Category Archives: Destruction

Wagging The Dog

I’ve said before that I generally have little use for most of what comes out of Hollywood but there are rare exceptions and “Wag The Dog” is one of those exceptions & for the same reason that allows “Idiocracy”  to make the cut…it is some of the best fictional “truth” that’s out there. As I’ve been feeling the rumble of the War Pigs’ drums getting steadily louder and louder lately, this movie has come to mind more than once. Ordinarily it is easy to tell where the spark will ignite but right now, there is too much noise in the wind to look just in one direction.

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I ask myself over and over…is any of it even REAL? Does N. Korea really want to blast us into oblivion? If so…why…and I mean, really WHY, not the Faux or CoNN news scare versions of why, thanks. If they don’t really want to attack us, how would ‘We The Peons’ know that?  Or…maybe it’s Syria that wants to take us out..? Oh but wait…I saw mention about how going to war with China would be a bad thing…so maybe it’s them we should fear?? And of course, we cannot forget those scary folks down in Mali who…well, I don’t know what their beef is exactly, but by gawd…America will be there, standing strong!!!

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I know I did not list all of the places our government is currently chest-thumping with but it still makes the point…there is too much being thrown out too quickly – and without full background, details or key information so that the average citizen has no damned idea what is going on and what, if any, real threats there are. So much of what I’ve been seeing reads like propaganda and rhetoric…but is it? How can I be certain? Are we intentionally being spun about in all directions so that when something does finally trigger even more massive scale war, we will be so confused as to believe anything our ‘protectors’ tell us?

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Related Videos:

Wag the Dog: Media blamed for covering Libya unrest with fog of war

Will NATO Try a Wag-the-Dog Provocation Against Syria to Keep Sarkozy in Power After May 6?

Wag the Dog: Is China’s Philippines Aggression Merely a Diversion?

The Silent History of Rachel Carson

A friend of mine recently mailed me a copy of the book, “Living Downstream” which makes repeated mention of Rachel Carson and her fascinating work in trying to expose the dangers of the toxins we release into the environment by way of pesticides. I must admit that other than occasional short, almost abstract, mentions (even by other bloggers here; see links below) that popped up in my peripheral vision the past few years, nothing fully caught my attention so I had no knowledge of Rachel Carson or just how groundbreaking and important her work really was. I cannot believe I have managed to overlook her for so long…and am even more amazed that Ms. Carson is not a more nationally recognized hero…for a heroic life is most certainly what she lead!

And tho I find myself cringing (again) at just how lousy and lacking my public edumucashion really was and how little I still really know about…everything!…I am also looking forward to delving deeper, exploring more and discovering a whole new piece of history that until now, somehow never made it into my field of vision…

“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.”

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From RachelCarson.org - “Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up simply in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother bequeathed to her a life-long love of nature and the living world that Rachel expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.

She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

She wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time turned her government research into lyric prose, first as an article “Undersea” (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), and then in a book,Under the Sea-wind (1941). In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books constituted a biography of the ocean and made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing.

She wrote several other articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including “Help Your Child to Wonder,” (1956) and “Our Ever-Changing Shore” (1957), and planned another book on the ecology of life. Embedded within all of Carson’s writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly.

Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.

Carson was attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. Testifying before Congress in 1963, Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment. Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Her witness for the beauty and integrity of life continues to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures.

Biographical entry courtesy of Carson biographer © Linda Lear, 1998, author of Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (1997).

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“We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost’s familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.” 

Books by Rachel Carson

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“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”

Rachel Carson: A Conservationist Hero

Excerpt, Living Spoonful – “…It was in 1945 that Carson first encountered DDT, which the scientific community had dubbed the “insect bomb” in reference to the atomic bombs recently dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such was the utter destructiveness of the chemical spray.

Deeply troubled by the use of DDT without further research on its long term effects, Carson was one of only a few voices looking ahead to the “downstream” effects of pesticide use on land, and she was unable to find a publisher willing to take on the issue…

…In 1957, Carson became a champion in the fight against the “fire ant eradication program” – the USDA’s aerial spraying of DDT mixed with other pesticides and fuel oil, which included spraying private as well as public lands. When landowners on Long Island lost a suit to stop the USDA from aerial spraying on their own private lands, Carson was recruited by the Audubon Society to bring public attention to the issue.

