Olympic Peninsula: West Coast Radiation Crisis

Yoichi Shimatsu 5-12-13

The azure glow of Crater Lake was about to be smudged by a band of wispy smoke blowing in eastward on the jet stream. As steely gray turned to black, I switched on my dosimeter, which immediately whined in alarm. The radiation level inside the jetliner cabin hit 2.26 microsieverts, equivalent to twice the dosage at locations just 5 kilometers from the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant. Although my nerves were thoroughly rattled by the buzzing, the dozing passengers were blissfully unaware of being bombarded by lethal neutrons.   Sky-high radiation reading inside a jetliner cabin while flying over the Oregon-Washington state boundary.   The thin ghost shadow riding through the sky had no semblance to a fat rain cloud. Here, over the Pacific Northwest, was a vast plume of smoke from the incinerators of Greater Tokyo that burn radioactive debris from Fukushima Prefecture. The radiation levels gradually diminished as the jet made its descent to SEA-TAC airport.    My journey to Seattle from Southern California had been prompted by a questionable claim from Washington State officials that the waves of tsunami debris from Japan are not radioactive. This sort of optimism is based on the assumption that any residual isotopes would be washed away in the North Pacific Current during the passage of more than a year over a distance of 7450 km (4630 miles).   Above Crater Lake, Oregon, on arrival of the leading edge of concentrated particulates from Tokyo incinerators burning low-level nuclear waste from Fukushima.   To the contrary, my gut instinct tends to be pessimistic, especially after having conducted several field research expeditions that discovered serious contamination not only in northeast Japan but also on the southernmost peaks of the Japanese archipelago. The spread of radiation, as far I have been able to tell, is unstoppable.    New World’s End    The Olympic Peninsula is unexpectedly large. The three-hour drive out of Seattle wends through a cactus desert in the rain shadow of snow-capped mountains and then plunges into dark moss-hung stands of temperate rainforest. Beyond the great arc of Crescent Lake, reminiscent of Scandinavia or Switzerland, a road sign points to the town of Forks, location for the “Twilight” romantic vampire series.   Shishi Beach, Olympic Peninsula, has been cleared of all debris from the 3.11 tsunami that hit northeast Japan.   At the Last Chance gas station, the breakfast fare caters to the sport fishermen rolling their boats down a ramp onto the Salish Sea, which separates Washington State from British Columbia. My choice is a frozen barbecue burrito reheated in a microwave. Farther along, totem poles in front of a low-hung casino were carved by the Makah tribe known for their seagoing war canoes, which are still used to hunt whales. Unlike the Japanese fleet’s mechanical contraptions and ballistic projectiles, these muscular paddlers hurl old-fashioned harpoons in a fair contest between man and leviathan.    Turning south from Neah Bay, the road peters out at gravel parking lot marked by a wooden sign that reads: “Shishi Beach 1.6 miles”. The early stretch is a pleasant stroll atop wooden planks through a forest as spooky as those in Lord of the Rings. Then the path descends into an endless slog through perma-mud and poison oak well beyond the promised distance. My thought while stumbling along was : “So this is how the natives get their revenge.”   Higher radiation levels from previous year’s seaweed are found along the shore of the Makah tribal lands.     At last, the waves crashing on pristine beaches devoid of foreign flotsam, come into sight. After traveling 10,000 kilometers from the other side of the ocean, I find not a matchstick much less a floating house or boat from Japan. There were more bits of chewing gum wrappers on the trail than on these lonely stretches of sand and bonsai-studded rocks.    Seaweed Tales    Disappointed, to say the least, I switched to a stratagem of measuring radiation in the seaweed that had washed ashore. Within a few minutes, a pattern emerged. Dry bunches of kelp above the dunes imply a serious radioactive event happening about a year earlier with readings of up to 0.28 microsieverts. More recently displaced wet seaweed show half that figure. At the water’s edge, the readings are very low, only about 0.08 microsieverts, near the background radiation across the peninsula.    The Pacific Northwest has abundant rainfall yet lacks the high humidity of Japan. Thus, instead of recycling radiation inland, the isotopes are washed out to sea, rapidly lowering contaminations on land and in the bays.    It is a pity that my science kit does not include any instruments to detect toxic chemicals or microbiological contamination. The steep slopes of Japan’s northeast coast meant that most of the region’s tanks for oil, fertilizer and pesticides, along with refrigerant fluids, were stored along the shore and were swept away by the tsunami.   Barnacles attached to a mussel have bio-accumulated radiation from algae and plankton.   A Strand of Buoys    Calling it a day, filled with hard-earned futility, I headed back toward civilization. On the edge of Neah Bay village, the front yard of a shack identified by the sign “FISH” is festooned with a string of colorful buoys. On closer inspection, the plastic balls are covered with raised Chinese characters, a bit of Japanese phonetic script and the Roman alphabet.    My experience along the Fukushima coast showed that rubber plastic and fishing nets absorb radiation more readily than wood or metal. The dosimeter recorded an identical 0.16 microsieverts on every Japanese float, a level not immediately harmful to the rare passerby. Nonetheless, the figure is a good indicator of contamination on the journey from Fukushima. The Chinese balls are between 0.05 and 0.08 microSv.   Lower radiation levels are present in recently dowsed items like wet kelp or this cast-off woman’s shoe.   Again, small differences disclose a larger story. The made-in-Japan floats, aboard trawlers or hanging to dry with nets in fishing villages, were pulled out to sea by the tsunami and soon became irradiated by contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. In contrast, the Chinese buoys were attached to long fishing nets laid outside Japan’s 200-mile maritime exclusive economic zone. Larger pieces of jetsam, for example, wooden beams, boats and buildings, ripped those long nets to shreds, releasing the Chinese buoys adrift. At that distance from the coast, radiation levels had become greatly diluted.    So here, in these findings, was undeniable proof that the federal and state governments have again failed to inform American citizens of the radiation risk from Fukushima. For all the funding spent on climate research, oceanic studies, fisheries protection and marine biology, not a single official bulletin mentions anything about what a visitor can learn from a string of buoys in front of a salmon smokehouse.   Beachcomber’s collection of fishing-net buoys at a salmon smokehouse run by a Makah resident   The proprietor, a big strapping cheerful Makah fellow, stepped outside to provide answers to the missing debris riddle. “The state has started to put two big containers by the beaches on weekends, and volunteers come to clean up the beaches.”    The state Bureau of Corrections responded to my query by answering that convicts from the two nearby prisons had never been assigned to the beach detail. Therefore, ordinary residents out of the goodness of their hearts did the hard work of removing flotsam, which included radioactive materials. The volunteers had no knowledge of the health risk and were given no advice on wearing protective gloves and eyewear or about decontamination methods.  A state resident who is an avid halibut fisherman told me: “It must be some sort of diversion that the only thing that the biologists have been focusing on is invasive species from Japan. They never say anything about radiation in the food chain.”    Gazing at the ocean from the closest point in the Lower 48 to Japan, the truth is as cold and bitter as the north wind. I shudder to think of what is still to come.   A consistent reading of 0.16 microsieverts is found on the buoys from Japan   Update on the Marine Mammal Kill-off in Southern California: Before heading to the Pacific Northwest, I met a number of Southern California residents whose lives are deeply connected to the ocean.    A California Fish and Wildlife ranger did not flinch when told of my radiation findings in the heart of a dead sea lion beached at San Onofre. He told me the following:   “Made in Japan” is impressed on a small buoy.   The coming feed shortage: “At this time of year (late winter and spring), there’s a northward current from San Diego-Coronado Island up the Catalina Channel. The colder California Current (moving southward) flows around the outside of the Channel islands (Santa Catalina and San Clemente). Over the past year, the water in the Channel has been colder than usual. Soon, a warm current will strongly push north below the surface and there will be a series of powerful upwellings of warm water up the Channel. The sudden temperature change is likely to kill off the sardines, leading to a major feed crisis for marine mammals.”    Marine environment imbalances: “Rising population along the coast and one-sided zoning decisions have upset the delicate balance in the marine environment. Lobbyists from either side, industry or animal protection, have pushed the state legislature toward one extreme or the other, further worsening the environmental balance. The situation does not get better, for instance, when a ban against commercial fishing opens the door to poachers. We’re going from one ill to the next without the overall situation getting any better ”     Pups and juvenile sea lions rest on the rocks of a jetty at Newport Harbor despite the presence of sport fisherman, a sight never seen before.   Aquaculture: “The squid from the coast of Southern California, formerly used for bait, are now being fished as feed for large tuna farms off the coast of Ensenada, Mexico. The expansion of this billion-dollar industry is going to pose a lot of pressure on fish stocks around here.” Shark Attacks: (reply to my question on the absence of teeth marks on the dead sea lion at San Onofre.) “Great White sharks often do not leave any teeth marks. There are many reports of fast-moving sharks hitting a sea lion and ripping off a strip of skin with no other sign of a bite.” A bait-barge worker: “The price of sardines is no different now than in the past. There is no shortage of smaller fish. Everything is as normal.” (His observations runs counter to the theory of a feed shortage in the channel.)    Volunteer at a fish-stocking raft: “We’ve never before seen sea lion pups resting on the jetty of Newport Harbor. This is most unusual.”   A shallow tide pool in the Laguna Beach area has higher radiation levels due to constant evaporation.   Sport fisherman on the jetty: “The pups arrived here about two weeks ago and stayed.” (In mid-April, the marine mammal kill-off extended northward to Malibu and later Santa Barbara, where beaches were littered with pups dead from starvation. Apparently, just after that crisis, some juvenile sea lions fled to the unfamiliar rocks at the harbor mouth. My radiation readings of a dead pup’s intestines indicated it was not contaminated, meaning the mother was probably dead before she could nurse the pup with radioactive milk.}    A sport fisherman conjectures: “The Great White sharks have been getting more aggressive recently, attacking swimmers and sea lions. Orcas are hunting here out of season, feeding on the white sharks. From what I can tell, the radiation in the water is disrupting the sensors in their snouts and enraging them to attack without cause.”    A Point about Beach Safety:    Radiation readings along the Laguna Beach area indicate lower readings than in San Onofre or Santa Catalina, with one exception: Shallow tide pools affected by solar evaporation. Flat tidal pools that are exposed at high tides tend to act like salt ponds, concentrating radioactive isotopes in the seaweed and in crustaceans. One large sea snail registered 0.38 microsieverts, and seaweed clumps were up to about 0.20 microSv.    Sandy beach areas showed much lower levels, and thus are safer for beach goers, so act accordingly when positioning beach blankets.    Author: Yoichi Shimatsu, a Hong Kong-based science journalist, provides health and environment consulting to residents of Fukushima on countermeasures to radiation exposure.

