Be Afraid, Be VERY Afraid

. . . Or just tell me lies, sweet little lies - because the truth is just not what it's cracked up to be. Since I believe most serious health freedom advocates prefer the unvarnished truth, no matter how unappetizing - what follows here is a full plate of it.

One of our favorite health freedom crusadors, Dr Rita Laibow, MD has a cameo role in this unnerving 6 minute video in which she discloses that an FBI brochure out of the Phoenix Office on Counterterrorism states:

"Defenders of the U.S. Constitution against the Federal Government and the United Nations who make numerous references to the US Constitution should be monitored as potentially murderous and finatical terrorists. . . who by extension should be considered mentally unstable. further and under the New Freedom commmission those considered "mentally unstable" must be medicated on a compulsory basis with lethal, untested but very profitable drugs".

In this same video a former Director of Nursing speaks - from personal experience - about a health care system "which finds a reason to medicate everyone" through (among other things) the world-wide promotion of "cradle to grave" medication, taking place under the auspices of the UN and other international bodies.

This same Nurse also talks about the devastating effect of such anti-depressants as Wellbutrin and Prozac, both of which, along with other drugs and medical treatments I write about on my website. Below is the entry I included on Prozac which is taken from the book Health Myths Exposed:

"Both the dangers of prescription drugs and the greed of the pharmaceutical industry are glaringly obvious when we study the FDA approved drug Prozac (fluoxetine). . . the popularity of Prozac is a result of marketing, not science. . .The first testing of Prozac was performed on cats and dogs. Every trial showed that Prozac use caused aggression amongst normally calm and friendly animals, as could be seen by increased hissing and growling. When the animals were taken off the drug, they returned to their usual friendly behavior. . . By mid 1978, Prozac testing moved to humans in controlled clinical trials. . Despite the lack of scientific methodology, this study concluded that Prozac worked well to a "statistically significant" degree in a population of depressed patients. . . Both of these animal and human studies raised red flags about a potential causal relationship between Prozac and violence/suicide. . . Since its approval, the potential for Prozac-induced suicide has become frighteningly clear. . . Under the FDA's own analysis, there have been more than 20,000 Prozac-related suicides since 1987. Clinical studies performed on Prozac show 191 side effects per 100 people. . . Despite the many adverse side effects associated with it, the FDA approved its use for children in 2003! (p3-5) [Despite this, one article appearing in the July 2005 issue of the British Medical Journal said that "It is now medical malpractice not to treat depression with medication.]"

Please spend some time reading about Codex as it has developed under the auspices of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization, both arms of the UN. Meantime just remember, be safe and don't mention the Constitution. Be extra safe and watch what you say in general. Can't be too safe nowadays so maybe just don't talk at all.

Please forward

Sixth Grade Science

Do you still use a microwave oven, even "just to heat water"? If so, you might want to rethink your decision, because "The purpose of this report is to show proof - evidence - that microwave cooking is not natural, nor healthy, and is far more dangerous to the human body than anyone could ever imagine. "

On the other hand if you want the short form, then take a look at this sixth grade science project which concerned itself with the effects of microwaved water fed to plants. A picture truly is worth a thousand words.

The results of our sixth grader's findings are confirmed by yet another science fair project appearing online which also devotes itself to determining the effects of microwaved water on plants. Check the photos and graphs these kids placed on the "results" page. You might even want to read their intro which says in part:

In our world of evolving technology, we have been presented with new appliances, unheard of a few decades ago. Amongst these appliances, cell phone and microwaves among other things are causing death and sickness. With health care costs rising progressively each day, an increase of awareness is required in order to prevent further harm. Inaudible “noise” emitting from advanced devices are causing impairment to the human brain, crippling even the best and smartest of technologically advanced nations. Many agree that this century is our last chance to change our ways and to stop abusing ourselves and our planet.

