Tokyo Olympics Bid was Fixed by the International Olympic Committee’s Nuclear Lobby

By Yoichi Shimatsu

September 16, 2013

The lame acquiescence of International Olympic Committee to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s blatant lies about Fukushima radiation leaks being under control” is an act of reckless negligence on the health risk to young athletes aiming for a spot at the 2020 Olympics.

The Olympic hosting rights was stolen from safer and better-off candidate cities Istanbul and Madrid by an well-financed lobbying effort from Japan’s national committee and the Education and Sports Ministry, which provides murky donations for sports programs in developing countries.

The hidden factor behind Tokyo’s campaign of radiation denial was the quiet support from the global nuclear industry acting through the IOC’s corporate sponsorship program. The political influence and corruption behind this campaign was so obvious that even the semi-governmental NHK television news has raised questions about bribery in the bidding process.

The Nuclear Grip

Many of the big multinationals that finance the IOC are not readily associated with the Olympic goals of good health much less amateur sports. Anyone who believes in the healthy fun meal hype from McDonalds does not comprehend the hazards of obesity and clogged arteries. Besides household names like toothpaste giant P&G and smartphone maker Samsung, some brands on the sponsor list such as Atos are virtually unknown.

Every corporation on the IOC global sponsor list is, in fact, connected with the nuclear industry, and some directly with the melted-down of the Fukushima plant. Here’s a look at the list:

GE (General Electric): builder of Fukushima Mark 1 reactors Nos. 1,2 and 6; and designer of MOX (mixed oxide of uranium and plutonium) shroud for reactors Nos.3 and 4. The tritium-enhanced explosion at Reactor 3 massively contaminated the Kanto region, including Tokyo’s watershed.

Panasonic: Besides televisions and home appliances, this Japanese electronics giant is a manufacturer of radiation measuring equipment used by TEPCO and other atomic energy players, including Iran’s nuclear program.

Atos: A French IT company that provides command-and-control systems for 70 nuclear power plants around the world, and which is also involved in the upgrade of British nuclear power plants recently acquired by Hitachi-GE.

Dow: Along with partner company Graver, the chemical giant produces resins, polishing compounds, cleansers and filters for the worldwide nuclear industry.

Samsung, Builder of nuclear power plants in South Korea and for export, including the Middle East, in partnership with Toshiba, which built reactor No.5 at Fukushima.

P&G: Proctor & Gamble directors Alan G. Laffley is a board member of GE and James McNerney Jr. is a retired top-ranking GE executive.

Omega: The Swiss watchmaker uses its precision timing technology for monitoring instruments used inside nuclear power plants.

McDonalds: Board member Enrique Hernandez is CEO of Inter-Con Security, which provides armed guards for Southern California Edison’s San Onofre reactors and other nuclear plants.

Coca Cola: the soft drink maker’s board of directors includes Jacob Wallenberg, a director of ABB along with Donald Rumsfeld when it sold 2 nuclear reactors to North Korea (under investigation, ABB sold its nuclear division to BNFL in the UK, which has since been taken over by Hitachi and GE); Alexis Hernadez, a lawyer for and board member of Entergy, the U.S. power company with several radiation-leaking plants; and retired senator Sam Nunn, former Secretary of Defense and board member of GE.

It’s no wonder then that Tokyo won the 2020 Olympics, when the voting was actually a litmus test for “nuclear safety”. Radiation denial is key to the expansion of the nuclear industry, as Hitachi, Toshiba and GE are now pushing in Vietnam, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, India and many other countries.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Put on Your Blinders

As if wearing blinders, IOC delegates at Buenos Aires ignored media questions about the thousands of tons of radiation-contaminated water leaking from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Arguably worse is the ash from Tokyo’s incinerators that burned Fukushima combustible waste for two years. The highly radioactive cinders were dumped into landfills in Tokyo Bay, which will be the site of the Olympic Village and most of the sports venues.

The Arakawa River, which flows into Tokyo Bay, is also contaminated in its upper reaches by clouds drifting in from the Pacific. The forests around Tokyo’s watershed in Oku-Tama, which provides drinking water to the capital, are dangerously drenched by radioactive rainfall, and the national food supply is so irradiated that regulators have had to raise the food safety level.

