Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi (documentary)

In September 2008 Seed Savers released their first film, “Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi”, a 57 minute documentary that celebrates traditional food plants and the people that grow them.

We have now released this documentary on the net for free viewing (with English audio and Portuguese subtitles — we will put French, Chinese and Japanese subtitled versions online in the future). Watch it now (or read more about it below thevideo):

Indigenous farmers around the world face increasing pressure from agribusiness corporations that push their uniform seeds. Many of these varieties require costly inputs such as pesticides and chemical fertilisers.

Seed Savers directors, Michel and Jude Fanton, shot the film in eleven countries of Europe, Asia and Oceania. It features Pacific islanders who face great challenges: replacing innumerable varieties of root staples with modern hybrids that require pesticides and chemical fertilisers; importing low-quality starch thereby risking losing their resilient food crops.

“Our Seeds” has been shown several times on national television in American Samoa and Western Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. Excerpts have been shown on national television in Serbia, Malaysia and Taiwan and Portugal.

This one hour documentary will help you if you are presenting the idea of a Local Seed Network in your region.

There are instructive motion graphics and a rich sound track, of mostly indigenous music recorded on-location. Audio is English or Pacific Pidgin.

seedsavers.net

Save and exchange free seeds, exchange free seeds, & use a wider diversity of vegetable and fruit seeds in your garden to improve your nutrition.

See Seed Savers' 660 film clips on seed saving and bio-cultural matters on Seedsavers Youtube Channel www.youtube.com/seedsavers It is divided into twenty-five playlists that make it easier to choose a clip or to follow a theme. Examples of our Playlists on our Youtube Channel:

• My Seed Savers University - 100 clips on how to save seeds with practical tips.
• Permaculture Food Forest - 80 clips on how to grow, harvest and process food in a forest. Filmed in Seed Savers' Permaculture gardens, established in 1998.
• Crap Foods We Eat - 35 clips with the bad news.
• Gardening Short Cuts - 43 clips shot in our Permaculture style garden; here are our strategies after forty years' practice.

Michel and Jude continue to produce and upload film clips in the seed gardens in Byron Bay, Australia. More clips are added every week, so be there!

Human Metabolism Negatively Impacted by High-Fructose Corn Syrup

High-fructose corn syrup is just one food ingredient, among many others, that virtually every health advocate will tell you to avoid. The Corn Refiners Association (CRA), a large organization that represents the corn refining industry, continues to assert that high-fructose corn syrup is completely safe and perfectly ‘natural’,  but many health experts and research results couldn’t disagree more. One contribution high-fructose corn syrup is making to our society is a startling increase in obesity rates. Scientists have repeatedly proven that heavily altered (and often genetically modified) form of fructose, used in thousands of food products and soft drinks, can negatively impact human metabolism and is contributing to the growing obesity epidemic.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup Alters Human Metabolism

For quite some time, high-fructose corn syrup was thought to be perfectly healthy by some individuals, and the ingredient rampantly consumed in high amounts internationally. But research shows that high-fructose corn syrup changes human metabolism, and is actually metabolized much differently than other sugars. HFCS is a highly processed product that contains nearly the same amount of fructose and glucose. Sucrose, however, is a larger sugar molecule that is metabolized into glucose and fructose in your intestine. High-fructose corn syrup metabolizes to fat in your body much faster than other sugars, resulting in increased fat gain. Since the fructose is consumed in liquid form, the negative effects on human metabolism are even greater.

“…Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a strictly controlled diet, including high levels of fructose, produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems”, reported scientists from UC Davis.

In addition, 100% of fructose that’s consumed is taken up by the liver, while only some of glucose passes through the liver, and is then excreted. This results in increased fat deposition in the abdominal cavity and increased blood levels of triglycerides — both of which are risk factors for heart disease and diabetes.

Further showing how the human metabolism is damaged, one study found:

“To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened beverages providing 25% of energy requirements for 10 weeks. Although both groups exhibited similar weight gain during the intervention, visceral adipose volume was significantly increased only in subjects consuming fructose…and [fructose-sweetened beverages] decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight humans.”

Some individuals claim that high-fructose corn syrup is safe at low levels, but even if that were remotely true, the ingredient is still found in thousands of mainstream and corporate-owned food and beverage products in high doses. It is in these high doses that it has also been found to contain mercury, an element that is highly damaging to the human body. Sugar itself is highly over-consumed today, causing a multitude of health issues, but turning the natural form of sugar into  high-fructose corn syrup causes further damage to human metabolism and the liver.

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/high-fructose-corn-syrup-alters-human-metabolism/#ixzz1tGG4ziWl

THE GULF IS DYING: Two years After the BP Drilling Disaster, Gulf Residents Fear for the Future

by Jordan Flaherty

Now is not the time to let BP off the hook for the Gulf oil spill disaster. Environmentalists report “shrimp born without eyes, fish with lesions, and crabs with holes in their shells.” The Obama administration has not acted in the public’s interest. “The US government seemed to protect BP more than coastal communities or the environment.”

