BEST OF WEB: The Most Powerful People in America

By Joel S. Hirschhorn, Information Clearing House:

They are not the rich and superrich, nor the politically powerful running the two-party plutocracy, nor the greedy heads of banking and finance companies, and certainly not the media moguls and bloviating pundits.

The most powerful people are US, American consumers that account for over 70 percent of the economy. It is exactly now, when the economy is in the toilet, that consumers hold the maximum power. So why are we the people still deluding ourselves that the path to a better future rests on electing a new president?

We are suckers, conditioned by decades of clever marketing and advertising to believe the lies of politicians, and worst of all to believe that elections and our votes provide us with power. Wrong. Our real power can only be manifest through our spending dollars.

The overwhelming majority of Americans have been severely damaged by economic oppression by government policies that have produced historic economic inequality. Yet, despite revolting conditions, Americans seem unwilling to revolt by using their remaining economic power. They have let themselves become economic slaves.

What is amazing and depressing is that there are no national leaders from the worlds of politics, religion, education, media or public interest that are attempting to harness consumer power at this critical time. No one is capturing the public’s attention by making it crystal clear that consumers could obtain any political or economic reform in the public interest by joining together to withhold their discretionary spending.

Where are the anti-Iraq war leaders? Why are they not shouting about forcing an immediate commitment to ending the Iraq war by using the power of a massive consumer boycott that clearly could destroy the whole economy? Tell President Bush that consumers will greatly curb their spending for a month to give him time to implement a plan for withdrawal from Iraq. Make it clear that the coming federal rebates will not be used for spending. Make it clear that Bush inaction will result in continuation of the boycott.

Where is Ralph Nader, the ultimate consumer advocate? Why is he not proclaiming the brilliance of a consumer boycott as the winning tactic to force effective government assistance to the millions of Americans screwed by the sub-prime mortgage fiasco and about the lose their homes?

Where is Barack Obama, who supposedly wants to produce change? Rather than putting all his energy into satisfying his egoistic hunt for the presidency, why is he not talking about harnessing consumer power right now to get political reforms, like ending trade agreements that are destroying the middle class? Why does he not send a clear message to his million-plus contributors to join a national consumer boycott to obtain immediate concessions from the Bush administration?

Where are the professors who have published books making the case for a second constitutional convention as the way to restore American democracy? Not one has the courage to say that the way to get Congress to obey Article V of the Constitution and convene that the first Article V convention is by American consumers threatening to plunge a dagger into the heart of American business.

Now is the time for all the millions of Americans that make up the 81 percent who see the nation on the wrong track to take action, to think like patriotic revolutionaries and take the power that now only exists with their spending. Sounds simple. All this strategy needs is leadership. Rather than spending so much time and energy on the media-hyped presidential campaign, we the people should demand that someone step forward to inform and mobilize consumers to become powerful citizens by using their spending as the ultimate populist political weapon.

SOTT FOCUS: Shaping Conventional Wisdom

By Henry See, Signs of the Times:

We ran an article recently on the Signs page about the elite that run the world. It is from a mainstream publication, about as mainstream as they get in the US: Newsweek. It is about the group of people the author calls the “Superclass” and who are:

“part of a new global elite that has emerged over the past several decades. I call it the ’superclass.’ They have vastly more power than any other group on the planet. Each of the members is set apart by his ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide. Each actively exercises this power, and often amplifies it through the development of relationships with other superclass members. This new class of elites is both more permeable, and more transient, than elites of the past…The top 10 percent of all people, for example, now control 85 percent of all wealth on the planet.

That such a group exists is indisputable. It includes the heads of the biggest financial institutions, the 14 families Blankfein joked about, and then some; the top 50 control almost $50 trillion in assets. The heads of the world’s biggest corporations are also members; the top 2,000 support perhaps 500 million people, generate almost $30 trillion in sales and have well over $100 trillion in assets. The list also includes top government officials with real cross-border influence… media barons…religious leaders…cultural icons…”

The author goes on to describe the lifestyle “up there”, looking down upon the rest of us peons from the leather seats of their private jets as they circle the globe entangling us in their machinations. No standing in line at airports and passing through humiliating security checks for these folks. No way. They just implement those rules to keep the rest of us in line.

It is a small group, and they all know one another.

Says Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Wall Street’s Blackstone Group, “The world is pretty small. In almost every one of the areas in which I am dealing or in which we at Blackstone are looking at deals, you find it is just 20, 30 or 50 people worldwide who drive the industry or the sector.”

They meet at places like Davos to “get to know one another, hatch deals and exercise perhaps the greatest power the superclass has collectively: to shape conventional wisdom.”

Did you catch that phrase about shaping “conventional wisdom”? You know what that really means, right? Brainwashing. Telling us what to think. Shaping the insides of our heads by creating the invisible prison bars of thought that keep us prisoner while they scurry around robbing and plundering under our very noses.

They have it down to a well-oiled and highly perfected machine. They have conquered our minds, and once that has happened, there is precious little one can do until the mind has been reclaimed.

Unfortunately, how can you find the time to reclaim your own right to think when you are thoroughly preoccupied with putting food on the table? When you are worried that the next health problem will bankrupt the family? Worried whether you will be able to pay for your next dose of anti-depressants because the big pharmaceutical companies have raised the price yet again? Or how to pay for that impressive car or big screen flat-panel TV bought with financing.

How could you even get suckered into thinking you needed that car or TV or those anti-depressants in the first place?

“Shaping conventional wisdom” is a thought war. If one never asks the right question, it doesn’t matter what the answer is, and all the wrong questions and answers are being broadcast into your brains over the television, via the newspapers and radio, in the mindless activities of the Internet, and via the gossip around the water cooler at work.

What is the step from being there, confronted with these problems, real and imagined, bombarded by mindlessness 24 hours a day, not to mention the waves that are part of the new ‘connected’ environment that affect us from cell phones, wireless internet connections, or microwaves, to wondering, “Gee, it does look like Bush, Cheney, and their cronies in Israel had something to do with 911, doesn’t it”?

How big is that leap?

How many people do you know who are willing to pose the question? And if they have posed the question, how many have risen above the likely response, “Well, what can I do about it?”, before returning to their TV or computer.

So this small group, this “superclass”, have done their job well.

But don’t be fooled by the idea that this new “superclass” is “permeable” or “transient”, as the author puts it. The psychopaths at the top have always had minions working for them, the expendable ones.

Heck, even your corner street gang leader knows that. Look at this example from Political Ponerology:

When drawn into a felonious group, these constitutionally weakened individuals become faint-critical helpers and executors of the leader’s intentions, tools in the hands of more treacherous, usually psychopathic, leaders. Once arrested, they submit to their leaders’ insinuated explanations that the higher (paramoral) group ideal demands that they become scapegoats, taking the majority of blame upon themselves. In court, the same leaders who initiated the delinquencies mercilessly dump all the blame onto their less crafty colleagues. Sometimes a judge actually accepts the insinuations. [Political Ponerology, Andrew Lobaczewski, p. 112.]

