For 30 years the UN has fomented worldwide hysteria based upon the premise of global destruction by CO2
UN subterfuge…the global warming hoax
By James Lampe Monday, December 20, 2010
After schooling in the Environmental Sciences, and cleaning up toxic waste sites for an environmental agency, my hobby became global warming. At first it was interesting because the prevailing theory was always changing, but as new theories were advanced, they relied more on data adjustments and political strategy, than science. Today, Americans perceive global warming as a low priority item, and have turned their attention to our economic and security concerns. But big government agencies (UN and US) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) continue to quietly expand UN influence, by teaching their insidious Marxist policies to the bureaucratic, naive, and idiotic.
In 1972, Drs. George Kukla and Robert Matthews were the central figures in convincing the US government that climate change was a threat. Kukla worked with geologist Robert Matthews of Brown University, and presented the conference: “The Present Interglacial: How and When will it End?” Their presentation influenced President Nixon to create the “Panel on the Present Interglacial.”
In a 1974 Time article, Dr. George J. Kukla said the earth was in crisis because his research indicated the earth was headed into an Ice Age! Time reported: “The trend shows no indication of reversing.” Sound familiar? But in the 1981 article: “Evidence is Found of warming Trend,” Kukla said: “We have found within the general pattern a warming element in the right place and in the right season; it is just where we expected it from the theory, it fits nicely.”
The UN jumped on the environmental issue at the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, at Stockholm, Sweden. It was organized and led by Canadian, Maurice Strong, the Secretary-General of the Conference. During this conference, the UN Environment Programme was born, which has worldwide jurisdiction over UN environmental matters. The first Executive Director of UNEP was Maurice Strong.
At the June 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Maurice Strong kicked off the conference by calling you a wasteful capitalist pig! Aiming his words at America he said: “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”
It was at Rio, that the UNEP issued Agenda 21, a 40-chapter plan detailing the global goals of the UNEP. “Agenda 21” refers to the goals the UN wants to achieve in the 21st century. The UN also created the UN’s Division for Sustainable Development, to fund and manage the implementation of Agenda 21. (In 1992, Congress ratified the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which GH Bush signed. In 1993, WJ Clinton issued Executive Order 12852, creating the “President’s Council on Sustainable Development.” Its purpose: “The Council shall advise the President on matters involving sustainable development.”
For 30 years the UN has fomented worldwide hysteria based upon the premise of global destruction by CO2, and a large percentage of the population reacted just as HL Mencken predicted: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
The science of global warming has been unraveling for years, but one of the most glaring revelations came in 2007, when a UK High Court judge considered the science behind the 2006 Academy Award winning movie “Inconvenient Truth.” The judge ruled the movie contained nine significant errors and ruled it was a “political” movie, not a science movie.
Through the serendipity of Climategate, we discovered that although Russian weather stations cover most of Russia: “the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.” Then came the discovery that famed UK global warming scientist Professor Phil Jones moved weather stations in China. As the scientific methods of global warming scientists were aired, the number of skeptics increased, and one petition now has over 31,000 signatures.
But while the world was debating, the UN was infiltrating! The UN has been quietly training local governments and universities on UN sustainability policies and organizing techniques since 1990. Their plans are in Chapter 28 of Agenda 21, which advises: “Local authority programmes, policies, laws and regulations to achieve Agenda 21 objectives would be assessed and modified, based on local programmes adopted.” This chapter is a primer on how to infiltrate the US at every level, and in every organization.
Summary
For 30 years UN scientists contorted scientific theories, data, and “hockey sticks” to cobble their science together. The current status of global warming can be summarized with the Jeffersonian maxim: “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” It is now clear that global warming was an epic scam. Please consider:
1.Why reduce CO2 emissions to 1990 levels as called for in the Kyoto Treaty? Which scientists determined the 1990 CO2 levels would save the planet? Actually, the 1990 level was negotiated by bureaucrats, and despite their assertion that CO2 is harmful, they exempted two of the biggest CO2 emitters, China and India.
In 2007, Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria discovered: “These two countries (China and India) are currently building 650 coal-fired power plants. The combined CO2 emissions of these new plants is five times the total savings of the Kyoto accords-that is, if the Kyoto targets were being adhered to by western countries, which they are not.” (Quoted in Climate Change and Presidential Policy, p4.)
2.Climategate. “Hey buddy, can you tweak some data and delete a few emails for me?”
3.The 1992 Rio delegates actually admitted that science doesn’t matter!
Principle 15: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
4.In 2003, Economist Michael Grubb wrote: “The Protocol is essentially an agreement to extend economic globalization to environmental policy: to establish a global emissions market to counter the global environmental consequences of global economic growth.” Fortunately, there were men of vision such as Al Gore, Maurice Strong, and Barack Obama, who teamed up with their friends at Goldman Sachs to create such a system, and thus was born the Chicago Climate Exchange. (CCX).
5.In November 2010, UN environmental economist Ottmar Edenhofer admitted that in regard to UN environmental policy: “developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”
The UN infiltration of America was authorized by bipartisan quisling presidents, whose actions empowered the UN to quietly train and create; hundreds of Marxists change agents at all levels of government and academia. This has been a stealth operation and completely under the media radar. The people who have assimilated the global warming sustainability propaganda are trained and motivated advocates who uphold the New World Order of sustainability by UN fiat, not the Constitution of capitalists. Sound far-fetched? The US Congress never passed a bill approving green house gas regulations or Cap and Trade. But that hasn’t stopped the EPA from promulgating GHG regulations; and in November 2010, the EPA took a step towards globalizing environmental compliance by signing a cooperative agreement with the European Chemicals Agency, for: “the implementation and further development of EU policies.”
There are hundreds of cities from El Cerrito, California, to Belfast, Maine, that have been trained, and agreed to implement UN Agenda 21 policies! The barbarians are inside our offices, municipal buildings, and schools! If this UN advocacy for a New World Order is not reversed, isn’t it only a matter of time until America becomes known as the most powerful country in the North American Union?
Friday, December 31, 2010
TSA targets Gulf filmmakers at check-point (video)
.TSA targets Gulf filmmakers at check-point (video)
December 31st, 2010 2:58 pm ET.
At California's Ontario Airport this week, TSA targeted three of the most active filmmakers documenting the crime of the millennium, the Gulf of Mexico operation. After working in Los Angeles where they are residents, in trying to board a plane to return to the Gulf region, the three young human rights defenders were pre-selected for harassment and intimidation at the check-point.
"It started the minute we got to the airport,” Project Gulf Impact film director, Matt Smith said in a telephone conversation Thursday from Orange Beach, Alabama.
When Smith and his crew members, Gavin Garrison and Heather Rally arrived at the nearly empty Ontario Airport on Tuesday evening, heading back to document ongoing atrocities along the Gulf Coast, they were soon alerted they were in for a rough ride – not on the plane but instead, in the terminal with TSA.
Tuesday was the first day the three have traveled together, explained Smith, saying,
"The three of us are careful to never travel all together.”
Like other film crews, Project Gulf Impact filmmakers take precautions to secure their footage. They take two copies of their work, one carried by two of the filmmakers and the other by one, on separate flights. Tuesday was their first exception to their rule.
As usual, they used the automated self check-in machine in the quiet airport.
Smith reported, “We'd purchased the three tickets together. After I put the confirmation code into the machine, I saw a big message on the screen saying that TSA needs more information on each passenger.”
"It's like they were waiting for us. They are assigning redress numbers to people they see as terrorists.
"I've been looking for the SSSS code on our tickets,” Smith said, referring to the code scrawled in red on tickets of flyers on a watch list, flyers like human rights defenders and peace workers viewed as a threat to alleged high-level criminals running the airline industry gagging airline industry whistleblowers who know what the real threats are.
In the article, Delta black op bomb gave neocon Christmas gifts of nudity and fear, Dupré reported over a year ago that the incident that catapulted the nation to an all new level of fascism was executed by a black operation for that purpose:
"The Christmas day Delta flight 253 bomb attempt was another black operation, similar to the false flag 911, 2001 black operation, this one involving the CIA, Mossad and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) according to investigative journalist, Wayne Madsen reports based on Asian intelligence that closely monitors activities of the three agencies in India and Southeast Asia." (The reader could also read her article: Bogus Christmas airline terrorism. Bogus war on terror. Got it?, except it has disappeared off of the internet.)
Smith knows that he and his crew likely fall into the bogus terrorist category since they are exposing truth. He reported, however, that Tuesday was the worst travel experience they have ever had. (See: Fake DHS airline security. Real American suppression, Dupré, D., Examiner, Dec. 18, 2010)
"We work so well together,” said Smith. “Usually when something happens, I get freaked first, then Heather and then Gavin.
"As soon as I walked through, the TSA agent looked at us like we were criminals. Heather got pulled out first and then Gavin. When Heather went through, other agents started arriving... It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”
"They put Heather in the holding prison. Then four agents were there. One marched over and said, 'You've been preselected.”'
Although most American air travelers are choosing to walk through the dangerous new scanners, Garrison said he values his future and ability to have children more than the temporary sexual assault. (See: Travelers choosing TSA cancer over TSA sex assault, Dupré, D., Examiner, Dec. 17, 2010)
They were told to go through the new backscatter machine instead of the old machines there.
"Those machines interfere with the endocrine system and that's permanent. TSA's sexual assault won't stop us from having babies,” Garrison said.
Earlier this year, the young filmmakers took a near direct hit of Corexit while filming from a boat in the Gulf. Officials had announced the chemical spraying had stopped two months earlier, but as the three in their boat traveled to their pre-planned destination, they were suddenly alarmed to see fresh, bubbling orange Corexit and knew their path had very recently been just sprayed before their arrival. They were breathing poison, soon all three very ill they have reported.
"The doctor said if I wanted a future, stay away from the Gulf and never bring my wife here.”
Garrison said that when he told the TSA agents, “I don't want to go through that machine,” the female agent suddenly began shouting, “Opt out! Opt out!”
At that point, Smith, seated and observing the scene, noticed the airport getting crowded and more agents suddenly appearing near them.
One agent said about Garrison, “Oh, he only needs a minor pat down.”
Smith said he looked around, saw Heather still in the cage, all kinds of agents appearing and began filming from the bench where he quietly sat.
"We were all trying to remain calm.” Garrison said.
A TSA agent then explained what they were going to do, including feeling the bottom of his naked feet and continuing to feel him all the way up to his pubic bone until they “felt resistance.”
"By that time, everyone was watching,” Garrison said.
He said he was working hard to remain calm but looking at the scene over three innocent filmmakers, Garrison said to the agents, “This is intense! This is intense, isn't it?”
"The agent was heavily perspiring. Then he started talking about surgery he'd just had and that he'd just returned to work, saying tThings had changed there since Thanksgiving.”
"We're always polite and cordial, so I was asking him about his surgery,” Garrison explained.
Garrison told the writer, “They talk about racial profiling. That's not what this is. I was thinking, 'I'm just a skinny young white boy going through this. They were ravaging and touching every part of my body.”
The Intel Hub reported, “These procedures are much more than Orwellian scanners; they are being used to break the will and spirit of the American people. If the government is able to to force the public into accepting these intrusive measures than society as we know it will come to an end.” (Gulf Activists Harassed by TSA Agents Who Claim Filming is illegal, Thomas, A., Dec. 29, 2010, Online: http://theintelhub.com/2010/12/29/gulf-activists-harrassed-by-tsa-agents-who-claim-filming-is-illegal/
A TSA agent then noticed Smith filming and yelled over to him, “Are you filming? We don't want this on Youtube or the Internet!”
An agent then walked over to Smith and said, “It's a federal offense to be filming here. You can't film the check-point!”
Smith told the writer he knew better. The agent was either ill-informed or dishonest.
Having learned about his travel rights, Smith told the agents that it is legal to film public places and kept filming, noticing the agent who was saying it was illegal to film there was subtly and strategically covering his badge so it could not be documented on film.
(Photo: Firedoglake)
"The agent again said filming there was illegal,” Smith said.
"When Heather and Matt challenged this, [the agent] grew increasingly angry. He continued repeating that it was a federal offense. (Intel Hub)
“The only thing that saved me at that point,” said Smith on Thursday, “was Heather asking, 'Since when?'”
That seemed to stump the agent. He could not answer her.
“They don't like it when people know their rights, when they know you're monitoring them monitoring you,” Smith said.
But then, one of the agents radioed into someone else about what was going on according to Smith, saying, “They all wear ear pieces, you know,” adding that they are seemingly getting their orders remotely.
“At that point, I knew I had two options. I could sit and wait for more agents to arrive and possibly lose what I had videoed – or make a dash away from the scene.
“They could take my phone I was using to video and delete what I had on camera, or I'd have on camera what everyone has been complaining about,” Smith said, referring to the recent giant step in fascism through airports.
"I looked around and saw two bathrooms.”
Smith said he made his dash into one of them, further shocked upon realizing he was in the women's bathroom. He had to slip out and into the men's room.
"We now live in a country where traveling American citizens are subject to a Stazi type TSA that believes that it completely legal to fondle attractive women’s breasts yet illegal to film their intrusive security procedures.” (Intel Hub)
Ted Nicholson reported on December 29 and 1:43 p.m that he tried to share the Intel Hub article on his Facebook page but was blocked from doing so.
"I filed a complaint and am waiting for a response,” he wrote on the Intel Hub site.
Project Gulf Impact film crew, minus Heather Rally who returned home due to illness, are back on the scene today, filming along the Alabama Coast today.
In these final days of 2010, front-line Gulf coast workers are noticeably wearing down, breaking down, and weeping more than usual according several reports to the writer this week. They say they that they know the pain and suffering is mounting because they can see it and they know that really, although they have seen death and dying, it is only the beginning.
"It breaks my heart,” said Smith. “I'm down here watching this. Nobody knows how bad it is unless they see it first-hand. The hardest part is the apathy and complacency of the rest of the nation."
"There's chaos and confusion down here.”
Agreeing that chaos is the work of Satan, Smith said that he was lucky to have great parents, a mother who explained ugly reality about the world to him, but he'd not fully appreciated her words of wisdom until the Gulf explosion.
"I kept seeing in the news, 'BP, BP, BP.' and asking myself, 'Where are the people? Why isn't media reporting what's happening to the people?' That was like a siren for me. I knew I had to go film and document the people.”
After what he's been through, Smith says he's afraid to have children. He said that the toughest part of his work is seeing so few other people working to prevent a dismal future.
"If things look this bad now, from airports to the Gulf situation, what will they look like when I'm 80? What do children have to look forward to? Being totally controlled robots?”
Monday night, January 3rd, Mr. Jeff Rense will interview the Project Gulf Impact filmmakers from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. PST on the Rense Radio Network, heard nationally and internationally.
Anticipated to be another enlightening program about the TSA and Gulf of Mexico people, accessed at www.renseradio.com/, it is destined to provide a rare glimpse of the life of young warrior reporters, filming human rights abuses from the trenches in the undeclared Gulf of Mexico war on humanity and planet.
Copyright © 2010 Deborah Dupré. All rights reserved.
Deborah Dupré, B.Sci, MA. Sci, DipContEd, QMHP from U.S. and Australian universities, human and environmental rights advocate over 25 years in U.S., Vanuatu and Australia. Support her work by subscribing to her articles and forwarding the link of this article to friends and colleagues or reposting only title and first paragraph linked to this Examiner page. Email info@DeborahDupre.com with targeting and Gulf illness news tips, with name or anonymously. See her Vaccine Liberty or Death book plus Compassion Film Project DVDs at www.DeborahDupre.com.
If you're flying soon, download our "Know Your Rights at TSA" flier and print out copies for you and other passengers. Click here to download.
If the readers feels rights have been violated by the TSA, Firedoglake made it easy to spread the word and warn others. See TSAcomplaint.com to share your story and also leave comments below this article.
.
December 31st, 2010 2:58 pm ET.
At California's Ontario Airport this week, TSA targeted three of the most active filmmakers documenting the crime of the millennium, the Gulf of Mexico operation. After working in Los Angeles where they are residents, in trying to board a plane to return to the Gulf region, the three young human rights defenders were pre-selected for harassment and intimidation at the check-point.
"It started the minute we got to the airport,” Project Gulf Impact film director, Matt Smith said in a telephone conversation Thursday from Orange Beach, Alabama.
When Smith and his crew members, Gavin Garrison and Heather Rally arrived at the nearly empty Ontario Airport on Tuesday evening, heading back to document ongoing atrocities along the Gulf Coast, they were soon alerted they were in for a rough ride – not on the plane but instead, in the terminal with TSA.
Tuesday was the first day the three have traveled together, explained Smith, saying,
"The three of us are careful to never travel all together.”
