother, while another man who believed that he was a plane jumped off a building leading his legs to be broken.

However, it was later decided that a local baker had unfortunately contaminated his bread flour with ergot, which is a hallucinogenic mold that could cause similar symptoms.

Now, over five decades later, H.P Albarelli Jr., has investigated the matter for his book. According to him, the incident had little to do with contaminated bread and more to do with a top-secret mind control experiment conducted by the CIA. His findings are based on a CIA document entitled “Re: Pont-Saint-Esprit and F. Olson Files. So Span/France Operation file, inclusion Olson. Intel files. Hand carries to Belin-tell him to see to it that these are buried.”

F. Olson, according to the BBC, was Frank Olson, or a CIA scientist that had led the research for the agency that was looking into LSD. David Bellin worked for the Rockefeller Commission that had been created by the White House in 1975 to look into the various abusive accounts carried out by the CIA.

Furthermore, it is indisputable that the CIA has conducted a variety of LSD involved mind control experiments throughout the world involving Britain, and Korea, while the Cold War tensions were steadily rising.

Albarelli explains in his book “A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments,” that he had spoken to the former coworkers of Frank Olson who had told him that the Pont-Saint-Esprit incident was just a part of a variety of mind control experiments that had been carried out by the CIA.

However, what he could not find in his research, was whether or not French authorities were aware of the true nature of the incident. Included in a variety of news reports are requests from French intelligence agencies demanding information from the CIA regarding the statements included in the book. Many others, including those who were affected by the incident, have also requested answers. Charles Granjoh explained to a French magazine that he ‘almost kicked the bucket,’ continuing, he stated, ‘I’d like to know why.’ 

  

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It’s high time for a new, multipolar world order

Source: It’s high time fora new, multipolar world order | Environment | Al Jazeera

http://www.aljazeera.com

By Lorenzo Marsili

Lorenzo Marsili is a writer, politic activist, and the founder of international NGO European Alternatives.

June 16, 2017

Pax Americana is over, but empowered cities and a reformed EU can take the lead for a better global governance model.

We have the opportunity of taking a step towards renewed, more enlightened global cooperation, writes Marsili [AP]

 

While the new US administration was busy reining in support for international trade and freedom of movement, China’s president, speaking at the annual Davos forum in the Swiss Alps, performed a stunning defence of globalisation. While Donald Trump was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement, France’s newly elected President Emmanuel Macron was trolling him by demanding to “make the planet great again” – now an official website – and China’s leadership, meeting with the EU institutions, was reaffirming its commitment to leading the fight against climate change.

While we should take China’s new global role with a pinch of salt, one thing should be clear to all: global governance is in shambles. The recent failure of the G7 meeting in Taormina, Sicily, with the lack of agreement on measures to tackle climate change and the refugee crisis, is only the latest event to signal a breakdown of international cooperation. The unipolar world order of American hegemony is over.

This is not necessarily bad news: the so-called Pax Americana has been anything but peaceful, ushering in an endless string of wars that have inflamed the Middle East. But the risk of moving from a unipolar to an anarchic world system is real. A system where powers vie for influence – in Eastern Europe or in the South China Sea – in a zero-sum game of opposed national interests always one step away from catastrophe.

This is worrying, because today’s world requires cooperative global governance as never before. The list of new global challenges goes well beyond fighting climate change, as if that were not already enough: just take wealth distribution and economic globalisation. Brando Milanovic’s “elephant graph” (pdf) may be the reference chart for the decline of Western middle classes, but it also shows something else: the stunning rise of the wealthiest one percent globally. Excessive concentration of wealth creates distortions and inefficiencies, as even the International Monetary Fund now admits. Short of expropriation, the solution is progressive taxation – and here is the problem.

Multinational corporations are increasingly able to play one state against the other to drive a fiscal bargain all but unimaginable for small and medium enterprises. Well beyond Apple’s infamous 0.005 percent Irish tax rate, the scandal stretches to a majority of the largest corporations – from the furniture of Ikea to the toothpaste of Procter&Gamble. Only international cooperation can put a break to such practice. Yet, progress is stalling, at both European Union and global level, with the G7 failing spectacularly to take a position on the issue despite pressure from the Italian hosts.