Think ‘Scooter’ Libby. Only at this level, the ones with the real power can get their “constitutionally weakened” patsies off the hook. Libby took one for the team and was duly pardoned. As for Bush and Cheney, after dumping the blame for the Valerie Plame leak onto Libby, they walked out clean as any Mafia don or street-corner bully who had the patsy take the fall.

The author of the Newsweek article concludes by saying:

“In short, while we may have a somewhat different superclass in the future, until the people of the world are more comfortable with creating the kind of strong global governance mechanisms that can contain and regulate many of their activities, the 6,000 will continue to play the greatest role of any group on the planet in defining our times.”

Well, we won’t even comment on the need to “contain and regulate” their activities, because that is so far from being all that is necessary, that the remark, slipped in like that, is nothing more than another example of the shaping of conventional wisdom. It sets the limits in the reader’s mind before he or she has even thought the problem through.

So just take note of that and then think about the figure he gives.

Six thousand people. All over the world.

Six thousand people. Who know each other. Who meet secretly, plan our future, and make decisions that affect billions of people. Six thousand people who “shape conventional wisdom”.

Could you call it a “conspiracy”? Or would that be stretching it?

Is it any less a conspiracy because they meet in the “open” in places like Davos? What are they doing the other 364 days of the year?

But even if we don’t use the C-word, does that make it any more just? Let’s say it isn’t a conspiracy, that these individuals are just average Joes, luckier and richer than the rest of us, doing their best. Does the fact that “the top 10 percent of all people, for example, now control 85 percent of all wealth on the planet” not reveal an injustice so profound, one that is so deep, so overwhelming, that it really doesn’t matter whether or not it is a “conspiracy”?

When you read that, don’t the hairs on your neck stand upright at the sheer horror of it?

If they don’t, why not? Have you become anaesthetized?

If 6,000 people really have that much power, then isn’t the use of the word “conspiracy” really something of a straw man, erected precisely in order to divert attention, to “shape conventional wisdom”, as it were?

Then think about the way the Palestinians are being killed a few at a time while the entire population suffers from the occupation, an occupation that if it were happening to any other group on the planet would be on the front pages of every newspaper in the West.

“Shaping conventional wisdom”.

Look, then, at Iraq, the destruction of a country that was one of the most vital in the Middle East prior to the “liberation” by the forces of “democracy and freedom”. There are estimates that well over one million Iraqis have died. But we saw images of Iraqis happily welcoming US invaders into the country.

“Shaping conventional wisdom”?

Have you been following the food riots that are breaking out around the globe? Do you think the “superclass” are going to go hungry?

So there it is, in black and white and Newsweek of all places. Of course, sociologists have been studying this for years and have been saying much the same thing: power resides in a small group of people. What is new is that globalization has switched the focus from a power elite in one country to a power elite that more or less openly runs the world. And they are doing it out in the open. They aren’t hiding when they jet off to Davos. Their arrogance and their success in “shaping conventional wisdom” is such that they no longer need to hide it. Hey, they can get away with 911, and no one called them on it.

No one.

Except for that small group of people who have refused to succumb to “conventional wisdom”. But this group can be easily handled, marginalized, set against each other, and rendered uncredible through the planting of outlandish theories that discredit the serious researchers. Agents are sent in to cause disputes and in-fighting that cripples the movement.

It is down to a science. The science of control. “Shaping conventional wisdom”.

It worked with the Kennedy assassinations. It worked again with 911.

Why? Because most people are struggling around the ultimate problem. They have not yet identified it, the root problem, the underlying cause: psychopathy and deviants in control of our world.

All the struggle and fighting for justice, for sustainable growth, for equity and equality among the peoples isn’t going to get us anywhere as long as we continue to think that we are up against people “like us”, people with a heart, with a conscience, who care about the world’s peoples. Bono can run around from meeting to meeting extracting promises till he is blue in the face or U2 has another number one hit, and it isn’t going to change a thing. Promises while he is at the table, a quick photo op with Bush or Blair or the humanitarian politician of the month, and then laughter when he walks out of the room.

They don’t care one whit.

Worse than that, not only will they never lift a finger to improve things for the majority of people on the planet, they do their best to destroy anything the people themselves set out to accomplish. It is easy for a few to destroy the life’s work of thousands. All it takes is one psychopath. It is much harder to create, to give something real to the world. It is an uphill fight at the best of times, and we are not in the best of times.

While the people struggling for change are busy in the trenches, through what Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism the pathocrats ferret out the individuals and organizations in a country that are actually working to improve the lives of the people, either by killing them or jailing them or banning them, and they then implant economic policies that benefit this same small group and institute dictatorships to ensure the new laws are followed, all done with the knowledge garnered from research such as that done by Ivan Pavlov on transmarginal inhibition. And they do it under the banner of “democracy’! Iraq was invaded and destroyed in the name of “democracy”, in the name of “freedom”.

Well, if this is what they have been doing since the end of the Second World War, what are they up to now? Disaster capitalism is business as usual, or has been for the last forty years. But something feels different now, in our post-911, pre-apocalyptic, return of Jesus world.

The “superclass” are stockpiling the samples of the world’s grain supplies on an island off Norway.

They are building underground bases.

They are making it more and more difficult to fly and travel, from humiliating searches and ridiculous regulations about putting toothpaste in clear, plastic, government approved baggies instead of the clear plastic travel kit your spouse gave you, to issuing passports with electronic ID that will include any piece of private information they can find about you.

They are closing down the economy by siphoning off ever greater amounts of money through their criminal and fraudulent trading practices.

They are poisoning us with their genetically modified foods, not to mention forcing people to return year after year to the multinationals to buy new seeds instead of continuing on in their old ways of setting aside seed from one year for the next.

They are spying on us, checking our emails, our credit and debit card purchases, our library book borrowing, our text messaging and cell phone messages, our telephone calls, our medical records.

It sounds to me like they are preparing for something.

And what could that be, after years of dumbing us down, after years of numbing us with TV, cell phones, deficient schooling, after years of war?

They are hanging us out to die. They know the planet is subject to cyclic catastrophes. They know the next one in the cycle is due very soon. If SOTT can see a sharp increase in the sightings of fireballs in the skies, don’t you think, with all their black budgets, that the pathocrats have a even clearer idea about it than we do?

It is all part of one, overreaching plan: to save themselves while letting space rocks take care of the rest of us.

But if someone can’t even see 911, how can they see this?

If it is impossible for your average citizen to transgress their inner world and strictures of thought about 911, if it goes against everything they believe, against the “conventional wisdom” drummed into us since we were children, how could they possibly comprehend the whole?

But, you, reading this page, you see it, don’t you?

What are you going to do about it?

How to Prevent Vaccine Injury

The best way—don’t get vaccinated. At the very least, evaluate the likelihood of your child being exposed to diseases on a case-by-case basis. Never receive more than one vaccine at a time! In addition, breastfeeding is the single most important thing a mother can do to boost her child’s immune system.

Source: Byron J. Richards, CCN, News With Views:

It is a colossal failure on the part of our government to not warn parents of the actual risks associated with vaccines. The blind insistence that vaccines are safe and effective is not supported by science, at least for a significant number of our children. There are now 25,000 children per year developing autism (1 in 150), a problem that has expanded in direct proportion to the increase in vaccinations. How do you know if your child is at risk?