Like other film crews, Project Gulf Impact filmmakers take precautions to secure their footage. They take two copies of their work, one carried by two of the filmmakers and the other by one, on separate flights. Tuesday was their first exception to their rule.
As usual, they used the automated self check-in machine in the quiet airport.
Smith reported, “We'd purchased the three tickets together. After I put the confirmation code into the machine, I saw a big message on the screen saying that TSA needs more information on each passenger.”
"It's like they were waiting for us. They are assigning redress numbers to people they see as terrorists.
"I've been looking for the SSSS code on our tickets,” Smith said, referring to the code scrawled in red on tickets of flyers on a watch list, flyers like human rights defenders and peace workers viewed as a threat to alleged high-level criminals running the airline industry gagging airline industry whistleblowers who know what the real threats are.
In the article, Delta black op bomb gave neocon Christmas gifts of nudity and fear, Dupré reported over a year ago that the incident that catapulted the nation to an all new level of fascism was executed by a black operation for that purpose:
"The Christmas day Delta flight 253 bomb attempt was another black operation, similar to the false flag 911, 2001 black operation, this one involving the CIA, Mossad and India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) according to investigative journalist, Wayne Madsen reports based on Asian intelligence that closely monitors activities of the three agencies in India and Southeast Asia." (The reader could also read her article: Bogus Christmas airline terrorism. Bogus war on terror. Got it?, except it has disappeared off of the internet.)
Smith knows that he and his crew likely fall into the bogus terrorist category since they are exposing truth. He reported, however, that Tuesday was the worst travel experience they have ever had. (See: Fake DHS airline security. Real American suppression, Dupré, D., Examiner, Dec. 18, 2010)
"We work so well together,” said Smith. “Usually when something happens, I get freaked first, then Heather and then Gavin.
"As soon as I walked through, the TSA agent looked at us like we were criminals. Heather got pulled out first and then Gavin. When Heather went through, other agents started arriving... It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”
"They put Heather in the holding prison. Then four agents were there. One marched over and said, 'You've been preselected.”'
Although most American air travelers are choosing to walk through the dangerous new scanners, Garrison said he values his future and ability to have children more than the temporary sexual assault. (See: Travelers choosing TSA cancer over TSA sex assault, Dupré, D., Examiner, Dec. 17, 2010)
They were told to go through the new backscatter machine instead of the old machines there.
"Those machines interfere with the endocrine system and that's permanent. TSA's sexual assault won't stop us from having babies,” Garrison said.
Earlier this year, the young filmmakers took a near direct hit of Corexit while filming from a boat in the Gulf. Officials had announced the chemical spraying had stopped two months earlier, but as the three in their boat traveled to their pre-planned destination, they were suddenly alarmed to see fresh, bubbling orange Corexit and knew their path had very recently been just sprayed before their arrival. They were breathing poison, soon all three very ill they have reported.
"The doctor said if I wanted a future, stay away from the Gulf and never bring my wife here.”
Garrison said that when he told the TSA agents, “I don't want to go through that machine,” the female agent suddenly began shouting, “Opt out! Opt out!”
At that point, Smith, seated and observing the scene, noticed the airport getting crowded and more agents suddenly appearing near them.
One agent said about Garrison, “Oh, he only needs a minor pat down.”
Smith said he looked around, saw Heather still in the cage, all kinds of agents appearing and began filming from the bench where he quietly sat.
"We were all trying to remain calm.” Garrison said.
A TSA agent then explained what they were going to do, including feeling the bottom of his naked feet and continuing to feel him all the way up to his pubic bone until they “felt resistance.”
"By that time, everyone was watching,” Garrison said.
He said he was working hard to remain calm but looking at the scene over three innocent filmmakers, Garrison said to the agents, “This is intense! This is intense, isn't it?”
"The agent was heavily perspiring. Then he started talking about surgery he'd just had and that he'd just returned to work, saying tThings had changed there since Thanksgiving.”
"We're always polite and cordial, so I was asking him about his surgery,” Garrison explained.
Garrison told the writer, “They talk about racial profiling. That's not what this is. I was thinking, 'I'm just a skinny young white boy going through this. They were ravaging and touching every part of my body.”
The Intel Hub reported, “These procedures are much more than Orwellian scanners; they are being used to break the will and spirit of the American people. If the government is able to to force the public into accepting these intrusive measures than society as we know it will come to an end.” (Gulf Activists Harassed by TSA Agents Who Claim Filming is illegal, Thomas, A., Dec. 29, 2010, Online: http://theintelhub.com/2010/12/29/gulf-activists-harrassed-by-tsa-agents-who-claim-filming-is-illegal/
A TSA agent then noticed Smith filming and yelled over to him, “Are you filming? We don't want this on Youtube or the Internet!”
An agent then walked over to Smith and said, “It's a federal offense to be filming here. You can't film the check-point!”
Smith told the writer he knew better. The agent was either ill-informed or dishonest.
Having learned about his travel rights, Smith told the agents that it is legal to film public places and kept filming, noticing the agent who was saying it was illegal to film there was subtly and strategically covering his badge so it could not be documented on film.
(Photo: Firedoglake)
"The agent again said filming there was illegal,” Smith said.
"When Heather and Matt challenged this, [the agent] grew increasingly angry. He continued repeating that it was a federal offense. (Intel Hub)
“The only thing that saved me at that point,” said Smith on Thursday, “was Heather asking, 'Since when?'”
That seemed to stump the agent. He could not answer her.
“They don't like it when people know their rights, when they know you're monitoring them monitoring you,” Smith said.
But then, one of the agents radioed into someone else about what was going on according to Smith, saying, “They all wear ear pieces, you know,” adding that they are seemingly getting their orders remotely.
“At that point, I knew I had two options. I could sit and wait for more agents to arrive and possibly lose what I had videoed – or make a dash away from the scene.
“They could take my phone I was using to video and delete what I had on camera, or I'd have on camera what everyone has been complaining about,” Smith said, referring to the recent giant step in fascism through airports.
"I looked around and saw two bathrooms.”
Smith said he made his dash into one of them, further shocked upon realizing he was in the women's bathroom. He had to slip out and into the men's room.
"We now live in a country where traveling American citizens are subject to a Stazi type TSA that believes that it completely legal to fondle attractive women’s breasts yet illegal to film their intrusive security procedures.” (Intel Hub)
Ted Nicholson reported on December 29 and 1:43 p.m that he tried to share the Intel Hub article on his Facebook page but was blocked from doing so.
"I filed a complaint and am waiting for a response,” he wrote on the Intel Hub site.
Project Gulf Impact film crew, minus Heather Rally who returned home due to illness, are back on the scene today, filming along the Alabama Coast today.
In these final days of 2010, front-line Gulf coast workers are noticeably wearing down, breaking down, and weeping more than usual according several reports to the writer this week. They say they that they know the pain and suffering is mounting because they can see it and they know that really, although they have seen death and dying, it is only the beginning.
"It breaks my heart,” said Smith. “I'm down here watching this. Nobody knows how bad it is unless they see it first-hand. The hardest part is the apathy and complacency of the rest of the nation."
"There's chaos and confusion down here.”
Agreeing that chaos is the work of Satan, Smith said that he was lucky to have great parents, a mother who explained ugly reality about the world to him, but he'd not fully appreciated her words of wisdom until the Gulf explosion.
"I kept seeing in the news, 'BP, BP, BP.' and asking myself, 'Where are the people? Why isn't media reporting what's happening to the people?' That was like a siren for me. I knew I had to go film and document the people.”
After what he's been through, Smith says he's afraid to have children. He said that the toughest part of his work is seeing so few other people working to prevent a dismal future.
"If things look this bad now, from airports to the Gulf situation, what will they look like when I'm 80? What do children have to look forward to? Being totally controlled robots?”
Monday night, January 3rd, Mr. Jeff Rense will interview the Project Gulf Impact filmmakers from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. PST on the Rense Radio Network, heard nationally and internationally.
Anticipated to be another enlightening program about the TSA and Gulf of Mexico people, accessed at www.renseradio.com/, it is destined to provide a rare glimpse of the life of young warrior reporters, filming human rights abuses from the trenches in the undeclared Gulf of Mexico war on humanity and planet.
Copyright © 2010 Deborah Dupré. All rights reserved.
Deborah Dupré, B.Sci, MA. Sci, DipContEd, QMHP from U.S. and Australian universities, human and environmental rights advocate over 25 years in U.S., Vanuatu and Australia. Support her work by subscribing to her articles and forwarding the link of this article to friends and colleagues or reposting only title and first paragraph linked to this Examiner page. Email info@DeborahDupre.com with targeting and Gulf illness news tips, with name or anonymously. See her Vaccine Liberty or Death book plus Compassion Film Project DVDs at www.DeborahDupre.com.
If you're flying soon, download our "Know Your Rights at TSA" flier and print out copies for you and other passengers. Click here to download.
If the readers feels rights have been violated by the TSA, Firedoglake made it easy to spread the word and warn others. See TSAcomplaint.com to share your story and also leave comments below this article.
.
'It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,' toxicologist says
Panel challenges Gulf seafood safety all-clear
'It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,' toxicologist says
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. Jerry Moran / Native Orleanian Fine Photograph
Strong Bear, an environmental technician with Boston Chemical Data Corp., collects samples on Horn Island, offshore from Biloxi, Miss. Bear is part of a team of environmental investigators hired by a New Orleans law firm that has analyzed hundreds of soil, plant, water and seafood samples from the Gulf coast area affected by the BP oil spill. By Kari Huus
Reporter
msnbc.com msnbc.com
updated 12/27/2010 6:04:49 AM ET 2010-12-27T11:04:49
Share Print Font: +-A New Orleans law firm is challenging government assurances that Gulf Coast seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the BP oil spill, saying it poses “a significant danger to public health.”
It’s a high-stakes tug-of-war that will almost certainly end up in the courts, with two armies of scientists arguing over technical findings that could have real-world impact for seafood consumers and producers.
Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage.
Is dispersant still being sprayed in the gulf?
“What we have found is that FDA simply overlooked an important aspect of safety in their protocol,” contends William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist on Smith’s team. “We now have a sufficient number of samples to provide FDA with probable cause to include such testing, really. They need to go back and test some of their archived samples as well.”
Five months after crude oil stopped gushing from the broken BP wellhead into the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government has reopened more than 90 percent of fishing waters that were in danger of contamination from the broken Deepwater Horizon rig.
More U.S. news New twister alerts after 6 killed in Ark., Mo.
Parts of six states were on the lookout for twisters after several touched down Friday. One killed three people in an Arkansas town and another killed three in Missouri. Full story
Updated 34 minutes ago 12/31/2010 9:51:27 PM +00:00 Most hostages freed in botched bank robbery
Snowstorm causes 100-car pileup in N.D.
U.S. helps Ukraine secure two bombs' worth of uranium
1 million to watch NYC ring in 2011
..“There is no question gulf seafood coming to market is safe from oil or dispersant residue,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said in an Oct. 29 statement as the final fisheries reopenings were under way. With a partner agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the FDA said it tested thousands of seafood samples before issuing the “all clear.”
In the most recent vote of confidence for the seafood — and an effort to get the hobbled industry back on its feet — Navy Secretary Mark Mabus, a top official in the oil spill recovery effort, is urging the military to buy as much Gulf seafood as possible for distribution to its armed forces commissaries worldwide.
advertisement
ad info
Advertisement
ad info
Advertisement
ad info
.Claims in the pipeline
But many fishermen have yet to return to sea, and consumer confidence in Gulf seafood remains lukewarm. And some scientists remain skeptical that the government testing has been rigorous enough to protect public health.
Smith's clients in the BP oil spill include environmental activists and fishermen who don’t believe the seafood to be safe. The independent testing he is overseeing is meant to provide a legal underpinning to their anecdotal evidence — sightings of oil sheens, tar balls, oily fish — and help them win full compensation for their damage claims.
Only on msnbc.com For bayou tribe, new year brings only uncertainty
Concrete jungle: Department store's zoo sparks fury
Social media had little role in holiday buying
Opinion: Dialysis program is costly in too many ways
New Year's ball sets an energy example
Planning a 'polar bear plunge'? How your body reacts
Transcript: Allison Linn on 2011 jobs outlook
..“When BP says your guy isn’t fishing (as a reason not to pay for lost income) we can say he isn’t fishing because it isn’t safe,” said Smith.
So far, the firm has filed $75 million in six-month damage claims on behalf of commercial interests, including fishermen. If the Gulf claims fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg decides to allow claims for damage losses in property value, Smith expects to seek another $150 million for those clients.
"I believe the government and BP are trying to downplay the damage," said Smith. "If they are successful my clients won’t get full compensation for damages."
It’s complicated
Scientists can’t just test for “oil” in seafood.Crude oil is a mixture of hundreds of different hydrocarbons that are associated with different health risks — to the nervous system, immune system, lungs, skin, liver and kidneys.
The group the FDA and NOAA testing focuses on — polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — are considered the most toxic and some are clearly linked to cancer.
Story: This woman's nose stands between you, Gulf seafood
The agencies have used expert “sniffers” and laboratory analysis to examine thousands of samples of gulf shrimp, crabs, oysters and fin fish. They say they have discovered no samples with PAH levels of concern.
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..But Sawyer and his colleagues say the government isn't looking far enough. They are testing for the toxic PAHs — and, like the government, finding little — but they are also measuring for other elements from oil that potentially pose health risks.
And those tests, Sawyer says, are routinely turning up long-chain “aliphatic” hydrocarbons associated with liver damage.
Their approach draws on the work of scientists from industry, government and academia who banded together in the 1990s to develop guidelines for public health officials and environmental engineers faced with petroleum-related exposure and contamination. The work of the U.S.-funded Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Criteria Working Group was part of a flurry of research that occurred in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
The idea was to offer guidance to engineers on hazardous waste sites and to public health officials dealing with exposure to the contaminants. Based on available animal and human research the scientists set risk levels for exposure to various groups of hydrocarbons.
advertisement
ad info
Advertisement
ad info
Advertisement
ad info
.The secret sniffers between you and oiled fish
That is the standard that Smith's scientists are relying on to argue that levels of aliphatic hydrocarbons in the seafood samples are about twice as high as the risk level set by the hydrocarbon group.
Sawyer, the toxicologist, said that daily exposure above the risk level poses a risk of liver damage, especially for people who have underlying health issues, such as hepatitis.
Food safety standards
The problem is the U.S. government has never applied the standards to food safety, even though they are recognized by the CDC and the governments of the U.K. and New Zealand. They also were written into environmental clean-up regulations used by a half dozen U.S. states.
In response to questions from msnbc.com, NOAA and FDA representatives expressed confidence in the government’s testing and results.
“The FDA has determined, based on a large base of science, that the compounds of greatest concern to human health are the PAHs, and levels of concern have been determined for the PAHs,” Dr. John Stein, a seafood safety expert at NOAA, said in an email. “The methods used for testing are designed for PAHs.”
"Aliphatic hydrocarbons are relatively non-toxic components of oil compared to the much more toxic PAH compounds," said Siobhan DeLancy, an FDA spokeswoman. PAH's are "monitored by FDA and most countries as the oil compounds of greatest food safety concern as well as reliable markers of oil exposure in assuring the safety of seafood."
Both government experts also said that testing for aliphatic compounds in seafood is inappropriate because it is prone to false positives.
"FDA would be pleased to review the detailed data and information on the method(s) used that led to the claimed high levels of oil derived ... aliphatic hydrocarbons in seafood tissues sampled from the Gulf Of Mexico," DeLancy wrote in an email response to questions.
Health of U.S. population
Smith’s team may have difficulty making the argument of potential health risk in U.S. courts, even if their testing methods and results hold up to scrutiny. Even the TPH working group that produced the risk reference levels had to base its report on limited animal and human research for many hydrocarbon compounds.
Among the controlled studies cited is one in which rats that consumed the aliphatic hydrocarbons developed granuloma, or masses, in their livers — a type of immune reaction.
“Bottom line is that little information is available on the potential adverse health effects of these compounds on human health," said Peter Spencer, director of the Oregon Health and Science University and a toxicologist and neurologist who is not involved in the research.
advertisement
ad info Advertisement
ad infoAdvertisement
ad info.But scientists working with Smith will argue that the “potential risk to human health” above the set levels should be reason enough for concern on the part of the FDA.
"It is unethical to 'experiment' with the health of the U.S. population or military members who may be admonished to consume TPH-tainted Gulf seafood," said Sawyer, the toxicologist on Smith’s team.
Scientists outside the study urge caution in drawing conclusions from the challenge posed by Smith’s team, but also admonish the government not to ignore their findings.