It was through the research and connections she made during her work on the “fire ant” campaign that Rachel began to write Silent Spring. Evidence she gathered from her field work and from research at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, as well as from confidential information passed on to her by colleagues and friends still working as government scientists, all painted a picture of ecological damage and human sickness resulting from widespread pesticide use.

It’s a tragic irony that Carson, like so many scientists, suffered personally from her dedicated research. In 1960, Carson was diagnosed with breast cancer, which many have attributed to exposure to the very chemicals she fought to restrict. Although fighting cancer and its complications, Carson found the strength to finish writing her most impactful work.

Silent Spring was published on 27 September 1962, and immediately sparked a controversy among chemical manufacturers, the scientific community, and even the general public. Although much energy was invested into debunking Carson’s research, she was ultimately successful in defending her conclusions. As one of her last acts as a conservationist, Carson testified before President Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee, which, in 1963, issued a report largely supporting the claims she made in Silent Spring.

In January 1964, Rachel Carson died of complications from breast cancer. The legacy of her work, especially the work she completed in her last years, cannot be understated. Her biographer, Mark Hamilton Lytle, credits Carson with “calling into question the paradigm of scientific progress that defined postwar American culture.” Many believe her work is largely responsible for inspiring the grassroots environmental and ecofeminist movements that took hold throughout the 1960s.” Full Article Here

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“Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species — man — acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”

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Acknowledging Critics of Carson’s Work - 

I am not sure I agree with the above video but wanted to include it to show differing points of view about Carson’s work. I want to read and learn more before I decide what to fully make of her studies…no matter whether or not I end up agreeing with her assessments, I still admire those who stand up & fight for what they believe in!

Related articles

Women’s History Month Spotlight: Rachel Carson (947thewave.cbslocal.com)
ASU Professor Sees Rachel Carson´s Early Careers As A Model For Today´s Science Journalism Crisis (spiritandanimal.wordpress.com)
On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson (feministtexicanreads.wordpress.com)
Repeated Refrains of Nature, Quote by Rachel Carson (silverbirchpress.wordpress.com)
Girl History Month – Rachel Carson, Quiet Voice For The Environment (romancingthebee.com)

Why More SWAT-Style Raids?

“I’m very concerned that, on a national basis, police organizations are looking more and more like combat troops and less and less like community police officers.” 

- Robert Wadman, emeritus Weber State University criminal justice professor-

Excerpt, Standard Examiner – “Law enforcement officials agree: Police execute a “door kick” somewhere in Weber County, on average, once every week.

The forced entries range from a welfare check, when neighbors become concerned as newspapers pile up on someone’s porch and the family car is parked in the driveway.

At the other end of the spectrum are the full-on, SWAT-style raids with helmeted officers battering down a door unannounced, such as the Sept. 16, 2010, entry that left the suspect, Todd Blair, fatally shot.

Officials point to the frequency of door kicks, in police parlance, that occur without publicity or complaint as proof they’re benign — only a small percentage go awry. They steadfastly maintain they are crucial, the swift deployment necessary for officer safety and to keep suspects from destroying evidence.

Commando tactics concerns

But there are critics concerned about the increase in the commando-style entries, also known as a breach.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently announced a nationwide investigation of the “militarization” of police departments, simultaneously filing 255 public records requests in 24 states on March 6.

Among 18 Utah agencies whose records were requested are the Ogden, Roy and Brigham City police departments and the Weber and Cache county sheriff’s offices.

The agencies have been asked to provide data on SWAT team deployments and injuries during the deployments, weaponry used, and the level of funding for armament and equipment from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

The ACLU decried militarization as an erosion “of civil liberties encouraging increasingly aggressive policing.”

In the wake of high-profile, lethal-force incidents involving officers, police brass and prosecutors have defended the strong-arm tactics as necessary in an increasingly violent world.

“Officers plan for the worst and hope for the best,” said Ogden Police Lt. Will Cragun. “It’s easy to second-guess after the fact, but you need to get down in the dirt with us to know what’s going on.”

Officials typically point to recent mass shootings around the country as a constant reminder to officers to be on their guard.