The risk of more clouds of radioactive fallout sweeping toward Tokyo is not hypothetical but an inevitable consequence of uncontrollable meltdowns of hundreds of tons of nuclear fuel at Fukushima. The danger is amplified by recurrent earthquakes along Japan’s major fault lines and consequent volcanic eruptions, which pose a constant threat to the nearby nuclear plants at Hamaoka on the seaside below Mount Fuji, Tokai in neighboring Ibaraki, and the twin plants in Fukushima. Another explosion at any of these nuclear sites would force the evacuation of 50 million residents, or one-third of the population.

A major quake or volcanic eruption, long-overdue in the nearby Nankai Trough and Mount Fuji, and even under Tokyo itself, would close the capital’s airports, forcing thousands of Olympic athletes and spectators along with millions of residents to flee in the opposite direction, directly into Fukushima Prefecture. Tokyo is a killing field waiting to happen.

Influence Peddling

The Japanese host-city team was led by JOC chief Tsunekazu Takeda, who is the successor to his father Prince Takeda, a cavalry officer in Manchuria who supervised the Unit 703 bioweapons program. An equestrian contestant at the Berlin Olympics, Prince Tsuneyoshi organized the military looting of East Asia and also personally authorized plague-and-virus attacks against Chinese cities and lethal experiments on prisoners. The aristocratic war veteran evaded prosecution for war crimes because the U.S. Army recruited UNIT 731 scientists and was then appointed by Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, founder of Japan’s nuclear weapons program and Abe’s grandfather, to head the bidding for the 1964 Olympics.

The counterpart for the private sector is Masato Mizuno, former chief of Mizuno Sports and CEO of the Tokyo bidding team, who led the outreach to the IOC corporate sponsors.

The bid was originally launched by then Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, whose resignation as alleged in local media reports was due to the diversion of Olympics donations for his provocative visits and attempt to purchase the disputed Senkaku-Diaoyu islands. These connections are worthy of an Interpol investigation since the IOC is incapable of policing itself.

Backlash Against the Heist

The French cartoon that provoked an angry protest by “chimpira”, slang for punks or yakuza wannabees, is only the start of a worldwide backlash against the Tokyo heist.

The usually timid Japanese media are raising questions about Abe’s lack of credibility on the radiation issue and Japan’s economic health. In contrast to the hype in Buenos Aires about Tokyo’s prosperity, the national debt stands at 10 trillion U.S. dollars, making the Japanese by far the most indebted people on the planet. Even TEPCO officials, including its vice president in charge of Fukushima operations, Zengo Aizawa, have scoffed at Abe’s nonsense and countered that the radioactive water leaks are out of control, despite his team’s best efforts.

Abe is a shameless liar and buffoon, while his pro-nuclear allies among IOC sponsors are only kidding themselves in a black comedy destined to careen into further disaster. The Tokyo bid is a hard act to follow, and the only thing that could equal this bad joke is if Ukraine places a bid to host the 2024 Chernobyl Olympics.

Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/tokyo-olympics-bid-was-fixed-by-the-international-olympic-committees-nuclear-lobby/69923/

U.S. Military and Intelligence Officials to Obama: “Assad NOT Responsible for Chemical Attack”

Obama Warned on Syrian Intel

September 6, 2013

Exclusive: Despite the Obama administration’s supposedly “high confidence” regarding Syrian government guilt over the Aug. 21 chemical attack near Damascus, a dozen former U.S. military and intelligence officials are telling President Obama that they are picking up information that undercuts the Official Story.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap?
Precedence: IMMEDIATE
We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”
We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.

