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Political Issues

March 22, 2009

USDA-approved chip implants causing Cancer tumors

Verichip NAIS would require that all farmers and farm animal owners, implant their animals with a computer chip, even those who just own a single cow, horse, chicken or other farm animal.

Studies are finding that these chips are causing cancer in as many as 10% of the animals and people they're implanted into: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_7570.cfm

[The Organic Comsumers Association has reported on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), a set of controversial, mandatory regulations the U.S. Federal Government claims to have abandoned to the states, but in fact is still pushing, specifically, in the 2007 Farm Bill.]

February 22, 2009

Dumbing down America... intentionally

Why are people so resistant to Raw Living Foods? It has to do with the way we've been educating in America for the last 100 years. Read "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling," by John Taylor Gatto.

Library Journal says: "In this tenth-anniversary edition, Gatto updates his theories on how the U.S. educational system cranks out students the way Detroit cranks out Buicks. He contends that students are more programmed to conform to economic and social norms rather than really taught to think."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0865714487/httpwwwfutuor-20/102-9535290-6658545?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2

January 12, 2009

FDA food pyramid - and a spoof

Well, the US FDA released another "food pyramid": http://www.mypyramid.gov/
Like it's predecessors, it's flawed. But I'll let this site speak on the issues: http://www.mypyramid.org/

January 08, 2009

How big business influences government policy and our food choices

"The Politics of Meat and Dairy: How Big Business Influences Government Policy and Our Food Choices," by Michele Simon: http://informedeating.org/docs/politics_of_meat_and_dairy_article.html

February 24, 2008

Kids buy lunches with finger scans

ROME, Ga., Sep. 5, 2006
(AP) The never-ending march of technology now means school children here can pay for their cafeteria sloppy joes with their fingers.

Rome City Schools is switching to a scanning system that lets students use their fingerprints to access their accounts. In the past, students had to punch in their pin numbers.

"The finger's better because all you've got to do is put your finger in, and you don't have to do the number and get mixed up," said Adrianna Harris, a second grader at Anna K. Davie Elementary School.

Many parents are concerned about having their minor children fingerprinted: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/05/ap/strange/mainD8JULN4G0.shtml.

- thanks to Steven Gibb

December 20, 2007

Ron Paul making Amazing Inroads

What is behind the improbably successful presidential campaign of Ron Paul, a 72-year-old, 10-term Republican congressman from Texas who favors the gold standard?

How did Paul manage to set a one-day GOP record by raising $4.3 million on the Internet? Paul's campaign didn't even organize the fundraiser -- an independent-minded supporter did.

According to this Washington Post editorial, a new and potentially transformative force is growing in American politics. Americans are increasingly disillusioned with government becoming ever more intrusive at all levels.

Paul’s philosophy of principled libertarianism, predicated on the fundamental notion that a smaller government allows individuals more freedom, appeals to these voters.

Read more: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/12/15/libertarians-a-force-to-be-reckoned-with.aspx

December 01, 2007

USDA Proposes Rule Undermining Organics and Small Farms

1onionheads The USDA is accepting public comments until December 3 on a new proposed rule that would force small farms growing green leafy vegetables, such as spinach and lettuce, to put into place industrial-style sterilization measures that reduce biodiversity and soil fertility.

The proposal follows in the wake of the USDA's recent controversial crackdown on raw almonds, continued interference with raw milk production, and bans on the sale of locally produced organic meat directly to consumers. The proposed rules basically cover up the fact that e-coli 0157H contamination in lettuce and spinach crops comes from feedlot or industrial livestock-contaminated irrigation waters or contamination in large processing plants. The rule limits hedgerows, and other non-crop vegetation commonly found on and around small organic and sustainable farms.

In addition, although every organic farmer knows that healthy soil is literally alive with multiple types of healthy bacteria, the rules also discourage the development of beneficial microbial life in the soil. Send a message to the USDA today.

Learn more and take action: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_8679.cfm

November 30, 2007

School Lunches and Farm Politics

Why does a salad cost more than a burger? Part of the problem is that school lunch programs and other food assistance programs are used as dumping grounds for agricultural commodities. When meat or cheese prices fall, the government boosts farm income by buying up millions of dollars worth of these products and sending them to schools and other food programs. Livestock companies get rich, while public health and animals suffer.

We now have the chance to change things. The Farm Bill, which includes the blueprints for agricultural subsidies and food assistance programs, comes up for renewal this fall. Certain helpful amendments will be proposed that would cut subsidies for unhealthful foods and would bring vegetables and fruits into nutrition programs. Call or write your senators now and let them know how you feel.

Follow these links for more information:

from PCRM: http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm07autumn/health_pork.html

from Farm Sanctuary: http://www.farmsanctuary.org/campaign/DC_may07.htm

November 27, 2007

You Might Lose Your Job If You Smoke or Eat Junk Food

In an effort to reduce health care costs, employers are beginning to scrutinize the lifestyle habits of their employees -- even those that happen outside of business hours.

It's commonplace for insurance companies to question clients about their smoking habits, weight, or other health issues. However, a new trend has employers screening employees and new job applicants for these same factors. The following factors could now put your job on the line:

1. Smoking
2. Blood pressure
3. Blood glucose levels
4. Body mass
5. Bad cholesterol levels

Currently only a small portion of U.S. employers have taken action against what they deem unhealthy behaviors, but the list is growing. For instance, in September 2007 The Cleveland Clinic began screening potential employees for nicotine. If any is found in their systems, they're denied employment.

In 2009, another company, Clarian Health, plans to start charging employees $5 per paycheck if they are found using tobacco or to have abnormal levels of cholesterol or high blood pressure.

Meanwhile, employees at Weyco Incorporated can be charged $50 fees per paycheck not only if they smoke, but if their spouse smokes as well.

Privacy advocates are concerned that these monitoring trends will get out of hand, with employers charging fines for eating fast food or visiting a tavern. Most experts believe, however, that as health care costs continue to rise, employers will continue to enact penalties for unhealthy behaviors.

How to Improve Your Health and Keep Your Job: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2007/11/03/you-might-lose-your-job-if-you-smoke-or-eat-junk-food.aspx

November 12, 2007

FDA to reclassify vitamins, supplements, herbs, vegetable juices as regulated drugs

Originally published April 11 2007

Health freedom action alert:
FDA attempting to regulate supplements, herbs and juices as "drugs"

by Mike Adams

When it comes to health freedom, this is the FDA's end game. A new FDA "guidance" document, published on the FDA's website, reveals plans to reclassify virtually all vitamins, supplements, herbs and even vegetable juices as FDA-regulated drugs.

Massage oils and massage rocks will be classified as "medical devices" and require FDA approval.

The document is called Docket No. 2006D-0480. Draft Guidance for Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA is accepting public comments on the docket until April 30th. They tried to sneak this under the radar, but word got out and now the natural health community is up in arms over this rule. If you wish to protect your access to nutritional supplements, herbs, essential oils, homeopathic medicine or any other "complementary" or "alternative" modality, it is crucial that you take action to post your comments with the FDA right now and write your representatives in Washington to put a stop to this outrageous effort to destroy natural medicine. (And be sure to really write them. Just sending an email has virtually no impact compared to writing a physical letter in your own words.)

Click here for the direct link to the FDA's comment posting page for this docket.

This move by the FDA is designed to once and for all destroy the 1994 DSHEA law that has made supplements "legal" while eliminating nutritional supplements and natural medicine from the United States, ensuring monopoly profits and control by drug companies and the FDA. It is the latest action item by the FDA / Big Pharma conspiracy that will not stop until health freedom has been abolished, drug companies rule the nation, and every citizen is diagnosied with a fictitious disease and drugged up on monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals.

FDA "experts" will decide what's a drug or medical device

Under these proposed guidelines, FDA "experts" (the same corrupt officials who reapproved Vioxx after it killed over 50,000 Americans) will decide whether herbs, supplements, vitamins or simple devices like massage stones are to be regulated as drugs and medical devices. If the FDA experts, in their infinite wisdom, decide that these things are to be reclassified, they will essentially be outlawed, stripped from the shelves, and regulated out of existence. Anyone who dares to manufacture, promote or sell such products may be branded a criminal and rounded up by armed FDA agents who have a well established history of suppressing natural medicine.