The cooperative, transnational experiment of the European Union represents a powerful blueprint for a new multipolar world order, one where proud nations are no longer pitted one against the other but work through consensus and the rule of law to reach mutually beneficial solutions.

The list of crises that go well beyond the remit and reach of any nation-state keeps on growing. The refugee crisis is here to stay, fuelled by ongoing warfare and the nefarious effects of global warming, such as droughts, increasing in intensity in the most vulnerable African economies. Or, again, the need to regulate internet surveillance and data privacy, something Angela Merkel is hoping to raise at the upcoming Hamburg G20 summit in July. The list could be extended at length.

We need to reconstruct a global governance for this century or risk letting go of our capacity to govern some of the most important challenges of our time. 

One part of the answer comes from cities. Cities are taking an increasingly central role all across the world. Often, as the in the US experience of the sanctuary cities that offer protection to undocumented migrants, they go directly against central government policy. And cities are now creating elaborate networks that could turn into effective agents of transnational governance.

On June 10, Barcelona hosted a global summit, fearless cities, bringing together mayors from across the world to commit to joint initiatives to tackle precisely the global challenges that national leadership seems increasingly unable to address.

Actions on climate, for instance, with reinforced cooperation over the implementation of ambitious environmental standards are more than just rhetoric: New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has just signed an executive order committing the city to the Paris agreement. Actions on refugees, with initiatives such as Solidarity Cities creating a pan-European network of municipal governments for the integration of migrants and refugees, are also taking place. Such initiatives need to be fostered, for cities matter enormously: More than half the world’s population and over 70 percent of Europeans live in urban areas, while the top 100 cities produce just under half the world’s GDP. They deserve political and economic recognition from national governments, constructing a space for global cooperation below the level of the nation state.

And then there is the level above. And here the cooperative, transnational experiment of the European Union represents a powerful blueprint for a new multipolar world order, one where proud nations are no longer pitted one against the other, but work through consensus and the rule of law to reach mutually beneficial solutions.

Emmanuel Macron has just won a landslide victory in France’s legislative elections. He has a clear mandate to be in the driving seat of a comprehensive reform of the European Union – something he has repeatedly advocated. After the upcoming German elections in September, there are signs that the traditional Franco-German engine will gear up for further integration of of the Eurozone, the EU’s core.There is a risk. We should not forget that the policy mix supported by Angela Merkel’s Germany over the long years of European crisis – rebranded “austerity” – has brought Europe to the brink of collapse. Nor should we be fooled by Macron’s youthful personality, when he seems to be supporting the same market-friendly economic policies that have led to the crisis in the first place.

Without a serious policy rethink – such as a comprehensive New Deal to put the continent back to work and a profound democratisation of EU institutions – Europe’s path towards greater integration risks becoming a fast-track to disintegration. This would be a shame for Europe as much as for the world.

Yes, we run the risk of stumbling towards a chaotic world of nationalism and conflict. But today’s crisis of global governance also offers the chance to move beyond a system that never truly worked in the first place. Crafting a new global role for cities and reforming Europe are the heart of this challenge.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Giant crop circles appear overnight in French field

Source: Giant crop circles appear overnight in French field — High Strangeness — Sott.net

http://www.sott.net

Peter Berlin
The Connexion
Tue, 06 Jun 2017  

© France3
The circles in Crézancy-en-Sancerre, France

The mysterious designs in central France attract curious sightseers but leave the farmer furious. Nearly a dozen circles, the largest some 500 meters in diameter, appeared in a barley field near Sancerre during the night between June 1 and June 2.

Among those who came to look at the circles outside Crézancy-en-Sancer was Didier Chaumien, who drove 20 kilometres with his family on Friday to admire the circles. “We’ve never seen anything like this in the region,” he told the France 3 television station. “One wonders how it is done. There is no sign of entry into the field. It’s crazy!”

Jean-Paul Millet, who farms the land, was less impressed. He has filed a complaint with the local gendarmerie. “This represents about 1 hectare, or 6 tons,” he told Le Journal du Centre. He said the folded barley would not yield a crop this year and might force him to replant the field next year. He estimated that the circles would cost him about €1,000. “It’s not very environmentally friendly,” he said. “It’s particularly disagreeable. I don’t see the point of this sort of thing.”