The government’s primary goal appears to be to prevent parents, en masse, from refusing to vaccinate their children. To prevent such a “run on the public health bank” all caution is being recklessly thrown to the wind. American children are now the most vaccinated people in the world. What are we actually doing? The vaccination problem needs to be objectively solved so that public health is maintained, yet needless vaccine injury is avoided.

It should not be of any great comfort to parents that scientists hardly understand how the immune system works. The simplistic idea that vaccines offer protection against disease has an element of truth and a significant element of risk. This article explores the risk in greater depth. I will first explain what is known about the nature of the risk and follow with some natural options that can really help out.

Vaccine Adjuvants – A Double-Edged Sword

Giving a fully active virus as a vaccine would obviously cause the disease. On the other hand, a weakened or deadened form of the virus may not produce much of an immune response thereby making the vaccine worthless. This problem has been “solved” by combining the weakened disease with an immune activator called an adjuvant.

An adjuvant does not contain the disease; rather it is intended to initiate the first step in fighting an infection – the inflammatory response. This is like giving a general wake up call to the immune system. This can be done with an irritant or a more specific toxin the immune system is likely to recognize based on eons of exposure.

In the irritant category the most common adjuvants used in vaccines your child will get are salts of aluminum (aluminum phosphate and aluminum hydroxide). The safety of aluminum salts has been called into question following the poor health of many Gulf War Veterans who received multiple aluminum adjuvant vaccinations. Many scientists consider that their poor health was caused by the adjuvants in the vaccines they were given. In 2003 French researchers identified aluminum hydroxide vaccine adjuvants as the cause of a new disease consisting of pain and chronic fatigue; noting similarities to problems in Gulf War soldiers.

In a recent study mice were given aluminum hydroxide at doses comparable to Gulf War soldiers. Extensive testing was done of their cognitive ability as well as analysis of the nervous system upon sacrifice. The results showed that aluminum hydroxide caused nerve-related motor defects. Analysis of brain tissue showed 255% increase in inflammatory markers along with 35% loss of motor neurons.

It has been over a year since this study was published. Why isn’t the CDC doing the same experiment with the adjuvant load from their recommended vaccine schedule? Any substance that is adversely neurotoxic in an adult is likely to be more neurotoxic in the evolving nervous system of a baby. Not following up on this is gross negligence on the part of the CDC.

Another common adjuvant is bacterial endotoxin (the outer membrane of the cell wall of Gram-negative bacteria), also known as lipopolysaccharide or LPS. Since we have been battling bacteria since the beginning of our evolution, our immune systems recognize LPS as an invasion – setting off a powerful inflammatory immune system reaction. The toxicity of any bacterial infection relates to LPS.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health freely acknowledge that the proinflammatory effects of adjuvants in vaccines “underlie many of the observed toxic effects.” What the new science shows very clearly is that all the inflammation that is generated by adjuvants is actually not necessary for activating the immune response.

This means that our government is sticking by a vaccine program that relies on firing a toxic shotgun at the immune system even though they know a laser-guided approach would have much less risk of vaccine injury from direct toxicity. The problem for our government is that they don’t currently have the ability to make safer vaccines; thus they blindly defend the safety of a very crude approach and refuse to conduct tests that would easily show the current vaccine program is not safe. It is quite clear that an inflamed nervous system is an undeniable feature in autism.

What Does NF-kappaB Have to Do With It?

Nuclear Factor kappa-B is the “brain” residing within every cell of your body, including cells of your nervous system. It is a gene transcription factor, meaning that it tells your cells how to behave depending on what is happening. When everything is running smoothly, NF-kappaB has its feet up on the lawn chair in a relaxed mode of operation. Under stress NF-kappaB initiates survival strategies. NF-kappaB is the main regulator of all inflammatory and immune responses, and is intimately involved with the healthy function of your nervous system. NF-kappaB is an active intelligence within your cells. The last thing you would ever want to do is mess up NF-kappaB.

Adjuvants, due to their intentionally inflammatory mode of operation, activate NF-kappaB. This is done to ramp up the immune system so it can “see” the weakened virus in the vaccine. The million dollar question is: “How much NF-kappaB activation can a child take before their NF-kappaB system overheats and sets a fire in their brain called autism?” When NF-kappaB overheats it generates large amounts of inflammatory immune system messengers (like TNFa and IL6) and massive numbers of free radicals that damage nerve cells.

If a child is already acutely inflamed then the NF-kappaB pump has already been primed and the risk for vaccine injury is greater. Acute inflammation is caused by illness, injury, surgery, poor diet, and stress at home. This problem is magnified if the child had a history of inflammation while in the womb, was born prematurely, or had health struggles during the first few years of life. Even a previous round of vaccines can prime the inflammatory NF-kappaB pump. Environmental toxicity is another factor that cannot be ignored, as is the health of the mother prior to and during pregnancy. A mother’s obesity and eating habits have a significant effect on the nerve health of her child.

The main point to understand is that if the NF-kappaB system is already on the edge of overheating due to other factors, then the intentional pushing of this system with vaccines poses a serious risk to the child. Multiple vaccines given at one time, with multiple pro-inflammatory adjuvants, obviously increase the risk. Any person objectively reviewing the science on this issue could reach no other conclusion.

The issue of NF-kappaB is so important that the next generation of vaccines will utilize it in an attempt to make less toxic vaccines (the laser-guided approach rather than the shotgun). While NF-kappaB-targeted vaccines will be less blatantly toxic, making them free of adverse side effects is another story altogether. Manipulating NF-kappaB is playing with the essence of the life force of a cell. At any given time there are numerous ons and offs relating to how NF-kappaB is naturally working to maintain health. The new vaccines will turn on the inflammatory aspect of NF-kappaB – which could easily upset the applecart in some other needed aspect of health.

No matter how good research scientists are at developing new vaccines, there will always be a percentage of at-risk-already-inflamed children who are likely to respond in a poor manner. Vaccine safety is not just about better vaccines; it’s also about protecting those who are most likely to poorly react to them. It is not possible to have a good public health policy for disease prevention that fails to take this fact into account.

Nutrients that Can Help

Mother Nature has provided an array of NF-kappaB modulating compounds. Unlike drugs, nutrients are far more compatible with genes as we evolved using nutrition to assist survival. When we provide our cells needed nutrients, NF-kappaB seems to know what to do with them. It is very clear that NF-kappaB uses nutrition to help cool itself off – like a tall glass of ice water on a hot day.

A diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables is the foundation for NF-kappaB anti-inflammatory nutrition. When a mother eats this way during pregnancy and while nursing she is passing tremendous benefit to her child. It is now clear that such good health habits are passed along, a type of fetal programming of the taste system, wherein the child is now more likely to eat healthfully and consequently have better function of NF-kappaB.

On top of a good diet there are certain “super nutrients” that significantly help NF-kappaB behave in a healthy manner. These help NF-kappaB not get overheated or too bent out of shape. The following list of nutrients is by no means complete; I’ve selected them because I’ve used them for years and I know they work. There is plenty of science to support their common sense use, for young and old.