Secretary of State John Kerry departs for a Sept. 6 trip to Europe where he plans to meet with officials to discuss the Syrian crisis and other issues. (State Department photo)

The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond …  the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today.
Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you.
We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.
Intelligence Summary or Political Ploy?
That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.”
This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”
Déjà Fraud: This brings a flashback to the famous Downing Street Minutes of July 23, 2002, on Iraq, The minutes record the Richard Dearlove, then head of British intelligence, reporting to Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials that President Bush had decided to remove Saddam Hussein through military action that would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” Dearlove had gotten the word from then-CIA Director George Tenet whom he visited at CIA headquarters on July 20.
The discussion that followed centered on the ephemeral nature of the evidence, prompting Dearlove to explain: “But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” We are concerned that this is precisely what has happened with the “intelligence” on Syria.
The Intelligence
There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war.
According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured.
We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons.
In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.
Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria.
At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government
The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.
Cui bono?
That the various groups trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have ample incentive to get the U.S. more deeply involved in support of that effort is clear. Until now, it has not been quite as clear that the Netanyahu government in Israel has equally powerful incentive to get Washington more deeply engaged in yet another war in the area. But with outspoken urging coming from Israel and those Americans who lobby for Israeli interests, this priority Israeli objective is becoming crystal clear.
Reporter Judi Rudoren, writing from Jerusalem in an important article in Friday’s New York Times addresses Israeli motivation in an uncommonly candid way. Her article, titled “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria,” notes that the Israelis have argued, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no outcome. Rudoren continues:
“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.
“‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”
We think this is the way Israel’s current leaders look at the situation in Syria, and that deeper U.S. involvement – albeit, initially, by “limited” military strikes – is likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict in Syria. The longer Sunni and Shia are at each other’s throats in Syria and in the wider region, the safer Israel calculates that it is.
That Syria’s main ally is Iran, with whom it has a mutual defense treaty, also plays a role in Israeli calculations. Iran’s leaders are not likely to be able to have much military impact in Syria, and Israel can highlight that as an embarrassment for Tehran.
Iran’s Role
Iran can readily be blamed by association and charged with all manner of provocation, real and imagined. Some have seen Israel’s hand in the provenance of the most damaging charges against Assad regarding chemical weapons and our experience suggests to us that such is supremely possible.
Possible also is a false-flag attack by an interested party resulting in the sinking or damaging, say, of one of the five U.S. destroyers now on patrol just west of Syria. Our mainstream media could be counted on to milk that for all it’s worth, and you would find yourself under still more pressure to widen U.S. military involvement in Syria – and perhaps beyond, against Iran.
Iran has joined those who blame the Syrian rebels for the August 21 chemical incident, and has been quick to warn the U.S. not to get more deeply involved. According to the Iranian English-channel Press TV, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif has claimed: “The Syria crisis is a trap set by Zionist pressure groups for [the United States].”
Actually, he may be not far off the mark. But we think your advisers may be chary of entertaining this notion. Thus, we see as our continuing responsibility to try to get word to you so as to ensure that you and other decision makers are given the full picture.
Inevitable Retaliation
We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Thomas Drake, Senior Executive, NSA (former)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan
Larry Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)
W. Patrick Lang, Senior Executive and Defense Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.)
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.)
Todd Pierce, US Army Judge Advocate General (ret.)
Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army, Iraq
Coleen Rowley, Division Council & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret); Foreign Service Officer (ret.)

Source:  http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/06/obama-warned-on-syrian-intel/

John Kerry: Arab Countries Have Offered to Pay the “Full Cost” of America’s War on Syria

John Kerry: Arab Countries Have Offered to Pay the “Full Cost” of America’s War on Syria

By Matthias Chang

Friday, 06 September 2013 09:52

The US military by the admission of Secretary of State John Kerry is for sale and can do the bidding of any state willing to pay the cost for any military adventure even if such military action constitutes war crimes.

“The US regime” is nothing but a war criminal regime. 

This shameless government accuses others of committing crimes, but the US is the first country to use nuclear weapons, raining death and destruction on innocent lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In Vietnam, the deployment of Agent Orange killed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and created an environmental disaster for which Vietnam is still suffering.

Then there is the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq.

Where will it end?

The US, supposedly a “democracy” is a renegade country. It commits genocide with impunity.

American citizens cannot deny their collective responsibility because throughout the above mentioned wars, they have through their elected representatives in Congress and in the Senate approved and condoned the wanton slaughter of the innocent. 

Secretary of State John Kerry said Arab countries have offered to pay for a full invasion of Syria to oust President Bashar Assad.

