So who owns your child… You, the state, or God???
Published on Jul 27, 2012 by ConnectTheBlots
Hosea 4:6 (ESV)
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children…
Deuteronomy 27:25 (NIV)
“Cursed is the man who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent person.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”
Washington’s Newest Tool for Global Domination
By David Vine from TomDispatch.com July 23, 2012
Unknown to most Americans, Washington’s garrisoning of the planet is on the rise, thanks to a new generation of bases the military calls “lily pads.”
The first thing I saw last month when I walked into the belly of the dark grey C-17 Air Force cargo plane was a void — something missing. A missing left arm, to be exact, severed at the shoulder, temporarily patched and held together. Thick, pale flesh, flecked with bright red at the edges. It looked like meat sliced open. The face and what remained of the rest of the man were obscured by blankets, an American flag quilt, and a jumble of tubes and tape, wires, drip bags, and medical monitors.
That man and two other critically wounded soldiers — one with two stumps where legs had been, the other missing a leg below the thigh — were intubated, unconscious, and lying on stretchers hooked to the walls of the plane that had just landed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. A tattoo on the soldier’s remaining arm read, “DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR.”
I asked a member of the Air Force medical team about the casualties they see like these. Many, as with this flight, were coming from Afghanistan, he told me. “A lot from the Horn of Africa,” he added. “You don’t really hear about that in the media.”
“Where in Africa?” I asked. He said he didn’t know exactly, but generally from the Horn, often with critical injuries. “A lot out of Djibouti,” he added, referring to Camp Lemonnier, the main U.S. military base in Africa, but from “elsewhere” in the region, too.
Since the “Black Hawk Down” deaths in Somalia almost 20 years ago, we’ve heard little, if anything, about American military casualties in Africa (other than a strange report last week about three special operations commandos killed, along with three women identified by U.S. military sources as “Moroccan prostitutes,” in a mysterious car accident in Mali). The growing number of patients arriving at Ramstein from Africa pulls back a curtain on a significant transformation in twenty-first-century U.S. military strategy.
These casualties are likely to be the vanguard of growing numbers of wounded troops coming from places far removed from Afghanistan or Iraq. They reflect the increased use of relatively small bases like Camp Lemonnier, which military planners see as a model for future U.S. bases “scattered,” as one academic explains, “across regions in which the United States has previously not maintained a military presence.”
Disappearing are the days when Ramstein was the signature U.S. base, an American-town-sized behemoth filled with thousands or tens of thousands of Americans, PXs, Pizza Huts, and other amenities of home. But don’t for a second think that the Pentagon is packing up, downsizing its global mission, and heading home. In fact, based on developments in recent years, the opposite may be true. While the collection of Cold War-era giant bases around the world is shrinking, the global infrastructure of bases overseas has exploded in size and scope.
Unknown to most Americans, Washington’s garrisoning of the planet is on the rise, thanks to a new generation of bases the military calls “lily pads” (as in a frog jumping across a pond toward its prey). These are small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.
Around the world, from Djibouti to the jungles of Honduras, the deserts of Mauritania to Australia’s tiny Cocos Islands, the Pentagon has been pursuing as many lily pads as it can, in as many countries as it can, as fast as it can. Although statistics are hard to assemble, given the often-secretive nature of such bases, the Pentagon has probably built upwards of 50 lily pads and other small bases since around 2000, while exploring the construction of dozens more.
As Mark Gillem, author of America Town: Building the Outposts of Empire, explains, “avoidance” of local populations, publicity, and potential opposition is the new aim. “To project its power,” he says, the United States wants “secluded and self-contained outposts strategically located” around the world. According to some of the strategy’s strongest proponents at the American Enterprise Institute, the goal should be “to create a worldwide network of frontier forts,” with the U.S. military “the ‘global cavalry’ of the twenty-first century.”
Such lily-pad bases have become a critical part of an evolving Washington military strategy aimed at maintaining U.S. global dominance by doing far more with less in an increasingly competitive, ever more multi-polar world. Central as it’s becoming to the long-term U.S. stance, this global-basing reset policy has, remarkably enough, received almost no public attention, nor significant Congressional oversight. Meanwhile, as the arrival of the first casualties from Africa shows, the U.S. military is getting involved in new areas of the world and new conflicts, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Transforming the Base Empire
You might think that the U.S. military is in the process of shrinking, rather than expanding, its little noticed but enormous collection of bases abroad. After all, it was forced to close the full panoply of 505 bases, mega to micro, that it built in Iraq, and it’s now beginning the process of drawing down forces in Afghanistan. In Europe, the Pentagon is continuing to close its massive bases in Germany and will soon remove two combat brigades from that country. Global troop numbers are set to shrink by around 100,000.
Yet Washington still easily maintains the largest collection of foreign bases in world history: more than 1,000 military installations outside the 50 states and Washington, DC. They include everything from decades-old bases in Germany and Japan to brand-new drone bases in Ethiopia and the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean and even resorts for military vacationers in Italy and South Korea.
In Afghanistan, the U.S.-led international force still occupies more than 450 bases. In total, the U.S. military has some form of troop presence in approximately 150 foreign countries, not to mention 11 aircraft carrier task forces — essentially floating bases — and a significant, and growing, military presence in space. The United States currently spends an estimated $250 billion annually maintaining bases and troops overseas.
Some bases, like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, date to the late nineteenth century. Most were built or occupied during or just after World War II on every continent, including Antarctica. Although the U.S. military vacated around 60% of its foreign bases following the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Cold War base infrastructure remained relatively intact, with 60,000 American troops remaining in Germany alone, despite the absence of a superpower adversary.
However, in the early months of 2001, even before the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration launched a major global realignment of bases and troops that’s continuing today with Obama’s “Asia pivot.” Bush’s original plan was to close more than one-third of the nation’s overseas bases and shift troops east and south, closer to predicted conflict zones in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Pentagon began to focus on creating smaller and more flexible “forward operating bases” and even smaller “cooperative security locations” or “lily pads.” Major troop concentrations were to be restricted to a reduced number of “main operating bases” (MOBs) — like Ramstein, Guam in the Pacific, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean — which were to be expanded.
Despite the rhetoric of consolidation and closure that went with this plan, in the post-9/11 era the Pentagon has actually been expanding its base infrastructure dramatically, including dozens of major bases in every Persian Gulf country save Iran, and in several Central Asian countries critical to the war in Afghanistan.
Hitting the Base Reset Button
Obama’s recently announced “Asia pivot” signals that East Asia will be at the center of the explosion of lily-pad bases and related developments. Already in Australia, U.S. marines are settling into a shared base in Darwin. Elsewhere, the Pentagon is pursuing plans for a drone and surveillance base in Australia’s Cocos Islands and deployments to Brisbane and Perth. In Thailand, the Pentagon has negotiated rights for new Navy port visits and a “disaster-relief hub” at U-Tapao.
In the Philippines, whose government evicted the U.S. from the massive Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base in the early 1990s, as many as 600 special forces troops have quietly been operating in the country’s south since January 2002. Last month, the two governments reached an agreement on the future U.S. use of Clark and Subic, as well as other repair and supply hubs from the Vietnam War era. In a sign of changing times, U.S. officials even signed a 2011 defense agreement with former enemy Vietnam and have begun negotiations over the Navy’s increased use of Vietnamese ports.
Elsewhere in Asia, the Pentagon has rebuilt a runway on tiny Tinian island near Guam, and it’s considering future bases in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, while pushing stronger military ties with India. Every year in the region, the military conducts around 170 military exercises and 250 port visits. On South Korea’s Jeju island, the Korean military is building a base that will be part of the U.S. missile defense system and to which U.S. forces will have regular access.
“We just can’t be in one place to do what we’ve got to do,” Pacific Command commander Admiral Samuel Locklear III has said. For military planners, “what we’ve got to do” is clearly defined as isolating and (in the terminology of the Cold War) “containing” the new power in the region, China. This evidently means “peppering” new bases throughout the region, adding to the more than 200 U.S. bases that have encircled China for decades in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and Hawaii.
