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November 17, 2011

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LESSONS FROM ICELAND: THE PEOPLE CAN HAVE THE POWER

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As early progress in Iceland shows since the banking collapse, the 21st century will be the century of the common people. Of us.

The Guardian

The Dutch minister of internal affairs said at a speech during free press day this year: “Law-making is like a sausage, no one really wants to know what is put in it.” He was referring to how expensive the Freedom of Information Act is, and was suggesting that journalists shouldn’t really be asking for so much governmental information. His words exposed one of the core problems in our democracies: too many people don’t care what goes into the sausage, not even the so-called law-makers, the parliamentarians.

If the 99% want to reclaim our power, our societies, we have to start somewhere. An important first step is to sever the ties between the corporations and the state by making the process of lawmaking more transparent and accessible for everyone who cares to know or contribute. We have to know what is in that law sausage; the monopoly of the corporate lobbyist has to end – especially when it comes to laws regulating banking and the internet.

The Icelandic nation only consists 311,000 souls, so we have a relatively small bureaucratic body and can move quicker then in most countries. Many have seen Iceland as the ideal country for experimentation for new solutions in an era of transformation. I agree.

We had the first revolution after the financial troubles in 2008. Due to a lack of transparency, corruption and nepotism, Iceland had the third largest financial meltdown in human history, and it shook us profoundly. The Icelandic people realised that everything we had put our trust in had failed us. One of the demands during the protests that followed – and that resulted in getting rid of the government, the central bank manager and the head of the financial authority – was that we would get to rewrite our constitution. “We” meaning the 99%, not the politicians who had failed us. Another demand was that we should have real democratic tools, such as being able to call directly for a national referendum and dissolve parliament.

As an activist, web developer and poet, I never dreamt of being a politician and nor have I ever wanted to be a part of a political party. That was bound to change during these exceptional times. I helped create a political movement from the various grassroots movements in the wake of the crisis. We were officially created eight weeks prior to the election, and based our structure on horizontalism and consensus. We had no leaders, but rotating spokespeople; we did not define ourselves as left or right but around an agenda based on democratic reform, transparency and bailing out the people, not the banks. We vowed that no one should remain in parliament longer then eight years and our movement would dissolve if our goals had not been achieved within eight years. We had no money, no experts; we were just ordinary people who’d had enough and who needed to have power both within the system and outside it. We got 7% of the vote and four of us entered the belly of the beast.

Many great things have occurred in Iceland since our days of shock in 2008. Our constitution has been rewritten by the people for the people. A constitution is such an important measure of what sort of society people want to live in. It is the social agreement. Once it is passed, our new constitutionwill bring more power to the people and give us proper tools to restrain those in power. The foundation for the constitution was created by 1,000 people randomly selected from the national registry. We elected 25 people to put that vision into words. The new constitution is now in the parliament. It will be up to the 99% to call for a national vote on it so that we inside the parliament know exactly what the nation wants and will have to follow suit. If the constitution passes, we will have almost achieved everything we set out to do. Our agenda was written on various open platforms; direct democracy is the high north of our political compass in everything we do.

Having the tools for direct democracy is not enough though. We have to find ways to inspire the public to participate in co-creating the reality they want to live in. This can only be done by making direct democracy more local. Then people will feel the direct impact of their input. We don’t need bigger systems, we need to downsize them so they can truly serve us and so we can truly shape them.

The capital city of Reykjavík has launched a direct democracy platform, where everyone can put in a suggestion in a community forum about things they want to be done in the city. The city council has to take the top five suggestions and process them every month. Next step is to have a similar system for the parliament, and the logical step after that is to have the same system for the ministries.

From conversations I have had with people from Occupy London it is obvious we are all thinking along the same lines. All systems are down: banking, education, health, social, political – the most logical thing would be to start a fresh system based on values other than consumerism, which maximises profit and self-destruction. We are strong, the power is ours: we are many, they are few. We are living in times of crisis. Let’s embrace this time for it is the only time real changes are possible by the masses.

 

Source: https://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=29907

Filed Under: An Alternative World, Banks, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Democracy, Economy, Education, Human Rights, Income Inequality, Law, Lobbying, Media, Money, Politicians, Politics, Protests, Rights

FINANCIAL TIES BIND MEDICAL SOCIETIES TO DRUG AND DEVICE MAKERS

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

SAN FRANCISCO — From the time they arrived to the moment they laid their heads on hotel pillows, the thousands of cardiologists attending this week’s Heart Rhythm Society conference have been bombarded with pitches for drugs and medical devices.

St. Jude Medical adorns every hotel key card. Medtronic ads are splashed on buses, banners and the stairs underfoot. Logos splay across shuttle bus headrests, carpets and cellphone-charging stations.

At night, a drug firm gets the last word: A promo for the heart drug Multaq stood on each doctor’s nightstand Wednesday.

Who arranged this commercial barrage? The society itself, which sold access to its members and their purchasing power.

Last year’s four-day event brought in more than $5 million, including money for exhibit booths the size of mansions and company-sponsored events. This year, there are even more “promotional opportunities,” as the society describes them.

Concerns about the influence of industry money have prompted universities such as Stanford and the University of Colorado-Denver to ban drug sales representatives from the halls of their hospitals and bar doctors from paid promotional speaking.

Yet, one area of medicine still welcomes the largesse: societies that represent specialists. It’s a relationship largely hidden from public view, said David Rothman, who studies conflicts of interest in medicine as director of the Center on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University.

Professional groups such as the Heart Rhythm Society are a logical target for the makers of drugs and medical devices. They set national guidelines for patient treatments, lobby Congress about Medicare reimbursement issues, research funding and disease awareness, and are important sources of treatment information for the public.

Dozens of such groups nationwide encompass every medical specialty from orthopedics to hypertension.

“What you’re exploring here is the subtle ways in which the companies and professional societies become partners and — wittingly or unwittingly — physicians become agents on behalf of the interests of the sponsoring company,” said Dr. Steven Nissen, chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.

“It has a not very subtle effect on medicine,” said Nissen, an expert on the impact of industry money.

‘This is our business’

Nearly half the $16 million the heart society collected in 2010 came from makers of drugs, catheters and defibrillators used to control abnormal heart rhythms, the group’s website disclosed.

Officials of the Heart Rhythm Society say industry money does not buy influence and is essential to developing new treatments. Still, on Thursday the group unveiled a formal policy that, among other things, requires more detailed disclosure of board members’ industry ties.

“This is our business,” said Dr. Bruce Wilkoff, the incoming society president. “We either get out of the business or we manage these relationships. That’s what we’ve chosen to do.”

The society is one of a handful of groups that make public details about their finances. Most don’t. As non-profits, they must disclose their tax returns but not their specific sources of funding.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, requested the information from the Heart Rhythm Society and 32 other professional associations and groups that promote disease awareness and research.

Their responses and reporting by ProPublica showed wide disparities in money the groups accept from medical companies, what they disclose and how they manage potential conflicts of interest.

With billions of dollars at stake, companies can court entire specialties by helping to bankroll doctors’ groups. The Heart Rhythm Society’s 5,100 members represent a particularly lucrative market.