“With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes,” Kerry told the House Foreign Relations Committee during a hearing Wednesday, according to The Washington Post. “They have. That offer is on the table.”

Kerry told Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) that Arab countries are willing to put up the full cost.

“In fact, some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we’ve done it previously in other places, they’ll carry that cost,” Kerry said.

“That’s how dedicated they are at this. That’s not in the cards, and nobody’s talking about it, but they’re talking in serious ways about getting this done.”

“We’ve done it previously”. Where: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.  That is the model of US intervention.

Source: http://futurefastforward.com/component/content/article/8772

One in seven hungry in US as Obama preps for more war

 08 Sept, 2013

By Rady Ananda

The number of starving US citizens during Obama’s terms in office is a whopping one in seven, worse than the global average of one in eight. As he continues to pour several hundred billion dollars into the Middle East war theater that will likely soon include Syria, Congress wants to cut $40 billion in food aid to its constituents.

A recent USDA report reveals that nearly 18 million families, or 49 million people, lacked “food security” which is defined as “consistent, dependable access to enough food for active, healthy living.” Food insecurity is a polite term for starvation.

Since 1995, the percent starving in the US hovered at or below 12%. That changed in 2008 when it jumped to 14.6%, and has stayed above 14% since then. In 2012, the percentage was 14.5%, or one in seven people.

Only 59% of those counted as “food insecure” used any of the three major federal food assistance programs, researchers found. They looked at Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps); Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and the National School Lunch Program.

Though food stamps provide an average of $1.33 per meal for its recipients, Republicrats plan to cut $40 billion over ten years from this essential social service,Think Progress reports. People get nasty when hungry; and many sociologists and historians point to widespread hunger as the cause of most, if not all, major revolutions in world history. Even recent ones. The Romans understood this, ergo the saying, panem et circenses (give the masses ‘bread and circuses’ to appease them and thus retain control).

Despite that one out of seven US citizens goes hungry, Obama, like his predecessors, continues to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the war machine. At last count, the US spent $684 billion in 2012, or 39% of the total global defense spending, reportsGlobal Issues.

US military spending is down from 2008, when it spent $711 billion, if sources are accurate.

Even so, notes Jobs Not Wars, “If the U.S. cut its military spending in half, it would still outspend China, Russia and Britain together.”

Obama’s Food ‘Security’ Program

Obama’s military spending is ironic given his Global Food Security Initiative announcedjust months into his presidency, at the April 2009 G20 Summit held in London. As part of a global development strategy, Obama stated his plan to:

“Increase our investments and engagement in development-focused innovation by seeking and scaling up potential game-changing development technologies such as vaccines for neglected diseases, weather-resistant seed varieties, and clean energy technologies.”

The World Food Programme of the United Nations estimates the global hunger rate at one in eight. Under these circumstances, no US president has any business worrying about hunger over there. But that he is, at least superficially.

The food security initiative includes a “Feed the Future” program that established “the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) – a multilateral trust fund, based at the World Bank and launched by the United States in collaboration with other donors, including private philanthropy — designed to help poor farmers grow, market and earn more.”

In reality, “Feed the Future” is merely a scheme to blanket the planet in genetically modified food and toxic chemicals.

Obama’s concern about homegrown poverty, as we see from bankster bailouts and never-ending war, is nonexistent. He certainly hasn’t bucked long-time federal policy of legalizing slavery under the name minimum wage. No adult can support herself on minimum wage. Hunger is guaranteed under minimum wage.

The War on Farms

Obama’s FDA, run by former Monsanto executives, has a peculiar interest in destroying small farming operations in this nation. Nutritious food, grown organically and raised humanely, has been the target of several federally directed raids, supported by local sheriffs and police. No one has been sickened by food sold by these farms, or in the private buying clubs (like Rawsome Foods) that distribute it. But that’s not the point. Instead, the federal government clearly seeks to eliminate giant agribiz competition.

The current war on small US farmers is detailed in David Gumpert’s two books, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights (2009), and Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Food Rights (2013).