“The Gulf has been dying the death of a thousand cuts for a long time.”

On April 20, 2010, a reckless attitude towards the safety of the Gulf Coast by BP, as well as Transocean and Halliburton [5] , caused a well to blow out 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. As the world watched in horror, underwater cameras showed a seemingly endless flow of oil – hundreds of millions of gallons – and a series of failed efforts to stop it, over a period of nearly three months. Two years later, that horror has not ended [6] for many on the Gulf.

“People should be aware that the oil is still there,” says Wilma Subra, a chemist who travels widely across the Gulf meeting with fishers and testing seafood and sediment samples for contamination.

Subra says that the reality she is seeing on the ground contrasts sharply with the image painted by BP. “I’m extremely concerned on the impact it’s having on all these sick individuals [7],” she says. Subra believes we may be just at the beginning of this disaster. In every community she visits, fishers show her shrimp born without eyes, fish with lesions, and crabs with holes in their shells. She says tarballs are still washing up on beaches across the region.

While it's too early to assess the long-term environmental impact, a host of recent studies published by the National Academy of Sciences and other respected institutions have shown troubling results. They describe mass deaths of deepwater coral [8], dolphins, and killifish [9], a small animal at the base of the Gulf food chain. "If you add them all up, it’s clear the oil is still in the ecosystem, it’s still having an effect,” says Aaron Viles, deputy director of Gulf Restoration Network [10], an environmental organization active in the region.

The major class action lawsuit on behalf of communities affected by the spill has reached a proposed $7.8 billion settlement, subject to approval by a judge. While this seems to have brought a certain amount of closure to the saga, environmentalists worry that any settlement is premature, saying they fear that the worst is yet to come. Pointing to the 1989 Exxon spill off the coast of Alaska, previously the largest oil spill in US waters, Viles said that it was several years before the full affect of that disaster was felt. “Four seasons after Exxon Valdez is when the herring fisheries collapsed,” says Viles. “The Gulf has been a neglected ecosystem for decades – we need to be monitoring it closely.”

“Environmentalists worry that any settlement is premature, saying they fear that the worst is yet to come.”

In the aftermath of the spill, BP flooded the Gulf with nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants. While BP says these chemicals broke up the oil, some scientists have said this just made it less visible, and sent the poisons deeper into the food chain.

It is widely agreed that environmental problems on the coast [11] date back to long before the well blew open. The massive catastrophe brought into focus problems that have existed for a generation. Land loss caused by oil company drilling has already displaced many who lived by the coast, and the pollution from treatment plants has poisoned communities across the state - especially in "cancer alley," the corridor of industrial facilities along the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge. “The Gulf is a robust ecosystem and it's been dying the death of a thousand cuts for a long time,” says Viles. “BP is legally obligated to fix what they screwed up. But if you’re only obligated to put the ecosystem back to where it was April 19, 2010, why would we?”

Fishing is a huge part of the economy for the Gulf Coast. Around 40% of the seafood caught in the continental US comes from here. Many area fishermen were still recovering from Hurricane Katrina when the spill closed a third of Gulf waters to fishing for months. George Barisich [12], president of the United Commercial Fisherman’s Association, a group that supports Gulf Coast fishers, says many fishers still had not recovered from Hurricane Katrina when the oil started flowing from the BP spill [13]. Now, he says, many are facing losing their homes. “Production is down at least 70 percent,” compared to the year before the spill, he says. “And prices are still depressed thirty, forty, sixty percent.”

“Many fishers still had not recovered from Hurricane Katrina when the oil started flowing from the BP spill.”

In a video statement on BP’s website, Geir Robinson, Vice President of Economic Restoration for BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, says that the company believes the legal settlement will resolve most legitimate economic claims. “We do have critics,” adds Robinson. “And we’re working hard every day to show them that we will meet our responsibilities.”

Environmentalists and scientists also complain that Obama administration has let down the Gulf Coast. Viles is critical of the role the US government has played, saying that by inaction they seemed to protect BP more than coastal communities or the environment. “The coast guard seems to empower the worst instincts of BP,” Viles says. “I don’t know if it’s Stockholm Syndrome or what.”

International environmental groups have also joined in the criticism. Oceana, a conservation group with offices in Europe and the Americas, released a report on Tuesday criticizing the US government’s reforms as being either ineffective or nonexistent, saying “offshore drilling remains as risky and dangerous as it was two years ago, and that the risk of a major spill has not been effectively reduced.”

Theresa Dardar lives in Bayou Pointe-au-Chien [14], a Native American [15] fishing community on Louisiana's Gulf Coast. Dardar and her neighbors have seen their land vanish from under their feet within their lifetimes due to canals built by the oil companies to access wells. The canals brought salt water into freshwater marshes, helping cause the coastal erosion that sees Louisiana lose a football field of land every 45 minutes. The main street that runs through the community now disappears into the swamps, with telephone poles sticking out of the water.