And Asia is just the beginning. In Africa, the Pentagon has quietly created “about a dozen air bases” for drones and surveillance since 2007. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, we know that the military has created or will soon create installations in Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, South Sudan, and Uganda. The Pentagon has also investigated building bases in Algeria, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria, among other places.
Next year, a brigade-sized force of 3,000 troops, and “likely more,” will arrive for exercises and training missions across the continent. In the nearby Persian Gulf, the Navy is developing an “afloat forward-staging base,” or “mothership,” to serve as a sea-borne “lily pad” for helicopters and patrol craft, and has been involved in a massive build-up of forces in the region.
In Latin America, following the military’s eviction from Panama in 1999 and Ecuador in 2009, the Pentagon has created or upgraded new bases in Aruba and Curaçao, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru. Elsewhere, the Pentagon has funded the creation of military and police bases capable of hosting U.S. forces in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, and even Ecuador. In 2008, the Navy reactivated its Fourth Fleet, inactive since 1950, to patrol the region. The military may want a base in Brazil and unsuccessfully tried to create bases, ostensibly for humanitarian and emergency relief, in Paraguay and Argentina.
Finally, in Europe, after arriving in the Balkans during 1990’s interventions, U.S. bases have moved eastward into some of the former Eastern Bloc states of the Soviet empire. The Pentagon is now developing installations capable of supporting rotating, brigade-sized deployments in Romania and Bulgaria, and a missile defense base and aviation facilities in Poland. Previously, the Bush administration maintained two CIA black sites (secret prisons) in Lithuania and another in Poland. Citizens of the Czech Republic rejected a planned radar base for the Pentagon’s still unproven missile defense system, and now Romania will host ground-based missiles.
A New American Way of War
A lily pad on one of the Gulf of Guinea islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, off the oil-rich west coast of Africa, helps explain what’s going on. A U.S. official has described the base as “another Diego Garcia,” referring to the Indian Ocean base that’s helped ensure decades of U.S. domination over Middle Eastern energy supplies. Without the freedom to create new large bases in Africa, the Pentagon is using São Tomé and a growing collection of other lily pads on the continent in an attempt to control another crucial oil-rich region.
Far beyond West Africa, the nineteenth century “Great Game” competition for Central Asia has returned with a passion — and this time gone global. It’s spreading to resource-rich lands in Africa, Asia, and South America, as the United States, China, Russia, and members of the European Union find themselves locked in an increasingly intense competition for economic and geopolitical supremacy.
While Beijing, in particular, has pursued this competition in a largely economic fashion, dotting the globe with strategic investments, Washington has focused relentlessly on military might as its global trump card, dotting the planet with new bases and other forms of military power. “Forget full-scale invasions and large-footprint occupations on the Eurasian mainland,” Nick Turse has written of this new twenty-first century military strategy. “Instead, think: special operations forces… proxy armies… the militarization of spying and intelligence… drone aircraft… cyber-attacks, and joint Pentagon operations with increasingly militarized ‘civilian’ government agencies.”
Add to this unparalleled long-range air and naval power; arms sales besting any nation on Earth; humanitarian and disaster relief missions that clearly serve military intelligence, patrol, and “hearts and minds” functions; the rotational deployment of regular U.S. forces globally; port visits and an expanding array of joint military exercises and training missions that give the U.S. military de facto “presence” worldwide and help turn foreign militaries into proxy forces.
And lots and lots of lily-pad bases.
Military planners see a future of endless small-scale interventions in which a large, geographically dispersed collection of bases will always be primed for instant operational access. With bases in as many places as possible, military planners want to be able to turn to another conveniently close country if the United States is ever prevented from using a base, as it was by Turkey prior to the invasion of Iraq. In other words, Pentagon officials dream of nearly limitless flexibility, the ability to react with remarkable rapidity to developments anywhere on Earth, and thus, something approaching total military control over the planet.
Beyond their military utility, the lily pads and other forms of power projection are also political and economic tools used to build and maintain alliances and provide privileged U.S. access to overseas markets, resources, and investment opportunities. Washington is planning to use lily-pad bases and other military projects to bind countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America as closely as possible to the U.S. military — and so to continued U.S. political-economic hegemony. In short, American officials are hoping military might will entrench their influence and keep as many countries as possible within an American orbit at a time when some are asserting their independence ever more forcefully or gravitating toward China and other rising powers.
Those Dangerous Lily Pads
While relying on smaller bases may sound smarter and more cost effective than maintaining huge bases that have often caused anger in places like Okinawa and South Korea, lily pads threaten U.S. and global security in several ways:
First, the “lily pad” language can be misleading, since by design or otherwise, such installations are capable of quickly growing into bloated behemoths.
Second, despite the rhetoric about spreading democracy that still lingers in Washington, building more lily pads actually guarantees collaboration with an increasing number of despotic, corrupt, and murderous regimes.
Third, there is a well-documented pattern of damage that military facilities of various sizes inflict on local communities. Although lily pads seem to promise insulation from local opposition, over time even small bases have often led to anger and protest movements.
Finally, a proliferation of lily pads means the creeping militarization of large swaths of the globe. Like real lily pads — which are actually aquatic weeds — bases have a way of growing and reproducing uncontrollably. Indeed, bases tend to beget bases, creating “base races” with other nations, heightening military tensions, and discouraging diplomatic solutions to conflicts. After all, how would the United States respond if China, Russia, or Iran were to build even a single lily-pad base of its own in Mexico or the Caribbean?
For China and Russia in particular, ever more U.S. bases near their borders threaten to set off new cold wars. Most troublingly, the creation of new bases to protect against an alleged future Chinese military threat may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: such bases in Asia are likely to create the threat they are supposedly designed to protect against, making a catastrophic war with China more, not less, likely.
Encouragingly, however, overseas bases have recently begun to generate critical scrutiny across the political spectrum from Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul to Democratic Senator Jon Tester and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. With everyone looking for ways to trim the deficit, closing overseas bases offers easy savings. Indeed, increasingly influential types are recognizing that the country simply can’t afford more than 1,000 bases abroad.
Great Britain, like empires before it, had to close most of its remaining foreign bases in the midst of an economic crisis in the 1960s and 1970s. The United States is undoubtedly headed in that direction sooner or later. The only question is whether the country will give up its bases and downsize its global mission by choice, or if it will follow Britain’s path as a fading power forced to give up its bases from a position of weakness.
Of course, the consequences of not choosing another path extend beyond economics. If the proliferation of lily pads, special operations forces, and drone wars continues, the United States is likely to be drawn into new conflicts and new wars, generating unknown forms of blowback, and untold death and destruction. In that case, we’d better prepare for a lot more incoming flights — from the Horn of Africa to Honduras — carrying not just amputees but caskets.
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David Vine is assistant professor of anthropology at American University, in Washington, DC. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton University Press, 2009). He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and Mother Jones, among other places. He is currently completing a book about the more than 1,000 U.S. military bases located outside the United States.
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Malachi 3:5 (NASB) What the Almighty thinks of corporate enforcers…
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me,” says the LORD of hosts.
Obadiah 1:6 (NASB) Vengeance is on the way…
“O how Esau will be ransacked, And his hidden treasures searched out!
Federal Reserve Audit Bill Overwhelmingly Passes The House
By Jennifer Bendery
jen.bendery@huffingtonpost.com
Posted: 07/25/2012 2:59 pm Updated: 07/26/2012 5:51 pm
WASHINGTON — In a rare moment of bipartisanship, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to audit the Federal Reserve.
The bill (H.R. 459), which has 270 co-sponsors, passed 327 to 98. All but one Republican — Rep. Bob Turner of New York — voted for it, along with 89 Democrats.
