Higher Minimum Wages
by Walter E. Williams
In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama proposed raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour. That would be almost a 25 percent increase. Let's look at the president's proposal, but before doing so, let's ask some other economic questions.
Are people responsive to changes in price? For example, if the price of cars rose by 25 percent, would people purchase as many cars? Supposing housing prices rose by 25 percent, what would happen to sales? Those are big-ticket items, but what about smaller-priced items? If a supermarket raised its prices by 25 percent, would people purchase as much? It's not rocket science to conclude that when prices rise, people adjust their behavior by purchasing less.
It's almost childish to do so, but I'm going to ask questions about 25 percent price changes in the other way. What responses would people have if the price of cars or housing fell by 25 percent? What would happen to supermarket sales if prices fell by 25 percent? Again, it doesn't require deep thinking to guess that people would purchase more.
This behavior in economics is known as the first fundamental law of demand. It holds that the higher the price of something the less people will take and that the lower the price the more people will take. There are no known exceptions to the law of demand. Any economist who could prove a real-world exception would probably be a candidate for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and other honors.
Dr. Alan Krueger, an economist, is chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. I wonder whether he advised the president that though people surely would be responsive to 25 percent increases in the prices of other goods and services, they would not be responsive to a 25 percent wage increase. I'd bet the rent money that you couldn't get Krueger to answer the following statement by saying either true or false: A 25 percent increase in the price of labor would not affect employment. If anything, his evasive response would be that found in a White House memo, reported in The Wall Street Journal's article titled "The Minority Youth Unemployment Act" (Feb. 15), namely that "a range of economic studies show that modestly raising the minimum wage increases earnings and reduces poverty without measurably reducing employment." The WSJ article questions that statement: "Note the shifty adverbs, 'modestly' and 'measurably,' which can paper over a lot of economic damage." My interpretation of the phrase "without measurably reducing employment" is that only youngsters, mostly black youngsters, would be affected by an increase.
University of California, Irvine economist David Neumark has examined more than 100 major academic studies on the minimum wage. He states that the White House claim "grossly misstates the weight of the evidence." About 85 percent of the studies "find a negative employment effect on low-skilled workers." A 1976 American Economic Association survey found that 90 percent of its members agreed that increasing the minimum wage raises unemployment among young and unskilled workers. A 1990 survey found that 80 percent of economists agreed with the statement that increases in the minimum wage cause unemployment among the youth and low-skilled. If you're looking for a consensus in most fields of study, examine the introductory and intermediate college textbooks in the field. Economics textbooks that mention the minimum wage say that it increases unemployment for the least skilled worker.
As detailed in my recent book Race and Economics (2012), during times of gross racial discrimination, black unemployment was lower than white unemployment and blacks were more active in the labor market. For example, in 1948, black teen unemployment was less than white teen unemployment, and black teens were more active in the labor market. Today black teen unemployment is about 40 percent; for whites, it is about 20 percent. The minimum wage law weighs heavily in this devastating picture. Supporters of higher minimum wages want to index it to inflation so as to avoid its periodic examination.
Link:
http://lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams158.html
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Ron Paul interview...
The New Ron Paul Era
Listen to Ron Paul interview here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2013/02/27/352-the-new-ron-paul-era/
Listen to Ron Paul interview here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2013/02/27/352-the-new-ron-paul-era/
Why are veterans being disarmed???
Why is the Federal Government Disarming Veterans?
Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
Veterans around the country are receiving letters from the federal government informing them that because of alleged physical or mental disability their financial decisions will be made by a government-appointed “fiduciary” and they will be forbidden from “purchasing, possessing, receiving or transporting a firearm or ammunition.”
This is not a warning of something that might happen; these letters are being sent out everyday by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as part of its Fiduciary Program.
Citing the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, VA is warning veterans labeled as incompetent that they will be “fined and/or imprisoned” if they are found in possession of a gun or ammunition.
The final decision on whether the veteran should be disarmed and prevented from ever owning a gun or ammunition will include an assessment of the following:
• The willingness to serve and abide by all agreements
• An interview with a VA representative
• Credit report review
• An inquiry into the criminal background, and
• Interviews with character witnesses
For years now, the Obama administration has followed a policy of targeting vets, taking away their guns, imprisoning them, and labeling them as “right wing extremists” and potential threats to national security.
Consider this quote from a Department of Homeland Security report entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment”:
The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.
Veterans are being asked to serve tour after tour in unconstitutional foreign conflicts with no identified enemy, then returning home and having their most basic right denied by the very government that asked them to sacrifice their lives.
There was a story last year about a police raid on the house of an Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient in Ohio. The county sheriff executed a search warrant and seized the man’s guns for the “safety of the defendant and the general public.”
Although unnamed, the government ruled the man was mentally incompetent to handle his own affairs or to own a weapon.
Readers also may remember the recent shocking case of Brandon Raub. The New American’s Jack Kenny reported on the story last August. Kenny wrote that Raub was:
held involuntarily as a psychiatric patient at the Salem Veterans Affairs hospital in Virginia over anti-government postings on his Facebook page. Raub, a Marine combat veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was visited by FBI and Secret Service agents at his North Chesterfield home on August 16, then taken by police under an emergency custody order to John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was transferred to the veterans hospital on August 20. A medical assessment of his condition at John Randolph described him as paranoid and delusional, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. But after an hour-long hearing in Hopewell Circuit Court August 23, Judge W. Allan Sharrett dismissed an involuntary commitment petition as invalid.
“The petition is so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy,” said the release order signed by Sharrett, vacating the order of Special Justice Walter Douglas Stokes to detain Raub for 30 days. Stokes, who presides over commitment hearings, also ordered Raub’s transfer to the VA hospital in Salem, about 180 miles from his home. Judge Sharrett said he was shocked to find the commitment order contained no grounds for holding Raub.
The irrefutable fact is had the Rutherford Institute not stepped in and defended Raub, the young man would likely still be unconscionably held in a government mental hospital at the mercy of Obama administration bureaucrats.
Apart from the government’s reprehensible quest to disarm veterans, brand them as mentally ill, and treat them as terrorists, there is the fact that all this is being done in violation of the veterans’ right to due process protected by the Fifth Amendment.
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due processof law.”
As in the case of so many other constitutional impediments to its statist goals, the president and his subordinates are ignoring the Fifth Amendment and arresting, disarming, and imprisoning veterans without due process.
Of course, the VA assures veterans subject to disarmament that if they file a timely objection to the decision, a VA board will consider their appeal. This is hardly the rigorous legal process required before the government can constitutionally deprive citizens — or any person — of their most basic constitutional rights.
Why is the president targeting veterans? Michael Connelly proposes the following possible explanation:
The reality is that Obama will not get all of the gun control measures he wants through Congress, and they wouldn’t be enough for him anyway. He wants a totally disarmed America so there will be no resistance to his plans to rob us of our nation. That means we have to ask who will be next. If you are receiving a Social Security check will you get one of these letters? Will the government declare that you are incompetent because of your age and therefore banned from firearm ownership. It certainly fits in with the philosophy and plans of the Obama administration. It is also certain that our military veterans don’t deserve this and neither do any other Americans.
Or, as Michael Snyder wrote at the American Dream, “The federal government wants lots of warm bodies to throw into battle, but when those bodies get broken the government is not there to pick up the pieces.”
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/14629-why-is-the-federal-government-disarming-veterans?
Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
Veterans around the country are receiving letters from the federal government informing them that because of alleged physical or mental disability their financial decisions will be made by a government-appointed “fiduciary” and they will be forbidden from “purchasing, possessing, receiving or transporting a firearm or ammunition.”
This is not a warning of something that might happen; these letters are being sent out everyday by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as part of its Fiduciary Program.
Citing the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, VA is warning veterans labeled as incompetent that they will be “fined and/or imprisoned” if they are found in possession of a gun or ammunition.
The final decision on whether the veteran should be disarmed and prevented from ever owning a gun or ammunition will include an assessment of the following:
• The willingness to serve and abide by all agreements
• An interview with a VA representative
• Credit report review
• An inquiry into the criminal background, and
• Interviews with character witnesses
For years now, the Obama administration has followed a policy of targeting vets, taking away their guns, imprisoning them, and labeling them as “right wing extremists” and potential threats to national security.
Consider this quote from a Department of Homeland Security report entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment”:
The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.
Veterans are being asked to serve tour after tour in unconstitutional foreign conflicts with no identified enemy, then returning home and having their most basic right denied by the very government that asked them to sacrifice their lives.
There was a story last year about a police raid on the house of an Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient in Ohio. The county sheriff executed a search warrant and seized the man’s guns for the “safety of the defendant and the general public.”
Although unnamed, the government ruled the man was mentally incompetent to handle his own affairs or to own a weapon.
Readers also may remember the recent shocking case of Brandon Raub. The New American’s Jack Kenny reported on the story last August. Kenny wrote that Raub was:
held involuntarily as a psychiatric patient at the Salem Veterans Affairs hospital in Virginia over anti-government postings on his Facebook page. Raub, a Marine combat veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was visited by FBI and Secret Service agents at his North Chesterfield home on August 16, then taken by police under an emergency custody order to John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was transferred to the veterans hospital on August 20. A medical assessment of his condition at John Randolph described him as paranoid and delusional, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. But after an hour-long hearing in Hopewell Circuit Court August 23, Judge W. Allan Sharrett dismissed an involuntary commitment petition as invalid.
“The petition is so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy,” said the release order signed by Sharrett, vacating the order of Special Justice Walter Douglas Stokes to detain Raub for 30 days. Stokes, who presides over commitment hearings, also ordered Raub’s transfer to the VA hospital in Salem, about 180 miles from his home. Judge Sharrett said he was shocked to find the commitment order contained no grounds for holding Raub.
The irrefutable fact is had the Rutherford Institute not stepped in and defended Raub, the young man would likely still be unconscionably held in a government mental hospital at the mercy of Obama administration bureaucrats.
Apart from the government’s reprehensible quest to disarm veterans, brand them as mentally ill, and treat them as terrorists, there is the fact that all this is being done in violation of the veterans’ right to due process protected by the Fifth Amendment.
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due processof law.”
As in the case of so many other constitutional impediments to its statist goals, the president and his subordinates are ignoring the Fifth Amendment and arresting, disarming, and imprisoning veterans without due process.
Of course, the VA assures veterans subject to disarmament that if they file a timely objection to the decision, a VA board will consider their appeal. This is hardly the rigorous legal process required before the government can constitutionally deprive citizens — or any person — of their most basic constitutional rights.
Why is the president targeting veterans? Michael Connelly proposes the following possible explanation:
The reality is that Obama will not get all of the gun control measures he wants through Congress, and they wouldn’t be enough for him anyway. He wants a totally disarmed America so there will be no resistance to his plans to rob us of our nation. That means we have to ask who will be next. If you are receiving a Social Security check will you get one of these letters? Will the government declare that you are incompetent because of your age and therefore banned from firearm ownership. It certainly fits in with the philosophy and plans of the Obama administration. It is also certain that our military veterans don’t deserve this and neither do any other Americans.
Or, as Michael Snyder wrote at the American Dream, “The federal government wants lots of warm bodies to throw into battle, but when those bodies get broken the government is not there to pick up the pieces.”
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/14629-why-is-the-federal-government-disarming-veterans?
We are the enemy...
DHS To Lease $10 Million Firearms Facility
Federal agency has purchased around 2 billion bullets over last year
Paul Joseph Watson
While the second amendment is under assault from gun control legislation across the country, the Department of Homeland Security is gearing up to use some of the roughly 2 billion rounds of ammunition it has purchased over the last year, by leasing a $10 million dollar firearms facility in Boston.
“The Department of Homeland Security, Office of Procurement Operations, Federal Protective Service Acquisition Division, East Consolidated Contracting Group has a requirement for a firearms facility within 25-miles of the Boston, Massachusetts area for use by the Federal Protective Service, Region 1 (New England),” states a solicitation posted on FedBizOpps.
The proposed contract will consist of a 12 month initial base period followed by two 12 month renewal options and further 6 month option, a total of 3 and a half years. The cost of leasing the facility is listed as $10 million dollars.
Further details about the firearms facility are unavailable because the documents for the solicitation are listed as “sensitive/secure” and only authorized companies are allowed to view the attached PDF file.
As the DHS attracts increased media attention over its acquisition of massive amounts of ammunition, the agency is becoming increasingly less transparent and preventing the public from seeing details of its purchase activity.
As we reported last year, in some solicitations the agency has redacted information pertaining to the amount of bullets purchased by blacking out figures in PDF files.
Whether the facility in Boston will be used for target practice, the storage of firearms and ammunition or both is unknown, but it is sure to provoke more questions about why Homeland Security appears to be gearing up for domestic disorder as it rapidly expands while the American people are having their right to bear arms eviscerated.
The DHS has committed to purchasing roughly 2 billion rounds of ammunition over the course of the last year, enough to fight a near 30 year war given that U.S. troops at the height of combat operations in Iraq only expended around 5.5 million bullets a month.
Last September, the DHS also purchased no less than 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles, labeling them “Personal Defense Weapons.”
Whether or not the DHS will purchase more shooting targets for use in its new Boston facility from Law Enforcement Targets Inc. remains to be seen. The company, which previously received $2 million dollars in contracts from the DHS, was forced to apologize last week after producing “no hesitation” threat targets of pregnant women, children and elderly gun owners in residential settings.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/dhs-to-lease-10-million-firearms-facility.html
Federal agency has purchased around 2 billion bullets over last year
Paul Joseph Watson
While the second amendment is under assault from gun control legislation across the country, the Department of Homeland Security is gearing up to use some of the roughly 2 billion rounds of ammunition it has purchased over the last year, by leasing a $10 million dollar firearms facility in Boston.
“The Department of Homeland Security, Office of Procurement Operations, Federal Protective Service Acquisition Division, East Consolidated Contracting Group has a requirement for a firearms facility within 25-miles of the Boston, Massachusetts area for use by the Federal Protective Service, Region 1 (New England),” states a solicitation posted on FedBizOpps.
The proposed contract will consist of a 12 month initial base period followed by two 12 month renewal options and further 6 month option, a total of 3 and a half years. The cost of leasing the facility is listed as $10 million dollars.
Further details about the firearms facility are unavailable because the documents for the solicitation are listed as “sensitive/secure” and only authorized companies are allowed to view the attached PDF file.
As the DHS attracts increased media attention over its acquisition of massive amounts of ammunition, the agency is becoming increasingly less transparent and preventing the public from seeing details of its purchase activity.
As we reported last year, in some solicitations the agency has redacted information pertaining to the amount of bullets purchased by blacking out figures in PDF files.
Whether the facility in Boston will be used for target practice, the storage of firearms and ammunition or both is unknown, but it is sure to provoke more questions about why Homeland Security appears to be gearing up for domestic disorder as it rapidly expands while the American people are having their right to bear arms eviscerated.
The DHS has committed to purchasing roughly 2 billion rounds of ammunition over the course of the last year, enough to fight a near 30 year war given that U.S. troops at the height of combat operations in Iraq only expended around 5.5 million bullets a month.
Last September, the DHS also purchased no less than 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles, labeling them “Personal Defense Weapons.”
Whether or not the DHS will purchase more shooting targets for use in its new Boston facility from Law Enforcement Targets Inc. remains to be seen. The company, which previously received $2 million dollars in contracts from the DHS, was forced to apologize last week after producing “no hesitation” threat targets of pregnant women, children and elderly gun owners in residential settings.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/dhs-to-lease-10-million-firearms-facility.html
If Italy falls???
Will Italy Be The Spark That Sets Off Financial Armageddon In Europe?
Mike Snyder
Is the financial collapse of Italy going to be the final blow that breaks the back of Europe financially? Most people don't realize this, but Italy is actually the third largest debtor in the entire world after the United States and Japan. Italy currently has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 120 percent, and Italy has a bigger national debt than anyone else in Europe does. That is why it is such a big deal that Italian voters have just overwhelmingly rejected austerity. The political parties led by anti-austerity candidates Silvio Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo did far better than anticipated. When you combine their totals, they got more than 50 percent of the vote. Italian voters have seen what austerity has done to Greece and Spain and they want no part of it. Unfortunately for Italian voters, it has been the promise of austerity that has kept the Italian financial system stable in recent months. Now that Italian voters have clearly rejected austerity, investors are fearing that austerity programs all over Europe may start falling apart. This is creating quite a bit of panic in European financial markets right now. On Tuesday, Italian stocks had their worst day in 10 months, Italian bond yields rose by the most that we have seen in 19 months, and the stocks of the two largest banks in Italy both fell by more than 8 percent. Italy is already experiencing its fourth recession since 2001, and unemployment has been steadily rising. If Italy is now "ungovernable", as many are saying, then what does that mean for the future of Italy? Will Italy be the spark that sets off financial armageddon in Europe?