Roy Police Chief Greg Whinham noted the Columbine High School shootings of 1999, where 12 students and a teacher were killed and 21 injured, moved him to make his department the first in the state to put A-4 automatic rifles in the trunks of all patrol cars.

“I will always err on the side of getting my officers home at the end of their shift,” he said.

In an earlier news story about the ACLU records request, Weber County Sheriff’s Deputy Chief Klint Anderson said the problem is “the militarization of our criminals.”

Anderson said law enforcement is seeing “criminals who have military experience and military training.”

“They are better armed, better trained and more dangerous than before.”

Jim Retallick, veteran Ogden public defender, and other defense attorneys argue there are other ways to serve search warrants than the military-style door kicks.

“Hell yes, it’s getting dangerous,” Retallick said. “For seven people to get shot over marijuana is ridiculous.”

He is referring to the Jan. 4, 2012, forced-entry raid on the Ogden home of Matthew David Stewart. Six officers were shot, one fatally. Stewart was also wounded, hospitalized and jailed and now awaits trial, facing the death penalty…” Full Article Here

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***Warning: Video Contains Graphic & Heartbreaking Footage***

 

SWAT Raids Home Over Hydroponic Equipment Purchase, Finds Tomatoes and Squash

Grow your garden outdoors, officials will bust you, fine you and demand that your ‘eyesore’ be removed from their cookie cutter communities…try to be nice and plant your veggies indoors where the neighbors can’t complain…and SWAT is going to come bust in your door and seize your uh…squash. After all,  everyone knows that the only thing hydroponic equipment could ever be used for is growing that terrifying plant known as “Pot”, right? 

The Activist Post – “Did you know that buying hydroponic growing equipment is now being used as probable cause for the government to raid your house?

Neither did Bob and Addie Harte, a Kansas couple who were raided by SWAT without a warrant last April because the authorities took notice of their purchase of indoor gardening items.

The illegal raid turned up “just six plants — three tomato plants, one melon plant and two butternut squash plants — growing in the basement”, and now the couple is suing the sheriff’s department.

The Associated Press reports:

~Two former CIA employees whose Kansashome was fruitlessly searched for marijuana during a two-state drug sweep claim they were illegally targeted, possibly because they had bought indoor growing supplies to raise vegetables. 

Adlynn and Robert Harte sued this week to get more information about why sheriff’s deputies searched their home in the upscale Kansas City suburb of Leawood last April 20 as part of Operation Constant Gardener.~

It seem peculiar that the couple are former CIA agents.  Perhaps government watches their former employees’ purchases more closely?

“With little or no other evidence of any illegal activity, law enforcement officers make the assumption that shoppers at the store are potential marijuana growers, even though the stores are most commonly frequented by backyard gardeners who grow organically or start seedlings indoors,” the lawsuit says.

“If this can happen to us and we are educated and have reasonable resources, how does somebody who maybe hasn’t led a perfect life supposed to be free in this country?” Adlynn Harte told the Associated Press.

The lawsuit says the Harte children (7 and 13) were traumatized when deputies wearing bullet-proof vests armed with assault rifles pounded on their door.

“It was just like on the cops TV shows,” Robert Harte told The Associated Press. “It was like ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ ready to storm the compound.”

“You can’t go into people’s homes and conduct searches without probable cause,” said Harte’s attorney Cheryl Pilate.” Source

Erin Brockovich Talks Sinkhole With Bayou Corne Residents

WBRZ – “Erin Brockovich, the woman who became famous after a film profiled her life in the year 2000 starring Julia Roberts, visited with residents affected by the Bayou Corne sinkhole.

Brockovich helped get millions of dollars in settlement money from a company in California, after she helped prove the company contaminated the ground water. Dozens of residents were sickened by cancer.

Today, Brockovich told residents they needed to stick together as a community. She also said she believed that the residents needed to heed the officials advice to evacuate, considering the fact that the area remains under an evacuation order.

She met with them for two hours, after visiting the sinkhole site today.

Brockovich said no matter what, she has the residents’ back.” Source

More on the sinkhole…

Giant sinkhole to more than double in size?