“Raising this issue is good but should not be seen as conclusive in any way that a proven toxicologic issue exists, just that there clearly is more to know before we determine there is no problem,” said toxicologist Dave Hobson, president and CEO of LoneStar Pharmtox in San Antonio, Texas, and past president of the American College of Toxicology. He said he's wary of scientific findings that are connected to a legal case, but that they should be investigated “sooner rather than later.”
Getting the ducks in a row
While Smith may be fighting an uphill legal battle, BP’s attorneys are unlikely to take him lightly.
Smith has 23 years experience handling claims involving oil company pollution. In 2002, he led a case against ExxonMobil that resulted in a $1.06 billion verdict for radioactive contamination of leased land.
Consequently, Smith’s team of chemists, marine biologists and toxicologists are collecting evidence by the book, knowing that it will very likely have to hold up in court.
To make sure their testing withstands scrutiny, the scientists use the FDA “chain of custody” for handling samples, which are sent for analysis at three facilities in the Canada-based ALS Environmental Laboratory network — chosen, Smith said, to make sure it is outside BP’s substantial sphere of influence.
While the FDA conducts random sampling when deciding whether to reopen sections of the gulf, Smith’s team gathers samples from suspected “hot spots,” based on tips from contacts. The samples are run through a battery of tests, more elaborate and more expensive than those used by the government, according to Smith. He said they the plaintiffs’ have so far spent about $500,000 for analysis of about 500 samples, including seafood, water, plants, sediment and tar balls.
The scientists employ a method in the lab to separate carbons associated with petroleum from those that occur naturally in animals, said Marco Kaltofen, an environmental engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., and a consultant on contamination cases, including this one. This is a key point, aimed at deflecting FDA charges that TPH testing is unreliable in seafood.
Kaltofen uses several means to “fingerprint” the hydrocarbons in seafood to determine whether they match the BP’s Deepwater Horizon crude.
“What gives us confidence that we are finding oil in these samples is that we are using multiple lines of evidence,” he said. “We are finding — even in metabolized samples — a lot of matches to BP oil.”
advertisement
ad info Advertisement
ad infoAdvertisement
ad info.Sawyer and Kaltofen began finding high levels of TPH in seawater and sediment in June. Many scientists had previously expressed concerns that the heavy use of chemical dispersants by BP to break up giant oil slicks would lock the contaminants in the water column, making them more available to marine life.
“From there you can reasonably predict that there are going to be more and more findings in the food chain,” said Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist at the Marine Environmental Research Institute. Shaw, who is not a member of Smith's scientific team, is one of 14 scientists tapped for the independent DOI Strategic Sciences Working Group to dissect the oil spill consequences and make policy recommendations to the agencies. She has been a vocal opponent of the heavy use of dispersants throughout the response.
“What we’re seeing now is plausible evidence from independent labs that — just as we thought — there’s oil in the food web, and here’s where we’re finding it,” said Shaw.
How many shrimp make a meal?
Other scientists not directly associated with the plaintiffs’ case also are questioning whether the FDA seafood testing program is stringent enough to protect public health.
“FDA’s approach has been to focus on the known carcinogens in the oil and to test specifically for them,” said Gina Solomon, senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We share the concern that the FDA may be looking too narrowly, and in fact, there are some important PAHs that the FDA isn’t looking for, so they may be missing some of the carcinogens.”
More broadly, Solomon and others have criticized the way the FDA calculates safe exposure to PAHs in seafood. For one thing, Solomon and others have long said the fish consumption portions used by the FDA to make this calculation — an average of four shrimp in one sitting — are too small to reflect eating habits in the Gulf region.
This month, the NRDC released the results of a survey looking at those eating habits, concluding that "many Gulf residents are eating far more seafood, far more often, than the federal government has acknowledged."
“It’s common knowledge that people in the Gulf love their seafood," said Solomon. "When we think of food from the region we think of po-boys and gumbo, oyster bakes and jambalaya." Thus, the current FDA standards "may also be failing to adequately protect many people in the Gulf,” she said.
The group argues that the average body weight of 176 pounds used in the FDA calculations of safe exposure levels also is too high to account for many women, children and fetuses, she said. Of the 547 survey respondents, about 60 percent reported they were under the average weight, and 40 percent said they had children at home who eat seafood.
In June, the FDA also relaxed the acceptable PAH level for gulf fisheries, in effect allowing for a risk of one person in 100,000 developing cancer as a result of seafood consumption, compared to one person in 1 million under the previous levels, according to the FDA testing protocol published in June.
“Each of these (factors) alone doesn’t change the results in a big way, but when you put them all together, the result is a number that won’t protect many Gulf residents,” said Solomon.
Shrimp, with seasoning
For gulf residents, reminders of oil in their waters — from the BP disaster and other spills — are hardly so subtle.
advertisement
ad info Advertisement
ad infoAdvertisement
ad info.In November, just a week after an area of the gulf between the Mississippi coast and the closed BP well area was reopened to commercial fishing, a shrimper trawling those waters pulled in a net full of royal red shrimp peppered with what appeared to be tar balls.
The waters, just to the east of the Mississippi River Delta, had been closed for months after the BP spill, but were reopened after hundreds of seafood specimens gathered in the area, including royal red shrimp, passed both sensory and chemical testing, according to NOAA, which added that no oil had been sighted there for 30 days prior to the reopening.
“Out of an abundance of caution,” the federal government announced on Nov. 24 that it was reclosing the area — about 4,200 square miles — to shrimping of royal reds, which are caught by dragging nets along the sea floor in deep waters. (The area remains open to fishing of other species.)
Now the agencies are back to testing — trying to determine if the tar balls were from the BP/Deepwater Horizon spill and to ascertain, once again, whether seafood from those waters is safe.
Initial testing was “inconclusive,” according to Kimberly Smith, a spokeswoman for the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command. Additional tests were planned, Smith said, but the waters remained closed as of Dec. 17.
“We are taking this situation seriously,” said Roy Crabtree, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast region. “Our primary concerns are public safety and ensuring the integrity of the gulf’s seafood supply.”
© 2010 msnbc.com Reprints
.
'It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,' toxicologist says
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. Jerry Moran / Native Orleanian Fine Photograph
Strong Bear, an environmental technician with Boston Chemical Data Corp., collects samples on Horn Island, offshore from Biloxi, Miss. Bear is part of a team of environmental investigators hired by a New Orleans law firm that has analyzed hundreds of soil, plant, water and seafood samples from the Gulf coast area affected by the BP oil spill. By Kari Huus
Reporter
msnbc.com msnbc.com
updated 12/27/2010 6:04:49 AM ET 2010-12-27T11:04:49
Share Print Font: +-A New Orleans law firm is challenging government assurances that Gulf Coast seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the BP oil spill, saying it poses “a significant danger to public health.”
It’s a high-stakes tug-of-war that will almost certainly end up in the courts, with two armies of scientists arguing over technical findings that could have real-world impact for seafood consumers and producers.
Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage.
Is dispersant still being sprayed in the gulf?
“What we have found is that FDA simply overlooked an important aspect of safety in their protocol,” contends William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist on Smith’s team. “We now have a sufficient number of samples to provide FDA with probable cause to include such testing, really. They need to go back and test some of their archived samples as well.”
Five months after crude oil stopped gushing from the broken BP wellhead into the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government has reopened more than 90 percent of fishing waters that were in danger of contamination from the broken Deepwater Horizon rig.
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Parts of six states were on the lookout for twisters after several touched down Friday. One killed three people in an Arkansas town and another killed three in Missouri. Full story
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..“There is no question gulf seafood coming to market is safe from oil or dispersant residue,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said in an Oct. 29 statement as the final fisheries reopenings were under way. With a partner agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the FDA said it tested thousands of seafood samples before issuing the “all clear.”
In the most recent vote of confidence for the seafood — and an effort to get the hobbled industry back on its feet — Navy Secretary Mark Mabus, a top official in the oil spill recovery effort, is urging the military to buy as much Gulf seafood as possible for distribution to its armed forces commissaries worldwide.
advertisement
ad info
Advertisement
ad info
Advertisement
ad info
.Claims in the pipeline
But many fishermen have yet to return to sea, and consumer confidence in Gulf seafood remains lukewarm. And some scientists remain skeptical that the government testing has been rigorous enough to protect public health.
Smith's clients in the BP oil spill include environmental activists and fishermen who don’t believe the seafood to be safe. The independent testing he is overseeing is meant to provide a legal underpinning to their anecdotal evidence — sightings of oil sheens, tar balls, oily fish — and help them win full compensation for their damage claims.
Only on msnbc.com For bayou tribe, new year brings only uncertainty
Concrete jungle: Department store's zoo sparks fury
Social media had little role in holiday buying
Opinion: Dialysis program is costly in too many ways
New Year's ball sets an energy example
Planning a 'polar bear plunge'? How your body reacts
Transcript: Allison Linn on 2011 jobs outlook
..“When BP says your guy isn’t fishing (as a reason not to pay for lost income) we can say he isn’t fishing because it isn’t safe,” said Smith.
So far, the firm has filed $75 million in six-month damage claims on behalf of commercial interests, including fishermen. If the Gulf claims fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg decides to allow claims for damage losses in property value, Smith expects to seek another $150 million for those clients.
"I believe the government and BP are trying to downplay the damage," said Smith. "If they are successful my clients won’t get full compensation for damages."
It’s complicated
Scientists can’t just test for “oil” in seafood.Crude oil is a mixture of hundreds of different hydrocarbons that are associated with different health risks — to the nervous system, immune system, lungs, skin, liver and kidneys.
The group the FDA and NOAA testing focuses on — polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — are considered the most toxic and some are clearly linked to cancer.
Story: This woman's nose stands between you, Gulf seafood
The agencies have used expert “sniffers” and laboratory analysis to examine thousands of samples of gulf shrimp, crabs, oysters and fin fish. They say they have discovered no samples with PAH levels of concern.
Most popular New twister alerts after 6 killed in Ark., Mo.
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NM governor: No pardon for outlaw Billy the Kid
Wicked weather sparks 100 car pileup
The most memorable photo of 2010
..But Sawyer and his colleagues say the government isn't looking far enough. They are testing for the toxic PAHs — and, like the government, finding little — but they are also measuring for other elements from oil that potentially pose health risks.
And those tests, Sawyer says, are routinely turning up long-chain “aliphatic” hydrocarbons associated with liver damage.
Their approach draws on the work of scientists from industry, government and academia who banded together in the 1990s to develop guidelines for public health officials and environmental engineers faced with petroleum-related exposure and contamination. The work of the U.S.-funded Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Criteria Working Group was part of a flurry of research that occurred in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
The idea was to offer guidance to engineers on hazardous waste sites and to public health officials dealing with exposure to the contaminants. Based on available animal and human research the scientists set risk levels for exposure to various groups of hydrocarbons.
advertisement
ad info
Advertisement
ad info
Advertisement
ad info
.The secret sniffers between you and oiled fish
That is the standard that Smith's scientists are relying on to argue that levels of aliphatic hydrocarbons in the seafood samples are about twice as high as the risk level set by the hydrocarbon group.
Sawyer, the toxicologist, said that daily exposure above the risk level poses a risk of liver damage, especially for people who have underlying health issues, such as hepatitis.
Food safety standards
The problem is the U.S. government has never applied the standards to food safety, even though they are recognized by the CDC and the governments of the U.K. and New Zealand. They also were written into environmental clean-up regulations used by a half dozen U.S. states.
In response to questions from msnbc.com, NOAA and FDA representatives expressed confidence in the government’s testing and results.
“The FDA has determined, based on a large base of science, that the compounds of greatest concern to human health are the PAHs, and levels of concern have been determined for the PAHs,” Dr. John Stein, a seafood safety expert at NOAA, said in an email. “The methods used for testing are designed for PAHs.”
"Aliphatic hydrocarbons are relatively non-toxic components of oil compared to the much more toxic PAH compounds," said Siobhan DeLancy, an FDA spokeswoman. PAH's are "monitored by FDA and most countries as the oil compounds of greatest food safety concern as well as reliable markers of oil exposure in assuring the safety of seafood."
Both government experts also said that testing for aliphatic compounds in seafood is inappropriate because it is prone to false positives.
"FDA would be pleased to review the detailed data and information on the method(s) used that led to the claimed high levels of oil derived ... aliphatic hydrocarbons in seafood tissues sampled from the Gulf Of Mexico," DeLancy wrote in an email response to questions.
Health of U.S. population
Smith’s team may have difficulty making the argument of potential health risk in U.S. courts, even if their testing methods and results hold up to scrutiny. Even the TPH working group that produced the risk reference levels had to base its report on limited animal and human research for many hydrocarbon compounds.
Among the controlled studies cited is one in which rats that consumed the aliphatic hydrocarbons developed granuloma, or masses, in their livers — a type of immune reaction.
“Bottom line is that little information is available on the potential adverse health effects of these compounds on human health," said Peter Spencer, director of the Oregon Health and Science University and a toxicologist and neurologist who is not involved in the research.
advertisement
ad info Advertisement
ad infoAdvertisement
ad info.But scientists working with Smith will argue that the “potential risk to human health” above the set levels should be reason enough for concern on the part of the FDA.
"It is unethical to 'experiment' with the health of the U.S. population or military members who may be admonished to consume TPH-tainted Gulf seafood," said Sawyer, the toxicologist on Smith’s team.
Scientists outside the study urge caution in drawing conclusions from the challenge posed by Smith’s team, but also admonish the government not to ignore their findings.
“Raising this issue is good but should not be seen as conclusive in any way that a proven toxicologic issue exists, just that there clearly is more to know before we determine there is no problem,” said toxicologist Dave Hobson, president and CEO of LoneStar Pharmtox in San Antonio, Texas, and past president of the American College of Toxicology. He said he's wary of scientific findings that are connected to a legal case, but that they should be investigated “sooner rather than later.”
Getting the ducks in a row
While Smith may be fighting an uphill legal battle, BP’s attorneys are unlikely to take him lightly.
Smith has 23 years experience handling claims involving oil company pollution. In 2002, he led a case against ExxonMobil that resulted in a $1.06 billion verdict for radioactive contamination of leased land.
Consequently, Smith’s team of chemists, marine biologists and toxicologists are collecting evidence by the book, knowing that it will very likely have to hold up in court.
To make sure their testing withstands scrutiny, the scientists use the FDA “chain of custody” for handling samples, which are sent for analysis at three facilities in the Canada-based ALS Environmental Laboratory network — chosen, Smith said, to make sure it is outside BP’s substantial sphere of influence.
While the FDA conducts random sampling when deciding whether to reopen sections of the gulf, Smith’s team gathers samples from suspected “hot spots,” based on tips from contacts. The samples are run through a battery of tests, more elaborate and more expensive than those used by the government, according to Smith. He said they the plaintiffs’ have so far spent about $500,000 for analysis of about 500 samples, including seafood, water, plants, sediment and tar balls.
The scientists employ a method in the lab to separate carbons associated with petroleum from those that occur naturally in animals, said Marco Kaltofen, an environmental engineer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., and a consultant on contamination cases, including this one. This is a key point, aimed at deflecting FDA charges that TPH testing is unreliable in seafood.
Kaltofen uses several means to “fingerprint” the hydrocarbons in seafood to determine whether they match the BP’s Deepwater Horizon crude.
“What gives us confidence that we are finding oil in these samples is that we are using multiple lines of evidence,” he said. “We are finding — even in metabolized samples — a lot of matches to BP oil.”
advertisement
ad info Advertisement
ad infoAdvertisement
ad info.Sawyer and Kaltofen began finding high levels of TPH in seawater and sediment in June. Many scientists had previously expressed concerns that the heavy use of chemical dispersants by BP to break up giant oil slicks would lock the contaminants in the water column, making them more available to marine life.
“From there you can reasonably predict that there are going to be more and more findings in the food chain,” said Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist at the Marine Environmental Research Institute. Shaw, who is not a member of Smith's scientific team, is one of 14 scientists tapped for the independent DOI Strategic Sciences Working Group to dissect the oil spill consequences and make policy recommendations to the agencies. She has been a vocal opponent of the heavy use of dispersants throughout the response.
“What we’re seeing now is plausible evidence from independent labs that — just as we thought — there’s oil in the food web, and here’s where we’re finding it,” said Shaw.
How many shrimp make a meal?
Other scientists not directly associated with the plaintiffs’ case also are questioning whether the FDA seafood testing program is stringent enough to protect public health.
“FDA’s approach has been to focus on the known carcinogens in the oil and to test specifically for them,” said Gina Solomon, senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We share the concern that the FDA may be looking too narrowly, and in fact, there are some important PAHs that the FDA isn’t looking for, so they may be missing some of the carcinogens.”