I've documented much of the criminal history of the FDA in my recent book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them, which suddenly seems even more relevant today than when I wrote it. In that book, I documented the FDA ordered book burnings, the raids on vitamin shops, the kidnapping of natural health practitioners, the threats, intimidation and oppression tactics that have been used to suppress natural medicine for nearly a hundred years now. And now, with this CAM Products Regulation effort, the FDA is about to deal a final, fatal blow to the alternative medicine industry, outlawing nutritional supplements, functional foods, homeopathy and natural therapies all at once.

This is not a drill. It really is time to be alarmed. Nothing else I've written about this year is as important as this sinister plot to destroy natural medicine and force the American population to resort to dangerous prescription medications sold at monopoly prices under a system of medical tyranny.

Your access to vitamins, supplements, herbs, and even energy medicine modalities is now directly threatened, and you have until April 30 to make your voice heard.

Action items

First, read the document yourself. Click here for the PDF version.

Take special care to notice the following text, taken directly from the FDA's own document: (italicized text is from the FDA, with my own translation following)

"...a product used in a CAM therapy or practice may be subject to regulation as a biological product, cosmetic, drug, device, or food (including food additives and dietary supplements) under the act or the PHS Act. Second, neither the act nor the PHS Act exempts CAM products from regulation."

Translation: Anything used in any system of medicine may now be regulated as a drug or medical device by the FDA. This includes a biofeedback machine, acupuncture needles, a cup of herbal tea, massage oil, a glass of vegetable juice or even a bottle of water.

"...if a person decides to produce and sell raw vegetable juice for use in juice therapy to promote optimal health... [and] if the juice therapy is intended for use as part of a disease treatment regimen instead of for the general wellness, the vegetable juice would also be subject to regulation as a drug under the Act."

Translation: Raw vegetable juice will be regulated as a drug and must be FDA approved as a drug if it has any health effect whatsoever. Handing a cup of raw vegetable juice to someone and telling them it's good for the detoxification of their liver will get you arrested for practicing medicine without a license and promoting an "unapproved drug."

..."biologically based practices" includes, but is not limited to, botanicals, animal-derived extracts, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, proteins, prebiotics and probiotics: whole diets, and "functional foods". ...a botanical product intended for use in treating a disease would generally be regulated as a drug." ..."functional foods" may be subject to FDA regulation as foods, dietary supplements, or drugs under the Act.

Translation: All foods, supplements, superfoods and functional foods may be reclassified as drugs by the FDA, then regulated off the market.

If... the manipulative and body-based practices involve the use of equipment (such as massage devices) or the application of a product (such as a lotion, cream, or oil) to the skin or other parts of the body, those products may be subject to regulation under the Act."

Translation: Massage oils and creams will be regulated as "drugs" and acupuncture needles as "medical devices." Taking this absurdity one step further, massage therapists who use their fingers to touch patients may have their fingers regulated as "medical devices" and be accused of practicing medicine for merely touching patients.

Things that will be regulated out of existence

It is very clear that the FDA is intending to regulate and ultimately destroy the entire CAM industry (Complementary and Alternative Medicine). Based on the explanations in the FDA's own document, the following things are likely to occur:

  • All vitamins, nutritional supplements and functional foods will be stripped of their structure & function claims, reducing them to empty labels where virtually nothing at all is allowed to be stated.
  • Vegetable juice will be regulated as a drug. Raw juice retreats will be raided or shut down.
  • Growing and selling common garden herbs will get you arrested as a drug dealer.
  • Massage oils and handheld massagers will be regulated as "medical devices."
  • Yoga props, pilates machines and weight machines will be regulated as "medical devices" and require FDA approval before being sold or used.
  • Raw sprouts and other anti-cancer foods will be regulated as drugs.
  • Bottled water that "treats" dehydration will be regulated as a drug.
  • Massage therapists who use hot rocks as part of their therapy will have the ROCKS regulated as medical devices! (It's true. The FDA will actually look at a pile of rocks and declare, "Those are medical devices!")
  • Functional foods, supplements, vitamins and homeopathic remedies will disappear from store shelves, pending FDA "review." (The only things remaining will be processed junk foods and pharmaceuticals, which is exactly what Big Business wants.)
  • Therapeutic tea products, such as green tea, will be outlawed and confiscated.
  • Vitamin store owners will be arrested and prosecuted for "practicing medicine without a license."
  • Citizens owning personal inventories of "unapproved drugs" (vitamins and herbs) may have their homes raided at gunpoint and their inventories confiscated by armed law enforcement agents.
  • The importation of herbs and functional foods from all countries may be banned.

Keep in mind that the FDA is the same agency that:

  • Wants to label irradiated foods as "pasteurized."
  • Voted to put the deadly drug Vioxx back on the market after tens of thousands of deaths, even after its own manufacurer pulled it from pharmacies.
  • Raided a church at gunpoint, confiscating biofeedback machines and charging that they were "practicing medicine" by counseling church members on issues like depression.
  • Openly allows corrupt, "on the take" experts to vote on new drug approvals, even when those experts are taking money from the same companies impacted by their votes.
  • Refuses to legalize stevia, the safe, natural herbal sweetener that's used virtually everywhere else in the world. The agenda? Protect the profits of aspartame and other chemical sweeteners.
  • Openly allows the mass poisoning of the public with cancer-causing food additives such as sodium nitrite.
  • Refuses to enforce its own laws regarding unsafe chemical toxins in personal care products, allowing perfume and lotion companies to continue poisoning the public with cancer-causing chemicals that don't even have to be listed on the label, nor proven safe.
  • Ordered the destruction of recipe books that mentioned stevia. (A campaign to keep the public ignorant of the herb.)
  • Does everything in its power to protect drug company profits, including discrediting herbs, supplements and alternative medicine.

Does anyone honestly believe that this criminal organization has any capacity whatsoever to act in the public interest? Even many Senators are fed up with the FDA's unprecedented level of corruption and criminal behavior.

Action items, continued...

Read Jon Barron's comments on this rule at the JonBarron.org website

Next, lodge your complaint against the FDA by commenting on this docket through the FDA's docket comment form.

And finally, write your Senator or Congressperson about this issue and let them know, in blatant language, that you will not stand by and allow the criminals running medicine today to take away your access to vitamins, supplements, herbs and homeopathic medicine. Write the letter in your own words, even if it's just two sentences. Individual letters have a hundred times the impact of form letters.

Medical wasteland USA

Everything is at stake here. If the FDA gets its way, the United States will become a medical wasteland, dominated by corporate drug company interests, where the naturopaths are imprisoned and their products destroyed. Supplements and herbs will become contraband, and gardeners who grow their own medicinal herbs may be raided and arrested by DEA agents wielding assault rifles. Simply selling dried broccoli sprouts as being "good anti-cancer foods" may land you in prison, and running a vitamin shop could result in you being arrested for "practicing medicine."

Imagine a nation where Whole Foods stores are stripped of all herbs and supplements, where vitamin shops are emptied and abandoned, where books that promote herbs are bulldozed into large piles and burned, where natural healers are rounded up and "disappeared" into incarceration centers. This is the future that will become reality if the FDA has its way. The plan has been explained to us in plain language. Any agency that openly states "vegetable juice will be regulated as a drug" has quite simply lost its marbles. We're are now clearly being regulated by clinically insane bureaucrats.

With this desperate proposal by the FDA -- clearly designed as a last-ditch effort to save the failing conventional medical industry from a massive public shift towards natural medicine -- the war against health freedom has reached our shores, and the FDA is plotting a 9/11-style attack to bring down the towers of health freedom in one swift motion.

This is the same agency that currently represents the greatest threat to the health and safety of the American people, far outweighing the threat of real terrorism. This agency, we have seen, will do ANYTHING to protect the profits and power of drug companies. It will lie, steal, accept bribes, hide scientific evidence, distort statistics, commit scientific fraud, break federal laws, threaten its own drug safety scientists, conspire with drug company executives, intimidate American citizens and use terror-style tactics to achieve its goals of complete domination over foods, drugs and health.