“It’s probably going to take out Highway 70″

Related articles

African Elephants: Their Struggle To Survive Against Poachers And The Illegal Ivory Trade.

Protecting Elephants Is A Globally Shared Responsibility.

From Wesman Todd Shaw “Now there is no real need to go on here about just what an African elephant is, the African elephant is one of the most easily identifiable creatures on planet Earth; literally everyone with the gift of sight knows what one is. Oh I suppose some persons may not realize there are elephants that are NOT African elephants, but that is another story entirely.

I’m going to take a bit of a guess here, and please forgive me should I be wrong, but I’m thinking most persons do NOT realize there are not just one, but TWO species of African elephants; the African bush elephant, and the slightly smaller African forest elephant. Both of these species of elephant are facing slaughters in the tens of thousands right now, as their ivory can be converted to cash at unprecedented rates.

Were the entire nation of the USA polled, then the percentage of persons who would like to see the African elephants extinct would be so extraordinarily small as to be a statistical irrelevancy, yet the African elephants are in real danger just the same.

What does the USA have to do with the survival of African elephants?

Well, I just used the imaginary USA poll as a bit of example. I don’t think much of anyone wants to see African elephants get remotely close to extinction, but yet it is heading that way for them just the same. If you happen to buy into the notion that the USA is the most powerful nation on Earth still, then the USA should definitely lead the way towards making absolutely certain the elephants of Africa in no way become more threatened than they already are.

It’s a global responsibility we have, we only have one planet.

Tons Of Elephant Ivory – Confiscated And Destroyed In Gabon.

Who Is Killing The Elephants?

Quite literally, we are. The enemy of the planet is us, and humanity alone has that little extra something that prevents it from spreading out and finding maintainable levels within its respective ecosystems. Oh don’t get me wrong, there have been human communities that lived in harmony with the natural world, but we always label those people as “savages,” and then we take everything they have…their land, which they were wise enough to know was never really theirs to begin with, and in some cases we just have a good old fashioned genocide against them in the name of corporations and consumerism stupidity.” Story Continues Here

 

Related articles

Is the New Madrid Mega Quake Being Engineered?

“With a looming economic collapse, constant threat of false flag events and World War III, and myriad seasonal viruses to call upon to keep the fear machine working overtime, we would be unwise to assume that TPTB will show unending restraint. Nevertheless, if one is prepared for these eventualities, then it becomes less about fear and more about self-empowerment to make personal changes and ensure that we can survive and thrive no matter what they throw at us.”

Nicholas West and Zen Gardner
Activist Post 

Excerpts: “The Powers-That-Be seem to be making a continuous effort to drive a stake right into America’s heart(land). Natural disasters are on the rise, and an increasing amount of evidence is leading to the conclusion that these natural disasters might not be completely natural.

Some already have speculated that we are entering a time of weather and earthquake wars, as the incidence of mega disasters has risen across the world. Is government experimentation simply going awry, or is it being orchestrated on purpose? Are they hiding behind or even amplifying current natural earth changes such as the strong solar cycle and the ongoing magnetic pole shift to accomplish some furtive plot?The hidden hand has always cloaked itself using a wide array of techniques to conceal its divide-and-conquer agenda. By owning the ultimate weapon — the very climate upon which we all depend — entire regions can now be put under a full spectrum of remote control already served up through climate change, economic instability, and the military-surveillance complex brought in under the false threat of terrorism.
Louisiana Sink Hole – Will This Trigger the Big One?

As you peruse the points below and the accompanying illustrations, you’ll see a very clear, seriously dangerous weak spot.
The recent developments with the growing Louisiana sinkhole caving into a potentially massively explosive gas repository also used for nuclear waste storage is something to keep a close eye on and take very seriously.
Will A New Madrid Quake Be Natural, Manipulated, or Both? The Sordid Lead Up To NowLet’s first look at the evidence for the manipulation of natural disasters and the proposed government solutions, then move to the massive preparation undertaken by FEMA indicating that something big is on the way for the area of the New Madrid Fault.

