Archive for April 10, 2012


I  would like  to make  clear  that  I  did  not  write  nor did  I   incorporate  any  information  towards the  writing  of these  articles.  Eddie  Sage of Consciousness TV  / World Truth TV  (http://worldtruth.tv/) encourages  his  readers  to  share and  so in light  of the importance  of this information.  I  think it extremely  important  to pass on the articles you  will find here.

The  lack of  coverage in the mainstream  media is appalling .  The  egregious lies and crimes  being   perpetrated against us  and   our  environment can  no longer be  ignored  or  chalked up to honest  mistakes.  These  are serious issues  that  affect all of us in ways  that  can  only be measured with time.  However  once  the  damage  has been done   the  necessary  steps to correct  and repair said  damage  must  be taken.

Instead  we  are  lied  to and  the  crimes  covered up.  How  long  will we  allow  this  to continue without  and  outcry of  outrage and a  call to stop these criminals from their  actions?  If they are  allowed  to continue what  will be next?  They  have already   poisoned our children’s food  supply  with  GMO’s.   They have  already  poisoned our  water  with  Fluoride  and all manner  of  chemicals  that  play  no  role in said  waters  safety.  They  have  already poisoned our  children’s  vaccines  with  Mercury and all manner  of  poisonous adjuvents.  How  much  more   will we  allow them to get  away  with?

Countries around the   world  are  saying , “No to GMO”.  Yet we  sit  idly  by  and  allow   the poisoning to continue  here  at  home.  Monsanto is  suing anyone  that  stands in it’s  way.  So  we  cower  and  look the other  way.  No matter  how  powerful they  cannot  possibly  sue  all of us  if  we  stand  together. When  will Enough be  Enough?  We  must  stand up and  stop this  madness now before it is  too late  for our  children  and  our environment!

We  have  the power to  vote with our  hard  earned  dollars.  We have the  power  to  voice  our  displeasure and  our  disagreement.  We  have the  power to let  them  know  just  how  disgusted  we  are with their  corrupt , inept  and   calculated  ways.  We are  the only  ones  that  can exact a  change that  will benefit  not  only our  children  but  our  world.  The  power of  the people  is not  dead is is merely sleeping after  so many  years of disuse.  It is  time to  wake  her  up and set her in motion for all our  sakes!

Share this  with as  many  people  as  you  can.  Knowledge  is power !  Pass it on and  take a  stand  today !!

Or  sit  back and do nothing.  So when  the  damage  can no longer  be  reversed you will  know in  your heart that  you could have  done  something about this  and  never  lifted  a  finger……. Which will do  no one  any good, including our  children.

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USDA Admits Exterminating Birds, Crops, and Bees

By Eddie Sage on 08 April 2012

 

http://worldtruth.tv/usda-admits-exterminating-birds-crops-and-bees/

 

 

The USDA has been under fire recently for its admitted assault against nature, after multiple investigations have uncovered its deliberate tampering with both plants and animals alike. One such investigation has put an end to the mystery surrounding the death of millions of birds, with USDA documents revealing the organization’s role in the massive slaughter. In addition to the mass bird killings, it turns out the USDA was fully aware that a highly-popular herbicide chemical was a known bee-killer, which may have aided the bee decline. The USDA has also threatened the genetic integrity of the nation’s crops. Information has surfaced regarding the USDA’s illegal approval of Monsanto’s biotech crop, sugar beets. These crimes are simply an excerpt from the long list of USDA crimes that are continually being exposed.

In December of 2010, mystery struck the world. Reports of mass fish and bird die-offs were coming in from Texas to Sweden. The first occurrence in the series of strange events started in Arkansas, where 3,000 birds fell from the sky. In the following days and weeks, similar incidents were reported with no solid explanation. The reason has now been found, thanks to documents found on the USDA’s website. Claiming to be protecting farmers from predators, the birds were victims of a little-known government program. Like millions of other animals since the Bye Bye Blackbird program was created in the 1960′s, the birds were poisoned and killed for being considered a nuisance to farmers. It is important to take note that many of these animals don’t pose any immediate threat to farmers.

In the 1960′s the USDA established a program referred to as the Bye Bye Blackbird program. This program is solely responsible for the mass killings of what could ultimately be millions of birds across the nation. In 2009 alone the USDA poisoned and killed over 4 million birds. The documents state whether or not the deaths were intentional or unintentional on the government website. You can find extremely large numbers, such as 22,276 blackbirds marked as intentionally euthanized. Here is some data from the USDA itself:

Brown-headed cowbirds: 1,046,109

European Starlings: 1,259,714

Red-winged blackbirds: 965,889

Canadian Geese : 24,519

Pigeons: 96,297

Grackles: 93,210

Starlings European: 1,259,714

These numbers are simply the top for 2009. Let us not forget about all the other years animals have been killed since the 1960′s when the program was first created.

According to Natural News :

A Nebraska farmer was apparently complaining that the starlings were defecating in his feed meal. The answer to this conundrum apparently isn’t to cover your feed meal but rather call the USDA and ask them to poison thousands of birds. The USDA complied, apparently agreeing this was a brilliant idea. So they put out a poison called DRC-1339 and allowed thousands of birds to feed on that poison.

“Cows are supposed to eat grass. If you are running a cow operation where the birds are eating your grain and you think the birds are the problem, the real problem is that you’re feeding cows the wrong food! If you raise your cows on grass, the birds don’t get into the grain and you don’t have to poison the birds.

“You see, when one ecological element gets out of balance (feeding grain to cows, for example), it then causes another problem that must be dealt with in some other destructive way (such as poisoning the birds). This cycle of disharmony continues and escalates until entire ecosystems are out of whack. Then the USDA shows up with a pickup truck full of poison bait and goes to work poisoning animals. The solution isn’t to keep poisoning animals and trying to control populations through toxic chemicals but rather to return to holistic web-of-life farming methods that work in harmony with nature rather than treating nature as the enemy.”

The government is committing what many people would call a crime. Killing mass amounts of animals via poison is a flagrant act of violence against nature that should not be tolerated or encouraged. People aren’t allowed to hunt in certain regions of the United States, but the government is allowed to kill off animals by the millions. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.

In recent years the world honey bee population has plummeted in North America. This is important because bee pollination is crucial for the fertilization of many crops. Just as many potential explanations arose over the mysterious bird deaths, many different theories have been proposed to explain the bee decline. Electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate have all taken the heat of critics looking for answers. Recently, however, a document was leaked revealing that a bee-killing pesticide put in use by the EPA may be to blame. Adding to the controversy, more records have emerged showing that the USDA was fully aware of the pesticide’s threat to not only bees, but humans. The two-month-old report released by the USDA itself unveiled that the toxic insecticide used on plants are not only a threat to insects’ central nervous systems, but are also a threat to the internal systems of humans.