There have been crop circles in central France before. Examples appeared in the Nièvre and Loiret departments in 2012 and there was one near Bourges in 2009.

Paul Craig Roberts: French Election A Catastrophe For World Peace

“…It was a huge victory for the American neoconservatives who will now be able to push Russia to war without European opposition.”

“Le Pen, as Trump did prior to his castration by the military/security complex, understands that military conflict with Russia means death for humanity.”

Source: French Election A Catastrophe For World Peace – PaulCraigRoberts.org

With permission from

PaulCraigRoberts.org

Paul Craig Roberts

May 10, 2017

Marine Le Pen’s defeat, if the vote count was honest, indicates that the French are even more insouciant than Americans.

The week before the election the Russian high command announced that Washington had convinced the Russian military that Washington intended a preemptive nuclear first strike against Russia. No European leader saw danger in this announcement except Le Pen.

No European leader, and no one in Washington, has stepped forward to reassure the Russians. In the US apparently only my readers even know of the Russian conclusion. Simply nothing is said in the Western media about the extraordinary risk of convincing Russia that the US is preparing a first strike against Russia.

Nothing in the 20th century Cold War comes close to this.

Le Pen, as Trump did prior to his castration by the military/security complex, understands that military conflict with Russia means death for humanity.

Why were the French voters unconcerned with what may be their impending deaths?

The answer is that the French have been brainwashed into believing that to stand for France, as Marine Le Pen does, is to place patriotism and nationalism above diversity and is fascist.

All of Europe, except for the majority of the British, has been brainwashed into the belief that it is Hitler-like or fascist to stand up for your country. For a French man or woman to escape the fascist designation, he or she must be Europeans, not French, German, Dutch, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese.

Brainwashed as the French are that it is fascist to stand up for France, the French voted for the international bankers and for the EU.

The French election was a disaster for Europeans, but it was a huge victory for the American neoconservatives who will now be able to push Russia to war without European opposition.

Emmanuel Clinton and The Revolt Of The Elites

Contrary to global perceptions, the biggest issue in this election was not immigration, it was actually deep resentment towards the French deep state (police, justice, administration) – perceived as oppressive, corrupt and even violent.

Source: Emmanuel Clinton & The Revolt Of The Elites | Zero Hedge

http://www.zerohedge.com

by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

May 9, 2017

So in the end the West was saved by the election of Emmanuel Macron as President of France: relief in Brussels, a buoyant eurozone, rallies in Asian markets.

That was always a no-brainer. After all, Macron was endorsed by the EU, Goddess of the Market, and Barack Obama. And he was fully backed by the French ruling class.

This was a referendum on the EU – and the EU, in its current set-up, won.

Cyberwar had to be part of the picture. No one knows where the MacronLeaks came from – a last minute, massive online dump of Macron campaign hacked emails. WikiLeaks certified the documents it had time to review as legitimate.

That did not stop the Macron galaxy from immediately blaming it on Russia. Le Monde, a once-great paper now owned by three influential Macron backers, faithfully mirrored his campaign’s denunciation of RT and Sputnik, information technology attacks and, in general, the interference of Russia in the elections.

The Macron Russophobia in the French media-sphere also happens to include Liberation, once the paper of Jean-Paul Sartre. Edouard de Rothschild, the previous head of Rothschild & Cie Banque, bought a 37% controlling stake in the paper in 2005. Three years later, an unknown Emmanuel Macron started to rise in the mergers and acquisitions department, soon acquiring a reputation as “the Mozart of finance.”

After a brief stint at the Ministry of Finance, a movement, En Marche! was set up for him by a network of powerful players and think tanks. Now, the presidency. Welcome to the revolving door, Moet & Chandon-style.

See you on the barricades, babe

In the last TV face-off with Marine Le Pen, Macron did not shy from displaying condescending/rude streaks and even raked some extra percentage points by hammering “Marine” as a misinformed, corrupt, “hate-filled” nationalist liar who “feeds off France’s misery” and would precipitate “civil war.”

That may in fact come back to haunt him. Macron is bound to be a carrier of France’s internal devaluation; a champion of wage “rigor,” whose counterpoint will be a boom of under-employment; and a champion of increasing precariousness on the road to boost competitiveness.