Such extra nutrient support can be used as needed to:
1) Calm down nerves from existing life stress or a pattern of wear and tear,
2) Calm down nerves following an inflammatory event, such as vaccinations,
3) Stabilize nerves that are struggling,
4) Generally improve cognitive function and nerve development.

The five nutrients I’ve selected for discussion are the tocotrienol form of vitamin E, the herb silymarin, grape seed extract, lipoic acid, and acetyl-l-carnitine. This is a treasure trove of NF-kappaB modulating nerve and energy support nutrients.

Tocotrienols are a special form of vitamin E with unique antioxidant properties that are in many ways superior to plain vitamin E. For example, a recent study showed that tocotrienols offered superior protection to the nervous system from methylmercury – a potent nerve toxin. It is very clear that tocotrienols work by modulating NF-kappaB, are a superior brain protecting nutrient, and are also helpful for inflammation in the circulatory system by reducing NF-kappaB.

Silymarin or Milk Thistle is an herb that is commonly used to protect the liver as well as to help the liver clear toxins. Silymarin also works by modulating NF-kappaB to turn down inflammation. One study showed it was able to stop the LPS induced toxicity in brain cells. Another study showed it stop the autoimmune-driven damage to nerves (demyelination) while reducing inflammation.

Grape seed extracts contain proanthocyanidins that have also been shown to directly turn off LPS toxicity by turning down NF-kappaB. Taking the extract before damage to the nerves, as from alcohol consumption, helps prevent brain damage. Taking the extract after damage to nerves is already in progress helps stop the damage. Grape seed extracts are another top choice for nerve protection.

R-Alpha Lipoic Acid and Acetyl-L-Carnitine work synergistically to restore mitochondrial energy production in nerve cells. It is now believed that one factor involved with vaccine injury is poor mitochondrial function. Lipoic Acid is another nutrient now proven to lower NF-kappaB and reduce the inflammation associated with LPS toxicity. Acetyl-l-Carnitine has been extensively studied for its role in memory and cognitive function. It also exerts powerful nerve protection by a variety of different mechanism.

As you can see, there is plenty of science to support the use of nutrition to help out the brain – and this is just a sample of some of the better options. These nutrients are typically quite easy to mix into juice, apple sauce, or yogurt. The tocotrienol oil can be squeezed from the softgel capsule directly into the mouth. Powders can be mixed in water and administered with a dropper during nursing. Moms can take any of these nutrients which will transfer in her milk.

Nutrition excels at the safe and natural regulation of inflammation, including nerve inflammation, primarily by helping NF-kappaB work normally.

Decline Of The American Empire And The Rise Of The Newer World Order

Source: Thought-Criminal - Michael Vail

“Much like the time leading up to World War I, coalitions and regional blocs could form to contest American supremacy. If one of these entities could consolidate its power quickly enough, a new bipolar world could emerge. Potentially, China, a pan-Arab coalition, or a unified European Union (EU) could become this new superpower.”–Robert DeYeso. Newer World Order The Return to a Multipolar Era 2006

A very telling article was written by Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He accurately described the decline of the American empire and put forward some plans for the ‘tectonic shift’ that will take place as nation states scramble to fill the power vacuum that will be left behind by the decline of the military muscle of America. He spoke of a ‘Newer World Order’ as events are taking place and the ruling elite want to take full advantage of it.

“The United States’ unipolar moment is over. International relations in the twenty-first century will be defined by nonpolarity. Power will be diffuse rather than concentrated, and the influence of nation-states will decline as that of nonstate actors increases. But this is not all bad news for the United States; Washington can still manage the transition and make the world a safer place.” -Richard Haas. The Age of Nonpolarity 2008

Much like Rome, America’s days of empire are coming to an end. America is morally and economically bankrupt. We have run fresh out of cannon fodder and have resorted to the hiring of mercenaries much like the mercenaries who broke their allegiance with Rome and sacked the country. We have outsourced our military and let the dogs of war run wild around the world in our name with murderous brutality. There is a distinct difference between the Visigoths and Blackwater USA, Blackwater is building their own military infrastructure [1] and their own air force [2] .Blackwater USA plans to be a permanent replacement to our all voluntary military and they have no problems with getting their hands dirty.

The United States is also a major source of culture (through films and television), information, and innovation. But the reality of American strength should not mask the relative decline of the United States’ position in the world — and with this relative decline in power an absolute decline in influence and independence. -Richard Haas

U.S. primacy is also being challenged in other realms, such as military effectiveness and diplomacy. Measures of military spending are not the same as measures of military capacity. -Richard Haas

These global superintendants still have need for U.S. military muscle as the IMF, World Bank and other NGO’s have been using our military decades but they would prefer to slow bleed our nation to prevent our influence in foreign policy. They are currently investing in the emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, Indian and China. These nations will have strong economies and powerful militaries in the near future that will rival our own. The deck must be shuffled to keep true power out of the hands of the people.

Trade can be a powerful tool of integration. It gives states a stake in avoiding conflict because instability interrupts beneficial commercial arrangements that provide greater wealth and strengthen the foundations of domestic political order. Trade also facilitates development, thereby decreasing the chance of state failure and alienation among citizens. The scope of the World Trade Organization must be extended through the negotiation of future global arrangements that further reduce subsidies and both tariff and nontariff barriers. -Richard Haas

A similar level of effort might be needed to ensure the continued flow of investment. The goal should be to create a World Investment Organization that would encourage capital flows across borders so as to minimize the chances that “investment protectionism” gets in the way of activities that, like trade, are economically beneficial and build political bulwarks against instability. -Richard Haas

Free Trade is but a mere slogan to the IMF and World Bank. They don’t mean free enterprise and trade among peoples. They mean to keep countries indebted[3]to them forever like the Philippines, Latin America, South Africa and many more developing countries. Free trade also means kickbacks from corporations like Bechtel[4]who privatize water and sanitation through World Bank/IMF public-private partnerships and leave the people disease ridden and lacking basic necessities. If the United States dollar was not the main reserve currency of the world all our debts and obligations would be called in and the IMF would be telling us to devalue our dollar further which has led to food riots in other nations.

Finally, the United States needs to enhance its capacity to prevent state failure and deal with its consequences. This will require building and maintaining a larger military, one with greater capacity to deal with the sort of threats faced in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, it will mean establishing a civilian counterpart to the military reserves that would provide a pool of human talent to assist with basic nation-building tasks. -Richard Haas

Mr Haas wants to create a new NGO to centralize investments which will lead to heights of corruption never seen. He also suggests that we gather more prey for the killing fields and hints toward creating a new type of Global Peace Corps. America in the end will not be any different from those countries which are under the thumb of the NGOs. As our nation slides towards oblivion they will loot, pillage and rape this nation while looking as if they are trying to save it. Let us take our lessons from the nations that have been ruined by globalism [5]. Let’s hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

1. WTKR. Blackwater Meeting Reveals New Projects. 2007 [cited; Available from: http://www.wtkr.com/global/story.asp?s=7272471&ClientType=Printable.]