All of Europe was totally shocked by the election results in Italy. As you can see from the following excerpt from a Bloomberg article, the vote was very divided and the anti-austerity parties did much better than had been projected...
The results showed pre-election favorite Pier Luigi Bersani won the lower house with 29.5 percent, less than a half a percentage point ahead of Silvio Berlusconi, the ex-premier fighting a tax-fraud conviction. Beppe Grillo, a former comedian, got 25.6 percent, while Monti scored 10.6 percent. Bersani and his allies got 31.6 percent of votes in the Senate, compared with 30.7 percent for Berlusconi and 23.79 percent for Grillo, according to final figures from the Interior Ministry.
So what do those election results mean for Italy and for the rest of Europe?
Right now, there is a lot of panic about those results. There is fear that what just happened in Italy could result in a rejection of austerity all over Europe...
"I think the election results (or lack thereof) are a negative for the euro, which will likely keep the currency pressured for some time," Omer Esiner, chief market analyst for Commonwealth Foreign Exchange, told me. But it's not just the political uncertainty in Italy, he adds. "The shocking gains made by anti-establishment parties in Italy signal a broad-based frustration with austerity among voters and a decisive rejection of the policies pushed by Germany in nations across the euro zone's periphery. That theme revives unresolved debt crisis issues and could threaten the continuity of reforms across other countries in the euro zone."
And the financial markets have clearly interpreted the election results in Europe as a very bad sign. Zero Hedge summarized some of the bad news out of Europe that we saw on Tuesday...
Swiss 2Y rates turned negative once again for the first time in a month; EURUSD relatively flatlined around 1.3050 (250 pips lower than pre-Italy); Europe's VIX exploded to almost 26% (from under 19% yesterday); and 3-month EUR-USD basis swaps plunged to their most liquidity-demanding level since 12/28. Spain and Italy (and Portugal) were the most hurt in bonds today as 2Y Italian spreads broke back above 200bps (surging over 50bps casting doubt on OMT support) and 3Y Spain yields broke above 3% once again. The Italian equity market suffered its equal biggest drop in 6 months falling back to 10 week lows (and down 14% from its end-Jan highs). Italian bond yields (and spreads) smashed higher - the biggest jump in 19 months as BTP futures volume exploded in the last two days.
Not that things in Europe were going well before all this.
In fact, the UK was just stripped of its prized AAA credit rating. That was huge news.
And check out some of the other things that have been going on in the rest of Europe...
In Spain, a major real estate company, Reyal Urbis, collapsed last week, leaving already battered banks on the hook for millions of euros in losses. Meanwhile, the government faces a corruption scandal and a steady stream of anti-austerity demonstrations. Thousands of people took to the streets again on Saturday, protesting deep cuts to health and other services, as well as hefty bank bailouts.
Life is no better in a large swath of the broader EU. In Britain, Moody’s cited the continuing economic weakness and the resulting risks to the government’s tight fiscal policy for its rating cut. In Bulgaria, where the government fell last week and the economy is in a shambles, rightists who joined mass demonstrations across the country burned a European Union flag and waved anti-EU banners. Other austerity-minded governments in the EU face similar murky political futures.
At this point, Europe is a complete and total economic mess and things are rapidly getting worse.
And that is really bad news because Europe is already in the midst of a recession. In fact, according to the BBC, the recession in the eurozone got even deeper during the fourth quarter of 2012...
The eurozone recession deepened in the final three months of 2012, official figures show.
The economy of the 17 nations in the euro shrank by 0.6% in the fourth quarter, which was worse than forecast.
It is the sharpest contraction since the beginning of 2009 and marks the first time the region failed to grow in any quarter during a calendar year.
But this is just the beginning.
The truth is that government debt is not even the greatest danger that Europe is facing. In reality, a collapse of the European banking system is of much greater concern.
Why is that?
Well, how would you feel if you woke up someday and every penny that you had in the bank was gone?
In the U.S. we don't have to worry about that so much because all deposits are insured by the FDIC, but in many European countries things work much differently.
For example, just check out what Graham Summers recently had to say about the banking system in Spain...
It’s a little known fact about the Spanish crisis is that when the Spanish Government merges troubled banks, it typically swaps out depositors’ savings for shares in the new bank.
So… when the newly formed bank goes bust, “poof” your savings are GONE. Not gone as in some Spanish version of the FDIC will eventually get you your money, but gone as in gone forever (see the above article for proof).
This is why Bankia’s collapse is so significant: in one move, former depositors at seven banks just lost virtually everything.
And this in a nutshell is Europe’s financial system today: a totally insolvent sewer of garbage debt, run by corrupt career politicians who have no clue how to fix it or their economies… and which results in a big fat ZERO for those who are nuts enough to invest in it.
Be warned. There are many many more Bankias coming to light in the coming months. So if you have not already taken steps to prepare for systemic failure, you NEED to do so NOW. We’re literally at most a few months, and very likely just a few weeks from Europe’s banks imploding, potentially taking down the financial system with them. Think I’m joking? The Fed is pumping hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars into EU banks right now trying to stop this from happening.
Like Graham Summers, I am extremely concerned about the European banking system. Europe actually has a much larger banking system than the U.S. does, and if the European banking system implodes that is going to send huge shockwaves to the farthest corners of the globe.
But if you want to believe that the "experts" in Europe and in the United States have "everything under control", then you might as well stop reading now.
After all, they are very highly educated and they know what they are doing, right?
But if you want to listen to some common sense, you might want to check out this very ominous warning from Karl Denninger...
I hope you're ready.
Congress has wasted the time it was given by the Europeans getting things "temporarily" under control. But they didn't actually get anything under control, as the Italian elections just showed.
Now, with the budget over there at risk of being abandoned, and fiscal restraint being abandoned (note: exactly what the US has been doing) the markets are recognizing exactly the risk that never in fact went away over the last couple of years.
It was hidden by lies, just as it has been hidden by lies here.
Bernanke's machinations and other games "gave" the Congress four years to do the right thing. They didn't, because that same "gift" also destroyed all market signals of urgency.
As such you have people like Krugman and others claiming that it's all ok and that we can spend with wild abandon, taking our fiscal medicine never.
They were wrong. Congress was wrong. The Republicans were wrong, the Democrats were wrong, and the Administration was wrong.
Congress is out of time; as I noted the deficit spending must stop now, irrespective of the fact that it will cause significant economic damage.
For the past couple of years, authorities in the U.S. and in Europe have been trying to delay the coming crisis by kicking the can down the road.
By doing so, they have been making the eventual collapse even worse.
And now time is running out.
I hope that you are ready.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/will-italy-be-the-spark-that-sets-off-financial-armageddon-in-europe
Mike Snyder
Is the financial collapse of Italy going to be the final blow that breaks the back of Europe financially? Most people don't realize this, but Italy is actually the third largest debtor in the entire world after the United States and Japan. Italy currently has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 120 percent, and Italy has a bigger national debt than anyone else in Europe does. That is why it is such a big deal that Italian voters have just overwhelmingly rejected austerity. The political parties led by anti-austerity candidates Silvio Berlusconi and Beppe Grillo did far better than anticipated. When you combine their totals, they got more than 50 percent of the vote. Italian voters have seen what austerity has done to Greece and Spain and they want no part of it. Unfortunately for Italian voters, it has been the promise of austerity that has kept the Italian financial system stable in recent months. Now that Italian voters have clearly rejected austerity, investors are fearing that austerity programs all over Europe may start falling apart. This is creating quite a bit of panic in European financial markets right now. On Tuesday, Italian stocks had their worst day in 10 months, Italian bond yields rose by the most that we have seen in 19 months, and the stocks of the two largest banks in Italy both fell by more than 8 percent. Italy is already experiencing its fourth recession since 2001, and unemployment has been steadily rising. If Italy is now "ungovernable", as many are saying, then what does that mean for the future of Italy? Will Italy be the spark that sets off financial armageddon in Europe?
All of Europe was totally shocked by the election results in Italy. As you can see from the following excerpt from a Bloomberg article, the vote was very divided and the anti-austerity parties did much better than had been projected...
The results showed pre-election favorite Pier Luigi Bersani won the lower house with 29.5 percent, less than a half a percentage point ahead of Silvio Berlusconi, the ex-premier fighting a tax-fraud conviction. Beppe Grillo, a former comedian, got 25.6 percent, while Monti scored 10.6 percent. Bersani and his allies got 31.6 percent of votes in the Senate, compared with 30.7 percent for Berlusconi and 23.79 percent for Grillo, according to final figures from the Interior Ministry.
So what do those election results mean for Italy and for the rest of Europe?
Right now, there is a lot of panic about those results. There is fear that what just happened in Italy could result in a rejection of austerity all over Europe...
"I think the election results (or lack thereof) are a negative for the euro, which will likely keep the currency pressured for some time," Omer Esiner, chief market analyst for Commonwealth Foreign Exchange, told me. But it's not just the political uncertainty in Italy, he adds. "The shocking gains made by anti-establishment parties in Italy signal a broad-based frustration with austerity among voters and a decisive rejection of the policies pushed by Germany in nations across the euro zone's periphery. That theme revives unresolved debt crisis issues and could threaten the continuity of reforms across other countries in the euro zone."
And the financial markets have clearly interpreted the election results in Europe as a very bad sign. Zero Hedge summarized some of the bad news out of Europe that we saw on Tuesday...
Swiss 2Y rates turned negative once again for the first time in a month; EURUSD relatively flatlined around 1.3050 (250 pips lower than pre-Italy); Europe's VIX exploded to almost 26% (from under 19% yesterday); and 3-month EUR-USD basis swaps plunged to their most liquidity-demanding level since 12/28. Spain and Italy (and Portugal) were the most hurt in bonds today as 2Y Italian spreads broke back above 200bps (surging over 50bps casting doubt on OMT support) and 3Y Spain yields broke above 3% once again. The Italian equity market suffered its equal biggest drop in 6 months falling back to 10 week lows (and down 14% from its end-Jan highs). Italian bond yields (and spreads) smashed higher - the biggest jump in 19 months as BTP futures volume exploded in the last two days.
Not that things in Europe were going well before all this.
In fact, the UK was just stripped of its prized AAA credit rating. That was huge news.
And check out some of the other things that have been going on in the rest of Europe...
In Spain, a major real estate company, Reyal Urbis, collapsed last week, leaving already battered banks on the hook for millions of euros in losses. Meanwhile, the government faces a corruption scandal and a steady stream of anti-austerity demonstrations. Thousands of people took to the streets again on Saturday, protesting deep cuts to health and other services, as well as hefty bank bailouts.
Life is no better in a large swath of the broader EU. In Britain, Moody’s cited the continuing economic weakness and the resulting risks to the government’s tight fiscal policy for its rating cut. In Bulgaria, where the government fell last week and the economy is in a shambles, rightists who joined mass demonstrations across the country burned a European Union flag and waved anti-EU banners. Other austerity-minded governments in the EU face similar murky political futures.
At this point, Europe is a complete and total economic mess and things are rapidly getting worse.
And that is really bad news because Europe is already in the midst of a recession. In fact, according to the BBC, the recession in the eurozone got even deeper during the fourth quarter of 2012...
The eurozone recession deepened in the final three months of 2012, official figures show.
The economy of the 17 nations in the euro shrank by 0.6% in the fourth quarter, which was worse than forecast.
It is the sharpest contraction since the beginning of 2009 and marks the first time the region failed to grow in any quarter during a calendar year.
But this is just the beginning.
The truth is that government debt is not even the greatest danger that Europe is facing. In reality, a collapse of the European banking system is of much greater concern.
Why is that?
Well, how would you feel if you woke up someday and every penny that you had in the bank was gone?
In the U.S. we don't have to worry about that so much because all deposits are insured by the FDIC, but in many European countries things work much differently.
For example, just check out what Graham Summers recently had to say about the banking system in Spain...
It’s a little known fact about the Spanish crisis is that when the Spanish Government merges troubled banks, it typically swaps out depositors’ savings for shares in the new bank.
So… when the newly formed bank goes bust, “poof” your savings are GONE. Not gone as in some Spanish version of the FDIC will eventually get you your money, but gone as in gone forever (see the above article for proof).
This is why Bankia’s collapse is so significant: in one move, former depositors at seven banks just lost virtually everything.
And this in a nutshell is Europe’s financial system today: a totally insolvent sewer of garbage debt, run by corrupt career politicians who have no clue how to fix it or their economies… and which results in a big fat ZERO for those who are nuts enough to invest in it.
Be warned. There are many many more Bankias coming to light in the coming months. So if you have not already taken steps to prepare for systemic failure, you NEED to do so NOW. We’re literally at most a few months, and very likely just a few weeks from Europe’s banks imploding, potentially taking down the financial system with them. Think I’m joking? The Fed is pumping hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars into EU banks right now trying to stop this from happening.
Like Graham Summers, I am extremely concerned about the European banking system. Europe actually has a much larger banking system than the U.S. does, and if the European banking system implodes that is going to send huge shockwaves to the farthest corners of the globe.
But if you want to believe that the "experts" in Europe and in the United States have "everything under control", then you might as well stop reading now.
After all, they are very highly educated and they know what they are doing, right?
But if you want to listen to some common sense, you might want to check out this very ominous warning from Karl Denninger...
I hope you're ready.
Congress has wasted the time it was given by the Europeans getting things "temporarily" under control. But they didn't actually get anything under control, as the Italian elections just showed.
Now, with the budget over there at risk of being abandoned, and fiscal restraint being abandoned (note: exactly what the US has been doing) the markets are recognizing exactly the risk that never in fact went away over the last couple of years.
It was hidden by lies, just as it has been hidden by lies here.
Bernanke's machinations and other games "gave" the Congress four years to do the right thing. They didn't, because that same "gift" also destroyed all market signals of urgency.
As such you have people like Krugman and others claiming that it's all ok and that we can spend with wild abandon, taking our fiscal medicine never.
They were wrong. Congress was wrong. The Republicans were wrong, the Democrats were wrong, and the Administration was wrong.
Congress is out of time; as I noted the deficit spending must stop now, irrespective of the fact that it will cause significant economic damage.
For the past couple of years, authorities in the U.S. and in Europe have been trying to delay the coming crisis by kicking the can down the road.
By doing so, they have been making the eventual collapse even worse.
And now time is running out.
I hope that you are ready.
Link:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/will-italy-be-the-spark-that-sets-off-financial-armageddon-in-europe
History stuff: Mass murder and gun control...
The true history of gun control - Timeline
by: J. D. Heyes
Throughout the history of the world there have been despots, tyrants, dictators and kings who have imposed their will over those they conquered. After defeating rival armies in battle, many of these rulers went on to lead cruel, ruthless and abusive regimes largely by keeping the subjugated powerless to resist.
Men like Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia; Genghis Khan, who founded and ruled the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise; the Caesars of the Roman empire; and the pharaohs of the Egyptian empire all conquered, then kept power, by ruling with iron fists over people who were powerless to resist because they did not have the means to do so. In feudal England, British subjects in Scotland, Ireland and elsewhere were forbidden to bear arms, and as such were forced to remain loyal to the crown (until they won their independence by force of arms).
In more recent times the invention and mass production of the firearm made conquering - and then controlling - entire populations much more difficult, which is why the most heinous despots in the last 150 years have moved to limit or ban access to guns. In our own country, prior to the Revolutionary War, some colonists did own firearms but in the months before, and directly after, the war began King George's generals implemented gun confiscation policies - a primary driver behind the adoption of the Second Amendment by our founding fathers.
As gun control once more becomes an issue, and as some lawmakers, academics, pundits and ordinary Americans call for outright gun bans and confiscation in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in mid-December, it is vital and appropriate to examine the history of gun control around the world, and the carnage visited upon the innocent by gun-grabbing tyrants.
Soviet Union - 1929 -- Soviet Russia was established following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when ruling Czar Nicholas II tossed 11 million Russian peasants into World War I. Frustrated and angered by the loss of life, scores of armed Russians - many current or former Russian soldiers who were led by Marxist Vladimir Lenin - rebelled against a ruling regime that was already teetering on the edge of collapse.