Now, in addition to worries about disappearing land and increasing risk of hurricanes, she fears that her family’s livelihood is gone for good. “It’s not going to be over for years,” she says, expressing a widely held concern among fishers here. “We’re just a small Native American fishing community. That’s all they’ve done their whole lives. Some of them are over 60. What are they going to do? If BP gives them money for the rest of their lives, that’s one thing. But if not, then what can they do?

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans and author of the book Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six [16].[17]

NOTES:

[1] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/war-against-environment
[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/bp-gulf-disaster
[3] http://blackagendareport.com/category/us-politics/bp-gulf-settlement
[4] http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/bayou_poison.jpg
[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/bp-2-other-companies-cite_n_1007949.html
[6] http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/2010/06/lji-injustice-index-bp-drilling.html
[7] http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/2011/07/devastating-report-exposes-feinbergs.html
[8] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/26/gulf-oil-spill-coral-death_n_1380712.html
[9] http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/oil-spill-affected-gulf-fishs-biology-study-finds/
[10] http://healthygulf.org/
[11] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/05/2011519131959617935.html
[12] http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/2011/04/fishers-gather-to-commemorate.html
[13] http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/2010/08/colorlines-heres-where-bp-is-dumping.html
[14] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/fears-of-cultural-extinct_b_612626.html
[15] http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/2011/11/houma-nation-fight-for-recognition-by.html
[16] http://floodlines.org/
[17] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblackagendareport.com%2Fcontent%2Ftwo-years-after-bp-drilling-disaster-gulf-residents-fear-future&linkname=Two%20years%20After%20the%20BP%20Drilling% 0Disaster%2C%20Gulf%20Residents%20Fear%20for%20the%20Future    

MIT computer simulation predicts total global economic collapse in less than 20 years

(NaturalNews) Don't look now, but some of the world's smartest people are even predicting the end of the global economic order as we know it, and they're saying it'll happen within the next two decades.


According to a group of researchers from the Jay W. Forrester's institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a computer simulation concluded that the world could suffer a "global economic collapse" coupled by a "precipitous population decline" at current rates of resource consumption.


The research was conducted on behalf of a group known as the The Club of Rome, which bills itself "as an informal association of independent leading personalities from politics, business and science, men and women who are long-term thinkers interested in contributing in a systemic interdisciplinary and holistic manner to a better world." Founded in 1968,The Club of Romeaims "to identify the most crucial problems which will determine the future of humanity through integrated and forward-looking analysis; to evaluate alternative scenarios for the future and to assess risks, choices and opportunities," and to help find solutions to "challenges."


According to the group's web site, the research project "took into account the relations between various global developments and produced computer simulations for alternative scenarios."


"Part of the modeling were different amounts of possibly available resources, different levels of agricultural productivity,birth control or environmental protection," it said.


World still on course for self-destruction


The recent MIT research builds upon an earlier body of work from the same esteemed institution, dated 1972, that some in the scientific community regardinfamous. According to a report in theSmithsonian Magazine, a team led by researcher Dennis Meadows used computer modeling for the first time in an attempt to answer "a centuries-old question: When will the population outgrow the planet and the natural resources it has to offer?"


That work was later made into a book titledThe Limits to Growthand has since sold over 10 million copies in 37 languages. Essentially it "warned that if current trends in population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continued, that dark time -- marked by a plummeting population, a contracting economy and environmental collapse -- would come within 100 years," theSmithsonian Magazinereported.


That work was later supported by data presented in the form of a graph designed by Australian physicist Graham Turner, which purports to show how actual data from the 30-year period between 1970 and 2000 matches almost exactly predictions set forth in Meadows' work.


Meadows, who retired in 2004 after 35 years as a professor at MIT,Dartmouth Collegeand theUniversity of New Hampshire, discussed his original research with the Smithsonian on the 40th anniversary of the publishing ofThe Limits to Growth. He said his team's "goal was to gather empirical data to test" a theoretical situation showing "the interrelationship of some key global growth factors: population, resources, persistent pollution, food production and industrial activity."


In describing what he meant by a "collapse," Meadows said the model assumed a "business-as-usual" approach to pressing issues of overuse and over-consumption.


"In the world model, if you don't make big changes soon -- back in the '70s or '80s -- then in the period from 2020 to 2050, population, industry, food and the other variables reach their peaks and thenstartto fall," he said. "That's what we call collapse."


Most of the computer models found steady population and economic growth rates until about 2030. Then, the researchers found, conditions begin to decline, and without "drastic measures for environmental protection," scenarios began predicting higher likelihoods of population and economic crashes.


But is there a bright spot?


Despite the dire predictions, the research team said not all hope is lost.


The study said "unlimited economic growth" was still very possible, providing governments develop and enact policies and invest in clean- or green-energy technologies that limit the widening of the human ecological footprint.


Others say the situation is not nearly as ominous as the MIT report makes it sound. For instance, the lateYale Universityeconomist Henry Wallich, who served a dozen years as a governor of the Federal Research Board, for a time as its chief international economics expert, said once that any attempts to regulate global growth would be akin to "consigning billions to permanent poverty."


Still, other experts believe the matching trends of the earlier 1972 study and the most recently completed body of work are telling, in that they show a similar trajectory of demise.