2. FlightGlobal. Blackwater seeks Super Tucano acquisition for trainer role 2007 [cited; Available from: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/08/27/216333/blackwater-seeks-super-tucano-acquisition-for-trainer-role.html.]

3. Thirdworldtraveler. The IMF Formula: Prescription for Poverty 2001 [cited; Available from: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/IMF_Formula_PrescripPover.html.]

4. Democracy Center. Bechtel’s Ugly Ecuador Water Adventure 2008 [cited; Available from: http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2008/02/bechtels-ugly-ecuador-water-adventure.html.]

5. Thirdworldtraveler. A “killing field” in the Americas: US policy in Guatemala. [cited; Available from: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html.]

A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

Source: Counter Punch – MICHAEL HUDSON

If the move to a Unitary Executive of unfettered presidential power frightens you, America’s radical right turn to Unitary Finance should compound your fears–and your debts as well. The financial events of the last two weeks of March 2008 demonstrate that the “economic royalists” and “money changers” whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) drove from the temple of finance have returned to mismanage our economy into dire straights of unprecedented risk–debt creation, euphemized as “leveraging” and “wealth creation.”

The few checks and balances that remain in the way of the financial sector’s increasingly centralized planning, especially at the state level, are being swept aside under the guise of “saving the system.” Few Wall Street beneficiaries who use this phrase explain just what the system is. For starters, its political managers are industry lobbies appointed to high managerial and planning positions in the public agencies that are supposed to regulate these industries. Their idea of financial planning is to put a trillion dollars in government agency funds and credit guarantees at risk. This agency funding was supposed to be used to help average American families obtain housing and health care, and to protect their savings and provide for their retirement. Instead, it is being mobilized to support the economy’s bankers and financial managers. Indeed, the past few weeks have seen seemingly trillions of dollars committed for war making and bank support.

The banking system’s free creation of credit, doubling each five years or so for the economy at large, threatens to culminate in debt peonage for many American families and also for industry and for state and local governments. The economic surplus is being quickly absorbed by a combination of debt service and government bailouts for creditors whose Ponzi schemes are collapsing right and left, from residential to commercial real estate and corporate takeover loans to foreign bubble-economy credit.

This is the context in which to view the past few weeks’ financial turmoil surrounding Bear Stearns, JPMorgan/Chase and the rapidly changing debt landscape. “The system” that the Treasury, Federal Reserve and the New Deal agencies captured by the Bush Administration is trying to save is an economy-wide Ponzi scheme. By that I mean that the business plan is for creditors to lend debtors enough money for them to pay the interest costs so as to keep current on their loans.

For the past few years this system has depended on asset prices for real estate, stocks and bonds to be inflated by enough to enable debtors to pledge these assets as collateral at a higher market price for more and more new loans. But now that the real estate bubble has burst (and indeed, as stock prices sink), the problem is how to bail out the tip of our economic iceberg that has sunk into negative equity–a condition in which the debts attacked to property exceed its market value. Someone must take a loss–but whom?

Normally, it is the banker or investor who takes the loss. But they are now supposed to be “rescued.” This is being presented as a return to stability. But it was a system that never was stable to begin with. In fact, for the rescue to work, most Americans will have to own less and owe more, while being told that all this is the path to wealth creation–as if it were their wealth, not that of their creditors. The Bear Stearns/JPMorgan Chase/monoline insurance giveaway to “save the financial system” provides a vivid illustration of how Unitary Finance has developed a parasitic relationship with American labor in its role as pension contributor, consumer and homeowner. The system being subsidized enables the FIRE sector to direct and live off the productive efforts of others–people who make real things and provide real services.

Saving Wall Street with a trillion-dollar bailout of bad mortgage debt

The bailout started on Sunday, March 16. The government and JPMorgan Chase had reason to be embarrassed about the negotiations, for the details trickled out on the Federal Reserve or Treasury websites and Mr. Paulson’s speeches went far beyond just Chase and Bear Stearns. It turned out that on the same Sunday on which he had negotiated the $30 billion Fed bailout, Mr. Paulson started a frenetic ten days orchestrating actions by the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and other government agencies to earmark a trillion dollars to re-inflate financial markets for mortgage holders and their associated creditors and speculators. Behind the scenes, as matters turned out, the Bush Administration was mounting a financial surge: It decided to throw everything its mortgage financing agencies could muster to prevent property markets from collapsing on its watch.

The surge of support for the mortgage and real estate markets was headed by the two largest U.S. mortgage holders and packagers: the government-sponsored National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and Freddie Mac. These two agencies were created to develop tradable markets for mortgages that banks traditionally had kept on their own books by buying home mortgages from the banks and mortgage brokers that originated them. This created a vast new demand for mortgages by making them marketable in large packages for institutional investors such as pension and mutual funds. Being implicitly government-guaranteed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to borrow at fairly low interest rates, and sell mortgages at a premium. Demand for these packaged mortgage securities provided an enormous new source of lending. It also turned banks into mortgage originators rather than mortgage holders.

Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought more than three-fourths of all U.S. mortgages issued in the fourth quarter of 2007, bringing their holdings to $1.4 trillion. However, the fact that their capital base was under $70 billion–for a 20 to 1 debt-leveraging ratio–led investors to sell their stock steadily over the past year. Rather than insisting that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rebuild their capital position, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise and Oversight (OFHEO) did just the opposite. It reduced their capital requirements from 30 percent to 20 percent, and encouraged them to use this increased leverage to pour an extra $200 billion to the nation’s mortgage market. Limits on the size of mortgage loans that these two agencies could make were raised sharply in order to help re-inflate the troubled high-cost California and New York property markets in particular.

Designed to bring temporary relief, this maneuver threatened to further destabilize matters by simply kicking the can down the road. The same applied to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), set up in 1934 as part of the New Deal. Its insurance fund of about $20 billion backs some 3.8 million mortgage loans totaling $365 billion, for an 18:1 debt-leverage ratio. On Monday, March 24, it promised $400 billion in new mortgage credit insurance. This means that government agencies can use their capital to lend much more money to prospective homebuyers. The FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also will be on the line for any losses, “socializing the risk” to a higher degree than ever before.

What was so worrisome about this strategy was that the FHA already was in financial straits as a result of its subprime loans. For the first time in its history it was running a deficit. Over a third of the loans it insured were made by home sellers to new buyers to cover their down payment–enabling homes to be bought without any down payment at all. (Traditionally, 20 percent has been the norm.) This was a brand-new market, barely existing in 2000 on the eve of the Greenspan-Bush real estate bubble. The Secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Agency (HUD), Alphonso R. Jackson, told a Senate committee: “These types of loans have pushed F.H.A. to the brink of insolvency.” And now it was to double its activities to prop up the real estate and mortgage market.

The Federal Housing Finance (FHF) board dutifully did its part to increase the system’s debt leverage. It doubled the ability of the 12 regional Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB) to leverage their purchase of mortgage securities, from three times their capital to six times, twice the existing debt/equity ratio. The aim was to help them serve their clients, the nation’s eight thousand savings banks, S&Ls, credit unions and insurance companies, finance the purchase of $160 to $200 billion new mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The target was for these two agencies to buy up about half a trillion dollars worth of mortgage securities from the private sector this year.