Firearms were allowed to remain in the hands of Soviet citizens until 1929, when private gun ownership was abolished - a time which saw the rise of one of the world's most repressive regimes, that was led by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (he ruled from 1941-1953 but was entrenched in the country's leadership by 1928).
From 1929 to the year Stalin died, tens of millions of Soviet dissidents or anyone the country's leadership believed were a threat, were rounded up and either murdered or placed in labor camp/prisons and forced to work, sometimes to their deaths. Early in Stalin's political career, he launched two national collectivization campaigns in order to transform the country into an industrial power. Both campaigns, however, were rife with murder on a massive scale.
"In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance," says a history of his political career at Gendercide.org. "The Five-Year Plans for industry, too, were implemented in an extraordinarily brutal fashion, leading to the deaths of millions of convict laborers, overwhelmingly men.
His "callous disregard for life" was matched only by his paranoia; later, he purged the Communist Party itself of anyone and everyone he believed was a threat - all under the auspices of a total gun ban.
"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves," he once said.
The Ottoman Empire - 1911 -- The Ottoman Empire, the origins of which were in Turkey, implemented full gun control in 1911. A few years later, beginning in 1915 and lasting until 1917, some 1.5 million Armenians (out of a total of 2.5 million) living within the empire were rounded up and murdered by the "Young Turks" of the ruling class. In what has since been called the Armenian Holocaust, "Armenians all over the world commemorate this great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were rounded up, deported and killed," says a short history of the slaughter by the University of Michigan. "Also on that day in Constantinople, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes."
The Ottoman government established "butcher battalions" which consisted primarily of violent criminals who had been released from prison just to kill ethnic Armenians. Those who were members of the army (which was currently fighting the Allies in World War I) "were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed," said the university history.
Germany - 1938 -- Adolph Hitler's Nazi Germany established gun control in 1938, just prior to the implementation of his horrendous, murderous campaign to exterminate the Jews. In the end, 13 million Jews and other perceived lesser races were killed by Hitler and his Nazi Party.
In 1942, at the height of the Second World War and German advances, Hitler said:
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country.
China - 1935 -- The Nationalist Chinese government established gun control in 1935, just two years before Japan invaded in 1937. In the period from 1935 to 1952, some 20 million citizens and political dissidents were murdered. The Chinese Cultural Revolution, which was launched by the country's supreme ruler, Mao Zedong, took place from 1966-1976, and "claimed the lives of several million people and inflicted cruel and inhuman treatments on hundreds of million people," says MassViolence.org. "However, 40 years after it ended, the total number of victims of the Cultural Revolution and especially the death toll of mass killings still remain a mystery both in China and overseas." The actual figures remain a highly-classified state secret.
Regarding gun control, Mao once said: "War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun."
Cambodia - 1956 -- The year this Asian nation issued its total gun control edict was in 1956, but the real carnage did not begin until several years later, during the regime of the demonic Pol Pot. Between 1975 and 1977, his regime murdered as many as 1 million "educated" people whom he believed represented a threat to his power in "killing fields" that were later depicted in a movie by the same name.
In all, more than 56 million people around the world have been murdered as a result of gun control laws imposed by rulers and despots who knew that the only way they could continue to brutalize their own people and stay in power was by disarming them.
And now left-wing pols, politicians, academics and pundits want our leaders to have the same ability to rule unopposed and unafraid of reprisal.
"Our forefathers did not arm the American people for the purpose of hunting, but rather to protect themselves from those who were doing the hunting, namely the tyrant King George," writes Bradlee Dean for WorldNetDaily.
Anyone truly interested in preventing mass murder should not be a supporter of gun control.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039264_gun_control_timeline_true_history.html#ixzz2M6MHfiyJ
by: J. D. Heyes
Throughout the history of the world there have been despots, tyrants, dictators and kings who have imposed their will over those they conquered. After defeating rival armies in battle, many of these rulers went on to lead cruel, ruthless and abusive regimes largely by keeping the subjugated powerless to resist.
Men like Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia; Genghis Khan, who founded and ruled the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise; the Caesars of the Roman empire; and the pharaohs of the Egyptian empire all conquered, then kept power, by ruling with iron fists over people who were powerless to resist because they did not have the means to do so. In feudal England, British subjects in Scotland, Ireland and elsewhere were forbidden to bear arms, and as such were forced to remain loyal to the crown (until they won their independence by force of arms).
In more recent times the invention and mass production of the firearm made conquering - and then controlling - entire populations much more difficult, which is why the most heinous despots in the last 150 years have moved to limit or ban access to guns. In our own country, prior to the Revolutionary War, some colonists did own firearms but in the months before, and directly after, the war began King George's generals implemented gun confiscation policies - a primary driver behind the adoption of the Second Amendment by our founding fathers.
As gun control once more becomes an issue, and as some lawmakers, academics, pundits and ordinary Americans call for outright gun bans and confiscation in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in mid-December, it is vital and appropriate to examine the history of gun control around the world, and the carnage visited upon the innocent by gun-grabbing tyrants.
Soviet Union - 1929 -- Soviet Russia was established following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when ruling Czar Nicholas II tossed 11 million Russian peasants into World War I. Frustrated and angered by the loss of life, scores of armed Russians - many current or former Russian soldiers who were led by Marxist Vladimir Lenin - rebelled against a ruling regime that was already teetering on the edge of collapse.
Firearms were allowed to remain in the hands of Soviet citizens until 1929, when private gun ownership was abolished - a time which saw the rise of one of the world's most repressive regimes, that was led by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (he ruled from 1941-1953 but was entrenched in the country's leadership by 1928).
From 1929 to the year Stalin died, tens of millions of Soviet dissidents or anyone the country's leadership believed were a threat, were rounded up and either murdered or placed in labor camp/prisons and forced to work, sometimes to their deaths. Early in Stalin's political career, he launched two national collectivization campaigns in order to transform the country into an industrial power. Both campaigns, however, were rife with murder on a massive scale.
"In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance," says a history of his political career at Gendercide.org. "The Five-Year Plans for industry, too, were implemented in an extraordinarily brutal fashion, leading to the deaths of millions of convict laborers, overwhelmingly men.
His "callous disregard for life" was matched only by his paranoia; later, he purged the Communist Party itself of anyone and everyone he believed was a threat - all under the auspices of a total gun ban.
"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves," he once said.
The Ottoman Empire - 1911 -- The Ottoman Empire, the origins of which were in Turkey, implemented full gun control in 1911. A few years later, beginning in 1915 and lasting until 1917, some 1.5 million Armenians (out of a total of 2.5 million) living within the empire were rounded up and murdered by the "Young Turks" of the ruling class. In what has since been called the Armenian Holocaust, "Armenians all over the world commemorate this great tragedy on April 24, because it was on that day in 1915 when 300 Armenian leaders, writers, thinkers and professionals in Constantinople (present day Istanbul) were rounded up, deported and killed," says a short history of the slaughter by the University of Michigan. "Also on that day in Constantinople, 5,000 of the poorest Armenians were butchered in the streets and in their homes."
The Ottoman government established "butcher battalions" which consisted primarily of violent criminals who had been released from prison just to kill ethnic Armenians. Those who were members of the army (which was currently fighting the Allies in World War I) "were disarmed, placed into labor battalions, and then killed," said the university history.
Germany - 1938 -- Adolph Hitler's Nazi Germany established gun control in 1938, just prior to the implementation of his horrendous, murderous campaign to exterminate the Jews. In the end, 13 million Jews and other perceived lesser races were killed by Hitler and his Nazi Party.
In 1942, at the height of the Second World War and German advances, Hitler said:
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country.
China - 1935 -- The Nationalist Chinese government established gun control in 1935, just two years before Japan invaded in 1937. In the period from 1935 to 1952, some 20 million citizens and political dissidents were murdered. The Chinese Cultural Revolution, which was launched by the country's supreme ruler, Mao Zedong, took place from 1966-1976, and "claimed the lives of several million people and inflicted cruel and inhuman treatments on hundreds of million people," says MassViolence.org. "However, 40 years after it ended, the total number of victims of the Cultural Revolution and especially the death toll of mass killings still remain a mystery both in China and overseas." The actual figures remain a highly-classified state secret.
Regarding gun control, Mao once said: "War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun."
Cambodia - 1956 -- The year this Asian nation issued its total gun control edict was in 1956, but the real carnage did not begin until several years later, during the regime of the demonic Pol Pot. Between 1975 and 1977, his regime murdered as many as 1 million "educated" people whom he believed represented a threat to his power in "killing fields" that were later depicted in a movie by the same name.
In all, more than 56 million people around the world have been murdered as a result of gun control laws imposed by rulers and despots who knew that the only way they could continue to brutalize their own people and stay in power was by disarming them.
And now left-wing pols, politicians, academics and pundits want our leaders to have the same ability to rule unopposed and unafraid of reprisal.
"Our forefathers did not arm the American people for the purpose of hunting, but rather to protect themselves from those who were doing the hunting, namely the tyrant King George," writes Bradlee Dean for WorldNetDaily.
Anyone truly interested in preventing mass murder should not be a supporter of gun control.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039264_gun_control_timeline_true_history.html#ixzz2M6MHfiyJ
Did you know this about nutrition???
10 Lies and Misconceptions Spread by Mainstream Nutrition
by Joseph Mercola
Story at-a-glance
Many mainstream nutritionists are guilty of spreading dietary myths and misconceptions that lead to poor health outcomes. Here, I review 10 of the most widespread lies that have been refuted by science
The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine recommends adults to get 45–65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, 20–35 percent from fat, and 10–35 percent from protein. This is an inverse ideal fat to carb ratio that is virtually guaranteed to lead you astray and result in a heightened risk of chronic disease.
Most people likely benefit from 50-70 percent of calories as healthful fats in their diet for optimal health, whereas you need very few carbohydrates to maintain good health. Although that may seem like a lot, fat is much denser and consumes a much smaller portion of your meal plate
The low-fat myth may have done more harm to the health of millions than any other dietary recommendation as the resulting low-fat craze led to increased consumption of trans-fats, which we now know increases your risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease – the very health problems wrongfully attributed to saturated fats
Most people use artificial sweeteners to lose weight and/or because they’re diabetic and need to avoid sugar. Ironically, nearly all the studies that have carefully analyzed artificial sweeteners show that those who use artificial sweeteners actually gain more weight than those who consume caloric sweeteners. Studies have also revealed that artificial sweeteners can be worse than sugar for diabetics
Fructose, soy, eggs, whole grains, milk, lunch meats, and genetically engineered foods are also victims of widespread misconceptions that threaten your health unless you get it “right”
There's no shortage of health myths out there, but I believe the truth is slowly but surely starting to seep out there and get a larger audience. For example, two recent articles actually hit the nail right on the head in terms of good nutrition advice.
Shape Magazine features a slide show on "9 ingredients nutritionists won’t touch,"1 and authoritynutrition.com listed “11 of the biggest lies of mainstream nutrition."2
These health topics are all essential to get "right" if you want to protect your health, and the health of your loved ones, which is why I was delighted to see both of these sources disseminating spot-on advice. I highly recommend reading through both of them.
Here, I will review my own top 10 lies and misconceptions of mainstream nutrition – some of which are included in the two featured sources, plus a few additional ones I believe are important.
Lie # 1: 'Saturated Fat Causes Heart Disease'
As recently as 2002, the "expert" Food & Nutrition Board issued the following misguided statement, which epitomizes this myth:
"Saturated fats and dietary cholesterol have no known beneficial role in preventing chronic disease and are not required at any level in the diet."
Similarly, the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine recommends adults to get 45–65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, 20-35 percent from fat, and 10-35 percent from protein. This is an inverse ideal fat to carb ratio that is virtually guaranteed to lead you astray, and result in a heightened risk of chronic disease.
Most people benefit from 50-70 percent healthful fats in their diet for optimal health, whereas you need very few, if any, carbohydrates to maintain good health... Although that may seem like a lot, fat is much denser and consumes a much smaller portion of your meal plate.
This dangerous recommendation, which arose from an unproven hypothesis from the mid-1950s, has been harming your health and that of your loved ones for about 40 years now.
The truth is, saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone-like substances, without which your body cannot function optimally. They also act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes.
In fact, saturated is the preferred fuel for your heart! For more information about saturated fats and the essential role they play in maintaining your health, please read my previous article The Truth About Saturated Fat.
Lie # 2: 'Eating Fat Makes You Gain Weight'
The low-fat myth may have done more harm to the health of millions than any other dietary recommendation as the resulting low-fat craze led to increased consumption of trans-fats, which we now know increases your risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease – the very health problems wrongfully attributed to saturated fats...
To end the confusion, it's very important to realize that eating fat will not make you fat!
The primary cause of excess weight and all the chronic diseases associated with it, is actually the consumption of too much sugar – especially fructose, but also all sorts of grains, which rapidly convert to sugar in your body. If only the low-fat craze had been a low-sugar craze... then we wouldn't have nearly as much chronic disease as we have today. For an explanation of why and how a low-fat diet can create the very health problems it's claimed to prevent, please see this previous article.
Lie # 3: 'Artificial Sweeteners are Safe Sugar-Replacements for Diabetics, and Help Promote Weight Loss'
Most people use artificial sweeteners to lose weight and/or because they’re diabetic and need to avoid sugar. The amazing irony is that nearly all the studies that have carefully analyzed their effectiveness show that those who use artificial sweeteners actually gain more weight than those who consume caloric sweeteners. Studies have also revealed that artificial sweeteners can be worse than sugar for diabetics.
In 2005, data gathered from the 25-year-long San Antonio Heart Study showed that drinking dietsoft drinks increased the likelihood of serious weight gain, far more so than regular soda.3 On average, each diet soft drink the participants consumed per day increased their risk of becoming overweight by 65 percent within the next seven to eight years, and made them 41 percent more likely to become obese. There are several potential causes for this, including:
Sweet taste alone appears to increase hunger, regardless of caloric content.
Artificial sweeteners appear to simply perpetuate a craving for sweets, and overall sugar consumption is therefore not reduced – leading to further problems controlling your weight.4
Artificial sweeteners may disrupt your body's natural ability to "count calories," as evidenced in studies such as this 2004 study at Purdue University,5 which found that rats fed artificially sweetened liquids ate more high-calorie food than rats fed high-caloric sweetened liquids.
There is also a large number of health dangers associated with artificial sweeteners and aspartame in particular. I've compiled an ever-growing list of studies pertaining to health problems associated with aspartame, which you can find here. If you're still on the fence, I highly recommend reviewing these studies for yourself so that you can make an educated decision. For more information on aspartame, the worst artificial sweetener, please see my aspartame video.
Lie # 4: 'Your Body Cannot Tell the Difference Between Sugar and Fructose'
Of the many health-harming ingredients listed in the featured article by Shape Magazine – all of which you're bound to get in excess if you consume processed foods – fructose is perhaps the greatest threat to your health. Mounting evidence testifies to the fact that excess fructose, primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), is a primary factor causing not just obesity, but also chronic and lethal disease. In fact, I am convinced that fructose is one of the leading causes of a great deal of needless suffering from poor health and premature death.
Many conventional health "experts," contend that sugar and fructose in moderation is perfectly okay and part of a normal "healthy" diet, and the corn industry vehemently denies any evidence showing that fructose is metabolically more harmful than regular sugar (sucrose). This widespread denial and sweeping the evidence under the carpet poses a massive threat to your health, unless you do your own research.
As a standard recommendation, I advise keeping your total fructose consumption below 25 grams per day. For most people it would also be wise to limit your fructose from fruit to 15 grams or less. Unfortunately, while this is theoretically possible, precious few people are actually doing that.
Cutting out a few desserts will not make a big difference if you're still eating a "standard American diet" – in fact, I've previously written about how various foods and beverages contain far more sugar than a glazed doughnut. Because of the prevalence of HFCS in foods and beverages, the average person now consumes 1/3 of a pound of sugar EVERY DAY, which is five ounces or 150 grams, half of which is fructose.
That's 300 percent more than the amount that will trigger biochemical havoc. Remember that is the AVERAGE; many actually consume more than twice that amount. For more details about the health dangers of fructose and my recommendations, please see my recent article Confirmed – Fructose Can Increase Your Hunger and Lead to Overeating...
