Humans Are Natural Vegetarians

Meat Myth: Humans Are Natural Vegetarians:

Meat Myth: Humans Are Natural Vegetarians

Frequently stated notion that eating meat was an essential step in human evolution. While this notion may comfort the meat industry, it’s simply not true, scientifically.  Dr. T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The China Study, explains that in fact, we only recently (historically speaking) began eating meat, and that the inclusion of meat in our diet came well after we became who we are today. He explains that “the birth of agriculture only started about 10,000 years ago at a time when it became considerably more convenient to herd animals. This is not nearly as long as the time [that] fashioned our basic biochemical functionality (at least tens of millions of years) and which functionality depends on the nutrient composition of plant-based foods.”  That jibes with what Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine President Dr. Neal Barnard says in his book, The Power of Your Plate, in which he explains that “early humans had diets very much like other great apes, which is to say a largely plant-based diet, drawing on foods we can pick with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging–eating the leftovers that carnivores had left behind. However, our bodies have never adapted to it. To this day, meat-eaters have a higher incidence of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems.”  There is no more authoritative source on anthropological issues than paleontologist Dr. Richard Leakey, who explains what anyone who has taken an introductory physiology course might have discerned intuitively–that humans are herbivores. Leakey notes that “[y]ou can’t tear flesh by hand, you can’t tear hide by hand…. We wouldn’t have been able to deal with food source that required those large canines” (although we have teeth that are called “canines,” they bear little resemblance to the canines of carnivores).  In fact, our hands are perfect for grabbing and picking fruits and vegetables. Similarly, like the intestines of other herbivores, ours are very long (carnivores have short intestines so they can quickly get rid of all that rotting flesh they eat). We don’t have sharp claws to seize and hold down prey. And most of us (hopefully) lack the instinct that would drive us to chase and then kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Dr. Milton Mills builds on these points and offers dozens more in his essay, “A Comparative Anatomy of Eating.”  The point is this: Thousands of years ago when we were hunter-gatherers, we may have needed a bit of meat in our diets in times of scarcity, but we don’t need it now. Says Dr. William C. Roberts, editor of the American Journal of Cardiology, “Although we think we are, and we act as if we are, human beings are not natural carnivores. When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us, because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”  Sure, most of us are “behavioral omnivores”–that is, we eat meat, so that defines us as omnivorous. But our evolution and physiology are herbivorous, and ample science proves that when we choose to eat meat, that causes problems, from decreased energy and a need for more sleep up to increased risk for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.  Old habits die hard, and it’s convenient for people who like to eat meat to think that there is evidence to support their belief that eating meat is “natural” or the cause of our evolution.  But in fact top nutritional and anthropological scientists from the most reputable institutions imaginable say categorically that humans are natural herbivores, and that we will be healthier today if we stick with our herbivorous roots. It may be inconvenient, but it alas, it is the truth.

Female Police officer stands against brutality

Female police officer went to help young man being beaten by fellow cops:

female police officer went to help young man being beaten by fellow cops

 

A woman who intervened when two fellow officers were allegedly assaulting an ’emotionally disturbed’ young man, will find out in the next few days if she will be sacked.  Officer Regina Tasca in the Bogota Police Department, New Jersey, has been suspended since the incident last April –  the hearing in front of a retired judge started on Tuesday.  When Officer Tasca, an 11-year veteran with numerous commendations, responded to a call in April 2011, she clicked her unit dashboard camera on.

 

Breaking it up: This photo was taken by the young man’s distraught mother as she begged the policemen to stop hurting her son. Officer Regina Tasca is seen her trying to pull one of the men off – it was this intervention which may cost her, her job.  She did not realise she was about to capture a mother, screaming for police to stop punching her son outside her home on their front lawn, reported Pix 11.com.  The mother – who is thought to be a councilwoman – had called emergency services to help take her son Kyle, 22, to hospital –  he is reported to have ’emotional issues.’  Officer Tasca was the only officer in the area on that day, so she called for back-up, which is part of response protocol and Ridgefield Park Police then sent the two officers.

 

 

In limbo: Officer Regina Tasca in the Bogota Police Department, has been suspended since the incident last April – she is an 11-year veteran with numerous commendation.  Officer Tasca said one of the officers charged at the young man and she was ‘quite shocked.’  ‘As he’s doing that, another Ridgefield Park officer flies to the scene in his car, jumps out and starts punching him in the head,’ she added.  On the tape you can hear Tara, the mother, and Kyle, her son, screaming, “Why are you punching him?” and “Stop punching me!”, reported the website.  Kyle’s mother was so disturbed by the incident that she took a photo of Officer Tasca, seemingly pulling the two officers off her son.  Kyle was not charged or arrested for an offence – Officer Tasca says this is because he did not threaten anyone and did not have a weapon.  She says he was not violent and did not even attempt to resist during the incident.  Officer Tasca says she was eventually successful in yanking the Ridgefield Park policeman off Kyle.  ‘If another officer is using excessive force, it’s my duty to make sure you stop it. and that’s what I did,’ says Officer Tasca about her actions.  The hospital took several photos documenting the extensive bruises on the 22-year-old’s body including his head, back, arms and wrists.Disturbing: The black-and-white tape captures a mother, screaming for police to stop punching her son on their front lawn.  Officer Tasca said when she met her superior officer after the incident she was asked to hand in her weapon and was told she would be sent for a fitness for duty exam.  Bogota Police suspended Officer Tasca and the website reports that after hearing her story, they were concerned she was psychologically incompetent to be a police officer.  But the two officers in the video have not been interviewed by an Internal Affairs Investigator, and are still working the streets today, reported Pix11.com. 

 

Case: After hearing Officer Tasca’s story, Bogota PD, believes she is psychologically incompetent to be a police officer, and she is being sent for testing.  Tasca’s attorney Catherine Elston said: This was excessive force used against an emotionally disturbed person.’  ‘This was an unlawful tackle, this was a punching an emotionally disturbed person whose arms were pinned under his chest with his face pushed into the ground,’ she added.  Kyle’s mother later called her and said on Officer Tasca’s answering machine: ‘Thank you Regina. I appreciate you standing up for him, for protecting him while the officer attacked him. I can’t figure out what I would have done without you at the scene.’  Raymond Wiss, who represented the borough in a disciplinary hearing, said Officer Tasca’s termination is warranted based on two incidents in April 2011 — one at Holy Name Medical Center, in which she is accused of failing to assist a fellow officer who was attacked by a drunken woman, and the incident with the two Ridgefield Park officers.

 

U.S. Secret Zug Island testing effects Canada

Mysterious hum in Canada coming from U.S. Industrial Site:

Mysterious hum in Canada coming from U.S.

 

WINDSOR, Ontario — A mysterious humming sound that has drawn hundreds of complaints in Windsor, Canada, for more than a year is emanating from Michigan, testing has determined.  The low-frequency, rumbling noise dubbed the Windsor hum is coming from the area of Zug Island, an industrial site, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.  But officials in River Rogue, Mich., where Zug Island is located, have said they don’t have the money to find the precise source of the noise.  “The government of Canada takes this issue seriously,” Bob Dechert, a conservative member of Canadian Parliament, said in a news release. “It is important that we find a solution that works for the people of Windsor.”  Jim Bradley, Ontario’s environment minister, said the ministry has received nearly 500 complaints about the noise, and about 22,000 residents took part in a telephone forum in February about the hum.  Bradley has sent letters to municipal, state and federal officials in the United States asking them to take action, while Dechert has met with representatives of the Great Lakes Commission, the Council of Great Lakes Industries, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments and the Regional Office of the International Joint Commission to discuss the hum.  Gary Gross said he’s had his fill of the hum. “I was in bed, it was about 2:30 a.m. and I could just hear this pulsing noise,” he told CBC News. “I decided to get up. It disturbed my sleep and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”

 

Scientists create genetic polymer replacing DNA

Scientists create DNA alternative– expected to reveal how molecules first replicated and drive biotechnology research:

Scientists create DNA alternative

 

Scientists have created artificial genetic material that can store information and evolve over generations in a similar way to DNA – a feat expected to drive research in medicine and biotechnology, and shed light on how molecules first replicated and assembled into life billions of years ago.  Ultimately, the creation of alternatives to DNA could enable scientists to make novel forms of life in the laboratory.  Researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, developed chemical procedures to turn DNA and RNA, the molecular bases for all known life, into six alternative genetic polymers called XNAs.  The process swaps the deoxyribose and ribose (the “d” and “r” in DNA and RNA) for other molecules. It was found the XNAs could form a double helix with DNA and were more stable than natural genetic material.  In the journal Science the researchers describe how they caused one of the XNAs to stick to a protein, an ability that might mean the polymers could deployed as drugs working like antibodies.  Philipp Holliger, a senior author on the study, said the work proved that two hallmarks of life – heredity and evolution – were possible using alternatives to natural genetic material.  “There is nothing Goldilocks about DNA and RNA,” Holliger told Science. “There is no overwhelming functional imperative for genetic systems or biology to be based on these two nucleic acids.”  Vitor Pinheiro, a co-author on the paper, said the research could help scientists unpick how DNA and RNA became so crucial in the evolution of life, and perhaps even help in the search for extraterrestrial organisms. “If a genetic system doesn’t have to be based on DNA and RNA, what then do you define as life? How do you look for life?” he said.  In an accompanying article, Gerald Joyce, of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, says the study heralds an “era of synthetic genetics, with implications for exobiology [which deals with extraterrestrial life], biotechnology and understanding life itself”. He adds: “Construction of genetic systems based on alternative chemical platforms may ultimately lead to the synthesis of novel forms of life.”  Other scientists, including a team at the J Craig Venter Institute , in Rockville, Maryland, are hoping to make synthetic organisms from scratch, but the majority of the work so far has used conventional DNA.  In his article on the Cambridge study Joyce alludes to the potential dangers of synthetic genetics. He writes: “As one contemplates all the alternative life forms that might be possible with XNAs and other more exotic genetic molecules, the words of Arthur C Clarke come to mind. In 2010: Odyssey Two, HAL the computer tells humanity, ‘all these worlds are yours’, but warns – ‘except [Jupiter’s moon] Europa, attempt no landings there’. Synthetic biologists are beginning to frolic on the worlds of alternative genetics but must not tread into areas that have the potential to harm our biology.”