Why do Americans tolerate terrorism in their own government?

It is time we put a stop to this home-grown tyranny. We have fought too hard for freedom in the United States to allow us all to be steamrolled by a criminal front group covertly working for Big Pharma. The FDA has declared war on natural medicine and the American people, and we will lose our family members, children, brothers and sisters as casualties of this war if we don't stand up now and demand radical changes. It's time to stop this terrorist organization from destroying the lives of yet more U.S. citizens.

Make your voice heard now, or forever surrender your access to supplements, herbs, superfoods and functional foods. By the time the FDA is done with this country, we'll all be eating medication for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Action reminders:

1. Lodge a complaint with the FDA by clicking here. MAKE SURE you include the docket number 2006D-0480. But don't trust this to be enough. The FDA will probably simply delete half the complaints it receives, so don't trust your complaint to actually count. It's important to continue...

2. Send a strongly-worded letter to your representatives in Washington. Be sure to cite Docket No. 2006D-0480. Draft Guidance for Industry on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Products and Their Regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. Tell them you support open access to vitamins, herbs, and supplements, and you do not want CAM to be regulated by the FDA.

3. Send this story to everyone you know. Spread the word. Raise the alarm. With enough public support, the FDA will be forced to back off this insane proposal.

And stay tuned to NewsTarget for more news, analysis and action alerts on health freedom. Even though we're under constant attack by criminal organizations trying to disrupt our servers and take us off line, we're still here, beating the drum for health freedom, and hoping that we have enough sane-minded Americans remaining to save this country from its government.

Actual FDA quote is gobbledygook

Here's an actual FDA statement from the CAM Guidance report:

For example, naturopathic cranberry tablets might be labeled for use to maintain the health of the urinary tract. In this example, the cranberry tablets generally would be regulated as "dietary supplements" ...if they were labeled for use to "maintain the health of the urinary tract" rather than "prevent urinary tract infections." The cranberry tablets would be regulated as "drugs" ...if they were labeled for use to "treat urinary tract infections" even if they were labeled as dietary supplements.

Additional phone numbers as listed in the FDA document

Sheryl Lard-Whiteford at 301-827-0379
Daniel Nguyen at 301-827-8971
Ted Stevens at 301-594-1184
Wayne Amchin at 301-827-6739


All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. Newstarget.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NewsTarget.com/terms.shtml

View original article: http://www.newstarget.com/z021789.html

"If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention."

November 08, 2007

Where are your Rights going?

In last year’s reader survey of our newsletter readers (www.chiDiet.com/subscribe.htm) the overwhelming response was “It can’t be too radical.”

Congress In that spirit, we offer a link to this 10-minute freedom of speech video about “the end of America as we know it.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PpMdTmVMpo.  It makes you think, doesn't it?

Is it any wonder that the USDA, the FDA, and other governmental agencies are unresponsive to consumer input and the evidence of the benefits of a Raw Living Foods lifestyle? “Big Brother knows what’s best for you.” Or so "he" thinks…

"Man is not free unless government is limited... As government expands, liberty contracts." - Ronald Reagan, former US President.

There’s a 90-minute video called “Zeitgeist - The Movie.” Zeitgeist is a German word that means, “The spirit of the age,” or “The spirit and beliefs of a society at a particular point in time.” This video expands upon the above with more detail about how Americans are being emotionally and intellectually manipulated into accepting restrictions on their freedom: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331&q=zeitgeist+movie&total=808&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 or here: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22zeitgeist+-+the+movie%22

“People should not be afraid of their Governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” – Thomas Jefferson, former US President.

If you think being microchipped is a good idea, or even that it’s safe, studies show that as many as 10% of chip recipients are growing cancerous tumors around their microchips: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296175,00.html and also http://www.antichips.com/press-releases/microchip-imlants-tumors.html.

“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”  - http://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%9CIf+you%E2%80%99re+not+outraged%2C+you%E2%80%99re+not+paying+attention%E2%80%9D+&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

- compiled from the contributions of numerous readers

November 05, 2007

The most astonishing health disaster of the 20th century

Nurse

A five-minute video about the state of healthcare in the US today. If you haven't seen all of this info in one place before, it will shock you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPI7zdGdqo4.

November 01, 2007

Health Freedom USA

0logo The Natural Solutions Foundation was created to protect, promote and defend Health Freedom when Rima E. Laibow, M.D. and Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III (U.S. Army, Ret.) took stock of the dismal state of health freedom in the United States domestically (e.g. privacy violations like HIPPA, attacks on DSHEA, witch hunts against advanced medical practitioners, stifled new medical technologies, “practice guidelines” designed to straight jacket doctors and force them into pharmaceutical models of treatment, etc.) and internationally.

Visit the website: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php.

October 27, 2007

FDA proposing more changes

From Steven J. Monkiewicz [drsteve720@msn.com]

Won't you take a moment tell your friends that the FDA is proposing a dangerous change in the way health claims are regulated which is Unconstitutional and will keep them from getting truthful information about supplements and health? Ask them to join you in keeping your right to learn what supplements can do for you despite the efforts of the FDA to take them away. Take action now at: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=12189&t=

July 26, 2007

FDA intends to restrict Free Speech

FDA Restricts Truthful Health Claims in New Guideline

Ignoring more than 100,000 emails to Congress in support of truthful health claims, the FDA has directly challenged the Health Freedom Protection Act, HR 2177, with a new draft guidance, "Evidence-Based Review System for the Scientific Evaluation of Health Claims", Docket 2007D-0125, http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/hclmgui5.html

This draft guidance represents the FDA's current thinking on the process for evaluating the scientific evidence for a health claim through "significant scientific agreement (SSA) and the definition of credible scientific evidence to support a qualified health claim.

The use of SSA and "credible scientific evidence" to determine permitted health claims is both unconstitutional since it constitutes prior restraint of speech, violating the First Amendment, and an invitation to corrupt "junk science" being manipulated to prevent truthful, useful and helpful information from reaching consumers.

Similar rulings have been passed in Australia and it's now illegal to share your experiences with your vegan diet with others.

Visit Your Health is Your Wealth for more information.

June 14, 2007

Congress considering nearly $200 million funding for Organics - OCA

In the past few issues of Organic Bytes, the OCA has been alerting its readers to contact various congressional subcommittees who are in the process of allocating funding for the 2007 Farm Bill. This massive piece of legislation provides funding until 2012 and includes a variety of programs that would benefit organic farmers, sustainable agriculture and the environment. Thanks to your efforts and the concerted work of OCA's allies, many of these target programs have been allocated funding.

Farmer6 Specifically, the following funding has been approved in subcommittees for organic and sustainable agriculture related programs over the course of the next five years:

$150 million to examine optimal conservation and environmental outcomes for organically produced agricultural products, and to develop new and improved seed varieties that are particularly suited for organic agriculture.

$22 million to help farmers pay for organic certification
$5 million for outreach to organic and specialty crop producers.
$3 million to collect market and production data about organic farming.
The OCA will continue to alert you to new issues arising in this arena, as the 2007 Farm Bill continues to be developed by Congress.

Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/farm.cfm

April 09, 2007

USDA loses lawsuit over "above and beyond" testing

Blind Creekstone Farms has won one of the most bizarre court cases the USDA has brought upon itself in recent years.

Early last year, after the discovery of another case of Mad Cow Disease in the U.S., foreign markets tightened their ban on U.S. beef based on the fact that the USDA requires such a small percentage of meat to be tested for this fatal disease. In an attempt to maintain sales with customers overseas, Kansas-based Creekstone Farms announced it would voluntarily test all of its meat for Mad Cow Disease.

Surprisingly, the USDA responded to Creekstone, saying it was illegal for them to have such high quality food safety testing. This action left Creekstone and its lawyers scratching their heads trying to figure out where in the law books it states that it's illegal to test food for safety beyond what is required by law. Creekstone took the USDA to court and last week a federal judge ruled against the USDA.