Read the rest here:
http://lewrockwell.com/mercola/mercola266.html
by Joseph Mercola
Story at-a-glance
Many mainstream nutritionists are guilty of spreading dietary myths and misconceptions that lead to poor health outcomes. Here, I review 10 of the most widespread lies that have been refuted by science
The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine recommends adults to get 45–65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, 20–35 percent from fat, and 10–35 percent from protein. This is an inverse ideal fat to carb ratio that is virtually guaranteed to lead you astray and result in a heightened risk of chronic disease.
Most people likely benefit from 50-70 percent of calories as healthful fats in their diet for optimal health, whereas you need very few carbohydrates to maintain good health. Although that may seem like a lot, fat is much denser and consumes a much smaller portion of your meal plate
The low-fat myth may have done more harm to the health of millions than any other dietary recommendation as the resulting low-fat craze led to increased consumption of trans-fats, which we now know increases your risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease – the very health problems wrongfully attributed to saturated fats
Most people use artificial sweeteners to lose weight and/or because they’re diabetic and need to avoid sugar. Ironically, nearly all the studies that have carefully analyzed artificial sweeteners show that those who use artificial sweeteners actually gain more weight than those who consume caloric sweeteners. Studies have also revealed that artificial sweeteners can be worse than sugar for diabetics
Fructose, soy, eggs, whole grains, milk, lunch meats, and genetically engineered foods are also victims of widespread misconceptions that threaten your health unless you get it “right”
There's no shortage of health myths out there, but I believe the truth is slowly but surely starting to seep out there and get a larger audience. For example, two recent articles actually hit the nail right on the head in terms of good nutrition advice.
Shape Magazine features a slide show on "9 ingredients nutritionists won’t touch,"1 and authoritynutrition.com listed “11 of the biggest lies of mainstream nutrition."2
These health topics are all essential to get "right" if you want to protect your health, and the health of your loved ones, which is why I was delighted to see both of these sources disseminating spot-on advice. I highly recommend reading through both of them.
Here, I will review my own top 10 lies and misconceptions of mainstream nutrition – some of which are included in the two featured sources, plus a few additional ones I believe are important.
Lie # 1: 'Saturated Fat Causes Heart Disease'
As recently as 2002, the "expert" Food & Nutrition Board issued the following misguided statement, which epitomizes this myth:
"Saturated fats and dietary cholesterol have no known beneficial role in preventing chronic disease and are not required at any level in the diet."
Similarly, the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine recommends adults to get 45–65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, 20-35 percent from fat, and 10-35 percent from protein. This is an inverse ideal fat to carb ratio that is virtually guaranteed to lead you astray, and result in a heightened risk of chronic disease.
Most people benefit from 50-70 percent healthful fats in their diet for optimal health, whereas you need very few, if any, carbohydrates to maintain good health... Although that may seem like a lot, fat is much denser and consumes a much smaller portion of your meal plate.
This dangerous recommendation, which arose from an unproven hypothesis from the mid-1950s, has been harming your health and that of your loved ones for about 40 years now.
The truth is, saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone-like substances, without which your body cannot function optimally. They also act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes.
In fact, saturated is the preferred fuel for your heart! For more information about saturated fats and the essential role they play in maintaining your health, please read my previous article The Truth About Saturated Fat.
Lie # 2: 'Eating Fat Makes You Gain Weight'
The low-fat myth may have done more harm to the health of millions than any other dietary recommendation as the resulting low-fat craze led to increased consumption of trans-fats, which we now know increases your risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease – the very health problems wrongfully attributed to saturated fats...
To end the confusion, it's very important to realize that eating fat will not make you fat!
The primary cause of excess weight and all the chronic diseases associated with it, is actually the consumption of too much sugar – especially fructose, but also all sorts of grains, which rapidly convert to sugar in your body. If only the low-fat craze had been a low-sugar craze... then we wouldn't have nearly as much chronic disease as we have today. For an explanation of why and how a low-fat diet can create the very health problems it's claimed to prevent, please see this previous article.
Lie # 3: 'Artificial Sweeteners are Safe Sugar-Replacements for Diabetics, and Help Promote Weight Loss'
Most people use artificial sweeteners to lose weight and/or because they’re diabetic and need to avoid sugar. The amazing irony is that nearly all the studies that have carefully analyzed their effectiveness show that those who use artificial sweeteners actually gain more weight than those who consume caloric sweeteners. Studies have also revealed that artificial sweeteners can be worse than sugar for diabetics.
In 2005, data gathered from the 25-year-long San Antonio Heart Study showed that drinking dietsoft drinks increased the likelihood of serious weight gain, far more so than regular soda.3 On average, each diet soft drink the participants consumed per day increased their risk of becoming overweight by 65 percent within the next seven to eight years, and made them 41 percent more likely to become obese. There are several potential causes for this, including:
Sweet taste alone appears to increase hunger, regardless of caloric content.
Artificial sweeteners appear to simply perpetuate a craving for sweets, and overall sugar consumption is therefore not reduced – leading to further problems controlling your weight.4
Artificial sweeteners may disrupt your body's natural ability to "count calories," as evidenced in studies such as this 2004 study at Purdue University,5 which found that rats fed artificially sweetened liquids ate more high-calorie food than rats fed high-caloric sweetened liquids.
There is also a large number of health dangers associated with artificial sweeteners and aspartame in particular. I've compiled an ever-growing list of studies pertaining to health problems associated with aspartame, which you can find here. If you're still on the fence, I highly recommend reviewing these studies for yourself so that you can make an educated decision. For more information on aspartame, the worst artificial sweetener, please see my aspartame video.
Lie # 4: 'Your Body Cannot Tell the Difference Between Sugar and Fructose'
Of the many health-harming ingredients listed in the featured article by Shape Magazine – all of which you're bound to get in excess if you consume processed foods – fructose is perhaps the greatest threat to your health. Mounting evidence testifies to the fact that excess fructose, primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), is a primary factor causing not just obesity, but also chronic and lethal disease. In fact, I am convinced that fructose is one of the leading causes of a great deal of needless suffering from poor health and premature death.
Many conventional health "experts," contend that sugar and fructose in moderation is perfectly okay and part of a normal "healthy" diet, and the corn industry vehemently denies any evidence showing that fructose is metabolically more harmful than regular sugar (sucrose). This widespread denial and sweeping the evidence under the carpet poses a massive threat to your health, unless you do your own research.
As a standard recommendation, I advise keeping your total fructose consumption below 25 grams per day. For most people it would also be wise to limit your fructose from fruit to 15 grams or less. Unfortunately, while this is theoretically possible, precious few people are actually doing that.
Cutting out a few desserts will not make a big difference if you're still eating a "standard American diet" – in fact, I've previously written about how various foods and beverages contain far more sugar than a glazed doughnut. Because of the prevalence of HFCS in foods and beverages, the average person now consumes 1/3 of a pound of sugar EVERY DAY, which is five ounces or 150 grams, half of which is fructose.
That's 300 percent more than the amount that will trigger biochemical havoc. Remember that is the AVERAGE; many actually consume more than twice that amount. For more details about the health dangers of fructose and my recommendations, please see my recent article Confirmed – Fructose Can Increase Your Hunger and Lead to Overeating...
Read the rest here:
http://lewrockwell.com/mercola/mercola266.html
Info on vitamins and supplements...
Six crucial things to watch out for when buying vitamins and supplements
by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Not all vitamins and dietary supplements are the same. Many popular supplement brands, in fact, contain artificial additives, synthetic flow agents, chemical colorings, and even imitation vitamin compounds that your body does not recognize and cannot fully process. So how can you know whether or not the vitamins and supplements you buy are safe and effective? Here are six helpful tips on what to watch out for when buying vitamins and supplements.
1) Synthetic vitamins. There is a big difference between the natural vitamins found in food and the so-called vitamins added to many popular dietary supplements. Whole-food based vitamins are uniquely bioavailable, and occur naturally in foods, plants, and herbs. Synthetic vitamins, on the other hand, are produced in a laboratory, and may be derived from toxic sources such as coal tar and petroleum.
How can you know the difference? Synthetic vitamins are typically listed on ingredient labels by their isolated names -- ascorbic acid (vitamin C), riboflavin (vitamin B2), and dl-alpha tocopherol acetate (vitamin E) are all examples of synthetic vitamins commonly added to vitamins and supplements, including multivitamin formulas. Stick with whole food-based vitamins and supplements, including those that clearly delineate their being derived from plants or other natural sources.
"In addition to being synthetic, isolated vitamins are missing all their naturally occurring essential synergistic co-factors and transporters," explains the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). "A synthetic vitamin can stimulate a cell's metabolism, but it cannot upgrade or replace the cell's components with superior, better quality elements. The results? A degraded cell." (http://www.organicconsumers.org/nutricon/qa.cfm)
2) Magnesium stearate. Believe it or not, many supplements, including those made by more reputable brands, contain a flow agent additive that, over time, can actually block the absorption of nutrients into your body. This ingredient is known as magnesium stearate, and regular consumption of it is linked to the development of a harmful "biofilm" in the intestines that may cause digestive problems.
Despite having the word magnesium in its name, magnesium stearate is not a source of nutritive magnesium. The only reason why supplement manufacturers add the chalk-like substance to their products is to make them easier to process through manufacturing equipment. But the long-term health consequences of ingesting magnesium stearate may not be worth the risk.
3) Titanium dioxide. Another unnecessary additive found in many supplements, titanium dioxide, which is often used as a pigment in vitamins and supplements, comes with its own set of health risks. An untested nanoparticle powder made from titanium bits, titanium dioxide has been linked to causing autoimmune disorders, cancer, and various other diseases. Besides the fact that it belongs to a class of particles known to cause cell damage, titanium dioxide serves no therapeutic purpose whatsoever, which means it does not belong in a health supplement.
"Titanium dioxide has recently been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as an IARC Group 2B carcinogen 'possibly carcinogen[ic] to humans,'" explains the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health & Safety on its website. "This evidence showed that high concentrations of pigment-grade (powdered) and ultrafine titanium dioxide dust caused respiratory tract cancer in rats exposed by inhalation and intratracheal instillation." (http://www.naturalnews.com/027000_titanium_dioxide_vitamins.html)
4) Artificial colors. Though not as common in more reputable vitamin and supplement brands, artificial colors are still present in many mainstream supplements. The Pfizer-owned brand of supplements marketed as Centrum, for instance, contain toxic coloring agents like FD&C Blue No. 2 Aluminum Lake and FD&C Red No. 40 Aluminum Lake, both of which are potential neurotoxins. Even children's vitamins like Flintstones Complete contain these and other toxic coloring agents. (http://www.greenmedinfo.com)
5) Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). If your vitamin or supplement formula contains ingredients like maltodextrin, citric acid, dextrose, vegetable-based fillers, sugars of any kind, or even synthetic vitamin C (ascorbic acid), chances are it also contains GMOs. Unless specifically stated on the bottle as being GMO-free, a vitamin supplement that is not whole food-based more than likely contains ingredients derived from GMOs.
Soybean oil is often used as a filler in gelcap-based supplements, and is a common source of GMOs. Vitamin E is another common GMO additive typically derived from soy, more than 90 percent of which is of GMO origin in the U.S. Other common GMO ingredients, unless otherwise labeled, include soy lecithin, inositol, choline, vegetable oil, and vegetable cellulose. (http://www.responsibletechnology.org/docs/Non-GMO-Shopping-Guide.pdf)
6) Irradiation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently prohibits the use of irradiation as a sterilizing protocol for dietary supplements. But this does not mean that every raw ingredient used in dietary supplements is free of irradiation, as suppliers have been caught in the past illegally selling irradiated raw materials. A European Commission study from back in 2002, for instance, found that nearly half of all dietary supplements tested in Europe contained ingredients that had been illegally irradiated. (http://www.nutraingredients.com)
Since most supplement manufacturers will insist that their products are not irradiated, the best way to know for sure is to ask a company directly whether or not it tests and verifies the integrity of all its raw ingredients. If it does not, urge the company to do so and ask for test results.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039271_vitamins_supplements_magnesium_stearate.html#ixzz2M6L1SUCC
by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Not all vitamins and dietary supplements are the same. Many popular supplement brands, in fact, contain artificial additives, synthetic flow agents, chemical colorings, and even imitation vitamin compounds that your body does not recognize and cannot fully process. So how can you know whether or not the vitamins and supplements you buy are safe and effective? Here are six helpful tips on what to watch out for when buying vitamins and supplements.
1) Synthetic vitamins. There is a big difference between the natural vitamins found in food and the so-called vitamins added to many popular dietary supplements. Whole-food based vitamins are uniquely bioavailable, and occur naturally in foods, plants, and herbs. Synthetic vitamins, on the other hand, are produced in a laboratory, and may be derived from toxic sources such as coal tar and petroleum.
How can you know the difference? Synthetic vitamins are typically listed on ingredient labels by their isolated names -- ascorbic acid (vitamin C), riboflavin (vitamin B2), and dl-alpha tocopherol acetate (vitamin E) are all examples of synthetic vitamins commonly added to vitamins and supplements, including multivitamin formulas. Stick with whole food-based vitamins and supplements, including those that clearly delineate their being derived from plants or other natural sources.
"In addition to being synthetic, isolated vitamins are missing all their naturally occurring essential synergistic co-factors and transporters," explains the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). "A synthetic vitamin can stimulate a cell's metabolism, but it cannot upgrade or replace the cell's components with superior, better quality elements. The results? A degraded cell." (http://www.organicconsumers.org/nutricon/qa.cfm)
2) Magnesium stearate. Believe it or not, many supplements, including those made by more reputable brands, contain a flow agent additive that, over time, can actually block the absorption of nutrients into your body. This ingredient is known as magnesium stearate, and regular consumption of it is linked to the development of a harmful "biofilm" in the intestines that may cause digestive problems.
Despite having the word magnesium in its name, magnesium stearate is not a source of nutritive magnesium. The only reason why supplement manufacturers add the chalk-like substance to their products is to make them easier to process through manufacturing equipment. But the long-term health consequences of ingesting magnesium stearate may not be worth the risk.
3) Titanium dioxide. Another unnecessary additive found in many supplements, titanium dioxide, which is often used as a pigment in vitamins and supplements, comes with its own set of health risks. An untested nanoparticle powder made from titanium bits, titanium dioxide has been linked to causing autoimmune disorders, cancer, and various other diseases. Besides the fact that it belongs to a class of particles known to cause cell damage, titanium dioxide serves no therapeutic purpose whatsoever, which means it does not belong in a health supplement.
"Titanium dioxide has recently been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as an IARC Group 2B carcinogen 'possibly carcinogen[ic] to humans,'" explains the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health & Safety on its website. "This evidence showed that high concentrations of pigment-grade (powdered) and ultrafine titanium dioxide dust caused respiratory tract cancer in rats exposed by inhalation and intratracheal instillation." (http://www.naturalnews.com/027000_titanium_dioxide_vitamins.html)
4) Artificial colors. Though not as common in more reputable vitamin and supplement brands, artificial colors are still present in many mainstream supplements. The Pfizer-owned brand of supplements marketed as Centrum, for instance, contain toxic coloring agents like FD&C Blue No. 2 Aluminum Lake and FD&C Red No. 40 Aluminum Lake, both of which are potential neurotoxins. Even children's vitamins like Flintstones Complete contain these and other toxic coloring agents. (http://www.greenmedinfo.com)
5) Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). If your vitamin or supplement formula contains ingredients like maltodextrin, citric acid, dextrose, vegetable-based fillers, sugars of any kind, or even synthetic vitamin C (ascorbic acid), chances are it also contains GMOs. Unless specifically stated on the bottle as being GMO-free, a vitamin supplement that is not whole food-based more than likely contains ingredients derived from GMOs.
Soybean oil is often used as a filler in gelcap-based supplements, and is a common source of GMOs. Vitamin E is another common GMO additive typically derived from soy, more than 90 percent of which is of GMO origin in the U.S. Other common GMO ingredients, unless otherwise labeled, include soy lecithin, inositol, choline, vegetable oil, and vegetable cellulose. (http://www.responsibletechnology.org/docs/Non-GMO-Shopping-Guide.pdf)
6) Irradiation. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently prohibits the use of irradiation as a sterilizing protocol for dietary supplements. But this does not mean that every raw ingredient used in dietary supplements is free of irradiation, as suppliers have been caught in the past illegally selling irradiated raw materials. A European Commission study from back in 2002, for instance, found that nearly half of all dietary supplements tested in Europe contained ingredients that had been illegally irradiated. (http://www.nutraingredients.com)
Since most supplement manufacturers will insist that their products are not irradiated, the best way to know for sure is to ask a company directly whether or not it tests and verifies the integrity of all its raw ingredients. If it does not, urge the company to do so and ask for test results.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039271_vitamins_supplements_magnesium_stearate.html#ixzz2M6L1SUCC
You are what you eat...