More broadly, Solomon and others have criticized the way the FDA calculates safe exposure to PAHs in seafood. For one thing, Solomon and others have long said the fish consumption portions used by the FDA to make this calculation — an average of four shrimp in one sitting — are too small to reflect eating habits in the Gulf region.
This month, the NRDC released the results of a survey looking at those eating habits, concluding that "many Gulf residents are eating far more seafood, far more often, than the federal government has acknowledged."
“It’s common knowledge that people in the Gulf love their seafood," said Solomon. "When we think of food from the region we think of po-boys and gumbo, oyster bakes and jambalaya." Thus, the current FDA standards "may also be failing to adequately protect many people in the Gulf,” she said.
The group argues that the average body weight of 176 pounds used in the FDA calculations of safe exposure levels also is too high to account for many women, children and fetuses, she said. Of the 547 survey respondents, about 60 percent reported they were under the average weight, and 40 percent said they had children at home who eat seafood.
In June, the FDA also relaxed the acceptable PAH level for gulf fisheries, in effect allowing for a risk of one person in 100,000 developing cancer as a result of seafood consumption, compared to one person in 1 million under the previous levels, according to the FDA testing protocol published in June.
“Each of these (factors) alone doesn’t change the results in a big way, but when you put them all together, the result is a number that won’t protect many Gulf residents,” said Solomon.
Shrimp, with seasoning
For gulf residents, reminders of oil in their waters — from the BP disaster and other spills — are hardly so subtle.
advertisement
ad info Advertisement
ad infoAdvertisement
ad info.In November, just a week after an area of the gulf between the Mississippi coast and the closed BP well area was reopened to commercial fishing, a shrimper trawling those waters pulled in a net full of royal red shrimp peppered with what appeared to be tar balls.
The waters, just to the east of the Mississippi River Delta, had been closed for months after the BP spill, but were reopened after hundreds of seafood specimens gathered in the area, including royal red shrimp, passed both sensory and chemical testing, according to NOAA, which added that no oil had been sighted there for 30 days prior to the reopening.
“Out of an abundance of caution,” the federal government announced on Nov. 24 that it was reclosing the area — about 4,200 square miles — to shrimping of royal reds, which are caught by dragging nets along the sea floor in deep waters. (The area remains open to fishing of other species.)
Now the agencies are back to testing — trying to determine if the tar balls were from the BP/Deepwater Horizon spill and to ascertain, once again, whether seafood from those waters is safe.
Initial testing was “inconclusive,” according to Kimberly Smith, a spokeswoman for the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command. Additional tests were planned, Smith said, but the waters remained closed as of Dec. 17.
“We are taking this situation seriously,” said Roy Crabtree, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast region. “Our primary concerns are public safety and ensuring the integrity of the gulf’s seafood supply.”
© 2010 msnbc.com Reprints
.
31 USDA Certified Organic’s Dirty Little Secret: Neotame
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Dec
31 USDA Certified Organic’s Dirty Little Secret: Neotame
By Barbara H. Peterson
Farm Wars
Just when we thought that buying “Organic” was safe, we run headlong into the deliberate poisoning of our organic food supply by the FDA in collusion with none other than the folks who brought us Aspartame. NutraSweet, a former Monsanto asset, has developed a new and improved version of this neurotoxin called Neotame.
Neotame has similar structure to aspartame — except that, from it’s structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. (Holisticmed.com)
But surely, this product would be labeled! NOT SO!!! For this little gem, no labeling required. And it is even included in USDA Certified Organic food.
The food labeling requirements required for aspartame have now been dropped for Neotame, and no one is clear why this was allowed to happen. Neotame has been ruled acceptable, and without being included on the list of ingredients, for:
•USDA Certified Organic food items.
•Certified Kosher products with the official letter k inside the circle on labels. (Janet Hull)
Let me make this perfectly clear. Neotame does not have to be included in ANY list of ingredients! So, if you buy processed food, whether USDA Certified Organic or not, that food most likely will contain Neotame because it is cost-effective, and since no one knows it is there, there is no public backlash similar to what is happening with Aspartame. A win/win situation!
But that’s not all. Just love chowing down on that delicious steak? Well, that cow most likely will have been fed with feed containing…..you guessed it…..Neotame! A product called “Sweetos,” which is actually composed of Neotame, is being substituted for molasses in animal feed.
“Sweetos is an economical substitute for molasses. Sweetos guarantees the masking of unpleasant tastes and odor and improves the palatability of feed. This product will be economical for farmers and manufacturers of cattle feed. It can also be used in mineral mixture,” said Craig Petray, CEO, The NutraSweet Company, a division of Searle, which is a part of Monsanto. (Bungalow Bill)
Why would we feed animals food that is so distasteful that we would have to mask the unpleasantness with an artificial sweetener? Most animals will not eat spoiled, rancid feed. They know by the smell that it is not good. Enter Sweetos (Neotame). Just cover up the unpleasant tastes and odors, and you can feed them anything you want to, courtesy of the oh, so considerate folks at Monsanto and company.
But of course, Monsanto is no longer associated with NutraSweet. In the time-honored tradition of covering its assets, Monsanto has a proven track record of spinning off controversial portions of its company that generate too much scrutiny, such as it did with the Solutia solution.
Says the Farm Industry News, “Monsanto, which has long resided in the crosshairs of public scorn and scrutiny, appears to have dodged at least one bullet by spinning off its industrial chemical business into a separate entity called Solutia a couple of years ago. Solutia has since been hammered by lawsuits regarding PCB contamination from what were once called Monsanto chemical plants in Alabama and other states” (Source Watch)
So what is the solution to this problem? Buy local organic food, know your local farmer, and don’t buy processed foods whether they are labeled “Organic” or not. This requires a drastic change in lifestyle that most will not want to make. For those who choose to ride the wheel of chance by succumbing to this genocidal adulteration of our food supply by those who stand to profit from our sickness and early demise, my only comment is….it is your choice. But for those of us who have decided to fight this battle one bite at a time by hitting these sociopaths in the pocketbook where it hurts……viva la revolucion!
(C) 2010 Barbara H. Peterson
(Visited 133 times, 133 visits today)
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Dec
31 USDA Certified Organic’s Dirty Little Secret: Neotame
By Barbara H. Peterson
Farm Wars
Just when we thought that buying “Organic” was safe, we run headlong into the deliberate poisoning of our organic food supply by the FDA in collusion with none other than the folks who brought us Aspartame. NutraSweet, a former Monsanto asset, has developed a new and improved version of this neurotoxin called Neotame.
Neotame has similar structure to aspartame — except that, from it’s structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. (Holisticmed.com)
But surely, this product would be labeled! NOT SO!!! For this little gem, no labeling required. And it is even included in USDA Certified Organic food.
The food labeling requirements required for aspartame have now been dropped for Neotame, and no one is clear why this was allowed to happen. Neotame has been ruled acceptable, and without being included on the list of ingredients, for:
•USDA Certified Organic food items.
•Certified Kosher products with the official letter k inside the circle on labels. (Janet Hull)
Let me make this perfectly clear. Neotame does not have to be included in ANY list of ingredients! So, if you buy processed food, whether USDA Certified Organic or not, that food most likely will contain Neotame because it is cost-effective, and since no one knows it is there, there is no public backlash similar to what is happening with Aspartame. A win/win situation!
But that’s not all. Just love chowing down on that delicious steak? Well, that cow most likely will have been fed with feed containing…..you guessed it…..Neotame! A product called “Sweetos,” which is actually composed of Neotame, is being substituted for molasses in animal feed.
“Sweetos is an economical substitute for molasses. Sweetos guarantees the masking of unpleasant tastes and odor and improves the palatability of feed. This product will be economical for farmers and manufacturers of cattle feed. It can also be used in mineral mixture,” said Craig Petray, CEO, The NutraSweet Company, a division of Searle, which is a part of Monsanto. (Bungalow Bill)
Why would we feed animals food that is so distasteful that we would have to mask the unpleasantness with an artificial sweetener? Most animals will not eat spoiled, rancid feed. They know by the smell that it is not good. Enter Sweetos (Neotame). Just cover up the unpleasant tastes and odors, and you can feed them anything you want to, courtesy of the oh, so considerate folks at Monsanto and company.
But of course, Monsanto is no longer associated with NutraSweet. In the time-honored tradition of covering its assets, Monsanto has a proven track record of spinning off controversial portions of its company that generate too much scrutiny, such as it did with the Solutia solution.
Says the Farm Industry News, “Monsanto, which has long resided in the crosshairs of public scorn and scrutiny, appears to have dodged at least one bullet by spinning off its industrial chemical business into a separate entity called Solutia a couple of years ago. Solutia has since been hammered by lawsuits regarding PCB contamination from what were once called Monsanto chemical plants in Alabama and other states” (Source Watch)
So what is the solution to this problem? Buy local organic food, know your local farmer, and don’t buy processed foods whether they are labeled “Organic” or not. This requires a drastic change in lifestyle that most will not want to make. For those who choose to ride the wheel of chance by succumbing to this genocidal adulteration of our food supply by those who stand to profit from our sickness and early demise, my only comment is….it is your choice. But for those of us who have decided to fight this battle one bite at a time by hitting these sociopaths in the pocketbook where it hurts……viva la revolucion!
(C) 2010 Barbara H. Peterson
(Visited 133 times, 133 visits today)
Wretched bit of Faux Science is being forced upon all humanity
Wretched bit of Faux Science is being forced upon all humanity
Wonky Wheels Now Off the Warmist Ox Cart
By Joseph A Olson, PE Friday, December 31, 2010
No matter how hard these neutered steers pull on their yoke, there’s no denying that warmist views are a cruel joke. There is no question that Climatology has operated with a scientific blind spot for decades. Under normal circumstances this would have been resolved through debate with the wider scientific community.
Unfortunately, this congenital defect was of potential value to the manipulators of reality and this fledgling science became a captured pawn in the globalist scheme. There is just one single tenant that supports the flawed Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. That is the illogical and incorrect ‘back radiation’ concept and supported with faulty ice core data.
It would be nice if we could discuss flawed science at leisure in the traditional manner. However, this wretched bit of Faux Science is being forced upon all humanity by the IPCC with the same admonitions as a Speaker Pelosi forcing a two thousand page act. “We must hurry up and pass this so we can see what is in it” is an inappropriate attempt to create a world tax, to support a world government and create world serfdom.
Traditionally trained scientists have noted the warmist flaws and have argued against this intentional fraud for decades now. These arguments are far above the limited understanding of the talking airheads of broadcast mass media and the sophist scribes of print mass media. These are the reliable outlet for elitist fictions.
Human caused climate change has always been an IPCC load of dung. Early on the wheels of falsified data and errant math formulas fell off. Then the Jones-Mann-Hansen team of oxen got mired in the sticky ruts of truth. Now the final two wheels are falling off the cart. Humanity can now see the full level of stupidity of this government ordered load of guano.
The IPCC fiction was founded on a fountain of lies. The more the lies flowed the more the foundation eroded. No amount of spinning can turn fiction to fact, but over time facts can reverse fiction. If you are a believer in AGW then recognize that as a fact. You are a BELIEVER, and as such suffer the fate of previous failed belief systems.
The provable, empirical universe is immune to any human belief system. The fact that millions of humans, for thousands of years BELIEVED that the Earth was flat and/or the Sun revolved around the Earth had virtually no impact on the actual condition of the Universe. Believing that human carbon energy use warms/changes/endangers the planet is just that, a belief. There is no empirical evidence to support this belief.
The warmist hypothesis was cut from whole cloth two decades ago and cannot conform to any subsequent research findings. The warmist intransigence on public debate has allowed no input or discernable refinement to their hypothesis. Many of the data sources cherry picked for AGW support have subsequently refined their theories and now no longer are supportive. Additionally, non climate related sciences have joined the debate with fresh material and perspectives.
Of the many off based complaints by the AGW believers, is that deniers are well organized and funded by the dirty carbon energy supporters. This is as blatant as any fiction about the AGW science. Another is that while they are correct, their message has not been properly packaged for public consumption. With direct access to the main stream media, the government and the complete education system, this is hardly a plausible claim.
However, the claim of proper packaging can be made for the deniers. Since our rebuttal involves complex physics, chemistry, geology and astronomy it is difficult to transcribe to laymen terms. This two week thoughtful research papers have been posted that may resolve this issue. If still beyond the average reader, then this new information should persuade any science trained individuals with any remaining questions.
One remaining wheel on the IPCC ox cart is the fundamental hypothesis of AGW, the back-radiation hypothesis. Long troubling to more informed scientists is the thought that atmospheric Carbon Dioxide can absorb and ‘re-radiate’ warming energy back to Earth. This is reduced to fiction in the article “Maxwell vs Planck” by Frank Davis and posted [here].
The final remaining wheel supporting this wonky cart is the distorted ice core CO2 ratios. This bit of fiction is refuted by David Middleton which compares the IPCC conforming ice core data with non hypothesis supporting plant stored CO2 ratios. The ice core data requires questionable ‘adjustments’ to be hockey stick usable. The plant data does support the non adjusted data. The reader can make their own judgments after reviewing the material posted [here].
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it” is a popular refrain. Given what we now know it is best we do NOT do anything about it. Taxing carbon use into oblivion will have no change on climate. Current renewable and green energy schemes are just that, schemes. All of these schemes rob us of limited resources just to benefit the politically connected few.
The most frightening and potentially dangerous of all the BELIEVERS efforts is in their proposed ‘Geo-engineering Projects’. The arrogance of those who cannot predict next weekend’s weather to assume they have the authority to spray chemicals into the atmosphere and the oceans to solve a problem that only exists in their belief system is beyond inhuman. If there is one climate that is in desperate need of change, it is the climate of thought in these feeble brains.
Wonky Wheels Now Off the Warmist Ox Cart
By Joseph A Olson, PE Friday, December 31, 2010
No matter how hard these neutered steers pull on their yoke, there’s no denying that warmist views are a cruel joke. There is no question that Climatology has operated with a scientific blind spot for decades. Under normal circumstances this would have been resolved through debate with the wider scientific community.
Unfortunately, this congenital defect was of potential value to the manipulators of reality and this fledgling science became a captured pawn in the globalist scheme. There is just one single tenant that supports the flawed Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. That is the illogical and incorrect ‘back radiation’ concept and supported with faulty ice core data.
It would be nice if we could discuss flawed science at leisure in the traditional manner. However, this wretched bit of Faux Science is being forced upon all humanity by the IPCC with the same admonitions as a Speaker Pelosi forcing a two thousand page act. “We must hurry up and pass this so we can see what is in it” is an inappropriate attempt to create a world tax, to support a world government and create world serfdom.
Traditionally trained scientists have noted the warmist flaws and have argued against this intentional fraud for decades now. These arguments are far above the limited understanding of the talking airheads of broadcast mass media and the sophist scribes of print mass media. These are the reliable outlet for elitist fictions.
Human caused climate change has always been an IPCC load of dung. Early on the wheels of falsified data and errant math formulas fell off. Then the Jones-Mann-Hansen team of oxen got mired in the sticky ruts of truth. Now the final two wheels are falling off the cart. Humanity can now see the full level of stupidity of this government ordered load of guano.
The IPCC fiction was founded on a fountain of lies. The more the lies flowed the more the foundation eroded. No amount of spinning can turn fiction to fact, but over time facts can reverse fiction. If you are a believer in AGW then recognize that as a fact. You are a BELIEVER, and as such suffer the fate of previous failed belief systems.
The provable, empirical universe is immune to any human belief system. The fact that millions of humans, for thousands of years BELIEVED that the Earth was flat and/or the Sun revolved around the Earth had virtually no impact on the actual condition of the Universe. Believing that human carbon energy use warms/changes/endangers the planet is just that, a belief. There is no empirical evidence to support this belief.
The warmist hypothesis was cut from whole cloth two decades ago and cannot conform to any subsequent research findings. The warmist intransigence on public debate has allowed no input or discernable refinement to their hypothesis. Many of the data sources cherry picked for AGW support have subsequently refined their theories and now no longer are supportive. Additionally, non climate related sciences have joined the debate with fresh material and perspectives.
Of the many off based complaints by the AGW believers, is that deniers are well organized and funded by the dirty carbon energy supporters. This is as blatant as any fiction about the AGW science. Another is that while they are correct, their message has not been properly packaged for public consumption. With direct access to the main stream media, the government and the complete education system, this is hardly a plausible claim.
However, the claim of proper packaging can be made for the deniers. Since our rebuttal involves complex physics, chemistry, geology and astronomy it is difficult to transcribe to laymen terms. This two week thoughtful research papers have been posted that may resolve this issue. If still beyond the average reader, then this new information should persuade any science trained individuals with any remaining questions.