15 year old hacks 259 Websites

15-year-old hacks 259 websites in just 3 months:

15-year-old hacks 259 websites in just 3 months

If you’re looking for a gauge as to how good or bad web security is at the moment, look no further than the case of a 15-year-old from Austria who, over the course of 3 months, managed to hack 259 company websites and databases.  The young man (boy?) was anti-social and turned to the Internet for “praise and affirmation.” He found a hacking community that rewarded successful attacks, downloaded the tools he needed, and set about bypassing the security of different websites.  Between January and March this year he successfully gained access to 259 sites including a few run by adult entertainment companies. Any that he defaced were left with a tag like the one in the screenshot above. His hacker name was ACK!3STX.  The Federal Criminal Police Office (BMI) in Austria identified the boy after many complaints when he failed to hide his IP address during a hack. It was logged and passed to the BMI who arrested him. It didn’t take long for a confession to be forthcoming.  The attacks weren’t aimed at any particular sites, instead it turns out he was just looking for security holes he could exploit in any and all websites he visited. His reason? He was bored as well as wanting praise from the hacker community.  Hacking 259 websites in 3 months is impressive not because a 15-year-old did it, but because it seems to have been done so easily. A boy with no experience and using free tools did this. Clearly website security still isn’t a major concern for the majority of companies being hacked and/or the frameworks being used to implement them.

Police fatally kills man

Stanislaus deputy Tasers, fatally shoots man:

shooting

MODESTO, Calif. — Authorities are investigating the shooting death of a man by a Stanislaus County sheriff’s deputy who was responding to reports of a family dispute.  Sheriff’s officials say the deputy went to the home in the town of Keyes on Monday afternoon.  Sgt. Anthony Bejaran says the deputy first used a Taser on 32-year-old George Ramirez Jr. and called for backup. Moments later, the deputy reported that he fired shots.  Ramirez’s family told KCRA-TV that he was severely depressed and that they urged the deputy not to hurt him. George Ramirez Sr. says the deputy refused to listen and shot his son three times after he staggered back to his feet from the Tasering.  Sheriff’s officials declined comment on the family’s claims pending the investigation.

Monsanto’s has Millions of people against them

Millions Against Monsanto:

Millions Against Monsanto

The Food Fight of Our Lives. Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We’re fighting back.

 

 

 “If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” — Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994. “Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.” — Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1998. For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture, aided and abetted by indentured politicians and regulatory agencies, supermarket chains, giant food processors, and the so-called “natural” products industry. Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We’re fighting back. This November, in a food fight that will largely determine the future of what we eat and what we grow, Monsanto will face its greatest challenge to date: a statewide citizens’ ballot initiative that will give Californians the opportunity to vote for their right to know whether the food they buy is contaminated with GMOs. A growing corps of food, health, and environmental activists – supported by the Millions against Monsanto and Occupy Monsanto Movements, and consumers and farmers across the nation – are boldly moving to implement mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods in California through a grassroots-powered citizens ballot initiative process that will bypass the agribusiness-dominated state legislature.  If passed, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act will require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods and food ingredients, and outlaw the routine industry practice of labeling GMO-tainted foods as “natural.” Passage of this initiative on November 6 will radically alter the balance of power in the marketplace, enabling millions of consumers to identify – and boycott – genetically engineered foods for the first time since 1994, when Monsanto’s first unlabeled, genetically-engineered dairy drug, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), was forced on the market, As Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director for the Organic Consumers Association, pointed out at an Occupy Wall Street teach-in in Washington DC in early April: “The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act ballot initiative is a perfect example of how the grassroots 99% can mobilize to take back American democracy from the corporate bullies, the 1%. By aggressively utilizing one of the last remaining tools of direct democracy, the initiative process (available to voters not only in California and 23 other states, but in thousands of cities and counties across the nation), we can bypass corrupt politicians, make our own laws, and force corporations like Monsanto to bend to the will of the people, in this case granting us our fundamental right to know what’s in our food.”

President Intelligence agencies safeguarding Leaks

President Creates Task Force to Stop Leaks of Classified Information:

obama_false

A joint task force of American law enforcement and intelligence agencies is drafting a plan to prevent cyber attacks and information leaks from those working inside the agencies. The proposal is a requirement of an executive order signed October 7 of last year by President Obama. Executive Order 13587 sets guidelines designed to “to ensure the responsible sharing and safeguarding of classified national security information (classified information) on computer networks.
”One step toward the accomplishment of this goal is the creation of an interagency Insider Threat Task Force. That group is charged with developing a Government-wide program (insider threat program) for deterring, detecting, and mitigating insider threats, including the safeguarding of classified information from exploitation, compromise, or other unauthorized disclosure, taking into account risk levels, as well as the distinct needs, missions, and systems of individual agencies. This program shall include development of policies, objectives, and priorities for establishing and integrating security, counterintelligence, user audits and monitoring, and other safeguarding capabilities and practices within agencies. Reading between the lines it is easy to see what prompted the issuing of this order and the creation of this new bureaucracy: WikiLeaks. President Obama likely was also motivated by the acts of Army Private Bradley Manning. In what is described as “the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history,” Manning is accused of passing over 700,000 documents and video clips to WikiLeaks, the widely known website devoted to exposing government corruption throughout the world. Private Manning, 24, from Crescent, Oklahoma, has been detained since he was arrested on May 29, 2010 while on deployment with the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq. While on duty near Baghdad, Manning had access to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. SIPRNET is the network used by the U.S. government to transmit classified information. Manning’s arrest came as the result of information provided to the FBI by a computer hacker named Adrian Lamo. Lamo told agents that during an online chat in May 2010, Manning claimed to have downloaded classified information from SIPRNet and sent it to WikiLeaks. According to published reports, the material Manning is accused of unlawfully appropriating includes a large cache of U.S. diplomatic cables (approximately 250,000), as well as videos of an American airstrike on Baghdad conducted in July 2007 and a similar attack in May 2009 on a site near Granai, Afghanistan (an event sometimes known as the Granai Massacre). Of course, the new policy is being promoted by the Obama administration as an attempt to assist law enforcement and intelligence to “connect the dots” so as to prevent future terrorist attacks on the homeland. A key member of the task force and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, John Swift, is quoted in a recent article as saying that the agencies named in the executive order are committed to conforming to the requirements handed down by President Obama. “The National Policy on Insider Threat is in draft and will probably move its way to the White House National Security Staff in the next month or two, which is pretty fast in the federal scheme of things,” said Swift during a panel discussion on the insider threat at the FOSE trade show in Washington Wednesday. “However, in order to actually implement a program, you will want to have standards. Those standards are being developed now by the task force, and all the interagency members that are working on it. Those standards have to be issued by October of this year.” The Order gives the agencies one year to set and implement the appropriate standards for identifying and eliminating the threats of leaks caused by intelligence insiders.

 

According to the article published by Federal News Radio, Swift said that most agencies have already developed protocols for identifying “troubled employees” who would be the most likely suspects in a case of an insider passing on classified information. The Task Force will take advantage of the protocols that are already in place by examining each and choosing from among them those best suited to being reported to all the relevant departments within the Executive Branch. In reading the description of the policy in the Federal News Radio piece, it would seem that the Task Force is preparing training modules for federal employees that teach them how to recognize behavior that might indicate that a colleague is a potential risk to national security. Prior to the branch-wide implementation of whatever scheme is finally approved by the Task Force and the President, there is a method already set to be enforced that could address the potential for leaks. In order to decrease the “potential for terrorist attacks,” Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 calls for the creation of a mandatory, Government-wide standard for secure and reliable forms of identification issued by the Federal Government to its employees and contractors (including contractor employees). Rob Carey, the Defense Department deputy chief information officer, said during another session at FOSE that the federal ID card can “prevent unauthorized access to data and promote information sharing at the same time along with improving the cybersecurity of an agency’s network.” The absolute requirement that the identification be used by intelligence employees will provide the President with a keystroke-by-keystroke record of every worker’s online activity. This level of after-the-fact monitoring will plug the pores in our nation’s cybersecurity. As Carey explained it, implementation of the key card control mechanism will “add another layer of security while also letting officials know who is on the network, when they were on the network and what they were doing there.” As set forth in the Directive, “Secure and reliable forms of identification” for purposes of this directive means identification that (a) is issued based on sound criteria for verifying an individual employee’s identity; (b) is strongly resistant to identity fraud, tampering, counterfeiting, and terrorist exploitation; (c) can be rapidly authenticated electronically; and (d) is issued only by providers whose reliability has been established by an official accreditation process. The Standard will include graduated criteria, from least secure to most secure, to ensure flexibility in selecting the appropriate level of security for each application. The use of the “Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors” is only one of the ideas being offered for securing the country’s most critical classified data. One member of the Insider Threat Task Force, Diana Braun, said that the ID cards are just one of five “near term ways to strengthen systems against insider threats.” According to the rubrics contained in Executive Order 13587, the agencies listed therein must submit annual reports to the Steering Committee created by the Order. The Senior Information Sharing and Safeguarding Steering Committee shall be co-chaired by senior representatives of the Office of Management and Budget and the National Security Staff. Members of the committee shall be officers of the United States as designated by the heads of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, and Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Information Security Oversight Office within the National Archives and Records Administration (ISOO), as well as such additional agencies as the co-chairs of the Steering Committee may designate. While it is indisputable that our nation must be protected from the damage that could be caused by intelligence agency insiders who criminally pass classified information to those who could pose a legitimate and demonstrable threat to our national security, what is perhaps more helpful to the long-term freedom of our Republic is the immediate end of all those secret yet reprehensible activities being carried out by our government that bring shame to every citizen.  If we could rid our government of those in high places who are working against the cause of liberty and peace, then we wouldn’t need another task force or federal agency.