Big Food Is Making Us Sick
Washington’s Blog
The Independent reports that small farmers are being challenged by food companies are becoming insanely concentrated:
Increasingly, a handful of multinationals are tightening their grip on the commodity markets, with potentially dramatic effects for consumers and food producers alike.
***
Three companies now account for more than 40 per cent of global coffee sales, eight companies control the supply of cocoa and chocolate, seven control 85 per cent of tea production, five account for 75 per cent of the world banana trade, and the largest six sugar traders account for about two-thirds of world trade, according to the new publication from the Fairtrade Foundation.
***
This is the year “to put the politics of food on the public agenda and find better solutions to the insanity of our broken food system”.
More people may be shopping ethically – sales of Fairtrade cocoa grew by more than 20 per cent last year to £153m – but, according to the report, the world’s food system is “dangerously out of control”.
How is that effecting the safety of our food supply? Reuters notes:
Multinational food, drink and alcohol companies are using strategies similar to those employed by the tobacco industry to undermine public health policies, health experts said on Tuesday.
In an international analysis of involvement by so-called “unhealthy commodity” companies in health policy-making, researchers from Australia, Britain, Brazil and elsewhere said … that through the aggressive marketing of ultra-processed food and drink, multinational companies were now major drivers of the world’s growing epidemic of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
Writing in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers cited industry documents they said revealed how companies seek to shape health legislation and avoid regulation.
This is done by “building financial and institutional relations” with health professionals, non-governmental organizations and health agencies, distorting research findings, and lobbying politicians to oppose health reforms, they said.
They cited analysis of published research which found systematic bias from industry funding: articles sponsored exclusively by food and drinks companies were between four and eight times more likely to have conclusions that favored the companies than those not sponsored by them.
How are giant food manufacturers trying to influence legislation?
As Waking Times reports, they’re trying to gag all reporting:
States are adopting laws meant to keep consumers in the dark about where their food comes from.
Do you have a right to know where that steak on your plate came from?
Should it be legal to photograph chicken farms and dairy cows?
Big Agriculture says you don’t and it shouldn’t. Armies of Big Ag lobbyists are pushing for new state-level laws across the country to keep us all in the dark. Less restrictive versions have been law in some states since the 1980s, but the meat industry has ratcheted up a radical new campaign.
This wave of “ag-gag” bills would criminalize whistleblowers, investigators, and journalists who expose animal welfare abuses at factory farms and slaughterhouses. Ten states considered “ag-gag” bills last year, and Iowa, Missouri, and Utah approved them. Even more are soon to follow.
Had these laws been in force, the Humane Society might have been prosecuted for documenting repeated animal welfare and food safety violations at Hallmark/Westland, formerly the second-largest supplier of beef to the National School Lunch Program. Cows too sick to walk were being slaughtered and that meat was shipped to our schools, endangering our kids. The investigation led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history.
***
Big Ag wants to silence whistleblowers rather than clean up its act. Ag-gag bills are now pending in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, and New Hampshire. Similar legislation may crop up in North Carolina and Minnesota.
The bills aren’t identical, but they share common language — sometimes even word-for-word. Some criminalize anyone who even “records an image or sound” from a factory farm. Others mandate that witnesses report abuses within a few hours, which would make it impossible for whistleblowers to secure advice and protection, or for them to document a pattern of abuses.
Indiana’s version of this cookie-cutter legislation ominously begins with the statement that farmers have the right to “engage in agricultural operations free from the threat of terrorism and interference from unauthorized third persons.” [The Feds are treating people who expose abuse in factory farms as potential terrorists … and the states want the same power.]
Yet these bills aren’t about violence or terrorism. They’re about truth-telling that’s bad for branding. For these corporations, a “terrorist” is anyone who threatens their profits by exposing inhumane practices that jeopardize consumer health.
***
Ag-gag bills aren’t about silencing journalists and whistleblowers. They’re about curbing consumer access to information at a time when more and more Americans want to know where our food comes from and how it’s produced.
The problem for corporations is that when people have information, they act on it. During a recent ag-gag hearing in Indiana, one of the nation’s largest egg producers told lawmakers about a recent investigation. After an undercover video was posted online, 50 customers quickly called and stopped buying their eggs. An informed public is the biggest threat to business as usual.
An informed public is also the biggest threat to these ag-gag bills. In Wyoming, one of the bills has already failed. According to sponsors, it was abandoned in part because of negative publicity. By shining a light on these attempts, we can make sure that the rest fail as well, while protecting the right of consumers to know what they’re buying.
So what – exactly – are the giant food corporations trying to hide?
They are fraudulently substituting cheaper – less healthy – food for high-quality food. And see this.
Indeed, the dairy industry wants to add sweeteners – such as aspartame – to milk without any labeling.
Food fraud is rampant .. including huge proportions of fish.
The bottom line is that collusion between government and big business is dishing up cheap, unhealthy food … just like collusion between D.C. and giant corporations caused the financial crisis, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, the Gulf oil spill and other major disasters (and see this; and take a peek at number 9).
For example, the FDA:
Allows cows to be stuffed with synthetic estrogen, fattening agents which are harmful to people, muscle antibiotics and other nasties
Pretends that genetically engineered meat is an “animal drug” that doesn’t need to be analyzed for human safety
Allowed arsenic to be added to chicken feed throughout the U.S. for more than 65 years under thefalse theory that it would be “excreted” by the chickens before it could accumulate in the chicken meat
Declared fish from Fukushima a-okay after radiation spewed into the ocean
Doesn’t even test for mercury, arsenic or other pollutants in fish in the Gulf
Allows animal blood and other animal parts to be fed to animals in feedlots … which can spread disease like mad cow
The Department of Agriculture:
Prohibits private citizens such as ranchers or meat packers from testing their own cows for mad cow disease.
Allowed cheap pink slime to be added to meat without labeling
An official U.S. government report finds that Americans ‘are sicker and die younger’ than people in other wealthy nations. There are a number of factors making us sick … but unhealthy, cheap food is part of it.
One solution: buy from local farmers and ranchers … or grow your own as much as possible.
Link:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/02/giant-food-corporations-work-hand-in-glove-with-corrupt-government-agencies-to-dish-up-cheap-unhealthy-food.html
Washington’s Blog
The Independent reports that small farmers are being challenged by food companies are becoming insanely concentrated:
Increasingly, a handful of multinationals are tightening their grip on the commodity markets, with potentially dramatic effects for consumers and food producers alike.
***
Three companies now account for more than 40 per cent of global coffee sales, eight companies control the supply of cocoa and chocolate, seven control 85 per cent of tea production, five account for 75 per cent of the world banana trade, and the largest six sugar traders account for about two-thirds of world trade, according to the new publication from the Fairtrade Foundation.
***
This is the year “to put the politics of food on the public agenda and find better solutions to the insanity of our broken food system”.
More people may be shopping ethically – sales of Fairtrade cocoa grew by more than 20 per cent last year to £153m – but, according to the report, the world’s food system is “dangerously out of control”.
How is that effecting the safety of our food supply? Reuters notes:
Multinational food, drink and alcohol companies are using strategies similar to those employed by the tobacco industry to undermine public health policies, health experts said on Tuesday.
In an international analysis of involvement by so-called “unhealthy commodity” companies in health policy-making, researchers from Australia, Britain, Brazil and elsewhere said … that through the aggressive marketing of ultra-processed food and drink, multinational companies were now major drivers of the world’s growing epidemic of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
Writing in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers cited industry documents they said revealed how companies seek to shape health legislation and avoid regulation.
This is done by “building financial and institutional relations” with health professionals, non-governmental organizations and health agencies, distorting research findings, and lobbying politicians to oppose health reforms, they said.
They cited analysis of published research which found systematic bias from industry funding: articles sponsored exclusively by food and drinks companies were between four and eight times more likely to have conclusions that favored the companies than those not sponsored by them.
How are giant food manufacturers trying to influence legislation?
As Waking Times reports, they’re trying to gag all reporting:
States are adopting laws meant to keep consumers in the dark about where their food comes from.
Do you have a right to know where that steak on your plate came from?
Should it be legal to photograph chicken farms and dairy cows?
Big Agriculture says you don’t and it shouldn’t. Armies of Big Ag lobbyists are pushing for new state-level laws across the country to keep us all in the dark. Less restrictive versions have been law in some states since the 1980s, but the meat industry has ratcheted up a radical new campaign.
This wave of “ag-gag” bills would criminalize whistleblowers, investigators, and journalists who expose animal welfare abuses at factory farms and slaughterhouses. Ten states considered “ag-gag” bills last year, and Iowa, Missouri, and Utah approved them. Even more are soon to follow.
Had these laws been in force, the Humane Society might have been prosecuted for documenting repeated animal welfare and food safety violations at Hallmark/Westland, formerly the second-largest supplier of beef to the National School Lunch Program. Cows too sick to walk were being slaughtered and that meat was shipped to our schools, endangering our kids. The investigation led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history.
***
Big Ag wants to silence whistleblowers rather than clean up its act. Ag-gag bills are now pending in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Indiana, Nebraska, and New Hampshire. Similar legislation may crop up in North Carolina and Minnesota.
The bills aren’t identical, but they share common language — sometimes even word-for-word. Some criminalize anyone who even “records an image or sound” from a factory farm. Others mandate that witnesses report abuses within a few hours, which would make it impossible for whistleblowers to secure advice and protection, or for them to document a pattern of abuses.
Indiana’s version of this cookie-cutter legislation ominously begins with the statement that farmers have the right to “engage in agricultural operations free from the threat of terrorism and interference from unauthorized third persons.” [The Feds are treating people who expose abuse in factory farms as potential terrorists … and the states want the same power.]
Yet these bills aren’t about violence or terrorism. They’re about truth-telling that’s bad for branding. For these corporations, a “terrorist” is anyone who threatens their profits by exposing inhumane practices that jeopardize consumer health.
***
Ag-gag bills aren’t about silencing journalists and whistleblowers. They’re about curbing consumer access to information at a time when more and more Americans want to know where our food comes from and how it’s produced.
The problem for corporations is that when people have information, they act on it. During a recent ag-gag hearing in Indiana, one of the nation’s largest egg producers told lawmakers about a recent investigation. After an undercover video was posted online, 50 customers quickly called and stopped buying their eggs. An informed public is the biggest threat to business as usual.
An informed public is also the biggest threat to these ag-gag bills. In Wyoming, one of the bills has already failed. According to sponsors, it was abandoned in part because of negative publicity. By shining a light on these attempts, we can make sure that the rest fail as well, while protecting the right of consumers to know what they’re buying.
So what – exactly – are the giant food corporations trying to hide?
They are fraudulently substituting cheaper – less healthy – food for high-quality food. And see this.
Indeed, the dairy industry wants to add sweeteners – such as aspartame – to milk without any labeling.
Food fraud is rampant .. including huge proportions of fish.
The bottom line is that collusion between government and big business is dishing up cheap, unhealthy food … just like collusion between D.C. and giant corporations caused the financial crisis, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, the Gulf oil spill and other major disasters (and see this; and take a peek at number 9).
For example, the FDA:
Allows cows to be stuffed with synthetic estrogen, fattening agents which are harmful to people, muscle antibiotics and other nasties
Pretends that genetically engineered meat is an “animal drug” that doesn’t need to be analyzed for human safety
Allowed arsenic to be added to chicken feed throughout the U.S. for more than 65 years under thefalse theory that it would be “excreted” by the chickens before it could accumulate in the chicken meat
Declared fish from Fukushima a-okay after radiation spewed into the ocean
Doesn’t even test for mercury, arsenic or other pollutants in fish in the Gulf
Allows animal blood and other animal parts to be fed to animals in feedlots … which can spread disease like mad cow
The Department of Agriculture:
Prohibits private citizens such as ranchers or meat packers from testing their own cows for mad cow disease.
Allowed cheap pink slime to be added to meat without labeling
An official U.S. government report finds that Americans ‘are sicker and die younger’ than people in other wealthy nations. There are a number of factors making us sick … but unhealthy, cheap food is part of it.
One solution: buy from local farmers and ranchers … or grow your own as much as possible.
Link:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/02/giant-food-corporations-work-hand-in-glove-with-corrupt-government-agencies-to-dish-up-cheap-unhealthy-food.html
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
OOPS!!! It is getting colder because it is getting warmer...
US Winter Temperatures Plummeting Over The Last 15 Years
Steven Goddard
Link:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/us-winter-temperatures-plummeting-over-the-last-15-years/
Steven Goddard
Link:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/us-winter-temperatures-plummeting-over-the-last-15-years/
"Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the government cannot be challenged over its secret warrantless wiretapping program targeted at American citizens."
Supreme Court Throws Out Challenge To Warrantless Wiretapping Of Americans
Legal expert: Decision “insulates” government spying from court review
Steve Watson
In a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the government cannot be challenged over its secret warrantless wiretapping program targeted at American citizens.
The case was brought by US journalists, lawyers and human rights groups led by Amnesty International. Reuters reports that the Court ruled that none of the parties could sue because they could not prove that they were targets of the program, or that they had suffered any detrimental injury from it.
As we have noted, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has admitted that the National Security Agency violated the US constitution and abused its power by spying on American citizens and monitoring their communications under the expanded Bush era Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
At the end of last year, after favorable votes in the House and Senate, President Obama re authorized the “intelligence gathering” bill for five more years, effectively allowing the NSA to continue snooping on Americans’ emails and phone conversations until 2017.
In a 5-4 split, Justices today sided with the Obama administration’s argument that the challengers did not have any legal standing in the case.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the challengers’ argument was formulated according to a “highly speculative fear” that the government choose to spy on their communications, rather than conduct other forms of intelligence gathering. Alito also stated that the groups could not prove they had been targeted for surveillance by the US government.
“Simply put, respondents can only speculate as to how the attorney general and the Director of National Intelligence will exercise their discretion in determining which communications to target.” Alito wrote.
“We decline to abandon our usual reluctance to endorse standing theories that rest on speculation about the decisions of independent actors,” Alito added.
Justice Stephen Breyer disagreed with Alito, stating that “the government has a strong motive to listen to conversations of the kind described.” Surveillance of such groups “is as likely to take place as are most future events that commonsense inference and ordinary knowledge of human nature tell us will happen.” Breyer added.
“The majority is wrong when it describes the harm threatened plaintiffs as “speculative,” the Justice said.
Breyer further noted that there is a “very high likelihood” that the government would cite the amended FISA law when intercepting the communications of groups that brought the case.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan also voted in dissent of the majority.
Jonathan Hafetz, a former ACLU lawyer and now a lecturer at Seton Hall University’s law school, said, “The decision effectively insulates the government’s increasingly broad surveillance powers from meaningful court review, threatening constitutional liberties in the name of secrecy and security.”
Last June, prior to the re-authorization of FISA, the DNI refused to provide details on the NSA’s clandestine domestic spying program, ironically suggesting that to do so would violate the privacy of Americans.
Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Mark Udall of the intelligence oversight committee had repeatedly asked the NSA to divulge how many innocent Americans have had their communications monitored under the expanded counterterrorism powers put into place in 2008.
The expansion of powers eliminated the need for the NSA to have probable cause to intercept any American’s phone calls, text messages or emails. Wired acquired a letter (PDF) from the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which noted that “NSA leadership agreed that an IG review of the sort suggested would further violate the privacy of U.S. persons.”
The letter, written by I. Charles McCullough, also claimed that the NSA, which has as many employees as the FBI and the CIA combined, does not have the man power to collate and reveal such details, and that to attempt to do so would jeopardize the program.
“I defer to [the NSA inspector general's] conclusion that obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of his office and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA’s mission,” McCullough wrote.
In 2011, the NSA tacitly admitted that it has an active domestic spying program when the general counsel testified to a Senate hearing, overseen by Wyden and Udall, that he believes the agency has the authority to track Americans via cell phones.
“There are certain circumstances where that authority may exist,” said Matthew Olsen the Director of The National Counterterrorism Center.