Paul teamed up with former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) in 2010 to pass similar legislation that became part of the final Wall Street reform bill. But Paul has said new audit legislation is needed because the 2010 bill didn’t go far enough. Specifically, he states on his website that the audit called for in the 2010 bill only focused on emergency credit programs and procedural issues, rather than on the substantive details of the lending transactions. The 2012 bill doesn’t limit the focus of the audit.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke recently told the House Financial Services Committee that he agrees with the “basic premise” that the Fed should be transparent, but raised concerns that Paul’s bill doesn’t exempt monetary policy and deliberations from its reach.
Not including an exemption on this point could create “a political dampening effect on the Federal Reserve’s policy decisions,” Bernanke warned.
But Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) pointed out that the House vote on the bill comes on the same day that the Washington Post reported that the New York Fed “did not communicate in key meetings with top regulators that British bank Barclays had admitted to Fed staffers that it was rigging LIBOR,” the index which sets interest rates worldwide.
“The Fed creates trillions of dollars out of nothing and gives it to banks. Congress is in the dark. The Fed sets the stage for the subprime meltdown. Congress is in the dark. The Fed takes a dive on LIBOR. Congress is in the dark. The Fed doesn’t tell regulators what is going on. Congress is in the dark,” Kucinich shouted on the House floor, just before the vote.
“It is time for us to bring the Fed into the sunshine of accountability,” he said.
Despite the broad support in the House, a senior Senate Democratic aide signaled the bill isn’t likely to go anywhere in that chamber in the near future.
“Not this work period,” the aide said about the Senate acting on the bill ahead of the month-long August recess. “Don’t know about September, but I doubt it.”
Another top Senate Democratic aide concurred that the bill likely won’t go anywhere, but speculated it could resurface in a different form.
“We probably won’t bring it up,” said the aide, adding that Paul’s son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), “will probably start insisting on this as an amendment to everything under the sun, so it’s possible it comes up for an amendment vote at some point.”
“It would not be the craziest amendment we’ve voted on,” the aide said.
This post has been updated to include the House bill number.
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Related posts…
The bank parasites are losing their mojo…
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Deuteronomy 32:35 (NIV)
It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.”
The Almighty has the last word on things that matter…
Deuteronomy 17:15 (NIV)
Be sure to appoint over you the king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite…
Psalm 14:4 (NLT)
Will those who do evil never learn? They eat up my people like bread and wouldn’t think of praying to the LORD…
Published on Jun 21, 2012 by mercola (youtube)
Italian Court Reignites MMR Vaccine Debate After Award Over Child with Autism
By Dr. Mercola June 25 2012
Many parents don’t think twice about taking their children in for routine vaccinations, as they are an integral and heavily promoted part of the conventional medical system. But this decision has had life altering, and sometimes life-ending, ramifications for more children than you might expect.
Many hard core health activists are distressed that I do not promote the avoidance of all vaccines outright. Instead, I strongly urge you to invest the time to educate yourself about the potential benefits and risks of each vaccine prior to vaccination, and to make educated decisions based on what you conclude is likely to be the best course of action for your child.
While some vaccines appear to be safer than others, it’s important to realize that each vaccination carries a certain amount of risk and vaccine risks can be greater for some than others due to biological and environmental factors, and the timing and types of vaccines given. The risks of vaccination may be exponentially increased when revaccination takes place after an individual has already had a previous vaccine reaction, or when multiple vaccines are administered at the same time.
There are vaccines that historically have been associated with more side effects than others, and the combination measles, mumps and rubella vaccine – MMR shot – is one of those.
The health risks associated with the MMR vaccine has been in the news for about 15 years, and we’re undoubtedly going to see a re-emergence of questions about this vaccine in the coming days and weeks because the Italian health ministry recently conceded that the MMR vaccine caused autism in a now nine-year-old boy, who suffered brain inflammation and permanent brain damage after he was vaccinated.
Italian Court Rules MMR Vaccine Caused Autism
Valentino Bocca was given an MMR shot in 2004, at the age of 15 months. According to his parents, the change in his behavior was immediate. That same night he refused to eat, and he developed diarrhea during the night. It quickly went downhill from there. Within days he was no longer able to put a spoon to his mouth, and he spent nights crying in pain. His parents immediately suspected the vaccination, but were told this was “impossible.” Valentino progressively regressed, and received the diagnosis of autism a year later.
In the final analysis, the Italian Health Ministry disagreed with the initial conclusion of the pediatrician, conceding that the vaccine was at fault.
As a result, a court in Rimini, Italy recently awarded the Bocca family a 15-year annuity totaling 174,000 Euros (just under $220,000), plus reimbursement for court costs, ruling that Valentino “has been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (prophylaxis trivalent MMR)i.” According to a featured article in the UK newspaper, The Independentii, about 100 similar cases are now being examined by Italian lawyers, and more cases may be brought to court.
“Luca Ventaloro the family lawyer, said yesterday: “This is very significant for Britain which uses, and has used, an MMR vaccine with the same components as the one given to Valentino.
It is wrong for governments and their health authorities to exert strong pressure on parents to take children for the MMR jab while ignoring that this vaccine can cause autism and linked conditions.” The number of autism cases has risen sharply since the 1970s, with one in 64 British children affected,” The Independent reportsiii .
Why is US Media in Black-Out on this Story?
It’s well worth mentioning that this story has yet to be addressed in the US media… The Daily Mail was the first paper in the UK to talk about it on June 15iv. The Independent was the second to print an article, on June 17. The Daily Mail was the most substantive of the two. Their version included the following statements:
“Judge Lucio Ardigo, awarding compensation to the family… said it was ‘conclusively established’ that Valentino had suffered from an ‘autistic disorder associated with medium cognitive delay’ and his illness, as Dr Barboni stated, was linked to receiving the jab. Lawyer Mr Ventaloro explained yesterday: ‘This is very significant for Britain which uses, and has used, an MMR vaccine with the same components as the one given to Valentino. ‘It is wrong for governments and their health authorities to exert strong pressure on parents to take children for the MMR jab while ignoring that this vaccine can cause autism and linked conditions.’
Claudio Simion, a leading member of the lobby group Association for Freedom of Choice in Vaccination (Comilva), adds: ‘The Rimini judgment is vitally important for children everywhere. The numbers with autism are growing. It is a terrible thing that the authorities turn a blind eye to the connection between the MMR vaccination and this illness.’”
The complete lack of coverage of this case in the US media is a potent example of how health information is flat out censored in the US. Is it any wonder so many Americans are still in the dark? Whether hearing about this case in the US media would sway you to believe vaccines may cause autism or not, the REAL story here is the fact that you’re not even being allowed to learn about it in the first place!
“Controversial” MMR Vaccine Research Replicated and Accurate
It’s virtually impossible to read an article about the MMR vaccine without coming across a reference to British gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 research published in The Lancet, which suggested there may be a link between the MMR vaccine, chronic bowel disease, and autism. Ever since the article’s publication, it has remained one of the most cited yet controversial studies on the topic of vaccine safety.
Few public health officials or doctors speaking about vaccination in the media today fail to drive home the point that Wakefield’s research was subsequently “discredited” by the General Medical Council in Britain, while completely ignoring the facts about what his research actually showed, and the long list of studies done since then by other researchers that back up his initial findings.
Dr. Wakefield’s 1998 study involved a retrospective case series analysis, which essentially reviews the clinical histories of a group of patients with a constellation of signs and symptoms that link them together and create a pattern. In this case, it was a group of autistic children with gastrointestinal problems, which led to the discovery of a novel bowel disease that Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in London first described.
But rather than celebrating the discovery of a tangible, treatable and potentially preventable serious health problem that could help those suffering with similar health issues, Wakefield’s discovery became a hotly debated controversy in which Dr. Wakefield’s personal and professional reputation was smeared.
Why?
Because the clinical story didn’t end with bowel disease; it also included symptoms of regressive autism after receiving the MMR vaccine…
In the years following his 1998 finding, which linked the MMR vaccine to inflammatory bowel disease and symptoms of autism, Dr. Wakefield published another 19 papers on the vaccine-induced bowel disorder. All were peer reviewed, and none have been retracted. However, none of these 19 papers are ever discussed in the media.