China’s heavy-handed censorship accelerate rumors

Rumor, Lies, and Weibo: How Social Media is Changing the Nature of Truth in China:

chinese

 

When the message appeared on the Weibo account of Xinhua, China’s official news agency on April 10, announcing charges against the family of high-profile party leader Bo Xilai, it ended many days of public speculation on China’s largest political crisis in decades. But it also left Chinese web users even more deeply confused about the distinction between political truth and rumor, one that has always been hazy in China but is now blurred even more by social media.  Chinese web users began speculating, following Bo’s firing as Chongqing party chief in March, about the Bo family’s possible role in the mysterious death of Neil Heywood, a British businessman with close ties to the family. China’s Internet censors muzzled the online discussions. The government spokesmen stonewalled inquiries from the British government and told curious Chinese that Heywood died of “excessive drinking,” admonishing them “not to spread groundless rumor.”  On the morning of April 11, Chinese web users woke up to find that the reports that had previously filled their Weibo pages — in coded words adopted to evade the censors — now featured the front page of every official newspaper. The rumor, repressed by censors and dodged by government spokesmen, had become a state-approved fact overnight.  “What was treated as attacks spread by ‘international reactionary forces’ has now become truth. Then what other ‘truths’ exposed by foreign media should we believe?…God knows!” wrote Weibo user Jieyigongjiang. “How did it all become truth? Was I being fooled?” user Zousifanye asked. This hall-of-mirrors system can be confusing even for the officials who run it.  For China’s new generation of tech-savvy youth, who compose the bulk of the nation’s estimated 300 million Weibo users, the downfall of Bo Xilai is the largest political crisis they have witnessed. The sudden volatility of the official versions of truth on the story has left many of them deeply confused. Some see this as a victory for Weibo, which is moderated by censors but often too free-wheeling and fast-moving for them to maintain total control, over more traditional media, which is openly run by the state. “In this political drama that took place in Yuzhou [alternative name for Chongqing], all the media outlets were following Weibo. The power of social media is manifested here,” user Tujiayefu wrote. User Kangjialin agreed: ” ‘Rumor’ is the proof that mainstream media is now falling behind Weibo.”  The government controls all forms of media in China, including Weibo. But on occasions censorship of Weibo is known to relax, allowing windows of free speech, particularly in the cases of breaking news. Chinese distrust of the country’s traditional media, which regularly covers up food scandals and human rights violations, is leading many people to turn to Weibo for information and news. The Twitter-like service has helped expose incidents of mafia intimidation and money laundering. Weibo-based stories like that of Guo Meimei, the 20-year-old “senior official” at the state-run Red Cross Society who posted photos of her new Lamborghini and Maserati online, ignited firestorms of discussions on weightier, more sensitive, and sometimes forbidden subjects such as corruption within state-run social organizations.  In the West, social media is treated skeptically for the exact same reason that it is so embraced in China: it is rife with rumors. Its break-neck speed allows little time for fact-checking or editorial supervision, which also means it can move too quickly for censors. Its noisy, open-source discussion — anyone can say anything and watch it spread — makes it tougher for Western users to trust, but easier for Chinese users, who know that censors can pressure official news organizations but not a hundred million anonymous citizen-bloggers. That anonymity is slowly receding, but this hasn’t done much damage to the service’s popularity or power.  In the Bo Xilai saga, many Weibo users had at first dismissed the dramatic speculations over the Communist Party’s divisive infighting as sensationalized rumors. Now that the rumors have turned out to be true, they’re re-examining the established beliefs that led them to reject the stories and to take the officials at their word. “The result of rumor turning truth is that from now on all rumors will become more trustworthy,” concluded Potomac Xiaowu.  The government is fighting back, reminding Chinese web users that Weibo is also a hot bed of invented rumors, and that believing and spreading them can bring real consequences. Less than a month ago, whispers circulated on Weibo of troop movements near the leadership’s Zhongnanhai compound in central Beijing. Those whispers soon grew into a full-blown account of a coup being staged by Bo’s Party allies in Beijing. Tanks purportedly rolled in and gunshots were fired, a story with terrifying echoes of the 1989 protest on Tiananmen Square. The rumors quickly made it into Western media. Just as it became clear that these stories weren’t true, the government ordered the shutdown of 16 websites and detention of six people over the rumors, which it clearly considered threats to public order. The two massive Weibo sites, Sina and Tencent, were forced to shut down their comment function for three days in order to “carry out a concentrated cleanup.”  China’s heavy-handed censorship may now actually accelerate the spread of rumors, which could be seen as more plausible precisely because they are censored. Chinese web users trying to figure out the most likely truth must speculate not only about the rumors themselves, but also about every move the government makes in response. Did the state order censors to crack down on a particular story because they want quell a false and potentially destabilizing rumor or because they want to prevent an uncomfortable truth from spreading? If censors clamp down on a growing rumor later than expected or not at all, is this because they’re simply slow or because government wants to build up public attention for its own purposes? In the days immediately after Bo’s removal from his Chongqing office, for example, Internet rumors about his misdeeds circulated freely, in what many suspect was a state effort to build public knowledge of his corruption and turn people against him. For Chinese netizens trying to parse out truth from rumors, every story and its government response are a new mystery, and the guessing game never really ends.  This hall-of-mirrors system can be confusing even for the officials who run it, and social media consumers are not the only people in China who can confuse truth and rumor. Last February, as protest movements stormed the Middle East, starting with the “Jasmine revolution” in Tunisia, a crowd gathered quietly in central Beijing after anonymous calls for their own Jasmine protests. The small crowd was outnumbered by skittish police, not to mention a number of Western reporters. Both groups had also caught the rumor and responded swiftly.  The movement was ended before it had really started, but it continued to ripple through the life of common Chinese citizens in ways its initiators had probably not expected. In the next months, although few or no protesters actually gathered and there seemed to be little momentum for an Arab Spring-style movement, the government seemed to take the social media mumblings far more seriously than the actual activists. Streets were blocked and plainclothes police were stationed at shopping malls and movie theaters every few hundred of feet. Security officials detained dozens of leading activists, including artist Ai Weiwei, in apparent fear of their stirring further unrest, and threatened foreign journalists for reporting on the incident. When Chinese people realized the word “jasmine” was blocked from the Internet and from text messages, though euphemisms for the word were now well-known, and the flower was banned at Beijing botanic markets, the news of the pseudo-revolution had reached a wide public. The government, in its effort to quell the rumor, had ballooned it into an alternate version of truth. Their over-reaction had communicated the rumors of a revolution far more powerfully than had the actual rumors or its proponents.  The tug-of-war between the government and the people over truth and rumor happens every day in today’s China. The rise of social media has made the struggle harder and the stakes higher. The night the government announced the charges against Bo Xilai, a crowd of thousands gathered in Chongqing and clashed with local police. The government vigorously denied any connection between the incident and Bo’s expulsion, meanwhile moving to delete relevant messages and photos from Weibo. The Chinese web users reveling in the role of social networking sites in revealing the Bo scandals once again fell into debates, while others have been reflecting on larger questions. “Why does the U.S. not censor rumors?” asked one Weibo user last November. “No matter how wild they are, nobody bans them, and the creators of rumors do not worry about getting arrested. Perhaps for places where truth persists, rumors have no harm. Only places that lack truth are fearful of rumors.”  Had the censors tried to look for the original writer of this message, they would not have found him or her. The name is lost amid millions of others, who forward the message after each round of rumor-clearing seizes Weibo in a state-run information purge that can never quite keep up.

Powerful forces line up against internet around world

Google: Internet Freedom Faces Greatest Threat Ever:

1984-was-not-supposed-to-be-an-instruction-manual

In an interview published today, Google Co-founder Sergey Brin told The Guardian that internet openness and universal access are under immediate attack by “very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world”. “I am more worried than I have been in the past,” he said. “It’s scary.”

Sergey Brin Google co-founder .The threat to the internet comes “from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry’s attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of ‘restrictive’ walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms,” The Guardian reports.  In the interview Brin alludes to the reach of the US government, telling how Google is forced to hand over data and is restricted from notifying users that their privacy has been breached.

Brin said he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google if the internet was dominated by Facebook. “You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive,” he said. “The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.”

He criticised Facebook for not making it easy for users to switch their data to other services. “Facebook has been sucking down Gmail contacts for many years,” he said. […]

He reserved his harshest words for the entertainment industry, which he said was “shooting itself in the foot, or maybe worse than in the foot” by lobbying for legislation to block sites offering pirate material.

He said the Sopa and Pipa bills championed by the film and music industries would have led to the US using the same technology and approach it criticised China and Iran for using. The entertainment industry failed to appreciate people would continue to download pirated content as long as it was easier to acquire and use than legitimately obtained material, he said. […]

Brin acknowledged that some people were anxious about the amount of their data that was now in the reach of US authorities because it sits on Google’s servers. He said the company was periodically forced to hand over data and sometimes prevented by legal restrictions from even notifying users that it had done so.

Deaf Cyclist Murdered by Police

Police ‘Killed Deaf Cyclist With Stun Gun After He Failed To Obey Instructions To Stop’:

police-state

A police officer killed an elderly, deaf and mentally disabled man riding his bicycle by shooting him with a Taser stun gun after he failed to obey instructions to stop. Roger Anthony, 61, was killed as he made his way home in Scotland Neck, South Carolina, after officers responded to a 911 call about a man who had fallen off his bicycle in a car park. The caller told dispatchers that the man appeared drunk and that it looked like he had hurt himself. Officers said they repeatedly told Mr Anthony to get off his bike, but when he didn’t respond, they shocked him. The state Office of the Medical Examiner hasn’t yet determined a cause of death. Family members claim Mr Anthony had hearing problems and suffered from seizures. Now they’re considering whether to file a lawsuit against the town. His brother Michael said: ‘What did they tase him for? It’s hurting me. It’s really hurting me.’  Scotland Neck Mayor James Mills said he wouldn’t blame the family for suing. ‘There has been no information that this man was a threat to anybody,’ he said.