Wyden and Udall have been pressing the NSA for some time to reveal whether or not the agency is collecting sensitive data on Americans such as cell site data, which would allow for tracking the location of anyone using a cell phone in the US. Along with Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), Wyden introduced a joint bill that would force any government agency to secure a search warrant and show probable cause before tracking the location of any American.
Wyden has consistently expressed concern that the law relating to surveillance is unclear, and is being “secretly interpreted by the executive branch.”
As a candidate for president in 2008, Barack Obama promised to revisit and revise the rules of FISA to protect Americans’ rights, after he had voted for the bill as a Senator. However, as president, Obama has continued where president Bush left off in calling for extending the legislation and even actively preventing any judicial oversight of the wiretapping program.
The FISA provision, introduced in 2008, was merely a confirmation of activity that government spy agencies, including the NSA, have been engaging in for years.
The ACLU recently released an infographic (below) detailing how the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program has grown in gargantuan proportions and now intercepts 1.7 billion US electronic communications every single day. Those communications will soon all be funneled through the top secret $2 billion spy center in the Utah desert, which the NSA has refused to provide Congress with details of.
While the government says that the official targets of this expanding surveillance dragnet are “terrorists,” we now have an admission that snoops are using these powers to go after Americans exercising their constitutional rights.
Click on chart for larger image...
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/supreme-court-throws-out-challenge-to-warrantless-wiretapping-of-americans.html
Legal expert: Decision “insulates” government spying from court review
Steve Watson
In a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the government cannot be challenged over its secret warrantless wiretapping program targeted at American citizens.
The case was brought by US journalists, lawyers and human rights groups led by Amnesty International. Reuters reports that the Court ruled that none of the parties could sue because they could not prove that they were targets of the program, or that they had suffered any detrimental injury from it.
As we have noted, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has admitted that the National Security Agency violated the US constitution and abused its power by spying on American citizens and monitoring their communications under the expanded Bush era Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
At the end of last year, after favorable votes in the House and Senate, President Obama re authorized the “intelligence gathering” bill for five more years, effectively allowing the NSA to continue snooping on Americans’ emails and phone conversations until 2017.
In a 5-4 split, Justices today sided with the Obama administration’s argument that the challengers did not have any legal standing in the case.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the challengers’ argument was formulated according to a “highly speculative fear” that the government choose to spy on their communications, rather than conduct other forms of intelligence gathering. Alito also stated that the groups could not prove they had been targeted for surveillance by the US government.
“Simply put, respondents can only speculate as to how the attorney general and the Director of National Intelligence will exercise their discretion in determining which communications to target.” Alito wrote.
“We decline to abandon our usual reluctance to endorse standing theories that rest on speculation about the decisions of independent actors,” Alito added.
Justice Stephen Breyer disagreed with Alito, stating that “the government has a strong motive to listen to conversations of the kind described.” Surveillance of such groups “is as likely to take place as are most future events that commonsense inference and ordinary knowledge of human nature tell us will happen.” Breyer added.
“The majority is wrong when it describes the harm threatened plaintiffs as “speculative,” the Justice said.
Breyer further noted that there is a “very high likelihood” that the government would cite the amended FISA law when intercepting the communications of groups that brought the case.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan also voted in dissent of the majority.
Jonathan Hafetz, a former ACLU lawyer and now a lecturer at Seton Hall University’s law school, said, “The decision effectively insulates the government’s increasingly broad surveillance powers from meaningful court review, threatening constitutional liberties in the name of secrecy and security.”
Last June, prior to the re-authorization of FISA, the DNI refused to provide details on the NSA’s clandestine domestic spying program, ironically suggesting that to do so would violate the privacy of Americans.
Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Mark Udall of the intelligence oversight committee had repeatedly asked the NSA to divulge how many innocent Americans have had their communications monitored under the expanded counterterrorism powers put into place in 2008.
The expansion of powers eliminated the need for the NSA to have probable cause to intercept any American’s phone calls, text messages or emails. Wired acquired a letter (PDF) from the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which noted that “NSA leadership agreed that an IG review of the sort suggested would further violate the privacy of U.S. persons.”
The letter, written by I. Charles McCullough, also claimed that the NSA, which has as many employees as the FBI and the CIA combined, does not have the man power to collate and reveal such details, and that to attempt to do so would jeopardize the program.
“I defer to [the NSA inspector general's] conclusion that obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of his office and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA’s mission,” McCullough wrote.
In 2011, the NSA tacitly admitted that it has an active domestic spying program when the general counsel testified to a Senate hearing, overseen by Wyden and Udall, that he believes the agency has the authority to track Americans via cell phones.
“There are certain circumstances where that authority may exist,” said Matthew Olsen the Director of The National Counterterrorism Center.
Wyden and Udall have been pressing the NSA for some time to reveal whether or not the agency is collecting sensitive data on Americans such as cell site data, which would allow for tracking the location of anyone using a cell phone in the US. Along with Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), Wyden introduced a joint bill that would force any government agency to secure a search warrant and show probable cause before tracking the location of any American.
Wyden has consistently expressed concern that the law relating to surveillance is unclear, and is being “secretly interpreted by the executive branch.”
As a candidate for president in 2008, Barack Obama promised to revisit and revise the rules of FISA to protect Americans’ rights, after he had voted for the bill as a Senator. However, as president, Obama has continued where president Bush left off in calling for extending the legislation and even actively preventing any judicial oversight of the wiretapping program.
The FISA provision, introduced in 2008, was merely a confirmation of activity that government spy agencies, including the NSA, have been engaging in for years.
The ACLU recently released an infographic (below) detailing how the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program has grown in gargantuan proportions and now intercepts 1.7 billion US electronic communications every single day. Those communications will soon all be funneled through the top secret $2 billion spy center in the Utah desert, which the NSA has refused to provide Congress with details of.
While the government says that the official targets of this expanding surveillance dragnet are “terrorists,” we now have an admission that snoops are using these powers to go after Americans exercising their constitutional rights.
Click on chart for larger image...
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/supreme-court-throws-out-challenge-to-warrantless-wiretapping-of-americans.html
"The total acreage of US farmland with resistant superweeds jumped by 51% in 2012. In 2011, it was a 25% increase. That upward- percentage escalation is called a nightmare."
US farmers flood fields with dangerous poison to fight Monsanto superweeds
by: Jon Rappoport
You're a farmer. Season after season, you watch your fields being taken over by Monsanto superweeds, which are resistant to the herbicide Roundup.
What are you going to do? You're locked in. You're buying your GMO seeds from Monsanto, and the food crops that grow from those seeds are supposed to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup, so that's what you spray on your crops.
But the weeds aren't resistant. They spread and they grow taller. They're taking over.
So you, along with many, many other US farmers, go to a strategy called "burndown," which is just as bad as it sounds. You use something a lot stronger than Roundup to kill those weeds: Paraquat, for example, which has been banned in 32 countries.
You drench your fields with it in the fall. You kill anything growing. And you drench the fields again in the spring, before you plant. Then, just as you're going to plant, you hit the fields a third time with the poison.
This is in addition to all the sprayings with Roundup, which is toxic, too.
Then you harvest the crops and you sell them. And consumers eat the food along with all the poison.
Tom Philpot, writing in Mother Jones (Feb.6), reports the alarming stats on the superweed takeover of US farmland. As of 2012, almost 50% of US farms had superweeds. In 2011, it was 34%. In Georgia, it's now 92%.
The total acreage of US farmland with resistant superweeds jumped by 51% in 2012. In 2011, it was a 25% increase. That upward- percentage escalation is called a nightmare.
Well, so farmers are poisoning the hell out of their food and their fields. But with Monsanto's super-duper GMO technology, the crop yields are still much bigger than they would be without the GMO seeds, right?
The Institute for Responsible Technology cites and quotes three reports on that score.
An International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development study, signed on to by 58 governments and 400 scientists, states that GMO crop production is "highly variable," and in some cases it has "declined."
The Union of Concerned Scientists' 2009 report, "Failure to Yield," emphatically stated: "Commercial GE [genetically engineered] crops have made no inroads so far into raising the intrinsic or potential yields of any crop."
A US Dept. of Agriculture report: "GE crops available for commercial use do not increase the yield potential. In fact, yield may even decrease..."
Let's summarize. Using Monsanto GMO technology to grow food crops results in massive poisoning of the farm land and the food. And increased crops yields are a fiction.
Nothing to see here, move along. Don't worry, be happy. Stand back, technology at work. Progress is our most important product. Better living through chemistry. Ignorance is strength.
What would a president and his administration do to make sure the truth is overrun and squashed?
In addition to silencing the media, they would appoint a host of GMO insiders to key government posts, and they would bring to market as many new GMO crops as possible, to construct a fait accompli.
So let's go to the scorecard and review the actions of Obama in his first term.
The new president filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:
At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.
As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.
As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors' Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.
As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.
As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.
As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had preciously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.
We should also remember that Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.
Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.
The deck was stacked. Obama hadn't simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn't just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn't just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.
And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let's detail the extraordinary parade of GMO crops that have skated through the open door of the Obama presidency.
Monsanto GMO alfalfa.
Monsanto GMO sugar beets.
Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.
Coming soon: Monsanto's GMO sweet corn.
Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.
Syngenta GMO stacked corn.
Pioneer GMO soybean.
Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.
Bayer GMO cotton.
ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.
A GMO papaya strain.
And perhaps, soon, genetically engineered salmon and apples.
That's how you control and squash the truth.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039250_Monsanto_superweeds_poisons.html#ixzz2M0bqFTM4
by: Jon Rappoport
You're a farmer. Season after season, you watch your fields being taken over by Monsanto superweeds, which are resistant to the herbicide Roundup.
What are you going to do? You're locked in. You're buying your GMO seeds from Monsanto, and the food crops that grow from those seeds are supposed to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup, so that's what you spray on your crops.
But the weeds aren't resistant. They spread and they grow taller. They're taking over.
So you, along with many, many other US farmers, go to a strategy called "burndown," which is just as bad as it sounds. You use something a lot stronger than Roundup to kill those weeds: Paraquat, for example, which has been banned in 32 countries.
You drench your fields with it in the fall. You kill anything growing. And you drench the fields again in the spring, before you plant. Then, just as you're going to plant, you hit the fields a third time with the poison.
This is in addition to all the sprayings with Roundup, which is toxic, too.
Then you harvest the crops and you sell them. And consumers eat the food along with all the poison.
Tom Philpot, writing in Mother Jones (Feb.6), reports the alarming stats on the superweed takeover of US farmland. As of 2012, almost 50% of US farms had superweeds. In 2011, it was 34%. In Georgia, it's now 92%.
The total acreage of US farmland with resistant superweeds jumped by 51% in 2012. In 2011, it was a 25% increase. That upward- percentage escalation is called a nightmare.
Well, so farmers are poisoning the hell out of their food and their fields. But with Monsanto's super-duper GMO technology, the crop yields are still much bigger than they would be without the GMO seeds, right?
The Institute for Responsible Technology cites and quotes three reports on that score.
An International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development study, signed on to by 58 governments and 400 scientists, states that GMO crop production is "highly variable," and in some cases it has "declined."
The Union of Concerned Scientists' 2009 report, "Failure to Yield," emphatically stated: "Commercial GE [genetically engineered] crops have made no inroads so far into raising the intrinsic or potential yields of any crop."
A US Dept. of Agriculture report: "GE crops available for commercial use do not increase the yield potential. In fact, yield may even decrease..."
Let's summarize. Using Monsanto GMO technology to grow food crops results in massive poisoning of the farm land and the food. And increased crops yields are a fiction.
Nothing to see here, move along. Don't worry, be happy. Stand back, technology at work. Progress is our most important product. Better living through chemistry. Ignorance is strength.
What would a president and his administration do to make sure the truth is overrun and squashed?
In addition to silencing the media, they would appoint a host of GMO insiders to key government posts, and they would bring to market as many new GMO crops as possible, to construct a fait accompli.
So let's go to the scorecard and review the actions of Obama in his first term.
The new president filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:
At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.
As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.
As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors' Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.
As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist.
As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.
As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had preciously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.
We should also remember that Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.
Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.
The deck was stacked. Obama hadn't simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn't just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn't just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.
And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let's detail the extraordinary parade of GMO crops that have skated through the open door of the Obama presidency.
Monsanto GMO alfalfa.
Monsanto GMO sugar beets.
Monsanto GMO Bt soybean.
Coming soon: Monsanto's GMO sweet corn.
Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.
Syngenta GMO stacked corn.
Pioneer GMO soybean.
Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.
Bayer GMO cotton.
ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.
A GMO papaya strain.
And perhaps, soon, genetically engineered salmon and apples.
That's how you control and squash the truth.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039250_Monsanto_superweeds_poisons.html#ixzz2M0bqFTM4
It's all part of the plan, folks...
Obama Pushing Trans-Atlantic Union with EU
Written by Alex Newman
Even as the European Union continues to pursue ever-closer “integration” in the name of “global governance,” Obama is now working to form a “Trans-Atlantic partnership” between the U.S. government and the EU under the guise of a so-called “free trade” agreement. Formally announced in the United States during the president’s State of the Union address, the highly controversial deal — a scheme that has been under discussion since before the current administration came to power — is expected to take at least 18 months to complete. It also has the backing of both Big Business and Big Labor.
The “Transatlantic Partnership,” of course, is just one of the major sovereignty-threatening international schemes being pursued by the Obama administration simultaneously — closer North American integration and the so-called “Trans-Pacific Partnership” are two of the most prominent efforts. The latest plot, though, has far-reaching, global implications that critics argue represent a serious threat to America and freedom. If the U.S.-EU deal ends up becoming reality, the regulatory regime governing the new bloc, which accounts for about half of global GDP, would become the de-facto standard-setting entity for the entire planet.
“To boost American exports, support American jobs and level the playing field in the growing markets of Asia, we intend to complete negotiations on a Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Obama said during his SOTU speech. “And tonight, I am announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union — because trade that is free and fair across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.”
Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, hinted at the plan even earlier, and since at least 2007, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have been formally working on the scheme. The New American magazine first warned of EU-U.S. integration in a 2009 in-depth cover story by author James Perloff, who concluded that the economic alliance would eventually and inevitably lead to a political merger.
More recently, critics of the “partnership” have also blasted the proposed plan, highlighting everything from concerns over national sovereignty to the fact that supposed “free trade” deals tend to be less about real free trade and more about transnational regulation of commerce by unaccountable bodies. The so-called NAFTA “tribunals” that overrule American laws and courts represent just one example of the dangers of “integration,” according to opponents of the plan. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is another.
“Obama’s open discussion of the two-oceans TPP and TAP free trade agendas during his recent SOTU attests to the persistence of globalists,” noted celebrated author and WorldNetDaily investigative reporter Jerome Corsi, who has played a key role in exposing the myriad plots to subvert American sovereignty using international “trade” regimes. Dr. Corsi also offers some of the history and background behind the latest plot: “The Transatlantic economic integration plan was originated in 1939 by a world government advocate who sought to create a Transatlantic Union as an international governing body.”
Among other measures, the agreement being worked out between the Obama administration and EU negotiators would seek to “harmonize” regulations between Europe and the United States. In simpler terms, American citizens and U.S. companies would end up being governed by rules developed and even implemented by supranational authorities — not elected officials who are accountable to the people. Because the U.S. economy, combined with Europe, represents almost half of the world’s economic output, the new transatlantic regulatory regime would ensure that companies around the globe would have to comply with the new scheme, too; at least if they wanted to sell goods or services in the bloc.
The “Trans-Atlantic Grand Bargain,” as the bold plot was touted in a recent New York Times editorial, would aim to reduce or eliminate some remaining trade barriers. However, tariffs on trade between the United States and Europe average just four percent. Reducing those figures further, of course, could easily be accomplished without ceding even more policy control and national sovereignty to unaccountable international entities.
Instead of worrying about tariffs, however — as supporters and opponents of the plan have both stated — the real goal of the emerging Atlantic union would be to do what the EU has already done to its 27 formerly sovereign nations: centralize authority in the hands of international bureaucrats at the expense of national sovereignty and individual liberty under the guise of promoting trade. In Europe, that has already happened, and now, even the Russian government is being brought into the fold.
As The New American has documented extensively, the vast majority of “laws” governing Europe today already come from Brussels — even with the EU widely considered illegitimate among Europeans — as opposed to national parliaments accountable to citizens. If Obama and his allies pushing the transatlantic scheme get their way, some or even all of those “laws” and regulations might someday be applied in the United States.