One remaining wheel on the IPCC ox cart is the fundamental hypothesis of AGW, the back-radiation hypothesis. Long troubling to more informed scientists is the thought that atmospheric Carbon Dioxide can absorb and ‘re-radiate’ warming energy back to Earth. This is reduced to fiction in the article “Maxwell vs Planck” by Frank Davis and posted [here].
The final remaining wheel supporting this wonky cart is the distorted ice core CO2 ratios. This bit of fiction is refuted by David Middleton which compares the IPCC conforming ice core data with non hypothesis supporting plant stored CO2 ratios. The ice core data requires questionable ‘adjustments’ to be hockey stick usable. The plant data does support the non adjusted data. The reader can make their own judgments after reviewing the material posted [here].
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it” is a popular refrain. Given what we now know it is best we do NOT do anything about it. Taxing carbon use into oblivion will have no change on climate. Current renewable and green energy schemes are just that, schemes. All of these schemes rob us of limited resources just to benefit the politically connected few.
The most frightening and potentially dangerous of all the BELIEVERS efforts is in their proposed ‘Geo-engineering Projects’. The arrogance of those who cannot predict next weekend’s weather to assume they have the authority to spray chemicals into the atmosphere and the oceans to solve a problem that only exists in their belief system is beyond inhuman. If there is one climate that is in desperate need of change, it is the climate of thought in these feeble brains.
Vaccines, sprays linked to cancers, pet deaths
Vaccines, sprays linked to cancers, pet deaths
BY ROSSLYN BEEBY, SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
29 Dec, 2010 01:00 AM
Australia's veterinarians and pet owners filed more than 2600 complaints last year about sudden deaths, illnesses and serious side-effects caused by pet vaccines, flea treatments and other veterinary chemical products.
According to a report published last week by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, the deaths of more than 60 dogs in 2009 were associated with commonly used veterinary chemicals and vaccines.
Several over-the-counter flea sprays and spot-on treatments contain chemicals that have been banned in Europe for more than a decade.
Scientific studies by the United States Environment Protection Authority have also linked these chemicals to liver, lung and thyroid cancers in animals, as well as DNA damage, severe hair loss and chronic itching.
In one instance cited in the APVMA report, a flea treatment containing the insecticide imidacloprid prompted 255 reports of ''adverse reactions'' in dogs, ranging from nerve inflammation, skin irritations, vomiting, seizures and difficulty in walking.
The chemical was banned in France more than a decade ago after it was linked to the death of billions of bees.
The report reveals another commonly available flea treatment containing the insecticide fipronil was linked last year to 42 reports of adverse reactions in dogs, and 38 in cats. Fipronil is banned in France, Uruguay and China, but the chemical is widely used in Australia to control fleas, ticks, cockroaches, ant infestations and crop pests including locusts.
For more on this story, including comments from Australian Veterinary Association president Barry Smyth on the issue, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.
__._,_.___
BY ROSSLYN BEEBY, SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
29 Dec, 2010 01:00 AM
Australia's veterinarians and pet owners filed more than 2600 complaints last year about sudden deaths, illnesses and serious side-effects caused by pet vaccines, flea treatments and other veterinary chemical products.
According to a report published last week by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, the deaths of more than 60 dogs in 2009 were associated with commonly used veterinary chemicals and vaccines.
Several over-the-counter flea sprays and spot-on treatments contain chemicals that have been banned in Europe for more than a decade.
Scientific studies by the United States Environment Protection Authority have also linked these chemicals to liver, lung and thyroid cancers in animals, as well as DNA damage, severe hair loss and chronic itching.
In one instance cited in the APVMA report, a flea treatment containing the insecticide imidacloprid prompted 255 reports of ''adverse reactions'' in dogs, ranging from nerve inflammation, skin irritations, vomiting, seizures and difficulty in walking.
The chemical was banned in France more than a decade ago after it was linked to the death of billions of bees.
The report reveals another commonly available flea treatment containing the insecticide fipronil was linked last year to 42 reports of adverse reactions in dogs, and 38 in cats. Fipronil is banned in France, Uruguay and China, but the chemical is widely used in Australia to control fleas, ticks, cockroaches, ant infestations and crop pests including locusts.
For more on this story, including comments from Australian Veterinary Association president Barry Smyth on the issue, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.
__._,_.___
Hundreds of herbal products to be outlawed across EU in early 2011
Hundreds of herbal products to be outlawed across EU in early 2011
Thursday, December 30, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
3251
Share
Free Health Ranger email newsletter
Your email privacy is 100% protected.
(NaturalNews) The global effort to outlaw herbs, vitamins and supplements is well under way, and in just four months, hundreds of herbal products will be criminalized in the UK and across the EU. It's all part of an EU directive passed in 2004 which erects "disproportionate" barriers against herbal remedies by requiring them to be "licensed" before they can be sold.
It's called the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD), Directive 2004/24/EC.
The licensing requirements, however, were intentionally designed to make sure that virtually no herbs could ever meet them. It costs from $125,000 to $180,000 to license a single herb with the EU, and since herbs cannot be patented and don't have the monopolistic pricing found in pharmaceuticals, there's simply not enough profit margin in most herbs to justify such huge expenditures from any one company.
But that's sort of the point. Governments of the world have been conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry for decades to destroy the competition by outlawing nutritional supplements, herbal remedies and many other forms of natural medicine.
They really are coming for your natural medicine
Some people in the USA are still skeptical that this could ever happen in the "land of the free," yet it's happening in Europe right now, and the U.S. is probably not far behind. In just four months, health food stores in the UK will be stripped bare of these suddenly "illegal" herbs, and the many millions of people who have come to depend on them as a safe, natural and non-invasive form of medicine will be forced to pursue pharmaceuticals instead of herbs.
And that's also the point. By driving these products off the shelves, governments know they will simultaneously herd people into doctors' offices where they will be prescribed medications that benefit the wealthy corporations that keep politicians in office (in every western nation).
It may also drive people to acquire herbs from sources that have poor quality controls. As Dr Rob Verkerk of the Alliance For Natural Health said in an Independent article, "Thousands of people across Europe rely on herbal medicines to improve their quality of life. They don't take them because they are sick - they take them to keep healthy. If these medicines are taken off the market, people will try and find them elsewhere, such as from the internet, where there is a genuine risk they will get low quality products, that either don't work or are adulterated." (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...)
You must beg the King for permission
The MHRA (UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) has received 166 applications for herbal product licensing and has granted 78 so far. Do you see how this works? Now you must be "granted" a license in order to exercise your Natural Law right to engage in the free commerce of Mother Nature's plants. Big Government has stolen from European citizens their natural rights and is now condemning many of them to suffering or even death as a result.
That's how governments always work in the end: They expand their power at the expense of your freedom. The centralize control over your life while maximizing the profits of the powerful corporations that keep them in business. You're watching it happen right now across Europe, and if we don't put a stop to this, it will soon happen in the United States as well. It's already under way, in fact, with the FDA's outlawing of scientifically-validated free speech about nutritional supplements. There's also a war under way on raw milk, and need I even mention the decades-long war being waged against medical marijuana?
Which herbs are under threat of being banned
Here are some of the hundreds of herbs that are about to be banned across Europe:
• Ashwagandha
• Cascara Sagrada
• Pau D'Arco
• Skullcap
• Horny Goat Weed
... and hundreds more, especially Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas.
Sign the petition
Efforts are under way in Europe to try to reverse this highly destructive directive. You can sign this petition at: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/...
Also, the European office of the Alliance for Natural Health is working diligently to attempt to protect health freedom for EU citizens: http://www.anh-europe.org
They could really use your support right now if you're considering an end-of-year donation of some kind. Health freedom is worth defending, and as we're seeing right now, if we don't take a stand against this, we will all lose our access to natural remedies, vitamins, supplements and perhaps even naturopathic medicine.
There really is a global conspiracy to force you to take pharmaceuticals and surrender your body to conventional medicine. Governments around the world absolutely do not want you to have free choice about how to treat your own health, because "choice" implies that you, like literally billions of other people across the planet, might not choose to poison yourself with conventional medicine's deadly drugs.
More sources of articles to read
http://www.gaia-health.com/articles...
http://www.anh-europe.org/node/3113
http://www.consumersforhealthchoice.com
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030873_EU_directive_medicinal_herbs.html#ixzz19i8IKLrk
Thursday, December 30, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
3251
Share
Free Health Ranger email newsletter
Your email privacy is 100% protected.
(NaturalNews) The global effort to outlaw herbs, vitamins and supplements is well under way, and in just four months, hundreds of herbal products will be criminalized in the UK and across the EU. It's all part of an EU directive passed in 2004 which erects "disproportionate" barriers against herbal remedies by requiring them to be "licensed" before they can be sold.
It's called the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD), Directive 2004/24/EC.
The licensing requirements, however, were intentionally designed to make sure that virtually no herbs could ever meet them. It costs from $125,000 to $180,000 to license a single herb with the EU, and since herbs cannot be patented and don't have the monopolistic pricing found in pharmaceuticals, there's simply not enough profit margin in most herbs to justify such huge expenditures from any one company.
But that's sort of the point. Governments of the world have been conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry for decades to destroy the competition by outlawing nutritional supplements, herbal remedies and many other forms of natural medicine.
They really are coming for your natural medicine
Some people in the USA are still skeptical that this could ever happen in the "land of the free," yet it's happening in Europe right now, and the U.S. is probably not far behind. In just four months, health food stores in the UK will be stripped bare of these suddenly "illegal" herbs, and the many millions of people who have come to depend on them as a safe, natural and non-invasive form of medicine will be forced to pursue pharmaceuticals instead of herbs.
And that's also the point. By driving these products off the shelves, governments know they will simultaneously herd people into doctors' offices where they will be prescribed medications that benefit the wealthy corporations that keep politicians in office (in every western nation).
It may also drive people to acquire herbs from sources that have poor quality controls. As Dr Rob Verkerk of the Alliance For Natural Health said in an Independent article, "Thousands of people across Europe rely on herbal medicines to improve their quality of life. They don't take them because they are sick - they take them to keep healthy. If these medicines are taken off the market, people will try and find them elsewhere, such as from the internet, where there is a genuine risk they will get low quality products, that either don't work or are adulterated." (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...)
You must beg the King for permission
The MHRA (UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) has received 166 applications for herbal product licensing and has granted 78 so far. Do you see how this works? Now you must be "granted" a license in order to exercise your Natural Law right to engage in the free commerce of Mother Nature's plants. Big Government has stolen from European citizens their natural rights and is now condemning many of them to suffering or even death as a result.
That's how governments always work in the end: They expand their power at the expense of your freedom. The centralize control over your life while maximizing the profits of the powerful corporations that keep them in business. You're watching it happen right now across Europe, and if we don't put a stop to this, it will soon happen in the United States as well. It's already under way, in fact, with the FDA's outlawing of scientifically-validated free speech about nutritional supplements. There's also a war under way on raw milk, and need I even mention the decades-long war being waged against medical marijuana?
Which herbs are under threat of being banned
Here are some of the hundreds of herbs that are about to be banned across Europe:
• Ashwagandha
• Cascara Sagrada
• Pau D'Arco
• Skullcap
• Horny Goat Weed
... and hundreds more, especially Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas.
Sign the petition
Efforts are under way in Europe to try to reverse this highly destructive directive. You can sign this petition at: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/...
Also, the European office of the Alliance for Natural Health is working diligently to attempt to protect health freedom for EU citizens: http://www.anh-europe.org
They could really use your support right now if you're considering an end-of-year donation of some kind. Health freedom is worth defending, and as we're seeing right now, if we don't take a stand against this, we will all lose our access to natural remedies, vitamins, supplements and perhaps even naturopathic medicine.
There really is a global conspiracy to force you to take pharmaceuticals and surrender your body to conventional medicine. Governments around the world absolutely do not want you to have free choice about how to treat your own health, because "choice" implies that you, like literally billions of other people across the planet, might not choose to poison yourself with conventional medicine's deadly drugs.
More sources of articles to read
http://www.gaia-health.com/articles...
http://www.anh-europe.org/node/3113
http://www.consumersforhealthchoice.com
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030873_EU_directive_medicinal_herbs.html#ixzz19i8IKLrk
The TSA's state-mandated molestationThe humiliations of the patdown policy, which Janet Napolitano wants to expand, are an Orwellian assault on American freedom
The TSA's state-mandated molestationThe humiliations of the patdown policy, which Janet Napolitano wants to expand, are an Orwellian assault on American freedom
Share Comments (464)
Jennifer Abel guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 December 2010 18.00 GMT Article history
A TSA officer signals an airline passenger forward at a security checkpoint at Seattle-Tacoma international airport, Washington State. Photograph: Elaine Thompson/AP
The holiday brought bittersweet news: unless the Transportation Security Authority disbands, I'll never see a certain friend of mine again. His long-term unemployment finally ended, and next month, he starts a great new job. But it's in Texas, too far to drive; from my place in Connecticut to his new home in San Antonio is 2,000 miles – 500 more than separates London from Moscow.
As an American – that is, someone considered lucky to get seven consecutive days off work – the only way I could possibly travel such distance is to fly. But flying includes the legal obligation I submit to having my genitalia groped by some TSA thug wearing the same latex gloves already shoved down nine dozen other strangers' underwear. There's only two ways an American flyer can reliably avoid this: be rich enough to buy your own plane, or a high-ranking congressman or other VIP exempt from the indignities they inflict upon ordinary citizens.
The ACLU maintains an ever-growing database of these indignities, many so graphic they're illegal to broadcast over public airwaves. Actions that violate FCC standards are embraced by the TSA. "Mary in Texas" reported:
The TSA agent used her hands to feel under and between my breasts. She then rammed her hand up into my crotch until it jammed into my pubic bone ... I was touched in the pubic region in between my labia ... She then moved her hand across my pubic region and down the inner part of my upper thigh to the floor. She repeated this procedure on the other side. I was shocked and broke into tears.
A woman named Chris said:
"In the four times she explored the area where my inner thigh met my crotch, she touched my labia each time, and one pass made contact with my clitoris, through two layers of clothing. I told her I felt humiliated, assaulted and abused ... In my work as a nurse, if I did what the TSA did against a patient's will it would be considered assault and battery, and I did not see how the TSA should have different rules."
Recipients of such treatment aren't allowed to show distress. Melissa from Massachusetts did anyway:
"I was shaking and crying the entire time. I was begging them to hurry up but they kept stopping and telling me to calm down. It is impossible to gain composure when a stranger has her hands in your underwear."
I couldn't. I know my limits: can't sprout wings and fly, spin straw into gold, or ooze obedience toward anyone who'd treat me as the TSA treats Melissa, Mary, Chris and countless others. And once I said something rude – even an obscenity-free comment like "Have fun on your knees, sniffing my crotch like the dog that you are" [see top photo] – I'd be arrested on terrorism charges and the media would run sympathetic stories about poor TSA agents disliked for merely following orders. Self-described patriots would say "Disrespecting authority is unAmerican" and recommend harsh punishment for me.
There's no logical consistency backing TSA policies. On Christmas eve, it added insulated Thermos bottles to its extra-scrutiny list, not after learning of some beverage-container plot but because a bureaucrat thought, "A terrorist could, maybe, I dunno, do bad stuff with one." The Thermos-threat article said the TSA's usual ban on more than 3.4 ounces of liquid still applies. This surprised me because last time I flew, in 2006, regulations only allowed three ounces; the TSA, no doubt, claims sound, secret reasons why that four-tenths of an ounce of shampoo stopped being dangerous.
Meanwhile, every month, more American airports install nude-photo pornoscanners and fingerbang patdowns, while less-intrusive (for the time being) searches spread on other mass transit modes. Washington, DC kicked off the holiday season on the solstice by instituting "random" bag searches on the Metro; New York City has had them at scattered subway stations since 2005.
Last month, Janet Napolitano floated the idea of TSA searches for bus, ship and train passengers; she later withdrew it, but I'm sure it will be re-introduced after Americans come to accept such treatment in airports – which Napolitano has just confirmed "for the foreseeable future" (that is, permanently).
So, I can't fly. And maybe, someday not far off, I won't be able to ride any form of mass transit either, unless I become so debased and broken in spirit that I don't mind vacation and business trips bookended by government-mandated sexual humiliation. And while my government requires such dehumanisation, I mournfully recall 20 years ago, when the cold war ended and we Americans thought concepts like "freedom" and "human dignity" would rule the future.
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Air transport · United States · US domestic policy · Gender
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Terrorism policy
Travel
Law
US constitution and civil liberties
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17 Nov 2010
Get your hands off me, TSA!
19 Nov 2010
'Don't touch my junk' passenger sparks revolt against airport searches
26 Nov 2010
Who benefits over the TSA controversy?