 

Scene: Mr Anthony was shot with the Tazer gun as he cycled home in the town of Scotland Neck, South Carolina.  ‘If I was a family member, I’m sure I’d be thinking the same way.’  Mills said he has tried to get information from the police department about what happened to Mr Anthony, but they have turned him away. Police Chief Joe Williams says the officer is on administrative leave while the SBI conducts its investigation. He declined to comment further. Anthony’s family said they hope the case is resolved soon.  Excessive force: Family members claim Mr Anthony had hearing problems and suffered from seizures Mr Anthony’s niece, Porsha Anthony said: ‘I’m sad. I lost an uncle. ‘Hopefully it will be rectified so that not another family in Scotland Neck has to go through this’. The State Bureau of Investigation in South Carolina said they are looking into Mr Anthony’s death.

 

Deaf Cyclist

American Gov revoke passports of anyone with tax debt

Tax Debt? Feds Want Your Passport:

Tax Slavery

 

A year ago, we reported on the State Department’s new passport application rules, which some have called unconstitutional. A new bill now making its way through Congress could prevent even more Americans from traveling abroad. A transportation bill recently passed by the Senate contains a controversial provision that could allow the State Department to revoke the passport of anyone with an “excessive” tax debt.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid added the tax enforcement language to an “Act to reauthorize the Federal – aid highway and highway safety construction programs”, probably categorizing it under the latter part of the title, “and for other purposes”. That bill — SB1813– was introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in November. Before it was passed by the Senate on a 74-22 vote in March, it became the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, or MAP-21.  A recent Summary of the Senate Finance Committee Title of the Highway Bill on the Senate’s website reads:

Currently the Federal government revokes passports and denies new passports to individuals who owe more than $2,500 in child support payments. Similarly, this provision would authorize the government to deny the application for a new passport or renewal of an existing passport when the individual has $50,000 or more (indexed for inflation) of unpaid federal taxes which the IRS is collecting through enforcement action. It would also permit the Federal government to revoke a passport upon reentry into the United States for such individuals. This provision is estimated to raise $743 million over ten years.

The provision isn’t as draconian as a first glance would have you believe, but it would be precedent setting, says tax attorney Robert Wood.  “Does this [enforcement] apply in all cases? Mercifully no,” writes Wood in a recent Forbes piece. “You could travel if your tax debt is being paid in a timely manner or in emergency circumstances or for humanitarian reasons. But this isn’t limited to criminal tax cases or situations where the government fears someone is fleeing a tax debt.” Wood reminds his readers that the IRS files liens and levies all the time and that under the tax enforcement provision of MAP-21, all it would take is an accusation of a debt to prevent any U.S. Citizen from leaving the country at their leisure.  According to constitutional attorney Angel Reyes, the provision is a violation of due process and is unconstitutional.  “It takes away your right to enter or exit the country based upon a non-judicial IRS determines that you owe taxes,” Reyes told FOX Business. “It’s a scary thought that our congressional representatives want to give the IRS the power to detain US citizens over taxes, which could very well be in dispute.”  Perhaps Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul wasn’t off his meds when he suggested last September that the lingering economic malaise might encourage federal-level capital controls (and even lead to what he called “people controls”). Those remarks, the target of popular ridicule at the time, came during a nationally televised Republican presidential debate.

Microsoft spy’s on you reports to Government

A patent filed by Microsoft reveals the company has voluntarily created software that provides the Government and other agencies seeking to spy on you:

A patent filed by Microsoft reveals the company has voluntarily created software that provides the Government and other agencies seeking to spy on you.

A patent filed by Microsoft seeks to give the company exclusive rights to intercept personal electronic communications and resend them directly to the Government and other agencies who may be seeking to spy on you.  By filing the patent, Microsoft clearly shows they have voluntarily created the software,  instead of waiting for a Government mandate to do so. The patent states that “the  government or one of its agencies may need to monitor communications” and software acts as a “recording agent” that is able to silently record the communication”.  The patent specifically names certain types of communications, such as Skype calls, instant messaging, video conferencing software, and even meeting software but does not stop there. Instead it goes on to label just about all electronic devices you can think of as a computer and requests for a patent to be able to intercept digital communications from those devices, and even access data stored in a variety of other storage mediums, and forward the to the Government.  A Gizmodo article on the patent points out that Microsoft appears to trying to patent Skype spying,  which is specifically named within the patent,  but the scope of patent goes far beyond the ability to just spy on Skype calls.  Only by digging into the patent can you see the deceptiveness in Microsoft’s the labeling of certain technologies and realize the true scope of what the software company is trying to provide the Government easy access to spy on.  For example, the label all packet-based communication as VoIP, which clearly nothing is further from the truth. All data that can be sent over the internet is a “packet-based communication”.

[…] the term VoIP is used to refer to standard VoIP as well as any other form of packet-based communication that may be used to transmit audio over a wireless and/or wired network. For example, VoIP may include audio messages transmitted via gaming systems, instant messaging protocols that transmit audio, Skype and Skype-like applications, meeting software, video conferencing software, and the like.

The patent goes on and deceptively labels all digital electronic devices as computers, say that everything from computers, to printers, gaming devices, automobile systems, even printers, home appliances and all other mobile based electronics are computers. The patent even applies to microcontroller which are often the brain of electronic devices and used in products ranging from automobile engine control systems, implantable medical devices, remote controls, office machines, appliances, power tools, and even toys.

A computer may include any electronic device that is capable of executing an instruction[…]

Examples of well known computing systems, environments, or configurations that may be suitable for use [include] personal computers, server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, microcontroller-based systems, set-top boxes, programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), smartphones, gaming devices, printers, appliances including set-top, media center, or other appliances, automobile-embedded or attached computing devices, other mobile devices, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like.

The patent also doesn’t stop with computers or even communications for that matter. It targets a variety of offline mediums that can used to store data and even computer programs themselves.

[…] a variety of computer-readable media [including] any available media that can be accessed by the computer  removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data.

Computer storage media includes RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile discs (DVDs) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to store the desired information and which can be accessed by the computer.

The patent further reveals that the software’s capability includes the ability to intercept all digital communications regardless of the medium, or whether they are online or offline, bluntly including the ability to intercept all modulated data signals.

Communication media typically embodies computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data in a modulated data signal such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism and includes any information delivery media. The term “modulated data signal” means a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal. By way of example, and not limitation, communication media includes wired media such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, RF, infrared and other wireless media. Combinations of any of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media.

 

China Jails and beats women activists

China Jails Disabled Rights Activist

 

China has sentenced disabled human rights lawyer Ni Yulan to two years and eight months in prison on charges of causing a disturbance and committing fraud, prompting complaints by rights activists.  A Beijing court sentenced the 51-year-old lawyer on Tuesday. Her husband, Dong Jiqin, was also jailed for two years on similar charges.  Both deny the charges, and their supporters say the charges were intended to silence their criticism of the government. The two were arrested a year ago as part of a wider crackdown on political dissent following anonymous online calls for protests in China after a series of uprisings in Arab countries.  Sarah Schafer, a Hong Kong-based China researcher with Amnesty International, told VOA the sentence is “absolutely unfair.” She charged that Ni Yulan was targeted because she and her husband have been outspoken advocates for victims of land rights violations.  “Ni Yulan has suffered countless abuses at the hands of authorities, trying to defend people from forced evictions,” she said. “In fact, she herself is a victim of a violent forced eviction, and she began giving aid to other victims to other victims of these types of evictions in 2001.”

Outside the heavily guarded courtroom in suburban Beijing, European Union official Raphael Droszewski read a statement expressing “deep concern” about the sentences and calling for Ni’s immediate release.  “The delegation of the European Union in China is deeply concerned by news of the sentence handed down to human rights defenders Ni Yulan and Dong Jiqin,” said Droszewski The EU firmly upholds the rights of a person to address any human rights on behalf of individuals or groups, as enshrined in the United Nations declaration on human rights defenders.”  He also said the EU is “preoccupied with the deterioration of the situation for human rights defenders in China,” and will continue to closely monitor such cases.  Ni was jailed in 2002 and 2008 for “obstructing official business” and “harming public property” after fighting against the government acquisition of her home in Beijing. She says she was tortured while in prison and is now wheelchair-bound.  During her four-hour court hearing in December, Ni was forced to use an oxygen tank and recline on a bed because of poor health. Activists, including Schafer, say the hearing did not meet international standards for a fair trial.  Her case is the latest in a series of lengthy prison terms given to Chinese human rights activists and other dissidents. Schafer says she expects the crackdown to widen as China’s Communist Party nears the date of a sensitive leadership transition later this year.  “As the leadership transition approaches, I think we’ll see more arrests, more detentions, more harassment of activists and dissidents,” Schafer said.  She says Ni’s lawyer plans to appeal the verdict, although he has not been allowed to meet with either Ni Yulan or her husband.

WiFi electricity generator

RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity From WiFi Signals

This thing is, seriously, the highlight of CES for me (so far) this year. 3D TVs and eBook readers are fine, but there’s nothing amazing about them.  The Airnergy Charger is amazing. This little box has, inside it, some kind of circuitry that harvests WiFi energy out of the air and converts it into electricity. This has been done before, but the Airnergy is able to harvest electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practically useful: on the CES floor, they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source.  The Airnergy has a battery inside it, so you can just carry it around and as long as you’re near some WiFi, it charges itself. Unlike a solar charger, it works at night and you can keep it in your pocket. Of course, proximity to the WiFi source and the number of WiFi sources is important, but at the rate it charges, if you have a home wireless network you could probably just leave anywhere in your house overnight and it would be pretty close to full in the morning.