The results of the case will likely create a domino effect in the industry where more producers will voluntarily choose to increase testing in order to lure international and domestic customers.

Is it out of the question to envision meats in future supermarkets bearing the voluntary label "This meat has been tested for Mad Cow Disease"? Stay tuned to the OCA... http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4655.cfm

April 06, 2007

Monsanto trying to outlaw Truth In Labeling

Rbghfree This week, Monsanto declared war on dairy companies that have chosen to ban the injection of their cows with Monsanto's genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

Due to escalating consumer demand, an increasing number of large dairies around the U.S. have declared themselves rBGH-free in the last couple of years. Monsanto, the sole producer of the synthetic hormone, has seen substantial losses in sales as a result of this voluntary movement of the industry towards healthier milk. Although rBGH is banned in most industrialized nations, including Europe and Canada, due to its links to breast and colon cancer, the controversial drug remains legal in the U.S.

This week, Monsanto filed a formal complaint with the FDA and Federal Trade Commission, demanding that labeling of rBGH-free diary products be made illegal. Learn more and get involved with OCA's "Millions Against Monsanto" campaign by signing on to our petition. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4698.cfm

March 26, 2007

Raw living foods deter Global Warming

VeggiegirlLast year a UN Report showed that the raw vegan diet is the best deterrent to global warming and promoting sustainability.

This video by Glen Beck discusses how Al Gore - and other politicians - is ignoring how going low on the food chain deters global warming (8 minutes): http://youtube.com/watch?v=VwkbDubF2qM. Includes an interview with PETA spokesperson.

So... Is the Living Foods Lifestyle an "Inconvenient Truth?"

EPA watchdog agency facing another budget cut

The federal office that has accused the US Environmental Protection Agency of manipulating science for political reasons is now dismissing staff in anticipation of budget cuts.

Epasponsor A February 9 e-mail memo sent from Acting EPA Inspector General Bill Roderick to his staff said that President Bush’s proposed 2008 budget contains millions of dollars in cuts for the Inspector General’s Office. It explained that the cuts would mean a reduction in staff. The e-mail was obtained by the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and reviewed by The NewStandard.

If the White House’s draft 2008 budget is accepted by Congress, the EPA inspector general will be left with just $45 million next year, compared to around $50 million allotted in each of 2006 and 2007.

"The President has stated his intention to achieve a balanced budget by 2012," Roderick wrote. "Therefore, resources available to fund federal non-defense, non-homeland security related programs, which have been declining in recent years, are projected to continue their downward trend in the coming years."

Read more: http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/4553.

March 22, 2007

We Become Silent: The Last Days of Health Freedom

If you're eating a wide-variety diet you probably don't need supplements. Still, many people take them, and that freedom is being threatened.

Here's a 28-minute video about what's going on:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=451097355502728465.

December 31, 2006

The Price of Cheap Beef: Disease, Deforestation, Slavery and Murder

According to the Center for International Forestry Research, cattle pasture accounts for six times more cleared land in the Amazon than crop land: even the notorious soya farmers, who have plowed some 5m hectares of former rainforest, cover just one-tenth of the ground taken by the beef producers. The four Amazon states in which the most beef is produced are the four with the highest deforestation rates.

Cattle ranching, if it keeps expanding in the Amazon, threatens two-fifths of the world's remaining rainforest. This is not just the most diverse ecosystem but also the biggest reserve of standing carbon. Its clearance could provoke a hydrological disaster in South America, as rainfall is reduced as the trees come down. Next time you see footage of the forest burning, remember that you might have paid for it.

Read more: http://www.americas.org/item_22592.

December 30, 2006

You DO what you eat

Forget tougher punishments and hiring more police. The solution to crime and violence is on your plate. Here’s how healthy food can reduce aggressive behaviour: http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4143.

December 11, 2006

Mercury Present in Many FDA-Regulated Drugs

The FDA has been sued over the use of mercury in medicine. The lawsuit, originally filed in August 2006 by the Coalition for Mercury-free Drugs (CoMeD), asked the court to force the FDA to comply with laws and regulations by providing proof of the safety and efficacy of mercury in drugs.

Mercury is present in at least 45 prescribed or over-the-counter drugs, including eye ointments, nasal sprays, and vaccines. Mercury-containing flu vaccines are administered both to children and to pregnant women.

In a 1999 internal FDA e-mail, an official wrote that the agency's failure to properly evaluate the effects of mercury in medicine would " ... raise questions about FDA being 'asleep at the switch' for decades" because they would be allowing a "potentially hazardous compound" to remain present in medications.

Read more: http://www.mercola.com/2006/nov/30/mercury-present-in-many-fda-regulated-drugs.htm.

December 07, 2006

New Congress scolds FDA for not protecting public health

Fda Bureaucrats received a kick in the butt this week from Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), the newly elected chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Kennedy slammed the FDA for endangering public health by ignoring science and serving as a puppet for big business.

"The dedicated professionals at the FDA have been pressured to trim their scientific views to the prevailing political winds. These are symptoms of a serious illness, and we should act without delay to provide the cure," the senator said. Kennedy said the committee will hold a series of FDA oversight hearings in early 2007 to force the agency back on track. FDA advocates responded by saying the agency can only become scientifically credible if Congress increases the FDA's budget in order to supplant the millions of dollars it now receives from industry.

Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_3397.cfm

December 03, 2006

USDA approves genetically engineered rice that contaminated U.S. food supply; safety tests skipped

Gecrop_1 Rather than penalize the company that slipped an illegal strain of genetically modified rice into the human food supply, the USDA has simply approved the grain for marketing.

Last week, the USDA "deregulated" the genetically engineered (GE) rice known as Liberty Link (LL) 601. The rice’s DNA has been modified to help the plant resist herbicides: http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3917 and http://www.newstarget.com/021203.html.

November 25, 2006

U.S. Factory Farms – So Bad They're A Tourist Attraction

Consumer Group Brings European Farmers to United States Dairies

Washington, D.C. – Food & Water Watch welcomed farmers from France, Spain, and Germany this week for a first hand look at the environmental and public health consequences of factory farm dairies in three states – Michigan, Oregon and Washington.

“U.S. factory dairy farms are so bad they’re a tourist attraction,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch Executive Director. “European farmers touring U.S. factory dairies and communities will take home a snapshot of what European agriculture could become if farmers and their governments aren’t careful.”

Factory farms have been linked to health problems for farm workers and neighbors, and contaminated water and air in surrounding communities. The stench alone can ruin rural communities, as residents rush to shut their windows and bring their children indoors when the wind shifts. These communities have been fighting lonely, uphill battles against operators that take advantage of lax enforcement of zoning and environmental laws.

“In a 16 mile corridor we have dairy operations dumping five times the amount of raw sewage as that produced by the entire population of Seattle onto our fields,” said Helen Reddout, president of Community Association for Restoration of the Environment in Yakima County, Washington. “Contaminated waste on our fields is dangerous as we can see in the California spinach case."

"The U.S. EPA and state agencies turn a blind eye to the air and water pollution caused by giant dairies and other factory farms," explained Hauter. "Rural communities and U.S. consumers deserve better."

“It’s sad that when there’s so much in Oregon agriculture that is right, we become known to the international community for operations like the Threemile Canyon Farm complex, that don’t represent the agriculture we value in our state,” said Kendra Kimbirauskas, a regional consultant with the GRACE Factory Farm Project.

Factory farming can also affect the health of consumers far from the dairy.  According to the American Public Health Association (APHA), the overuse of antibiotics for livestock is creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threatens human health. An estimated 70% of antibiotics used in the United States are for promoting growth and preventing disease in food animals.

"We wanted to see U.S. factory dairies because big agriculture interests plans to export the factory farm model to Europe and replace our traditional family dairies," said Jean Cabaret, a French dairy farmer and member of the French farmers union Confederation Paysanne. “Europeans want sustainable, chemical free, and humanely raised dairy and meat products – not factory farm pollution."