The Vaccine Hoax Is Over, Truth Prevails Through FOIA

Andrew Baker ( FFN),- Freedom of Information Act in the UK filed by a doctor there has revealed 30 years of secret official documents showing that government experts have

1. Known the vaccines don’t work
2. Known they cause the diseases they are supposed to prevent
3. Known they are a hazard to children
4. Colluded to lie to the public
5. Worked to prevent safety studies
Those are the same vaccines that are mandated to children in the US.



Educated parents can either get their children out of harm’s way or continue living inside one of the largest most evil lies in history, that vaccines – full of heavy metals, viral diseases, mycoplasma, fecal material, DNA fragments from other species, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 (a sterilizing agent) – are a miracle of modern medicine.

Freedom of Information Act filed in the US with the CDC by a doctor with an autistic son, seeking information on what the CDC knows about the dangers of vaccines, had by law to be responded to in 20 days. Nearly 7 years later, the doctor went to court and the CDC argued it does not have to turn over documents. A judge ordered the CDC to turn over the documents on September 30th, 2011.

On October 26, 2011, a Denver Post editorial expressed shock that the Obama administration, after promising to be especially transparent, was proposing changes to the Freedom of Information Act that would allow it to go beyond declaring some documents secret and to actually allow government agencies (such as the CDC) to declare some document “non-existent.”

Simultaneous to this on-going massive CDC cover up involving its primary “health” not recommendation but MANDATE for American children, the CDC is in deep trouble over its decades of covering up the damaging effects of fluoride and affecting the lives of all Americans, especially children and the immune compromised.

 Lawsuits are being prepared.  Children are ingesting 3-4 times more fluoride by body weight as adults and “[t]he sheer number of potentially harmed citizens — persons with dental fluorosis, kidney patients tipped into needing dialysis, diabetics, thyroid patients, etc — numbers in the millions.”

The CDC is obviously acting against the health of the American people. But the threat to the lives of the American people posed by the CDC’s behavior does not stop there. It participated in designed pandemic laws that are on the books in every state in the US, which arrange for the government to use military to force unknown, untested vaccines, drugs, chemicals, and “medical” treatments on the entire country if it declares a pandemic emergency.

The CDC’s credibility in declaring such a pandemic emergency is non-existent, again based on Freedom of Information Act. For in 2009, after the CDC had declared the H1N1 “pandemic,” the CDC refused to respond to Freedom of Information Act filed by CBS News and the CDC also attempted to block their investigation.  What the CDC was hiding was its part in one of the largest medical scandals in history, putting out wildly exaggerated data on what it claimed were H1N1 cases, and by doing so, created the false impression of a “pandemic” in the US.

The CDC was also covering up e financial scandal to rival the bailout since the vaccines for the false pandemic cost the US billions. And worse, the CDC put pregnant women first in line for an untested vaccine with a sterilizing agent, polysorbate 80, in it. Thanks to the CDC,  “the number of vaccine-related “fetal demise” reports increased by 2,440 percent in 2009 compared to previous years, which is even more shocking than the miscarriage statistic [700% increase].
The exposure of the vaccine hoax is running neck and neck with the much older hoax of a deadly 1918-19 flu.

 It was aspirin  that killed people in 1918-19, not a pandemic flu. It was the greatest industrial catastrophe in human history with 20-50 million people dying but it was blamed on a flu. The beginning of the drug industry began with that success (and Monsanto was part of it). The flu myth was used by George Bush to threaten the world with “another pandemic flu that could kill millions” – a terror tactic to get pandemic laws on the books in every state and worldwide.

 Then the CDC used hoax of the pandemic hoax to create terror over H1N1 and to push deadly vaccines on the public, killing thousands of unborn children and others.  (CDC will not release the data and continues to push the same vaccine.)

The hoax of the vaccine schedule is over, exposed by FOIAs in the UK. 

The hoax of the CDC’s interest in children’s lives has been exposed by its refusal to respond to a doctor’s FOIAs around its knowledge of vaccine dangers.

The 1918-19 pandemic hoax has been exposed by Dr. Karen Starko’s work on aspirin’s role in killing people.

And despite refusing to respond to FOIAS, the CDC’s scandalous hoax of a 2009 flu pandemic and its part in creating it, was exposed by CBS NEWS. 

And the Obama administration, in attempting to salvage the last vestige of secrecy around what is really happening with vaccines, by declaring agency documents non-existent, has made its claim of transparency, non-existent.

But pandemic laws arranging for unknown vaccines to be forced on the entire country are still in place with HHS creating a vaccine mixture that should never be used on anyone and all liability for vaccines having been removed. Meanwhile, a Canadian study has just proven that the flu vaccine containing the H1N1 vaccine which kills babies in utero, actually increases the risk of serious pandemic flu.

Americans who have been duped into submitting their children to the CDC’s deadly vaccines, have a means to respond now. People from every walk of life and every organization, must

1. take the information from the UK FOIAs exposing 30 years of vaccine lies, the refusal of the CDC to provide any information on what it knows about those lies, and the Obama Administration’s efforts to hide the CDC’s awareness of those lies, and go to their state legislatures, demand the immediate nullification of the CDC vaccine schedule and the pandemic laws.

2. inform every vet. active duty military person, law enforcement people, DHS agents and medical personnel they know, of the vaccine hoax, for their families are deeply threatened, too, but they may not be aware of it or that they have been folded into agency structures by the pharmaceutical industry (indistinguishable from the bankers and oil companies) that would make them agents of death for their country with the declaration of a “pandemic” emergency or “bio-terrorist” attack.