Here is the really, really unbelievable part: RCA says that the USB charger will be available this summer for $40, and a battery with the WiFi harvesting technology will be available soon after. I mean, all kinds of people are pushing wireless charging, but this would hands down take the cake… It doesn’t need a pad and it’s charging all the time, for free, in just about any urban environment.

Fluoridation is killing you

New Scientific Data Forces Government to Reverse Its Stance on Fluoride in the Water Supply:

Fluoride kills you

Why are some states simply ignoring the latest studies, and passing new laws that will hurt your teeth and harm your health? Action Alert!  Water fluoridation was introduced to the United States in the 1940s as a way to use waste products from the manufacture of aluminum, a waste product that was expensive to dispose of and which was harming cattle and farmland. Since then, the federal government has taken the stance that the fluoridation of drinking water, which conveniently disposed of the waste, is vitally important to help prevent tooth decay; the CDC called it one of the ten great public health achievements of the 20th century. But the latest scientific studies have finally made the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) change their tune on how much fluoride is safe.  The data indicate that dental fluorosis—damage to the teeth from fluoride, ranging from lacy white markings or spots on the enamel to staining and pitting of the tooth surface—happens when fluoride levels are too high. Water is only one of several sources of fluoride. Other common sources include dental products such as toothpaste and mouth rinses, prescription fluoride supplements, fluoride applied by dental professionals, and exposure through our food, which is often sprayed with fluoride-based pesticides.  Today the fluoride in your water mostly comes from the phosphate fertilizer industry—but it’s still toxic waste, containing other byproducts such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. And two studies show that fluoride increases the accumulation of lead in bone, teeth, and other calcium-rich tissues, transporting heavy metals into areas of your body they normally would not be able to go—like your brain.  Another study revealed that prolonged, high intake of fluoride can increase the risk of brittle bones, fractures, and crippling bone abnormalities. Longtime readers may recall our 2008 article on the effects of fluoride on teeth and bones (harming kidney patients worst of all); we also noted that fluoride is a known neurotoxin, and can have detrimental effects on the thyroid, which could affect intelligence.  Moreover, fluoride can combine with other chemicals in the water to make them even more harmful. For example, when chloramines combine with the fluoride in water, they work together to extract lead from old plumbing systems, which leads to the accumulation of lead in the water supply.  EPA and HHS now recommend the level of fluoride in drinking water to be set “at the lowest end of the current optimal range” —that is, no more than 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water instead of the currently recommended range which goes as high as 1.2 milligrams.  Despite studies so compelling that the federal government has started backpedaling, the states of New Jersey and Vermont are attempting to mandate the fluoridation of water supply. Unfortunately, the New Jersey bill is very close to being passed. By contrast, Illinois and New Hampshire have introduced bills to prohibit fluoride in drinking water.

Police copy your phone in two minutes

Police Can Copy Your Cell Phone’s Contents In Under Two Minutes:

police-state

 

It has emerged that Michigan State Police have been using a high-tech mobile forensics device that can extract information from over 3,000 models of mobile phone, potentially grabbing all media content from your iPhone in under two minutes.  The CelleBrite UFED is a handheld device that Michigan officers have been using since August 2008 to copy information from mobile phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The device can circumvent password restrictions and extract existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags.

In short, it can copy everything on your smartphone in a matter of minutes.  Learning that the police had been using mobile forensic devices, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has issued freedom of information requests which demand that state officials open up the data collected, to better assess if penalised motorists warrant having their data copied.  Michigan State Police were more than happy to provide the information – as long as the ACLU paid $544,680. Obviously not pocket change.

“Law enforcement officers are known, on occasion, to encourage citizens to cooperate if they have nothing to hide,” ACLU staff attorney Mark P. Fancher wrote. “No less should be expected of law enforcement, and the Michigan State Police should be willing to assuage concerns that these powerful extraction devices are being used illegally by honoring our requests for cooperation and disclosure.”

Once the data is obtained, the device’s “Physical Analyzer” can map both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth, porting location data and image geotags on Google Maps.  The ACLU’s main worry is that the handheld is quietly being used to bypass Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches:

“With certain exceptions that do not apply here, a search cannot occur without a warrant in which a judicial officer determines that there is probable cause to believe that the search will yield evidence of criminal activity.

A device that allows immediate, surreptitious intrusion into private data creates enormous risks that troopers will ignore these requirements to the detriment of the constitutional rights of persons whose cell phones are searched.”

 

Online Privacy is Non-Fiction

Your privacy is a sci-fi fantasy:

No Privacy

 

One bright sunny morning in the Land Before the Internet, you go on a job interview. You’re smart, skilled, motivated, and clearly destined to be an asset to any company that hires you. During the interview process, however, just as the HR manager begins to discuss the benefits package and salary, basically communicating that you have the job, he pauses.  “Oh, and we have a few procedural things to take care of,” he says. “We’ll need to assign a goon to follow you around with a parabolic microphone to listen to all of your conversations with friends, and we’ll have a few more follow your friends and family around to see what they’re saying.”  He continues: “Also, we’ll need full access to your diary, your personal records, and your photo albums. In fact, we’ll need the keys to your house, so we can rifle through your stuff to see what you have tucked away in the attic and whatnot. We will also need to do the same to all your friends. I assume that won’t be a problem?”   Just across town in the Land Before the Internet, a few officers in the local police station are bored, so they assign a few cruisers to shadow people at random, for an indefinite period of time. They pick names out of the phone book — selecting citizens who’ve otherwise raised no cause for suspicion — and follow them, simply because they can.  The cops meticulously document the citizens’ comings and goings, creating a very detailed report on their daily lives, complete with where they go, how long they stay, and when they return to their homes. They note when they go to the doctor, where they pick up their kids, everything. They maintain the trail for months or longer, then keep these reports forever.   It turns out that the police in the Land Before the Internet aren’t half as busy as the employees at the post office, who’ve been opening and reading every single letter you’ve sent and received — or the people at the phone company, who are assigned to listen to every phone call you make and transcribe the contents for easy search and recall at a later date. You could avoid their prying ears by speaking in code, but this would be documented as an attempt to evade eavesdropping, which is clearly an indicator that you’re engaging in some sort of nefarious activity. For instance, you might infringe on a copyright down the line, perhaps by singing a few bars of “In the Year 2525” to a friend over the phone.  Welcome to the twilight zone.  Of course, these upside-down horrors are unimaginable in real life. The idea that the post office or phone company would snoop is just crazy — except it’s pretty much what the major ISPs are now volunteering to do. Police stalking innocent citizens could never happen in the United States, at least not without a judge’s approval — unless it means sticking GPS devices on their cars. And under no circumstances would we allow the prospect of gainful employment to be contingent on the abrogation of someone’s personal privacy — but we might need to examine your Facebook page.  These invasions of personal privacy are occurring now because they’re suddenly very easy to accomplish. The rapid advancements in processing power and storage have opened the door to the wholesale collection and storage of vast amounts of data that can be indexed and tied (however loosely) to individuals. There’s no way that any of these entities would have the means or personnel to do this Big Brother nonsense physically, but once those communications occur over the network, they think they’re fair game.  There are many instances where digital surveillance is a good idea and essentially required because of the medium: people working on highly secure defense projects, those working with sensitive information for corporations that could be a target of corporate espionage, and obviously those in positions that require interaction with information on private individuals that should not be disseminated. The use of digital monitoring and data collection is very important in these places. Further, if you’re employed by a company, using corporate resources, you relinquish some right to privacy in order to protect the company from internal sabotage or damages that might ensue from vital internal planning, innovations, or intellectual property falling into the hands of the competition. In short, if you’re at the office running your mouth on Facebook and IM about sensitive internal information and get fired for it, it’s your fault. You’re unlikely to get fired for bitching about your ex-husband to a friend in an IM from your work PC, but don’t be surprised to know that your conversations are being monitored and recorded in an effort to crack down on the former. However, that should not extend beyond the office or into your personal time and space. Invasive digital eavesdropping and coerced access to private social networking applications is an absurd example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In an effort to find the needle, we’re burning down the haystack.

Elite want You Dead

Red Level Alert North America:

Your Dead

While we are all focusing on the coming financial collapse, as bad as that is something much more sinister is in the works.  It’s very subtle if you are not paying attention.  But, to the award, its blatant, insidious, and just as horrific as Hitler’s Germany.  There is a small group of the world’s banking elite who have worked for a few hundred years with ingenious precision and unlimited money, to corral, coerce, and conquer every country of value on earth.  For people who are normal and not rabidly greedy, it’s hard to fathom the idea of anyone trying to get control of the whole world, and taking a chunk of every measure of value traded between its people.  What’s even harder to grasp is that they will stop at nothing to do it.  Look at the millions of people slaughtered in just the last 10 years.  Their leaders may have resisted the Cabal, but many if not all of those dead people were innocents.  We have actually become numb to the idea of genocide, even when it’s right under our nose!!!  And we are sadly mistaken if we think we are somehow immune to the wrath of the most evil people on earth.  They want us dead!  They would love nothing better than to use our own military against us by goading us into revolting.  They have really upped the ante lately too.  Swat is teaming everyday Americans on a regular basis and making sure it’s in the news, and in our face.  If we finally snap, then they will have their pretext to kill us off en mass.  They love the cover of war for murdering millions. Don’t you think that our trick CIA could have found and destroyed Hussain or Gaddafi without dropping a single bomb?  Smedley Butler was right, war is a racket.  But I get the distinct feeling that it’s just not quite as much fun for this group of psychopaths if there’s not total Mad Max destruction.  If after pondering and researching these facts and events, you come to any other conclusion; you are in need of a serious wake up call.  The Powers That Be (TPTB) have even carved in stone their desire to eliminate 80% plus of the population of the world.  They need a much smaller herd if they are going to be able to steer and control everyone for a One World Government, under their control.  A theme emerges when you look at the big picture. They find the things that we all need to survive or use, then put their agenda in motion.