In a joint statement dated February 13, Obama, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, a former Maoist revolutionary, said they were “pleased to announce” that the EU and the U.S. government were initiating “negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.” Noting that the “transatlantic economic relationship” is already the world’s largest, the officials touted jobs, investment, and trade as the key motivations behind the scheme. So-called “sustainable development” will also be part of the effort, documents show.
“We are committed to making this relationship an even stronger driver of our prosperity,” the three officials claimed in their controversial press statement, using terms that have become standard whenever governments are promoting otherwise-unpopular policies. “Through this negotiation, the United States and the European Union will have the opportunity not only to expand trade and investment across the Atlantic, but also to contribute to the development of global rules that can strengthen the multilateral trading system.”
Unsurprisingly, opponents of the scheme have already started to speak out forcefully. However, opposition to the transatlantic plan is facing a herculean adversary: a network of well-funded and well-connected think tanks like the Atlantic Council and the powerful, global government-promoting Council on Foreign Relations; Big Business; Big Labor; the “mainstream” media; members of Congress in the establishment wing of both parties; and more. The globalist CFR, in particular, appears to be at the forefront pushing the transatlantic integration effort.
“You have for the first time in Europe a clear commitment, not only in Brussels but among the major leaders in the national capitals, that this is an economic priority for the European Union,” CFR Senior Fellow Edward Alden was quoted as saying in the Fiscal Times. “The Canadians are doing a certain amount of our work for us, because a lot of these issues are being hammered out in the Canada-EU negotiations, which are close to conclusion.” The CFR also touts the integration schemes — within North America and across the Atlantic — all over its websites.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, has also jumped on the bandwagon, urging Obama and policymakers to act boldly on the controversial agreement with the EU. “For the sake of jobs and growth, it’s time to forge a bold, new trade pact with Europe,” explained chamber Chairman Thomas Donohue. “The stars are finally aligned.”
Labor unions, meanwhile, despite having largely opposed such “free trade” schemes in recent decades, are lining up behind the transatlantic scheme as well, hoping to use it to score more European-style government favors for Big Labor in the United States. Multiple prominent unions have publicly voiced their support for closer alignment between U.S. and EU standards on labor laws, with the U.S. government, of course, expected to follow Europe’s lead in terms of highly regulated, rigid labor markets that economists say stifle growth, damage the economy, and, ultimately, hurt the workers themselves.
“People in labor see this as an opportunity, not as a threat,” senior director George Kohl with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) was quoted as saying in The Hill about the transatlantic plot, one of several major union figures cited in the article offering support for the plan. “Now we get to benchmark against a more progressive economy and raise up labor engagement here in the United States.”
At the same time as he seeks to forge a union between the U.S. government and the EU, Obama is also pursuing more “integration” with governments and dictatorships in the Asia-Pacific region through the so-called “Trans-Pacific Partnership.” That scheme, which includes the communist regime ruling over Vietnam as a member, has also been blasted by critics as a threat to national sovereignty and even Internet freedom. The New American has documented and exposed many of the dangers in recent years, too, but Obama wants it complete by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, closer to home, the U.S. government and its counterparts in Mexico and Canada continue pushing closer “integration” in North America as well — a highly controversial effort that critics and supporters have both said is aimed at eventually creating a “North American Union.” Documents released by WikiLeaks confirmed that top officials in all three governments and corporate bosses were working largely under the radar to advance a merger in everything from military to monetary affairs. Again, the CFR’s fingerprints are all over the plot.
While opposition to globalist integration schemes is growing, the trend toward ever-more ambitious and numerous “free trade” regimes is accelerating as well. Critics say it is time to restore U.S. sovereignty completely — not create even more entangling alliances, which the Founding Fathers warned against on more than a few occasions. Withdrawing from NAFTA, the UN, and the various other international entities that continue to usurp illegitimate authority would be a good start. Whether U.S. lawmakers will finally put the brakes on the plots, however, depends largely on the American people waking up to the threat in time.
Link:
http://thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/14612-obama-pushing-trans-atlantic-union-with-eu
"...the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) have filed a petition with the FDA asking the FDA to alter the definition of “milk” to secretly include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose."
U.S. dairy industry petitions FDA to approve aspartame as hidden, unlabeled additive in milk, yogurt, eggnog and cream
Mike Adams
You probably already know that the FDA has declared war on raw milk and even helped fund and coordinate armed government raids against raw milk farmers and distributors. Yes, it’s insane. This brand of tyranny is unique to the USA and isn’t even conducted in China, North Kora or Cuba. Only in the USA are raw milk farmers treated like terrorists.
But now the situation is getting even more insane than you could have imagined: the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) have filed a petition with the FDA asking the FDA to alter the definition of “milk” to secretly include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose.
Importantly, none of these additives need to be listed on the label. They will simply be swept under the definition of “milk,” so that when a company lists “milk” on the label, it automatically includes aspartame or sucralose. And if you’re trying to avoid aspartame, you’ll have no way of doing so because it won’t be listed on the label.
This isn’t only for milk, either: It’s also for yogurt, cream, sour cream, eggnog, whipping cream and a total of 17 products, all of which are listed in the petition at FDA.gov.
As the petition states:
IDFA and NMPF request their proposed amendments to the milk standard of identity to allow optional characterizing flavoring ingredients used in milk (e.g., chocolate flavoring added to milk) to be sweetened with any safe and suitable sweetener — including non-nutritive sweeteners such as aspartame.
This is all being done to “save the children,” we’re told, because the use of aspartame in milk products would reduce calories.
Milk industry specifically asks to HIDE aspartame from consumers
Astonishingly, the dairy industry is engaged in extreme doublespeak logic and actually arguing that aspartame should be hidden from consumers by not listing it on the label. Here’s what the petition says:
IDFA and NMPF argue that nutrient content claims such as “reduced calorie” are not attractive to children, and maintain that consumers can more easily identify the overall nutritional value of milk products that are flavored with non-nutritive sweeteners if the labels do not include such claims. Further, the petitioners assert that consumers do not recognize milk — including flavored milk — as necessarily containing sugar. Accordingly, the petitioners state that milk flavored with non-nutritive sweeteners should be labeled as milk without further claims so that consumers can “more easily identify its overall nutritional value.”
In other words, hiding aspartame from consumers by not including it on the label actually helps consumers, according to the IDFA and NMPF!
Yep, consumers are best served by keeping them ignorant. If this logic smacks of the same kind of twisted deception practiced by Monsanto, that’s because it’s identical: the less consumers know, the more they are helped, according to industry. And it’s for the children, too, because children are also best served by keeping them poisoned with aspartame.
Consumers have always been kept in the dark about pink slime, meat glue, rBGH and GMOs in their food. And now, if the IDFA gets its way, you’ll be able to drink hormone-contaminated milk from an antibiotics-inundated cow fed genetically modified crops and producing milk containing hidden aspartame. And you won’t have the right to know about any of this!
The FDA confirms this “secret” status of aspartame, stating, “If the standard of identity for milk is amended as requested by petitioners, milk manufacturers could use non-nutritive sweeteners in flavored milk without a nutrient content claim in its labeling.”
FDA requests comments
The FDA is requesting comments on this petition. You have until May 21st, 2013 to submit your comments. Click here for instructions.
This is a clue to stop drinking processed milk and milk products altogether
There’s a bigger story here than just the industry hoping to get FDA approval to secretly put aspartame in milk products while not listing aspartame on the label.
The bigger question is this: If an industry is pushing to hide aspartame in its products, what else is it already hiding?
How about the pus content of its dairy products? How about its inhumane treatment of animals who are subjected to torture conditions and pumped full of genetically engineered hormones? How about the fact that homogenization and pasteurization turn a whole food into a dietary nightmare that promotes obesity, autoimmune disorders and cardiovascular disease?
There are lots of dirty little secrets in the dairy industry of course, and that doesn’t even get into the secret closed-door conversations to encourage the FDA to destroy the competition of raw milk.
The only rational answer to all this is to stop buying and consuming processed dairy products, period!
I gave up ALL milk products many years ago and have never looked back. I drink almond milk, not pus-filled pasteurized cow’s milk. (Click here for a recipe to make your own almond milk at home.) I don’t eat yogurt. If I want probiotics, I get them from tasty chewable probiotics supplements such as Sunbiotics. I parted ways with processed dairy products many years ago, and as a result, my cardiovascular health, skin health, digestive health and stamina have all remained in outstanding shape.
There’s also a philosophical issue here: Don’t buy products from an industry that habitually LIES about everything. The dairy industry is like a mafia. They actively seek to destroy the competition, keep consumers ignorant and monopolize the market. They run highly deceptive ads with ridiculous claims like, “drinking milk helps you lose weight” and other nonsense.
The U.S. dairy industry is steeped in deception at every level, and now they want you and your children to unknowingly drink aspartame that’s secretly blended into the product.
The dairy industry is to food as Lance Armstrong is to sports. It’s all a big lie, laced with secret chemicals and false claims.
Stop drinking milk. Stop financially supporting the food mafia.
Link:
http://www.naturalnews.com/039244_milk_aspartame_FDA_petition.html
Mike Adams
You probably already know that the FDA has declared war on raw milk and even helped fund and coordinate armed government raids against raw milk farmers and distributors. Yes, it’s insane. This brand of tyranny is unique to the USA and isn’t even conducted in China, North Kora or Cuba. Only in the USA are raw milk farmers treated like terrorists.
But now the situation is getting even more insane than you could have imagined: the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) have filed a petition with the FDA asking the FDA to alter the definition of “milk” to secretly include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose.
Importantly, none of these additives need to be listed on the label. They will simply be swept under the definition of “milk,” so that when a company lists “milk” on the label, it automatically includes aspartame or sucralose. And if you’re trying to avoid aspartame, you’ll have no way of doing so because it won’t be listed on the label.
This isn’t only for milk, either: It’s also for yogurt, cream, sour cream, eggnog, whipping cream and a total of 17 products, all of which are listed in the petition at FDA.gov.
As the petition states:
IDFA and NMPF request their proposed amendments to the milk standard of identity to allow optional characterizing flavoring ingredients used in milk (e.g., chocolate flavoring added to milk) to be sweetened with any safe and suitable sweetener — including non-nutritive sweeteners such as aspartame.
This is all being done to “save the children,” we’re told, because the use of aspartame in milk products would reduce calories.
Milk industry specifically asks to HIDE aspartame from consumers
Astonishingly, the dairy industry is engaged in extreme doublespeak logic and actually arguing that aspartame should be hidden from consumers by not listing it on the label. Here’s what the petition says:
IDFA and NMPF argue that nutrient content claims such as “reduced calorie” are not attractive to children, and maintain that consumers can more easily identify the overall nutritional value of milk products that are flavored with non-nutritive sweeteners if the labels do not include such claims. Further, the petitioners assert that consumers do not recognize milk — including flavored milk — as necessarily containing sugar. Accordingly, the petitioners state that milk flavored with non-nutritive sweeteners should be labeled as milk without further claims so that consumers can “more easily identify its overall nutritional value.”
In other words, hiding aspartame from consumers by not including it on the label actually helps consumers, according to the IDFA and NMPF!
Yep, consumers are best served by keeping them ignorant. If this logic smacks of the same kind of twisted deception practiced by Monsanto, that’s because it’s identical: the less consumers know, the more they are helped, according to industry. And it’s for the children, too, because children are also best served by keeping them poisoned with aspartame.
Consumers have always been kept in the dark about pink slime, meat glue, rBGH and GMOs in their food. And now, if the IDFA gets its way, you’ll be able to drink hormone-contaminated milk from an antibiotics-inundated cow fed genetically modified crops and producing milk containing hidden aspartame. And you won’t have the right to know about any of this!
The FDA confirms this “secret” status of aspartame, stating, “If the standard of identity for milk is amended as requested by petitioners, milk manufacturers could use non-nutritive sweeteners in flavored milk without a nutrient content claim in its labeling.”
FDA requests comments
The FDA is requesting comments on this petition. You have until May 21st, 2013 to submit your comments. Click here for instructions.
This is a clue to stop drinking processed milk and milk products altogether
There’s a bigger story here than just the industry hoping to get FDA approval to secretly put aspartame in milk products while not listing aspartame on the label.
The bigger question is this: If an industry is pushing to hide aspartame in its products, what else is it already hiding?
How about the pus content of its dairy products? How about its inhumane treatment of animals who are subjected to torture conditions and pumped full of genetically engineered hormones? How about the fact that homogenization and pasteurization turn a whole food into a dietary nightmare that promotes obesity, autoimmune disorders and cardiovascular disease?
There are lots of dirty little secrets in the dairy industry of course, and that doesn’t even get into the secret closed-door conversations to encourage the FDA to destroy the competition of raw milk.
The only rational answer to all this is to stop buying and consuming processed dairy products, period!
I gave up ALL milk products many years ago and have never looked back. I drink almond milk, not pus-filled pasteurized cow’s milk. (Click here for a recipe to make your own almond milk at home.) I don’t eat yogurt. If I want probiotics, I get them from tasty chewable probiotics supplements such as Sunbiotics. I parted ways with processed dairy products many years ago, and as a result, my cardiovascular health, skin health, digestive health and stamina have all remained in outstanding shape.
There’s also a philosophical issue here: Don’t buy products from an industry that habitually LIES about everything. The dairy industry is like a mafia. They actively seek to destroy the competition, keep consumers ignorant and monopolize the market. They run highly deceptive ads with ridiculous claims like, “drinking milk helps you lose weight” and other nonsense.
The U.S. dairy industry is steeped in deception at every level, and now they want you and your children to unknowingly drink aspartame that’s secretly blended into the product.
The dairy industry is to food as Lance Armstrong is to sports. It’s all a big lie, laced with secret chemicals and false claims.
Stop drinking milk. Stop financially supporting the food mafia.
Link:
http://www.naturalnews.com/039244_milk_aspartame_FDA_petition.html
"Most don’t even have a clue what’s coming..."
I Hope You’re Ready: “The Sell-Off Today Is The Start. Not the End.”
Mac Slavo
SHTFPlan.com
They’d have us believe that happy days are here again. And, if your only source of information for economic news is the mainstream media and their talking heads, then in all likelihood you’ve bought into the hype about an economy on the rebound, consumers being more confident, housing prices in recovery and a government that’s soon to resolve America’s fiscal woes.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We are very rapidly approaching a situation that could be much, much worse than what we experienced in 2008.
Remember, in 2008 then Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson warned that we were literally on the brink of collapse and Congressional representatives were told that the situation was so serious that should the economy, financial markets and the US dollar crash, it would lead to riots and the need for martial law.
We’re not making this up – see for yourself:
One non-mainstream economist who has been warning of the coming disaster since the last disaster is Market Ticker’s Karl Denninger. He uses something called basic mathematics (with a healthy mix of advanced analysis) to come to his conclusions, and prior to the massive collapse of October/November 2008, Denninger sounded the alarm when he spotted numerous data points, including central bank manipulation in credit markets, suggesting that a massive crash was coming.
Two weeks later markets around the world fell apart.
Over the last several years Denninger has continued to warn Americans about the fiscal crisis, unsustainable debt levels and wealth destruction.
The prescient analyst and commentator is once again sounding the alarm:
Bernanke’s machinations and other games “gave” the Congress four years to do the right thing. They didn’t, because that same “gift” also destroyed all market signals of urgency.
As such you have people like Krugman and others claiming that it’s all ok and that we can spend with wild abandon, taking our fiscal medicine never.
They were wrong. Congress was wrong. The Republicans were wrong, the Democrats were wrong, and the Administration was wrong.
Congress is out of time; as I noted the deficit spending must stop now, irrespective of the fact that it will cause significant economic damage.
We will survive it if we do it now.
…
Time’s up; we either have serious people who will take serious actions right now or we’re going to find out what a real ”discontinuity” looks like.
I promise that you won’t like it.
…
The sell-off today is the start. Not the end.
And it’s also the end of the rope for our Congress, if they don’t get off their butts, which I do not expect them to do.
Therefore, I hope you’re ready.
I bet you’re not.
Source: Market Ticker ; Market Ticker 2
If we were on the brink in 2008, and we spent the last five years injecting TRILLIONS of dollars into the system, why are we once again at the cusp of another crash?
Because they fixed nothing.
In fact, they made it worse.