We also see the feds’ real motives in the “Food Safety Modernization Act” (formerly S 510), and the bandaid fix known as the Tester Amendment which was adopted to protect small farms from onerous food safety regulations that would put them out of business. Even former supporters now recognize that the FSMA will devastate small farm operations. The Cornucopia Institute now admits:

“Instead, the regulations would ensnare the country’s safest family farmers in burdensome regulations in a misdirected attempt to rein in abuses that are mostly emanating from industrial-scale factory farms and giant agribusiness food processing facilities.” [emphasis in original]

On the state level, we continue to find news items where children’s lemonade andraspberry stands are being shut down, for failure to acquire a permit. At the city level, feeding the homeless, a time-honored act of charity, has been criminalized across the US. Even fundraising bake sales have been criminalized.

Ron Finley, a self-admitted “gangsta gardener” faced a $400 fine for growing free-for-the-taking vegetables on his tree lawn.

The War on Herbs

The federal government, in line with globalists, also seeks complete control over medicinal and nutritional herbs. By and far, the best advocate protecting our right to natural herbs with which humans evolved is the National Health Federation, the only populist representative on the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a forum ostensibly created to facilitate global trade in foods. Unfortunately, we learn from NHF:

“This will be used to exclude high-potency American supplements and move towards harmonization of the more-liberal U.S. food regulatory regime with the harsh European regulatory model that only allows ridiculously low-potency and expensive supplements to be marketed.”

The “more-liberal U.S. food regulatory regime” is being overturned as we speak, with the introduction of several bills to force natural herbs into a testing protocol more strict, and more expensive, than what pharmaceuticals endure. In opposing hyper-regulation of supplements (as spearheaded by Senator Dick Durbin and others), Dr. Mercola explains:

“Data from the U.S. National Poison Data System’s annual report, which tracked data from 57 U.S. poison centers, showed vitamin and mineral supplements caused zero deaths in 2010, whereas pharmaceuticals caused more than 1,100 of the total 1,366 reported fatalities. FDA-approved drugs cause 80 percent of poison control fatalities each year. Poison control centers report 100,000 calls, 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations and nearly 500 deaths each yearfrom acetaminophen (Tylenol) alone.

“Data from the European Union indicate that pharmaceutical drugs are 62,000 times as likely to kill you as dietary supplements. You’re actually more likely to be struck dead by lightning or drown in your bathtub than have a lethal reaction to a dietary supplement. These figures make it quite clear where the danger lies. If Senator Durbin really cared about your health, his efforts would be centered on doing something to make drugs safer, as they obviously pose a FAR greater risk to your health.”

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), among other laws, already controls supplements. Instead of enabling enhanced nutrition of its citizens, the feds concern themselves with increasing pharmaceutical profits.

The same can be said for other nations. In 2011, legislation introduced in Australia sought to ban thousands of plants, including its national flower, because they contain DMT, a naturally-occurring hallucinogen that even the human brain produces.

The War on Weed

Though rarely considered in food criminalization discussions, not only does marijuana have medicinal and recreational benefits, but its “seeds contain essential fatty acids and amino acids, which can be baked into foods to boost their nutritional value, in seed oil when sauteing foods, or taken as a supplement,” report Fox, Armentano and Tvert in Marijuana Is Safer So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?

Marijuana Is Safer details numerous medical benefits including anti-carcinogenic properties, preventing epileptic seizures, reducing peripheral neuropathy pain along with other types of pain, and thus reduces opiate dosage needs. It increases craving for food, a boon for those on appetite-suppressing chemotherapy, and it promotes sleepiness.

Not only does marijuana treat the symptoms of disease, Marijuana Is Safer reports, but:

“In some cases, it appears that marijuana can effectively treat disease itself. For instance, marijuana possesses strong antioxidant properties that can protect the brain during trauma and potentially ward off the onset of certain neurological diseases such as Alzheimers.

“In fact, in one of the great political ironies, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services holds a patent – it’s patent no. 6630507 – on the use of cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. That’s right, the same government that classifies cannabis as a Schedule I illicit drug (which under federal law is defined as possessing ‘no currently accepted medical use in treatment’) owns the intellectual property rights to several of the plant’s naturally occurring, therapeutic chemicals.”

That patent was filed back in 1999, deep amid the war on drugs.