Big Business lauds his idea of cutting corporate tax from 33% to 25% (the European average). But overall, what Macron has sold is a recipe for a “see you on the barricades” scenario: severe cuts in health spending, unemployment benefits and local government budgets; at least 120,000 layoffs from the public sector; and abrogation of some key workers’ rights. He wants to advance the “reform” of the French work code – opposed by 67% of French voters – ruling by decree.

 On Europe, the only thing “Marine” said during the campaign that was closer to the truth was that “France will be led by a woman, either me or Mrs Merkel.”

Macron is more likely to be the new Tony Blair or, in a more disastrous vein, the new [former Italian PM Matteo] Renzi.

The real game starts now. Only 4 in 10 voters backed him. Abstention reached 25% – about one-third if spoilt ballots are counted. It will be virtually impossible for Macron to come up with a parliamentary majority in the upcoming elections.

France is now viciously divided into five blocks – with very little uniting them: Macron’s En Marche! movement; Marine Le Pen’s National Front, which will be recomposed and expanded; Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Disobedient France, which is bound to lead a New Left; the shattered Republicans, or the traditional French Right, which badly needs a new leader after the François Fillon debacle; and the virtually destroyed Socialists post-Hollande.

An Orwellian shock of the new

Contrary to global perceptions, the biggest issue in this election was not immigration, it was actually deep resentment towards the French deep state (police, justice, administration) – perceived as oppressive, corrupt and even violent.

Even before the vote, the always sharp and delightfully provocative philosopher Michel Onfray, author of Decadence, the best book of the year and founder of the Popular University of Caen, identified some of the main players behind the Macron bandwagon: the “bellicose” philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy; Le Monde’s Pierre Bergé; Jacques Attali – who almost single-handedly turned the Soclalists into hardcore neoliberals; eminence grise Alain Minc; former MSF head Bernard Kouchner; and former May 1968 stalwart Daniel Cohn-Bendit – “In other words, the feral promoters of a liberal policy that allowed Marine Le Pen to hit her highest score ever.”

All of the above are faithful servants of the French deep state. I have outlined in Asia Times how the Macron hologram was manufactured. But to see how the deep state managed to sell him, it’s essential to refer to philosopher Jean-Claude Michea, a disciple of George Orwell and Christopher Lasch, and author of the recently published Notre Ennemi, Le Capital.

Michea studies in detail how the Left has adopted all the values of what Karl Popper dubbed “open society.” And how media spin doctors molded the term “populism” to stigmatize the contemporary form of Absolute Evil. Marine Le Pen was ostracized as “populist” – while media propaganda always refused to note that National Front voters (now 11 million) come from the “popular classes.”

Michea emphasizes the original, historical meaning of “populism” in Czarist Russia; a current within the socialist movement – much admired by Marx and Engels – according to which peasants, artisans and small entrepreneurs would have their place of honor in a developed socialist economy. During May 1968 in France nobody would have thought that populism could be equated with fascism. That only happened in the beginning of the 1980s – as part of the new Orwellian language of neoliberalism.

Michea also notes that now it’s much easier to be a Left neoliberal than a Right neoliberal; in France, these Left neoliberals belong to the very closed circuit of the “Young Leaders” adopted by the French
American Foundation. French Big Business and high finance – essentially, the French ruling class – immediately understood that an Old Catholic Right candidate like François Fillon would never fly; they needed a new brand for the same bottle.

 Hence Macron: a brilliant repackaging sold as change France can believe in, as in a relatively soft approach to the “reforms” essential to the survival of the neoliberal project.

What French voters have – sort of – endorsed is the unity of neoliberal economy and cultural liberalism. Call it, like Michea, “integrated liberalism.” Or, with all the Orwellian overtones, “post-democratic capitalism.”A true revolt of the elites. And “peasants” buy it willingly. Let them eat overpriced croissants. Once again, France is leading the West.

Fun with Disinformation: The Russians Did It: ‘Massive’ Macron email leak just hours before election silence (3 min)

“France will be led by a woman, either Merkel or me.” Marine le Pen

May 8, 2017

Macron’s campaign team was apparently the target of a massive hacking attack on Friday night – but no one could talk about it until voting closed.