Back in 1930 Americans thought they were out of the woods and that the economy and financial markets had recovered.
They were dancing, drinking and spending like nothing was wrong; as if the crash had been nothing more than a short-term blip.
Congress was being warned about the possibility of tanks in the streets in 2008. All of the economic, financial and monetary policy measures implemented by the government and the Federal Reserve since then have failed.
Should we be worried?
The short answer is ‘Yes’.
This is going to happen. And this time people should be terrified of the consequences.
Most don’t even have a clue what’s coming.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/i-hope-you%e2%80%99re-ready-%e2%80%9cthe-sell-off-today-is-the-start-not-the-end-%e2%80%9d.html
Mac Slavo
SHTFPlan.com
They’d have us believe that happy days are here again. And, if your only source of information for economic news is the mainstream media and their talking heads, then in all likelihood you’ve bought into the hype about an economy on the rebound, consumers being more confident, housing prices in recovery and a government that’s soon to resolve America’s fiscal woes.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We are very rapidly approaching a situation that could be much, much worse than what we experienced in 2008.
Remember, in 2008 then Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson warned that we were literally on the brink of collapse and Congressional representatives were told that the situation was so serious that should the economy, financial markets and the US dollar crash, it would lead to riots and the need for martial law.
We’re not making this up – see for yourself:
One non-mainstream economist who has been warning of the coming disaster since the last disaster is Market Ticker’s Karl Denninger. He uses something called basic mathematics (with a healthy mix of advanced analysis) to come to his conclusions, and prior to the massive collapse of October/November 2008, Denninger sounded the alarm when he spotted numerous data points, including central bank manipulation in credit markets, suggesting that a massive crash was coming.
Two weeks later markets around the world fell apart.
Over the last several years Denninger has continued to warn Americans about the fiscal crisis, unsustainable debt levels and wealth destruction.
The prescient analyst and commentator is once again sounding the alarm:
Bernanke’s machinations and other games “gave” the Congress four years to do the right thing. They didn’t, because that same “gift” also destroyed all market signals of urgency.
As such you have people like Krugman and others claiming that it’s all ok and that we can spend with wild abandon, taking our fiscal medicine never.
They were wrong. Congress was wrong. The Republicans were wrong, the Democrats were wrong, and the Administration was wrong.
Congress is out of time; as I noted the deficit spending must stop now, irrespective of the fact that it will cause significant economic damage.
We will survive it if we do it now.
…
Time’s up; we either have serious people who will take serious actions right now or we’re going to find out what a real ”discontinuity” looks like.
I promise that you won’t like it.
…
The sell-off today is the start. Not the end.
And it’s also the end of the rope for our Congress, if they don’t get off their butts, which I do not expect them to do.
Therefore, I hope you’re ready.
I bet you’re not.
Source: Market Ticker ; Market Ticker 2
If we were on the brink in 2008, and we spent the last five years injecting TRILLIONS of dollars into the system, why are we once again at the cusp of another crash?
Because they fixed nothing.
In fact, they made it worse.
Back in 1930 Americans thought they were out of the woods and that the economy and financial markets had recovered.
They were dancing, drinking and spending like nothing was wrong; as if the crash had been nothing more than a short-term blip.
Congress was being warned about the possibility of tanks in the streets in 2008. All of the economic, financial and monetary policy measures implemented by the government and the Federal Reserve since then have failed.
Should we be worried?
The short answer is ‘Yes’.
This is going to happen. And this time people should be terrified of the consequences.
Most don’t even have a clue what’s coming.
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/i-hope-you%e2%80%99re-ready-%e2%80%9cthe-sell-off-today-is-the-start-not-the-end-%e2%80%9d.html
"...some things are not quite what they seem to be."
What if everything you know is wrong?
John R. Schindler
One of the nice things about working in counterintelligence is the acceptance of the notion that some things are not quite what they seem to be. (One of the bad things is that it can make you weird, even slightly crazy, if you stick to it too long; see: James Angleton.) Working in CI, every day you encounter people, even whole organizations, acting out secret agendas that are carefully hidden from public view … but you get to know the hidden truth.
It is fashionable to deride anything like what I’m suggesting as a “conspiracy theory” which conveniently cuts off discussion amidst images of people living in basements wearing tinfoil hats. Yet conspiracies do exist – pretty much every revolution starts as one – and such thinking forms the basis of all espionage. There is a good reason the Russian word for espionage activities, what Americans term “tradecraft,” is konspiratsiya. Those who have labored in counterintelligence know that agents provocateurs, fronts, and even false flags happen all the time, indeed they are unexceptional, bread-and-butter things on Planet CI. Just don’t expect civilians, normal people – especially academics, mainstream journalists, and nearly all “deep thinkers” – to believe you. Yet every once in a while the secret world jumps into open view, and the reaction to the revelation can be anything from outright denial to speechless confusion.
Back in the spring of 1967, West Germany was enjoying a wave of student protests of the sort then causing annoyance across much of the Western world as the baby boomers came of age, crankily, and acted out in public. On the evening of June 2, a big demo in West Berlin protesting the visit of the Shah of Iran, who was in town that night seeing an opera, got out of hand. Police were jumpy and soon the demo was verging on something ugly. Then a twenty-six year old student named Benno Ohnesorg was shot in the back of the head by a policeman – for no reason, according to his friends. Ohnesorg died at this, his first demo, leaving behind a pregnant young wife.
Outrage ensued, not least because the protestors claimed that the unarmed Ohnesorg had been murdered by the police without cause; no one under thirty believed the policeman when he said that he had seen a knife and had to defend himself. For a generation, the murder became “the shot that changed Germany.” It didn’t help matters that the killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was a middle-aged cop of thuggish inclinations who had served in Hitler’s army in the Second World War, and was almost a caricature of the “fascist mentality” that West German baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s so detested about their parents. Kurras was an ideal stand-in for the so-called “Auschwitz generation” that younger leftists reviled and wanted to junk on the ash heap of history as soon as possible.
For the hard Left, Ohnesorg was a welcome martyr, since his death confirmed all their dark fears about West Germany, which they asserted was objectively a fascist state, despite actually being a high-functioning democracy, not to mention a quite prosperous one, with exceptionally stringent protection of civil liberties and dissent. There soon arose the June 2 Movement, a terrorist group dedicated to Ohnesorg’s martyrdom. Next came the far more dangerous Red Army Faction, popularly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, a terrorist movement dedicated to Ohnesorg’s memory that claimed to be fighting fascism, but whose leaders seemed mostly into fast cars, turgid ideological dissertations, and murder-as-self-actualization. It took the West German intelligence and police agencies over a decade to stamp out the RAF, even though the gang was small and not very adept, a longevity that, it turned out, had a lot to do with the RAF’s close relationship with the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious Ministry for State Security (MfS). The Stasi offered RAF fighters sanctuary, logistical support, training, even weaponry. (The support by East Bloc intelligence services for terrorist groups in the West was another issue dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” by mainstream thinkers in the 1970s and 1980s, but with the collapse of the Soviet empire and access to secret files – whoops – turned out to be quite true.)
Plenty of West Germans to the right of the Baader Meinhof thugs were troubled by the conduct of the German police. Kurras was never seriously punished for the Ohnesorg killing. Twice he was acquitted of major charges and was suspended from the force for four years, working in private security, but after that suspension he was back with the Berlin police and was actually promoted. Kurras continued a normal career, retiring to a pension at age sixty, remaining defiant and unrepentant: “Anyone who attacks me is destroyed,” he explained to a reporter who asked him about the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg.
By 2009, Karl-Heinz Kurras was an elderly pensioner and a mostly forgotten minor hate figure, yet that May he returned to the front pages in a sensational fashion when it was revealed that he had been for years a highly valued agent of the Stasi. Information from the files of the MfS, which German authorities have combed through carefully for over twenty years, revealed that Kurras had volunteered to work for East German intelligence in 1955. He wanted to move to the DDR, but Stasi handlers convinced him to stay where he was and to serve as an agent-in-place inside the West Berlin police. Files indicate that Kurras was a loyal and effective Stasi source, handing over reams of documents and all the information he could find to the MfS. He was decorated several times and was allowed to secretly join the SED, the East German ruling Communist Party, in 1964, a rare honor for a foreign agent. He helped the Stasi and the KGB expose double agents, reported regularly on U.S. and NATO military developments, and during the 1961 Berlin Crisis was informing the Stasi about critical events at Checkpoint Charlie, the heart of the East-West confrontation.
The revelation that Kurras was a long-term and highly valued agent of East German intelligence exploded like a bombshell, turning a generation’s worldview on its head. The man that Germany’s baby boomers loathed as the archetype of fascism, a living symbol of the evil Nazi-ish past, actually was a Stasi hero, a loyal servant of Communism. Many had no idea what to make of it, as the implications of the news were so stunning.The important question arose at once: Did Kurras kill Ohnesorg on the orders of the MfS, to bolster the radical Left movement in West Germany? It is impossible to answer this question with certainty, though it seems to be the obvious explanation for the crime, since the files are incomplete (and Kurras is keeping his mouth shut about any details, though he has admitted in recent years that he did serve the Stasi). Fearing that he was now toxic, the MfS put Kurras on ice after the Ohnesorg killing, as he was the recipient of much media attention. A recent reexamination of the Ohnesorg case has revealed that the killing was indeed premeditated, no one had threatened Kurras – he simply shot the young protestor in the back of the head without provocation, a crime which the Berlin police actively covered up the facts about. Why Kurras did this may never be known, but it seems unlikely to this former counterintelligence hand that an agent of such value to the Stasi would do something so certain to cause scandal and uproar out of literally nowhere, for no reason.
This sensational case is destined to leave behind as many questions as answers. It has caused a more-than-minor reassessment of the 1960s in German life, and the path of the Left in Germany in the decades since. Not to mention the irony noted by many that both Kurras and the radicals his criminal act gave birth to in the form of terrorism, were under the control of the Stasi. A brilliant op, clearly. And a good reminder that some things are not quite what they seem to be.
Link:
http://20committee.com/2013/02/24/what-if-everything-you-know-is-wrong/
John R. Schindler
One of the nice things about working in counterintelligence is the acceptance of the notion that some things are not quite what they seem to be. (One of the bad things is that it can make you weird, even slightly crazy, if you stick to it too long; see: James Angleton.) Working in CI, every day you encounter people, even whole organizations, acting out secret agendas that are carefully hidden from public view … but you get to know the hidden truth.
It is fashionable to deride anything like what I’m suggesting as a “conspiracy theory” which conveniently cuts off discussion amidst images of people living in basements wearing tinfoil hats. Yet conspiracies do exist – pretty much every revolution starts as one – and such thinking forms the basis of all espionage. There is a good reason the Russian word for espionage activities, what Americans term “tradecraft,” is konspiratsiya. Those who have labored in counterintelligence know that agents provocateurs, fronts, and even false flags happen all the time, indeed they are unexceptional, bread-and-butter things on Planet CI. Just don’t expect civilians, normal people – especially academics, mainstream journalists, and nearly all “deep thinkers” – to believe you. Yet every once in a while the secret world jumps into open view, and the reaction to the revelation can be anything from outright denial to speechless confusion.
Back in the spring of 1967, West Germany was enjoying a wave of student protests of the sort then causing annoyance across much of the Western world as the baby boomers came of age, crankily, and acted out in public. On the evening of June 2, a big demo in West Berlin protesting the visit of the Shah of Iran, who was in town that night seeing an opera, got out of hand. Police were jumpy and soon the demo was verging on something ugly. Then a twenty-six year old student named Benno Ohnesorg was shot in the back of the head by a policeman – for no reason, according to his friends. Ohnesorg died at this, his first demo, leaving behind a pregnant young wife.
Outrage ensued, not least because the protestors claimed that the unarmed Ohnesorg had been murdered by the police without cause; no one under thirty believed the policeman when he said that he had seen a knife and had to defend himself. For a generation, the murder became “the shot that changed Germany.” It didn’t help matters that the killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, was a middle-aged cop of thuggish inclinations who had served in Hitler’s army in the Second World War, and was almost a caricature of the “fascist mentality” that West German baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s so detested about their parents. Kurras was an ideal stand-in for the so-called “Auschwitz generation” that younger leftists reviled and wanted to junk on the ash heap of history as soon as possible.
For the hard Left, Ohnesorg was a welcome martyr, since his death confirmed all their dark fears about West Germany, which they asserted was objectively a fascist state, despite actually being a high-functioning democracy, not to mention a quite prosperous one, with exceptionally stringent protection of civil liberties and dissent. There soon arose the June 2 Movement, a terrorist group dedicated to Ohnesorg’s martyrdom. Next came the far more dangerous Red Army Faction, popularly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, a terrorist movement dedicated to Ohnesorg’s memory that claimed to be fighting fascism, but whose leaders seemed mostly into fast cars, turgid ideological dissertations, and murder-as-self-actualization. It took the West German intelligence and police agencies over a decade to stamp out the RAF, even though the gang was small and not very adept, a longevity that, it turned out, had a lot to do with the RAF’s close relationship with the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious Ministry for State Security (MfS). The Stasi offered RAF fighters sanctuary, logistical support, training, even weaponry. (The support by East Bloc intelligence services for terrorist groups in the West was another issue dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” by mainstream thinkers in the 1970s and 1980s, but with the collapse of the Soviet empire and access to secret files – whoops – turned out to be quite true.)
Plenty of West Germans to the right of the Baader Meinhof thugs were troubled by the conduct of the German police. Kurras was never seriously punished for the Ohnesorg killing. Twice he was acquitted of major charges and was suspended from the force for four years, working in private security, but after that suspension he was back with the Berlin police and was actually promoted. Kurras continued a normal career, retiring to a pension at age sixty, remaining defiant and unrepentant: “Anyone who attacks me is destroyed,” he explained to a reporter who asked him about the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg.
By 2009, Karl-Heinz Kurras was an elderly pensioner and a mostly forgotten minor hate figure, yet that May he returned to the front pages in a sensational fashion when it was revealed that he had been for years a highly valued agent of the Stasi. Information from the files of the MfS, which German authorities have combed through carefully for over twenty years, revealed that Kurras had volunteered to work for East German intelligence in 1955. He wanted to move to the DDR, but Stasi handlers convinced him to stay where he was and to serve as an agent-in-place inside the West Berlin police. Files indicate that Kurras was a loyal and effective Stasi source, handing over reams of documents and all the information he could find to the MfS. He was decorated several times and was allowed to secretly join the SED, the East German ruling Communist Party, in 1964, a rare honor for a foreign agent. He helped the Stasi and the KGB expose double agents, reported regularly on U.S. and NATO military developments, and during the 1961 Berlin Crisis was informing the Stasi about critical events at Checkpoint Charlie, the heart of the East-West confrontation.
The revelation that Kurras was a long-term and highly valued agent of East German intelligence exploded like a bombshell, turning a generation’s worldview on its head. The man that Germany’s baby boomers loathed as the archetype of fascism, a living symbol of the evil Nazi-ish past, actually was a Stasi hero, a loyal servant of Communism. Many had no idea what to make of it, as the implications of the news were so stunning.The important question arose at once: Did Kurras kill Ohnesorg on the orders of the MfS, to bolster the radical Left movement in West Germany? It is impossible to answer this question with certainty, though it seems to be the obvious explanation for the crime, since the files are incomplete (and Kurras is keeping his mouth shut about any details, though he has admitted in recent years that he did serve the Stasi). Fearing that he was now toxic, the MfS put Kurras on ice after the Ohnesorg killing, as he was the recipient of much media attention. A recent reexamination of the Ohnesorg case has revealed that the killing was indeed premeditated, no one had threatened Kurras – he simply shot the young protestor in the back of the head without provocation, a crime which the Berlin police actively covered up the facts about. Why Kurras did this may never be known, but it seems unlikely to this former counterintelligence hand that an agent of such value to the Stasi would do something so certain to cause scandal and uproar out of literally nowhere, for no reason.
This sensational case is destined to leave behind as many questions as answers. It has caused a more-than-minor reassessment of the 1960s in German life, and the path of the Left in Germany in the decades since. Not to mention the irony noted by many that both Kurras and the radicals his criminal act gave birth to in the form of terrorism, were under the control of the Stasi. A brilliant op, clearly. And a good reminder that some things are not quite what they seem to be.
Link:
http://20committee.com/2013/02/24/what-if-everything-you-know-is-wrong/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)