Industrial agriculture companies have dramatically expanded their operations in parts of Europe in recent years, transforming the landscape from one of numerous small family farms to one of giant animal confinement facilities. The European Union is considering reforms to its Common Agricultural Policy for dairy that could potentially drive European dairy farmers out of business and towards a model similar to the U.S system. Food & Water Watch supports efforts to encourage local food production through numerous sustainable family farms instead of an industrialized model that relies on factory farms.

“Showing just how bad it is in Lenawee and Hillsdale Counties is one way to advocate for stronger laws here as well as to make sure Europeans don’t weaken their laws to allow these horrible facilities to move into their communities,” said Lynn Henning, Sierra Club CAFO Water Sentinel and a leader of the Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan.

From: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/about/press/press-release-factory-dairy-farm-tour.

November 22, 2006

Are viral meat sprays truly food safety?

There are still no firm answers as to what caused an E. coli outbreak in fresh spinach that has now been reported in 21 states and taken one life.

And there are not many firm answers as to how to avoid similar outbreaks in the future. We know that people should wash all fresh foods to kill most germs and bacteria.

But water will not wash away E.coli, salmonella or listeria.

In its quest to find what else might work on these potentially deadly bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration gave the OK to an unusual — somewhat creepy-sounding — food safety solution.

In August, the FDA approved the spraying of some foods with viruses in an effort to stop certain bacteria: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2464943&page=1.

November 02, 2006

David Icke newsletter - How the Corporations control the Food Chain

THEY ARE WHAT YOU EAT ...

... HOW THE CORPORATIONS CONTROL THE FOOD CHAIN

Hello all ...

Twenty-five years ago when I was a national spokesman for the British Green Party I was talking about the plan by the corporations to monopolise global food production from field to plate. Today, the crime is almost complete.

This is even more significant when you realise that those 'corporations' are in fact one corporation operating under different names. Behind the fake directors and interlocking personnel the same force dictates the policy and goals for them all. And one of those goals is to control everything we eat and drink.

People talk about controlling oil to control the people. But nothing, apart from air, is more fundamental to human survival, let alone health and prosperity, than food and water. If anything should be exempt from the profit motive it should be water, which is a most basic requirement for life in this reality. But our water supplies are in the hands of the same corporation that now controls food production and sales across the world.  This was all planned a long time ago.

To achieve this control, diversity had to be eliminated and this is why life has been made so difficult for small and independent farmers. Almost wherever you look suicide rates among farmers are some of the highest in the population and often the stress of battling daily to survive is a key, often overriding, factor. The numbers of independent farmers going bankrupt or selling up and leaving the land has soared since the Illuminati war on the small farmer began world-wide. It is a similar story with small businesses of all kinds because the corporations want to own and control everything.

The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is alleged to have said that 'Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power'.  Whether he said it or not the statement remains true, not least in Hitler's Germany. Today we see the gathering global fascism in the merger of state and corporate power - with the corporate far more powerful than the political. This interconnecting web has allowed the corporations to integrate their ambitions and manipulations into political policy and never more powerfully than in the hijacking of the food chain.

A perfect example was the sting played on European farmers in the 1980s under the European Community's Common Agricultural Policy or CAP. At first, this appeared to be the equivalent of winning the lottery for farmers of all kinds. Basically, they were paid for whatever they produced whether they sold it or not. Imagine that, whatever you make you are guaranteed the market rate courtesy of the European taxpayer.

I remember as a Green Party spokesman arguing against the infamous CAP and facing the wrath of the farming community who were lighting cigars and raising a glass to the Genie and his magic lamp. But why wouldn't they, given the short-term thinking that infests the human psyche? All their dreams had come true.

The policy of we'll-buy-what-you-sow led to massive surpluses and the infamous 'food mountains' and 'wine lakes' as the unsold production was stored in giant warehouses across the continent. This was one of the grotesque examples of the rich-poor divide highlighted by Bob Geldof at the time of Live Aid in 1985. While extraordinary amounts of food were being stored in Europe, millions were dying from starvation.

But the Illuminati are nothing if not inhuman.

The CAP also devastated the countryside and the land and soil in general as farmers cleared all impediments to opening every square inch they could to more production. Every sow was guaranteed dough and this was without the need even to find a buyer or a belly. They were also taking out big bank loans to buy more land at the ever increasing prices fuelled by what was happening.

Trees and hedgerows were uprooted and wildlife plummeted with the loss of habitat and the poisons provided by the pharmaceutical cartel to increase yields in the short term while destroying fertility in the long. Talking to farmers about the insanity of this as a Green party spokesman was, appropriately, the story of the seeds and the stony ground.

Then came the sting.

Opposition to the Common Agricultural Policy increased until it was the major issue of the day because the European taxpayer was footing the astonishing bill. What's more, the hidden forces behind the policy were supporting and giving publicity to this public outrage - 'something must be done'. Stage two was underway.

The European Economic Community, now called the European Union, announced that it would have to change the CAP in the face of public demand and the 'mountains' of food left unconsumed. This 'change' was to stop paying farmers for everything they produced. The gravy train had collided with the buffer stops. Farmers across Europe were now faced with actually finding buyers for their produce, but once the subsidies evaporated prices slumped with so much food and drink available both in production and storage. Small and independent farmers went bankrupt on a massive scale because they couldn't pay their debts to the banks that they increased dramatically through land-buying and other investment in the manufactured boom.

And who was waiting to buy the farms at a few cents on the dollar? The corporations who were behind the whole thing via the Illuminati network in government.

In the United States, something similar has happened in the last half century with a series of decisions by the Illuminati-owned Federal Reserve leading farm debt to soar. By the end of 2005, it was well in excess of $200 billion and today in the United States, once a nation of small farmers, only two per cent of the population are involved. Illuminati corporations like Monsanto in St Louis and the price-fixing Archer-Daniels Midland in Illinois, have been major beneficiaries of other people's misery.

This has happened on every continent as the market has been artificially suppressed in readiness for the 'buy outs'. Where this has not yet happened the corporations control the food chain by owning the seeds, setting the prices and imposing 'free trade'.

Patenting seeds was unthinkable before the 20th century and indeed Article One of the US Constitution specifically excluded, for moral reasons, the patenting of 'life'.  In the 1930s, plant breeders were allowed to patent seed varieties, but not to have rights to subsequent seeds that were produced from them by the growers. Then in 1980, the Illuminati challenged these restrictions through the General Electric Corporation and specifically one of its employees, an Indian-born scientist called Dr Ananda Chakrabarty. He developed a genetically-engineered microbe to 'eat' oil licks, which in the end proved unusable. It was refused a patent by the US Patent Office, but Chakrabarty made history when the US Supreme Court awarded him, by just one vote, the first patent for a life form. With that judgement, the floodgates did swing.

During the Reagan-Bush years patents followed for animals, human genes and body parts. The corporations contend that if they own the gene in the animal or plant, they own the animal and plant. So what about the genetic engineering of the human body? Yep, according to this contention they would say they therefore own the body. As Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety, said: 'It actually means giving corporations, incredibly, the power to own and control species of the earth'. It means that if you own animals or seeds that have been patented by the corporations you have to pay a royalty for every new one produced. This includes the poorest farmers of the 'developing world'.

From the mid-1990s, the Illuminati pesticide and chemical producers, notably Monsanto and Dow, began to buy the seed producers. Monsanto spent some eight billion dollars alone and Dr. Charles M Benbrook, former Board of Agriculture Director at the Academy of Sciences, said: 'Basically, the US pesticide industry bought the seed industry for all intents and purposes.'

The intent and purpose was to control food production.

The law was changed still further to, wait for this, allow the corporations to patent seed varieties that they have not genetically engineered. The only criteria were that no-one else had got there first! This led to the corporations taking the seeds from the seed banks designed to protect genetic diversity and going to the patent office to register ownership. It is reckoned that Monsanto alone owns more than 11,000 seeds.

It has reached such ludicrous levels that even if seeds they don't own are contaminated by genetically-modified seeds blown onto a farm from elsewhere, even a passing truck, the corporations are taking the farmers to court for illegal use of their patented seed without a license. This is happening to increasing numbers of farmers, including Percy Schmeiser in Canada who was well-known for developing his own seeds.