‘Very essence of establishment’: Macron’s reformer image questioned in view of govt and EU links

The French like to believe they are politically and intellectually sophisticated. They are not. By voting in a globalist like macron France just showed the world that it is as gullible as the USA when it comes to buying the elites’ propaganda. The French believe that Americans are a bunch of uneducated , ignorant, and naive doofuses. Welcome to that club France!

Source: ‘Very essence of establishment’: Macron’s reformer image questioned in view of govt & EU links — RT Op-Edge

RT Op-Edge

8 May, 2017

Francois Hollande and Emmanuel Macron (L) © Philippe Wojazer / Reuters

France’s newly elected leader, Emmanuel Macron, represents the European establishment fearful of a popular revolt, former MI5 intelligence officer Anne Machon tells RT, as many analysts appeared to be skeptical the former Socialist minister could bring change.

“Former US President Barack Obama endorsed Macron, the EU endorsed Macron. They were very frightened about another popular revolt against the establishment. Macron is very establishment: the elitist universities in France, the fact that he was [France’s] Economy Minister,” Machon said, further listing the facts showing Macron’s actual affiliation.

According to the former British intelligence officer, the fact that his En Marche! political movement “that came from nowhere within one year” looks very much “an establishment stitch-up.”

“The western global elites wanted to make sure that EU continues. That there is a status quo,” she added.

Steven Woolfe, a British barrister and independent politician, told RT he believes that Macron is next on the list of European politicians masquerading as fighters against the establishment.

“Macron is the essence of the European establishment. If you look at the way from [former UK PM] Tony Blair to [Greek PM Alexis] Tsipras, [former Italian PM Matteo] Renzi, Macron is simply another one of those characters,” Woolfe says.

Woolfe notes that Macron was the Economy Minister serving under the Socialist government of Francois Hollande from 2014-16. He stepped down last year and created his En Marche! movement to join the presidential race.

“[Macron] worked in international finance and banking, he is someone who has great links to the establishment media in France. And as long as he is supporting the EU, as long as he never changes what is happening in Europe, then he is the man that was put in place,” Woolfe says.

Janice Atkinson, an independent member of the European Parliament, also pointed out that  Macron is “backed by EU, backed by globalists, backed by the bankers.”

Woolfe believes that, in reality, people “are fed up with globalization, with open borders, with globalists and bankers who are running our systems.”

Jean Bricmont, Belgian philosopher of science and a political commentator, believes that Macron is going to follow the policy of his predecessor.

“Macron is going to make the same foreign policy as Hollande, only worse, so it will be more [orientation] on Washington – whether he would get along with Trump, it’s a separate question – but it would be very anti-Russian, he would probably want to arm rebels in Syria,” he said.

Bricmont said that the French electoral commission had instructed media not to report on the recent leaks about Macron. A massive trove of internal documents from Macron’s campaign was leaked by unknown hackers on Friday evening. Macron’s En Marche! movement said they were the “victims of a hacking attack.”

“When there was an inquiry about Fillon, which in principle should have been secret, it was leaked to the press and the press used it. Fillon was a candidate, who could have beaten Macron but he was totally destroyed by these affairs,” he said.

The hacking of the Emmanuelle Macron team’s emails “in a certain sense could have helped” the centrist candidate in the vote, Professor Bruno Drweski, from the National Institute of Languages and Eastern Civilizations, told RT.

He pointed out that the attack happened “very late” in the election and failed to reveal any compromising details about the candidate.

“It’s difficult to know exactly what did happen, but it confirms that [the Macron team] need an atmosphere of conspiracy… to make something popular because they have no program, no concrete proposals,” Drweski said.

Macron may face a problem if he cannot secure a majority in the French legislative elections that are to be held in June 2017, Guy Mettan, Executive Director of the Swiss Press Club, believes.

“He is a candidate of the establishment… But I think that difficulties will come with the next step of legislative elections for Macron and his supporters. Even if he has won tonight, now he has to convince all the French people to vote for him. And it is not yet won now,” he said.

He noted that French voters are “completely divided” into five parties, supporting five presidential candidates – En Marche! (Macron), National Front (Marine Le Pen), La France Insoumise (Jean-Luc Mélenchon), Republicans (Francois Fillon) and Socialists (Benoît Hamon).

“I think it will be quite impossible to get a majority in the next parliament. So France will be very divided. It’s not possible in four weeks to make a majority in the next parliament,” Mettan said.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.