Genetically modified marijuana research has been ongoing for over two decades, detailed by numerous freelance researchers. Several insist that a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency, Sam Selezny (aka David Watson aka Skunkman) developed his strains of GM weed in Holland with funding from the DEA. His company, Hortapharm, stands to make billions when pot is fully legalized in the States.

Just as natural, unmodified fresh milk is a market threat to drug-laden, industrial milk; natural, privately grown marijuana is a threat to the GM weed market. And so we see legal marijuana suffering under Obama.

Raids on legal cannabis farming and sales has cost nearly $300 million in the past four years, reports Americans for Safe Access:

Last month, however, we saw some key changes in federal policy. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a “compassionate release” program to let medical marijuana users out of prison. Next, the Dept. of Justice reversed itself by agreeing to allow banks to work with medical marijuana clinics, and agreed to abide by voter decision in Washington and Colorado which allows for recreational use.

The DoJ’s policy reversals follow a unanimous resolution adopted by US mayors at their annual conference in June, supporting the notion of “states setting their own marijuana policies without federal interference.”

Food as Trade Commodities

Finally, we cannot discuss starvation without mentioning food commodities. The dissolution of trade barriers and deregulation of the banking sector has led to price manipulation, increasing food insecurity and causing widespread starvation.

F. William Engdahl explains that for over 4,000 years, grains were safely stored for up to seven years to protect against war, drought and famine. That all changed in 1993 with the passage of GATT – the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – when:

“[T]he European Union finally agreed in 1993 to the GATT Uruguay Round, requiring a major reduction of national agriculture protection. Central to the Uruguay Round deal was agreement on one major change: national grain reserves as a government responsibility were to be ended….

“The elimination of national grain reserves in the USA and EU and other major OECD industrial countries set the stage for the next step in the process—elimination of agricultural commodity derivatives regulation, allowing unbridled unchecked speculative manipulations.

“Under the Clinton Treasury (1999 – 2000) the elimination of grain reserves was formalized by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)—the government body charged with supervising derivatives trade in exchanges such as the Chicago Board of Trade or NYMEX— and in legislation drafted by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers at Treasury. It was no accident that Wall Street pushed Geithner, former President of the NY Federal Reserve, to become Obama’s Treasury Secretary in 2008, amid the worst financial debacle in history. Something to do with having foxes guard henhouses.”

The Fox scored big in the henhouse:

“When Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State in 1972-1973, acting in league with the Department of Agriculture and major US grain trading companies, he orchestrated an unprecedented 200% jump in the price of grain. The price hike was triggered at that time by the US signing a three-year contract with the Soviet Union that had just gone through a disastrous harvest failure.

“The US-Soviet deal hit amid global drought and severely reduced harvests worldwide, hardly a prudent time to sell the entire US grain cupboard to an ostensible Cold War opponent. The sale took place amid a major world grain harvest shortfall leading to the explosive price rise. Critical voices in US press at the time appropriately dubbed it the Great Grain Robbery. Kissinger had even arranged for much of the cost of shipping US grain to the Soviets to be paid by US taxpayers. Cargill and company laughed all the way to the bank.”

Next, writes Engdahl, came the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000:

“The two key architects of Clinton’s new law were a former Goldman Sachs consultant and Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and his Assistant at Treasury Tim Geithner, friend of Wall Street and today Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Secretary Summers was also a key player in preventing efforts to regulate financial derivatives in commodities and financial products….”

“At the time, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) proposed also to deregulate trading in derivatives between major banks or financial institutions, including derivatives of grain and other agricultural commodities.

“The historic and unprecedented deregulation opened a massive hole in Government supervision of derivatives trading, a gaping hole that ultimately facilitated the derivatives games leading to the 2007 financial collapse. It also formed the deregulation free-for-all that is behind much of the recent explosion in grain prices.”

The Emerging Local Food Movement

There’s still hope.

Despite the FDA’s war on private food and herb sources, private buying clubs and direct farm to consumer sales are spreading as fast as Monsanto-resistant weeds, and are a boon to local farm economies. The following chart shows the growth in direct sales from 1997 thru 2007, segregated by region:

Urban agriculture is taking off in blighted areas in Detroit, Los Angeles, and other cities.Rooftop and bus top gardens represent innovations beyond the ken of Obama and his agribuddies. They profit urbanites by providing local, healthy produce in food deserts, where fresh, nutritious food is lacking. They also provide a food cushion, should disaster strike and the local store’s 3-day food supply runs out.