Imidacloprid, one of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides introduced over the past 15 years, is likely to be responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the recently observed phenomenon in which bees abandon their hives en masse, according to the study by scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health in the United States.

The study, to appear in the June issue of The Bulletin of Insectology, provides “convincing evidence” of the link between imidacloprid and CCD, claim the authors, led by Alex Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the school’s Department of Environmental Health. It follows two other widely publicised studies, from Britain and France, published last week in the journal Science, which strongly suggested that neonicotinoids were linked to the declines in bees and other pollinating insects seen in Europe and the US.

Neonicotinoids, which attack the central nervous system of insects, are considered by some scientists as dangerous to species which are not the compounds’ principal targets, because they are “systemic” – meaning they do not just sit on the surface of a plant but are taken up into every part of it, including the pollen and nectar, where they can be ingested repeatedly by bees and other pollinating insects.

Twice in the past three years, the Government has been asked, on the basis of compelling evidence, to suspend the use of the new generation of neonicotinoid pesticides, until the increasingly worrying evidence that they are extremely harmful to bees and other pollinating insects has been shown to be unfounded.

The first occasion was in 2009, by a coalition of environmental groups led by Buglife, the invertebrate conservation charity; the second was in 2011 by the Labour MP Martin Caton, after  paper’s disclosure that America’s leading bee scientist had found a harmful link. On each occasion the request was ignored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Sugar Beets created by corporate giant Monsanto Company, who is leading the genetically modified food market, make up for about half of the nation’s sugar supply. The approval of these beets was initially made in 2005, granting Monsanto the right to plant genetically modified sugar beets that could withstand sprayings of the herbicide marketed as Roundup. The entity responsible for the approval? The USDA. Unfortunately, the USDA hadn’t conducted a thorough review of the biotech crop, making the approval flagrantly illegal. To make matters more complicated, the USDA issued permits which allowed companies to plant seedlings that would later produce seed for future sugar beet crops. Judge White, the federal judge who deemed the approval illegal, issued that the seedlings be removed immediately. The immunity that the sugar beets possess against the herbicide being used on them is not exhibited by any other plant, or even humans. With excessive herbicide use comes more poisoned organisms consuming the sugar beets and thus becoming sickly. Additionally, conventional and organic crops are subject to contamination from an overflow of pesticides.

If you thought Monsanto’s lack of testing on their current GMO crops was bad before, prepare to now be blown away by the latest statement by the USDA. Despite links to organ damage and mutated insects, the USDA says that it is changing the rules so that genetically modified seed companies like Monsanto will get ‘speedier regulatory reviews. With the faster reviews, there will be even less time spent on evaluating the potential dangers. Why? Because Monsanto is losing sales with longer approval terms.

The changes were expected to take full effect in March when they’re published in the Federal Register. The USDA’s goal is to cut the approval time for GMO crops in half in order to speedily implement them into the global food supply. The current USDA process takes longer than they would like due to ‘public interest, legal challenges, and the challenges associated with the advent of national organic food standards‘ says USDA deputy administrator Michael Gregoire.

This is just a small fragment taken from a list of . The USDA seems to be recklessly endangering life on this planet with its disregard for what it was created to protect. The reports and documents revealed in this article may very well be the tip of the iceberg. The recently-released document unveiling the bee decline is two years old, and is most likely not the last to be uncovered. It is only a matter of time before more secretive documents come out highlighting the USDA’s shameless lack of respect for life. The USDA has not been forced to openly admit to these claims due to a lack of mainstream media attention. It took investigative journalism to discover these documents and it will take future investigation to oust even more of the USDA’s corruption.

USDA Has Been Found To be Poisoning Bird Populations

By Eddie Sage on 27 December 2011

 

http://worldtruth.tv/usda-has-been-found-to-be-poisoning-bird-populations/

 

Not all the mysterious bird die-offs that have been witnessed around the globe recently are due to unexplained causes. A recent mass die-off event witnessed in Yankton, South Dakota was traced back to the USDA which admitted to carrying out a mass poisoning of the birds.

After hundreds of starlings were found dead in the Yankton Riverside Park, concerned citizens began to investigate. Before long, a USDA official called the local police and admitted they had poisoned the birds. “They say that they had poisoned the birds about ten miles south of Yankton and they were surprised they came to Yankton like they did and died in our park,” says Yankton Animal Control Officer Lisa Brasel, as reported by KTIV (http://www.ktiv.com/Global/story.as…).

The USDA then confirmed the story and explained it was all “part of a large killing” in Nebraska. Some of the birds that ate the poison apparently flew all the way to Yankton before succumbing to the poison.

Watch the video yourself, as reported from KTIV:
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=19157…

USDA mass-murders birds on a regular basis

So why was the USDA poisoning birds in the first place? A Nebraska farmer was apparently complaining that the starlings were defecating in his feed meal. The answer to this conundrum apparently isn’t to cover your feed meal but rather call the USDA and ask them to poison thousands of birds.

The USDA complied, apparently agreeing this was a brilliant idea. So they put out a poison called DRC-1339 and allowed thousands of birds to feed on that poison.

Carol Bannerman from USDA Wildlife Services ridiculously claimed the bird kill was also to protect “human health.”

“We’re doing it to address, in this case, agricultural damage as well as the potential for human health and safety issues,” she said. That’s just a lie, of course. In what universe do starlings pose a threat to human health and safety?

The USDA Wildlife Services website, by the way, ishttp://www.aphis.usda.gov

The USDA even has a name for this mass poisoning program: Bye Bye Blackbird. Through the use of poisons such as DRC-1339, the USDA has killed more than four million birds over the last several years, reports Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org/bye-bye-bl…).

They even proudly publish an online spreadsheet showing just how many they’ve murdered with poison:http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_…

Remember, these are mass bird killings that are funded with your tax dollars. It all makes you wonder whether the government is, in fact, responsible for many of the other mysterious animal deaths that have been reported across the country (and around the globe).

It also makes you wonder: If the federal government thinks nothing of murdering 4 million living, breathing birds, then what else might they be capable of doing out of a total lack of respect for wildlife?

And if the USDA poisons birds because certain groups become too populous, what do you suppose is planned for when human population grows too large?