"The issue of global carrying capacity is one that is fraught with all sorts of technical, scientific and philosophical problems," admits Meadows. But he believes now, as he did four decades ago, that sustainable development is not possible.


"When I use the term sustainable development -- which I consider to be an oxymoron actually -- I am trying to capture the meaning that most people seem to have," he said. "Either way you use the term, it is just a fantasy. [...] We're at 150 percent of the global carrying capacity."


Sources for this article include:


http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=32713


http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=326


http://www.smithsonianmag.com


http://www.smithsonianmag.com

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/035700_MIT_economic_collapse_simulation.html#ixzz1tGApbLy6

Monsanto and ArborGen set their sights on GM trees and grasses

(NaturalNews) Not satisfied to own or control our food crops, Monsanto and its spinoff ArborGen have also set their sights on genetically modified trees and grasses. Despite a groundswell of objections by scientists and activists, the USDA has turned a deaf ear to their concerns and has instead aided and abetted Monsanto's plans.

Coming soon to a forest or landscape near you: Franken trees and Franken grasses

In recent years, Monsanto and ArborGen have been developing GM trees including trees modified to withstand Monsanto's Roundup, trees designed with a reduced lignin content to appeal to paper making and construction industries (lignin gives trees their strength and rigidity) and "terminator trees" which don't produce seeds. In Hawaii, there has already been a contamination issue with GM papaya - the world's first commercially planted genetically engineered tree.


One of the GM trees currently being readied planting is GM Eucalyptus, despite numerous unresolved and unstudied concerns such as:


*Cryptococcus neoformans gattii, a yeast pathogen hosted by a variety of Eucalyptus species. It causes systemic fungal infections in humans, leading to fungal meningitis and death.


*Cold tolerance C-Repeat Binding Factor (CBF) genes such as those found in transgenic Eucalyptus trees that have been associated with stunted growth and production in potatoes. CBF gene modification produces highly pleiotropic effects but there does not appear to have been any investigation on the production of unintended metabolites, proteins, or nuclei acids in the modified trees.


*Transgenes, such as the ones involved in the Agrobacterium vector used in creating the transgenic trees, which can enlarge their host range to infect other species and exchange genes with them through hormones produced at the site of plant wounds.


*As reported by MSNBC and PLoS Pathogens, a new strain of a deadly fungus, Cryptococcus gattii, that has been causing fatal human illnesses throughout the Pacific Northwest. The fungus, which is known to grow on eucalyptus trees, has killed 40 out of 220 people infected throughout the region. The reduced lignin in GM eucalyptus has raised concerns that the trees could be more susceptible to infection.


*Pollen from GM Eucalyptus trees can travel almost twice as far as the ArboGen application stated. Pollen from other GM trees can travel for over 40 kilometers.


One way Monsanto has used to escape scrutiny of their GM Eucalyptus is by declaring most, if not all of the genetically modified components to be 'Confidential Business information' (CBI). The CBI designation prevents independent evaluation of the full impact of GM eucalyptus on the environment and on human and animal health.


The USDA recently handed Monsanto and their client lawn seed company Scotts a huge victory by deciding to not regulate Roundup Ready Scotts Kentucky Bluegrass. The USDA had previously echoed warnings by the Center for Technology Assessment that GM bluegrass could become an "environmental nightmare".


Grasses such as Kentucky bluegrass have light and easily dispersed pollen. Thus, the likelihood of polluting existing strains is virtually certain as has happened in Oregon where Roundup Ready bentgrass has become a scourge.


So, get ready for even more toxic poisons in the coming plague of glyphosate-resistant plants gone wild. Also expect Monsanto to demand that payment for infringing on their patents, as they have with farmers whose crops have been adulterated by Monsanto's seed pollen.

A sure formula for disaster

Easy approval of GM grasses and trees combined with insufficient testing and lack of oversight is an almost certain formula for future disaster. As we have seen with other Monsanto GM plants, once the GM genie is out of the bottle it is pretty much impossible to put it back in.


Sources for this article included:


http://globaljusticeecology.org/connections.php?ID=607
http://www.sourcewatch.org
http://www.allthingsnow.com
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/05/04-0


About the author:
Tony Isaacs, is a natural health author, advocate and researcher who hosts The Best Years in Life website for those who wish to avoid prescription drugs and mainstream managed illness and live longer, healthier and happier lives naturally. Mr. Isaacs is the author of books and articles about natural health, longevity and beating cancer including " Cancer's Natural Enemy " and is working on a major book project due to be published later this year. He is also a contributing author for the worldwide advocacy group " S.A N.E.Vax. Inc" which endeavors to uncover the truth about HPV vaccine dangers.