Studies show that “the higher the frequency, the more damage”. In other words, you would do better living next to chemical waste than to be on your cell phone, while eating a micro-waved meal, which causes decreased nutritional value as it renders all vitamins useless. A micro-waved meal, in reality, has the nutritional value of a piece of paper. All in all, microwaves could cause diseases and infections such as: stomach and intestinal cancers, digestive and excretive disorders, higher risks of sarcoma and brain tumors and a lot more. The stress induced by micro-waves and the resulting high blood pressure can cause migraines, dizziness, anxiety and stomach pain. Among these illnesses, regular micro-wave meal consumers are prone to crankiness, depression, disconnected thoughts and sleep interruption. All nutrients in micro-wave food are reduced and altered so much to a point that your body receives little or no benefits from the food it consumes. “Nuking” your food as you can see, has deadly consequences. “Recent research shows that microwave oven-cooked food suffers severe molecular damage. When eaten, it causes abnormal changes in human blood and immune systems. Not surprisingly the public has been denied details on these significant health dangers”. –Dr .Mercola

. . . In the future, microwaves may be used to land aircraft, track anything on the earth, and many other things. Public awareness of these dangers is an absolute necessity. The everyday appliances in our homes are killing us. The Forensic Research Document of AREC Research states “The effects of micro-waved food by-products are long term [and] permanent within the human body.” This is our last chance to change our ways, before it’s too late and before the effects of microwaves permanently change and twist our lives.

Amen. And out of the mouths of babes!

Bird Flu, Vaccines and Propaganda

In this August, 2005 article, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny discusses a "blueprint" that was developed for the Center for Disease Control. This blueprint provides a seven step plan which will tap into "[t]he major media outlets [which] are intended to become providers of millions of dollars of free advertising for the drug companies, in an attempt to secure economic success from the sale of this year's flu stocks."

Supplying links to a slide presentation of the report itself, Tenpenny goes on to say:

Concerned over data revealing that nearly 65% of people surveyed did not receive the flu shot in 2003 - including nearly 47% with chronic illnesses and 78% of children aged 6-23 months of age - a new strategy has been devised. The program called "The Seven-Step Recipe for Generating Interest in and Demand for, Flu (or any other) Vaccination," [1] is designed to methodically manipulate the general public. Language within the presentation reveals the intent of the government and their drug company partners to use major media (newswires, TV) to send scheduled, fear-based messages to convince an unsuspecting public to not only accept the flu shot as necessary, but to motivate them to demand it.

In a related article, Dr. Michel Chossudovsky (who is professor of Economics at the University of Ottowa) suggests that, while the threat is real enough, the new official interest in avian flu carries with it the risk of militarizing our public health agencies even as it contributes to our spiraling defense budget. Says Chossudovsky: "The pandemic is being presented to public opinion as an issue of National Security. . . [Further] the hidden agenda consists in using the threat of a pandemic and/or the plight of a natural disaster as a pretext to establish military rule, under the facade of a "functioning democracy."

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the same biotech conglomerates can look forward to a financial bonanza. As Chossudovsky concludes:

The threat of the avian flu pandemic will result in multibillion dollar earnings for the pharmaceutical and biotech industry.

In this regard, a number of major pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Santo-Aventis, California based Chiron Corp., BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc., Novavax and Wave Biotech, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding, have positioned themselves in the procurement of vaccines in case of an avian flu outbreak. Maryland based biotechnology company MedImmune which produces "an inhaled flu vaccine" has also positioned itself to develop a vaccine against the H5N1 avian flu.

(Although it has no expertise in the avian flu virus, one of the major actors in the vaccine business, on contract to the Pentagon, is bioport, a company which is part owned by the Carlyle Group, which is closely linked to the Bush Cabinet with Bush Senior on its board of directors.)

This page will supply more information on Vaccines and "biological terrain".

Bird Flu Fact and Fantasy

As facts reported in one recent article tell us :

Chicken never has been cheaper. A whole one can be bought for little more than the price of a cup of coffee from Starbucks. But the industrial farming methods that make ever-cheaper chicken possible also may have created the lethal strain of bird flu virus, H5N1, that threatens to set off a global pandemic.

According to University of Ottawa flu virologist Earl Brown, lethal bird flu is entirely man-made, first evolving in commercially produced poultry in Italy in 1878. The highly pathogenic H5N1 is descended from a strain that first appeared in Scotland in 1959.

People have been living with backyard flocks of poultry since the dawn of civilization. But it wasn't until poultry production became modernized and birds were raised in much larger numbers and concentrations that a virulent bird flu evolved. Somehow, the virus that arose in Scotland found its way to China, where, as H5N1, it has been raging for more than a decade.

Industrial poultry-raising moved from the West to Asia in the last few decades and has begun to supplant backyard flocks there.

Then this in an online financial newletter:

. . . industrial poultry is the cause of the spread of the bird flu outbreak worldwide.