The only study that keeps seeing the light of day is the original Lancet article from 1998. Another interesting fact is that, since that study, a large number of replication studies have been performed around the world, by other researchers, that confirm Wakefield’s initial findings. Yet you never hear a word about those either!
Download Interview Transcript
For a list of 28 studies from around the world that support Dr. Wakefield’s controversial 1998 findings, please see this previous article.
As one example of many, at the 2006 International Meeting for Autism Research, Stephen J. Walker, Ph.D. shared preliminary research findings that confirmed Dr. Wakefield’s contested findings.
A research team from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina had examined children with regressive autism and bowel disease, and of the 82 tested at the time of his presentation, 70 were positive for the vaccine strain of the measles virus (as opposed to the wild strain of measles). What this proved was that a majority of children diagnosed with regressive autism had the vaccine strain of measles in their gastrointestinal tract, which is exactly what Dr. Wakefield had found back in 1998.
This doesn’t automatically prove the vaccine was the cause of the autism, but it does at the very least suggest a link between these three factors—the presence of MMR vaccine strain of measles in the digestive tract; chronic bowel inflammation; and symptoms of regressive autism. Which brings us to even more recent research into the ramifications of chronic bowel inflammation.
The Connection Between Your Gut and Your Brain
Is it really so unlikely that chronic bowel inflammation from a measles virus could lead to autistic behavior? After all, the gastrointestinal system is often referred to as your “second brain,” containing some 100 million neurons—more than in either your spinal cord or your peripheral nervous system!
The research of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride shows there’s a profound dynamic interaction between your gut, your brain, and your immune system, and she has developed what might be one of the most profoundly important treatment strategies for preventing autism, as well as a wide range of other neurological-, psychological-, and autoimmune disorders—all of which are heavily influenced by your gut health.
I believe her Gut and Psychology Syndrome, and Gut and Physiology Syndrome (GAPS) Nutritional program is vitally important for MOST people, as the majority of people have such poor gut health due to poor diet and toxic exposures, but it’s particularly crucial for pregnant women and young children.
According to Dr. Campbell-McBride, children who are born with severely damaged gut flora are at a significantly increased risk of vaccine damage, which may help explain why some children develop symptoms of autism after receiving one or more childhood vaccinations, such as the MMR vaccine, while others do not.
In a previous interview, she explained the chain of events that is typical for many, if not most, autistic children:
“What happens in these children [is that] they do not develop normal gut flora from birth… As a result, their digestive system—instead of being a source of nourishment for these children—becomes a major source of toxicity. These pathogenic microbes inside their digestive tract damage the integrity of the gut wall. So all sort of toxins and microbes flood into the bloodstream of the child, and get into the brain of the child.
That usually happens in the second year of life in children who were breast fed because breastfeeding provides a protection against this abnormal gut flora. In children who were not breastfed, I see the symptoms of autism developing in the first year of life. So breastfeeding is crucial to protect these children.”
If a child with abnormal gut flora and damaged digestive tract receives a vaccine, the added toxic burden may prove too great to bear. Keep in mind that this toxic burden is NOT necessarily limited to thimerosal (mercury-based preservative) or aluminum-based adjuvants found in some vaccines. The MMR vaccine for example does not contain thimerosal or aluminum. Instead, it appears the measles virus in the vaccine may contribute to chronic inflammation of the bowel, thereby unleashing a cascade of harmful effects on the brain.
“… If the child’s brain is clogged with toxicity, the child misses that window of opportunity of learning and starts developing autism depending on the mixture of toxins, depending on how severe the whole condition is, and how severely abnormal the gut flora is in the child,” Dr. Campbell-McBride explains.
It’s important to understand that the gut flora your child acquires during vaginal birth is dependent on your—the mother’s—gut flora. So if your microflora is abnormal, your child’s will be as well. Autism isn’t the only potential outcome in this case.
GAPS may manifest as a conglomerate of symptoms that can fit the diagnosis of either autism, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attention deficit disorder (ADD), dyslexia, dyspraxia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, just to name a few possibilities. Digestive issues, asthma, allergies, skin problems and autoimmune disorders are also common outgrowths of GAPS, as it can present itself either psychologically or physiologically.
A Simple, Inexpensive Solution to Reduce Risks of Vaccine Damage
Dr. Campbell-McBride’s book Gut and Psychology Syndrome contains an entire chapter outlining what health care professionals need to do to improve the vaccination strategy, because the standard vaccination protocol is bound to damage GAPS babies. She explains:
“It’s a matter of the last straw breaking the camel’s back. If the child is damaged enough, the vaccine can provide that last straw. But if it doesn’t provide that last straw in a particular child, then it will get the child closer to the breaking point.”
Fortunately, it’s possible to rather inexpensively identify GAPS within the first weeks of your baby’s life, which can help you make better-informed decisions about vaccinations, and about how to proceed to set your child on the path to a healthy life.
The entire process for identifying children who would be at risk for developing autism from a vaccine is described in her book, but to sum it up, in her practice she starts out by collecting a complete health history of the parents, and their gut health is assessed.
Then, within the first few days of life, the stool of the child can be analyzed to determine the state of her gut flora, followed by a urine test to check for metabolites, which can give you a picture of the state of your child’s immune system.
These tests are available in most laboratories around the world and cost a very reasonable amount, about $80-100 per test — peanuts compared to the incredible expense of treating an autistic child once the damage is done.
In my view it is absolutely VITAL to perform this analysis BEFORE you consider vaccinating your child. As Dr. Campbell-McBride states, she has yet to find an autistic child with normal bowel flora. If you find that your baby has abnormal gut microflora, or begins to develop symptoms of autism a year or two later, the GAPS program should be started immediately, as the younger the child is when you start the treatment, the better the results.
You should seriously evaluate the potential increased risks of giving a child vaccines before their microflora tests normal. For more information about the GAPS Nutritional Program, including the two types of GAPS diets, and the importance of fermented foods, please review this previous article.
MMR Vaccine Linked to Brain Inflammation
Whereas the research of Dr. Wakefield and others provide compelling evidence that MMR vaccine can cause chronic inflammatory bowel disease, other researchers have found links between the MMR and inflammation of the brain. Dr. Harold Buttram has written about the MMR vaccine’s potential link to autism, due to the vaccine’s potential to cause brain inflammation. He explains:
“First and perhaps foremost, MMR is incubated in chick embryo culture medium, which necessarily includes precursors of all the organ systems of the chick, including myelin basic protein. Merck Pharmaceuticals, which produces MMR vaccine, claims that all traces of the chick embryo are removed before the vaccine is released for use.
This may be true, but it is probably irrelevant as it does not take into account the process of mobile genetic elements, more commonly referred to as “jumping genes.” Viruses being made up entirely of genetic material, they are highly susceptible to this process.
It has been shown that viruses are genetically changed by accepting genetic material from cell cultures.’ The genetic imprint of the chick myelin basic protein, which is foreign to the human system because of its chick origin, may be programmed to induce antibodies against human myelin basic protein, once injected into the human system.
This in turn, potentially resulting in encephalitis.”
If you don’t want to take his word for it, take a look at the package insert for Merck’s MMR vaccinev , which, on page seven, lists encephalitis as a potential side effect. Type 2 diabetes (diabetes mellitus) is another, along with a number of other potentially life altering conditions. Rarely, if ever, will your pediatrician calmly inform you of these reported side effects, which is why you’d be wise to read through the vaccine manufacturer product inserts as part of your own personal research, prior to vaccination.
Other Acknowledged Cases of MMR Vaccine Brain Damage
In 2009, the US District Court of Claims, also known as the “Vaccine Court,” ruled in favor of awarding federal vaccine injury compensation to a young boy, who developed Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD), a constellation of symptoms of brain dysfunction that includes autism and other learning disorders.
The parents of Bailey Banks argued that their son had a seizure 16 days after his first MMR vaccination. That, they said, led to a type of brain inflammation called Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM), which, in turn, led to PDD.
The court agreed that the MMR vaccine had, indeed, caused him to suffer Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis leading to permanent brain damage. According to the court decision, there was, “a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay.”
