Organic Watergate & How The USDA Allows Almost 300 Synthetics Into Organics

Lawfully Tainted Organics—How Did that Happen?

You've probably heard the health conscious mantra popularized by Michael Pollan: "If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't be eating it."

The easiest way to side step synthetic food additives has been to simply eat certified organic foods. But we've seen an increasing number of questionable additives being approved for use in organics.

There are currently almost 300 non-organic and synthetic compounds approved for use in organic farming or food production. The video shows a long list of such ingredients—all of which are supposed to have been carefully reviewed for safety prior to approval.

But just how rigorous were those reviews, and are these additives really safe and appropriate for use in organics? Mark rightfully points out that fighting for the integrity of the organic label is well-worth it, considering the fact that conventional foods are allowed to use thousands of synthetic processing aids and additives, plus residues from a myriad of agricultural chemicals and genetically engineered ingredients.

Research by the Cornucopia Institute reveals disturbing evidence showing that large corporate interests have infiltrated the process, and that the rules put in place to maintain organic integrity are severely compromised.

"... It seems evident that the people doing the supposedly careful scientific reviews and approving these chemicals have mostly been affiliated with the same corporate agribusinesses and the same food producers that are lobbying for their use," Mark says.

"We thought organics would be different from the rest of the money-dominated corruption in Washington... But the corporations that have gobbled up most of the pioneering organic businesses are relentless in their short-sighted pursuit of profit."

The Organic Watergate

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is charged with enforcing the laws regulating organic foods, so how are improprieties occurring? According to Mark, what we have here is nothing short of an Organic Watergate. He explains:

"An incident last fall caused Cornucopia staff to do a cursory review of many non-organic and synthetic ingredients that have been approved for use in organics since the USDA took over regulation in 2002. And what do we find?

A corporate and governmental conspiracy to allow almost any chemical petitioned by agribusinesses in organic food, regardless of the fact that Congress mandated review of all such substitutes to make sure that they will not damage the environment or human health."

In November, 2011, the USDA's National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) held a meeting in Savannah, Georgia. During that meeting, two 12-billion-dollar corporations-- Martek Biosciences (a division of the Dutch biotechnology giant DSM), and WhiteWave (a division of the dairy behemoth Dean Foods)—received approval for synthetic, genetically mutated DHA and ARA oils derived from algae and soil fungus, which are then grown in a medium of genetically engineered corn products and organics.

Furthermore, the oil is then extracted from this biomass using synthetic solvents including hexane, a neurotoxic byproduct of gasoline refinement that is specifically banned in organics. Martek Biosciences' lobbyists duped the NOSB into believing that banning hexane was enough of a safeguard but they failed to look at the other petroleum-based solvents used (illegal in organic production). " But petrochemical solvent extraction is just the tip of the iceberg. Other questionable manufacturing practices and misleading statements by includedi:

Undisclosed synthetic ingredients, prohibited for use in organics (including the sugar alcohol mannitol, modified starch, glucose syrup solids, and "other" undisclosed ingredients)

Microencapsulation of the powder (possibly using nanotechnology), which are prohibited under organic laws

Use of volatile synthetic solvents, besides hexane (such as isopropyl alcohol)
Recombinant DNA techniques and other forms of genetic modification of organisms;

mutagenesis; use of GMO corn as a fermentation medium

Heavily processed ingredients that are far from "natural"

Shocked by this incident, the Cornucopia Institute began a more in-depth review of other chemicals approved for use in organics, to determine whether proper procedures and safeguards were followed in the past.

"Guess what? For the most part, sadly, they were not," Mark says.

One of the first products the Cornucopia Institute looked at was carrageenan. Like most people in the industry, the initial belief was that it was natural and benign since it comes from seaweed. However, as it turns out, carrageenan is an inflammatory agent tied to serious intestinal disease and is even categorized as a "possible carcinogen." Just how did that get approved for use in organic foods?

The Integrity of the Organic Label has Been Compromised

The Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA) provides a structure for reviewing non-organic ingredients being petitioned for approval for use in organic foods, in order to assure the integrity of the organic label. The first line of defense is the National Organics Standards Board (NOSB), which must, by law, maintain a certain diversity of members:

4 farmers
2 handlers (processors/marketers)
3 environmentalists
1 conservation expert
3 representatives of the public or consumers
1 certifier
1 retailer
1 scientist

The intention was for this board to act as a balance against competing interests and corporate power. Unfortunately, abuses and obvious violations of the Congressional intent have been rampant.

According to Mark:

"The most egregious example of this was when a corporate employee of General Mills was nominated as the "consumer representative." There was such a strong backlash that her name was withdrawn and later she was nominated and served in a slot reserved for a scientist. She might have technically qualified as a scientist. But by filling a slot with a corporate representative that Congress obviously intended as an independent voice, the board's agribusiness bias was reinforced.

During the Obama administration, a full-time employee of a 700-million-dollar-a-year agribusiness was appointed as a "farmer." And a similar "farmer" was just appointed to the board, this time a manager at Driscoll's, the giant, primarily conventional berry producer in California."

Absurd Bias Showing up in "Independent" Technical Reviews

Before an ingredient can be approved for use in organic foods, it must undergo a technical review by the NOSB. As you can see by the list of mandated board members above, the NOSB is not a scientific panel; rather these organic industry stakeholders are meant to use their individual field of expertise and judgment to help evaluate each petition. In order to do so, the petition must include accurate and comprehensive scientific data from truly independent sources.

According to Mark:

"One of the problems of the recent Martek proposal was the gross level of bias exhibited in the technical review (TR) supplied to the NOSB. Even though materials that are highly processed by bleaching or deodorizing have previously been deemed as "synthetic," the Martek materials presented in the TR as "natural."

Natural?

From genetically mutated strains of algae never existing before in nature? Instead of presenting independent research regarding a material, the TR was filled with biased statements lacking the required scientific citations. How could the NOSB use their best judgment in evaluating the Martek petitions without sound scientific advice?"

Making matters worse, it turns out that of the handful of industry experts who have been advising the NOSB on scientific matters, one of them, Dr. Theuer, co-authored 45 of approximately 50 technical reviews during a two-year span in the 1990s—virtually all of them in support of approving the synthetic material in question for use in organics.

And if you think matters may have gotten better since then, think again. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack was appointed to his post despite massive public outcry, as he was well-known for his agribusiness and biotechnology industry bias'. He's been a strong supporter of genetically engineered crops (including bio-pharmaceutical corn), Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), and animal cloning, for example. The USDA now contracts the Organic Center to produce technical reviews for the NOSB. And who's behind The Organic Center?

According to Mark:

"[The Organic Center] began as the non-profit organic arm of the powerful Organic Trade Association (OTA) and are generally controlled and funded by the same giant corporations that run that OTA. The rest of The Organic Center's leadership reads like a who's who of giant corporations involved in organics: Aurora Dairy, the giant distributor UNFI, the vegetable giant Earthbound Farms, Safeway Grocers, Organic Valley, Whole Foods, and no fewer than four individuals with financial relationships to Dean Foods and their WhiteWave division."

Talk about proverbial foxes guarding the organic chicken coop... Mark points out that some of the board members of The Organic Center are even from the same companies petitioning for, and/or supporting the use of synthetics in organics! So how can employees of The Organic Center be expected to actually provide wholly independent technical reviews and solid scientific advice to the NOSB, when their bosses are neck-deep in corporate interests?

Carrageenan—Another Ingredient that Should Never have Been Approved

As mentioned earlier, once the Cornucopia Institute began reviewing carrageenan, a seaweed derivative used as a stabilizer, it became clear that just like Martek's DHA/ARA oils, it does not belong in truly organic foods. This is a timely issue, as carrageenan is currently up for a sunset reevaluation by the NOSB. (By law, all synthetic ingredients in organics must be reevaluated every five years.) According to Mark:

"When carrageenan was first reviewed in 1995, the NOSB, as required by law, looked at the potential environmental and health impacts after examining a technical review produced by three experts with corporate agribusiness ties: Dr. Steve Harper, director of R&D at Small Planet Foods (now owned by General Mills), Dr. Richard Theuer, a vice-president of R&D at Beech Nut, and Dr. Stephen Taylor, professor of food science at the University of Nebraska and defender of genetic engineering. Dr. Taylor has published studies on genetically engineered organisms (GMO) and allergy risks, co-authored by agribusiness scientists at DuPont and Pioneer Hi-Bred (manufacturers of chemicals and organic seed).