One implantable cardioverter defibrillator — a device that jolts the heart back to a normal beat — can cost more than $30,000. A single electrophysiologist, a physician specializing in heart-rhythm disorders, can implant dozens a year. World sales of the devices totaled $6.7 billion last year, according to JPMorgan.

All the defibrillator manufacturers are at this week’s conference, including market leaders Medtronic, Boston Scientific and St. Jude Medical, which together gave the society $4 million last year.

These companies and others not only provided financial support to Heart Rhythm but paid many of its board members: Twelve of 18 directors are paid speakers or consultants for the companies, one holds stock, and the outgoing president disclosed research ties, according to the society’s website, which does not specify how much they receive.

Board members at other medical societies have similar arrangements. The American Society of Hypertension does not post disclosures on its website, but records provided to Grassley show that 12 of its 14 board members had financial ties to medical companies.

Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said these groups commonly say the money doesn’t affect what they do, but he has doubts. “I don’t think it’s believable,” he said. “There are a lot of incestuous relationships that really bother me.”

Big Booths Boost Devices

As competition among cardiac-device makers has intensified, so have questions about whether their products are being used and marketed appropriately.

In January, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than one in five patients who received cardiac defibrillators did not meet science-based criteria for getting them.

Weeks later, the Heart Rhythm Society disclosed it was assisting a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the issue.

Two of the society’s biggest funders — Boston Scientific and St. Jude Medical — have paid millions since 2009 to settle federal allegations that they improperly paid kickbacks to unidentified physicians to use their cardiac devices. Neither company admitted wrongdoing.

Top sponsor Medtronic also has disclosed to shareholders that the Department of Justice is investigating the advice it gave purchasers on how to bill Medicare for defibrillators and payments it made to buyers of the devices.

In a statement, Medtronic said societies play an important role in educating physicians about their devices. Boston Scientific declined to comment, and St. Jude did not respond to questions.

At this week’s conference, Medtronic is front and center with a 12,000-square-foot booth to demonstrate its products and allow physicians to examine them.

Medtronic spent $543,000 at last year’s meeting on a similar exhibit, part of $1.6 million it paid to prominently display its name around the conference and fund educational grants. The Minnesota device maker also paid unspecified speaking or consulting fees to eight of the society’s 18 board members.

Your (sponsor) Name Here

These slides show “promotional opportunities” – and their asking price – that the Heart Rhythm Society offered to medical industry sponsors at its 2011 conference. Not everything was sold.

The spending befits the company’s dominance of the world market for implantable defibrillators. It sold more than $3 billion worth last year.

Next booth down is the 8,100-square-foot spread of rival Boston Scientific, with $1.6 billion in defibrillator sales last year. The company spent $1.5 million on the society in 2010 and paid speaking or consulting fees to seven board members.

Physicians must traverse these and other booths to reach “Poster Town,” where the latest research findings, a big draw of the gathering, are displayed. “It’s very hard to get through there without being accosted,” said Dr. Paul D. Varosy, director of cardiac electrophysiology at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Eastern Colorado Health Care System.

‘Tag and Release’

Through the years, groups such as the Heart Rhythm Society have expanded the range of sponsorships they offer to drug and device makers. Companies can now fund Wii game rooms or put their names on conference massage stations and on the shirts of the masseuses.

Some deals give companies more than name exposure. Last month, the American College of Cardiology attached tracking devices to doctors’ conference ID badges. Many physicians were unaware that exhibitors had paid to receive real-time data about who visited their booths, including names, job titles and how much time they spent.

Dr. Westby Fisher, an Evanston, Ill., electrophysiologist, called the practice “Tag and release.” College officials say they’ll do a better job of notifying doctors next year.

Attendees at the Rhythm Society conference also have tracking badges. Society officials say exhibitors are not getting doctors’ personal information.

Two years ago, the American Society of Hypertension teamed with its biggest donor, Daiichi Sankyo, to create a training program for drug company sales reps. The society says about 1,200 Daiichi reps have graduated — at a cost of $1,990 each — allowing them to put the “ASH Accreditation symbol” on business cards.

In fiscal 2009, Daiichi gave the society more than $3.3 million — more than 70% of its total industry funding — according to financial records it provided Grassley. Daiichi makes four hypertension drugs.

“I think it’s an obscenity,” said former ASH president Michael Alderman, professor emeritus at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. “I can see how it would play out in the doctor’s office: ‘I’m a Daiichi sales rep. But let me tell you something: The American Society of Hypertension is backing me.’”

Alderman and some other prominent members of the group quit after a dispute in 2006 about industry influence.

Current ASH President George Bakris said the training program is science-based and doesn’t focus on specific drugs. The reps “ought to know what they are talking about,” he said.

The 1,900-member group has revised its policies since 2006, he said. Financial conflicts disclosed by board members, however, are available only to members, who must request them in writing and explain why they want them, according to the group’s conflict of interest policy.

A Question of Influence

Bakris and leaders of several other professional groups say industry funding is essential for much of what they do. It reduces conference registration fees, subsidizes the cost of continuing medical education courses and provides money for disease awareness.

Dr. Jack Lewin, chief executive of the American College of Cardiology, said the money is helping build registries of cardiac procedures that track side effects and flag whether physicians are using devices in the right patients.

The “circus element” of the exhibit booths doesn’t unduly influence attendees, Lewin said. “I don’t buy a soft drink just because of the advertising… I buy it because I like it.”

Researchers say companies are not spending millions solely for altruistic reasons. “If it weren’t influencing the doctors, they wouldn’t be doing it,” said Dr. Gordon Guyatt, a health policy expert at McMaster University in Ontario.

There are fledgling efforts to push medical societies toward stricter limits on industry funding: 34 groups have signed a voluntary code of conduct calling for public disclosure of funding and limits on how many people on guideline-writing panels have industry ties.

“The general feeling is that the societies need to be independent of the influence of companies,” said Dr. Norman B. Kahn Jr., chief executive of the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, which helped draft the code.

Grassley, too, is continuing his efforts to make the groups publicly accountable. In initial responses to his December 2009 request for information, some said they planned to post financial information on their websites. This week, the senator followed up with letters to some groups, asking why they hadn’t done so.

He hopes the political pressure succeeds: “You might conclude that maybe they don’t want to give the information out because it might be embarrassing.”

 

Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/medical-societies-and-financial-ties-to-drug-and-device-makers-industry

Filed Under: Big Pharma, Biotechnology, Campaigning, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Drugs, Health, Lobbying, Medical Industry, Money, Politics, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Science, Surveillance

PAYING FOR HEALTH: THE COST OF ORGANIC FOOD VERSUS CONVENTIONAL

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Whenever discussing the importance of buying organic, there is one objection that is stated 100% of the time. That objection is: I can’t afford it; I don’t have the money.

I’m here to tell you that you can’t afford NOT to eat organic.

The specifics will be covered below, but here is why you should absolutely buy organic and ditch what you’ve probably been eating.

Health is the Most Important Aspect of Life

Some people, for some reason or another, may not feel this way. But when it comes down to it, your health affects every aspect of your life.

It should be your top priority.