The Federal Home Loan Banking system also announced plans to start offering its own “monoline” mortgage insurance against the looming economic downturn at prices way below what private-sector insurance writers were willing to match. The aim is to shore up the nation’s crumbling mortgage-insurance coverage at taxpayer expense. Again, the concept of a “free market” is being subjugated in order to socialize the losses for the FIRE sector’s big players. The situation is much like the government insurance of beachfront properties against flood damage, paying for a chronically losing proposition at public expense. Of course, a disproportionate number of the owners of those beachfront properties also come from the campaign-contributing class.

Gillian Tett of the Financial Times noted that this mortgage insurance subsidy is “likely to trigger further debate about how policymakers are turning to state, or quasi-state, entities to stabilise the financial sector” by addressing “an absence of the market.” Instead of shaping the market along less risky, less debt-leveraged lines, it was now another case of the government socializing financial risk at below-market rates. John Price, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank board, claimed that this “is what Government State Enterprises are for.’” In view of the fact that private insurers would charge higher rates, But the government’s present plan being coordinated by Treasury Secretary Paulson seeks to avoid letting markets work in a way that would raise costs to Wall Street and hence leave less revenue for homeowners to pledge for debt service. This policy is presented sanctimoniously as lowering the price at which the financial sector “serves” the economy, not as putting it at risk.

The most amazing moves were still to come. On March 11 the Federal Reserve created a new Term Securities Lending Facility to extend $200 billion in loans to primary bond and securities dealers against their holdings of mortgages and other packaged securities as collateral. The aim was to rapidly re-inflate mortgages that the free market was pricing as junk, as low as 20 percent of face value.

Then came the double bombshell. In a true showing of the green on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, the Fed extended nearly unlimited credit to non-bankers for the first time since the Great Depression. It accepted their toxic mortgages as collateral–dubious assets that “the market” was refusing to touch. So much for “market-based” solutions when it comes to high finance! For the first time since the 1930s, non-banks could borrow from the Fed’s loan window against their junk mortgages, apparently at full face value. It was too late for Bear Stearns, but other investment bankers and brokerage houses saw the green lifeline as the Fed opened its discount window to non-bankers, that is, to investment bankers such as Lehman Brothers, in contrast to commercial bankers that are regulated by the Fed.

The volume of credit seemed to be unlimited, collateralized by mortgage-backed securities that “the marketplace” was pricing around the levels Third World loans were selling at after Mexico’s 1982 insolvency. Labor economist Tom Palley wrote in his March 26 blog: “These subsidies are a travesty. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley are extraordinarily profitable. They also have been the drivers of the worst trends in the American economy over the past generation, pushing excessive CEO pay that has spread like a cancer throughout corporate America, even reaching into universities and non-profits. Additionally, they have pedaled the shareholder value paradigm that has pushed companies to emphasize short-term gain over long-term investment, and contributed to ripping up America’s social contract. Meanwhile, their business model has promoted speculation that is behind repeated asset and commodity price bubbles.”

It is to support this business model that the Fed and Treasury officials seem to be making up new rules on a daily basis–rules that receive only a superficial or perfunctory review by Congress. Critics point out that investment bankers are not subject to Federal Reserve oversight or other regulation. Perhaps even this does not really matter in view of the Fed’s extreme non-regulatory mode ever since Alan Greenspan’s four-term Chairmanship. Even more important, of course, is the fact that the Fed’s new clients, investment banks and brokerage houses, do not serve the middle-class depositors in need of special protection for their life savings. The financial investments being saved from adverse market conditions are ultimately speculative in character.

It seems a biting irony that the institutions now being mobilized to bail out Wall Street creditors–the Federal Home Loan Banks to pump credit into the mortgage market, the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgage loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy and package mortgages for bulk resale to institutional investors–were created to help homebuyers, not their creditors and speculators. But bailing out speculators and high finance has now becoming their primary function. This shift has turned America’s housing, mortgage and banking agencies upside down. Wall Street of course has welcomed the capture of these New Deal and post-1945 institutions. But their doctrinaire ideology has accused Glass-Steagall, Social Security, and most recently Sarbanes-Oxley regulations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as leading down the road to serfdom.

Politically, such bailouts require an ostensibly humanitarian cover story. They need to be presented as a subsidy not to banks and other wealthy creditors, but to debtors. This means that the “ideal” (that is, most smoothly hypocritical) bailout takes the form of new credit to pay banks and other bondholders and mortgage holders enough to keep the debt bubble afloat. That means enough more credit to keep it growing, at least by the amount of interest that must be paid.

The result is a true road to debt peonage. It is much more destructive–and certainly more real–than the imaginary road to serfdom that Hayek and other anti-government ideologues envision. While these free-enterprise boys wring their hands and denounce government power, their sponsors realize full well that when government steps back, the financial sector moves in to fill the vacuum. The banks and money managers become society’s planners and resource allocators–in their own short-term interest. This interest leads them to oppose laws protecting, labor, consumers and debtors. This means that the “freedom” at issue is a one-way favoritism for employers, monopolistic privilege and creditors. What these vested interests mean by the “road to serfdom” is an economy managed by hands other than their own, an economy protecting the workers, consumers and debtors whom they seek to victimize.

No money left for Social Security and health insurance after the real estate bailout?

The American public may justifiably be puzzled by how the government can seem to come up trillions of dollars for foreign wars and banker bailouts, but so little for them. The United States is spending an estimated $3 trillion for an illegal war that has made us less safe, and $1 trillion so far to rescue bankers in a way that is destabilizing the economy. But it can’t seem to secure health care or retirement security for all Americans. On Tuesday, March 25, fresh from providing a trillion dollars to underwrite the financial and real estate sector, Mr. Paulson revived the Bush Administration’s pretense that there is no money to pay Social Security. Yet “fixing” Social Security–if indeed there is a problem (which is no means certain)–would be relatively easy. Merely restoring the Bush tax cuts for the top 1% of Americans (those earning over $414,000 a year) to the high 30-percent tax rates of the 1990s (nowhere near approaching the 94% top marginal rate of the 1940s, or even the 70-percent rates of the 1970s) would provide 46% more than the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the Social Security shortfall. The Administration does not acknowledge such inconvenient truths, or do the reporters who simply pass on its handouts to the mass media.

The claim that there is no prospective funding to meet the government’s Social Security and Medicare obligations was rendered blatantly incredible in the last week of March, which saw the five-year anniversary of the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq. As its death toll to U.S. soldiers reached 4,000, newspaper accounts across the country reported the calculations by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz that the war’s cost has reached the $3 trillion mentioned above, taking into account its legacy of interest charges and medical treatment for the more than 25,000 troops that had been wounded or had post-traumatic and other psychiatric stress disorders. (Mr. Stiglitz recently updated his analysis to say $3 trillion is a conservative number.)