This technical review hardly mentions some potential serious health impacts from degraded carrageenan, failing to cite any of the research to inform the board that historically, as much as 25 percent of carrageenan on the market was categorized as degraded. Current research shows all types of carrageenan can degrade in the body and can create serious known health impacts.

A number of peer-reviewed published papers that should have been cited indicate that degraded carrageenan causes inflammation and can cause serious intestinal abnormalities. Degraded carrageenan is also considered a possible carcinogen, and it's in organic foods! There is no doubt that carrageenan is an inflammatory agent. In fact, in testing anti-inflammatory drugs, laboratory animals are given carrageenan to produce inflammatory symptoms. There's no secret in the medical community that this is a problem.

The technical review also failed to document the known environmental hazards from discharge of alkaline water, the deleterious impacts of seaweed farming to coral reefs, coastal ecosystems, and mangroves. By law, organics is supposed to do no harm. By law, these environmental externalities needed to be considered. Now, carrageenan is up for review again this year. As before, no negative environmental impacts and no human health threats were recognized by the NOSB's industry-friendly handling subcommittee, which unanimously again recommends its approval.

We must oppose the relisting of carrageenan and assure that it is taken out of organic foods. It shouldn't be in any food – conventional or organic. We need to be careful about reviews of all synthetics and organics. We need to re-review them, and the weight of your voice will help us make this argument."

A Call to Action

The Cornucopia Institute are now pursuing a pressure campaign aimed at the organic program at the USDA, and at the National Organics Standards Board, to persuade them to review the manipulation and misinformation provided at the November NOSB meeting, which led to the approval of synthetic, genetically mutated DHA and ARA oils—ingredients that have been "confidently linked" to health problems in infants.

"We need to be careful about reviews of all synthetics and organics. We need to re-review them," he says.

On the Cornucopia Institute's website, you'll find a proxy letter calling for careful scrutiny of all synthetics and organics; a creditable and independent review process; and a diverse NOSB that truly reflects the organic community as Congress intended. Please take a moment to download and sign the proxy letter, and mail it back to the Cornucopia Institute.

"We will deliver your message as an organic industry stakeholder to the powers in Washington, who can preserve or destroy organics," Mark says. "Please download and sign the proxy letter that's posted at Cornucopia.org to amplify our message and your voice...

The law requires the imperative to make sure we have independent oversight. Please, don't reject organics because corporations have acted recklessly and the USDA has failed to do their legally mandated job. Organic farmers and their ethical processing and marketing partners need your support now more than ever, and your family deserves authentic organic food."

NOTE: We believe that the USDA honestly represent both sides. On the one hand they accept significant input/contributions from the industrial food giants and on the other hand they extract organic certification fees from those who's intention is to provide pure, unadulterated food. As consumers, we're being forced to choose between pesticides and the growing indifferences between Organic & GMO.

In fact, the USDA is pushing hard, with Monsanto's persuasive might to allow all GMO's as organic. We can only vote with our $$$$ by rejection all conventionally grown food, and force a higher level of honesty into our foods.

Another option is to reject the USDA compromised whores and create a legitimate certification for all pure, natural, unadulterated foods that serves both the spirit, law & intention of real food.

We can't all grow it ourselves, but we can participate at some level with those who do.

States Voting Against Agenda 21

The New Hampshire House of Representatives voted to ban UN Agenda 21 polices.

This legislation will prevent local, county and state governments from adopting the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) programs.

ICLEI is a UN agency that provides “local” community plans, software and training to towns and cities that pay their dues. Other private organizations in league with ICLEI are:

• National League of Cities
• International City/County Management Group
• National Governors Association
• American Planning Group





“I know it is totally against our Constitution from reading the U.N. biodiversity assessment,” Rep. Anne Cartwright (R-Alstead), the primary sponsor of the bill. “It’s through local initiative that it is being implemented in bits and pieces to erode our property rights.”

Cartwright believes ICLEI is attempting to remove individual property rights through sustainable development.

Cartwright said: “They are very slowly implementing rules and regulations that have not reached a high level yet. They are implementing it through zoning, planning and regional planning things that impact our property rights.”

NH is not the only state to pass anti-Agenda 21 legislation.

In Kansas a resolution was approved that quashed Agenda 21 from taking over the state.

Tennessee also resolved an anti-Agenda 21 resolution that failed to receive Governor Bill Haslam’s signature.

The Arizona House of Representatives voted down a ban that resembles the NH ban.

Louisiana and Alabama have resolutions against Agenda 21 that are still under consideration.

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the UN, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human beings impact the environment.

The Agenda 21 plan is to assist in social and economic issues by providing maintained healthcare and vaccinations, implement controls on how to govern the populous and make decisions for the people of the world through actions taken by the UN.

Their plans are to focus on the global impact of use of land, education and depopulation through control measures. Through the elimination of personal property rights, private education (including homeschooled children) and eugenics (forced sterility), the globalization of the planet can be achieved.

The UN plans to take over conservation and management of resources for their developmental purposes. By abolishing personal property rights, the demise of rural area living, removal of personal ownership of natural resources, they will take away the power away from individuals are place it firmly in the hands of governments who have agreed to these controls.

Financial independence will be illuminated because dependence on the government keeps the population under its grip. Through monitoring energy usage, behaviors, big brother style controls, and re-education (brainwashing with propaganda); as well as restricting local governments by installing their own leaders voted into office by a coerced consensus.

America 2050 is an organization sponsored by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, lists 11 megaregions in the United States and Canada. A megaregion is typically defined as a chain of roughly adjacent metropolitan areas. The concept is based on the original Megalopolis model.

• Environmental systems and topography
• Infrastructure systems
• Economic linkages
• Settlement patterns and land use
• Shared culture and history

Megaregions are needed because the US will be reduced to only 11 regions that will be habitable for humans by the UN’s design. These mega-cities will be connected through railways. The general public’s access to free movement across megaregions will be severely restricted. Trains will also be used to transport the food and supplies to these areas.

Currently, federal government agencies are working with corporations like Amtrak, the housing and urban development authorizations and farm policies to connect and restrict the needs of the cities. A high speed rail system is needed to meet the growing movement across the country. This provides freight systems to move directly to ports, pick up their goods and transport them. Truck Only Tolls are designed to discourage individual movement of goods. The need for traditional truck driving will be a distant memory. Trains are more easily controlled by the governing agencies in charge of managing the population of these areas.

As states become aware of the underlying meaning behind Agenda 21, they are putting in place legislation to prevent this takeover of our rights as Americans by the UN.

President Obama, a big supporter of the UN’s Agenda 21 initiative, signed the executive order Establishing a White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities where he outlined plans to partner with local communities and the US government to “provide them with comprehensive technical assistance to use and compete for Federal resources”. The US government will then “enable them to develop and implement economic strategies to become more competitive, sustainable, and inclusive”.

Obama claims that only with regional collaboration and comprehensive planning with the US government will stabilize economic growth, create jobs, and lead to sustainable redevelopment of our American cities. This rhetoric is nearly copied directly from the Agenda 21 documents from past Earth Summits.
Obama wants to gain governance over resources and implement US government objectives under the guise of suggestive communication with state and local governments. Simply put, when the US government provides the financial backing, they can create any outcome they desire. By using the cloak of sustainability and economic growth, the Obama administration is seeking to obtain voluntary control of our towns and cities from our local governments.

As with Agenda 21, this governmental intervention will take all the power out of the local residents of towns and cities. The US government will have supreme control by way of financial manipulation. As the local level is forced to change independent strategies, the government will assist the supposed flailing local governments with predetermined and sustainable economic opportunities . . . as long as the local government’s do as they are told by the Obama administration.

Write to your local elected officials, attend community meetings and vote against Sustainable Developmental plans whenever you can. The more attention we bring to this hidden goal of the UN, the less likely we will face a totally controlled future by an international body under the power of global governance.

The time is now; but our time to effectively halt the UN’s takeover is dwindling.

Creepy Occult Stuff On US Dollars

This video examines and reveals various secrets held by the highest ranking members of the world's secret society networks including the freemasonic "illuminati" or "enlightened ones". Symbology has a very high emphasis among such groups as they respect and understand the power they hold in affecting the world around us.

The American dollar bill is packed full of occultic significance all of which is explained such as the language used, the pyramid, the all seeing eye, the numerology and the owl of moloch. The Bohemian Grove is also briefly discussed given the connection it has with the very same pagan deity being worshipped by some of the world's leading and most powerful politicians, industrialists and media moguls. Excerpts were taken from a lecture given by researcher and historian Jordan Maxwell. (7:38)

Seattle Attorney Claims US Teleport Adventures

A lot of people have a hard time trusting lawyers as it is, but what about one who claims he was part of a secret government time travel program when he was a kid?