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Earthquakes

 

 

EMSC Dodecanese Islands, Greece
Apr 10 06:01 AM
4.0 30.0 MAP

USGS Offshore Northern California
Apr 10 05:43 AM
2.9 10.6 MAP

EMSC North Of Ascension Island
Apr 10 05:09 AM
5.8 33.0 MAP

GEOFON North Of Ascension Island
Apr 10 05:09 AM
5.4 10.0 MAP

USGS North Of Ascension Island
Apr 10 05:09 AM
5.8 9.9 MAP

USGS Washington
Apr 10 04:43 AM
3.2 11.0 MAP

EMSC Dodecanese Islands, Greece
Apr 10 04:34 AM
2.6 12.0 MAP

EMSC Western Turkey
Apr 10 04:19 AM
2.7 8.0 MAP

EMSC Western Turkey
Apr 10 04:13 AM
2.9 3.0 MAP

EMSC Eastern Turkey
Apr 10 04:11 AM
3.0 10.0 MAP

GEOFON Northern Mid Atlantic Ridge
Apr 10 03:37 AM
4.5 10.0 MAP

EMSC Northern Mid-atlantic Ridge
Apr 10 03:37 AM
4.6 10.0 MAP

USGS Northern Mid-atlantic Ridge
Apr 10 03:37 AM
4.7 10.4 MAP

EMSC Near East Coast Of Honshu, Japan
Apr 10 02:57 AM
4.8 55.0 MAP

GEOFON Near East Coast Of Honshu, Japan
Apr 10 02:57 AM
4.7 60.0 MAP

EMSC Spain
Apr 10 01:54 AM
2.9 10.0 MAP

EMSC Carlsberg Ridge
Apr 10 01:42 AM
4.7 30.0 MAP

USGS Carlsberg Ridge
Apr 10 01:42 AM
4.8 15.2 MAP

GEOFON Carlsberg Ridge
Apr 10 01:42 AM
4.6 10.0 MAP

EMSC Eastern Turkey
Apr 10 01:16 AM
3.0 5.0 MAP

USGS Northern California
Apr 10 01:09 AM
2.7 1.2 MAP

EMSC Eastern Turkey
Apr 10 00:02 AM
2.5 12.0 MAP

 

Swarm of small earthquakes hit Mt. Rose area

 

A series of small earthquakes over the weekend in the area between Mt. Rose and Incline Village is nothing out of the norm, a seismologist for the University of Nevada, Reno said Monday.

More than a dozen small tremors registering between 1.0 and 1.9 on the Richter scale were recorded on Sunday, most taking place about 6 miles north of Incline Village. The quakes were so small, and at a depth that they likely weren’t felt.

“I wouldn’t consider this unusual,” said Diane Depolo, a seismologist with the UNR Seismological Lab. “These are pretty small, and depth-wise, they’re what we’d consider normal depth for that area.”

The quakes were about 8 to 12 kilometers deep. Depolo said it would normally take a quake of 2.5 to 3 to be felt at that depth.

Depolo said this cluster of quakes is different from those that affected the Verdi-Mogul area in past years because the Verdi-Mogul quakes were much shallower.

A 1.1 quake was registered in the Mt. Rose area on Monday morning.

 

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Volcanic Activity

 

Colombia issues Nevado del Ruiz volcano warning

 

 

BOGOTA (AFP) – Colombia on Sunday issued a warning for areas crossed by rivers that pass through the Nevado del Ruiz volcano area, amid heavy rains and concern that an eruption could be in the works.

Authorities issued a ‘red alert’ for rivers near the volcano in Caldas and Tolima departments ‘due to the change in the eruption threat and to heavy rains in the area,’ the national weather and environmental institute (IDEAM) said.

The volcano has been rumbling at a greater rate in recent days; its alert level was boosted on March 31.

On Saturday, the volcano’s activity was still unstable and it was emitting more gases, the National Geological Service said.

 

 

Ecuador: Increase in Seismic Activity of Tungurahua Volcano

 

Quito, Apr 9 (Prensa Latina) A new increase in the seismic activity of Tungurahua Volcano, in Ecuador, began early Monday with a constant sign of high energy tremor linked with ash emissions.

According to the report of the Geophysics Institute of the National Polytechnic School, the increase of the seismic activity in this crater started with a column of smoke that reached 3 kilometers high along with low intensity roaring and sounds.

The first explosions caused minor thunders or crashes due to the rolling of blocks through the side walls of the volcano.

Shortly after, the falling of black and fine ashes on populations in the south-southwest regions, such as Palitahua, Capil, and Toctes, was reported.

According to the last report, the area surrounding the volcano remains highly cloudy, and with seismic activity.

 

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Extreme Temperatures/ Weather

 

National heat records shattered during March

 

Associated Press

 

It’s been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records weren’t just broken, they were deep-fried.

Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That far exceeds the old records.

The magnitude of how unusual the year has been in the U.S. has alarmed some meteorologists who have warned about global warming. One climate scientist said it’s the weather equivalent of a baseball player on steroids, with old records obliterated.

“Everybody has this uneasy feeling. This is weird. This is not good,” said Jerry Meehl, a climate scientist who specializes in extreme weather at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “It’s a guilty pleasure. You’re out enjoying this nice March weather, but you know it’s not a good thing.”

It’s not just March…..

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

Extreme weather in Sydney, Australia

 

-Heavy storm and rainfall in Australia damaged roofs of several houses.
-Power outage in several areas of Ryde, Lindfield, Killara, St Ives, Frenchs Forest and Turramurra.
-Australian Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Sydney, the Hunter region, the Mid North Coast, North West Slopes and Plains districts.

 

 

Massive Wildfire in Harford County, Maryland, USA

 

 

-Evacuation order issued to several houses across Harford county.
-100 firefighters controlled the fire which spread to more than 50 acres.
-People were allowed to return their homes after three hours.

 

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Storms, Flooding

 

Natural Disasters List April 9, 2012-Flooding In Turner Falls, Oklahoma

 

Flooding in Turner Falls, Oklahoma

-More than 500 people evacuated from Turner Falls area after flooding caused by heavy rainfall.
-Evacuated people are taking shelter in Murray County Expo Center.
-Many flood affected people are from Texas.
-Power outage reported in several places.
-The National Weather Service hadn’t issued any weather watches or warnings in this area.
-Turner Falls is currently closed and expected to reopen when water levels are safe.
-No fatalities or injuries reported.
-In March, Norman and Oklahoma City were affected by Flash floods
Update
-About 600 people are living in evacuation centers.
-The American Red Cross is supporting the shelter in the evacuation center.
-Following officials, more storms are expected in Oklahoma this week.

 

 

Strong winds and sandstorm in Northern part of China

 

-National Meteorological Center (NMC) of China has issued a BLUE ALERT for different areas of Northern China.