In today’s society, if you aren’t eating organic, you are seriously compromising your health.

Here’s how:

  • Pesticides used on conventional food are a hazard to your health.Substances in conventional food such as high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and aspartame slows down your brain and reduces cognitive ability. They also cause a whole host of other problems discussed in-depth on other pages of this website.
  • Growth hormones and antibiotics, in addition to thegenetically modified feed fed to livestock, cause various health problems.
  • Nutritional value of the food is compromised, leaving you with less vitamins and minerals your body thrives on. This is caused partly by synthetic fertilizer which is used for conventionally grown foods.
  • Many foods are genetically modified. These foods with altered DNA are unsafe for consumption. This is covered extensively on the Genetically Modified Foods page.

It is hard to measure how much money you save buying organic in terms of your health. But one thing is for sure, you DO save money. By buying organic, you won’t be subjecting your body to all the negative aspects of conventional food. Thinking will be enhanced, and you’ll notice your health problems disappear one by one, assuming you are eating a nutrient-rich diet full of organic superfoods and fresh produce. I think you’ll find this very enlightening – the money you actually save by making less visits to the drug store and feeling better.

You’ll save money because:

  • Prescription drug use will lessen.
  • Drugs you buy at the drug store to “fix” headaches, stomach aches, and pains may no longer be needed.
  • You’ll feel better and could find yourself turning to alcohol or cigarettes less.
  • Organic and whole foods fill you faster, and therefore you will not need as much food to satisfy your physical hunger.

So what is the difference in cost?

The Difference in Costs

It is true, SOMETIMES organic food costs more directly than conventional food, which is often bought from large food manufacturers. However, there is a a reason for the price difference, and it often has to do with quality. Certified organic foods with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) seal will often be the foods that cost more than conventional products and even other organic foods that do not qualify for the seal.

Certified organic foods may cost more for these reasons:

  • Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are prohibited. This leaves organic farmers with more expensive methods for controlling pests, diseases, weeds, and providing more nutrients for crops to grow.
  • Organic farming is more labor intensive and takes more time.
  • Yields for organic farmers are typically lower than those of conventional farmers. They end up with less crops while putting out more time and using more expensive means of growing.
  • Ultimately, organic farmers make less money than conventional farmers, and must increase price to make some profit and survive. The organic farms are usually smaller and don’t benefit from the economies of scale that larger growers get.
  • Organic farmers don’t receive federal subsidies like conventional farmers do.

Not all foods qualify for the organic seal, however. The reason I’m mentioning this is that some organic foods don’t have to follow such strict rules. So, many times organic food may only cost a little bit more, the same, or even less!

It is often just a matter of good, better, and best. At least TRY to buy organic and see how much more you’re spending. Prices vary based on the food and the area you buy in, so the only real way to know is to do the experiment for yourself.

If you find you’re spending too much in your eyes, don’t buy all organic. Another great way to consume high quality organic foods on a budget is home gardening. Purchase some 100% organic non-GMO seeds, and get to work!

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/paying-for-health-cost-of-organic-food.html

Filed Under: An Alternative World, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Earth, Eco-system, Education, Environment, Food, Food, Health, Income Inequality, Money, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Rights, Self-Sustainability, Survival

GEORGE ORWELL ON WAR

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The reason why George Orwell seems to have so accurately predicted what we are in the midst of today is precisely because it is nothing new.

We have a chance — once again — to fight the tyranny that has landed on our doorstep.

Let’s see if we can get it right this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/05/quote-of-day-george-orwell-on-war.html

Filed Under: An Alternative World, Capitalism, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, CYBER WARFARE, Democracy, Earth, Law, Martial Law, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Nuclear, Politicians, Politics, Propaganda, Radiation, Revolution, Rights, War

WORLD’S OCEANS IN PERIL

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Climate change is causing our oceans to become increasingly acidic, threatening to alter life as we know it.

“From a climate change/fisheries/pollution/habitat destruction point of view, our nightmare is here, it’s the world we live in.”

This bleak statement about the current status of the world’s oceans comes from Dr Wallace Nichols, a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences. Al Jazeera asked Dr Nichols, along with several other ocean experts, how they see the effects climate change, pollution and seafood harvesting are having on the oceans.

Their prognosis is not good.

Dr Nancy Knowlton is a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. Her research has focused on the impact of climate change on coral reefs around the world, specifically how increasing warming and acidification from carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have affected oceans.

While she is unable to say if oceans have crossed a tipping point, Dr Knowlton offered this discouraging assessment, “We know it’s bad and we know it’s getting worse, and if we care about having coral reefs, there’s no question we have to do something about CO2 emissions or we won’t have coral reefs, as we do now, sometime between 2050-2100.”

Since at least one quarter of all species of life in the oceans are associated with coral reefs, losing them could prove catastrophic.

“Coral reefs are like giant apartment complexes for all these species, and there is intimacy,” Dr Knowlton explained. “If that starts breaking down, these organisms, which include millions of species around the world, lose their homes. Even if they aren’t eating coral, they depend on it.”

CO2 is the main greenhouse gas resulting from human activities in terms of its warming potential and longevity in the atmosphere, and scientists continually monitor its concentration.

In March 1958, when high-precision monitoring began, atmospheric CO2 was 315.71 parts per million (ppm). Today, atmospheric CO2 is approaching 390 ppm.

350 ppm is the level many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments say is the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere.

“You see evidence of the impact of climate change on the oceans everywhere now,” Dr Nichols said. “The collapsing fisheries, the changes in the Arctic and the hardship communities that live there are having to face, the frequency and intensity of storms, everything we imagined 30 to 40 years ago when the environmental movement was born, we’re dealing with those now … the toxins in our bodies, food web, and in the marine mammals, it’s all there.”

Bleak scenario

The Zoological Society of London reported in July 2009 that “360 is now known to be the level at which coral reefs cease to be viable in the long run.”

In September 2009 Nature magazine stated that atmospheric CO2 levels above 350 ppm “threaten the ecological life-support systems” of the planet and “challenge the viability of contemporary human societies.”

In their October 2009 issue, the journal Science offered new evidence of what the earth was like 20 million years ago, which was the last time we had carbon levels this high. At that time, sea levels rose over 30 metres and temperatures were as much as 18 degrees C higher than they are today.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, carbon emissions have already risen “far above even the bleak scenarios.”

Oceans absorb 26 per cent (2.3bn metric tonnes) of the carbon human activities released into the atmosphere annually, according to a 2010 study published by Nature Geocience and The Global Carbon Project.

Unfortunately, global carbon emissions, rather than slowing down in order to stem climate change, are continuing to increase.

At a 2008 academic conference Exeter University scientist Kevin Anderson showed slides and graphs “representing the fumes that belch from chimneys, exhausts and jet engines, that should have bent in a rapid curve towards the ground, were heading for the ceiling instead”.

He concluded it was “improbable” that we would be able to stop short of 650 ppm, even if rich countries adopted “draconian emissions reductions within a decade”.

That number, should it come to pass, would mean that global average temperatures would increase five times as much as previous models predicted.