1. ASPARTAME (renamed AMINO SWEET or NEOTAME to thwart growing awareness)- Named commercially Equal/Sweet ‘n Low, aspartame has now found its way into 5000-6000 food products.  This artificial sweetener was denied approval three times.  That is, until Mr. Donald Rumsfeld was hired as the new president of the Searl Co.  The company has since been sold to Monsanto.  This chemical literally turns into wood alcohol in your body, by-passing the blood brain barrier.  Tests show it causes brain tumors and cancer, reduces fertility, can be addictive, and cause many other serious health problems.  The incidence of brain tumors and cancer has risen dramatically since it was introduced.  The test monkeys were trying to tell us something.  A quick read on how they make it and you’ll realize why it’s so toxic. Instead of a “WARNING” on food labels, most products just say ‘sugar free’.

2. GMO CROPS– Since these crops are patented; no one really knows exactly what types of genes are spliced into their DNA.  They call them terminator seeds, meaning they do not produce seeds for future planting and must be purchased by farmers every year.  The original theory was to blend Monsanto’s herbicide Round-Up into the gene of the plant so the crops could be sprayed with Monsanto’s Round-up without killing the plant.  Way back in the 1980′s president G.H.W. Bush declared that if Genetically Modified crops looked like regular foods, then they were foods, and the government would not spend federal money on testing or researching their safety or efficacy.  It has since been a battle royal for independent scientists to show that these foods are indeed questionable as to their safety for human or animal  consumption.  Obvious evidence from around the world shows that farm animals, as well as mice and hamsters in laboratory tests, have a high incidence of death and deformity in second and third generation offspring, spontaneous abortion and sterility.  These plants have infiltrated growing fields around the world and their derivatives are in nearly all our foods. Problems are arising in spite of the hyped ‘improved crop yield’.  Complete fields are collapsing, new ‘super weeds’ are growing, and the over spraying of pesticides and Round-up are destroying the biology of growing soil. GMO crops were never tested over the long haul, and now the very worm the farmers wanted to avoid are developing a resistance to the GM corn. Monsanto’s answer? Plant up to 20% of the fields with NON-GMO to lure the worms over there!  And, now they’ll try splicing two kinds of pesticides into the corn seed.  Last summer Monsanto had to pay GMO farmers to use their competitor’s herbicide, since Round-up was not working anymore.  Organically grown crops are being contaminated by wind and cross pollination, and farmers are being sued for ‘stealing’ Monsanto’s property.  If they can’t afford to fight the monster company, they are losing their farms and lifetime investments. Monsanto hires private thugs to secretly inspect organic farms in order to accomplish these take downs.  The predatory Big Ag companies have declared war on smaller farmers and us.  Scientists believe that once the distorted DNA of these plants go into our bodies, that our own DNA is invaded and that our intestines can literally become pesticide factories. Monsanto has put up vicious attacks on scientists who try to warn about GMO dangers. Recently the USDA ignored an urgent letter from a Purdue scientist about a newly discovered pathogen in GMOs, pleading with them not to approve Monsanto’s new GM alfalfa.  The USDA has even defied an appeals court order not to approve it until an environmental impact study was conducted, but they approved it anyway. What ever happened to the truth that “you can’t fool mother nature”?  If GMO’s are not stopped now, indigenous seeds, organic foods, age old farming methods, clean and normal healthy foods will be destroyed forever. Since Monsanto lobbied against their ‘Franken Foods’ being labeled, and won, we have become the de facto ‘environmental impact study’.  There are already red warning lights flashing, but hell, who cares?  Full steam ahead!

3.COREXIT– During the Gulf Oil Disaster, BP defied the EPA’s ‘order’ not to apply this highly toxic deadly poison into the sea water.  A ‘no fly zone’ was, and still is in force, so the public will not see that the spraying continues to this day.  There has been a news black out imposed on scientists, researchers, doctors who are trying to diagnose and treat the many illnesses that the Gulf residents are sick and dying from.  Plants and humans are being affected far, far inland, but no one knows the extent of the damage. The Corexit has produced new and deadly bacteria, one is known as Blue Plague, but that’s where the story dead ends.  Has anyone heard the numbers of the premature deaths on the Gulf Coast, compared with the normal death rates?  No, I didn’t think so. Somehow the news did leak out though, that the ‘spill’ has blown open and is gushing oil again, although it’s questionable that it ever stopped.  Gee, if oil drilling expert Matt Simmons was still here, maybe we could find out.  He gave very good reports on TV.  He died alone in his hot tub one night from what they said was a ‘heart attack’.  I sure miss him.

4. VACCINES- Does it seem to you that every day some new vaccine pops up that we must have?  Shingles?  HPV?  In my 33 years of working with the public on an intimate level, I’ve never known anyone who died of cervical cancer.  Hmmm.  Each year they guess which flu bug might come around, and we’re all supposed to line up.  A couple years ago they said ‘oops, we were wrong, come in for another stab’ of a different brew.  Two winters ago they said we were all going to die a quick horrible death if we didn’t get the ‘human, pig, bird’ flu shot.  I didn’t even see anyone sick, let alone die, did you?  Many got sick and died from the vaccine though.  Is it any wonder the drug companies paid off congress some years ago to exempt them from any damage liability for their vaccines?  We’ve all heard the horror stories about what these shots can do to people.  Squalene, mercury, and lord knows what else is in these formulas, or how they are cultured. Since we aren’t told, I’m not allowed to repeat rumors here.  I did read last year that 83% of the people in California who ‘contracted’ whooping cough had been vaccinated for it though. Hmmm.  Unfortunately, the government has admitted that ‘some’ vaccines had cancers cells in them, that they infected thousands of children in other countries with polio, and conducted illegal experiments on people with syphilis bacteria in Alabama and Guatemala.  What a good way to hurt a lot of people at once; figure out what a whole lot of people think they need or want, then shoot it straight into their veins.  But just as people are finally wising up to the dangers of vaccines, Big Pharma pushes harder and harder for vaccines to be mandatory for when they decide to create another fake pandemic or illness.

5. FALSE PANDEMIC PANIC– An investigation into the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proclamation that the world was in a bonafide pandemic (after changing the criteria for that level 6 classification), it was discovered that there were unscrupulous and conflict of interest ties to the pharmaceutical companies. Wow!  What a surprise!  And yes, what was the payoff going to be?  Billions of flu shots sold.  Sometimes I think they need to float a trial balloon just to see how many people are still buying their scary propaganda, inflamed and enabled by the corporate owned mainstream media.  Pharmaceutical companies, with the governments’ help, have already accomplished blackmailing parents into shooting up their children with a plethora of vaccines if they want to send them to school.  The Powers That Be are hell bent on finding some way to force their poisons into all of us. Keep in mind that whatever the TV is trying to sell you, whatever story they go hyperbolic over, it means one of 2 things.  It is either to promote TPTB’s agenda, or to divert your attention away from TPTB’s agenda.  And when they omit news that’s important to your life, it’s so you don’t think there’s an agenda at all.

6. PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS– I think the number of deaths caused by prescription drugs each year is up to 200,000 if I’m not mistaken.  And that’s not even the mistakes.  That’s the number for properly prescribed meds!  The drug companies trump up a crisis, like cholesterol numbers that are too high, restless legs, hyperactive kids, whatever, just when they are ready to release their shiny new pill for exactly that problem.  They lie and fudge in their testing, hide the flaws in the results, push for fast track approval, and wala! Billions more pour into their coffers, while people start keeling over in droves.  By the time the FDA decides to even ‘study’ the issue, thousands have died.  Don’t you just love being the real test subjects for them?  And you didn’t even get paid to be in a clinical trial!  Even if the hungry lawyers get the class action suits going, the award damages are far, far smaller than what the company has already raked in.  Oh well, there’s always ‘collateral damage’ with these things, you know?  Haven’t I heard those words somewhere before, like when the government is making excuses for killing ‘innocent civilians’ during war?

7. FLUORIDATED CITY WATER– This is a little trick they stole from the Hitler playbook. It’s just so expensive to dispose of the waste from aluminum manufacturing, hmmm, what could we drum up as a good use for it?  Never mind that it actually causes brain damage, or makes your teeth mottled and discolored, or corrodes your bones, we’ll just put that skull and crossbones on the 55 gallon drums to warn people.  But they’ll still think it’s good for them because we said so, right?  Then we’ll pay the dentists to agree.  Gee, another thing a whole lot of people need, water!  Now, one of President Obama’s czars suggests adding in lithium to keep people calm, along with the other pharmaceuticals that have been found in our water supplies.  No matter what we learn after the fact about what’s been done wrong, it just continues on anyway, doesn’t it?  Why is that?

8. AEROSOL SPRAYING– Have you noticed all those pretty streams planes make in the sky over your head?  I have.  They can turn a clear Arizona deep blue sky cloudy, in just about an hour.  Sometimes they make puff clouds that have streamers draping off of them.  Cool!  But maybe in a short time, you find you can’t breath so well, or you find these cobweb like things on your plants, or it can look like it’s snowing when it’s 100 degrees! More cool!  But it’s a different story when you read about the testing of what’s been collected in air samples, or in people’s blood and saliva.  Micro particles of aluminum, barium, strontium, arsenic, zinc, and too many to list other heavy metals, along with strange bacteria and fibers.  Have you ever heard of Morgellon’s disease?  It’s where people develop moving fibers under their skin.  It’s one of the most horrible, unimaginable, creepy and disgusting skin ailments I’ve ever seen.  Look it up. Dr. Clifford Carnicom has been researching aerosol spraying, otherwise known as chemtrails, for over 12 years and has discovered the Morgellons fibers in the fallen debris and in the saliva of 99% of the people he’s tested.  What do you know?  One more thing we all like, breathing the air!  By the way, it’s not legal for the government to experiment on us without our permission, “UNLESS it’s for medical, therapeutic, pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial purposes, or for research in general, or for protection against, or for law enforcement purposes, including riot control”. (Section 1520a Chapter 32 of U.S. Code Title 50).  No wonder our ‘representatives’ scurry like rats when approached about this subject!  They must have their own special air to breathe.