The Evidence of a Plan

Predictive Programming – This is where the groundwork is laid for directing people toward an imagined future. Through books, video games, movies, propaganda placement, and education, the passive receiving of orchestrated information can literally change the future. Elites have always been obsessed with mind control . . . and the best form is that which is the least obvious. The unaware are manipulated and controlled without a single shot being fired, or a single piece of legislation written. However, once one becomes attuned to their methods, it becomes incredibly obvious. Besides the constant bombardment of mega-disaster and end-of-the-world scenarios, including the new madrid mega quake, one prime current example is geoengineering (aka chemtrails). This chemical spraying has now wormed into movies and public places as an example for children toembrace the new normal of planes laying down a tic-tac-toe murky gloom across our skies.

Accept the new manipulated reality and the rest will follow.

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Al Gore Talks About Modifying The Weather

I am certainly no fan of Al Gore’s (or any politrickster for that matter) but couldn’t resist sharing this video since he more or less openly admits that we do indeed have people polluting our air and that due to the side-effects, the efforts to create a ‘sun-canopy’ are harmful to every life form on the planet.

Former vice president Al Gore appeared on Ellen Degeneres’ NBC daytime talk show and admitted that scientists have “proposed” programs intended to “figure out a way to block out the sun,” an effort many argue is already underway via the “chemtrail” program.

Building The Global Special Operation Forces Partnership

This is…well…unnerving…and chilling.

 

ISOF

ISOF (Photo credit: United States Forces – Iraq (Inactive))

 

(May 2012) Military assault demonstrations at the ISOF 2012 conference in Tampa bay, Florida. The participating SOF teams came from 10 allied nations: Australia, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Jordan, Norway, Poland, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and included American SEALs, Green Berets, Air Force Combat Controllers, and US Marines. This year ISOF’s theme is “Building the Global SOF Partnership.” This is composed of mutually supporting partners working to identify and preemptively address problems, and helping to defeat the appeal of violent extremism.

 

 

 

Like A Phoenix: Power Beyond The Fall

So…you want a revolution, eh? Pissed off…fed up…you know bad things are going bump in the night but don’t know which way to turn for help when officers are murdering people – and pets – all over the place. Your government representatives have gone deaf and blind. Your online activity is not only not private, but can and will be used against you in court…doors are getting bashed in, your milk is no longer legal, your neighbors can vanish and be indefinitely detained & families are being terrorized by armed and masked SWAT men in the middle of the night…

It is time to do something…NOW!!

Enough is enough!! Our founding fathers would not have stood for this and neither should we!! 

The time for a revolution is at hand…!

Or is it..?

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No one can deny that we are in dire straits both as a nation and as part of the global community of human beings…things are not good and changes absolutely must be made before we all end up in darker times and conditions than most of us could ever dream of living in – or even surviving. But…since it is premature to jump into a revolution…and it is obvious that we cannot continue on the path we’re on without serious negative consequences, where does that leave us? 

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I wish I could drop a big, happy rainbow here and say that there is no reason to worry, our leaders will all come to their senses soon and everything will be hunky-dory. I’d be a liar if I did. I honestly don’t think that things are going to be “okay” in the sense that we want for a long time to come still. The price of…everything…has risen so it seems. It’s not actually that prices are any higher – it’s that the dollar is lower, worth less…bottom line either way is that you get fewer items for more Monopoly Money than ever before. There is no denying the rise of the police state and ever tightening laws that are strangling us on every level from personal to business. The war machine is rolling over countries left, right and sideways; it is the Hexxus of Fern Gully, out of control and oozing death and destruction everywhere it goes. We find it acceptable to imprison citizens in order to satisfy corpo-political pigs and keep them all feeding at the trough of profit via human slavery…

Continue reading →

Monsanto & Venter; The Unholiest Alliance

For those not already familiar with J. Craig Venter, I added links in bold to the article excerpt below that highlight more of his history. I’ll give you a spoiler…he was a huge part of that wonderfully successful BP Oil Spill ‘clean-up’…he created an e-coli based bacteria that eats iron and it was dumped…or was it sprayed?…all across the Gulf of Mexico….*shudders* It eats iron…how much iron is in the human body..? 

Monsanto + Craig Venter…the Ultimate Match Made in Heaven…er, HELL…

UT San Diego - “Monsanto Corp. has acquired part of a La Jolla agricultural biotech in a deal that gives the St. Louis food giant a presence in San Diego for the first time.