26 Nov 2010
The Right Word: a lot of hot air
Printable versionSend to a friendShareClipContact usArticle historyhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/29/air-transport-terrorism?x=1
Share Comments (464)
Jennifer Abel guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 December 2010 18.00 GMT Article history
A TSA officer signals an airline passenger forward at a security checkpoint at Seattle-Tacoma international airport, Washington State. Photograph: Elaine Thompson/AP
The holiday brought bittersweet news: unless the Transportation Security Authority disbands, I'll never see a certain friend of mine again. His long-term unemployment finally ended, and next month, he starts a great new job. But it's in Texas, too far to drive; from my place in Connecticut to his new home in San Antonio is 2,000 miles – 500 more than separates London from Moscow.
As an American – that is, someone considered lucky to get seven consecutive days off work – the only way I could possibly travel such distance is to fly. But flying includes the legal obligation I submit to having my genitalia groped by some TSA thug wearing the same latex gloves already shoved down nine dozen other strangers' underwear. There's only two ways an American flyer can reliably avoid this: be rich enough to buy your own plane, or a high-ranking congressman or other VIP exempt from the indignities they inflict upon ordinary citizens.
The ACLU maintains an ever-growing database of these indignities, many so graphic they're illegal to broadcast over public airwaves. Actions that violate FCC standards are embraced by the TSA. "Mary in Texas" reported:
The TSA agent used her hands to feel under and between my breasts. She then rammed her hand up into my crotch until it jammed into my pubic bone ... I was touched in the pubic region in between my labia ... She then moved her hand across my pubic region and down the inner part of my upper thigh to the floor. She repeated this procedure on the other side. I was shocked and broke into tears.
A woman named Chris said:
"In the four times she explored the area where my inner thigh met my crotch, she touched my labia each time, and one pass made contact with my clitoris, through two layers of clothing. I told her I felt humiliated, assaulted and abused ... In my work as a nurse, if I did what the TSA did against a patient's will it would be considered assault and battery, and I did not see how the TSA should have different rules."
Recipients of such treatment aren't allowed to show distress. Melissa from Massachusetts did anyway:
"I was shaking and crying the entire time. I was begging them to hurry up but they kept stopping and telling me to calm down. It is impossible to gain composure when a stranger has her hands in your underwear."
I couldn't. I know my limits: can't sprout wings and fly, spin straw into gold, or ooze obedience toward anyone who'd treat me as the TSA treats Melissa, Mary, Chris and countless others. And once I said something rude – even an obscenity-free comment like "Have fun on your knees, sniffing my crotch like the dog that you are" [see top photo] – I'd be arrested on terrorism charges and the media would run sympathetic stories about poor TSA agents disliked for merely following orders. Self-described patriots would say "Disrespecting authority is unAmerican" and recommend harsh punishment for me.
There's no logical consistency backing TSA policies. On Christmas eve, it added insulated Thermos bottles to its extra-scrutiny list, not after learning of some beverage-container plot but because a bureaucrat thought, "A terrorist could, maybe, I dunno, do bad stuff with one." The Thermos-threat article said the TSA's usual ban on more than 3.4 ounces of liquid still applies. This surprised me because last time I flew, in 2006, regulations only allowed three ounces; the TSA, no doubt, claims sound, secret reasons why that four-tenths of an ounce of shampoo stopped being dangerous.
Meanwhile, every month, more American airports install nude-photo pornoscanners and fingerbang patdowns, while less-intrusive (for the time being) searches spread on other mass transit modes. Washington, DC kicked off the holiday season on the solstice by instituting "random" bag searches on the Metro; New York City has had them at scattered subway stations since 2005.
Last month, Janet Napolitano floated the idea of TSA searches for bus, ship and train passengers; she later withdrew it, but I'm sure it will be re-introduced after Americans come to accept such treatment in airports – which Napolitano has just confirmed "for the foreseeable future" (that is, permanently).
So, I can't fly. And maybe, someday not far off, I won't be able to ride any form of mass transit either, unless I become so debased and broken in spirit that I don't mind vacation and business trips bookended by government-mandated sexual humiliation. And while my government requires such dehumanisation, I mournfully recall 20 years ago, when the cold war ended and we Americans thought concepts like "freedom" and "human dignity" would rule the future.
Printable versionSend to a friendShareClipContact us larger
smaller World news
Air transport · United States · US domestic policy · Gender
Politics
Terrorism policy
Travel
Law
US constitution and civil liberties
More from Comment is free on
World news
Air transport · United States · US domestic policy · Gender
Politics
Terrorism policy
Travel
Law
US constitution and civil liberties
Related
17 Nov 2010
Get your hands off me, TSA!
19 Nov 2010
'Don't touch my junk' passenger sparks revolt against airport searches
26 Nov 2010
Who benefits over the TSA controversy?
26 Nov 2010
The Right Word: a lot of hot air
Printable versionSend to a friendShareClipContact usArticle historyhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/29/air-transport-terrorism?x=1
STEALTH EDUCATION IN AMERICA
STEALTH EDUCATION IN AMERICA
By Investigating Journalist Jon Rappoport
December 31, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
By Investigating Journalist Jon Rappoport
December 31, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Why focus on health freedom? Because our future is worth protecting, says Health Ranger
Why focus on health freedom? Because our future is worth protecting, says Health Ranger
Thursday, December 30, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
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(NaturalNews) We've been covering health freedom topics with great intensity lately, and that has taken away from our typical coverage of natural cures, herbal remedies, medicinal foods and so on. Some people are asking why we've shifted our focus, and I want to answer those questions with clarity and determination.
It's one thing to know HOW to use herbs and superfoods, and there's a wealth of knowledge to be gained in that area. But it's another thing entirely to have ACCESS to those herbs and superfoods without being criminalized or harassed by the government in the process. I would say that unless you have access to those healing remedies, all the knowledge in the world of how to use them makes no difference.
Our access to natural healing remedies, superfoods and herbs is under constant threat. For example, the FDA has outlawed supplement companies and food companies from offering scientifically-validated free speech about their products. If a cherry company links to a scientific study on its website, providing a scientific basis for clinical evidence that cherries can help prevent gout, for example, the FDA sends them a threatening letter claiming they may be subjected to criminal prosecution, have their products seized, and even thrown in prison for selling "unapproved drugs." (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html)
Both local and federal authorities, meanwhile, have declared war on raw milk producers, treating them like drug dealers with armed raids, arrests and criminal prosecutions. If milking a cow and selling that milk to your neighbor is now a federal crime, what other foods or natural substances might the feds go after next? (It looks like they may soon outlaw the selling of breast milk!)
With the passage of the recent Food Safety Modernization Act, the FDA will be moving forward with so-called Codex Alimentarius harmonization. It's written right into the bill text (http://www.naturalnews.com/030863_f...). This law also requires the FDA to set up enforcement offices in foreign nations to run a global food safety scheme that will try to pasteurize, irradiate or fumigate virtually all foods entering the United States. This is an effort to kill these foods and destroy most of their nutritive qualities. "Safety" is just the excuse to sterilize your food.
This same law also gives the FDA authority to inspect and shut down backyard gardeners, small local famers, small greenhouse operations, people who sell items at the farmers' market, and so on. No, these groups are not automatically exempt from the bill as was claimed by bill proponents: They must "apply" to be granted exemption by the FDA -- a process requiring them to produce tax returns, safety documentation and a pile of paperwork that the FDA can choose to declare "insufficient."
With our health freedoms under attack, it's crucial that we take a stand and support our Natural Law rights (God-given rights) to grow our own food and medicine, to buy food and natural medicine, and to sell what we grow to our local neighbors and community members. All these rights are under assault by the federal government, and if we don't work to oppose the tyrants who want to take away our access to healing foods, herbs and supplements, we may end up living in a nation where vitamins are outlawed (or at least the natural, food-based vitamins are), herbs are regulated off the shelves and local farmers' markets are shut down.
Instead of getting your food from a neighbor, you'll have to get it from a food factory that passes the FDA's "safety" inspections even though it's still injecting aspartame, sodium nitrite and MSG into its food products. (The FDA considers all those chemical food additives to be "safe," believe it or not.)
Why protecting our freedoms is crucial to our health
If we do nothing and stay silent, it is guaranteed that our access to natural remedies and honest food will be stolen from us by tyrannical bureaucrats who incessantly work to protect the financial interests of Big Pharma and the sick-care industry. They don't necessarily want you to be well. They don't want you to buy local food. What they want is to turn consumers into cattle, where they feed you dead, processed foods and then make a fortune off the degenerative disease that inevitably develops as a result.
And they especially want you to do what you're told and stop questioning vaccines. Stop questioning the chemicals in the food. Just eat it, swallow and buy into it.
What I seek to do, on the other hand, is protect our food freedoms by alerting you when those freedoms are under attack. I aim to expose the true agenda of the FDA and Big Government tyrants who are trying to take away your raw milk, take away your access to nutritional supplements and censor the truth about how natural remedies can prevent and even cure serious disease.
Health freedom protection is a team effort
In addition to NaturalNews, other health freedom organizations are also part of the leading edge of this fight: The Alliance for Natural Health (www.ANH-USA.org), the Natural Solutions Foundation (www.HealthFreedomUSA.org), and to some extent also sites such as the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (www.FarmToConsumer.org). Alex Jones even covers health freedom on his show (www.Infowars.com), and then goes on to warn about the Fed, FEMA camps and other similar topics. Authors such as Naomi Wolf, Lew Rockwell, Ed Griffin, Dr Gary North and many others are beating the freedom drum on other fronts that are just as important (the Fed, the police state, etc.).
We are, collectively, your early warning system. We are alerting you to the very real threats that are headed your way, and we're trying to prevent the tyrants from taking over. The TSA is now shoving their hands down your pants at the airports (who would have even imagined that a decade ago?). The FDA is threatening walnut company founders with prison time for telling the truth about the health benefits of walnuts. The DEA is ignoring state law and raiding medicinal marijuana dispensaries that are 100% compliant with state and local laws. The Fed is giving away trillions of dollars to foreign corporations. The President is granting health care waivers to McDonald's and hundreds of other corporations that will be exempted from Obamacare regulations. The CDC keeps pushing flu vaccine propaganda based on junk science while avoiding any mention of vitamin D.
Need I go on? One by one, nearly every government agency is on a power trip, seeking to expand its power at the expense of your freedom. The tyrants are running loose in America, and if we don't reverse this dangerous trend, there is absolutely no question where we will end up because history teaches this lesson well: A police state nation run by the wealthy elite corporatists who dictate government policy and centralize power into their own hands (while stealing it out of yours).
They want power over everything you do: What you eat, what you buy, how you save your money (did you notice U.S. banks don't let you save money in foreign currencies?), what you think (TV programming), what you read (don't read Wikileaks or you'll never get a government job!) and even how you live and die (sick-care monopoly). The government does not want you to have free choice over your body, your mind, your finances or your future. They want to control your choices while giving you the illusion of choice. Sure, go out a vote every two years and see if it really makes any difference. The corporations already run Congress. Whether you vote Republican or Democrat, they still call the shots at the top.
Can't we just meditate our way out of this?
There are quite a number of "create your own reality" people who believe we can all just meditate our way out of this. The thinking goes like this: Since we create our own reality, we can just sit in our rooms and imagine the world being a better place, and it will come true. I'm not trying to make fun of this position. There is merit to it, but as much as I value meditation, positive thinking and even to some extent the Law of Attraction, it is a mistranslation of those principles to think that we do not have to take a stand in the real world, from time to time, against those who would steal our freedoms from us.
What would have happened in India if Gandhi just sat around and meditated instead of leading his people on his famous resistance march to gather salt? That the British Empire outlawed salt in India and forbade is people from harvesting it is very much the same as the U.S. government outlawing raw milk or dictating the operations of small family farms. We are experiencing an historical rise of tyranny in America, and we must rise up against it or be overrun by it.
What would have happened in colonial America of Paul Revere, instead of riding his horse to warn his neighbors that the British were coming, just sat in his living room and tried to think positive thoughts instead? Quite possibly, Americans might still be British subjects today.
If you want proof of what happens when you sit around and meditate instead of taking a real-world stand against oppression and tyranny, just look at the Tibetan Buddhists. You won't find a more peaceful, dedicated group of wise meditators anywhere on the planet. I've visited Buddhist temples on high mountaintops in Asia. I've spent time with these people face to face, and I have incredible admiration for them. I've read many books written by the Dalai Lama and have incorporated several Buddhists principles into my own life. But even I cannot deny the fact that the Chinese government rolled right over them throughout mainland China, destroying their temples, arresting their priests and sending their congregation members into the gulag.
The Dalai Lama lives in exile! And why? Because the Chinese government stampeded over them. Meditation doesn't stop bullets. And when evil is running rampant across our lands, evil must be met with force... and then stopped cold.
I'm not faulting the Buddhists for choosing meditation over armed resistance. It is a legitimate spiritual decision to avoid violence and refuse to take part in any resistance movement, but once you choose that path, the outcome is never in doubt: Big Government will roll right over you because governments incessantly desire more power, and they will always seek to secure more power at any cost. Even if it means eradicating an entire religion.
Real action is needed to preserve liberty
So for those who believe they can sit in candle-lit rooms and meditate our way out of tyranny, I thank you for your positive vibes, but I will not limit my own actions to such passivism. I know from my time in this world, having lived in numerous countries and spoken different languages around the world, that those who retain freedom are those who actively defend it. Eternal vigilance, as Jefferson said, is the price of freedom.
My goal with NaturalNews is to be eternally vigilant; to help protect your food freedoms, your access to natural healing herbs and supplements, and to secure your natural law rights to grow your own food (and medicine) and sell it to your neighbors if you so choose. Your right to grow food and to engage in free commerce of your food is a "natural law" that exists as an even higher authority than the Constitution itself. It is a law of God and nature. You are born with it. No bureaucrat, no tyrant and no government can take it away from you (but they will try).
I believe in Liberty, I believe in America's founding principles, and I believe in the Bill of Rights. And I will fight to defend it. Nowhere in the world is there another country that is more free than America once was. This freedom is worth fighting for.
I was not so adamant about this point until recently, when Big Government began reaching down our pants at the airport and the S.510 food safety bill passed. Today, I cannot stand by idly and do nothing while our food freedoms are threatened. Codex harmonization is on the horizon. The Department of Homeland Security has us all spying on each other at Wal-Mart. The GMO conspiracy is very real and very powerful, and they want us all to eat their poisonous corn and soy products so that we become diseased and infertile.
I will resist this effort with every ounce of breath in my body. I will continue to work to expose the dangers of vaccines, GMOs, fluoride, MSG and other chemicals, and I will do my best to promote the healing properties of natural foods, healing herbs, superfoods and nutritional supplements.
We continue to grow our reach and expand our audience by the day! Our video site is exploding in popularity (www.Naturalnews.TV), our news site reaches millions of readers each month, and we have a lineup of video mini-documentaries coming in 2011 that will absolutely blow your mind.
Along with people like Jesse Ventura, Alex Jones, Jonathan Emord and James Turner (and many others), we are winning the fight against tyranny. We are Journalism 2.0 -- it's the new journalism where you can't buy us off, you can't control our message, and you can't stop us because we are powered by the People who support our efforts, who believe in our mission and who absolutely will not stop until they are free.
That's why I do what I do. That's why I work 16 hour days and spend nearly every waking hour thinking of new ways to spread knowledge, enlightenment and a message of FREEDOM for our collective future. And that's why I've been writing about health freedom rather than the specific properties of medicinal herbs and nutrients. It is crucial that we protect our natural rights to food and natural medicine, even it is means putting other projects to the side for the moment.
I thank you for your ongoing support in this mission. Our future is, in every way, worth fighting for. And with your help, we can make sure that future is one based on freedom rather than tyranny.
- Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030872_health_freedom_natural_law.html#ixzz19cMlBge2
Thursday, December 30, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
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Today: All HP Laptops are Sold for
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Dr. Bill Douglass Reveals The Ugly
Truth About the Poisonous Sweetener
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473
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(NaturalNews) We've been covering health freedom topics with great intensity lately, and that has taken away from our typical coverage of natural cures, herbal remedies, medicinal foods and so on. Some people are asking why we've shifted our focus, and I want to answer those questions with clarity and determination.
It's one thing to know HOW to use herbs and superfoods, and there's a wealth of knowledge to be gained in that area. But it's another thing entirely to have ACCESS to those herbs and superfoods without being criminalized or harassed by the government in the process. I would say that unless you have access to those healing remedies, all the knowledge in the world of how to use them makes no difference.