Monsanto went onto his land without his knowledge or permission and then issued a law suit for his use of patented canola seeds that had blown onto his land. It didn't matter how unjust and crazy it was, the court gave the judgement in favour of Monsanto. Why? Because the corporations, through the Illuminati network, control the courts as they control the politicians who allowed all this to happen in the first place. Percy Schmeiser was forced to destroy a thousand pounds of seeds that he and his wife had developed over decades because they had been contaminated by the unwanted Monsanto variety. Percy's wife, Louise, said:

'Monsanto comes along when we have worked for all these years and they just want to take it away just like that ... they can just come and do anything to the farmers, just like they own them, and it really is upsetting. And I feel they have taken our rights away and our privacy. And we are not the only ones they have done it to, there are many others.

Why are they prosecuting so many of these little farmers when they are only worth a couple a hundred thousand, when they are such a multi-national company - why? Is it greed or is it that they just want to control all the seeds?'

The answer is both. It is another front on the war against the independent producer and seed diversity. The Schmeisers lost all their retirement money in legal costs fighting the case and thousands of innocent farmers just pay up when Monsanto come calling to avoid crippling lawsuits.

Rodney Nelson, a farmer in North Dakota, was another Monsanto victim. He said that every farmer he had spoken to who had been targeted by Monsanto had told the same story. Monsanto had arrived to test their crop and those with nothing to hide thought little of it until a year later when, to their astonishment, Monsanto said they had found their patented seed variety on their land. The delay of a year meant the plants were not available for them to challenge the claims.

Monsanto told Nelson that they had tested all 1,350 acres of his soya bean crop, but when it was pointed out in the subsequent legal case that to do this would have meant gathering one sample continuously every 20 seconds, they changed their story.  They had, they said, only taken a handful. In short, they were making it up. But the Illuminati control the courts and Rodney Nelson describes the judge's 'view' of this incredible injustice:

'It didn't matter how Monsanto's genetic-altered canola got into his field. Whether it cross-pollinated or blew in by the wind, or by birds, insects or animals or falling off a farmer's truck, or carbine and so on, it didn't matter, if there were some plants there I had violated Monsanto's patent, even though I didn't want it in my field.

He ruled that any farmer that has a conventional plant, it doesn't matter what kind of plant, if it's a seed, a tree, if it gets cross-pollinated with Monsanto's gene against your wishes and against your property, my plant becomes Monsanto's property. Now stop and think what that means for farmers all over the world, farmers, gardeners, anything to do with a life-giving form. That shows you the power of patent law over farmers' rights.'

One farmer suggested there is not a single field in western Canada that has not been contaminated by Monsanto's GM Canola and that's the whole idea. That was the reason for the 'trials' in the UK ordered by Tony Blair, the biotech industries man in Downing Street. Once they are established, the contamination begins, followed by the lawsuit.  One of the most active funders of GM research, by the way, has been the Rockefeller Foundation, which will surprise no-one who has studied Illuminati history.

But the most sinister development of all are the so-called 'terminator seeds' that die after a single use and cannot be re-used to produce seeds for the next year's harvest. The United States government has been funding the research since the Reagan-Bush administration in 1983 and, if you didn't know the true motivation, it would seem inexplicable that a government would seek to develop a technology that threatened to turn farmers and whole nations into slaves of the seed corporations. Willard Phelps, a spokesman for the US Department of Agriculture, said the aim was to establish the widest possible use of terminator seeds 'to increase the value of proprietary seed owned by US seed companies and to open up new markets in Second and Third World countries.' Henry Kissinger's words in the 1970s capture the motivation: 'Control the oil and you can control entire continents. Control food and you control people ...'

Jackson Stephens ... if you emptied his pockets the Clintons would fall out.

The 'suicide seeds' were developed with taxpayer money in a joint operation between the United States government and a company called Delta and Pine Land which was reported to have had a rather famous investor - Queen Elizabeth II. The largest shareholder has been the Stephens Group in Arkansas, controlled by Jackson Stephens, the major bankroller of Bill Clinton's deeply corrupt political career. A chairman of Delta and Pine has been Stephens Group vice-chairman, Jon E.M. Jacoby, who once said of Clinton's alleged corruption in Arkansas: 'You see a girl walking down the street. You can say, "There goes a beautiful girl" or "There goes a whore". What the hell's the difference? They've both got legs.' Nice people.

Now the punch line: In August 2006 it was announced that Delta and Pine had agreed a $1.5 billion deal to sell its operation and terminator seed patents to ... Monsanto.

Running parallel with the creation of copyrighted seeds has been the systematic destruction of the alternatives. Ninety-seven per cent of the vegetables grown at the start of the 20th century are now extinct. There were once five thousand potato varieties grown world-wide, now only four are grown on any scale.  This is extremely important because it opens the way for those varieties that remain to be destroyed by disease or genetic manipulation. In Ireland in the 19th century when only a few varieties of potato were grown, the consequences of potato blight attacking those species was a million people starved to death.

The fewer varieties we use the greater the danger from disease and insects and this had led to the dependence of chemical spraying - provided by Monsanto and co - which have created the so-called super bugs and weeds that have developed through mutation an immunity to the poisons that killed them before. In my book, It Doesn't Have To Be Like This, published in 1989, I wrote that the chemicals were ... 'creating super-pests that have become resistant to the chemicals so more and more pesticides are needed to kill them. Where will it all end?'  Nearly 20 years later we are beginning to see. A report by the California Policy Seminar, a joint program of the university and state government, said: 

'As a result of these practices worldwide, the number of resistant pests is growing exponentially, the authors point out. According to recent biological research, the number of insects and mites that have become resistant to chemicals since 1950 is up 10-fold, from less than 50 species to more than 450.'

All these things connect with the Illuminati plan to control the good chain and, through that, to control the people. Their ownership of the land and, by lawsuit, the independent farmers, means they control what and how much is produced; by control of the supermarkets and the commodity markets they dictate the price it is sold for; and by enforcing 'free trade' laws through the Illuminati World Trade Organisation they prevent any country from blocking imported produce to protect homes markets. All this has created:

  • Dependency on Illuminati corporations for seeds.
  • Dependency on Illuminati corporations for the pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers to make the seeds grow or survive.
  • Dependency on Illuminati supermarkets which have destroyed independent stores and dictate the price they will pay to farmers.
  • Dependency on Illuminati corporations for virtually everything that we eat or drink.

Dependency = control and that is what this whole story is about.

To be continued ...

[thanks to http://www.davidicke.com.]

October 30, 2006

Making it all illegal

Making It All Illegal
- from WinXPNews

Most of us have had the experience, when we saw someone do something stupid or that we thought was wrong, of shaking our heads and lamenting that "there ought to be a law." Unfortunately, our legislators have taken our wish literally - more and more laws are being passed criminalizing every "bad" behavior, and I'm afraid that soon it's going to be as impossible for most people to go through life without committing a crime as it is to drive a car without ever committing a traffic violation.

This came to mind yesterday when I was filling out a form on the web. You know, the ones that you have to complete in order to access some sites? I never give my correct address and phone number in those forms; who knows who'll have access to that information? In many cases, the lists are sold to spammers - er, sorry: to advertisers. Another piece of info I don't give out casually is my date of birth, since that's prime information for identity thieves.

But as I typed in my fake info, I wondered whether someday in the near future it will be illegal to lie on web forms. Sound silly? I'm not so sure. Lying is becoming a crime in more and more circumstances, in more and more jurisdictions. It used to be that the only time you could go to jail for telling untruths was when you committed perjury (lying under oath) or engaged in a blatant con game. Now we have laws making it illegal to lie in all sorts of situations, from applying for a loan to applying for a job. Some states have outlawed claiming to have a diploma or degree you don't have. Does that mean the office manager who pretends to be a doctor when he's coming on to some lady in a bar can go to jail for it? Maybe, depending on how the law is written.