-Strong winds and sandstorms are forecast over the next 24 hours in parts of Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Ningxia Hui autonomous region and the provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi and Shanxi.
-Last week Gansu province of China was hit by the biggest sandstorm in 2012

 

 

Flooding in Fiji Islands

 

-Schools in Western Division will resume classes from Tomorrow.
-Flood victims are currently living in 60 different evacuation centers. Click for detail report on Fiji floods

 

 

Flooding in Indonesia

 

-More than 900 people affected by flood last week are suffering from influenza and skin rashes.
-About 7,000 people were affected by flood which caused due to torrential rainfall.
-Following Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), rainfall last week was a normal phenomenon during the transition period from the rainy to dry season

 

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Radiation

 

Radioactive fluid leaks at French nuclear reactor

 

Radioactive cooling fluid leaked at a French nuclear reactor Thursday following two small fires, but the spillage was safely collected in special tanks, officials said.

 

A reactor at the power plant in Penly on the English Channel near the port of Dieppe shut down automatically after two small fires broke out Thursday, the plant’s operator EDF said.

Firefighters easily extinguished the blazes but a cooling pump was damaged, in turn causing a joint to leak radioactive water into collection tanks located inside the reactor building, EDF said.

The reactor continued to be cooled properly and teams were working to lower the water pressure, the company said.

EDF said the installation was secure, no one was injured, and there were “no consequences for the environment”…..

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

California nuclear plant shut indefinitely amid hunt to find cause of problems

 

By the CNN Wire Staff

 

(CNN) — A large Southern California nuclear plant is out of commission indefinitely, and will remain so until there is an understanding of what caused problems at two of its generators and an effective plan to address the issues, the nation’s top nuclear regulator said Friday.

Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, refused to give a timetable as to when the San Onofre nuclear plant could resume operation. He said only that his agency had “set some firm conditions” as to when that could happen.

“We won’t make a decision (to approve the facility’s restart) unless we’re satisfied that public health and safety will be protected,” Jaczko told reporters. “They have to demonstrate to us that they understand the causes, and … that they have a plan to address them.”

The power plant has been shut down since this winter, when a small amount of radioactive gas escaped from a steam generator during a water leak. At the time, federal regulators said there was no threat to public health, though they could not identify how much gas leaked or exactly why it had happened.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

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Climate Change

 

North Sea Gas Leak: Experts Assess Climate Impact of Ongoing Accident

 

Elizabeth Grossman, InsideClimate News:

 

“The French energy company Total estimates that its North Sea Elgin field gas well is leaking about 200,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day … If the gas continues escaping at that rate, and all of it reaches the atmosphere, it would approximate the annual global warming impact of 35,000 Americans. The gas is mostly methane, which is considered the second largest contributor to human-caused global warming after carbon dioxide.”

 

Read Full Article Here

 

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SOLAR ACTIVITY

 

2MIN News Apr9: NASA, WW3, Extreme Weather, Solar/Planetary Update

 

 

 

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Wildlife

 

Polar bears have symptoms of mystery disease: U.S. agency

 

(Reuters) – Symptoms of a mysterious disease that has killed scores of seals off Alaska and infected walruses are now showing up in polar bears, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Friday.

Nine polar bears from the Beaufort Sea region near Barrow were found with patchy hair loss and oozing sores on their skin, similar to conditions found in diseased seals and walruses, the agency said in a statement.

Unlike the sickened seals and walruses, the affected polar bears seem otherwise healthy, said Tony DeGange, chief of the biology office for the USGS’s Alaska Science Center. There had been no deaths among polar bears, he said.

The nine affected bears were among the 33 that biologists have captured and sampled while doing routine studies on the Arctic coastline, DeGange said.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]

Health

10 Things the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know
Nutrition experts argue that you can’t take marketing campaigns at face value

 

By Adam Voiland, Angela Haupt

 

Bigger, juicier, saltier, sweeter, crunchier. Most of all, more. The food industry and its nonstop marketing has been tabbed by many experts as a major player in the obesity epidemic. “The result of constant exposure to today’s ‘eat more’ food environment,” write Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim in their upcoming book Why Calories Count, “has been to drive people to desire high-calorie foods and to become ‘conditioned over-eaters.’”

Even as the food industry takes steps seemingly in the right direction—by launching campaigns to bring healthy products to schools, for example—wellness initiatives are often just marketing ploys, contends David Ludwig, a pediatrician and coauthor of a commentary published in 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that raised questions about whether big food companies can be trusted to help combat obesity. Ultimately, he has argued, makers of popular junk foods have an obligation to stockholders to maximize profits….

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

Acid Reflux Relief—Without a Pill

Tricks range from loosening your belt to cutting carbs

 

By Angela Haupt

Feeling the burn? That painful sensation in your chest or throat—acid reflux, or what doctors call GERD—isn’t intractable. Lifestyle and dietary tweaks can bring relief, experts say. “Simple [changes] can make a big difference,” says gastroenterologist Jorge Rodriguez, author of the new book The Acid Reflux Solution (Ten Speed Press, $21.99). That’s promising, since researchers warn that heartburn drugs may do more harm than good, increasing the risk of infection with an intestinal bacteria or even the likelihood of contracting pneumonia.

Here are nine easy ways to alleviate heartburn without swallowing a pill:…..

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

Understanding Allergies

 

Ah-choo! High pollen levels throughout much of the country mean that millions of Americans are sniffling, sneezing and itching. Spring allergies are usually caused by tree pollen, while grasses are generally the culprit during late spring and summer. Weather and environmental conditions affect the severity of your allergy symptoms. Pollen moves around less when conditions are rainy, cloudy and still, so your allergy symptoms may be better on these days. Pollen travels more readily on hot, dry and windy days, which can increase allergy symptoms. Exposure to outdoor air pollution like ozone can also increase sensitivity to allergens……

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

Young Parkinson’s patients fight back with boxing

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

 

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Holistic Health

 

The Hidden Food in Your Yard – You May Walk by It Every Day…

 

By Dr. Mercola

 

A major part of achieving optimal health is living in partnership with nature.

Growing your own food is a great way to rekindle this connection with nature.

But have you thought about eating plants that grow wild—perhaps in your own backyard?

Some “weeds” can be delicious if prepared properly, and they are absolutely free.

In an article published earlier this summer, Live Science collected some easy-to-identify healthful weeds, including:

Dandelion: The entire plant is edible, and the leaves contain vitamins A, C and K, along with calcium, iron, manganese, and potassium.
Purslane: Purslane tops the list of plants with omega-3 fats.
Lamb’s-quarters: Lamb’s-quarters are like spinach, except healthier, tastier and easier to grow.
Plantain: Not the better-known banana-like plant with the same name. It has a nutritional profile similar to dandelion.
Stinging Nettles: If you handle them so that you don’t get a painful rash from the tiny, acid-filled needles, these are delicious and nutritious cooked or prepared as a tea.