Several studies show that transnational poultry industry is the root cause of the problem. The spread of industrial poultry production and trade networks have created ideal conditions for the emergence and transmission of lethal viruses like the H5N1 strains of bird flu.

Inside factory farms viruses becomes lethal and multiply. Air thick with viral load from infected factory farms is carried for kilometres, while integrated trade networks spread the disease through many carriers like live birds and chicken manure.

Finally, the facts presented in an extremely well-documented report just released by the international organization GRAIN clearly support the idea that the industrialized poultry industry is the main culprit in spreading bird flu - which as the above article states, has been with us for decades.

The press release for the GRAIN report prepared by Devlin Kuyek concludes with:

A burning question is why governments and international agencies, like the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, are doing nothing to investigate how the factory farms and their byproducts, such as animal feed and manure, spread the virus. Instead, they are using the crisis as an opportunity to further industrialise the poultry sector. Initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically-modified chickens. The web of complicity with an industry engaged in a string of denials and cover-ups seems complete.

"Farmers are losing their livelihoods, native chickens are being wiped out and some experts say that we're on the verge of a human pandemic that could kill millions of people," Kuyek concludes. "When will governments realise that to protect poultry and people from bird flu, we need to protect them from the global poultry industry?"

Hmmmmm. . . . good question. But a good bet is that the answer will never see the light of day unless and until said governments (and their peoples) forthrightly address the pernicious influence of big M-O-N-E-Y as it relates to the various profit centers which surround the bird flu issue.

For example, a move is afoot in the US to have all free range birds vaccinated while some British scientists have announced intentions to work on the development of genetically modified birds which would be resistant to bird flu. Meanwhile no one in position of influence and policy-making seriously addresses the role of the industrial poultry industry.

Perhaps worst of all is the sad but all-too-real fact is that these various and sundry profit centers often draw the most well-intentioned among us into a carefully woven fantasy which in reality focuses on profits over people.

Vitamin Levels in Fruits & Veggies Continue to Decline

Continuing the pattern revealed by over 100 years worth of studies, yet another study confirms what should by now be considered a long overdue wake up call. This new study- using data from the USDA - shows "decreases of up to 38% in protein, calcium, vitamin C, phosphorus, iron and riboflavin when compared with produce from past decades."

Yet again the blame is attributed to farming methods which place a higher value on increasing yield by focusing on faster, larger growing crops irrespective of nutritional value. The so-called "green revolution" has in fact delivered the opposite of what it promised over 50 years ago.

When taken in the context of 100 years worth of studies describing declining nutrients in our food supply, this continued decline provided even by fresh foods truly does make one wonder how it is we manage to even function, much less stay alive and vibrant.

Or is the real state of our health yet another unacknowledged story?

Making Food Cheap

Excerpted from an article titled (appropriately enough) I'm Hatin' It:

If you're going to talk about poverty, food, and the environment in the United States, you might as well start in the Corn Belt.

This fertile area produces most of the country's annual corn harvest of more than 10 billion bushels, far and away the world's largest such haul. Where does it all go? The majority -- after accounting for exports (nearly 20 percent), ethanol (about 10 percent, and climbing), and excess (another 10 percent) -- anchors the world's cheapest food supply in purchasing-power terms.

Our food system is shot through with corn. It [UN-NECESSARILY] feeds the animals that feed us: more than 50 percent of the harvest goes into domestic animal operations. About 5 percent flows into high-fructose corn syrup, adding a sweet jolt to soft drinks, confections, and breakfast cereal. All told, it's a cheap source of calories and taste. Yet all this convenience comes with a price -- and not just an environmental one. . . .

. . . . If the USDA's food pyramid recommends two to five cups of fruits and vegetables per day, its budget -- mandated by Congress through the Farm Bill -- encourages different behavior altogether.

Under the Farm Bill, the great bulk of USDA largesse flows to five crops: corn, soy, cotton, wheat, and rice. Of the $113.6 billion in commodity subsidy payments doled out by the USDA between 1995 and 2004, corn drew $41.8 billion -- more than cotton, soy, and rice combined. . .

The huge corn payouts encourage overproduction, and have helped sustain a long-term trend in falling prices. According to figures from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, the inflation-adjusted global commodity price for corn plunged 61 percent between 1983 and 2002. Today a bushel, roughly 56 pounds, fetches about $2.