While peace activists the world over vocally oppose more MidEast wars, agtivists continue to battle the biotech giants whose products are genetically contaminating natural crops and destroying our pollinators and soils with their requisite toxic chemicals. A fortnight of actions for Seed and Food Freedom is planned for Oct. 2-16 around the planet.

As “generals gather in their masses,” we can expect little positive aid from the feds. We can and should get local regulators on our side, so that our kids can have lemonade stands, our churches can have bake sales, and our private buying clubs or food co-ops can provide the food we want, that is much healthier for us, and that works with nature instead of against it.

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” ~Ayn Rand

The real trick to reducing hunger is to decentralize the food system, to grow our own, and to buy local. This is food democracy in action, and we don’t need permission to do it.

It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
~ Leonard Cohen

Source:  http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2013/09/08/one-in-seven-hungry-in-us-as-obama-preps-for-more-war/

Saudi Arabia’s 'Chemical Bandar' behind the Syrian chemical attacks?

Saudi Arabia’s 'Chemical Bandar' behind the Syrian chemical attacks? 
time: September 05, 2013 02:08

The Obama Administration’s intelligence report on Syria was a rehash of Iraq. “There are lots of things that aren’t spelled out” in the four-page document, according to Richard Guthrie, the former project head of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. One piece of evidence is the alleged interception of Syrian government communications, but no transcripts were provided.Nothing the US claims about what happened in Syria adds up. We are being asked to believe an illogical story, when it is much more likely that it was Israel and Saudi Arabia who enabled the Obama Administration to threaten Syria with war.
An Israeli-Saudi-US conspiracy?So it seems that the Saudis enabled the chemical attack while the Israelis provided them cover to ignite a full-scale war, or at the very least enable a bombing campaign against Damascus. Israel and Saudi Arabia have empowered the Obama Administration to threaten war on Syria.
Obama wants to change the balance of power in Syria

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a sociologist, award-winning author and geopolitical analyst.

U.N. chemical weapons experts visit a hospital where wounded people affected by an apparent gas attack are being treated, in the southwestern Damascus suburb of Mouadamiya, August 26, 2013 (Reuters / Abo Alnour Alhaji)

Just as with the Obama Administration’s speeches which all fall short of conclusively confirming what happened, nothing was categorically confirmed in the intelligence report. Actually it comes across more as a superficial college or university student’s paper put together by wordsmiths instead of genuine experts on the subject.

Going in a circle, the report even depends on “unnamed” social media and accounts as sources of evidence or data. Lacking transparency, it states that “there are accounts from international and Syrian medical personnel, videos, witness accounts, thousands of social media reports from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area, journalist accounts and reports from highly credible non-governmental organizations.”

Chances are that these unnamed sources are actually foreign-funded insurgents, Israeli media, Saudi media, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights - which includes fighters in the ranks of the insurgency and salutes Saudi Arabia as a model democracy - or the NGO Doctors Without Borders. These are the same sources that have been supporting the insurgency and pushing for regime change and military intervention in Syria.

Moreover, one of the main sources of the intelligence and communication interceptions that are supposed to be a smoking gun is none other than Israel, which is notorious for doctoring and falsifying evidence.

The US intelligence report also claims to have advanced knowledge about the plans to launch a chemical weapons attack several days before it happened. A leading expert on chemical weapons, Jean Pascal Zanders, who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies, asks why the US government did not tell the world about it and issue warnings about a chemical attack at that time.

The US-supported anti-government forces fighting inside Syria are the ones that have a track record of using chemical weapons. Yet, Obama and company have said nothing.

Reuters / Loubna Mrie

Despite the anti-government forces accusations that the Syrian military launched a chemical weapon attack on Homs at Christmas in December 2012, CNN reported that the US military was training anti-government fighters with the securing and handling of chemical weapons. Under the name of theDestructive Wind Chemical Battalion, the insurgents themselves even threatened to use nerve gas and released a video where they killed rabbits as a demonstration of what they planned on doing in Syria.