Monsanto purchased crop-boosting microbial technology from Agradis, a spinoff of Synthetic Genomics, the companies said Wednesday. Monsanto also made an equity investment in Synthetic Genomics and signed a research agreement with the company. Terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition gives Monsanto access to some of the newest and most sophisticated technologies for improving crop yields and preventing loss from disease. And while genetic technology is fundamental, it’s mostly being used to find naturally occurring beneficial microbes.

Synthetic Genomics was founded in 2005 by gene pioneer J. Craig Venter to solve energy and environmental challenges. As part of the acquisition, seven Agradis employees researching helpful microbes were hired by Monsanto, said Joe Mahler, Synthetic Genomics’ chief financial officer…

…Synthetic Genomics and Plenus are forming a new company with the parts of Agradis not purchased by Monsanto, Mahler said.

The company, AgraCast, controls breeding and genetic improvement technologies for castor and sweet sorghum, along with an antifungal product for fruits and vegetables. Employees with the new company will move out of the Agradis office to a new one nearby, Mahler said.

Full Story Here

Related articles

Monsanto Shareholders Reject GMO Proposal

Oh, gosh, golly, gee-frickin’-whiz!!

Monsanto shareholders voted to do the wrong thing and denied a proposal that would finally force them to admit their GMO crops cause damage and harm to organic farms…who’d have thunk they’d so such a thing?

SL Post Dispatch -

Monsanto shareholders voted down a proposal Thursday that would have forced the biotech seed giant to report on how its genetically modified products might affect organic farmers.

Only 7 percent of votes cast by shareholders were in favor of the proposal, the Creve Coeur-based company said Thursday.

Monsanto had opposed the proposal, which would have required the company to make a report on the financial impact of the unintentional introduction of GMO seeds into organic farms.

In other matters at the company’s annual meeting Thursday, shareholders re-elected four members to three-year terms on Monsanto’s board of directors. Shareholders approved a proposal to phase out the current three-year, staggered terms of directors in favor of annual election of directors. They will serve one-year terms, beginning next year.

 

How To Combat Modern Slavery

“If the rule of law is sound, it protects the poor and it protects the vulnerable. But if corruption creeps in and people don’t have the opportunity to have that protection of the rule of law, then if you can use violence, if you can use violence with impunity, you can reach out and harvest the vulnerable into slavery…”

In this moving yet pragmatic talk, Kevin Bales* explains the business of modern slavery, a multi-billion-dollar economy that underpins some of the worst industries on earth. He shares stats and personal stories from his on-the-ground research — and names the price of freeing every slave on earth right now.

Highlights from the transcript which can be viewed in full Here on TEDTalks

“So, I began to do a research project of my own. I went to five countries around the world. I looked at slaves. I met slaveholders, and I looked very deeply into slave-based businesses because this is an economic crime. People do not enslave people to be mean to them.They do it to make a profit. And I’ve got to tell you, what I found out in the world in four different continents, was depressingly familiar…

…And I want to be very clear. I’m talking about real slavery. This is not about lousy marriages,this is not about jobs that suck. This is about people who can not walk away, people who are forced to work without pay, people who are operating 24/7 under a threat of violence and have no pay. It’s real slavery in exactly the same way that slavery would be recognized throughout all of human history…

…We’re also particularly interested and looking very carefully at places where slaves are being used to perpetrate extreme environmental destruction. Around the world, slaves are used to destroy the environment, cutting down trees in the Amazon; destroying forest areas in West Africa; mining and spreading mercury around in places like Ghana and the Congo;destroying the coastal ecosystems in South Asia. It’s a pretty harrowing linkage between what’s happening to our environment and what’s happening to our human rights.

Now, how on Earth did we get to a situation like this, where we have 27 million people in slavery in the year 2010? That’s double the number that came out of Africa in the entire transatlantic slave trade. Well, it builds up with these factors. They are not causal, they are actually supporting factors. One we all know about, the population explosion: the world goes from two billion people to almost seven billion people in the last 50 years. Being numerous does not make you a slave. Add in the increased vulnerability of very large numbers of people in the developing world, caused by civil wars, ethnic conflicts, kleptocratic governments, disease … you name it, you know it…”

* Kevin Bales is the co-founder of Free the Slaves, whose mission is to end all forms of human slavery within the next 25 years.