Now I'm not advocating dishonesty. Telling a lie usually results in way more trouble than it's worth and in most cases it's ethically wrong (although in some cases, brutal honesty can be ethically questionable, too). But this trend toward making it a criminal offense worries me. Not everything that's unethical or immoral should result in jail time. If you lie on your resume, your employer should be able to fire you. If you lie to your spouse too many times, he/she might (and probably should) leave you. If you lie on your credit card application, you ought to get the card yanked and your credit record affected. Heck, all of the above wronged parties should be able to sue you for compensation if they want. But should you be imprisoned for it?

As a former cop, I don't really think most police officers want to be in the business of rounding up all the folks who fudged a little about their former job titles or salaries or education. With serial killers, terrorists and child predators out there on the loose, I don't think government resources are best spent tracking down liars.

And it's not just the possibility of being taken downtown for giving a false phone number on a Web form that I'm worried about. This propensity to make everything illegal goes way beyond the bans on lying. We are increasingly turning to the criminal laws to punish every undesirable behavior. Smoking is illegal in more and more places; it's only a matter of time before it's banned outright and mere possession is made a crime. I hate cigarettes and don't allow them in my house or car - but I also hate the thought of the government putting nicotine addicts in jail. We've seen how well that works with those addicted to "harder" substances.

Having done a miserable job of waging the war on drugs, health advocates are now ramping up to declare war on "bad" food. They point to obesity statistics as justification and are already seeking to make fast food illegal. What's the next step? Raiding grandma's kitchen if she dares whip up a batch of evil fried hushpuppies for the grandkids?

What does all this have to do with technology? Computers and the Internet are prime fodder for our over-zealous lawmakers, and it's probably just a matter of time before this micro-management of our lives spreads further into the electronic frontier. Just last week, reports came out that FBI director Robert Mueller wants ISPs, social networks and search engines to log and store records of users' IP addresses for up to two years, and another proposal would require providers to record the identities of email correspondents, IM users and addresses of web pages visited. Of course, you can still use web browsers that encrypt the addresses of users and online sites - but will legislators soon make it illegal to use such technologies based on the theory that they can be used by terrorists and child predators? Given the trends in modern lawmaking, I'd say it's not just possible but probable.

What do you think? Is our society becoming over legislated to the point where the government will make criminals of us all? Should the government stay out of issues like lying to private parties (such as an employer) and let it be handled administratively or civilly? Are you in favor of laws protecting people from themselves (such as bans on smoking in your own home or eating food that's not healthy) or do you think it's justified on the basis of health care costs for which society often must pick up the tab? Twenty years from now, will we still be able to surf the 'net freely, or will we be required to get a license and register every site we visit with the government? What other changes to the laws (for good or bad) do you foresee in the near future? Tell us your opinions at feedback@wxpnews.com.

Deb Shinder, Editor
WinXPNews - http://winxpnews.com

October 23, 2006

The pharmaceutical industry & the FDA are endangering your health for profit

It is estimated that in America last year, nearly $2 trillion was spent on health care -- and virtually all that money was spent on treating disease. Despite this massive expenditure on treatment, more Americans are sicker than ever before with diseases that are largely preventable: heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, fibromyalgia, and depression, to name a few.

Each year more money is spent on treatment, mere patchwork, even though it has become crystal-clear that treatments do NOT enable you to live a longer, better life. So why is the amount of money being spent on prevention just a pittance compared with the amount spent on treatment?

The answer is simple -- when you are sick it is highly profitable to various giant corporations. When you are well, it doesn't profit them much at all.

Gary Null's new DVD, Prescription For Disaster, is an in-depth investigation and expose of the conventional health care system -- and that's putting it lightly. It describes in detail the failure of the traditional paradigm and provides us with shocking statistics on the thousands and thousands of deaths that resulted from unnecessary or incorrect medical treatments.

Prescription For Disaster takes you deep into the symbiotic relationships between the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, lobbyists, lawmakers, medical schools, and researchers, and the impact this has on consumers and their health care. During this thorough investigation from medical insiders, you get a first hand look at:

    *       Why patented drugs are so readily prescribed by doctors
    *       The role insurance companies and HMO's play in promoting compliance, and the problem of rising health care costs
    *       The marketing and public relations efforts on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies -- including sales reps, medical journals and conferences
    *       Alternatives to traditional pharmacology and drug therapy -- vitamins, nutritional supplements, alternative nutritional therapies, exercise, healthy lifestyle changes -- and why they are often perceived as a competitive threat to the drug manufacturers
    *       The problem of rising health care costs

As a research scientist at the Institute of Applied Biology for over 27 years, Gary Null, Ph.D., has spent his career investigating health issues and searching for the truth. A New York Times best-selling author, the host of the talk radio program, "The Gary Null Show," producer of documentary films, DVDs and PBS television programs, Null empowers all who will listen with life-changing facts that promote wellness.

For more information visit http://www.mercola.com/dvd/prescription_for_disaster.htm.

New FDA craziness

An analysis by the Institute of  Medicine found that the federal system for approving and regulating drugs has serious problems, and dramatic changes are required to fix them.

The report fixed the blame on the FDA, Congress, and the pharmaceutical industry, and called on all of them to share responsibility in implementing solutions. Several of the suggested changes are ones that have been requested for many years by drug safety advocates: http://www.mercola.com/2006/oct/12/new-fda-craziness.htm.

September 13, 2006

Vitamins in the near future

You’ve taken supplements for years. You’re out of vitamins C and E. You go to your natural food store, but you can’t find the kind you want on the shelf. You ask a clerk to find them for you. She says you can’t get your vitamin E as mixed tocopherols (the best natural form) anymore, and asks if you like your vitamin C in the 100- or 200-milligram size. The 1,000-milligram size, you say.

“Where have you been?” she asks. “Asleep since 2004? It’s 2007 now! The types and sizes of vitamins you just asked for have been declared illegal by the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organization!” http://www.naturalhealingtoday.com/article_004.html

- thanks to Helen Terry

August 31, 2006

Big Ag contaminating the engire gene pool

If chemicals are killing us and our world, we stop manufacturing the chemicals, unless we are insanely greedy and demonically possessed by the idea that every single element of life, every seed and bit of DNA can and must be owned by someone. Here's what the big ag companies want to do -- they want to own and contaminate the entire gene pool of all the world's food resources for their own profit and without the knowledge or input of anyone who will actually be eating the food or living in the world they create. So far, the French and the Japanese and some other nations are standing firm, but the US government, our government, your government, is trying to enforce the will of the big ag companies.

The complete article: http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/40682/.

July 10, 2006

Food watchdog group to sue over deceptive food labeling

A food watchdog group announced it has hired an attorney to head litigation efforts aimed at stopping deceptive food labeling, fraudulent advertising and the use of dangerous food additives:  http://www.gopusa.com/news/2005/may/0504_food_labels.shtml.

July 08, 2006

Food and supplement issue legislation - a clarification

We've been getting lots of email about food and supplement legislation. Not all of it is accurate. Here are some resources that you can trust:

1) This article accurately describes the issue: http://ahha.org/CodexWalter2005.htm
2) Alliance for Natural Health http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/
3) American Holistic Health Association http://www.ahha.org/
4) International Advocates for Health Freedom http://www.iahf.com/
5) Other links & resources: http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/freedom.htm

July 04, 2006

Hybrid animals a step closer to reality

Smilepig Scientists Able to Mix in Human Cells
By Rick Weiss
The Washington Post
November 23, 2004

In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins. In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human. In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls.

These are not outcasts from The Island of Dr. Moreau, the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.

Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses.

Chimeras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how nascent human cells and organs mature and interact - not in the cold isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the bodies of living creatures. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and pointing the way toward new medical treatments.

But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers above the work: How human must a chimera be before more stringent research rules should kick in? The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the federal government, has been studying the issue and hopes to make recommendations by February.

Chimeras - meaning mixtures of two or more individuals in a single body - are not inherently unnatural. Most twins carry at least a few cells from the sibling with whom they shared a womb, and most mothers carry in their blood at least a few cells from each child they have born.

Recipients of organ transplants are also chimeras, as are the many people whose defective heart valves have been replaced with those from pigs or cows.