9. FDA– How many words are the limit for regular articles?  Some doctors have been known to call this the Federal Death Agency.  There are countless detrimental to life additives, fillers, chemicals, artificial extenders, dyes, poison in plastic food containers, and even radiation that are just fine with the FDA for us to eat.  But don’t you dare consume organic raw milk!  Oh no no no.  They just won’t have any of that!  If you report adverse effects from one of their approved elements, you may not hear back from them for years.  You won’t even be noticed if you’re already a statistic!  It just depends on what made you sick.  If it was something a huge corporation makes, forget it.  If you got sick from a peach you bought at a local roadside stand, or some lemonade from your neighbors little girls stand down the street, well its curtains for them.  They’ll get 10+ years in the slammer.  Just beware while you’re shopping at your favorite organic fresh food grocer. Those black Suburban cars, swat team ninja cops, and big AK-47 rifles can be quite startling.  Oh, I forgot about all the toxic chemicals that are allowed to go into our skin and hair products too.  Boys and girls, don’t forget to use your (cancer causing) sunscreen now.  Remember to be careful in that bad sun!  P.S.  Watch out for domestic home grown terrorists like John McCain and Dick Durbin, they’ve been trying to outlaw your vitamin and mineral diet supplements, and they just won’t quit.

10. VITAMIN SUPPLEMENT DEMONIZATION– The Pharmaceutical companies have a jealousy problem.  They don’t like all the money you’ve been spending on vitamins to stay healthy.  It’s just driving them crazy.  So they got our government to sign onto some UN treaty called Codex Alimentarius.  This multi country UN gig wants to judge just how little nutrition you actually need in your vitamin pills, something like what wouldn’t be enough for your pet fly.  Then they want to give the rights to BigPharma to make the pills, with only slightly more milligrams at one thousand times the cost.  What the heck took them so long?  And to make it even better, you’ll have to go to your doctor (IF you can find one after ObamaCare kicks in) for a prescription for your vitamin A, B, C, D, Etc.  So now, we won’t have to worry at all about maintaining good health, because our loving government will do it all for us, right?  So, when all the diseases that are caused by nutritional deficiencies return, all the pharmaceutical companies will be lined up waiting to fix us.  Are you getting the picture yet?  Foods that are loaded up with chemicals, pesticides and herbicides, hormones and anti-biotics to counteract e.coli and staff bacteria; severely depleted in nutrients and minerals, and shipped in from all over the world with scant oversight.  Yet they want to deny us the only means we have to counteract the industrialization and over processing of our foods.  The deal is to keep us very sick, slowly dying, and drain our purses dry, before we die.  Speaking of dying, how many people are killed by vitamins each year?  None, or one?  From the way the FDA is reacting, and Sen. Durbin’s new bill, you might think there was a holocaust in progress.  Well, there is….. But it’s not caused by vitamins!!

11. EPA-Natural gas fracking (flaming tap water).  5 year Naval war exercises on all US coasts with every horrible kind of toxin, bomb, or chemical warfare germ you can think of.  They even admit this endeavor will “take” (read ‘kill’) up to 11 million sea mammals.  Nuclear leakage and fallout.  Every imaginable chemical, pesticide, and herbicide.  Chemtrails. Oil spills and gushers.  Aerosol spraying of deadly toxins on oceans.  Ocean trash dumping by corporations.  Neglected toxic Superfund sites. Overflowing spent nuclear fuel pools all over the country.  Electro Magnetic Frequencies (EMF).  Let’s see.  What am I forgetting?  It doesn’t matter. Anything is OK by the EPA apparently.

12. USDA- Let me give you a clue.  All these alphabet soup agencies are head fakes.  They were put in place by TPTB to make us think the government was protecting us and our country.  And maybe for awhile, to get us believing in them, they were.  But folks, the worm has turned.  Look out.  They are all there to enable the move to consolidate the elites’ plan for total control over our lives!  Here’s a line from a recent article: ‘The USDA lied to farmers and ranchers about federal drought insurance.  The government has refused to pay up during the worst drought in US history’.  More farmers down the drain.  The USDA is an enemy of the country.  The FDA is an enemy of people.  The SEC is an enemy of investors.  The EPA is an enemy of the earth.  I could go on if you like.  Nothing is logical. Nothing makes sense.  What’s love got to do with it?  Nothing.  TPTB are brutal, evil, and diabolical.  They delight in death and destruction, and enjoy watching us suffer.

13. FUKUSHIMA- What is Fukushima?  I think I’ve heard of that somewhere before.  Was that the name of a country somewhere near Japan or something?  Oh that’s right, there was a tsunami, and I think I heard something about a nuclear power plant.  Boy, that CNN just jumps from one story to the next.  Things are moving so fast these days it’s hard to keep up. But I think somebody from England said something about not going out in the rain, or eating green leafy vegetables.  But everything must be OK now, because I haven’t heard any more about it.  Nothing is more despicable than to have our government order a news black-out about what is very possibly a life extinction event of mass proportion.

14. THE FOOD SAFETY AND MODERNIZATION ACT– Better known as ‘The End of Small Farms and Don’t Bother Looking For Roadside Fruit and Vegetable Stands Act’.  Those small time farmers are going to be too busy complying with new draconian paperwork and regulations to worry about the safety of their organic crops.  While they are busy paying the piper, the crops will die of neglect anyway.  But don’t get all huffy and think you’ll just grow some food of your own.  The Garden Police will show up with their AK-47s, and God knows what will happen if you don’t have your permit!  And don’t even think about sharing your extra tomatoes with the neighbor.  That is against the law now.  They’ll work best thrown onto the compost pile for next years planting.  Our loyal representatives twisted themselves into pretzels to get this bill passed.  The lame duck congress even worked till the wee hours of the morning so no one would see what they were doing on the last day they were in office.  Many who may have voted ‘no’ had gone home to bed.  They got about 6 million letters, calls, and e-mails from the suckers who voted for them, begging them not to pass this dangerous bill!  But they just couldn’t resist giving us a parting gift, because they couldn’t resist the parting gifts they got for passing this disgusting bill.  In case you haven’t picked up on it, every new bill in this Orwellian world we live in, has a name the exact opposite of what its underlying purpose is.

15. SMART GRID and SMART METERS– As if electro magnetic frequencies (EMF) from cell phones, cell towers, microwave ovens, HD TVs, wi-fi signals, medical CT scans, X-rays, and airport scanners, aren’t enough to fry us, we now get to have the new and improved electrical grid along with the deadly ‘smart meters’ that go with them.  Here’s another gift from TPTB money grabbers who have nothing but their own agenda in mind.  Even all the corporations who are going to be bidding for a piece of the action dare not bring up the issue of safety.  Not a word!  This may finally be the wake-up call for all the people who refused to believe their government has anything but their best interests at heart.  Once again, our dependence on electricity will be used to hold us hostage, and to make us comply with something that may very well kill us!  Not to mention that ‘smart meters’ are a complete invasion of your privacy and a way for Big Brother to keep track of your every move and even control your appliances remotely if they want.  Please read up on this subject before they come to your town and alert your neighbors!  The meters will be spewing strong pulses of microwave energy all through the environment, your home and everybody in it, then returning the signal to a receiver up to 2 miles away. Even if you didn’t have one, don’t worry, you’ll be treated to all your neighbors signals as well, right through your walls.  Your utility’s talking point will be that ‘they are no more dangerous than a cell phone’, or that it only pulses twice a day.  Outright lies!  Apparently, they haven’t been keeping up on their propaganda scheme.  Even the WHO is finally admitting that cell phones do cause cancer tumors!  Another case of hiding the health risks for the benefit of big corporations.  And, according to Dr. Bill Deagle, who has been testing the smart meter, it’s been putting out 100 times the EMF of a cell phone!  I wonder how long it will take to kill people who are unfortunate enough to live in multi-family dwellings, or live with a meter bank containing hundreds of meters a short distance from their home?  Don’t think our government knows exactly what they’re doing to us?  The military has studied this technology extensively!  The meters have not even been approved by UL, and you need a subpoena to get safety rating records from the utility co.  How would you like to die?  Cooked by microwaves, or fried in a fire?  The meters have been catching on fire and may have been the cause of the gas line explosion in San Diego that took 8 lives and 47 homes a few months ago.  Federal “investigators” said they were not going to investigate if the meter was the cause “because the meter did not cause the explosion”.  They don’t look for things they don’t want to find.  The utility commissions and the utility companies are playing extreme hardball with people who do not want to be microwaved in their homes.  If you try to ‘opt out’, you will pay dearly to protect your health, while they are happy to place your life on the black jack table for that first winning hand.  Judging by Dr. Deagle’s own testing of his smart meter, it’s obvious that any test results provided by the industry claiming the meters are completely safe are fraudulent!  Further, they do admit that there has been no long term testing, but you’ll need a subpoena to see their safety data.  So just like cell phones, how can they dare to make any safety claims?  “The meters are within the FCC’s guidelines” they say. (Another alphabet agency)  I guess cell phones are too, although the radio frequency levels they put out have just been listed as carcinogens.  Once again, the people who will get rich off this boondoggle will be sailing away on their yachts, while you lie in a hospital bed dying of cancer.  You can bet they won’t have smart meters on their homes!   The government has offered bribe money to the states, utilities and the utility commissions (which came from us in the form of ‘stimulus money’) to institute this program.  Then we’ll pay for it again ‘to reimburse the utility along with a ‘fair’ profit’, by paying much higher rates.  It is NOT mandated by law, but if you refuse them permission to install the meter, they will come back and install it anyway and say you have no choice.  Or they’ll threaten to turn your power off!  They thought they could pass this one off by saying it will save us money, conserve energy, and save the earth!   But people are catching on to this one, and the lawsuits are already under way.  (Good luck with that.  How many judges do you trust these days?)  Act now and get your city to ban them, please!  And don’t forget to educate your doctor.  He’ll need the info to treat your addled brain and confused bodily systems, if the Cabal gets their way.  Every cell in our body has an electrical biology, and unless you aren’t human, you will be damaged.  It’s the modern day version of a gas chamber.  The chamber this time happens to be your own home,  If this isn’t our line in the sand, nothing is.