Brazilian Troops Bulldoze Homes; Leave Thousands Homeless

I am not really familiar with the current politics of this region but all sides of politics aside, this story is very disturbing and seems very, very wrong. I do know that several multi-national corporations have been working to force their way in to pillage the country for every possible resource…the most disturbing of which would be the human resources required to keep the new Brazilian Private Prison Corporations fully supplied and happy.

If people who were unjustly evicted from their homes decide to do something like…oh…riot or protest…the Intn’l Corporate Police will be there to *assist* and *put down* the riots.  Who knows exactly how many corporations are standing behind this land-grab or what their intentions really are…I just have that chilling kind of hunch that this is bad…very bad, for the people and future of Brazil.

Excerpts from WND

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While the press was barred from documenting much of the battle, local news reports showed the true extent of the human tragedy. Many critics have said it constitutes forced relocation, a crime against humanity under international agreements.

“Thousands of poor Brazilian families are living in wretched conditions at make-shift refugee camps after being evicted from their homes at gunpoint by federal forces, some of whom were sporting United Nations logos, according to sources.

The massive operation, which left an estimated 7,500 or more people, including thousands of children, homeless was justified by authorities under the guise of creating an Indian reservation.

Towns literally have been wiped off the map, and no compensation was offered to the victims. About 400,000 acres of land were expropriated in the latest operation.

Residents in the Siua-Missu area in the state of Mato Grosso battled heavily armed federal police and military forces for weeks using sticks, rocks, Molotov cocktails and other crude weapons.

In the end, however, the powerful national government forces were overwhelming.

Virtually all of the residents have now been displaced, living in squalor, packed into school gymnasiums in nearby towns. Others are living on charity under plastic tarps propped up with sticks with no clean water or sewage services.

Leaders of the feeble resistance, meanwhile, are being hunted down by authorities for punishment…

…“The conflicts between the productive sector and Indians are assuming greater proportions,” he added. “Countless non-governmental organizations have appeared, many from abroad, to involve themselves in the question.”

Authorities also told WND that the U.N. was not involved in the eviction efforts but that the organization’s logos were on the military equipment and personnel because they had recently returned from “peace-keeping” abroad.

“The evicted victims are now living at schools in Alto da Boa Vista and camps, with some being sheltered by relatives,” Naves Bispo, a local resident and victim of the land-grab scheme, told WND, adding that the situation was dire and deteriorating…

…Like other victims and analysts who spoke with WND, Bispo was unsure about why Brazilian authorities had decided to create an Indian reservation on land that was never occupied by Indians and was already lawfully owned.” Full Story on WND

Alive, Beautiful, Finite, Hurting…

…And worth dying for…

This is a non-commercial attempt from

http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/ and

 https://www.facebook.com/sanctuaryasiapage,

to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless ‘consumers’ are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/).

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My favorite mountain meadow…Gila Wilderness, NM

The Road To Hell…And Redemption

I am going to scale back on posts on this blog for a few days while I work on building something new….well, it isn’t new to me…it’s more like rebuilding a home for myself after I foolishly tore the last ‘home’ to smithereens.

A bit of back-history; hang in with me here, please. This is so incredibly hard to write…

At one point I was an extremely dedicated volunteer for prison reform and prisoners. To this day I am unable to retrace the steps that led me into the work – I have not ever been in prison nor do I have a family member inside. I saw a problem I thought I could help with and so I jumped in full force, no holds barred.

Due to my inexperience and the fact that I stepped into the work without a full understanding of what I was getting into, it did not take very long for me to lose my way within the movement. I got caught and tangled in the middle of a bunch of racial/political factions that I hadn’t even really known existed prior to getting into the advocacy work.  I was a carpenter…what did I know about ANYTHING?? I believed everyone behind bars deserved equal help and that race, religion, political beliefs or gang affiliation had no place in the decision of whom to help – or not help.

To this day I believe that to be the truth…at least it should be. All dividing lines should be erased so that people can find strength in working together. It’s a nice theory but not one that I am sure I will see come to fruition in my lifetime.