Since 2004, Seattle attorney Andrew Basiago has been publicly claiming that from the time he was 7 to when he was 12, he participated in "Project Pegasus," a secret U.S. government program that he says worked on teleportation and time travel under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

"They trained children along with adults so they could test the mental and physical effects of time travel on kids," Basiago told The Huffington Post. "Also, children had an advantage over adults in terms of adapting to the strains of moving between past, present and future."

Skeptical? You're not alone. Hong Kong physicist Shengwang Du issued a paper last year saying time travel is impossible, because nothing moves faster than the speed of light, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Nevertheless, Basiago's claim gets support from Alfred Webre, a lawyer specializing in "exopolitics," or the political implications surrounding an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. Webre said teleportation and time travel have been around for 40 years, but are hoarded by the Defense Department instead of being used to transfer goods and services faraway distances.

"It's an inexpensive, environmentally friendly means of transportation," Webre told The Huffington Post. "The Defense Department has had it for 40 years and [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld used it to transport troops to battle."

Basiago said he experienced eight different time travel technologies during his stint in the program. Mostly, he said, his travel involved a teleporter based on technical papers supposedly found in pioneering mechanical engineer Nikola Tesla's New York City apartment after his death in January 1943.

"The machine consisted of two gray elliptical booms about eight feet tall, separated by about 10 feet, between which a shimmering curtain of what Tesla called 'radiant energy' was broadcast," Basiago said. "Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space."

Basiago said project participants would jump through this field of radiant energy into a vortal tunnel and "when the tunnel closed, we found ourselves at our destination."

"One felt either as if one was moving at a great rate of speed or moving not at all, as the universe was wrapped around one's location," Basiago said.

Basiago claimed he can be seen in a photograph of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863, which he said he visited in 1972 via a plasma confinement chamber located in East Hanover, N.J.

"I had been dressed in period clothing, as a Union bugle boy," he said. "I attracted so much attention at the Lincoln speech site at Gettysburg -- wearing over-sized men's street shoes -- that I left the area around the dais and walked about 100 paces over to where I was photographed in the Josephine Cogg image of Lincoln at Gettysburg." (The boy on the left in the photo below).

In addition, Basiago said he traveled to Ford's Theatre the night of Lincoln's assassination on five or six occasions. "I did not, however, witness the assassination," he said. "Once, I was on the theater level when he was shot and I heard the shot followed by a great commotion that arose from the crowd. It was terrible to hear."

Basiago said each of his visits to the past was different, "like they were sending us to slightly different alternative realities on adjacent timelines. As these visits began to accumulate, I twice ran into myself during two different visits."

Being sent back in time to the same place and moment, but from different starting points in the present, allowed two of himselves to be in Ford's Theatre at the same time in 1865.

"After the first of these two encounters with myself occurred, I was concerned that my cover might be blown," he recalled. "Unlike the jump to Gettysburg, in which I was clutching a letter to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles to offer me aid and assistance in the event I was arrested, I didn't have any explanatory materials when I was sent to Ford's Theatre."

And how did these alleged time travelers return to the present day or their point of origin? According to Basiago, some sort of holographic technology allowed them to travel both physically and virtually.

"If we were in the hologram for 15 minutes or fewer," he explained, "the hologram would collapse, and after about 60 seconds of standing in a field of super-charged particles ... we would find ourselves back on the stage ... in the present."

Basiago said the technology should only be used for real-time teleportation, not time travel, because, "It would be chaos."

Basiago and Webre recently held a seminar in Vancouver, B.C., focusing on the need to disclose, deploy and declassify the technology, as well as the public policy decisions that would be needed to use it.

Webre, for one, said he wants teleports installed in every major city where people and products would be transported through the time-space continuum. "This would free up a lot of urban space that is currently being used by train yards or airports," Webre said.

Of course, there are risks. Basiago remembered feeling extreme turbulence while going through the vortal time tunnel. Webre said one tragedy occurred in the early days of the technology in which a child in Project Pegasus arrived a few seconds before his legs.

"He was writhing in pain with just stumps where his legs had been," Webre said.

Webre said problems like that have since been solved. Still, he said teleportation needs strict legal controls to prevent it being used for "for political control, economic control or illegal surveillance."

All of this is fascinating stuff -- if true. But experts who include retired Army Col. John Alexander, former director for the Advanced System Concepts Office, U.S. Army Laboratory Command, are, to put it mildly, skeptical.

"If this could be done, if anyone could go even one second into the future, we'd own the world," Alexander told The Huffington Post. "There are computer programs on Wall Street that are hundredths of a second faster and provide a tremendous advantage."

Basiago said that as many as 100 people worked on Project Pegasus. Alexander said he doubts that many people could keep the secret for 40 minutes, much less 40 years.

"There's a saying in Washington: If two people know something, it's not a secret," said Alexander, author of "UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities." "If this was used by the Department of Defense, how did we miss the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the fall of the Shah of Iran?"

Basiago said Alexander's rhetorical questions can be explained by the paradoxes of the time-space continuum.

"I only know about how the time travel technology was used during my involvement with Project Pegasus, so this is only speculation," he said. "But it's possible that 'forward intelligence' showed [Iraq leader Saddam] Hussein using the weapons of mass destruction, but our military went in and toppled him before he could use them."

Austin Test Site For Drones To Spy On You

NOTE: Intrusive things always start with good intentions, finding lost puppies, kitties or kids and then it's fun for the boys in blue looking at private sun bathing, a little after noon delight in what should be the privacy of your back yard and is that really a legitimate garden or illicit, & what they caught you chugging down fresh, raw milk. Just imagine the potential for misuse.

Illegal without a search warrant?

The Prison Industrial Complex

“Prison Industrial Complex” is a term that refers to private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. What is interesting about this term and the concept of “prison labor” is how it’s rise parallels the rapid expansion of the US inmate population.

The Prison Industrial Complex is big growth industry. While other sectors of our economy continue to struggle in this recession, the private prison industry is booming!

Is there a connection between this booming business and the record rise in incarceration in this country? Let’s take a deeper look…

Did you know that for every 100,000 Americans, 743 of them reside behind bars? That is nearly 1 out 100 Americans!

Today, the United States has the highest prison population in the world with more than 2 million people either incarcerated in prison or in jail awaiting trail.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, surpassing China, North Korea and Russia.

A study conducted by the Bureau of Justice in 2005 showed that a record 33-year continuous rise in the number of inmates in the United States despite falling crime rates.

To put this concept into perspective, consider the following:

Consider that for every $1 we spend on higher education in this country, we spend $.60 on correctional facilities.
Collectively, the States and Federal government spend about $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people who work in the industry.
The largest private prison conglomerate in the United States is Corrections Corporations of America(CCA) which controls more than 47% of all private prison and jail beds nationwide, produces a 13% to 15% return annually.
Nearly ¼ of the world’s total number of prisoners being incarcerated behind bars are Americans.
1 out of every 32 Americans is on probation, parole or in prison.
A total 7,225,800 adults were under correctional supervision in 2009 (about 3.1% of US Adults).
Of these, 4,933,667 adults were on probation or parole.
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are over 2,266,800 adults incarcerated in US Federal and States prisons today.
County jails accounts for another .7% of U.S. adults.
There are more Americans under “correctional supervision” than were in Stalin’s Gulags.
Every day, at least 50,000 men—a full house at Yankee Stadium are in solitary confinement.
86,927 juveniles were in detention as of 2007.
Texas alone has sentenced more than 400 teenagers to life imprisonment.
A black male is 7x more likely to be imprisoned than a white male.
Prison rape is so endemic—more than 70,000 prisoners are raped each year.

The major myth associated with our Prison Industrial Complex is that the rise in incarceration rates reflects a commensurate rise in crime. The fact is that crime rates have fallen. One of the driving forces behind the sudden rise in prison populations is a result of the “three strikes laws.”
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It is estimated over 500,000 Americans are in prison for drug-related, non-violent crimes. Another driver is the continued privatization of our prison system where these private companies are actually incented to keep their jails full.

Case in point, CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for “good behavior,”but for any infraction, they get 30 days added – which means more profits for CCA.

According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost “good behavior time” at a rate eight times higher than those in state-run prisons.

Another big driving force behind our massive prison system is cheap labor.

37% states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations. The list of these corporations include: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more.

In private-run prisons, the working inmates receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison “employer” is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.”

Exploitation of cheap labor by Fortune 500 companies has competition from the Military Industrial Complex. Did you know that prison labor — with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days, pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security withholding — makes complex components for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter?