According to the National Climate Data Centre in the US, 2010 was the warmest year on record. September 2011 was the 8th warmest September on record since 1880. At 15.53°C, August’s global temperature is 0.53 C higher than the 20th Century average for that month.

Even if CO2 emissions were completely stopped immediately, ongoing impacts from climate change would take centuries to stop.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a study in 2009 showing that a new understanding of ocean physics proved that “changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than a thousand years after carbon dioxide emissions are completely stopped”.

Increasing acidification

Many factors concern Knowlton and Nichols, but one in particular, the increasing acidification of the oceans, has been gaining more attention as of late.

Historically, oceans have been chemically constant, but less than 10 years ago oceanographers were shocked when researchers noticed the seas were acidifying - 30 per cent more acidic - as they absorbed more of the carbon dioxide humans have emitted into the atmosphere, a process that Britain’s Royal Society has described as “essentially irreversible.”

The oceans are already more acidic than they have been at any time in the last 800,000 years. At current rates, by 2050 it will be more corrosive than they have been in the past 20 million years.

Acidification occurs when CO2 combines with seawater to form carbonic acid.

Sarah Cooley, a marine geochemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, wrote this about acidification:

“As CO2 levels driven by fossil fuel use have increased in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, so has the amount of CO2 absorbed by the world’s oceans, leading to changes in the chemical make-up of seawater. Known as ocean acidification, this decrease in pH creates a corrosive environment for some marine organisms such as corals, marine plankton, and shellfish that build carbonate shells or skeletons.”

Already ocean pH has slipped from 8.2 to 8.1, and the consensus estimate is that the pH will drop to 7.8 by the end of this century.

Acidification has been the research focus of biological oceanographer Dr Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez with the National Oceanography Centre at Britain’s University of Southampton. She has researched how phytoplankton, which are the major contributors to sinking carbon in the oceans, are able to absorb carbon now and into the future when human impact on the atmosphere is changing the chemistry of the oceans and how this will affect the oceans ability to sink carbon in the future.

“The oceans are becoming more alkaline now and this will affect marine life and marine animals and plants,” Iglesias-Rodriguez told Al Jazeera. “The chalk producing calcifying organisms are introducing chalk into these increasingly acidic conditions, and it is dissolving.”

These chalk produced by these organisms traps and stores carbon, so when increasing acidification decreases the amount of calcium carbonate, it decreases the ocean’s ability to store carbon.

“Calcification affects fisheries because many fish’s diet is based on these organisms, so this has food security impacts as well,” added Iglesias-Rodriguez. “The changes we are seeing now are happening faster than they have for 55 million years. The worry is that these organisms may not be able to keep up with these changes.”

In this kind of environment, shellfish cannot produce thick enough shells. By 2009, the Pacific oyster industry was reporting 80 per cent mortality for oyster larvae due to the corrosive nature of the water.

“Acidification has the potential to change food security around the world, so I think it’s incumbent upon the entire world to recognise this and deal with it,” Cooley told Al Jazeera.

Cooley said that less developed countries that are more dependent on seafood will have less to eat as acidification progresses, and they will be forced to migrate somewhere where there is a better food supply.

Further complicating the situation, rising sea levels, also caused by climate change, will affect migration patterns from island nations as well.

In addition to food security issues, increasing acidification will also cause coral reefs to be degraded, which will affect tourism, coastal protection, and heritage values of coastal regions.

Prof Matthias Wolff is a fisheries biologist and marine ecosystem ecologist working for Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Ecology, as well as a research professor and professor at university of Bremen, Germany.

“Plankton, organisms that produce much of the carbon in the sea and coral, are dying off,” he told Al Jazeera. “So people believe that CO2 level may double from the pre-human times to more than 400-500 ppm by the end of the century, which would be a unique situation in history. This would have a tremendous effect on these organisms that would affect the whole ecosystem.”

Cooley points out that while some species will benefit from increasing acidification, others like corals and molluscs will suffer, along with others that are pH sensitive that cannot control their intercellular biology as well.

“We think there will be shifts in ecosystems, and the current array of species present in an ecosystem is going to shift and there will likely be a new dominant species,” she said. “Past studies have shown us that any real decrease in species in an ecosystem can be a bad thing. On land, we see that monoculture fields are really susceptible to a virus or bug. So if acidification decreases diversity, it creates a less stable system in the future. We’re anticipating, if things go as they are going now, we really could be seeing some profound shifts in what we know and what we currently benefit from.”

Myriad problems

In addition to climate change and acidification, there are many other problems that concern scientists as well.


“Marine pollution, this is a big issue,” Dr Iglesias-Rodriguez said, “There is this idea that oceans have unlimited inertia, but the effect of nano-particles of plastic getting into marine animals and the food chain and these are affecting fish fertility rates, and this effects food security, and on coastal populations. Pollution is having a huge impact on the oceans, and is urgent and needs to be dealt with.”

Dr Nichols describes the crisis of the oceans as a three-fold problem.

“We’re putting too much in, in all forms of pollution, we’re taking too much out by fishing, overfishing, and bi-catch, and we’re destroying the edge of the ocean - these places where there is the most biodiversity like reefs, mangroves, sea grass, etc.”

Nichols said he finds plastic on literally every beach he visits across the globe, and added, “Probably every sea turtle on the planet interacts with plastic at some point in its life.”

Nichols believes that, rather than the polar bear, sea turtles should be the “poster species” for climate change.

“The sex of sea turtles is temperature dependent, so as temperature warms more males are produced, cooling produces more females, and obviously you need the right mix to maintain numbers,” he explained, “We’re seeing some eggs literally cooking on beaches now because the temperature has moved out of the tolerable range.”

Prof Wolff explained another issue complicating the situation.

“The oceans warm up, and this affects spatial distribution of fish,” he explained, “Those needing colder waters need to migrate and change the distribution, other fish can extend their distribution greatly when the water warms, so now they can reach polar regions where they weren’t before. So there is a great change in distributional patterns of the resources of the fisheries to be expected in the future.”

Wolff points to Greenland fisheries as an example of how an area warms up, there are longer periods for fish production, while in other areas like Brazil and Indonesia, productive areas are shrinking and there will be a great decrease in fishing potential.

“This is already happening,” said Wolff.

Dr Knowlton is concerned about how increasing ocean temperatures are causing the bleaching of coral reefs.

“Bleaching causes a lot of problems for corals, because if it’s severe and prolonged the algae starves to death because the amount of nutrition coral needs is not there,” she said. “The 1998 El Nino bleached 80 per cent of the corals in the Indian Ocean and 20 per cent of them died.”

She is concerned by the fact that high temperature events like the 1998 El Nino are becoming increasingly common, and added, “We’ve been having bleaching for close to 30 years now.”

Like others, Knowlton sees poor water quality from pollution, overfishing and other problems that are causing ocean conditions to become increasingly unfavourable for corals.

She believes if there is not a major shift to correct the pollution problem, the next 10 years are going to be bleak.

“Increasing numbers of dead zones and collapsing fisheries,” Knowlton says is what we can expect, “Then ultimately the collapse of these deep ecosystems that are dependent on things like coral reefs.”

What to do?

Despite these grave concerns, Knowlton feels there is something that can be done.