Unfortunately, the road to hell really can be paved with good intentions and my good intentions led me straight into an ugly world that I still can’t fully comprehend. For a little Jewish-raised girl (me), the world of skinheads and hatred was not exactly one that I ever planned on walking into…but walk…fall?…into that world, I did.

I did not then, nor do I now, support a single idea of the neo-Nazis.

Continue reading →

Midnight’s Dragon

PurpleDragon0001

As midnight’s hour dances away through time once again

And bravely growing shadow demons dare challenge the

Light in the last battle for the day, a solitary Raven mourns for

The souls kept prisoner and lost in the mist. 

Staring out into the vast land of ink and ash,

My mind reaches out, searching, seeking –

Wondering which side of the hour’s reality

My brother occupies on this cold winter night? 

The sudden absence of words is so pounding;

So full that it has become its own rhythmic sea of expectation… 

Whoever could’ve dreamt that the silence of letters lost

Could echo so loudly into the nothingness? 

Each dawn whispers a tinge of hope; perhaps an SOS in a

Dragon claw’s bottle will wash up on the shore today? 

At dusk The Cap’n reports that the beach is empty and no

Double-rainbow message in a bottle can be found. 

And the sun drops down in blood-red glory, defeated once more

by the angry winds who’ve stolen your voice. 

Somewhere in the darkness, imprisoned in a

Cloudy cave, there lies a wounded Dragon Warrior… 

We miss the sound of his thundering, fighting Spirit. 

Wherever you are, our beautiful Warrior Brother,

we hope Freya is watching over you

 and protecting you against evil, from both without and within. 

Heal well and hurry back to us; you are needed out here in battle.

©Reb McFarland

Fukushima’s Mutated Flutterbyes

August was a busy month for me I guess so I somehow managed to miss this item about the mutated butterflies found near the Fukushima radiation zone.

Even though it is a few months old, the damage from the fallout is going to impact our world for a long time to come so I thought this would still be worth sharing in case I am not the only one who missed it when the butterflies were originally discovered…

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Shading The Sky; Shading The Truth

“Hey, have you guys noticed all of the weird planes, streaks and spraying going on in the sky lately..?” 

*Gasp* “No…what are you, one of them Alex Jones 9-11 Truthers..?!” 

“Really..? You haven’t noticed anything odd about days like these?” 

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Or these..?

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Not an internet image; I took this picture of the sky over my head…

“Nope. There is nothing unusual in the sky, you are just paranoid…”

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“Sunshade” to fight climate change costed at $5 bln a year

(Reuters) – Planes or airships could carry sun-dimming materials high into the atmosphere for an affordable price tag of below $5 billion a year as a way to slow climate change, a study indicated on Friday.

Guns, rockets or a pipeline into the stratosphere would be more expensive but generally far cheaper than policies to cut world greenhouse gas emissions, estimated to cost between $200 billion and $2 trillion a year by 2030.

Transporting a million tonnes of particles to at least 18 km (11 miles) above the Earth every year to form a sunshade is “both feasible and affordable”, U.S. scientists concluded in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The strategy, called “solar radiation management”, broadly imitates a volcanic eruption. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, for instance, blasted out a haze of sun-reflecting particles that slightly cooled the planet.

The authors did not examine whether such “geo-engineering” of the planet was a good idea. Other studies show it might have unwanted side effects, such as changing rainfall patterns…

PLANES, AIRSHIPS

New aircraft, specially adapted to high altitudes, would probably be the cheapest delivery system with a price tag of $1 to $2 billion a year, they said. A new hybrid airship could be affordable but might be unstable at high altitudes.

A 20 km (12 mile)-long “space elevator” pipe hanging from a helium-filled platform was possible in theory but highly uncertain. Giant guns or rockets would be much more costly. Full Story Here

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Weather Modification, Inc.

Weather Modification, Inc., has been modifying and operating aircraft for cloud seeding and atmospheric research operations since 1961. We maintain and operate a fleet of more than 35 twin-engine aircraft in various configurations that meet the needs of every client.

Weather Modification, Inc., uses several models of aircraft in our own operations, although we can adapt our equipment to virtually any type of aircraft for specific customer needs.

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Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025