Five years, four thousand lives, and three trillion dollars for the war–but no money for Social Security and Medicare! Did Mr. Paulson not feel just a little bit discomfort in claiming with seeming urgency that Social Security funding would be exhausted in just over another thirty years, by 2041? Medicare is supposed to be in even worse shape, having accumulated enough wage set-asides to last only until 2019, due largely to rising health costs–which the Bush Administration refused to control by negotiating prices with the drug companies, among others.

The historical road to serfdom is that of debt peonage to a financial oligarchy concentrating wealth in its own hands. Contemporary anti-government “libertarianism” creates a vacuum that the financial sector moves to fill. The problem for society at large is that finance finds its major gains to lie not in raising living standards, but in promoting a free lunch for its customers–while turning corporate profits, monopoly rent-seeking and real estate price gains into a flow of interest to itself, by advancing the credit to finance the purchase of these assets and privileges.

There is only one way to reverse this evolution toward debt peonage. That is to scale back existing mortgages, especially for properties with negative equity, to reflect the plunge in property values today–admittedly under distress conditions, but nonetheless real constraints on the debtor’s ability to pay. Once the principal was reduced to realistic levels, adjustable-rate mortgages would be replaced by fixed-rate mortgages.

The problem with this solution is that to the financial institutions, the housing crisis is not their problem. Their blame-the-victim attitude holds it to be the mortgage holders’ problem–and now increasingly the taxpayers’ problem. This perspective on how to resolve the housing crisis can only succeed by creating a populist rhetoric for public officials to use in promoting financial interests as if all this is in the best interest of homeowners and other debtors.

Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase & Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world’s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens & Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich’s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com

The Food Irradiation Plot

Source: Natural News

There’s a new plot underway to sterilize your food and destroy the nutritional value of fresh produce. The players in this plot are the usual suspects: The USDA (which backed the “raw” almond sterilization rules now in effect in California) and the American Chemical Society — a pro-chemical group that represents the interests of industrial chemical manufacturers. The latest push comes from USDA researchers who conducted a study to see which method more effectively killed bacteria on leafy green vegetables like spinach.

To conduct the study, they bathed the spinach in a solution contaminated with bacteria. Then, they tried to remove the bacteria using three methods: Washing, chemical spraying and irradiation. Not surprisingly, only the irradiation killed nearly 100 percent of the bacterial colonies. That’s because radiation sterilizes both the bacteria and the vegetable leaves, effectively killing the plant and destroying much of its nutritional value while it kills the bacteria.

The USDA claims this is a huge success. By using radiation on all fresh produce, they claim, the number of food-borne illness outbreaks that happen each year could be substantially reduced. It all makes sense until you realize that by destroying the nutritional value of all fresh produce sold in the United States, an irradiation policy would greatly increase the number of people killed by infections and chronic diseases that are prevented by the natural medicines found in fresh produce!

Why fresh, living produce helps prevent sickness

The USDA, you see, has zero recognition of the difference between living produce and dead produce. To uneducated government bureaucrats, pasteurized or irradiated vegetable juice is identical to fresh, raw, living vegetable juice. They believe this because they’ve never been taught about the phytonutrients, digestive enzymes and life force properties that are found in fresh foods, but that are destroyed through heat or irradiation. This, the USDA is operating out of extreme ignorance when it comes to food and nutrition.

Even a simple leaf of spinach contains hundreds of natural medicines — phytonutrients that help prevent cancer, eye diseases, nervous system disorders, heart disease and much more. Every living vegetable is a powerhouse of disease-fighting medicine: Broccoli prevents cancer, beet greens cleanse the liver, cilantro removes heavy metals, celery prevents cancer, berries prevent heart disease and dark leafy greens help prevent over a dozen serious health conditions while boosting immune function and helping prevent other infections. But when you subject these fruits and vegetables to enough radiation to kill 99.9% of the pathogens that may be hitching a ride, you also destroy many of the phytonutrients responsible for these tremendous health benefits!

This means that while irradiating food may decrease outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, it will have the unintended consequence of increasing the number of people who get sick from other infections (and chronic diseases) due to the fact that their source of natural medicine has been destroyed. For many Americans, you see, salad greens are their one remaining source for phytonutrients. Given their diets of processed foods, junk foods and cooked foods, there are very few opportunities for these consumers to get fresh, phytonutrient-rich foods into their diet. And now the USDA wants to take that away, too, by mandating the irradiation of all fresh produce.

Let me make a rather obvious prediction, on the record: If the irradiation of fresh produce goes into effect in the United States, rates of infection among consumers will sharply increase, not decrease, due to the removal of immune-boosting natural medicine from the food supply. Consumers will also experience higher rates of cancer, heart disease, dementia, eye disorders, diabetes and even obesity. By destroying these thousands of healing phytonutrients, irradiation will leave many consumers defenseless against modern society’s many health challenges.

It is no exaggeration to say that a policy of mass irradiation of fresh produce is as blatantly stupid as the Romans building their aqueducts with lead-lined waterways. As historians have explained, after the aqueducts were built, the water delivered to the Roman population was contaminated with lead — a heavy metal that causes numerous health problems, including insanity. Many historians blame the lead-lined aqueducts as one of the primary reasons why the Roman Empire fell: Its leaders went mad, and the rest is history.

I would argue that America’s leaders are already mad, but that’s beside the point. If we start irradiating our food, thereby destroying its nutritional value, we are going to unleash a cascade of unintended consequences even greater than the Roman’s aqueducts. Absent the protections of phytonutrients found in plants, the health of most consumers will rapidly decline, and we’ll see the U.S. thrust into a quagmire of chronic disease and medical bankruptcy. (It’s already heading there, of course, but killing the food supply will only accelerate the downward spiral of health.)

Let’s sterilize all the food!

The USDA has never met a food sterilization plan it didn’t like. It backed the recent almond sterilization law that went into effect in California last year, forcing all almond growers to sterilize their almonds by subjecting them to toxic chemicals or cooking them at high enough temperatures to kill anything that might have been alive (such as the almond itself). Now, all the raw almonds consumed in America are purchased from overseas growers, where raw still means raw.

Raw milk has also been under attack in California and elsewhere. The USDA supported laws that essentially banned the sales of raw milk, requiring milk to be sterilized, too. If you now irradiate all the fresh produce, you have a food supply that is predominantly sterilized — otherwise known as “dead.” And dead foods lead to dead people.

That a society’s health regulators would want all foods to be dead should be downright shocking to anyone who knows anything about health and nutrition. Live foods keep people alive, but dead foods make people dead. It’s really not a complicated concept. The USDA’s definition of “food safety,” however, is based on the idea that the health of one immune-system-compromised individual who can’t handle a little E. Coli is more important than the ongoing health of the entire population. Thus, all foods must be killed for everyone.

I strongly disagree with this approach. Foods should not be expected to be sterilized. In terms of food safety, emphasis should be placed on boosting the health and immune systems of individuals so they can survive occasional contact with E. Coli rather than trying to create a sterile environment in which nothing is alive. As it turns out, the people susceptible to food-borne illnesses are precisely those individuals who have compromised immune systems due to their intake of vaccines and antibiotics. Thus, it is modern medicine that has made these people vulnerable to food-borne illnesses. Blame the drug companies, not the bacteria.