“Even though the long term prognosis with business as usual is pretty grim, we know there are smaller areas where reefs are protected and those are very healthy, and we can reduce local stresses and that builds resilience in ecosystems.”

Prof Wolff pointed out that, while more than 75 per cent of fish stocks are overfished or already depleted, there are a number around the globe that are regenerating.

“In 2009 we saw that more than 50 per cent of overfished areas are being rebuilt because they responded to the situation of heavy over-exploitation, so I’m a little more optimistic than many other scientists. By reducing fishing, we can allow the stocks to rebuild.”

But he believes that in order for this to happen, we need to create more protected areas in the oceans.

According to Wolff, roughly 10 per cent of our lands are protected, but far less than 1 per cent of oceans are protected.

“We need to aim for 10 to 20 per cent of oceans being protected, because that is what is needed to maintain ecosystem functioning and to rebuild the stocks,” he said.

Wolff has been working in the Galapagos Islands on conservation, and cites them as an example of what can happen with protected areas, since there has been no fishery there since 1998.

“If you go diving there you see an abundance of large fish and sharks, which I’ve never seen anywhere else, you see 200 to 300 sharks in one dive,” he said. “To me, this is a promising example of the way we need to go. We need more money for this than for subsidies for fisheries, which is ridiculous. Right now, they are getting as much money as we’d need to manage protected areas of 15 per cent of the oceans.”

Nichols believes it is no longer about trying to avert disaster, but more along the lines of mitigating the problems that are already upon us.

“I think we’re in it right now,” he said, “So it’s not about, here’s how much time we have. The clock in many ways has already run out. We’re still growing our use of fossil fuels, we’re not even in a mode of trimming them down, same with our use of plastic and the plastic pollution generated from it. There’s more conversation about this than ever, but it’s not translating into societal change or evolution.”

Nichols makes his point by way of example of ocean types.

“If ocean 1.0 is the pristine natural ocean, 2.0 is the ocean we have now under the petroleum product regime of 100 years of use, and 3.0 is the future ocean,” he said. “It can either be a dead ocean, or we can come up with some very innovative solutions that right now people aren’t even talking about.”

He said we can come up with new ways of getting food from the oceans that don’t involve long line fishing and bottom trawling, as well as eliminating packaging and taking a zero-waste approach to consumer goods, both of which he says are possible, “if we can muster the political and personal motivation.”

“We could have a healthy ocean in 50 years if we make some bold moves, it wouldn’t be 1.0 or 2.0, but it would be a cleaner from a more responsible set of actions for how we get energy from the oceans and how we use them as a source of food.”

If that is not done, then we most likely will face a future predicted in a 2008 report co-authored by NASA’s James Hansen, a leading climate scientist, titled, Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?

“Humanity today, collectively, must face the uncomfortable fact that industrial civilisation itself has become the principal driver of global climate,” reads the report, “If we stay our present course, using fossil fuels to feed a growing appetite for energy-intensive lifestyles, we will soon leave the climate of the Holocene, the world of prior human history.

The eventual response to doubling pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 likely would be a nearly ice-free planet, preceded by a period of chaotic change with continually changing shorelines.”

 

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/11/2011111653856937268.html

Filed Under: Campaigning, Climate, Consumer, Corporations, Earth, Eco-system, Education, Environment, Health, Lobbying, Ocean, Politics, Pollution, Rights, Water, Wealthy Elite

HOW CONSERVATIVES EXPLOIT THE MYTH OF “WEALTHY ELDERLY” TO JUSTIFY GUTTING SOCIAL SECURITY

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Right-wingers somehow think that seniors with incomes under $30,000 a year must sacrifice to balance the budget

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The austerity gang seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare has been vigorously promoting the myth that the elderly are an especially affluent and privileged group. Their argument is that because of their relative affluence, cuts to the programs upon which they depend is a simple matter of fairness. There were two reports released last week that call this view into question.

The first was a report from the Census Bureau that used a new experimental poverty index. This index differed from the official measure in several ways; most importantly it includes the value of government non-cash benefits, like food stamps. It also adjusts for differences in costs by area and takes account of differences in health spending by age.

While this new measures showed a slightly higher overall poverty rate the most striking difference between the new measure and the official measure was the rise in the poverty rate among the elderly. Using the official measure, the poverty rate for the elderly is somewhat lower than for the adult population as a whole, 9 percent for the elderly compared with 14 percent for the non-elderly adult population. However with the new measure, the poverty rate for the elderly jumps to 14 percent, compared with 13 percent for non-elderly adults.

By this higher measure, we have not been nearly as successful in reducing poverty among the elderly as we had believed. While Social Security has done much to ensure retirees an income above the poverty line, the rising cost of health care expenses not covered by Medicare has been an important force operating in the opposite direction.

The other report suggests that this situation could get worse in the years ahead. The Pew Research Center released a study on wealth by age cohort. While many observers (including me) focused on the change in wealth over the last 25 years, what is perhaps more striking about this study are the levels of wealth it reported.

The report showed that the median wealth for a household over age 65 is $170,500. This measure includes everything that they own, including equity in their home. With the median house selling for roughly $170,000, this study implies that the typical household over age 65 would essentially have enough money to pay off their mortgage. They would then have nothing else to live on except their Social Security.

The situation looks even worse for the near elderly: the cohorts between the ages of 55 to 64. (Wealth typically peaks in these years, so these people are unlikely to have more wealth when they cross age 65.) The median wealth for this group was reported as $162,000. Using the Pew findings, the typical household in the 55 to 64 year old cohort would fall 5 percent short of the money needed to pay off the mortgage on the median home.

Alternatively, if they were to use this wealth to buy an annuity at age 65, it would be sufficient to get them an annuity of roughly $10,000 a year or just over $800 a month. This would supplement Social Security income that comes to less than $1,200 a month for a typical worker. The monthly premium for Medicare Part B is $100, which would leave $1,100 from a monthly Social Security check for a typical retiree.

Note that this calculation assumes that they have no equity in their home so they would either being paying rent or still paying off a mortgage out of this money. It is also worth remembering that the Medicare premium is projected to rise considerably more than the cost of living each year. This means that as retirees age, rising Medicare premiums will be reducing the buying power of their Social Security check each year. And this is the median; half of all seniors will have less income than this to support themselves.

This is the group that the Very Serious People in Washington want to target for their deficit reduction. While the Very Serious People debate whether people who earn $250,000 a year are actually rich when it comes to restoring the tax rates of the 1990s, they somehow think that seniors with incomes under $30,000 a year must sacrifice to balance the budget. There is a logic here, but it ain’t pretty.

 

Source: https://www.alternet.org/story/153079/how_conservatives_exploit_the_myth_of_%22wealthy_elderly%22_to_justify_gutting_social_security/?page=entire

 

Filed Under: America, Banks, Capitalism, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Democracy, Economy, Health, Income Inequality, Law, Lobbying, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Politicians, Politics, Poverty, Propaganda, Protests, Revolution, Rights, Taxes, Welfare Benefits

DEPT. OF JUSTICE SAYS LYING ON THE INTERNET IS A FEDERAL CRIME

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is backing a controversial component of an existing computer fraud law that makes it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or embellish your weight on an online dating profile such as eHarmony. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a 25-year-old law that mainly addresses hacking, password trafficking, and computer viruses, should enforce criminal penalties for users who violate websites’ terms of service agreements, alleges the Justice Department.

In a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security, federal officials deliberated over cyber threats to the country’s infrastructure and a perplexing interpretation of the law that makes lying on the Internet a crime. During the hearing, titled “Cyber Security: Protecting America’s New Frontier,” the DOJ’s deputy computer crime chief Richard Downing addressed Congress, asserting that the CFAA law must allow “prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provide[r].”

“Businesses should have confidence that they can allow customers to access certain information on the business’s servers, such as information about their own orders and customer information, but that customers who intentionally exceed those limitations and obtain access to the business’s proprietary information and the information of other customers can be prosecuted,” said Downing’s prepared remarks.

This interpretation of the law was applied by the DOJ in 2008 to prosecute Lori Drew, a woman who created a fake MySpace account and cyber attacked a 13-year-old girl who then committed suicide. The department contended that MySpace’s terms of service restricts users from creating fraudulent profiles, so Drew was convicted of violating the CFAA (although her conviction was dismissed in 2009). “It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime,” U.S. District Judge George Wu indicatedin his 2009 verdict, which acquitted Drew of the charges. “And therefore it criminalizes what would be a breach of contract.”

The DOJ justified the move by enforcing a dubious section of the CFAA that was supposedly never intended to be used in that manner, which is a general-purpose prohibition on any computer-related action that “exceeds authorized access” — meaning, a website’s terms of service determines what is “authorized” or not. This is how Downing put it in his testimony:

These are just a few cases, but this tool is used routinely. The plain meaning of the term ‘exceeds authorized access,’ as used in the CFAA, prohibits insiders from using their otherwise legitimate access to a computer system to engage in improper and often malicious activities. We believe that Congress intended to criminalize such conduct, and we believe that deterring it continues to be important. Because of this, we are highly concerned about the effects of restricting the definition of ‘exceeds authorized access’ in the CFAA to disallow prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider.

In an August letter to the Senate, the ACLU, FreedomWorks, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Americans for Tax reform, warned that this convoluted interpretation of the law could make ignoring such “terms” a felony. “If a person assumes a fictitious identity at a party, there is no federal crime,” the letter read. “Yet if they assume that same identity on a social network that prohibits pseudonyms, there may again be a CFAA violation. This is a gross misuse of the law.” Orin Kerr, a former DOJ computer crime prosecutor and now law professor at George Washington University, says the government’s contentions are anemic, as he told CNET prior to the hearing:

The Justice Department claims to have an interest in enforcing Terms of Use and computer use policies under the CFAA, but its examples mostly consist of cases in which the conduct described has already been criminalized by statutes other than the CFAA. Further, my proposed statutory fix… would preserve the government’s ability to prosecute the remaining cases DOJ mentions while not raising the civil liberties problems of the current statute.

In combating the statute, Kerr is requesting that Congress follow the Senate Judiciary Committee’s lead, which recently approved an amendment to a pending bill that would narrow the “exceeding authorized access” interpretation of the CFAA. The amendment says the law would “not include access in violation of a contractual obligation or agreement, such as an acceptable use policy or terms of service agreement, with an Internet service provider, Internet website, or non-government employer, if such violation constitutes the sole basis for determining that access to a protected computer is unauthorized.” Downing and the DOJ requested that the House not approve the amendment.

However, beyond the devious doings of Facebook users and online dating prowlers are countless other terms of service stipulations that are littered throughout the World Wide Web. For instance, many Internet media outlets disclose various restrictions for users posting comments under articles, blogs, and forums. But how many people read the terms of service under the comments section of a website? What happens if a website’s terms of service contains a clause that prohibits users from posting opposing viewpoints? According to the DOJ, such actions are subject to prosecution.

“Terms of Use can be arbitrary and even nonsensical,” said Kerr, relaying the above note. “Anyone can set up a website and announce whatever Terms of Use they like. Perhaps the Terms of Use will declare that only registered Democrats can visit the website; or only people who have been to Alaska; or only people named “Frank.” Under the Justice Department’s interpretation of the statute, all of these Terms of Use can be criminally enforced… I do not see any serious argument why such conduct should be criminal.”

Lying on the Internet may be immoral, but should it really be criminalized by law? Moreover, is this the same DOJ headed by Attorney General Eric Holder who’s admitted lying about the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal?

Indeed, the Big Brother police state, which continues to assail Americans’ civil liberties, strikes yet again.

 

Source: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/9805-doj-says-lying-on-the-internet-is-a-federal-crime

Filed Under: America, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, CYBER WARFARE, Democracy, Education, Human Rights, Internet, Law, Lobbying, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Occupy, Police, Politicians, Politics, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Surveillance, Telecommunication, The Hidden Empire, Truth, Wealthy Elite

ARE YOU READY FOR AN EMP EVENT?

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

An electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is an abrupt burst of electromagnetic radiation.

What causes an EMP? To start with, certain types of high energy explosions, such as a nuclear explosion, will surely cause an EMP. Likewise, an EMP can be the result of a suddenly fluctuating magnetic field. Or, as I have mentioned before, it can be the result of Coronal Mass Eject (CME) from solar activity. But perhaps most sobering of all, is the possibility of a man-made EMP weapon that is purposely deployed in order to wreak devastation on our planet. Scary stuff.

Regardless of the trigger, an EMP can be devastating to the power grid, resulting in rapidly changing electrical fields that can create fluctuating electrical currents and wild voltage surges. Bottom line? The electronic gizmos we have come to rely on would be toast. The microchips would be fried or so severely damaged that they would become useless.

So what would life be like following a massive EMP event or episode? There would be no power, no transportation systems, no communication systems, no banking, no Internet, and — no surprise — no food and no water delivery systems. This would truly be an End of The World As We Know it situation.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • What if the power went out and never came back on? Could you fend for yourself?
  • Could you keep yourself warm in the winter and cool in the summer?
  • Where would you find food?
  • What would you use for money if credit cards and ATM’s no longer worked?
  • How would you get from one place to another without transportation?
  • How would you wash your clothes?
  • How would you keep yourself healthy if sanitation systems were no longer functional and medicine could no longer be manufactured.
  • And the biggest question of all, how would you communicate with the rest of the world?

An electromagnetic pulse could potentially fry the vast majority of all the microchips in the United States. In an instant, nearly all of our electronic devices would be rendered useless.

Back in 2004 the Wall Street Journal wrote:

No American would necessarily die in the initial attack, but what comes next is potentially catastrophic. The pulse would wipe out most electronics and telecommunications, including the power grid. Millions could die for want of modern medical care or even of starvation since farmers wouldn’t be able to harvest crops and distributors wouldn’t be able to get food to supermarkets. Commissioner Lowell Wood calls EMP attack a ‘giant continental time machine’ that would move us back more than a century in technology to the late 1800s.

Now you know that I am not a doom and gloomer. Quite the contrary. I am an optimist to the nth degree. Yet even the optimist is sobered at the ramifications of an EMP and especially at the prospect of a weapon-based EMP.

And so we prepare. And we prepare some more. It quite possibly could be an obsession. But we just can’t stop since the ramifications of not being prepared could mean sickness, starvation, and even death. Most certainly the government will not be there to take care of us and, even if they tried, well, let’s just say that the power dudes will be so busy protecting their own that there will be little attention paid to the blokes in trenches.

This is a call for Prepper’s to unite in spirit! Here is what you can do:

  • Learn to grow food in whatever area you have available. Try hydroponics or a square foot garden. They work in limited spaces.
  • Create multiple backup water systems using a combination of stored water and filtration systems.
  • Learn to cook outdoors over an open fire.
  • Seek out like minded folks that will barter for things they need in return for items that you have available.
  • Put up defense systems to protect your homestead.
  • Take up hobbies that require no money and no electronic do-dads to keep you entertained.
  • And, for goodness sake, store away at least year’s worth of basic, nutritious foods that will get you by while you are learning to survive under the most trying of circumstances.

The prepper movement is exploding, and if you are reading this article you are either part of that explosion or getting ready to hop on board and hit the ground running. Educate yourself, stock up on essentials, learn to be self sufficient, and prepare for the worst with a positive mindset.

I hope an EMP never happens. But if it does, I want to be ready to fend for myself and to continue to live a rich and rewarding life in spite of it all.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/are-you-ready-for-emp-event.html

Filed Under: An Alternative World, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Earth, Education, Energy, Environment, Health, Politics, Power Grid - Electrical - Et Al, Revolution, Self-Sustainability

ANTI-HACKING LAW CRIMINALIZES MOST COMPUTER USERS, FORMER PROSECUTOR SAYS

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The nation’s premier anti-hacking law poses a threat to the civil liberties of millions of Americans who use computers and the internet and could lead to the arrest and prosecution of many users who violate the law on a regular basis, says a former federal prosecutor who wants the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act revised.

“In the Justice Department’s view, the CFAA criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake name on Facebook or lying about your weight in an online dating profile. That situation is intolerable,” says Orin Kerr, George Washington University law professor and a former federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in the Criminal Division.

Currently, the law punishes anyone who “intentionally … exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains information from any protected computer.”

Kerr is testifying on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, and is asking Congress to amend the law to narrow how prosecutors can interpret what it means to exceed authorized access on a computer.

When the legislation was first enacted in the 1980s, it specifically targeted computer hacking and other computer misuse, Kerr argues in a written version of the testimony (.pdf) he plans to give. But since then, Congress has broadened the statute significantly four times, expanding the law’s reach and rendering it “unconstitutionally vague.”

The law as it currently stands allows prosecutors to criminally prosecute users for violating an internet service provider’s terms of service agreement, something that would normally be a breach of contract issue handled in civil court rather than through criminal prosecution.

In 2008, federal prosecutors used this exact interpretation of the CFAA when they charged Missouri resident Lori Drew under the law in order to punish her for her role in a cyber-bullying incident that led a teenage girl to commit suicide.

Prosecutors argued that Drew was guilty under the CFAA for violating MySpace’s terms-of-service agreement in setting up a fraudulent account that was used to bully the teenage girl. The government argued that violating MySpace’s terms of service was the legal equivalent of computer hacking.

Drew was convicted on misdemeanor charges, but a judge subsequently threw out the verdict on grounds that the CFAA was constitutionally vague and that upholding the verdict would set a precedent for anyone who breaches similar contracts to be criminally prosecuted.

Kerr was part of Drew’s defense team as pro-bono co-counsel.

Prosecutors also used the CFAA last year to charge a ring of online ticketbrokers who wrote a script to circumvent CAPTCHA challenges used by TicketMaster and other ticket vendors to detect and slow down computers attempting to purchase large numbers of tickets.

Prosecutors asserted that bypassing CAPTCHA constituted unauthorized access of ticket-seller servers. U.S. District Judge Katharine S. Hayden allowed the case to proceed, saying, “The Court is satisfied that the indictment sufficiently alleges the elements of unauthorized access and exceeding authorized access under the CFAA, and sufficiently alleges conduct demonstrating defendants’ knowledge and intent to gain unauthorized access.”

The defendants ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and hacking.

In arguing that the statute needs to be revised, Kerr is calling on Congress to follow the Senate’s lead. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved an amendment to a pending bill that would limit the interpretation of exceeding authorized access under the CFAA. Per the amendment, it would ‘‘not include access in violation of a contractual obligation or agreement, such as an acceptable use policy or terms of service agreement, with an Internet service provider, Internet website, or non-government employer, if such violation constitutes the sole basis for determining that access to a protected computer is unauthorized.”

Kerr says this would still allow prosecutors to pursue cases against government employees for misusing sensitive government databases, but would not sweep in an entire class of other people for merely violating a contractual agreement with a web site or their ISP.

 

Source: https://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/anti-hacking-law-too-broad/

Filed Under: America, Banks, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Consumer, Corporations, Corruption, Education, Internet, Law, Lobbying, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Occupy, Police, Politicians, Politics, Prison, Privacy, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Science, Surveillance, Telecommunication, The Hidden Empire, Wealthy Elite

THE COMING PANDEMIC: EXPECT ALL PROTECTIVE SYSTEMS TO FAIL

November 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The attacks of September 11 were quickly followed by a biological weapons attack in which government-grade weaponized anthrax killed five people and sickened numerous others.

This attack, the genesis of which remains unsolved ten years later, was used to justify the United States Congress pumping over $60 billion dollars into a “biodefense “ program which has failed in every parameter that can be measured.

In fact, it appears that all purportedly protective measures, developed nationally and internationally, have fatal flaws in their design which may function to ensure the likelihood and success of a biological weapons attack.

On The Domestic Front

Even the commission created by Congress in 2007 to evaluate all defenses for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats gave our biodefense program a failing grade.

Ten years after the anthrax mailings (which went to Congressmen who might have voted against the USA Patriot Act, as well as to certain media outlets), the US has not even developed a second generation anthrax vaccine. Over 100 million dollars has been allocated to develop this vaccine, but ten years after the biological weapons attack on our country our vaccine stockpiles consist of smallpox vaccines as well as the original anthrax vaccine (reputed to cause Gulf War syndrome) and little else.

Authorized under the Bush administration, Project BioWatch has developed and placed sensors in a number of large cities to serve as an advance detection system for an airborne biological attack, but this program has come under scrutiny and critics have alleged that this may be useless due to prior knowledge of the sensor locations by terror groups.

Since 9/11, there has also been a proliferation of what are called “biosafety labs” (BSL’s) level threes and fours. The 3’s and 4’s, so designated because of the enhanced safety protocols at use in the advanced level labs, handle the most dangerous bugs known to man. There are at least 17 such BSL-4’s now in the US and, according to documents released by the DOJ and DOE, over 1350 BSL-3’s. These numbers are dramatically up since the events of September 2001.