"Chimeras are not as strange and alien as at first blush they seem," said Henry Greely, a law professor and ethicist at Stanford University who has reviewed proposals to create human-mouse chimeras there.

But chimerism becomes a more sensitive topic when it involves growing entire human organs inside animals. And it becomes especially sensitive when it deals in brain cells, the building blocks of the organ credited with making humans human. In experiments like those, Greely told the academy last month, "there is a nontrivial risk of conferring some significant aspects of humanity" on the animal. 
Greely and his colleagues did not conclude that such experiments should never be done. Indeed, he and many other philosophers have been wrestling with the question of why so many people believe it is wrong to breach the species barrier.

Many turn to the Bible's repeated invocation that animals should multiply "after their kind" as evidence that such experiments are wrong. Others, however, have concluded that the core problem is not necessarily the creation of chimeras but rather the way they are likely to be treated.

Imagine, said Robert Streiffer, a professor of philosophy and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, a human-chimpanzee chimera endowed with speech and an enhanced potential to learn - what some have called a "humanzee."

"There's a knee-jerk reaction that enhancing the moral status of an animal is bad," Streiffer said. "But if you did it, and you gave it the protections it deserves, how could the animal complain?"

Unfortunately, said Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel, speaking last fall at a meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics, such protections are unlikely. "Chances are we would make them perform menial jobs or dangerous jobs," Sandel said. "That would be an objection."

CHICKEN OR QUAIL?

The potential power of chimeras as research tools became clear about a decade ago in a series of dramatic experiments by Evan Balaban, now at McGill University in Montreal. Balaban took small sections of brain from developing quails and transplanted them into the developing brains of chickens.

The resulting chickens exhibited vocal trills and head bobs unique to quails, proving that the transplanted parts of the brain contained the neural circuitry for quail calls. It also offered astonishing proof that complex behaviors could be transferred across species.

The most radical experiment, still not conducted, would be to inject human stem cells into an animal embryo and then transfer that chimeric embryo into an animal's womb. Scientists suspect the proliferating human cells would spread throughout the animal embryo as it matured into a fetus and integrate themselves into every organ.

Such "humanized" animals could have countless uses. They would almost certainly provide better ways to test a new drug's efficacy and toxicity, for example, than the ordinary mice typically used today.

But few scientists are eager to do that experiment. The risk, they say, is that some human cells will find their way to the developing testes or ovaries, where they might grow into human sperm and eggs. If two such chimeras - say, mice - were to mate, a human embryo might form, trapped in a mouse.

In one ongoing set of experiments, Jeffrey Platt at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has created human-pig chimeras by adding human-blood-forming stem cells to pig fetuses. The resulting pigs have both pig and human blood in their vessels. And it's not just pig blood cells being swept along with human blood cells; some of the cells themselves have merged, creating hybrids.

It is important to have learned that human and pig cells can fuse, Platt said, because he and others have been considering transplanting modified pig organs into people and have been wondering if that might pose a risk of pig viruses getting into patient's cells. Now scientists know the risk is real, he said, because the viruses may gain access when the two cells fuse.

In other experiments led by Esmail Zanjani, chairman of animal biotechnology at the University of Nevada at Reno, scientists have been adding human stem cells to sheep fetuses. The team now has sheep whose livers are up to 80 percent human - and make all the compounds human livers make.

Zanjani's goal is to make the humanized livers available to people who need transplants. The sheep portions will be rejected by the immune system, he predicted, while the human part will take root. "I don't see why anyone would raise objections to our work," he said. 

By RICK WEISS
The Washington Post
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041123/REPOSITORY/411230313/1013/NEWS03

July 03, 2006

Monsanto seeking to limit truthful food labeling

-condensed from Acres USA, June 2004

“Monsanto has introduced a novel new idea into the genetically modified food debate. The argument is that consumers might be entitled to know the ingredients of a food, but not how a food was created.”

This emerged in a Boston Court when Monsanto sued Oakhurst Dairy because Oakhurst labeled their products stating that certain hormones, including artificial growth hormones like BST, were not used by the Dairy.

Monsanto argued that any statement assigning merit to the avoidance of synthetics offended the market. Chemical additives are characterized as progressive and good, and statements to the contrary, uninformed and evil.”

Note that BST has been “officially rejected” in Canada.

Ahhhhhhh……. This is way too acid of a theme. Who cares, anyway? Who drinks Cow Milk anymore? Almond Mylk is SO much better! <g> On to happier things…

The American Association for Health Freedom

Mission "If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson

AAHF is the politically active voice at the federal level for Americans to have the right to access a full range of health care treatment and prevention methods.

They ensure health freedom by lobbying Congress and crafting legislation; acting as government watchdog and filing comments on proposed rulings; educating the public, press, and decision- makers on integrative medicine; initiating legal activities (e.g., lawsuits, amicus briefs, petitions), and joining and forming significant coalitions: http://www.healthfreedom.net/aahf/default.asp.

June 27, 2006

World's largest drug company bribing NIH scientists

Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, is accused of bribing scientists that work for the National Institute of Health.

"It's not like they are a struggling company, as they are part of the most profitable industry on the planet. Last year alone they sold $10 billion of their nearly worthless drug Lipitor."

http://www.mercola.com/2006/jun/27/largest_drug_company_in_the_world_steals_millions_from_us_government.htm.

June 25, 2006

Big pharma's evil marketing geniuses

The health care field has evolved into a facade for the business of selling drugs. The pharmaceutical industry spends more than $4 billion a year to market drugs to consumers in the United States and more than $16 billion to market them to U.S. physicians. Moreover, they have come up with some of the most effective and creative marketing schemes in history.

You probably didn't know that top U.S. drug makers spend 2.5 times as much on marketing and administration as they do on research, and at least a third of the drugs marketed by industry leaders were discovered by universities or small biotech companies.

YET drug companies justify their extremely high prices by saying they need this money to cover their high R&D costs: http://www.mercola.com/2006/jun/22/evil_marketing_geniuses.htm.

June 22, 2006

EPA drops plans to approve cancer-causing pesticide

Crop dusting   BANNING A CANCER-CAUSING PESTICIDE-METHYL IODIDE - In Feb. 2006 OCA generated thousands of letters and phone calls to the EPA opposing the proposed use of the carcinogenic pesticide methyl iodide. In January, the EPA had indicated it would allow farmers to apply up to 400 lbs. of the carcinogenic chemical to each acre. Methyl iodide is especially hazardous, vaporizing quickly and drifting over large distances. Reacting to widespread media coverage and public pressure EPA backed off on legalizing the pesticide: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_258.cfm.

Stopping chemical industry experiments on children

STOPPING CHEMICAL INDUSTRY EXPERIMENTS ON CHILDREN - In late 2005--early 2006, OCA alerted our nationwide network to a proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation allowing industry to carry out experiments on children with toxic pesticides and chemicals. After a barrage of 15,000 letters from OCA, and thousands more from our allies, the EPA's own union of scientists came against the rule. Reacting to the growing backlash, EPA administrators announced they would ban chemical testing on children. Unfortunately after the media reported this change in public policy, and public attention turned elsewhere, EPA bureaucrats reinstated similar language back into the proposed regulation. The battle continues: http://www.organicconsumers.org/epa6.cfm.

June 20, 2006

Studies funded by drug companies favor drugs 80 percent of the time

Multi-national drug corporations are manipulating you through highly conflicted studies they fund and publish to convince you to use their drugs: http://www.mercola.com/2006/jun/8/studies_funded_by_drug_companies_favor_drugs_80_percent_of_the_time.htm.

June 19, 2006

Big phrama conducting deadly experiments

experiments   Sonia Shah's new exposé reveals how drug companies prey on poor people overseas by using them in tests for new -- and often dangerous -- medications: http://www.alternet.org/story/37024/.

- submitted by Steven Gibb

June 17, 2006

Dr. Mercola on the failings of the FDA

(Dr. Mercola) - From approving harmful drugs to letting the pharmaceutical industry get away with murder, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems to be continually failing to get it right.

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