As you can see, what we’re seeing in some cases is little more than semantics, really, because what’s the difference, in practical terms, between PDD and autism? Both words describe chronic brain dysfunction. They are essentially two ways to describe the same brain disorder at different points along a spectrum.
Essentially, this is how many people are misled and kept in the dark, because when the word “autism” is not used, everyone can keep insisting that “there’s no evidence linking vaccines to autism.” Still, for a parent and their affected child, the end result is the same
The case of Hannah Poling is another important case to ponder when discussing potential vaccine damage. In her case, it was found that vaccines “significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder,” resulting in a brain disorder “with features of autism spectrum disorder.”
Mitochondria are the powerhouses in your body’s cells that produce energy. The US Court of Claims and government health agencies again stopped short of admitting a direct link between autism and vaccines, saying instead that vaccines may only be a danger for children who have a “rare” mitochondrial dysfunction.
The problem is that mitochondrial “dysfunction” may not be as rare as initially thought. According to some estimates, the prevalence may be as high as 1 in 50 children—which is pretty darn close to the current prevalence of autism.
But is it possible that what the government is calling a genetic predisposition for mitochondrial dysfunction is actually a biological or cellular response to numerous environmental assaults? You bet!
A brand new meta-analysis published in the March issue of Molecular Psychiatryvi discovered that, while five percent of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) had mitochondrial dysfunction (MD)—far higher than that found in the general population—79 percent of them were NOT associated with any kind of genetic abnormality! Seventy-four percent of children with ASD were also found to have gastrointestinal abnormalities, again supporting the link between chronic bowel disorders and autistic symptoms.
According to the authors:
“Neuroimaging, in vitro and post-mortem brain studies were consistent with an elevated prevalence of mitochondrial dysfunction (MD) in ASD. Taken together, these findings suggest children with ASD have a spectrum of mitochondrial dysfunction of differing severity…
The prevalence of developmental regression (52%), seizures (41%), motor delay (51%), gastrointestinal abnormalities (74%), female gender (39%), and elevated lactate (78%) and pyruvate (45%) was significantly higher in ASD/MD compared with the general ASD population.
The prevalence of many of these abnormalities was similar to the general population of children with mitochondrial dysfunction, suggesting that ASD/MD represents a distinct subgroup of children with MD.
Most ASD/MD cases (79%) were not associated with genetic abnormalities, raising the possibility of secondary mitochondrial dysfunction. Treatment studies for ASD/MD were limited, although improvements were noted in some studies with carnitine, co-enzyme Q10 and B-vitamins.
… Overall, this evidence supports the notion that mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with ASD. Additional studies are needed to further define the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in ASD.” [Emphasis mine]
A Pediatrician Responds
In response to the Italian case, Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, MDvii, posted the following statement on his Facebook page:
“One of the reasons the measles vaccine was originally administered to children was to prevent against the unfortunate, but rare complication of a measles infection-SSPE (Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis). Before the measles vaccine was licensed for use in the US in 1963, the CDC reports that 400,000 cases of measles infections occurred each year in the US. Yet, the incidence rate of measles encephalitis (SSPE) was only .0061 %. Encephalitis is another term for brain inflammation, and it occurs rarely after a measles infection due to a slow viral infection of the brain weeks, months or even years after the resolution of a measles infection.
According to the CDCviii , there were 368 cases of SSPE in US citizens between 1969 and 1981. 55 % (202) of the cases had only a history of having had a measles infection. 14 % (51) had a history of only having received the measles vaccine, and 17% had a history of having had both the natural measles infection and the measles vaccine. 14% (52) gave no history of either having had the measles infection or the vaccine. These data clearly show that SSPE can occur after a subset of people have received the measles vaccine.
The development of encephalitis is not just limited to people, who experience a natural measles infection. According to the CDC, 1 in 88 US children have received the diagnosis of autismix. In children with autism, we are finding that they too have a considerable amount of brain inflammation. In other words, children with autism also suffer from encephalitis.
Since the CDC points out that encephalitis can occur in people who receive the measles vaccine, it is scientifically valid to say that in a subset of the 1 in 88 children who suffer from autism, i.e., brain inflammation, the measles vaccine they received may have contributed to the onset of their brain inflammation. So, here’s the tradeoff. We’ve gone from an encephalitis incidence rate post measles infection of .0061% to an encephalitis incidence rate post measles vaccination of 1.14% (1 in 88 children).
As a result of the use of the measles vaccine, we see fewer obvious cases of acute measles infections. Instead, however, we now have many more clinical cases of chronic brain inflammation, the very complication of a natural measles infection that the vaccine was supposed to protect against.
I’d say the measles vaccine program has failed to accomplish what it was meant to do, and now, as a result of our attempts to minimize the rare complication of a measles infection by stopping children from experiencing a measles infection, we have created the very problem of an inordinate amount of children with chronic brain inflammation. “
Why Don’t Health Agencies Look At Risks of Excess Vaccinations?
Bear in mind that vaccine safety is not just about individual vaccines. Dr. Russell Blaylock has written an excellent paper that explains the connection between excessive vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders like autism that is definitely worth reading.
Dr. Blaylock is suggesting that vaccines can over-stimulate your child’s immune system and, when several vaccines are administered together, or in close succession, their interaction may completely overwhelm your child’s developing immune system.
It’s your child, so it’s up to you to make an informed decision. For parents who are looking for the truth about vaccinations, I invite you to continue your journey by searching this site and other reliable resources like the National Vaccine Information Center for more information.
Why We Must Insist on Invoking the Precautionary Principle
If multiple toxic exposures and poor nutrition is to blame, then trying to tease out “the” primary culprit for autism will get us nowhere. I believe we must tackle the issue of ASD with a much wider aim, and that is to:
Reduce ALL toxic exposures
Improve nutrition for pregnant women and young children
Improve digestive health of pregnant women and young children, and test all newborns to evaluate their digestive flora to help determine the safest time to vaccinate, for those who choose to do so
This tactic includes but is not limited to reducing the vaccine load, especially in the US where children receive the most vaccines of any country on the planet. I believe it’s imperative to invoke the precautionary principle with respects to vaccines, and, at the very least, allow people to opt out if they so choose.
While vaccine advocates tend to stress the importance of so-called “herd immunity,” saying the vaccine will not work unless the majority is vaccinated, there’s a great price to pay by forcing everyone into a one-size-fits-all mold.
Not only are some children at greater risk for vaccine damage than others, but we also eliminate the ability to evaluate the health risks of vaccinations if no one is allowed to opt out. We NEED to conduct comparison studies to evaluate the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, yet such studies are not done.
An oft-cited reason for that is that it would be unethical to not vaccinate certain children… But this is not really a reasonable excuse today, as many parents want to opt out of one or more vaccines for their children.
Deciding whether or not to vaccinate your child is a VITAL decision with very high stakes. I implore you to avoid exclusively relying on the advice of public health officials and the media, which are clearly biased and influenced by vaccine industry money. There is a revolving door between many federal regulatory, policymaking and research agencies, like the FDA, CDC and NIH. Former heads of several of these government health agencies are now executives in two of the largest pharmaceutical corporations marketing vaccines in the world.
There are major conflicts of interest between the vaccine industry and government health agencies, which virtually makes it impossible to receive objective advice from them. It is crucial to investigate the other side of the vaccine story and evaluate the risks of vaccines before you make your decision.
One good place to start is NVIC.org as they have been providing accurate and balanced vaccine information and insights to parents on this topic for the last 30 years.
References:
—
Micah 3:1-3 (NIV)
Then I said, “Listen, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice, you who hate good and love evil; who tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their bones; who eat my people’s flesh, strip off their skin and break their bones in pieces; who chop them up like meat for the pan, like flesh for the pot?”
II Chronicles 7:14 (KJV)
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land…
The Corn Is Dying All Over America
July 9th, 2012
All over America the corn is dying.
If drought conditions persist in the middle part of the country, wheat and soybeans will be next.