This is of course how our ancestors ate. They hunted and gathered, and ALL of it was wild. And by all accounts, they were far healthier than we are.

Of course, like anything else, identification and use of wild plants requires spending some time educating yourself, lest you eat something inedible or even poisonous. But with some attention to learning what to look for, you can avail yourself of some of the most highly nutritious, health-promoting plants for FREE—and have a lot of fun doing it. With the availability of the Internet, in addition to a number of excellent printed books and even wild-food foraging classes, this information is now easy to access.

So, grab your favorite weeding tool and a basket, and step outside to see what little gems you can find in your own backyard!

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

 

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Pet Health

 

Floppy-Eared Dogs Need Extra Help to Avoid This Miserable Condition

 

By Dr. Becker

 

Ear or aural hematomas are fluid-filled pockets on the inside of the ear flap.

There are tiny blood vessels in the pinna or the floppy part of your pet’s ears.

When something causes these little vessels to rupture, they bleed under the skin and form a fluid-filled pocket.

Ear hematomas are most commonly seen in floppy-eared dogs, but they can occur in any breed of dog – whether their ears are floppy or not – and even occur in cats.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

 

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Positivity Mind and Body

01_The Game of Life & How to Play It  Part 1 of 3

by Florence Scovel-Shinn

Uploaded by luxnewman on Jan 13, 2010

Chapter One – Part 01 of 03
The Game of Life & How to Play It
by Florence Scovel-Shinn
Portrait sketch of Florence Scovel-Shinn
Voice of Rev. Lux Newman

 

 

Part 2  

 

Part 3

 

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Articles of Interest

 

Dirty dentures? Dangerous MRSA may be lurking, dentists say

 

By JoNel Aleccia

 

Here’s some bad news for the estimated 20 million people in the U.S. who wear full or partial dentures: There’s a good chance your choppers are covered with thin layers of icky, sticky bacteria known as biofilms.

Worse, some of the biofilm germs may be bad bugs such as MRSA, or drug-resistant staphylococcus aureus bacteria, which can lurk on the dentures until they’re breathed into the lungs, where experts fear they may cause nasty, hard-to-treat infections.

Fortunately, a team of scientists in Brazil has come up with two simple solutions that seem to work: Zap your dentures in the microwave for three minutes, or soak them in a solution of 2 percent chlorhexidine gluconate, a germicidal mouthwash, for 10 minutes…..

 

Read Full Article Here

 

Birth control shots tied to breast cancer risk, study says

 

By Rita Rubin

 

Recent use of the injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera for at least a year was associated with a doubling of young women’s breast cancer risk, a new study has found.

However, users’ breast cancer risk dropped to that of non-users within several months of stopping Depo-Provera injections, researchers report in the journal Cancer Research.

Depo-Provera, injected every three months, was approved as a contraceptive in the United States 20 years ago. Convenient, highly effective and relatively inexpensive, Depo-Provera is used by about 1.2 million U.S. women, or 3.2 percent of those who practice contraception, according to the latest data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and education organization that focuses on reproductive health.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]

Food Safety

The Genetically Modified Food You Eat Every Day

GMO crops have infiltrated 80% of all the packaged food in the United States, and no one has told you. Here’s why.

Genetically modified food is in a store near you today. In fact, it’s been there for years. You may not know it, but in all the fracas over genetically modified food, one point is often left out: You’ve been eating it for a long time and no one has told you. This infographic from Nature’s Path–which makes organic cereals, bars, and waffles that contain no GMO ingredients, they’d like you to know–shows where you’re getting your genetically modified treats, and why no one has told you:

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

Debate Heats Up Over Poultry Inspection Proposal

 

By Helena Bottemiller

 

If you listen to both critics and proponents of a new U.S. Department of Agriculture proposal to expand a pilot poultry inspection program, you might wonder if they’re talking about the same thing. In January, the USDA’s Food Safety and…

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

Has Salmonella Sushi Sickened 3,000?

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that for every reported case of Salmonella, an additional 29.3 infections go undiagnosed and unreported. Undiagnosed Salmonella victims are never counted in official Salmonella outbreak case-counts. There may well be nearly 3,000 sickened.

In the wake of an April, 2012 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announcement that at least 100 people have become ill in a Salmonella outbreak linked to Sushi, the attorneys at Marler Clark are distributing a FAQ list for consumers who may have been exposed in the outbreak. The CDC has identified cases in the following states: Alabama (2), Arkansas (1), Connecticut (5), District of Columbia (2), Georgia (4), Illinois (9), Louisiana (2), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (4), Mississippi (1), Missouri (1), New Jersey (7), New York (23), North Carolina (2), Pennsylvania (3), Rhode Island (4), South Carolina (3), Texas (3), Virginia (5), and Wisconsin (9).

What do consumers need to know in a Sushi Salmonella Outbreak?……

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

7 Food Ingredients Most Prone for Food Fraud

 

ROCKVILLE, Md.—Olive oil, milk, honey, saffron, orange juice, coffee and apple juice are the seven most likely food ingredients to be targets for intentional or economically motivated adulteration of food, or food fraud, according to analysis of the first U.S. public database created to compile information on risk factors for food fraud published in the Journal of Food Science.

The database was created by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) and provides baseline information to assist interested parties in assessing the risks of specific products. It includes a total of 1,305 records for food fraud based on a total of 667 scholarly, media and other publicly available reports.

Food fraud is a collective term that encompasses the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain. A more specific type of fraud is the fraudulent addition of nonauthentic substances or removal or replacement of authentic substances without the purchaser’s knowledge for economic gain of the seller.

According to the authors of the paper, food fraud may be more risky than traditional threats to the food supply because the adulterants used in these activities often are unconventional and designed to avoid detection through routine analyses.

“The vast majority of food fraud is primarily technical and economical,” said John Spink, associate director with the anti-counterfeiting and product protection program at Michigan State University. “However, there are some cases where there can be serious health consequences as illustrated when melamine was added to infant formula and pet food in order to falsify the level of protein content in these products.”