But the USDA would rather blame the food. Blaming conventional medicine for the harm it has caused to the human immune system is not politically correct. It’s better to blame the food, then use scare tactics to announce yet more outbreaks and hope for a public outcry for widespread food irradiation. And that brings me to the “final solution” on food irradiation.

How the USDA plans to join the FDA in keeping everyone sickThere is a corporate-sponsored plot underway in the U.S. today to keep people sick and deny them access to information about natural cures (such as medicinal foods) that would prevent disease and keep people out of the hospitals. In more than 1,500 articles on this website, I’ve documented the FDA’s criminality, the USDA’s indefensible actions, and the criminal behavior of drug manufacturers who only earn profits if they can find a way to keep the entire population sick and diseased for another generation or two.

Destroying the natural medicine in the food supply sure would be a highly effective way to create more customers for Big Pharma, wouldn’t it? I think it’s all part of the “keep the population sick and diseased” plot being carried out by an evil partnership between drug companies and the U.S. government. We already know that the FDA and USDA work for the corporations, not the People. We already know that they will do practically anything to boost their profits (including conducting medical experiments on infants, drugging schoolchildren, lying to the public, fabricating clinical trials and more). Is it any surprise that they would now attempt a “final solution” on the food supply that kills the food and thereby results in a huge reduction in the population’s intake of the disease-fighting nutrients found in fresh produce?

The social engineering recipe

Pulling this off, of course, requires a bit of social engineering by the USDA in order to force the public into demanding something be done. If you’re the USDA, you can’t just suddenly announce a national food sterilization plan; you have to prime the pump with a bit of dirty work. Here’s the simple plan for accomplishing that, if you’re the USDA:

1) Conduct poor inspections of fresh produce on purpose, in order to cause a large increase in food-borne illness outbreaks. (We’ve seen this increase happen over the last 12 – 24 months.) This can be easily accomplished by reducing the budget of food inspection offices, or removing inspectors from the payroll altogether (which has already happened).

2) Wait for the outbreaks to happen. When consumers get sick, run national press releases announcing how dangerous the food supply is.

3) Watch the consumer reaction as people and lawmakers demand “something be done!”

4) Fudge a study with the American Chemical Society to show that washing doesn’t work and that irradiation is the only solution. Time the release of this news to coincide with the public outcry that “something be done!”

5) Once the public is demanding a solution to food-borne illnesses, roll out a national produce irradiation requirement that sterilizes all the food.

Mission accomplished! This, of course, leads to point #6:

6) Watch the population become increasingly sick and diseased (thanks to the lack of phytonutrients that used to be found in the fresh produce), and cash in on your Big Pharma shares as the population is herded into hospitals for lucrative treatments with monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals.

It’s the same old social engineering trick that’s been used to hoodwink the American people hundreds of times. How do you get the public to support a war in the Middle East? Stage an attack on U.S. soil first, and wait for the public outcry. How do you get the People to support the mass sterilization of their own food supply? Lower your inspection standards, let the sickness spread, and then wait for the public outcry. It’s the way governments get things done these days: They manipulate the public into demanding the things they wanted to accomplish in the first place. These are sometimes called “false flag operations” in a military context, and they’ve been conducted by the U.S. government on numerous occasions, just like they were conducted by Hitler in Nazi Germany to justify his invasions of neighboring countries. You can read about False Flag operations on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

What “they” really want: A dead food supply

Let’s be blunt about this: The corporations running this country (which also run the U.S. government) want the U.S. food supply to be dead. They don’t want foods to be used as medicines, and they sure don’t want the natural medicines found in foods competing with their own patented pharmaceutical medicines (that just happen to earn them a whole lot more money than any food ever did).

Don’t you find it curious that this attack on the food supply is coming out now, right after all this incredible news about the healing power of foods has been hitting the science journals? Every week, it seems, we find out about another amazing health property in a food. Black raspberries reverse oral cancer. Pomegranates halt prostate cancer. Green tea halts breast cancer. The list goes on. Just on this website alone, we’ve probably published 1,000 stories over the last two years on the disease-fighting properties of foods.

The thing to realize here is that many of the healing properties of these foods are destroyed through pasteurization or irradiation. If you’re a government that wants to “take away the People’s medicine,” the fastest way to accomplish that is to mandate the sterilization of the food supply. Kill the foods and you take away the People’s medicine, and that forces the population to use pharmaceuticals instead.

The FDA, for its part, has for many decades conducted its natural medicine censorship campaign, whose only purpose is to deny the People access to accurate information about the healing properties of natural medicines found in foods and herbs. But apparently that wasn’t enough: The Internet came along and people found a way to educate themselves. So since the FDA couldn’t keep the truth about natural medicine bottled up and censored, the government has now apparently decided to just sterilize all the foods, thereby destroying the natural medicine and transforming Mother Nature’s gifts into dead calories.

The USDA’s decisions here are not based on public safety, folks. They’re based on corporate greed. Just look at how they handled the raw almond controversy in these related articles: http://www.naturalnews.com/almonds.html

The USDA as operated today is a front group for wealthy corporations. It is not interested in helping the People. It’s interested in protecting the profits of corporations… even if that means destroying the food supply and turning the population into “dead eaters” who die from other diseases caused by the lack of phytonutrient protection.
How you can help stop this latest atrocity against our food supply

What can you do to stop this? Be prepared to fight irradiation plans with a massive outcry that demands our food supply be protected from radiation. There are two things that need to be accomplished, and of course the USDA and FDA oppose them both:

1) Require the labeling of all irradiated foods with a large “Irradiated” label or sticker.

2) Block any attempts to mandate the irradiation of fresh produce.

Stay tuned to NaturalNews.com for more on this story. We’ll be joining with other pro-consumer groups (like the Organic Consumers Association) to rally our readers in opposition to this food irradiation effort.

I believe we must keep our food supply fresh and alive. (Sounds kinda obvious, huh?) And if there’s a little extra bacteria on the spinach, it’s nothing that a healthy body can’t handle anyway. Take some probiotics and avoid antibiotics, and you’ll be just fine. E. Coli is really only a threat to the health of individuals who have had their immune systems (or intestinal flora) destroyed by pharmaceuticals in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with some living organisms in your milk, on your almonds or on your spinach. Wash your food, get plenty of sunlight and avoid using antibiotics.

The human body is NOT a sterile environment. To try to make our food supply sterile is insane, and anyone who supports the irradiation of the food supply is, in my opinion, supporting a policy of genocide against the American people. To destroy the vitality of the food supply is a criminal act of such immense evil that it stands alongside the worst crimes ever committed against humanity.

You see, it’s not enough for them to poison our water (fluoride), poison our children (vaccines) and lie to us about the sun (skin cancer scare stories). Now they want to destroy our foods… and thereby take away any natural medicine options that might actually keep people healthy and free. Remember: A diseased population is an enslaved population.

Now go eat your Big Mac, drink your Pepsi and don’t ask too many questions.

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About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored more than 1,500 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write articles about any product or company. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce CO2 emissions. He’s also a veteran of the software technology industry, having founded a personalized mass email software product used to deliver email newsletters to subscribers. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening.