Government Takeover of Health Care

Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir

December 25, 2010

New York Times - When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.

The final version of the health care legislation, signed into law by President Obama in March, authorized Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or wellness visits. The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.

Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make health care decisions for themselves.

While the new law does not mention advance care planning, the Obama administration has been able to achieve its policy goal through the regulation-writing process, a strategy that could become more prevalent in the next two years as the president deals with a strengthened Republican opposition in Congress. In this case, the administration said research had shown the value of end-of-life planning.

“Advance care planning improves end-of-life care and patient and family satisfaction and reduces stress, anxiety and depression in surviving relatives,” the administration said in the preamble to the Medicare regulation, quoting research published this year in the British Medical Journal.

The administration also cited research by Dr. Stacy M. Fischer, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who found that

“End-of-life discussions between doctor and patient help ensure that one gets the care one wants.” In this sense, Dr. Fischer said, such consultations “protect patient autonomy.”

Opponents said the Obama administration was bringing back a procedure that could be used to justify the premature withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from people with severe illnesses and disabilities. Section 1233 of the bill passed by the House in November 2009 — but not included in the final legislation — allowed Medicare to pay for consultations about advance care planning every five years. In contrast, the new rule allows annual discussions as part of the wellness visit.

Elizabeth D. Wickham, executive director of LifeTree, which describes itself as “a pro-life Christian educational ministry,” said she was concerned that end-of-life counseling would encourage patients to forgo or curtail care, thus hastening death.

“The infamous Section 1233 is still alive and kicking,” Ms. Wickham said. “Patients will lose the ability to control treatments at the end of life.”

Several Democratic members of Congress, led by Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, had urged the administration to cover end-of-life planning as a service offered under the Medicare wellness benefit. A national organization of hospice care providers made the same recommendation. Mr. Blumenauer, the author of the original end-of-life proposal, praised the rule as “a step in the right direction.”

“It will give people more control over the care they receive,” Mr. Blumenauer said in an interview. “It means that doctors and patients can have these conversations in the normal course of business, as part of our health care routine, not as something put off until we are forced to do it.”

After learning of the administration’s decision, Mr. Blumenauer’s office celebrated “a quiet victory,” but urged supporters not to crow about it.

“While we are very happy with the result, we won’t be shouting it from the rooftops because we aren’t out of the woods yet,” Mr. Blumenauer’s office said in an e-mail in early November to people working with him on the issue. “This regulation could be modified or reversed, especially if Republican leaders try to use this small provision to perpetuate the ‘death panel’ myth.”

Moreover, the e-mail said:

“We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists, even if they are ‘supporters’ — e-mails can too easily be forwarded.”

The e-mail continued:

“Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

In the interview, Mr. Blumenauer said,

“Lies can go viral if people use them for political purposes.”

The proposal for Medicare coverage of advance care planning was omitted from the final health care bill because of the uproar over unsubstantiated claims that it would encourage euthanasia.

Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, led the criticism in the summer of 2009. Ms. Palin said,

“Obama’s death panel” would decide who was worthy of health care.

Mr. Boehner, who is in line to become speaker, said,

“This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.”

Forced onto the defensive, Mr. Obama said that nothing in the bill would “pull the plug on grandma.”

A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that the idea of death panels persists. In the September poll, 30 percent of Americans 65 and older said the new health care law allowed a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare. The law has no such provision.

The new policy is included in a huge Medicare regulation setting payment rates for thousands of services including arthroscopy, mastectomy and X-rays. The rule was issued by Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a longtime advocate for better end-of-life care.

“Using unwanted procedures in terminal illness is a form of assault,” Dr. Berwick has said. “In economic terms, it is waste. Several techniques, including advance directives and involvement of patients and families in decision-making, have been shown to reduce inappropriate care at the end of life, leading to both lower cost and more humane care.”

Ellen B. Griffith, a spokeswoman for the Medicare agency, said,

“The final health care reform law has no provision for voluntary advance care planning.” But Ms. Griffith added, under the new rule, such planning “may be included as an element in both the first and subsequent annual wellness visits, providing an opportunity to periodically review and update the beneficiary’s wishes and preferences for his or her medical care.”

Mr. Blumenauer and Mr. Rockefeller said that advance directives would help doctors and nurses provide care in keeping with patients’ wishes.

“Early advance care planning is important because a person’s ability to make decisions may diminish over time, and he or she may suddenly lose the capability to participate in health care decisions,” the lawmakers said in a letter to Dr. Berwick in August.

In a recent study of 3,700 people near the end of life, Dr. Maria J. Silveira of the University of Michigan found that many had “treatable, life-threatening conditions” but lacked decision-making capacity in their final days. With the new Medicare coverage, doctors can learn a patient’s wishes before a crisis occurs. For example, Dr. Silveira said, she might ask a person with heart disease,

“If you have another heart attack and your heart stops beating, would you want us to try to restart it?” A patient dying of emphysema might be asked, “Do you want to go on a breathing machine for the rest of your life?” And, she said, a patient with incurable cancer might be asked, “When the time comes, do you want us to use technology to try and delay your death?”

Nationalization, Scarcity and Economic Decline

Venezuela's Economy - Towards State Socialism

November 22, 2010

Cuba 2.0 - Owners of property, large or small, sleep uneasily in Venezuela these days. After the opposition narrowly won a majority of the vote in a legislative election in September, Hugo Chávez, the country’s leftist president, has been on a nationalisation spree, seizing everything from steel companies and bottle makers to housing schemes. When workers have protested, he has deployed the national guard against them.

The government has justified the confiscations by saying that it was breaking up monopolies or stopping breaches of labour or environmental rules. But the aim appears to be to move decisively against what Mr Chávez calls "the oligarchy" before the new parliament, which has a sizeable opposition minority, comes into session in January.

On October 25th the Venezuelan subsidiary of Owens-Illinois, an American glass maker, became the 200th business nationalised so far this year. As usual, managers and workers learned of their fate during a live television broadcast by the president. He accused the company of exploiting its workers and laying waste to forests. But the expropriation decree, published the next day, made no mention of these alleged crimes, accusing the company instead of exploiting its dominant market position.

By the government’s own reckoning, it has confiscated some 3m hectares (7.4m acres) of farmland, and plans to seize another 450,000 hectares next year. Although the 1999 constitution guarantees property rights, successive changes to the land law have given the government the right to seize any farm it takes a fancy to, in most cases with little or no compensation.

Industrial and commercial firms have fared no better. According to the employers’ organisation, Fedecamaras, since Mr Chávez became president in 1999 almost 400 companies have been nationalised, the vast majority in the past two years. The Venezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce says that compensation was paid to the owners of only nine out of the 44 of its member-firms that have been taken over this year. The constitution states that no expropriation can take place without a final verdict from the courts and fair compensation. In practice, a stroke of the president’s pen is all that is required.

Over the years the official rationale for nationalisation has changed. The earliest takeovers were justified on the grounds that the company (or farm) was unproductive. The government then decided that "strategic" areas of the economy should pass into state hands. So in 2007-08 it took over private-sector oil and electricity businesses, as well as telecommunications, the cement industry and Sidor, an iron and steel firm privatised in the 1990s.

The government also now controls a quarter of the banking system. Mr Chávez said recently that any bank which declined to "co-operate with national development" by assigning credit according to government priorities would also be taken over. Nowadays officials openly state that their aim is to implant a socialist economy.

Paradoxically, despite the takeovers, the state’s share of GDP seems still to be around 30%, the same as it was in 1998. That is partly because the private sector expanded rapidly during the 2004-08 oil boom. But it is also because many nationalised companies now produce less than when they were in private hands. Much of the food industry has been confiscated in order to "ensure food sovereignty". But the result has been a sharp increase in imports. Earlier this year, more than 130,000 tonnes of decomposing food imported by PDVAL, an arm of the state oil company, was found in ports and on wasteland.

There are one or two exceptions. Officials say that output at Enlandes, a nationalised milk firm, has risen by 50% in two years. The science minister said recently that CANTV, the main telecoms firm, had 65% more customers since its nationalisation, though he provided no details. But more typically, once companies are in state hands their staffing levels rise, prices fall and they become dependent on government subsidies, according to Richard Obuchi of IESA, a business school in Caracas. In addition, they tend to make a smaller range of products.

The construction industry has been badly hurt by nationalisation. Cement and steel rods have become scarcer (there is a thriving black market in both). Sidor produced 4.3m tonnes of steel in its last year in private ownership; this year it hopes to make 2m tonnes. Another reason that housing schemes have slowed or halted is that the government has banned developers from adjusting prices in line with inflation, which is running at over 30%. Earlier this month Mr Chávez expropriated six new estates under construction, to the horror of most buyers. Developers, the president says, are "bandits" who will not be compensated for the seizure.

The story is repeated in almost every area the government has moved into. Electricity nationalisation contributed to power shortages that saw severe rationing earlier this year and continuing unscheduled blackouts across the country. The oil industry, the bulk of which was already state-owned, has seen production of both crude and refined products fall (by how much is a matter of dispute).

Polls suggest that most Venezuelans disapprove of the nationalisations and firmly support private property. But Mr Chávez seems to be following the advice of Alan Woods, a Welsh Trotskyist who has become an informal adviser. Mr Woods, who is better known in Caracas than Cardiff, publicly urged the president to respond to his electoral setback by "accelerating the revolutionary process", expropriating land, banks and the main industries. Venezuelans had better brace themselves for more nationalisation, scarcity and economic decline.

What Socialism? Private Sector Still Dominates Venezuelan Economy Despite Chavez Crusade

July 18, 2010

Associated Press — It's President Hugo Chavez's biggest economic battle cry, and it's getting louder as Venezuela suffers a recession:

"We're going to bury Venezuelan capitalism."

Yet creating a socialist economy is one of Chavez's most elusive goals — a stark example of the disconnect between the president's rhetoric and the reality on the ground. In fact, the private sector still controls two-thirds of Venezuela's economy — the same as when Chavez was elected in 1998, according to estimates by the Central Bank.

The reasons are political and practical: Chavez knows most Venezuelans recoil from the idea of Cuban-style state control, and his government is far from being capable of taking over and running a majority of the economy.

"Basically he recognizes that in this day and age in a global economy ... complete state control would just doom the country," said Michael Shifter, an analyst at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

So his strategy has been to selectively nationalize companies, set up state-run supermarkets and promote worker-managed businesses, while trying to convince Venezuelans to accept his vaguely defined brand of "21st Century Socialism."

It is a hard sell for a country hooked on consumerism.

Shopping malls are filled with middle- and upper-class Venezuelans browsing through Lacoste shirts, Guess jeans and Montblanc pens. Sales have declined in the recession, but just about everyone who can afford it seems to own a BlackBerry, and Scotch whisky flows liberally in upscale restaurants at the equivalent of $110 a bottle.

Just as Chavez has ramped up his anti-capitalism tirades, he finds himself facing one of the biggest scandals of his tenure involving a state-run food distributor. The company, PDVAL, left more than 2,700 shipping containers of rice, flour, milk, chicken, beef and other foods in a port rotting or beyond their expiration dates.

Its former chief and two others have been arrested, and some Venezuelans have begun to mockingly call the state company "Pudre-val," using the Spanish word for rotting. One newspaper cartoon depicted Karl Marx wearing a gas mask to ward off the stench.

It's a glaring example of the problems and delays that regularly plague Venezuela's government-run operations. In a review of 15 state-run companies, economist Richard Obuchi found that all "were producing well below goals or production capacity." The vast majority — some of which were nationalized by Chavez — now rely on government subsidies, said Obuchi, a professor at the Institute of Higher Administration Studies, or IESA, in Caracas.

One of the expropriated companies, industrial valve maker Industria Venezolana Endogena de Valvulas SA, or INVEVAL, has been limited to refurbishing old oil industry and water valves for years — instead of producing them as it once did.

Port workers in Puerto Cabello, where much of the rotten food was found, say six of the port's eight cranes are out of order and the pace of importing cargo has slowed since the government took over management last year.

The country's food imports have grown as the government has seized farmland, and periodic shortages of foods such as milk, beef and sugar have emerged in recent years.

People at a state-supported farming commune on the outskirts of Caracas say they have been waiting for a new well to water crops for more than a year since the first one went dry.

While production has declined, the public sector has swelled from about 1.4 million workers in 1999 to about 2.4 million in 2010, according to government figures.

"They don't have the capacity to manage any company," said Rafael Davila Guaricuco, a 34-year-old port crane operator. "They're destroying everything."

That is precisely the perception Chavez tries to fight in his speeches.

"The bourgeoisie is trying to convince Venezuelans that the path to socialism isn't viable, that all businesses in socialism go bust. It's the opposite," Chavez said.

He pitches cut-rate prices at subsidized state-run supermarkets like a salesman, and touts a successful state-run dairy factory, cooking oil plant and the nationalized telephone company. State-run markets are part of Chavez's attempts to counter 31-percent inflation that has been battering the country, alongside a recession that shrank the economy 5.8 percent in the first quarter. Venezuela is now the only South American country with a shrinking economy, according to the latest figures available.

Tensions are growing between Chavez and business leaders, who blame his policies for prompting a sharp drop in investment.

Chavez's finance and communication ministers didn't respond to e-mails seeking comment about his efforts toward socialism.

Since 2007, Chavez has nationalized and expropriated companies in sectors he deems strategic, including the oil industry, cement, telecommunications, electricity, steel and food. But economists note that those businesses make up a relatively modest share of the economy. And the balance between public and private sectors remains nearly identical to when Chavez took office in part because the private sector grew faster than the government between 2003 and 2006, when the economy was booming. Last year the private sector accounted for 70 percent of gross domestic product, including 11 percent in taxes paid on products, according to Central Bank estimates. The public sector was 30 percent, a slightly smaller share than when Chavez was elected in 2008.

By international standards, Venezuela has long had a large public sector because it includes the oil industry. By comparison, the public sector in Sweden accounts for 25 percent of GDP, and in United States less than 14 percent.

Chavez could have moved more quickly toward bigger state control while the economy was growing, but he had other priorities, including consolidating his political power after a 2002 coup that ousted him for two days. He now has a favorable congress and judges. But just as he turned to his socialist economic agenda, lower oil prices and the global economic crisis cut into the money he had to take over and run companies.

Polls have repeatedly shown Venezuelans oppose expropriations. Chavez now is focused on maintaining his majority in September congressional elections and on his own re-election in 2012. He has repeatedly said he would not use Cuba or the collapsed Soviet Union as an economic model, noting that even his mentor Fidel Castro has advised him:

"Chavez, remember this isn't 1960."

Victor Alvarez, an economist and former mining minister for Chavez, said the aim is to build a new sort of "social economy" sector made up of worker-managed companies, farming cooperatives and other community-run businesses.

"The objective isn't for the state to have the greatest weight in the economy, because that would be simply repeating the experience of 20th century socialism," said Alvarez, who has been studying the transition to socialism at a government-sponsored research institution.

A plan prepared in 2007 by the government projected that such "social economy" businesses and the public sector would together become larger than the private sector by 2013. Chavez knows he is still very far from that goal. But he says he won't give up, using one of his favorite mantras:

"We invent or we fail."

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Tightens State Control of Food Amid Rocketing Inflation and Food Shortages

President Hugo Chavez is tightening state control over Venezuela's food supply, setting quotas for food staples which are to be sold at government-imposed prices.

March 4, 2009

Telegraph - Venezuela's public finances are unravelling, with oil prices at $40 a barrel, while the national budget is calculated at $60 a barrel [Venezuela remains highly dependent on oil and gas earnings, which account for approximately 90 per cent of export revenues, approximately 50 per cent of the federal budget earnings, and around 30 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).]. Inflation is running at over 30 per cent, yet with the new measures Mr Chavez is seeking to ensure that his core support, the poor, can still fill their shopping baskets with food.

"If any industry wants to ride roughshod over the consumers, with a view to getting better dividends, we are going to act," said Carlos Osorio, the national superintendent of silos and storage. "For the government, access to food is a matter of national security."

Production quotas and prices have now been set for cooking oil, white rice, sugar, coffee, flour, margarine, pasta, cheeses and tomato sauce.

White rice, the staple for many Venezuelans, can now only be sold at a price of 2.15 bolivares (.07p) per kilo. Private companies insist that production of that kilo costs 4.41 bolivares (.14p) and that government regulations are impossible to fulfill and companies will quickly go broke. Companies that are dedicated to rice production must ensure that 80 per cent of their efforts are dedicated to white rice. The new regulations set production percentages, as companies were rebranding their products to avoid the government controls, like flavouring the rice, as the price restrictions apply only to white rice.

"Forcing companies to produce rice at a loss will not resolve the situation, simply make it worse," said Luis Carmona of Polar, a rice company that has been singled out by the government for trying to sidestep restrictions.

Government price controls on basic goods have been in place, in various forms, since 2003. But the restrictions have forced Venezuela to become increasingly reliant on imports of these products as local farmers will not supply the selected food staples at government prices.

Mr Chavez last month won a referendum allowing him to stand indefinitely for re-election. With that now achieved, the Venezuelan leader, who has vowed to turn his South American nation into a model Socialist state, is now taking some unpopular decisions needed to stabilise his floundering economy.

Hugo Chavez profile: Timeline of the rise of the Venezuelan president
Chavez given power to rule by decree for 18 months

‘Unexpected’ Home Price Decline is a Serious Reason to Worry About Economy

‘Unexpected’ Home Price Decline is a Serious Reason to Worry About Economy

December 29, 2010

SHTFPlan.com - The Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller index’s most recent report shows that home prices across the country are sliding. For economists, this is yet another unexpected decline. For readers of non-mainstream news, analysis and opinion, this was to be expected.

Robert Shiller, co-creator of the index joins the Wall Street Journal and shares his perspective:

It’s still only a few months we’ve seen these declines. So, it’s not clear that we have a downtrend.

But, if home prices continue on this pace down, I think the economy has serious reasons to worry.

…

According to our survey, forecasters are expecting on average - these are professional forecasters - prices will be up 7% by 2014. So, that’s not bad, but it’s not great either. On the other hand, a good share of those forecasters are predicting declines. I think the outlook has become steadily more pessimistic over the last few months. With today’s announcement our professional forecasters are going to be a little more pessimistic.

The same professional forecasters who didn’t see the collapse of 2008 coming are being relied upon now to tell us what is coming next. Like Ben ‘the sub-prime crisis is contained’ Bernanke, the mainstream forecasters out there are touting the group think line. No one wants to step outside of the group and tell us how it really is - even if they know what’s coming.

Luckily, we don’t live in the mainstream bubble, so we don’t have a problem being called fear mongers. In reality, we’re just reality mongers.

And the fact is, that the home price decline has a long way to go.

• We will not return to the home price tops of 2006 for at least a decade - and that’s being optimistic.
• We will see further deterioration in home prices from here - in real terms, likely in nominal terms as well. Regardless of how much money the Federal Reserve prints and how much value the US dollar loses, the relative price of a home compared to assets like gold, food and energy will go down. End of story.

In May of 2010 we responded to a report which showed the home construction was up. In that response we penned the reasons for why the real estate market will not only not recover, but will continue to decline - significantly. Rather than trying to explain it in different terms, here’s what we wrote in May:

We have the government tax credit now expired, roughly 7 million plus foreclosed and delinquent shadow inventory homes that have not yet been reflected on banks’ books, credit markets remain tight, mortgage rates will likely rise due to federal debt problems, millions of adjustable rate mortgages are resetting interest rates higher over the next two years, and home prices in many areas have resumed their downward slide.

While today’s news may seem positive, one must consider the dynamics of the entire real estate market before rushing to judgment about a recovery in real estate.

Our view since the Summer of 2009 has been that the bottom for real estate is not yet in, with average national home prices still well above the historical, inflation adjusted price of around $110,000 (going back 100 years).

This is a credit contraction and the pendulum is now swinging in full force from the top of the bubble to the extreme opposite. If history is any guide, corrections are equally as violent as bubble formations, if not more, because the momentum in the other direction can be ferocious and very fast. This means that the pendulum will not simply revert to the mean, but will likely overshoot in the opposite direction.

Since the housing bubble’s peak, which reached an average national home price of around $200,000, we’ve seen real estate prices deflate nearly 20% to about $165,000. So, just to revert to the historical average of around $110,000 housing prices would need to slide another 30% from here.

Over the last twenty years the Japanese real estate market, blown from an easy money bubble and the expectation that real estate will never go down because people keep being born, has lost over 70% of its value (inflation-adjusted).

We can expect the same in the US. That means we’ve got about 30% to 50% more to go in terms of real estate declines. It sounds crazy, yes. But, it’s been a pretty crazy last couple of years, as well. So crazy that had you predicted ten years ago that we’d see a detonation of the real estate bubble, the insolvency of every major banking institution in the country and the trillions in bailouts that followed you would have been called a doom and gloom quack.

Biflation is the order of the day, where debt-based assets like homes will continue to lose value, while essential goods like food and energy will continue to rise.

When we talk about tanking real estate prices going forward, it should no longer be ‘unexpected.’

Video Interview with Robert Shiller and the Wall Street Journal:

Obama to Push Global Warming Policy Using EPA Regulations and the Clean Air Act

White House Plans to Push Global Warming Policy, GOP Vows Fight

On Jan. 2, new carbon emissions limits will be put forward as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares regulations that would force companies to get permits to release greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

December 28, 2010

FoxNews.com - After failing to get climate-change legislation through Congress, the Obama administration plans on pushing through its environmental policies through other means, and Republicans are ready to put up a fight.

On Jan. 2, new carbon emissions limits will be put forward as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares regulations that would force companies to get permits to release greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Critics say the new rules are a backdoor effort to enact the president's agenda on global warming without the support of Congress, and would hurt the economy and put jobs in jeopardy by forcing companies to pay for expensive new equipment.

"They are job killers. Regulations, period -- any kind of regulation is a weight on economy. It requires people to comply with the law, which takes work hours and time, which reduces the profitability of firms. Therefore, they grow more slowly and you create less jobs," said environmental scientist Ken Green of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Dan Howells of Greenpeace disagrees.

"I was looking at some advertisements from the 1970s where they were making the very same arguments about stopping acid rain. And that didn't turn out to be a job-killer. In fact, it created jobs in some places," said Howells, the environmental group's deputy campaign director. "The more we keep making these decades-old arguments, the more we won't be creating the jobs of the future and working towards the new energy economy."

The administration says it has the power to issue the regulation under a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that directed the agency to make a determination on whether carbon dioxide, blamed for global warming, was a hazard to human health.

The agency is set to have a preliminary version of the rules in place by July and then issue final standards in 2012 after a public comment period.

Rep Fred Upton, R-Mich., the incoming House Energy Committee Chairman, penned an op-ed in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal along with Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips, and charged that Congress should act.

"The best solution is for Congress to overturn the EPA's proposed greenhouse gas regulations outright. If Democrats refuse to join Republicans in doing so, then they should at least join a sensible bipartisan compromise to mandate that the EPA delay its regulations until the courts complete their examination of the agency's endangerment finding and proposed rules," the op-ed read in part.

With Republicans taking control in the House, the GOP will be in a better position to take on some of these policies, and members are promising a fight if the Obama White House moves forward with any carbon crackdown. There was bipartisan support for a bill proposed this year that would have stripped the EPA of the power to set carbon emissions limits. GOP lawmakers could bring the measure back.

The White House seems prepared for a fight.

The administration recently circulated a memo from the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy John Holdren to the heads of all federal departments and agencies calling for "a clear prohibition on political interference in scientific processes and expanded assurances of transparency."

Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

Vitamin D Better Than Vaccines at Preventing Flu, Report Claims

March 15, 2010

The Times - The risk of children suffering from flu can be halved if they take vitamin D, doctors in Japan have found. The finding has implications for flu epidemics since vitamin D, which is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight, has no significant side effects, costs little and can be several times more effective than anti-viral drugs or vaccine.

Only one in ten children, aged six to 15 years, taking the sunshine vitamin in a clinical trial came down with flu compared with one in five given a dummy tablet. Mitsuyoshi Urashima, the Japanese doctor who led the trial, told The Times that vitamin D was more effective than vaccines in preventing flu.

Vitamin D was found to be even more effective when the comparison left out children who were already given extra vitamin D by their parents, outside the trial. Taking the sunshine vitamin was then shown to reduce the risk of flu to a third of what it would otherwise be.

Altogether 354 children took part in the trial, which took place during the winter of 2008-09, before the swine flu epidemic. Vitamin D was found to protect against influenza A, which caused last year’s epidemic, but not against the less common influenza B.

The trial, which was double blind, randomised, and fully controlled scientifically, was conducted by doctors and scientists from Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan.

The children were given a daily dose of 1200 IUs (international units) of vitamin D over a period of three months. In the first month children in the group taking the vitamin became ill just as often as those taking the dummy tablet. But by the second month, when the vitamin level in the children’s blood was higher, the advantage of the vitamin was clear.

The Japanese scientists, writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, say that the anti-viral drugs zanamivir and oseltamivir reduce risk of flu infection by 8 per cent in children who have been exposed to infection, compared with a 50 per cent or greater reduction with vitamin D.

Anti-virals are also too expensive, and possibly too toxic, to be given to the population as a whole whereas vitamin D has additional benefits. The sunshine vitamin not only prevents bone fractures but is also believed to reduce risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other illness, including various bacterial as well as viral infections.

The Japanese finding supports a theory that low blood levels of the sunshine vitamin occurring in winter explain why flu epidemics generally peak between December and March.

Vitamin D activates the innate immune system, enabling the body to produce several proteins such as defensin and cathelicidin which trigger cell activity and disable viruses.

Dr Urashima said:

“Vitamin D and vaccine work by quite different mechanisms. Vitamin D enhances innate immunity while vaccine enhances acquired immunity. So we do not have to select only one way of prevention, rather we should do both ways, I think.”

Dr John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine, London, said:

“This is a timely study. It will be noticed by scientists. It fits in with the seasonal pattern of flu. There is an increasing background of solid science that makes the vitamin D story credible. But this study needs to be replicated. If it is confirmed we might think of giving vitamin D at the same time as we vaccinate.”

Nine Technologies that Will Change Your Future

Nine Technologies that Will Change Your Future

December 21, 2010

The Kiplinger Letter - For 88 years, subscribers have relied on The Kiplinger Letter for insights into emerging technologies that will change the way Americans live and do business. Examples of "you read it first in Kiplinger" include the rise of commercial air routes in 1927, the early development of television in the 1930s, electronic office machines in 1953, and mobile phones in 1983.

View the innovations as a slide show

Biometrics on the Move

Banks are increasingly turning to biometric authentication for mobile and online clients. Fingerprint, voice and face recognition systems will soon become commonplace as banks seek to heighten security for the rising tide of on-the-go transactions.

Customers are accepting such security measures more readily these days. Many smart phones are already outfitted with cameras and only need a face recognition application; in a few, fingerprint scanners are embedded as well. They’re already in some laptops, and Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system contains the needed recognition software. Citibank intends to test the waters first in Australia with voice recognition. Look for the trend to spread quickly to other banks as well as to other countries.

Self-Driving and Folding Cars

GM’s prototype EN-V (Electric Networked Vehicle) is just a third of the length and weight of today’s average car, thanks to an all-electric, rechargeable power system. There’s no bulky engine, transmission or braking system, plus it has built-in smarts to navigate on its own and avoid hitting other vehicles.

The all-electric CityCar, developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, can squeeze its eight-foot length into a more compact five feet, allowing it to fit in teeny urban parking spots.

Personal Bar Codes

A digital code on your business card could soon let folks you meet scan contact information directly into smart phones or other mobile devices on the spot, ensuring correct spelling and phone numbers.

There are plenty of marketing uses for bar codes as well: On property listings -- to allow prospective buyers to download info. Postings at restaurants let patrons peek at menus and specials or tip off friends to their whereabouts. For retailers of all stripes, bar codes provide a chance to interact with consumers, making a digital connection.

Genetically Modified Critters

Uncle Sam’s OK is expected soon for the first genetically modified food animal -- no, not this pig -- but for farm-raised salmon with a gene from a wild chinook salmon. The gene-jiggered fish is engineered to grow at twice the pace of its unaltered farm raised progenitors.

Next up: Meet “Enviropig,” a porker genetically altered to make the manure it produces less polluting, with phosphorus levels 30%-65% lower than normal. Also in the works: Cattle that are not susceptible to mad cow disease. The animals lack the protein that mutates, so they don’t get the disease and can’t pass it on.

Farm-raised Pharma

A better understanding of genetics is also leading to changes in other sectors. In agriculture, scientists can tweak genes to make disease resistant animals. Plus they’re using genetically altered animals -- cattle, for one -- to make antibodies to fight diseases such as botulism and anthrax.

Eventually, the isolated antibodies may be approved for injection into humans to protect against those diseases. Researchers are also using genetically altered swine to grow pancreatic tissue that can be implanted in human diabetics to restore their ability to produce insulin.

New Cancer Treatments

Genetic advances go way beyond a few drugs. Consider Oncotype DX, a test developed by Genomic Health. It can identify whether breast cancer in a specific patient is aggressive and likely to recur. That gives doctors and patients more information when considering whether chemotherapy is a good move.

Similar tests may do the same for colon, renal and prostate cancers. Dako, the global diagnostic company, is developing a test to select patients with metastatic stomach cancer who may benefit from Herceptin, a breast cancer drug. If the test shows chemotherapy won’t help, doctors and patients can decide against it, avoiding unnecessary pain, and saving $15,000-$20,000 in medical costs. That scenario could be replicated for scores of other treatments.

New Drug Therapies

Genetic testing is revolutionizing medicine, offering doctors and patients more-educated choices. Using personal gene info, doctors can match patients with the therapies most likely to prove successful.

The Food & Drug Administration is on the cusp of approving a promising drug for lupus, Benlysta, from Human Genome Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline. Gene mapping will also make drug development faster and cheaper. All this could mean big savings in health costs as well as better results.

Power up on the Roof

On the horizon: A novel solar roofing system with appeal for homeowners. Dow Chemical will soon roll out shingles with embedded solar chips. Other companies, such as Lumeta, SRS Energy and SunPower, offer similar power generating shingles and tiles, but Dow’s have a difference: They can be installed by any roofing contractor. An electrician is needed only for the final plug-in. Others require wiring each shingle. Solar roofing systems offer big advantages over more conventional solar panels: In addition to being less bulky and more attractive, they offer more flexibility and can cover entire roofs, including irregular spaces, to capture more power.

Time For Your Pill

Half of all Americans don’t get prescriptions filled or take prescription medicines when they should. Such negligence contributes to higher costs as people get sicker instead of better. Pharmacy benefit managers can help. Medco Health Solutions, for example, has pharmacists reach out to patients who don’t seem to be heeding doctors’ orders.

One tech solution: A pill bottle cap that lights up when it’s time for a dose. The GlowCap, made by Vitality Inc., emits a pulsing orange light, followed by a beep that becomes increasingly insistent until the bottle is opened. No response will prompt an electronic phone call or e-mail.

Fungus is Killing Bats Across the United States; Fewer Bats Could Result in Harm to Agriculture and Forests

Biologists Head to Bunkers to Fight Bat Disease

December 25, 2010

AP – Biologist Susi von Oettingen walked into the dark World War II-era military bunker and took out her flashlight. Among the old pipes, wires and machinery parts, she saw some bats hanging from cracks in the cement walls and ceiling.

It was an unusual place for the bats to hibernate, different from a mine or cave. But something else was different, too: None of them had white-nose syndrome, a fungus that's killing bats across the country.

The group of bats found last winter in the New Hampshire bunker was small, recalled von Oettingen, an endangered species biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But two of the three species discovered there — the Northern Long-eared Bat and the Little Brown Bat — have been dying off from the disease.

Starting as early as next month, von Oettingen will be part of a group of state and federal biologists monitoring that bunker and a few others in the state. They'll study temperature and humidity levels and put up footholds for the bats, hoping to attract more and figure out if there's a way to control white-nose syndrome, first discovered near Albany, N.Y., in 2006.

"We may be able to maintain a white-nose-free site for these bats to return to," she said.

The disease, which appears to affect bats mostly during winter hibernation, has killed more than a million in the Northeast and has spread to at least 11 states, as far west as Oklahoma, and parts of Canada. Some caves on federal lands were closed to people this year to prevent them from spreading the disease.

Because the bunkers would be controlled, artificial settings, biologists also might be able to experiment with different treatments for bats with the disease, without worrying about how a spray or drug might affect other organisms.

"This is one of the most promising things I've heard," said Nina Fascione, executive director of Bat Conservation International, an Austin, Texas-based group that focuses on research initiatives involving bats and their ecosystems. "It presents an excellent opportunity to test things."

One of the challenges is encouraging enough bats to use the bunkers, von Oettingen said.

"They move around on the landscape, so it may be that they will naturally colonize it, or we may bring some in," she said.

Von Oettingen said New Hampshire plans to reach out to neighboring states to examine their bunkers. Some, such as the one she visited, are on state parks land. Others are part of the National Wildlife Refuge System.

"There's tons of bunkers of all different kinds out there on the landscape," from World War II, the Cold War-era, and afterward, she said. "Now the question is, do some of these have bats? And so far, we haven't found any more."

Bats hang out in all sorts of manmade structures, but the idea of monitoring them for white-nose syndrome in an artificial setting is relatively new. In Tennessee, the Nature Conservancy has proposed building a large dome-shaped cave, "like a giant upside-down underground swimming pool," said Cory Holliday, the program's cave and karst director.

"You can apply whatever control you wanted in there and you wouldn't be affecting a natural ecosystem."

Tennessee has about 15 species of bats, roughly half of which are potentially susceptible to white-nose syndrome. At least several hundred bats were found with symptoms last year. No deaths have been reported yet.

"We don't know with real certainty if it will work," Holliday said of the cave, "but with white-nose syndrome, it's moving really fast. We don't want to be left five years from now thinking, 'Well, I wish we could have.' "

In October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came out with a plan to investigate the cause of disease, in which a white fungus develops around bat muzzles, ears and wing membranes, and find ways to manage it.

Biologists say fewer bats, which eat insects, could lead to increased numbers of insect pests, resulting in harm to agriculture and forests. It is anticipated that white-nose syndrome will continue to spread, partly because the fungus can be carried on humans' clothing.

Under the plan, state agencies will monitor bat populations and design disease management programs. The federal government will assist in areas including research, education, funding and testing. Goals include setting up a central database, developing testing standards and continually reviewing knowledge of the disease to identify gaps and research needs.

In New Hampshire alone, surveys last year showed that the state lost over half of its hibernating bats.

"They're dead. They're gone. They're not here," said Emily Brunkhurst, a wildlife biologist for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.

"The thing about white-nose is it is an unprecedented disease," Brunkhurst said. "We have never seen a disease in wildlife that affects so many species and is so rapidly fatal and spread so incredibly rapidly."

Food Safety Bill Invokes Codex Harmonization and Grants FDA Authority to Police Food Safety of Foreign Nations

Food Safety Bill Invokes Codex Harmonization and Grants FDA Authority to Police Food Safety of Foreign Nations

December 29, 2010

NaturalNews - Of all the talk about S.510, virtually no one has actually read the language in the bill — especially not those lawmakers who voted for it. The more you read from this bill, the more surreal it all becomes. For example, did you know there’s a global FDA power grab agenda hidden in the Food Safety Modernization Act? Keep reading and I’ll quote text straight out of the bill itself.

Section 305 is entitled “BUILDING CAPACITY OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS WITH RESPECT TO FOOD SAFETY” and it gives the FDA authority to set up offices in foreign countries and then dictate the food safety plans of foreign governments. It says, specifically, on page 217 of the bill (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-…):

SEC. 308. FOREIGN OFFICES OF THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION.

(a) IN GENERAL. – The Secretary shall establish offices of the Food and Drug Administration in foreign countries selected by the Secretary.

It then goes on to say:

(a) The Secretary shall, not later than 2 years of the date of enactment of this Act, develop a comprehensive plan to expand the technical, scientific, and regulatory food safety capacity of foreign governments, and their respective food industries, from which foods are exported to the United States.

Huh? The FDA is now going to run the food safety programs of foreign governments? Look out, world: I’m from the FDA and I’m here to help!

Homeland Security and U.S. Treasury also involved

So who is involved in creating this? Believe it or not, the global “food safety” plan is to be developed under consultation to the Department of Homeland Security as well as the U.S. Treasury. As the bill states:

(b) Consultation – In developing the plan under subsection (a), the Secretary shall consult with the Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Trade Representative, and the Secretary of Commerce, representatives of the food industry, appropriate foreign government officials, nongovernmental organizations that represent the interests of consumers, and other stakeholders.

You might reasonably wonder “What does the Department of Homeland Security have to do with the FDA’s food safety plan?” Or “Why is the U.S. Treasury involved in the food supply?” Learn more about the Federal Reserve and you’ll have the answers to these questions. I don’t have space for all the details here, but read Ed Griffin’s book and visit http://www.realityzone.com if you really want to know what’s behind a lot of this.

Codex harmonization, data sharing and more

So what does this global food safety plan actually entail? It’s all spelled out right in the language of the law. You can view this yourself on page 195 of the bill text in the PDF file at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-…

(c) Plan – The plan developed under subsection (a) shall include, as appropriate, the following:

• “Provisions for secure electronic data sharing.”

This is so that the FDA can electronically track and monitor the food production activities of foreign nations. That way, if somebody in Spain tries to sell raw almonds to the USA, the FDA can make sure those almonds get irradiated or fumigated with chemicals first. Because raw almonds are so dangerous they have actually been outlawed in America (http://www.naturalnews.com/021776.html).

• “Training of foreign governments and food producers on United States requirements for safe food.”

This is designed to shove the FDA’s “dead food” agenda down the throats of other nations. The FDA, you see, believes that the only safe food is dead food — that’s why, along with the USDA, they have declared war on raw milk, raw almonds and many raw vegetables (http://www.naturalnews.com/023015_f…).

Now, with this law, the FDA will begin pushing its dead foods agenda globally, essentially exporting the FDA’s agenda of death and disease by making sure other nations destroy the nutritive qualities of their food supply in the same way the U.S. is doing. It’s all great for the global Big Pharma profiteers, of course. The more disease they can spread around the world, the more money they’ll make from selling medications.

Codex Alimentarius is also promoted in the bill

The “Plan” described in this bill continues with the following:

• “Recommendations on whether and how to harmonize requirements under the Codex Alimentarius.”

This is included so that the FDA will “harmonize” the U.S. food and dietary supplement industries with global Codex requirements which outlaw virtually all healthy doses of vitamins and minerals. Under full Codex “harmonization,” America will be left with a dead food supply and the health food stores will be virtually stripped bare of dietary supplements. Selling vitamin D at a reasonable dose such as 4,000 IU per capsule will be criminalized and products will be seized and destroyed by FDA agents who recruit local law enforcement to bring in the firepower.

All this will, of course, ensure a diseased, nutritionally-deficient U.S. population. This actually seems to be the goal the FDA has been trying to achieve all along because the more diseased the population, the more money gets collected by Big Pharma for “treating” sick people with medication and chemotherapy.

It’s all right in the bill!

The text mentioned in this article is taken straight from the bill itself. You can search for it at http://thomas.loc.gov by searching for “S.510″ as the bill number.

It makes me wonder why some food book authors so wholeheartedly supported this bill. Why were so many progressives on the left so enamored with this law? Didn’t they realize this was a huge FDA power expansion that would destroy many small farms and put farmers out of business while subjecting the USA to possible Codex harmonization?

Did they even know the FDA is now on a global food-killing agenda that will seek to pasteurize, fumigate, cook or kill virtually every piece of food that enters the United States?

Did they not know that the bill does absolutely nothing to limit the use of chemical pesticides on imported food? According to the FDA’s stance on all this, foods laced with DDT and other pesticides are perfectly “safe” for human consumption, but foods teeming with probiotics — such as raw milk — are deadly and dangerous! (Seriously…)

How is it that popular food book authors and food documentary producers could possibly support this bill? Do they also think small dairy farmers who sell raw milk should be criminalized? Do they agree with the Codex harmonization agenda? Do they think the FDA should run the world’s food safety systems and that the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Treasury should be shaping our global food safety agenda?

You really just have to shake your head and wonder about the true intentions of some people. I just have to ask: Were the supporters of this bill really so naive that they could somehow believe the FDA would actually seek to protect small, local organic farms? What about raw milk producers? What about the single-family farms that must now apply to the FDA for exemption status by authoring research reports, collecting tax returns and producing a pile of documentation the FDA will soon require?

Let me just say it bluntly: The Food Safety Modernization Act is the destroyer of local organic farming. It will gut small farms and local farms, greatly increasing the price of local organic food while decreasing America’s food security. Farmers’ Markets will be targeted by FDA agents who raid the operations of local farmers and imprison them for not having the right paperwork. Families will be destroyed, and those who have been successful at local food production will scale back their operations in a desperate effort to duck under the $500,000 / year rule (which can easily be surpassed by producing just ten acres of organic carrots, by the way).

The real agenda behind the bill

From another point of view, however, this bill is doing exactly what it was supposed to do: Destroy small farms, wipe out family farm operations, imprison raw milk producers and centralize food production in the hands of the big corporate food producers whose operations are steeped in pesticides and soil degradation.

This bill should have been called the “Big Agriculture Monopoly Act” because that’s what it does. It will ensure that America’s food supply will be controlled by Monsanto, DuPont and other agricultural giants who have been at odds with small organic farms for years.

The global food control agenda is a conspiracy, not a theory

It’s all part of the global food control agenda that we now know to be 100% true based on the leaked Wikileaks cables which revealed that the U.S. government conspired to push GMOs into Europe and “create a retaliatory target list” for any nation that resisted GMOs (such as France). Read that full report right here on NaturalNews: http://www.naturalnews.com/030828_G…

Thanks to Wikileaks, we now know that the global GMO conspiracy is quite real. It’s something that U.S. diplomats and government officials scheme on in order to appease their corporate masters in the agriculture industry. Now, with the Food Safety Modernization Act, this global conspiracy extends beyond GMOs and encompasses the global food supply, too.

It has become clear that U.S. lawmakers and bureaucrats will not stop until they have killed the entire global food supply, rendering living foods, raw foods and dietary supplements illegal or impossibly difficult to grow. You can thank your U.S. Congresspeople and Senators for all this, of course. In the end, every Senator in office today caved in and voted to pass this bill. You can also thank those who publicly promoted this bill even while having no real idea of the horrors they were supporting.

Such begins a new era of global food destruction headed by what can only be called the most dangerous government agency in North America: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration. If they do to your food what they’ve done to prescription drugs, annual food deaths will increase to over 100,000 a year.

Watch for the FDA to now set up enforcement offices in nations all around the world and start outlawing living foods on a global scale (if they can get away with it).

Also, watch for a new push for Codex harmonization which is a truly evil agenda to criminalize healing foods and nutritional supplements that prevent and even reverse chronic disease.

Medical Genocide in the New World Order

Medical Genocide in the New World Order (Part 3)

Originally Published on April 24, 2008

Avalon Health & Info - As reported in Medical Heretic, 25 years as a practicing physician convinced Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, M.D. that:

"Annual physical examinations are a health risk....Hospitals are dangerous places for the sick....Most operations do little good and many do harm....Medical testing laboratories are scandalously inaccurate," about half the time.

Dr. Mendelsohn concludes by saying,

"I believe that more than 90% of modern medicine could disappear from the face of the earth -- doctors, hospitals, drugs and equipment -- and the effect would be immediate and beneficial."

All of this is true, and perhaps one day, you will come to know that the initials "M.D." following the name of your own Establishment medical doctor means "Moral Degenerate," because your health and your life mean nothing to him as proven by his works not his words. How do you know if your doctor is an Establishment degenerate? Ask him,

"Do you use and support chelation, ozone, ultraviolet, Armour thyroid, homeopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, herbs, vitamins and freedom of choice?"

If the answer is no, don't know, maybe, or "I didn't study nutrition and alternative therapies in medical school," politely excuse yourself and find a holistic medical doctor, a real doctor, who primarily uses the natural therapies.

Medical genocide in the past 80 years since the internationalists took control of the medical Establishment has murdered an estimated 65 million people using fraudulent approved drugs, surgery and radiation proven to sicken and kill. In addition, internationalists initiated and funded abortion clinics have murdered over 30 million innocent unborn babies by abortion since the satanic Roe vs. Wade ruling.

Now can you begin to understand that the medical genocide of 95 million lives in the past 80 years is part of the genocidal New World Order, a totalitarian, communistic plan which promises freedom, abundance, health, well-being, and peace but will deliver slavery, scarcity, doctor caused disease and death, and continual war.

International bankers control the medical Establishment. They want to destroy all competition to their genocidal drug approach. They want to limit and eliminate chiropractic as part of their genocidal program to keep us sick and dependent, too sick and dependent to resist their global plans to enslave us.

The same one world government international gangsters who are destroying our national sovereignty also control the medical Establishment. The New World Order is communistic and the controlled United States government has supported Communism for over 80 years.

Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower all supported Stalin's Communism and the murder of 30 million to 50 million mostly white Christians in Russia. Stalin was an agent of the international bankers. It is estimated that these international Communists have murdered over 300 million people in the past 100 years and in addition, their medical genocide has murdered 95 million people in the past 80 years.

Medical genocide includes:

• treating superficial symptoms with drugs to intentionally make your health problems worse;


• ignoring, minimizing, discrediting and mismanaging the underlying causes of disease on purpose to make you sick; mandatory immunizations to create not cure disease;


• recommending unhealthy foods to destroy your health;


• suppressing and eliminating all ozone, ultraviolet, oxygen therapies, chelation and other holistic therapies proven to save lives and medical costs;


• suppressing and rejecting any research to test holistic therapies;


• abortion;


• the abortion pill;


• the AIDS virus, created by the internationalists, is being spread intentionally by AIDS virus contaminated vaccines, including the hepatitis and polio vaccines.

This is medical genocide.

Dr. John Coleman, a political analyst, states that the internationalists Global 2000 Report, an actual secret document, calls for zero growth in the population and the elimination of 2 billion people from the Earth by the year 2000 by medical genocide, abortion, the abortion pill, birth control pills, euthanasia, suicide, homosexuality, bacteriological warfare against civilian populations (you), and war.

Dr. Coleman states,

"The ruling class is cult-ridden. They belong...to a network of cults and secret societies which in many cases teach that killing certain classes of people is their bound duty...Adherents and members of these cults do not blink an eye at killing millions of unwanted people. Once we have grasped this truth, it is easy to see how and why the Club of Rome intends carrying out it mass murder plans."

H. G. Wells, a well known internationalist, wrote:

"It is easy to kill when one kills for the purpose of maintaining the ideals of the ruling class."

The death merchants of the Global 2000 Report have plans to kill you.

Commenting on how the banker-created wars are not killing us quick enough, Bertrand Russell, a well known homosexual and stooge of the internationalists, wrote in his book, The Impact of Science and Society,

"War has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove effective. If a black death could spread throughout the world once every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. This state of affairs might be unpleasant but what of it."

Will our liberal politicians save us? Eustace Mullins says that both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party are communistic proven by their affiliation with known Communist organizations and by their support of the Communist platform.

The Communist platform includes Federal Reserve Banks owned by the international Communists bankers, who control our money and credit system to steal from us.

• The U.S. Congress should control our money and credit system, not international Communist bankers.


• Elimination of private property is Communism. Fee simply is a trick word for feudal State owned property; dictatorial planning departments are State control of private property; inheritance tax and probate courts cheat your heirs out of their private property.


• Atheistic government schools and eliminating school prayer are straight out of the Communist Manifesto.


• Accepting Social Security benefits and welfare make you a ward of the State.


• Constitutional courts have been replaced with kangaroo maritime administrative courts. Clinton's national health care plan is socialistic, Communistic and genocidal.

Make no mistake, medical genocide is part of New World Order genocide. The One World Government has only one objective: total genocide of anyone who is not willing to be controlled by the international Communists. It is a purge, a killing frenzy, cold blooded murder. Medical genocide is part of the Communist New World Order genocide.

Your orthodox medical doctor in every small and large city and rural area in America, whether he will admit it or not, is a drug pusher. He is not a scientist, except in his own warped mind. He is a coward, who hides behind his arrogance, lies and a false mantle of respectability. He claims to be the best doctor, but other than doing a pretty good job patching up accident victims, he mismanages every metabolic disorder, illness and disease known to man. He is criminally negligent and a murderer when he uses orthodox treatments proven not to work and when he refuses to use chelation, ozone and other natural holistic therapies. He is a prostitute of the processed food industry, health insurance industry, drug industry and medical Establishment, in which proper nutritional advice, health insurance coverage, medical research, diagnosis, treatment and access to alternative natural therapies are determined by political pressure, fraud, bribery and threats to losing his license to practice Establishment medicine, if he does not prescribe worthless drugs and equally unproven surgeries and radiation treatments -- all designed to make you sick, dependent and easily controlled like sheep led around by the nose.

Your understanding and knowledge are just the beginning stages. Medical genocide will continue until you do something about it; and we need to do something very soon. Begin by consulting a holistic doctor and help to pass legislation to allow holistic medical doctors, chiropractors and naturopaths to practice in your state. May God bless you and open your mind, heart and spirit to His truth.

Five Crazy and New Genetically Modified Foods

Five Crazy and New Genetically Modified Foods

December 19, 2010

Planet Green - Who would have known 20 years ago that so many of the foods that we eat would be produced in a lab rather than nature? Scientifically designed seeds are becoming a larger than ever portion of our diet and for the most part, it’s difficult for the consumer to even realize it because of a lack of labeling.

According to Sustainable Table, about 200 million acres of farmland worldwide are now used to grow genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The most common GMO crops are soybeans, which represent 63 percent of all GMO crops, corn at 19 percent, cotton at 13 percent, and canola at 5 percent.

The list of seeds, and later foods, that have already been modified also include alfalfa, tomatoes, chicory, flax, papaya, potato, rice, sugar beets, and squash. The future of our global food supply is laden with seeds, and most recently animals, modified for human consumption. You may be surprised to see what’s on the horizon.

None of these have been approved yet by the FDA, but with what we’ve seen so far, who’s to say that they won’t be in the future.

1. Super Chicken Eggs

New biotechnology is being used to develop genetically modified chickens that produce compounds that can be harvested from the eggs. The compounds in the eggs can be used to fight a range of diseases from diabetes, to viruses to tooth decay, according to Jacqueline Jacob and Richard Miles – Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. According to the BBC, UK scientists have developed genetically modified chickens capable of laying eggs containing proteins needed to make cancer-fighting drugs. While these additives may be beneficial on their own, I think most of us would prefer to know what medications and drugs we were taking, rather than getting them in the form of an egg. Let alone all the side effects from feeding people all these extra additives.

2. Non-Browning Apples

According to Food Safety News, Okanagan Specialty Fruits of Summerland, British Columbia, a biotechnology company, has submitted an application to the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for market approval for a GMO apple that doesn’t brown after being sliced. The apple doesn’t brown because the gene that produces the enzyme polyphenol oxidase (what actually turns the apple brown) is silenced. The apples still brown but just not as quickly. What’s next, avocados that never go bad and pears that never get brown spots? Crazy stuff.

3. Fast-Growing Salmon

Unless you’ve been hibernating for the past few months, you’ve heard about this one and with good reason because salmon would be the first GMO animal approved by the FDA for human consumption.

According to Ars Technica:

These genetically modified Atlantic salmon have two foreign DNA sequences inserted into their genomes. One encodes a growth hormone from Chinook salmon. The other is the on-switch used by an antifreeze gene from ocean pout, an eel-like fish found in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. When placed alongside the growth hormone, this on-switch makes the salmon produce the growth hormone in cold weather when they otherwise wouldn’t. Importantly, the GM salmon do not grow larger than regular salmon; they just achieve their size in sixteen to eighteen months rather than three years.

The FDA isn’t evaluating the environmental concerns including pollution, waste, mating, and concentration of disease that go along with Aqua Bounty’s approval, just whether it’s safe for human consumption and it’s way too early to know that either.

4. Hyper-Producing Seeds

Scientists are working to manipulate DNA to create hyper-producing seeds, specifically plum tomato seeds that increase the yield by half. Zachary Lippman and his team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, produced a strain of hyper-productive tomato seeds by altering the command gene that tells plants when and how many flowers to generate, according to the New York Times. He’s also thinking about the modification in melons and soybeans.

5. Enviro-Pigs

Christine over at TreeHugger wrote that Canada has approved limited production of animals dubbed “enviropigs™,” pigs that are modified to produce 65 percent less phosphorous in their poop and urine. Pig farms are notorious for producing a world of waste, three times more excrement than human beings do. Lloyd wrote about a Rolling Stone article entitled Pork’s Dirty Little Secret which reported that an estimated 500,000 pigs at a subsidiary of pork giant Smithfield generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The stream of waste is loaded with phosphorus which causes the growth of excessive algae in lakes and streams which in turn, sucks the oxygen out of water and kills off all life. But even still, scientifically altering a pig so that it’s less polluting seems counterintuitive to me.

• Are You Eating Genetically Modified Foods?
• 7 Foods Banned in Europe and Still Available in the U.S.
• Are you Ready for the Genetically Modified “Frankenapple”
• Frankenfish

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation & Genetically Modified Foods

Monsanto developed terminator seeds, forcing farmers to buy new seeds because they cannot be recycled after first harvest. Monsanto is the world's leading GMO producer. And they sue farmers for violating patent laws when non-GMO farms' crops are inadvertently infested by neighboring GMO crops. Monsanto is making sure they own patents on almost all other non-GMO seeds as well. Their stated goal is to own the world's food production. Think food mafia! Under the guise of philanthropy, Gates is constantly funding vaccine development and distribution; this includes GM crops containing vaccines and mosquitoes to deliver vaccines. The targets of these developments are usually developing countries. Vaccines have been exposed as carriers for sterilization agents in developing countries over the past two decades. Perhaps Bill Gates' comment on reducing the population by ten to fifteen percent with vaccines was not a slip of the tongue or taken out of context. Gates is also funding the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The Gates Foundation hired Robert Horsh in 2006 when he was a director at Monsanto! The AGRA is a front for stripping African farmers of their traditional seed use and force selling them GM seeds. This type of operation has had tragic results for poor cotton farmers in India. - Behold the Four Horsemen of the Looming Food Apocalypse, Salem-News.com , November 9, 2010

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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation purchased 500,000 shares of Monsanto for more than $23 million — with this action the outing of the mask of "philanthropy" was completed. Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing, and Monsanto controls about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed. There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of "market competition" of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies. Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really "donating" anything. Instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their "donations" finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation. Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the "Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa" (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source. - Three Sides of the Same Figure: Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates, Pravda October 14, 2010

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Oil Spill in the Gulf: The Gulf of Mexico is Dying

The Gulf of Mexico is Dying (Excerpt)

December 1, 2010

Dr. Tom Termotto (Phoenix Rising) - It is with deep regret that we publish this report. We do not take this responsibility lightly, as the consequences of the following observations are of such great import and have such far-reaching ramifications for the entire planet. Truly, the fate of the oceans of the world hangs in the balance, as does the future of humankind.

The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) does not exist in isolation and is, in fact, connected to the Seven Seas. Hence, we publish these findings in order that the world community will come together to further contemplate this dire and demanding predicament. We also do so with the hope that an appropriate global response will be formulated, and acted upon, for the sake of future generations. It is the most basic responsibility for every civilization to leave their world in a better condition than that which they inherited from their forbears.

After conducting the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference for over seven months, we can now disseminate the following information with the authority and confidence of those who have thoroughly investigated a crime scene. There are many research articles, investigative reports and penetrating exposes archived at the following website. Particularly those posted from August through November provide a unique body of evidence, many with compelling photo-documentaries, which portray the true state of affairs at the Macondo Prospect in the GOM.

http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/

The BP narrative is nothing but a corporate-created illusion – a web of fabrication spun in collaboration with the US Federal Government and Mainstream Media. Big Oil, as well as the Military-Industrial Complex, have aided and abetted this whole scheme and info blackout because the very future of the Oil & Gas Industry is at stake, as is the future of the US Empire which sprawls around the world and requires vast amounts of hydrocarbon fuel.

Should the truth seep out and into the mass consciousness – that the GOM is slowly but surely filling up with oil and gas – certainly many would rightly question the integrity, and sanity, of the whole venture, as well as the entire industry itself. And then perhaps the process would begin of transitioning the planet away from the hydrocarbon fuel paradigm altogether.

It’s not a pretty picture.

The various pictures, photos and diagrams that fill the many articles at the aforementioned website represent photo-evidence about the true state of affairs on the seafloor surrounding the Macondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon, which is located in the Central Planning Area of the northern Gulf of Mexico. The very dynamics of the dramatic changes and continuous evolution of the seafloor have been captured in ways that very few have ever seen. These snapshots have given us a window of understanding into the true state of the underlying geological formations around the various wells drilled in the Macondo Prospect.

Although our many deductions may be difficult for the layperson to apprehend at first, to the trained eye these are but obvious conclusions which are simply the result of cause and effect. In other words there is no dispute around the most serious geological changes which have occurred, and continue to occur, in the region around the Macondo wells. The original predicament (an 87 day gushing well) was extremely serious, as grasped by the entire world, and the existing situation is only going to get progressively worse.

So, just what does this current picture look like. Please click on the link below to view the relevant diagrams and read the commentary:

http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/an-autopsy-of-the-bp-gulf-oil-well-at-the-macondo-prospect/

As the diagrams clearly indicate, the geology around the well bore has been blown. This occurred because of drilling contiguous to a salt dome, as well as because of the gas explosions which did much damage to the integrity of the well casing, cementing, well bore, well head, and foundation around the well head. Eighty-seven straight days of gushing hydrocarbon effluent under great pressure only served to further undermine the entire well system. Finally, when it was capped, putting the system back under pressure forced the upsurging hydrocarbons to find weaknesses throughout the greater system, which revealed all sorts of compromised, fractured and unsettled geology through which the hydrocarbons could travel all the way to the seafloor and into the GOM.

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Question: How many times can you grout a seafloor crack that was caused by an underlying superficial fault after drilling into an old mud volcano?

Answer: “In the attempt to seal the oil from oozing through the faults, BP resorted to high pressure grouting. Basically it is like cementing the cracks in the rock by injecting grout (cement mixture) at high pressure. The way they do this is by drilling an injection hole into the shallow rocks and pumping in the grout. The grout in “slurry” state will permeate into the cracks, cure and seal up the cracks. However it is not working because of the presence of gas and oil. It is like super-glue. You need to clean the surfaces before you apply the glue; otherwise it won’t stick and will come off eventually after a few days or weeks. That is why we can see a few blown out craters – shown in my article – Is the last rite for the Macondo Well for real?” (Per BK Lim, Geohazards Specialist)

Likewise, how do you fill a newly emerging gash in the seafloor which is caused by a deep fault due to low level seismic activity, or worse, a full blown earthquake?!

Seismic activity in the GOM and the uptick in earthquakes in the Mississippi River Basin and surrounding region

The oil and gas platforms that were in operation throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico in 2006 (per Wikipedia).

We now come to the most serious issue regarding the relentless drilling for oil and gas throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The map above clearly illustrates the density of drilling throughout the northern GOM as of 2006. Likewise, the map below demonstrates the extraordinary and increasing intensity of these very same operations off the coast of Louisiana alone.

Green lines represent active pipes (25,000 miles in all). Yellow dots represent oil rigs.

The map that follows, however, tells a story which demands the attention of every resident of the GOM coastline. The video link below the map shows the development timeline of the successively deeper wells being drilled during the last decade. Of course, with greater depths come much greater risks, as the technology and machinery have not been proportionately upgraded to accommodate the extraordinary demands and unforeseen contingencies of such a speculative and dangerous enterprise*.

*Oil and gas drilling in seawater depths of over 4000 feet, and through 15,000 to 25,000 feet of the earth’s crust and mantle, is considered extremely dangerous to those from whom reason and common sense have not yet fled.

Click on the map to enlarge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh_wNVUx9SI

It’s critical to understand the location and current activity of the various faults which exist throughout the GOM and how they connect to the New Madrid Fault Line, as well as other major faults at much greater distance. There does appear to be a emerging uptick in earthquake activity in the greater Louisiana area, as well as contiguous regions in the GOM as demonstrated by unprecedented, albeit low level earthquakes. Correlations between these earthquakes/seismic activity and major operations at the Macondo Prospect have been alluded to in our previous postings.

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