 

Read Full Article Here

 

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Recalls

 

Some Planters Cocktail Peanuts Recalled

 

By News Desk

 

Kraft Foods Group, Inc. is recalling about 3,000 cases of Planters Cocktail Peanuts because there is a possibility that the product was exposed to water not intended for use in food during the production process.Consumers who purchased the affected code…

 

Read Full Article Here

 

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Articles of Interest

 

BPI and ‘Pink Slime’: A Timeline

 

By James Andrews

 

The story of Beef Products Inc.’s Lean Finely Textured Beef isn’t new, and neither is the nickname “pink slime”. Yet after more than 10 years on the market, the beef additive had never received the level of attention it did…

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

A Question of Origin

 

By Alli Condra

 

Dear Reader: Where did your last meal come from?Given our globalized food system, this is a difficult question to answer. The question of food origin breaks down into several parts. Do we care where it originated? Or, do we care…

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]

 

Environmental

Monsanto’s Roundup Altering the Physical Shape of Amphibians

 

Mike Barrett, News Analysis:

 

While it wasn’t surprising to see morphological changes take part due to the naturally emitted chemicals from predators, it was rather shocking to find out that Roundup had the same effects — causing the tails of the tadpoles to grow in size. What’s more, the combination of the naturally emitted chemicals and Roundup caused the tadpoles’ tails to grow twice as large. Seeing as tadpoles alter body shape in order to properly survive in its environment, the forced changes from herbicides like Roundup can put the animals at a disadvantage.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

Environmental Groups Sue EPA Over Lack of Coal Ash Regulation

 

Emma Schwartz, News Report:

 

A 2009 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity revealed the havoc that coal ash has wreaked near ponds, landfills, and pits where it is dumped. Even the EPA has identified 63 “proven or potential damage cases” in 23 states where coal ash has tainted groundwater or otherwise harmed the environment. But critics say no meaningful federal regulations have been put in place.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

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Survival / Sustainability

 

Using Community Gardens to Grow Low-Income Communities Out of Food Deserts

 

Emily Apple, New Deal 2.0:

 

“More than 23 million Americans live in ‘food deserts’: areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, particularly ones composed of predominantly lower income neighborhoods and communities. Recognizing these problems, Daniel Bowman Simon … has now has moved on to helping low-income individuals and families access healthy foods through his organization SNAP Gardens. Simon encourages SNAP beneficiaries to ‘grow’ their benefits by utilizing a 1973 amendment to the Food Stamp Act that allows food stamp recipients to use their benefits to buy seeds.”

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

The Hidden Food in Your Yard – You May Walk by It Every Day…

 

By Dr. Mercola

 

A major part of achieving optimal health is living in partnership with nature.

Growing your own food is a great way to rekindle this connection with nature.

But have you thought about eating plants that grow wild—perhaps in your own backyard?

Some “weeds” can be delicious if prepared properly, and they are absolutely free.

In an article published earlier this summer, Live Science collected some easy-to-identify healthful weeds, including:

Dandelion: The entire plant is edible, and the leaves contain vitamins A, C and K, along with calcium, iron, manganese, and potassium.
Purslane: Purslane tops the list of plants with omega-3 fats.
Lamb’s-quarters: Lamb’s-quarters are like spinach, except healthier, tastier and easier to grow.
Plantain: Not the better-known banana-like plant with the same name. It has a nutritional profile similar to dandelion.
Stinging Nettles: If you handle them so that you don’t get a painful rash from the tiny, acid-filled needles, these are delicious and nutritious cooked or prepared as a tea.

This is of course how our ancestors ate. They hunted and gathered, and ALL of it was wild. And by all accounts, they were far healthier than we are.

Of course, like anything else, identification and use of wild plants requires spending some time educating yourself, lest you eat something inedible or even poisonous. But with some attention to learning what to look for, you can avail yourself of some of the most highly nutritious, health-promoting plants for FREE—and have a lot of fun doing it. With the availability of the Internet, in addition to a number of excellent printed books and even wild-food foraging classes, this information is now easy to access.

So, grab your favorite weeding tool and a basket, and step outside to see what little gems you can find in your own backyard!

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

 

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Whistle Blowers

 

‘Reluctant Spy’ indicted for leaking US secrets

 

A former CIA officer was indicted Thursday on charges of leaking secrets to journalists, including the name of a covert agent and the role of another CIA employee in classified operations.

John Kiriakou, who had previously revealed the CIA’s use of waterboarding of Al-Qaeda suspects, was charged in January with leaking secrets. The indictment allows the case to proceed to trial without an evidentiary hearing.

The indictment returned by a grand jury in Virginia charged Kiriakou with one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and three counts of violating the Espionage Act.

The indictment also charged him with making false statements to the CIA in an unsuccessful attempt to trick the agency into allowing him to include classified information in his 2010 book, “The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.”

 

Read Full Article Here

 

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Activism

 

How to Succeed in Reoccupation Without Really Trying

 

Nathan Schneider, Op-Ed:

 

This is a new time; the movement and people’s perspectives on it are in a totally different place than they were last fall. Potential allies expect more from the movement, I’d say, and so they should. People I know who were wholeheartedly behind it a few months ago seem to think it’s over, or it should be. The encampments, which Occupiers know as well as anyone sometimes turned into rather unsafe spaces, lost much public support.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

Corrupt Canadian Banking System.mp4

 

Uploaded by facing42 on Apr 6, 2012

 

This is my daughter. She gave this speech at a business meeting in front of 600 people. Her eyes have been opened to a scam that is being perpetrated upon Canadians and the rest of the world.
I am the owner of this video. Feel free to use it freely without altering the content in a manner that would draw conclusions unintended by the speech but please redirect people back to the original post.

Please also see these great resources for more information and people who are trying their best to enact the necessary change in our country and the world:

http://www.ohcanadamovie.com/

 

 

 

 

More proof activism works: Kraft, Coca-Cola and Pepsi all say they will leave ALEC

 

By Madison Ruppert

 

For those who are unaware, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is a corporate front group which enables corporate members to help craft “model” legislation which they then give to their allies in state legislatures to put forth as their own.

Essentially, it allows America’s largest corporations to ghostwrite legislation which is later proposed by legislators without the public ever knowing that ALEC had a hand in crafting the bill. They have been linked to many corporations with less-than-admirable intentions, one of the more troubling being Corrections Corporation of America.

A great resource to learn more about the corrupt and deplorable actions of ALEC is ALEC Exposed, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy. They expose ALEC corporations, politicians, state chairmen, who funds ALEC as well as a breakdown of all of the so-called “model bills” they create.

A coalition of citizen groups led by the group Color of Change have begun a campaign to pressure the corporations behind ALEC to quit the group and thus cease providing them with massive funding.

They are arguing that popular consumer corporations should not be backing legislation which, ultimately, is incredibly harmful to the communities which profit off of.

Furthermore, they are directly harming their shareholders and employees as well by damaging their communities as well.

The coalition, made up of Color of Change, Rebuild the Dream, Center for Media and Democracy and the Republic Report, along with private individuals, recently wrote to all 20 corporations sitting on ALEC’s board.

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

Generation Waking Up: The Story of Our Generation

 

 

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Articles of Interest

 

These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps

 

Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff

 

If Americans aren’t disturbed by phone carriers’ practices of handing over cell phone users’ personal data to law enforcement en masse–in many cases without a warrant–we might at least be interested to learn just how much that service is costing us in tax dollars: often hundreds or thousands per individual snooped.