Cheap corn, underwritten by the subsidy program, has changed the diet of every American. It has allowed a few corporations -- including Archer Daniels Midland, the world's largest grain processor -- to create a booming market for high-fructose corn syrup. HFCS now accounts for nearly half of the caloric sweeteners added to processed food, and is the sole caloric sweetener for mass-market soft drinks. . .

. . . . From a short-term economic viewpoint, the Ding Dongs present a better deal: 360 calories per dollar, and no need for the time or skill to cook. "If you're on a limited income trying to feed a family, in a sense you're behaving rationally by choosing heavily sweetened and fat-laden foods," Drewnowski says. . .

"Energy-dense foods ... are the cheapest option for the consumer," Drewnowski says. "As long as the healthier lean meats, fish, and fresh produce are more expensive, obesity will continue to be a problem for the working poor."

. . . . ."Essentially, this economy is extractive," Meter says. "Our food system doesn't build wealth in our high-producing areas, it extracts wealth." Meter says the area's economy benefits not local farmers or consumers, but rather the large operations like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, which thrive on low prices for commodity inputs. The federal government picks up the tab for a failing economy; between 1997 and 2003, federal subsidies poured into southeastern Minnesota an average of $98 million per year.

Meter reckons that if the region's consumers were to buy 15 percent of their food from local sources, it would generate as much income for the region as two-thirds of farm subsidies.

Poverty and Hunger: Qui bono?

OK, so everyone knows that we live in a land of plenty - especially when it comes to food. But did you know that the U.S. actually produces enough food to feed each and every American TWICE over – and that is after excluding exports?

Why is it then that 20% of America's children go to bed hungry every night, and upwards of 30 million Americans do not get "three squares" a day when we so clearly live in a land of such food abundance?

Appallingly, the wealthiest countries are the very ones with the largest numbers of children are going hungry. In fact, and according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science : "78% of all malnourished children under the age of five live in countries with excess food."

Although the nutritional quality of most of this food is highly debatable, the controlled competition and government subsidies, incentives and tax breaks that are provided compliments of we taxpayers help keep the price of our foods artificially low – and often below the cost of the farmer to produce. These enticingly low prices keep we consumers buying, with little awareness of the dynamics which not only allows 20% of children in this land of abundance to go to bed hungry each night, but tens of millions to starve to death worldwide every year.

Yes, that is correct. TENS of MILLIONS STARVE to death EVERY YEAR. Hundreds of millions more are so seriously malnourished that they suffer a myriad of otherwise easily preventable health problems.

So how much food is produced worldwide? Well, according to figures calculated from reports released by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations the world produces enough to feed everyone in the world about 4.3 pounds of food every day, including one pound of meat, milk and dairy.

Yet, hunger and starvation are actually increasing, particularly in those poor countries that are being forced by WTO-protected multinational agribusiness ventures to produce two or three crops to sell to world markets in place of the multiple kinds of crops traditionally and successfully used to feed their own peoples, however “poor” these peoples may have been when judged by our own modern standards.

This emphasis on "commodity crops", which are traded on stock exchanges around the world, create an oversupply which forces the price paid to the farmer to levels well below the cost of production. In the "rich" northern countries the difference is often made up with a complex array of subsidies, incentives and tax breaks at all levels of government.

Meanwhile, the high cost of high tech farming is forcing less energy-and-chemical intense small farmers everywhere off the land, only to be replaced by giant, energy-and-chemical intense agribusiness farms. Even these industrial-style mega-farms are having an increasingly difficult time surviving, even though they get the lions shares of subsidies and so forth.

The simple fact is that small farmers cannot afford high tech farming and are not the main beneficiaries of subsidies, tax breaks and incentives - or so-called "free trade" agreements. Likewise, the poor in all countries simply can not afford to buy industrialized food - even if it could be argued that it was good for them (and us) in the first place, which it cannot.

In the final analysis,

Food security or freedom from hunger depends fundamentally on:

1) the availability of food (of sufficient quality and quantity), and

2) people’s access to food through self-provision, purchase/exchange or entitlement.

It follows that people experience food insecurity when they lack money to buy food that is readily available or if they are deprived of access to or control over the productive resources necessary to produce it themselves.

Vandana Shiva, farm activist and author of Stolen Harvest and other books, speaks about growing up in a cashless economy, which was nevertheless one in which she and her peers wanted for nothing that was life-giving and life-sustaining. In other words, hunger and starvation are and always have been a political and economic decision made primarily by those who stand to gain the most from such decisions, while “poverty” may well be in the eye of the beholder.