Our access to natural healing remedies, superfoods and herbs is under constant threat. For example, the FDA has outlawed supplement companies and food companies from offering scientifically-validated free speech about their products. If a cherry company links to a scientific study on its website, providing a scientific basis for clinical evidence that cherries can help prevent gout, for example, the FDA sends them a threatening letter claiming they may be subjected to criminal prosecution, have their products seized, and even thrown in prison for selling "unapproved drugs." (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html)
Both local and federal authorities, meanwhile, have declared war on raw milk producers, treating them like drug dealers with armed raids, arrests and criminal prosecutions. If milking a cow and selling that milk to your neighbor is now a federal crime, what other foods or natural substances might the feds go after next? (It looks like they may soon outlaw the selling of breast milk!)
With the passage of the recent Food Safety Modernization Act, the FDA will be moving forward with so-called Codex Alimentarius harmonization. It's written right into the bill text (http://www.naturalnews.com/030863_f...). This law also requires the FDA to set up enforcement offices in foreign nations to run a global food safety scheme that will try to pasteurize, irradiate or fumigate virtually all foods entering the United States. This is an effort to kill these foods and destroy most of their nutritive qualities. "Safety" is just the excuse to sterilize your food.
This same law also gives the FDA authority to inspect and shut down backyard gardeners, small local famers, small greenhouse operations, people who sell items at the farmers' market, and so on. No, these groups are not automatically exempt from the bill as was claimed by bill proponents: They must "apply" to be granted exemption by the FDA -- a process requiring them to produce tax returns, safety documentation and a pile of paperwork that the FDA can choose to declare "insufficient."
With our health freedoms under attack, it's crucial that we take a stand and support our Natural Law rights (God-given rights) to grow our own food and medicine, to buy food and natural medicine, and to sell what we grow to our local neighbors and community members. All these rights are under assault by the federal government, and if we don't work to oppose the tyrants who want to take away our access to healing foods, herbs and supplements, we may end up living in a nation where vitamins are outlawed (or at least the natural, food-based vitamins are), herbs are regulated off the shelves and local farmers' markets are shut down.
Instead of getting your food from a neighbor, you'll have to get it from a food factory that passes the FDA's "safety" inspections even though it's still injecting aspartame, sodium nitrite and MSG into its food products. (The FDA considers all those chemical food additives to be "safe," believe it or not.)
Why protecting our freedoms is crucial to our health
If we do nothing and stay silent, it is guaranteed that our access to natural remedies and honest food will be stolen from us by tyrannical bureaucrats who incessantly work to protect the financial interests of Big Pharma and the sick-care industry. They don't necessarily want you to be well. They don't want you to buy local food. What they want is to turn consumers into cattle, where they feed you dead, processed foods and then make a fortune off the degenerative disease that inevitably develops as a result.
And they especially want you to do what you're told and stop questioning vaccines. Stop questioning the chemicals in the food. Just eat it, swallow and buy into it.
What I seek to do, on the other hand, is protect our food freedoms by alerting you when those freedoms are under attack. I aim to expose the true agenda of the FDA and Big Government tyrants who are trying to take away your raw milk, take away your access to nutritional supplements and censor the truth about how natural remedies can prevent and even cure serious disease.
Health freedom protection is a team effort
In addition to NaturalNews, other health freedom organizations are also part of the leading edge of this fight: The Alliance for Natural Health (www.ANH-USA.org), the Natural Solutions Foundation (www.HealthFreedomUSA.org), and to some extent also sites such as the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (www.FarmToConsumer.org). Alex Jones even covers health freedom on his show (www.Infowars.com), and then goes on to warn about the Fed, FEMA camps and other similar topics. Authors such as Naomi Wolf, Lew Rockwell, Ed Griffin, Dr Gary North and many others are beating the freedom drum on other fronts that are just as important (the Fed, the police state, etc.).
We are, collectively, your early warning system. We are alerting you to the very real threats that are headed your way, and we're trying to prevent the tyrants from taking over. The TSA is now shoving their hands down your pants at the airports (who would have even imagined that a decade ago?). The FDA is threatening walnut company founders with prison time for telling the truth about the health benefits of walnuts. The DEA is ignoring state law and raiding medicinal marijuana dispensaries that are 100% compliant with state and local laws. The Fed is giving away trillions of dollars to foreign corporations. The President is granting health care waivers to McDonald's and hundreds of other corporations that will be exempted from Obamacare regulations. The CDC keeps pushing flu vaccine propaganda based on junk science while avoiding any mention of vitamin D.
Need I go on? One by one, nearly every government agency is on a power trip, seeking to expand its power at the expense of your freedom. The tyrants are running loose in America, and if we don't reverse this dangerous trend, there is absolutely no question where we will end up because history teaches this lesson well: A police state nation run by the wealthy elite corporatists who dictate government policy and centralize power into their own hands (while stealing it out of yours).
They want power over everything you do: What you eat, what you buy, how you save your money (did you notice U.S. banks don't let you save money in foreign currencies?), what you think (TV programming), what you read (don't read Wikileaks or you'll never get a government job!) and even how you live and die (sick-care monopoly). The government does not want you to have free choice over your body, your mind, your finances or your future. They want to control your choices while giving you the illusion of choice. Sure, go out a vote every two years and see if it really makes any difference. The corporations already run Congress. Whether you vote Republican or Democrat, they still call the shots at the top.
Can't we just meditate our way out of this?
There are quite a number of "create your own reality" people who believe we can all just meditate our way out of this. The thinking goes like this: Since we create our own reality, we can just sit in our rooms and imagine the world being a better place, and it will come true. I'm not trying to make fun of this position. There is merit to it, but as much as I value meditation, positive thinking and even to some extent the Law of Attraction, it is a mistranslation of those principles to think that we do not have to take a stand in the real world, from time to time, against those who would steal our freedoms from us.
What would have happened in India if Gandhi just sat around and meditated instead of leading his people on his famous resistance march to gather salt? That the British Empire outlawed salt in India and forbade is people from harvesting it is very much the same as the U.S. government outlawing raw milk or dictating the operations of small family farms. We are experiencing an historical rise of tyranny in America, and we must rise up against it or be overrun by it.
What would have happened in colonial America of Paul Revere, instead of riding his horse to warn his neighbors that the British were coming, just sat in his living room and tried to think positive thoughts instead? Quite possibly, Americans might still be British subjects today.
If you want proof of what happens when you sit around and meditate instead of taking a real-world stand against oppression and tyranny, just look at the Tibetan Buddhists. You won't find a more peaceful, dedicated group of wise meditators anywhere on the planet. I've visited Buddhist temples on high mountaintops in Asia. I've spent time with these people face to face, and I have incredible admiration for them. I've read many books written by the Dalai Lama and have incorporated several Buddhists principles into my own life. But even I cannot deny the fact that the Chinese government rolled right over them throughout mainland China, destroying their temples, arresting their priests and sending their congregation members into the gulag.
The Dalai Lama lives in exile! And why? Because the Chinese government stampeded over them. Meditation doesn't stop bullets. And when evil is running rampant across our lands, evil must be met with force... and then stopped cold.
I'm not faulting the Buddhists for choosing meditation over armed resistance. It is a legitimate spiritual decision to avoid violence and refuse to take part in any resistance movement, but once you choose that path, the outcome is never in doubt: Big Government will roll right over you because governments incessantly desire more power, and they will always seek to secure more power at any cost. Even if it means eradicating an entire religion.
Real action is needed to preserve liberty
So for those who believe they can sit in candle-lit rooms and meditate our way out of tyranny, I thank you for your positive vibes, but I will not limit my own actions to such passivism. I know from my time in this world, having lived in numerous countries and spoken different languages around the world, that those who retain freedom are those who actively defend it. Eternal vigilance, as Jefferson said, is the price of freedom.
My goal with NaturalNews is to be eternally vigilant; to help protect your food freedoms, your access to natural healing herbs and supplements, and to secure your natural law rights to grow your own food (and medicine) and sell it to your neighbors if you so choose. Your right to grow food and to engage in free commerce of your food is a "natural law" that exists as an even higher authority than the Constitution itself. It is a law of God and nature. You are born with it. No bureaucrat, no tyrant and no government can take it away from you (but they will try).
I believe in Liberty, I believe in America's founding principles, and I believe in the Bill of Rights. And I will fight to defend it. Nowhere in the world is there another country that is more free than America once was. This freedom is worth fighting for.
I was not so adamant about this point until recently, when Big Government began reaching down our pants at the airport and the S.510 food safety bill passed. Today, I cannot stand by idly and do nothing while our food freedoms are threatened. Codex harmonization is on the horizon. The Department of Homeland Security has us all spying on each other at Wal-Mart. The GMO conspiracy is very real and very powerful, and they want us all to eat their poisonous corn and soy products so that we become diseased and infertile.
I will resist this effort with every ounce of breath in my body. I will continue to work to expose the dangers of vaccines, GMOs, fluoride, MSG and other chemicals, and I will do my best to promote the healing properties of natural foods, healing herbs, superfoods and nutritional supplements.
We continue to grow our reach and expand our audience by the day! Our video site is exploding in popularity (www.Naturalnews.TV), our news site reaches millions of readers each month, and we have a lineup of video mini-documentaries coming in 2011 that will absolutely blow your mind.
Along with people like Jesse Ventura, Alex Jones, Jonathan Emord and James Turner (and many others), we are winning the fight against tyranny. We are Journalism 2.0 -- it's the new journalism where you can't buy us off, you can't control our message, and you can't stop us because we are powered by the People who support our efforts, who believe in our mission and who absolutely will not stop until they are free.
That's why I do what I do. That's why I work 16 hour days and spend nearly every waking hour thinking of new ways to spread knowledge, enlightenment and a message of FREEDOM for our collective future. And that's why I've been writing about health freedom rather than the specific properties of medicinal herbs and nutrients. It is crucial that we protect our natural rights to food and natural medicine, even it is means putting other projects to the side for the moment.
I thank you for your ongoing support in this mission. Our future is, in every way, worth fighting for. And with your help, we can make sure that future is one based on freedom rather than tyranny.
- Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030872_health_freedom_natural_law.html#ixzz19cMlBge2
The Gulf of Mexico is Dying
December 30, 2010
The Gulf of Mexico is Dying
A Special Report on the BP Gulf Oil Spill
by Dr. Tom Termotto
Global Research, December 26, 2010
Concerned citizens of Florida - 2010-12-01
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
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It is with deep regret that we publish this report. We do not take this responsibility lightly, as the consequences of the following observations are of such great import and have such far-reaching ramifications for the entire planet. Truly, the fate of the oceans of the world hangs in the balance, as does the future of humankind.
The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) does not exist in isolation and is, in fact, connected to the Seven Seas. Hence, we publish these findings in order that the world community will come together to further contemplate this dire and demanding predicament. We also do so with the hope that an appropriate global response will be formulated, and acted upon, for the sake of future generations. It is the most basic responsibility for every civilization to leave their world in a better condition than that which they inherited from their forbears.
After conducting the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference for over seven months, we can now disseminate the following information with the authority and confidence of those who have thoroughly investigated a crime scene. There are many research articles, investigative reports and penetrating exposes archived at the following website. Particularly those posted from August through November provide a unique body of evidence, many with compelling photo-documentaries, which portray the true state of affairs at the Macondo Prospect in the GOM.
http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/
The pictorial evidence tells the whole story.
Especially that the BP narrative is nothing but a corporate-created illusion – a web of fabrication spun in collaboration with the US Federal Government and Mainstream Media. Big Oil, as well as the Military-Industrial Complex, have aided and abetted this whole scheme and info blackout because the very future of the Oil & Gas Industry is at stake, as is the future of the US Empire which sprawls around the world and requires vast amounts of hydrocarbon fuel.
Should the truth seep out and into the mass consciousness – that the GOM is slowly but surely filling up with oil and gas – certainly many would rightly question the integrity, and sanity, of the whole venture, as well as the entire industry itself. And then perhaps the process would begin of transitioning the planet away from the hydrocarbon fuel paradigm altogether.
It’s not a pretty picture.
The various pictures, photos and diagrams that fill the many articles at the aforementioned website represent photo-evidence about the true state of affairs on the seafloor surrounding the Macondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon, which is located in the Central Planning Area of the northern Gulf of Mexico. The very dynamics of the dramatic changes and continuous evolution of the seafloor have been captured in ways that very few have ever seen. These snapshots have given us a window of understanding into the true state of the underlying geological formations around the various wells drilled in the Macondo Prospect.
Although our many deductions may be difficult for the layperson to apprehend at first, to the trained eye these are but obvious conclusions which are simply the result of cause and effect. In other words there is no dispute around the most serious geological changes which have occurred, and continue to occur, in the region around the Macondo wells. The original predicament (an 87 day gushing well) was extremely serious, as grasped by the entire world, and the existing situation is only going to get progressively worse.
So, just what does this current picture look like. Please click on the link below to view the relevant diagrams and read the commentary:
http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/an-autopsy-of-the-bp-gulf-oil-well-at-the-macondo-prospect/
As the diagrams clearly indicate, the geology around the well bore has been blown. This occurred because of drilling contiguous to a salt dome(1), as well as because of the gas explosions which did much damage to the integrity of the well casing, cementing, well bore, well head, and foundation around the well head. Eighty-seven straight days of gushing hydrocarbon effluent under great pressure only served to further undermine the entire well system. Finally, when it was capped, putting the system back under pressure forced the upsurging hydrocarbons to find weaknesses throughout the greater system, which revealed all sorts of compromised, fractured and unsettled geology through which the hydrocarbons could travel all the way to the seafloor and into the GOM.
(1)“The rock beds in the vicinity of a salt dome are highly fractured and permeable due to stress and deformation which occur as the salt dome thrusted upwards.” (Per BK Lim, Geohazards Specialist)
We also have faults* to deal with in this scenario of which there are both deep and shallow. Depending on the current vital stats of the blown out well, especially its actual depth; the number, location and severity of the breaches throughout the well system; the pressure at the wellhead; as well as the type and status of geological formations/strata it has been drilled into, these faults will become prominently configured into the future stability of the whole region. Larger faults can open up much greater opportunities for the hydrocarbons to find their way to the seafloor via cracks and crevices, craters and chasms. In fact the numerous leaks and seeps throughout the seafloor surface, which are quite apparent from various ROV live-feeds, give testimony to sub-seafloor geological formations in great turmoil and undergoing unprecedented flux.
*“Once the oil gets into the shallow faulted zones, we have an uncontrollable situation. The place where most of the oil and gas is coming out is at the foot hills of the continental shelf as shown in figure 134-1 in the article “BP continues to dazzle us with their unlimited magic”. The discovery by WHOI of the 22 mile long river of oil originated from these leaks. So the leaks will be mainly along the faults where I have marked (shallow) in “What is going on at West Sirius” and deep strike-slip faults (red line) on fig 134-1.” (Per BK Lim, Geohazards Specialist)
Just how bad is this situation?
There are actually three different ongoing disasters – each more grave and challenging than the previous one – which must be considered when assessing the awesome destruction to the GOM by the Oil & Gas Industry.
I. A single gushing well at 7o – 100,000 barrels per day of hydrocarbon effluent for 87 days into the GOM at the Macondo Prospect along with two smaller rogue wells
II. Numerous leaks and seeps within five to ten square miles of the Macondo well with an aggregate outflow of an unknown amount of hydrocarbon effluent per day into the GOM
III. Countless gushers and spills, leaks and seeps, throughout the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling has been conducted for many decades, with an aggregate outflow that can not even be estimated, but is well in excess of any guesstimate which would ensure the slow and steady demise of the GOM.
It is the last scenario which we all face and to which there is no easy or obvious solution. The truth be told, there currently does not exist the technology or machinery or equipment to repair the damage that has been wrought by the process of deep undersea drilling, especially when it is performed in the wrong place. Therefore, wherever the oil and gas find points of entry into the GOM through the seafloor, these leaks and seeps will only continue to get worse. Here’s why:
Methane gas mixed with saltwater and mud makes for a very potent corrosive agent. Under high pressure it will find every point of egress through the rock and sediment formations all the way up to the seafloor where it will find any point of exit that is available. The longer and more forcefully that it flows throughout the fractured area, which is dependent on the volume, temperature and pressure at the source of the hydrocarbons, the more its corrosive effects will widen, broaden and enlarge the channels, cracks and crevices throughout the sub-seafloor geology, thereby creating a predicament that no science, technology or equipment can remedy.