Earlier this week the American Civil Liberties Union revealed a trove of documents it had obtained through Freedom of Information Requests to more than 200 police departments around the country. They show a pattern of police tracking cell phone locations and gathering other data like call logs without warrants, using devices that impersonate cell towers to intercept cellular signals, and encouraging officers to refrain from speaking about cell-tracking technology to the public, all detailed in a New York Times story.

But at least one document also details the day-to-day business of telecoms’ handing over of data to law enforcement, including a breakdown of every major carrier’s fees for every sort of data request from targeted wiretaps to so-called “tower dumps” that provide information on every user of certain cell tower. The guide, as provided by the Tucson, Arizona police department to the ACLU, is dated July 2009, and the fees it lists may be somewhat outdated. But representatives I reached by email at Verizon and AT&T both declined to detail any changes to the numbers…..

 

Read Full Article Here

 

 

 

[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]

Politics and Legislation

Payola for the Most Profitable Corporations in History
And Why Taxpayers Shouldn’t Stand for It Any More

By Bill McKibben

April 06, 2012 — Along with “five dollar a gallon gas,” the energy watchword for the next few months is: “subsidies.” Last week, for instance, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez proposed ending some of the billions of dollars in handouts enjoyed by the fossil-fuel industry with a “Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act.” It was, in truth, nothing to write home about — a curiously skimpy bill that only targeted oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left out were coal and natural gas, and you won’t be surprised to learn that even then it didn’t pass.

Still, President Obama is now calling for an end to oil subsidies at every stop on his early presidential-campaign-plus-fundraising blitz — even at those stops where he’s also promising to “drill everywhere.” And later this month Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce a much more comprehensive bill that tackles all fossil fuels and their purveyors (and has no chance whatsoever of passing this Congress).

Whether or not the bill passes, those subsidies are worth focusing on. After all, we’re talking at least $10 billion in freebies and, depending on what you count, possibly as much as $40 billion annually in freebie cash for an energy industry already making historic profits. If attacking them is a convenient way for the White House to deflect public anger over rising gas prices, it is also a perfect fit for the new worldview the Occupy movement has been teaching Americans. (Not to mention, if you think about it, the Tea Party focus on deficits.) So count on one thing: we’ll be hearing a lot more about them this year.

Read Full Article Here

Issa, Grassley hammer White House for stonewalling on ‘Fast and Furious’ witness

By Michael Volpe

The Obama administration is stonewalling two lawmakers’ requests to interview a former member of the National Security staff in connection with the failed Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program, according to a March 28 letter obtained by The Daily Caller.

California Rep. Darrell Issa and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, both Republicans, requested a response by April 4 to their letter, which asks for an interview with Kevin O’Reilly, that former staffer. But the White House, according to the letter, is blocking access to him.

Through staff, both Grassley and Issa confirmed to TheDC on Thursday that April 4 came and went without any response from the Obama administration.

In their letter to White House Counsel Karen Ruemmler, Grassley and Issa cited a cryptic email exchange between O’Reilly and William Newell, the special agent in charge of the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives at the time Fast and Furious was implemented. The emails, their letter suggests, indicate that Newell was going around his chain of command to personally brief the White House about developments in the gun-walking program.

“You didn’t get this from me,” Newell wrote to O’Reilly in a Sept. 3, 2010 email about Fast and Furious, according to the letter from Issa and Grassley.

“Just don’t want ATF HQ to find out,” Newell wrote in am earlier email, “especially since this is what they should be doing (briefing you!).”

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Issa chairs, has not yet made complete copies of those emails available to reporters.

Read Full Article Here

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Economy

Greek mourners: it was not suicide, it was financial murder – video

Athenians gather in the spot where a 77-year-old man shot himself dead over debts on Wednesday and a woman reads the man’s suicide letter to the crowd. Later in the evening the vigil turns to chaos when riot police use teargas on protesters. Mourners say the police attacks were unprovoked

View video Here

Ireland: Bailed Out Banks are in Process of Going Bust Again

By David McWilliam

April 06, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — Ernest Hemingway was once asked how did he go bankrupt. The great man thought for a second and then replied: “I went bankrupt in two ways, gradually and then suddenly.”

When we see the figures coming from the various banks, it is not difficult to see that something similar is happening in Ireland. Whether the banks end up bust again, the second time in three years, will depend on how the ECB reacts but it looks like the banks, having been bailed out and having received huge government capital injections, could now be in the process of going bust.

As Mr Hemingway observed, people and entities go bust gradually, at first — this is the phase we are in. Then they go bust overnight. History suggests that after that happens, the economy will recover because we have to start again.

Interestingly, the reason that the banks might be going bust gradually is because the ECB is giving them money at 1pc so that they can mask the inconsistencies in their business model for another year or two. But when that money runs out or the ECB’s policy reverses, which it must eventually, where will they get the cash to operate?

Read Full Article Here

U.S. Standard of Living Has Fallen More Than 50%

By Jeff Nielson

April 06, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — In writing about the relentless collapse of Western economies, I frequently point to “forty years of plummeting wages” for Western workers, in real dollars. However, where I have been remiss is in quantifying the magnitude of this collapse in Western wages.

On several occasions I have glibly referred to how it now takes two spouses working to equal the wages of a one-income family of forty years ago. Unfortunately that is now an understatement. In fact, Western wages have plummeted so low that a two-income family is now (on average) 15% poorer than a one-income family of 40 years ago.

Using the year 2000 as the numerical base from which to “zero” all of the numbers, real wages peaked in 1970 at around $20/hour. Today the average worker makes $8.50 hour – more than 57% less than in 1970. And since the average wage directly determines the standard of living of our society, we can see that the average standard of living in the U.S. has plummeted by over 57% over a span of 40 years.

There are no “tricks” here. Indeed, all of the tricks are used by our governments. The green line shows average wages, discounted by inflation calculated with the same methodology for all 40 years. Obviously that is the only way in which we can compare any data over time: through applying identical parameters to it each year.

Then we have the blue line: showing wage data discounted with our “official” inflation rate. The problem? The methodology used by our governments to calculate inflation in 1975 was different from the method they used in 1985, which was different than the method they used in 1995, which was different than the method they used in 2005.

Read Full Article Here

Only 120,000 jobs added in March, missing economic expectations

By Vicki Needham

The economy added 120,000 jobs in March, well below what economists had predicted, while the unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 8.2 percent.

The number is nearly half the 210,000 expected and ends the streak of three straight months in which the economy added more than 200,000 jobs, according to a Labor Department report released Friday.