Mr. Isaacs also has The Best Years in Life website for baby boomers and others wishing to avoid prescription drugs and mainstream managed illness and live longer, healthier and happier lives naturally. In addition, he hosts the Yahoo Oleandersoup Health group of over 2500 members and the CureZone Ask Tony Isaacs - Featuring Luella May forum, where he also serves as the local moderator for the Cancer Alternatives forum. Mr. Isaacs serves as a consultant to the " Utopia Silver Supplement Company and he and his partner Luella May recently began hosting The Best Years in Life Radio Show for Rumor Mill News on the Micro Effect Radio Network.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/035699_Monsanto_GMO_trees.html#ixzz1tG9e2D7t

What in the World Are They Spraying? Full Length

The Chemtrail/Geo-Engineering Coverup Revealed.

Trails of white, emitted behind jet aircraft, stretching from horizon to horizon, turn our skys into a blanket of overcast that blocks out our sunshine. Our innate intelligence tells us these are not mere vapor trails from jet engines. 

Who is doing this and why? Here is the story of a rapidly developing industry called geo-engineering, driven by scientists, corporations, and governments, intent on changing global climate, controlling the weather, and altering the chemical composition of soil and water.

Although government officials insist that these programs are only in the discussion phase, evidence is abundant that they have been underway since about 1990 - The effect has been devastating to crops, wildlife, and humans. We are being sprayed with toxic substances, without our consent. To add insult to injury, they lie to us about it and try to coverup the Chemtrail/Geo-Engineering that is ongoing.

• Runtime 97 minutes
• Produced by G. Edward Griffin, Michael Murphy and Paul Wittenberger

Farmageddon

Farmageddon: Farmageddon is the story of a mom whose son healed from all allergies and asthma after consuming raw milk, and real food from farms. It depicts people all over the country who formed food co-ops and private clubs to get these foods, and how they were raided by state and local governments.

Monsanto buys leading bee research firm after being implicated in bee colony collapse

(NaturalNews) Amid all the controversy over genetically-modified (GM) crops and their pesticides and herbicides decimating bee populations all around the world, biotechnology behemoth Monsanto has decided to buy out one of the major international firms devoted to studying and protecting bees. According to a company announcement, Beeologics handed over the reins to Monsanto back on September 28, 2011, which means the gene-manipulating giant will now be able to control the flow of information and products coming from Beeologics for colony collapse disorder (CCD).


Since 2007, Beeologics has been studying CCD, as well as Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), for the purpose of coming up with intervention-based ways to mitigate these conditions. And based on the way the company describes both CCD and IAPV on its website, Beeologics has largely taken the approach that intervention, rather than prevention, is the key to solving the global bee crisis.


Now that Beeologics is owned and controlled by Monsanto, the company is sure to completely avoid dealing with the true causes of CCD and IAPV as they pertain to Monsanto's crop technologies -- GMOs and their chemical counterparts. So going into the future, it seems expected that Beeologics will come up with "scientific breakthroughs" that deny any link between CCD and GMO technologies, and instead blame mystery pathogens and other factors that require more chemicals to eliminate.


According to Anthony Gucciardi atActivist Post, Beeologics has also long had a cozy relationship with the U.S.Department of Agriculture(USDA), which is convenient for Monsanto. The USDA, in fact, considers Beeologics to be one of the foremost bee research organizations in the world, as does the USDA'sAgricultural Research Service(ARS), the mainstream media and "leading entomologists" worldwide, according to the company.

Monsanto to use Beeologics' 'biological tools' to develop more GMOs, crop chemicals

Beeologics' acquisition announcement explains that Monsanto plans to incorporate all the biological research that Beeologics has conducted over the years into its own programs for developing more GMO systems. Monsanto has also seized control of a key product that is currently in the Beeologics development pipeline that supposedly "help[s] protect bee health."


"Monsanto will use the base technology from Beeologics as a part of its continuing discovery and development pipeline," says the announcement. "Biological products will continue to play an increasingly important role in supporting the sustainability of many agricultural systems."


To translate, it appears as though Monsanto plans to useeven more chemical inputsto supposedly solve the bee collapse problem, even though it is these very inputs that are largely thecauseof the bee collapse problem. Several recent studies, after all, have definitively linked crop pesticides and herbicides, as well as high fructose corn syrup, to CCD.


The future looks bleak for bees, in other words, as Monsanto appears poised to slowly gobble up all the competing companies and organizations that threaten its own GMO products, while pretending to care about the dwindling bee populations. And unless drastic action is taken to stop Monsanto in its continued quest to dominate global agriculture, the food supply as we know it will soon be a thing of the past.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/035688_Monsanto_honey_bees_colony_collapse.html#ixzz1tCgcLy27

Begin Experiencing the Benefits of Garlic

A common ingredient for sautéing, garlic is a spice relative of onion, leek, chive and shallots. This is a common staple for many savory dishes. Although popular in the kitchen, the health benefits of garlic have also been recognized and taken advantage of since the ancient times, showing countless individuals the compelling reasons to increase garlic consumption.

Benefits of Garlic

Garlic has many well-known health benefits – the most popular being its anti-infection uses. Skin conditions caused by bacteria, virus, fungi or yeast can be treated by rubbing raw chopped garlic on the affected area.