Weeks of intense heat combined with extraordinarily dry conditions have brought many U.S. corn farmers to the brink of total disaster.
If there is not significant rainfall soon, many farmers will be financially ruined.
This period of time is particularly important for corn because this is when pollination is supposed to happen.
But the unprecedented heat and the extremely dry conditions are playing havoc with that process.
With each passing day things get even worse.
We have seen the price of a bushel of corn soar 41 percent since June 14th. That is an astounding rise.
You may not eat much corn directly, but it is important to realize that corn or corn syrup is just about in everything these days. Just look at your food labels.
In the United States today, approximately 75 percent of all processed foods contain corn.
So a huge rise in the price of corn is going to be felt all over the supermarket. Corn is also widely used to feed livestock, and if this crisis continues we are going to see a significant rise in meat and dairy prices as well.
Food prices in America have already been rising at a steady pace, and so this is definitely not welcome news.
The weather conditions in the middle part of the country during the last couple of months have been highly unusual. The following is from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times….
It’s not that the Midwest hasn’t been extremely hot before, and it’s not that it hasn’t been incredibly dry.
But it’s unusual for a vast swath of the Midwest to be so very hot and so very dry for so very long — particularly this early in the summer.
The current heat wave — which is spurring comparisons to the catastrophic heat of 1936 — is “out of whack,” meteorologist Jim Keeney said Friday in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Corn crops typically pollinate and mature in June and early July. That is why this time of the year is so vitally important for corn. We have reached a make it or break it moment.
The following is how an Accuweather.com report described what is happening right now….
Either heat or drought can stress the stalks, but both can basically shut down the pollination process. When this happens few, small or no ears of corn form.
According to AccuWeather.com Agricultural Meteorologists, you can’t raise a corn crop with less than an inch of rain over six weeks, combined with 100-degree and higher temperatures.
However, these conditions have taken place in much of the southern corn belt through the week of July 4, 2012.
If pollination does not happen, corn farmers might as well give up.
Just check out what agricultural economist Chris Hurt said the other day….
“Pollination problems just can’t be overcome, even if the weather turns. There’s no turning back. There’s just failure.”
At this point, half of all corn in the state of Indiana is already in poor shape.
With each passing day, the condition of the corn gets even worse.
As a recent article in the Chicago Tribune detailed, many farmers feel completely helpless at the moment….
Dave Kestel, who farms about 1,300 acres in Manhattan about 40 miles southwest of Chicago, said he feels helpless.
“Every day you get out there and it’s the same heat and cloudless sky,” he said. “You see your corn just withering out there, knowing you can’t do anything about it.”
The United States is suffering from a severe lack of rain. Just look at the chart posted below. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, most of the country is experiencing drought conditions right now….
These drought conditions have also played a major role in the huge number of wildfires that we have seen lately.
There are a few northern states that are not feeling the drought right now, but otherwise the rest of the country is extremely dry.
So what does all of this mean for you and I?
A recent article by Holly Deyo summarized why we should all be praying for rain….
Since 75% of grocery store products use corn as a key ingredient, expect food prices to skyrocket. Corn is also a staple in many fast foods. Corn is in ethanol and the main food source or chickens. In addition to this, maize is in many things that aren’t obvious like adhesives, aluminum, aspirin, clothing starch, cosmetics, cough syrup, dry cell batteries, envelopes, fiberglass insulation, gelatin capsules, ink, insecticides, paint, penicillin, powders, rugs and carpets, stamps, talcum, toothpaste, wallpaper, and vitamins. That’s just for starters…
This is a huge heads up for you to purchase corn-using products NOW before these conditions reflect in grocery goods. It will be a narrow window of opportunity.
These thoughts are being echoed by many agricultural economists as well. According to Businessweek, the outlook for U.S. food prices is bleak….
“When people look at rising prices for hamburger, butter, eggs and other protein sources from higher corn costs, that’s when more money ends up in the food basket,” said Minneapolis- based Michael Swanson, a senior agricultural economist at Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. farm lender. “We were hoping for a break, and we aren’t going to get it.”
Unfortunately, the fact that the corn is dying all over America is not just a problem for the United States.
As Businessweek also recently noted, the fate of U.S. corn affects the entire globe….
When rain doesn’t fall in Iowa, it’s not just Des Moines that starts fretting. Food buyers from Addis Ababa to Beijing all are touched by the fate of the corn crop in the U.S., the world’s breadbasket in an era when crop shortages mean riots.
This year they have reason to be concerned. Stockpiles of corn in the U.S. tumbled 48 percent between March and June, the biggest drop since 1996, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said last week. And that was before drought hit the Midwest.The United States is the world’s biggest exporter of corn by far, and if there is a massive corn crop failure in America it is going to be felt to the four corners of the earth.
Just check out what Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization, said the other day….
“Everyone watches the U.S. because they can rely on it. Without it, the world would starve.”
Back in February, I wrote an article that suggested that we could see dust bowl conditions return to the middle part of this country in the years ahead.
A lot of people were skeptical of that article.
Not quite as many people are skeptical today.
The following is from a recent article posted on MSNBC entitled “Fears of new Dust Bowl as heat, drought shrivel corn in Midwest”….
Crop insurance agents and agricultural economists are watching closely, a few comparing the situation with the devastating drought of 1988, when corn yields shriveled significantly, while some farmers have begun alluding, unhappily, to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Far more is at stake in the coming pivotal days: with the brief, delicate phase of pollination imminent in many states, miles and miles of corn will rise or fall on whether rain soon appears and temperatures moderate.
As I wrote about last week, if the weather does not turn around soon the implications are going to be staggering.
Even if we got some significant rainfall at this point a tremendous amount of damage has already been done according to the Washington Post….
Jay Armstrong, owner and operator of Armstong Farms in Kansas, flew his small plane over a portion of the affected area and landed with the impression that the potential damage is far worse than is commonly understood.
“At this time of year, when you look down in a place like Indiana or Illinois, you should see just lush green fields,” Armstrong said. “I saw bare soil. I just thought to myself, the market has no idea what’s coming.”
So is there significant rain in the forecast?
Unfortunately, the answer is no.
The National Weather Service says that the corn belt will experience “above-normal temperatures” and “below-normal rainfall” over the next week.
At this point it does not look like there will be any significant rainfall for the foreseeable future….
“We got a break in the temperatures over the weekend but no rain of significance is in sight for next seven days,” said Jim Keeney, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service the US central region based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Needless to say, that is really bad news.
Right now we just have more heat and more dryness to look forward to. The skies are like iron and the earth is like brass. We like to think that we have conquered nature, but at moments such as these we see that is not true at all.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about all of the reasons why we should be concerned about the second half of 2012. In that article I did not even mention drought and crop failures. Sometimes major problems have a way of piling on top of themselves.
The U.S. economy is already in bad enough shape without adding major crop failures to the mix. This is something that we just don’t need right now.
But it looks like we are going to have to deal with it. Unless there is a major change in the weather, food prices are going to go up even more and large numbers of farmers and ranchers are going to be absolutely devastated.
Let us all pray for rain. We desperately need it. All over America the corn is dying.
If drought conditions persist in the middle part of the country, wheat and soybeans will be next.
Weeks of intense heat combined with extraordinarily dry conditions have brought many U.S. corn farmers to the brink of total disaster.
If there is not significant rainfall soon, many farmers will be financially ruined.
This period of time is particularly important for corn because this is when pollination is supposed to happen.
But the unprecedented heat and the extremely dry conditions are playing havoc with that process.
With each passing day things get even worse.
We have seen the price of a bushel of corn soar 41 percent since June 14th. That is an astounding rise.
You may not eat much corn directly, but it is important to realize that corn or corn syrup is just about in everything these days. Just look at your food labels.
In the United States today, approximately 75 percent of all processed foods contain corn.
So a huge rise in the price of corn is going to be felt all over the supermarket. Corn is also widely used to feed livestock, and if this crisis continues we are going to see a significant rise in meat and dairy prices as well.
Food prices in America have already been rising at a steady pace, and so this is definitely not welcome news.