 It is completely clear now that the terrorism/bioterrorism structures are scams so that any actions taken to “protect” this country using those laws would in fact be what threatens the existence of Americans.

It was aspirin that killed millions in 1918-19.  Now it is mandated and unknown, untested vaccines with banned adjuvants in them that threaten the country with millions of deaths.  At the same time, the CDC is holding 500,000 mega-coffins, built to be incinerated, on its property outside Atlanta.  Not to put to fine a point on this, but it’s clear now that the CDC should not be involved in any way with public health.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we know that vaccines are not a miracle of modern medicine.  Any medical or government authority which insists vaccines prevent diseases is either ignorant of government documents (and endless studies) revealing the exact opposite or of the CDC’s attempts to hide the truth about vaccines from the public, or means harm to the public.

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we know the vaccine schedule is a hoax.

The health danger to American children and adults are vaccines.

Former Pro-GMO Scientist Speaks Out On The Real Dangers of Genetically Engineered Food

By Thierry Vrain

I retired 10 years ago after a long career as a research scientist for Agriculture Canada. When I was on the payroll, I was the designated scientist of my institute to address public groups and reassure them that genetically engineered crops and foods were safe. There is, however, a growing body of scientific research – done mostly in Europe, Russia, and other countries – showing that diets containing engineered corn or soya cause serious health problems in laboratory mice and rats.

I don’t know if I was passionate about it but I was knowledgeable. I defended the side of technological advance, of science and progress.

In the last 10 years I have changed my position. I started paying attention to the flow of published studies coming from Europe, some from prestigious labs and published in prestigious scientific journals, that questioned the impact and safety of engineered food.
I refute the claims of the biotechnology companies that their engineered crops yield more, that they require less pesticide applications, that they have no impact on the environment and of course that they are safe to eat.

There are a number of scientific studies that have been done for Monsanto by universities in the U.S., Canada, and abroad. Most of these studies are concerned with the field performance of the engineered crops, and of course they find GMOs safe for the environment and therefore safe to eat.

Individuals should be encouraged to make their decisions on food safety based on scientific evidence and personal choice, not on emotion or the personal opinions of others.
We should all take these studies seriously and demand that government agencies replicate them rather than rely on studies paid for by the biotech companies.

The Bt corn and soya plants that are now everywhere in our environment are registered as insecticides. But are these insecticidal plants regulated and have their proteins been tested for safety? Not by the federal departments in charge of food safety, not in Canada and not in the U.S.

There are no long-term feeding studies performed in these countries to demonstrate the claims that engineered corn and soya are safe. All we have are scientific studies out of Europe and Russia, showing that rats fed engineered food die prematurely.

These studies show that proteins produced by engineered plants are different than what they should be. Inserting a gene in a genome using this technology can and does result in damaged proteins. The scientific literature is full of studies showing that engineered corn and soya contain toxic or allergenic proteins.

Genetic engineering is 40 years old. It is based on the naive understanding of the genome based on the One Gene – one protein hypothesis of 70 years ago, that each gene codes for a single protein. The Human Genome project completed in 2002 showed that this hypothesis is wrong.

The whole paradigm of the genetic engineering technology is based on a misunderstanding. Every scientist now learns that any gene can give more than one protein and that inserting a gene anywhere in a plant eventually creates rogue proteins. Some of these proteins are obviously allergenic or toxic.

I have drafted a reply to Paul Horgen’s letter to the Comox Valley Environmental Council. It is my wish that it goes viral as to educate as many people as possible rapidly. Any and all social media is fine by me. This can also be used as a briefing note for the councilors of AVICC or anywhere else. Thank you for your help. [Click here for original source with replies from Dr. Paul Horgen]
— Thierry Vrain, Innisfree Farm

I am turning you towards a recent compilation (June 2012) of over 500 government reports and scientific articles published in peer reviewed Journals, some of them with the highest recognition in the world. Like The Lancet in the medical field, or Advances in Food and Nutrition Research, or Biotechnology, or Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, European Journal of Histochemistry, Journal of Proteome Research, etc … This compilation was made by a genetic engineer in London, and an investigative journalist who summarized the gist of the publications for the lay public.

GMO Myths and Truths – an evidence based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops. A report of 120 pages, it can be downloaded for free from Earth Open Source. “GMO Myths and Truths” disputes the claims of the Biotech industry that GM crops yield better and more nutritious food, that they save on the use of pesticides, have no environmental impact whatsoever and are perfectly safe to eat.

 Genetic pollution is so prevalent in North and South America where GM crops are grown that the fields of conventional and organic grower are regularly contaminated with engineered pollen and losing certification. The canola and flax export market from Canada to Europe (a few hundreds of millions of dollars) were recently lost because of genetic pollution. Did I mention superweeds, when RoundUp crops pass their genes on to RoundUp Resistant weeds.

Apparently over 50% of fields in the USA are now infested and the growers have to go back to use other toxic herbicides such as 2-4 D. Many areas of Ontario and Alberta are also infested. The transgenes are also transferred to soil bacteria. A chinese study published last year shows that an ampicillin resistance transgene was transferred from local engineered crops to soil bacteria, that eventually found their way into the rivers. The transgenes are also transferred to humans.

 Volunteers who ate engineered soybeans had undigested DNA in their intestine and their bacterial flora was expressing the soybean transgenes in the form of antibiotic resistance. This is genetic pollution to the extreme, particularly when antibiotic resistance is fast becoming a serious global health risk. I can only assume the American Medical Association will soon recognize its poorly informed judgement.

In 2009 the American Academy of Environmental Medicine called for a moratorium of GM foods, safety testing and labeling. Their review of the available literature at the time noted that animals show serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.

 Monsanto writes “There is no need to test the safety of GM foods”. So long as the engineered protein is safe, foods from GM crops are substantially equivalent and they cannot pose any health risks.” The US Food and Drug Administration waived all levels of safety testing in 1996 before approving the commercialization of these crops. Nothing more than voluntary research is necessary, and the FDA does not even want to see the results.

 And there is certainly no need to publish any of it. If you remember 1996, the year that the first crops were commercialized, the research scientists of the US FDA all predicted that transgenic crops would have unpredictable hard to detect side effects, allergens, toxins, nutritional effects, new diseases. That was published in 2004 in Biotechnology if you recall seeing it.

I know well that Canada does not perform long term feeding studies as they do in Europe. The only study I am aware of from Canada is from the Sherbrooke Hospital in 2011, when doctors found that 93% of pregnant women and 82% of the fetuses tested had the protein pesticide in their blood.

This is a protein recognized in its many forms as mildly to severely allergenic. There is no information on the role played by rogue proteins created by the process of inserting transgenes in the middle of a genome. But there is a lot of long term feeding studies reporting serious health problems in mice and rats. The results of the first long term feeding studies of lab rats reported last year in Food and Chemical Toxicology show that they developed breast cancer in mid life and showed kidney and liver damage.

The current statistic I read is that North Americans are eating 193 lbs of GMO food on average annually. That includes the children I assume, not that I would use that as a scare tactic. But obviously I wrote at length because I think there is cause for alarm and it is my duty to educate the public.

One argument I hear repeatedly is that nobody has been sick or died after a meal (or a trillion meals since 1996) of GM food. Nobody gets ill from smoking a pack of cigarette either. But it sure adds up, and we did not know that in the 1950s before we started our wave of epidemics of cancer.

 Except this time it is not about a bit of smoke, it’s the whole food system that is of concern. The corporate interest must be subordinated to the public interest, and the policy of substantial equivalence must be scrapped as it is clearly untrue.

Thierry Vrain is a former research scientist for Agriculture Canada. He now promotes awareness of the dangers of genetically modified foods.

Take A Radioactive Bullet For The Team

“You people who live near the Nevada Test Site are in a very real sense participants in the Nation’s atomic test program,” boasted a propaganda pamphlet distributed to those living downwind from the American nuclear test site in Nevada in 1955. In the end this statement turned out to be more ominous than it was celebratory. Their primary means of “participation” in the nation’s program was to be silent about being irradiated and having their land contaminated by fallout radiation from clouds that blew overhead after nuclear weapon tests for years. Of course that doesn’t count paying high taxes for the gift of national security.

All across the globe communities have been devastated by radiation in the name of giving the members of those communities “security.” This is especially true of communities that suffered from the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, however, many of the communities that experienced underground testing, such as Pokharan (of which today is the anniversary of the first test there) experienced the venting of radiation from the underground shafts, contaminating areas near to the test sites. This was especially true of the French Bérly nuclear test in Algeria in 1962 in which the tunnel, drilled into a hillside, partially collapsed venting tremendous amounts of radiation that contaminated the surrounding communities.

While communities on every continent besides South America and Antarctica have experienced contamination from nuclear weapon testing, not one person has yet been “protected” by nuclear weapon testing. Arguments are made that vast nuclear arsenals have “deterred” nuclear war, but these arguments rest on assumptions and are as demonstrable as the notion that prayer produces miracles. What is certain is that the communities that have been the sites of nuclear weapon testing have experienced radiological contamination and that this has led to illness, loss of access to land and seas, disruption of traditional diets, traditional lifestyles, and ruptures of culture.

In Australia where aboriginal societies were displaced by British nuclear testing in the 1950-60s, generations of knowledge of the land—where to find water and game—were broken when communities were simply moved off of traditional lands. Survival in areas in which ancestral knowledge did not guide and protect these communities proved extremely difficult. But as (barely) Australians and members of the Commonwealth, their safety was supposedly guaranteed by these tests. In truth there never was a threat to the safety of people living in Australia that was protected by the British testing of nuclear weapons. Rather, it was the testing itself that destroyed communities and left land desolate.

In all nations that have built, tested and maintain nuclear arsenals, those arsenals have taken essential resources away from the maintenance of social welfare. In the United States, arguably the richest country in history during the period of the Cold War, the dominance of public tax monies by the nuclear weapon complex, and the military as a whole, has left the country depleted of social wealth in a few short decades.

During the early Cold War period there were times when 10% of all electricity was being used to build, maintain and deploy nuclear weapons. Did this protect the nation, or did it cost the citizens? I would argue that the pursuit of nuclear weapons by any nation is an attack on the welfare of the citizenry in terms both of the public cost, and in antagonizing the neighbors and enemies of the nation. It is clearly true that possessing nuclear weapons has not kept any nation from becoming embroiled in warfare, and has proved useless once war commences. For those who live close to nuclear weapon testing sites, either domestically or in the colonial reaches of the nuclear power, the tests themselves have been a kind of warfare wagged upon them directly by their own governments.

Like the crown jewels of nobility past, nuclear weapons are a vast commitment of public wealth to the purpose of dazzling observers. Nuclear prima donnas display their expensive, glittering weapons to establish status and dominance. If we are lucky the cost to the citizens who pay for this is only money. But for those who live near to the nuclear testing facilities of the exclusive club of nuclear states, the cost is higher. They pay with their health, their families, their communities, and uncertain futures that accompany contaminated lands and gene pools.

US Justice Dept Claims No Homeschooling Rights

Individual liberty is being burned at the stake, as governments set fire to people natural rights. This time it has everything to do with homeschooling.

It all started in Germany. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike were raising their five children in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, when they decided to remove their children from the public education system. In 2006, the Romeike's illegally withdrew their children from the German public schools system and began homeschooling. Believing that the public education system was undermining their Christian faith, the Romeike's began breaking the law and teaching their kids at home. By exercising their natural rights, the Romeikes were fined over $10,000 by the German government and at one point their children were forcefully removed from their home. In 2010, after getting their children back, they chose to flee Germany and move to the United States.

Finding freedom in the US, only to be challenged again, this time by the US

Upon arrival in Tennessee, the Romeikes were granted asylum. A federal judge rebuked the German policy and ruled that the Romeike's had a reasonable fear of persecution for their personal beliefs if they returned to Germany.

Nothing much was said about the issue until the Obama's Administration's Department of Justice got involved.

Attorney General, Eric Holder came out and opposed the federal court ruling, siding with the German government. He pleaded that the Romeike's be denied their asylum. Holder believes that governments may legitimately use force and authority to make parents comply with government-sanctioned schools.

With statements like these, the United States, once a beacon for liberty, is now endorsing force and mandates in regard to education. The right to homeschool and teach one's own children is a fundamental human right is now at stake. It doesn't matter what beliefs each family has. It's liberty that matters. According to Holder, that liberty should be supervised by the federal government.

Government supervised education

The German policy that's currently in place says that the upbringing of a child is a parent's natural right but the government's duty is to watch over them in the performance of this duty. The law also states that: "The entire school system shall be under the supervision of the state."

The policy in the United States is currently one of freedom. The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution secures homeschooling as a fundamental liberty. The Constitution enables each individual state to regulate homeschooling in its own way. Is this idea under attack?

Very much so. The Attorney General currently seeks to deport the Romeike's. Their right to home school their children their own way doesn't matter to the Department of Justice. The government is more concerned with compliance: Everyone giving away their liberty and free will, and absorbing the education laid out by federal law.

From the failed No Child Left Behind Act to the new federally implemented Common Core program, the government is socializing the public school system. The new Common Core program is based on a one-size-fits-all approach that school Board President Michael Faccinetto condemns, saying:

"All we care about are these high-stakes tests and numbers and data instead of the kids." Faccinetto continues, "Standardized tests don't define the success of a child."

Homeschooling typically allows for a broader, more creative, and more self-disciplined approach to learning

Will federal compliance be the way forward for education in the United States, or are people catching on and learning that the freedom of homeschooling allows for the exploration of alternative ideas, engaging children more effectively with their society and themselves?

Indeed, homeschooling in the US is on the rise. Since 1999, the number of homeschooled children has increased by 75 percent.

Typically, a parent-involved education lays the groundwork for a set of core values that helps children become more productive and principled later in life.

More times than not, homeschooling is not a close-minded, antisocial way of educating. It's actually a more integrative, creative approach, with opportunities outside the classroom.

Homeschooling isn't anything to be ashamed of, and there should be nothing criminal about it. It is a parent's natural right to teach their children what they want as long as they are not harming another. A family that flees a county's educational control to find liberty in the United States is a testimony of freedom and the Attorney General should be ashamed for wanting to strip the family of asylum and deport them back into the hands of the controlling German government.

Australian Newspaper Pushes Aggressive Pro Vaccine Agenda

(NaturalNews) In a new low for even the mainstream media, the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers in Australia are pushing a campaign of outright medical child abuse they call "NO JAB NO PLAY." The campaign demands that unvaccinated children be barred from all social contact with other children and condemned to the life of a social outcast where parents are presumably supposed to raise them in cages in dark basements. The paper has launched its horrific, anti-human-rights campaign, "NO JAB NO PLAY" that demands children who are not vaccinated with state-mandated chemicals (which include mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum and other toxins) be denied interaction with other children.

I'm not making this up. The paper, which seems to be run by a band of human rights haters and child abuse proponents, all but admits wanting to turn children into anti-social monsters and psychological criminals -- just one of the side effects of forcing children to be raised without healthy social interaction with other children. This is the first time in history that an Australian newspaper has directly called for the medical abuse of children -- and seem to be happy about doing so! Is their editor the ghost of Jimmy Saville from the UK?

It's a new low for even the Telegraph. Click here to see the campaign push by the newspaper.

See the image of the paper's "No Jab No Play" campaign on the right. This is the actual image taken from the paper's editorial page where they are pushing this idea of socially condemning all children whose parents do not submit to state-sponsored medical terrorism.

Telegraph caught with huge conflict of interest, taking money from vaccine manufacturers

Oh, and by the way: The Telegraph takes money from vaccine manufacturers while pushing their editorial agenda. Yet it never discloses this in its medical child abuse campaign for mandatory vaccinations. What we have here is a clear conflict of interest with the paper now being caught with its hand in the cookie jar of Big Pharma cash flow.

Here's one full-page ad the paper ran for Pfizer, a globally-known vaccine manufacturer. There are hundreds more examples of ads from vaccine companies who are financially supporting The Telegraph and essentially paying the salaries of its staff.

Are the Telegraph's editors vaccine-damaged or just scientifically illiterate?

To justify this medical child abuse against children, the Telegraph engages in an astonishing display of junk science logic that demonstrates the complete illiteracy of the paper's editors. It says, "Most parents are rightfully fed up with those who put other people's children at risk."

So let's examine that with actual scientific reasoning, shall we? (Something with which the Telegraph is entirely unfamiliar.)

This statement asserts that there are two groups of children: 1) Children who are vaccinated and therefore "protected" from infectious disease, and 2) Children who are unvaccinated and therefore "carriers" of infectious disease and a threat to others.

It further asserts that children from group 2 ("carriers") can somehow infect children from group 1 ("vaccinated").

But hold on a second. Wasn't group 1 ("vaccinated") supposed to be immune to the disease precisely because they were already vaccinated?

If vaccinations work, then a vaccinated child should be able to strut through even the most snot-nosed, coughing, sneezing, sick group of other children and have no concern whatsoever for catching any disease, right? The vaccine offers them 100% protection, doesn't it? So why would vaccinated children need to fear unvaccinated carriers?

Here is where the entire myth of vaccination falls completely apart -- and where the editors of the Telegraph show just why they are so easily discredited on issues requiring actual scientific reasoning. Vaccines do NOT offer 100% protection. In fact, if you look hard at the numbers for things like flu vaccines, it turns out that vaccines offer, at best, about a 1% protection effect. Flu shots, in other words, are worthless on about 99% of the children who receive them.

Even worse, flu shots always contain neurologically-damaging chemicals, so they risk harm to children's brains. The flu shot manufacturers could, if they chose, produce "clean" flu shots without methylmercury (a potent brain poison), formaldehyde, aluminum or other adjuvant chemicals, but they choose not to. Thus, every flu shot administered to your child is like playing Russian Roulette with your child's brain. Sometimes the result is disastrous and the child goes into a seizure. When they emerge from the seizure hours later, they are suddenly autistic, now a victim of permanent brain damage caused by vaccines.

The Telegraph doesn't seem to mind this idea, however. After all, the paper wants unvaccinated children to be medically abused and live like anti-social monsters, growing up in total isolation and suffering immense developmental harm as a result. It's no surprise the paper's editors also don't mind the fact that what they are pushing causes provable brain damage to children, turning healthy young boys and girls into screaming, moaning, lobotomized human beings who will require a lifetime of social support to keep alive and functioning in society. That's a good thing, according to the Telegraph. The more lobotomies, the better! After all, somebody's gotta be left behind with a low enough IQ to subscribe to the paper.

Now, to understand this even further, the real truth about all this is that vaccines weaken the immune system against future infections, and it's all the non-vaccinated children who are statistically far more naturally immune from infection. Take a sample of 100 sick children anywhere in Australia, and you'll find that the ones who have the most severe symptoms are the ones who were vaccinated. Every measles outbreak happens among children who were vaccinated against the measles. Flu outbreaks are carried and spread primarily by children who receive flu shots! This is the "inconvenient truth" the vaccine-pushing medical establishment doesn't want you to know.

In truth, it's the vaccinated children who are the risky "carriers" of disease, threatening the non-vaccinated children!

Vaccinations are now a weapon against children

But the real upshot of all this is that the Telegraph is now the first newspaper in the world to recommend that vaccines be used as an anti-human-rights weapon against children. By saying no to vaccines as an informed, scientifically literate parent, you might soon be condemning your child to the life of a social outcast... a psychologically-imbalanced misfit. This is medical child abuse at its worst, and it's openly endorsed by the Australian media.

This no doubt pleases the Telegraph in the same way that destroying the planet Alderaan might please the Grand Moff Tarkin from the Star Wars universe. What's a few billion lives lost compared to the raw power of total control over the lives of other humans, after all?

 Medical choice is a terrible, terrible thing, and parents must be denied any choice whatsoever... at gunpoint, if necessary, for their own good!

This is the logic of The Telegraph, a disgusting, anti-human rights, anti-children rag of vaccine quackery and cognitively impaired writers who most likely are vaccine damaged themselves. Perhaps that's their wish: to pay forward the "gift" of vaccine lobotomization to the next generation of children so that yet more Australians can grow up with sufficient brain damage to actually work for the Telegraph.

I'm just curious what's next for the Telegraph. Is this "NO JAB NO PLAY" campaign doesn't fly, will they up their game and recommend that all unvaccinated children be sexually molested, too? What are the limits to the degree of child abuse the Telegraph thinks is justifiable to make sure little children are penetrated with deadly chemical injections? "Sick" doesn't even begin to describe what's going on at the Telegraph.

These people are bordering on criminally insane, and if any state-sponsored action is to be taken in all this, I would recommend a police investigation of the Telegraph editors to make sure they aren't abusing their own children in some sick way in their own homes. They obviously think there's nothing wrong with abusing children in order to accomplish their goals. Might they also be abusing their own?

Use GMO Food Pyramid To Plan Diet of Disease & Death

Law of Attraction

If Everyone Thinks The Same, Who Is Actually "Thinking"

Welch's Fruit Juice Is 80% Non Juice

(NaturalNews) If you buy fruit juices at your local grocery store, you might notice the Welch's brand juices sold in refrigerated cartons. Welch's calls them "refrigerated cocktails" and offers exotic-sounding flavors like Strawberry Peach, Dragon Fruit Mango Cocktail and Orange Pineapple Apple.

These products are aggressively marketed with pictures of splashy fruit and loud label claims like "Fruity and Refreshing!" But what Welch's doesn't reveal anywhere except in the fine print on its ingredients label is that these juice cocktails contain more high fructose corn syrup than fruit.

In fat, they contain so much high fructose corn syrup that the front label should actually show chunks of corn rather than the fruit they currently depict.

Is this corn syrup derived from GMO corn? See below for more...

Deceptively marketed and labeled

A Natural News investigation concludes that Welch's refrigerated cocktails are deceptively labeled and marketed. The Welch's website, for starters, hides the ingredients list from consumers, showing nutrition facts but not ingredients. High fructose corn syrup only shows up under ingredients, not nutrition facts.

The front label of Welch's Strawberry Peach product uses the phrase, "Fruity & Refreshing" in a prominent position on the label. But if this claim were accurate, it would actually say, "Corny & Refreshing" because it's made more from corn than fruit.

The front label (see picture below) also intentionally leaves out any mention of corn syrup even though high fructose corn syrup is the second most prominent ingredient of the product, right after water. It says:

Strawberry Peach flavored fruit juice cocktail blend made with apple, pear, strawberry and peach juices from concentrate.

No mention of corn.

The back label (see image below) begins with a giant, all-caps "LOVE" statement, jumping on the bandwagon of trying to associate LOVE with its product, even though no rational person would use the word "LOVE" to describe a highly refined liquid sugar that has been repeatedly linked to diabetes and obesity.

Welch's annual report admits it is aware that consumers seek to avoid HFCS

All this corn syrup is being pushed as fruit juice despite the fact that Welch's 2012 annual report openly admits the company is fully aware that consumers are attempting to avoid high fructose corn syrup.

It reads:

"Our mid-priced essentials line continued to grow in FY '12 with its powerful message -- no high fructose corn syrup."

The context of this statement clearly implies that "no high fructose corn syrup" is a benefit of its essentials line of products. Yet, simultaneously, Welch's continues to promote other products that contain alarming proportions of HFCS while avoiding any mention of corn on the front label.

80% water and corn syrup!

Only when you get to the back label do you learn that these Welch's fruit juice cocktails -- which are heavily adorned with photos and words that describe and imply "fruit" -- are actually 80% water and corn syrup.

The first two ingredients are Filtered Water (i.e. tap water) and High Fructose Corn Syrup. An easy-to-miss bit of text admits, "Contains 20% juice," meaning 80% of the beverage is not juice.

Nowhere does the product claim to be free of GMOs. As the vast majority of high fructose corn syrup produced in North America is derived from genetically modified corn, it is very likely that the HFCS used by Welch's is actually GMO. A genetic test would not confirm this, however, as the heavy processing of HFCS destroys genetic integrity, rendering genetic ID tests useless.

Here are the photos of the label: (story continues below)

Deceptive labeling pushes more high fructose corn syrup to children

Welch's fruit juice cocktails are depicted as if they were nothing but fruit juice. The photos, descriptive text and website text all imply they are made of nothing other than fruit juices. Nowhere on the product front label, website or promotional materials is corn depicted at all.

When consumers shop for fruit juices at their local grocery stores, they are easily misled by deceptive labeling practices such as those used by Welch's. Consumers use the pictures and prominent text on the front of the product as their primary cues to determine the composition of the product, and if that product label primarily depicts fruit and fruit juices, a typical consumer will incorrectly assume the product is primarily made of fruit and fruit juices. That same consumer will typically have no idea the product contains more corn derivatives than fruit juice.

Most consumers -- especially parents -- are actively trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup. This is often the reason why they choose fruit juice instead of sodas, as a matter of fact. Yet if they reach for Welch's juice cocktails, they are getting the exact same refined liquid sugar they were trying to avoid by choosing juice instead of soda!

Here at Natural News, we think Welch's should be ashamed of itself for pushing water and high fructose corn syrup as a fruit juice beverage. Its labeling practices deceive rather than inform consumers.

We urge you to call the Welch's comment line at 1-800-340-6870 and demand they stop selling high fructose corn syrup as fruit juice.

Corn is not a fruit. And corn syrup is not fruit juice. It is, however, often contaminated with mercury.

Demand that Welch's stop tricking consumers into thinking corn syrup is fruit juice.

Civil Disobedience Or Death By Design

Friends. How much time to we have left?

By my clock it's five minutes past midnight. We are into unchartered territory. Territory where only bravery and vision can hope to cut through the torpor and stupor which is bringing about the designed obsolescence of the human race and the transgenic re-engineering of the common gene pool of our planetary biodiversity.

As I write this, the technocrats in Brussels are lining up to enforce an Act designed put an end to our seeds. The saving and resowing of 'real' seeds. 

 

Those in high places believe we need to 'move-on' concerning the control of the food chain. It's time for total control. 

 

Only seeds registered and licensed by the State will be legal. And only those with money will be able to afford to do this exercise. The corporations will own the seeds and fulfill their ambition to have 'full spectrum dominance' of the food chain. “He who controls food controls the people”. Checkmate.

They have decided that its time to cease the perpetuation of a pattern of life on planet Earth that goes back to the birth of agriculture – and before.

That is what they are doing in Brussels 6 May 2013 and beyond. From now on, unless we cut free of obeisance to the centralised, totalitarian regimes whose takeover of our planet is almost complete, we will have only ourselves to blame. For we are complicit in allowing ourselves to become slaves of the Corporate State and its cyborg enforcement army. 

 

That is, if we continue to remain hypnotized by their antics instead of taking our destinies into our own hands and blocking or refusing to comply with their death warrants. This 'refusal' is possible. But it will only have the desired effect when, and if, it is contemporaneous with the birthing of the Divine warrior who sleeps in us all. The warrior who sleeps-on, like the besotted Rip Van Winkle in the Catskill mountains.

 We have arrived at the optimum point to draw a line in the sand. I say optimum, because the need for food faces everyone of us every day – so it's not possible to run and hide when it comes to eating. It's a bottom line necessity. It's a bottom line that is now one step from being removed from our control. I say 'one step' because we can turn around , draw our swords and say “No”.

Artists and spiritually inspired human beings are not exempt. In fact they will have a critical role to play in the great fight-back which is our one and only genuine resource at times of extreme crisis. And, in case some think otherwise, I want to state that this is such a time. No artist or spiritually inclined individual can claim to be such unless he or she is willing to enlist in the cause of protecting the sacred nature of life itself.

What the technocrats and their Illuminati masters cannot do is defy the power of the spirit – once its lit-up. And we must get it lit up – or die of starvation. Starvation of the spirit is just as prevalent as starvation from lack of food, on this tragic planet; perhaps more so. It's an artist's job to light-up the starving spirit by feeding it something that will bring it to life and steer it towards victory, not something that will encourage it to remain asleep.

I am a farmer, actor, activist and writer. I see no contradiction here. They are each mutually reinforcing elements of one life force. Of the gift of life which brought us here. And this gift of life starts as a seed. When lit-up - it presents the one power that can ultimately defeat the tunnel vision technocrats, the power besotted politicians, the blind Bilderbergers and the non-human will of the Illuminati overlords. They will all fall to our Excalibur once we remember how to use it.

Remember we must. To put an end to that darkly scheming little cabal which is, at this very moment, is dipping the ancient sacred seed into the patented petri-dish of a genetically engineered holocaust. Attempting to forever remove it from its origins in the subtle soil of a thousand lands. Fight this with a thousand shining swords, for it is we who are being engineered.

Those subverters of the sacred are convinced they will succeed in locking this seed away from the light - forever, and enlisting all humanity into their sinister power games. But, brave souls, nothing can stir us like a challenge to kill us off. Nothing can set the red corpuscles racing faster than the thought of an insentient trans-humanist cyborg future for us and our children. 

 

Pay them a fair price and offer to help them harvest it. Only connect. Connect. Never allow yourself to be just another number at the stupor-market check-out desk. Life begins when we turn and face our enemy and say NO

Qi Gong Master Demonstrates Pyrokinesis

Qi Gong Master Demonstrates Impossibilities

Zhou Ting-Jue is an internationally renown Qigong, Tai Chi and Kung Fu grand master who has shocked the world with his abilities to generate extreme heat from his hands and stand on thin sheets of paper without falling through.

Master Zhou, also known as “The Jewel of China”, has been featured on a number of television programs such as Ripley’s Believe It or Not, That’s Incredible or Stan Lee’s Superhumans, and his amazing abilities have been studied and verified by various scientists for decades.

 For some time now, researchers have been presenting information about the benefits of practicing Qigong, but what Master Zhou is able to accomplish by channeling his inner Chi defies science and Western medicine. Not only is he able to generate heat close to boiling point through the palms of his hands, but this traditional healer says his Qigong treatments have the power to “dissolve tumors, heal severe, chronic injuries, as well as successfully treat “incurable” diseases.”

 People from all over the world seek his aid for a variety of conditions, and in the past he has used his powers to treat the Dalai Lama, members of the LA Lakers basketball team, Olympic athletes, celebrities and dignitaries. In China, he is so respected that he has been named a “Treasure of the Nation”.

79-year-old Zhou Ting-jue began practicing Kung Fu under his grandfather at the age of 7, and by the time he was 16, his uncle began teaching him the secrets of Qigong, to help him maintain his body strength. He has been practicing it ever since, developing a growing understanding of the ancient art and its potential.

 Before moving to the United States, Master Zhou traveled through China, teaching Qigong, treating patients and displaying his incredible martial arts techniques. Word of his superhuman powers spread like wildfire after he arrived in America, sparking the interest of scientists and martial arts enthusiasts. So far no one has been able to explain how exactly he is able to generate heat of up to 202 degrees Fahrenheit through the palms of his hands, or shift his body weight from his legs to his chest and stand on a thin sheet of paper.

As you would expect Master Zhou has a number of detractors who call him a fraud, but he says the secret to his “tricks” lie in focus and controlling his chi energy. As for those skeptical about his healing powers, Ting-jue claims after treatment “everybody believes”.

 On an episode of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Zhou’s heat-generating abilities were captured with a thermal camera and even the naked eye can spot vapor rising from a piece of cloth as he channels his energy into it. One of his patients, a former anesthesiologist who couldn’t find a cure for his back pain until he met the Qigong master, says: It’s…I can’t explain it, but it’s real”.

 Zhou Ting-jue isn’t the only man who achieves incredible things using the powers of Qigong. In the past, we’ve featured a young Chinese man who could put out candles three meters away from him with energy generated by his punches, and a practitioner of the ancient art who could pull cars with his eyelids.

How Can You Tell If You're Eating Real Chicken?

By Dr. Mercola

The six decades’ old fast food franchise KFC recently rolled out Original Recipe boneless chicken in its 4,500 US locations.¹ The new slogan: “No mess. No fuss. No bones about it.”

The company is so convinced boneless chicken is the way of the future that they’re actually considering eliminating on-the-bone chicken from its menu altogether. According to the featured article:

“McDonald’s execs began experimenting with a range of non-burger options: chicken pot-pies, bone-in fried chicken, deep-fried onion chunks. None of them were successful, until they offered customers deep fried chicken chunks. The McNugget was born.

That was 1980, when about 80 percent to 85 percent of chicken consumed in the US was unprocessed... Ten years later, the numbers had almost reversed...

While the rotisserie chicken made a bit of a comeback in the mid-‘90s, the idea of eating the whole bird was, for the most part, a thing of the past... According to internal KFC surveys, nearly four out of five servings of chicken in the US today are off-the-bone, the inverse of 30 years ago.”

Why might this be “a big deal”? Well, for one, processed chicken nuggets, regardless of brand, are far more likely to contain all sorts of additives and fillers you’d be better off without.

For example, I wrote about the questionable ingredients of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets back in 2010. Only half of Chicken McNuggets are actual meat. The other 50 percent includes corn derivatives, sugars, leavening agents and completely synthetic ingredients.

In a 2003 lawsuit against McDonald’s, Federal Judge Robert Sweet² even questioned "whether customers understood the risks of eating McDonald's chicken over regular chicken." But there’s yet another reason for my questioning the trend of going boneless, and it’s even less savory than that...

The Future of Food: Bioengineered Meat

Few are talking about this, but scientists have been working on bioengineering "cultured" meat for the past decade. According to a September 2011 Huffington Post article,³ scientists at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands claimed to be as little as 12 months away from delivering the world’s first bioengineered synthetic hamburger.

As of this writing, the hamburger has yet to be presented, although I doubt that means the plan has been abandoned.

The article also pointed out that London's Royal Society had released a global food supply report, in which they called for a synthetic meat solution to feed the world’s growing population without causing environmental destruction.

“The only barriers? Overcoming the social stigma and the RS scientists say it could take another decade before it rolls out to the masses,” the article states.

Then, in February 2012, The Economist⁴ followed up on the research. Other Dutch scientists, led by Dr. Mark Post at the Eindhoven University in the Netherlands, expressed hopes of decimating animal husbandry altogether by altering how meat for the masses is produced. The article explains how this laboratory-created meat is created:

“Dr. Post's cultures, grown from stem cells, are sheets 3cm long, 1.5cm wide and half a millimeter deep. To make the world's most expensive hamburger 3,000 of them will be needed. The stem cells themselves are extracted from cattle muscle and then multiplied a millionfold before they are put in Petri dishes and allowed to turn into muscle cells.

When they have done so, they are encouraged to exercise and build up their strength by being given their own gym equipment (pieces of Velcro to which they can anchor themselves in order to stretch and relax spontaneously). The fatty cells of adipose tissue, needed for juiciness, are grown separately and then combined with the muscle cells before the whole thing is cooked.

Producing meat in Petri dishes is not commercially viable, but Dr. Post hopes to scale things up—first by growing the cells on small spheres floating in tanks and ultimately by using scaffolds made of biodegradable polymer tubes, which would both add the third dimension needed for a juicy steak and provide a way of delivering nutrients and oxygen to the steak's interior.”

Sure, companies like KFC may have a point when they say they’re just changing their meals to meet the needs of the “chicken nugget generation.” But a side effect of getting used to the idea that chicken meat doesn’t have bones is that, at any point, the meat used in these processed nuggets could be exchanged for bioengineered meat, and no one would be the wiser...

I sincerely doubt bioengineered meat would be advertised, since it’s hardly a selling point—at least in the beginning. What the potential health ramifications might be from eating such meats are completely unknown, but it’s clearly not going to be identical to meat from an animal.

More Data Ties Human Illness to Farm Antibiotics

Seeing how commercially available bioengineered meat is still a ways away from being a reality you have to contend with, let’s bring the focus back to something more relevant to the present day, namely antibiotics in CAFO meats. Animals are often fed antibiotics at low doses for disease prevention and growth promotion. These agricultural uses account for about 80 percent of all antibiotic use in the US,⁵ so it's a MAJOR source of human antibiotic consumption.

According to a recent NPR report,⁶ data published by a joint government program⁷ from tests conducted on supermarket meat samples collected in 2011 by the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, reveals the presence of several disease-causing bacteria, including the super-hardy antibiotic-resistant versions of salmonella, Campylobacter and E. coli. According to NPR:⁸

“The implications were significant — that the bacteria had become resistant to antibiotics back at the farm because farmers were overusing them. The findings, released through the joint program of the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, got little attention when they were published in February. But this week, the Environmental Working Group, which opposes some of the livestock industry's use of antibiotics, analyzed the government data and highlighted some of their startling implications in a report.”

The report⁹ in question, aptly named “Superbugs Invade American Supermarkets,” points out that many of the meats tested contained “startlingly high levels” of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on:

• 81 percent of ground turkey
• 69 percent of pork chops
• 55 percent of ground beef
• 39 percent of chicken breasts, wings and thighs

Want Safer Meat? Buy Organic Pastured/Grass-Fed

Writing for the New York Times,¹⁰ David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1990 to 1997, also recently sounded warning bells over the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in livestock, urging the FDA to take the matter seriously. So far, the agency has only restricted on class of antibiotics, cephalosporin, from routine use in livestock.¹¹

“While the FDA can see what kinds of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are coming out of livestock facilities, the agency doesn’t know enough about the antibiotics that are being fed to these animals,” he writes. “This is a major public health problem, because giving healthy livestock these drugs breeds superbugs that can infect people. We need to know more about the use of antibiotics in the production of our meat and poultry. The results could be a matter of life and death.”

The misuse of antibiotics in livestock has now become “a direct source of foodborne illness,” EWG points out. Worse yet, because animals are given these antibiotics continuously, in low doses, pathogens are becoming increasingly resistant to the drugs, which means they no longer work to treat human disease either. The end result is that people are dying from infections that were once easily treatable.
Despite this, organic foods, which are by law produced without such pathogen-promoting methods, are the ones being consistently targeted “for safety reasons.” The truth of the matter is, conventionally grown mass-produced foods pose the greatest danger to your health, in multiple ways, and are the ones to be avoided if you’re at all concerned about food safety.

“To be safe, consumers should treat all meat as if it may be contaminated, mainly by cooking thoroughly and using safe shopping and kitchen practices (see EWG's downloadable Tips to Avoiding Superbugs in Meat),”¹² EWG suggests.¹³

One of the best ways to avoid contaminated meat is to avoid meat from animals raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), aka “factory farms,” and buying organic, pastured or grass-fed meats instead. Growth promoters such as antibiotics are not permitted in organic animal farming, and organically-raised animals are also healthier as a result of being pastured, so overall you’re getting far “cleaner,” healthier meat.

Organic, Cage-Free, Free-Range, or Pasture-Raised?

When it comes to chicken, there are a number of designations floating around, such as “organic,” “free-range,” “pastured” and “cage-free.” But while you may think these are interchangeable, they’re actually not. In many ways these labels are little more than creative advertising.

The definitions of "free-range" are such that the commercial egg industry can run industrial farm egg laying facilities and still call them "free-range" eggs, despite the fact that the birds' foraging conditions are far from what you'd call natural. For example, regulations on the use of the term "free-range" do not specify the amount of time the hens must spend outdoors or the amount of outdoor space each hen must have access to. Nor do they indicate that the hen must have access to a pasture diet.

True free-range hens (and eggs), now increasingly referred to as “pasture-raised,” are from hens that roam freely outdoors on a pasture where they can forage for their natural diet, which includes seeds, green plants, insects, and worms.

Large commercial egg facilities typically house tens of thousands of hens and can even go up to hundreds of thousands of hens. Obviously they cannot allow all of them to forage freely. They can still be called “cage-free” or “free-range” though, if they’re not confined to an individual cage. But these labels say nothing about the conditions they ARE raised in, which are still deplorable.

So, while flimsy definitions of "free range" and “cage-free” allow such facilities to sell their products as free range, please beware that a hen that is let outside into a barren lot for mere minutes a day, and is fed a diet of corn, soy, cottonseed meals and synthetic additives is NOT a free-range hen, and simply will not produce the same quality meat and/or eggs as its foraging counterpart.

Certified organic poultry is also the only poultry product that is 100 percent guaranteed to be antibiotic-free.¹⁴

So to summarize, what you’re really looking for is chicken and eggs that are both certified organic and true pasture-raised. Barring organic certification, which is cost-prohibitive for many small farmers, you could just make sure the farmer raises his chickens according to organic, free-range standards, allowing his flock to forage freely for their natural diet, and aren’t fed antibiotics, corn and soy.

Last year, I visited Joel Salatin at his Polyface farm in Virginia. He's truly one of the pioneers in sustainable agriculture, and you can take a virtual tour through his pasture-raised chicken farm operation in the following video.

Shopping Guidelines for Real, Health-Promoting Food

It is very difficult to control the quality of your food if you’re eating in a restaurant, which is why I recommend that you prepare the vast majority of your food yourself. If you’re going to occasionally dine out, you would be best served to avoid fast food places. Reclaiming your kitchen is part and parcel of healthful living, so you know exactly what you're putting in your body.

Whether you are grocery shopping or looking for dining options, the table that follows lists criteria to look for in identifying high-quality, health-promoting foods. If the food meets these criteria, it is most likely a wise choice and would fall under the designation of "real food."

Grown without pesticides and chemical fertilizers (organic foods fit this description, but so do some non-organic foods)	Not genetically modified
Contains no added growth hormones, antibiotics, or other drugs	Does not contain any artificial ingredients, including chemical preservatives
Fresh (keep in mind that if you have to choose between wilted organic produce or fresh conventional produce, the latter may be the better option)	Did not come from a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO)
Grown with the laws of nature in mind (meaning animals are fed their native diets, not a mix of grains and animal byproducts, and have free access to the outdoors)	Grown in a sustainable way (using minimal amounts of water, protecting the soil from burnout, and turning animal wastes into natural fertilizers instead of environmental pollutants)

If you're "hooked" on fast food and other processed foods, please review my article about how to wean yourself off fast food in seven easy steps. If you're currently sustaining yourself on fast food and processed foods, this is probably the most positive life change you could ever make.

And if you have children, remember that feeding your children home cooked meals can have far reaching benefits, extending even to your future grandchildren. Yes, that's right! It is now well known that dietary changes can prompt epigenetic DNA changes that can be passed on to future generations. For instance, pregnant rats fed a fatty junk food diet had daughters and granddaughters with a greater risk of breast cancer. Making wise food decisions can literally "override" genetic predispositions for disease.

 Grassland Beef

offers  grass fed and free range beef, chicken, pork and more....these premium quality meats don't taste like what you may be used to buying.

How About Economical RatBurgers From China?

(NaturalNews) (Note: Everything mentioned in this story is based on actual findings of food scandals in China. While the tone is satire, the basis of this story is factually true.)

Introducing the Ratburger! If you've never tried the Ratburger, you're missing out on the latest in affordable cuisine from China, home of the most trusted food on the planet.

The Ratburger is made only of hand-picked, select cuts of rat meat, finely textured and enhanced for your enjoyment. Don't worry: The head, feet and tails are completely removed by slave labor workers!

The Ratburger comes with a side of "rice" made largely out of plastic, meaning zero calories! Eat as much as you want, we'll make more!

It's served up on a sesame seed bun made, in part, from human hair from which the l-cysteine amino acid is derived. This ingredient, by the way, is used throughout the commercial bread industry as a "dough enhancer." It is derived from human hair collected from the floors of hair salons across China, making it fashionable! You'll also find this ingredient in the pizza dough at your favorite pizza restaurants across the USA.

The bun is adorned with black sesame seeds that have been turned black by dousing regular sesame seeds with black ink. A little ink is good for ya!

When you buy our Ratburger, you get a free Melamine Milkshake, made with extra melamine that causes permanent kidney damage! But kidney damage is cool, because you get to experience the joys of dialysis for the rest of your life, so what's not to like?

On top of all that, every ingredient in the Ratburger is loaded with an extra dose of heavy metals poisoning, including cadmium, arsenic, lead, mercury and also aluminum as a bonus. Where else can you get this kind of value across the full table of elements? Only in the Ratburger from China!

Don't miss the RATBURGER from China, available for a limited time only!

 

 

What You Aren't Being Told About The Boston Bombings

Would You Believe A Convention Center With 6 Acres Of Living Roof?

Vancouver, British Columbia’s convention center has a roof that’s not just green, it’s alive. It is a living roof topped by it’s own ecosystem of nearly six acres of native plants and grasses.
In addition to the living roof which houses thousands of indigenous plants and recovers rainwater for irrigation. The covention center also uses seawater for heating and cooling and on-site water treatment. And it has a fish habitat built into the building foundations.


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Sweet Suicide: Sugar Deadlier than Drugs and Just as Addictive

Is sugar the biggest modern-day scourge of the earth? Is it a soft kill slow suicide?

It used to be thought that our bodies could evolve and adapt with the extra poundage of sugar consumed each year. But come 150lbs yearly on average consumed by each person - I think we've proven that theory false.

It's been said that 1-2 teaspoons of sugar in various forms can change your entire physiology in just seconds. Mood swings can come from the sugar but probably mainly from the intense insulin spikes and dips. The first part of this video shows an almost cruel experiment on children's reactions to eating sugar cubes - later it talks about opioid effects, like drug withdrawals in rats including chattering teeth, high pitched crying, shakes, anxiety and brain chemistry changes.



Sugar consumption is implicated in chronic inflammation, chronic fatigue, immune suppression, feeding cancer, heart disease, and obesity - yeah, I would say that's pretty deadly! From one pre-diabetic sugar-addict to another, here are some resources:

Many people recommend Sugar Blues by William Duffy. It's a riveting true story about a man whose entire life changed after meeting actress Gloria Swanson who told him sugar was poison. He researched and found out why. He weaves the history of sugar throughout in this classic little paperback. It's one of those books that without disgusting the reader, motivates a person to really think about their next bite.

Having a hard time quitting cold turkey? Me too. Just like with tobacco, cravings are often exacerbated by malnutrition and deficiencies. Leaving a vacuum by quitting is a sure way to dive back in. ALSO - since Candida Yeast uses sugar as food, the cravings might actually be coming from the yeast. Starving Candida and the cravings becomes more difficult. Ease yourself in and add the nutrition with Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Eat for Health series of two books, one for diet and recipes, the other to gear up the mind. They are so gentle.

If you're ever at a garage sale or old book shop, look for The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet by Doctors Rachael and Richard Heller. They were both obese, tired and riddled with cravings when they discovered that if they just push carbs into dinner time only, within a 60-minute period, they could reset the whacked-out insulin cycle. The way they described the theory was that a certain set of people - carb addicts - have a leaky insulin valve that starts running the second a simple carb is eaten. They used the method to lose all the weight, cut cravings and fix mood swings - and to help people who weren't making progress in Overeaters Anonymous (OA).

Please, please ignore the parts and recipes that promote using artificial sweeteners - those are neurotoxins and there are natural alternatives available that won't spike insulin.

The video goes into marketing tactics - while compelling, I think the real trouble comes from the cravings, Candida, difficulty withdrawing, and the grotesque, vast prevalence in grocery store foods. Until cravings and diabetic tendency is corrected, it's best to avoid fruit, honey and grains, especially if these trigger reactions.

Many naturopaths can help to stave off or reverse diabetes, eradicate Candida, and curb cravings - it's best to do research, ask questions and find one in your area. A host of issues begin in the gut - be good to it. The naturopath can help with that too.