Garlic is great for boosting the immune system, containing high levels of vitamin C and being identified as a serious anti-cancer food. Because of its high potassium content, it can aid in absorption of essential nutrients, and help avoid digestive problems and fatigue as well. Garlic can also help in lung and throat problems due to its pungent smell. Since consuming garlic can irritate the digestive tract because of its pungent smell, a signal travels to the brain to release watery fluid in the lungs to counter the pungent property, thereby helping clear the lungs out of cough and colds.

Adding more to the benefits of garlic list, garlic’s role in the prevention of cancer is perhaps one of the most notorious. Scientists believe that the exceptional anti-cancer properties may have to do with the way that garlic boosts the production of something known as hydrogen sulfide. It is the hydrogen sulfide production that researchers believe to be why garlic is so effective at preventing a wide variety of cancer including, prostate, breast, and colon cancer.

As an antioxidant, garlic can help protect against free radicals, cancer, high cholesterol, and can be used as one of the many home remedies for high blood pressure. It is said that the older the garlic gets, the more antioxidants properties it contain, and the more effectively it works.

To maximize on the health benefits of garlic, let it sit for a few minutes before cooking. Letting garlic sit helps to release the enzymes that provide more nutrients for the body. Raw garlic can be used to kill bacteria, but cooked garlic has more potency in lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Optimally, crush the garlic at room temperature and allow it to sit for about 15 minutes. In addition, never cook garlic at high heat — try consuming it raw or cooked lightly. You can consume the spice both ways.

If you are worried about garlic causing bad breathe, you can counter this by consuming garlic prepared as pills or capsules. If you want to get the health benefits from garlic and stave off the odor a different way, consume garlic with parsley, as the herb counters garlic’s bad smell.

These are only some of the health benefits of garlic.

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/benefits-of-garlic/#ixzz1tA6rpf34

Trampling on the Tribes: 'The Corporate Way'

You might think Man has come a long way from the Dutch and English slave masters of the 18th Century selling work-able men and women from Africa at "markets" in North, Central and South America. But look at the attitudes to indigenous people.


The facts are that in our day and age Power - the ability to do things irrespective of any resistance from anybody - has been fundamentally privatized worldwide.So when private corporations decide to grab resource-rich lands they use all methods - modern and primitive - to get their way, as occurs for example, with the primitive Awá Indian tribe dwelling in Brazil's Amazonian rainforest where major logging companies simply hunt them down to extermination.


For the Awá people, modern Western "democracy", "market economy" and "human rights" mean decimation so complete that, according to a London Guardiannewspaper report last Sunday 22nd April, today there's only 355 of them left.The whole tribe could easily fit inside a jumbo jet!


That's the result of the private logging industry inside Brazil ramming into the Amazon forest to get their trees.Reminiscent of the film "Avatar" these corporations use strong private armies of pistoleros - gun-toting "soldiers of fortune" - to round up and kill anyone, primitive aboriginal or local townsfolk, who doesn't immediately grasp the benefits of the "market economy"


Why did this particular case reach the Western press? Because an NGO called "Survival International" campaigns in the Awa's defense, supported by British actor Colin Firth. No doubt, this at least is something, but...what about all the other thousands of tribes and unprotected, voiceless peoples throughout the world who haven't caught the eye of any Oscar-winning actor?


Does a British NGO helping an Amazonian tribe basically serve to publicly ease Western governments' and corporations' dirty conscious?If so, then it's little help considering the untold millions of suffering aboriginal and poor local peoples elsewhere.


The Guardian explains how the Awa's misfortunes date back to the early eighties when European Economic Community and World Bank-funded programs promoted mass iron-ore extraction in Brazil's Amazonia.That ripped open Awá country to railways, roads and mining.As money-hungry corporations worked their way through the resource food-chain in that region now its forestry's turn, hence the logging companies recruiting pistoleros to do their dirty work against the Awa for them. Investigating their plight, even Brazil's National Indian Foundation (Funai) reported they "did not dare to stop the loggers who were almost certainly armed."


This, in fact, has been one of the World Bank's key missions over the past 30 years or so: ensuring that dozens of weak countries around the world enact legislation favoring mining company interests by making their highly contaminating mining processes "legal" at the local level. The World Bank is just one of many Corporate Over-world tools used to control national governments.


Another example. Canadian transnational gold mining giant Barrick Gold's rapacious behavior has triggered myriads of protests from aborigine groups and local people in Argentina and Chile, who have seen their livelihoods endangered and turned upside-down by open-air dynamite-based mining techniques intensively using highly poisonous Cyanide in their processes, killing off animals, wildlife and people.


Mega-mining corporations pressed the governments of Chile and Argentina to sanction local laws, and in 2000 even a bilateral treaty, granting giants like Barrick full autonomy, tantamount to territorial sovereignty, over huge tracts of territory where they prospect and mine gold on the Andes Mountains.This legislation "facilitates investor's actions in developing mining business... with the use of all types of natural resources, supplies and infrastructure".


The key to understanding why they get away with all these lies in the highly asymmetrical relationship that exists between the very powerful private Corporate Over-world bent on maximizing profits, and increasingly weak public institutions and governments unable or unwilling to defend the Common Interest of their local populations.