16. UNENDING WARS- Mothers, don’t let your babies grow up to be soldiers.  If they make it back home, they’ll never be the same.  Look up Gulf War Syndrome. They are guinea pigs for every imaginable vaccine, and unwitting victims of America’s own weapon of mass destruction called depleted uranium.  You could also become the proud grandparents of a grandchild with 2 heads and 4 legs.  It has become very obvious that our government, our military, and our country have been the subjects of a coup ‘d tat.  The next time someone says our sons and daughters are defending our freedom, remind them of the black SUVs and swat team raids on the beautiful Amish farmers, or the 630 citizen deaths by cop tasers, or the no warrant, no knock raids on homes of innocent people, or the sexual assault by the airport TSA because people just want to visit their family in another state.  I know our young people sign up out of financial desperation and perceived patriotism.  Once they sign they are compelled to follow orders, but it is now apparent to the entire world that they are not fighting for our country, but for the agenda of the cabal of elites who want to own it all, including you.  The military standing down is our only hope for saving the country.  We need them to defend us, right here at home, from the enemies within, and the outside enemies who are fomented by our government’s lies.   I hate to say it, but right at this moment, our military is aiding and abetting the enemy to destroy our dreams, our freedoms, and our country.   Is there not a single commander who has the guts to loudly and publicly just say NO MORE?!

17. OBAMA”CARE”– Written by the insurance companies, it will be the perfect covert plan to eliminate all the ‘useless eaters’ and save the government from paying all of us pesky Baby Boomers our social security. It won’t be hard, since while they are adding 30 million people into the system, 60% of the doctors we have now will be long gone.  They want nothing to do with it.  Everyone knows that the medical system is in melt down as we speak anyway.  One of my favorite parts of this travesty is the rule that if you are ‘not up to date on your vaccines’, you won’t get care.  It’s such a fabulous law that the scum who voted for it made themselves and their staff exempt from it!  Make your doctor appointments now!  It may be a few years wait.  Ask him if he makes house calls to jails, since that’s where you’ll be if you can’t afford ObamaCare.  By the way…. when your doctor (if he hasn’t left the country) asks, by law, if you have any firearms in your home, tell him ‘absolutely not’!  Then ask him why he wants to know.  18. WEATHER MODIFICATION– Scientists say the technology certainly exists.  I’m sure the ruling Cabal has unlimited funds to invest in it, and the Navy says they’ll own the weather by 2025.  We keep having rare, deadly, ‘once every 100 years’ droughts, floods, earthquakes, temperatures, and snowfalls, so I’m really suspicious about this.  I think they own the weather now!  It seems to add up to broke farmers, food shortages and sky high prices.  Our government signed on to a UN treaty that prohibits all countries from using weather weapons.  So, our leaders promptly privatized the U.S. weather bureau, and created numerous front companies that carry out their plans for them anyway.  It’s similar to hiring that company Blackwater in Iraq.  They did such a good job for the U.S. in Iraq, and they’re so proud that they changed their name to XE, as if that makes them seem any less dark. 

19. FINANCIAL COLLAPSE/DEPRESSION– I forget.  How many people died during the 1930s depression?  One of the most telling discoveries were the thousands of coffins piled up that Jessi Ventura showed on one of his TruTV shows.  That show was never aired again, and was removed altogether from the TruTV website and the internet.  Are the coffins for the masses of people who will starve during the new great depression?  Why did the government order them?  If they are there in case of a big natural disaster, wouldn’t the government just say so?  Instead they removed the evidence from view.  In detective terms, they call that consciousness of guilt.

Will someone please wake me up after I’m dead, Thank You!

Monsanto’s Protecting GMO Label

Monsanto Threatens to Sue, Requiring GMO Food to Be Labeled:

Monsanto

 

The world’s most hated corporation is at it again, this time in Vermont.  Despite overwhelming public support and the support of a clear majority of Vermont’s Agriculture Committee, Vermont legislators are dragging their feet on a proposed GMO labeling bill. Why? Because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if the bill passes.  The popular legislative bill requiring mandatory labels on genetically engineered food (H-722) is languishing in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, with only four weeks left until the legislature adjourns for the year. Despite thousands of emails and calls from constituents who overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, despite the fact that a majority (6 to 5) of Agriculture Committee members supports passage of the measure, Vermont legislators are holding up the labeling bill and refusing to take a vote.  Instead, they’re calling for more public hearings on April 12, in the apparent hope that they can run out the clock until the legislative session ends in early May.  What happened to the formerly staunch legislative champions of Vermont’s “right to know” bill? They lost their nerve and abandoned their principles after Monsanto representative recently threatened a public official that the Biotech giant would sue Vermont if they dared to pass the bill. Several legislators have rather unconvincingly argued that the Vermont public has a “low appetite” for any bills, even very popular bills like this one, that might end up in court. Others expressed concern about Vermont being the first state to pass a mandatory GMO labeling bill and then having to “go it alone” against Monsanto in court.  What it really comes down to this: Elected officials are abandoning the public interest and public will in the face of corporate intimidation.  Monsanto has used lawsuits or threats of lawsuits for 20 years to force unlabeled genetically engineered foods on the public, and to intimidate farmers into buying their genetically engineered seeds and hormones. When Vermont became the first state in the nation in 1994 to require mandatory labels on milk and dairy products derived from cows injected with the controversial genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone, Monsanto’s minions sued in Federal Court and won on a judge’s decision that dairy corporations have the first amendment “right” to remain silent on whether or not they are injecting their cows with rBGH – even though rBGH has been linked to severe health damage in cows and increased cancer risk for humans, and is banned in much of the industrialized world, including Europe and Canada.  Monsanto wields tremendous influence in Washington, DC and most state capitals. The company’s stranglehold over politicians and regulatory officials is what has prompted activists in California to bypass the legislature and collect 850,000 signatures to place a citizens’ Initiative on the ballot in November 2012. The 2012 California Right to Know Act will force mandatory labeling of GMOs and to ban the routine practice of labeling GMO-tainted food as “natural.”  All of Monsanto’s fear mongering and intimidation tactics were blatantly on display in the House Agriculture Committee hearings March 15-16.  During the hearings the Vermont legislature was deluged with calls, letters, and e-mails urging passage of a GMO labeling bill – more than on any other bill since the fight over Civil Unions in 1999-2000. The legislature heard from pro-labeling witnesses such as Dr. Michael Hansen, an expert on genetic engineering from the Consumers Union, who shredded industry claims that GMO’s are safe and that consumers don’t need to know if their food is contaminated with them.

Anonymous hacks China

Over 480 gov and biz sites hit by hacktivist blitz:

Anonymous

Hacktivist group Anonymous has finally turned its attention to the People’s Republic of China, claiming to have defaced more than 480 web sites over the past few days including government sites, whilst urging Chinese hackers to join its cause.  The group apparently began its campaign in the region with the launch of its AnonymousChina Twitter account, which seems to have begun tweeting on 30 March.  In a list posted to Pastebin, the group claimed to have defaced over 480 sites, including several belonging to regional Chinese government organizations in areas such as Chengdu and Dalian.  In several separate posts Anonymous also claimed to have hacked and leaked user names, password details, phone numbers and emails from various government sites.  All the sites on the list we have been trying now appear to have been taken down, although the Wall Street Journal managed to take a screen grab showing the following message in English:

Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall. So expect us because we do not forgive, never. What you are doing today to your Great People, tomorrow will be inflicted to you. With no mercy.

According to the WSJ, the message also contained a link to an Anonymous site detailing how Chinese web users can bypass the Great Firewall, although at the time of writing this site appears to have been killed.  Not content with that, the group also posted another message to Pastebin, urging the Chinese people to revolt.  “So, we are writing this message to tell you that you should protest, you should revolt yourself protesting and who has the skills for hacking and programming and design and other ‘computer things’ come to our IRC,” the note read.  This is the first major Anonymous campaign targeting China, which is somewhat strange given the government’s hardline stance on web censorship and human rights – two issues guaranteed to get the group’s attention.  In fact, the hacking of several minor regional government sites is unlikely to cause much consternation at Communist Party headquarters, and the group’s messages on Pastebin and posted on the defaced sites will largely have failed to reach their audience given that they were written in English.  Anonymous seems to be working on the latter issue, however, having sent a tweet out calling for help from would-be translators.  Given China’s strict web controls on social media, it’s unlikely that the group will be able to broadcast its message on platforms such as Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, so for the time being it’ll have to stick with Twitter – banned in China – and defacing web sites.

Monsanto’s causing Birth Defects

Round Up

Industry regulators have known for years that Roundup, the world’s best-selling herbicide produced by U.S. company Monsanto, causes birth defects, according to a new report released Tuesday.  The report, “Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?” found regulators knew as long ago as 1980 that glyphosate, the chemical on which Roundup is based, can cause birth defects in laboratory animals.  But despite such warnings, and although the European Commission has known that glyphosate causes malformations since at least 2002, the information was not made public.  Instead regulators misled the public about glyphosate’s safety, according to the report, and as recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety, the German government body dealing with the glyphosate review, told the European Commission that there was no evidence glyphosate causes birth defects.  The report comes months after researchers found that genetically-modified crops used in conjunction Roundup contain a pathogen that may cause animal miscarriages. After observing the newly discovered organism back in February, Don Huber, a emeritus professor at Purdue University, wrote an open letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack requesting a moratorium on deregulating crops genetically altered to be immune to Roundup, which are commonly called Roundup Ready crops.  In the letter, Huber also commented on the herbicide itself, saying: “It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders.”
Although glyphosate was originally due to be reviewed in 2012, the Commission decided late last year not to bring the review forward, instead delaying it until 2015. The chemical will not be reviewed under more stringent, up-to-date standards until 2030.