Dire realities of the methane hydrate predicament
The Macondo Prospect in the GOM is just one of many throughout the oceans of the world where the seafloor has beds of methane hydrate locked in place by very high pressure and low temperatures. Likewise, there are myriad repositories and large “reservoirs” of methane clathrates in the sub-seafloor strata, and especially within the more superficial geological formations, which are being greatly impacted by all oil and gas drilling and extraction activities. It does not take much imagination to understand how the upsurging hydrocarbons (very hot oil and gas) are quickly converting the frozen hydrates to gas, thereby causing innumerable “micro-displacements”, the cumulative effect of which will translate to larger “macro-displacements” of rock, sediment and other geological formations.
When you factor in this constant vaporization of methane hydrates/clathrates both sub-seafloor as well as those scattered around the seafloor surface to the existing scenario, this devolving situation becomes that much more difficult to effectively remedy. With the resulting shifts and resettling and reconfiguration of the entire seafloor terrain and underlying strata occurring in the wake of these dynamics, we are left with a situation that is not going to get better through the use of even more invasive technology and intrusive machinery.
Question: How many times can you grout a seafloor crack that was caused by an underlying superficial fault after drilling into an old mud volcano?
Answer: “In the attempt to seal the oil from oozing through the faults, BP resorted to high pressure grouting. Basically it is like cementing the cracks in the rock by injecting grout (cement mixture) at high pressure. The way they do this is by drilling an injection hole into the shallow rocks and pumping in the grout. The grout in “slurry” state will permeate into the cracks, cure and seal up the cracks. However it is not working because of the presence of gas and oil. It is like super-glue. You need to clean the surfaces before you apply the glue; otherwise it won’t stick and will come off eventually after a few days or weeks. That is why we can see a few blown out craters – shown in my article – Is the last rite for the Macondo Well for real?” (Per BK Lim, Geohazards Specialist)
Likewise, how do you fill a newly emerging gash in the seafloor which is caused by a deep fault due to low level seismic activity, or worse, a full blown earthquake?!
Seismic activity in the GOM and the uptick in earthquakes in the Mississippi River Basin and surrounding region
The oil and gas platforms that were in operation throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico in 2006 (per Wikipedia).
We now come to the most serious issue regarding the relentless drilling for oil and gas throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The map above clearly illustrates the density of drilling throughout the northern GOM as of 2006. Likewise, the map below demonstrates the extraordinary and increasing intensity of these very same operations off the coast of Louisiana alone.
Green lines represent active pipes (25,000 miles in all). Yellow dots represent oil rigs.
The map that follows, however, tells a story which demands the attention of every resident of the GOM coastline. The video link below the map shows the development timeline of the successively deeper wells being drilled during the last decade. Of course, with greater depths come much greater risks, as the technology and machinery have not been proportionately upgraded to accommodate the extraordinary demands and unforeseen contingencies of such a speculative and dangerous enterprise*.
*Oil and gas drilling in seawater depths of over 4000 feet, and through 15,000 to 25,000 feet of the earth’s crust and mantle, is considered extremely dangerous to those from whom reason and common sense have not yet fled.
Click on the map to enlarge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh_wNVUx9SI
It’s critical to understand the location and current activity of the various faults which exist throughout the GOM and how they connect to the New Madrid Fault Line, as well as other major faults at much greater distance. There does appear to be a emerging uptick in earthquake activity in the greater Louisiana area, as well as contiguous regions in the GOM as demonstrated by unprecedented, albeit low level earthquakes. Correlations between these earthquakes/seismic activity and major operations at the Macondo Prospect have been alluded to in our previous postings.
Earthquake Activity in Gulf of Mexico Prompts 2003 Study for MMS
Gulf of Mexico Subsea Structures May Be in Seismic Danger Zone – Part 2
Now then, the question remains just how vulnerable has the GOM been made to a truly catastrophic event, ending up with an overwhelming displacement of water producing tidal waves, in the aftermath of an undersea earthquake.
There is no question that the ceaseless fracturing of the seafloor and fissuring of the sub-seafloor geological strata by the Oil & Gas Industry has set up a quite conducive environment for HUGE unintended consequences. We leave it up to the experts to conduct the necessary risk assessments, which will most assuredly let loose a sea of red flags about what Big Oil has done, and is currently doing, in the Gulf of Mexico. Furthermore, we are deeply concerned that, if a permanent moratorium on all new oil and gas drilling and extraction in the GOM is not put into place poste haste, the coastal communities will remain in a very precarious situation.
Worsening GOM predicament is reflective of the status quo around the globe
Now consider the following scenario: that this very same predicament, which we have all witnessed in the Gulf of Mexico, is happening wherever oil and gas drilling is conducted in the various water bodies throughout the planet. Therefore we can multiply the Macondo Prospect disaster a hundred times and still not come close to the impacts that these ongoing gushers and spills, leaks and seeps are having the world over.
Perhaps the BP Gulf Oil Spill was the defining moment in modern history when all the nations of the world community were called by Mother Earth herself to begin transitioning the planet away from the Hydrocarbon Fuel Paradigm. After all, we may never get another chance!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Transitioning-The-Planet-Away-From-The-Hydrocarbon-Fuel-Paradigm/154984831192787?v=wall&ref=ts
Tom Termotto is National Coordinator of the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference
OilSpillSolution@comcast.net
SKYPE: Gulf_Advocate
http://oilspillsolutionsnow.org/
The Gulf of Mexico is Dying
A Special Report on the BP Gulf Oil Spill
by Dr. Tom Termotto
Global Research, December 26, 2010
Concerned citizens of Florida - 2010-12-01
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
4diggsdigg 1541
Share
It is with deep regret that we publish this report. We do not take this responsibility lightly, as the consequences of the following observations are of such great import and have such far-reaching ramifications for the entire planet. Truly, the fate of the oceans of the world hangs in the balance, as does the future of humankind.
The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) does not exist in isolation and is, in fact, connected to the Seven Seas. Hence, we publish these findings in order that the world community will come together to further contemplate this dire and demanding predicament. We also do so with the hope that an appropriate global response will be formulated, and acted upon, for the sake of future generations. It is the most basic responsibility for every civilization to leave their world in a better condition than that which they inherited from their forbears.
After conducting the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference for over seven months, we can now disseminate the following information with the authority and confidence of those who have thoroughly investigated a crime scene. There are many research articles, investigative reports and penetrating exposes archived at the following website. Particularly those posted from August through November provide a unique body of evidence, many with compelling photo-documentaries, which portray the true state of affairs at the Macondo Prospect in the GOM.
http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/
The pictorial evidence tells the whole story.
Especially that the BP narrative is nothing but a corporate-created illusion – a web of fabrication spun in collaboration with the US Federal Government and Mainstream Media. Big Oil, as well as the Military-Industrial Complex, have aided and abetted this whole scheme and info blackout because the very future of the Oil & Gas Industry is at stake, as is the future of the US Empire which sprawls around the world and requires vast amounts of hydrocarbon fuel.
Should the truth seep out and into the mass consciousness – that the GOM is slowly but surely filling up with oil and gas – certainly many would rightly question the integrity, and sanity, of the whole venture, as well as the entire industry itself. And then perhaps the process would begin of transitioning the planet away from the hydrocarbon fuel paradigm altogether.
It’s not a pretty picture.
The various pictures, photos and diagrams that fill the many articles at the aforementioned website represent photo-evidence about the true state of affairs on the seafloor surrounding the Macondo Prospect in the Mississippi Canyon, which is located in the Central Planning Area of the northern Gulf of Mexico. The very dynamics of the dramatic changes and continuous evolution of the seafloor have been captured in ways that very few have ever seen. These snapshots have given us a window of understanding into the true state of the underlying geological formations around the various wells drilled in the Macondo Prospect.
Although our many deductions may be difficult for the layperson to apprehend at first, to the trained eye these are but obvious conclusions which are simply the result of cause and effect. In other words there is no dispute around the most serious geological changes which have occurred, and continue to occur, in the region around the Macondo wells. The original predicament (an 87 day gushing well) was extremely serious, as grasped by the entire world, and the existing situation is only going to get progressively worse.
So, just what does this current picture look like. Please click on the link below to view the relevant diagrams and read the commentary:
http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/an-autopsy-of-the-bp-gulf-oil-well-at-the-macondo-prospect/
As the diagrams clearly indicate, the geology around the well bore has been blown. This occurred because of drilling contiguous to a salt dome(1), as well as because of the gas explosions which did much damage to the integrity of the well casing, cementing, well bore, well head, and foundation around the well head. Eighty-seven straight days of gushing hydrocarbon effluent under great pressure only served to further undermine the entire well system. Finally, when it was capped, putting the system back under pressure forced the upsurging hydrocarbons to find weaknesses throughout the greater system, which revealed all sorts of compromised, fractured and unsettled geology through which the hydrocarbons could travel all the way to the seafloor and into the GOM.
(1)“The rock beds in the vicinity of a salt dome are highly fractured and permeable due to stress and deformation which occur as the salt dome thrusted upwards.” (Per BK Lim, Geohazards Specialist)
We also have faults* to deal with in this scenario of which there are both deep and shallow. Depending on the current vital stats of the blown out well, especially its actual depth; the number, location and severity of the breaches throughout the well system; the pressure at the wellhead; as well as the type and status of geological formations/strata it has been drilled into, these faults will become prominently configured into the future stability of the whole region. Larger faults can open up much greater opportunities for the hydrocarbons to find their way to the seafloor via cracks and crevices, craters and chasms. In fact the numerous leaks and seeps throughout the seafloor surface, which are quite apparent from various ROV live-feeds, give testimony to sub-seafloor geological formations in great turmoil and undergoing unprecedented flux.
*“Once the oil gets into the shallow faulted zones, we have an uncontrollable situation. The place where most of the oil and gas is coming out is at the foot hills of the continental shelf as shown in figure 134-1 in the article “BP continues to dazzle us with their unlimited magic”. The discovery by WHOI of the 22 mile long river of oil originated from these leaks. So the leaks will be mainly along the faults where I have marked (shallow) in “What is going on at West Sirius” and deep strike-slip faults (red line) on fig 134-1.” (Per BK Lim, Geohazards Specialist)
Just how bad is this situation?
There are actually three different ongoing disasters – each more grave and challenging than the previous one – which must be considered when assessing the awesome destruction to the GOM by the Oil & Gas Industry.
I. A single gushing well at 7o – 100,000 barrels per day of hydrocarbon effluent for 87 days into the GOM at the Macondo Prospect along with two smaller rogue wells
II. Numerous leaks and seeps within five to ten square miles of the Macondo well with an aggregate outflow of an unknown amount of hydrocarbon effluent per day into the GOM
III. Countless gushers and spills, leaks and seeps, throughout the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling has been conducted for many decades, with an aggregate outflow that can not even be estimated, but is well in excess of any guesstimate which would ensure the slow and steady demise of the GOM.
It is the last scenario which we all face and to which there is no easy or obvious solution. The truth be told, there currently does not exist the technology or machinery or equipment to repair the damage that has been wrought by the process of deep undersea drilling, especially when it is performed in the wrong place. Therefore, wherever the oil and gas find points of entry into the GOM through the seafloor, these leaks and seeps will only continue to get worse. Here’s why:
Methane gas mixed with saltwater and mud makes for a very potent corrosive agent. Under high pressure it will find every point of egress through the rock and sediment formations all the way up to the seafloor where it will find any point of exit that is available. The longer and more forcefully that it flows throughout the fractured area, which is dependent on the volume, temperature and pressure at the source of the hydrocarbons, the more its corrosive effects will widen, broaden and enlarge the channels, cracks and crevices throughout the sub-seafloor geology, thereby creating a predicament that no science, technology or equipment can remedy.
Dire realities of the methane hydrate predicament
The Macondo Prospect in the GOM is just one of many throughout the oceans of the world where the seafloor has beds of methane hydrate locked in place by very high pressure and low temperatures. Likewise, there are myriad repositories and large “reservoirs” of methane clathrates in the sub-seafloor strata, and especially within the more superficial geological formations, which are being greatly impacted by all oil and gas drilling and extraction activities. It does not take much imagination to understand how the upsurging hydrocarbons (very hot oil and gas) are quickly converting the frozen hydrates to gas, thereby causing innumerable “micro-displacements”, the cumulative effect of which will translate to larger “macro-displacements” of rock, sediment and other geological formations.
When you factor in this constant vaporization of methane hydrates/clathrates both sub-seafloor as well as those scattered around the seafloor surface to the existing scenario, this devolving situation becomes that much more difficult to effectively remedy. With the resulting shifts and resettling and reconfiguration of the entire seafloor terrain and underlying strata occurring in the wake of these dynamics, we are left with a situation that is not going to get better through the use of even more invasive technology and intrusive machinery.
Question: How many times can you grout a seafloor crack that was caused by an underlying superficial fault after drilling into an old mud volcano?
Answer: “In the attempt to seal the oil from oozing through the faults, BP resorted to high pressure grouting. Basically it is like cementing the cracks in the rock by injecting grout (cement mixture) at high pressure. The way they do this is by drilling an injection hole into the shallow rocks and pumping in the grout. The grout in “slurry” state will permeate into the cracks, cure and seal up the cracks. However it is not working because of the presence of gas and oil. It is like super-glue. You need to clean the surfaces before you apply the glue; otherwise it won’t stick and will come off eventually after a few days or weeks. That is why we can see a few blown out craters – shown in my article – Is the last rite for the Macondo Well for real?” (Per BK Lim, Geohazards Specialist)
Likewise, how do you fill a newly emerging gash in the seafloor which is caused by a deep fault due to low level seismic activity, or worse, a full blown earthquake?!
Seismic activity in the GOM and the uptick in earthquakes in the Mississippi River Basin and surrounding region
The oil and gas platforms that were in operation throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico in 2006 (per Wikipedia).
We now come to the most serious issue regarding the relentless drilling for oil and gas throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The map above clearly illustrates the density of drilling throughout the northern GOM as of 2006. Likewise, the map below demonstrates the extraordinary and increasing intensity of these very same operations off the coast of Louisiana alone.
Green lines represent active pipes (25,000 miles in all). Yellow dots represent oil rigs.
The map that follows, however, tells a story which demands the attention of every resident of the GOM coastline. The video link below the map shows the development timeline of the successively deeper wells being drilled during the last decade. Of course, with greater depths come much greater risks, as the technology and machinery have not been proportionately upgraded to accommodate the extraordinary demands and unforeseen contingencies of such a speculative and dangerous enterprise*.
*Oil and gas drilling in seawater depths of over 4000 feet, and through 15,000 to 25,000 feet of the earth’s crust and mantle, is considered extremely dangerous to those from whom reason and common sense have not yet fled.
Click on the map to enlarge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh_wNVUx9SI
It’s critical to understand the location and current activity of the various faults which exist throughout the GOM and how they connect to the New Madrid Fault Line, as well as other major faults at much greater distance. There does appear to be a emerging uptick in earthquake activity in the greater Louisiana area, as well as contiguous regions in the GOM as demonstrated by unprecedented, albeit low level earthquakes. Correlations between these earthquakes/seismic activity and major operations at the Macondo Prospect have been alluded to in our previous postings.
Earthquake Activity in Gulf of Mexico Prompts 2003 Study for MMS
Gulf of Mexico Subsea Structures May Be in Seismic Danger Zone – Part 2
Now then, the question remains just how vulnerable has the GOM been made to a truly catastrophic event, ending up with an overwhelming displacement of water producing tidal waves, in the aftermath of an undersea earthquake.
There is no question that the ceaseless fracturing of the seafloor and fissuring of the sub-seafloor geological strata by the Oil & Gas Industry has set up a quite conducive environment for HUGE unintended consequences. We leave it up to the experts to conduct the necessary risk assessments, which will most assuredly let loose a sea of red flags about what Big Oil has done, and is currently doing, in the Gulf of Mexico. Furthermore, we are deeply concerned that, if a permanent moratorium on all new oil and gas drilling and extraction in the GOM is not put into place poste haste, the coastal communities will remain in a very precarious situation.
Worsening GOM predicament is reflective of the status quo around the globe
Now consider the following scenario: that this very same predicament, which we have all witnessed in the Gulf of Mexico, is happening wherever oil and gas drilling is conducted in the various water bodies throughout the planet. Therefore we can multiply the Macondo Prospect disaster a hundred times and still not come close to the impacts that these ongoing gushers and spills, leaks and seeps are having the world over.
Perhaps the BP Gulf Oil Spill was the defining moment in modern history when all the nations of the world community were called by Mother Earth herself to begin transitioning the planet away from the Hydrocarbon Fuel Paradigm. After all, we may never get another chance!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Transitioning-The-Planet-Away-From-The-Hydrocarbon-Fuel-Paradigm/154984831192787?v=wall&ref=ts
Tom Termotto is National Coordinator of the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference
OilSpillSolution@comcast.net
SKYPE: Gulf_Advocate
http://oilspillsolutionsnow.org/