In fact, this forms an integral part of a giant corporations' strategic exploitation process, that includes controlling local authorities so that theypass legislation promoting corporate interests (or block legislation limiting those interests), and then exerting little or no controls.


A good (or bad!!) example of this is Governor Beder Herrera of Argentina's mining-rich La Rioja Province who before becoming governor organized public protests against Barrick Gold.This made him popular and later got him being elected governor, whereupon he "saw the light", negotiated with Barrick, retracted on everything he had said and now fully backs Barrick who use their pistoleros against the Citizens' Assemblies for Life groups.Governor Herrera has even made anti-Barrick protests illegal in his province.


So, to understand how the poor and defenseless of this world are kept ever poor and defenseless, one need first understand how today's Global Power System actually works.


It systematically preys on weak local governments that are easily neutralized, or invited to "join up and partner" with major corporate interests, or simply thrown out in a multitude of ways: ranging historically from orchestrated military and financial coups, and media operations, to today's complex engineered popular insurrections (in the Middle East, aka as "The Arab Spring").


These are sobering reminders that today's world is run not by "international law", nor by the quest for the "common good" of the people, nor - much less - by "democracy".No, no: today's world is run by people wielding Power.


And a Law of Iron governs the use of Power: Those who wield Power use it in their interest and benefit; whilst those who wield little or no power have no choice but to suffer the consequences of the actions of individuals, corporations, entities and countries that do wield power to impose their interests and objectives on everybody.


You might say, "OK, the world's been this way ever since the dawn of history" and you would probably be right.But never in history has naked power been wielded with such insolent hypocrisy as it is today.At least, past empires openly invaded, exploited and colonized weaker nations for their own benefit, so the vanquished knew right away who their enemy was.Today's imperialists, however, demand that we believe that they promote "human rights", "freedom" and "democracy".


The more things change, the more they remain the same...


Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV commentator in Argentina. www.asalbuchi.com.ar

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/244604-Trampling-on-the-Tribes-The-Corporate-Way-

Waking Up to Propaganda and Unplugging From the Matrix

When did things begin going wrong in America? 


"From the beginning," answer some. English colonists, themselves under the thumb of a king, exterminated American Indians and stole their lands, as did late 18th and 19th century Americans. Over the course of three centuries the native inhabitants of America were dispossessed, just as Israelis have been driving Palestinians off their lands since 1948. 


Demonization always plays a role. The Indians were savages and the Palestinians are terrorists. Any country that can control the explanation can get away with evil. 


I agree that there is a lot of evil in every country and civilization. In the struggle between good and evil, religion has at times been on the side of evil. However, the notion of moral progress cannot so easily be thrown out. 


Consider, for example, slavery. In the 1800s, slavery still existed in countries that proclaimed equal rights. Even free women did not have equal rights. Today no Western country would openly tolerate the ownership of humans or the transfer of a woman's property upon her marriage to her husband. 


It is true that Western governments have ownership rights in the labor of their citizens through the income tax. This remains as a mitigated form of serfdom. So far, however, no government has claimed the right of ownership over the person himself. 


Sometimes I hear from readers that my efforts are pointless, that elites are always dominant and that the only solution is to find one's way into the small, connected clique of elites either through marriage or service to their interests. 


This might sound like cynical advice, but it is not devoid of some truth. Indeed, it is the way Washington and New York work, and increasingly the way the entire country operates. 


Washington serves powerful private interests, not the public interest. University faculties in their research increasingly serve private interests and decreasingly serve truth. In the US the media is no longer a voice and protection for the people. It is becoming increasingly impossible in America to get a good job without being connected to the system that serves the elites. 


The problem I have with this "give up" attitude is that over the course of my life, and more broadly over the course of the 20th century, many positive changes occurred through reforms. It is impossible to have reforms without good will, so even the elites who accepted reforms that limited their powers were part of the moral progress. 


Labor unions became a countervailing power to corporate management and Wall Street. 


Working conditions were reformed. Civil rights were extended. People excluded by the system were brought into it. Anyone who grew up in the 20th century can add his own examples. 


Progress was slow - unduly so from a reformer's standpoint - and mistakes were made. Nevertheless, whether done properly or improperly there was a commitment to the expansion of civil liberty. 


This commitment ended suddenly on September 11, 2001. In eleven years the Bush/Obama Regime repealed 800 years of human achievements that established law as a shield of the people and, instead, converted law into a weapon in the hands of the government. Today Americans and citizens of other countries can, on the will of the US executive branch alone, be confined to torture dungeons for the duration of their lives with no due process or evidence presented to any court, or they can be shot down in the streets or exterminated by drone missiles. 


The power that the US government asserts over its subjects and also over the citizens of other countries is unlimited. Lenin described unlimited power as power "resting directly on force, not limited by anything, not restricted by any laws, nor any absolute rules." 


Washington claims that it is the indispensable government representing the exceptional people and thereby has the right to impose its will and "justice" on the rest of the world and that resistance to Washington constitutes terrorism to be exterminated by any possible means. 