And that prison labor produces night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio and communication devices, and lighting systems and components for 30-mm anti-aircraft guns to 300-mm battleship guns, along with land mine sweepers and electro-optical equipment for BAE Systems’ Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder? Prisoners are also “hired” to recycle toxic electronic equipment and overhaul military vehicles.

Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 14 prison factories, more than 3,000 prisoners manufacture electronic equipment for land, sea and airborne communication. UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor, with 110 factories at 79 federal penitentiaries.

The majority of UNICOR’s products and services are on contract to orders from the Department of Defense. Giant multinational corporations purchase parts assembled at some of the lowest labor rates in the world, then resell the finished weapons components at the highest rates of profit.

For example, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corporation subcontract components, then assemble and sell advanced weapons systems to the Pentagon.

I believe what former Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix said when he recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that “there won’t be any transportation costs, we’re offering you competitive prison labor (here).”

In other words…he is basically offering slave labor! While our so-called elected officials talk about the massive slave labor camps in North Korea, I think one only has to look into the mirror and let the facts speak for themselves.

Our prison industrial complex is getting out hand, much like our military industrial complex. We need to stand up now and do something about it, before it gets too powerful, too influential, and too out of control.

Until next time, keep your powder dry and your faith strong!

How TSA Body Scanners Destroy Your DNA

he threat of radiation is constant and growing; too much radiation from medical testing and other sources is increasingly becoming a concern for many individuals around the world. The average child will receive more than seven radiation emitting scans for medical procedure by age 18, not to mention all of the background radiation emitted from cell phones, as well as other various electronic devices.

With the advent of the TSA body scanners, using deadly terahertz radiation only adds to the controversy. An array of DNA destroying and cancer causing devices pervade our natural lives.

A recent study conducted using THz radiation found that the radiation’s effects on genetic material are so devastating that they can actually destroy it. THz radiation effectively unzips the double helix strands, creating anomalies that would be detrimental to gene expression and replication. The report concludes by saying that TSA scanners are not only a gross invasion of privacy, but are also producing long term effects on human health that ultimately shorten the lifespan of those who are unfortunate enough to be affected by them.

Add this to the constant exposure from cell phones, cell phone towers, and other forms of radiation including x-rays from medical procedures, and you have a mega-radiation dose over time. Radiation is indeed harmful; there’s a reason why doctors leave the room after giving patients undergoing radiation a heavy lead coat.

The pervasive nature of this threat has even prompted the FDA to issue guidelines concerning radiation exposure and safety. This report notes of a proposal to create less dangerous scanners and technology in an attempt to mitigate the damage done, espically to younger individuals.

The fact that they would propose taking action shows that they know the effect of radiation is a real threat and causing damage daily. Taking this into account, you should also be aware of the dangers and necessity to protect yourself and others.

Is There A Drone Watching You?

Earlier this week, the federal government announced that the Air Force might be dispatching drones to a backyard near you. The stated purpose of these spies in the sky is to assist local police to find missing persons or kidnap victims, or to chase bad guys.

If the drone operator sees you doing anything of interest (Is your fertilizer for the roses or to fuel a bomb? Is that Sudafed for your cold or your meth habit? Are you smoking in front of your kids?), the feds say they may take a picture of you and keep it.

The feds predict that they will dispatch or authorize about 30,000 of these unmanned aerial vehicles across America in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, more than 300 local and state police departments are awaiting federal permission to use the drones they already have purchased – usually with federal stimulus funds.

The government is out of control.

If the police use a drone without a warrant to see who or what is in your backyard or your bedroom, or if while looking for a missing child the drone takes a picture of you in your backyard or bedroom and the government keeps the picture, its use is unnatural and unconstitutional.

I say "unnatural" because we all have a natural right to privacy; it is a fundamental right that is inherent in our humanity. All of us have times of the day and moments in our behavior when we expect that no one – least of all the government – will be watching. When the government watches us during those times, it violates our natural right to privacy. It also violates our constitutional right to privacy. The Supreme Court has held consistently that numerous clauses in the Bill of Rights keep the government at bay without a warrant.

Even when we don't have an expectation of privacy, we do have a right to be left alone. But merely watching us in public isn't enough for the police, as many street corner cameras are equipped with listening devices and tiny megaphones. We can expect that these devices will soon bark commands: "Put down that BlackBerry." "Look to your right before crossing." "Don't kiss her; a car is coming." Actually, Big Brother is coming, and he's not smiling.

Big Brother is watching from the skies, as well as the streets. This started when the Department of Defense decided to offer help to police – and they are prepared to accept. Never mind that the military may not lawfully operate within our borders, except in the case of rebellion, and then only when publicly authorized by the president. Never mind that the military may not lawfully be used for law enforcement, except in the case of disaster, and then only when publicly authorized by the president. And never mind that this use of drones by the Air Force was not the result of legislation debated and enacted by Congress, but was done under the authority of the president alone.

Add to all this the use of drones to kill people. President Obama has argued that he can use drones to kill Americans overseas, whose deaths he believes will keep us all safer, without any constitutional due process whatsoever. His attorney general has argued that the president's careful consideration of each target and the narrow use of deadly drones are an adequate substitute for due process. Of course, no court has ever ruled that way. The president's national security adviser has argued that the use of drones is humane since they are "surgical" and only kill their targets. Of course, that's not true, but it misses the point. Without a declaration of war, the president can't lawfully kill anyone, no matter how humane his killing.

How long will it be before the Air Force and the police adopt the unconstitutional arguments of the president's wrongheaded advisers and use the drones not only to spy but also to kill Americans in America?

The whole reason we have a Bill of Rights is to assure that tyranny does not happen here, to guarantee that the government to which we have supposedly consented will leave us alone. Do you think the government accepts that? Would you feel safe with a drone in your backyard? Would you feel like you were in America?

Reprinted with the author's permission.

May 17, 2012

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is It Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.

DEA & Police Using Drones To Spy On You

Illegal by any means without a search warrant

Vets For Ron Paul

Italian Court Rules MMR Vaccine DID Trigger Autism

Natural Health News — An Italian court has ruled there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In what may be a ground-breaking decision, the Italian Court of Rimini has ruled that causation between an MMR vaccine and the resulting autism in a young child “has been established.”

The unnamed child received the vaccine in March of 2004 and on returning home immediately developed adverse symptoms. During the next year the child regressed, receiving the autism diagnosis one year later and is now 100% disabled by the disease.

The Italian court ruled that the child “has been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (prophylaxis trivalent MMR)” and ordered the Ministry of Health to compensate the child with a 15 year annuity and to reimburse the parents of their court cost.

The judgement can be found in full here and the original news report in Italian appears here. A rough Google translation appears here.

The case is expected to go to appeal as authorities are concerned it may set a legal precedent.

Not the first judgement against the vaccine

This, however, is the second recent judgement to come to this conclusion. Earlier this year a US court also ruled that the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine can cause autism.

In a ruling that kept very quiet in the press, the US Court of Federal Claims has conceded that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, which was in vaccines until 2002, caused autism in the case of one child.

The ruling was just one of 4,900 cases currently being considered for compensation payments. Health officials are concerned that it could open the floodgates for even more claims.

The ruling, made by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, was made last November, and was one of three test cases into the MMR-autism link that was being considered by a three-member panel, which Keisler chaired.

The case involved a child who received nine vaccinations in July 2000, when she was 18 months old. Two of these contained thimerosal. Within days, the girl, who had previously been healthy, began to exhibit loss of language skills, no eye contact, loss of response to verbal direction, insomnia, incessant screaming, and arching.

A diagnosis of autism was confirmed seven months later.

In its defence, the US government claimed the girl had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was aggravated by the vaccine. However in his conclusion, Keisler said that “compensation is appropriate”.

Too much heat, not enough light

Both findings would appear to support the controversial findings of Dr Andrew Wakefield who, in 1998 published an article in the Lancet suggesting a link between the vaccine and autism. Official reaction to the paper was of such force and such outrage that the Lancet withdrew the paper on the grounds that it was scientifically unsound.

Wakefield has been in a battle for his professional reputation ever since and the question of the proposed link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been largely sidelined (though not solved) by bitter and very public professional rows that have done little to bring clarity to concerned parents.

UCLA Proves HFCS Makes You Fat & Stupid

The laughable habit of ordering a huge fast-food meal and washing it down with a diet soda might actually be smarter than it sounds, if the results of a new study published Tuesday are any indication.