The weather conditions in the middle part of the country during the last couple of months have been highly unusual. The following is from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times….
It’s not that the Midwest hasn’t been extremely hot before, and it’s not that it hasn’t been incredibly dry.
But it’s unusual for a vast swath of the Midwest to be so very hot and so very dry for so very long — particularly this early in the summer.
The current heat wave — which is spurring comparisons to the catastrophic heat of 1936 — is “out of whack,” meteorologist Jim Keeney said Friday in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Corn crops typically pollinate and mature in June and early July. That is why this time of the year is so vitally important for corn. We have reached a make it or break it moment.
The following is how an Accuweather.com report described what is happening right now….
Either heat or drought can stress the stalks, but both can basically shut down the pollination process. When this happens few, small or no ears of corn form.
According to AccuWeather.com Agricultural Meteorologists, you can’t raise a corn crop with less than an inch of rain over six weeks, combined with 100-degree and higher temperatures.
However, these conditions have taken place in much of the southern corn belt through the week of July 4, 2012.
If pollination does not happen, corn farmers might as well give up.
Just check out what agricultural economist Chris Hurt said the other day….
“Pollination problems just can’t be overcome, even if the weather turns. There’s no turning back. There’s just failure.”
At this point, half of all corn in the state of Indiana is already in poor shape.
With each passing day, the condition of the corn gets even worse.
As a recent article in the Chicago Tribune detailed, many farmers feel completely helpless at the moment….
Dave Kestel, who farms about 1,300 acres in Manhattan about 40 miles southwest of Chicago, said he feels helpless.
“Every day you get out there and it’s the same heat and cloudless sky,” he said. “You see your corn just withering out there, knowing you can’t do anything about it.”
The United States is suffering from a severe lack of rain. Just look at the chart posted below. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, most of the country is experiencing drought conditions right now….
These drought conditions have also played a major role in the huge number of wildfires that we have seen lately.
There are a few northern states that are not feeling the drought right now, but otherwise the rest of the country is extremely dry.
So what does all of this mean for you and I?
A recent article by Holly Deyo summarized why we should all be praying for rain….
Since 75% of grocery store products use corn as a key ingredient, expect food prices to skyrocket. Corn is also a staple in many fast foods. Corn is in ethanol and the main food source or chickens. In addition to this, maize is in many things that aren’t obvious like adhesives, aluminum, aspirin, clothing starch, cosmetics, cough syrup, dry cell batteries, envelopes, fiberglass insulation, gelatin capsules, ink, insecticides, paint, penicillin, powders, rugs and carpets, stamps, talcum, toothpaste, wallpaper, and vitamins. That’s just for starters…
This is a huge heads up for you to purchase corn-using products NOW before these conditions reflect in grocery goods. It will be a narrow window of opportunity.
These thoughts are being echoed by many agricultural economists as well. According to Businessweek, the outlook for U.S. food prices is bleak….
“When people look at rising prices for hamburger, butter, eggs and other protein sources from higher corn costs, that’s when more money ends up in the food basket,” said Minneapolis- based Michael Swanson, a senior agricultural economist at Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. farm lender. “We were hoping for a break, and we aren’t going to get it.”
Unfortunately, the fact that the corn is dying all over America is not just a problem for the United States.
As Businessweek also recently noted, the fate of U.S. corn affects the entire globe….
When rain doesn’t fall in Iowa, it’s not just Des Moines that starts fretting. Food buyers from Addis Ababa to Beijing all are touched by the fate of the corn crop in the U.S., the world’s breadbasket in an era when crop shortages mean riots.
This year they have reason to be concerned. Stockpiles of corn in the U.S. tumbled 48 percent between March and June, the biggest drop since 1996, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said last week. And that was before drought hit the Midwest.The United States is the world’s biggest exporter of corn by far, and if there is a massive corn crop failure in America it is going to be felt to the four corners of the earth.
Just check out what Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization, said the other day….
“Everyone watches the U.S. because they can rely on it. Without it, the world would starve.”
Back in February, I wrote an article that suggested that we could see dust bowl conditions return to the middle part of this country in the years ahead.
A lot of people were skeptical of that article.
Not quite as many people are skeptical today.
The following is from a recent article posted on MSNBC entitled “Fears of new Dust Bowl as heat, drought shrivel corn in Midwest”….
Crop insurance agents and agricultural economists are watching closely, a few comparing the situation with the devastating drought of 1988, when corn yields shriveled significantly, while some farmers have begun alluding, unhappily, to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Far more is at stake in the coming pivotal days: with the brief, delicate phase of pollination imminent in many states, miles and miles of corn will rise or fall on whether rain soon appears and temperatures moderate.
As I wrote about last week, if the weather does not turn around soon the implications are going to be staggering.
Even if we got some significant rainfall at this point a tremendous amount of damage has already been done according to the Washington Post….
Jay Armstrong, owner and operator of Armstong Farms in Kansas, flew his small plane over a portion of the affected area and landed with the impression that the potential damage is far worse than is commonly understood.
“At this time of year, when you look down in a place like Indiana or Illinois, you should see just lush green fields,” Armstrong said. “I saw bare soil. I just thought to myself, the market has no idea what’s coming.”
So is there significant rain in the forecast?
Unfortunately, the answer is no.
The National Weather Service says that the corn belt will experience “above-normal temperatures” and “below-normal rainfall” over the next week.
At this point it does not look like there will be any significant rainfall for the foreseeable future….
“We got a break in the temperatures over the weekend but no rain of significance is in sight for next seven days,” said Jim Keeney, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service the US central region based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Needless to say, that is really bad news.
Right now we just have more heat and more dryness to look forward to. The skies are like iron and the earth is like brass. We like to think that we have conquered nature, but at moments such as these we see that is not true at all.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about all of the reasons why we should be concerned about the second half of 2012. In that article I did not even mention drought and crop failures. Sometimes major problems have a way of piling on top of themselves.
The U.S. economy is already in bad enough shape without adding major crop failures to the mix. This is something that we just don’t need right now.
But it looks like we are going to have to deal with it. Unless there is a major change in the weather, food prices are going to go up even more and large numbers of farmers and ranchers are going to be absolutely devastated.
Let us all pray for rain. We desperately need it.
—
Psalm 81:13 (NIV)
“If my people would but listen to me, if Israel would follow my ways…
Is ATF acting director Todd Jones threatening those who do wrong, or is he making it clear that anyone in the ATF who exposes their conspiracy against the right of the people to be armed and their gun running to the drug cartels will be subject to “consequences”??? —Editor
Romans 13:3 (NIV) Godly versus ungodly rulers…
… For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you…
Worrisome Message from Acting ATF Director
Published on Jul 18, 2012 by SenChuckGrassley (about 2 minutes 20 seconds into the clip he makes it clear the attitude they will take against those exposing the leadership)
Related posts…
Never underestimate the number of mercenaries there are amongst you…
All rights, including firearm ownership rights, from the state, not God and the people…
UN Arms Treaty Could Put U.S. Gun Owners In Foreign Sights, Straitjacket U.S. Foreign Policy
Published July 11, 2012
A treaty being hammered out this month at the United Nations — with Iran playing a key role — could expose the records of America’s gun owners to foreign governments — and, critics warn, eventually put the Second Amendment on global trial.
International talks in New York are going on throughout July on the final wording of the so-called Arms Trade Treaty, which supporters such as Amnesty International USA say would rein in unregulated weapons that kill an estimated 1,500 people daily around the world. But critics, including the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre, warn the treaty would mark a major step toward the eventual erosion of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment gun-ownership rights.
Americans “just don’t want the UN to be acting as a global nanny with a global permission slip stating whether they can own a gun or not,” LaPierre said. “It cheapens our rights as American citizens, and weakens our sovereignty,” he warned in an exclusive interview with FoxNews.com from the halls of the UN negotiating chambers.