The news isn’t what the White House would want to see just as the labor market seemed to be improving at a faster pace.

With the economy remaining a top issue for voters, any perception that its growth is slowing down could hurt President Obama’s reelection effort.

Republicans immediately pounced on the news, attacking Obama’s economic policies.

Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, used the numbers to criticize the president.

Read Full Article Here

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Wars and Rumors of War

We want war, and we want it now

By Pepe Escobar

It was deep into the night, somewhere over Siberia, in a Moscow to Beijing flight (BRIC to BRIC?) when the thought, like a lightning bolt, began to take hold.

What the hell is wrong with those Arabs?

Maybe it was the narcotic effect of that perennially dreadful Terminal F at Sheremetyevo airport – straight out of a Brejnev gulag. Maybe it was the anticipation of finding more about the Russia-China joint naval exercise scheduled for late April.

Or it was simply another case of “you can take the boy out of the Middle East, but you can’t take the Middle East out of the boy”.

With friends like these … It all had to do with that Friends of Syria (fools for war?) meeting in Istanbul. Picture Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal – who seems to have a knack for sending US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into rapture – feverishly arguing that the House of Saud, those paragons of democracy, had “a duty” to weaponize the Syrian “revolutionary” opposition.

And picture al-Faisal ordering an immediate ceasefire by the Bashar al-Assad government, guilty – according to the House of Saud – not only of cruel repression but crimes against humanity.

No; this was not a Monty Python sketch.

To make sure he was milking the right cow, al-Faisal also said that the Gulf Counter-revolution Club (GCC), also known as Gulf Cooperation Council, wanted to get further into bed with the United States. Translation, if any was needed; the US-GCC tag team, as expressed by the weaponization of the Syrian “rebels”, is meant to body slam Iran…..

Read Full Article Here

U.S. trained terror group

By Glenn Greenwald

When the U.S. wants to fund, train, arm or otherwise align itself with a Terrorist group or state sponsor of Terror — as it often does — it at least usually has the tact to first remove them from its formal terrorist list (as the U.S. did when it wanted to support Saddam in 1982 and work with Libya in 2006), or it just keeps them off the list altogether despite what former Council on Foreign Relations writer Lionel Beehner described as “mounds of evidence that [they] at one time or another abetted terrorists” (as it has done with close U.S. allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, along with the El Salvadoran death squads and Nicaraguan contras armed and funded in the 1980s by the Reagan administration). But according to a new, multi-sourced report from The New Yorker‘s Seymour Hersh, the U.S. did not even bother going through those motions when, during the Bush years, it trained the Iranian dissident group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) at a secretive Department of Energy site in Nevada:

It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. . . . The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.

Read Full Article Here

Babar Ahmad: This interview is the last chance of ending my nightmare

Uploaded by StoptheWarCoalition on Apr 6, 2012

On 5 April 2012, Barbar Ahmad became the first prisoner in a British jail to be interviewed on television from behind bars in this BBC broadcast. He has been held for eight years in a UK jail without charge or trial, during which time he has been fighting extradition to the United States under controversial “war on terror” legislation. If he has done anything wrong, as a British citizen he asks that he be tried in his own country. MP Caroline Lucas, who has called for a public inquiry, says, “Babar Ahmad’s case shames us all.” To learn more about Babar Ahmad’s case, go to http://freebabarahmad.com

Kurdish opposition quits Syrian National Council

By Lauren Williams
The Daily Star

ISTANBUL: The Syrian Kurdish opposition bloc has walked away from the Syrian National Council, exposing deep and problematic rifts within the umbrella opposition group just days after international leaders granted the body extra recognition after attempts to unify.

Syrian Kurdish opposition leader Abdul-Baki Yousef, a leading member of the Kurdish Yakiti party in Syria and former member of the Kurdish National Council, charged host country Turkey with “pressuring the SNC” to omit the demands of the Kurdish opposition members in the final constitution document outlining a transition plan for Syria.

The fiercely divided SNC pulled the document together at the last minute under pressure to unite from the “Friends of Syria” group.

The Friends group – which includes Turkey, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Gulf states – recognized the SNC as “a legitimate representative of the Syrian people,” falling well short of the recognition as the legal government in exile they had hoped for after the first Friends of Syria meeting in Tunis in February.

“Our goal was to unify with the opposition and come up with a patriotic agreement that makes an umbrella for the whole opposition, but unfortunately the Turkish sponsor was very sensitive toward the Kurdish issue,” Yousef told The Daily Star. “We accuse the Turkish government of putting pressure on the council.”

Yousef said that negotiations ahead of the conference had outlined recognition of the Kurds, but claimed that those points had been removed in the final covenant.

Read Full Article Here

‘US to accept civilian nuke program in Iran’

President Obama signals Iran that US would endorse nuclear program if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei backs up claim that Islamic Republic won’t purse atom bomb, US paper reports

Yitzhak Benhorin

WASHINGTON – US President Barack Obama

has signaled Tehran that the Washington would accept an civilian nuclear program in Iran if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can back up his recent claim that his nation “will never pursue nuclear weapons,” the Washington Post reported Friday.

According to the report, the verbal message was sent through Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who met with Khamenei last week. A few days prior to leaving for the trip, Erdogan held a two-hour meeting with Obama on the sidelines of the nuclear security summit in Seoul, in which they discussed what the Turkish leader would tell Khamenei about the nuclear issue.

Read Full Article Here

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Articles of Interest

Our Men in Iran?

Posted by Seymour M. Hersh

From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, was once used for nuclear testing, and now includes a counterintelligence training facility and a private airport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft. It’s a restricted area, and inhospitable—in certain sections, the curious are warned that the site’s security personnel are authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, against intruders.

It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some international credibility by publicly revealing—accurately—that Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret underground location. Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency, told me later that he had been informed that the information was supplied by the Mossad. The M.E.K.’s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration’s fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.

Read Full Article Here

Leaked Video Shows US Contractors Randomly Killing Civilians

Employees of the US military contracting group Academi (formerly Xe, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide) are seen in new leaked video shooting their machine guns at random while driving through the streets of Baghdad, crashing into other cars and even running over a pedestrian without hesitation.

Academi received a $250 million contract by the Obama administration to provide military services in Afghanistan.

Read Full Article Here

More  Videos  Here

Guilty Of Telling The Truth

20-Year Veteran to Face Jail Time for Act of Civil Disobedience

Retired Naval Commander Leah Bolger will appear in court Thursday, April 12, 2012 on charges stemming from her arrest on October 26th, 2011. Bolger, who is a peace activist and the President of Veterans For Peace, interrupted a public hearing of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, commonly known as the Super Committee.

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