The US government maintains a list of pathogens and toxins which have the potential of causing grave harm to human or plant life. The Center for Disease Control is mandated to keep track of labs handling select agents, but is very cagey in terms of releasing the information about the numbers and locations of these facilities, preferring instead to tender denials and offer false information when confronted with the proliferation of these labs.

There is evidence that the US has developed an aggressive biological weapons program, despite our government’s insistence that we abandoned our bioweapons program forty years ago, under President Nixon. The evidence may be found at Sierra Army Depot (and other military bases) where these weapons appear to be stockpiled.

Locking in on the Threat

There is growing alarm among certain sectors that the US may be planning another “event” using biological weapons, and may attempt to either blame this on terrorists or on some sort of “natural” epidemic. It therefore becomes imperative to determine what sort of attack we may be facing and what we can do to protect ourselves.

According to Dr. Kenneth Alibek, a Russian scientist who came over to this side of the fence and is now working on biological weapons issues at Battelle, there are essentially three ways in which a biological attack could be launched. Writes Alibek:

Biological weapons can deployed in three ways:

  • contamination of food or water supplies, which are then ingested by the victims
  • release of infected vectors, such as mosquitoes or fleas, which then bite the victims
  • creation of an aerosol cloud, which is then inhaled by the victims (or if the targets are plants, the cloud then settles on and infects the plants).

The probability of a general airborne attack is unlikely. An airborne attack could not be easily controlled and carries the strong likelihood of affecting unintended targets. One must therefore look at other delivery systems that carry an ability to lock onto the desired targets and pass over those who have been predesignated to survive.

Work on reconfiguring the water system, countrywide, began right about the same time as the US signed onto the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in the early 1970s. This reconfigured “double line” water system provides the opportunity for a nearly “surgical” attack on predetermined targets.

Possibly advancing to the top of the list in terms of all-time government deception was President Nixon’s public announcement in 1969 that the US was ending its biological weapons program. It is now apparent that at the same time that President Nixon disavowed our bioweapons program and the US ratified the BWC, plans were being developed and executed to lay down a second main line in cities and towns throughout America, and plans to use the water system as a delivery system were cemented.

A chemist in Eastern Washington State, Dave Duncan, had volunteered in 2006 to run chemical analyses on samples of water which had ostensibly come from the mixture of the two water mains. His initial tests revealed that the specific gravity of the sample was significantly skewed when compared to normal tap water. Duncan, a fundamentalist Christian, became concerned about the implications of his work, declaring that “if people were going to be killed off, it must be God’s will.” Shortly after vacating his work on analyzing the water sample, Duncan succumbed to an aggressive form of colon cancer.

Another delivery system has been uncovered, which may dovetail with the double line water system, for the delivery of a lethal dose of toxins or chemicals. For numerous medications being manufactured by Big Pharma, there are now imposter “death drugs” being quietly manufactured, as well. These look-alike doppelgangers, which appear identical to the antibiotic, analgesic, hormonal, cardiac or other common medication, will produce a heart attack and/or stroke and — most likely — subsequent death.

Both water as a delivery system and the imposter pharmaceuticals bear the necessary targeting capability. The double line water system provides the ability to selectively target households and the pharmaceutical delivery system provides the ability to selectively target individuals.

None of the 60 billion dollars pumped into biodefense in the last ten years appears to be designated to address waterborne attacks. A recent announcement from DHS Chief Janet Napolitano declared that “dangerous terrorists” had infiltrated the utility companies and were planning an attack. The Department of Homeland Security was subsequently contacted and details were turned over to that agency as to how this could very well occur via water utilities, given the vulnerability inherent in the double line water system. There has been no response from Napolitano or the DHS.

On the International Scene

It appears the wagons have also circled around the involvement of the pharmaceutical companies in biological weapons work. As there are no weapons inspectors or any other implementation vehicle for the BWC, the pharmaceutical companies can carry on their death work without the intrusion of any Peeping Tom inspection team. The glaring failure of the BWC to provide a means of implementing the treaty has resulted in a complete lack of oversight as to what is going on in pharmaceutical labs. In the past, attempts to set up an inspection capability for the BWC have been vigorously opposed by the United States and also by . . . you guessed it — the pharmaceutical companies.

The development and production of biological weapons would necessitate, of course, a laboratory to produce them. Certain industries maintain such labs, such as pharmaceutical companies and some food production companies. Big Pharma has consistently objected to the spectre of weapons inspectors coming into their labs, stating that such weapons inspectors could, in fact, be industrial spies bent on stealing proprietary drug information. Bending to the stated necessity of keeping the profits of the pharmaceutical companies secure along with their proprietary formulas, the BWC has so far accommodated the pharmaceutical companies in their insistence on the priority of maintaining their privacy and profit margins, granting this imperative more weight than the need to keep the world safe from biological weapons.

However, given the revelation of the “death drug” imposter pill program, we can see why the pharmaceutical industry would balk at weapons inspectors peering over its shoulders.

This December, the BWC will be meeting again in Geneva, as it does only every five years. On the table will be strengthening the “confidence building measures,” (CBM’s) which have taken the place of inspection teams as a means to ensure treaty compliance. The problem is that the CBM’s rely on the integrity of each nation to accurately report on its own programs. In plain language, that means that we must “trust” the word of countries such as the United States, Russia, Great Britain, Iran, Pakistan and South Africa to accurately report what is going on in their labs.

The very term “confidence building measures” is possibly one of the most offensive and misleading parts of the staged drama that is the BWC. Forty years after the BWC treaty originally came into existence, we still have no means of ensuring any kind of compliance with the mandates of the treaty, other than the “word” of a possible offender. In a recent interview with a former CIA contractor, who has asked his name not be used here, this top-level scientist who worked for years as a CIA asset admitted that it was known in intelligence circles that the old Soviet Union under Yeltsin was violating the BWC. This was never brought to the attention of the international community through the BWC.

The three nations which serve as depositories of the BWC are Russia, Great Britain and the United States. Great Britain may have recently ducked an international scandal when a South African physician, Dr. Wouter Basson, was exonerated of war crimes charges for his work developing biological weapons with Project Coast during the apartheid years. Basson was purportedly involved in developing a “blacks-only” bioweapon, which would only kill native Africans and leave white people unscathed. Sources in the US government have contacted this reporter alleging that such a weapon is now at play and has been leaked into processed foods. The substance allegedly bonds with melanin (which is present in darker skinned peoples) producing hypertension and diabetes. Indeed, the present epidemic of these two “silent killers” is nearly unknown in Africa, where the native population does not eat such a preponderance of processed foods, relying instead on more natural food sources. Africa, as we know, is being emptied out by the AIDS epidemic.

Dr. Basson, it appears, was chummy with Dr. David Kelly, the British biological weapons inspector whose sudden “suicide” may well have been an effort to obscure the evidence of a cooperative effort between the South African bioweapons program and England ().

Come December, the Big Three — Russia, Great Britain and the US — will meet with other nations to convene their deadly serious effort of making the world safe from biological weapons. Or, that is what they want us to believe, anyway.

The reality is that, through its failure to enact implementation protocols, the BWC is enabling the development of precisely the type of weaponry that it is mandated to curtail.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/coming-pandemic-expect-all-protective.html

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