The nutrition industry's favorite bogeyman, high-fructose corn syrup, took yet another massive hit when a UCLA study in the Journal of Physiology showed the ubiquitous additive makes lab rats less clever.

The study addressed the interaction of omega-3 fatty acids and high fructose intake. It found that rats fed a diet deficient in omega-3s had difficulty navigating a maze they'd already been trained to find their way through, and that a steady diet of HFCS as their drinking water only made their difficulties worse. On the other hand, the rats fed both HFCS and omega-3s did better all around than did the sugar-only group.

The researchers were less surprised to find that HFCS also gave the rats metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, often precursors to diabetes, obesity, or both.

The study results were limited to the effects of HFCS, not sugar derived from beets or cane or fructose from fruit.

"Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think," UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, one of the co-authors of the study, said in a press release. "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage."

This is foul news, not only for the legions of people who insist on drinking regular Coke (KO) and Pepsi (PEP), but for the Corn Refiners Association. The six-member group, which includes Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Tate & Lyle Americas (TATYY.PK), has been fighting a losing battle trying to rehab HFCS' image. Despite any real evidence to support the idea, it's now a given that sugar is somehow better for you than HFCS.

Seeing the writing on the wall, ConAgra (CAG), Starbucks (SBUX), and Kraft (KFT) have removed the offending ingredient from some or all of their products, the Wall Street Journal notes. That list of sinking ship deserters is only likely to get longer as more studies are undertaken.

The corn refiners have even tried to lobby the Food and Drug Administration to change the blackened name of its product from "high-fructose corn syrup" to "corn sugar," an effort unlikely to bear fruit anytime soon.

Cops Want To Keep Tasering Pregnant Women

Thanks to a misbegotten ruling from a divided Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, police in nine states have been left at an insurmountable disadvantage when dealing with criminal suspects. At least, that’s what we’re told in a legal brief submitted to the Supreme Court by a coalition of police unions.

"It won’t be long before the word spreads through society’s criminal underworld that the Ninth Circuit hasn’t simply given them a ‘get out of jail free’ card, but a ‘never have to go to jail in the first place’ card," warns the amicus brief. Rather than subduing criminals, "police officers will now be forced to walk away from people they have arrested."

The ruling that is fraught with such awful implications, Brooks v. City of Seattle, involved a patently unnecessary Taser attack upon a woman who was seven months pregnant. The unarmed woman, who was not suspected of a violent crime, posed no threat to the three – yes, three – valiant officers who assaulted her. She was uncooperative, but did not offer any violent resistance.

Her sole "offense" was to refuse a demand that she sign a traffic ticket that was eventually dismissed.

In March 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court found that Seattle Police Officers Steven Daman, Juan Ornelas, and Donald Jones used excessive force when they committed their attack on Brooks and her unborn child – but that they were entitled to "qualified immunity" because the legal precedents dealing with the use of electro-shock torture on a pregnant woman were ambiguous in 2004.

The assailants were thus left in the clear – but unsatisfied with their victory. With the support of organizations representing tens of thousands of police officers (including some 30,000 SWAT operators), the officers are appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court, claiming that any limitation on the discretionary use of tasers against non-violent "suspects" constitutes an unacceptable restraint on police discretion and a dire threat to that holiest of social considerations, "officer safety."

In its brief on behalf of the officers, the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association (LACPCA) and the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) insist that refusing to allow police to use electro-shock torture against a pregnant woman would fatally undermine the principle of "pain compliance" on which social order – as they pretend to understand it – depends.

On November 23, 2004, Malaika Brooks was taking her son to school when she was stopped by Officer Ornelas, who claimed – wrongly, as it turned out – that she had been speeding. When he presented Brooks with a traffic ticket, she refused to sign it out of the concern that doing so would constitute an admission of guilt. She had done the same during a 1996 traffic stop in which the officer, who possessed some residual decency, simply handed her the little extortion note and walked away.

Ornelas, unfortunately, chose to escalate the encounter by calling for "backup." A few minutes later, Officer Jones and Sgt. Daman arrived on the scene and began to threaten and berate Brooks. None of this was necessary: The officers were engaging in a tribal display of primate dominance, rather than carrying out a function related in any way to protection of person and property. When they threatened to kidnap – or, as they called it, "arrest" – Brooks, the woman informed them that she was "less than 60 days from having my baby."

After huddling briefly, the three officers attacked Brooks. Ornelas seized her right arm and – in the course of less than a minute – inflicted three "drive stun" charges to Brooks’s neck, shoulder, and thigh, an assault that left her with permanent scars. The three officers then dragged Brooks – who had been desperately clinging to the steering wheel, honking the horn, and screaming for help – from the car, threw her face-down and pinned her to the ground. She was handcuffed and then booked on charges of "Refusing to sign" a traffic citation – a misdemeanor – and resisting arrest.

A jury eventually found Brooks guilty of the first "offense," and acquitted her of the second. The speeding citation was thrown out before Brooks went to court. Brooks filed suit against the officers for assault and violating her civil rights. The officers responded by invoking the well-established – and utterly specious – doctrine of "qualified immunity," seeking a summary dismissal. The District Court dismissed the assault charge but found that the officers had committed a civil rights violation that nullified their claim to qualified immunity.

The Ninth Circuit reversed that holding as it applied to the defendants, ruling that the officers were protected by qualified immunity and could not be sued by Brooks. However, the Court offered notice that in the future similar taser attacks on non-cooperative but non-violent subjects would constitute excessive force.

In his dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski maintained that Brooks "had shown herself deaf to reason, and moderate physical force had only led to further entrenchment…. Brooks was tying up two line officers, a sergeant and three police vehicles – resources diverted from other community functions – to deal with one lousy traffic ticket."

Who was responsible for this "diversion" – Mrs. Brooks, who was merely being uncooperative, or Officer Ornelas and his comrades, who needlessly escalated a disagreement over "one lousy traffic ticket" to the point where potentially deadly force was used against someone accused of a trivial traffic offense, rather than an actual crime?

"The officers couldn’t just walk away," complains Kozinski. "Brooks was under arrest."

There was no substantive reason why the police couldn’t walk away – if they had been acting as peace officers, that is, rather than as armed enforcers of the revenue-consuming class.

If a police officer has the option of deploying a reliably deadly weapon in a situation of this kind, he also has the option of backing down and letting the court deal with the merits of the citation. But the position claimed by the officers – and accepted, in a qualified sense, by the Ninth Circuit Court – is that anything other than immediate and unqualified submission by a Mundane justifies the infliction of summary punishment by a police officer.

The amicus brief by the LACPCA and NTOA lament that the Ninth Circuit Court, while upholding the unqualified "authority" of police to arrest people at their discretion, "has deprived officers of any lawful way of enforcing that authority, at least when the suspect is not engaged in violence directed towards the officers" and has "unnecessarily limited the amount of force that can be used against a suspect who refrains from using violence against the police" (emphasis added).

What the police unions who filed that brief are demanding is an open-ended grant of unlimited "authority" to use "pain compliance" against people who passively resist abduction by police. The question of using violent means to subdue a violent criminal suspect is not implicated in any way by this case.

In their petition for certiorari, the officers – whose actions, remember, were upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court – complain that the ruling could "prohibit the use of any low-level physical force against an actually resisting suspect who does not present an imminent threat of harm to the officers, a result that could strip law enforcement of any reasonable and practical means of enforcing the law."

To which a person whose mind is not hostage to totalitarian assumptions would reply: "And the problem with this is…?"

In a reasonably free society, police (actually, peace officers) would not presume to "enforce" the law; they would track down and arrest people plausibly suspected of committing crimes against person and property. They would not be permitted to violate the unconditional law of non-aggression by initiating force, or issue what they assume to be "lawful orders" to people who are not suspected of actual crimes. They certainly would not be permitted to employ "pain compliance" in any situation that didn’t involve legitimate defense against an actual aggressor.

Remarkably, in their amicus brief the officers who committed what should be prosecuted as a felonious assault on Brooks asserted that "it is well established that police officers need not use the least amount of force in effecting an arrest."

Once again, we’re invited to believe that there would be apocalyptic consequences if police were inhibited in the use of disproportionate force to compel non-violent "suspects" to submit to their supposed authority.

Under the standard prescribed in the amicus briefs filed on behalf of the officers who assaulted Brooks, it’s difficult to find fault with the actions of Beaumont, California Police Officer Enoch Clark.

On February 21, Clark stopped a woman named Monique Hernandez on suspicion of DUI. When Clark tried to handcuff her, Hernandez resisted. Clark’s preferred method of "pain compliance" was a JPX device – a weapon that employs a gunpowder charge to fire a stream of pepper spray at roughly 400 miles an hour.

The JPX weapon is designed for use against armed assailants at a distance of 6 to 15 feet. Its payload of weaponized OC spray is propelled over that distance at less than three one-hundredths of a second, making it (in the words of the company’s promotional literature) "too fast to avoid…. The effect is immediate; there is no chance to resist."

Clark – a veteran officer and chairman of the local police officers union – fired his JPX gun into Hernandez’s right temple at a distance of roughly ten inches. The impact shattered the woman’s right eye and inflicted irreparable damage to her left eye as well.

The officer has been indicted on four felony charges. His attorney insists that the officer’s attack was justified in order "to gain compliance and in defense of his person." If the claims made by and on behalf of the officers who assaulted Mailaka Brooks are sound – if police officers are not legally required to use minimal force when dealing with non-violent "suspects" – it’s difficult to see how Clark’s actions were improper, even though they resulted in Monique Rodriguez being permanently blinded.

"It was Brooks’s recalcitrance and resistance that prompted her treatment," sniffs the officers’ petition for certiorari. "Under both state and federal law she did not have a right to resist her arrest," which purportedly means that the officers were permitted – nay, required – to employ "pain compliance" techniques against her until she submitted.

Wouldn’t the same principle apply to the actions of Enoch Clark in dealing with the equally recalcitrant Monique Hernandez? His police union attorney certainly thinks so. And let us not forget that any effort to inhibit the police in their sacred mission to impose order would constitute an existential threat to our society.

Deny an intrepid hero in body armor the option of tasing a pregnant woman – or kicking her in the stomach hard enough to cause the near-term infant to defecate in the womb – a reign of terror will ensue, with the "criminal underworld" arising to devour us all.

Indonesia Coasts In Danger For Massive Shrimp Farming

In an exclusive investigation, the Ecologist Film Unit reveals the impact of Indonesia's plans to privatise its entire 90,000 km coastline

Set against the looming construction cranes and gleaming plastic roofs of the newly built factories, the last remaining fishing village in Jakarta Bay looks increasingly out of place.

For countless generations the community here at Marunda Kepu village have eeked out a living from the sea; farming fish, collecting mussels and setting nets in the estuaries and shallow coastal waters of this region of Northern Java.

But today they live in squalour, penned in by industrial developments all around them. Puddles of stagnant water surround the crumbling brick homes and disease is rife.

'My livelihood is the sea. If there is no more access to the coast or the sea then where should i go? How can I live?' asked Habiba, as she nursed her sick child.

She is referring to the impact of the ‘coastal areas and small island management law’, or HP-3 as it is more commonly known. If passed, HP-3 will allow all of the commonly-held land on and around the Marunda Kepu community, as well as the coastal waters and the seabed up to 12 km offshore, to be offered to the highest bidder, on leases lasting up to 60 years.

'HP-3 will definitely destroy our livelihood: the more...

Shrimp Farming Tragic Disappearance Of Mangroves

Mangroves are the unsung heroes of the biosphere, says Kennedy Warne in his comprehensive study. So why are we so ready to rip them up in pursuit of tropical golf courses and all-you-can-eat shrimp?

Mangroves, it must be said, do not get their dues. The tangled, swampy growths of trees and plants that line humid coastlines support thousands of communities worldwide. For the Indian and Bangladeshi residents of the Sundarbans, they provide food, building materials and medicine, while acting as a giant coastal defence from tropical storms for the Bimini Islands off the coast of Florida. And, while they amount to less than 0.1 per cent of the Earth’s total land surface area, they also act as giant carbon sinks, sending one tenth of all land-derived organic carbon into the ocean.

In spite of this, mangroves aren’t the most popular of the ecosystems. John Steinbeck summed up their traditional image, describing ‘the foul odor and impenetrable quality’ that surrounds them, before adding bluntly: ‘No one likes the mangroves.’ And this, perhaps, is the reason why conservation of mangrove forests has fallen far behind that of other endangered habitats.

Kennedy Warne, however, is one man who does like mangroves. As he writes: ‘Documentary makers aren’t beating a path to the mangroves; their eyes are on more charismatic ecosystems, such as Amazonian rainforests and coral reefs.’ He describes them as ‘misunderstood’ and urges more respect for these ‘Rainforests of the Sea’. Warne’s interest in them was first documented in a 2007 National Geographic article, and Let Them Eat Shrimp continues his reporting on the mangroves of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the threat posed to them by the colossal shrimp farms and expansive holiday resorts being built on deforested mangrove sites.

He meets the people who depend on the mangroves such as Aracely Caicedo, a conchera - cockle collector - who is paid a measly $7 per hundred shellfish she harvests from the mangroves of Tambillo, Ecuador but who cannot seek a higher, fairer price, because she is in debt to the boat owners who take the concheras out to the swamps. In the Sundarbans, he meets the mouali, honey collectors, who set off firecrackers to ward away the tigers that prowl the tangles, while in Bimini, he takes a boat ride with Ansel Saunders, who took Martin Luther King to a secluded mangrove lagoon to work on his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

His efforts are exhaustive, and the book brims with facts, statistics and adroitly chosen anecdotes to open each chapter. His writing is taut, a quality which occasionally renders it a little heavy-handed. This is a shame: Warne’s personal connection to the underwater rainforests is expressed in a tenderly reflective author’s note recalling his childhood in New Zealand, which is slotted in at the end, though could have easily sat earlier in the book.

The title itself is a little misleading. While Warne confronts the rapidly expanding shrimp aquaculture industry, his book is primarily about the mangroves, both a paean for their multiple ecological talents and a lament for their disappearance. However, as he says, mangroves and shrimp are ‘intertwined, ecologically and economically’.

Since the process of cultivating shrimp on thousand-hectare farms was mastered in Japan in the 1960s, the mangroves have suffered. They presented cheap land which governments were happy to sell off to shrimp farmers, providing an injection of income for the mangrove-hosting developing nations in Asia and Latin America. As Warne points out, the 1990s spelt the beginning of ‘a devastating double whammy for the forests of the Third World’, as both rainforests and mangroves fell prey to commerce, the shrimp farms tallying up ‘like cancer cells’.

A biased battle has since been waged between the masses who live and work in the mangroves and the gun-toting shrimp farmers, a battle which has cost lives: an Ecuadorian cockle collector was killed in 2008 by a shrimp farm security guard who suspected him of trying to steal shrimp, while another was killed in a similar situation, set upon by an attack dog.

Low Dose Radiation Very Deadly- Video

Fukushima Radiation Is Killing The Pacific Ocean

Just prior to the Supermoon of March 18th, 2011, the world witnessed a natural and manmade disaster of epic proportions. What transpired off the coast of Honshu Island, Japan on March 11 has forever altered the planet and irremediably affected the global environment. Whereas the earthquake and tsunami proved to be truly apocalyptic events for the people of Japan, the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima is proving to be cataclysmic for the entire world.

Most of the world community is still unaware of the extremely profound and far-reaching effects that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has had. If the nations of the world really understood the implications of the actual ‘fallout’ – past, current and future – the current nuclear energy paradigm would be systematically shut down. For those of us who are in the know, it is incumbent upon each of us to disseminate the relevant information/data necessary to forever close down the nuclear power industry around the globe.

There is now general agreement that the state of the art of nuclear power generation is such that it was deeply flawed and fundamentally dangerous from the very beginning. This fact was completely understood to be the case by the industry insiders and original financiers of every nuclear power plant ever built. Nuclear engineers had a very good understanding of just how vulnerable the design, engineering and architecture was at the startup of this industry. Nevertheless, they proceeded with this ill-fated enterprise at the behest of who?

Therefore, this begs the question, “Why would such an inherently unsafe technology and unstable design be implemented worldwide in the first place?”

More importantly, “Who ought to be responsible for mitigating this ongoing planetary nuclear disaster?” And, is there any practical way this predicament can be fixed? Is there technology available which can address this situation in any meaningful way?

With the increasing energy needs of the global economy pushing energy-poor nations like Japan into nuclear power, the economic incentive has always overridden good judgment. Especially in Japan do we see a nation that was literally set up to be a poster child for the nuclear power industry. This, in a place that is known to be the most seismically active region in the world!

“Does anyone in their right mind believe that nuclear power plants can ever be designed, engineered or constructed to withstand 9.0 earthquakes followed by 15 meter high tsunamis? Sorry if we offend, but such a display of so deadly a combination of ignorance and arrogance must represent the very height of hubris. Particularly in view of the inevitable consequences which have manifested at Fukushima, how is it that so few saw this pre-ordained and disastrous outcome, except by willful blindness?”
— Japan: A Nation Consigned To Nuclear Armageddon

Numerous headlines over the past few weeks have been relentless in trumpeting Japan’s begrudging response to this global wakeup call. For the first time since nuclear power has been used in the land of Nippon, all 55 nuclear power plants now sit idle. This is of course very good news for the people of Japan. The question now remains how to go about remediating all of these vulnerable and unsafe nuclear reactors. Particularly because of those nuclear plants that are located anywhere along the Japanese coastline is this remediation imperative an existential necessity.

Japan nuclear power-free as last reactor shuts

Japan switches off last nuclear power plant; will it cope?

International Forces Are Responsible For Fukushima;
An Immediate Global Response Ought To Formulated

Since the very first news about the Fukushima nuclear disaster came to light, many industry researchers and various investigations have unveiled the multi-decade plot to foist nuclear power onto the islands of Japan. The many forces arrayed against the Japanese people were so formidable that this ill-fated enterprise could only come to such an unfortunate outcome. Just as humankind learned from the folly of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fukushima has served as an example of how not to implement nuclear power generation.

“Quite purposefully, no one ever stopped to consider the obvious and far-reaching ramifications of constructing 55 nuclear reactors on the most seismically active piece of property on planet Earth! And, that doesn’t count another 12 reactors in various stages of planning or development.”
— An Open Letter to the People of Japan

If Japan is to remain habitable for future generations, there are certain (nuclear) matters confronting every corner of this island nation which must be addressed post haste. We know the people of Japan are up to it. The real question is whether the powers who have controlled their destiny are willing to back off for once since WWII.

Can the USA, the UK, Israel and France completely let go of their control of the Japanese economy, energy infrastructure and political process? Not only does the very existence of Japan rely on this relinquishment of control, the futures of the USA, UK and France do as well.

“Tokyo has the largest greater metro population in the world at about 34.3 million. Tokyo has the largest GDP of all major cities in the world – larger than both New York City and London. Tokyo is the economic/financial capital of the world’s 3rd largest national economy, as well as the primary economic engine of East Asia.”
– As Fukushima Goes, So Goes Japan

Most are not aware, even at the very highest levels of the Global Control Matrix, but as Fukushima goes, so goes Japan. Taken to its logical conclusion we can say with absolute certainty that as Japan goes, so goes the entire planet. In reality, Japan is not only a super-charged trigger point in the Pacific Ring of Fire, it is also a lynchpin for the world economy as the previous article well explains. Therefore, we would highly advise the Anglo-American power structure to take proper responsibility for this unprecedented global catastrophe and show up in great force on the Honshu coastline to remediate and de-activate wherever still possible.

Global “Manhattan Project” Required

It is quite quizzical that those who run the Global Control Matrix have not yet seized the day. What is clearly at stake is the Pacific Ocean, its shorelines, numerous national economies, as well as myriad ecosystems and aquatic environments.
If they persist in this display of passivity and willful neglect, the planet may never recover. Surely, we can offer the observation that as the Pacific becomes exposed to massive volumes of radioactive water being dumped from the Fukushima site, eventually this radiation will find its way to the four corners of that ocean and beyond.

There has been a steady barrage of headlines lately aimed at those who can respond to this global catastrophe with some degree of cogency. A uniquely cohesive international response is urgently required if there is to be any hope of a successful remediation. Only a fully represented international think tank and implementation team has any chance of formulating a strategy that might be successful at fixing Fukushima.

We’re thinking of a Manhattan Project type of gravity. After all, if such a serious project was established in the interest of creating an atomic bomb, surely a similar endeavor can be initiated in the interest of saving the same country, that was ravaged by nuclear war, from Fukushima-generated radiation.

Japan has clearly shown that this disaster is way beyond their ability to manage and capacity to address in any meaningful way. Their entire culture seems to ensure that the real problems will be constantly swept under the rug. The problem this time around is that there may be no rug soon to sweep it under.

As Fukushima Goes, So Goes Japan

The preceding article clearly sets forth the thesis that if Tokyo requires evacuation in the future, the Japanese economy will immediately collapse. This eventuality would merely be the first domino to fall toward the collapse of the entire global economy. The prospect at this point is so real that those decision-makers at the top of the Global Control Matrix can’t afford not to inaugurate a worldwide effort to remediate Fukushima.

The Pacific Ocean Is Dying

How about the rest of the Pacific Ocean? What does the future hold in store for the largest body of water on Earth. One that circulates more water than any other ocean and possesses more coastline than all the others put together. The following headlines portend the future health of the Pacific, so all are encouraged to take serious notice.

Fukushima Daiichi Worker: Nothing can be done except to leak radioactive water! — Honestly feel that we are dumping massive amounts into ocean — Will spread all over world, reaching Hawaii and US soon

Nuclear Professor: 5,000 Hiroshima bombs worth of cesium-137 in spent fuel pool No. 4 — “Low estimate”

Doomsday scenarios spread about No. 4 reactor at Fukushima plant

Former Ambassador: No. 4 reactor a top national security issue for entire world — Could start “the ultimate catastrophe”

Japan Nuclear Expert: Humanity as a whole has literally never experienced something like Fukushima — “We will be fighting this radiation on the order of tens or hundreds of years”

The upshot of each of these articles is that the Pacific Ocean is extremely vulnerable to the radioactive waste being dumped into her waters at Fukushima. Should another catastrophic earthquake occur, it could create a new and more complicated nuclear disaster scenario that is truly irreparable. Even without any seismic activity affecting the nuclear sites, the current state of affairs has taken for granted that the Pacific Ocean will become a nuclear dumping ground for decades to come. It has not been lost on us that such an inevitability appears to be the only practical expedient available.

We are truly saddened by the great loss of marine life and harm to myriad aquatic and shoreline ecosystems. As the nuclear radiation is exported around the Asian Ring of Fire, genetic mutation will begin to affect every form of life — from phytoplankton to whales, from seabirds to mangroves, from dolphins to krill. Everything that lives near the Pacific will be at risk to some degree. Anyone who lives, works or plays in or around the Pacific will be compelled to evaluate their relationship to this great ocean.

What have we done to Mother Earth by siting nuclear power plants in the most seismically active region of the world?!

What in God’s Creation can possibly be done to fix it?

Never in the history of humankind has the planet been confronted with such a grave set of circumstances. Fukushima represents all that can go wrong when scientific applications and technological advancement within a crude industrial context have gone awry. Unfortunately, given the many trajectories that numerous fields of technological innovation are currently on, Fukushima and the BP Gulf oil spill of 2012 may only be the beginning of an accelerating period of technospheric breakdown which will plague the Earth.

Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown Converge to Create Global Perfect Storm

Cosmic Convergence Research Group
Submitted: May 5, 2012
cosmicconvergence2012@gmail.com

Author’s Note:
NuclearReader.info has provided an invaluable service to the worldwide internet community by giving away their ebook currently linked here: http://www.nuclearreader.info/
The first chapter entitled “Hazards of Low Level Radioactivity” ought to be a must read for anyone impacted by Fukushima.

Also of critical significance, there is a phenomenon known as the Photoelectric Effect which weighs heavily throughout the entire contamination zone associated with the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The following article gives an important overview for those who want to know what we are really dealing with as a planetary civilization.
Photoelectron Induction in Uranium Particles by Chris Busby, PhD

Addendum:
There has been no mention in this essay of the massive amount of debris pollution brought about by the Japan earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011. We have chosen a photo-documentary instead to portray this state of affairs in the following addendum.

Wild Elephants Gather To Mourn Loss Of Their Human Friend

For 12 hours, two herds of wild South African elephants slowly made their way through the Zululand bush until they reached the house of late author Lawrence Anthony, the conservationist who saved their lives.

The formerly violent, rogue elephants, destined to be shot a few years ago as pests, were rescued and rehabilitated by Anthony, who had grown up in the bush and was known as the “Elephant Whisperer.”

For two days the herds loitered at Anthony’s rural compound on the vast Thula Thula game reserve in the South African KwaZulu – to say good-bye to the man they loved. But how did they know he had died March 7?

Known for his unique ability to calm traumatized elephants, Anthony had become a legend. He is the author of three books, Baghdad Ark, detailing his efforts to rescue the animals at Baghdad Zoo during the Iraqi war, the forthcoming The Last Rhinos, and his bestselling The Elephant Whisperer.

There are two elephant herds at Thula Thula. According to his son Dylan, both arrived at the Anthony family compound shortly after Anthony’s death.

“They had not visited the house for a year and a half and it must have taken them about 12 hours to make the journey,” Dylan is quoted in various local news accounts. “The first herd arrived on Sunday and the second herd, a day later. They all hung around for about two days before making their way back into the bush.”

Elephants have long been known to mourn their dead. In India, baby elephants often are raised with a boy who will be their lifelong “mahout.” The pair develop legendary bonds – and it is not uncommon for one to waste away without a will to live after the death of the other.

Expert Update On Continuing Fukushima Radiactive Contamination

European VW Passat's Get Almost Double US Mileage

Internment Camp Guards Needed In The US

Look at a current Job Advertisement:- Job Title As an Internment/Resettlement Specialist for the Army National Guard, you will ensure the smooth running of military confinement/correctional facility or detention/internment facility, similar to those duties conducted by civilian Corrections Officers. This will require you to know proper procedures and military law; and have the ability to think quickly in high-stress situations. Specific duties may include assisting with supervision and management operations; providing facility security; providing custody, control, supervision, and escort; and counseling individual prisoners in rehabilitative programs.

Corrections Officer Internment/Resettlement Specialist
Job Details
City: Pensacola/Panama City
State: Florida
Country: USA
Company Name: Army National Guard
Job Category: Legal/Law Enforcement/Security
Job Description

So that’s not a normal Prison Guard is it! Alex Jones has always spoken of Martial Law coming and the only alternative to FEMA Camps is, Martial Law.

The Bush-era proposal would also have required airlines and cruise lines to store more information about domestic and international passengers, such as e-mail addresses, traveling companions and return flight information. The information would be subject to review by federal officials in a health emergency, though it would be voluntary for passengers to provide the data.

The proposals to limit liberty represent a dangerous precedent to constitutional theory, particularly when there’s almost no evidence it will matter. It wouldn’t surprise me if they try to sneak this past in August, when people are away.

The next stage I would expect would be to move more US Troops out of the USA on deployment so they don’t become a threat as Patriots and bring in Foreign Troops

Censorship & Disinformation

You will not see an article like this appear in any American mainstream media outlet.

Barack Hussein Obama is an illegal President. He is not now nor has he ever been eligible to be a candidate for or hold that office because his father was a British subject at the time of his birth.

Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution requires that all candidates for the Presidency be "natural born citizens." As defined in the binding Supreme Court precedent of Minor v. Happersett (1875) and confirmed in the subsequent ruling of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and others, all candidates for the offices of President and Vice President must be second generation Americans, that is, US citizens of citizen parents at the time of birth.

President and Vice President are the only U.S. political offices with that requirement. It was the intent of the American Founding Fathers that the chief executive and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces would not have dual allegiance or loyalty to a foreign power.

There is no ambiguity, although the Democrat and Republican parties and the media are and have been deliberately trying to confuse the American public as to the true meaning of natural born citizenship.

Case in point.

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On May 1, 2012, Fox News Channel anchor Bret Baier posted an explanation of the term natural born citizen that was so factually incorrect that it must be considered propaganda.

It is well beyond the scope of this or perhaps any single article to document the full extent of the censorship conducted and the amount of disinformation disseminated, which has continued non-stop since the onset of the 2008 election cycle.

Why did that happen? The cause stemmed from political expediency and cowardice.

Since 1975, there have been numerous attempts by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to redefine or amend the Article II "natural born citizen" clause.

Having failed to change it legally, politicians seized the opportunity to amend the Constitution by a political fait accompli through the unexpected victory of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democrat Presidential primary.

Long before the 2008 campaign, however, Obama supporters were already helping the candidate either hide his genuine personal history or create a false one.

The censorship and disinformation campaign about Obama's ineligibility had its origins in February 2008 about the time he began to overtake Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Presidential primary.

Anticipating a likely challenge, Obama supporters, instead of reacting defensively, went on the attack through a fabricated controversy, sustained by the media, which questioned the eligibility of Republican Presidential candidate Senator John McCain. The basis of the challenge was that McCain was born in a Panamanian hospital while his U.S. Navy officer father and his U.S. citizen mother were serving at a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone.

The fake controversy was settled in April 2008 through Senate Resolution 511, which, in essence, was a political deal struck between the Democrats and Republicans that would provide validation for McCain and, at least, cover for Obama on the issue of eligibility.

SR 511, a non-binding resolution with an unrecorded vote, had no force of law, but by passing it Congress created the conditions whereby the Constitution could be amended de facto through a back-room political agreement.

Republican involvement in SR 511 and the fear of being branded a "racist" prevented any meaningful vetting of candidate Obama after he secured the Democrat Presidential nomination in June 2008.

Thus began the conspiracy of silence and the disinformation campaign by the political establishment and the media.

Given the effort to prevent discussion of Constitutional ineligibility, it should come as no surprise that the politicians and media also protected Obama from investigation of allegations involving a forged birth certificate, a forged Selective Service registration and the use of a Social Security Number not issued to him.

The Democrats and the media don't want to discuss ineligibility and criminality because they want Obama re-elected.

The Republicans can't talk about those issues because of their dereliction of duty, their complicity in a cover-up and their unashamed cowardice.

Regardless of who wins the election in November, it is and has been the intention of both political parties and the media to bury forever questions regarding Obama's ineligibility and crimes.

The truth would shake the American political system to its core because exposing Obama would also expose the endemic political corruption in Washington, D.C.

It is all about power and the financial rewards it reaps. The politicians and the media have it and they intend to keep it by any means necessary.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of "Afghanistan and the Culture of Military Leadership". He receives email lawrence.sellin@gmail.com

TSA Considers 18 Month Old Potential Terrorist

Eighteen-month-old Riyanna has been called a lot of things: cute, adorable and now ... a suspected terrorist.

She was called that on Tuesday night at the Ft Lauderdale Airport. She and her parents had just boarded a JetBlue flight when an airline employee approached them and asked them to get off the plane, saying representatives from the Transportation Security Agency wanted to speak to them.

"And I said, 'For what?'" Riyanna's mother told only WPBF 25 News on Wednesday. "And he said, 'Well, it's not you or your husband. Your daughter was flagged as no fly.' I said, 'Excuse me?'"

Riyanna's father was flabbergasted.

"It's absurd," he said. "It made no sense. Why would an 18-month-old child be on a no-fly list?"

MUG SHOTS: Who Got Arrested In South Florida?

Riyanna's parents, who asked not to be identified, said they think they know the answer to that question. They believe they were profiled because they are both of Middle Eastern descent. Riyanna's mother wears a hijab, a traditional head scarf. That's why they have asked to remain anonymous. They said they're concerned about repurcussions. That said, they are both Americans, born and raised in New Jersey, just like their daughter.

Riyanna's parents said once they were taken off the plane, they were met by TSA agents and made to stand in the terminal for about 30 minutes.

"We were put on display like a circus act because my wife wears a hijab," Riyanna's father said.

Inspriing Ron Paul Video

The Sunscreen Scam ~Does Sunscreen Cause Cancer?

This is the scam:

'Tell them that the sun causes skin cancer. Tell them that they need sunscreen to protect them from the sun. Skin cancer increases due to the chemicals in sunscreen and you say that this proves that the sun causes cancer and you should use even more sunscreen - which then increases the rate of skin cancer still further.

What they don't tell you is that without vitamin D3 from the sun the body becomes subject to a range of diseases (including cancer) for which Big Pharma and its on-the-payroll Medical Mafia prescribe ever more expensive drugs and death-sentence chemotherapy that cause far more problems than they even begin to address.

They also don't tell you that cholesterol (yes, yet another manufactured 'demon') is fundamental to the process of transforming ultraviolet light from the sun into vitamin D3 in the body. So they tell you that cholesterol causes heart disease (bollocks) and that you should take statins (which do cause heart disease) to lower your cholesterol.

Lower cholesterol means less vitamin D3 absorbed by the body, which means a range of diseases that follow, and more sunscreen also means less vitamin D3 and more skin cancer.

Do most doctors know this? No, the vast majority are just ignorant repeaters singing from the Medical Mafia songsheet because they know no better, while the few who do know still tell their patients what they are well aware is nonsense to protect their careers.' - David Icke

'Who would think that sunscreen causes cancer? It has been only a fairly recent development, but it still could cause some serious shock and awe when everyone figures out that conventional sunscreen found in drugstores nationally could be a potential risk factor for skin cancer. Sunscreens are made to protect and help your body, so why are we finding out that sunscreen causes cancer? It could be simply widespread ignorance, or it could be that the FDA has kept this secret under wraps for at least a decade.'