The world body has already been criticized for appointing Iran to a key role in the talks, even as Tehran stands accused by the UN of arming Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s bloody crackdown on rebels. The Obama administration in 2009 reversed Bush administration policy by agreeing to take part in the talks. But in another exclusive interview with FoxNews.com, the top government official on the issue under President Bush says he’s seen nothing new to convince him the U.S. should be at the table today.
While the treaty’s details are still under discussion, the document could straitjacket U.S. foreign policy to the point where Washington could be restricted from helping arm friends such as Taiwan and Israel, said Greg Suchan, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs from 2000 to 2007.
Suchan also highlighted ongoing concern that the treaty may end up giving foreigners access to U.S. gun-ownership records.
On that score, LaPierre, who serves as NRA executive vice president, warns that the “UN’s refusal” to remove civilian firearms and ammunition from the scope of the treaty amounts to a declaration that only governments should be gun owners.
But he revealed he was set Wednesday to tell the UN gathering that 58 U.S. senators had signed a letter saying that they would refuse to ratify any treaty that includes controls over civilian guns or ammunition.
Ratification by two-thirds of the Senate is necessary before an international treaty negotiated by the executive branch can become U.S. law. But the treaty could still go into effect elsewhere once 65 countries ratify it. Such a development could change the pattern of world arms transfers and reduce the U.S. share, which stands at about 40 percent of up to $60 billion in global deals.
The Bush administration opposed a 2006 UN General Assembly resolution launching the treaty process, but President Obama decided the U.S. would take part on condition the final agreement be reached by consensus — thereby giving any of the 193 participating states an effective veto.
The safeguard is insufficient for opponents of the U.S. participation, not least because UN talks invariably involve compromise.
“The administration swears they have a whole bunch of red lines, and they will block consensus if anyone crosses them,” said Suchan, now a government relations consultant as senior associate with the Commonwealth Consulting Corporation in Arlington, Va.
“But the dynamics of international negotiations are that once you get 90 percent of what you seek, you say, ‘Maybe there is a way we can finesse the final 10 percent.’”
A clause permitting arms transfers solely between UN member states would allow UN member China to object to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a non-UN member that China considers to be a renegade province.
This would be highly problematic for the U.S. at a time when Beijing is engaged in an unprecedented arms buildup.
Another fear is that Arab or other states critical of Israel may use any treaty language on human rights standards to argue against U.S. arms transfers to the Israeli government – much in the same way they currently use the UN Human Rights Council to repeatedly condemn Israel.
Suchan said U.S. arms trade law is seen as the global “gold standard” for regulating arms transfers, but doubted many countries would be willing to raise the bar that high. Instead, the treaty that emerges is expected to set a lower global standard – which Suchan said would have the effect of reducing Washington’s ability to press for voluntary arms embargoes against rogue states.
“We might want to urge a country to not sell arms to a state whose government is particularly odious,” Suchan explained.
“But that government could then ask whether the sale is prohibited under the Arms Trade Treaty – and if it is not, they would argue they are meeting the international standard.”
U.S. gun lobby concern focuses on the emphasis the treaty places on governmental – as opposed to individual – rights to guns, LaPierre explained.
“They’re trying to impose a UN policy that gives guns to the governments – but the UN doesn’t in turn make moral judgments as to whether these governments are good or bad,” he said.
“If you’re the government, you get the guns, if you’re a civilian, you don’t. But this will just end up helping evil governments and tyrants.”
For LaPierre, the emphasis he sees at the UN on governmental rights reflects what he believes is a wider international tradition that contrasts with the historical American emphasis on individual rights.
“The UN view is that governments – not individual citizens – ought to protect people,” he said, signaling that this principle permeates the draft that negotiators are currently working with.
LaPierre says the treaty that is likely to emerge will have the effect of squeezing individual gun owners in the United States and elsewhere by imposing on them an onerous collection of regulations.
“If they get this through, then what comes along is the institutionalizing of the whole gun control-ban movement within the bureaucracy of UN – with a permanent funding mechanism that we [in America] will be mainly paying for,” he said.
“The world’s worst human rights abusers will end up voting for this, while the Obama administration has not drawn a line in the sand like the previous administration did. Instead, it is trying to be a part of this train wreck because they think they can somehow finesse it. But, to me, there is no finessing the individual freedoms of American citizens.”
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I Timothy 5:8 (KJV) Your household is your responsibility, you can’t delegate it to the government…
… But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel…
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I Samuel 25:13 (KJV) David was an enemy of the state when he gave this order…
… And David said unto his men, Gird ye on every man his sword. And they girded on every man his sword; and David also girded on his sword…
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Luke 22:36 (NIV) Jesus Christ commands you to be able to buy a sword, no matter what the state or the UN say…
… He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one…
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Jeremiah 48:10 (NIV) If you don’t take your stand for what is right, you are to be cursed…
… “A curse on him who is lax in doing the LORD’s work! A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!
The truth has always had it’s underground musicians
Carl Klang – The Federal Reserve Isn’t Federal At All
Uploaded by TheRapeOfJustice on Aug 24, 2011
John 10:10 (KJV)
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly…
The old fashioned term was tyranny…
I Samuel 8:7 (NLT)
“Do everything they say to you,” the LORD replied, “for it is me they are rejecting, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer…
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New Executive Order Gives Obama Control Over All Communications In National Emergency
Published: 10 July, 2012, 00:11
US President Barack Obama quietly signed his name to an Executive Order on Friday, allowing the White House to control all private communications in the country in the name of national security.
President Obama released his latest Executive Order on Friday, a 2,205-word statement offered as the “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.” And although the president chose not to commemorate the signing with much fanfare, the powers he provides to himself and the federal government under the latest order are among the most far-reaching yet of any of his executive decisions.
“The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions,” the president begins the order. “Survivable, resilient, enduring and effective communications, both domestic and international, are essential to enable the executive branch to communicate within itself and with: the legislative and judicial branches; State, local, territorial and tribal governments; private sector entities; and the public, allies and other nations.”
President Obama adds that it is necessary for the government to be able to reach anyone in the country during situations it considers critical, writing, “Such communications must be possible under all circumstances to ensure national security, effectively manage emergencies and improve national resilience.” Later the president explains that such could be done by establishing a “joint industry-Government center that is capable of assisting in the initiation, coordination, restoration and reconstitution of NS/EP [national security and emergency preparedness] communications services or facilities under all conditions of emerging threats, crisis or emergency.”
“The views of all levels of government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and the public must inform the development of NS/EP communications policies, programs and capabilities,” he adds.
On the government’s official website for the National Communications Systems, the government explains that that “infrastructure includes wireline, wireless, satellite, cable, and broadcasting, and provides the transport networks that support the Internet and other key information systems,” suggesting that the president has indeed effectively just allowed himself to control the country’s Internet access.
In order to allow the White House to reach anyone within the US, the president has put forth a plan to establish a high-level committee calling from agents with the Department of Homeland Security, Pentagon, Federal Communications Commission and other government divisions to ensure that his new executive order can be implemented.
In explaining the order, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) writes that the president has authorized the DHS “the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications.”
In Section 5 of his order, President Obama outlines the specific department and agency responsibilities that will see through his demands. In a few paragraphs, President Obama explains that Executive Committee that will oversee his order must be supplied with “the technical support necessary to develop and maintain plans adequate to provide for the security and protection of NS/EP communications,” and that that same body will be in tasked with dispatching that communiqué “to the Federal Government and State, local, territorial and trial governments,” by means of “commercial, Government and privately owned communications resources.”
Later, the president announces that the Department of Homeland Security will be tasked with drafting a plan during the next 60 days to explain how the DHS will command the government’s Emergency Telecommunications Service, as well as other telecom conduits. In order to be able to spread the White House’s message across the country, President Obama also asks for the purchasing of equipment and services that will enable such.
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What do slaves need with privacy???
The difference between a dictator and a statesman…
If you want liberty you must serve the Lord…
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Judges 8:23 (NLT)
But Gideon replied, “I will not rule over you, nor will my son. The LORD will rule over you!
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II Corinthians 3:17 (KJV)
Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty…
Equipping the Saints News Service 