According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, two brigades of anti-government fighters that were trained by the CIA, Israelis, Saudis, and Jordanians crossed from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordon into Syria to launch an assault, respectively on August 17 and 19, 2013. The US must have invested quite a lot in training both anti-government brigades. If true, some may argue that their defeat prompted the chemical weapons attack in Damascus as a contingency plan to fall back on.

However, how they came by chemical weapons is another issue, but many trails lead to Saudi Arabia. According to the British Independent, it was Saudi Prince Bandar “that first alerted Western allies to the alleged use of sarin gas by the Syrian regime in February 2013.”  Turkey would apprehend Syrian militants in its territory with sarin gas, which these terrorists planned on using inside Syria. On July 22 the insurgents would also overrun Al-Assal and kill all the witnesses as part of a cover-up.

A report by Yahya Ababneh, which was contributed to by Dale Gavlak, has collected the testimonies of witnesses who say that  “certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack.”

The Mint Press News report adds an important dimension to the story, totally contradicting the claims of the US government. It quotes a female insurgent fighter who says things that make a link to Saudi Arabia clear. She says that those who provided them with weapons ‘didn’t tell them what these arms were or how to use them” and that they “didn’t know they were chemical weapons.” “When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she is quoted.

There is also another Saudi link in the report: “Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a ‘tube-like structure’ while others were like a ‘huge gas bottle.’” 

The moralistic language coming out of Washington is despicable posturing. The hypocrisy of the US government knows no bounds. It condemns the Syrian military for using cluster bombs while the United States sells them en mass to Saudi Arabia.

US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo / Scanpix Sweden / Jessica Gow)

The UN inspectors entered Syria in the first place on the invitation of the government in Damascus. The Syrian government warned the UN for weeks that the anti-government militias were trying to use chemical weapons after they gained control of a chlorine factory east of Aleppo. As a precaution, the Syrian military consolidated all its chemical weapons into a handful of heavily guarded compounds to prevent anti-government forces reaching them. Yet, the insurgents launched a chemical weapon attack against the Syrian government’s forces in Khan Al-Assal on March 19, 2013. Turning the truth on its head, the insurgents and their foreign backers, including the US government, would try to blame the Syrian government for the chemical attack, but the UN’s investigator Carla Del Ponte would refute their claimsas false in May after extensive work.

Concerning the alleged August attack the Obama Administration has been lying and contradicting itself for days. They say that traces of chemical weapons cannot be eliminated, but that the Syrian government destroyed that same evidence that cannot be eradicated. They want an investigation, but say they already have all the answers. 

The claims that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in the suburb of Ghouta defy logic. Why would the Syrian government unnecessarily use chemical weapons in an area that it controls and shoot itself in the foot by presenting the US and its allies with a pretext to intervene? And of all the days it could unnecessarily use chemical weapons, the Obama administration wants us to believe that the Syrian government picked the day when United Nation inspectors arrived in Damascus.

Even the biased and misleading state-run British Broadcasting Corporation admitted that there was something strange about the event. The BBC’s  own “Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen says many will ask why the [Syrian] government would want to use such weapons at a time when [United Nations] inspectors are in the country and the military has been doing well militarily in the area around Damascus.”

The US is deliberately pointing the finger for the use of chemical weapons at the Syrian government.

American officials have a track record of lying to start wars against other countries. This has been the consistent modus operandi of the US from Vietnam to Yugoslavia, and from Iraq to Libya.

It is not Syria that is going against the international community, but the warmongers in Washington, which include the Obama Administration.

Washington is threatening to attack Syria as a means of prolonging the fighting inside Syria. The US government also wants to have a stronger hand in the country’s future negotiations by restoring the balance of power between the Syrian government and America’s anti-government insurgent allies, thus weakening the Syrian military and ending its winning momentum against the insurgency. If not softening Damascus up for the insurgents, America wants to level the equation and undermine the Syrian government before a final negotiation takes place.

Now is the time for the “responsibility to prevent war”—the real R2P—to come into play. 

Source:  http://rt.com/op-edge/saudi-chemical-behind-syrian-attack-421/