Thus, the American neoconservatives speak of nuking Iran for insisting on its independence from American hegemony and exercising its rights to nuclear energy under the non-proliferation treaty to which Iran is a signatory. 


In other words, Washington's will prevails over international treaties that have the force of law, treaties which Washington itself imposed on the world. According to the neoconservatives and Washington, Iran is not protected by the legal contract that Iran made with Washington when Iran signed the non-proliferation treaty. 


Iran finds itself as just another 17th or 18th century American Indian tribe to be deprived of its rights and to be exterminated by the forces of evil that dominate Washington, D.C. 


The vast majority of "superpower" americans plugged into the Matrix, where they are happy with the disinformation pumped into their brains by Washington and its presstitute media, would demur rather than face my facts. 


This raises the question: how does one become unplugged and unplug others from the Matrix? Readers have asked, and I do not have a complete answer. 


It seems to happen in a number of ways. Being fired and forced to train your H-1B foreign replacement who works for lower pay, being convicted of a crime that you did not commit, having your children stolen from you by Child Protective Services because bruises from sports activities were alleged to be signs of child abuse, your home stolen from you because a mortgage based on fraud was given the force of law, laid off by "free market capitalism" as your age advanced and the premium of your employer-provided medical insurance increased, being harassed by Homeland Security on your re-entry to the US because you are a non-embedded journalist who reports truthfully on US behavior abroad. There are many instances of Americans being jolted into reality by the "freedom and democracy" scales falling away from their eyes. 


It is possible that becoming unplugged from the Matrix is a gradual lifelong experiencefor the few who pay attention. The longer they live, the more they notice that reality contradicts the government's and media's explanations. The few who can remember important stuff after watching reality shows and their favorite sports teams and fantasy movies gradually realize that there is no "new economy" to take the place of the manufacturing economy that was given away to foreign countries. Once unemployed from their "dirty fingernail jobs," they learn that there is no "new economy" to employ them. 


Still seething from the loss of the Vietnam War and anger at war protesters, some flag-waving patriots are slowly realizing the consequences of criminalizing dissent and the exercise of First Amendment rights. "You are with us or against us" is taking on threatening instead of reassuring connotations, implying that anyone who opens his or her mouth in any dissent is thereby transformed into an "enemy of the state." 


More Americans, but far from enough, are coming to the realization that the extermination of the Branch Davidians at Waco in 1993 was a test run to confirm that the public and Congress would accept the murder of civilians who had been demonized with false charges of child abuse and gun-running. 


The next test was the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. Whose explanation would prevail: the government's or that of experts? Air Force General Partin, a top expert on explosives, proved conclusively in a heavily documented report given to every member of Congress that the Murruh Federal Office Building blew up from the inside out, not from the outside in from the fertilizer car bomb. But General Partin's facts lost out to the government's propaganda and to Congress' avoidance of cognitive dissonance. 


Once the "national security" government learned that its pronouncements and those of the presstitute media carried more weight than the facts presented by experts, conspiracies such as Operation Northwoods could be put into play. A 9/11 became possible. 


The Pentagon, CIA, and military/security complex were desperate for a new enemy to replace the "Soviet threat," which had ceased to exist. The military/security complex and its servants in Congress were determined to replace the profits made from the cold war and to preserve and increase the powers accumulated in the Pentagon and CIA. The only possible replacement for the Soviet threat was "Muslim terrorists." Thus, the creation of the "al Qaeda threat" and the conflation of this new threat with secular Arab governments, such as Iraq's and Syria's, which were the real targets of Islamists. 


Despite the evidence provided by experts that secular Arab governments, such as Saddam Hussein's, were allies against Islamic extremism, the US government used propaganda to link the secular Iraq government with Iraq's enemies among Islamic revolutionaries. 


Once Washington confirmed that the American public was both too ignorant and too inattentive to pay any attention to events that would alter their lives and jeopardize their existence, every thing else followed: the PATRIOT Act, the suspension of the Constitution and destruction of civil liberty, Homeland Security which has quickly extended its gestapo reach from airports to train stations, bus terminals and highway road blocks, the criminalization of dissent, the equating of critics of the government with supporters of terrorism, the home invasions of antiwar protesters and their arraignment before a grand jury, the prosecution of whistleblowers who reveal government crimes, the equating of journalism organizations such as WikiLeaks with spies. The list goes on.


The collapse of truth in the US and in its puppet states is a major challenge to my view that truth and good will are powers that can prevail over evil. It is possible that my perception that moral progress has occurred in various periods of Western civilization reflects a progressive unplugging from the Matrix. What I remember as reforms might be events experienced through the rose colored glasses of the Matrix. 


But I think not. Reason is an important part of human existence. Some are capable of it. Imagination and creativity can escape chains. Good can withstand evil. The extraordinary film, The Matrix, affirmed that people could be unplugged. I believe that even americans can be unplugged. If I give up this belief, I will cease writing.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.


www.paulcraigroberts.org


Source: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/244569-Waking-Up-to-Propaganda-and-Unplugging-From-the-Matrix